St. Blaise

Blaise is one of the early martyrs whose cult is very strong but whose biography rests almost entirely on a legendary passio of uncertain date. He is said to have been bishop of Sebaste in Armenia, a physician before his episcopate, who withdrew to the hills during the Diocletian persecution and was found there by hunters sent to capture wild beasts for the arena. The passio gives him a period in the wilderness living among wild animals and healing them, then his arrest, his imprisonment, and his martyrdom by being torn with iron combs before being beheaded. The blessing of throats on his feast — one of the most durable parish customs in the Western Church — goes back to a story in the passio: a child brought to him while he was under arrest, who had a fishbone lodged in the throat and was near death. Blaise healed the child before they led him away.

The legendary material deserves honest acknowledgment: the passio is not historical biography. But the cult retains its content regardless. The enormous popular hold of Blaise's intercession for the sick, and especially for throat ailments, reflects how the faithful have understood his patronage across many centuries. The feast falls in February, when winter ailments were most pressing, which may partly explain the persistence of the blessing custom. He is also one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers, the group of saints whose intercession was invoked in epidemic and crisis, and his membership in that company says something about the confidence the medieval Church placed in him.