#saint barbara

[wgm-beautiful-world]

St. Barbara's Cathedral in Kutná Hora, CZECH REPUBLIC

[theinternetarchive]

'saint barbara,' tempera on wood panel; framed: 91 x 34.5 x 5.5 cm; master of the holy blood, netherlandish c. 1520.

[dvoeverie-stitches]

Witches Nights in Czech and Slovak Folk Culture—St. Catherine’s Day (November 25) through St. Lucy’s Day (December 13)

The first day was the feats of Catherine, when people defended against evil with garlic, museum pedagogue Ján Vingarik told the TASR newswire. Garlic was eaten, used for smearing on doors, door-handles, locks, and latches. Women were strictly forbidden to do any work on this day, especially spinning and sewing, so that their fingers would not fester during summer works. A superstition said that if the first person to enter a house on St. Catherine was a woman, dishes will be smashed in it for the whole year to come. Young single men made rounds in the village in female clothing and in masks. Tools from a house where maidens were living were stolen and secretly removed and hidden.

Superstitions concerning love happened too, for example, when girls put papers with boys names in the water while cooking dumplings: the first paper to float to the water surface supposedly bore the name of one’s future bridegroom. Other magic rituals included jabbing needles into a willow-tree, strewing sawdust from the lover’s house to the girl’s house, etc.

The last of the balls and dance parties for the year were organised on this evening, ending the period of weddings and feasts and starting the time of Advent.

The next witches’ day (stridží deň) was St. Andrew’s Day, November 30 – probably the most famous day of this period. Girls poured molten lead into cold water to see the profession of their future husbands, slept on male trousers to dream about their prospective spouses, shook fences, knocked on wells, waiting from which side a barking dog will come – from that corner, their future man may come. Again, wool spinning was forbidden, to prevent sheep getting fluke or being eaten by a wolf.

In some regions, St. Barbara’s Day was also included in the witches’ days – the patron saint of miners was especially esteemed in mining areas, such as around Prievidza. On that day, girls chipped off small cherry branches, put them in their rooms and watered them until Christmas Eve – if it blossomed, they would marry the next year.

On St. Nicolas’ Day (December 6) rounds were made by St. Nicholas, a devil and an angel. However, this ritual arrived rather from towns to the countryside. Originally, an entourage marched across villages, composed of a farmer with a fake horse and bear, Vingarik said.

The most important of these days was St. Lucy’s Day, December 13, when dark powers culminated, including that of witches. While in the neighbouring countries, Lucy or Lucia is perceived as the impersonation of light, in Slovak culture her feast day is felt as the most important witches’ day, ethnologist Petronela Rágulová told the SITA newswire. The activities of strigas were most intense then. On the eve of St. Lucy, people used to eat garlic, sprinkle households with holy water, make circles around wooden cabins, stables and barns. Young men roamed around the village, cracking whips to avert evil.

Witches’ Days prepared by museum, hailing old traditions

HOW Slovaks’ ancestors protected themselves against evil powers, but also how they used the darkest period of a year for magic rituals and f

[fiery-kitty]

Icon of Saint Barbara the Great Martyr, created in the 18th century in the Kyiv region.

Location: the National Art Museum of Ukraine

Style: Ukrainian Baroque

[7pleiades7]

Saint Barbara, (Detail), (c. 1510-1520), by the Master of Frankfurt (identified by some scholars as Hendrik van Wueluwe) (active c. 1460 – c. 1533), oil on panel, McNay Art Museum

[thefugitivesaint]

Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale (1872-1945), ''The Illustrated London News'', Christmas Number, 1922 'The Legend of St. Barbara: The Rescue by the Angels' "Saint Barbara, Patron Saint of Ferrara and Mantua, of arms, armourers, and fortifications, and against thunder and lightning, was the only daughter ot Dioscorus, a noble of Nicomedia. Her father loved her so much that, fearful of losing her by marriage, he hid her from the eyes of man, in a high tower. There she spent her time in thought and study, and came to the belief that the gods of her father could not be the true gods. She was converted and baptised by one of Origen’s disciples, sent to her in the disguise of a physician. She instructed the workmen to build three windows in her tower, instead of two; saying that she desired it so because it was through three windows (the Trinity) that the soul received light. Thus her father saw that she was a Christian, and, filled with rage, he would have killed her; but she escaped to the top of her tower, and was carried thence by angels. A shepherd showed Dioscorus her place of concealment, and he dragged her from it by the hair, and, finding imprisonment and ill-treatment powerless to move her, gave her up to the proconsul, under whose orders she suffered cruel tortures. Still her faith was unshaken; so her father carried her off to a mountain and beheaded her himself. In descending the mountain, he was killed by lightning."

[strongbabydoll999]

an icon i painted for art class 🩷

@c0ca1n3erotica this is the icon I told u abt in that comment section!! xx 😌😻

[somethingwithmoles]

Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio, St. Barbara, 1502, panel painting, 172 x 113.5 cm, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin