The life of St Helen of Sinope
She managed to slip away and return home, but the governor, furious, threatened to massacre the city's Christians unless she was given back to him, and her grieving father, to spare his people, brought her to him himself.
Even then she was kept from harm by the same invisible protection through further attempts, until the governor, unable to break her, had her imprisoned, tortured, and finally killed, her skull pierced through before she was beheaded. Her body was sewn into a sack and cast into the sea, where witnesses said it floated glowing with light rather than sinking, until it came to rest in deep water. Sailors later recovered her relics there, guided by a light rising from below. Her body was carried to Russia and her head kept at Sinope, later brought to Thessaloniki, where it is venerated to this day and remembered especially by those seeking relief from headaches.
