ST. BARBARA PATRON SAINT OF WEAPONEERS

St. Barbara, (died c. 200 CE; feast day December 4 ), legendary virgin martyr of the early church. Venerated as one of the 14 Auxiliary Saints (Holy Helpers), she is invoked in thunderstorms and is the patron saint of artillerymen and miners.

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According to legend, which dates only to the 7th century, she was the beautiful daughter of a pagan, Dioscorus, who kept her guarded in a tower to protect her from harm. When she professed Christianity and refused marriage, he became enraged and took her to the provincial prefect, who ordered her to be tortured and beheaded. Dioscorus himself performed the execution and, upon his return home, was struck by lightning and reduced to ashe.

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Some accounts name the ancient Egyptian city of Heliopolis, others Nicomedia or a town in Tuscany, as the scene of her sufferings. The original Greek accounts of her martyrdom are lost, but Syriac, Latin, and other versions are extant. Her story, reproduced in great detail in Jacobus de Voragine’s Legenda aurea (1255–66; Golden Legend, 1483), was popular in the Middle Ages.