Cloud of Witnesses: Six Martyred Maidens

Christianity had a difficult start in life. In the religious hothouse of the middle east, where the strange new ‘way’ of Jesus was competing for attention against the sectarianism of Palestinian Judaism and the pagan gods of the Roman Empire, it struggled at first to make much headway. 

But the evangelising energy of the disciples and the tireless missionary endeavours of Paul of Tarsus ensured that within a few decades of Jesus’s death the new faith was becoming a threat to the Roman authorities with its message about the return of Jesus and the divine overthrow of earthly powers. Imperial retribution was swift as Christians were singled out for vicious persecution. Those who refused to recant their faith were tortured, beheaded, set alight like human torches and mauled by savage animals for the entertainment of the citizens of Rome. It was brutal and ugly, but the more they were persecuted, the more eagerly the early Christians proclaimed their faith.

Although the names of these early martyrs have faded in the mists of time, their experiences live on in the stories that are told about them in the Christian hagiographies of the third and fourth centuries. The fate of six of them, all young women from across the Roman Empire, are depicted in windows in the cloister and south transept of Chester Cathedral. They are St Lucia of Syracuse, St Catherine of Alexandria, St Margaret of Antioch, St Agnes of Rome, St Faith of Aquitaine and St Cecilia of Rome. With the possible exception of St Catherine, after whom a whirring firework is named, none can be said to be well known, but here they are, keeping a watchful eye on all that is happening around them.

Although these six women lived in different parts of the Roman empire and would never have met each other, their stories have much in common. Born a little before 300 CE, they all came from well-to-do families, they were probably all still in their teens when they were martyred, and they all rejected the normal expectation that they would marry whoever was chosen for them. There was an almost cultic element to their attitudes about marriage: having become Christians early in their lives, they declared themselves to be brides of Christ and consecrated their virginities to Him. Marriage to anyone else was anathema – even though, in the case of both Catherine and Margaret, it would have meant marriage to a high-ranking official of the Roman state. The fates of these six young women were sealed when they refused to accept the pardons offered to them if they worshipped the pagan gods of Rome.

The punishments meted out to them were ghastly: Agnes was dragged naked through the streets of Rome to a brothel, Faith was roasted on a brazier, Catherine was bound to a spiked wheel and rolled along, Cecilia and Margaret were decapitated, and Lucia had her eyes gouged out before having a sword thrust into her throat. All were later revered as saints, and some acquired patronages that reflected their particular fates: St Agnes, for example, is a patron saint of victims of sexual abuse and St Lucia is a patron saint of people with visual impairments.

These six martyred maidens were witnesses to the Christian faith in their own time and place, yet their stories have a strong resonance in many parts of the globe today where Christians are still persecuted for their faith. The organization Christianity Today has estimated that 5,000 Christians were killed worldwide for their faith in 2023 and almost 4,000 were abducted by terrorist groups. More than 295,000 were forcibly displaced from their homes because of their faith. In many parts of the world, moreover, Christian women and girls experience more persecution than men because of their gender, and the threats they face are more likely to be violent and complex, exacerbating other inequalities that already exist. In some societies Christian women are forced to marry Muslim men, and in others they are easy victims of sexual trafficking.

So the martyred maidens in the Chester windows remind us that the persecution of Christians – and especially Christian women – is not something that happened only in the dim and distant past. It is a present-day reality for many across the globe, inviting us as we pass by the images of Lucia, Catherine, Margaret, Agnes, Faith and Cecilia to pray for those who are still victimized for their faith.