The body of Saint Cecilia found incorrupt

The first saint whose body was found to be incorrupt was St. Cecilia, who was martyred in AD 177. Her remains were moved to a new site in 822, and in 1599 an exhumation revealed her body to be incorrupt.

Despite her vow of virginity, Cecilia was forced her to marry a pagan nobleman. Her husband, the future Saint Valerian, agreed to respect her virginity and converted to Christianity. They both died as martyrs in the 3rd century, beheaded during persecutions against Christians. In 821, Pope Saint Paschal first discovered the Virgin's body, intact, in the catacombs of Rome. He had it moved to the basilica that bears her name, on the site of her former home. On 20 October 1599, the saint's forgotten body was exhumed by Cardinal Sfondrati, titular of the Basilica of Santa Cecilia: people were once again amazed to find her body intact and in its original position.

The Death of Saint Cecilia, sculpted by Stefano Maderno, Basilica of Saint Cecilia, Rome / © CC BY 2.0 Sébastien Bertrand, Flickr

Reasons to believe:

The body of Saint Cecilia was discovered twice, several centuries apart. Exposed to the air before being reburied, it was not preserved in a watertight lead coffin, which could have explained its preservation due to a lack of oxygen: in fact Saint Cecilia's body rests in a simple cypress coffin.

Saint Cecilia's body is intact, neither mummified nor desiccated: it has remained supple, and she seems simply to be asleep. This state of preservation is inexplicable.

At present, we only know of artificial method for the preservation of a body: plastinisation (injection under pressure of a plastic liquid that penetrates the tissues and hardens), or freezing... Obviously, these processes were not applied to the body of Cecilia, who died a martyr's death in the 3rd century.

The discovery of Saint Cecilia's body has confirmed the authenticity of her martyrdom, recounted in Acts written in the 5th century, as several details of the account are perfectly consistent with what was observed inside the tomb (the fatal wound on her neck, the gold-woven dress and the cloths rolled around her feet).

Summary:

The life of Saint Cecilia

Cecilia came from a noble Roman family and was brought up in the Christian faith from the cradle. She carried the Gospel of Christ hidden over her chest at all times. She wore sackcloth next to her skin, fasted, and invoked the saints, angels, and virgins, asking them to guard her virginity. Her conversations with God and her prayers never ceased day or night. Under her father's authority, at the age of sixteen she was betrothed to a pagan youth called Valerian.

On her wedding day, before the consummation of her nuptials, she told her husband she had taken a vow of virginity and had an angel protecting her: Valerian would be punished if he violated her, or rewarded if he consented to respect her vow. Valerian asked to see the angel as proof, and Cecilia told him he would be able to see that angel if he went to Pope Urban (222-230) to be baptized. After following Cecilia's advice, he saw the angel standing beside her, bringing crowns of roses and lilies for the two of them.

When the persecutions against Christians resumed, the prefect of the city of Rome, Turcius Almachius, had the Christians' property seized. He had Valerian beheaded and ordered his wife Cecilia to appear before him and sacrifice to idols, or receive a death sentence. Almachius had Saint Cecilia brought to him and asked:

"What is your condition?
- I am a free and noble citizen.
- I'm asking you about religion. Do you not know what my power is?
- Your power is like a wineskin filled with wind; when a needle pierces it, all the stiffness that it had disappears, and all the stiffness that it seemed to have, collapses.
- Why are you talking so proudly?
- It is no pride; it is firmness.
- Leave aside your boldness and sacrifice to the gods.
- How have you become blind? The gods you speak of are merely only stones to us. Touch them instead, and learn by your sense of touch what you cannot manage to see with your sight."

Almachius then had her taken home and ordered that she be tortured by the extreme heat of a steam bath for a night and a day. He thought this would make the frail young girl yield - but Cecilia survived and did not even sweat. The next day, she still did not change her mind about remaining a Christian. When Almachius found out, he ordered her head to be cut off. A young executioner was assigned to the task and, moved and trembling, he struck her three times on the neck, but was unable to cut off her head. Because there was a law against hitting a victim four times, the executioner left Cecilia half-dead. During the three days that she survived, she gave everything she owned to the poor, and recommended all those she had converted (it is estimated that they amounted to 400 people) to Pope Urban: " I asked God," she told him, "for this three-day period in order to recommend them to your beatitude, and for you to consecrate this house of mine to make a church of it". Saint Urban then buried her body and consecrated her house, which became a church, as she had requested.

The martyrdom of Saint Cecilia called into question

Doubts about the authenticity of Saint Cecilia's martyrdom arose in the 17th century with the remarks of a Jansenist priest, Le Nain de Tillemont. In the 1970s, a period of hypercriticism, the various circumstances of her martyrdom, as well as the date and place, were called into question. Two main arguments were put forward:

According to the records of her life (Acts) she was martyred by the prefect of Rome Almachius, during the reign of the emperor Severus Alexander. The latter was rather favourable to Christians, as his mother professed that religion. It is unlikely that any Christians were martyred during his reign, let alone in Rome, where the emperor lived.
The date of writing of the Acts of Saint Cecilia seems late (fifth century), since these Acts contain allusions to the Trinitarian faith in terms that seem to post-date the Councils of Nicaea (325) and Constantinople (381).

