Albina

Holy Martyr Albina was a virgin of Caesarea of Palestine who received a martyr's death in the time of the emperor Decius, around 250 (our record gives her birth as 238). She is commemorated on 16 December and venerated chiefly at Formia, in Italy. The Orthodox Church knows her as a martyr of the early Church, and her veneration comes mainly through the Roman Martyrology, so we call her here a saint of the undivided Church.

According to her Life in the Roman Martyrology, she was born at Caesarea of Palestine and suffered there under the emperor Decius Trajan (249 to 251). They wished to force her to renounce her faith, promising many advantages. For her steadfastness in confessing Christ she was tortured and beheaded. In iconography, the palm leaf in her hand is the sign of the martyrs.

Her body was placed in a boat left to the mercy of the waves, which miraculously came ashore at Scauri, near Formia. Two traditions differ: the Greek one says that she died at Caesarea, while the one in the Martyrology says that she was brought to Italy and killed at Formia. Her relics, kept from antiquity at Formia, were found in 1665 and taken to the local monastery of the Holy Sepulchre, according to one source. Another source says that her remains are kept in the cathedral of the Italian city of Gaeta. The sources do not agree on the place.

Other women named Albina are remembered in the Western Church: one put to death in the second century together with her brother Paxentius, in the time of Marcus Aurelius, commemorated on 23 September, whose relics reached Paris; a Roman woman beheaded because she was a Roman citizen, among the martyrs of Lyon of 177; the mother of Saint Marcella, who died on 4 March 387; and a fourth, martyred in Rome, commemorated on 17 February. They should not be confused with Albina of Caesarea.