Florentina of Cartagena

The Venerable Florentina of Cartagena was a Spanish nun of the sixth century, sister of Saints Leander, Isidore and Fulgentius. She fell asleep around 612. Her feast is on 20 June (in the diocese of Plasencia, also on 14 March).

She was born in the middle of the sixth century at Cartagena, in Hispania, in the Christian family of the Goths Severian and Turtura. She and her brothers Leander, Fulgentius and Isidore are enrolled among the saints; they were known as the four saints of Cartagena. Leander had become archbishop of Seville, Fulgentius bishop of Écija, and Isidore succeeded Leander on the throne. Florentina was younger than Leander and older than Isidore. Orphaned early, she was placed under the guidance of her brother Leander, who had already taken the monastic habit, and through his influence she received the ascetic life. She gathered around her several virgins who wished to leave the world and united them in a community, in the monastery of Santa María de Valle near Écija (Astigis), where her brother Fulgentius was bishop; later she became abbess. According to some sources she founded over forty monasteries; she was a highly educated woman.

Before the year 600 her brother Leander, who died in 600 or 601, wrote for her guidance a work that survives, the Rule or Book on the Instruction of Virgins and the Contempt of the World, to his sister Florentina. In it stands the order of life for consecrated virgins: he urges them to avoid contact with women living in the world and with men, especially youths, to keep strict temperance in food and drink, gives advice on reading and meditating on Holy Scripture, asks for equal love and friendship among all who live together, and earnestly urges his sister to remain true to her state. Some read in it not a monastic rule but a praise of virginity. Isidore also dedicated to her his work De fide catholica contra Iudaeos, written at her request. Florentina ordered her life according to her brother's advice, entered with fervour into the spirit of monastic life and was honoured as a saint after her death.

She is patroness of the diocese of Plasencia. Part of her bones is in the cathedral of Murcia, but most of her relics are at Berzocana, where she is venerated together with her brother Fulgentius; she is also especially venerated in the region of La Palma in the Campo de Cartagena. Images of the four saints have been much painted and sculpted in Cartagena; among others the sculptures of Francisco Salzillo of 1755 have been kept.