The “Dragon-Slayer” Saints of the Eastern Orthodox Church

Wednesday, December 16, 2015



St. Marina of Antioch (4th c.) is swallowed and exploded from the dragon’s belly at the same time.

According to the version of the story in Golden Legend, she was a native of "Antioch" and she was the daughter of a pagan priest named Aedesius. Her mother having died soon after her birth, Margaret was nursed by a pious woman five or six leagues from Antioch. Having embraced Christianity and consecrated her virginity to God, she was disowned by her father, adopted by her nurse and lived in the country keeping sheep with her foster mother (in what is now Turkey). Olybrius, Governor of the Roman Diocese of the East, asked to marry her but with the price of her renunciation of Christianity. Upon her refusal she was cruelly tortured, during which various miraculous incidents occurred. One of these involved being swallowed by Satan in the shape of a dragon, from which she escaped alive when the cross she carried irritated the dragon's innards.



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