Agatha continued to refuse Quintianus’s advances, to he eventually had her put in prison to be tortured. She was stretched on a rack to be torn with iron hooks, burned with torches, and whipped. Her breasts were cut off with pincers. She was sentenced to be burned at the stake, but she was saved by an earthquake. She was returned to prison, where Saint Peter appeared to her and healed her wounds. Agatha eventually died in prison.
According to Maltese tradition, Agatha and some of her friends fled Sicily and spent some time in Malta, before returning to Sicily to face persecution and martyrdom. The crypt where she lived (hewn from rock in Rabat) is now an underground basilica. Agatha is a patron saint of Malta, and her apparition in 1551 to a Benedictine nun is said to have saved Malta from Turkish invasion.
Agatha’s cult spread to England, and her feast day, February 5, was retained in the Anglican kalendar.