Saint Lucy Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description

, 1521: A High Renaissance recasting of a Gothic iconic image (Pinacoteca Nazionale, Siena)]] Saint Lucy of Syracuse, also known as Saint Lucia, (traditional dates 283-304) was a rich young Christian martyr who is venerated as a Saint by Catholic and Orthodox Christians. Her feast day in the West is December 13; she is the patron saint of blindness. Lucy is the only saint celebrated by the Lutheran Swedes and Norwegianss, in celebrations that retain many pre-Christian elements of a midwinter light festival.

Lucy means "light", with the same Latin root, lux, as "lucid," which means "clear, radiant, understandable." "In 'Lucy' is said, the way of light" Jacobus de Voragine stated at the beginning of his vita of the Blessed Virgin Lucy, in Legenda Aurea, the most widely-read version of the Lucy legend in the Middle Ages. St Lucy's history is shrouded in darkness: all that is really known for certain is that she was a martyr in Syracuse in Diocletian's persecutions of 303 A.D.. Her veneration spread to Rome, so that by the sixth century the whole Church recognized her courage in defense of the faith.

Because people wanted to shed light on Lucy's bravery, legends grew up, reported in the Acta that are associated with her name. All the details are conventional ones also associated with other female martyrs of the early 4th century. Her Roman father died when she was young, leaving her and her mother without a protecting guardian. Her mother, Eutychia, had suffered four years with a "bloody flux" but Lucy having heard the renown of Saint Agatha the patroness of Catania, "and when they were at a mass, one read a gospel which made mention of a woman which was healed of the bloody flux by touching of the hem of the coat of Jesu Christ," which, according to Legenda Aurea, convinced her mother to pray together at Saint Agatha's tomb, and Eutychia was cured.

Now Eutychia had arranged a marriage for Lucy with a pagan bridegroom, but Lucy urged that the dowry be spent on alms that she might retain her virginity. Euthychia suggested that the sums would make a good bequest, but Lucy countered, "That which thou givest when thou shalt die, thou givest it because thou mayest not bear it with thee. Give then for God's sake whiles thou livest." News that the patrimony and jewels were being distributed came to the ears of Lucy's betrothed, who heard from a chattering nurse that Lucy had found a nobler Bridegroom.

Her rejected pagan bridegroom denounced Lucy as a Christian to the magistrate Paschasius, who ordered her to burn a sacrifice to the Emperor's image. Lucy replied that she had given all that she had: "I offer to him myself, let him do with his offering as it pleaseth him." Sentenced to be defiled in a brothel, Lucy asserted:

"The body may take no corruption but if the heart and will give thereto assenting: for if thou madest me to do sacrifice by my hands, by force, to the idols, against my will, God shall take it only but as a derision, for he judgeth only of the will and consenting. And therefore, if thou make my body to be defouled without mine assent, and against my will, my chastity shall increase double to the merit of the crown of glory. What thing that thou dost to the body, which is in thy power, that beareth no prejudice to the handmaid of Jesu Christ."

The guards who came to take her way found her so filled with the Holy Spirit that she was stiff and heavy as a mountain; they could not move her even when they hitched her to a team of oxen. Even with a dagger through her throat she prophesied against her persecutors.

Jacobus de Voragine did not include the episode of Lucy's passio that was most vivid to her devotés in the Middle Ages and since: having her eyes torn out. Lucy was represented in Gothic art holding a dish with two eyes on it (illustration above). The legend concludes with God restoring Lucy's eyes.

Lucy's name also played a large part in naming Lucy as a patron saint of the blind and those with eye-trouble. She was the patroness of Syracuse.

In Sweden Lucy (called Lucia) is venerated each year on December 13, in a ceremony where a woman portraying Lucy, candles attached to her head, leads a procession of other women holding candles. The candles symbolize the fire that refused to take her life. The women usually sing christmas-carols during the procession.

External link

• Jacobus de Voragine, Legenda Aurea: St. Lucy (e-text, in English)

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