Saint Anastasia

The Prologue of Ochrid calls her "The Holy and Great Martyr Anastasia the Deliverer from Bonds." Her father was a pagan, Roman senator and her mother was a Christian. She chose to follow Christ, but was forced by her father to marry a wealthy pagan, Publius. She refused physical relations with her husband under a guise of feminine weakness. This and the fact that she was secretly using his wealth to minister to Christians in prison enraged Publius, so that he imprisoned her and tortured her. Publius was sent by the emperor to Persia and drowned on the voyage. Anastasia then used her great inheritance to openly minister to the Christians who were suffering. Emperor Diocletian went to Aquileia and summoned Chrysogonus (the holy man who had discipled Anastasia as a girl) and beheaded him. He also killed 3 sisters, Agapia, Chionia and Irene. Anastasia had followed her teacher to the town and witnessed these martyrdoms. She took their bodies, wrapped them in white linen and aromatic spices and buried them. She then went to Macedonia and continued ministering to those who were suffering for Christ. She was arrested and repeatedly interrogated. Ulphian, a pagan priest, reached out in lust toward Anastasia and was suddenly blinded, then fell dead. They tried to starve her for thirty days in prison. Then they put her in a boat with other Christians to drown her, but she survived. Finally they bound her to four wheels over a fire. She endured martyrdom in the year 304.