Category:Saint Barbara

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Coats of arms showing St. Barbara.

Saint Barbara , known in the Eastern Orthodox Church as the Great Martyr Barbara, is martyr. Although there is no reference to her in the authentic early Christian writings, nor in the original recension of Saint Jerome's martyrology, veneration of her was common from the seventh century.

According to the legendary accounts of her life that circulated from the seventh century, Barbara was the daughter of a rich man named Dioscorus. She was carefully guarded by her father who kept her shut up in a tower in order to preserve her from the outside world. Having secretly become a Christian, she rejected an offer of marriage that she received through him. Before going on a journey, he commanded that a private bath-house be erected for her use near her dwelling, and during his absence Barbara had three windows put in it, as a symbol of the Holy Trinity, instead of the two originally intended. When her father returned, she acknowledged herself to be a Christian; upon this she was ill-treated by him and dragged before the prefect of the province, Martinianus, who had her cruelly tortured and finally condemned her to death by beheading.

The father himself carried out the death-sentence, but in punishment for this he was struck by lightning on the way home and his body consumed.

Her main symbol thus is a three-windowed tower and also a sword with a lightning rod.

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