Venerable Paraskeva of Serbia

Paraskeva, called Petka by the Slavs, was born in the 11th century at Epivates on the Sea of Marmara, near Constantinople. Her brother Euthymius became bishop of Madytos. After her parents' death she left home and, her Life says, spent many years as a hermit in the desert near the Jordan, eating only plants after sunset.

Later, the Life says, she returned to Epivates and lived there unknown until her death. Her relics were taken to Tarnovo by the Bulgarian tsar Ivan Asen II in the 1230s, later to Belgrade and Constantinople, and in 1641 to Iași in Moldavia, where they rest in the metropolitan cathedral and draw great crowds of pilgrims each October.