Marinus

Saint Marinus was an Early Christian and the founder of a chapel and monastery in 301 from whose initial community the state of San Marino later grew. Life Tradition holds that he was a stonemason by trade who came from the island of Arba (today Rab), on the other side of the Adriatic Sea (in what is now part of modern-day Croatia, then part of the Roman Empire), fleeing persecution for his Christian beliefs in the Diocletianic Persecution. Known only by the single name Marinus (lit. of the sea), he became a Deacon, and was ordained by Gaudentius, the Bishop of Rimini; later, he was recognised and accused by an insane woman of being her estranged husband, so he quickly fled to Monte Titano to build a chapel-monastery and live as a hermit. Another version of the story says that hearing that the town of Rimini (Italy) was being rebuilt, he travelled there and was astonished to find among the workmen many Christians of formerly high position who had been sentenced to hard labour because of their refusal to sacrifice to the gods. He sought to comfort them and to alleviate their sufferings, so far as was in his power.