According to longstanding local tradition, Engratia was born about the year 642 in Segovia, in the Visigothic kingdom, into a prosperous family of Roman patrician descent firmly rooted in the Christian faith. After the early death of her parents, her brother Frutos resolved to distribute their abundant goods among the needy and withdraw from the city in search of solitude. Engratia and their brother Valentín freely joined him in this decision.
The three siblings retired to a barren stretch near Sepúlveda along the gorges of the River Duratón, in what is now the municipality of Carrascal del Río. At first they dwelt in natural caves; later they raised three separate hermitages so that each might live in fuller solitude, penance, and continual prayer. Engratia's hermitage stood on the lower rocks toward the south, beside a spring; the three shrines still bear their names.
When Frutos died at the age of seventy-three in his own hermitage, Engratia and Valentín buried him there and moved to the hermitage of Saint Zoilus at Caballar. They continued their eremitical life until Saracen forces, advancing after the conquest of the peninsula, demanded that they renounce Christ. Refusing to apostatize, brother and sister were beheaded in 715.
In the eleventh century Bishop Pedro of Agen translated the mortal remains of the three siblings—except the skulls of Valentín and Engratia—to the old cathedral of Segovia. After a period of disappearance within the church, Bishop Juan Arias Dávila ordered a search in the fifteenth century. Since 1558 the relics have rested in an urn behind the choir of the new cathedral of Segovia. The skulls of Saints Valentín and Engratia remained in a reliquary at the parish church of Caballar. There, in times of extreme drought, the festival of Las Mojadas is observed: with the bishop's permission the heads are immersed in water, and tradition records that rain follows at once. The first documented Mojada took place in 1593; the last was celebrated in 1992.
Engratia accompanies her brother Saint Frutos as patron of the Diocese of Segovia and of the Community of City and Land of Segovia; her feast is kept on 25 October with a pilgrimage to the hermitage of San Frutos. She is also patroness of the municipality of Caballar, where her memory is honored on 26 and 27 October.
May Saint Engratia obtain for us the grace of steadfast faith and the courage to prefer God above every earthly good.
