Not less eager than the men were the women converts of the third century to show their zeal for the faith, and many were the matrons and maidens who willingly laid down their lives for Christ after heroically enduring terrible sufferings.
Amongst the most celebrated of these noble and courageous women were Saints Perpetua and Felicita of Carthage, Juliana of Nicomedia, Apollonia of Alexandria, Margaret of Antioch, Barbara of Heliopolis, Agatha of Catania, and Martina, Eugenia, and Cecilia of Rome.
St. Perpetua herself left an account of her sufferings and those of St. Felicita, written in prison before the end, in which she related a vision, somewhat resembling that of Jacob, of a golden ladder guarded by a dragon leading up from earth to heaven, but so set with sharp knives, hooks, etc., that those who should attempt to ascend it would certainly be cut to pieces. She dwelt, too, on the struggle it was to her to leave her infant child^ and told how her father brought the little one to her, entreating her not to forsake it. She remained firm, however, and was condemned to be torn to pieces in the amphitheater by wild beasts, with other steadfast witnesses to the truth. After being much mangled, but not killed, they were all dispatched by the attendants, not, however, until their constancy had converted many to the faith.
Saints Perpetua and Felicita are introduced in the mosaic Procession of Martyrs in S. Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna. When the former is represented alone, she generally has a ladder beside her and a dragon at her feet; but when she and the slave woman are together a cow is their symbol, for it is said that they were tossed by a cow in the arena.
St. Juliana of Nicomedia, who is greatly venerated in the Eastern Church, is generally represented in a cauldron of boiling oil, although she is supposed to have been martyred on a wheel held over flames. She sometimes holds a chained dragon, which is crouching at her feet, but why is not known. It is related that when she was sought in marriage by a noble Roman, she made acceptance conditional on the conversion of the bridegroom to Christianity, and was, as a result, condemned to death. She is said to have won over her executioners to the true faith before the end, though her lover remained obdurate.
St. Apollonia of Alexandria, who is often confounded with the Saint of the same name who was crucified in Rome under Julian the Apostate, is said to have been the daughter of a magistrate of Alexandria, born after a child had long been desired in vain, through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin. It is related that her mother was converted to the true faith by three Christian pilgrims to whom she had given hospitality, and that her little girl was early endowed with so great a gift of eloquence that she won over many to Christianity. According to one version of the legend of St. Apollonia, her father himself gave her up to the heathen authorities; and when she was dragged to the temple to offer sacrifice, she cried aloud to the devil in the god to come out, an order he immediately obeyed, shrieking as he fled: ‘The Holy Virgin Apollonia drives me forth!’ Enraged at this incident, the Governor ordered the young girl to be bound to a column and all her teeth to be pulled out. As even after this torture she still refused to recant, she was burnt to death.
Another version of the story of St. Apollonia of Alexandria, now more generally received than the one just related, is that she was a very old woman at the time of her death, and her teeth were not drawn, but beaten out with sharp flints. When the tortures to which she was being subjected were remitted, to give her a chance for recantation, she sprang of her own will into the flames, and was quickly consumed.
St. Apollonia of Alexandria is supposed to be able to save her votaries from toothache, and it is related that St. Francis of Sales, who suffered terribly from it, was relieved by the use of a piece of linen which had touched the relics of the martyr. She is, as a rule, represented, as in an anonymous engraving in the Mazarin Library, Paris, holding a pair of pincers with a tooth in them in her hand, or with that emblem beside her. In a picture of the Saint in the National Gallery, London, the pincers are lying on a table; and in some old German prints a golden tooth hangs from the martyr’s neck.
St. Apollonia is one of the martyrs whose sufferings are depicted with terrible realism on the trails of S. Stefano Rotondo at Rome. Rubens introduced her more than once into his sacred pictures, but the finest paintings of her are that on the wing of an altar-piece, by Francesco Granacci, in the Munich Gallery — on the predella of which, now in the Florence Academy, the same artist gave a series of scenes from her life and martyrdom, departing, however, from both versions of her legend by representing her as having been beheaded — and the painting by Luini in S. Maurizio, Milan.
