Early Church · d. c. 304
St Marina
Greatmartyr of Antioch in Pisidia
Marina was born in Antioch of Pisidia in Asia Minor, the daughter of a pagan priest. Losing her mother in infancy, she was raised in the countryside by a nurse from whom she learned the Christian faith, and when her father learned of her belief he disowned her. As a girl of about fifteen she was seen by the governor Olymbrius, who sought her in marriage if she would renounce Christ. She refused, confessing herself a Christian, and endured savage tortures; the traditional account of her passion tells how in prison she overcame the assaults of the evil one through prayer and the sign of the Cross, an episode beloved in her iconography. Many who witnessed her endurance confessed Christ and died with her. She was beheaded around 304, during the persecution of Diocletian. Venerated in the West as Margaret, she is one of the most honored virgin martyrs of the Church.
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