Anastasia (2)

Anastasia 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.