The Confession of *Leocadia (virgin and confessor of Toledo, S01367) mentions other martyrs of Hispania as Leocadia's peers. Written in Latin in Hispania, probably in the 7th c.
E08525
Literary - Hagiographical - Accounts of martyrdom
The Confession of the Most Holy and Blessed Virgin Leocadia (Confessio sanctae ac beatissimae Leocadiae uirginis; BHL 4848, CPL-2072)
Summary:
The date of the Confession is given as 9 December 'under the governor [praeses] Datianus', official of the emperors Diocletian and Maximianus.
(2) The Confession begins with a brief history of the spread of Christianity in Hispania: After the events described in the Gospels, the apostles spread the doctrine, which eventually reaches Hispania. The Christians are very few, but they are 'perfect' and their 'conventicles' become more and more numerous and visible, even in the cities.
(3) The rise of Christianity in Hispania alerted the emperors Diocletian and Maximianus, who sent Datianus first to Gaul and later to Hispania to persecute the Christians. The martyrdoms of *Felix (martyr of Gerona, S00408), *Cucuphas (martyr of Barcelona, S00502) and *Eulalia (virgin and martyr of Mérida, S00407), of many martyrs in Zaragoza (probably an allusion to the *Eighteen Martyrs of Zaragoza, S00485), and of *Iustus and Pastor (schoolboys and martyrs of Alcala, S00504) are here all attributed to Datianus.
(4) Datianus arrives in Toledo, where a noble woman, Leocadia, is among the persecuted Christians. Datianus rebukes her for abandoning the worship of pagan gods despite her noble status. Leocadia refuses to give in to Datianus, who becomes furious and orders Leocadia to be thrown into prison.
(5) Datianus leaves Toledo and goes to Elbora [possibly present-day Talavera de la Reina] and then to Avila, where *Vincentius, Christeta and Sabina (martyrs of Avila, S02827) die a martyr's death. He then travelled to Mérida, where Eulalia (virgin and martyr of Mérida) was martyred.
(6) When Leocadia learns of Eulalia's death, she dies in prison after saying a prayer on her knees. [This scene is alluded to in the hymn to Leocadia (see E06847).]
(7) A concluding doxology.
Text: Yarza Urquiola 2020: 432-434.
Summary: M. Szada.
Composing and translating saint-related texts
Source
The Confession of Leocadia is a short hagiographic text that was probably written in Hispania in late antiquity. Its date is not easy to determine. The earliest manuscripts date from the tenth century, some of which represent hagiographic collections that circulated in Hispania in the 10th and 11th centuries and are often referred to in scholarship as the 'Hispanic Passionary' (on the concept and the doubts it may raise see Alberto 2021).The editor of the Passionary, Ángel Fábrega Grau (1950, 67-78), proposed a complex reconstruction of the history of the text. He assumes that the Confession in its present form is a new version of an earlier martyrdom that commemorated various Iberian martyrs who were condemned to death by the praeses Datianus ('Pasión de comun'). In early Hispanic Martyrdoms, Datianus appears only in the Martyrdom of Vincent of Zaragoza and his name must have been taken from there; some textual echoes also suggest the dependence of this 'common martyrdom' on the fifth-century Martyrdom of *Saturninus (bishop and martyr of Toulouse, S00289), for which see E05623. Arguing that c. 3 could contain an allusion to a rededication of a church, Fábrega Grau wanted to date the 'common martyrdom' to the time after the Second Council of Zaragoza in 592 (canon 3 speaks of the rededication of the formerly Arian basilicas, which could be the cathedral of Zaragoza, since its bishop Vincentius, had converted to Arianism in 580, according to John of Biclar). This text was later rewritten as the Confession of Leocadia, which, according to Fábrega Grau, must have preceded other liturgical texts about Leocadia from the 7th century (the hymn E06847; the prayers in the Orationale E05172).
