Saint Barbara

Neither the place nor the time of Barbara’s life is known, and the hagiographies about her contradict one another. Her cult, though, is attested from the sixth or seventh century, in the East as in the West, and in the Middle Ages the Golden Legend made it hugely popular. The story says she was the daughter of a rich pagan, Dioscorus, who shut her in a tower to keep suitors away. After becoming a Christian, she had a third window opened in the tower in honor of the Trinity: that’s how her father found out everything. He denounced her himself, and according to the story he was the one who beheaded her — and was burned to ashes by lightning right afterward. It was that lightning that made her fortune. Barbara became the protector against lightning and sudden death; then, with gunpowder, the protector of those who handled it. From there her name entered the Italian language: the *santabarbara* is the ammunition store on board ships. She was removed from the General Roman Calendar in 1969 because of doubts about her historicity, and it made no difference at all: she remains one of the most invoked saints there is. She is the patron saint of firefighters, the Italian Navy, artillerymen, military engineers, bomb disposal experts, miners and geologists. If your name is Barbara, today is your name day.