The Tower, the Third Window, and the Lightning

Barbara is one of the most beloved of the early virgin martyrs, and also one of the least historical: no early record attests her, and her story survives only in later legend. That legend is vivid. A rich pagan father, wishing to keep his beautiful daughter from suitors and from the new religion, shut her in a tower. While he was away she was baptized, and she had the builders add a third window to her bathhouse so that its openings might confess the Trinity.

Enraged at her faith, her father dragged her before a judge, and after she endured torture he beheaded her with his own hand, whereupon he was struck dead by lightning on the way home. From that thunderbolt grew her patronage: she is invoked against lightning, fire, and above all sudden and unprovided death, the death that gives no time to prepare the soul. When gunpowder came to Europe she naturally became patron of those who worked with it, of artillerymen, miners, and engineers, and powder magazines were often placed under her name. Her feast is 4 December; her image carries a tower and a martyr's palm.