# St. John’s fires *Midsummer fires; *fuochi di San Giovanni** **Known today as.** The bonfires lit across Europe on the eve of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, 23 June, at midsummer. Kind: Sacramental ## 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. ## What does modern science say? The fires are still lit in many places, from Brittany and Catalonia to Scandinavia and the Baltic. ## What lore surrounds it? The Church gave the old midsummer fires to the Baptist, whom Christ called “a burning and a shining light”; the herbs gathered that night, St. John’s wort above all, were held to be at the height of their power. ## 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.” ## Sources - Frazer, J. G. (1922). *The Golden Bough*, abridged ed., ch. 62, “The Fire-Festivals of Europe.” - *The Catholic Encyclopedia* (New York, 1907–1914), “Fire, Liturgical Use of.” newadvent.org/cathen/06079a.htm --- *St. John’s fires.* In *Materia Medica*, edited by B. C. P. Statema. Version 1, revised 2026-10-01. The Thinking Press. https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/st-johns-fires Historical description, not medical advice.