A Novena to Saint Blaise

The blessing of throats with two crossed candles is given each year on or near Blaise's feast, 3 February, a custom traceable in written sources to at least the sixteenth century, though the association between Blaise and the throat is recorded far earlier, in the account of him curing a child choking on a fishbone.

Blaise is one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers, a group of saints whose cult developed in the Rhineland in the fourteenth century, each invoked against a specific affliction; his own was illness of the throat.

Tradition holds that Blaise practiced medicine before his ordination and continued to be remembered as a healer after becoming bishop of Sebaste, in Lesser Armenia, credited with curing both people and animals.

Blaise became bishop of Sebaste, in the Roman province of Lesser Armenia, in the early fourth century, chosen, according to the legend, by the acclamation of the people after the death of the previous bishop.

During a persecution of Christians, Blaise is said to have fled to a cave on Mount Argeus, where he lived among wild animals until hunters sent by the governor discovered him and brought him in for trial.

Blaise was tortured with iron combs of the kind used to comb wool before being beheaded, around the year 316, during a persecution ordered by the governor of Cappadocia and Lesser Armenia; wool-combers later took him as their patron because of it.

Devotion to Blaise as a patron against diseases of the throat is recorded in the Eastern Church by the sixth century and had reached the West by the ninth.

Blaise's feast falls on 3 February in the Roman calendar, the day after Candlemas, and the candles used in his blessing are traditionally those blessed at the Candlemas Mass the day before.

Blaise's feast has remained on the universal calendar continuously since the early Middle Ages, unlike many other legendary martyrs whose cults were later suppressed or restricted to local calendars.