Venerable Mary (Marinus) and her father Eugene of Alexandria

Life

According to the synaxarion, Mary and her father Eugene lived at the beginning of the sixth century in Bithynia, in northwestern Asia Minor. After the death of his wife, Eugene resolved to withdraw to a monastery. His daughter, unwilling to be separated from him, put on male clothing so that she might accompany him, and together they entered a monastery not far from Alexandria, where she was tonsured under the name Marinus.

Living as a monk, Marinus was distinguished by humility and obedience and grew accomplished in the ascetic virtues. After her father's death she intensified her labors, and the synaxarion relates that she received the gift of healing those afflicted by unclean spirits.

The defining episode of her life was a false accusation. An innkeeper's daughter, who had sinned and become pregnant, named the monk Marinus as the father of her child. Mary did not deny the charge. She accepted expulsion from the monastery and lived in poverty near its wall; when the child was born and left in her care, she raised the boy as her own. After a period of penance she was readmitted to the community.

Death and Discovery

Mary died peacefully in her cell. Only when the brethren prepared her body for burial was it revealed that the monk Marinus had been a woman, and that the accusation she had borne in silence had been false.

The synaxarion relates that her witness moved those who had wronged her: the abbot and the innkeeper sought forgiveness, and the innkeeper's daughter, who according to the account had fallen under demonic possession, confessed her sin at Mary's tomb and was healed. The boy whom Mary had raised is said to have become a monk.

Veneration

Mary is commemorated together with her father Eugene on February 12. The synaxarion records that her relics were taken to Venice in 1113.

Her story circulated widely in both Eastern and Western Christian tradition, and the details of her life vary across recensions; some accounts place her in an earlier century and in a different region, and the precise dating is uncertain. The anchor record for this entry assigns her to the sixth century and gives Egypt as her region of origin.