The life of Cecilia, Valerian, Tiburtius and Maximus
Church tradition tells that on their wedding night she told him an angel watched over her purity, and that Valerian, wishing to see this angel for himself, went to be instructed and baptized by the Roman bishop Urban, after which he too believed. His brother Tiburtius soon followed him into the faith, and the two brothers spent themselves giving alms and burying the bodies of Christians who had died for their confession, until they too were arrested and put to death, along with an official named Maximus who was won to Christ by their courage and shared their end. Cecilia buried the three together, then was herself sought out, tried, and condemned.
The vivid details of her own ordeal and death, treasured for centuries in art and song, come from an account written long after these events and are regarded by historians as a devout retelling rather than reliable history, though the martyrs themselves and their burial together on the Appian Way are not in doubt. She is remembered today above all as the patroness of music.
