Euthalia of Sicily

Euthalia was born at Leontini in Sicily — the ancient Leontinoi, north of Syracuse — into a pagan household, living with her mother Eutropia and her brother Sermylian (the name is given variously in the sources). The turning of the family toward Christ came, the tradition holds, through a healing. The mother Eutropia suffered from a long and incurable flow of blood, and was told in a dream — or through the report of the faithful — that she would be healed if she believed in Christ and sought the aid of the holy martyrs of Lentini (Alphius, Philadelphus, and Cyrinus, the martyred brothers venerated in the city, May 10). She did so and was made whole; and, converted by the miracle, she received baptism, and her daughter Euthalia with her.

The brother Sermylian remained a fierce pagan, and the conversion of his mother and sister kindled his fury. Learning that they had become Christians and had put away the gods, he set himself against them — the accounts speak of his seeking to force them back to idolatry, of the mother's flight, and of his rage falling upon Euthalia, who would not be moved. He pressed her to deny Christ; she confessed him the more boldly, declaring herself his bride and refusing every threat. Sermylian then abused her cruelly — the passion adds that he handed her to be dishonoured, from which she was preserved — and, unable to break her constancy, struck off her head with his own hand. So the young virgin, faithful to the confession into which her mother's healing had drawn her, was crowned in martyrdom about the year 257, in the persecutions of the mid-third century.

The bare shape of the story — a pagan household won to Christ through the healing of the mother by the local martyrs, and the daughter slain by her own brother for refusing to apostatise — is what the tradition transmits; the particulars of date and name vary among the witnesses, and her passion belongs to the cycle of the martyrs of Sicily rather than to a securely dated official record.