Tarsilla of Rome

Saint Tarsilla of Rome, a venerable mother, lived in the 6th century and was one of the three aunts of Pope Gregory the Great. With her sister Emiliana she devoted herself to God and lived in piety and mortification. Her nephew wrote that she was the most assiduous in prayer, the most severe in abstinence and modesty, and that she thus reached a high degree of holiness.

According to tradition, her body, together with her sister's, was laid by her nephew in the area of the church of Saints Andrew and Gregory on the Caelian Hill in Rome. She is venerated as a saint in the Western Church and remembered on 24 December in the Western calendar. Her image appears in an engraving by Jacques Callot of 1632.