Saint Lucy


Lucia of Syracuse, also called Santa Lucia and better known as Saint Lucy, was a Roman Christian martyr who died during the Diocletianic Persecution. She is venerated as a saint in Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox Christianity. She is one of eight women explicitly commemorated by Catholics in the Canon of the Mass. Her traditional feast day, known in Europe as Saint Lucy's Day, is observed by Western Christians on 13 December. Lucia of Syracuse was honored in the Middle Ages and remained a well-known saint in early modern England. She is one of the best known virgin martyrs, along with Agatha of Sicily, Agnes of Rome, Cecilia of Rome, and Catherine of Alexandria.

Life

All the details of her life are the conventional ones associated with female martyrs of the early fourth century. John Henry Blunt views her story as a Christian romance similar to the Acts of other virgin martyrs.
According to the traditional story, Lucy was born to rich and noble parents in 283 in Syracuse. Her father was of Roman origin, but died when she was five years old, leaving Lucy and her mother without a protective guardian. Her mother's name, Eutychia, seems to indicate that she came from a Greek background.
Like many of the early martyrs, Lucy had consecrated her virginity to God, and she hoped to distribute her dowry to the poor. However, Eutychia, not knowing of Lucy's promise, and suffering from a bleeding disorder, feared for Lucy's future. She arranged Lucy's marriage to a young man of a wealthy pagan family.
Saint Agatha had been martyred 52 years before, during the Decian persecution. Her shrine at Catania, less than from Syracuse, attracted a number of pilgrims; many miracles were reported to have happened through her intercession. Eutychia was persuaded to make a pilgrimage to Catania, in hopes of a cure. While there, St. Agatha came to Lucy in a dream and told her that because of her faith, her mother would be cured and that Lucy would be the glory of Syracuse, as she was of Catania. With her mother cured, Lucy took the opportunity to persuade her mother to allow her to distribute a great part of her riches among the poor.
Eutychia suggested that the sums would make a good bequest, but Lucy countered, "...whatever you give away at death for the Lord's sake you give because you cannot take it with you. Give now to the true Savior, while you are healthy, whatever you intended to give away at your death."
News that the patrimony and jewels were being distributed came to Lucy's betrothed, who denounced her to Paschasius, the Governor of Syracuse. Paschasius ordered her to burn a sacrifice to the emperor's image. When she refused, Paschasius sentenced her to be defiled in a brothel.
The Christian tradition states that when the guards came to take her away, they could not move her even when they hitched her to a team of oxen. Bundles of wood were then heaped about her and set on fire, but would not burn. Finally, she met her death by the sword thrust into her throat.
Absent in the early narratives and traditions, at least until the fifteenth century, is the story of Lucia tortured by eye-gouging. According to later accounts, before she died, she foretold the punishment of Paschasius and the speedy end of the persecution, adding that Diocletian would reign no more and Maximian would meet his end. This so angered Paschasius that he ordered the guards to remove her eyes. Another version has Lucy taking her own eyes out in order to discourage a persistent suitor who admired them. When her body was prepared for burial in the family mausoleum it was discovered that her eyes had been miraculously restored. This is one of the reasons that Lucy is the patroness saint of those with eye illnesses.

Veneration

The earliest evidence of Lucy’s veneration is the grave stele of Euskia, which was discovered in the catacombs of Syracuse, Sicily and is now housed in the Museo archeologico regionale Paolo Orsi. Euskia was a 25-year-old woman who died on St Lucy’s Day in the late 300s or early 400s. By the sixth century, her story was sufficiently widespread that she appears in the procession of virgins in the Basilica of Sant'Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna and in the Sacramentary of Pope Gregory I. She is also commemorated in the ancient Roman Martyrology. St. Aldhelm and later the Venerable Bede attest that her popularity had already spread to England, where her festival was kept in England until the Protestant Reformation, as a holy day of the second rank in which no work but tillage or the like was allowed.
Lucy is honored in the Catholic Church, in the Church of England, in the Episcopal Church, and in the Lutheran Church on 13 December.
The monk Sigebert of Gembloux wrote a mid-eleventh-century passio, to support a local cult of Lucy at Metz.
The General Roman Calendar formerly had a commemoration of Saints Lucy and Geminianus on 16 September. This was removed in 1969, as a duplication of the feast of her dies natalis on 13 December and because the Geminianus in question, mentioned in the Passio of Saint Lucy, seems to be a fictitious figure, unrelated to the Geminianus whose feast is on 31 January.

