Description
St Agatha Frame
St Agatha Frame (c. 231 – 251 AD) a Christian saint. Her feast is on 5 February. Agatha born in Catania, part of the Roman Province of Sicily, and martyred c. 251. One of several virgin martyrs who are commemorated by name in the Canon of the Mass.
Agatha the patron saint of Catania, Molise, Malta, San Marino, Gallipoli in Apulia, and Zamarramala. A municipality of the Province of Segovia in Spain. She also the patron saint of breast cancer patients, martyrs, wet nurses, bell-founders, and bakers. And is invoked against fire, earthquakes, and eruptions of Mount Etna.
Buried at the Badia di Sant’Agata, Catania. Listed in the late 6th-century Martyrologium Hieronymianum associated with Jerome, and the Synaxarion, the calendar of the church of Carthage, c. 530. Agatha also appears in one of the carmina of Venantius Fortunatus.
Two early churches dedicated to her in Rome; Sant’Agata in via della Lugaretta, Trastevere, and notably the Church of Sant’Agata dei Goti in Via Mazzarino, a titular church with apse mosaics of c. 460 and traces of a fresco cycle, overpainted by Gismondo Cerrini in 1630. In the 6th century AD, the church adapted to Arianism, hence its name “Saint Agatha of Goths”, and later reconsecrated by Gregory the Great, who confirmed her traditional sainthood.
Agatha is also depicted in the mosaics of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna, where she appears, richly dressed, in the procession of female martyrs along the north wall. Her image forms an initial ‘I’ in the Sacramentary of Gellone, which dates from the end of the 8th century.
