Sts. Adulph and John

Adulph and his brother John were born in Seville, Spain during the ongoing occupation of much of the country by the Moors. Adulph, John, and their sister (Saint) Aurea were the children of an Arab Moslem father and a Spanish Catholic mother named Artemia. Subsequently, Artemia took her three children to Cordoba, where she would be somewhat more at liberty to raise them in the Catholic faith. Due to the loss of the original biography of Adulph and John, the specific circumstances of the family’s departure for Cordoba remain unknown. It is most probable that Artemia’s husband had either converted to the Catholic faith or had already died when the family set out for Seville. It was in Cordoba that Adulph and John were to be martyred for their faith around the year 824 under the Moslem caliph, Abderraman II. Their sister Aurea became a nun in the convent of Cutellara and later suffered martyrdom over thirty years after her two brothers. Artemia also entered the Cutellara convent and became its abbess.