MARTYRDOM OF ST. CECILIA
A Glorious Martyrdom—A Vision of Heaven—The Bodies of the
Martyrs—Prefect Incensed Against St. Cecilia—Preparation for
Death—Her Trial—Her Victory and Martyrdom—The Miracle of Her
Three Days’ Ministering—Final Honours—Martyrdom of St. Urban
and His Companions—Cecilia’s Place Among Martyrs—Her Tomb in
the Catacombs—Pope Paschal’s Vision of St. Cecilia—Cecilia’s
Restoration to Her Own Church—History of Her Church—The Second
Finding of Her Body—Her Statue.
And Cecilia? While the first chapter of the glorious tragedy was being
enacted before the tribunal of Almachius, she had been immersed in
fervent prayer for those she loved, asking not that their lives should
be spared, but that their faith should be strengthened and that they
might come triumphantly through their ordeal. Valerianus, through
some Christian friend, immediately informed her of all that was taking
place. Still she waited and prayed. The officer charged with carrying
out the commands of Almachius was his notary, Maximus, a man of upright
life and kind heart. As he led the brothers away he mourned openly
over the terrible doom which they had drawn down upon themselves,
and entreated them to reconsider their resolutions and save their
lives, pointing out that they were throwing away all their splendid
advantages of youth, wealth, and a brilliant future, for a miserable
delusion. Valerianus, filled with the Spirit of God, explained to him
the Christian doctrine of a future life, which so amazed the honest
man that he swore, by all he held sacred, that if he could believe in
eternal happiness he would sacrifice everything on earth to attain it.
“Only repent of your sins,” Valerianus replied, “and I promise you that
at the moment of our death, the Heavens shall be opened to you, and you
shall behold with your own eyes the glory of the Blessed.”
“I accept,” Maximus answered. “May the thunderbolts of Heaven consume
me if, after you have shown me what you promise, I do not confess the
One God who has prepared another life to follow this one!”
Now Valerianus was filled with a great desire to see Maximus baptised
before his own death, so he asked him to delay the execution of the
sentence for a few hours and to conduct his prisoners to his own
house, where, as he explained, the soldiers could still keep guard over
them, so that no lapse from duty could be laid to the notary’s charge.
Maximus gladly consented, and led the brothers and their guards to his
dwelling—we are not told where it stood—and there Cecilia hastened to
rejoin them. No word is recorded of her anguish at seeing her beloved
Valerianus all torn and bleeding from the lashes of the whips. Surely
she kissed and washed the pitiful wounds so joyously received for
Christ’s sake; but this was a time for quick and courageous action,
and the one thought in her mind as in that of her husband and his
brother was to save as many souls as possible in this supreme hour.
She hastened to summon several priests, and, under cover of nightfall,
brought them to the house of Maximus, where, by this time, many persons
were assembled. The notary, his entire family, and the soldiers under
his command listened eagerly to the instructions of the priests, and,
before the first gleam of dawn tinged the sky, were all baptised. A
great chorus of thanksgiving went up to God. Not one had been left out,
not a voice but joined in that pæan.
Then, the sun rose and a great silence fell—“Facto magno silentio,”
Cecilia spake, not in words of her own choosing—she repeated that
splendid battle cry of St. Paul: “Arise, soldiers of Christ! Cast off
the works of darkness and put on the armour of light. You have fought a
good fight, you have finished your course, you have kept the Faith. Go
to receive the Crown of Life which the Just Judge gives to you, and not
to you only, but to all who love His coming!”
She, who had opened to her dear ones the gates of life, now bade them
forth to death. No word she spoke of her own grief, of the desolation
that awaited her till her own hour (not far away, as she knew) should
come. We are not told whether she accompanied the martyrs to the place
of execution. With all her glorious valour she was but a young and
loving woman, and God may have chosen to spare her the last dreadful
sight, may have led her back to her empty home to pray, rather than out
to the public road to shudder and weep.
Maximus and his soldiers, praying also, led Valerianus and Tiburtius
over the well-known road as far as the temple in the Pagus Triopius,
where the waiting priests of Jupiter commanded them to offer incense
before the idol. For answer, the young men knelt down and offered
their necks to the executioner’s sword. Those who had been charged with
the cruel mission confessed loudly that they were Christians now, and
refused to perform it, but others were present who offered themselves
as substitutes. A moment later the two young heads rolled on the
ground, and Maximus, as Valerianus had promised him, saw the souls of
the martyrs carried to Heaven, which was opened before his eyes, on the
wings of Angels resplendent as suns. He could not contain the ecstasy
with which the sight had filled him, and was now himself consumed with
the love of God and the desire to attain to the same glory. Many of
the pagans who had gathered around were converted on the spot, and
Almachius, incensed beyond measure, caused Maximus to be scourged to
death a few days afterwards.