St. Margaret of Antioch, whose name signifies ‘pearl,’ has become, on account of the beauty of her character, the type of maiden purity. She is much honored, alike in the Eastern and Western Churches, as one of the auxiliary Saints whose intercession is especially effective in heaven; and in representations of them she is generally grouped with St. Denis of Paris. She is said to have been the daughter of a heathen priest, to have lost her mother in infancy, and to have been placed under the care of a nurse in the country, who brought her up as a Christian, much to the indignation of her father, who did all he could to undo what he considered the fatal mischief. Finding he could not prevail on Margaret to renounce her faith, he refused to have her at home, and she remained with her foster-mother, helping her to tend her farm. One day when she was minding the sheep, the Governor of Antioch, Olybrius by name, happened to see her, and fell so deeply in love with her that he wished to make her his wife. Having ascertained that she was of gentle birth, he sent for her to his palace, and begged her to marry him. She replied that she was a Christian, and added that she meant to remain single all her life, as the bride of the Crucified Redeemer. Enraged at this answer, the Governor tried to shake her constancy by all manner of tortures, including immersion in a butt of water, but from everything she emerged uninjured. Thrown into prison, she was, it is said, assailed there by the devil himself in the form of a huge dragon, but she held up the cross before him, and he at once fled from her presence ; or, according to another version of the legend, she escaped from him by the power of the cross she had in her hand, after he had actually swallowed her up alive, issuing unharmed from his mouth.
St. Margaret was comforted in her prison, after her fearful sufferings, by the apparition of a luminous cross, and when she was once more brought before the Governor, her beauty had so gained in radiance that he desired more than ever to conquer her obstinacy. It was all in vain, however, and in the end, she was led forth to be beheaded, praising for having given her strength to endure.
It is related, further, that before the end she told all present that, when she should be received into glory, she would aid with her intercession all expectant mothers, in memory of her own rescue from the dragon, and a voice from heaven was heard assuring her that she should never plead in vain. For this reason, St. Margaret is invoked by pregnant women, and by those who wish to become mothers. She is specially honored as the mother’s helper at St. Germain des Pres, Paris. The Church of St. Acheul, near Amiens, which claims to own a portion of her relics, is visited by numbers of poor women, who come to pray to her.
The most constant attributes of St. Margaret are a dragon and a cross. Sometimes the dragon is at her feet, and has the staff of a long-hilted cross in his mouth, as in a quaint old Gothic sculpture in Henry the Seventh’s Chapel, Westminster Abbey; or, as in a painting by Lucas van Leyden, she is issuing from the back of a huge beast, and holds a small cross in her hands, which are folded in devotion. More rarely she leads the dragon along by a rope tied round his neck. Sometimes she wears a garland of pearls upon her head, in allusion to her name; more rarely a wreath of daisies, because of her pastoral cares. A flock of sheep, or a huge water-butt, are also now and then introduced in pictures of the maiden Saint, and examples occur of both a dragon and a lamb being in attendance upon her. A sash or scarf is also one of her emblems, because the expectant mothers who appeal to her for aid are in the habit of wearing one, containing supposed relics of the Saint.
One of the most beautiful representations of St. Margaret of Antioch is that long ascribed to Raphael, but probably painted by Giulio Romano, now in the Louvre, of which there is a replica, with slight variations, at Vienna. She is constantly introduced in devotional pictures, as in an altar-piece painted for a chapel in the convent named after her at Bologna by Parmigiano, in which she kneels at the feet of the Virgin and caresses the Holy Child; in the Christian Museum of the Vatican is a beautiful life-sized figure of her, by an unknown hand, with scenes from her life and other subjects on small panels beneath; in the Chapel of the Sacre Coeur in Chartres Cathedral is a fine fifteenth-century window, in which she is the pendant to St. Catherine.
