A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Anastasia, Saint
ANASTASIA, SAINT,
Several eminently pious women are known by this name. The earliest and most famous among them lived at Corinth, about the time when St. Paul preached the gospel in that city. She heard the apostle, and was seized with a firm conviction that the doctrines inculcated by that eminent disciple of Christ were true. She joined the Christian church without the knowledge of her parents and relations. Although betrothed to a Corinthian whose Interests made him hostile to the introduction of the new religion, she nevertheless suffered neither persuasion nor threats to shake her in her enthusiasm for the new faith. She prevailed even so far upon her lover as to make him resolve to become a Christian. Finally she was compelled, on account of persecution, to conceal herself in a vault. But her lover, to whom she had declared her intention of living the life of a virgin devoted to God, betrayed her retreat. Every attempt to make her recant proved fruitless. She suffered the death of a martyr; and her lover died soon afterwards, a victim to remorse and grief. Petrarch mentions her several times in his poems.