Anastasia
Anastasia [1]
a martyr of the fourth century, of Roman descent, instructed in the principles of Christianity by Chrysogonus. Her father, being a pagan, gave her in marriage to a man of his own faith named Publius, who informed against her as a Christian. By command of Florus, governor of Illyricum, she was put to the torture; but, her faith remaining unshaken, he ordered her to be burnt, which sentence was executed December 25, A.D. 304, about one month after the martyrdom of Chrysogonus, her instructor. The Greeks commemorate her as a saint on Dec. 22: the Latins, Dec. 25. — Baillet, under Dec. 25.
is the name of several Christian saints:
(1) a martyr of the time of Nero, said to have been a pupil of St. Peter and St. Paul, commemorated April 15;
(2) the martyr under Diocletian whose nativity is celebrated in Roman lists on Dec. 25, and in the Byzantine calendar (as Φαμακολυτρία , or Dissolver Of Spells ) on Dec. 22 (Neale, Eastern Church , introd. p. 786);
(3) a special martyr ( Ὁσιομάρτυς ) of Rome commemorated in the Byzantine calendar on Oct. 29;
(4) the daughter of an eminent Greek family of Constantinople. Her beauty attracted the attention of the emperor Justinian, but she resisted his dishonorable proposals, and retired to Alexandria, where she lived as a monk for twenty-eight years, her sex remaining unknown until her death, in A.D. 597. She is commemorated March 10.
