# St. Agatha’s bread

**Agathabrot*; *minne di Sant’Agata**

**Known today as.** Bread blessed on 5 February, the feast of St. Agatha, virgin and martyr of Catania.

Kind: Sacramental

## What was it used for?

Kept in the house and thrown into fire against the flames; given to cattle and to the sick. In Catania the feast brings small cakes shaped as breasts, for the tortures of her martyrdom.

## What does modern science say?

The blessing is still kept in Switzerland, southern Germany, and Sicily.

## What lore surrounds it?

A year after her death her veil, carried out against a stream of lava from Etna, was said to have stopped it at the city’s edge, and she became the patron of all who fear fire.

## What did the older authorities say?

**The Catholic Encyclopedia.** The Catholic Encyclopedia holds that of St. Agatha's Acts “neither of these recensions, however, can lay any claim to historical credibility,” the order “to have her breasts cut off” being “a detail which furnished to the Christian medieval iconography the peculiar characteristic of Agatha.” Catania honours her as patron, “and throughout the region around Mt. Etna she is invoked against the eruptions of the volcano, as elsewhere against fire and lightning. In some places bread and water are blessed during Mass on her feast after the Consecration, and called Agatha bread.”

## Sources

- *The Catholic Encyclopedia* (New York, 1907–1914), “Agatha, Saint.” newadvent.org/cathen/01203c.htm

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*St. Agatha’s bread.* In *Materia Medica*, edited by B. C. P. Statema. Version 1, revised 2026-10-01. The Thinking Press. https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/st-agatha-bread

Historical description, not medical advice.