Photine the Samaritan Woman

John's gospel gives her the longest dialogue Christ had with anyone: a Samaritan woman, five times married, come to draw water at noon to avoid the other women, to whom he announces living water and then declares himself Messiah. She leaves her jar and runs to tell the town, which makes her the first to proclaim him outside Israel. The Christian East gave her a name — Photine, "the luminous" —, a family and a passion: she is said to have preached at Carthage and then Rome, and there to have been thrown down a well by Nero. The Byzantine Churches keep her feast as isapostolos, equal to the apostles.