SAINT CECILIA

22^nd November is the feast day of St Cecilia. She has been the patron saint of music and musicians since the sixteenth century and is still popular today. In common with other saints (for instance, St George and St Barbara) doubt has been cast on her authenticity and the story of her life and martyrdom has never been substantiated.

The story is that she was a Roman martyr of the third century, a young Christian noblewoman betrothed to a pagan called Valerian. As is often in these cases, she had dedicated her virginity to God and refused to consummate the marriage. She must have been quite an advocate for the faith because both her husband and his brother Tiburtius were converted to Christianity. They were arrested and martyred.

Soon afterwards Cecilia buried the pair and was thus brought before the Roman prefect, Turchius Almachius, who demanded that she sacrifice to the Roman gods.

She certainly must have been an amazing lady because she converted her persecutors as well. However, this did not save her and she was sentenced to be suffocated in her bathroom. This failed and a soldier was then dispatched to behead her, not very successfully and he fled, leaving her half dead for three days. Her house was later dedicated as a church.

This account is unsupported by contemporary evidence and there was no mention whatsoever of Cecilia in the fourth century in any of the writings of Jerome, Ambrose, Damascus and Prudentius, all very interested in early Christian martyrs. She appears in a late fifth century Legend (a book describing lives of saints). There is, however, evidence that martyrs associated with Cecilia are indeed historical persons.

In the Roman Catholic Church she is one of the seven women, along with the Virgin Mary, commemorated in the Canon of the Mass which is the liturgical book containing texts of the Mass. Venaius Fortunatus, Bishop of Poitiers, stated that she had died in Sicily under Marcus Aurelius sometime between AD176 and 180. Her major shrine is a church built in Trastevere in Rome sometime during the fifth century, called the Titulus Cecilia. Other sources say that this was founded by a Roman matron called Cecilia which perhaps is the true source of the story.

Her relics were transferred by Pope Paschal I around AD820 when the church was rebuilt with much splendour, and again in 1599 by Cardinal Paolo Sfondrati. At this time when the tomb was opened Cecilia’s body was seen to be incorrupt. Contact with the air soon caused it to disintegrate but not before the sculptor Stefano Maderna, had carved a life sized marble statue of the saint lying on her side as if asleep. A replica of this statue now occupies her original tomb in the cemetery of Callistus.

Her association with music and musicians rests on a passing notice in her Legend that, as she lay dying, she sang to God in praise. Her popularity grew quickly and by the end of the sixteenth century there were important festivals and celebrations in her honour beginning in Normandy. Over one hundred years later these festivities had crossed the channel and in 1683 Henry Purcell set to music three odes in her honour ‘Hail, bright Cecilia’. Other pieces of music were dedicated to her e.g. Benjamin Britten’s ‘Hymn to St Cecilia’ (based on a text by the poet, W. H Auden); Alessandro Scarlatti and Charles Gounod each composed a Mass, and there was an opera by Licinio. In more modern times she found her way into the hit parade! In 1984 at a Swedish Music Festival ‘Sankta Cecilia’ was sung by Lotta Pedersen and Goran Folkestad. In 2007, ‘Jars of Clay’, an American pop-rock band opened their ‘Christmas Songs’ album with an instrumental track entitled ‘The Gift of St Cecelia’.

From 1999 to 2007 she could be found on the reverse of the £20 note with Sir Edward Elgar. She is the patron saint of the cathedrals at Albi and Omaha, Nebraska, and a few English churches are dedicated to her. Close to home is the high school in Longridge.

In early mosaics and frescoes she appears without an emblem, but since the sixteenth century she is portrayed with an organ as in the painting of her by the artist Raphael at Bologna ‘The Ecstasy of St Cecilia’. She appears in many other paintings and in stained glass windows, usually with an organ but sometimes another instrument such as a lute.

In literature she appears in Chaucer’s ‘Second Nuns Tale’, and John Dryden’s famous ode which was later set to music by Handel and, as previously stated, W.H. Auden from whom I quote -

“Blessed Cecilia, appear in visions

To all musicians, appear and inspire:

Translated Daughter, come down and startle

Composing mortals with immortal fire.”

Barbara Hothersall