AGNES, Saint, Martyr. - Of this very famous Roman martyr, probably a victim of the Diocletianic persecution, no genuine acts survive; moreover, nothing is known of her family. There is, however, certain evidence of her martyrdom in some writings of the 4th century: she appears in the Depositio Martyrum of 336 "XII Kal. Feb. Agnetis, in Nomentana" (ed. Valentini-Zucchetti, Rome 1942, p. 17); Ambrose speaks of her in the De virginibus, I, 2 and in the De Officiis, I, 41; Damasus in the poem still preserved on his original marble (A. Ferrua, Epigrammata Damasiana, Vatican City 1942, no. 37); Prudentius in the Peristephanon, 14, and the Ambrosian hymn Agnes beatae virginis (PL 17, 1210-11). From these sources it can be established with certainty that A. was a young girl of about 12 years or a little more when she was put to death, and that she was a martyr of chastity and of the faith. Less clear is the kind of martyrdom: Damasus speaks of fire; one may therefore think either of the pyre or of the torches with which the victim's flesh was burned; according to Ambrose and Prudentius it would have been decapitation, while according to the author of the Ambrosian hymn Agnes beatae virginis it was death by the sword. Damasus and the hymn just mentioned also emphasize A.'s care in covering her virginal body, the former with her abundant hair, the latter with her garments. The body of the little martyr was then buried in a gallery or hypogeum of the Christian cemetery, which was soon dedicated to her name, situated on the left of the Via Nomentana, where today stands the Basilica dedicated to her.
What has been reported thus far is the most reliable information we possess about the extremely popular Roman martyr; everything further that the hagiographical sources later than the 4th century report belongs to legend. The episode of the martyr's exposure in a place of infamy also smacks of popular tradition, which cannot be verified, as Prudentius seems to suggest; it constitutes the central and principal core of his poem, later exploited with amplifications by both the Greek and the Latin legend.
A. is presented in the Greek and also in the Latin legend in such a way that Father Jubaru thought of attributing to another martyr of the same name everything in it that seems scarcely credible for our very young martyr. But this second Roman martyr named Agnes never existed, and all the details that the legend in its two versions, Greek and Latin, adds to the already slender Roman tradition gathered by Damasus and Ambrose do not belong to the true biography of A. The Greek legend, composed outside Rome, and the Latin one, written by a pseudo-Ambrose (later translated into Greek) belong to about the 6th century; as for the Sermo 56 in natali s. Agnetis (PL 57, 643-48) of St. Maximus of Turin, the first witness to the Latin legend, its authenticity is doubtful (cf. Tillemont, V, ed. Venice 1732, pp. 345, 723; Pio Franchi de' Cavalieri, Hagiographica (Studi e Testi, 19), Rome 1908, p. 157, note 1; S. Colombo, in Didashaleion, 1924, fasc. 2, p. 74).
Chapters XIII-XVII of the Latin legend, containing the data on the martyr's burial, on the visions of her parents, on the martyrdom of St. Emerentiana (v.) etc., do not belong to the primitive redaction of the legend, as the sermon of the pseudo-Maximus demonstrates; they were, however, added before Aldhelm of Sherborne wrote his De virginitate. The problem of the interdependence of the two redactions of the legend is not yet resolved; on the other hand, the biography of A. would gain nothing from it.