St. Barbara, who is perhaps even more popular than St. Margaret, was, it is said, the only daughter of a wealthy noble of Heliopolis, named Dioscorus, who loved her so deeply that he would not allow any suitor to approach her, lest she should be taken away from her home. So, he shut her up in a lofty tower built especially for her, and from which she could see only the sky above her head, with all the marvels of the heavenly bodies. Left thus alone, the pure-hearted maiden pondered much on the mysteries of creation, abjuring in her heart the errors of the heathen, and although she was not yet a Christian, her mind was gradually prepared to receive the true faith. Her attendants talked to her of what was going on in the outer world, dwelling much on the wonderful courage of the Christians under their persecutions, so that she longed to learn more about them, and secretly wrote to Origen, the great Christian teacher of Alexandria, asking him to help her. He sent to her a priest disguised as a physician, who instructed her in the faith, and baptized her in the absence of her father.
Before he left her, Dioscorus had ordered skillful architects to build for his beloved child a bath-room, which was to be a perfect marvel of beauty, but was to have two windows only. Barbara wished to have a third, so she ordered the workmen to add another. At first, they refused, but she promised them to explain the matter to Dioscorus on his return, and the extra window was added. When the father came back, he was angry, and said to Barbara, ‘Why didst thou thus disobey me?’ To which she replied, ‘Through three windows doth the soul receive light: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.’ Then Dioscorus knew that his beloved child had adopted the hated religion, and in a great rage he drew his sword to kill her. She fled to the top of her tower, and when he pursued her, she was wafted away by angels, who carried her to a distant spot, where she hid herself for some days. Her father, however, discovered her, the place of her concealment having been betrayed by a shepherd, and he dragged her to a dungeon, where he shut her up, his great love for her being now changed into an equally great hatred. As she continued obstinate, he denounced her to the Proconsul, a cruel persecutor of the Christians, and by his orders she was scourged and otherwise tortured, but in vain. She gloried in her suffering for the sake of Christ, and, worn out by her continued obstinacy, her father took her up to a high mountain, and there cut off her head. Immediately afterwards he himself fell a victim to the fury of Heaven, for a great storm arose, and he was killed on the spot by a thunderbolt. Just before her death St. Barbara is said to have prayed to God that she might have power to secure to all her votaries the last consolations of the Church, and a voice from above replied to her, as to St. Margaret of Antioch, that her prayer should be granted.
On account of the terrible judgment which overtook her unnatural father, St. Barbara is invoked to save from sudden death, from dying unpenitent or unshriven, and from thunderbolts. She is the patron Saint of architects, because she lived in a tower, of artillerymen, gunsmiths, makers of gunpowder, metal smelters, slaters, miners, and others whose professions are more or less dangerous, and, which is more difficult to understand, of brush and hat makers, it is supposed because hair is used for making some brushes and hats; the name Barbara signifying beard. The jewelers and librarians of Rome also claim to be under the special care of the martyred maiden.
The most constant attributes of St. Barbara in art are a tower with three windows, and a chalice with the host and paten above it, to which is sometimes added a small crucifix, in which case the paten is set upright, so that the crucifix may be distinctly seen. The crown and palm, with a book in token of her studious life, are also, of course, constantly given to her, and now and then, as in a painting by Michael Coxis in the Munich Gallery, the palm is replaced by a peacock’s feather. The last-named emblem has been variously explained, some thinking it to be an allusion to the Holy Trinity, in which St. Barbara expressed her belief to her father; others that it has reference to the phoenix of Eastern legend, Western artists having imagined that fabulous bird, the symbol of immortality, to have resembled a peacock; whilst others say that it refers to a tradition that when St. Barbara was scourged by her father, the rod turned into a peacock’s feather.
Images and pictures of St. Barbara are numerous throughout Europe, and amongst the Christian antiquities discovered in the Seine were several medals bearing her effigy. On one of these she holds the tower in one hand and the palm in the other, whilst on the reverse side her father is represented about to cut off her head with a sword; in another the peacock’s feather is very clearly indicated. In a quaint old wooden figure of Flemish origin, of which the hands are destroyed, St. Barbara, wearing an Oriental turban and rich robes, leans against an ornate tower. In many rood-screens in English churches she is introduced beside her tower; she appears above the doorway of the Church of S. Dominico at Siena, and is very often seen amongst the Saints in stained-glass windows. As patron of soldiers her history has sometimes been engraved on armor, as on a suit now in the Tower of London, given by the Emperor Maximilian to Henry VIII., in which she is associated with St. George and his dragon, the patron Saint of England appearing on the breast-plate, and St. Barbara with her tower on the shoulder-plate, and on a set of armor for a war-horse presented with the royal suit, scenes from the lives of the two Saints alternate with each other.