The Christians obtained possession of the bodies of Valerianus and
Tiburtius, and Cecilia, weeping and rejoicing, received the dear
remains, wrapped them in costly silks with great wealth of precious
balms, and buried them in the cemetery of Pretextatus near the second
milestone of the Appian Way. She sealed their tomb with the emblems
of victory, the palm and crown, and returned to the palace beyond the
Tiber to await the will of God in regard to herself. When she heard of
the martyrdom of Maximus she came forth to take up his body, which she
buried with her own hands near those of her husband and his brother,
and on his tomb she caused to be engraved the symbol of resurrection,
the phœnix rising from its own ashes.
Her next care was to forestall the rapacity of Almachius by
distributing all the goods of Valerianus to the poor, a measure which
so inflamed the Prefect’s fury that he began to cast about for some
means of doing away with her, without arousing the ire of the people; a
difficult matter, since all in Rome, both pagans and Christians, knew
and admired her for her noble birth, her great beauty, and her many
virtues, more especially for her all-embracing charity. The murder
of Valerianus and Tiburtius had not pleased the populace; that of
Cecilia might easily cause a riot; it behooved Almachius to proceed
with caution. As in the former case, he felt that her Christianity,
so openly professed in the face of his thundered prohibitions, was a
direct affront to his authority and that she must be forced to retract;
yet he feared the resentment of the Emperor, and also of the people,
should he venture upon bringing her to a public trial. So he hit upon
an expedient which, he thought, would satisfy all parties. He sent some
officers to see her, and to tell her that, if she would sacrifice to
the gods in their presence, in the privacy of her home, the Governor
would be satisfied and would molest her no further.
The officers very unwillingly accepted the task laid upon them, and,
when they found themselves face to face with Cecilia, were so overcome
by the sight of her calm and heavenly beauty that they could scarcely
explain their mission. Cecilia spoke to them with great gentleness.
She told them that she knew how their hearts revolted from carrying out
the impious designs of their superior. She said that she sorrowed not
at all for herself, since she was only too happy to suffer for Christ,
but that she deeply pitied them, who “in the flower of their youth were
condemned to obey the orders of an unjust judge.”
The young men were cut to the heart to see this exquisite girl (_tam
elegans puella_), so noble and so wise, inviting martyrdom, and they
besought her with tears not to “fling so much beauty to Death!” But in
her calm, lucid way she explained that to die for Christ was to renew
youth forever; that to exchange mortality for immortality was like
giving up a little handful of lead to receive inexhaustible treasures
of purest gold. She saw that the scales were falling from their eyes,
and, all aflame to gain more souls to Christ, she cried, “Do you
believe what I have told you?” And they replied: “We believe Christ the
Son of God to be truly God, Who possesses such a servant!”
Cecilia had won another victory. “Go now,” she commanded, “to unhappy
Almachius, and tell him that I pray him not to hasten my passion, and
then return here to my house and you shall find him who will make you
sharers of Eternal Life.”
The few days’ delay was granted, and the officers returned joyfully
to Cecilia’s house. She had at once sent to inform St. Urban of her
approaching martyrdom, and begged him to come at once, as many whom
she had instructed and converted were desirous of receiving baptism
before her death. The Pope hastened to her side and remained with
her for all that was left of her life. The house became a temple of
prayer and praise; more than four hundred persons, the officers of
Almachius foremost among them, were baptised. In order to prevent the
confiscation of her property, Cecilia made her will devising her house
and all it contained to a certain Gordian, “one of her converts, a most
upright man,” charging him to make of the dwelling where the Sacrament
of Baptism had been conferred a “Church of the Lord forever.”
Then, when all was accomplished and her work on earth completed,
Almachius sent for her to appear before him and answer the accusations
brought against her. Joyfully she obeyed. The account of her trial
is very remarkable, evidently taken down on the spot by some one
who witnessed it, and as evidently genuine not only because of the
endorsement of contemporaries, but because of some curious allusions to
customs prevailing at that particular time.
Too long and diffuse to transcribe here, the proceedings opened with
the usual question, a question regarded evidently as something of
a farce by the onlookers, since all Rome knew of Cecilia, and the
greatest excitement prevailed in the crowd that had assembled to see
the noble, delicately nurtured lady brought to trial like a common
criminal.
Cecilia’s very small stature and delicate frame surprised the Prefect,
who had never seen her before, and his question seems to show that he
had forgotten that she was a married woman.
“Who art thou, child?” he asked.
“I am called Cecilia among men,” she replied, “but I have a more
illustrious name—that of ‘Christian.’”
