“Today, I do not have the strength to pretend I like you.” St. Agnes, the empath said.

“Today, I do not have the strength to pretend I like you.” is a quote I came across some years ago when I was researching for the series. While reading about the saints I came across an interesting quote that’s still in usage today.

St. Agnes in 304 A.D., supposedly told her persecutor and pursuer. The young man who was having her condemned to death by beheading for refusing to marry him. While others begged her to accept his offer and live she allegedly said, “Today, I do not have the strength to pretend I like you.”

She’s accredited with the gift of empathy.

Obviously, he was a very horrible person to make a saint prefer death than be his wife. Some say her displeasing him is why she was executed but I doubt that. His ego was why she had to die. Back then if a man of means said you were to be his wife to say no was not taken kindly. He asked her several times and she said no, so to save face he had her beheaded.

Remember, she was only about thirteen to fifteen years old when she was martyred. So teens wasn’t so different nearly two thousand years ago than today. Yes, the story of why she was beheaded is a messed up story by any era’s standard. Let alone by today’s standard.

Keep in mind, this is not the same St. Agnes widely known fro her charity work. This is an earlier one. There many St. Agnes, but I am referring to the original one.

Come to think of it, placing the picture and painting side by side, she and Raven are wearing somewhat the same facial expression.

About unholypursuit

A. White, an award winning former librarian, who is also a long time member of Romantic Time and Publisher's Weekly. A. White has been writing for over fifteen years. She took classes in creative writing in college, specializing in ancient myths and legends. and later at a local community center while living in Chicago. In college she won the national contest to verbally list every country in the world, it's capital and ingenious language. Her works are mainly horror, fantasy, extreme, and sci-fi as well as, as some may says, "the truly strange predicament and puzzling." Books that I've written are "Clash with the Immortals, and eleven others which are part of the "Unholy Pursuit saga,". She has been working on the Chronicles since 2007. She wished to complete them all before introducing them to public so the readers wouldn't have to for the continuation to be written. The ideas of the book come from classic literature such as whose work greatly influence the world world such as Homer, Sophocles, Herodotus, Euripides, Socrates, Hippocrates, Aristophanes, Plato, Aristotle and many more. The "Book of Enoch" influenced the usage of Azazael as a main character and love interest. I created the primary main character from the Chronicle of Saints. I wanted to show them as real flesh and blood with thoughts, desires and yearning as any human. Not as they are so often depicted. So I created one of my own to show her as a real human that everyone can relate to.

View all posts by unholypursuit →

2 Responses to “Today, I do not have the strength to pretend I like you.” St. Agnes, the empath said.

lbeth1950 says:

July 14, 2018 at 10:59 am

He must have been a monster.

LikeLiked by 1 person

- unholypursuit says:
  
  July 14, 2018 at 11:14 am
  
  The account I read didn’t say exactly who he was but it does he was of nobility. This was during the height of Christian persecution throughout the Roman Empire. It was a crime to be one. Agnes was a member of the Roman nobility, born in AD 291 and raised in an early Christian family. She lived during the reign of the Roman Emperor Diocletian.
  
  She was said to be a beautiful young girl of wealthy family, Agnes had many suitors of high rank, and the young men but she slighted them all by her resolute devotion to Christianity.
  
  This angered some. To punishe her, the Prefect Sempronius condemned Agnes to be dragged naked through the streets to a brothel. Where it said she prayed and her hair grew and covered her body to cover. It was also said that all of the men that attempted to rape her were immediately struck blind or an angel smote them. The son of the prefect is struck dead, but revived after she prayed for him, causing her release.
  
  After having heard about this at the trial the Sempronius recuses himself, and another figure presides, sentencing her to death. She was led out and bound to a stake, but the bundle of wood would not burn, or the flames parted away from her, whereupon the officer in charge of the troops drew his sword and beheaded her, or, in some other texts, stabbed her in the throat. It is also said that her blood poured to the stadium floor where other Christians soaked it up with cloths. But the part that often left out of this account especially in later years is that her angel appeared after her death and killed those who killed her. Jesus did say guardian angels were a fierce bunch.
  
  LikeLike