Painting by Hans Hemling, realized in 1491 as a part of a triptych which should decorate the altar in the Cathedral of Lübeck, now in the St. Annen-Museum, Lübeck, Germany. The image represents the bishop Saint Blaise.
According to the legend, diffused in the VIII century, he was bishop in Armenia and was forced to flee because of the anti-Christian persecutions. He took refuge in an isolated place, were he lived in a cave, in the company of wild beasts. It was told that he was martyred with iron combs used for carding wool and at last killed: for this reason he became the patron of the wool carders. It is possible that folk tradition had wanted to emphasize an association between the Saint’s torture and the “death” of the wool, realized through its working. The steps in wool working, as were those of the textile plants, inscribed themselves into a semantic field signed by violence, by dismemberment and purification, in which the wool itself was regarded as to suffer a kind of martyrdom (Gaignebet 1974, p. 81-82), for a culture which still tended to personify, not only animal and plants, but even many aspect of the apparently inanimate nature.
Another attribute of Saint Blaise was the candle, since Antiquity a symbol of purification and rebirth, a revival in strict association with the world of nature, taking place in the moment of transition between the winter and spring. To the Saint were recognized also healing powers, particularly regarding throat aches, in continuity with the function which were attributed to the myth figures that permeated the common mentality, like the Fool and the Wild Man. Even in contemporary age, on Febrary 3 (the day after Candlemas), it was custom to bless the worshipers’ throat with two crossed candles.

[Image: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hans_Memling_002.jpg]