Did Saint Philomena marry anyone

Answer 1

There is virtually no information extant about Philomena. In fact, she is not formally recognized as a saint in the Catholic Church and her cult has been allowed only in Mungano, Italy, where relics purported to be of Philomena are kept. If legends about her have any truth to them she was a 13 year old girl who had made a vow of virginity. When she refused the Roman Emperor's demand that she marry him, she was ordered to be executed. Based on that information we must assume that she was never married.

Answer 2

The only information we have about Saint Philomena is from revelation to others after her remains had been found in a catacomb in 1802. Sister Maria Luisa di Gesù reported that she received revelations from Philomena, who told her she was the daughter of a king in Greece who, with his wife, had converted to Christianity. At the age of about 13 she took a vow of consecrated virginity.

Sister di Gesù said she received a revelation from Philomena that Emperor Diocletian fell in love with her and, when she refused to be his wife, subjected Philomena to a series of torments: scourging, from whose effects two angels cured her; drowning with an anchor attached to her (two angels cut the rope and raised her to the river bank); being shot with arrows, (on the first occasion her wounds were healed; on the second, the arrows turned aside; and on the third, they returned and killed six of the archers, after which, several of the others became Christians). Finally the Emperor had her decapitated. The two anchors, three arrows, the palm and the ivy leaf on the tiles found in the tomb were to be interpreted as symbols of her martyrdom. On this basis, Philomena did not marry anyone.

Later in the twentieth-century it was discovered that the inscription on the three tiles that had provided the Latin name Filumena (Philomena, in English) and the images around which a tale of martyrdom had been woven belonged to the middle or second half of the second century, while the body that had been found behind the tiles was of the fourth century. The three tiles had no relation to the person whose remains were found. There was no Saint Philomena and on that basis she did not marry anyone.