St. John’s fires

St. John’s fires: what was it used for?

People leapt through the flames and drove cattle between fires for health; herbs were thrown in, and brands and ashes carried home and onto the fields against hail, lightning, and sickness.

St. John’s fires: what does modern science say?

The fires are still lit in many places, from Brittany and Catalonia to Scandinavia and the Baltic.

St. John’s fires: what did the older authorities say?

The Catholic Encyclopedia

The Catholic Encyclopedia's article on liturgical fire says that “all the creeds of antiquity accorded a prominent place to this element whose mysterious nature and irresistible power frequently caused it to be adored as a god,” and that Christianity “denied the divine title to heat and light, and made them the symbols of the divinity.” It records the Irish “as early as the sixth century, lighting large fires at nightfall on the Eve of Easter,” fires “kindled, not with brands from other fires, but with lenses; they were therefore new fires,” and suggests the custom, “of Breton or Celtic origin, was imposed upon the Anglo-Saxons, and the missionaries of that nation brought it to the continent in the eighth century.” The Easter new fire of the Greeks at Jerusalem it calls “the occasion for scandalous demonstrations of a piety which frequently degenerates into orgies worthy of pagan rites.”