Olivia of Palermo ( it, Oliva dì Palermo, scn, Uliva di Palermu), Palermo, 448 –

Tunis ''Tounsi'' french: Tunisois , population_note = , population_urban = , population_metro = 2658816 , population_density_km2 = , timezone1 = CET , utc_offset1 ...

, 10 June 463,
Sant' Oliva di Palermo Vergine e martire
'' SANTI, BEATI E TESTIMONI. 10 giugno. Retrieved: February 2, 2015. Daniele Ronco (2001).
Il Maggio di Santa Oliva: Origine Della Forma, Sviluppo Della Tradizione
'' ETS, Pisa University, IT. 325 pages. pp. 18–19. while according to another tradition she is supposed to have lived in the late 9th century AD in the Muslim Emirate of Sicily Carlo Di Franco.
LA PATRONA DIMENTICATA: S.OLIVA
'' PalermoWeb.com. is a Christian virgin-martyr who was venerated as a local patron saint of Palermo, Sicily, since the

Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire ...

, as well as in the Sicilian towns of

Monte San Giuliano Erice (; scn, Èrici) is a historic town and ''comune'' in the province of Trapani, Sicily, in southern Italy. Geography The main town of Erice is located on top of Mount Erice, at around above sea level, overlooking the city of Trapani, the ...

Termini Imerese Termini Imerese (; scn, Tèrmini ) , grc, Θερμαὶ αἱ Ἱμερᾶαι , grc, Θερμαὶ Ἱμέραι , or grc, Θερμὰ (Ἱμεραῖα) ; la, Thermae Himerenses; literally "Himera's hot springs". is a town of the Metropo ...

Alcamo Alcamo (; scn, Àrcamu, italic=no) is the fourth-largest town and communes of Italy, commune of the Province of Trapani, Sicily, with a population of 44.925 inhabitants. It is on the borderline with the Metropolitan City of Palermo at a distan ...

Pettineo Pettineo ( Sicilian: ''Pittineu'') is a ''comune'' (municipality) in the Metropolitan City of Messina in the Italian region Sicily, located about east of Palermo and about west of Messina. Pettineo is a beautifully restored medieval city, situa ...

and Cefalù. Her feast day is on 10 June, and in art she is shown as a young woman surrounded of olive branches, holding a cross in her right hand.

Hagiographic sources

Olivia seems to have been

sanctified Sanctified may refer to: *Sanctification, the process of making holy Music Albums * ''Sanctified'' (album), by Morgana Lefay, 1995 *''Sanctified'', by Jack McDuff, 1961 *''Sanctified'', by the Rance Allen Group, 1975 Songs *"Sanctified", by The ...

by popular tradition alone as a pious local saint since her name was not recorded historically in any mainstream Latin or Greek

martyrology A martyrology is a catalogue or list of martyrs and other saints and beati arranged in the calendar order of their anniversaries or feasts. Local martyrologies record exclusively the custom of a particular Church. Local lists were enriched by n ...

Hagiology A hagiography (; ) is a biography of a saint or an ecclesiastical leader, as well as, by extension, an adulatory and idealized biography of a founder, saint, monk, nun or icon in any of the world's religions. Early Christian hagiographies might ...

of the church. The oldest textual sources of her ''Life'' include a Gallo-siculo Breviary of the twelfth century, which records her memory and is still preserved in Palermo, as well as a document in vulgar Sicilian of the fourteenth century found in

, and a ''Life'' contained in a lectionary of the fifteenth century. Chiesa di San Francesco di Paola (Palermo) - Esterno1

A venerable icon of Olivia also exists, perhaps of the twelfth century, which depicts Saint Olivia with saints

Elias Elias is the Greek equivalent of Elijah ( he, אֵלִיָּהוּ‎ ''ʾĒlīyyāhū''; Syriac: ܐܠܝܐ ''Eliyā''; Arabic: الیاس Ilyās/Elyās), a prophet in the Northern Kingdom of Israel in the 9th century BC, mentioned in several h ...

Venera The Venera (, , which means "Venus" in Russian) program was the name given to a series of space probes developed by the Soviet Union between 1961 and 1984 to gather information about the planet Venus. Ten probes successfully landed on the s ...

and

Rosalia Rosalia or Rosalía (with diacritic) may refer to: Persons * Saint Rosalia (1130–1166), the patron saint of Palermo in Italy * Rosalia (given name) * Rosalía (born 1992), Spanish singer Places * 314 Rosalia, an asteroid * Rosalia, Pisidia ...