“What is thy rank?”
“A Roman citizen of illustrious and noble family.”
“We know that. I asked thee of thy religion.”
“Thy interrogation was a strangely incorrect one, since to one question
it required two answers.”
Cecilia’s logic was incontrovertible and the Prefect lost his temper
at once. He reproached her with what he called her insolence, boasted
of his authority, tried to frighten her with threats, was drawn into
arguments as to the existence of the pagan gods and their power to
punish those who should resist them; as to the “invincibility of the
Emperors,” and other points, on every one of which the highly educated,
intellectual girl, calm as an Angel, and relying on God to sustain her,
confounded him publicly, to the great delight, and as she intended, to
the edification and instruction of her hearers. Conscious that he was
losing ground every moment, Almachius floundered and blundered on till
Cecilia closed the interview by saying: “Since you first opened your
mouth you have not uttered a word which I have not proved to be either
unjust or unreasonable.” Then, as concisely and coolly as a lawyer
conducting a case, she summed up her proofs of the dead nothingness
of the pagan idols, and ended with these words: “Christ alone can save
from death, and deliver the guilty from eternal fire.”
There ensued a long silence, during which Almachius considered how he
could do away with her with the least amount of publicity and scandal.
In his mind he already heard the Emperor’s stinging reprimand for his
folly in provoking a scene which could only result in casting obloquy
on the deities worshipped (or rather patronised) by Alexander himself,
and in the condemnation of a beautiful and virtuous lady beloved by
all the people. Cecilia stood undisturbed while her enemy pondered her
fate. She had done with earth; she had vindicated Heaven; her thoughts
were there.
At last Almachius gave some whispered orders to his satellites, and
Cecilia, in her litter, since no Roman lady could walk through the
public streets, carried by her devoted, heart-broken servants, was
sent back to her palace under a heavy guard, among whom were those who
had consented to act as her executioners. These hurried to that one
of the marble bathrooms called the “calidarium,” disposed to produce
the fierce heat of a steam bath. The opening in the gilded ceiling,
intended to moderate the temperature when necessary, was hermetically
closed, and every conduit and furnace heated to raging point. When
the suffocating fumes had so filled the place that no one dared go in,
Cecilia was commanded to enter. She passed in, smiling, and was lost
to view in the dense cloud of steam; then the entrance was closed and a
guard set over it that none of those who were mourning and weeping all
through the halls and courts of the palace might either set her free or
share her end. For the rest of the day and all the ensuing night the
tormentors continued to pile the fires, till it seemed as if the heat
must crack the very marble. No sound came from the sealed room, and at
sunrise the next day the executioners were convinced that their work
was done. Nothing mortal could survive in that furnace.
So they opened the door—and Cecilia, radiant and fresh as a rose washed
in dew, knelt there in prayer, her lovely face raised to Heaven, her
pure hands clasped in love and thanksgiving. Terrified, the men rushed
to tell Almachius of the portent.
“Let a Lictor go and behead her!” was all he said. Some man was found
to do it—though unwillingly, since even the most brutal and ignorant
felt that here was one mysteriously protected by Heaven—and might not
Heaven—even the Heaven of Jupiter and Apollo—smite him who should
raise his hand against her? Still, orders were orders. In the soft
May morning a heavy tread sounded over the mosaic pavements of the
palace. The sweet lady’s friends and dependents cried out as they saw
a man stride along towards the “calidarium”—where, in obedience to
the Prefect’s commands, she had remained—swinging a heavy two-handled
axe. The Christians who were the trophies of her conquests for Christ
besought her, between their sobs, to pray for them in Heaven. She bade
them be comforted—smiling radiantly and mysteriously—and knelt down on
the still wet marble to receive the blow.
But the Lictor’s hands were trembling so that he could scarcely grasp
his weapon. Three times he struck, and each time the steel sank deep
into the meek white neck, and the blood crimsoned the golden robe
and the marble floor. Then he fled in terror. The Roman law forbade a
fourth stroke. Cecilia was lying on the reddened marble, on her side,
Urban and the rest kneeling around her. And it was she who broke the
silence, bidding them pray to God and then listen to her, since she
still had somewhat to say to them. Some among them were yet in need of
instruction, many in need of comfort and encouragement; so she taught
and prayed, and comforted them for three long days, never moving from
the spot where she had sunk down under the strokes of the axe; and they
were left in peace, since cold fear had fallen on the city and none
dared approach Cecilia’s house to ask how it fared with her.
During all this time her face showed that she was suffering the agonies
of death, though she found her old sweet smile for each and all of her
spiritual children and her beloved poor, as they crowded round her to
kiss her garments and try to staunch her wounds, and to dip their linen
cloths in the treasure of her blood. Her last endearments were for the
poor, and whatever remained of her own properties in the house she now
commanded to be given to them. Each word she spoke seemed as if it must
be the last, yet still she lived—and smiled, and blessed them.
