Historical Context
The date traditionally assigned to her death, about 311, places Theotime in the final years of the persecutions that had intensified under the emperor Diocletian and continued in the eastern provinces afterward. This was the period in which the Edict of Milan (313) and the broader peace of the Church lay only just ahead, and many of those commemorated for these years are remembered with only the barest of details.
Nicomedia, the city with which the liturgical calendars connect her, was an imperial capital in the East and a notable center of both Christian life and official persecution during this era; numerous martyrs of the same day and decade are likewise associated with it. Because no narrative of her trial or sufferings was handed down, Theotime is preserved in the synaxarion essentially as a name, a place, a date, and the fact of her beheading.