Musa of Rome
The Blessed Maiden Musa of Rome
Righteous · d. 5th century, at Rome
Commemorated 16 May — Repose at Rome on the thirtieth day after the vision
Musa was a Roman girl of the fifth century whose whole story is one page of the Dialogues of Gregory the Great, told to him by her own brother, the monk Probus. The Mother of God appeared to the child in a vision, among a company of girls of her own age dressed in white, and asked whether she wished to be one of them and to live in her train. Musa said that she did, and was given a rule for it: to leave off the frivolity and the light words of her age, and to wait — for in thirty days she would come. The girl changed, so completely that her household could not account for it. On the twenty-fifth day she took a fever; on the thirtieth the Theotokos came again with the same company, and Musa, answering "I come, Lady, I come," gave up her spirit. She is one of the very few children in the calendar who are neither martyrs nor monastics, and is commemorated on May 16.
The whole record of Musa is the eighteenth chapter of the fourth book of the Dialogues of Pope Gregory the Great (†604), where Gregory says plainly where he got it: from Probus, a monk, who was Musa's brother, and whom Gregory knew.
Musa was a girl of Rome, a child still, of a Christian household but of a child's seriousness — playful, given to the chatter and the small vanities of girls her age. To her, in a vision, appeared the Mother of God, and with her a company of maidens in white raiment of Musa's own years. Musa longed to go to them but did not dare. The Virgin asked her whether she wished to be numbered among them and to live in her service; and when the child said that she did, the Lady laid on her the one condition: that she leave off her light and girlish ways, and speak and behave as one who was being prepared — and that on the thirtieth day she would come for her.
The change in the girl was so complete that her parents were astonished and asked what had happened to her; and she told them what she had seen and what day had been appointed. On the twenty-fifth day she was taken with a fever. On the thirtieth the Theotokos came again, with the same company of maidens, and called her by name; Musa answered, in the words Gregory's informant remembered — Ecce, Domina, venio; ecce, venio — "Behold, Lady, I come; behold, I come" — and so died, going out of the body in the act of answering.
Gregory tells the story in a book written to show that the soul survives the body and that the friends of God are given warning of their death, and he tells it without embellishment. Its whole force is in the smallness of the demand made on the child and the completeness with which she met it. Byzantine and Slavic menologia took her over from the Dialogues — which were translated into Greek by Pope Zacharias in the eighth century and were among the most-read Latin books in the East, where Gregory is surnamed Dialogos for them — and gave her the title blessed (блаженная) rather than venerable or martyr, since she was neither a monastic nor a sufferer, but a child who was called and went.
Feast and commemoration
May 16 (church date; Old Calendar civil May 29). She is commemorated in the Russian menologion, which styles her the blessed maiden Musa of Rome, and in the OCA calendar as Blessed Child Musa of Rome; she is not in the Greek Menaion for this day and has no proper office. Her feast falls with the great monastic fathers of the day, which is a striking juxtaposition — the koinonia of thousands and a girl of a Roman household, honoured on one page of the calendar.
Hymns
Troparion — Tone 4
The Mother of God called thee, and thou didst run to her, O blessed Musa; for laying aside the lightness of childhood at a single word, thou didst make ready thy soul in thirty days and didst answer her calling, saying, "I come." Wherefore pray for us, that we too may be found ready.
Original translation from the Greek
Iconography
Musa is painted as a young girl, unveiled or lightly veiled, in a plain long tunic with a mantle, her hands crossed on her breast or one hand raised in prayer — the type used for child saints who are not martyrs, without the cross that a martyr would carry. The narrative type, which is the one worth painting, shows her lying on her bed while the Mother of God stands before her with a company of white-robed maidens, one of whom is reaching out a hand to her; the Russian illustrated Lives of the Saints of the nineteenth century engraved exactly this scene for May 16. No pre-1900 image of her has been secured for this collection, though such engravings exist and are in the public domain.
Disputed questions
- Nothing beyond the Dialogues is transmitted — not her family name, not the year, not a place of burial, not a relic. The fifth century is an inference from Gregory's dating of his informant's generation, not a datum.
- The name Musa is otherwise unattested as a Roman Christian name of this period, and some have taken it for a form of Musa/Muse or a household name rather than a baptismal one. This does not touch the story.
- The commemoration is Slavic and Latin-derived and stands in the Byzantine-rite calendar by way of the Greek Dialogues; the Greek synaxaria do not generally carry her under this day.