Especially noteworthy amongst the many painting in which St. Barbara is the principal, or one of the principal, figures are the altar-piece by Palma Vecchio in the Church of S. Maria Formosa at Venice, in which she has a crown at her feet and her tower behind her; the ‘St. Barbara enthroned’ by Matteo da Siena in the Church of S. Domenico, Siena, in which two angels are placing a crown upon her head; the quaint picture by Cosimo Roselli in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence, in which the Saint stands upon her prostrate father, and Saints John the Evangelist and Matthias look on, and the fresco by Pinturicchio in the Appartamenti Borgia of the Vatican, in which she is fleeing from her father. The single figure of the maiden Saint by Ghirlandaio in the Berlin Gallery and that by Holbein in the Munich Gallery are also very fine.
IIn devotional pictures of the ‘Madonna enthroned,’ St. Barbara constantly appears in a place of honor close to the Virgin and Child, as in the beautiful ‘Madonna di San Sisto’ of Raphael, and a fine painting by a pupil of Van Eyck in the Rouen Museum. In Luini’s beautiful fresco in the Brera Gallery, Milan, St. Barbara, with her chalice and palm, stands opposite to St. Anthony the Hermit; and in an interesting painting attributed to Van der Goes in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence, she is the pendant to St. Catherine.
St. Agatha of Catania, who is even more celebrated than St. Barbara, and whose memory was long reverenced even by the heathen of Catania, where the tragedy of her death took place, is said to have been of very noble birth, and to have been early converted to Christianity. She was also so exceedingly beautiful that all who saw her fell in love with her. Amongst her suitors was the evil King of Sicily, Quintianus, who when he found that she cared nothing for all his gifts and flattery, and foiled every attempt to do her harm by supernatural aid, determined to nave her condemned to torture as a Christian. When she was dragged before the King, he said to her: ‘Who and what art thou, audacious girl, who dares to defy me?’ To which she replied: ‘I am a free woman, and the servant of Jesus Christ.’ ‘Free, yet a servant!’ he cried. ‘How can that be?’ To which she made answer: ‘I am the handmaid of Christ, whom to serve is perfect freedom.’ ‘Abjure thy Master, then,’ cried Quintianus, ‘or I will have thee tortured.’ But Agatha, still undismayed, said calmly: ‘If thou throw me to the beasts, Christ will make them meek as lambs. If thou kindle a fire to burn me, it will be quenched by angels with dew from heaven. If thou tear my flesh with scourges, the Holy Spirit will make my tortures harmless.’
The only reply the tyrant gave to this spirited protest was to order the poor girl, who is said to have been but fifteen, to be first scourged, and then to have her breasts cut off. At first no intervention saved her, and the blood flowed from her terrible wounds; but with unbroken composure she only said to her persecutor: ‘Art thou not ashamed to treat me thus, who did once draw thy life from the breasts of thy mother?’ Hoping even yet to subdue her will, Quintianus then ordered her to be taken to a dark dungeon, and left there alone. But in the night, as Agatha lay almost senseless from loss of blood, a sudden glory filled her cell, and two men in shining raiment, one of venerable aspect, the other young, stood beside her. These were St. Peter and an angel, who had come to heal her wounds, and though at first her great modesty led her to refuse their help, she was quickly reassured, for the Apostle said to her: ‘Fear not; the Master Himself sent me to minister to thee.’ When the celestial ointments were applied the flesh of the sufferer was restored, so that no sign of all she had endured remained, and with a parting blessing St. Peter and the angel disappeared. The guards, who had fled in terror, had left the prison door open; but St. Agatha did not take advantage of it, for she had no wish either to escape martyrdom or to get the soldiers into trouble.
