Saint Martyr Iuliana lived in the time of Emperor Maximilian. She was from Nicomidia, the daughter of a wealthy family. The parents set her engagement with a Greek senator, named Eleusie. Her fiance was looking forward for the wedding, but the Saint did not agree, and said „I won’t marry you until you become the prefect of the city”. After he became a prefect, the Saint told him again: „I won’t marry you unless you pass from serving the idols to the Christian religion”.
The fiance confessed everything to her father. The father, as he could not deter her from the belief in Christ, confined her to the prefect, her fiance, to look into her case within the Roman laws. The Prefect took off her frock and had her horribly tortured, the he imprisoned her.
The night she was sent to prison, while praying, the unseen enemy of all humans, the devil, came close to her in an angel appearance and advised her to sacrifice herself to the idols, in order to escape. The Saint expelled him and made him unwillingly confess who he was.
She was brought again to the prefect, but she kept steady in her love to Christ. This is why she was thrown into a burning furnace which cooled by miracle. At the sight of that miracle, five hundred men and one hundred and thirty women believed in Christ and were soon murdered by sword. And the saint was tortured again; proving to be more enduring in these trying, she was murdered by sword.
She was 16 years of age when her parents set her engagement with Eleusie; and when she engaged Christ by martyring she was 18.
