When persecution was raging against Christians under Diocletian, a wealthy and pious noblewoman named Julitta was widowed with a three-year-old son named Quiricus. As a Christian Julitta decided that life in her native Iconium in Lycaonia was becoming too dangerous.

Taking Quiricus and two maids, she fled to Seleucia and to her alarm found that the governor there, Alexander, was savagely persecuting Christians. The four fugitives journeyed on to Tarsus in Antioch. Unfortunately, Alexander was paying a visit to that city when the 4 fugitives were recognized and arrested.

Julitta was put on trial. She brought her young son with her to the courtroom. She refused to answer any questions about herself, except to say that she was a Christian. The court pronounced its sentence: Julitta was to be stretched on the rack and then beaten.

The guards, about to lead Julitta away, separated Quiricus from his mother. The child was crying, and Alexander, in a vain attempt to pacify him, took Quiricus on his knee. Terrified and longing to run back to his mother, Quiricus kicked the governor and scratched his face. Alexander stood up in a rage and flung the toddler down the steps of the tribune, fracturing the boy's skull and killing him.

Quiricus's mother did not weep. Instead she thanked God and went cheerfully to torture and death. Her son had been granted the crown of martyrdom. This made the governor even angrier. He decreed that her sides should be ripped apart with hooks, and then she was beheaded. Both she and Quiricus were flung outside the city, on the heap of bodies belonging to criminals, but the two maids rescued the corpses of the mother and child and buried them in a nearby field.