# Blessed candles

**Candele benedette**

**Known today as.** Candles blessed at Candlemas (2 February), and the Paschal candle.

Kind: Sacramental

## What did Canale use it for?

Lit or placed, so that “the devil may depart and tremble”; held by the sick; the sign of the demon’s departure is the extinguishing of a light (Treatise One, Part One; Treatise Two).

## What does modern science say?

Candles are still blessed at Candlemas; in Poland the blessed candle (gromnica) was traditionally lit in the window during thunderstorms, a custom now more remembered than practiced.

## What did the older authorities say?

**The Catholic Encyclopedia.** The Catholic Encyclopedia admits “that candles, like incense and lustral water, were commonly employed in pagan worship and in the rites paid to the dead,” and that the Council of Elvira (c. 300) “seems to condemn as an abuse some superstitious burning of candles during the daytime in cemeteries.” Beeswax is required because “the idea of the supposed virginity of bees is insisted on, and the wax is therefore regarded as typifying in a most appropriate way the flesh of Jesus Christ born of a virgin mother.” At Candlemas the candles “must be of beeswax,” are sprinkled and incensed, and in former ages “some were scattered among the crowd and others sent as presents to persons of note.” A medieval practice was “measuring to” a saint: “offering at any favoured shrine a candle or a number of candles equalling in measurement the height of the persons for whom some favour was asked.”

## Sources

- *The Catholic Encyclopedia* (New York, 1907–1914), “Candles.” newadvent.org/cathen/03246a.htm
- *The Catholic Encyclopedia* (New York, 1907–1914), “Candlemas.” newadvent.org/cathen/03245b.htm

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*Blessed candles.* In *Materia Medica*, edited by B. C. P. Statema. Version 1, revised 2026-10-01. The Thinking Press. https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/blessed-candles

Historical description, not medical advice.