When the King sent for the maiden the next morning, and she was brought before him again, he was astonished at the change; but his heart was still hardened, so that he could not believe in Him who had delivered his victim out of his hands. After questioning her, and hearing of the cause of her recovery, he ordered her to be burnt alive, and a great fire was lit, into which she was thrown bound hand and foot ; but even as she fell into the flames a great earthquake shook the buildings of the city, so that the people rushed to snatch her from the pyre, crying out that Heaven was wroth with them because of the sufferings of the Christian girl. The earthquake ceased at once, and Agatha was taken back to prison, where almost immediately afterwards her pure spirit was released, returning to Him for whom she had endured such anguish. Her body was reverently buried by the converts of Catania, and it is related that a year later, when there was another earthquake, with an eruption of Mount Etna, the destruction was stayed by the intervention of the martyr. Christians and pagans alike flocked to pray at her tomb, on which lay a veil she had worn in life; and placing the relic at the end of a long spear, they went forth, followed by the whole population of the city, towards the burning mountain, which, on their approach, at once ceased to belch forth fire.
According to another version of the legend of St. Agatha, she was not flung into the flames, but rolled naked on burning coals and broken glass, which failed to bum or cut her, and it was only after her death that she became associated with the cessation of an earthquake. In any case she is supposed to be able to save her votaries from fire and from all convulsions of nature, whether storms, earthquakes, or eruptions of volcanoes. She is also, on account of the terrible torture to which she is said to have been subjected, the special protector of nursing mothers, and she is appealed to for aid by those suffering from diseases of the breast.
The chief emblems of St. Agatha are a pair of shears, which mark her fete-day, February 5th, in many old calendars; a chafing-dish, in allusion to her having been burnt, or because the blood from her wounds was stanched with live coals; a long veil and a plate, on which she carries her own breasts. Occasionally, as above the High Altar of a church dedicated to her at Brescia, and on a marble altar in the Cathedral of Vienna, she is represented bound to a cross, but as a rule she is fastened to a pillar, and the executioners with their shears are about to carry out the revolting order of the King. Sebastiano del Piombo and Vandyck have both painted the scene, unsuitable though it is for art purposes, with horrible realism, but Domenichino, with better taste, has merely given the first Trial of the young girl when she refused to sacrifice to idols in the presence of Quintianus. Other artists have represented the apparition of St. Peter and the Angel, with the cessation of the earthquake through the intercession of the saint; and in a subterranean chapel at Malta, said to have belonged to the family of the martyr, are some fine, but much defaced, frescoes of various incidents of her legend. In the mosaic Procession of Martyrs at Ravenna, St. Agatha appears between Saints Agnes and Pelagia, and in various devotional pictures she is introduced with her attributes, and with the crown of martyrdom upon her head.
St. Martina, who is one of the patron Saints of Rome, and is held in great veneration there, was a highly-born maiden, who early became a Christian, and was martyred after many futile attempts to destroy her, all, it is said, frustrated by miraculous interposition. She was soaked in boiling oil, which did not harm her; flung in the amphitheater to a lion, who only licked her feet; torn with red-hot pincers, and, as usual, when all else failed, beheaded. In the course of her terrible experiences, she converted no less than eighteen soldiers, some of whom were later martyred; she caused the fall of the temple of Diana and the destruction of the idol, when she was ordered to offer up incense to the goddess; and after her death the surviving Christians vied with each other in the homage done to her remains. She was buried where the church known as SS. Martina e Luca now stands, and in the seventeen-century her body, with the head severed from the trunk, is said to have been found beneath the crypt. The little chapel above the sacred spot was restored, and an important church built over it, designed by Pietro da Cortona, who painted for its High Altar a realistic representation of the Destruction of the temple of Diana by the Saint. In votive pictures, as in one by Guido Cagnacci, now at Orleans, St. Martina is often introduced with various implements of torture beside her, and she sometimes holds a ring in token that she dedicated her maidenhood to Christ.
