Our hymn begins by reminding us that S Agatha is doubly crowned: and this is not meaningless floridity. Et diadema duplex decorat (Riley: Double diadem she weareth). It is a common motif of early Christian writings that a Virgin Martyr wears a Crown of Martyrdom and a Crown of Virginity. I wish to emphasise the high significance which this pervasive Christian culture attributes to Virginity.
It is my view that pretty well every modern novel, pretty well every daily newspaper ... even the 'intellectual' journals ... which one picks up, will tell you about sex ... sex and the young; sex and the very old ... having it or not having it .... But this is not the culture of Christian antiquity, it is not the culture which our Christian sources commend to us as being characteristically Christian. If this be the universal motif of the cultures which surround us ... why should we be surprised? Why should the Church preserve her rules of Abstinence and Celibacy?
The Hymn continues with Agatha's Passio and its details (you do know why she is the Patron of Bell-ringers?) until, towards the end, a new very active protagonist appears upon the scene: Mount Aetna.
Volcanic eruption becomes, in the Latin, a rogus. The pagan population ( Ethnica turba) flee, and (Riley) 'beseech her succour'. Christians (Quos fidei titulus decorat) ought to be all the readier for this crisis. For them, may the Saint herself all the more definitively repress (premat) Venerem.
Riley renders Venerem as "the flames of lust's desire". And rightly so. In Classical poetry, Venus can mean the (anthropomorphically conceived) Goddess; or it can mean her commodity: disordered sexual passion. Or it can alternate elusively between the two (So 'Bacchus' can mean the god Dionysus ... or simply alcohol! Baccho plenus means totally sozzled). But, of course, Riley's version cannot avoid losing one part of these two meanings.
Did the ancients have much sense of Romantic Love? Readers may be able to remind me if Vergil ever gives us his account of Aeneas and Dido Living Happily Together Ever After. But I do remember Aeneid IV 689: "infixum stridit sub pectore vulnus", with J W Mackail's comment "[stridit] accurately expresses the whistling sound with which breath escapes from a pierced lung." (1936 ... did Mackail see service in the Great War? ... I suspect he must have been rather too old ...)
Beata Agatha Virgo et Martyr: Preme, preme!
2 comments:
Thank you, Father. Two thoughts occur to me. First, the double crown immediately brought St. Maximilian Kolbe to mind. Second, I just love St. Agatha's barb to her torturer: 'Cruel tyrant, art thou not ashamed to to cut a woman's breast, who wast thyself fed at the breast of thy mother?' I have written about the sad irony of the willingness, even eagerness, which so-called doctors exhibit in expediting the removal of healthy young breasts (often to the later regret of the victim) under the spell of trans madness, when again and again in the Martyrology we read of breasts cut off with the clear implication that this is a cruel torture and method of attempting to shame and insult the martyrs.
Only marginally on topic: the excellent novels of Fr Alexander Lucie-Smith are set in Catania. I recommend them for light reading
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