Saint Pelagia of Tarsus

Pelagia was born in Tarsus in Cilicia and lived in Rome under Emperor Diocletian, raised in a pagan household. According to tradition, she saw the bishop of Rome in a vision urging her to be baptised, and she secretly went and was baptised a Christian, giving her costly belongings to the poor.

When her mother and her fiance, Diocletian's son, failed to change her mind, the young man took his own life in grief. Diocletian then ordered Pelagia to sacrifice to the idols; she refused publicly, and the emperor had her put to death inside a heated bronze bull.

The historicity of the story is doubted, since Diocletian had no son; it is probably a later embellishment of the memory of a real martyr from Tarsus, on whose site Constantine the Great later built a church.