Saint Barbara the Great Martyr
Great Martyr of Heliopolis
- Feast day
- December 4
- Lived
- d. c. 306
- Patronage
- Protection from sudden death; miners, artillerymen, the dying
Locked in a tower by her pagan father, Saint Barbara had a third window cut into it in honour of the Holy Trinity — and was denounced and beheaded by that same father.
Life
Barbara was the daughter of the wealthy pagan Dioscorus of Heliopolis, who shut her away to keep her from the world and from Christianity. Reasoning from the beauty of creation to a single Creator, she was secretly baptised, and while her father was away had a third window opened in the bathhouse he was building for her.
When he learned why, he dragged her before the prefect Martian, who had her tortured over days; her wounds healed each night. Dioscorus himself carried out the beheading, and was struck dead by lightning on the way home — which is why she is invoked against sudden and unprepared death.
Veneration
Because of the lightning, she became patroness of anyone working with explosives and fire — miners, gunners, engineers. Her relics are venerated in Kyiv at Saint Michael's Golden-Domed Monastery, and she is commemorated with Saint John of Damascus on December 4.