. There are also references to a church being dedicated to her in Palermo since AD 1310 on the supposed site of her burial. Today, this is the Chiesa di San Francesco di Paola (''Church of Saint Francis of Paola''). In addition, numerous Lives of this Saint were published in Sicily, both in prose and in verse, and the form of sacred representation until the end of the eighteenth century, reflecting the fair vitality of her cult. She is recorded in the Sicilian martyrology of

Ottavio Gaetani Ottavio Gaetani (22 April 1566 - 8 March 1620) was an Italian Jesuit and historian, writing exclusively in Latin and most notable for his ''Vitae Sanctorum Siculorum''. He is held to be the founder of hagiography in his native Sicily and one of t ...

, as well as in the Palmerian martyrology of Antonio Mongitore in 1742. A Breviary from Cefalù also contains a detailed entry on her ''Life'' (''Breviary Cefaludes''). The

Bollandists The Bollandist Society ( la, Societas Bollandistarum french: Société des Bollandistes) are an association of scholars, philologists, and historians (originally all Jesuits, but now including non-Jesuits) who since the early seventeenth century ...

published in 1885 the ''Acts'' of Saint Olivia, which they took from the lectionary of the church in Palermo. Moreover, Sicily's well-known writer of the 17th century, the poet

Petru Fudduni Petru Fudduni (c. 1600 in Palermo, Sicily – March 22, 1670) was a poet who wrote predominantly in Sicilian. He was born Pietro Fullone but was generally known by his Sicilian name. He was Sicily's greatest and most famed writer of the 17th ...

(born Pietro Fullone) wrote a poem in 114 octaves about her. At the same time, a dramatic opera of Gioacchino Bona Fardella, a tragedy in three acts, was also famous in its day.

Hagiographic life

According to the hagiographic legend, Olivia was the beautiful daughter of a

noble A noble is a member of the nobility. Noble may also refer to: Places Antarctica * Noble Glacier, King George Island * Noble Nunatak, Marie Byrd Land * Noble Peak, Wiencke Island * Noble Rocks, Graham Land Australia * Noble Island, Gr ...

Sicilian family, born either around 448 or in the 9th century AD. Local hagiographers state that she was born in the Loggia district of Palermo. From her early years she devoted herself to the Lord. At the same time, declining honours and riches and loved to give charity to the poor. In one version, in 454 AD

Genseric Gaiseric ( – 25 January 477), also known as Geiseric or Genseric ( la, Gaisericus, Geisericus; reconstructed Vandalic: ) was King of the Vandals and Alans (428–477), ruling a kingdom he established, and was one of the key players in the di ...

, king of the

Vandals The Vandals were a Germanic people who first inhabited what is now southern Poland. They established Vandal kingdoms on the Iberian Peninsula, Mediterranean islands, and North Africa in the fifth century. The Vandals migrated to the area betw ...

, conquered Sicily and occupied Palermo, started martyring many Christians. When she was thirteen, Olivia comforted the prisoners and urged the Christians to remain steadfast in their faith. The Vandals were impressed by the strength of her spirit, seeing that nothing could prevail against her faith. So in deference to her noble house, they sent her to

Tunis ''Tounsi'' french: Tunisois , population_note = , population_urban = , population_metro = 2658816 , population_density_km2 = , timezone1 = CET , utc_offset1 ...

, where the governor would attempt to overcome her constancy. In the other version, she was enslaved in 906 and sent to Tunis under the orders of the Emir of Sicily, then under Saracen rule. In Tunis, Olivia worked miracles and began to convert the pagans or Muslim Saracens. The governor, therefore, ordered that she be relegated to a lonely place as a

hermit A hermit, also known as an eremite (adjectival form: hermitic or eremitic) or solitary, is a person who lives in seclusion. Eremitism plays a role in a variety of religions. Description In Christianity, the term was originally applied to a Ch ...

ess, where there were wild animals, hoping that the beasts would devour her or that she would die of hunger. However, the wild animals lived peacefully around her. One day some men from Tunis who were hunting found her, and impressed by her beauty, tried to abuse her, but Olivia converted them too with the word of the Lord, and they were baptized. After miraculously curing many of the sick and suffering in the region, Olivia converted many pagans or Muslims to the Christian faith. When the governor heard about these things, he had her arrested and imprisoned in the city in an attempt to make her apostatize. She was scourged and was stripped and submerged into a cauldron of boiling oil, but these tortures did not cause her any harm, nor did they make her renounce her faith. Finally, she was beheaded on 10 June of the year 463 or sometime in the 10th century, and her soul "flew to the sky in the form of a dove" (Italian: ''"sotto forma di colomba volò al cielo"'').

