Sunday, 28 January

St Agnes (second feast)

This was once the occasion of a second commemoration of St Agnes, separate from that of 21 January. Why it should not be today is beyond me. As Bishop Butler observed, citing the testimonies of Jerome, Austin, Ambrose, and Prudentius, "the tongues and pens of all nations are employed in the praises of this saint, who overcame both the cruelty of the tyrant and the tenderness of her age, and crowned the glory of chastity with that of martyrdom." Keats, perhaps the most Catholic of our Protestant English poets, was dimly aware of her glories. Agnes’s retort to her patrician suitor in the Golden Legend is much too long to be quoted in full, but this beautiful excerpt (in Caxton’s rendering) gives us something of the flavour: