Saint Leocadia of Toledo

The Archdiocese of Toledo tells her story briefly. Leocadia was born in the city to Christian parents toward the end of the third century and was consecrated to God in the order of virgins, known for her charity and her prayer. ³ When the persecution of Diocletian came she was arrested and imprisoned, and the authorities tried to turn her from the faith, first with flattery and then with the threat of torture. ³ She confessed her faith and would not give way. She died in prison while she was praying, on December 9, 303. ³

Because she died in prison, the archdiocese explains, the old documents call her a confessor. ³ The encyclopedia supplies the evidence for that: the acts of the Fourth Council of Toledo, in 633, speak of the "basilica beatissimae et sanctae Confessoris Leocadiae," the basilica of the most blessed and holy confessor Leocadia. ¹

Johann Peter Kirsch, who wrote her entry in 1910, places her among the martyrs that the last great persecution gave to Spain between 303 and 305, and dates her death to December 9, "probably 304." ¹ The encyclopedia does not agree with itself about the year: Carlos Cedillo's 1912 article on Toledo, which calls her "one of the most illustrious of the martyrs" of the persecution there, gives December 9, 306. ⁶ Kirsch is frank about the gaps in the record. The poet Prudentius, who wrote a hymn on the martyrs of Spain, does not mention her. ¹ The historical martyrologies of the ninth century do. ¹

What settles the matter for him is the church. "In very early times," he writes, there was a church dedicated to her at Toledo, and in the first half of the seventh century it was the meeting place of the Fourth Council of Toledo in 633, the Fifth in 636 and the Sixth in 638. ¹ It was evidently built over her grave, and so, he concludes, she must have been publicly honored as a martyr long before. ¹ His verdict: "There is no doubt of the historical fact of her martyrdom." ¹ The date of December 9, he adds, "obviously rests on the tradition of the Church of Toledo." ¹

Those were not small gatherings. Toledo was then the seat of the Visigothic court, and Cedillo calls the Fourth Council of 633, over which Saint Isidore of Seville presided, "one of the most important held in Spain." ⁶ The Fifth, in 636, dealt largely with the protection of the king, and the Sixth, in 638, approved rules of discipline. ⁶ All three, on Kirsch's account, met in the church built over her grave. ¹

The archdiocese says her cult was extraordinary from the sixth century onward, with long liturgical offices composed in her honor. ³ Two more churches in Toledo besides the basilica were dedicated to her, according to Kirsch. ¹

The fuller story comes from what Kirsch calls "more recently compiled Acts." ¹ In them Leocadia is filled with the desire for martyrdom by hearing how Saint Eulalia died. ¹ The governor Decianus, whom, Kirsch notes, the martyrology describes as the most furious persecutor of the Christians in Spain, has her seized and cruelly tortured to make her give up the faith. She holds firm and is sent back to prison, where she dies of what was done to her. ¹

Nicholas Weber, in his encyclopedia article on Braulio, the seventh-century bishop of Saragossa, notes that Braulio "may also have written the 'Passio S. Leocadiae.'" ⁵ Kirsch draws a firm line between the Acts and the facts. The basilica and the councils he treats as history, and the details of her trial he reports only as what the Acts relate. ¹

Her basilica was also a burial church. Saint Ildephonsus, archbishop of Toledo from about 657 until 667, was buried there. ⁴ Poncelet's article gives the little that is certain about him: a nephew of his predecessor Eugenius, a monk and then abbot of the monastery of Agli near Toledo, and the author of a treatise defending the perpetual virginity of Mary. ⁴ The Archdiocese of Toledo adds that his remains were later taken to Zamora to keep them safe at the time of the Muslim invasion. ³

In the late eighth century Cixila, another archbishop of Toledo, wrote up the life of Ildephonsus and added two wonders to it. ⁴ In one of them, Ildephonsus was praying before the relics of Saint Leocadia "when the martyr arose from her tomb and thanked the saint for the devotion he showed towards the Mother of God." ⁴ Albert Poncelet, who wrote the Ildephonsus article in 1910, treats this as one of the "doubtful or even legendary anecdotes" added to a life whose authentic details are few. ⁴

Her body did not stay in Toledo. The archdiocese says that her relics were carried from Toledo to Belgium and only came home in the sixteenth century, and that the city built a gate for the occasion, the Puerta del Cambrón, which still carries an image of her. ³ Kirsch says she is shown in art with a tower, as a sign that she died in prison. ¹

Saint Leocadia is the patroness of the Diocese of Toledo. ¹ In 2004 the archdiocese also declared her the patroness of its young people. ³

Saint Leocadia's feast day is December 9, the day of her death. ¹³ The Archdiocese of Toledo celebrates her on that day, and the current Roman Martyrology enters her on it too, under the spelling Leucadia, as a virgin and martyr "outstanding for her witness of faith in Christ," in the Italian bishops' wording translated here. ²³ Kirsch noted in 1910 that December 9 was "still given as her feast in the Roman Martyrology," and that the date itself comes from the tradition of the Church of Toledo. ¹

The sources keep her life almost empty. A woman of Toledo, a virgin given to God, a prison, a death in December, and nothing else that a historian will vouch for. ¹³ What the Church of Toledo did with that little was to build over her grave and to go on gathering there, so that a little over three centuries later the bishops of a kingdom were holding councils beside her body. ¹

Toledo remembers her dying at prayer, and her oldest title is confessor. ³ That is a quiet kind of martyrdom. Nobody in the sources sees her executed. Her witness was to refuse, and then to wait in a cell until she died. ¹³ Painters have shown her with a tower, which is the prison she never left. ¹

It suits a saint like this that Toledo should have made her the patroness of its young people. ³ What she left behind is not advice. She left a church where others came to pray long after her, and a day in December that Toledo still keeps. ¹³