From Dissipation to Repentance
The shared life of Boniface and Aglaia is remembered above all as an account of conversion. Both began in a manner the tradition describes frankly as sinful, yet both are said to have been troubled in conscience and to have desired spiritual cleansing.
The synaxarion preserves a striking detail: before setting out for Tarsus, Boniface is said to have remarked, half in jest, that if he could find no relics he might bring back his own body instead. The remark, which Aglaia is said to have rebuked as irreverent, was taken in the tradition as an unwitting foreshadowing of his martyrdom.
Martyrdom at Tarsus
Boniface suffered at Tarsus in Cilicia, where he had gone to seek the relics of martyrs. Confessing Christ publicly amid the persecution, he was subjected to severe tortures before being beheaded with the sword, traditionally dated to about the year 307.
The fuller synaxarion accounts relate that he was suspended and beaten, that needles were driven beneath his fingernails, and that molten tin was poured into his mouth; that he was cast into a cauldron of boiling tar from which, by tradition, he was preserved unharmed; and that at his beheading the onlookers were moved to faith. These vivid details belong to the traditional martyr-account rather than to independent record.
Relics & Shrines
The relics of Boniface were carried from Tarsus back to Rome. By tradition Aglaia built a church at the place of his burial; this is associated with the Roman church later known as Santi Bonifacio e Alessio. Aglaia was in time buried alongside him.
Veneration
The Eastern Orthodox Church commemorates Boniface and Aglaia together on December 19. In the West, Boniface of Tarsus was historically observed on May 14, though his commemoration was removed from the Roman calendar in the 1969 revision on the grounds that his Acts are largely legendary.
In popular Orthodox devotion the pair is invoked by those struggling against intemperance and a dissolute life, on account of their own conversion from such a life.
