Dionysia (3) , St., a Christian martyr in the 5th cent. According to the narrative of Victor Vitensis, her contemporary, she was a lady of rare beauty in Africa, who preferred tortures, shameful indignities, and death to renouncing her faith; a victim of the persecution of the orthodox or Catholic Christians by Hunneric, king of the Vandals. The date assigned for her martyrdom is 484.

See Victor Vitensis, de Persecutione Africanâ , V. c. 1; ap. Migne, Patr. Lat. lvii.; Tillem., Mémoires , t. xvi. (Paris, 1701, 4to); Baronius, Annales Ecclesiastici , t. viii. p. 463 (Lucae, 1741, fol.).

[I.G.S.]