However, these objections overlook an important argument, which sweeps them aside conclusively.

Search for the body of Saint Cecilia in 821

In the 9th century, the popes worked to recover the bodies of the martyrs buried in the catacombs and place them in churches dedicated to them. Oral tradition had it that she was buried in the cemetery of Saint Sixtus, but the search had so far been fruitless. Pope Saint Paschal, who had decided to explore the catacombs, resigned himself to believing public rumour that Cecilia's tomb had been plundered and destroyed by the pagan Lombards in the 6th century. But Saint Cecilia kept watch from heaven!

While the pontiff was presiding over a liturgical service in St Peter's Basilica, it is said that he had a luminous apparition of a young virgin of great beauty , who encouraged him to continue his research. Following this event, he set to work once again, exploring the labyrinth of galleries. At the junction of two paths, an unexplored tomb caught his eye. The simplicity of this sepulchre had preserved it from looters, who paid it no attention. Saint Pascal had a marble plaque removed, and the tomb of Saint Cecilia appeared: there she lay in her cypress coffin, her body completely intact. She was still dressed in the gold-woven robe in which Pope Urban had her buried, and the cloths that had been used to wipe her wounds were rolled together and laid at her feet.

The pope then proceeded to transfer the relics. Saint Cecilia's new resting place could only be her former palace, transformed into a basilica, where she had suffered martyrdom. The pope left the body of the saint in the cypress coffin where he had found it, in the same posture; he placed the whole in a white marble sarcophagus and placed it in an underground passage in the basilica of Saint Cecilia, with a circular wall enclosing the whole.

Second discovery of Saint Cecilia's body in 1599

The centuries passed, and only a vague memory remained of the place where her body lay, supposedly somewhere under the altar. It was Cardinal Sfondrati, titular of the Basilica of Santa Cecilia, who rediscovered the saint's body on 20 October 1599 while carrying out excavations.

After removing the marble plaque that closed the sarcophagus, the cardinal himself, in the presence of several other witnesses, removed the lid of the cypress arch and, after eight centuries of darkness and silence, Cecilia once again appeared before the eyes of the faithful in the majesty of her martyrdom, her body completely intact.It was an emotional moment. She was dressed in her gold embroidered dress, on which the stains of her blood were still visible, and at her feet lay the purple cloths of her martyrdom. Lying on her right side, her arms slumped in front of her body, she seemed to be asleep. Her neck still bore the marks of the wounds the sword had cut into it. The head, with a mysterious and touching inflection, was turned towards the back of the coffin. The body was completely intact, and the general pose, preserved in its grace and modesty by a unique miracle after so many centuries, showed Cécile breathing her last, lying on the bathroom floor.

When the body of Saint Cecilia was examined, it was plain that she was small in stature. This observation gives us a better understanding of two passages in the Acts of the Martyrs: the one in which, in order to answer Almachius' envoys, she climbed up onto a marble block near her, so that everyone could hear her; and the one in which, at the start of the interrogation, Almachius, addressing Saint Cecilia, begins by saying to her: "Who are you, maiden [puella]?"

All these details showed that we were indeed looking at the body of Saint Cecilia. Now, the description of the burial in the Acts of the Martyrdom of Saint Cecilia corresponds perfectly to the discovery made by Saint Paschal and then by Cardinal Sfondrati: in particular, the mortal wound on the neck, the gold-woven dress and the linen cloths rolled around the saint's feet. This conformity is striking proof of the authenticity of the Acts, in the sense that the fifth-century author must have used accounts written by contemporaries who witnessed the events.

Cecilia's body posture eternalised in marble

One of the greatest Roman sculptors of the early 17th century, Stefano Maderno, was commissioned by the cardinal to eternalise in marble Cecilia's posture in the tomb. This masterpiece still exists in the Basilica of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere. This twenty-four-year-old artist even wanted to reproduce the pose of the hands, which attested to the faith of the dying Cecilia. The fingers of her left hand are closed, except for the index finger. The first three fingers of her right hand are outstretched. Unity of the divine substance, trinity of the persons, such was also the meaning of the symbolic gesture that testified, after so many centuries, to the belief for which Saint Cecilia had shed her blood.

In 2015, Arnaud Dumouch, who holds a degree in religious studies, and Abbé Henri Ganty founded the Institut Docteur Angélique, which offers a complete online training programme in Catholic philosophy and theology, in line with Benedict XVI's hermeneutics of continuity

Beyond reasons to believe:

Saint Thérèse of Lisieux travelled to Rome at the age of fifteen, and was struck by the Italian custom of displaying the bodies of the saints in glass caskets. However, she was not convinced by the state of preservation of most of them "which resembled mummies". Towards the end of her life, she said: " I'd rather be reduced to powder than preserved like Saint Catherine of Bologna. I only know Saint Crispin who rose from the grave with honour."

In fact, there are other striking exceptions, such as Saint Cecilia, Saint Charbel, Saint Germaine de Pibrac... The miraculous phenomenon of intact and supple bodies is a sign of the protection the angels grant to a bodily envelope that sheltered a beautiful soul.

Going further:

Life of Saint Cecilia, Virgin and Martyr: A Biography and Her History in the Christian Church by Prosper Guéranger, Pantianos Classics (January 1, 1866)