Feast day: November 22

St. Cecilia

Virgin & Martyr · 2nd–3rd century

Patron of Music, musicians, singers

Roman noblewoman martyred for the faith, said to have 'sung to God in her heart' at her forced wedding — making her the patroness of music.

Cecilia is among the most venerated of the early Roman martyrs, honored in the Church since at least the fourth century and named in the Canon of the Mass, though the details of her story come down through a much-loved later account rather than contemporary record. By that tradition she was a young Christian woman of a noble Roman family, given in marriage against her wish to a pagan named Valerian.

On her wedding night, the story goes, she told her husband that an angel of God watched over her; when Valerian asked to see the angel, she sent him to be baptized, and he returned to find her crowned, with his own eyes opened to the heavenly guardian. Valerian and his brother Tiburtius were converted, devoted themselves to burying the martyrs, and were themselves put to death, with Cecilia following them soon after.

Condemned to die, she was, by the tradition, first shut in the heat of her own bath-house and, when that failed to kill her, struck by the executioner, lingering three days, during which she gave away her goods to the poor and arranged that her house become a church. The ancient basilica of Santa Cecilia still stands over the site in Rome's Trastevere.

Because the old account says that at her wedding, while the instruments played, 'she sang in her heart to God alone,' she became from the Middle Ages onward the patron of music and musicians, pictured at the organ. Cecilian societies and church-music academies the world over still keep her feast on November 22.

When her tomb was opened in 1599, her body was found incorrupt — the sculptor Maderno carved her exactly as she lay, and the statue still marks the spot.

Image: Guercino (Public domain), via Wikimedia Commons.

Source: newadvent.org/cathen/03471b.htm