St. Eugenia of Rome, according to the legend related of her, was the daughter of Philip, Prefect of Egypt, and was by him taken to Alexandria when she was about ten years old. A very clever girl, she was educated with her brothers, and at the age of eighteen was sought in marriage by a noble Roman named Aquilius. She had meanwhile, however, been converted to Christianity, and when her father pressed her to accept her suitor, she begged to be allowed to retire into the country to consider the matter. Her father owned great estates outside the city, and he consented that Eugenia should go to one of them with two young eunuchs in his service named Rustus and Hyacinthus. As the three journeyed together they are said to have heard beautiful singing in the distance, and presently they met a Bishop with a number of his converts, to whom the approach of St. Eugenia had been miraculously revealed. The young girl and the eunuchs were baptized by him, and Eugenia adopted the dress of a monk, calling herself Eugenius. She then, with Rustus and Hyacinthus still in attendance, hid herself away in a remote district, apparently with the consent of the Bishop who had admitted them into the Church. For some little time, nothing more was heard of the fugitive. Her father, supposing that she would soon return to Alexandria, did not seek her; but presently rumors reached Alexandria of remarkable cures effected in the desert by a young monk. A wealthy lady smitten with a terrible disease went forth to consult the wonder-worker, and on her return home, healed of her trouble, she gave such an account of the monk that the Prefect sent apparitors to arrest him.
Eugenia and her two faithful servants were brought into the city, and all three were condemned to death by her father. The racks were prepared for the preliminary tortures, when Eugenia suddenly cried aloud, to the astonishment of all present: ‘Dost thou not know me, O my father? I am thy daughter Eugenia; the young men beside thee are my brothers, and these, my fellow-sufferers, are thy servants Rustus and Hyacinthus.’ The Prefect, greatly moved, ordered all three to be released, and took them back to his palace, whilst fire from heaven came down and consumed the house of the lady who had accused the Saint. Soon the Prefect, his wife and his sons were converted to Christianity, and being very wealthy, they built a great house for virgins who had dedicated their lives to the Master. All this, of course, reached the ears of the Emperor, who, incensed against the Prefect for thus abusing his position, ordered him to be killed with all his family. St. Eugenia, her mother, and her brothers escaped to Rome, but the father and the two eunuchs were martyred at Alexandria. What became of the mother and brothers the legend does not say, but St. Eugenia soon got into fresh trouble in the heathen capital, and was sentenced to death. She was thrown into the Tiber, which would not drown her; into a fiery furnace, which would not burn her; and, finally, by order of the Emperor, she was slain in prison by a gladiator, who plunged a sword into her heart.
In the mosaic Procession of Martyrs at Ravenna, St. Eugenia appears between Saints Christina and Anatolia, and in some few devotional pictures she is introduced amongst other Saints with a sword in her hand. In the Church of Varzy, in France, is preserved a quaint sixteenth-century triptych, in the middle panel of which the whole legend of St. Eugenia is given, chronology being set entirely at defiance, for on one side she appears at the door of a chapel in the dress of a Benedictine monk, and is received by a number of members of that Order, which had certainly never been heard of in her lifetime. In the center she is bending her head to meet the stroke of the executioner’s axe, though she is said to have been stabbed in prison, and on the other side she is baring her breasts, in the presence of the Prefect and his guard, to prove that she is indeed Eugenia. In the Cathedral of Nevers are some old frescoes, in which, in spite of their bad state of preservation, various scenes from the life of St. Eugenia can be made out, including the attempt to drown her in the Tiber, on which she is floating, although she has a heavy stone round her neck; the frustrated attempt to burn her, and a scene not elsewhere given: Christ appearing to her in prison and offering her a loaf of bread.
More celebrated and more widely venerated than any other martyred maiden of the third century is the much-loved St. Cecilia, the patron of musicians and singers, round about whose pathetic story, the main facts of which are historically true, many touching legends have gathered. She was of noble Roman birth, but her parents were Christians, and she was brought up in the true faith. She was endowed with great gifts, and especially skillful in playing on all the musical instruments then in use. Indeed, it is said that when she was singing to her own accompaniment the angels in heaven often joined in the concert. It is even asserted that St. Cecilia invented the organ, probably only because the Latin word organa is used to express all musical instruments, although it is possible that something resembling an organ may have been us^ in Rome in the lifetime of the martyr.
