January 21st. St. Agnes.

A famous early martyr of Rome whose name appears in the ‘Roman Canon’ [Eucharistic Prayer I] of the Mass. She died about 350, and mention of her is first made in the martyrs’ list, the so-called Depositio Martyrum, in 354. At this date the church over her grave on the Via Nomentana, on the Eastern approaches to Rome, was built.

The story of her life was first assembled in the 5th century and was (wrongly) ascribed to St. Ambrose, one of those who, along with St. Jerome, had praised her witness. She had dedicated herself to Christ in virginity and rejected the prospect of marriage. When she was handed over to the torturers by her outraged family, she wrapped her long hair around herself and went calmly to her death (this is all recorded on the epitaph composed by St. Damasus in the 4th. century, the original of which is still in place on the stairs leading down to her church).

Because her name is similar to the Latin for ‘lamb’ [‘Agnus’], that has been her symbol. On her feast day there are blessed in her church two lambs whose wool is used to make the ‘pallia’ given to archbishops; the pallium is a white wool collar with pendants back and front, adorned with black crosses. During the Mass of St. Agnes, these innocent creatures, wrapped up snugly in baskets of flowers and made fragrant with various perfumes, bleat their way through the proceedings blissfully unaware that their hair will later adorn new archiepiscopal necks the world over.