AGNES, Saint – Silver casket made by Paul V (1615)
Catt. [1939, 1], pp. 114-29); here it suffices to recall that A. is presented from the end of the 4th century as the quintessential Roman saint, who “servat salutem... Quiritium,” as Prudentius sings, and who “already enjoyed worldwide fame,” as Jerome wrote to Demetriade (PL 22, 1123). Turning to her proper cult, A. is recorded on 21 January, as mentioned above, in the most ancient calendar of the Roman Church, from which she passed into the *Martyrologium Hieronymianum* (pp. 52-53); into the Roman and Ambrosian Mass Canons; into the Carthaginian calendar of the early 6th century; and into various Western liturgies and Greek synaxaria, where, however, the principal feast is recorded on 5 July (cf. *Synaxarium Sirmondianum*). In the *Martyrologium Hieronymianum* and in the Roman Sacramentaries, there is a second feast of A., on 28 January, called: *Agnæ in genuinum* in the *Martyrologium Hieronymianum*; *in natali (Agnætis) de nativitate* in the Gelasian Sacramentary, in the “Gelasian” of the 8th century, and in the lectionaries (T. Klauser, *Das römische Capitulare Evangeliorum*, Münster in Westfalen 1935); *natalis sanctae Agnæ de secundo* in the Gregorian Sacramentary. The feast has the aspect of an octave, thus indeed it is called by some Sacramentaries of the 9th-10th centuries and by many rubricists after Durandus (*Rationale div. Off.*, VIII, 1, 18), while in reality both the title of the feast, contrasted with the *natalis de passione* of 21 January, and the proper texts of the Mass (except in the Gregorian Sacramentary) recall the nativity of A. (cf. J. M. Hanssens, in *Gregorianum*, 18 [1937], pp. 161-218).
The most celebrated monument of her cult is the small basilica erected before 349 over the martyr’s tomb by Constantina, daughter of Constantine (wife of Hannibalianus and thus of the Caesar Gallus), restored by Symmachus (498-514), and completely rebuilt by Honorius I (625-38). The Honorian reconstruction, with its fine apsidal mosaic depicting A. in Byzantine dress between the popes Honorius and Symmachus, aroused enthusiastic admiration among contemporaries (cf. *Epitome de locis SS. Martyrum*, ed. Valentini-Zucchetti, Rome 1942, p. 115).
Later, the basilica underwent various restorations, among which deserve mention those at the beginning of the 17th century by Cardinal Alessandro Ottaviano de’ Medici, to whom we owe the excavation of the northern part (1600), and by Cardinal Sfondrati (1605), to whom we owe the present coffered ceiling and an interior renovation; he also carried out the recognition of the martyr’s relics (1605), which Paul V enclosed in 1615 in a silver casket, placed in a small burial chamber beneath the new and rich altar that he had built to safeguard the sacred pledge. Many centuries earlier, certainly from the 9th century, her head was removed from the martyr’s sepulchre and placed in the papal treasury, that is, in the Sancta Sanctorum. Now, with the permission of Leo XIII, it is preserved and venerated in the church of S. Agnese in Agone. Since 1621, the statue of St Agnes by the sculptor Niccolò Cordier, known as il Franciosino—who added head, hands, and feet in bronze to a classical torso of oriental alabaster—has stood on the altar mensa. Pius IX restored the basilica and renewed its interior in 1855.
At the beginning of the 5th century, the basilica of St Agnes was under the jurisdiction of the priests of the title of Vestina or of St Vitalis, and by the end of the same century it seems already to have been guarded by nuns, as is evident from the discovery in the basilica of the epitaph of Abbess Serena (d. 514).
From the 9th to the 12th centuries, the custodians of St Agnes were monks and clerics, the latter removed in 1112 by Paschal II, who established Benedictine nuns there; these were replaced by Sixtus IV (1480) with the religious of S. Ambrogio ad nemus of Milan, who in turn were succeeded by Innocent VIII (1489) with the Canons Regular of the Most Holy Saviour (Lateran Canons), who remain its zealous custodians. The basilica was elevated to a cardinalatial title in 1654 by Innocent X, who transferred the title from S. Agnese in Agone (a title since 1517), and in 1708 a parish was erected there.
The site of the brothel where A. was exposed (Prudentius and the legend provide no topographical data) has been localized in a fornix of Domitian’s stadium, where in the 8th century there was a small church dedicated to the martyr (cf. *Itinerarium Einsidlense*, ed. Valentini-Zucchetti, Rome 1942, p. 180; P. Romano-P. Partini, *Piazza Navona nella storia e nell’arte*, Rome [1944], pp. 25-30), later called S. Agnese in Agone. At the beginning of the same 8th century there is also record of the oratory and monastery of St Agnes ad Duo Furna, near St Praxedes. The basilica erected at Ostia is probably recalled in the dedication recorded in the *Martyrologium Hieronymianum* on 18 October.
Iconography. – In the 4th century A. is represented as an orant: very young in the transenna of the altar of the time of Pope Liberius; young in the gold-glass vessels. From the 6th century onward the iconographic type of A. becomes fixed: a young girl with at her feet or in her arms a lamb, symbol of purity and allusive to her name. The earliest representation of this type is contained in
Agnes, Saint – Silver casket made by Paul V (1615)
together with those of S. Maria di Donna Regina (Naples), of the 14th century, and the gold cup (British Museum) that Duke John of Berry intended to offer King Charles V of France on his birthday, 21 January 1381. But since the latter died meanwhile, the cup was later offered in 1391 to King Charles VI of France (cf. C. H. Read, in *Vetusta Monumenta*, VII, III, Westminster 1904, of the Society of Antiquaries of London [description]; L. Delisle, in *Journal des Savants*, 1906, pp. 233-39; many other precious objects with depictions of St A. were offered to King Charles V).
The 7th-century musician who depicted A. in the apse of the Honorius basilica, drawing on the Greek recension of the legend, portrayed the martyr as a matron dressed like a Byzantine empress, holding a book and with at her feet the instruments of martyrdom: fire and the sword.
CEMETERY. – A little over 2 km from Porta Pia on the left of the Via Nomentana, where the basilica of St Agnes stands, there once existed a Christian burial ground predating the eponymous martyr. Of the above-ground sepulchral area, only the great elliptical enclosure survives, used for burials in the 4th century, on whose north-west side stands the mausoleum of Constantia (v.). The hypothesis recently advanced by F. W. Deichmann (Die Lage der constantinischen Basilika der Heiligen Agnes an der Via Nomentana, in *Rivista di Archeologia Cristiana*, 22 [1946], pp. 213-34), according to which the aforementioned elliptical enclosure represents the remains of the grand Constantinian basilica erected in honour of St A., is unfounded.
Of the underground cemetery, originally three storeys high and partly destroyed by the basilica built to bring the high altar over the martyr’s tomb, there remain three large regions with an arenarium and some pagan cubicula subsequently incorporated.
From the 4th century A. is depicted as an orant: very young in the transenna of the altar of the time of Pope Liberius; young in the gold-glass vessels; from the 6th century onward the iconographic type of A. is fixed as a young girl with at her feet or in her arms a lamb, symbol of purity and allusive to her name. The earliest representation of this type is contained in