St. Cecilia is said to have carried with her everywhere a copy of the Gospels, and, as a mere child, to have vowed to give her life to Christ. When she was about sixteen her parents affianced her to a young Roman named Valerian, and whilst she did not resist their wishes, she prayed very earnestly to God to save her from breaking her vow of virginity. When the marriage-day came she put on rough sackcloth under her wedding garments, and it was revealed to her before she left the temple as a bride that a way out of her difficulty would be made clear to her. Arrived at her new home, she told Valerian that she was already vowed to one greater than he; and Chaucer, in his ‘Second Nonnes Tale,’ makes her say:
‘1 have an angel which thus loveth me.
That with great love, whether 1 wake or sleep.
Is ready aye my body for to keep.’
Without showing any of the jealousy which would have been natural of this unknown angel. Valerian replied that he could not believe in him unless he saw him, so St. Cecilia told him to go to Pope St. Urban, who, owing to the persecution against the Christians then raging in Rome, was concealed in the catacombs. Valerian obeyed, and was converted by St. Urban, who, after baptizing him, told him to return home, for his eyes should now be opened to the great mysteries already revealed to his bride. When he approached his house, the young husband heard beautiful music proceeding from it, and on entering the room in which he had left his wife, he found her with an angel in shining raiment standing beside her, and holding in his hands two crowns of roses. All Valerian’s doubts were now removed, and with touching generosity he agreed to all Cecilia asked of him. The young pair knelt together before their heavenly visitor, who placed the crowns upon their heads, and told Valerian that any request he liked to make would be granted, to which he replied that he would fain have his beloved brother Tiburtius share his newly found joy in the faith. Then the angel, with a smile of radiant beauty, told him to fetch Tiburtius, who in his turn was converted, and having prophesied that all three would win the palm of martyrdom, the visitor disappeared, leaving the young converts full of zeal for the cause of Christ.
For some little time, they were allowed to practice their religion unmolested, and they spent their time worshipping with St. Urban in the catacombs or going about Rome aiding the poor and suffering. Presently, however, they were summoned before the Prefect, who in the Emperor’s absence had charge of the city, and on their refusing to sacrifice to the gods, the brothers, with a centurion named Maximus, whom they had converted, were beheaded; but Cecilia was reserved for a more terrible fate. On her continued refusal to worship in the temple of Jupiter, she was subjected to horrible tortures, all of which she endured with a smile of joy, many who witnessed her constancy being converted to the faith. At last, the Prefect, enraged at being thus set at defiance, ordered her to be taken home, and scalded to death in her own bath. The boiling water, however, did her no harm, so an executioner was sent to cut off her head, but his hand trembled so much that he only inflicted three wounds, two in her neck and one in her breast, after which he flung down his sword, declaring he could do no more.
The poor girl lived for three days afterwards, and before the end she sent for Pope Urban and gave her house to him to be consecrated as a Christian church. She was buried beside her husband in the catacomb of St. Calixtus, and there her body remained until 821, when its exact position was revealed in a dream to Pope Paschalis I., who was then engaged in restoring the Church of St. Cecilia. Search was at once made, and the remains were found close to those of Valerian and his fellow martyrs. ‘She lay,’ says an eye-witness of the discovery, ‘within a coffin of cypress wood, in the attitude, not of one dead and buried, on her back, but on her right side, as one asleep.’ The marks of the three wounds could still be made out, leaving no doubt of her identity, and Pope Clement VIII., had the coffin placed in a silver shrine and removed to the Saint’s old home, where it was re-interred with the remains of Saints Valerian, Tibertius, and Maximus, in what is now the Church of S. Cecilia in Trastevere. In the sixteenth century the coffin was again opened; the sculptor, Stefano Maderno, was allowed to make a sketch of the remains, and the beautiful recumbent figure executed by him from that sketch is now beneath the High Altar of the church. In the Tribune are still preserved some fine ninth-century mosaics of the Savior, with Saints Paul, Agatha, and Paschalis on one side and Saints Peter, Valerian, and Cecilia on the other. In one of the Chapels are some twelfth-century frescoes representing the ‘Entombment of St. Cecilia’ and her Apparition to Pope Paschalis, and close to the church are the remains of the martyred maiden’s bath, with its marble floor, heating apparatus, and bronze fittings.