On the third day, a great wonder being on all that assemblage, she
bade them leave her for a while, and the holy Pope Urban came and
prayed with her and blessed her. And he begged her to tell him how it
was that she had survived those cruel strokes so long. And Cecilia,
looking up at him most lovingly, replied: “I asked the Lord to give me
these three days, that I might give to your Beatitude my last treasure,
the poor whom I nourished, and who will miss me; and I also give you
this my house that you may consecrate it to be a Church to the Lord
for ever and ever.” Then she thanked her Saviour for all His love, and
especially for having “deigned to give her a part in the glory of the
athletes, for having crowned her with the lilies of virginity and the
roses of martyrdom.” A little faintness came over her then. She had
never moved from the attitude in which she had fallen, and was lying on
her right side, but her hands had been raised in prayer. Now they fell,
still clasped, on the folds of the golden robe so rosy with blood;
she turned her lovely face to the ground, that only God might see the
ecstasy of her reunion with Him, and thus she died.
Pope Urban attended personally to every detail of her burial. A
cypress-wood coffin was prepared, and in this she was laid by the
priests in attendance. Urban would not permit any change from the
attitude of virginal modesty in which she had expired, so with tender
care the consecrated hands raised her and laid her body in the coffin,
just as it was, on the right side, with the face turned to the ground.
The cloths dipped in her blood were rolled up and placed at her feet,
a profusion of rich ointments and perfumes was shed around her, and
then the fragrant casket was closed. Under cover of night the Pontiff
had it carried out to the cemetery of Saint Calixtus on the Appian
Way, wishing to honour her zealous apostleship for Christ by burying
her close to the tomb where he had laid his predecessor, the martyr
Pope, St. Zephyrinus. The cemetery of Pretextatus, where Valerianus and
Tiburtius had been buried, was close at hand, and Urban, to commemorate
the pure love that had united them on earth, made Cecilia’s tomb at the
extreme confine of the Calixtus catacomb, where its direction turned
towards the older one. Fearing desecration, perhaps prophetically
foreseeing that which threatened the resting-places of martyrs in
the invasion of the Arian heretics some two hundred years later, he
closed the tomb with one large slab of stone and left it for the moment
bare of all inscription; doubtless he intended to place one there
immediately, but had no time to do so before his own death.[16] Those
who had loved her needed not to see her name; they came day after day
to weep there and ask for her prayers; but God had inspired His servant
to protect and hide her blessed remains from all the enemies of the
Church.
It seems as if St. Urban’s own life had been prolonged thus far that
he might not only carry out this pious task, but also fulfil Cecilia’s
last commands by giving the remainder of her goods to the poor and by
consecrating as a Church the house in which she died. A short month
later he was taken and brought, with some of his Deacons, before
Almachius, to answer to two charges, that of being a Christian, and
that of having seized Cecilia’s property, which the covetous Prefect
had counted on securing for himself. The usual farce of a trial ensued;
the confessors were dragged out to the Pagus Triopius and, on their
refusing to sacrifice to Jupiter, savagely scourged. One of them,
Lucian, died under the lash; Urban and the others were beheaded, in
another spot, three days later.
Valerianus and his brother had suffered on the 18th of April, Cecilia
a week or more after them, and St. Urban and his companions on the
twenty-fifth day of May. St. Cecilia’s name was inserted at once in the
Canon of the Mass, where only those of six out of the thirty martyr
Popes were admitted. Agnes precedes her; Anastasia, burnt alive on
Christmas Day, under Diocletian, follows; and three hundred years later
St. Gregory inserted those of the two Sicilian martyrs, Agatha and
Lucy; but none inscribed on that sacred list which the priest repeats
every morning at Mass eclipses the name of Cecilia. Her house has never
ceased to be “A Church of the Lord,” as she ordained; every year on her
feast, the most glorious music resounds there, and many a time have I
been one of the crowd gathered on the 22d of November to listen to the
finest singers in Rome gathered to do her honour, because she loved to
praise the Lord in song and psalm. The anniversary of her death often
coincides with the great feasts of the Ascension and of Pentecost, and,
for some reason, of which we have lost the clue, the 22d of November
was fixed for the celebration of it. On that day not only in her Church
is she glorified, but also in the cemetery where her body lay for some
five hundred years and which is brilliantly illuminated and a grand
musical Mass sung there in her honour.
