The life of St Anysia at Thessalonica
She lived through the years of Diocletian and Maximian's persecution, when an imperial decree effectively left Christians unprotected from violence at the hands of any citizen who chose to harm them, and her own steadiness through that danger was remembered as an example that drew others toward the faith rather than away from it. On her way to church one day she was stopped at one of the city's gates by a soldier who tried to force her instead toward a pagan festival and grabbed at the veil covering her head; she pushed him away and refused him outright, and in his anger he ran her through with his sword, killing her on the spot. She died around 304, in the reign of Maximian, and her relics have long been kept at the Church of Saint Demetrios in Thessaloniki. No fuller independent historical account of her life survives beyond this traditional narrative, and that thinness of record is worth stating honestly alongside the reverence in which she has long been held.
