Page 6 - StCecilia

Santa Cecilia

a general range of 175 to 250 AD. She was a patrician woman who
owned a house (domus) in Trastevere, in which she founded a
church (titulus). Archaeological evidence shows there was a sec-
ond-century house on the site and that it was used for Christian
worship by the fifth century. An early fifth-century document
mentions a titulus of Romae Transtibere, Caecili. Cecilia was bur-
ied in the Catacomb of San Callisto near the Crypt of the Popes,
while Valerian and Tibertius were buried in the Catacomb of
Pretestato.

The Martyrdom of St Cecilia

esirous that Cecilia should be executed without publicity
or tumult, Almachius commanded that she should be
D taken home, and confined in the bathroom of her palace,
called by the Romans, the Caldarium. 1 This was to be kept intense-

1 The Roman baths were divided into several halls. The first was the frigidari-
um, where cold baths were taken ; the second, tepidarium, where the water
was tepid ; and the third, called caldarium, or calidarium, or sometimes
sudatorium, was reserved for vapor baths. Reservoirs of boiling water sent
whirlwinds of vapor through this hall ; and a furnace, called laconicum, the
flames of which were circulated by means of pipes laid under the floor, and
imbedded in the thick walls, increased the temperature to a burning heat.
The vaulted ceiling was generally built of stucco, and was of hemispherical
form. It was closed by a brass shield, which was worked by means of a chain,
and served as a valve when the intensity of the heat became suffocating. A
description of the caldarium may be found in Vitruvius, lib. x. cap x. The
punishment to which Almachius condemned St Cecilia, is not without a
parallel in history. This method of inflicting death, without shedding blood,
was employed by Constantine, in the execution of the Empress Fausta.
Zosimus relates that by the Emperor's orders, the princess was enclosed in
a bath, heated to suffocation, and that she was taken out dead. We find
another example in Rome of a martyrdom inflicted under circumstances
analagous to those that attended the death of St Cecilia. It is that of the
brothers Sts. John and Paul, unde Julian the Apostate. This prince, not
wishing to publish edicts against the Christians, adopted a less dangerous
and more efficacious system of persecution. The two Christians, after pro-
fessing their faith before the Roman Prefect, Terentianus, were reconducted
to their own palace, where they were secretly beheaded by the executioners

6