Saint Eulalia of Mérida

Saint Eulalia of Mérida
Saint Eulalia, by John William Waterhouse, 1885, Tate collection.
Martyr
Born	ca. AD 290 Mérida, Spain
Died	c. AD 304 Mérida
Venerated in	Roman Catholic Church, Orthodox Catholic Church
Major shrine	Cathedral of San Salvador
Feast	10 December
Attributes	cross, stake, and dove
Patronage	Mérida, Spain; Oviedo, Spain; runaways; torture victims; widows

Eulalia of Mérida was a young Roman Christian martyred in Emerita, the capital of Lusitania (modern Mérida in Spain), conventionally during the persecution under Diocletian and Maximian. Other views place her death at the time of Trajan Decius (AD 249-51). There is debate whether Saint Eulalia of Barcelona, whose story is similar, is the same person.

Eulalia was a devout Christian virgin, aged 12–14, whose mother sequestered her in the countryside in AD 304 because all citizens were required to avow faith in the Roman gods. Eulalia ran away to the law court of the governor Dacian at Emerita, professed herself a Christian, insulted the pagan gods and emperor Maximian, and challenged the authorities to martyr her. The judge's attempts at flattery and bribery failed. According to the Spanish-Roman poet Prudentius of the fifth century, who devoted book 3 of his Peristephanon ("About martyrs") to Eulalia, she said:

She was then stripped by the soldiers, tortured with hooks and torches, and burnt at the stake, suffocating from smoke inhalation. She taunted her torturers all the while, and as she expired a dove flew out of her mouth. This frightened away the soldiers and allowed a miraculous snow to cover her nakedness, its whiteness indicating her sainthood. For this reason she is regarded among Catholic school children and teachers alike as the patron saint of snow (inclement weather) days, according to Ian Gibbons, SJ.