Yet, for centuries that blessed tomb was lost and none could pray
beside it. Every word, almost every look and gesture of Cecilia’s last
days on earth, was written in the “Acts of the Martyrs,” that enormous
collection of archives instituted by St. Clement, who appointed seven
holy and learned notaries to take down at once even the smallest
details connected with the trial and sufferings of the Christian
victims, a work zealously continued by all the succeeding Pontiffs, one
of whom, Anterus, was put to death solely on this charge. The “Acts
of the Martyrs,” as we possess them to-day, were finally compiled in
the Fourth or early part of the Fifth Century. The Latin, though vivid
and powerful, is already notably defective, ungrammatical, but not as
debased as it became at the beginning of the Sixth Century. The great
masters of language in the Fourth Century—St. Augustine, St. Ambrose,
and St. Jerome—were eager to preserve the purity of the Latin tongue,
but their contemporaries all over the Empire, either through ignorance
or carelessness, spoke and wrote an idiom as far removed from that of
the Golden Age of Augustus as is fashionable English to-day from that
of Addison and Pope. Is our misuse of our own noble tongue the cause,
or the effect, of political degeneration? One thing is certain, the
slaughter of its language has invariably accompanied the downfall of a
State.
When the Goths invaded Rome in the Fifth Century their Arian fury was
especially directed at all that Catholics held sacred, barring only the
Tombs of the Apostles, which they feared to profane. They raged through
the Catacombs in the hope of finding plunder, or else some secret
ingress to the city; the Christians, warned of their approach, had time
to fill up and close the entrance of a few of the cemeteries, among
others of that where Cecilia’s body lay. As a result, the pilgrims
were unable to visit these underground sanctuaries for many years, and
when peace was restored to the Church, and the bodies of many martyrs
brought back to the city, all but the vaguest clue to her resting-place
was lost, though it was sought for eagerly and persistently. Her
Church—the “House where Cecilia prayed”[17]—was ever protected from
destruction and continually resounded with prayer and praise, but it
was empty of the treasure of her remains. As time went on, almost all
the bones of the martyrs had been restored to the piety of the Faithful
in the different Churches and Basilicas of Rome; the sanctuaries
ruined and desecrated by the Goths and Lombards had been rebuilt;
the Catacombs reopened and partially restored; so that, although they
would never again inspire quite the veneration with which they had been
regarded before the Barbarians defaced and defiled them, yet pilgrims,
with their strange old guidebooks to direct their steps, would visit
the places which had been hallowed by those noble presences in past
ages.
In 817 Pope Paschal ascended the throne, and made it his especial duty
to rescue from the Catacombs any holy relics that still remained there.
Great was his desire to find the tomb of St. Cecilia; he sought for it
long and patiently, and seems to have passed it more than once, owing
to its lack of inscription. He had already rebuilt her Church, which
had suffered much from time, and decorated it magnificently, but it
seemed destined to be deprived of the honour of sheltering all that
earth still held of her. In great depression he, with many others,
came to the conclusion that her body must have been carried away by the
Lombards when Charlemagne drove them out of Italy.
And then Cecilia herself re-animated him to the search. He has left us
an enchanting description of her visit. On a certain Sunday morning,
very, very early, Pope Paschal was sitting in St. Peter’s, near the
Tomb of the Apostles, listening entranced to the sweet voices of the
Canons, who were singing Lauds, the office with which the Church opens
her day before the first gleam of light has come into the East. It was
not the St. Peter’s that we know, but the ancient Basilica founded
by Constantine and consecrated in the year 326, vast and dark, with
heavy Byzantine arches and windows closed by panes of thin Oriental
alabaster. The good Pope speaks regretfully of a slight weariness which
was creeping over him after the long night’s vigil, and says that, just
as the eastern windows became visible squares in the first faint flush
of dawn, he was overcome with drowsiness and closed his eyes, so that
the soaring music became the music of dreams.
Then a luminous vision appeared: a young virgin, adorned as a bride,
stood before Paschal, and, after reproaching him with his too easy
abandonment of the task he had undertaken, said: “Nevertheless, thou
wast so near me that we could have spoken mouth to mouth!”
Amazed and agitated, Paschal asked her who she was. She replied,
“Cecilia, the servant of Christ.” But the prudent Pontiff, knowing that
all visions are not of Heaven, and fearing a snare of the Evil One,
said: “How can I believe thee? All men say that the body of the holy
Cecilia was carried away by the Lombards.”
Very gently she replied that the Lombards had indeed sought for her,
but that the Blessed Virgin had protected her sepulchre, so that
they had not found it. She bade him persevere in his search, which
she promised should soon be rewarded, and commanded him to bring her
body and those of “other Saints near her” to her own Church. Then she
disappeared, and Paschal, greatly rejoiced, went forth, and straightway
returned to the ground over which he had gone so many times in vain.
