Who was St Cecilia?
Biography
 St. Cecilia, Virgin and Martyr, was killed
in Rome in A.D. 230. The Church of St. Cecilia in Trastevere
is reputedly built on the site of the e house
in which she lived. The original church was constructed in the
fourth century; her remains were placed there in the ninth century
and the church was rebuilt in 1599. Her tomb is under the high
altar. The sculptor
Stefano
Maderno examined her perfectly preserved remains and said,
"I have in this marble expressed for thee the same saint
in the very same posture and body."
By far the best account of her life in
English is to be found in
The
Second Nun's Tale of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. It is a
dramatic story. The young Roman maid was brought up from the
cradle in the faith of Christ and His Gospel. She prayed for
her virginity. On the night of her wedding to Valerian she confessed
that she had a guardian angel who would slay Valerian if he touched
her either in love or lust. The naturally somewhat suspicious
bridegroom demanded to see the angel. Cecilia told him that he
must first be baptised by an old man named Urban, later to become
Pope Urban
1. Valerian's brother, Tiburce, was also baptised. Valerian
was then visited by the angel. Subsequently the brothers were
arrested and questioned by the prefect, Almachius. When they
refused to bow to Jove they were beheaded.
Cecilia refused to abjure her Christianity
and was ordered to be burnt to ashes in a bath of flame. She
sat in the bath for a day and a night without even sweating.
Finally an executioner delivered three strokes to her neck. Her
wounds were bound up and she continued to preach and pray for
three more days. Urban took her body and buried it at night.
Did
St. Cecilia invent the organ?
Contrary to general belief, Cecilia did
not invent the organ; there were certainly small hydraulic organs
in existence in Egypt some two and a half centuries before the
birth of Christ. The mistake seems to have arisen from a misinterpretation
of a sentence in her Acts: "Cantantibus organis in corde
suo soli Domino decantabat."
While musical instruments were playing
she was singing in her heart to God alone. The Latin "organum"
also refers to the organ of speech and singing.
Keeping
the memory of Saint Cecilia alive
St Cecilia's memory has been kept alive by poets,
writers, painters and musicians. The first record of a music
festival in her honour was held at Evreux in Normandy in 1570.
When the Academy of Music was founded in Rome in 1584, Cecilia
was adopted as the patron of Church Music and the 22nd of November
was chosen as the date for her Patronal Festival.
Many British composers such as Purcell,
Handel, Blow, Clarke, Boyce, Greene, Wesley, Parry, Howells and
Britten, have honoured her memory since the late seventeenth
century.
Dryden's Song
for St. Cecilia's Day, 1687
But oh! what art can teach
What human voice can reach
The sacred organ's praise?
Notes inspiring holy love,
Notes that wing their Heav'nly ways
To mend the choirs above.
Orpheus could lead the savage
race;
And trees unrooted left their place;
Sequacious of the lyre.
But bright
Cecilia raised the wonder higher:
When to her Organ vocal breath was given
An Angel heard and straight appear 'd
Mistaking Earth for Heaven.
As from the pow'r of sacred lays
The spheres began to move,
And sung the great Creator's praise
To all the bless'd above;
So when the last and dreadful hour
This crumbling pageant shall devour,
The trumpet shall be heard on high,
The dead shall live, the living die,
And music shall untune the sky
Click here to read Graham Hawkes authoriative
account of the history of St Cecilia..
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