Liberata

Saint Liberata (Librada) is venerated by the Catholic Church as a virgin and martyr, and is commemorated on 11 January. Her story belongs to the legend of the nine sisters and is legendary; more recent studies have largely rejected the tradition.

According to the hagiographic tradition she was the daughter of Lucius Catelius Severus, Roman consul of the westernmost part of the Iberian Peninsula (present-⁠day Galicia) in 122. His wife, Calsia, gave birth to nine girls in his absence and, ashamed, wanted to drown them in the sea. The Christian midwife did not obey and baptized them with the names Ginevra, Victoria, Euphemia, Germana, Marina, Marciana, Basilissa, Quiteria and Liberata. Their education in the faith was entrusted to Sila, who later became a saint too. After many trials, the sisters all died as martyrs in the persecution of Hadrian, at the hand of their own father. Other accounts place them in the third or fourth century.

She is often confused with Saint Wilgefortis, the crucified bearded virgin, known above all in Flanders and northern Europe, who is said to have been the daughter of the king of Portugal; other saints named Liberata lived at Pavia (around 496) and at Como (around 580). Her cult was spread in 1564 by Juan de San Millán, bishop of Tui, and in 1688 Bishop Alfonso Galaz Torrero ordered by edict the celebration of the other eight sisters as well. Her body is in the cathedral of Sigüenza, brought to Spain in the thirteenth century by the Benedictine-⁠Cluniac monks led by Bernard of Agen; she has there an altar of the sixteenth century, with the stone urn holding the relics. The most important examination of them, in 1948, was made by an anthropologist of Madrid. She is venerated in France, Spain, Italy, Malta and Latin America; in some places the feast is on 1 September.