Agnes in Agony

Happy Saint Agnes Day! Saint Agnes was a young Roman lady of 13 or 14 who suffered martyrdom in the persecutions of Diocletian in about the year 304.

She was one of the youngest of the early martyrs and one of the most moving and articulate.

Agnes) hastened to the place of torture as a bride to her wedding feast. Pain had no terror for her—although the fetters slipped from her small hands while even the pagan bystanders were moved to tears.

When the son of the Roman prefect offered to marry her, she replied: “The one to whom I am betrothed is Christ Whom the angels serve.” When the executioner, who was to behead her, hesitated, she encouraged him with the words: “Strike, without fear, for the bride does her Spouse an injury if she makes Him wait”.

(Source)

The early Church Fathers praised her to the skies, and her name is even in the Roman Canon of the Mass (Eucharistic Prayer I).

Prior to joining our current parish, I could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I’d actually heard the Roman Canon prayed. Now, we hear it virtually every Sunday. Such happy days!

On this day, I am always reminded of the two young women we met in Rome, coming out of the Church of Saint Agnes in Agony. They were taking the Angels & Demons tour of Italy, and they were quite upset that the author had taken certain liberties with the facts of people and places.

There’s a line that fiction sometimes crosses into falsehood. I think it happens when the author tries to pass off fiction as fact.

Let me try to explain. I love alternate history novels, but the instant that somebody tries to tell me that The Guns of the South contains a true account and the south really did win the Civil War, well, they’re lying.

The author of Angels & Demons on the one hand insists his novel is fiction, but on the other hand he says it with a sly wink as if we who share the secret know better. I don’t know if that crosses the line into lying or not, but it does make him a bit of a jerk.

The Church of Saint Agnes in Agony in Rome (Sant’Agnese in Agone) is, oddly, not named after the agonies of the martyr.

in agone was the ancient name of piazza Navona (“piazza in agone”), and meant instead (from Greek) “in the site of the competitions”, because piazza Navona was an ancient stadium on the Greek model (with one flat end) for footraces. (Wikipedia)

In the popular imagination, of course, it has become Agnes herself who is in agony. Truth be told, Agnes’s agonies were fleeting, and now she resides with her Lord in everlasting bliss.

Almighty and everlasting God,
who chooses those
whom the world deems powerless
to put the powerful to shame:
Grant us so to cherish the memory
of your youthful martyr Agnes,
that we may share her pure
and steadfast faith in you;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you
and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. Amen.