Question: In your Saint of the Month article on St Cecilia (November 2025), you note that the artist Maderno created a sculpture based on how he saw the saint’s incorrupt body more than 400 years ago. Was she then reburied and never exhumed again? Unlike many incorrupt saints displayed in glass coffins, why has this not been done for so ancient and beloved a martyr, especially if she still lies beneath the basilica of St Cecilia in Rome?
Answer: When the tomb of St Cecilia, a 3rd century martyr, was opened in 1599 during works commissioned by Cardinal Paolo Emilio Sfondrati, her body was reportedly found incorrupt, lying on her side in the position described in early sources.
The sculptor Stefano Maderno was present, and his famous marble statue in Rome’s basilica of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere depicts her exactly as he saw her. His testimony is considered historically reliable.
After the exhumation, her relics were not placed in a glass reliquary as has happened with later saints. Instead, after being reverently viewed, the body was reinterred beneath the high altar of the basilica. This was partly due to the devotional and liturgical customs of the time: in the late 16th and early 17th century, displaying saints’ bodies above ground in glass coffins was not yet a widespread practice. It became common from the 18th century onwards.
Pilgrims venerate the saint at her shrine, with Maderno’s statue serving as a powerful witness to St Cecilia’s martyrdom and burial almost 1800 years ago.
So, unlike St Thérèse of Lisieux or St Vincent de Paul or St Carlo Acutis, St Cecilia’s body is not visible, but her cult is centred on the basilica built over the site of her martyrdom.
Since then, St Cecilia’s remains have not been publicly exhumed again. The Church has generally refrained from disturbing her tomb again, presumably out of reverence for the ancient martyr.
Published in the February 2026 issue of The Southern Cross Magazine
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