Part 249: Lucia

PERSONA MYTHOLOGY UPDATE

Let's talk about Lucia.


Lucia is sort of an odd duck in the Persona compendium we're compiling here. While most of the other characters' personae are drawn from antiquity, Lucia is an early Christian martyr and saint. For the sake of simplicity, I'll refer to her by her English name, St. Lucy, for the rest of this post.

St Lucy is held sacred by both Catholic and Orthodox Christians. She is the patron saint of the blind; as she came from Syracuse, which was located in modern-day Sicily, Sicilians claim her as their national saint as well. Her name comes from the Latin root lux, meaning light, which may be one of the reasons she became associated with the blind. In iconography, she is often depicted holding a tray with her eyes on it. St. Lucy is also one of the seven women aside from the Virgin Mary to be included in the Canon of the Mass. Her sacred day is December 13.

Like many of the older saints, it is difficult to separate fact from fiction when it comes to the stories surrounding St. Lucy. She lived during the Diocletian persecution and is thought to have lived from 283 to 304 CE. Upon converting to Christianity, she decided to stay a virgin and devote her life to pious works. Her pagan fiance was not amused. He denounced her as a Christian to the authorities and she was executed. This much we can probably assume to be true.

Legends about St. Lucy more than elaborate on this sparse account. St. Lucy was born to a wealthy couple in Syracuse. As her father died when she was a baby, her mother, Eutychia, raised the girl alone. When St. Lucy vowed to stay a virgin, she did not tell her mother, who later betrothed her to a pagan. As such, she needed to find a way to convince her mother to end the engagement.

At the time Eutychia had been suffering from dysentery for four years, with none of her doctors providing any respite. St. Lucy had heard of another Christian martyr, St. Agatha of Catania (another city in Sicily), who had accomplished many miracles on the behalf of worshipers who had visited her tomb. She convinced Eutychia to go on a pilgrimage with her to Catania in order to pray at St. Agatha's tomb for relief from the dysentery. There they stayed up all night in prayer until they fell asleep from exhaustion. As she slept, St. Lucy dreamed that St. Agatha came to her and said, "Soon you shall be to Syracuse as I am to Catania." When she woke, she found that Eutychia had been cured.

Such miracles make believers. St. Lucy now revealed to her mother that she wished to remain a virgin and give her wealth to the poor. Eutychia gave her permission to do as she wished, and the two women returned home. There St. Lucy sold off all the jewels that made up her dowry and gave the proceedings away. It was through this sale that her betrothed learned of her resolution.

The young man was pissed. He denounced his ex-fiancee as a Christian to the governor Paschasius, who then sentenced St. Lucy to be put in a brothel. However, when guards came to take her away, St. Lucy was filled with the Holy Spirit and became unmovable. Then they tried to burn her, but that attempt failed as well. Finally they managed to kill her by slitting her throat, but until the end she continued to predict Paschasius's downfall and the end of the Diocletian persecution.

One particularly popular story says that St. Lucy's torturers gouged out her eyes, hence the reason why she is associated with the blind and depicted holding a tray with her eyes on it. An alternative version states that St. Lucy's fiance was particularly attracted to her beautiful eyes, so she tore them out herself and gave them to him. God subsequently rewarded her with another pair of eyes.

Although Protestants do not usually revere saints, St. Lucy's Day is still widely celebrated in Lutheran Scandinavia and other parts of the world with Scandinavian populations. A girl is chosen to play St. Lucy and leads a procession of women carrying candles while wearing a white dress, red sash, and a crown of candles and singing holiday songs. Apparently the processions is derived from a legend that St. Lucy used to sneak food to Christians hiding in catacombs, wearing a crown of candles to light the way. This modern practice apparently dates from the 19th or early 20th century, but mentions of St. Lucy's Day being observed in Scandinavia go back as far back as the Middle Ages. The celebration is likely a holdover of pre-Christian midwinter rites; until the 19th century, Scandinavians commonly believed that December 13th was the shortest day of the year.