The Feast of St. Blaise is one of the most widespread pieces of popular saintly devotion to survive in contemporary liturgy. From small suburban parishes to basilicas, the practice of blessing throats with a pair of crossed candles bound with a red ribbon remains much as it was 400 years ago. Although the candles are rarely lit today, the priest or deacon places them upon each parishioner’s throat and prays, “Through the intercession of St. Blaise, bishop and martyr, may God deliver you from every disease of the throat and from every other illness.”

St. Blaise, bishop and martyr, was born in Sebaste, which was the capital of Armenia Minor and is today called Sivas, located in Turkey. We know that he was martyred about the year 316 during the reign of the Emperor Licinius (308–24), on the order of the pagan governor Agricolaus. His cultus flourished in the east by the 6th century and the west by the 9th, in particular for his intervention with ailments of the throat. In the Middle Ages, he was numbered among the Fourteen Holy Helpers, and the blessing of the throats emerged in the form practiced today around the 16th century.

Those are the raw details, and historians tend to dismiss many stories as later embellishments. Most originate in the popular Acts of Blaise from 400 years after his death. The Catholic Encyclopedia dismisses this as “legendary,” although begrudgingly adds that some details might “rest on old traditions.” Even Butler calls the lives of the saint “of small authority.” The saint does appear in other places, however, and in the life of the martyr Eustratius, Blaise receives his relics and serves as executor of his last will and testament.

In addition to his aid to those who suffer from diseases of the throat, he’s also a patron of wool combers, wax chandlers and wild animals. In life, he was a physician elevated to the See of Sebaste, but received a divine order to retire to a cave and live an eremitical life during the Diocletian persecutions. His only companions were wild animals, and even the most ferocious of them were tame in his presence. He survived on the food they brought him, until one day a band of hunters was sent to gather animals for the arena. They found Blaise surrounded by wolves, bears and other dangerous creatures, yet unharmed.

Knowing him to be a Christian, they took him to the governor. Along the way, two encounters central to his legend occurred. In the first, he met a widow distressed that a wolf had carried off a pig, her only food. Blaise summoned the wolf, who returned the pig, and he miraculously restored the animal to full health.

Later, as he was in prison awaiting sentence, this same window found a way to smuggle him a little food. In some versions, she slaughtered the very pig he had restored to her and brought him its meat, a loaf of bread and a candle to light his dark cell. In thanksgiving for this kindness, he said, “Every year offer a candle in the church named for me, and all will be well with you and all who do the same.” This last embellishment to the tale may be etiological, providing a connection between Blaise and the candles that were part of his devotion.

The more famous story has to do with a mother whose son was slowly choking on a fishbone. Blaise touched the boy’s throat and dislodged the bone, saving his life. It is this wonder that links Blaise to diseases of the throat, as miracles followed for people who prayed for his intercession.

Once in the city, he was greeted by the prefect, as related by St. Jacobus in The Golden Legend:

‘Greetings, Blaise, friend of the gods!’

‘Greetings likewise to Your Excellency!’ Blaise responded, ‘But do not call them gods but demons, because they are given over to eternal fire along with all who honor them!’

This made the prefect angry, and he ordered Blaise to be beaten with cudgels and put back in jail. Blaise said to him: ‘Foolish man, do you hope that your punishments will take my love of God away from me, when I have my God in me to give me strength?’ ... The prefect ... ordered the torturers to hang him from a rafter and tear his flesh with iron spikes, then to put him back in jail. Seven women, however, followed and collected the drops of his blood, so they were arrested and ordered to sacrifice to the gods.

They said: ‘If you want us to adore your gods, place them reverently at the edge of the lake, so that we can wash their faces and worship them more cleanly!’ This made the prefect happy, and what they had asked was quickly done. But the women snatched up the idols and threw them into the middle of the lake, saying: ‘Now we shall see if they are really gods!’

Unamused by their trick, the prefect tortured the women and their children to death, and then turned his attention back to Blaise. When he refused to sacrifice to the gods, he was cast into the lake, but firm ground rose beneath his feet. He taunted the prefect’s men to call on their own gods to do the same, and 65 died trying to retrieve him from the middle of the lake. Jacobus concludes his entry by writing that an angel appeared to tell Blaise it was time for him to receive the crown of glory, whereupon the saint turned himself over to the prefect and was beheaded.

