A New Perspective on Virgins and Martyrs.

In the Catholic Church, today is the Memorial of Saint Agatha, Virgin and Martyr. She is pictured above with her breasts on a platter which I shall explain momentarily. Saint Agatha was being pursued by a Roman official whose name was Quintianus and who desparately wanted to marry her. Agatha did not want to marry Quintianus or any other man. She wanted to give her life to Christ and vowed to remain a virgin.

Quintianus was sure he could get her to change her mind. He threatened her and punished her resistance to his demands, as so many powerful men still do when they want something bad enough. Agatha continued to resist Quintianus until he finally got fed up and resorted to torturing her. She was stretched on a rack, torn with iron hooks, burned with torches and whipped. Her breasts were removed with tongs which explains why she is often pictured carrying them.

I guess maybe Quintianus thought that breasts were made for men and babies and if she was going to remain a virgin, they would be of no use. She survived the torture and was sent to prison where she eventually died, a virgin.

I have always struggled with why so many female saints in the Catholic church were "virgins and martyrs". It bothered me that male saints were never defined by whether or not they had ever had sex. I used to think that women who chose to be tortured or die rather than have sex with a man did so because they regarded sex as sinful or disgusting. I thought they must have very low self esteem to place all their value on their virginity.

But I am old now and I think much differently than I used to. Now I understand why so many women in history preferred death to turning themselves over to a man. Throughout most of recorded human history, women were treated as the property of men. They are still treated as legal property in some societies and women in the United States only gained their independence fairly recently.

Back in Agatha's days, most women had no individual rights and no life of their own. They were the property of their fathers or other male relatives until they married or became the consorts of men. They often had a lot of children whether they wanted to or not. Motherhood must have been horrendous in those days. Many women died in childbirth and infant mortality rates were very high. It was also common for young children to die from diseases as there were no vaccines or antibiotics. Many children died from contaminated water or starvation.

The only way most women in those days could possibly have any kind of life of their own was to remain virgins and consecrate themselves to God. Giving their lives to God was probably a whole lot safer and smarter than giving their lives to a men.

I realize now that these women were probably not religious fanatics. They were most likely not crazy or weird. Maybe they didn't remain virgins because they had low self esteem or thought sex was sinful. Maybe they wanted to remain virgins because they valued themselves too much to turn their lives completely over to a man who would wield total and absolute power over them. Maybe they didn't want to spend their lives having children only to watch them live arduous and often brutally short lives.

These women rejected the roles that society assigned to them at birth. They kept their rights over their own bodies. They had the courage to stand up for themselves and to make their own choices in life. They resisted the men who wanted to control them.

I think maybe they were among the first feminists and I have a lot of respect for their courage and conviction. If I had lived back then, I may have made the very same choice.