went on pilgrimage to
Rome, to
be there 21 January 2001, in quest of two
saints, Saint Agnes and Saint Cecilia, both of whom are
named in the
Canon
of the Mass, because they were important for two later women
contemplatives,
Saint Birgitta
of
Sweden and Julian
of Norwich.
ccording to
her
legend, Agnes was
a young girl who refused to sacrifice to pagan idols, even when
exposed
in a brothel by the Piazza Navonna, and who was then executed
with
stabbing
in the throat, around 304 A.D. She was buried in the catacomb
given her
name. When the Emperor Constantine's daughter, Constantia, died,
she
was
buried in a mausoleum beside Agnes' catacomb, 354 A.D. Both the
Basilica
of Sant' Agnese and the Mausoleum of Santa Costanza are
magnificently
mosaiced,
the Mausoleum's being earlier, that of Sant'Agnese commissioned
by Pope
Honorius (625-638), who had himself portrayed with Pope
Sylvester I
(314-335),
founder of the Basilica, on either side of the crowned and
jeweled
figure
of the young girl. Likewise the bones of the saint indicate her
youthfulness.
Each year, on
her
feast of 21 January,
two lambs, garlanded and crowned with roses, are brought into
the
Basilica
in baskets, placed on that altar above her tomb, below the
moasiced apse with her portrait, and blessed at Mass.
These
are then taken to the Basilica of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere,
their
wool spun and woven by the Benedictine nuns of St Cecilia there into the
pallium
the Pope next blesses on the altar above St Peter's Tomb, then
gives to
each metropolitan archbishop, the pallium signifying their rank
in the Church's
hierarchy.
aint
Cecilia's
legend is even more shrouded in mystery than is Saint Agnes',
yet here
again we have the body. She is said to have lived in the time
of Pope
Urban
I (222-230), but in his reign there were no persecutions
against the
Christians.
Married to the young Valerian, she insisted on retaining her
virginity
and converted both him and his brother Tiburtius to
Christianity. For
refusing
to sacrifice to pagan idols they were all martyred, Saint
Cecilia first
steamed in her own bathhouse, now beneath her church, then executed
with three sword blows , but after which she continued
to live for
three more days, preaching to the Roman people and giving her
house to
the Church, finally dying, the legend says, 22 November 280.
It is more
likely that she, like Saint Agnes, lived and died under
Diocletian and
his imperial persecutions against the Christians. Much later,
she came
to be associated with the playing of the organ and thus the
Patron
Saint
of Music. For which see: http://www.ondamar.demon.co.uk/literat/cel-milt.htm§
Saint Cecilia
Saint Cecilia's uncorrupted body, garbed in exquisite cloth of gold, was then discovered, because of his dream vision of her, in the Catacomb of her name by Pope Paschal I in 821, who had it brought back to her palace she had bequeathed to be a church and laid it beneath the altar there, placing above it a fine mosaic of her beside himself, wearing the pallium, Saints Paul and Peter, flanking the figure of the blessing Christ, Saint Valerian, and Saint Agatha, who is also named with Agnes and Cecilia in the Canon of the Mass and to whom Pope Paschal co-dedicated this church.
Pope Paschal 1, Saints Cecilia, Paul, Christ, Peter, Valerian, Agatha, Mosaic, c. 821 A.D.
Later, in the sixteenth century, the titular Cardinal of the church rediscovered her body. Pope Clement VIII and all the peoples of Rome rushed to see it, finding it still clothed in tissue of gold, lying modestly on its side, the neck wound covered with a golden amulet. Stefano Maderno, who created the fountains in St Peter's Piazza, was then commissioned to sculpt what he saw.
Stefano Maderno, Saint Cecilia, tomb sculpture beneath altar, Santa Cecilia in Trastevere.
Visiting Santa Cecilia in Trastevere
at Vespers, listening to the Benedictine nuns, who would soon
be
spinning
and weaving the lambs' wool, sing the Office, then attending
Mass the
following
day with the Blessing of the Lambs, in the midst of Roman
school
children,
I thought of many who knew and loved these stories, recalled
in the
Canon
of the Mass. Julian in Norwich
compared
herself
to Saint Cecilia in Rome.
By Permission of the British Library, Amherst Manuscript, Additional 37,790
Chaucer gave Saint Cecilia's Legend to his Second Nun to tell in the Canterbury Tales. Saint Birgitta of Sweden used to pray daily to Saint Agnes of Rome who, in a vision, offered to her her own mosaiced crown and who, as a native speaker and a woman, succeeding in teaching the Swedish saint her needed Latin, which her male ecclesiasts had failed to do.
My Mother Foundress, Agnes
Mason, CHF, chose as her two patrons, Saint Agnes and
Saint
Lawrence.
Don Divo Barsotti preached on an
American,
who, as a boy in Ireland, had been told of St Cecilia's
bravery by his
grandmother, and so became a priest, even a cardinal. These
young women
shed their blood, gave their lives for the Church, and so wove
the
tapestry
of their tales into the Canon of the Eucharist and into
ecclesiastical
history. The 'Agnus Dei', 'Lamb of God', in Swedish, 'Gods
Lamm', is
both
male and female. As had been Christ's Lovers in the Gospels.
No Pope, Cardinal,
Archbishop, Bishop, priest, or
laywoman, can forget their stories.
Where
they are invoked in the Canon of the Mass, their names drop
like pearls
from a golden crown, 'Felicity, Perpetua, Agatha, Lucy, Agnes,
Cecilia,
Anastasia'.
JULIAN
OF NORWICH, HER SHOWING OF LOVE AND ITS CONTEXTS
©1997-2010
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