Trahamunda

Saint Trahamunda was a nun from Galicia, Spain, in the early Middle Ages, venerated as a saint. Her life, preserved in the form of a legend, ties her to the monastery of San Juan de Poio in Pontevedra. She is regarded as the patron of homesickness (morriña) and of emigrants. The legend is local and does not appear in the Roman Martyrology.

According to tradition she was a novice at the convent of San Martín on the island of Tambo when she was carried off in a Moorish raid, while tending the convent's sheep (by some sources the raid was by Abd al-⁠Rahman I, by others by Abd al-⁠Rahman II). Taken to Córdoba to join the harem, she refused, and so was imprisoned for eleven years. The legend says that on a 23 June she asked God that she be at Poio the next day, the feast of Saint John the Baptist. That night an angel gave her a palm branch, with which she reached Galicia. She then planted the palm near the monastery of San Juan de Poio, where it took root and stayed until the sixteenth century; the meadow was called "Meadow of the Palm". Her tomb, in Suevo-⁠Visigothic style, is in the chapel of the monastery at Poio. Her feast is on 14 November, and the people of Poio also celebrate her around 23 June.