Monday, Feb. 02, 1931

St. Agnes' Lambs

Two chaste white lambs pomped with ribbons looked at the Pope last week, on the anniversary of St. Agnes' deathday. They had just come from blessing in the Church of St. Agnes on the Via Nomen-tana, Rome.

The legend of St. Agnes is obscure. Agreed upon are the facts that she was born a Christian in Rome. When she was about 12, a pagan Roman, Sempronius, insisted she marry his pagan son and renounce Christianity. She refused. Where upon Sempronius ordered her outraged. Miraculously she preserved her virginity. Then Sempronius ordered her burned at the stake. The fagots would not ignite. Thereupon the officer commanding her captors drew his sword and brutally sliced her head from her shoulders. This happened Jan. 21, 304, in the reign of Diocletian.

Her relatives buried Agnes in their yard. Constantine, first Christian emperor, built a church over her grave. Pope Honorius repaired that church some 1300 years ago. Agnes as Saint became the patron of young girls. The eve of her Day (Jan. 21) many girls would resort to quaint magic to discern their future husbands.*

As the two chaste lambs,/- fresh from their blessing in St. Agnes' Church, last week gazed at His Holiness, he blessed them again, patted them. Thereupon they were led away to be coddled and permitted to lie asleep in laps of legends old until Easter. Then they would be shorn and killed. Their white wool will be woven into pallia, the circular bands two inches wide with two twelve-inch pendants, which the Pope gives to patriarchs, primates, archbishops.

*Poet John Keats (1795-1821) romanticized these rural revelries in his "Eve of St. Agnes."

/-Agnus is Latin for lamb, a beast revered because St. John called Jesus the "Lamb of God.'' Agues the name (Inez is the same name) derives from Greek (h)agne, which means chaste.

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