De Gaiffier (1954) argued that another explanation for the Datianus cycle might be more likely. Instead of the hypothesis that there was a 'communal' martyrdom that borrowed the figure of Datianus from the martyrdom of Vincent of Zaragoza and then influenced the writing of the later prose Martyrdoms of these martyrs, it is easier to imagine that the authors of the seventh-century Martyrdoms were all influenced by the Martyrdom of Vincent. When the Confession of Leocadia was written, a corpus of hagiographical texts already existed in which the praeses Datianus was a prominent figure, and this enabled the author of the Confession to compose a text depicting his bloody itinerary in the peninsula. De Gaiffier also notes that it is not necessary to assume that the Confession is older than the prayers in the Orationale: the prayers do not mention any narrative element that appears in the Confession (e.g. the arrest, the stay in prison), but only produce a series of variations on the title 'confessor'. It is therefore possible, according to de Gaiffier, that someone as late as the 8th century wanted to compose a text based on the material in the Hispanic hagiographical collections that would explain the origin of the mysterious title of Leocadia already used in the liturgy. However, de Gaiffier's skepticism on this point seems to go too far. In the seventh century, Leocadia became a prominent saint to whom an important church in Toledo was dedicated (E03083). The Confession, together with the hymn (E06847) and prayers in the Orationale (E05172), seems to belong to the same effort to create a 'dossier' legitimizing this poorly attested confessor as a peer of Eulalia of Mérida. Moreover, later Gaiffier (1959, 197), following Díaz y Díaz (1957), notes that there are some textual similarities between the Confession of Leocadia and the works of Valerius of Bierzo, and it is more likely that Valerius (who copied the hagiographical works E01855 and was the author of a large hagiographical compilation, see Díaz y Díaz 1951, 1983, 2006) adopted some phrases from the Confession of Leocadia than the other way around. See also the discussion in García Rodríguez 1966, 251-53.
Discussion
The Orationale gives the date for the feast of Leocadia on 9 December, the day before the feast of Eulalia. However, this seems to be contrary to the tradition attested in the Confession that Leocadia died after Eulalia. The rubrics in the Orationale, however, which say that 10 December (the feast of Eulalia) is the feast of Leocadia, usually interpreted as a lapsus calami, might have been just possibly a trace that the authors of this liturgical book were aware that both martyrs should be commemorated on the same day.Bibliography
Editions:Fábrega Grau, Ángel. Pasionario Hispánico (Siglos VII–XI). 2 vols. Madrid and Barcelona: Atenas A.G., 1950.
Riesco Chueca, Pilar, ed. Pasionario hispánico. Serie Filosofía y letras (Seville, Spain) 131. Sevilla: Universidad de Sevilla, Secretariado de Publicaciones, 1995 with Spanish translation.
Yarza Urquiola, Valeriano. Passionarium Hispanicum: saeculi X. Corpus Christianorum. Series Latina 171. Turnhout: Brepols, 2020.
Further reading:
Alberto, Paulo F. ‘Editing Hispanic Passionaries. Passionarium Hispanicum Saeculi X, Cura et Studio Valeriano Yarza Urquiola, Turnhout, Brepols, 2020 (Corpus Christianorum Series Latina, 171). 1005 Pp. ISBN 978-2-503-58876-6.
Passionarium Hispanicum Saeculi XI, Cura et Studio Valeriano Yarza Urquiola, Turnhout, Brepols, 2020 (Corpus Christianorum Series Latina, 171A). 542 Pp. ISBN 978-2-503-59108-7’. Euphrosyne 49 (2021): 383–96. https://doi.org/10.1484/J.EUPHR.5.128815.
Díaz y Díaz, Manuel C. ‘Sobre la compilación hagiográfica de Valerio del Bierzo’. Hispania Sacra 4, no. 7 (1951): 3–25.
Díaz y Díaz, Manuel Cecilio. ‘Correcciones y conjeturas al Pasionario Hispánico’. Revista de Archivos, Bibliotecas y Museos 63 (1957): 453–65.
Díaz y Díaz, Manuel C. ‘La compilación hagiográfica de Valerio Del Bierzo en un manuscrito Leonés’. In Códices Visigóticos en la Monarquía Leonesa, 115–48. León: Centro de Estudios e Investigación San Isidoro, 1983.
Gaiffier, Baudouin de. ‘Sub Daciano Praeside. Étude de quelques passions espagnoles’. Analecta Bollandiana 72 (1954): 378–96.
Gaiffier, Baudouin de. ‘Hispana et Lusitana’. Analecta Bollandiana 77, no. 1–2 (May 1959): 188–217.
García Rodríguez, Carmen. El Culto de los santos en la España Romana y Visigoda. Monografías de Historia Eclesiástica. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1966.
Marta Szada
22 August 2024
| ID | Name | Name in Source | Identity | S00407 | Eulalia, virgin and martyr of Mérida | Eulalia | Certain | S00408 | Felix, martyr of Gerona | Felix | Certain | S00485 | Eighteen Martyrs of Zaragoza | Uncertain | S00502 | Cucuphas, martyr of Barcelona, Spain | Cucufas | Certain | S00504 | Iustus and Pastor, schoolboys and martyrs of Alcala, Spain | Iustus et Pastor | Certain | S01367 | Leocadia, virgin and confessor of Toledo | Leocadia | Certain | S02827 | Vincentius, Christeta, and Sabina, martyrs of Avila (Spain) | Vincentius, Sabina, Christeta | Certain |
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