Cecilia shared in their condemnation. The Government, however, dreading the example of the death of so prominent a personage in Roman society, determined to put her to death as privately as possible. She was doomed to die in her own palace. The furnaces which heated the baths were heated far beyond the usual extent, and Cecilia was exposed to the deadly and suffocating fumes. These failed in their effect: after being exposed in her chamber for a night and a day to these fumes, she was still living, apparently unharmed. The Prefect of the city, who was in charge of Cecilia’s execution, then gave orders to a lictor to decapitate the young Christian lady who persistently refused to abjure her religion.
There is nothing improbable in the story, which goes on to relate how the executioner, unnerved with his grim task, inflicted three mortal wounds, but Cecilia, though dying, yet breathed and preserved consciousness.
The Roman law forbade more than three strokes with the sword, and she lived on for two days and nights, during which long protracted agony she was visited by her friends, among whom was a Bishop Urbanus, not the Urbanus Bishop of Rome, as the “Acts” with some confusion tell us, but another Urbanus, probably a prelate of some smaller see.
After she had passed away, her body with all care and reverence was laid in a sepulchral chamber which subsequently became part of the great Cemetery of Callistus. The martyr was interred evidently in a vault or crypt which belonged to her illustrious family; several inscriptions belonging to Christian members of the gens Cæcilia have been found in the immediate vicinity of S. Cecilia’s grave. Less than a quarter of a century after her martyrdom, the subterranean cemetery in which the Cæcilian vault was situated became part of the general property of the Roman congregations. Callistus, afterwards Bishop of Rome, held a high office under Bishop Zephyrinus, and he was set over the cemetery, which was subsequently called after him, the Cemetery of Callistus. At the beginning of the third century—as in the Vatican Crypt, where the earliest Bishops of Rome had been deposited round the body of S. Peter, there was no more room for interments—Callistus arranged the sepulchral chamber known as the Papal Crypt to be the official burying-place of the Bishops of Rome. The chamber in which S. Cecilia was laid was close by this Papal Crypt. De Rossi graphically expresses this: “Ce n’est donc pas sainte Cecile qui fut enterrée parmi les Papes, c’est elle au contraire qui fit aux Papes du IIIme siècle les honneurs de sa demeure funèbre.” (From Allard.)
We will trace the story of the celebrated Roman saint through the ages.
The statement contained in the “Acts of S. Cecilia” of her interment in the Cemetery of S. Callistus no doubt is accurate, although the hand of a somewhat later “redactor” is manifest, for the cemetery only obtained its title of “Callistus” some thirty years after the martyrdom of the saint. S. Cecilia at once seems to have won a prominent place among the martyrs and confessors of the persecution of Marcus Aurelius. This is accounted for not only by the dramatic scenes which a generally accepted tradition tells us were the accompanying features of her passion, but also by the high rank and position of the sufferer and her generous bequest to the Roman congregations.
Towards the close of the fourth century S. Cecilia’s crypt was among the popular sanctuaries specially cared for by Pope Damasus, much of whose work is still, in spite of centuries of neglect, clearly visible. Damasus’ work here was by no means confined to decoration, but included elaborate arrangements for the visits of pilgrims to the shrine, such as a special staircase and considerable masonry work to secure the walls and approaches. Somewhat later, Pope Sixtus III, A.D. 432–40, continued and amplified the decoration and constructive improvements of his predecessor Damasus.
The decorations and paintings of this crypt, as at present visible, clearly date from the fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries. De Rossi considers that the existence of these successive decorations, and the fact that various works, constructive as well as ornamental, were evidently at different epochs executed here, tell us that this is an historic sepulchral chamber highly venerated by many generations of pilgrim visitors.
From very early times, most probably from the days of the Emperor Marcus, there has been a church traditionally constructed on the site of an ancient house, the house of the martyr Valerian, Cecilia’s husband. Recent investigations, have gone far to substantiate the ancient tradition, for beneath the existing Church of S. Cecilia portions of an important Roman house of the second century have come to light.