A priest handed over by his own brother, and the convert he met in prison.
Roderick was a priest at Cabra near Córdoba, in a divided family: one Muslim brother, another indifferent. Stepping in to part them in a brawl, he was knocked senseless; his Muslim brother then had him carried through the streets proclaiming that he had converted to Islam. Roderick denied it publicly as soon as he could — which, in Muslim law, made him an apostate liable to death. Imprisoned, he met there Solomon, arrested on the same charge. The two were beheaded together on 13 March 857. They are among the last of the “martyrs of Córdoba”, some fifty Christians executed between 850 and 859 in a city where coexistence was real but where public blasphemy and apostasy remained capital; the movement was as much a protest against assimilation as a persecution.
Two men in chains with palms and swords; sometimes the horseshoe arches of Córdoba behind them.