Lucy, Saint, Martyr

LUCY, Saint, Martyr. - Venerated throughout the whole Church, she suffered martyrdom at Syracuse during the persecution of Diocletian, on 13 Dec. 304. The oldest and most authentic document of the cult paid to L. is an inscription found in the cemetery of St. John at Syracuse in 1894; it dates to the beginning of the 5th century, and refers to a certain Euschia who died "τῇ ἑορτῇ τῆς Κουρίας μου Λουκίας".

The cult of L. soon crossed the boundaries of Sicily. Her feast is already found in the Sacramentarium Gelasianum (Reg. 316) and in the Sacramentarium Gregorianum (Pad. D. 47), assigned to 13 Dec.; on the same date she is commemorated in the Martyrologium Hieronymianum. In the 6th century there existed, both at Rome and at Syracuse, a monastery dedicated to her (St. Gregory the Great, Reg. epist., VII, 36; XI, 15), and in the 7th century Honorius I (625-638) consecrated a church to her. St. Gregory the Great probably inserted her name, together with that of Agatha, into the Canon of the Mass, and around the same time her cult was introduced also into the churches of Milan and Ravenna. There her image was also represented in the famous procession of the Virgins in the church of St. Apollinaris the New. The marble calendar of Naples and the Greek synaxaria commemorate her concordantly on 13 Dec.

The Passio, of which there exist versions in Greek (BHG, 995 ff.) and in Latin (BHL 4992-5003), composed between the 5th and 6th centuries, is a cento to be numbered among the hagiographic legends written to exalt the greatness of Christian virginity, although a certain primitive nucleus concerning the interrogation before the tribunal may be discerned in it. According to the Passio, L. was a young and wealthy woman of Syracuse, already betrothed to a fellow citizen of hers. Having gone to Catania to the tomb of St. Agatha, to implore the healing of her mother, the Saint appeared to her, assuring her that her prayer would be answered and foretelling her martyrdom. Having returned home, in fact, she decided to remain a virgin; therefore her betrothed accused her as a Christian before the prefect Paschasius. He summoned her to his tribunal; but when threats and exhortations proved useless, he ordered that the virgin be taken to a place of infamy, but, however many efforts were made, neither men nor the oxen employed succeeded in moving her a single step. She was covered with incendiary materials, but the fire did not touch her; finally she was pierced with a dagger. Before expiring, L. still had time to foretell the imminent peace that would come to the Church with the abdication of Diocletian, and to receive the Eucharist from the hands of the bishop. Over her tomb a church was later built, which soon became a destination of pilgrimages and a center of prodigies. Paschasius, on the other hand, accused of having plundered the province, was taken to Rome and executed.

Regarding the relics of L. there exists a twofold tradition. According to one, they remained at Syracuse until the 8th century, when Faroald, duke of Spoleto, having seized Syracuse, carried them to Corfinio (= Péntima), in the Abruzzi. There they are said to have remained for more than two centuries, and in 969 they were transferred to Metz by Bishop Theodoric, by concession of the emperor Otto. In 1042, an arm was donated to the emperor Henry III, who gave it to the monastery of Luitbourg. According to the other version, on the other hand, the relics of L. were transferred from Syracuse to Constantinople in 822 by George Maniakes, to remove them from the devastating fury of the Saracens. When in 1024 the city was taken by the Crusaders, they were carried by them to Venice and placed in the monastery of St. George. In 1280 they were transferred to a church dedicated to L., except for an arm which remained in St. George, but which Pius IX, in 1860, had transferred to the church of St. Jeremiah.

L. is generally invoked as protectress of sight, and against all ophthalmological diseases and blindness. Iconography customarily represents her with a tray in her hand containing a pair of eyes. Thus, of the whole legend concerning the Saint's martyrdom, the episode that most struck the popular imagination is that of the eyes, which L. tears out and sends on a tray to the prefect Paschasius, who had fallen in love with her, above all for the splendor of her gaze. However, this episode is not read in the Passio and was inserted only later into the account of L.'s life, carried over into it from the legend of another Lucia (cf. Moschus, Pratum spirituale, 60: PL 74, 178). According to some, the connection of L. with the representation of the eyes would have been suggested by the martyr's name: L. = light, hence invoked in diseases of the eyes, which use light in order to see. Indeed, in the Middle Ages a kind of eye lotion was called outright "santalucia".