CULT
Prof. R. Herzog (in Trierische Zeitschrift, 13 [1938] pp. 79-120) believed he had demonstrated that A. is a creation of female ascetic propaganda in Rome at the time of Pope Julius (d. 352) and that she was a foreigner to the City. To such fantasies others have replied excellently (cf. A. Ferrua, in La Civiltà
Catt. [1939, 1], pp. 114-29); here it suffices to recall that A. is presented from the end of the 4th century as the Roman saint par excellence, who servat salutem... Quiritium, as Prudentius sings, and that "she already enjoyed worldwide fame," as Jerome wrote to Demetrias (PL 22, 1123). Coming to the cult properly so called, A. appears on Jan. 21, as was said above, in the most ancient calendar of the Roman Church, from which she then passed into the Martyr. Hieronymianum, pp. 52-53); in the Canon of the Roman and Ambrosian Mass; in the Carthaginian calendar of the beginning of the 6th century; in the various Western liturgies and in the Greek synaxaria, where however the principal feast is registered on July 5 (cf. Synax. Constantinop.). In the Martyr. Hieronymianum and in the Roman Sacramentaries there is a second feast of A., on Jan. 28, called: Agnae in genuinum in the Martyr. Hieron.; in natali (Agnetis) 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 Westphalia 1935); natalis sanctae Agnae de secundo in the Gregorian sacramentary. The feast has the appearance of an octave, for so indeed some Sacramentaries of the 9th-10th centuries call it, and many rubricists after Durandus (Rationale div. Off., VIII, 1, 18), whereas in reality both the title of the feast, set in opposition to the natali de passione of the 21st, and the proper texts of the Mass (except in the Gregorian Sacramentary) commemorate the nativity of A. (cf. J. M. Hanssens, in Gregorianum, 18 [1937], pp. 161-218).
The most celebrated monument of the cult is the small Basilica erected before 349 over the tomb of the martyr by Constantina, daughter of Constantine (wife of Hannibalianus and then of the Caesar Gallus), restored by Symmachus (498-514), and completely rebuilt by Honorius I (625-38). The Honorian rebuilding, with the beautiful apse mosaic depicting A. dressed in Byzantine fashion, between the pontiffs Honorius and Symmachus, aroused enthusiastic admiration in contemporaries (cf. Epitome de locis SS. Martyrum, ed. Valentini-Zucchetti, Rome 1942, p. 115).
Afterwards the Basilica underwent various restorations, among which those of the beginning of the 17th century deserve to be remembered, carried out through the work of Cardinal Alessandro Ottaviano de' Medici, to whom the clearing of the north part is owed (1600), and of Cardinal Sfondrati (1605), to whom we owe the present coffered ceiling and an interior renovation; to him is also owed the recognition of the relics of the martyr (1605), which Paul V enclosed in 1615 in a silver casket, deposited in a small burial chamber beneath the new and rich altar that he had built to guard the sacred pledge. Many centuries earlier, certainly from the 9th century, her head was taken from the martyr's tomb 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. From 1621 the statue of St. Agnes was placed on the altar table, the work of the sculptor Niccolò Cordier, called il Franciosino, who to the trunk of a classical statue of oriental agatized alabaster added head, hands and feet of bronze. Pius IX in 1855 restored the Basilica and renewed its interior.
The basilica of S. Agnese stood, at the beginning of the 5th century, under the jurisdiction of the presbyters of the title of Vestina or of S. Vitale, and toward the end of that same century it seems to have already been guarded by nuns, as is gathered from the discovery in the Basilica of the epitaph of the Abbess Serena (d. 514).
From the 9th to the 12th century the guardians of S. Agnese were monks and clerics, the latter removed in 1112 by Paschal II, who established Benedictine nuns there, replaced by Sixtus IV (1480) with the religious of S. Ambrogio ad nemus of Milan, substituted by Innocent VIII (1489) with the Canons Regular of the Most Holy Savior (Renani), today Lateranensi, who are its zealous guardians. The Basilica was elevated to a cardinalitial title in 1654 by Innocent X, who transferred the title to it from S. Agnese in Agone, a title held since 1517, and, in 1708, a parish was erected there.
The site of the brothel where A. was exposed has been localized (Prudentius and the legend provide no topographical data for this purpose) in an archway of the stadium of Domitian, where in the 8th century there was a small church dedicated to the martyr (cf. Itinerario di Einsiedeln, 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 S. Agnese ad Duo Furna, near S. Prassede. Of the Basilica erected at Ostia there is probably a recollection of the dedication in the Hieronymian Martyrology on Oct. 18.
