Virgin Martyr Lucy of Syracuse

Saint Lucy was born into a noble Christian family in Syracuse, Sicily, in the late third century. Her mother Eutychia suffered from an incurable hemorrhage; the two travelled to the tomb of St. Agatha of Catania seeking healing. St. Agatha appeared to Lucy in a dream, promising her mother's cure and foretelling Lucy's own martyrdom.

In gratitude, Lucy resolved to consecrate herself to Christ and distributed her dowry to the poor, refusing marriage to her pagan betrothed. Angered at the loss of her fortune and her refusal to yield, he denounced her as a Christian to the governor Paschasius during the Diocletianic persecution.

Tradition holds that soldiers could not move her body to the place of forced defilement, and that fire built around her left her unharmed. Western iconography (including the image with a red cross in our database) associates her with unharmed eyes, the basis of her patronage of eyesight. According to her Life she was finally put to death by the sword around 304.

Her feast is kept on December 13/26. Her relics were translated multiple times and now rest primarily in Venice (San Geremia).