The life of St Aquilina the New Martyr
When Aquilina turned eighteen, the Turks pressed her father to bring his daughter into Islam as he had come himself. He tried, and when she refused him plainly, he told his neighbors he could no longer answer for her and they might do as they wished. She was seized, bound, and beaten across repeated sessions before the local judge, who alternated cruelty with offers of wealth and marriage to spare her; she met each in turn with the same unyielding refusal. After a final, merciless beating she was carried home dying to her mother, to whom she said only that she had kept what her mother had asked of her, and then gave up her soul, on September 27, 1764. Her body gave off a noted fragrance, and a light was seen over her grave at night. Christians later recovered her hidden relics from a Muslim burial and kept their location secret for generations to protect them.
