Life of Sant Barbara

Saint Barbara lived during the years when Diocletian, the persecutor of Christians, was emperor (284-305). She was born in  Baalbek in Lebanon and was the daughter of the rich pagan and toparish Dioscorus.

The daughter was very beautiful and as she was an orphan of a mother and without siblings, her father took special care of her. He wanted to keep her single, removed from the cares of life and human happiness. For this reason he built a high tower and isolated her there. A Christian healer took over her upbringing and education and from her she was certainly initiated into the life according to God.

In the isolation of the tower the daughter cultivated her spirit by prayer, study of the Scriptures and practice of the virtues. Once her father wanted to beautify the tower and ordered his workers to build a bath with two windows at its base.
At that time he needed to be away and so the young Varvara gave the order to open a third window in the bath so that all three windows would be in the form of the Holy Trinity, from which comes every light that illuminates and sanctifies every person who comes to the world

When the work was finished, the Saint stood proudly over the bath tub and, looking east, formed with her finger on its marbles the divine type of the Cross. And oh wonder! The Cross was carved into the marble as if it had been carved by a tool rather than a human hand and thus appeared to the faithful during the years following her martyrdom. Happy for her work, the Saint indulged in extensive prayer and did not refrain from reviling the inanimate idols that her father honored and those who worshiped them.

When Dioscorus once returned and saw the bath built with three windows, he asked the workers for an explanation and they pointed him to his daughter who, apologizing, testified to her faith in the Christian religion. With her three fingers joined she made the sign of the Cross saying that “Father, Son and Holy Spirit, this unique light illuminates all creation and through the sign of the Cross people are saved”.

Immediately the angry father drew his sword and rushed to kill his daughter. The Saint fled to the mountain where a rock miraculously split in two and protected the martyr. The same miracle had taken place once before to protect the first martyr and co-apostle Thekla…

Enraged Dioscorus met two shepherds on the road and asked them if they knew anything. The first, although he knew, declared ignorance, and the second, after refusing with words, showed with his hands the place of refuge of the Saint. Then Dioscorus pursued the Saint, arrested her by grabbing her hair and imprisoned her in a dark house with guards watching over her. Then he handed her over to Hegemon Marciano to interrogate her even with torture after denouncing her as a Christian and an enemy of the legal order.

When he saw the beautiful young woman, he forgot the words of her unloving father and began to persuade her to change her mind. Faced with the immutability of her opinion, he ordered her to be scourged with raw ox sinews (vuneura) until the ground was stained with her blood, and then her wounds to be rubbed with hairy cloths. Hurt and covered in blood, he threw her in prison. Around midnight, Jesus Christ appeared to her in a bright light and after giving her courage, he healed her and blessed her.

Inside the prison there was still a young Christian, Iuliani, who was concerned about Barbara’s suffering. As he saw her healed, he decided to follow her in her choice to testify about the love of Christ. Marciano called Barbara before him and when he saw her healthy, he attributed the event to the intervention of the gods of his faith. Barbara refused, pointing to Jesus Christ as her only healer. Then he angrily ordered the bystanders to scratch the ribs of the Martyr with iron nails and additionally with lighted lamps to burn the already scratched limbs. Then he ordered with a hammer to strike her honorable head.

Iuliani, watching these martyrdoms of Varvara, could not hide her sensitivity and began to cry. Then Marciano ordered her to be arrested and hanged on the tree next to Barbara and with iron scrapers to tear out her sides. The two women endured this torture praying to God to give them strength to endure it to the end.

Then the heartless Ruler ordered their breasts to be cut off with a chisel. But because one strengthened the other with prayer and friendly words, the Emperor separated them, and imprisoned Iuliani, while he ordered Barbara naked and bloodied to parade her through the streets to be denounced. Saint Barbara asked for divine help in this martyrdom and the grace of God clothed her with a bright cloud from heaven that made her invisible to the eyes of the crowd.

Horrified, Marciano once again gave the final order to put the two women to death by beheading. Agia’s father, seeing all the horrible torture up close, considered it a pity for himself that his daughter should be killed by a foreign hand. That is why he grabbed his daughter by the hair, preparing the massacre with his own hands. Taking her up the mountain, Iuliani followed with her.

Then Saint Barbara knelt down praying for both of them and said with fervor the following: “Lord God, you make the sky like a vault, and the earth with waters you sit on, the clouds are your protectors, the sun and the light are present everywhere, and the common ones these pleasures, righteous and unrighteous, good and wicked donors, he and now obey me, O king, and if of Your name and of my sport visit his house, nothing more than nothing of the weak bodies and the sorrows of the weak.

You see, Lord, that we are flesh and blood, a poem of your innocent hands and an image and similitude of the desolate”. He said this and then a heavenly voice was heard calling the martyrs to heaven, the voice promising the fulfillment of what the courageous Martyr requested.

With joy the two Saints approached the place of their end. And Iuliani was beheaded by an executioner, while Varvara was beheaded by her evil father. However, the divine judgment did not take long to intervene. Lightning consumed Dioscorus and reduced him to ashes.

From Simeon the Translator, who wrote the extensive life of the saint, we learn that a pious and God-fearing man, Valentinos, buried the holy relics of Saint Barbara in a modest house in the village of Gelassos, in a place called “of Nyssos”. , which is twelve miles from Euchaita, a city of Paphlagonia in Asia Minor.

From the same author, as well as from St. John of Damascus, we learn that the saint’s bath – in which her relics were originally recovered – and on the marbles of which she herself had carved the sign of the cross with her finger , was a place of worship and healing and gathered