I don’t believe anyone thought we took the name for our daughter, Agnes, from the then-recently released Despicable Me, but it often produced conversation. Among midwesterners, she inevitably hears, “Oh, I had a grandmother” — or great-grandmother — “named Agnes.” But few realize that the name has a distinctive Christian heritage, beginning with the early martyr Agnes of Rome.
In naming our daughter after a martyr, we were seeking to shape our (and her) imagination about the ideal Christian life. Agnes of Rome’s story, brief as it is, reminds us that gladly confessing Jesus as Lord and acknowledging our identity in Christ are the most important things about us. The martyr moment brings the good things of this earth into eternal perspective. Agnes shows the power of Jesus’s promise to the church in Smyrna — “Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life” (Revelation 2:10) — and asks if we really believe it.
Pure Lamb
Early authors often remarked that Agnes’s life matched her name. Agnes conveys a double meaning related to the Greek word for “pure” (hagne) and the Latin word for “lamb” (agnus). In Christian art, she is always depicted with a lamb, which makes her easy to spot in an old church or an art museum. She exemplifies a young unmarried woman who died for her Christian faith.
As with many martyr stories, Agnes’s death likely occurred during the “Great Persecution” around AD 304. The Roman emperor Diocletian feared the rising Christian population and sought to unify the empire after a series of insurrections and rebellions. He closed churches, arrested church leaders, and tested the loyalty of prominent Romans by making them offer a sacrifice to the gods or else face deadly consequences.
Among those brought to trial in Rome during the persecution was a twelve-year-old girl (or possibly thirteen) named Agnes. She came from a Christian family and was probably denounced because she refused to marry the son of a Roman official.
‘New Kind of Martyrdom’
We know Agnes from two texts in the late fourth century. The first is an inscription, which still exists, in a church honoring Agnes in Rome. Damasus, bishop of Rome (AD 366–384), comments on her courage amid the degrading humiliation of being exposed before the crowd: “Though of so little strength she checked her extreme fear, and covered her naked members with her abundant hair lest mortal eye might see the temple of the Lord.” Damasus emphasizes both her vulnerability and her steadfast conviction, indeed willingness, to die for Jesus.
The second witness is Ambrose (c. AD 339–397), bishop of Milan and mentor to Augustine. He delivered an address on January 21, 377, which he notes is Agnes’s “birthday” (her martyrdom day). If she died in AD 304, Ambrose was retelling the story 73 years after the fact, approximately our distance from the Second World War. He could have known people who had witnessed the event, so his story has substantial credibility.
According to Ambrose, after refusing an offer of marriage, Agnes said, “He who chose me first for Himself shall receive me. Why are you delaying, executioner? Let this body perish” (“Concerning Virgins,” 1.2.9). Ambrose praises her in the high classical style of preaching in that day: “She was fearless under the cruel hands of the executioners, she was unmoved by the heavy weight of the creaking chains, offering her whole body to the sword of the raging soldier, as yet ignorant of death, but ready for it” (1.2.7).
He marvels that one so young would die:
A new kind of martyrdom! Not yet of fit age for punishment but already ripe for victory . . . she filled the office of teaching valor while having the disadvantage of youth. . . . All wept, she alone was without a tear. (1.2.8)
In devotion beyond her age, in virtue above nature, she seems to me to have borne not so much a human name, as a token of martyrdom, whereby she showed what she was to be. (1.2.5)
That is, the double meaning of her name showed her to be a lamblike sacrifice and a pure virgin. She understood herself to be espoused to Jesus and so denied the claim of a human suitor.
Hagiography
One challenge in appropriating Agnes for today is that medieval Roman Catholic writers added substantial details to her story. For instance, The Golden Legend by Jacobus de Voragine (1275) records that the Roman prefect sent her to a brothel to be abused since she refused to recant and be married. God protected her so that when the prefect’s son approached her, he was struck dead. But Agnes prayed for the young man, and he immediately recovered. When she was sentenced to death in the fire, the flames parted so that she was unhurt. After failing to kill her in this way, the officials executed her with a sword.
This is hagiography, an expanded account of martyrdom that combines a historical core with additional (often invented) details to highlight the martyr’s heroism. We can see where the medieval authors creatively embellished Agnes’s story. While the motive may be commendable, we need to be content with the simpler accounts by Ambrose and Damasus, even if the details are not so vivid.
