At 03:16 PM 11/22/97 GMT, Michele Bacci wrote:
>Just one question; which are the relations of Cecilia with music and
>musicians, or which is the cause for his becoming their patron saint?
>
>Michele Bacci
>Scuola Normale Superiore
>Pisa (Italy)
>
The traditional, easy answer to this question is that there's a line in her
legend and feastday liturgy that mentions music ["cantantibus organis, illa
in corde suo soli Domino decantabat . . ."]. Although the meaning seems in
fact to be that she ignored the literal instruments that were playing [at
her unwilling marriage] in favor of her inner song to God, the standard
interpretation until recently was that the reference to "organis" was taken
out of context and eventually gave rise to the iconographic image of Cecilia
as an organist.
A more recent and much more interesting answer, which connects Cecilia's
inner song and the angels in her legend [among other things] with the
Biblical motif of singing to the Lord a new song, is offered by Thomas
Connolly, in *Mourning into Joy: Music, Raphael, and Saint Cecilia* (Yale
Univ. Press, 1994).
Sherry Reames (English Dept., U. Wisconsin)
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