29 Facts About Saint Barbara

1.

Saint Barbara, known in the Eastern Orthodox Church as the Great Martyr Barbara, was an early Christian Greek saint and martyr.

2.

Saint Barbara is often portrayed with miniature chains and a tower.

3.

Saint Barbara was born either in Heliopolis or in Nicomedia.

4.

Saint Barbara was buried by a Christian, Valentinus, and her tomb became the site of miracles.

5.

The name of Saint Barbara was known in Rome in the 7th century; her cult can be traced to the 9th century, at first in the East.

6.

In 2022, Saint Barbara was officially added to the Episcopal Church liturgical calendar with a feast day she shares with Catherine of Alexandria, and Margaret of Antioch on 24 November.

7.

Saint Barbara is venerated by Catholics who face the danger of sudden and violent death at work.

8.

Saint Barbara is invoked against thunder and lightning and all accidents arising from explosions of gunpowder.

9.

Saint Barbara became the patron saint of artillerymen, armourers, military engineers, gunsmiths, and anyone else who worked with cannon and explosives.

10.

Saint Barbara was the Patron saint of the Royal Army Ordnance Corps of the British Army, a church being dedicated to her, initially at Hilsea Barracks Portsmouth, and later being moved to Backdown in Surrey, when the Corps moved its training establishment there.

11.

Saint Barbara's Day is celebrated by United States Army and Marine Corps Field and Air Defense Artillery, many Marine Corps Explosive Ordnance Disposal Technicians.

12.

Saint Barbara is revered as a patron saint of miners and in extension, the geosciences in general, including the tunneling industry.

13.

The City of Santa Saint Barbara got its name from the early Spanish navigator Juan Cabrillo.

14.

Saint Barbara chose to name the spot after the patron of that day, Saint Barbara.

15.

The Presidio of Santa Saint Barbara was built in 1782, with the mission of defending the Second Military District in Spanish California.

16.

Santa Saint Barbara County was one of the twenty-seven original counties of California, formed in 1850 at the time of statehood.

17.

In Ukraine, alleged relics of Saint Barbara are kept in St Michael's Golden-Domed Monastery.

18.

Saint Barbara is the patron saint of the northern Greek city of Drama, where a sweet called, which resembles a more liquid form of koliva, is prepared and consumed on her feast day.

19.

The general belief among Lebanese Christians is that Saint Barbara disguised herself in numerous characters to elude the Romans who were persecuting her, and the tradition states that when the saint was escaping from the army of the pagan king in Baalbek, she passed in a field of wheat, and the wheat grew miraculously in order to hide her footprints from the soldiers, and this is the reason of serving the traditional wheat dessert on the feast day.

20.

The feast of Santa Barbara is the main religious feast of Paterno, in the province of Catania, dedicated to Santa Barbara, the patron saint of the city, originally from Nicomedia, in Bithynia and martyred according to tradition in 306 by father Dioscuro.

21.

The feast of Santa Saint Barbara is one of the most beautiful Catholic feasts in Italy.

22.

St Faustina wrote that St Saint Barbara appeared to her on August 22,1937.

23.

Saint Barbara is mentioned in Thomas Pynchon's novel Against the Day.

24.

Saint Barbara is mentioned in Federico Garcia Lorca's play La Casa de Bernarda Alba.

25.

Major Saint Barbara is a play by George Bernard Shaw in which the title character is an officer in the Salvation Army and grapples with the moral dilemma of whether this Christian denomination should accept donations from her father, who is an armaments manufacturer.

26.

Saint Barbara's story is mentioned in a live version of The Hold Steady's song "Don't Let Me Explode" from Lollapalooza.

27.

Saint Barbara is usually depicted in art as standing by a tower with three windows and two tables with any chair, carrying a palm branch and a chalice, sometimes with cannons depicted by her side.

28.

Saint Barbara crushing her infidel father, with a kneeling donor, by Domenico Ghirlandaio, ca.

29.

St Saint Barbara Directing the Construction of a Third Window in Her Tower, by the Master of the Joseph Sequence.