Blaise of Sebaste

Physician and bishop of Sebaste

Blaise was a native and, in time, the bishop of Sebaste (Sebasteia, the modern Sivas) in Lesser Armenia, the same Armenian city whose frozen lake would receive the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste a few years after his death. The tradition remembers him first as a physician — one who healed the bodies of men, and, discerning that the health of the soul is the greater medicine, was raised by the people and clergy of the city to its episcopal throne, that he might be a healer of souls as he had been of bodies. As bishop he governed the church of Sebaste in the last age of the persecutions, a shepherd famed for the gentleness and holiness of his life, at a time when the peace granted by Constantine in the West had not yet reached the dominions of his eastern colleague and rival.

The cave on Mount Argeus and the beasts

When the persecution of the emperor Licinius — who from about 320 turned against the Christians of the East in violation of the Edict of Milan — fell upon Sebaste, the aged bishop, at the urging of his flock and (the tradition says) by a warning from God, withdrew from the city into the wilderness of Mount Argeus (Aргаίος), taking refuge in a cave. There the most cherished of his legends unfolds: the wild beasts of the mountain came down to him, not to harm but to be blessed. They gathered at the mouth of his cave, waited while he prayed, and would not depart until he had laid his hand upon them; the sick and wounded among them he healed, and they attended him as a gentle flock attends its keeper. This image — the holy bishop amid the tamed beasts of the mountain — has bound Blaise to the animal creation ever since, and made him throughout the Christian world a protector of flocks and herds, invoked by shepherds and farmers for the health of their beasts.

The arrest, and the wonders on the road

The peace of the cave was broken when the governor Agricolaus sent hunters into the mountains to trap wild animals for the spectacles of the arena. Coming upon the multitude of beasts gathered about the cave, the hunters discovered the bishop at prayer within, and — recognising the Christian hierarch the persecution sought — arrested him and brought him down toward the city.

To the journey the tradition attaches the two miracles that have carried Blaise's name into the devotion of the whole Church. As he was led along, a poor widow's only pig was seized and carried off by a wolf; the woman cried out to the saint, and Blaise commanded the wolf to give back what it had taken, and the beast returned the pig to its owner unhurt. (The widow, when the saint was later in prison, brought him in gratitude the flesh of that same pig, and candles to light his darkness — the root of the custom of bringing candles to be blessed at his feast.) Then a mother whose child was choking to death on a fishbone lodged in his throat brought the boy to Blaise; the bishop prayed and laid his hand upon the child's throat, and the bone came free, and the boy was saved. From this wonder above all Blaise became the patron of the throat and of its diseases, invoked against sore throats, choking, and afflictions of the neck across East and West — the origin of the Western rite of the "blessing of throats," in which two candles, crossed at the neck of the faithful, are held while the priest invokes Saint Blaise's intercession for deliverance from every ailment of the throat.

Martyrdom

Brought before Agricolaus, Blaise confessed Christ and refused to sacrifice to the idols. He was beaten with staves and cast into prison, and — the account continues — was subjected to a torture that has become his emblem: his flesh was raked and torn with iron combs, the toothed wool-combs (carding combs) used in the working of wool, so that his body was rent as wool is carded. For this manner of his passion Blaise became in the West the patron of wool-combers and of the woollen trade, and the iron comb is his sign in Western art. The tortures failing to move him, he was cast into a lake to drown; but he walked upon the water, or stood upon it unharmed, and, inviting his persecutors to prove their gods by doing likewise, saw those who tried it drown. Drawn again to the shore, the bishop was at the last beheaded. With him, the tradition holds, suffered seven women — who had gathered the drops of his blood and were seized, tortured, and beheaded confessing Christ — and two young children who would not be parted from him. His martyrdom is placed in the reign of Licinius, about the year 316 (the year is given variously; the Slavic calendars note c. 316).

Relics and later cultus

Blaise was venerated at Sebaste from the time of his death, and his fame spread early and widely through both halves of the Christian world. Portions of his relics were carried westward; the tradition holds that in the eighth century relics of the saint, borne by sea toward Rome, were driven ashore by storm at Maratea in southern Italy, which keeps him as its patron; and above all the city of Dubrovnik (Ragusa) on the Dalmatian coast has honoured him since 972 as its heavenly protector — Sveti Vlaho, whose image stands upon the city's walls and gates and whose feast (kept there on February 3) is the great civic festival of the republic. In the medieval West Blaise was numbered among the Fourteen Holy Helpers, the auxiliary saints invoked against particular ills, his own province being the diseases of the throat; and the blessing of throats on his feast remains a living custom of the Western Church. In the East he is one of the widely loved hieromartyrs of February, his memory set close to that of the Forty Martyrs of his own city.

Not to be confused — the two Blaises

The calendar keeps two martyrs named Blaise (Vlasios) within nine days of each other, and the tradition itself testifies that they are constantly conflated:

• Blaise, Bishop of Sebaste — this saint: the physician-hierarch and hieromartyr of Armenia, healer of men and beasts, invoked for the throat and for flocks, martyred under Licinius (c. 316), kept February 11 (February 3 in the West), one of the most popular saints of both East and West.
• Blaise of Caesarea, the Herdsman — a Cappadocian cowherd, a layman, martyred in the third century and attended (the tradition says) by the beasts of his own herd, kept February 3.

The two share the name Vlasios, an association with animals (the bishop's healing and patronage of beasts; the herdsman's faithful cattle), and torture by iron; and the slighter acta of the herdsman have often been drawn into the orbit of the bishop's famous legend. They are nonetheless two distinct martyrs of two distinct days. The office of February 11 belongs to the bishop of Sebaste; the February 3 commemoration is the herdsman's.