St Agatha and St Lucy: saints of purity

By Peter Newman   |   5 February 2025

“So ended this young girl, of whom we know two things for certain: she lived pure and died a martyr. Without a doubt, she delighted her contemporaries by the passionate impulse of her sacrifice — a generous protestation for Christ and the Church, a word full of energy and of grace, a cry, a gesture — revealing an exquisite soul.”¹

In Christendom, the true sense of “legends” — in the strict sense of the lives of the saints — was well understood. The word itself comes from legenda, literally delineating things which “ought to be read”, but has been corrupted by modern (mis)usage to insinuate that the same things ought not to be believed. To vindicate the members of the Church Triumphant whose earthly careers certain critical historians will not countenance, we can call other saints to witness, the details of whose lives are verified to the highest possible degree. Take Saint Catherine of Alexandria and Saint Margaret of Antioch: two virgin martyrs about whom virtually nothing is known outside their legends, but whose reign in Heaven is attested to by the richly documented career of Saint Joan of Arc, which defies all natural explanation and owes everything to seven years’ formation in the pastures around Domrémy, by the “voices” and “counsels” of St Catherine, St Margaret and St Michael the Archangel which perfectly reproduced in Joan the Maid the model of a virgin martyr and military leader. Dom Guéranger interrogates the aspiring historian about these phenomena:

“Will you seek to explain them naturally? This would be a waste of time; there is nothing naturally less explicable than the mission and actions of the Maid of Orleans! … Rather go all the way and frankly confess that history contains miracles and that the mission of Joan of Arc is one of them. Plainly admit that the shepherd girl of Domrémy truly saw saints and heard voices, that God clothed her with His invincible strength, that He put in her the spirit of prophecy, that He Himself made her victorious on the ramparts of Orleans, that He assisted her with the superhuman virtue of the martyrs in the sublime sacrifice which was to end this miraculous career.”²

Such is the testimony of Saint Joan of Arc, recorded in the minutest detail in her many trials and campaigns. Take also the virgin martyrs of Sicily, Saint Agatha and Saint Lucy, saints of purity whose legendary examples (if not their “voices” and “counsels”) manifest the virtues that are most needed today.

When Saint Agatha, then suffering the amorous attentions of the consul Quintianus, heard the proclamation of the emperor Decius against the Christians, she weighed the threat to her life against the threat to her soul. She fled, but her retreat was only a preparation for the martyrdom by which she would show herself a true Spouse of Jesus Christ. Saint Alphonsus Liguori writes:

“When the saint appeared before Quintianus, in order the more easily to overcome her modesty, he gave her up to Aphrodisia, an abominable woman, who together with her daughters, publicly professed immodesty. In her infamous house the saint suffered greater torture than the darkest and most fetid dungeon could afford. All the arts of Aphrodisia and her partners in crime were unceasingly applied, in order to induce the saint to comply with the wishes of Quintianus; but Agatha, who from her infancy had been consecrated to Jesus Christ, was enabled by this divine grace to overcome all their attempts.”³

In her subsequent interrogation by Quintianus, Agatha “in order to give the governor to understand how infamous were the deities which he adored and desired her to worship … asked whether he would wish that his wife should be a prostitute, like Venus, or that he himself should be considered an incestuous adulterer like Jupiter.” In his malice, “he commanded her breasts to be lacerated, and afterwards cut off, which was executed with barbarous cruelty,”⁴ during which, the saint reproached him, saying: “Cruel tyrant, do you not blush to torture this part of my body — you that sucked the breasts of a woman yourself?”⁵

“Quintianus then remanded the saint to prison, commanding that her wounds should be left undressed, in order that she might expire under the torture. But at midnight Saint Peter appeared to her in a vision, and perfectly cured her wounds and freed her from all pain …”⁶

These events are remembered devoutly in the antiphons of her feast (5 February):

“Because of my chastity * they ordered me to be stretched upon the rack; help me, O Lord my God, for they are torturing my breasts.”⁷

“I have used no earthly medicine * for my body, but I have for a Master Christ Jesus, by Whose Word alone all things were made.”⁸

Thus was Saint Agatha preserved and her passion prolonged, but only as long as would serve the purposes of God’s glory and her own perfection. 

“And while the tyrant was planning fresh torments, the saint — perceiving that her life was drawing to a close — made the following prayer: ‘O Lord, my Creator, Who hast preserved me from my infancy, hast given me strength to overcome these torments and hast taken from me the love of the world, receive now my soul. It is time that I should at last pass from this miserable life to the fruition of Thy glory.’ Just as she had finished these words, she tranquilly expired and went to be united to God, to praise Him and love Him forever.”⁹

Such was the impression made by Saint Agatha’s witness that, half a century later, a young girl named Lucy came to Catania with her sick mother Eutychia, to pray at the tomb Saint Agatha. Lucy, solicitous for her mother’s cure, was also desirous to be spared the prospect of marriage (which was not lacking), having secretly consecrated her virginity to Jesus Christ. Saint Alphonsus relates that:

“When they arrived at Catania, they prostrated themselves in prayer before the sepulchre of Saint Agatha, where Lucy perhaps from fatigue of the journey, was overpowered with sleep. The blessed martyr appeared to her and, as we read in the Roman Breviary, said …”¹⁰

We quote the antiphons of St Lucy’s feast (13 December):

“Lucy, my sister, * thou virgin consecrated to God, wherefore askest thou of me what thou canst thyself forthwith obtain for thy mother?”¹¹

“Through thee, O virgin Lucy, * the city of Syracuse shall be made glorious by the Lord Jesus Christ.”¹²

Saint Agatha thus foretold the healing of Eutychia and Saint Lucy’s own martyrdom in Syracuse, which was to mirror her own in Catania. In thanksgiving for her miraculous cure, her mother consented to distribute all her wealth to the poor, not excepting Lucy’s dowry; the loss of which drove an avaricious suitor to denounce Lucy as a Christian to Paschasius, the governor of Syracuse. Saint Lucy demonstrated supernatural fortitude before Paschasius and chaste fidelity to her divine Spouse, which only served to foment her accuser’s malice. 

