Saint of the early Christian Church, traditionally honoured as patroness of music. Until recently there seemed to be little reason for Cecilia's long association with music as its patroness. Only fleetingly is music mentioned in her Acts, the Passio Caeciliae, a largely fictitious document composed about 500 ce; and not until very much later was she awarded a musical emblem in art. The mystery surrounding her musicality matches the mystery surrounding her person. Late in the 5th century she suddenly appears, among the most venerated of Roman saints, yet any firm evidence that she existed is lacking. Delehaye, who called the case ‘the most tangled question in Roman hagiography’, suggested that the legend developed when Christians who saw the tomb of a lady called Cecilia near the popes buried in the catacomb of St Callistus concluded that only a great martyr would have been interred in so hallowed a spot. Others (e.g. Josi), with considerable justification, think it improbable that an invented saint would have been listed in the Canon of the Mass, and insist on her historicity while admitting that nothing sure is known about her.
The Passio tells of a Christian maiden vowed secretly to virginity who was constrained by her parents to marry a young pagan named Valerian. On their wedding night she succeeded in converting him, persuading him to join her in a celibate marriage. The document then describes the conversion of his brother, Tiburtius, and their subsequent good works – preaching, converting, helping the poor – as well as their trials and martyrdom. Cecilia was condemned to die in a scalding Roman bath, but being miraculously preserved she was executed by the sword. At her death she left her house to the Church (this was the building that preceded the present 9th-century basilica of S Cecilia in Trastevere), and was buried by the pope ‘among his fellow bishops’ (a reference to a crypt next to the crypt of the 3rd-century popes in the catacomb of St Callistus).
The solitary reference to music in this narrative, in the description of the wedding night, has until recently provided the only explanation for Cecilia's musical association. In her predicament, says the Passio, ‘while instruments played [cantantibus organis] Cecilia sang in her heart to God alone: “May my heart and my body be kept immaculate lest I be cast into confusion”’. Adapted for Cecilia's medieval liturgy by omitting the words ‘in her heart’, the sentence resulted in an antiphon which, if taken literally, suggested that she actually sang, even to the accompaniment of an organ. This solution to the problem, never more than merely plausible, must now be discarded following deeper research that elaborates on the profoundly contemplative character of a saint who ‘sang in her heart’ and ‘kept the gospel in her heart’ (see Connolly, 1994).
Foremost in the evidence presented is the choice of liturgical texts for the station-day at S Cecilia in Trastevere, celebrated from early Christian times on the Wednesday after the second Sunday of Lent. On this very site there once stood a little shrine of the Bona Dea, a popular but enigmatic deity whose special function in Trastevere was to cure blindness. Because she restored light, she was there called ‘restitutrix’. But an oration for the Mass of the station-day uniquely addressed God as ‘restorer’, suggesting that the Christian liturgy took note of the pagan cult. Other texts confirm this, showing a continuity of healing function and of concern with the ‘restoration of light’ between the pagan and Christian cults. The name Cecilia, it seems, stemmed not from a member of the Roman clan of the Caecilii, but from the cure of blindness (caecitas) at the shrine. Given the ancient linking of blindness and music, these facts suggest that from the very beginning there were grounds for associating Cecilia with music.
The most remarkable of the stational liturgical texts was the lesson from Esther, a book scarcely used by early Christians uneasy with its tale of oriental court intrigue. The passage selected was from the additional material in the Septuagint (Esther xiii.8–17 of the Vulgate), a prayer for deliverance from the pogrom threatened against the Jews by Haman. Whoever chose the passage understood Hebrew and made the selection with the Bona Dea in mind – Esther's Hebrew name (Hadassah), for instance, means ‘myrtle’, a plant sacred to Venus and banned from the rites of the goddess. More startling is the fact that Esther is read in the Synagogue for the feast of Purim, which commemorates the deliverance of the Jews from this Persian pogrom; and that the station-day in question coincided with the beginning of Purim (13 Adar, counting back from Good Friday as 14 Nisan). This suggests that the lesson from Esther at S Cecilia in Trastevere was a residue of a time when Purim was observed there by a Jewish–Christian community. If Cecilia was a Jewish Christian, the long silence about her in the Gentile–Christian community would be readily explained.