Veneration

Patronage of Palermo

At the end of 1500, her cult was spread by the

Franciscans , image = FrancescoCoA PioM.svg , image_size = 200px , caption = A cross, Christ's arm and Saint Francis's arm, a universal symbol of the Franciscans , abbreviation = OFM , predecessor = , ...

, who sought her body. On 5 June 1606, the people and Senate of Palermo elected Saint Olivia as

Patroness Patronage is the support, encouragement, privilege, or financial aid that an organization or individual bestows on another. In the history of art, arts patronage refers to the support that kings, popes, and the wealthy have provided to artists su ...

of the city, together with

Saint Agatha Agatha of Sicily () is a Christian saint. Her feast is on 5 February. Agatha was born in Catania, part of the Roman Province of Sicily, and was martyred . She is one of several virgin martyrs who are commemorated by name in the Canon of the Ma ...

, Saint Christina and Saint Nympha. These four were chosen for each of the four major parts of the city. Their commemoration was entered in the Palermian Calendar by Cardinal Giannettino Doria in 1611. Their veneration waned following the discovery in 1624 of the (alleged) relics of

Saint Rosalia Rosalia (1130–1166), also called La Santuzza or "''The Little Saint''", and in Sicilian as "Rusulia", is the patron saint of Palermo in Italy, Camargo, Chihuahua, and three towns in Venezuela: El Hatillo, Zuata, and El Playon. She is es ...

, who had appeared to rescue the city from the plague. After that, Saint Rosalia began to be venerated as a patroness of the city as well. In 1940, a parish was dedicated to Saint Olivia in the city. She was commemorated by the Church in Palermo until 1980 as an obligatory memorial. However, in 1981, her feast was deleted from the local liturgical calendar. In Tunis, the Roman Catholic Cathedral of St. Vincent de Paul and Saint Olivia are also dedicated to her. It was begun in 1893, replacing the oldest Christian monument in the city – a chapel built by Father Jean Le Vacher in 1650 – and was opened on

Christmas Day Christmas is an annual festival commemorating the birth of Jesus Christ, observed primarily on December 25 as a religious and cultural celebration among billions of people around the world. A feast central to the Christian liturgical year, ...

1897.

Saint Olivia and Islam in Tunisia

The Great Mosque of Al-Zaytuna ("Mosque of Olive") is the oldest in Tunis, the capital of Tunisia, and covers an area of with nine entrances. The exact date of the mosque's foundation varies according to different historical sources. Modern historians have been divided over whether it should be attributed to Ubayd Allah ibn al-Habhab in the early 8th century or to

Hasan ibn al-Nu'man Hassan ibn al-Nu'man al-Ghassani ( ar, حسان بن النعمان الغساني, Hassān ibn al-Nuʿmān al-Ghassānī) was an Arab general of the Umayyad Caliphate who led the final Muslim conquest of Ifriqiya, firmly establishing Islamic rule ...

at the end of the 7th century. Most scholars support the second scenario and attribute the foundation to Ibn al-Nu'man in 698 CE. One legend states that it was called "Mosque of Olive" because it was built on an ancient place of worship where there was an olive. Another account, transmitted by the 17th century Tunisian historian Ibn Abi Dinar, reports the presence of a

Byzantine The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinopl ...

