Reparata of Caesarea

The Holy Martyr Reparata of Caesarea in Palestine was, according to tradition, a virgin of the third century, killed for the Christian faith in her native city. She is venerated in the West and commemorated on 8 October.

The sources give her an age between eleven and twenty; the cathedral of Sainte-⁠Réparate in Nice gives fifteen. According to tradition she was arrested for her faith and tortured in the persecution of Decius (249-251). Her enemies wished to burn her alive, but she was saved by a shower of rain. She was then forced to drink boiling pitch. When she would not renounce, she was beheaded. The legend says that at the moment of death a dove appeared, a sign of the departure of her soul to heaven. Later legends say that her body was laid in a boat and borne by the breath of angels to the bay now called the Baie des Anges, at Nice. A similar story is told of Saint Restituta, Saint Devota, patroness of Monaco and Corsica, and Saint Torpes of Pisa.

There is no evidence of her cult before the ninth century, when her name appears in the martyrology of Bede; Eusebius of Caesarea, who recorded the martyrdoms that took place in the Holy Land in the third century, does not mention her. Her cult spread widely in Europe in the Middle Ages, as shown by the numerous passions in many parts of the continent, especially in Italy, in Florence, Atri, Naples and Chieti. Many painters depicted her, among them Fra Bartolomeo, Arnolfo di Cambio, Andrea Pisano, Domenico Passignano and Bernardo Daddi. She remained until the late Middle Ages the principal patroness of Florence; around 1298 the city was placed under the immediate protection of the Mother of God and Saint John the Baptist. She is patroness of Nice and, with Saint Zenobius, of Florence. The former cathedral of Santa Reparata at Florence was dedicated to her (over its foundation Santa Maria del Fiore was built). Florence celebrates her on 8 October, in memory of its deliverance from the Ostrogoths of Radagaisus in 406, which it attributes to her intercession.