Saint Olivia de Palermo

Olivia of Palermo (Italian: Oliva dì Palermo, Sicilian: Uliva di Palermu), Palermo, 448 – Tunis, 10 June 463, while according to another tradition she is supposed to have lived in the late 9th century AD in the Muslim Emirate of Sicily is a Christian virgin-martyr who was venerated as a local patron saint of Palermo, Sicily, since the Middle Ages, as well as in the Sicilian towns of Monte San Giuliano, Termini Imerese, Alcamo, Pettineo and Cefalù. Her feast day is on 10 June, and in art she is shown as a young woman surrounded of olive branches, holding a cross in her right hand. Olivia seems to have been sanctified by popular tradition alone as a pious local saint since her name was not recorded historically in any mainstream Latin or Greek martyrology or Hagiology of the church. The oldest textual sources of her Life include a Gallo-siculo Breviary of the twelfth century, which records her memory and is still preserved in Palermo, as well as a document in vulgar Sicilian of the fourteenth century found in Termini Imerese, and a Life contained in a lectionary of the fifteenth century. A venerable icon of Olivia also exists, perhaps of the twelfth century, which depicts Saint Olivia with saints Elias, Venera and Rosalia. There are also references to a church being dedicated to her in Palermo since AD 1310 on the supposed site of her burial. Today, this is the Chiesa di San Francesco di Paola (Church of Saint Francis of Paola). In addition, numerous Lives of this Saint were published in Sicily, both in prose and in verse, and the form of sacred representation until the end of the eighteenth century, reflecting the fair vitality of her cult. She is recorded in the Sicilian martyrology of Ottavio Gaetani, as well as in the Palmerian martyrology of Antonio Mongitore in 1742. A Breviary from Cefalù also contains a detailed entry on her Life (Breviary Cefaludes).