Nunilo and Alodia

The Holy Martyrs Nunilo and Alodia were two sisters of Huesca in north-⁠eastern Spain, beheaded for faith in Christ around 851. They are named in the Roman Martyrology and in the calendars of the Mozarabic rite, as saints of the undivided Church.

They were born at Adahuesca into a wealthy family, of a Muslim father and a Christian mother, and were raised as Christians. After their father's death their mother married another Muslim, who persecuted them harshly, forbade them to go to church and demanded that they marry and accept Islam; they were sent to a Christian aunt in Castile. In 851 the emir Abd ar-⁠Rahman II decreed that all children of a Muslim father must follow their father's religion or be executed. The sisters were arrested, imprisoned and handed over to women of loose morals to change their way of life, and were pressed by suitors; they refused and were beheaded at Huesca on 22 October 851. Saint Eulogius of Córdoba told of their martyrdom in his Memoriale Sanctorum. Some scholars question the exact date and suspect an earlier one, around 813.

Their relics were brought in the 9th century to the monastery of Leyre in Navarre, where they were laid in an ivory casket made in the caliphate of Córdoba in 1005. After the monastery was suppressed in 1836 they were moved to the church of San Ginés at Arrecife.

They are commemorated on 22 October, the liturgical date in the Orthodox calendar (the same day number on the old and new calendars).