The lesson's concluding words are the key to understanding Cecilia's association with music: ‘Turn our mourning into joy, and do not close the mouths of those who sing thy praises’. The eventual thwarting of the pogrom and the institution of Purim fulfil Esther's prayer, and are described in the same terms, as the time when the Jews' mourning was turned into joy, to be remembered annually in feasting and rejoicing (Esther ix.22). Purim has always been celebrated with a worldly abandon, with noise, drinking and music. This must have been so in Trastevere, too, and most likely influenced the legend of Cecilia. But the significance of the theme of mourning and joy is much deeper and more extensive than mere merrymaking; it is founded on the ancient notion, inherited by the Middle Ages, that all change in the universe is summed up in the flux of the two Aristotelian passions of sadness and joy, operating in accordance with musical principles. Christians found biblical warrant for the idea in texts such as Job xxx.31 (‘My harp is turned into mourning, and my organ into the voice of those who weep’) and Lamentations v.15–16 (‘The joy of our heart is fled, our singing is turned into mourning, the crown has fallen from our head; woe unto us, for we have sinned’).
Such texts of mourning and joy were often cited in sermons and spiritual writings during the Middle Ages to describe the fluctuations of grace, sin and repentance in the human soul. In illuminated manuscripts images of discarded instruments were visual references to the texts, as in the harp that rests on the ground beside the kneeling king in the common miniature of David-in-Penitence (see David, fig.2). While such images of music abandoned – ‘joy turned to mourning’ – are one link with Cecilia, the texts these miniatures decorate are another, for they are frequently texts that occur in the liturgy of Cecilia. The David-in-Penitence with its abandoned harp, for instance, is often found decorating the introit for the first Sunday of Advent, the text of which (Psalm xxiv.1–3) is also the offertory for the Trastevere station-day. Images of Cecilia holding a portative organ, which began to appear a little later than the images of David with instrument abandoned, are a visual answer to Esther's prayer to ‘turn our mourning into joy’. Where David's sin had turned his joy into mourning and he had cast his harp to the ground, Cecilia's contemplative heart represents the reversal of this, and she has taken up the music that David had cast aside. No painting better illustrates this interpretation than Raphael's famous altarpiece of St Cecilia (c1515; see illustration), which draws on the tradition by showing instruments abandoned at her feet while she distractedly holds a portative organ upside-down and gazes heavenwards, where angel-choristers sing among the clouds.
The story of St Cecilia's musicality is a case-study in the loss of a tradition. That tradition's theological roots are stated clearly enough in the writings of Pietro da Lucca, director of Raphael's chief commissioner, and more eloquently by Jean Gerson, the famous theologian who was Pietro's chief authority, yet within a few years of Raphael's death the painting, though still much admired, began to baffle its viewers. The change in spiritual outlook that accompanied the Reformation, and the developing tendencies towards a more secular world-view, were most likely responsible. Purcell and Handel, Pope and Dryden would yet write their famous works in Cecilia's honour, musical societies would still place themselves under her patronage, artists would find her an even more appealing subject (though increasingly as a performing musician, an organist, singer, lutenist), but the significance of the ancient and medieval idea of the ‘music of the heart’, the contemplative spirit that was Cecilia's musical prerogative, had largely vanished from the human imagination.
MGG1 (F. Haberl)
H. Quentin: ‘Sainte Cécile’, Dictionnaire d’archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie, ed. F. Cabrol and H. Leclercq, ii/2 (Paris, 1924)
H. Delehaye: Etude sur le légendier romain: les saints de novembre et de décembre (Brussels, 1936), 73ff, 194ff
E. Josi: ‘Cecilia di Roma’, Bibliotheca sanctorum (Rome, 1963), 1064–81
A.P. de Mirimonde: Sainte-Cécile: métamorphoses d’un thème musical (Geneva, 1974)
T. Connolly: Mourning into Joy: Music, Raphael, and Saint Cecilia (New Haven, 1994)
T. Connolly: ‘Traces of a Jewish Christian Community at S. Cecilia in Trastevere’, PMM,
THOMAS H. CONNOLLY