St. Blaise - this one is for John and Mark

So, what do John, Mark and Dubrovnik have in common?  Well, St. Blaise of course.  St Blaise is the name of the school that John and Mark attended from 1st through 8th grades and also happens to be the patron saint of Dubrovnik - there are 37 statues of St Blaise within its city walls. For Catholics and Non-Catholics, St Blaise is the healer of the throats - and I can't recall the story of how that came to be, and it really has nothing to do with Dubrovnik anyway.  The relevance of St Blaise for Dubrovnik residents, whose biggest celebration aside from Christmas and Easter is St Blaise day, is that St Blaise apparently saved the city from enemy attack.  The story goes that in 972 AD, the Mayor of Dubrovnik (at that time, the town was called Ragusa) had a dream in which St. Blaise warned him of an impending attack by enemies.  The Mayor woke the town and prepared for battle, and because of the warning, the town successfully defended itself against the Venetians...so for more than 1,000 years, every February 3, the town celebrates St Blaise - with a festival, period costumes, music, and pageantry.

Above: Dubrovnik Cathedral, with St Blaise on top...see below for close up.

Above: one of the 37 St Blaise statues in town, this one is on top of the cathedral - St Blaise holds a replica of the city of Dubrovnik in his left hand and points up with his right.

This has nothing to do with St Blaise, but it is representative of the many drain spouts around town - when it's raining, excess water from the rooftops comes down the inside of the buildings through drains and exits through these fanciful drain spouts