By Stephen Smoot
“O’ God, our Creator and Redeemer, mercifully hear our prayers that as we venerate Thy servant, St. Lucy for the light of faith Thou didst bestow on her, Thou wouldst vouchsafe to increase and preserve this same light in our souls, that we may be able to avoid evil, to do good, and to abhor nothing so much as the blindness and the darkness of evil and sin . . .”
Thus opens the prayer in honor of Saint Lucia of Syracuse, patron saint of the blind and virgins and also a popular figure of faith identified throughout Italy and elsewhere as an important part of the celebration of the Christmas season.
History recalls little about the life of Saint Lucia, whose name refers to the Latin word for light. The First Eucharistic Prayer of the Roman Catholic Church, however, lists her “with your holy Apostles and Martyrs” that include John the Baptist, Stephen, Matthias, Peter, and others.”
According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, she came into the world born “of rich and noble parents in the year 283 AD.” Her father came from Roman origins, but her mother likely hailed from Greek stock.
Saint Lucia’s life coincided with a time of diametrically opposing environments for the increasingly popular Christian faith. During much of the reign of Diocletian, Bishop Eusebius wrote of “the glory and liberty with which the doctrine of piety was honored.”
For many Christians, however, the doctrine of piety became one that they once again risked their lives in devotion as the Emperor’s subordinate Galerius hardened Diocletian’s heart. He convinced the Emperor to launch the 10th and one of the most comprehensive and brutal of the persecutions. Church leaders faced first imprisonment, then agonizing torture. An entire town’s population was massacred for its devotion to Christ.
The year 304 AD saw the persecution at its darkest, but Saint Lucia remained a light.
According to Reverend Alban Butler’s Lives of the Saints, Saint Lucia kept her dedication of her virginity to the Church a secret, even for a time from her own mother Eutychia. Rev. Butler wrote that her mother “was a stranger to it” and betrothed her daughter to wed a powerful pagan.
As Saint Lucia continued to find ways to evade her impending marriage, she introduced her mother to the mysteries of Christian miracles. Eutychia “was visited with a long and troublesome flux of blood under which she laboured four years without finding any remedy by recourse to physicians.” Her daughter persuaded her to join a Christian pilgrimage to Catana, where she was cured, allowed her daughter to break off her engagement, and subsequently donated almost all of the family’s wealth..
Enraged because his love of wealth vastly outstripped his love for Saint Lucia, the pagan nobleman denounced his fiancee to the Governor of Syracuse with, as Rev. Butler wrote “the persecution of Diocletian then raging with the utmost fury.”
The Roman judge assigned to the case first tried to break her now openly known commitment to keep her virginity for God by ordering her into a notorious house of prostitution, “but God rendered her immovable so that the guards were not able to carry her thither.” The Catholic Encyclopedia recounts that “bundles of wood were then heaped around her and set on fire,” but like Daniel in the furnace, she received the protection of God.
She later succumbed to the agonies of torture, called by Rev. Butler “a long and glorious combat” by the Saint, which included guards stabbing her with swords. Some accounts include the guards gouging out her eyes.
Later on, Saint Lucia is known as the patron saint of the blind or sight impaired, virgins, and the impoverished.
“We associated Saint Lucia with sight,” says Rosalyn Queen, whose family came from Italy and settled in West Virginia. Queen and her family remain solidly involved with the Italian-American community in Harrison County and work hard to perpetuate Italian cultural traditions.
She went on to add that “if there was anyone who might be suffering from an eye problem, we would make a novena for a cure for the person.” A novena is a program of directed prayer that takes place over nine days and reflects both Roman Catholic and Jewish religious traditions.
Additionally, “young girls associated her pure life and often wore all white as a symbol of virginity,” Queen explained.
From Saint Lucia’s martyrdom in 304 AD, the historical life of Saint Lucy passes into faith and folklore.
According to the website Italian Tribune, “every Italian child” knows the phrase ‘Santa Lucia il giorno plu’ corto che ci sia,” or in English “Santa Lucia, the shortest day of the year.” In the old Julian calendar, which was replaced in the Western world by a more accurate one in the 1700s, Dec 13 was also the winter solstice.
How people remember her Saint’s day in Italy depends on the region. In her birthplace of Syracuse on the island of Sicily, celebrants enact a solemn procession from the Sicilian Baroque style Cathedral in Syracuse to the nine century old Norman style Church of Lucia al Sepolcro.
The procession carries a statue of Saint Lucia that dates back to 1599. She wears a palm and lily to represent her martyrdom and purity. The statue also has a gem covered dagger that illustrates her manner of death and in her right hand she carries a platter on which rest her eyes.
It starts promptly at 3:30 on Dec 13 and the statue makes the return trip on Dec 20.
Sicilians associate Saint Lucia with a number of miracles. The one remembered best comes from the 1600s when a famine gripped the island. Prayers for her intercession to end the famine preceded unexpected deliveries by ship of legumes and wheat. In memory, Sicilians abstain from breads and pastas on her Saint’s day.
Northern Italy also celebrates Saint Lucia with the city of Venice hosting some of her holy relics. For centuries, she has assumed the role given in other parts of Europe to Saint Nicholas, also known as Father Christmas or Santa Clause.
Saint Lucia was brought into a centuries-old Northern Italian tradition where families who benefited well from that year’s harvest gave to those whose lands were not so bountiful. In folklore, Saint Lucia rides a donkey pulling a cart. On Dec 12, children write letters to Saint Lucia, then on that night leave out bread and milk or wine for her and her assistant, the Castaldo, and carrots for her donkey.
Practices honoring Saint Lucia made their way to Italian communities that thrived in West Virginia in the 20th century. Queen remembered that “many local women would gather weekly to pray the rosary to Saint Lucia.”
One “good faithful servant,” as Queen described area resident Lucille D’Annunzio, worked to keep alive the memory of the Saint who sacrificed her life to the cruelty of her oppressors and for God. She, “in her later years changed her first name to Lucia and daily prayed to Saint Lucia and called attention to this saint in our area.”
Saint Lucia’s brutal death enables her, even after 1720 years, to serve as both an example of Christian faith and also a truly empowered woman – empowered by God and her faith in Him to take control of her life in a wealth obsessed, self-destructive, and patriarchal age.