But what about the emphasis in all these sources on virginity? Agnes’s commitment to Christ was tested because of the advances of a non-Christian man seeking a wife. We do not know whether she refused marriage in principle or only refused to be married to an unbeliever. Either way, while we today may be hesitant to affirm the principled denial of marriage, it is important to see that the early church rejoiced in the newfound freedom of a sacred singleness exemplified by Jesus and Paul. To early church authors such as Ambrose, the refusal of marriage in this world pointed strongly to one’s belonging to Jesus Christ.
Regardless of Agnes’s exact motivation, we can agree with Ambrose that she refused the earthly good of marriage and accepted death (the end of all possibilities for good things on this earth) because she belonged to Jesus Christ. Despite the legendary facets added to this story, the main event continues to draw our attention: a twelve-year-old girl stood before a Roman official and confessed her faith in Jesus.
Not Too Young to Testify
Ambrose and others marveled at Agnes’s youth. Her story presses home that a young person is never too young to testify to Jesus Christ as Lord, Savior, and Treasure. And when they do so, especially in the face of opposition, they participate in the victory of Jesus over sin, death, and hell. When teenagers today confess that their decisions and actions are motivated by faith in Jesus, they demonstrate the courage and faith that overcomes the world (1 John 5:4–5). A confession of Jesus has more significance than any accomplishment — whether in school, sports, or society.
Note how Ambrose and Damasus remind us of Agnes’s physical vulnerability as a child and a woman but then show her indomitable trust in Jesus. When Augustine reflects on Agnes, he compares her to Hercules. He overcame the lion and Cerberus the three-headed dog, but “Agnes, a thirteen-year-old girl, overcame the devil” (Sermon 273.6).
C.S. Lewis knew that simple faith possesses great power against Christ’s enemies. The demon Screwtape seethes just thinking about a godly young woman like Agnes:
[She is not] only a Christian but such a Christian. . . . The little brute. She makes me vomit. She stinks and scalds through the very pages of the dossier. It drives me mad, the way the world has worsened. We’d have had her to the arena in the old days. That’s what her sort is made for. Not that she’d do much good there, either. A two-faced little cheat (I know the sort) who looks as if she’d faint at the sight of blood and then dies with a smile. . . . Looks as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth and yet has a satirical wit. The sort of creature who’d find ME funny! (The Screwtape Letters, 117–18)
We do not know if Agnes died with a smile or laughing at the impotence of the demons, but she did die confessing her Lord. And the demons shuddered.
Raising Our Children for What?
Lewis’s imaginative description brings Agnes home to us. Are we raising children whose highest aim is to testify faithfully to their Savior, the risen and exalted Jesus Christ? Would our daughters die with a smile, use satirical wit against a demon, and even look into the face of our greatest enemy and laugh because they are so secure in their faith?
Here is where martyr stories are so helpful. The picture that comes into our minds of a successful Christian life determines to a considerable extent what our own Christian life will look like — and the kind of Christian life we will hold before our children. Agnes provides such a picture.
There is fresh talk today about generational influence and stable households. By all means, it is a blessing to provide your grandchildren with a tradition of hard work and respect for family continuity. But this desire can so easily become a temptation to aim primarily at wealth, influence, and property. The martyrs, on the other hand, remind us that, whatever we build on earth, we must be ready to say goodbye to everything and give up control over our earthly future in a moment of witness. Christian parents will do no better than to pray that they and their children display the faithful confession of Agnes and the other martyrs.
Jesus’s promise in Revelation 2:10 — “Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life” — does not apply only to those who face imminent execution for confessing Jesus as Lord. The language of martyrdom provides a peg, a hook, on which to hang the rest of our Christian life and the culture of Christian life we are creating as a family and church. The brief account of Agnes does not tell us everything about the Christian life, but it does illustrate the extreme situation that should anchor our expectations of life in this world.
Augustine concludes with encouragement: “Pray that you may be able to follow in the footsteps of the martyrs. It isn’t, after all, the case that you are human beings and they weren’t; not, after all, the case that you were born, and they were born quite differently” (Sermon 273.9). Indeed, Agnes’s story reminds us that all of God’s people can find the courage to confess Christ publicly based on a settled conviction that we belong to Jesus.
Desiring God