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Discover Catania

The Life

Within this area there are the various phases of the life of Sant'Agata.

The prison and the torture

For a day and a night Agatha remained locked in a prison cell, inside the praetorian palace: later she became a place of worship, it was an underground room, dark and humid.

The Consecration to God

Very soon, already in her childhood, Agatha had a clear desire in her heart to give herself totally to Christ.

The process

Quinziano took note that flattery, promises and threats did not have any effect on that young woman as beautiful as she was in love with Jesus. She then decided to start an immediate trial, counting on bending her by force. Summoned to the praetorian palace, Agatha entered proudly and humbly.

Agata La Buona

In those years, in the middle of the third century, Agatha was born in Catania. The date has never been historically ascertained with exactitude, but it was calculated backwards starting from another that instead egrave; certain, that is, the martyrdom occurred in 251.

In the house of Aphrodisiac

Quinziano, as soon as he saw her, was kidnapped by her beauty. A passionate ardor invaded him, but his attempts at seduction were all in vain, because Agatha always rejected him with great firmness.

Persecutions

Since 264 BC, the year in which the First Punic War Rome took the island from the Carthaginians, in Sicily had been imposed the pagan religion of the Romans, with its load of popular deities and enjoy, examples of corruption and debauchery in customs.

Sicily at the time of Agatha

In the years in which Agatha lived, in the middle of the third century, the Roman Empire had already reached its maximum territorial extension.

The table of the Angel

The Christians who had witnessed the martyrdom and death of Agatha collected with devotion her body and sprinkled it with perfumed aromas and oils, as was in use at that time.

The escape and the arrest

One day, the proconsul Quinziano was informed that in the city, among the consecrated virgins, lived a noble and beautiful girl. He then decided that he must know her. He ordered his men to capture her and bring her to the praetorian palace: it was Agatha.