Welcome back to another full week of saintly thrills and spills as Quiteria faces Rose of Lima in a battle of two faithful women. Second century martyr vs. 16th century nun.
On Friday, Philip the Deacon rolled past Onesimus 67% to 33% to advance to the Saintly Sixteen. By the way, did you know that the Bracket is updated daily? It's true! Click on the Bracket Tab to view an updated bracket and scroll down just underneath the bracket for a link to all the previous battles. This is all courtesy of our long-standing (suffering?) Bracket Czar, the Rev. Adam Thomas, who also supplies us with a plethora of puns each day when announcing the winner.
Stay tuned later today for an exciting newfangled edition of Monday Madness coming your way. You definitely don't want to miss it!
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Quiteria
St. Quiteria is a saint shrouded in mystery, about whom not much is certain but much is whispered. The facts are these: she was born in what is now Braga, Portugal, and was put to death in Aire-sur-l’Adour, France, in the second century. Her name and these facts are recorded in the Roman Martyrology. Here the stories diverge, but the devotion for her does not.
In the Western church, the tradition holds that she was born in Braga to the local Roman governor. Her father wanted her to marry and renounce Christianity. She refused, and instead fled into the forest with her sister, Liberata. Her father’s soldiers found them and beheaded them on the spot.
In Portugal, the story is more complex. The tradition says that Quiteria was the firstborn of nonuplet sisters (nine infants at once). Their mother, a noblewoman, panicked by having given birth to so many babies at once, and considering it a sign of common birth and animal-like nature, gave the babies to a servant to dispose of. Their father did not notice any of this happening.
Meanwhile, the servant went rogue and raised the girls herself with other local women in the village. The girls were reared as Christians, and learned to oppose the worship of Roman gods, and when they attained adulthood, they came before their father, who recognized them as his daughters. He then decided to exert some authority over them, and marry them off to nice Roman boys, but the nonuplets were not having this. When they refused, their irritated father locked them in the local prison tower.
They escaped and proceeded to travel the countryside while liberating prisoners, smashing pagan idols, and waging guerrilla warfare in the mountains of southern France against the Roman Empire. Quiteria was eventually caught and beheaded near Aire-sur-l’Adour, France, where her relics are now interred. Her sister Eumelia threw herself off a nearby cliff rather than be captured, and today the cliff is known as Penedo de Santa or Cliff of the Saint.
Quiteria’s feast is celebrated (hopefully with some nice empire-resisting) on May 22.
Collect for Quiteria
God of the unlikely journey, we thank you for the example of Quiteria, who, with her sisters, stood firm for what they knew to be right in the face of abandonment and opposition. Empower and guide us, who try to follow in the footsteps of Jesus, to fear nothing except the loss of you, and to keep our eyes set on your reign in the world. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
Rose of Lima
Isabel Flores de Oliva was born in 1586 in Lima, Peru, to a noble family. She was one of eleven children and would have been reared with education and refinement so that she could marry well. Isabel had other ideas.
A beautiful child, Rose’s name comes from an account of a servant who saw the infant Isabel’s face transform into a rose. When Isabel was confirmed, she took the name of Rose and began to follow in the model of Catherine of Siena with strict fasting, acts of penance, and devotion to Christ.
Rose fasted three times a week. She limited her sleep to two to three hours a night, spending the majority of her waking hours kneeling in prayer. When she did sleep, she scattered rocks and broken glass on her bed to remember Christ’s suffering and death, even in her sleep. She eventually refused to eat meat at all. She wore a crown of thorns with silver spikes that embedded themselves into her flesh and skull.
When her parents invited suitors to court her, Rose, a well-regarded beauty in her community, cut her hair off, rubbed hot peppers into her face to inflame her skin, and refused to wash herself to discourage all suitors.
She wanted desperately to become a nun; her father forbade her. She instead took a perpetual vow of virginity. She wore the habit of the Third Order of St. Dominic and used a room in the family home to care for children and elderly Peruvians who were sick. She lived this austere, penitential, and slightly unsettling spiritual life until her death at age thirty-one.
Rose’s spirituality is referred to as one of extreme mortification, that is, of acts undertaken to repent for sins and to share in the fullness of Christ’s Passion. Eve in her lifetime, various leaders of the Church investigated her spiritual practices. Yet, they only found a woman deeply dedicated to sharing in the sufferings of Christ, to constant prayer, and to caring for those who were most in need in her community. Dignitaries and religious leaders in Peru attended her funeral at the cathedral. Legend states that the city smelled of roses on the day of her funeral. In 1671, she became the first Roman Catholic in the Americas to be declared a saint. Her skull is in a golden chest at the Dominican Church of Santo Domingo.
Collect for Rose of Lima
Merciful God, you sent your Gospel to the people of Peru through Martin de Porres, who brought its comfort even to slaves; through Rosa de Lima, who worked among the poorest of the poor; and through Toribio de Mogrovejo, who founded the first seminary in the Americas and baptized many: Help us to follow their example in bringing fearlessly the comfort of your grace to all downtrodden and outcast people, that your Church may be renewed with songs of salvation and praise; through Jesus Christ, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
120 comments on “Quiteria vs. Rose of Lima”
May I recommend to you the novel We Should Not Be Afraid of the Sky by Emma Hooper. It is a beautiful telling of the imagined stories of Quiteria and her sisters.
Neither an inspiring choice. I went with the one that probably had the most facts behind them.
Hard time voting again. Voted Rose as Quiteria was stranger than Rose. Both seemed somewhat deranged.
Voted for Quiteria in the “Vive la Résistance!” mode of others here and thinking that despite the folktale-ish nature of the nine-tup-lets her resistance to Rome and heading to the hills seems far more inspiring in our difficult times than Rose of Lima’s ghoulish self-mortification.
