Saint Barbara

 

A rocky outcrop

One of the patron saints of Perillos is Saint Barbara. Her presence in the church is only by means of a simplistic statue, but her main presence was once in her position as patron saint of what is now the disused chapel sitting along the road in the valley below the village.
The chapel sits on a rocky outcrop, and is orientated north-south – an anomalous alignment when it comes to Christian churches, which are traditionally aligned east-west. Still, we note that all three chapels of Perillos (St Michael, St Barbara and St Theresa) were originally aligned north-south – and two still are.
The chapel of St Barbara is no longer used and is now mainly visited by people practicing their musical talents – or lack of – inside, as well as some who use the site for meditations. But despite its non-usage, the site has retained its geological oddity, sitting as it does as a rocky outcrop in the valley (thus somewhat resembling the Roc Redon on the valley on the other side of the village), as well as sitting at the exit of another valley. It is this valley that was once home to various mines and it may explain why the patron saint of miners, Saint Barbara, was chosen as the patron saint, to guard over the valley’s entrance. Perhaps it was once customary for the mining community to climb to the chapel before entering the mines, asking for her protection during their dangerous work.

A saint that towers over many others

Each canonized saint is symbolized by the instrument or the reason of its martyrdom. Saint Barbara is represented holding a tower. According to legend, Saint Barbara was the extremely beautiful daughter of a wealthy heathen named Dioscorus, who lived near Nicomedia in Asia Minor. Because of her singular beauty and fearful that she be demanded in marriage and taken away from him, he jealously shut her up in a tower to protect her from the outside world.
Shortly before embarking on a journey, he commissioned a sumptuous bathhouse to be built for her, approving the design before he departed. Meanwhile, with little else to do but think, Barbara heard of the teachings of Christ, and while her father was gone spent much time in contemplation about this emerging religion. It is said she corresponded with some of the leading Church authorities of her time, including Origen. As her belief became firmer, she instructed the builders to redesign the bathhouse her father had planned, adding another window so that its three windows would symbolise the Holy Trinity.
When her father returned, he was at first perplexed by the changes and then infuriated when Barbara acknowledged that she had converted to Christianity. He brought her before the perfect of the province, who decreed that she be tortured and put to death by beheading. Dioscorus himself carried out the death sentence, dragging her up a mountain to perform her execution. Of course, such things would not go unpunished; hence, on his way down, he himself was struck by lightening.

Thunder, fire and sudden death

Saint Barbara is hence represented standing by a tower with three windows, carrying the palm of a martyr in her hand. Often, too, she holds a chalice and a sacramental wafer and sometimes cannons are displayed near her. Generally her hairstyle is a blue or white veil, practically never revealing hair.
The legend of the lightning bolt which struck down her father caused her to be regarded as the patron saint in time of danger from thunderstorms, fires and sudden death. Furthermore, when gunpowder made its appearance, her existing associations made her a likely saint for aid against accidents resulting from explosions, as well as artillerymen and mining – the latter often using fire or explosives.

History, or legend?

There is debate as to whether Saint Barbara lived or not. Still, those who accept her historical nature, argue she lived ca. 300 AD. The problem is that the early inventories of martyrs do not mention her, and she begins to make her appearance only from the 7th century onwards, with her veneration ascending in the 9th, and really becoming popular by medieval times.
Officially, her relics are in a church in Old Cairo, which bears her name. Diego de Merida was one of those who wrote in 1531 how he had visited her tomb there. The church was built in 684 AD by a wealthy scribe called Athanasius, though was originally dedicated to Abu Kir and Yohanna (St. Cyrus and St. John). When the remains of Saint Barbara were brought here, a separate sanctuary was built. Thus there are now two separate churches. The remains of St. Catherine, of the famous monastery of the same name, are also to be found in the same complex.

The relic hunters

Saint Barbara was a saint who was greatly adored, it seems, by the Aragon kings. A chapel dedicated to the saint can be found in the Aragon castle in Naples – rather interestingly next to another chapel, dedicated to the souls in purgatory. The dedication of a chapel to Saint Barbara inside a castle was a specific Spanish custom. In the Spanish language, the word “santabárbara” actually means the magazine of a ship or fortress and it was customary to have a statue of Saint Barbara at the magazine to protect the ship or fortress from suddenly exploding. In Naples, they went one step further and dedicated an entire chapel to her.

But the Aragonese kings also apparently wanted to have her relics in their country. In “The Rise of the Aragonese-Catalan Empire 1200-1350”, there is a reference to an expedition that the Aragon kings tried to organise in 1334, an attempt to recover the relics of Saint Barbara.
The story is set against a rich background, in which travel to Egypt – Alexandria – was officially forbidden, this on papal orders. In 1323, the pope relented his position somewhat and allowed Jaime of Aragon to send one ship a year to Alexandria and establish diplomatic relations between the two governments. That year, G. Grau of Tarragona set sail for Alexandria with a cargo of merchandise and a pilgrim destined for Jerusalem. But one mission per year did not seem to suffice the needs or desires of the Aragon kings. Hence, on August 1, 1326, Jaime threw caution to the wind and allowed Jaume Dolvan of Barcelona to carry contraband to the Egyptian metropolis.
The Avignon popes may have fumed at the Aragonese disregard of their prohibitions, but they could do no more than invent excuses that permitted the Catalans to sail to Alexandria.

