Category Archives: Folklore

St. Agnes in Prague

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A view of the St. Agnes convent in Prague; the national museum’s stunning collection of medieval art is displayed here.

In the well-known Christmas carol, “Good King Wenceslaus looked out” from his castle in Prague and saw a poor beggar struggling to get home during a blizzard. The king asked his page if he knew who the poor man was and the page answered that he did; the poor man, the page told the king, that the poor man lived several miles away in a hovel near beneath the bluffs overlooking the river that runs through Prague. The poor man’s house was also on the edge of the forest, near “St. Agnes’ fountain.”

St. Agnes was a Czech princess who was born in AD 1200. She became a Franciscan nun–known as “Poor Clares”–and established a convent along the edge of the river, on what was then the edge of the city, right against the forest and in the shadow of the bluff on the other saide of the river. There was a well and a fountain in the convent courtyard which the nuns used for their drinking water. The convent is now the site where the National Museum of the Czeck Republic displays the collection of medieval art.

The princess shared a name with a much earlier St. Agnes, a young woman who lived inn Rome and who was executed for her Christian faith during the Great Persecution of Diocletian in AD 304; this Agnes refused to marry because she wanted to embrace life as a Christian ascetic. Agnes’ bones are conserved beneath the high altar in the church of Sant’Agnese fuori le mura in Rome, built over the catacomb that housed her tomb. Her skull is preserved in a separate chapel in the church of Sant’Agnese in Agone in Rome’s Piazza Navona.

According to Robert Ellsberg, in his book Blessed Among all Women: Women Saints, Prophets, and Witnesses for our Time,
“…the story of Agnes the opposition is not between sex and virginity. The conflict is between a young woman’s power in Christ to define her own identity versus a patriarchal culture’s claim to identify her in terms of her sexuality. According to the view shared by her ‘suitors’ and the state, if she would not be one man’s wife, she might as well be every man’s whore. Failing these options, she might as well be dead. Agnes did not choose death. She chose not to worship the gods of her culture. …Espoused to Christ, she was beyond the power of any man to ‘have his way with her’. ‘Virgin’ in this case is another way of saying Free Woman.”

This Roman St. Agnes was very popular throughout Europe during the Middle Ages. The well and fountain in Prague might have been associated with a church dedicated to her even before the princess built her famous convent there.

The young woman martyred in Rome was a member of a very prominent and wealthy family, which is why the Roman authorities cared that she had embraced the illegal Christian faith. The princess who became a nun evidently knew St. Clare herself, the founder of the Franciscan nuns and a friend of St. Francis of Assisi. Both women named Agnes–the Roman virgin-martyr and the Czech virgin-princess-nun–live on in the Christmas carol we sing every December.

St. Nina and the Georgians

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This 20th century icon of St. Nina shows her holding her cross made of sturdy grape vines.

St. Nina, said to be a relative of the famous St. George who killed the dragon, is thought to be the saintly missionary who brought Christianity to the people of Georgia just as St. Patrick brought Christianity to the Irish. Nina was a young girl of a pious family who was apparently abducted and sold into slavery in Georgia. Her prayers healed both the king and the queen on different occasions. Deprived of any other devotional aids, she made a cross from very sturdy grape vines and is often depicted holding the vine-cross. She has many feast days in Georgia, commemorating various events in her life; her principal feast day is January 14, the anniversary of her death in AD 340, her “birthday into heaven.”

The people of Georgia have a fascinating collection of folklore and tales. According to one story, God decided to make life easier for those who were driven out of Eden and forced to work hard on Earth. After a long time of thinking, God decided to create a beverage that would let people return to Paradise for even a short time. He invited all the angels and the devil to taste his creation: wine.

Everyone liked wine, including the devil, but the devil felt obligated to compete with God. So, the devil created chacha, a potent alcoholic drink made from the remains of crushed wine grapes, and invited God to taste it. God drank one glass of chacha, then a second, a third and a fourth. After the fourth, he said to the devil, “Those who will drink three glasses of chacha may be on my side, but anyone who drinks more than that will be yours!”

This icon depicts St. Nina of Georgia, holding her grapevine cross, with her relative St. George the Great-Martyr.

A contemporary icon from Georgia, depicting St. Nina holding her cross made of grape vines, with scenes from her life.

St. Barbara’s Branches

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St. Barbara with her tower and palm branch–indicating that she was a martyr–on a 15th century rood screen.

Barbara, the daughter of a rich pagan named Dioscorus, was carefully guarded by her father who kept her locked up in a tower in order to preserve her from the outside world. Before going on a journey, her father commanded that a private bath-house be erected for her use near her dwelling, and during his absence, Barbara had three windows put in it, as a symbol of the Holy Trinity, instead of the two originally intended. When her father returned, she acknowledged herself to be a Christian; upon this he drew his sword to kill her, but her prayers created an opening in the tower wall and she was miraculously transported to a mountain gorge, where two shepherds watched their flocks. Dioscorus, in pursuit of his daughter, was rebuffed by the first shepherd, but the second betrayed her. For doing this, he was turned to stone and his flock was changed to locusts.

Dragged before the prefect of the province, Martinianus, who had her cruelly tortured, Barbara held true to her Christian faith. During the night, the dark prison was bathed in light and new miracles occurred. Every morning, her wounds were healed. Torches that were to be used to burn her went out as soon as they came near her. Finally, she was condemned to death by beheading. Her father himself carried out the death-sentence. However, as punishment for this, he was struck by lightning on the way home and his body was consumed by flame. Barbara was buried by the Christians and her tomb became the site of miracles.

German-speaking countries celebrate the tradition of Barbarazweig, or the “St. Barbara’s branch.” The original folklore was that unmarried girls cut twigs from cherry trees on December 4–the anniversary of St. Barbara’s martyrdom–and forced them into bloom. There is an old belief that if the twig blossoms on Christmas Eve, the girl will be married the following year.

The practice of forcing the blooms on the cherry tree twigs comes from a legend that while St. Barbara was locked in her tower, she felt lonely. She found a dried up cherry tree branch which she watered daily with a few drops from her drinking water. She was greatly consoled by the beautiful cherry blossoms that appeared just days before her impending execution.

St. Barbara’s feast day also has traditional breads and other wheat foods symbolizing the harvest, with overtones of death and rebirth, tying her feast day to Christmas. In France and the Ukraine, two or more grains of wheat are planted and forced to grow. Folklore states that if they flourish by Christmas Eve, the wheat crop will prosper that year.

According to the Golden Legend, her martyrdom took place on December 4.