Virgin-martyr Anastasia the Roman

Anastasia the Roman — distinct from the better-known Great-martyr Anastasia the Deliverer of December — was a young Christian of Rome in the third century, an orphan raised from infancy in a convent under the abbess Sophia. She was strikingly beautiful and her piety was renowned in the small community of nuns, but the city outside was deep in the persecution of Decius (around 250).

When the prefect Probus heard of her, he ordered her brought to him. The synaxarion records that he attempted at first to seduce her, then to terrify her with the most savage threats. She refused his proposals with quiet resolution, and was subjected to a long and varied sequence of torments — including the cutting out of her tongue (after which she continued, the synaxarion says, to praise God), the cutting off of her hands and feet, and the breaking of her body on the rack. She was at last beheaded outside the city.

Her abbess Sophia retrieved her body and gave it honored burial; the synaxarion records that Sophia herself reposed three days later. She is the first virgin-martyr in the Roman tradition to bear the name Anastasia. Her feast falls on October 29.