Martyr Ennatha (of Gaza)

Martyr Ennatha came from the city of Gaza in Palestine. In the second year of the great persecution of Christians under Emperor Maximian Galerius (c. 308), Firmilian, ruler of Caesarea in Palestine, ordered the arrest of Christians gathered in Gaza to read Holy Scripture and had them sent for trial to Caesarea. Ennatha was among those seized. Undaunted by threats, she boldly denounced the ruler's injustice, for which she was scourged and then torn on the rack with tearing instruments. The enraged ruler ordered Ennatha burned alive together with the martyr Valentina (a native of the vicinity of Caesarea, subjected to the same torments in a fit of anger at the executioners' cruelty); the martyr Paul, who accompanied them, was beheaded. Given the absence in available sources of precise confirmation of the epithet "of Scythopolis" (as opposed to the attested origin "of Gaza") and of an exact calendar feast date, the card honestly reflects the established facts of the vita without inventing missing details.