The life of St Marcella of Chios
Cornered at last on the rocky shore, she is said to have prayed for the earth to hide her, and a rock opened to receive her body to the waist before her father killed her there.
A modern student of her cult, writing from within Orthodoxy itself, has noted that no ancient record, hymn, or shrine can be traced for her, that the life now told of her was composed only in recent centuries, and that estimates of her era have ranged across more than a thousand years, from the early Roman persecutions to as late as the sixteenth century, with the later dating now generally preferred by scholars. What has endured without dispute is the devotion of Chios itself: a shrine on the shore where she is said to have died, and long-reported healings sought there in her name.