I see, per a Google search, that there have been recorded births of nine babies at once (!) but perhaps the “nine” is more a symbolic number than actual one? Certainly, having traveled in Portugal a fair amount, I can easily imagine Portugal as Roman colony and what the struggle might have looked like for a nascent Christian community there. Braga is N/NE of present-day Porto and still historically significant; it’s in hill country and near-ish to the Spanish border. When you travel in Portugal you can still find so many relics of Rome: Roman roads you can still walk on (always blows me away), paving stones in beautiful mosaic-like/tile-like patterns everywhere, and layer on layer of history, as different conquerors and cultures swept through this part of the Iberian peninsula.
Today, Rose would be diagnosed as anorexic and mentally ill. She basically starved herself to death. But at least she cared for children and the elderly. Quieria has an improbable history, to say the least. Nine infants and nobody noticed? Wow.
Quiteria was an active saint.
It's a blue Monday contemplating martyrs. I cannot go hiding in the woods and smashing idols, so chose to emulate the dedication of Rose, but not to the extreme of rocks in bed.
These are not great choices today. I will always vote for the so-called 'nasty woman,' and Quiteria's legend speaks to her not conforming to the demands of her Empire. Rose has a beautiful story of how she got her name, but I am so tired of reading about self-mortification (which appears to be a requirement to be a woman saint in the early church) and relic worship. So, I didn't have much of a choice-voting to keep the game going, but none of the above would have been a good choice too.
Guerrilla warrior, liberator of prisoners, enemy of idolatry, martyr: Quiteria for the win!
I did not find either of these saints inspiring, so I said eenie meenie miney mo.
I choose Quiteria's simple story, not the nonuplet birth story. Since so many women were simply property whose only value was in their marriage, resisting in the cause of following the way of Christ seems like a dangerous but possibly the only way to be true to ones belief. It is obvious that the father had no regard for her as a person.
I complained on Friday that the Thursday email arrived too late to vote. Well, it got even worse. I didn’t receive the Friday email until Sunday morning!!
To MJ Fowler: Thanks for your response! Yes, I am on Comcast and I’m wondering why that would make a difference. My wife receives her emails on gmail and she receives them promptly. She forwards them to me and I use the link to vote. I don’t know what is different about Comcast this year; I’ve been using the same Comcast email address to play Lent Madness for about 8 years now.
I guess I'm drawn more to the story of those children who stuck together (maybe-depending on the stories) and tried to fix things they believed to be wrong.
I can't believe Rose of Lima is ahead of Quiteria who is way livlier and interesting! Go figure. I still cast my vote for Quiteria.
Two rather bizarre candidates for the Golden Halo. If they had been pitted against anyone else, I would have voted for their competitors.
I voted for Quiteria. A saintly band of guerrilla sisters appealed to me more than a saint who wears a crown of thorns.
I agree with many in not finding either of these saints particularly Golden Halo material. I suspect the demands of the alphabet had quite a bit to do with their selection this year. I voted for Quiteria mostly because of the collect.
I cannot approve of extreme mortification, much as I want to advance a saint in the americas. Such sleepless fasting (on broken glass) seems to have led to an early death. That can hardly glorify God. So I’m going to go with the totally true and NOT APOCRYPHAL story about the nine guerrilla warriors resisting empire. And since this story clearly needs some embellishment, I am picturing them as the Femen group marching bare breasted through the streets of Paris shouting “L’Europe féministe pas fasciste!” So much glory for God. And women are allowed to eat.
I still cannot vote. The Captcha shows only six squares not nine squares on my phone.
The auditory response is not accepted. Very odd this year.
I was all set to vote for Rose of Lima (Go America! Plus both my mother and my great niece were named Isabelle!) But the more I read about her self mutilation and mortification, the less inspiring I found her to be. So I will vote for Quiteria and her guerilla warfare against the Roman Empire.
Quiteria had me at "waging guerilla warfare in the mountains of southern France." Pretty apt for the conditions we find ourselves today. "Vive la Resistance!"
I do not believe mortification of the flesh pleases God, but I did vote for Rose. She reminds me of Francis in her rejection of her class position. As a feminist, I do speculate about how the commodification of the female body might spur a young woman to extreme self denial. She is also known for serving the poor, so I voted for her, even though the guerillista has an exciting story!
I choose mythology over masochism!
I don’t see the claim Rose made about praying away an impending earthquake. I have always disliked that part oof her story, though I am less skeptical about other saintly miracles. So I voted for Quiteria, whose story also invites skepticism (surviving nonuplets! all girls?), but it’s rather charming.
I find it hard to vote for one who is best know for self-mutilation. Neither are strong candidates but I take the one who may be a myth.
You forgot the part where Quiteria, after her beheading, simply tucked her head under her arm and went on fighting the Romans. She was a bada--, and I am here for it.
I cannot vote for either one. I will spend the day praying for Amy and her sister.
I am going with the woman warrior. Let's go smash a few idols! Speak truth to power.
Actually, as a kid, I struggled with guilt at not being willing to suffer like the young saints. There was a period of time when I would sleep on a small rug on the floor near my bed. (My sisters who shared the room laughed at me.) Of course a true saint wouldn't use the rug...you get the picture, never enough. So Rose of Lima's "slightly unsettling spiritual practices" unsettle me.
I had a hard time voting for either of these women. They are too extreme for me.
I struggled to find a reason to vote today. The spare western account of Quiteria was at least believable so my vote goes to her. I was aldo swayed by the lovely collect and the call to empire resisting. Extreme self mortification is not something we should be celebrating, and may well have contributed to her early death.