The return of her father
After a while, Barbara became a charming young woman who spent her days attending meetings and classes on various aspects of world culture. Until the day her father returned, which would forever alter the course of her life.
When “Dioscoro” returned, he saw at once that things had changed drastically during his absence and decided to determine how much the girl had changed. He confronted her and confessed that she was a Christian.
It was fruitless to try to persuade her to change her attitude. As soon as Caesar learned of the situation, the father flew into a rage and warned him that he risked losing everything he had fought for.
He drew his sword, ready to end this quarrel once and for all, but the young woman managed to escape, taking the mountain path and hiding in the bushes. To find her, Dioscoro formed a commission that went in search of her.
Praetor called “Marciano”
He tortured her for a few days in the hope that she would change her mind.
However, things got out of control and, for fear of being betrayed by one of his accomplices and in the face of the young woman’s determination to maintain her Christian faith, he decided to hand her over to the praetor known as “Marcian”, the chief judge of the court.
This man, known throughout the empire for his unparalleled cruelty and sadism, tried to convince the young woman to reject Christianity, a belief system that the high official considered mere superstition.
Brutal punishments
He then handed down the brutal punishments after ascertaining that words were ineffective and observing the legal requirements that applied in these circumstances.
The first punishment lasted three days and three nights. Barbara was interrogated during those days.
When she continued to defend her faith, “Marciano” then ordered a second round of torture, which began when she was placed on a mountain of broken glass and the torturers stood over her helpless body to ensure deep entry of the lethal shards of glass.
Horrifying “bed of spears”
After this feast of blood and hatred, Barbara was interrogated once again, but they failed to convince her to change her mind.
This enraged her torturers, who this time placed her body on the dreaded “bed of spears,” which consisted of a rectangular board with hundreds of sharpened spearheads fixed to its corners.
No one could have endured this had they not been aided by a greater force. Barbara was taken to a dark dungeon while completely unconscious and held there for three days without food or water.
Jesus visited her a second time while she was imprisoned, healing her wounds, tending to her needs and feeding her and she miraculously recovered. The soldiers expect to find a corpse when they open the dungeon door, so they are in for a surprise when the prisoner greets them standing and smiling.
When the young woman appears before the praetor “Marciano”, several of the soldiers flee in terror, but their commander forces them to turn around.
Upon her appearance before him, the entire court was astonished and when pressed to explain the nature of her strange recovery, she claimed that the intervention of Jesus of Nazareth was responsible.
Barbara was hung by her feet
The praetor “Marcian” found himself in a very difficult situation at that very moment.
Everyone could see that Barbara’s god was capable of great miracles and he was not willing to accept it, so he gave the order to hang Barbara by her feet, open her sides with two iron hooks and burn that area of her body with burning torches.
However, although this was enough to kill any normal person, the prisoner’s attitude did not change. On the contrary, she smiled and raised her eyes to heaven while conversing with a divine presence that, according to experts, was Jesus himself.
Faced with this obvious and inexplicable fact, the young woman was ordered to be killed by hitting her on the head with two demolition hammers, but surprisingly, she also managed to resist this punishment.
She kept smiling
Then, with huge pliers similar to those used in those days for difficult blacksmithing jobs, her thugs came up with the plan to rip her breasts off. They ripped off her breasts, but she kept smiling.
After completing these tasks, they loaded her naked onto a cart and drove her around the city while two monstrous people continuously kicked and whipped her.
A divine manifestation in the form of a beam of light with the combined power of a thousand suns appeared when the chariot reached the main square, blinding all who witnessed the cruel spectacle.
The praetor pronounced the sentence of death by beheading when he observed that Barbara was incredibly powerful physically and spiritually despite the tortures…