Relics

Sigebert of Gembloux, in his sermo de Sancta Lucia, chronicled that her body lay undisturbed in Sicily for 400 years, before Faroald II, Duke of Spoleto, captured the island and transferred the body to Corfinium in Abruzzo, Italy. From there it was removed by the Emperor Otho I in 972 to Metz and deposited in the church of St. Vincent. It was from this shrine that an arm of the saint was taken to the monastery of Luitburg in the Diocese of Speyer – an incident celebrated by Sigebert in verse.
The subsequent history of the relics is not clear. According to Umberto Benigni, Stephen II sent the relics of St. Lucy to Constantinople for safety against the Saracen incursions. On their capture of Constantinople in 1204, the French found some relics attributed to Saint Lucy in the city, and Enrico Dandolo, Doge of Venice, secured them for the monastery of St. George at Venice. In 1513 the Venetians presented to Louis XII of France the saint's head, which he deposited in the cathedral church of Bourges. Another account, however, states that the head was brought to Bourges from Rome, where it had been transferred during the time when the relics rested in Corfinium.
Parts of the body are present in Sicily in particular in Syracuse, which has preserved them from antiquity.
The remainder of the relics remain in Venice: they were transferred to the church of San Geremia when the church of Santa Lucia was demolished in 1861 to make way for the new railway terminus. A century later, on 7 November 1981, thieves stole all her bones, except her head. Police recovered them five weeks later, on her feast day. Other parts of the corpse have found their way to Rome, Naples, Verona, Lisbon, Milan, as well as Germany and France.

Patronage

Lucy's Latin name Lucia shares a root with the Latin word for light, lux. A number of traditions incorporate symbolic meaning of St. Lucy as the bearer of light in the darkness of winter, her feast day being 13 December. Because some versions of her story relate that her eyes were removed, either by herself or by her persecutors, she is the patroness saint of the blind.
She is also the patroness saint of ophthalmologists, authors, cutlers, glaziers, laborers, martyrs, peasants, saddlers, salesmen, stained glass workers, photogrammetry, and of Perugia, Italy. She is invoked against hemorrhages, dysentery, diseases of the eye, and throat infections.
St. Lucy is the patroness of Syracuse in Sicily, Italy. At the Piazza Duomo in Syracuse, the church of Santa Lucia alla Badia used to house the painting Burial of St. Lucy by Caravaggio. But it is now housed in the church of Santa Lucia al Sepolcro in Syracuse. She is also the patroness saint of the coastal town of Olón, Ecuador, which celebrates with a week-long festival culminating on the feast day 13 December. She is also the patroness saint of the town of Guane, Santander, Colombia.
The Caribbean island of Saint Lucia, one of the Windward Islands in the Lesser Antilles, is named after her.

Iconography

The emblem of eyes on a cup or plate apparently reflects popular devotion to her as protector of sight, because of her name, Lucia. In paintings St. Lucy is frequently shown holding her eyes on a golden plate. Lucy was represented in Gothic art holding a dish with two eyes on it. She also holds the palm branch, symbol of martyrdom and victory over evil. Other symbolic images include a lamp, dagger, sword or two oxen.

In literature

Dante

In Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy Lucy first appears in Canto 2 of Inferno as the messenger sent to Beatrice from "The blessed Dame", to rouse Beatrice to send Virgil to Dante's aid. Henry Fanshawe Tozer identifies Lucia as representing "illuminative grace". According to Robert Pogue Harrison and Rachel Jacoff, Lucia's appearance in this intermediary role is to reinforce the scene in which Virgil tries to fortify Dante's courage to begin the journey through the inferno.
In Purgatorio 9.52–63, Lucy carries a sleeping Dante to the entrance to purgatory. Since Lucy represents light, her appearance in Purgatorio 9 mirrors her appearance in Inferno 2; both times she carries him out of darkness. Lucy's light symbolism also explains why Dante tells this evening scene in Purgatorio 9 through the lens of the dawn. She carries him both out of the literal darkness to a new day, as well as the figurative darkness to lead him to salvation.
Then in Paradiso 32, Dante places her opposite Adam within the Mystic Rose in Canto XXXII of the Paradiso. Lucy may also be seen as a figure of Illuminating Grace or Mercy or even Justice.