'On the 22nd day of this month [November] is the martyrdom of St. Cecilia, the holy woman. She was wedded in her youth to a noble man, who was a heathen; but she was a Christian. She was clothed with a hair-cloth upon her body; and above the hair-cloth she was clothed with garments enwoven with gold. And, on the night when she was led into the bride-chamber, she said to the bridegroom that she saw an angel from heaven, who would slay him with a sudden death if ever he touched her with unclean love. Then she instructed the bridegroom, so that he received baptism, and believed in God. When he was baptised, and entered the bride-chamber, then stood the angel beside her with shining wings; and he had in his hand two crowns, that sometimes glistened like rose-blossoms and sometimes like lily-blossoms; and he gave one of the crowns to the woman, and the other to the bridegroom, and said: "Keep ye these crowns by cleanly deeds, because I have brought them to you from God's paradise."
'This woman suffered martyrdom for Christ. The prefect [lit. reeve] of the city of Rome was named Almatheus, who strove to compel her to forsake Christ; to which when she would not consent, he commanded her to be enclosed in a boiling [lit. burning] bath, in which she remained, without sweating, for a day and a night. Then the executioner approached her with a sword, and struck her thrice therewith, but was unable to strike off her head. But she commended herself to the pope, who was named Urbanus; and then, in the pope's presence, distributed all that she had, and gave it him, and said: "For three days' space I have prayed to the Lord that I might give thee this, in order that thou mightest hallow my house for a church." And thereupon she gave up her spirit to God.'
The Life of St. Cecilia occurs also in Ælfric's Lives of the Saints, as given in MS. Julius E vii, a portion of which I have edited for the Early English Text Society, though this passage is not as yet in type. I do not find that this Life differs from that in the Aurea Legenda in any particular that deserves especial mention, except that it is somewhat briefer, and omits, as might be expected, the passage in Chaucer's Tale, ll. 270-283.
The chief interest of the Life of St. Cecilia in Caxton's Golden Legende is that, as Dr. Kölbing has shewn, his translation exhibits clear traces of the influence of Chaucer. A single example will perhaps suffice. In l. 432, Chaucer has: 'Of whennes comth thyn answering so rude?' And Caxton has: 'Fro whens cometh thy rude answer?' Yet neither of the Latin texts suggests this exact expression. LA has: 'Unde tibi tanta praesumtio respondendi?' Lip.: 'Undenam est tibi haec fiducia?'
In The Military and Religious Life in the Middle Ages, by Paul Lacroix, at p. 426, is the following brief account of Saint Cecilia: 'Under the reign of Alexander Severus, many illustrious martyrs were put to death: St. Cecilia, her husband, and her brother-in-law among the number. St. Cecilia was descended from a very ancient family which dated back to the time of Tarquin the Proud; she belonged to the same house as Metella, many of whose children were raised to the honours of triumph and of the consulate in the heyday of the Roman republic. Her parents gave her in marriage to a young Roman patrician, named Valerian. But Cecilia had dedicated her virginity to God, and her husband, converted to the faith by her arguments and entreaties, respected her vow, and himself converted his brother Tiburtius. They all three relieved their persecuted brethren, and this Christian charity betrayed them. In spite of their distinguished birth, their wealth and their connexions, they were arrested, and their refusal to sacrifice to the false gods led to their being condemned to death. We find a multitude of analogous occurrences in Gaul, and also in the most distant provinces of the East.' On the preceding page of the same book is figured a copy of a piece of mosaic work of the third or fourth century, which was taken from the cemetery of St. Sixtus, and is preserved in the church of St. Cecilia, at Rome. It represents St. Cecilia and St. Valerian, with roses and lilies in bloom at their feet, and having on each side of them a palm-tree laden with fruit, a symbol of their victories and of their meritorious martyrdom. Upon one of the palm-trees is a phoenix with a 'gloria' round its head, the ancient symbol of resurrection.
