St. Cecilia, (also spelled as Cecily), is one of the most famous Roman martyrs of the early church and historically one of the most discussed. She did not need documented miracles for her to be canonised for two reasons; she was canonised long before the current process was in use (there is evidence of the Church considering her a saint from the 4th century, when the church dedicated to her name was founded in Rome) and because she was martyred.
According to a late 5th-century legend, she was a noble Roman who, as a child, had vowed her virginity belonged to God. When she was married against her will to the future saint Valerian, then a pagan, she told him an angel of God wished her to remain a virgin. He promised to respect this wish if he were allowed to see the angel. She replied that he would if he were baptised, and on his return from baptism he found Cecilia talking to the angel. Cecilia then converted his brother Tiburtius, who also saw the angel.
The martyrdom of Cecilia is said to have followed that of her husband Valerian and his brother at the hands of the prefect Turcius Almachius. Cecilia distributed her possessions to the poor, which enraged the prefect Almachius, who ordered her to be burned. When the flames did not harm her, legend says that after being struck three times on the neck with a sword, she lived for three days, and asked the pope to convert her home into a church. Cecilia was buried in the catacomb of St. Callistus, near Rome.
At the beginning of the 9th century, Pope Paschal I discovered her incorrupt relics in the catacomb of St. Praetextatus and had them moved to Rome, to a basilica in Trastevere that now bears her name. According to reports from the two occasions her body was moved (the 9th and 16th centuries), she looked like she was simply sleeping; her body was entirely incorrupt after 1500 years.
Cecilia became the patron saint of musicians and music; in art she is often represented playing the organ.
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| St. Cecilia, patron saint of music |
Benjamin Britten
Hymn to St Cecilia, Op. 27 is a choral piece by Benjamin Britten (1913–1976), a setting of a poem by W. H. Auden written between 1940 and 1942.
Born on St. Cecilia's day, Britten wanted to write a piece dedicated to St Cecilia for a long time. In addition to her patronage of music and musicians, there is a long tradition in England of writing odes and songs to St Cecilia. The most famous of these are by John Dryden ("A song for St. Cecilia's Day" 1687) and musical works by Henry Purcell, Hubert Parry, E. Florence Whitlock, and George Frideric Handel. Another briefer work by Herbert Howells has the similar title A Hymn for St Cecilia, but was written later in 1960. (Wikipedia)
The first known reference to Britten's desire to write such a work is from 1935 was when Britten wrote in his diary "I’m having great difficulty in finding Latin words for a proposed Hymn to St Cecilia. Spend morning hunting." The Hymn was actually composed in America, for performance in New York in 1941. However in the midst of World War II Britten and his partner Peter Pears decided to return home to England in 1942 and the composition was confiscated by customs, and rewritten on board the ship MS Axel Johnson, along with "A Ceremony of Carols".