In the cemetery of St. Calixtus he now noticed a nameless tomb, which
he had never connected in his mind with that of the Saint, because of
its extreme bareness and apparent obscurity. He now realised that this
must be what he had been seeking. The slab was at once removed from
the wall, disclosing a marble-lined recess, in which a little chest of
cypress-wood, just over four feet long, reposed without a trace of age
or decay.
Very carefully it was lifted down and placed at Paschal’s feet.
The opening of it presented some difficulty, but when the cover was
removed, a strong fragrance of roses and lilies came welling up from
the interior. Then the Pope and his assistants beheld Cecilia, lying
like a child asleep, her head turned down, her hands folded, her robe,
tinged with blood, outlining the modest grace of her young body. That
was whole and sweet as on the day when Urban laid it away hundreds of
years before; no decay or corruption had been suffered to approach it.
All was as on the day of her death, from the great wounds in her neck
to the gold embroidery on her dress, and at her feet were the rolls of
linen steeped in her blood.
They brought her, with great and reverent rejoicing, back to her own
house, now the Lord’s; they brought, too, the bodies of her beloved
husband and his brother, and that of Maximus, the brave officer who
had been charged with their execution, but who chose to follow them to
glory. For greater honour Paschal brought there the body of St. Urban
and placed it with that of Cecilia and her comrade martyrs under the
High Altar.
For Cecilia he prepared a white marble sarcophagus, and in this the
little cypress-wood coffin[18] was placed. Paschal would not have her
body touched, and left her as she had lain ever since that sad and
glorious May morning six hundred years before; but he lined the sides
of the coffin with a rich damask silk with fringed edges, and spread
over her a great veil of silk also, but diaphanously thin, and this
too was delicately fringed. All these details so carefully set down
at the time were destined to be of great value, not only as aids to
identification in after years, but as testimonies to the immeasurable
reverence with which the Church regarded the bodies of the martyrs in
the early ages.
After gazing for the last time at her pure loveliness, Paschal closed
the sarcophagus with a marble slab, and then, with no less love and
reverence, placed the bodies of her three heroes—Valerianus, Tiburtius,
and Maximus—in another sarcophagus, “all together, but each wrapped
in a separate winding sheet.” For St. Urban a third marble coffin was
made, but—a little touch of human nature that brings a smile and a
tear—Paschal feared he “might be lonely” in it, and brought the body of
one of his martyred successors, Lucius, to lie beside him, though he is
careful to tell us that they too had each “a separate winding sheet!”
The three sarcophagi were placed below the High Altar in the Church
now called St. Cecilia in Trastevere; a marble tablet, inscribed with a
cross, the martyrs’ names, and the account of their sepulture in this
spot, was duly placed near them, and then a strong circular wall was
built all around and closed up, so that none could enter the tomb. But
just above it, in the pavement of the Church, a small grating opened on
a long funnel-like aperture through which, according to ancient custom,
the Faithful could lower strips of linen to rest for a moment on the
marble coffins, and then be withdrawn and carried away as precious
souvenirs of the holy ones lying therein.
The Church is one of the most interesting in Rome to the Catholic
Pilgrim; as a well-known Protestant writer[19] says: “The traveller
who tries to overlook Catholicity in his sightseeing in Rome, misses
all that is most interesting to see.” Paschal lavished splendid gifts
on the Church he so dearly loved. The chroniclers have left us minute
descriptions of the gold and the silver, the marvellously embroidered
vestments and hangings that he provided for it, and his successors
adorned it with lovely paintings and mosaics as time went on, but the
best offering of all was Paschal’s own. That Cecilia’s last wish might
be carried out and “the praises of the Lord sound there forever,” he
built and endowed a monastery close by and established there a choir of
monks, who sang those praises night and day from that time forth.
Then he passed away, to be greeted in Heaven by those whom he had so
loved to honour upon earth. There had been many martyrs—so many that
only the Angels could count them—but none greater, more glorious, more
dear to God and beloved of men, than Cecilia.
The devotion to her spread rapidly over Europe; Britain, France,
and Germany emulated Italy in honours paid to her, and many churches
boasted, in perfect good faith, that they possessed some of her relics.
We know, not only from Paschal’s account, but from the eye-testimony
of witnesses quite near to our own times, that only one tiny fragment
of her blessed human frame—and that by accident—was ever parted
from the rest; but we know, too, that the Church counts three other
Cecilias, two of them Roman, among the known martyrs. Their relics were
borne away for veneration, and time caused their origin to be so far
forgotten that they were for centuries regarded as belonging to the
Roman heroine of the Third Century.
