Disguise and Monastic Office
A recurring feature of Susanna's hagiography is her years in a men's monastery in Jerusalem, which she entered disguised as a man under the name John. The sources relate that her fellow monks took her to be a eunuch and that, on account of her exemplary ascetic conduct, she was eventually placed at the head of the community as archimandrite (described in some retellings as abbot).
Her disguise was undone by a false accusation: a woman charged 'John' with attempted assault. When the bishop of Eleutheropolis investigated the matter, Susanna revealed her true identity, by tradition privately to virgins and female deaconesses. The revelation exonerated her but made it impossible for her to continue leading a men's monastery, after which the bishop ordained her a deaconess.
Accounts of Her Martyrdom
The principal tradition places Susanna's death in the persecutions associated with the reign of Maximian. In this account a magistrate named Alexander, arriving at Eleutheropolis, demanded that she sacrifice to the idols; when she refused and confessed Christ she was subjected to severe tortures, related by tradition to include the mutilation of her breasts (said to have been miraculously restored), molten lead, beating, and fire, dying in the flames.
A variant synaxarion summary instead assigns her martyrdom to the persecution under Julian the Apostate, names the investigating bishop Kleopas, and reports that she died in prison from starvation rather than renounce her faith. These accounts diverge on the emperor, the bishop's name, and the manner of her death; the Maximian-era tradition is the one carried by the database record.
