Saint Honorina

Saint Honorina (French: Sainte Honorine) was a 3rd-century virgin martyr of Gallo-Roman northern France, venerated as a saint in the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches. Believed to have been killed in the first years of the 4th century during the persecutions of Diocletian, very little is known of her life, apart from her reputed martyrdom for maintaining her Christian faith. She is one of the earliest martyrs of Gaul, still revered in northern France, especially in Normandy and Île-de-France, where there are a number of communes, chapels and churches named for her. The commune of Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, where her relics are kept in the parish church of Saint Maclou, claims her as their patron saint. She is also the patron saint of sailors and boatmen of inland waterways. Prisoners and captives traditionally invoke her name in praying for aid. Her feast day falls on 27 February. In the traditional account, Honorina belonged to the Gallic tribe of Calates from the Pays de Caux region. Martyred during the persecutions of Diocletian, near the modern farming town of Mélamare, between Lillebonne and Harfleur, her body was thrown into the Seine by the pagans. It drifted to Graville, later called Graville-Sainte-Honorine, which is now a district of the modern city of Le Havre. Reputedly, local Christians recovered Honorina's remains, first burying them at the foot of a cliff nearby; later, monks reinterred her remains in a reliquary, housed in a church they built to honour her. Other traditions hold that she was martyred at Coulonces, Calvados, or in the Pays d'Auge, where several villages bear her name. A community of monks established a priory in the 5th century at Graville-Sainte-Honorine, where they built a church dedicated to Saint Honorina, moving her relics there. In 876, with the coast threatened by the Normans, the monks moved the relics for safekeeping.