Saint Eulalia
The Iconography
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Mérida and Barcelona both claim martyrs named Eulalia, but it is likely that they were one and the same. Eulalia of Mérida was tortured and burned to death on December 10, 304, during the persecution of Diocletian, and her story was told later in the same century by Prudentius in his Peristephanon. In this poem the torturers claw at her body with iron hooks and hold lighted torches against her sides. The torches ignite her hair, and as she dies from the smoke and flame her soul flies up to Heaven as a dove.1
The Barcelona Eulalia was said to be martyred on February 12, but the earliest account of her life is from the 7th century and is merely a copy of Prudentius.2 Most of the "Eulalia" images one sees are from Catalonia or its one-time dependencies. They draw their details from different aspects of different legends. Some of the legends say Eulalia was tortured while suspended on an equuleus, a torturer's rack, whereas others use the word crux.3 Crux can refer to any sort of wooden instrument of execution, but usually it means "cross," so eventually some narrative images picture the men torturing Eulalia as she hangs on a cross saltire, as in the second picture at right and the altarpiece above. The cross saltire then becomes one of her attributes, as in the first picture at right. In the 9th-century Cantilène d'Eulalie (see below) the saint is thrown into a fire that fails to consume her and she is then beheaded. This account appears to be the source of the statue in Oviedo in which her attribute is a maquette of an horno, an outdoor oven common in the Spanish countryside. It may also explain images that place her on a gridiron like St. Lawrence's. (See the far right panel in the second register of the altarpiece at the top of this page.) The vita published in the Acta Sanctorum says the prefect Dacian had Eulalia flogged before moving on to the other torments.4 The flogging is illustrated in this painting and in the altarpiece at the top of this page. In Prudentius after the saint's death snow falls thickly to cover her body, which Gregory of Tours says had been stripped naked.5 The nakedness is treated respectfully in medieval images, but some later works dispense with the snow and present her body to a prurient gaze. Thus in St. Eulalia on the Bonfire (1519) Ordoñez stretches her out naked on the gridiron like a lounging odalisque. And Waterhouse's Eulalia (third picture at right) has her dead and prone, her lustrous body exposed to the elements and the view of gawking boys. In some portraits St. Eulalia has a crown (example) and/or a book or scroll.
The Hymn of St. Eulalia
Prepared in 2014 by Richard Stracke, Emeritus Professor of English, Augusta University, revised 2015-10-31, 2017-04-12, 2018-04-22. |
SHOWN ABOVE:
Altarpiece of St. Eulalia, Cathedral of Palma de Mallorca, 1350. See the description page. OTHER IMAGES ATTRIBUTES
MORE IMAGES
DATES
ST. EULALIA IN THE ROMAN MARTYROLOGY:
OTHER BIOGRAPHY
NOTES
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