Life and martyrdom
According to the accounts, Blaise was unanimously chosen as bishop by the people of Sebaste during a period marked by intense persecution of Christians. Having been a physician, he was held to heal the diseases of both men and animals, and his reputation for such cures drew those seeking relief of body and soul.
When persecution intensified under Licinius, Blaise withdrew from the city to a cave, where he gave himself to prayer. The synaxarion relates that wild beasts came to him there for his blessing. He was eventually arrested by order of the governor Agricola, tortured, and beheaded around 316. The accounts record that two children and seven women suffered martyrdom in connection with his passion.
The healing of the choking boy
The episode most closely associated with Blaise concerns a boy who was choking on a fishbone and in danger of death. By several accounts this took place while Blaise was imprisoned: a mother brought her son to him, and through his intercession the child was cured. This account is the root of his later invocation against ailments of the throat.
Veneration and legacy
Blaise's veneration spread widely in Europe and he became one of the most popular saints of the Middle Ages, his life recorded in the thirteenth-century Legenda Aurea. In the West he was adopted as a patron of wool workers and wool combers; English wool workers in particular honoured him, attributing prosperity in the wool trade to teachings associated with him.
His feast is kept on February 11 in the Eastern churches and on February 3 in the Latin Church. In the Western tradition he is counted among the Fourteen Holy Helpers. A traditional blessing of St. Blaise on his feast involves two consecrated candles held crossed over the throats of the faithful, with a prayer for deliverance from diseases of the throat.
Relics & Shrines
Several locations have claimed to possess relics of Blaise. At Dubrovnik (Ragusa) his skull, fragments of his throat bone, and both hands are reported to be preserved, and the city has long honoured him. A basilica on Monte San Biagio at Maratea in Italy is said to house relics of the saint, and Taranto and the Abbey of Saint Blaise in the Black Forest have likewise been named among the sites claiming his relics.
