(christian feast day:)
“october 8th”
(“Palatias” and “Laurentia” (Italian: Sante Palazia e Laurenzia, Lorenza) (died 302 AD) are martyrs venerated by the Roman Catholic and ‘Eastern Orthodox’ churches)
(according to tradition, ‘Palatias’ or Palatia was an aristocratic Roman woman who was converted to Christianity by her nurse or slave ‘Laurentia’)
(they were executed for being Christians at Ferma, in present-day Italy, during the reign of ‘Diocletian’)
(the account of their lives and martyrdom was preserved in an ancient manuscript from Ancona of uncertain date and another preserved by the Biblioteca Vallicelliana at ‘Rome’)
(the accounts contain many legendary details, containing tropes found in the vitai of other virgin saints, such as Saint Christina, Saint Barbara, and ‘Saint Victoria’)
(‘Mario Natalucci’ believes that it be may possible that the 2 saints were natives of ‘Ancona’ who were martyred during the persecutions of ‘Diocletian’, and their relics carried to that city)
(their cult was diffused in the ‘Piceno’, in places such as ‘Fermo’, ‘Osimo’, and ‘Camerino’, and in ‘Ancona’ the name “Palazia” appears in ancient liturgical texts and statues of her appear from the 11th century onwards)
(a church and a monastery were built in their honor)
(their relics were collected in one small bronze urn, of Berninian imitation, donated to ‘Ancona Cathedral’ by ‘Pope Benedict XIV’, who had been bishop of that city)
(Guercino’s La Santa Palazia is preserved in the ‘Pinacoteca Civica Francesco Podesti’, in ‘Ancona’)