Educated by her nurse, within that community, she chose the Christian life and received baptism in the new faith, which causes an estrangement from her father Theudio, and his Roman views.

One day when she was about fifteen years old, while she was minding the cattle, in a place near the road, the young Roman prefect Olibrio saw her by chance and was attracted to the beautiful stranger.

[1] She is also sometimes identified as one of nine sisters, including Quiteria and Librata, said to have been born in Braga, Portugal) to Lucius Catilius Severus, Roman governor of Gallaecia and Lusitania, and Calcia, his wife.

Calcia, frightened that her husband would interpret this multiple birth as a sign of infidelity, ordered her servant Sila to drown the girls in the Miñor River.

After the Edict of Milan (313), the burial site being near the Ribeira Sacra, it is probable that a group of anchorites or monks inhabited that place to preserve the memory of the saint and care for pilgrims to the martyr's tomb.

[1] Marina would have suffered martyrdom in the vicinity of the city of Ourense, in the locality of Aguas Santas, where her remains are preserved in a church dedicated to her.

The great diffusion of the cult is attested by the innumerable churches and sanctuaries dedicated to her in the dioceses of Galicia, Astorga, and in others more distant, such as Cordoba and Seville.

She is also the patron saint of the Portuguese parish of Santa Marinha e São Pedro da Afurada in Vila Nova de Gaia.

In the city of Seville, on San Luis street, is the Church of Santa Marina, built in the thirteenth century in Gothic-Mudejar style.