Saint Saint Markella

Saint Markella or Marcella (Greek: Μαρκέλλα) was an inhabitant of 14th-century Chios who was canonized by the Greek Orthodox Church. Her feast day is celebrated on 22 July. Information about her life and martyrdom was unknown as stated in the synaxarium of 1810, as well as of 1868 which quoted only some information about her ritual worship in Chios. Also mentioned by Leo Allatius in 1648, without any attributions of her identity. In the 1860s, her date of birth appears around 1500 AD for the first time. This chronology doesn't concur with the account of Leo Allatius who seems to have little information about her (he was born in 1586 and the memories of her life would still be fresh) and probably the events of her life will go further back in time. Therefore, based on the tradition that started in the 19th century, it is said that Saint Markella was born and lived in Volissos, Chios, Greece. She was raised as a devout Christian by her mother. However, her father (in some accounts) was a pagan. St. Markella lived during the 14th century - during most of which Chios was under Genoese rule. At a young age, her mother died and St. Markella continued to study the Bible, pray to God and live a life according to what she was taught. Around the time of her eighteenth birthday, the virtuous St. Markella had to flee the fury of her violent father. There are variant accounts given about the reasons for that. In one version, while St. Markella's late mother had been a Christian, her father was an idolater and he tried very hard to force his daughter to become an idolater, too; this seems anachronistic, since by the 14th Century paganism was long since extinct in Greece. By another version, the problem was that St. Markella's father was consumed with incestuous lust for her, and she fled in horror when he declared his intentions. Whatever her reason for being afraid of her father, St. Markella fled to nearby mountains and hid in a bush.