St. Rosalia

Biography

Much of what is told about St. Rosalia comes from tradition rather than documents from her own time. According to that tradition, she was born around 1130 into a Norman noble family in Palermo, Sicily, the daughter of a nobleman named Sinibald, and spent part of her youth at the royal court. As a young woman she renounced marriage and worldly life to live as a hermit. She is said first to have lived in a cave at Quisquina, in the Sicilian interior, where a Latin inscription attributed to her declares that she dwelt there for love of Christ, and later in a cave on Monte Pellegrino, the mountain above Palermo. Tradition places her death there around 1166. For centuries her memory was kept mainly in local devotion. In 1624, when plague struck Palermo, remains believed to be hers were discovered in the cave on Monte Pellegrino. After they were carried in procession through the city in 1625, the epidemic subsided, and the people of Palermo acclaimed her their patroness. Her cave became a shrine, and her name was entered into the Roman Martyrology in the seventeenth century. Palermo celebrates her with a great festival in July, marking the finding of her relics, and on September 4, her traditional feast.

Patronages

Symbols