The following interesting account of the church and statue of St. Cecilia is extracted from Mrs. Jameson's beautiful work upon Sacred and Legendary Art:—
'According to her wish, the house of Cecilia was consecrated as a church, the chamber in which she suffered martyrdom being regarded as a spot of peculiar sanctity. There is mention of a council held in the church of St. Cecilia by Pope Symmachus, in the year 500. Afterwards, in the troubles and invasions of the barbarians, this ancient church fell into ruin, and was rebuilt by Pope Paschal I. in the ninth century. It is related that, while engaged in this work, Paschal had a dream, in which St. Cecilia appeared to him, and revealed the spot in which she lay buried; accordingly search was made, and her body was found in the cemetery of Calixtus, wrapt in a shroud of gold tissue, and round her feet a linen cloth dipt in her blood: near her were the remains of Valerian, Tibertius, and Maximus, which, together with hers, were deposited in the same church, now St. Cecilia-in-Trastevere. The little room, containing her bath, in which she was murdered or martyred, is now a chapel. The rich frescoes with which it was decorated are in a state of utter ruin from age and damp; but the machinery for heating the bath, the pipes, the stoves, yet remain. This church, having again fallen into ruin, was again repaired, and sumptuously embellished in the taste of the sixteenth century, by Cardinal Sfondrati. On this occasion the sarcophagus containing the body of St. Cecilia was opened with great solemnity in the presence of several cardinals and dignitaries of the Church, among others Cardinal Baronius, who has given us an exact description of the appearance of the body, which had been buried by Pope Paschal in 820, when exhumed in 1599[[163]]. "She was lying," says Baronius, "within a coffin of cypress wood, enclosed in a marble sarcophagus; not in the manner of one dead and buried, that is, on her back, but on her right side, as one asleep; and in a very modest attitude; covered with a simple stuff of taffety, having her head bound with cloth, and at her feet the remains of the cloth of gold and silk which Pope Paschal had found in her tomb." Clement VIII ordered that the relics should remain untouched, inviolate; and the cypress coffin was enclosed in a silver shrine, and replaced under the altar. This re-interment took place in presence of the pope and clergy, with great pomp and solemnity, and the people crowded in from the neighbouring towns to assist at the ceremony. Stefano Maderno, who was then in the employment of the Cardinal Sfondrati as sculptor and architect, and acted as his secretary, was not, we may suppose, absent on this occasion; by the order of the Cardinal he executed the beautiful and celebrated statue of "St. Cecilia lying dead," which was intended to commemorate the attitude in which she was found. It is thus described by Sir Charles Bell:—"The body lies on its side, the limbs a little drawn up; the hands are delicate and fine,—they are not locked, but crossed at the wrists: the arms are stretched out. The drapery is beautifully modelled, and modestly covers the limbs. The head is enveloped in linen, but the general form is seen, and the artist has contrived to convey by its position, though not offensively, that it is separated from the body. A gold circlet is round the neck, to conceal the place of decollation (?). It is the statue of a lady, perfect in form, and affecting from the resemblance to reality in the drapery of white marble, and the unspotted appearance of the statue altogether. It lies as no living body could lie, and yet correctly, as the dead when left to expire,—I mean in the gravitation of the limbs."
'It must be remembered that Cecilia did not suffer decollation; that her head was not separated from the body; and the gold band is to conceal the wound in the neck; otherwise, this description of the statue agrees exactly with the description which Cardinal Baronius has given of the body of the saint when found in 1599.
'The ornaments round the shrine, of bronze and rare and precious marbles, are in the worst taste, and do not harmonize with the pathetic simplicity of the figure.
'At what period St. Cecilia came to be regarded as the patron saint of music, and accompanied by the musical attributes, I cannot decide. It is certain that in ancient devotional representations she is not so distinguished; nor in the old Italian series of subjects from her life have I found any in which she is figured as singing, or playing upon instruments[[164]].'