The general characteristics by which St. Cecilia may be recognized in works of art are a small organ, harp, or spinet in her hands, and other instruments of music at her feet. Sometimes, as in a quaint old drawing in the catacombs and in a painting by Cimabue, now in the Uffizi Gallery, she wears the martyr’s crown, but as a rule her beautiful hair is left uncovered, or adorned with a wreath of roses and lilies only. She is constantly associated in devotional pictures with her husband and his brother, and instances occur of the three being grouped with Pope St. Urban, who is said to have baptized them all. In the mosaic Procession of Martyrs at Ravenna she appears between St. Lucia and St. Eulalia, and the discovery of her remains in 891 gave so great an impulse to her cult that in the following centuries scarcely an artist of note failed to represent her either in devotional pictures, or as the chief actor in one of the many exciting episodes of her brief career.
Especially beautiful amongst devotional subjects are the seated figure of St. Cecilia, originally forming the upper portion of an altar-piece, by Cimabue, now in the Uffizi Gallery, in which the martyred girl holds a book in one hand and a flower in the other, the latter an allusion, probably, to the flowers of Paradise given to her by her attendant angel ; the painting by Raphael, now in the Pinacoteca, Bologna, in which the Virgin martyr: stands between St. John the Evangelist and St. Paul; the two fine paintings by II Moretto, one in S. Clemente, Brescia, the other in S. Giorgio, Verona; that by Garofalo, in which the Saint is playing on an organ, whilst the Virgin and St. Antony of Padua listen to her; that by Parmigiano, who has introduced two angels holding the instrument on which St. Cecilia is playing with the various single figures by Domenichino, who is said to have been present when the remains of the Saint were discovered by St. Paschalis, of which that in the Louvre is one of the best; and that by Lucas van Leyden in the Munich Gallery.
Before the rebuilding of the Church of S. Cecilia in Trastevere, in the seventeenth century, the portico contained a series of Byzantine frescoes of scenes from the life of the martyred maiden, including her marriage with St. Valerian, the baptism of her husband, the attempt to scald her to death, her actual martyrdom, her burial, and her apparition to St. Paschalis. In the ninth-century Greek Menology she is represented in her bath of boiling water with Saints Valerian and Tibertius lying dead on the floor near her, their heads severed from their bodies. In later representations of the tragedy, as in a picture ascribed to Riminaldi in the Pitti Galley, Florence, and in a fine composition by Poussin, the abortive efforts of the executioner to cut off the head of the Saint are rendered with painful realism. On the walls of the chapel dedicated to St. Cecilia at Bologna is an interesting series of frescoes by Francia and his pupils, representing scenes from the life of the martyr ; in the Berlin Gallery are preserved five paintings by Pinturicchio; and in the Church of S. Luigi de Francesci in Rome are some extremely beautiful frescoes by Domenichino, ranking amongst his masterpieces, all inspired by the same theme.
A very beautiful modem rendering of the legend of St Cecilia is that in the stained-glass window at Christ Church, Oxford, designed by Sir Edward Bume-Jones, in which foil justice is done to the fine character of the martyred girl. The three large upper lights of the window are occupied by the figures of St. Cecilia, who plays on a small organ, and two angels, who listen in rapt attention to her music, whilst below are represented: St. Cecilia sitting in her exhorting Valerian, who stands beside her; the angel bringing the crowns to the devoted young couple; and the Death of the bride, who kneels to receive the first blow from the trembling hand of the executioner.
Adapted from: The Saints in Christian Art: The Evangelists, Apostles, and Other Early Saints, By Mrs. Arthur Bell, (London: George Bell & Sons, 1901).