Nunilo And Alodia

Saints Nunilo and Alodia (also called Nunilone and Alódia) (died c. 851) were a pair of child martyrs from Huesca in north-eastern Spain. They appear in the Roman Martyrology and in the calendars of the Mozarabic rite. Their martyrdom is described by Saint Eulogius of Córdoba in 851 in his account of the Cordoban martyrs in the ''Memoriale Sanctorum'', even though they were from Huesca because of their addition to the Roman Martyrology. Eulogius describes in the ''Sanctorum'' how religiously mixed families functioned during the early Islamic period. According to art historian Julie Harris, the sisters "received more detailed treatment" in the ''Passional of Cardeña,'' during the eleventh century. Scholar Christian C. Sahner calls the sisters' story "dubious," but states that "the general circumstances of their lives are consistent with what we know about the internal dynamics of mixed families".

Nunilo and Alodia were sisters born into "a rich family"; art historian Julie Harris called them, like many martyrs of the same period, "the product of a mixed marriage". Their mother was Christian and their father was Muslim, but he allowed them to be raised in their mother's faith. When their father died, their mother remarried another "prominent" Muslim man, "who was not as tolerant" and was "an adherent of an obstinate conquering paganism", so in defiance of his prohibition that they attend church and demand that they marry and convert to Islam, they were sent to live with their aunt, who was also Christian, in Castile.

In 851, Abd ar-Rahman II issued a decree that all Christian children to a Muslim father had to convert to their father's religion or be executed. After repeated failed attempts to get Nunilo and Alodia to agree to convert, they were arrested, put in solitary confinement, then "handed over to women of dubious morality to make them change their lifestyle", and "were also pestered by many suitors to marry". The sisters still refused, so they were beheaded in Huesca, Spain, on October 22, 851. Their feast day is October 22.

Some sources state that the sisters' bodies were translated to the Leyre Monastery and their relics were stored in the Leyre Casket, a reliquary made in 1005 in the Caliphate of Córdoba (756-1031). Other sources state that their bodies were translated there in 880, but the exact date of their translation is debated because the casket's arrival to Leyre lacks documentary evidence. Harris states, however, that it was reasonable to assume that a second translation occurred in 1057, at the time of the consecration of the monastery's crypt. When the monastery was suppressed in 1836, Nunilo and Alodia's relics were moved to San Ginés Church in Arrecife.

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Image of Saints Nunilo and Alodia
on their way to martyrdom, statue on the Monastery of San Salvador of Leyre in Spain

Saints duos
9th-century Christian saints
Christian child saints
Spanish Roman Catholic saints
Christians executed for refusing to convert to Islam
9th-century Christian martyrs
Converts to Roman Catholicism from Sunni Islam
Spanish former Sunni Muslims
Christian saints killed by Muslims
Year of birth unknown
Christian female saints of the Middle Ages
9th-century Spanish women
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