Cecilia, Saint

CECILIA, Saint. - Roman martyr, venerated on Nov. 22. She has her elogium in acts composed in the 5th-6th centuries, which present numerous elements constituting on the whole a true crux for hagiographers. In them she appears as a young girl of noble family, who was betrothed to the noble Valerian. On her wedding day, while the music resounded, she sang in her heart the hymn of purity (from this detail

C. has been given the distinction of patroness of musicians). On the first night of her marriage C. declares to her spouse that an angel watches over her virginity. The spouse wishes to see the angel, and she urges him to receive Baptism and sends him for this to the 3rd mile of the Appian Way, to the bishop Urban. Following a heavenly apparition, Valerian is baptized. In white garments he returns to C., who is flanked by the angel, who holds two crowns in his hand: one of roses is given to C.; the other, of lilies, is given to Valerian. At this point the story of Sts. Tiburtius, Valerian and Maximus (a group venerated on Apr. 14) becomes interwoven, since the martyr Tiburtius appears as the brother of Valerian. Later the prefect of Rome Turcius Almachius first sacrifices the men, then has the woman arrested. She is condemned to be suffocated in the calidarium of the overheated bath in her house. But since this means of martyrdom had not caused death, she is beheaded in the same place. Pope Urban is said to have carried her body to be buried among those of his fellow bishops, and the house of her martyrdom is said to have been consecrated as a basilica in her name (cf. BHL, 1495; B. Mombritius, Sanctuarium, ed. Solesmense, pp. 332-41; Martyr. Romanum, p. 539; H. Delehaye, Etudes sur le légendier Romain, Brussels 1936, pp. 73-96, 194-220; see also his commentary on the Martyr. Hieronymianum, pp. 612-13).

As positive facts one notes: Tiburtius, Valerian and Maximus are martyrs of the cemetery of Praetextatus. An Urban was also venerated in Praetextatus (Itinerarium salisburgense; Lib. Pont.). But an epigraph with OYPBANOE E... and the mention in the list of Pope Sixtus III point to a namesake in the cemetery of Callistus. This must be a different bishop, and besides, the paleography of the epigraph does not take us back to a very ancient period. These connections of C. with personages of the cemetery of Praetextatus have been able to make some scholar believe that she too was venerated in Praetextatus. In reality she belongs to the cemetery of Callistus, and the Inter collegas suos episcopos of the Passio alludes to the adjacency of the papal crypt. Indeed the crypt of St. C. is in absolute proximity to that of the Popes.

The spacious crypt has epigraphic memorials from the end of the 3rd century (for example, the inscription of a Septimius Fronto Praetextatus Licinianus) and has paintings of the 5th century and later. Among the oldest are those of the skylight (image of the Saint - today almost vanished - and three personages: Polycamus, Sebastian and Quirinus; of these the first is an unknown saint and the last may be the bishop of Siscia in Pannonia, whose relics were transferred to Catacumbas in the 5th century). Another figure of St. C., which is on a wall, belongs to the 9th century. It seems that from this crypt Pope Paschal I took the body of the martyr (Apr. 821) to transfer it beneath the altar of the basilica of which we shall speak. However, the writer of the Lib. Pont. (II, p. 56) confuses matters and speaks of the cemetery of Praetextatus. It is strange that of so famous a martyr there is no mention in the most ancient calendar of the Roman Church (4th century) and that not a word about her appears in the writings of Damasus, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine and Prudentius.

But it is certain that the image of St. C. is found in the 6th century in Ravenna mosaics (archiepiscopal chapel; S. Apollinare

Nuovo) and the Lib. Pont. in the life of Pope Vigilius (535-55) speaks of the envoy sent from Constantinople, Artemius, who went to arrest the Pontiff: in ecclesia sanctae Caeciliae kol. dec. erat enim dies natalis eius. In the time of Gregory the Great (590-604) a certain John collected the oil that burned before the tomb of the Saint in the cemetery of the Appian Way. Moreover, among the subscribers of the Roman Synod of 499 there is already the title of C.

The Hieronymian Martyrology speaks of St. C. in notes that lend themselves to discussion. That of Nov. 22 betrays the use of the late Passio. Therefore the problem is this: there is no doubt that the cult of St. C. was already widely established in the 6th century and that one can go back to the 5th. But up to the first decades of the 5th there is no trace of it. The legend has a gentilician character. The basilica of Trastevere is moreover erected on an important Roman house, a true palace, which has some very ancient parts, with a small lararium. The remains of private baths may have provided the starting point for the legend about the manner of her death.

There is a fact that must be taken into account. The cemetery of Callistus is located in an area belonging to the ancient family of the Caecilii. Therefore, as has been proposed, a Christian C. was able to obtain a privileged tomb in the 3rd century in a crypt near that of the pontiffs. On the other hand, as is thought, in Trastevere there must have existed a house of the Valerii in which there was the tradition of kinship with the Caecilii.

The memory of the distinguished Christian woman of the Appian Way, probably a woman of holy morals (but not a martyr), may have promoted the erection of an important basilica, given rise to a veneration at the tomb of the Appian Way, and stimulated the legend-writers, incited perhaps also by some family tradition. In the basilica of Trastevere in the time of Clement VIII (in 1599) the body placed there by Paschal I was found, intact, it is related, with the head turned to the ground, while it is known that Paschal I placed the head in an arcella and later it is found among the relics of the basilica of the SS. Quattro Coronati.

The basilica of St. C. has not yet been well investigated in its most ancient parts and is identifiable only from the reconstruction of Paschal I. It is moreover known that this Pope made there the important apse mosaic. Later it received various adornments. For the late Middle Ages one must mention the ciborium sculpted by Arnolfo (1283) and the frescoes on the entrance wall (Last Judgment) painted by Cavallini. The diffusion of the cult of St. C. in medieval Rome was great, as attested by the various churches erected in her honor.

Carlo Cecchelli

ICONOGRAPHY

She is portrayed in rich robes, crowned with roses and gems, with the palm of martyrdom; from the Renaissance onward she is also represented with a small organ or a viol, although the saint has nothing to do with music (cf. A. De Santi, s. C. e la musica, in Civ. Catt., 1921, IV, pp. 318-33).

Among the oldest images one should recall that among the musicians of S. Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna (570) in a row of virgins, and that of S. Maria Antiqua in Rome (8th century). In a 13th-century fresco in Rome, in the church dedicated to her, the Saint is depicted in the act of appearing to Paschal I. Very famous is Raphael's St. Cecilia in the picture gallery of Bologna, with the musical attributes; the Saint has also been portrayed in the act of playing (Rubens) or accompanied by music-making Angels (Ant. Van Dyck). One of the best-known representations of the Saint is the one sculpted by S. Maderno in her Roman church and inspired by the enthusiasm for the recognition of her tomb carried out by Card. Sfondrati under Clement VIII (1599). - See Pl. LXXII.

Fabia Borroni