ON ST. AGNES THE MARTYR.
From the Menology collected by order of the Emperor Basil.
CommentaryAgnes, Martyr, among the Greeks (S.)
J. P.
The annual memory of St. Agnes is set down in various Fasti of the Greeks very meagerly, no note being added of her fatherland, of the arena of martyrdom, of the time of her life and death, or of the Governor under whom she won her sacred triumphs. The cult of St. Agnes, The Menaea of the Ambrosian library and the Menaeum of Chifflet refer her on this day. Maximus, bishop of Cythera, announces her with an elogium, which agrees with that which the printed Greek Menaea weave together. In the Slavo-Russian Menology of Sparwenfeld the memory of St. Agne, Martyr, is marked; and she is said to have suffered in the year 304. The printed Menaea adapt two little verses to our Martyr.
Ἄγνην λάγνοι ῥίψαντες εἰς οἶκον σκότους, Πάμφωτον αὐτῇ προυξένησαν οἰκίαν.
When the lustful drag Agnes to a house of darkness, they procure for her chaste dwellings gleaming with light.
[2] I subjoin the elogium from the Basilian Synaxary: The Martyr Agnes, and the elogium. bearing before her manners suited to her name, led many unchaste women, both by instruction and by exhortation, to desist from their foul commerce, and to believe in Christ. For which cause, being seized by the Governor of the province, she was tortured in dire ways. And when she could not be induced to sacrifice to the idols, she was sent to a brothel, to be defiled by the shameless. But, trusting in Christ, who preserved both her faith and her chastity, she came out untouched and pure; being kept by an Angel of God, who forbade anyone to approach her. One of them, daring to come nearer, was straightway struck down. Which when the Governor learned, he asked her, being summoned, to recall the dead man to life. And, the Saint praying, at once he who had been dead revived. Then the Governor, thinking him raised up by magic arts, condemned her to the flames. Lahier, in the things which he writes in his Menology concerning St. Agnes, borrowed from the Greek Menaea, has nothing singular to detain us here longer.