Sacred Violence: The Brutalisation of St. Lucy on Mosher Mag

Patron saint of vision—because they tried to take hers away.

She stands in a haze of candle smoke, face serene,

hands outstretched, and in her palm—two perfect, glistening eyeballs.

Not metaphor. Not poetry. Eyeballs. Wet. Raw. Detached from her skull, laid delicately on a silver plate, as if she’s offering hors d’oeuvres at a dinner party for the damned.

This is St. Lucy, virgin martyr, patron saint of sight and those who’ve had it ripped away. She is the girl who would not bow. Who would not be touched. Who would not look away. And so, in a world obsessed with breaking women, she broke herself first—and made it holy.

Sicily, 3rd century. The Roman Empire is in one of its usual purges, hunting down Christians like diseased animals. Enter Lucia: young, wealthy, and already pledging herself to something higher than Rome or man.

She pledged her life—and virginity—to Christ.

Her mother, ill and desperate, tried to marry her off.

St. Lucy, ever the unyielding blade, said no. Not just no—never.

The spurned suitor, a man more in love with ownership than affection, betrays her to the authorities. The Empire, drunk on control and crucifixions, decides to make an example of her.

First, they try to drag her to a brothel. The idea?

Humiliate the virgin. Break her purity. Turn her into just another ruined girl.

But St. Lucy doesn’t move.

Literally.

They tie ropes to her arms and legs, yoke oxen to her body, whip the animals until they foam at the mouth—and Lucy stays rooted, unmovable. Not because of divine miracles, but because of will.

Because somewhere beneath her ribcage, a bonfire had been lit.

A holy furnace that said: You will not reduce me. You will not drag me into your filth.

They burned her. She didn’t scream.

They tore at her flesh. She didn’t bleed for them.

And then there’s the eyes.

Oh, the eyes.

Depending on the telling, the Romans gouged out her eyes as torture, robbing her of the very sense she would later become the patron saint of.

But in the better version—the worse version—she does it herself.

She tore them from her own skull, offered them up on a silver plate to silence the jeers, the lustful stares, the world’s obsession with watching women suffer beautifully.

She said, in essence: Here. Have them. Is this what you wanted?

But you know the punchline?

God gave them back. Perfect. Untouched. As if to say: “her vision was never yours to take.”

St. Lucy didn’t offer her eyes to the Lord.They were ripped out.

What happens next is as grotesque as it is inevitable.

The Empire, infuriated by her defiance, sets her on fire. The flames do nothing. So they stab her in the throat. It takes a sword to bring her down, and even then, she doesn't die right away.

She lingers long enough to whisper prayers, long enough to be seen. Her death is not quiet. It’s staged. It’s a middle finger raised to the sky and the empire alike.

St. Lucy is everywhere, if you know how to look.

Statues, paintings, gilded icons—all show her with the same unsettling detail: a pair of disembodied eyeballs perched on a plate like two pearls torn from flesh. She holds them calmly. Almost smugly. And she looks directly at you—sometimes with sockets intact, sometimes without.

And it works. It gets under your skin.

Because Lucy isn’t meant to make you comfortable.

She’s not here to be pitied. She’s not your virginal doll or your holy archetype. She’s a weapon. A girl who stared down an empire, a suitor, a world obsessed with control—and won.

Her eyes aren’t a weakness. They’re a challenge.

What does it mean to see, really?

To witness pain, and not turn away?

To confront the grotesque and still find divinity in it?

Lucy isn’t blind. She sees clearer than any of us ever could.

St. Lucy has become the saint of the blind, yes.

But more than that—she’s the patron saint of every person who has ever been told to smile and shut up.

Every woman told to stay soft, stay quiet, stay in line. Every outcast who has been reduced to parts—eyes, lips, body—but never seen for the fire inside.

She is the martyr who didn’t suffer silently. She bled with intention. Her pain was strategic.

Her death was not passive—it was a full-throated fuck you to power.

In a world that still tries to strip people down and sell their suffering as beauty, Lucy remains a defiant corpse, staring back, empty sockets blazing with holy fury. Her sanctity was not in submission. It was in resistance. She didn't ascend meekly into heaven—she burned her way there.

St. Lucy doesn’t ask for prayers. She asks for witnesses.

She asks if you’re ready to really see—not just the divine, but the brutal, messy, raw truth beneath it. The parts of yourself that are torn out, offered up, and still not enough for a world that wants your obedience before your blood dries.

So, here’s St. Lucy. Standing in the dark. Holding her eyes out to you.

Asking: What will you sacrifice to see clearly?

And are you ready to stare back?

Because she never blinked. And she never will.

For the freaks, by the freaks.

Thanks for reading. Stay strange.

✦ moshermag.com