On Sainte Blasen Day

The growth of devotion to Blaise followed during the Crusades, and his position among the Fourteen Holy Helpers indicates a widespread and efficacious cultus, with many miracles attributed to his intervention. Since his feast day followed immediately upon Candlemas (the Feast of the Presentation) and the blessing of the candles, the linkage between candles and throats is fairly obvious: there were lots of candles about.

England, Scotland, France, Germany and Italy all had thriving popular devotions to Blaise. Because in many accounts his flesh was torn by iron combs, he became the patron saint of wool combers, who often had thriving guilds that sponsored lavish processions on his feast. Wealthy merchants paraded in their finest clothes, and everyone connected with the wool industry participated, often making their own floats, including wood-themed scenes from mythology, such as Jason and the Golden Fleece, a company of Odysseus’ men, and other themes. Farmers, dyers, weavers, loom makers, and others all participated, led by a figure of Blaise with a comb in one hand and a book in the other.

Blaise Days were a pretty big deal, with people traveling from far away to participate. The feasts emerged from the turmoil of the Reformation fairly intact (a testament to the power and wealth of the wool business), and faded more because of the industrial revolution than religious suppression. In the 1773 entry for The Diary of Country Parson, James Woodforde notes that “I never saw so great a multitude of people in my life collected together.” He continues:

The Market-Place was as full as it could be, both in the area, at the Windows and on the Tops of the Houses— and every Street besides full of People from all Parts of the County. The Procession proceeded thro’ every principal Street of the City and it lasted till 4 in the Afternoon. … We were all highly delighted indeed with this Days Sight — it far exceeded every Idea I cd have of it. Hercules, Jason, and Bishop Blaize, were exceedingly well kept up and very superbly dressed. All the Combers were in white ruffled Shirts with Cross-Belts of Wool of divers Colours —with Mitred Caps on their heads —The Shepherds and Shepherdesses were little Boys and Girls on horseback, very handsomely and with great Propriety dressed. Orations spoke in most of the principal Streets. I never saw a Procession so grand and well conducted.

While the High-Church Anglicans tended to preserve their Blaise devotions, Puritans were more contemptuous. Discovery of Witches calls the prayer to St. Blaise “a charm of the popish church” for removing a splinter or a bone in the throat, with the intrusive object urged to “come forth” in his name.

The Popish Kingdome records the following ditty, mocking the practice of placing a relic of St. Blaise in barrels of water and then distributing them as remedies.

Then followeth good Sir Blaze, who doth a waxen candell give,
And holy water to his men, whereby they safely live.
I divers barrels oft have seene, drawne out of water cleare,
Through one small blessed bone of this same Martyr beare:
And caryed thence to other townes and cities farre away,
Ech superstition doth require such earnest kinde of playe.

There are many claimed relics of St. Blaise, including multiple heads, jaws and arms, making it a source of widespread mockery of relic veneration during the Reformation.

Brand’s Popular Antiquities, citing Minshew’s Dictionary, notes that country women went about on Candlemas, making “good cheer,” but if they find a neighbor spinning on that day, they “burn and make a blaze of fitere of the distaffe, and thereof called St. Blaze his Day.” Fires were supposedly common at this time, although Brand’s notes it is “a custom antiently taken up, perhaps for no better reason than the jingling resemblance of his name to the word Blaze.”

Coming at the beginning of February, the doubleheader of Candlemas and Blaise offered a return to light in a season known for darkness. The days were starting to lengthen, and the weather was more changeable. Blaise, for a time, was associated with winds and storms, particularly in Germany, where the similarity of his name to the word blasen (“to blow”) made him a storm saint, in control of winds and often invoked by sailors. Fire, light and wind are all elements we think about as the Christmas season formally closes with the Presentation and we turn our eyes to the last hard month before the coming of spring. St. Blaise stands at the head of that month, offering light, warmth, and maybe a cure for that scratchy throat.