Saint Silvia

Silvia was born around 520, into a family of modest means but perhaps related to the gens Octavia. Another tradition has her born in Sicily instead; what is certain is that the family owned property both in Rome and on the island. She had two sisters, Emiliana and Tarsilla, who are saints too. In 538 she married the senator Gordianus, of the gens Anicia — the same family that Benedict of Nursia is traced back to. They went to live in the villa of the Anicii on the Caelian Hill, on the Clivus Scauri. In that house the son we remember her for was born: Gregory, who would become pope and whom we call the Great. Once widowed, Silvia withdrew to a religious life in a cell near Saint Paul Outside the Walls. Her son, who in the meantime had turned the family home into a monastery, sent her food every day — and she returned the favor by sending him vegetables on a silver plate, the most domestic detail to have come down to us from that century. When Gregory became pope, he had a portrait of his mother painted in the monastery of Saint Andrew, which the biographer John the Deacon describes in the ninth century: it was still there, and we know what it looked like. She died in Rome in 592. She is considered the patron saint of mothers and widows, together with Saint Monica — who was, in turn, the mother of another great man. If your name is Silvia, today is your name day.