Pope Paschal died in 824. The monastery which he had founded passed
away from the Benedictines, was made into a Collegiate Church, was
restored to the Benedictines—and had to be abandoned during the
stirring years of the first part of the Sixteenth Century, because
the zealous sons of St. Benedict had so many institutions to attend
to that their numbers no longer sufficed for the work to be done. The
Church of St. Cecilia, in 1532, had fallen into such decay that it
was barely possible to celebrate her feast there any longer, and this
in spite of the fact that it was still considered the most honourable
“Titular Church” in Rome.[20] On the 19th of December, 1590, Gregory
XIV, who had been made Pope on the fifth day of that month, conferred
the cardinal’s hat on the son of his brother, the young Paul Emilius
Sfondrato, with the “Titular” of St. Cecilia, which the Pontiff had
himself held before his election to the Papacy. The Sfondrati were a
Milanese family, but Paul had already spent much time in Rome under
the spiritual tutorship of St. Philip Nerim, and he joyfully hastened
thither in response to his uncle’s summons. The young Cardinal was
already famous for his wisdom and learning, but still more so for his
goodness and his tender charity to the poor. His two leading motives
in life were the honouring of God and the Saints, and the relief of
suffering. We read that he built and decorated church after church,
recking nothing of spending a great part of his large fortune on the
House of God and the dwellers therein, at the same time denying himself
every sort of luxury and living like a poor man in order that the poor
might not be defrauded of their share of the goods which he considered
he only held in trust for the Lord.
One of his first resolves on coming to Rome in 1591 was to rebuild the
almost ruinous Church of St. Cecilia, and, while doing so, to find her
tomb, of which the exact location had been lost in the eight hundred
years that had elapsed since Paschal closed it. Other traces of her
presence had also disappeared, and it was reserved for Sfondrato to
rediscover the bathroom where she had expired. At first a chapel had
been built over it, but with succeeding modifications this had been
pulled down and the space incorporated in the Church, and, although
there were old men then alive who remembered having prayed there
in their childhood, it was only after much study of the ancient and
actual topography that Sfondrato was led to the correct spot. There,
however, all doubts were set at rest. He found the “calidarium,” of
the small size adapted to a private dwelling, with its marble floor,
its great boiler, and the remains of the leaden and earthenware pipes
through which the steam percolated into the bathroom. When the rubbish
was cleared away it was easy to call up the touching scenes it had
witnessed in those May days fourteen hundred years earlier.
The pious Cardinal, wishing to place under the High Altar of the
restored basilica some precious relics of other saints, commanded the
workmen to take up the pavement, so that the supposed space below could
be utilised for this purpose. They found, however, that there was only
a very small recess there, and that all further excavation was arrested
by a thick rounded wall of exceedingly solid material. Sfondrato at
once realised that this must be the barrier mentioned in Paschal’s
account of the burial of St. Cecilia by himself, and directed the
masons to make some aperture in the wall, through which a glimpse might
be obtained of that which it protected. At the same time he was so
scrupulous as to the respect to be shown to the martyr that he forbade
the men to strike a blow of any kind except in his own presence.
At last, on the twentieth day of October, 1599, an opening was
effected, and Paul Sfondrato, looking through it with beating heart and
straining eyes, beheld by the light of a taper that for which he had
sought so eagerly—two large white marble sarcophagi, standing side by
side immediately below the High Altar. St. Cecilia and her companions
were undoubtedly there, just as Paschal had placed them, but the
prudent Cardinal would not open their tombs except in the presence of
eminent and reliable witnesses. Curbing his impatience, he sent for
four learned and holy men—the Bishop who was acting as Vicegerent of
the Cardinal Vicar, a Canon of St. John Lateran, and two Fathers of the
Society of Jesus. Many others came with them, but a palpitating silence
reigned in the vault while the workmen removed the marble slab from the
coffin nearest the entrance and disclosed, to eyes already misty with
tears, the little cypress casket, so touchingly small, in which Urban
had laid the dear saint on her “Natal Day.”
With extreme precaution this was lifted out, but the perfumed wood
proved to be perfectly solid, as if put together the day before,
only the cover showing some slight marks of the flight of time. At
first this cover baffled all efforts to remove it; it held tightly,
but with no visible fastening. Finally Sfondrato himself found out
the secret—it had been contrived to slip along two perfectly fitted
lateral grooves—and with his own hands drew it off and looked at last
on the body of St. Cecilia, perfect, untouched, lovely, and at rest
like that of a sleeping child. Every detail of Paschal’s description
was verified. The gold embroidery of her dress showed a little dulled
through the airy veil he had thrown over her, and his fringed damask
lining was slightly faded; otherwise no change had been suffered to
approach her whom the Lord so loved. From the last few moments before
her death no one had ever looked on her face, so pathetically turned to
the ground, and none could see now more than the soft outline of the
rounded cheek and the indication of the temple. Her little hands lay
together, and now for the first time it was noticed that her very last
movement must have been a confession of faith, for of one hand three
fingers were distended, of the other, one—to symbolise the Trinity in
Unity. And the last crowning sweetness was not wanting. As soon as the
small coffin was opened a heavenly fragrance as of freshly gathered
lilies and roses welled out from it and filled all the place.
