The Order of the Collar of Saint Agatha - Part IV
Saint Agatha of Sicily, whose death is traditionally said to have taken place in the year 251, Saint Agatha is regarded as a Christian Saint whose memorial is commemorated on the 5th of February of each year . Agatha was born in Catania, and she was allegedly a sacrificial victim on 251 as history tells us. . She is one of seven ladies, not including the Blessed Virgin Mary, who are commemorated by name in the Canon of the Catholic Church.
Agatha is buried at the Badia di Sant’Agata, in Catania. Her written legend, created to support her existing cultus, is comprised of “straightforward accounts of interrogation, torture, resistance, and triumph which constitute some of the earliest hagiographic literature” . According to legend, having dedicated her virginity to God, Agatha, rich and noble rejected the amorous advances of the low-born Roman prefect, Quintinianus, and was therefore persecuted by him for her Christian faith. She was handed over to Aphrodisia, the keeper of a brothel, and her nine daughters, but in response to their threats and entreaties to sacrifice to the idols and submit to Quintianus, she responded:
“My courage and my thought be so firmly founded upon the firm stone of Jesu Christ, that for no pain it may not be changed; your words be but wind, your promises be but rain, and your menaces be as rivers that pass, and how well that all these things hurtle at the foundement of my courage, yet for that it shall not move”.
Among the tortures which she had to endure was the cutting off of her breasts which was and still is a barbaric act of cruelty. In the meantime, an apparition of Saint Peter cured her. Saint Agatha died in prison, according to the Legenda Aurea in “the year of our Lord two hundred and fifty-three in the time of Decius, the emperor of Rome.”
Saint Agatha is often depicted iconographically carrying her excised breasts on a platter, as portrayed by Bernardino Luini’s Saint Agatha in the Galleria Borghese, Rome, in which Agatha sweetly contemplates the breasts on a standing salver held in her hand, an impressive and bone chilling ilustration by any standard. The shape of her amputated breasts, especially as depicted in artistic renderings, gave rise to her attribution as the patron saint of bell-founders and as the patron saint of bakers, whose loaves were blessed at her feast day. More recently, she has been venerated as patron saint of breast cancer patients, a simbol recognized worldwide.
Basques have a tradition of gathering on Saint Agatha’s eve (Santa Ageda bezpera in Basque) and going round the village. Homeowners can choose to hear a song about her life, accompanied by the beats of their walking sticks on the floor or a prayer for those deceased in the house. After that, the home-owner donates food to the chorus. This song has varying lyrics according to the local tradition and the Basque language. An exceptional case was that of 1937, during the Spanish Civil War, when a version appeared that in the Spanish language praised the Soviet ship Komsomol, which had sunk while carrying Soviet weapons to the Second Spanish Republic.
An annual festival to commemorate the life of Saint Agatha takes place in Catania, Sicily, from February 3 to 5. The festival culminates in a great all-night procession through the city for which hundreds of thousands of the city’s residents turn out.
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