Agnes of Rome

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Saint Agnes

Martyr
Born 291
Died 304
Venerated in Roman Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox Churches, Oriental Orthodox Churches, Anglican Communion, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
Major shrine Rome
Feast January 21; before Pope John XXIII revised the calendar, there was a second feast on January 28
Attributes lamb
Patronage betrothed couples; chastity; Children of Mary; Colegio Capranica of Rome; crops; engaged couples; gardeners; Girl Scouts; girls; rape victims; virgins; the diocese of Rockville Centre, New York

Saint Agnes (291–304; feast day: January 21) is a virgin martyr and 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 honour 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 hagnē (ἁγνή) meaning "chaste, pure, sacred." Hrosvit of Gandersheim wrote a play about Saint Agnes in the 10th century.

Biography

According 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 Eastern 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 struck off her head, 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.

File:Francisco de Zurbarán - Santa Inês.jpg
Santa Inês (Saint Agnes)
by Francisco de Zurbarán

In popular culture

An 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 (20–21 January) 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.

See also

Saints Portal
  • Sant'Agnese in Agone
  • Sant'Agnese fuori le mura

References
ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

  • Attwater, Donald and Catherine Rachel John. The Penguin Dictionary of Saints. 3rd edition. New York: Penguin Books, 1993. ISBN 0-140-51312-4.
  • Woodeene Koenig-Bricker Praying with the Saints: Making Their Prayers Your Own Loyola Press, 2001
  • Michele Rooney Literary Lives of the Saints
  • Barbara Calamari and Sandra DiPasqua Novena: The Power of Prayer (Penguin Studio, 1999)

External links

Retrieved June 9, 2008.

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