Quiteria and the Nonuplet sisters
Portuguese religious traditions state that Quiteria was the leader of the "Nonuplet Sisters", who were named Eumelia (Euphemia), Liberata (Virgeforte), Gema (Marina of Aguas Santas, Margarida), Genebra, Germana, Basilissa, Marica; and Vitoria (Victoria). These were born in Bracara Augusta, currently Braga, in the region of Minho to an important Roman military official. Their mother, disgusted at the fact that she had given birth to nine daughters all at once as if she were a common peasant (or an animal), ordered a maid to take them to a river to drown them. (Alternately, Calcia, their mother, frightened that her husband would interpret these multiple births as a sign of infidelity, ordered her servant Sila to drown the girls in the Miñor River.)
Disobeying her mistress, however, the maid gave the girls over to some local women who brought them up as Christians. As adult women, they opposed the worship of Roman gods and were brought before their father, who recognized them as his daughters. Their father wanted them to marry Roman officers or other suitors. The nonuplets refused and were imprisoned in a tower. However, they escaped and liberated all of their other prisoners. They subsequently waged a guerrilla war in the mountains against the Roman Empire.
Quiteria was caught and beheaded. Her sister Eumelia, unable to escape from the soldiers who pursued her, threw herself from a cliff situated today in the Peneda-Gerês National Park (it is called today Penedo da Santa, Cliff of the Saint). A rock opened up and swallowed her and on the spot, there sprang up a hot spring.
Liberata (in Portuguese Livrada) is the patron saint of Sigüenza. The chapel dedicated to her in the transept of the city's cathedral, with a splendid reredos and the relics of the saint, was constructed at the expense of Bishop Fadrique de Portugal.
