Saint Emerentiana was a

Roman Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a letter ...

martyr A martyr (, ''mártys'', "witness", or , ''marturia'', stem , ''martyr-'') is someone who suffers persecution and death for advocating, renouncing, or refusing to renounce or advocate, a religious belief or other cause as demanded by an externa ...

, who lived around the start of the 4th century. Her feast day is January 23.

Legend

According to the legend of

St. Agnes Agnes of Rome () is a virgin martyr, venerated as a saint in the Catholic Church, Oriental Orthodox Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church, as well as the Anglican Communion and Lutheran Churches. St. Agnes is one of several virgin martyrs comm ...

, Emerentiana was her foster-sister.Kirsch, Johann Peter. "St. Emerentiana." The Catholic Encyclopedia
Vol. 5. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1909. 4 December 2015 St. Agnes was a rich Roman heiress who was martyred after refusing her engagement due to her

Christian Christians () are people who follow or adhere to Christianity, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. The words ''Christ'' and ''Christian'' derive from the Koine Greek title ''Christós'' (Χρι ...

religion. Emerentiana's mother was the wet nurse and nanny of Saint Agnes."St. Emerentiana of Rome", Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America
/ref> A few days after Agnes' death, Emerentiana, who was a catechumen still learning about Christianity before being officially baptized, went to the tomb to pray and was suddenly attacked by the pagans,

stoned to death Stoning, or lapidation, is a method of capital punishment where a group throws stones at a person until the subject dies from blunt trauma. It has been attested as a form of punishment for grave misdeeds since ancient times. The Torah and Ta ...

by the crowd (cf.

baptism of desire In Christian theology, baptism of desire ( la, baptismus flaminis, lit=baptism of the breath), also called baptism by desire, is a doctrine according to which a person is able to attain the grace of justification through faith, perfect contritio ...

, baptism of blood).

Veneration

There was a real Roman martyr named Emerentiana, whose cultus is very ancient, as attested by the martyrologies of Jerome, Bede, and others, but not even the date of her death is known. Her

feast day The calendar of saints is the traditional Christian method of organizing a liturgical year by associating each day with one or more saints and referring to the day as the feast day or feast of said saint. The word "feast" in this context d ...

is January 23. Her cult was confined to local calendars in 1969. She is represented as a young girl who either has stones in her lap and lilies in her hand, or as being stoned to death by a mob. Her tomb is in the church of

Sant'Agnese fuori le mura The church of Saint Agnes Outside the Walls ( it, Sant'Agnese fuori le mura) is a titulus church, minor basilica in Rome, on a site sloping down from the Via Nomentana, which runs north-east out of the city, still under its ancient name. What a ...

in Rome. An altar dedicated to her with a marble relief by

Ercole Ferrata Ercole Ferrata ( 1610 – 10 July 1686) was an Italian sculptor of the Roman Baroque. Biography A native of Pellio Inferiore, near Como, Ferrata initially apprenticed with Alessandro Algardi, and became one of his prime assistants. When h ...

depicting her martyrdom is in

Sant'Agnese in Agone Sant'Agnese in Agone (also called Sant'Agnese in Piazza Navona) is a 17th-century Baroque church in Rome, Italy. It faces onto the Piazza Navona, one of the main urban spaces in the historic centre of the city and the site where the Early Christia ...

."Altar dedicated to Saint Emerentiana", Sant'Agnese in Agone
/ref> She is invoked against colic and stomach ache."S. Emerentiana, Virgin Martyr", The Brighton Oratory
/ref>

Popular culture

Emerentiana had a tiny

cameo role A cameo role, also called a cameo appearance and often shortened to just cameo (), is a brief appearance of a well-known person in a work of the performing arts. These roles are generally small, many of them non-speaking ones, and are commonly eit ...

in Cardinal

Nicholas Wiseman Nicholas Patrick Stephen Wiseman (3 August 1802 – 15 February 1865) was a Cardinal of the Catholic Church who became the first Archbishop of Westminster upon the re-establishment of the Catholic hierarchy in England and Wales in 1850. Born ...

's novel, '' Fabiola'', where she is seen mourning for Agnes right after the latter's martyrdom.

References

External links

Patron saint index
{{Authority control Year of birth unknown 304 deaths 4th-century Christian martyrs 4th-century Christian saints 4th-century Roman women Ante-Nicene Christian female saints Burials at Sant'Agnese fuori le mura Deaths by stoning