Agrippina of Rome

Saint Agrippina, virgin martyr, was born and raised at Rome, venerated in the Orthodox and in the Catholic Church, and patron of the Sicilian town of Mineo. She died a martyr in the time of the emperor Valerian (253 to 259), in 257 or 262, according to other sources in 275. She is commemorated on 23 June (6 July by the new calendar).

According to her life, she lived from childhood by the teaching of the Gospel. Confessing herself a Christian, she went willingly to the torments: her body was beaten with sticks so hard that her bones were broken, then she was stripped and put in chains. But the angel of the Lord loosed her with an invisible hand from the bonds and strengthened her, and later, after new torments, she died; according to her life she was put to the sword. The Catholic legend says she was a blonde princess of a noble Roman family and that she was either beheaded or scourged to death. Her body was buried at Rome, and from there, no later than the beginning of the fourth century, three devout women, Bassa, Paula and Agatonica, carried the relics to Mineo in Sicily, aided on the way by angels. The Serbian source says many miracles are tied to her relics and that by their power even the Agarenes were driven from the city where they rest.

Alban Butler says the acts ascribed to her in the Greek Menaia are quite unreliable and that no evidence of an early cult is forthcoming. Yet the saint is greatly honoured in Sicily and, to a lesser degree, in Greece, where it is said her relics were moved from Sicily to Constantinople, in the early eleventh century. Her tomb became a pilgrimage destination, and she was invoked as a patron against evil spirits, leprosy and thunderstorms. Her feast is no longer kept in the Catholic Church, but in the Orthodox Church it is celebrated on 23 June. Three Catholic churches bear her name: the church of Saint Agrippina in Mineo, the parish church of Saint Agrippina in Rosario (Argentina) and the chapel of Saint Agrippina of Mineo in Boston (Massachusetts). Immigrants from Mineo to the North End of Boston have celebrated their patron every year, in the first week of August, since 1914.