Teenage Girls
Peter Harper, Smoke Signals #42, January 2005
This article was originally titled “A Fascination for Raped and Murdered Teenage Girls”.
In the summer of 2001, I was in Rome for five days and, to give some focus to my stay, I decided to visit the shrines of some of the female martyrs that figure so prominently in early Roman devotion. Remember in the old days when the Canon of the Mass listed seven of them, “Felicitate, Perpetua, Agatha, Lucia, Agnete, Caecilia, Anastasia”, the first two and the last married women, the others young virgins, but martyrs all. By the way, have you noticed how the new liturgies, supposedly so politically-correct and inclusive, rarely ever mention female saints - when did you last hear a female saint (except Our Lady) mentioned at St. John’s, and perhaps Mary Magdalene every 6-7 years when her feast falls on a Sunday? And the 4-5 holy women included in our Litany of the Saints during Easter Vigil?
I first stopped at three churches, all very old and in the basilican style, which honour doubtful virgin-martyrs of the second century. The churches of Santa Pudenziana and S. Prassede on the Esquiline Hill near S. Maria Maggiore recall two sisters, the daughters of Senator Pudens who sheltered S. Peter in his home during the persecutions. Legend holds that they collected the blood and bodies of martyrs and put them in a well – still to be seen in the Church of S. Pudenziana. There is little archaeological proof that the sisters ever existed or that they were themselves martyrs; the Martyrology lists them both as virgins, but only Pudenziana as martyr. Yet, two of the most venerable churches in Rome stand in their “memory”. The apse mosaic of S. Pudenziana (5th c.) is in the style of “classical Rome” and depicts Christ enthroned among the apostles – two Roman matrons (the saintly sisters?) crown Peter and Paul with laurel wreaths. The mosaic of S. Prassede is in the later Byzantine style (9th c.)
Santa Sabina’s on the Aventine Hill is the headquarters of the Dominicans since 1936; they have ministered in the basilica since the time of S. Dominic. The church has been lovingly restored to its original state (422). Sabina was a rich widow converted by her servant Serapia and martyred under Hadrian.
I managed to visit four other shrines of later martyrs, the two Agneses, Cecilia, and Susanna (which also honours Felicity).
Santa Susanna’s is cared for by Cistercian nuns since 1586 and its titular cardinal is the now sadly notorious Bernard Law, former archbishop of Boston and protector of Catholics of Anglican rite (and now scandalously elevated to the dignity of archpriest of Santa Maria Maggiore). It is the American church in Rome and the Paulist Fathers minister there. The present building (1603), which replaced an early basilica, is by Maderno is one of the finest and purest Renaissance churches in Rome, with a single nave, a semicircular apse and two side chapels (dedicated to Our Lady of Graces and St. Lawrence).
Frescoes in the style of tapestries in the upper nave recount the story of the Biblical Susanna’s encounter with the lustful elders and her justification by the Prophet Daniel (by Baldassare Croce, +1628) – The six scenes include Susanna spied upon by the elders while she is bathing, her accusation of infidelity, the intervention of Daniel, his questioning of the elders, the stoning of the dirty old men, and Susanna’s thanksgiving. Paintings on the sanctuary wall tell of the martyrdom of the Christian Susanna: the young girl threatened by Diocletian’s son, her refusal to worship the idol of Jupiter (which crumples before the strength of her faith), and over the altar her martyrdom by beheading and her reception into heaven. On the left is the martyrdom of her father St. Gabinus and on the right that of St. Felicity whose relics are also in the church; under Antoninus Pius, she witnessed the martyrdom of her seven children before being herself beheaded.
Susanna born in Dalmatia was a noble woman, a relative of both Emperor Diocletian and Pope Caius; the emperor intended to marry her to his adopted son Galerius Maximianus. She had, however, embraced Christianity and was committed to virginity. When ordered to worship Jupiter, she refused and was beheaded in her own home (which she shared with her father Gabinus and her uncle Pope Caius) in 293.
Santa Cecilia’s church is beyond the Tiber in Trastevere; it is a much older building (9th c.), though often restored. The apse mosaic is original showing Christ surrounded by haloed saints: Peter, Paul, Agatha, together with Cecilia and her husband Valerian. The builder of the church, Pope Paschal is there too, but his halo is a blue square (he was alive at the time). Cecilia was a patrician maiden betrothed by her father to a young man of her class, Valerian. On her wedding night, she confessed to her new husband her vow of chastity and threatened him with the anger of her guardian angel, should he touch her. Valerian was eventually baptised and the young couple spend their time doing charitable work and burying martyrs. They were arrested and Valerian went first to his martyrdom. Cecilia was condemned to be suffocated in her bath, but after three days a soldier slit her throat.
