The life of St Ariadne of Phrygia
For that refusal she was beaten and torn with iron hooks, then shut in prison and left without food for a long while in hope that hunger would break what force had not.
She held to her faith regardless, and was eventually released, but Tertullus soon sent men to hunt her down. As they closed in on her flight, she turned to prayer for protection, and her story is remembered two different ways from that point: one account holds that the mountainside itself opened before her and she disappeared into the crevice, giving her life to God there; another says simply that she fell to her death from a cliff during the chase. Either way, her pursuers found no living woman to bring back.
Her memory has been kept since across a wide span of Christian traditions, East and West alike, a mark of how far and how early her story had already traveled.
