St Barbara is considered the patron saint of miners and there is usually a little shrine to her at the entrance to underground mines in many (Catholic) parts of Europe. But the connection between St Barbara and mining is very tenuous and she is also the patron saint of artillerymen, naval gunners and explosive engineers! The legend of St Barbara is itself somewhat speculative; she lived in Asia Minor (now Turkiye) in the third century, the daughter of a wealthy Roman official. He wanted to marry her off to another wealthy young man, but she resisted and instead secretly converted to christianity, which was then outlawed by the Roman Empire. Her father was outraged and had her imprisoned in an attempt to get her to comply with his plans, but she did not change her mind.
After some months, she escaped and hid herself in a mine. She was betrayed to the authorities, re-imprisoned and condemned to death. Her father, Dioscorus, is reputed to have executed her and he in turn, was soon after struck by lightening and died. In the early Christian tradition, St Barbara was reputed to have control over lightening which explains her association with artillery and explosives. Although many sources use the connection with explosives to explain her association with mining, that does measure up historically. While gunpowder had been around Europe since about 1250 CE, and was used in military mining (when tunnels would be dug under defensive walls and explosives set), it was not used in underground metal mining until about 1630 CE due to safety problems. The veneration of St Barbara in silver mines in Kattenberg in Bohemia dates to at least 1388 CE, when the burghers started construction of the Cathedral of St Barbara. That edifice took over 500 years to complete, as religious wars devasted Bohemia in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries and the silver had run out by wars end. It was completed by the patronage of the Hapsburg monarchy in 1905.
Today, Kattenberg is known as Kutna Hora, it’s Czech name. Two hundred and twenty kilometers west of there, also in the Czech Republic, is the small mining community of Jachymov. It is much better known by its original German name, Joachimstahl, and in 1618 it was one of the biggest silver mining towns in Europe, minting its own coin, the Joachimsthaler. This was an approx 30 gram silver coin, more generally known as the thaler, which was the main currency of much of Europe for the next 300 years. After being brought to New Amsterdam by the Dutch, it was eventually adopted by the continental congress as the US dollar.
The patron saint in Joachimstahl (Valley of Joachim) was of course St Joachim. He was the father of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Although he is not mentioned in the orthodox gospels, his legend is cited in many of the non orthodox (Gnostic) gospels. He and his wife St Anne were childless, and in their later years, Mary was immaculately conceived while they were in a tunnel together praying. They are quite often cited together in both feast day (July 26) and church dedications. There are a number of mining communities with churches dedicated to St Joachim, including one in Old Mines, MO where the French speakers mined lead for over a hundred years.
There are a number of other saints associated with mining, most notably St Piran, who is the patron saint of tin miners and of Cornwall. He is supposed to have come from Ireland, where he was probably known as Kieran. While that would not seem to have any relationship to mining, the Irish monks were the major miners and users of stone from the fifth to the twelfth century.In that era, most residential and fortified structures were of wood and clay construction (especially hill forts); the church preferred more lasting stone buildings and they had to fabricate them themselves. The huts on the monastry of Skellig Michil off the Kerry coast were quarried from stone right there on the Island, so the early monks had skilled stonecutters in their communities.
Other saints associated with mining include St Joseph of Arimathea (he built the tomb in which Jesus was buried), St Kinga who is associated with Polish salt miners and the martyrs St Antiochus of Sulci in Sicily , St Armogastas and St Saturus of Africa. The latter three all worked in mines.
The worship of St Barbara did not really cross the Atlantic. There are few churches dedicated to St Barbara in the US, and there is only one that I know about in a mining community. That is in the former coal mining town of Black Diamond, WA. In the major silver mining towns of the Spanish Empire, Potosi and Gaunajauto, the churches (and there were many) are not related to St Barbara.
There was no worship of St Barbara in the Irish mining communities of Allihies, Bunmahon or Castlecomer and despite there being many German and Austro-Hungarian immigrants, I am not aware of any in North America. The Irish mining communities had their St Patricks, St Lawrence O’Toole, St Columba or Colmcille and the Germans, their St Josephs.
St Barbara’s feast day is on December 4 and that is a big festival in places like Loeben and Kutna Hora. The berparaden (formal miner parades in miner uniforms and brass bands) in Germany are held mostly on the four sundays of Advent and usually reference their schedule to St Barbara’s Day. They tend to function as tourist attractions and be integrated with Christmas Markets in the old mining towns of the Harz mountains and the Erzgebirge (ore mountains). Many of these towns have wonderful historical buildings from the mining era and many were in former East Germany. Examples would be Freiberg, Goslar, Thum, Anneberg and Marieberg.