Agostino Amore

ICONOGRAPHY

The iconographic themes relating to the depiction of St. Lucy are quite numerous: not infrequently her attributes are accumulated, as in the panel by Pietro Lorenzetti for the church of St. Lucy among the Rovinate, in Florence, of c. 1340, in which the Saint appears with the palm in her right hand, the lamp in her left hand and the sword thrust into her neck, symbols respectively of martyrdom, of wisdom (the lamp of the wise virgins of the Gospel parable) and of the determination of the martyrdom. Moreover, on the mouth of the lamp two eyes appear, an attribute which entered only late into the iconographic tradition of L., but which would remain constant, at least in Italian art.

In the oldest depictions the Saint appears distinguished by the attributes of virginity and martyrdom: thus in the solemn procession of virgins of St. Apollinaris in Classe at Ravenna, with Sts. Agatha, Cecilia, Agnes, etc., of the 6th century, bearing in her hand, like them, a garland of flowers. Similarly, clothed in resplendent Byzantine garments of a princely character, St. L. is found in the frescoes of St. Elias near Nepi, in Latium, of the 11th century, beside St. Catherine and other saints. The lighted lamp already appears in the mosaic of the apse of St. Mary Major in Rome, of the 13th century, and, while it is absent in Germany, it remains in Italy a constant attribute, for the most part united with the palm. Besides the already cited example of Pietro Lorenzetti, one also recalls the altarpiece of Sebastiano del Piombo, in St. John Chrysostom in Venice, and the bas-relief of Luca della Robbia in the portal of St. L. in Florence. Another attribute that spread especially in Italy and in the Latin countries is that of the eyes on a tray, or displayed in another manner: but in reality, as has been mentioned, the legend of the martyrdom accomplished by extraction of the eyeballs dates only from the 14th century, and in a panel by Angeletto da Gubbio the attribute of the eyes has a merely symbolic value; the Saint supports with her right hand a tray, on which are 6 eyes, and has in her left hand another eye. In the popularization of the theme the Saint generally keeps the tray, with the eyes, in her left hand, while in her right she holds up the palm; the lamp, sometimes the chalice and rarely a book. Thus in altarpieces or panels by Crivelli, by Garofalo, by Sano di Pietro in the Academy of Siena, by Mainardi in St. Gimignano, by Andrea da Assisi in the Pinacoteca of Perugia. Exquisite variations are also found: in the celebrated St. L. of Cossa (from the Duveen collection in London, formerly part of the Griffoni Polyptych of ca. 1473) the Saint holds the eyes like flowers on their stem, by analogy with the fantastic attribute of St. Florian, to whom she is placed beside, and who is depicted with a flower in his hand. The attributes described thus far appear normally also in the sacred conversations, of which the Saint forms part, as in those of Tommaso di Vigilia in the Gallery of the Museum in Palermo, and of Borgognone in the Carrara Gallery of Bergamo. Generally the Saint is flanked by St. Catherine.

The sword thrust into the neck, sometimes replaced by a dagger, is a determinative indication of the martyrdom: it appears in two panels of the National Museum of Munich, of the monastery of Messkirch at Karlsruhe, etc. Thus also in a panel by Holbein the Elder at Prague. Sometimes the sword rests on the book, as in a painting by Jacopo di Michele Gera in the Palazzo dei Priori at Volterra. Another specification of the martyrdom, but widespread only in Germany, is that of the flames that envelop the Saint from below, as is found at Cologne in an altarpiece of a private collection of the local school and in a panel by Holbein. Naturally there exist other depictions that do not belong to these schemes: in the altarpiece of Borgognone at Bergamo the two eyes are on the point of the sword. Flandrin in a panel of the church of St-Vincent-de-Paul in Paris and Angelico in a reliquary of St. Maria Novella place a crown between her hands. Moreover, in the German-speaking countries, where the individual depictions of the Saint date only from the late Quattrocento, the Saint customarily wears a broad mantle open at the front, and long garments gathered at the waist. A large altarpiece by Palma the Elder, for the altar of the church of St. L. in Venice, then depicts her apotheosis. The martyrdom of the Saint is found depicted in the Menologion of Basil II (976-1025) preserved in the Vatican Library, in a hagiographic codex of the 12th century in the Library of Wallerstein in Bavaria, and in a Passionary of the Library of Stuttgart, of the same century, in miniatures of the Library of the Arsenal of Paris, in numerous predellas of altarpieces, and above all in that admirable one by Domenico Veneziano of the altarpiece of St. L. de' Magnoli, formerly at the Friedrich Museum in Berlin, in which one sees the Saint kneeling struck by the bailiff, while the Emperor from the balcony of the Palace gives the order for the decapitation.

