Vigils Reading – St Agnes

St Agnes, Virgin and Martyr From Butler’s Lives of the Saints

Rome was the scene of [St Agnes’s] triumph…She suffered perhaps not long after the beginning of the persecution of Diocletian, whose cruel edicts were published in March in the year 303. We learn from St Ambrose and St Augustine that she was only thirteen years of age at the time of her glorious death. Her riches and beauty excited the young noblemen of the first families in Rome to contend as rivals for her hand. Agnes answered them all that she had consecrated her virginity to a heavenly husband, who could not be beheld by mortal eyes. Her suitors, finding her resolution unshakable, accused her to the governor as a Christian, not doubting that threats and torments would prove more effective with one of her tender years on whom allurements could make no impression. The judge at first employed the mildest expressions and most seductive promises, to which Agnes paid no regard, repeating always that she could have no other spouse but Jesus Christ. He then made use of threats, but found her endowed with a masculine courage, and even eager to suffer torment and death. At last terrible fires were made, and iron hooks, racks and other instruments of torture displayed before her, with threats of immediate execution. The heroic child surveyed them undismayed, and made good cheer in the presence of the fierce and cruel executioners…

The governor, seeing his measures ineffectual, said he would send her to a house of prostitution, where what she prized so highly should be exposed to the insults of the brutal and licentious youth of Rome. Agnes answered that Jesus Christ was too jealous of the purity of His chosen ones to suffer it to be violated in such a manner… “You may…stain your sword with my blood, but you will never be able to profane my body, consecrated to Christ.” The governor was so incensed at this that he ordered her to be immediately led to the place of shame…Many young profligates ran thither, full of wicked desires, but were seized with such awe at the sight of the saint that they durst not approach her; one only excepted, who…was… by a flash, as it were of lightning from Heaven, struck blind, and fell trembling to the ground. His companions, terrified, took him up and carried him to Agnes, who was singing hymns of praise to Christ, her protector. The virgin by prayer restored his sight and his health.

The governor…condemned her to be beheaded. Agnes, filled with joy on hearing this sentence, “went to the place of execution more cheerfully…then others go to their wedding”. The executioner had instructions to use all means to induce her to give way, but Agnes remained constant; and having made a short prayer, bowed down her neck loaded with fetters, and offering herself fearlessly to the sword of the executioner, who with trembling hand cut off her head at one stroke.

…modern authorities incline to the view that little reliance can be placed on the details of the story. They point out that the “acts” of St Agnes, attributed unwarrantably to St Ambrose, can hardly be older than A.D. 415, and that these seem to represent an attempt to harmonize and embroider the discordant datafound in the then surviving traditions…

…however, there can be no possible doubt of the fact that St Agnes was martyred, and that she was buried beside the Via Nomentana in the cemetery afterwards called by her name. Here a basilica was erected in her honour before 354 by Constantina, daughter of Constantine and wife of Gallus; and the terms of the acrostic inscription set up in the apse are still preserved…it tells us…she was “a virgin” and “victorious”.