Sonoqui wrote:Purely as an aside, would someone please explain to me why Chrysogonus (etc.) and Agatha (etc.) are named to the exclusion of others?
Remember this is the ROMAN Canon - a pilgrimage to Rome - taking in the churches of these saints - will make it more clear...... and possibly cause a thirst for knowledge about the history of the liturgy..... and a thirst for the fermented fruit of the Alban Hills.
Here's the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia
............Communicantes
.......... In the lists of saints that follows, Our Lady of course always holds the first place. She is here named very solemnly with her title of "Mother of God", as in the corresponding Eastern Anaphoras. It is strange that St. John the Baptist, who should come next, has been left out here. He is named in both the Eastern liturgies at this place (Brightman, 93 and 169), and finds his right place at the head of our other list (in the "Nobis quoque"). After Our Lady follow twelve Apostles and twelve martyrs. The Apostles are not arranged in quite the same order as in any of the Gospels. St. Paul at the head, with St. Peter, makes up the number for Judas. St. Matthias is not named here, but in the "Nobis quoque". The twelve martyrs are evidently arranged to balance the Apostles. First come five popes, then a bishop (St. Cyprian), and a deacon (St. Lawrence), then five laymen. All these saints, except St. Cyprian, are local Roman saints, as is natural in what was originally the local Roman Liturgy. It is noticeable that St. Cyprian (d. 258), who had a serious misunderstanding with a Roman pope, is the only foreigner honoured by the Roman Church by being named among her own martyrs. The fact has been quoted to show how completely his disagreement with Pope Stephen was forgotten, and how Stephen's successors remembered him only as one of the chief and most glorious martyrs of the West.
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............ Nobis quoque peccatoribus
A prayer for ourselves that naturally follows that for the faithful departed, although the Commemoration for the Living has gone before......................
.......It is a petition that we too may find a good death and be admitted to the glorious company of the saints. The names of saints that follow are arranged rhythmically, as in "Communicantes". Like the others they are all martyrs. First comes St. John the Baptist, as Our Lady before, then seven men and seven women. After the first martyr, St. Stephen, St. Matthias finds here the place he has not been given among the Apostles in the other list. The Peter here is a Roman exorcist martyred at Silva Candida (now part of the Diocese of Porto, near Rome). His feast with St. Marcellinus is on 2 June. The female saints are all well known. Benedict XIV quotes from Adalbert, "De Virginitate", that St. Gregory I, having noticed that no female saints occur in the Canon, added these seven here (p. 162)...........
The full article can be found here
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03255c.htm
Let's hear it for the less well known saints.
