St Barbara is considered the Patron Saint of miners (and a number of 
other groups who are associated with explosives, including 
artillerymen) in many parts of central, northern and western Europe 
including Poland, Finland, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Slovakia, 
the Czech Republic etc. She was reputedly born in the third century AD 
in what is now Turkey. She was the daughter of a Roman nobleman and 
converted to Christianity which angered her father who eventually 
killed her for deserting the pagan faith. Her association with mining 
comes about because she is said to have hidden in a mine shaft to avoid 
capture by her father and due to the help she was given by 
metallurgists. She has been venerated across Europe from about the 
seventh century.
 
I have seen shines to her in numerous mining settlements and mine 
workings and there are many rituals associated with her. In Linares, 
Spain, for example, there is a church dedicated to St Barbara and the 
saint's day, 4th December, has seen something of a revival in recent 
years; a ballad about St Barbara is sung across the mining regions of 
Spain. In Finland St Barbara must be driven away at the opening of a 
new smelter to remove her protection from the concentrate. It is 
interesting that European mineworkers appear to have taken their belief 
in St Barbara to new mining areas overseas. I saw an advertisement for 
St Barbara's Day in Kalgoorlie, Western Australia, a couple of years 
ago. I surmise that due to the large immigrant Italian population, that 
the custom was introduced by them in the early twentieth century. 
However, in Cornwall, St Barabra is not associated with miners at all, 
it is St Piran, the Patron Saint of Cornish Tinners.
 
It's interesting that given the prominence of St Barbara in Spanish 
mining areas, we might have expected her to be more venerated in the 
mining areas of the former Spanish colonies of Latin America. However, 
I concur with Omar Escamilla about Mexico. The miners' shines there do 
not appear to be to St Barbara. In the tourist mine of El Eden in 
Zacatecas, there is a shrine to El Santo Niño de Atocha and the shinres 
I have seen in the mining district of Pachuca-Real del Monte appear to 
be to the Virgin de Guadalupe or another local variety. I saw no 
shrines to St Barbara in the mining regions of Chile either. Indeed, 
the 'Catholic' wayside shrines I saw in the more remote parts of the 
Atacama and the Altiplano looked to be more dedicated to Pachamama than 
the Virgin Mary. I guess that the custom of St Barbara as the Patron 
Saint of Miners might have been brought to Latin America by immigrant 
European miners after the Conquest of the Indies, but that it was 
assimilated or transformed into more acceptable forms by the indigenous 
people.
 
Dr Sharron P. Schwartz




See your new look Tiscali Homepage - http://www.tiscali.co.uk

___________________________________________________