Legendary Saint Barbara still honored as the
patron saint of mining.

Pan Eimon

 

Despite her being figment of someone's imagination, Santa Barbara became one of the most revered saint in Europe during the Middle Ages.
Festivals are still held each year in Europe to honor the mother of mining.

As I now descend into the dark bowels of the earth, I beseech thee, sweet Barbara, that I be kept safe from harm, for it liketh me not that I rush unbidden into God's presence.
(Prayer to Santa Barbara).

She was young, beautiful, intelligent, virgin. Her name was Barbara and she captured the attention of many men, especially those in dangerous occupations.
Her rich and doting father was hopeful of making an advantageous marriage for his daughter.
Instead, she defied him, became a Christian, and refused to marry. Traumatized, he killed her and was himself struck dead by lightning.
That is not the plot of a new soap opera. It is the melodramatic story of a Turkish teenager who was martyred in the third century but lives still as patron saint of mining.
The story begins with a 20th century fact. Santa Barbara is a figment of imagination – perhaps based on an early oriental folk heroine, embroidered by a seventh century storyteller, and reworked by a ninth century Greek martyrologist.
The authoritative Lives of the Saints reports: “There is...considerable doubt about the existence of a virgin martyr called Barbara and it is quite certain that her legend is spurious. There is no mention of her in the earlier martyrologies, her legend is not older than the seventh century, and her cult did not spread until the ninth”. The Catholic Dictionary adds that the Barbara story is probably “a pious legend”.

Widely revered

Santa Barbara was one of the most widely venerated saints of the Middle Ages. She became the patron, not only to miners, but also to artillerymen, engineers, architects, builders, stonemasons, gravediggers, and sailors. Mines, mountains, churches, and places bear her name.
Barbara's feast day, Dec. 4, appears on the most ancient holy day calendars. And a Barbara festival is still celebrated throughout central Europe, in Spain, and in mining areas of Latin America on that date.
The Pacific coast channel, the city, and the mission of California are named for Santa Barbara. An expedition, sailing that coast under Viscaino in 1602, was saved from shipwreck on Dec. 4 after the sailors prayed for Barbara's intervention.
Franciscans gave her name to the modern Franciscan Province of Santa Barbara, which embraces six western states and the Philippine Islands.
Barbara is intimately entwined with mining. The origins of both saint and profession are lost in antiquity. Agricola's Tables indicate that gold was washed from alluvial soil and copper was smelted before recorded civilization. Silver, tin, bronze, and iron were being reduced from ores before 3500 BC. However calculated, mining is an ancient profession, basic to civilization.

Logical companion for dangerous work

Dark, secretive, and underground, mining was considered dangerous. Myth and fable develop around the dangerous and hidden. Underground gods, trolls, fairies, tommyknockers, stope apes, and beautiful virgins are logical and needed companions for those engaged in such work. The emergence of Santa Barbara in the seventh century and her vitality in the 20th testify to this.

Barbara's legend

Historically true or not, the circumstances of the beautiful teenager's life are plausible. Christians were vigorously persecuted in the third century. Roman rulers clamped down on practitioners.
But the gospel of one God (instead of many) and of love as the ruling principle was spread by an underground of simple men and women as well as by learned teachers.

Barbara's father, Dioscorus, was a wealthy nobleman of Nicomedia ( a Roman provincial capital now in Turkey).
He sought out the best teachers for his intelligent daughter. She was tutored in arts, sciences, and the traditional Greco – Roman faith. Apparently, one of the tutors was a Christian who converted and baptized Barbara.
As the ninth century chronicler tells us, Dioscorus had built “a high and strong tower in which he did keep and close this Barbara to the end that no man should see her because of her great beauty”.
Nevertheless rich and noble suitors came calling, offering marriage. Dioscorus took the offers to Barbara who said “My father, I pray you that ye will not constrain me to marry”.
Dejected, Dioscorus left on a long journey.