It is in this context that on October 7, 1328, Pope John XXII informed Alfonso IV that it was acceptable to send a ship to Egypt to recover the relics of Saint Barbara. In February 1334, His Holiness permitted the king of Mallorca to send three ships to Egypt, perhaps for the same purpose. Again, on October 4, 1334, Pedro IV allowed Pedro de Mitjavita to go to Alexandria to seek the elusive relics.
It seems that despite being clearly located in a church in Cairo, all of these men had great difficulty finding the church in question – or perhaps indeed the relic hunt was nothing more than a handy excuse to trade with Egypt – or search for something else that may have been or been known in Egypt?
Let us nevertheless note that the principal families that were instrumental in mounting this search for the saint’s relics were Fenouillet and Manresa, two families with direct family ties to the Perillos family.

Saint Barbara in France… and Russia

That the expeditions to Egypt to retrieve her bones may have been an excuse, might be inferred from the fact that some claimed her bones – or at least part of them – were already present in France. It is said that the town of Monaure possessed the relics of Saint Barbara, brought from the East to Normandy around 1050 by Robert Stigaud, son of Odon, himself in the employment of William, Duke of Normandy. Stigaud seems to have been convinced of his case, for he went as far as destroying the family castle in 1068 to found, instead, a collegiate church known as “St Barbe en Auge”.
However, another tradition states that in the 12th century, her relics were brought from Constantinople to St. Michael's Golden-Domed Monastery in Kiev, where they were kept until the 1930s, when they were transferred to St. Vladimir's Cathedral in the same city. Like the several heads of John the Baptist, there seems to have been a lot of Barbara to go around.

A forgotten saint?

Specifically, Barbara’s claim to fame is that she is one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers, also known as Helpers in Need. These were the saints people could call upon in hour of need. Each saint had a specific area of expertise, depending on the looming doom. At the heart of the fourteen were three virgin martyrs: Saint Margaret, Saint Catherine… and Saint Barbara.
But despite all her past fame, today, the Church – at least the Catholic Church – seems to want to forget about her. When there was controversy over her historical nature, in 1969, she was stripped of her former feast-day, December 4. In Orthodox countries, her feast day nevertheless remained and she remains a popular saint. Still, the Catholic Church realised they could not wipe her out of existence completely, so the official position is that worship and dedication to the saint is the bailiwick of local church authorities.

A legend to hide another legend?

As such, despite being popular, her historical nature cannot be verified. This normally suggests that a saint was introduced because a pagan story or some type of pagan worship needed to be Christianised.
For example, where precisely she came from, is in dispute. Most list Nicomedia, others Rome, still others, interestingly, Heliopolis, which today is hidden under the streets of Cairo, close to the official location of her remains. But when we say Heliopolis, we are immediately confronted with the heart of ancient Egypt’s religion. The key feature of Heliopolis was the benben stone, which was an enigmatic stone that was located on top of an obelisk. Should we see a comparison between Saint Barbara’s tower and this obelisk? Perhaps, though at present, the evidence can only be described as possible at best.
However, we do note that the tower is an important symbol as such and hence, Saint Barbara may have been created as a tower needed to be introduced somehow in Christian iconography. At the same time, people may have opted to use Saint Barbara as a patron saint, even though what they really were looking for, was tower-related symbolism.

Towers

In the work of Patrice Chaplin on Saunière and his dealings with an esoteric society in the Spanish city of Girona, a tower in Girona and the Tour Magdala in Rennes-le-Château are key features. They are said to play a role in certain magical workings… which may bring to mind another tower, in the vicinity of Lyon, which in the 1950s was the key location for a series of important and intriguing magical workings.
In this regard, we also underline the enigmatic round towers of Celtic Christianity, a once popular and apparently important aspect of the religious life of the early Christians, which was crudely suppressed in the 4th century. We should perhaps wonder whether Barbara was “invented” so that these annulled strands of Christianity nevertheless had a means to survive within the church’s ever-growing scope of symbolism.
Of course, since The Da Vinci Code, it is well-known that in Hebrew, tower meant “migdal”, which was linked with Magdala, and hence Mary Magdalene. A lot has been made about the tower in Saunière’s estate, which he labelled Tour Magdala, though only after some deliberations, as prior to this, other names were proposed. For a man obsessed with games… did he see this tower as part of a grander design, one which normally involved inversions?

A game of cards

In the Tarot, the tower is a significant card. The Tarot deck is essentially a story of self-discovery, a means of divination for the seeker of personal insights, the Fool. By the time the voyage of self-discovery comes to the tower, the story of the tower relates how it is struck by lightning, and reduced to rubble. The tower symbolised all misperceptions the Fool had built up about his self-image, which now lies shattered, and which needs to be rebuild, though now according to his true self. Of course, we note the presence of lightning, which was also a chief ingredient in Saint Barbara’s story. Apart from modern references to the Twin Towers, the story was normally seen as a reference to the biblical story of the Tower of Babel.
From here, it is but a short hop to Babylon. Playing once again the role of inversions (even though we are unsure whether we should), when we switch Genesis (Babel) with the Apocalypse, we end up being confronted with the Whore of Babylon. She is a key player in any end of times scenario, one that also involves the advent of the New Messiah, a subject that became the magical working of a group of magicians working in the enigmatic tower in the Lyon region mentioned above. In that instance, the tower did not collapse, but its participants were forced to jump out of the windows, as enigmatic blue lights – resembling thunder – were beginning to engulf the tower, as reported by eyewitnesses at the time.

It is therefore clear that however popular Saint Barbara once was, her instrument of martyrdom, the tower, was as notorious as the saint. And within magical traditions, it is the tower, not the saint, which holds a key position.

Filip Coppens