She was buried in the catacombs of St. Callixtus. Her uncorrupted body (and that of her virginal husband) was found by Pope Paschal I in the 9th c. (instructions received in a dream) and put in the basilica he built to honour her in the place of her house (kept as a sanctuary since the 5th c.) and martyrdom (a side chapel where the old water-pipes of the bathroom can be seen). The body was still uncorrupt in 1599 when the tomb was opened by Cardinal Sfondrato. He had a marble copy made by the sculptor Maderno who was present at the scene: the saint is lying languorously on her side as if asleep. "Behold the body of the most holy virgin Cecilia, whom I myself saw lying incorrupt in the tomb. I have in this marble expressed for you the same saint in the very same posture." The body crumpled into dust following this exposure to the atmosphere. The too beautiful sculpture has been placed under the main altar in the church. The tombs are in the crypt. In a side chapel, there is a curiosity: the ornate tomb of cardinal Rampolla, Leo XIII’s secretary of state; he was on the verge of being elected pope in 1903 when an Austrian cardinal indicated the veto of Emperor Franz Joseph – and we got St. Pius X instead.
Why is she associated with musicians? A life of the saint says that at her wedding as the organ played, she sang to the Lord in her heart. A more cynical interpretation holds that she played music as a deterrent as her new husband waited for her in bed on their wedding night. Still, she is the patron of musicians, and great music has been written in her honour. In my schooldays, in a more catholic Quebec, we had time off on her feast-day, November 22, for a concert and other musical diversions.
There are curiously two major shrines to St. Agnes in Rome, as there are two feasts in her honour in the liturgical calendar, January 21 and 28. The second feast, “Sanctae Agnetis Secundo”, is a sort of octave feast, commemorating the ancient Roman custom of gathering on the tomb of martyrs once on the day of their death and also a week later. Her office in the Breviary is most extraordinary, with paradoxically much conjugal language. Witness these responsories from Mattins: “Already his body is joined to my body and his blood is on my cheeks, he whose mother is a virgin and whose father never knew a woman. I am married to him whom the angels worship...” , “When I love him, I am chaste, when I touch him, I am pure, when I receive him, I am a virgin”, “ I have drunk honey and milk from his lips” and “He has set inestimable pearls to my ears... he has given me a collar of fine gold and large gemstones”.
Agnes was a very young girl, only 10 when she was consecrated to Christ, and 13 when she was martyred. She spurned the love of Eutropius the son of the prefect who had her humiliated and killed ca. 305 under Diocletian.
The first church is Sant’Agnese in Agone or Saint Agnes Within, an elaborate Baroque church (1652) with a great cupola by Rainaldi and Borromini on the celebrated Piazza Navona which is set in what used to be Domitian’s stadium – “agone” refers to the “public games” held there. This is the place of her martyrdom. The great arches supporting the tiers of seats are still visible under the church. These “fornices” were the haunts of prostitutes (hence our word fornication) and that is where Agnes was brought to be exposed naked and given into prostitution. Accounts say that her hair grew to hide her nakedness and that angels covered her with a white cloak. When Eutropius tried to possess her, he was struck dead (or blind). Agnes survived being burned at the stake and was killed by the sword. In a small side chapel, it is possible to view and venerate her skull, tiny as that of a child.
The second church Sant’Agnese fuori le Mura, Saint Agnes Without, is on the Via Nomentana beyond the Porta Pia. It is an ancient basilica built by Pope Honorius (+638) near an older, now destroyed, church built 3 centuries earlier by Saint Constanza (Constantina), the daughter of Emperor Constantine, who was cured of leprosy by St. Agnes. It arises over the catacombs where St. Agnes was buried. Her bones are now under the altar, where they were last deposited by Pius IX whose seal can be seen on the sarcophagus. Her sister Emmerenziana, also a martyr, is nearby.
This church has been minutely and lovingly described by Margaret Visser in her most interesting book on the symbolism of Christian churches (The Geometry of Love. Space, Time, Mystery, and Meaning in an Ordinary Church (Toronto: Harper Flamingo, 2000)). The basilica has been much restored. Noteworthy are the original apse mosaic representing Agnes, dressed as a Byzantine princess, between Popes Honorius and Symmachus and a statue of the saint over the altar by Nicolas Cordier (1605) made out of an antique statue of the goddess Isis for whom he provided a new head and new hands.
As a play on her name, Agnes (= pure) is associated with a lamb (Agnus). Each year, two lambs, one crowned with red roses (marked SAM, S. Agnes martyr) the other with white roses (marked SAV, S. Agnes virgin), are blessed on her feast-day by the Pope, put on the altar at St. Agnes’ and raised at Castel Gondolfo. Their wool enters into the confection of pallia, the insigna that the Pope bestows on archbishops and which they wear over their chasuble at Mass. Young girls who fast on the eve of her feast and eat a egg with salt at bedtime will dream of their future husband.