6 Divorced Saints of the Orthodox Tradition

And why they matter

Hi, my name is Nicole, and I’m divorced.

It’s not been a secret. While I don’t wear a scarlet “D” on my shirt, if you’ve followed my work for a while, you likely know that my first marriage ended some years ago. I’ve quietly mentioned it a few times and alluded to it on other occasions. I also disclose this detail to my clients when necessary to enhance trust and transparency.

Here’s what else folks should know about my marital history: nothing. Divorce is an intimate, complex, and painful subject, and always involves more than just one person. Unless someone is God, my priest/confessor, bishop, therapist, or trusted loved one, it’s not their place to weigh in or seek further information.

Some corners of the internet, though, lately seem to consider my divorce a matter of public ridicule. According to them, it also disqualifies me from writing about trauma between men and women or, really, having any voice at all when it comes to matters of faith.

Thankfully, Scripture, Tradition, and the lives of the saints give us another, and more life-giving way to look at divorce and similar experiences, and that is how I choose to orient myself—warts, divorce, and all. If the witness of our faith has anything to impart to us, it’s that the way of holiness has never belonged exclusively to those whose lives are untouched by suffering, or even scandal. The saints of the Church come from all walks of life—fishermen, queens, scholars, repentant thieves, the faithful, and the unexpectedly redeemed.

Among the lives of those we revere are also those who have known the exquisite agony of a broken marriage.

Today, I share six such saints, all of them glorified and venerated in the Eastern Orthodox tradition. You’ll meet both men and women who’ve been through divorce—some who initiated it, others who endured it. Some were divorced before coming to faith, others afterwards. Some remarried, some remained single, and others turned to monasticism. Some even went through divorce more than once. But what unites all of them is that their lives are not defined by divorce alone, but by repentance, and the wholeness (and holiness) that it brings. Their journeys toward Christ were shaped by much more than this one chapter.

A quick note on divorce

I’m not here to commend divorce unequivocally—it is awful and not something we human beings were created for—but there are times when it is sadly necessary.

I also consider it a great mercy that the Church I call home not only honours divorce¹ when appropriate (and has since ancient times), it also actively remembers saints who’ve gone through it.

That we do not expunge details about divorce from the lives of saints is important—it conveys the paradoxical truth that, like so many areas of human brokenness, divorce is neither to be taken lightly nor to be regarded as an exile from grace and reconciliation. And this should remind all of us—regardless of our marital status—that even in the unraveling of something that was once whole, Christ is perpetually present, healing, and calling us forward and toward repentance.

On to the saints…

6 Divorced Saints of the Orthodox Tradition

Bulgarian icon of Saints Constantine and Helen. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

1. St. Helen, Equal to the Apostles (d. 330): Steadfast, Devoted, Transformative

Saint Helen’s life is a testament to how holiness can emerge from unexpected places. Born into a lowly background, she was a stable maid before becoming the partner of Constantius, a rising Roman military officer. Yet, her status was not secure—when Constantius sought a more politically advantageous marriage, he cast her aside, leaving her a single mother to their son, Constantine. Despite this rejection, Helen remained devoted to her son, and when he ascended as emperor, she regained prominence. Her later years were marked by an extraordinary pilgrimage to the Holy Land, where she became associated with the discovery of the True Cross. Yet beyond her legendary relic-finding, she was a woman who had known heartbreak, obscurity, and loss—experiences that might have embittered her but instead deepened her faith. St. Helen’s life reminds us that sainthood is not reserved for the pristine but is often shaped in the crucible of suffering and resilience. Her feast—celebrated together with that of her son, St. Constantine the Great—is May 21. Her prayers are especially sought for archaeologists, converts, those in difficult marriages, divorced people, empresses, and new discoveries.

Fabiola, painted by Jean-Jacques Henner (1850). Source: Wikimedia commons.

