Not only did she sing, but she played also on all instruments; but she could find none which satisfied her desire to breathe forth the harmony which dwelt within her, and so she invented a new one, the forerunner of the organ, and she consecrated it to the service of God.
St. Cecilia like St. Catherine was a martyr, but the executioner who was to put her to death was so affected by her innocence that his hand trembled, and the wounds he made did not immediately cause her death. She lived for three days, and as the story says:--
"She spent (these days) in prayers and exhortations to the converts, distributing to the poor all she possessed; and she called to her St. Urban, and desired that her house, in which she then lay dying, should be converted into a place of worship for the Christians. Thus, full of faith and charity, and singing with her sweet voice praises and hymns to the last moment, she died at the end of three days."
Very naturally, St. Cecilia was taken as the patron saint of musicians, and is sometimes represented as seated at a modern organ. In this picture she is shown holding in her hands an instrument of reeds, which may be taken as the beginning of the organ of later days.
Her eyes are raised, and her head is upturned as she listens to the choir of angels shown above in the clouds, their lips parted as they sing from open books. She holds the instrument, but she is so intent on the music she hears that it seems almost slipping from her hands.
Indeed, some of the tubes are already dropping out of their place; and as the eye follows them, it rests upon a number of other musical instruments lying on the ground,--the pipe, the violin, the tambourine, castanets, and others. It is as if we were shown the various instruments which she had set aside as not satisfying to her, and at last were shown her organ itself falling to pieces and dropping from her hands. So faint and imperfect, the painter seems to say, are all these forms of earthly music when compared with the heavenly.
[Illustration: ST. CECILIA _Bologna Gallery_]
St. Cecilia is here in a company of other saints, not indeed of her day and generation, but chosen by Raphael to give expression to various ideas and sentiments. St. Paul, the great apostle to the Gentiles, stands in a thoughtful attitude, one hand carrying a scroll and resting on the hilt of a sword; for in one of his epistles, he speaks of "the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God." He is listening, and at the same time looks down upon the instruments as if he were thinking how his earthly words, too, were dull beside the voice of the Spirit.