Notes the Martyrology Romano that "in Spain, in the city of Malaga, died on this day (fourth century), the martyrs Ciriaco and Paula, virgin. Which having suffered many torments were stoned and gave their souls (to) heaven among the same stones". According to another In the martyrology, St. Cyriacus and St. Paula were siblings.
The journalist Antonio Moreno, whom you can read in Omnes, gives a profile of the martyr saints and their context, with the words of Rafael Contreras, archivist, on the web site of the malaga diocese.
Tradition states that "Saints Ciriaco and Paula were two young people from Malaga belonging to a flourishing Christian community in our city and presided over by Bishop San Patricio. Seized in the context of the tenth persecution of Emperor Diocletian, they were subjected to painful torments. The purpose was to make them renounce their faith and worship pagan divinities".
"Revered in our city"
"As they did not achieve this purpose, they were condemned to death and stoned to death, tied to two trees. It happened on the banks of the Guadalmedina River on June 18 of the year 303 of our era. In the place we still know today as Paseo de Martiricos".
After their death, their Christian brothers collected their bodies and proceeded to bury them. "Since then they have been venerated in our city by the Christians". "The memory of the patron saints of Malaga is still very present among the people of Malaga," it is recalled.
Protagonists of a historical novel
In his recent article Real saintsIn Omnes, Antonio Moreno tells the genesis of "The mud fish". It is a historical novel by Ana Medina and Antonio S. Reina, which narrates the life of these patron saints of Malaga, the young St. Ciriaco and St. Paula, martyred in the time of Diocletian. The work transports the reader to the beginnings of Christianity, explains Antonio Moreno, when the first communities lived the joy of the Good News in the face of the failure of pagan religions.
"In this fiction (we have hardly any information about their lives) Ciriaco and Paula are two normal young people who live their Christian vocation as so many young people do today, amid doubts and blunders. But when the time came, grace gave them the power to change their lives in a heroic way to the point of giving the supreme witness of martyrdom". Set at the beginning of the fourth century, "The Mud Fish" reflects on current problems for the dialogue of faith with today's culture.
