Cecilia, a young Roman patrician of the early third century, was given in marriage to a pagan, Valerian, whom she converted. She was beheaded for refusing to sacrifice to the gods of Rome. Tradition says the executioner struck her three times in the neck and failed to sever it; she lay dying for three days, her right hand showing three fingers (Trinity) and her left hand one (the unity of God), before her death.
In 822, Pope Paschal I found her body in the catacombs of San Callisto and translated it to the basilica he had built in Trastevere. When the basilica was renovated in 1599, Cardinal Sfondrati opened the tomb. The young sculptor Stefano Maderno was present; he depicted what he saw — the saint on her right side, her face turned away, blood-stained gown intact, her hands in the position tradition described — in the celebrated marble statue still beneath the high altar of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere. Cecilia is the patroness of music and musicians.