Anysia of Thessalonica

Saint Anysia of Thessalonica was a Christian virgin, born of pious and well-⁠off parents, who gave her wealth to the poor and died for the faith in the persecution of Maximian, around 304. The Church remembers her on 30 December.

What is known of her comes from two Lives, one attributed to Symeon the Metaphrast, the other to a deacon and referendary Gregory. Her story lacks sure historical confirmation. Born at Thessalonica into a Christian family, she was orphaned early. She distributed her inheritance to the poor and lived a strict life of fasting, vigil and prayer.

One day, in the time of the persecution of Diocletian, as she was going to church, a Roman soldier stopped her at the Cassandriote Gate. He asked where she was going and urged her to join a pagan feast. Frightened, she made the sign of the cross on her forehead and confessed that she was a Christian, and the soldier tried to force her to offer sacrifice to the Roman gods. They struggled, he tried to tear the veil from her head, and she spat in his face, saying: "May my Lord Jesus Christ forbid you, devil." The soldier, who could not bear the name of Christ, drew his sword and ran her through. The Christians of Thessalonica buried her outside the city, near the gate, and later, when the persecution ended, built a chapel over her grave. Today her relics are kept in a silver shrine in the basilica of Saint Demetrius in Thessalonica.

Her memory is known from the Typikon of the Great Church of the tenth century. In Russia the earliest witness to her veneration is in the calendar of the Ostromir Gospel of 1056 to 1057.