Numerous also are the scenes of the legend. Of these one recalls, to limit oneself only to Italy, those painted by a Giottoesque master in the Benedictine cloister of Resca Valle on the island of Veglia in Dalmatia, by a 14th-century fresco painter at Empoli, by a pupil of Gentile da Fabriano in an altar of Fermo. But of all, the most important are the apse frescoes of the church of St. Maria delle Grazie, at Offida, by the hand of a follower of Allegretto Nuzi, and the cycle of the Oratory of St. George at Padua, by Avanzo (ca. 1380), in which, in four scenes that unfold against the background of a marvelous complex of Gothic architecture, one observes the Saint led before the judges who stand on the loggias of the Palace, the miracle of immobility, despite the fact that six oxen spurred on by the bailiffs try to drag her, the martyrdom, which unfolds in three architectural compartments in its various phases of the torture with fire, of the immersion of the naked Saint in boiling oil and of the wounding with the sword, and finally the deposition of her body in the sepulcher, before the Duomo, amid a pious procession of religious and faithful, while at the windows of the religious building, above a little loggia, she appears in the act of receiving Communion. Of particular beauty and narrative felicity is the altarpiece of Lorenzo Lotto in the Pinacoteca of Jesi, where scenes from the life of the Saint are represented.

Eugenio Battisti

FOLKLORE

The cult of St. Lucy has its center in the Saint's native city, Syracuse, where on December 13 a solemn procession takes place that goes as far as the country church built where the Saint suffered martyrdom. The Saint is much celebrated throughout Sicily with festivals and processions: on that day the devout abstain from eating bread, and limit themselves to legumes, vegetables, panelle made of chickpea flour, and caccia (grain soaked and cooked with other legumes).

In many Italian cities (as, for example, in Bologna) a great fair takes place on December 13 that opens the Christmas season and in which the figurines of the Nativity scene, toys and sweets are already displayed. In Trentino and elsewhere (Tyrol, Bohemia, etc.), St. Lucy has the same function as St. Nicholas or the Befana: it is imagined that she passes, on the night of the vigil, with her little donkey laden with gifts, by the houses of good children, leaving for them toys and confetti, as well as a little stick.

Before the Gregorian reform of the calendar, St. Lucy marked the shortest day of the year, and an old, very widespread proverb still recalls this. Therefore on that day prognostics for the new year were drawn, and still are drawn: in various regions not only of Italy (Sicily, Calabria, Apulia, Abruzzo, Venezia Giulia), but also of France, Silesia, the Carpathians and Russia, the forecast of the calends begins on December 13 rather than at Christmas or New Year: it consists in holding that the weather on each day from St. Lucy's to Christmas will correspond to that of each month of the coming year. Thus girls draw horoscopes to learn who their husband will be.

Expressions of the popular cult of St. Lucy are ex-votos in wax or silver foil with two eyes, or amulets in various metals of the same shape, or even small forms of bread called "the eyes of St. Lucy." In many villages a rigorous fast is observed on the vigil; and it is believed that whoever respects it will be able, during the night, to see his future spouse in a dream. Also widespread is the belief that on the night of St. Lucy spirits and witches are extraordinarily active; and various means are resorted to in order to drive them away. In Croatia a cornmeal flatbread is baked for the men and the livestock, with the idea that it will protect them from the bite of rabid dogs.

The legend of the Saint has inspired short poems and popular songs. A cantare in sestinas was published by De Bartholomaeis from cod. Ambr. 95 sup. (v. bibl.); a story in octaves is preserved in old popular prints at the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice; a narrative song in epic hendecasyllables is widespread in the popular tradition of the various regions of Italy, from Lombardy to Apulia. There are also known certain prayers - incantations in verse to obtain the healing of ophthalmias or to keep the sight healthy, and in which mention is made of a fantastic encounter between St. L. and Jesus Christ. A sacred representation with the title Devotissima historia di s. L. was published at Florence in 1558.

Paolo Toschi