Saint Cecilia

Saint Cecilia
Saint Cecilia by Guido Reni, 1606
Died	117
Major shrine	Rome
Feast	November 22
Attributes	lute, organ, roses
Patronage	the blind, music, poets; Albi, France; Archdiocese of Omaha, Nebraska

Saint Cecilia is the patron saint of musicians and of the blind. Her feast day, celebrated both in the Catholic and Orthodox Church, is November 22. She is one of seven women, excluding the Blessed Virgin, commemorated by name in the Canon of the Mass. It was long supposed that she was a noble lady of Rome who, with her husband Valerian(us), his brother Tiburtius, and other friends whom she had converted, suffered martyrdom, C. 230, under the emperor Alexander Severus.

The researches of de Rossi, however (Rom. sott. ii. 147), go to confirm the statement of Fortunatus, bishop of Poitiers (d. 600), that she perished in Sicily under Marcus Aurelius between 176 and 180. A church in her honor exists in Rome from about the 5th century, and was rebuilt with much splendour by Pope Paschal I around the year 820, and again by Cardinal Sfondrati in 1599. It is situated in Trastevere, near the Ripa Grande quay, where in earlier days the Ghetto was located, and gives a title to a Cardinal Priest.

Cecilia, whose musical fame rests on a passing notice in her legend that she praised God by instrumental as well as vocal music, has inspired many a masterpiece in art, including the The Ecstasy of St. Cecilia by Raphael at Bologna, the Rubens in Berlin, the Domenichino in Paris and at San Luigi dei Francesi, and works by Artemisia Gentileschi, and in literature, where she is commemorated especially by Chaucer's Seconde Nonnes Tale, and by John Dryden's famous ode, set to music by Handel in 1736, and later by Sir Hubert Parry (1889). Other music dedicated to Cecilia includes Benjamin Britten's Hymn to St. Cecilia, A Hymn for St Cecilia by Herbert Howells, a mass by Alessandro Scarlatti, Charles Gounod's Messe Solennelle de Sainte Cécile, and Hail, bright Cecilia! by Henry Purcell. "Sankta Cecilia" is also the title of a 1984 Swedish hit song sung by Lotta Pedersen and Göran Folkestad at the Swedish Melodifestivalen 1984.

St Cecilia features on the reverse of the current £20 note in the UK, accompanied by composer Sir Edward Elgar.

Gallery

• 
  Saints Cecilia, Valerian, and Tiburtius by Botticini
• 
  Saint Cecilia and Saint Valerian
• In a clear walled city on the sea. Near gilded organ pipes - slept St. Cecily
  In a clear walled city on the sea. Near gilded organ pipes - slept St. Cecily

Trivia

• Another St Cecilia, who suffered in Africa in the persecution of Diocletian, is commemorated on February 11.

• The source of the connection between Cecilia martyred in Sicily around 176 AD and the art of which she has become the patron saint is obscure almost to the point of extinction, and does not seem to date back much before the 15th century. Innumerable paintings and stained glass windows depict her gravely installed at the organ (inevitably one several centuries more advanced than any she could possibly have known), and yet no specific events during her life have ever come light that satisfactorily explain the association. But wheresoever it arose, it soon became impregnably lodged in folklore, and by the second half of the 16th century substantial festivals and celebrations in her honor (and that of music in general) begin to be recorded, the earliest of them in Normandy. It was just over 100 years before the fashion crossed the channel [to England] with the festivities of 1683 which attracted three celebratory Odes, all set to music by Purcell.

Why Cecilia?