Page:A Dictionary of Saintly Women Volume 2.djvu/20

8 8 ST. MANNIA and wonld not hnrt them: then they were beheaded. B.M. AA.SS. St. Mannia, Manna (i). St Mansenna, Mancina. Maraca, V. M. under Sapor. Migne, Dic., Appendix. St. Marana or Maranna, Aug. 3, Feb. 28, 5th century. A lady of Berea in Syria, sister of Cyra (1). They im- mnred themselves in a small half-roofed enclosure near their native town, assign- ing a little building outside their own to such of their maids as chose to follow their example. Here they lived for many years, loaded with chains too heavy for a strong man. Through a narrow window they received a scanty supply of food and water and exhorted their visitors to prayer and the love of GU>d. They repeatedly fasted for long periods. They observed a rule of silence, which Marana allowed herself to break at Pentecost, in order to exhort to prayer and the love of God, such women as visited the cell for edification. No one ever heard Cyra speak. She was the smaller and weaker of the two and was bowed to the earth by the weight of her chains. Large mantles concealed their faces and forms and shut the world from their sight. They wrought miraculous cures on the blind, the lame, and the possessed. Only twice did. they leave their dwelling; once to walk to Jeru- salem, twenty days' journey ; and once to the church of St. Thecla, at Seleucia in Isauria, almost as long a distance. On both these journeys they fasted the whole way, only eating when they were at the goal of their pilgrimage. They allowed Theodoret, bishop of Cyprus, to enter their abode and feel the weight of their phains. He testifies that they had . thus lived for forty-two years and were still living, the ornament of their sex, when he wrote in the middle of the fifth century. Hist. BeUgiosie. B.M. AA,SS. Migne. Men, of Basil, Feb. 28. Baillet. Tillemont St. Marcella (l), June lO, July 29. Patron of Tarascon and of Sclavonia. A fabulous saint described in the legends as servant of SS. Lazarus, Maky and Mabtha, whom she accompanied to Marseilles. After Martha's death, she preached in Sclavonia. She is by some writers identified as the woman who, recognizing the divine authority of Our Lord, *' lifted up her voice, and said unto him, Blessed is the womb that bare thee, and the paps which thou hast sucked" (St. Luke xi. 27). Legenda Aurea, St. Marcella (2), Quixctia Mau- OELLA. St. Marcella (3), June 2. One of 227 Human martyrs, commemorated together this day in the Martyrology of St, Jerome. AA,SS, SS. Marcella (4, 5, o), MM. in Africa, May 7 ; Tarsus, May 1(> ; and Bome, Feb. 17, respectively. AA.SS. St. Marcella (7), Jan. :ii, -h 4io, called "The First Nun," and by St. Jerome, "The Pattern of a Christian Widow" and "The Glory of Roman Ladies." She was of the illustrious Roman family of the Marcelli, and sister of AsELLA. Her mother was Albina, a benevolent and intellectual Christian lady of great wealth. Marcella was a child, but old enough to receive a last- ing spiritual impression, when, in 340, St. Athanasius came as an exile to Rome and was a welcome guest in her mother's house. Albina, Asella and the little Marcella, heard with enthusiasm Atha- nasius' descriptions of the desert, with the solitary life and unremitting prayer of the monks. When he went away, he left in the house the first copy of the Life of St Antony that had been seen in Rome, a book which greatly influenced the three ladies. Marcella grew up singularly beautiful, and married young. She had been a wife little more than half a year when she became a widow. She very soon had the offer of a second marriage, still more brilliant and wealthy than the first ; the prStendu was Cercalis, a consular senator, related to the imperial family. Her mother and all her friends favoured the suit of Cerealis and were vexed when she decidedly refused to take a second husband. The custom of the time, how- ever, granted great freedom to a widow, a freedom shamefully abused by many ; Marcella used it to follow her vocation and break with the irksume and absurd