Holy Martyr Iraida

Life

She is sometimes called Rais or Raida. A virgin from a certain Egyptian city of Batana, and so in all probability an Egyptian. Once Iraida went out to draw water from a well near the sea, and she saw a ship filled with bound Christians: priests, deacons, monastics, women, and maidens. Upon inquiring she learned that the pagan persecutors were taking all those people to torture and death for the name of Christ the Lord. In the heart of the young Iraida there blazed a desire to suffer herself for the Lord. She left her vessels at the well, boarded the ship, and confessed that she too was a Christian. They immediately bound her as well and took her with the rest to the Egyptian city of Antinopolis. After various tortures they first cut off the head of Iraida, and then of the rest. She suffered honorably and was glorified at the beginning of the fourth century.