ICONOGRAPHY
In the 4th century A. is represented in the form of an orant: very young in the transenna of the altar from the time of Pope Liberius, young in the gilded glass; from the 6th century onward the iconographic type of A. becomes fixed: a young woman with a lamb at her feet or in her arms, a symbol of purity and allusive to her name. The oldest representation of this type is contained in the series of virgins depicted on the left wall of S. Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna (beginning of the 2nd half of the 6th century). This type then became common among later artists. See for example Giottino (S. Francesco, Assisi); Duccio di Boninsegna (Maestà, Siena); Beato Angelico (Uffizi, Florence); Andrea del Sarto (Duomo, Pisa); Tintoretto (Madonna dell'Orto, Venice); Domenichino (Pinacoteca, Bologna); Dolci (Gall. Corsini, Rome), etc. In the church of S. Agnese in Agone, the statue of the saint is by Ferrata; the bas-relief with A. covered by her hair has just recently been attributed to D. Guidi. The statue of the saint on the exterior of the cathedral of Milan is the work of A. da Briosco. Among the pictorial cycles of the legend, those deserving mention are those of S. Maria di Donna Regina (Naples), of the 14th century, and of the gold cup (British Museum), which Duke John of Berry wished to offer to King Charles V of France, on the occasion of his birthday, on 21 January 1381. But since the latter had died in the meantime, the said cup was then offered in 1391 to King Charles VI of France (cf. C. H. Read, in VetustaMonumenta, VII, III, Westminster 1904, of the Society of Antiquaries of London [description]; L. Delisle, in Journal des Savants, 1906, pp. 233-39; to King Charles V were offered many other precious objects with depictions of St. A.).
The 7th-century mosaicist, who represented A. in the apse of the Basilica onoriana, drawing inspiration from the Greek version of the legend, depicted the martyr in the likeness of a matron dressed like a Byzantine empress, holding a book in her hand and having at her feet the instruments of martyrdom: fire and the sword.
CEMETERY
A little beyond the 2nd km. from Porta Pia on the left of the via Nomentana, where the basilica of St. Agnes stands, there existed a Christian cemetery area earlier than the eponymous martyr. Of the burial area above ground there survives nothing but the great elliptical enclosure, used for burial in the 4th century, on the north-west side of which stands the mausoleum of Constantia (v.). The hypothesis just recently put forward by F. W. Deichmann (Die Lage der constantinischen Basilika der Heiligen Agnes an der Via Nomentana, in Rivista di Archeol. Cristiana, 22 [1946], pp. 213-34), according to which the aforementioned elliptical enclosure would represent the remains of the grandiose Constantinian basilica erected in honor of St. A., is without foundation.
Of the underground cemetery, once of three levels, in part destroyed by the Basilica, built into the flank of the hill in order to bring the high altar above the tomb of A., there still remain three great regions with an arenarium and some pagan cubicula subsequently included in the Christian area. The oldest region is the one on the left side of the Basilica and may go back to the end of the 2nd century; the most recent is the one that ends at the mausoleum of Constantia of the 4th-5th century. It is a rather poor cemetery, as is also evident from the lack of paintings; it preserves, however, some dated inscriptions (the oldest is from 349), the well-known inscription (end of the 2nd century) of Favor lector, a Constantinian monogram carved on stone, a portrait of a deceased woman in mosaic of ivory and enamel, some gilded glasses, etc. The underground cemetery, into which Bosio and others had already penetrated, was discovered by chance in 1865 and 1866; the systematic excavation was begun in 1869 and Mariano Armellini, a well-known disciple of De Rossi, followed it step by step, which enabled him subsequently to give an exact description of the whole cemetery in the volume, a model of its kind, entitled: Il cimitero di S. Agnese sulla via Nomentana, Rome 1880. - See Plates XXXIII-XXXV.
