Note 21 — Chapter X · MARTYRDOM OF ST. CECILIA

The Acts of St. Cecilia have always been considered among the most absolutely authentic of those preserved by the Church, and every circumstance connected with the finding of her body, both by Paschal and Sfondrato, bears them out. Tillesnaut, the lying Jansenist historian so dear to heretic students, and who seems to have had a particularly malevolent hatred for St. Cecilia, has made a ludicrous attempt to prove—if such arguments could be called by that name—that St. Cecilia was not a Roman, and as we know her never existed. He supports this amazing theory on one line many times re-copied by ignorant scribes, of the poet Fortunatus, who speaks of “St. Cecilia” as having suffered in “Sicilia.” The Church knows of no Sicilian martyr of that name, but there was one in Sardinia, a name which one of Fortunatus’ copyists apparently mistook for “Sicilia.”