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Saint Agnes
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Saint Agnes is a Virgin Martyr saint of the Roman Catholic Church and Eastern Catholic Churches. She is also acknowledged in the Church of England and the Anglican Communion as well as in Eastern Orthodoxy. She is one of seven women, excluding the Blessed Virgin, commemorated by name in the Canon of the Mass. She is the Patron Saint of chastity, gardeners, girls, engaged couples, rape victims and virgins.
She is also known as Saint Agnes of Rome and Saint Ines (or Santa Ynez). Her feast day is January 21. St. Agnes also has a second feast on January 28, which commemorated her birthday. This feast was suppressed owing to the reform of the Church's calendar following the Second Vatican Council. Traditional Roman Catholics continue to commemorate this feast. Hundreds of churches are named in honor of Saint Agnes, including two major well-known churches and one Anglican Cathedral in Kyoto, Japan. She is depicted in art with a lamb as her name resembles the Latin word "agnus," which means "lamb." The name "Agnes" is actually derived from the feminine Greek adjective "hagne" (????) meaning "chaste, pure, sacred." Hrosvit of Gandersheim wrote a play about Saint Agnes in the 10th century.
BiographyAccording to tradition, Saint Agnes was a member of the Roman nobility born c. 291 and raised in a Christian family. She suffered martyrdom at the age of twelve during the reign of the Roman Emperor Diocletian, on January 21, 304.
The Prefect Sempronius wished Agnes to marry his son, and on Agnes' refusal he condemned her to death. As Roman law did not permit the execution of virgins, Sempronius had a naked Agnes dragged through the streets to a brothel. As she prayed, her hair grew and covered her body. It was also said that all of the men who attempted to rape her were immediately struck blind. When led out to die she was tied to a stake, but the bundle of wood would not burn, whereupon the officer in charge of the troops drew his sword and beheaded her, or, in some other texts, stabbed her in the throat. It is also said that the blood of Agnes poured to the stadium floor where other Christians soaked up the blood with cloths.
A few days after Agnes' death, a girl named Emerentiana was found praying by her tomb; she claimed to be the daughter of Agnes' wet nurse, and was stoned to death after refusing to leave the place and reprimanding the pagans for killing her foster sister. Emerentiana was also later canonized.
Agnes' bones are conserved in the church of Sant'Agnese fuori le mura in Rome, built over the catacomb that housed Agnes' tomb. Her skull is preserved in a side chapel in the church of Sant'Agnese in Agone in Rome's Piazza Navona.
In popular cultureAn interesting custom is observed on her feast day. Two lambs are brought from the Trappist abbey of Tre Fontane in Rome to the Pope to be blessed. On Holy Thursday they are shorn, and from the wool is woven the Pallium which the pope gives to a newly consecrated Archbishop as a sign of his jurisdiction and his union with the pope.
Saint Agnes is the patron saint of young girls; folk custom called for them to practice rituals on Saint Agnes' Eve with a view to discovering their future husbands. This superstition has been immortalised in John Keats' poem, "The Eve of Saint Agnes."
She is represented in art as a young blond girl in robes, holding a palm branch in her hand and a lamb at her feet or in her arms.
In the historical novel Fabiola or, the Church of the Catacombs, written by Cardinal Nicholas Wiseman in 1854, Agnes is the soft-spoken teenage cousin and confidant of the protagonist, the beautiful noblewoman Fabiola.
She is sometimes misconstrued to be the St Agnes referred to in the Christmas carol "Good King Wenceslas;" as the peasant who Wenceslas sees, lives, "Right against the forest fence, by Saint Agnes' fountain." The Saint being referred to is actually Agnes of Bohemia.
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