2. St. Fabiola of Rome (d. 399): Physician, Benefactor, and Friend of St. Jerome

Fabiola, a wealthy Roman patrician from the renowned Fabia family, led an extraordinary and colourful life. She divorced her first husband because of his infidelity and vicious behaviour, and later remarried. As remarriage following a divorce was not permitted in the Eastern Church until after its formal schism with Rome, she eventually had to seek reconciliation with the Church, which she did after her second husband’s death. Thereafter, she devoted herself to charity and medical care, using her wealth to establish the first Christian public hospital in the West, where she personally tended the sick. A physician as well as a benefactor, she later opened a hospice for poor pilgrims at Porto with St. Pammachius. St. Jerome, our main source of information about her, wrote two treatises in her honor. Her feast day is December 27th. The prayers of St. Fabiola are especially sought by divorced individuals, those in difficult marriages, and victims of abuse, adultery, unfaithfulness, or widowhood. She is also considered one of the patron saints of the hospice movement.

Gummarus, Patron Saint of Lier, Belgium. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

3. St. Gummarus (d. 774 or 714): Male victim of domestic cruelty

St. Gummarus of Lier (Belgium), a nobleman and relative of Pepin the Younger, was a divorced saint whose marriage to the wealthy and domineering Guinmarie was marked by discord and her mistreatment of their household. While he spent years away on military campaigns, his wife’s harshness toward their servants went unchecked. On returning, Gummarus attempted reconciliation and sought to right her wrongs, but the marriage ultimately ended in separation. Retreating to a hermitage at Nivesdunc, he lived as a hermit in prayer and solitude, and the town of Lier, Belgium later developed around the site. He died in the eighth century and was later glorified, remembered for his piety, humility, and endurance through a difficult marriage. His feast day is October 11, and he is regarded as a patron saint of childless people, difficult marriages, courtiers, cowherds, hernia sufferers, separated spouses, and woodcutters.

Maria Skobstova with Nikolai Berdyaev and Stefan Tsankov, 1930. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

4. St. Maria of Paris (d. 1945): Compassionate, Cantankerous, Chain-Smoking Martyr

St. Maria (Skobtsova) was divorced not once but twice—first before returning to the Orthodox faith of her childhood and again afterward. Having turned to atheism following her father’s untimely death, she rediscovered her faith as a young adult amid Russia’s political turmoil. She eventually settled in Paris with her second husband and children, where she pursued theological study, but after her marriage ended, her bishop encouraged her to take monastic vows. She agreed, with the unusual condition that she be allowed to live not in a monastery but in the heart of the city, serving those in need—including many Jews whom she helped escape Nazi-occupied France. Arrested for her work, she was sent to Ravensbrück Concentration Camp, where she was executed on Holy Friday in 1945. Canonized as a martyr in 2004, St. Maria is remembered not only for her radical acts of self-sacrifice but also for her sharp intellect, strong-willed personality, fondness for cigarettes, and deep conviction that true holiness requires a willingness to co-suffer with the most vulnerable. Her feast day is July 20.

11th-century depiction of St. Radegunde. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

5. St. Radegunde (d. 587): Queen, Deaconess, Poet and more

Born a princess and wed a queen, Radegunde’s life was anything but a fairytale. Taken captive as a child after her uncle’s betrayal of her father, a king, she was raised in the court of the Frankish King Clotaire I, who later made her his wife. But the crown rested uneasily on her head. When Clotaire had her last surviving brother murdered, Radegunde fled his court and found refuge in the Church, persuading a bishop to ordain her a deaconess—a rare and audacious act for a woman of her time. A gifted healer, an extreme ascetic, and a poet in her own right, she founded the Abbey of Sainte-Croix in Poitiers, where she cultivated a community of literate, disciplined women. Though she once commanded a throne, her truest power lay in words and faith: she corresponded with the Byzantine Emperor to secure a relic of the True Cross (found by St. Helen, see above), inspired one of the greatest hymns of the pre-schism Western Church, and counted poets and bishops among her closest friends. Yet, despite her holiness, even her own abbey rebelled after her death, resisting an abbess imposed by the male hierarchy. Radegunde’s life was one of paradox—princess and fugitive, wife and runaway, ruler and servant—but in the end, it was her quiet, fierce defiance that secured her legacy. She is venerated on August 13, and is considered by some to be a patron saint for victims of drowning, leprosy, the death of parents, ulcers, difficult marriages, potters, and weavers.

