Saint Marina

Marina was born in Bithynia, in Asia Minor, to Christian parents. When her mother died, her father Eugenius decided to withdraw to a monastery at Qannoubine, in the Qadisha Valley, in Lebanon. Marina was left alone, and she suffered; and so did he. So Eugenius went to the abbot and told a half-truth: that he had a son at home who had long been asking to enter the monastery. The abbot agreed, and Marina entered dressed as a man, under the name Marinus. She stayed there her whole life. When her father died, she carried on. Then came the thing that made her story famous: an innkeeper’s daughter got pregnant and, to cover for the real father, accused the young monk Marinus. Marina didn’t defend herself. She was driven out of the monastery and lived for years in front of its gate, begging, raising the child that was handed over to her. In the end they took her back, and gave her the humblest jobs. Only at her death, as they prepared the body, did the monks discover she was a woman — and with that, that she had been innocent all along. The period in which she lived is uncertain: perhaps the eighth century, perhaps the fifth or sixth. Her remains have been in Venice since the thirteenth century, and since 1810 they have rested in the church of Santa Maria Formosa. The city venerates her as a co-patron. If your name is Marina, today is your name day.