Trasilla (or Tarsila^[a]) and Emiliana (sometimes Aemiliana ^[b]) were aunts of Gregory the Great and are venerated as virgin saints of the sixth century. They appear in the Roman Martyrology, Trasilla on 24 December, Emiliana on 5 January.

History

Trasilla and Emiliana were sisters who came from an ancient Roman noble family, the gens Anicia. Their brother, Senator Gordian, was a very rich patrician with a magnificent villa on the Caelian Hill and large estates in Sicily.^[1]

Gregory (Hom. XXXVIII, 15, on the Gospel of St. Matthew, and Lib. Dial., IV, 16) relates that his father, the Roman senator Gordian, had three sisters: Trasilla, Emiliana, and Gordiana. All three had devoted themselves to a religious life and led a life of virginity, fasting, and prayer. They practiced their faith in their father's house, located on the Clivus Scauri in Rome.^[2] Gordiana, at first as devout as her sisters, later abandoned this calling and is thus not venerated as a saint.

Tradition states that Felix III, an ancestor, appeared to Trasilla and bade her to enter Heaven, and on the eve of Christmas Trasilla died, seeing Jesus Christ beckoning.^[2] The legend also states that Trasilla a few days later appeared to Emiliana, inviting her to celebrate Epiphany in heaven.

Tradition says that their relics and those of their sister-in-law, Silvia, are in the Oratory of St. Andrew on the Celian Hill.