“Paschasius ordered that she should instantly be brought to the place of infamy in order that she might first lose the honour of virginity and then be deprived of life. The guards endeavoured to execute this command, but found that God had rendered her so immovable that all their exertions were insufficient to drag her from the spot. Paschasius in astonishment exclaimed: ‘What incantation is this?’ The saint replied: ‘This is not an incantation, but the power of God. Why dost thou fatigue thyself? Dost thou not manifestly perceive that I am the temple of the Lord?’”¹³

After she was miraculously unharmed by a fire that was kindled to consume her where she stood, Paschasius, fearful of giving the people further spectacle of the power of the one true God in the maiden’s favour, after more torments, had her throat pierced with a sword.

“The saint did not expire immediately; she threw herself on her knees, offered her death to God; and having foretold that peace would soon be restored to the Church, consummated her martyrdom.”¹⁴

The peace she prophesied would be realised within the decade by the Edict of Milan, before which the Church would be furnished with many more martyrs; nor would this be the last time the blood of martyrs would extinguish the flames of terror.¹⁵ Saint Lucy’s name appears in the Canon of the Mass, alongside that of Saint Agatha, her patroness and sister in purity.

Further consternation from critical historians is aroused by the suggestion that Saint Agnes suffered much the same ordeal in Rome as Saint Agatha and Saint Lucy in Sicily (and apparently in the same year as the latter), while Saint Dorothy underwent a similar trial in Caesarea, probably in the very year of Constantine’s victory at the Milvian Bridge. Legend tells how the divine Bridegroom permitted Saint Agnes, at the age of thirteen, to be carried off to a brothel, where He was as powerful to keep her from harm as anywhere else, striking dead the first (and only) person who approached to lay hands on her and preserving her, like Lucy, from being burnt before permitting her to be put to the sword. Similarly, He permitted Saint Dorothy to be tempted by two apostate women, whose efforts she overcame so valiantly as to convert them both (making her a worthy patroness for all who suffer such temptations). While unique among these legends, the way in which He preserved Saint Lucy — first from abduction, then from burning — calls to mind the martyrdom of Saint Joan of Arc, upright and unmovable in the flames.

An acute point of realism in these legends is that the supernatural prodigies recorded in them do not dull the physical and moral torments endured by these saints of purity. After an episode of apparent invulnerability, Lucy’s torture is allowed to proceed, famously with the cutting out of her eyes; a fate that, to the modern mind, might seem far more barbaric than that from which she was preserved a moment before. This, however, is far from evident when one considers the words of our Lord, “And if thy eye scandalise thee, pluck it out …” as indeed she does in a later variation of the legend (perhaps taking this counsel too literally). Why should God not will that Lucy should approach Him as a loving spouse: with eyes only for Him? And just as the sensitivity of a child causes him to cover his eyes at the sight of anything which offends his innocence, so may we, by the grace of God, keep our gaze on the invisible and interior life: not in our imagination (which is already the exterior) but in the very sanctuary of our soul, inhabited by God through supernatural charity, where the enemy, who would first captivate our senses (internal and external) in order to take us captive, cannot penetrate unless we let him.

The virgin martyrs are God-given models for girls and young women today facing the onslaught of impurity from a culture which more and more resembles pagan Rome with iPhones, where Aphrodisia and her daughters are invited into schools. By restoring these legends to our reading lists, these saints of legend can begin to resume their place of honour and be empowered once again, by an example better than any instruction, to form saints in the present. Men too can choose no better model than these saints of purity. As Father Vallet used to tell seminarians, “Be virile! like Saint Therese of the Child Jesus …”

Notes

1. Paul Allard, quoted in Warren Carroll, The Founding of Christendom (Christendom Press, 1996) p 520. ↩︎
2. Dom Prosper Guéranger, The Christian Sense of History (Calx Mariae Publishing, 2022) pp 36–37. ↩︎
3. St Alphonsus de Liguori, Victories of the martyrs (Mount Saint Alphonsus, 1954) p 132. ↩︎
4. Ibid., p 133. ↩︎
5. Alban Butler, Lives of the fathers, martyrs and other principal saints, vol I (Virtue & Co., 1928) p 185. ↩︎
6. St Alphonsus, p 133. ↩︎
7. Propter fidem castitátis * iussa sum suspéndi in equúleo: ádiuva me, Dómine, Deus meus, in tortúra mamillárum meárum. ↩︎
8. Medicínam carnálem * córpori meo numquam exhíbui, sed hábeo Dóminum Iesum Christum, qui solo sermóne restáurat univérsa. ↩︎
9. St Alphonsus, p 134. ↩︎
10. Ibid p 154. ↩︎
11. Soror mea, Lúcia, * virgo Deo devóta, quid a me petis, quod ipsa póteris præstáre contínuo matri tuæ? ↩︎
12. Per te, Lúcia virgo, * cívitas Syracusána decorábitur a Dómino Iesu Christo. ↩︎
13. St Alphonsus, p. 154. ↩︎
14. Ibid, p. 155. ↩︎
15. The sacrifice of the Carmelites of Compiègne comes to mind. ↩︎