Renunciation and monastic life
Anna was a noblewoman who sold all her possessions and gave the proceeds to the poor. She received monastic tonsure from Saint Stephen the New while he was living on Mount Auxentius in Bithynia, and afterward was sent to live in the women's monastery called Trichinarion. The setting of her life was the reign of the iconoclast emperor Constantine V (Copronymus), under whom the veneration of holy icons was persecuted and Stephen the New stood out as a leading defender of the images.
False accusation and martyrdom
When the iconoclasts failed to turn Saint Stephen from venerating the holy icons through flattery, bribery, and threats, they accused him of visiting the Trichinarion monastery by night and of sinning with the nun Anna. Although her own maidservant testified against her, having been promised her freedom and marriage to a nobleman, Anna denied any guilt. Soldiers seized her and brought her before the emperor, but she refused to lie about Saint Stephen. In anger he had her stretched out on the ground and beaten with rods, during which she maintained her innocence. The soldiers continued to beat her until she was near death, and she died a martyr, accounted to have received the crowns of virginity and martyrdom.
