Saint Anastasia, Virgin and Martyr - 3rd century

Medieval lives of Anastasia, including the one in the Golden Legend, conflate elements from the stories of two different saints of the same name and same century.  One is St. Anastasia of Sirmium, who was burned at the stake.  The other is a disciple of St. Chrysogonus, St. Anastasia of Rome, who was crucified and then beheaded.  The conflated Anastasia in the Golden Legend and the Roman Martyrology is a Roman noblewoman who was both "tied to poles" and then burned at the stake, apparently an attempt to reconcile the different deaths in the two stories.

There is also a St. Anastasia the Patrician, a Byzantine lady-in-waiting of the 6th century who fled the court to live as a hermit in the desert. See Brock and Harvey.

Images of St. Anastasia of Sirmium/Rome can be identified by attributes or, failing that, by clothing. In eastern icons, she holds a cross in her right hand (example) and sometimes a small vase in her left (example). We also see the cross in the stone relief at left, from the cathedral in Zadar, Croatia. In other western images she sometimes holds a flame in her hand, either in a bowl (example) or directly on the palm of the hand, as in two sculptures in the Benedictine convent in Zadar, Croatia.1 The flame is of course a reference to Anastasia of Sirmium's death by fire, the cross to the Roman saint's crucifixion.

The conflated Anastasia of the Golden Legend had been forced into a marriage that she would not consummate. Nevertheless, two reliefs from Zadar's cathedral dress her as a matron, in veil and wimple, rather than bare-headed like a virgin. (One of the two reliefs, shown at left, is now in the Benedictine convent; the other is in the tympanum of the cathedral's west portal.) She is similarly dressed in an illumination in a 14th-century Book of Hours and a late 13th century French illumination. Later images in the convent collection have her bare-headed with a book and palm branch.2

Feast days (Latin, pre-Vatican II):
St. Anastasia of Rome, April 15
St. Anastasia of Sirmium, December 25
St. Anastasia the Patrician, March 10

At left, a Croatian relief of St. Anastasia.

Another image:
Contemporary Montenegrin icon with the cross and vase

Hagiography:
Golden Legend #7: html or pdf.
Roman Martyrology for December 25: Brief summary of St. Anastasia's life.

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1A photograph of one of the sculptures, from the 18th century, is in Petricioli, p. 128.
2See Petricioli, pp. 82, 114. The 18th-century statue on p. 128 is bare-headed, with the hair done in an 18th-century style.