Virgin Martyr Euthalia of Sicily
A young Christian woman from Sicily who, according to tradition, was baptised together with her mother and was put to death by her pagan brother for refusing to deny her faith.
Biography
Euthalia lived in Sicily together with her mother, who bore the same name and suffered from a haemorrhage. According to tradition, the mother saw in a dream the martyrs Alphius, Philadelphus and Cyprinus, who promised her healing if she believed in Christ and was baptised; mother and daughter were baptised together as a result.
Her brother, Sermilianus, enraged that his mother had become a Christian, tried to strangle her, but she escaped with a servant's help. When Euthalia rebuked her brother for this, he beat her, handed her to a slave to assault her — whom she blinded through prayer — and finally beheaded her.