St. Agatha

February 5 is the feast of St. Agatha, the Sicilian virgin-martyr of the Decian persecution (c. 251). A noblewoman of Catania, she refused the advances of the Roman prefect Quintianus and was tortured — her breasts cut off, her body rolled on coals — and died in prison. The earliest testimony is the martyrology of Carthage, c. 411, and her cult is one of the oldest in the West; her name is in the Roman Canon.

The relics of Agatha are venerated in the Cathedral of St. Agatha at Catania, where her feast is the great civic festival of the city. The silver reliquary bust that holds her skull is carried in procession through the streets on February 4 and 5, and the veil that bears her name is said to have stopped the lava flow of Mount Etna in 251, 1669, and 1987 — the lava halting at the edge of the city, where the veil was held up against it. From Catania the cult spread to Palermo, where she is co-patron, and to the whole of Sicily.

Agatha is the patron of Catania, of Palermo, and of the whole of Sicily, and of bell-founders (because her breasts, cut off in martyrdom, were said to have grown back as bells). From Palermo to Rome, where the church of Sant'Agata dei Goti keeps a relic of her, the February 5 feast is one of the most ancient in the calendar. Her name is invoked in the litany of the saints, and her intercession is asked against fire, eruption, and cancer of the breast.