Vigils Reading – St Agnes

ST AGNES

From The Oxford Dictionary of Saints

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The earliest witness to her cult is the Deposito Martyrum of 354. About

the same time a basilica was built in her honor over her grave in the Via

Nomemtana. Her name was in the Roman Canon; her feast was kept in

numerous churches of both East and West from early times. This evidence from

calendars and martyrologies make her one of the most famous and universal of

the early Roman martyrs. Writers who praised her include Ambrose, Jerome,

and Prudenius.

Her 5th-century Acts, wrongly attributed to Ambrose, made her a girl of

only thirteen who refused marriage because of her dedication to Christ. Calmly

and deliberately she preferred death to any violation of her consecrated

virginity; for this reason she has been venerated by many nations. She was

killed by the sword…piercing her throat. Legendary accretions to this simple

story were numerous, but unhistorical.

Through the remembrance of the word agnus (lamb) to Agnes, her

principal iconographic emblem is a lamb, at least from the time of the 6th

century mosaics at San Apollinare Nunco at Ravenna. On her feast are blessed

the lambs which produce the wool from which pallia for archbishops are woven

by the nuns of St Agnes’s convent in Rome. In England, as elsewhere, her cult

was ancient and widespread, with five early church dedications.

With other virgin martyrs she also appears…frequently in late medieval

stained glass, but the finest cycle of her life story is on a gold and enamel cup at

the British museum, which formerly belonged to the Duke of Berry and passed

through the Duke of Bedford to King Henry VI… Formerly the Roman calendar

contained a second feast in her honor on January 29th. This seems to have

commemorated her birthday rather than her octave.