**BARBARA, Saint and Martyr.** — No reliable historical records concerning the life and martyrdom of St BARBARA have been preserved. The *Passio* is a late compilation (7th century) full of improbabilities, probably of Egyptian origin. It was soon translated into Latin and adapted to the new environment; three versions of this translation are known, which inspired some martyrological notices of the 9th century. According to the *Passio*, she was martyred at the beginning of the 4th century under the Emperor Maximian in a city that varies according to the texts of the *Passio* and the authors of the martyrologies: Antioch, Etiopoli near Eucaita, Nicomedia, Rome, and even a region, Tuscany, are mentioned.
The day of her martyrdom and feast is fixed, both in the East and in the West, on 4 December; Ado, followed by Usuard, assigns it to the 16th of the same month, as does the Coptic calendar.
The content of the *Passio* can be summarised roughly as follows: BARBARA, a young woman of rare beauty, is locked by her father Dioscorus in a comfortable tower so that she may not be contaminated by the world. When he learns that she is a Christian (she had baptised herself), he denounces her to the provincial prefect Martinian; she is condemned, and her father takes it upon himself to carry out the death sentence, but shortly after the execution a lightning bolt incinerates the unworthy father. The known texts of the *Passio*, with the exception of one, present St Juliana as BARBARA’s companion in martyrdom.
The earliest monument recalling St BARBARA dates from the 8th century and consists of a painting found in the church of Sta Maria Antiqua in the Roman Forum. From the 9th century onwards, evidence of her cult—churches, oratories (the text of John the Deacon in the life of St Gregory the Great [IV, 89: PL 75, 234] is only valuable for the end of the 9th century), altars, monasteries, etc.—becomes increasingly numerous, both in the West and in the East. Later she was numbered among the Fourteen Holy Helpers (v.) and was invoked especially to obtain the grace of receiving the Sacraments at the point of death. Gunners and miners chose her as their patroness because she protects them from any fatal explosion that might lead to their death, just as the lightning bolt, according to the *Passio*, incinerated her inhuman father.
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**Iconography.** — While the crown, the palm, and the sword, instrument of her final execution, characterise the Saint as a martyr, her iconography also features the peacock, a tower whose three windows allude to the Holy Trinity, and, from
**BARBARA, Saint — Fresco in Sta Maria Antiqua (8th century) — Rome.**
26. — *ENCYCLOPEDIA CATHOLICA. — II.*
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**BARBARA, Saint — Engraving by I. van Meckenem (15th century) — Berlin, Print Room.**
**15th century — also a chalice, indicating her as the protector of armourers. Among Flemish artists, Jan van Eyck (Antwerp) and Memling (Chatsworth, Bruges, Brussels) left us notable images of the Saint. In 15th-century Italy, plates and engravings by G. Cozzarelli, Francesco Francia, Matteo di Giovanni, Cosimo Rosselli, and Bartolomeo Vivarini vie with one another in depicting her alone or grouped with other saints; in the 16th century Raphael paints her in the Sistine Madonna and Palma the Elder in the altarpiece of Sta Maria Formosa in Venice. For the legend of the Saint, already represented in a 12th-century German illuminated manuscript, a Silesian artist offers in the altarpiece of the same name in the museum of Breslau (1447) one of the most extensive cycles of stories; the scene of her flight from the tower was painted by Pinturicchio in a famous fresco in the Borgia apartments in the Vatican.**