Christian church dedicated to Santa Olivia at that location. Archeological investigations and restoration works in 1969–1970 have shown that the mosque was built over an existing Byzantine-era building with columns, covering a cemetery. This may have been a Christian basilica, which provides support for the legend reported by Ibn Abi Dinar. A more recent scholarly interpretation by Muhammad al-Badji Ibn Mami, also endorsed by Sihem Lamine, suggests that the previous structures may have been part of a Byzantine fortification. Olivia is particularly venerated in Tunisia because it is superstitiously thought that if the site and its memory are profaned, then misfortune will happen; this includes a belief that when her relics are recovered, Islam will end. This ancillary legend related to the discovery of the saint's relics is widespread in Sicily, however it is connected to other Saints as well. In 1402 king

Martin I of Sicily Martin I of Sicily (c. 1374/1376 – 25 July 1409), called "The Younger", was King of Sicily from his marriage to Queen Maria in 1390 until his death. Martin's father was the future King Martin I of Aragon, and his grandparents were King Pet ...

requested the return of Saint Olivia's relics from the Berber Caliph of Ifriqiya Abu Faris Abd al-Aziz II, who refused him. Even today the Tunisians, who still venerate her, believe that the dominion of their religion will fade when the body of the Virgin Olivia disappears.

Historicity

The main criticism of the life of Olivia is that the elements of her legend do not have a personal nature in and of themselves, but they all derive, with slight modifications, from old themes or

archetype The concept of an archetype (; ) appears in areas relating to behavior, historical psychology, and literary analysis. An archetype can be any of the following: # a statement, pattern of behavior, prototype, "first" form, or a main model that ...

s that were dear to the medieval imagination, such as that of the '' 'sacred heroine' '' or the '' 'persecuted maiden' ''. Daniele Ronco (2001).
Il Maggio di Santa Oliva: Origine Della Forma, Sviluppo Della Tradizione
'' ETS, Pisa University, IT. 325 pages. pp. 19. The Italian teacher and writer Giuseppe Agnello carefully undertook to sift the hagiographic tradition from the literary one and did not see anything more than a random

homonym In linguistics, homonyms are words which are homographs (words that share the same spelling, regardless of pronunciation), or homophones ( equivocal words, that share the same pronunciation, regardless of spelling), or both. Using this definiti ...

ous saint of Palermo

conflated Conflation is the merging of two or more sets of information, texts, ideas, opinions, etc., into one, often in error. Conflation is often misunderstood. It originally meant to fuse or blend, but has since come to mean the same as equate, treati ...

with the heroine of the mystery play dedicated to her, which was studied extensively by Alessandro d'Ancona and

Alexander Veselovsky Alexander Nikolayevich Veselovsky (russian: Алекса́ндр Никола́евич Весело́вский) ( in Moscow – in St. Petersburg) was a leading Russian literary theorist who laid the groundwork for comparative literary studi ...

(who in turn cited Ferdinand Wolf). Nevertheless, Paul Collura defends Olivia's historicity, writing that "the core of our ancient legends has a substrate that should not be underestimated, and since the Arab domination in Sicily (827–1092) made a clean sweep of all the written documents, sacred and profane, the memory of several Saints has been handed down only on the thread of memory." Furthermore, it has been accurately pointed out that the Roman Catholic Church has remained somewhat aloof from Southern Italian saint cults.Mia Di Tota. "SAINT CULTS AND POLITICAL ALIGNMENTS IN SOUTHERN ITALY." ''Dialectical Anthropology'', Vol. 5, No. 4 (MAY 1981), pp. 317–329. p. 317.

Notes

References

Sources

*
Sant' Oliva di Palermo Vergine e martire
'' SANTI, BEATI E TESTIMONI. 10 giugno. Retrieved: February 2, 2015. * Daniele Ronco (2001).
Il Maggio di Santa Oliva: Origine Della Forma, Sviluppo Della Tradizione
'' ETS, Pisa University, IT. 325 pp. * "ACTA SANCTAE OLIVAE." In:
ANALECTA BOLLANDIANA
'' Tomus IV. Edidreunt: Carolus de Smedt, Gulielmus Van Hooff et Josephus de Backer (S.J.). Geneve: Societe Generale de Librairie Catholique, 1885. pp. 5–9.

External links

* Carlo Di Franco.
LA PATRONA DIMENTICATA: S.OLIVA
'' PalermoWeb.com.
Bl. Olivia
Catholic Online. {{DEFAULTSORT:Olivia 448 births 463 deaths 5th-century Christian saints 5th-century Christian martyrs Saints from Roman Italy Christian child saints Christian female saints of the Middle Ages Christian martyrs executed by decapitation Executed Italian people Italian torture victims Sicilian saints Saints from the Vandal Kingdom Religious leaders from Palermo