AGNESE, SANTA, MARTIRE

**AGNES, Saint, Martyr.**

Of this most celebrated Roman martyr, probably a victim of the Diocletian persecution, no genuine acts have been preserved; moreover, nothing is known of her family. Reliable accounts of her martyrdom, however, appear in several 4th-century writings: she is mentioned in the Depositio Martyrum of 354 under “XII Kal. Feb. Agnesti, in Nomentana” (ed. Valesentini-Zucchetti, Rome 1942, p. 17); Ambrose discusses her in De virginibus, I, 2 and in De Officiis, I, 41; Damasus in the epigram still preserved on his original marble (A. Ferrara, 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 may be established with certainty that Agnes was a young girl of about twelve years or slightly older when she was put to death, and that she was a martyr for chastity and faith. Less clear is the manner of her martyrdom: Damasus speaks of fire, suggesting either burning at the stake or the use of torches to scorch the flesh; Ambrose and Prudentius, however, describe decapitation, while the Ambrosian hymn refers to beheading. Damasus and the aforementioned hymn also emphasize Agnes’s care to cover her virginal body—Damasus with her abundant hair, the hymn with her garments. The remains of the young martyr were then interred in a gallery or hypogeum of the Christian cemetery, soon dedicated in her name and situated on the left side of the Via Nomentana, where the Basilica dedicated to her now stands.

The foregoing is the most reliable information available concerning this widely venerated Roman martyr; everything further reported by hagiographical sources after the 4th century belongs to legend. There is also an unverifiable popular tradition, hinted at by Prudentius, that the martyr was exposed in a dishonorable place, a motif that forms the central core of his poem and was later expanded in both Greek and Latin legend.

In the Greek and Latin legends Agnes is portrayed in such a way that Fr. Jubaru suggested attributing the more implausible elements to another martyr of the same name. Yet this second Roman martyr named Agnes never existed, and all the details added by the legend—whether in its Greek or Latin form—to the already slender Roman tradition collected by Damasus and Ambrose do not belong to the true biography of Agnes. The Greek legend, composed outside Rome, and the Latin legend, attributed to a pseudo-Ambrose (later translated into Greek), date from about the 6th century; as for the Sermo 56 in natali s. Agnesti (PL 57, 643–48) by 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, n. 1; S. Colombo, in Didaskaleion, 1924, fasc. 2, p. 74).

Chapters XIII–XVII of the Latin legend, containing accounts of the martyr’s burial, the visions of her parents, the martyrdom of St. Emerentiana (v.), etc., do not belong to the original recension of the legend, as shown by the sermon of the pseudo-Maximus; yet they were added before Aldhelm of Sherborne wrote his De virginitate. The problem of the interdependence of the two recensions remains unresolved, and Agnes’s biography gains nothing from II.
Cult. — Prof. R. Herzog (in Trierische Zeitschrift, 13 [1938] pp. 79–120) argued that Agnes was a construct of female ascetic propaganda in Rome at the time of Pope Julius (d. 352) and that she was not a native of the city. Others have effectively refuted such fancies (cf. A. Ferrara, in La Civiltà

**AGNES**