Justa and Rufina of Seville
The Holy Martyrs Justa and Rufina, virgins of Seville
Martyr · Virgin · d. c. 287, at Hispalis (Seville) in Baetica
Commemorated 19 July — Martyrdom at Hispalis under the prefect Diogenianus
Justa and Rufina were two Christian sisters of Hispalis — Seville — in Roman Baetica, poor women who made and sold earthenware in the market, and who were put to death about the year 287. Their passion turns on an act of ordinary trading: asked to supply vessels for the procession of a pagan goddess, they refused, and when the devotees smashed their stock in reprisal the sisters threw down the idol. Justa died under torture in prison and her body was recovered from a well; Rufina, whom a lion in the amphitheatre would not touch, was strangled and her body burned. They are the patronesses of Seville and of potters, and are kept in East and West alike on July 19.
Two potters of Hispalis
The sisters belonged to the working population of Hispalis, the great river-port of Baetica and one of the oldest Christian centres of the Spanish provinces. They were, the passion says, of humble family, unmarried, and lived by their trade: they made pottery — the plain domestic ware of the Guadalquivir kilns — and sold it in the market of Triana across the river. Whatever they earned beyond their needs they gave to the poor. That is the whole of their life before the day that ended it.
The procession of the goddess
The city kept, as the Phoenician-founded cities of the south still did, the summer rites of a goddess whom the Latin passion calls Salambo — the Semitic Astarte assimilated to Venus, mourned in procession with the death of Adonis. The devotees went through the streets carrying the image, gathering offerings and, as the custom was, requiring vessels of the potters for the rite.
Coming to the sisters' stall they demanded ware for the goddess. Justa and Rufina refused: the vessels were for the use of men, not for the service of an idol, and they would not have their work go into it. The women of the procession, enraged, broke every piece on the stall. The sisters answered by taking hold of the image and throwing it down, and it shattered.
The prefect Diogenianus
They were arrested and brought before the prefect of the city, whom the passion names Diogenianus. Ordered to sacrifice, they confessed Christ and refused. He had them stretched on the rack and their sides torn with iron hooks; and then, hoping to break them by exhaustion where torture had failed, he had them driven barefoot on a forced march into the Sierra Morena — the mountains north of the city, over rock and thorn — and back, and then thrown into a cell without food or water.
Justa died there, in prison, of the torture and the privation. Her body was flung into a well, from which the bishop of the city, Sabinus, drew it out and buried it.
Rufina, who had survived, was taken to the amphitheatre and a lion loosed on her. The beast came up to her and would not touch her, and lay down; the crowd, the account says, was more frightened by this than by the killing. Diogenianus had her taken out and strangled, and her body burned, so that no relics should remain; but the Christians gathered the ashes, and Sabinus buried her beside her sister.
Cultus
Their tombs at Seville were venerated from an early date, and the cult is among the best attested of the Spanish martyr-cults: they appear in the Hieronymian Martyrology, in the Mozarabic liturgical books — the Visigothic Spanish rite has a proper mass and office for them — and in the calendars of the Spanish Church continuously from the seventh century. The Greek synaxaria received them, as they received a small number of Western martyrs, and they stand in the Byzantine calendar for July 19 with the note that they suffered in Spain.
They are the patronesses of Seville, and their protection is popularly attached to the Giralda, the Almohad minaret turned bell-tower of the cathedral: when the earthquake of 1504 shook the city and the tower was thought lost, the sisters were seen upholding it — whence the standard Sevillian image of the two women flanking the Giralda, which is how Spanish painting has represented them ever since. They are also patrons of potters and ceramicists, of the Triana pottery quarter, and of the azulejo trade.
Feast and commemoration
July 19 (church date; Old Calendar civil August 1) in the Greek synaxaria, and July 19 in the Roman and Mozarabic calendars — one of the small number of Western martyr-feasts kept on the same day in both traditions. In Seville the day is the city's own, with the municipal and cathedral observance attached to it. The Greek Menaion and the Great Synaxaristes carry them for July 19 as martyrs of Spain; the Orthodox Church in America and the Slavonic calendars do not list them, and they are absent from the Antiochian day-list — the commemoration is Greek and Western.
Hymns
Apolytikion — Tone 4 (common of women martyrs)
Thy lambs Justa and Rufina cry aloud to thee, O Jesus: Thee do we long for, O Bridegroom, and contending we are crucified and buried with thee in thy baptism; we suffer for thy sake, that we may reign with thee, and we die for thee that we may live in thee. Receive us as spotless sacrifices offered to thee in love. By their prayers, O merciful one, save our souls.
Kontakion — Tone 4
Ye would not sell your work to an idol, and for a broken image ye gave your bodies to the rack; the well and the fire could not hide you, O sisters, and the beast of the arena knew its master. Wherefore, O Justa and Rufina, entreat Christ God for us who honour you.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
In the Byzantine manner the sisters are written as women martyrs: two young figures side by side, in tunic and mantle with the head covered, each holding the martyr's cross in the right hand and the left open before the breast, without individual attribute. Where the painter distinguishes them, Rufina is given the lion at her feet.
The Western — and specifically Sevillian — type is quite different and is the one by which they are generally known: the two women standing on either side of the Giralda, which they support with their hands, dressed as townswomen, with earthenware pots at their feet or held in their arms and the palm of martyrdom in their hands. The type is fixed by the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and was painted by Goya and by Murillo among many others. The pots identify their trade; the tower records the earthquake of 1504.
No pre-1900 Orthodox icon of the two has been located and confirmed for this collection, and the well-known Spanish paintings, though long out of copyright, are Western devotional pictures rather than icons and are not stored here.
Disputed questions
- The date. The passion is generally dated to the persecution under Diocletian and Maximian, and the traditional year is 287; some Spanish authorities place the martyrdom in 283 or in the general persecution of 303–305. The Greek notices say simply "under Diocletian." The year 287 is given here as the received date, not as a established one.
- The value of the passio. The surviving Latin passion is late, and its details — the named prefect, the goddess Salambo, the march into the sierra, the lion — cannot all be taken as historical record. What is early and secure is the cult: two martyred sisters of Hispalis, venerated at identified tombs, in the Hieronymian Martyrology and the Mozarabic books. The narrative should be read as the tradition of that cult rather than as a court record.
- Which is the elder? The Latin and Spanish tradition puts Justa first and makes her the elder; the Greek synaxaria commonly reverse the order and name Rufina first. Nothing turns on it, but English lists derived from Greek sources will differ from Spanish ones.
- The goddess. "Salambo" in the passion is the Semitic Astarte under her Punic by-name, whose Adonis-mourning was still kept in the old Phoenician foundations of southern Spain; some versions of the passion instead name Venus, and some Cybele. The divergence is a mark of later copyists interpreting a rite they no longer recognised.