It's been a hard week and a long day and I *almost* missed it but not quite. Friends, allow me to wish you a happy Day of the Feast of Saint Barbara, patroness of Blowing Shit Up. (Seriously, that's her thing.)

Who is Barbara, you might rightly ask? She has been deprecated (OK, desanctified) in the modern RC church (though still venerated in E. Orthodox I think?), but she was historically the daughter of a pagan named Dioscorus and was murdered by him sometime in the vicinity of 300 CE.

The story: Barbara was beautiful and without supervision because her mother had died; her father kept her locked up in a tower. She came into contact with early Christian missionaries (in possibly Syria?), converted, and defied her father's order to make an advantageous marriage.

Her father handed her over to the local authorities for a disgusting series of tortures (really, the martyrology is awful), which culminate in him volunteering to behead her publicly. On the way home, he is struck down by lighting and mystical flames consume his body to ash.

So Barbara is avenged. She becomes the patroness of professions that are at risk of sudden (and fiery) death: sappers, miners, firemen, artillery engineers, makers of fireworks. The ordinance corps of multiple national militaries claim her as their patron.

In 1489, a count of Locmalo in Brittany was caught in a violent storm and prayed to St. Barbara to save him. The chapel he built in her honor contains a bell whose ringing wards off lightning. In 1602, a Spanish explorer who survived a Pacific storm named Santa Barbara for her.

I adore the idea that a woman murdered by the patriarchy became exalted over the centuries, in primarily male pursuits, for the power to fling or hold back the fire of heaven. She's not my name saint, but I'm happy to claim her. Happy Saint Barbara's Day.