Saint Flora of Córdoba

Flora was born in Córdoba, in Islamic Spain, to a Muslim father and a Christian mother. After her father died, she was raised as a Christian by her mother together with her sister Baldegoto, but her brother — a Muslim — stood in her way at every turn. Under the law of the time, hers was a position with no way out: as the daughter of a Muslim father, she was considered a Muslim, and professing Christianity meant apostasy, punishable by death. She ran away from home a first time. She came back because her brother, to force her hand, had had some clerics imprisoned. When she returned she was badly beaten. She left again and stayed away for years. Then she came back on her own and gave herself up to the qadi. She knew perfectly well what was waiting for her. In prison she met Eulogius, a priest who wrote about those events — it is to him that we owe what we know about the martyrs of Córdoba, and he too was killed a few years later. The letters he wrote to her while they were in prison survive, and they are among the few firsthand accounts we have of that group. She was beheaded on November 24, 851, together with Mary. The story says that her body, thrown into the fields, was not touched by animals, and that it was later thrown into the Guadalquivir. If your name is Flora, today is your name day.