Tomorrow is St. Agnes Eve (20th Jan). Across the country there are many wells, churches and springs dedicated to her. It is said that a visit by lovers to such a place, on the eve of her death, will mean they see their future.
John Keats in his work, ‘The Eve of St. Agnes (1820)’ wrote:
“ They told her how, upon St. Agnes Eve,
Young virgins might have visions of delight,
And soft adoring from their love receive,
Upon the honey’d middle of the night,
If ceremonies due they did aright;
As, supperless to bed they must retire,
And couch supine their beauties, lily white;
Nor look behind, nor sideways, but require
Of Heaven with upward eyes for all that they desire”.
As a family historian, these ancient traditions fascinate me. I have posted a couple of times on here, and have been invited back, so here goes!
Firstly who was St. Agnes? It is said that she lived in Rome during the late 3rd or 4th Century. Various legends describe how, between the ages of 12-13, St. Agnes refused to marry, stating that her only spouse could be Jesus Christ. This angered her Roman suitors, who revealed to the authorities that she was a Christian. She was arrested, then ordered to abandon her Christian God to worship Roman deities. But St. Agnes refused. Her punishment, was to be put in a brothel. Awed by her purity and presence, all but one of the Roman youths left her untouched; in his attempt to violate her, the sole attacker was miraculously struck blind, whereupon Agnes healed him with prayer. She continued to refuse to renounce her faith and was tortured, then later beheaded, during the persecution of the Christians by the Roman emperor Diocletian. Her execution reportedly shocked even the bloodthirsty pagan crowd, since Agnes was so young and pure.
Agnes was buried near Rome, in a catacomb, beside the Via Nomentana. The daughter of Constantine later built a basilica in her honour and in the decades after her death, Agnes's tomb became a place of pilgrimage.
Thus, her death created a new wave of sympathy for the Christians and brought many to the faith. The name “Agnes” is similar to the Latin word ‘agnus', which means “lamb”. For this reason she is often depicted in art with a lamb, probably due to the lamb's association with gentleness, purity, and submission. The name actually comes from a Greek word which means “chaste, pure, sacred”.
Tradition states that she was martyred on January 21, and so her feast day is on this particular day. On this day, two lambs are traditionally brought from the Trappist abbey of Tre Fontane in Rome to the pope to be blessed. The wool from these lambs are woven into the the pallium which the pope himself wears and which he gives to newly consecrated archbishops as a token of his jurisdiction.
In art, Saint Agnes is represented as a young girl in robes, holding a ‘martyrs’ palm branch in her hand and a lamb at her feet. She became the patron saint of chastity, girls, gardeners, engaged couples, rape victims, and virgins. She is recognised as a saint in both the Catholic and Orthodox traditions.
So, Saint Agnes became a popular figure in Christian legend and various folk customs. In England, at least from the seventeenth century to the times of our Victorian ancestors, Agnes was one of several female saints invoked by young woman, who wanted to predict or influence their love life. St. Agnes Eve was the traditional time for carrying out these divinatory practices.
“ Saint Agnes is a friend to me,
In the gift I ask of thee,
Let me this night my husband see”.
Many different love divinations have been recorded for St. Agnes Eve. Fasting was the evening was popular. Also, ‘sowing of the hemp seed’, which was thrown over the shoulder of the unmarried girl at midnight to conjure up the wraith of her future lover. Another ritual was the making of the ‘dumb cake’. The cake would be baked by the single girl. She would have to remain silent throughout the entire process that followed, hence the titular ‘Dumb’ of the cake. Once the cake was baked she would eat it – still silent - at exactly midnight. The cake finished, she would then walk backwards to her bed, but before doing so she would undo all the fastenings of her clothes. There was good reason for this. As she walked backwards, assuming the charm had been performed correctly, the apparitions of her future husband would appear, chasing her and snatching at her clothes!
‘Aristotles Last Legacy’ (1711) gives a highly elaborate set of instructions for St. Agnes Day itself (21 January), in which sprigs of rosemary and thyme need to be urinated upon, then each laid in a shoe, before the same shoes are placed at the head of the bed and an incantation to the saint is repeated.