Dioscorus' fury

While her father was away, Barbara ordered additional windows cut into her tower (some versions say the windows were added to a bathhouse under construction).
Three windows Barbara asked of the builders – one for each element of the Holy Trinity.
Dioscorus returned home to find himself betrayed – his daughter a convert to the hated sect and his building plans altered. The chronicler continues: “Then he, being replenished with fury, incontinent drew his sword”.
Barbara prayed and was miraculously saved. The enraged father turned his daughter over to the Roman authorities who scourged her. But her wounds healed immediately.
She was then taken before the prefect Martinianus, an historical figure noted for his brutality. Softened by Barbara's beauty, Martinianus gave her a choice. “Spare yourself and offer to the gods or else die by cruel torments.”
Barbara replied, “I offer myself to my God Jesus Christ.”
She was taken away, tortured, and condemned to die. Demented by his misfortunes, Dioscorus took his daughter's life with a blow from his own sword. The chronicler reports:”A fire from heaven descended on him and consumed him such wise that there could be found only ashes of his body”.
Other accounts say Dioscorus was struck by lightning.
Versions of this Golden Legend exist in Latin, Syriac, and other ancient languages. It was subsequently translated into the vernacular of the times, especially Germanic languages. Places differ – Tuscany, Rome, Antioch, and Heliopolis are identified as the location of the story. The essentials of the saga are the same.

Legend lives on

The New Catholic Dictionary says that the story of Barbara's life was composed in the seventh century, that she was depicted in an eighth century fresco in Rome, and that her vita was taken from the “Menologion” by one Symion Metaphrastes and introduced into European martyrologies in the ninth century. Santa Barbara is linked to the silver mines of Laurion in Greece. And what is believed to be the first church dedicated to her was built in Istanbul in 900 AD.
European veneration of Barbara began in the Netherlands, perhaps brought by sailors who sought her help in storms at sea.
It spread quickly into the central European mining districts around Freiberg, Kuttenberg and Chemnitz.
Freiberg, settle in 1170 after a silver strike, had 60 Barbara altars by 1346. The district and its famed mining academy, alma mater to many US mining entrepreneurs of the 19th and 20th centuries, are rich in Barbara lore.

Kuttunberg's Barbara Cathedral, begun in 1388, was built over an earlier Barbara chapel. The city coat – of – arms shows Barbara above the classic mining symbol – the crossed hammer and gad.
Dutch, German and Italian artists, including Palma Vecchio and Hans Holbien the Elder, found Barbara irresistible. She is the subject of paintings, copper engravings, woodcuts, windows, altars and sculptured pieces.
A charming 15th century French Santa Barbara may be seen at the Cloisters of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
The statue was a gift from a member of the famous new world mining family, Mrs. Solomon R. Guggenheim.
Santa Barbara is portrayed with a tower (where she lived), often with a crown (as a queen of heaven), a chalice (symbolizing a happy death), a sword (by which she was martyred), lightning (which killed her father), and, occasionally, with a peacock (symbol of youth and beauty).
She is sometimes represented floating on clouds with miners, hoists, ladders and ropes below.

Santa Barbara celebration

On a spring day, in the Hauptplatz of Leoben, Austria, a crowd of students, parents and onlookers shout encouragement to a young man trying to leap across a small pool and climb the 17th century fountain at its center.
The statue surmounting the fountain is Santa Barbara, dressed as a miner and holding a miner's hammer .
The climber catches her neck, kisses her, and then loses his grasp, splashing into the water. The crowd responds with laughter and applause.
The scene is an annual one – seniors at the Montanistische Hochschule marking the successful completion of their examinations.
Reenacted by generations of students, it is a reminder of a profession whose beginnings are lost in prerecorded history and of its patron saint, ancient as mining, made young by such springtime happening.

- Documento gentilmente concesso da Walter Scapigliati -

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Tratto da: MINING ENGINEERING (American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical and Petroleum Engineers), vol.37, N°11, November 1985, pag.1281 – 1283.