Icon of St. Photini meeting Christ at the well. Source: Wikimedia commons.

6. St. Photini (ca. AD 66): Samaritan woman at the well and Equal to the Apostles

The life of St. Photini (“the luminous one”)—aka the Samaritan woman at the well—was one of rejection and renewal, of inner wounds transformed by Christ into wells of living water. We don’t know with certainty whether divorce was the reason why she had been married five times by the time of her encounter with Christ. Regardless, her fraught marital status coupled with being a Samaritan meant she bore the weight of fractured relationships, scandal, and exclusion. Yet, Christ met her at the well—not to condemn, but to speak with her and allow her to have a say in the telling of her own story. Their conversation is the longest Christ has with any one person in the Gospels (Jn 4:4-42). He saw past the wreckage of her past and called her not by her shame, but by her thirst for truth. In that encounter, her voice—long dismissed—became a clarion call, proclaiming the Good News of Christ’s love to the very people who had shunned her. Later, as a fearless witness and martyr, she bore suffering not as a woman discarded but as one redeemed, reminding us that no story is too broken to be rewritten by grace. She is venerated on May 20, and her prayers are particularly sought by repentant sufferers of carnal temptations as well as by those with physical or spiritual blindness, and those suffering diseases of the head and trembling disorders.

Why divorced saints matter

Too many of us—both inside and outside the Church—try to police holiness, what it can and cannot look like, and whose lives are acceptable evidence of God’s mercy. This is why the stories of divorced saints, and all the saints, matter. Their lives are witness that no experience—not even the breaking of a marriage—can place us beyond the reach of Christ. In their struggles, we find reassurance that our wounds, shortcomings, scandals, and repented sins do not render us unworthy of God’s love, nor do they disqualify us from the command to speak the truth in love.

May we always remember that no life is beyond the bounds of holiness or repentance, including our own. May we not mistake suffering for failure, or insist people bear their wounds as marks of shame rather than sources of transformation. But may we look, instead, to the Christ we find in the Gospels and Holy Tradition, a lover of our souls who meets us in the wreckage of our lives, offering not just healing but dignity, not just forgiveness but renewal. And may the saints intercede for us.

ETA: More divorced saints (added by fellow readers!)

Let me know in comments if there are any special divorced saints you love and I will add them to this list.

• St. Tamara of Georgia

• Mother Alexandra/ Princess Ileana of Romania

• Chiune Sugihara, a Japanese diplomat and Orthodox Christian, saved many Jewish lives during WWII, is considered by many to be a saint but I can’t find any reputable English sources about his glorification (please send them my way if you have them!).

Further resources

• “Divorce in Church History,” Saints Peter & Paul Greek Orthodox Church (2019).

• “Recovering from Divorce,” Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America (2017)‌

1. Personally, I prefer the language of the Church “honouring” or “recognizing” divorce rather than “allowing” it. In practice, what the Church is doing is essentially acknowledging a reality that has already taken place—namely the end of a marriage—in the spirit of economia, or merciful concession. While the process of obtaining an ecclesiastical divorce differs slightly from between jurisdictions, most (if not all) require documentary proof of a civil divorce before conveying an ecclesiastical divorce or permission to remarry in the Church. There are many reasons for this—pastoral, sacramental, legal, and ecclesiastical—but in effect, when a bishop does grant a couple an ecclesiastical divorce, the marriage has already effectively ended in every other way.