With joy too great and tender to find words, Sfondrato and his
companions carried the precious casket up to the light of day, and
deposited it for safety in the small chapel with grated windows where
the nuns of the contiguous convent were accustomd to assist at Mass.
Raised on a daïs hung with rich silk, surrounded with lighted tapers
that shed a soft glow all around, half smothered in flowers, Cecilia
lay there while all Rome, beside itself with joy, came to gaze upon
her and entreat her prayers. No perfumes were permitted to be used,
since the heavenly fragrance of roses and lilies still emanated from
the coffin. The nuns knelt round her for a guard of honour, and soon
the great Pope Clement VIII, who had barely recovered from a severe
illness, travelled in from Frascati to pray beside her.
The times were very evil just then for him and for the Church;
Calvinism was devastating France and threatening to give her a
sovereign dyed in its abominable impieties; England, Holland,
Scandinavia, and a great part both of Germany and Switzerland were
altogether lost to the faith and had become the bitterest enemies of
the Church, and impious hands were scattering the bones of the saints
on the public highways. Only two months had elapsed since the ghastly
tragedy of the Cenci had thrown a pall of gloom over Rome itself; but
everything was forgotten in the joy of having the beloved Cecilia’s
remains restored to the veneration of her people. Clement himself, the
“hard, stern” old man, was completely overcome when he beheld her;
his tears choked his speech. The Romans of every class thronged to
the place in such numbers that Sfondrato himself was almost crushed to
death in the crowd and the Pontifical Swiss Guards had to be stationed
there to keep order. Such was still the enthusiastic love with which
our forbears regarded all that was dear to God!
Clement, with rare restraint, forbade that even the veil which covered
the virgin’s body should be lifted, but he permitted Sfondrato to
remove the linen cloths rolled up at her feet, to be distributed to
such as were worthy to possess these sacred souvenirs. The Cardinal
gave away all but one piece, a little rag that he had reserved for
himself; another Cardinal, a great historian, was present at the
scenes I have described and tells us that Sfondrato was rewarded for
all his love and charity by finding, adhering to this fragment, a
tiny particle of bone, which must have detached itself under the hand
which was tenderly attempting to staunch one of the wounds inflicted
by the Lictor’s axe. This is the only relic of the saint which was
ever separated from her body, and no greater treasure could she have
bestowed on her faithful servant. He bequeathed it to her Church, where
his own body finally found a resting-place, like that of Clement, at
her feet. He also cut off a tiny piece of her dress, and, as he did so,
felt beneath it the knots of the hair shirt which she continually wore
to mortify her innocent flesh.
The bodies of Valerianus, Tiburtius, and Maximus were found in the
second sarcophagus, everything about them testifying to the truth of
the records of their martyrdom. The two brothers were exactly alike,
as tradition recorded, in form and size, while Maximus was a much
larger, heavier man. The manner of his martyrdom was also attested,
the leaden plummets of the whips having fractured his skull in several
places, so that the thick brown hair, which was perfectly preserved,
was all matted with blood and particles of bone. Urban and Lucius were
found buried directly below Cecilia’s resting-place. To this her body
was returned a month later, when on her feast, the 22d of November,
the Pope, with all the Cardinals and a great concourse of bishops and
prelates, came to celebrate the Holy Mysteries and, for the third
time since her death, consign the dear maid’s body to the keeping
of earth. Clement enclosed the little cypress-wood coffin in one of
silver, superbly ornamented with gold—enclosed this in a newer and
larger marble sarcophagus (the old one being too small for the double
treasure), inscribed on a silver tablet the record of all that had
taken place, sealed the whole with his Pontifical seal, and had the
vault built over once more, not to be opened again, God willing, till
the Last Day.[21]
Before closing the saint’s coffin, Clement sent for the eminent
sculptor, Maderno, and commissioned him to model a statue as like as
possible to the fair body that lay there, but forbade him to remove the
veil. Maderno hastened to obey, and the statue now in the Church and
known by thousands of reproductions all through the artistic world, is
an exact portrait of Cecilia, with every detail of pose and garments,
as then shown, faithfully represented. Baronius and Bosio, to whom he
related them, have minutely chronicled all the circumstances connected
with the second finding of her body.