
Lucy
Saint Lucy is the patroness of the blind and of those with diseases of the eyes because of her name and her legend together: “Lucia” means light, and a medieval tradition holds that her eyes were torn out (or that she tore them out herself) during her passion and were miraculously restored — which is why art shows her carrying her eyes on a dish. The same association with light explains why writers, who need clear sight, and glaziers and electricians, who work with light and seeing, claim her. She is invoked against epidemics and eye troubles, and is especially honored in her native Syracuse and throughout Sicily.
Saint Lucy was a young Christian woman from Syracuse, Sicily, martyred during the Diocletian persecution around 304 AD. Having consecrated her virginity to God, she distributed her dowry to the poor and was denounced to the authorities. Her name means “light,” and she is invoked as the patroness of the blind and those with eye troubles.