98 EARLY MEDIEVAL SPAINof the religious life of the period is not clear. In the case of Eulalia
of Merida, it has been suggested that the strength of devotion to her
in southern Lusitania rests upon the previous existence of the local
cult of the goddess Atacaina, an Iberian divinity who in the Roman
period was identified with Proserpina. There are apparent similarities
between the pagan goddess and the Christian martyr: Atacaina or
Proserpina was invoked in the interests of agricultural fertility and
she did undergo an act of immolation, albeit involuntarily. However,
such comparisons are superficial and the whole explanation simplis-
tic. The real growth of the cult of the martyrs occurred later than,
and not as an integral part of, the large-scale conversion of the mass
of the population to Christianity. Veneration of Eulalia of Merida was
certainly underway by c. 400 when the Spanish Christian poet
Prudentius devoted one of the twelve sections of his Peristephanon to
her.^18 The cult had spread even beyond the confines of Spain to
Mrica where Augustine in Hippo (395-430) wrote a sermon for her
feast-day. But the growth of the ceremonial already referred to, and
the development of her cult to its special significance within the city,
seem to be more products of the sixth century than of those that
preceded it. From this time, and related to the development of cer-
emonial, comes the writing of liturgy for the feasts of the saints, in
the form of masses and prayers and also the composition of passions
for liturgical recitation. The sixth century was a particularly rich period
for all of these, and in hymn writing toO.^19 The Passion of St Eulalia
was most probably composed at this time and much else of her par-
ticular liturgy. Fortunately, just as the Iberian peninsula is peculiarly
rich in the number of its venerated martyrs, so is the historian fortu-
nate in the survival of much of the liturgy written to honour them.
Place names and church dedications also provide some indication
of the spread of devotion to Eulalia inside the Iberian peninsula.
However, this is not quite as straightforward as it may seem, in that
the relics of the saint were carried off to the kingdom of the Asturias,
in the course of a Christian raid on the Muslim territories, probably
in the ninth century. The relics today repose in a side chapel in the
Cathedral of Oviedo. As a result, the cult of Eulalia enjoyed some-
thing of a new vogue in the north, until finally eclipsed by the devo-
tion to StJames and the development of Compostela in the tenth and
eleventh centuries. There is an interesting letter of Alfonso III (866-
910), to the community of the monastery of St Martin of Tours,
requesting further information about the miracles of their saint and