Saint Blaise

Blaise was a physician, and that explains almost everything that came after. He lived between the third and fourth centuries in Sebaste, in Lesser Armenia, and he cared for the people of his city before being named its bishop. During the persecutions he was arrested by the Romans. He refused to renounce his faith, and they tortured him with iron tools like the combs used for carding wool; then they beheaded him, around 316. It’s a surprising date: the Edict of Milan, which granted freedom to Christians, dated from 313, just three years earlier. According to some readings, his martyrdom belongs to the new tensions between Constantine and Licinius, which hit bishops above all. He is one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers, and in the Middle Ages he was among the most popular saints of all. His fame shows in three things: the spread of his relics, a great many legends of miracles, and the popular rites still alive today in half of Europe. And above all he is **the protector against ailments of the throat**: he is the one people turn to when their throat closes up, and in this the physician and the saint keep doing the same job. The Armenian synaxarion describes him fleeing to Mount Ardeni during the persecution of Licinius, where he lived as a hermit among wild beasts, which came up to him without harming him. If your name is Blaise, today is your name day: an old, solid name, one of those that never disappeared from small towns. A physician who has kept on healing for seventeen centuries, at least in the hopes of those who pray to him.