medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Chaucer's version of Cecilia's legend, found in the Second Nun's Tale,
has Cecilia placed in a burning bath for her first ordeal. She sits in
it for a day and a night: "For al the fyr, and eek the bathes heete, /
She sat al coold, and feelede no wo. / It made hire nat a drope for to
sweete." She then receives three strokes in the neck but continues to
preach and convert, after which she asks Pope Urban to consecrate her
house as a church before she dies.
Clinton Atchley, Ph.D.
Director, Master of Liberal Arts Program
Department of English, Foreign Languages, and Philosophy
Box 7652
Henderson State University
Arkadelphia, AR 71999
Phone: 870.230.5276
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
URL: http://www.hsu.edu/atchlec
Cecilia (?) Legend tells that Cecilia was a patrician Roman, married
off against her will but able to convince her new husband that it
would be much nicer to live without sex. C.'s husband and her
brother-in-law were arrested for burying martyred Christians,
flogged, and beheaded. C. then was arrested for burying *them*. She
debated with the magistrate, was miraculously saved from her first
attempted execution by suffocation, and was then was mortally wounded
by a soldier who bungled beheading her, lingering 3 days before her
death (on September 16). C. has been a very popular saint for a very
long time, but this account of her life seems rather clearly
untrustworthy, and estimates for her death range from 177 to the 4th
century. She is the patron of music and musicians---because her
legend reports that at her wedding she didn't hear the celebrations,
but sat apart, "singing to God in her heart."
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