Baring-Gould’s sources: Gallican and Benedictine Martyrologies. Authority: — The notice by Saussaye in his Martyrology.] S. Julia or Juliana was a young servant girl at Pavilly in Normandy, who desired with all her heart to enter the convent at Pavilly, ruled at that time by Benedicta, next after the foundress, S. Austreberta. Julia besought the abbess to give her the veil, but Benedicta scorned and repulsed her because she was poor and of ignoble birth. Then Julia betook herself to prayer to the foundress, and on the anniversary of the death of Austreberta, entered the church and threw her arms about the tomb of the holy abbess, and bursting into floods of tears, vowed she would not let go till her request was granted. Benedicta, incensed at the pertinacity of the girl, ordered her to be removed by force. But instantly she was stricken with fever, her head became giddy, her heart faint, her face flushed. Alarmed at her condition, and attributing it to her harshness, she promised to accept Julia, and the fever left her instantaneously.

As a nun, Julia proved herself a burning and shining light; she walked in such an atmosphere of supernatural [Oct. xz sanctity that the sisters regarded her with awe and called her the “ Little Sister of Jesus.” When Benedicta died, there was but one opinion among them all, that Julia must succeed her, and so the servant girl became abbess over nuns of noble birth.

Her body was translated to Montreuil along with that of S. Austreberta.