According to apocrypha, as well as Christian and Islamic tradition, Saint Anne was the mother of Mary, the wife of Joachim and the maternal grandmother of Jesus. Mary's mother is not named in the Bible's canonical gospels. In writing, Anne's name and that of her husband Joachim come only from New Testament apocrypha, of which the Gospel of James seems to be the earliest that mentions them. The mother of Mary is mentioned but not named in the Quran.
Lucia of Syracuse (283–304), also called Saint Lucia was a Roman Christian martyr who died during the Diocletianic Persecution. She is venerated as a saint in Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, and Eastern Orthodox Christianity. She is one of eight women explicitly commemorated by Catholics in the Canon of the Mass. Her traditional feast day, known in Europe as Saint Lucy's Day, is observed by Western Christians on 13 December. Lucia of Syracuse was honored in the Middle Ages and remained a well-known saint in early modern England. She is one of the best known virgin martyrs, along with Agatha of Sicily, Agnes of Rome, Cecilia of Rome, and Catherine of Alexandria.
Odile of Alsace, also known as Odilia and Ottilia, born c. 662 - c. 720 at Mont Sainte-Odile), is a saint venerated in the Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church. She is a patroness saint of good eyesight and of the region of Alsace.
Saint Winifred was a Welsh virgin martyr of the 7th century. Her story was celebrated as early as the 8th century, but became popular in England in the 12th, when her hagiography was first written down.
Genevieve was a consecrated virgin, and is the patron saint of Paris in the Catholic and Orthodox traditions. Her feast day is on 3 January.
Saint Guinefort was a legendary 13th-century French greyhound that received local veneration as a folk saint.
Saint Faith or Saint Faith of Conques is a saint who is said to have been a girl or young woman of Agen in Aquitaine. Her legend recounts how she was arrested during persecution of Christians by the Roman Empire and refused to make pagan sacrifices. Saint Faith was tortured to death naked over a red-hot brazier. Her death is sometimes said to have occurred in the year 287 or 290, sometimes in the large-scale Diocletianic Persecution beginning in 303. She is listed as "Sancta Fides, Virgin and martyr", in the martyrologies.
The arrondissement of Bourges is an arrondissement of France in the Cher department in the Centre-Val de Loire region. It has 128 communes. Its population is 173,037 (2016), and its area is 2,783.9 km2 (1,074.9 sq mi).
Columba of Sens, was a virgin and nun who was born to a noble pagan family in the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula. She left Gallaecia for Gaul as a child to avoid being denounced as a Christian and received the baptismal name Columba, meaning "dove" in French. She settled in Sens, France, where the Roman emperor Aurelian noticed her and tried to force her to marry his son. When she refused, he imprisoned her. She was protected from being burned alive by a female bear and a miraculous rain shower, but was finally beheaded. Columba was venerated throughout France; a chapel was later built over her relics and the Abbey of Sens, which at one time was a pilgrimage site in her honor, was eventually built there.
A cephalophore is a saint who is generally depicted carrying their own severed head. In Christian art, this was usually meant to signify that the subject in question had been martyred by beheading. Depicting the requisite halo in this circumstance offers a unique challenge for the artist: some put the halo where the head used to be, others have the saint carrying the halo along with the head, and some split the difference. Associated legends often tell of the saint standing and carrying their own head after the beheading.
Devota is the patron saint of Corsica and Monaco. She was killed during the persecutions of the Roman Emperors Diocletian and Maximian. She is sometimes identified with another Corsican saint named Julia, who was described in Latin as Deo devota. The description was misinterpreted as a proper name. The legend connected with her is similar to those told of other saints of the region, such as Reparata and Torpes of Pisa.
Saint Aurelia of Strasbourg was a 4th-century saint, whose tomb in Strasbourg became the centre of a popular cult in the Middle Ages.
Saint Honorina was a 3rd-century virgin martyr of Gallo-Roman northern France, venerated as a saint in the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches. Believed to have been killed in the first years of the 4th century during the persecutions of Diocletian, very little is known of her life, apart from her reputed martyrdom for maintaining her Christian faith.
Saint-Doulchard is a commune in the Cher department in the Centre-Val de Loire region of France. It is on the outskirts of Bourges.
Saint Baudilus is venerated as a martyr by the Catholic Church. His cult is closely associated with the city of Nîmes but also spread into Spain.
Valerie of Limoges is a legendary Christian martyr and cephalophore, associated with the Roman period, whose cult was very important in Limousin, France, in the medieval period. She has been an important subject for Christian art since the middle ages and for porcelain figurines over several centuries.
Saint Ronan was an Irish pilgrim saint and hermit in western Brittany. He was a son of Saint Berach and the eponymous founder of Locronan and co-patron of Quimper (France), together with its founder, Saint Corentin.
Saint Paraskevi of Rome is venerated as a Christian martyr of the 2nd century. She was arrested and tortured under the reign of the Roman Emperor Antoninus Pius for her refusal to worship idols. Though he eventually released her after she performed a miracle that cured him of his blindness, she was arrested on multiple later occasions for her Christianity and was eventually beheaded by the Roman governor Tarasius.
Saint Barbara, known in the Eastern Orthodox Church as the Great Martyr Barbara, was an early Christian Greek saint and martyr.
Saint Goulven de Léon was a saint in Brittany in the 6th-7th century. Any knowledge of his life is derived from his vita, of which only a copy of a transcription of the original remains and whose historical accuracy is in question. According to that vita, he was the bishop of Saint-Pol-de-Léon in the seventh century, after having acquired a reputation as an ascetic and anchorite whose prayer and presence cured people and had helped fight off a Viking invasion. When he was elected as bishop, he tried to avoid that responsibility by going to Rome; after intervention by Pope Gregory I he returned and served for over a decade. He died in Rennes, where he was buried in the cathedral. He continued to be venerated in various parts of Brittany, most notably in the small commune of Goulven and other communes nearby in the Pays de Léon, the very western part of Finistère.
