Obdulia is a holy virgin venerated at Toledo in Spain, where her relics are enshrined and where she has long enjoyed a local cultus. Her commemoration falls on 5 September. She belongs to the company of Western saints honored in Spain before the Great Schism, and the city of Toledo counts her among its own.
Almost nothing of her life has survived. The sources that name her preserve no narrative of her birth, deeds, or death, and her history has effectively been lost; what remains is the memory of her sanctity, her virginity, and the presence of her relics at Toledo. Because of this silence, the few notices that mention her are cautious, recording her veneration rather than a biography.
In the absence of a transmitted life, later writers offered conjectures about her identity. One tradition identifies Obdulia with a Saint Odilia numbered among the companions of Saint Ursula martyred at Cologne, supposing that her relics were translated into Spain in early times; another conjecture connects her instead with Saint Odilia of Alsace. The proposals turn largely on the similarity of the names, and they have not won general agreement: some scholars have held that the Toledan saint and the Rhenish or French saints are distinct, while others, appealing to Toledan records, have argued that they are one and the same.
