St Luke - see his relics or statues or places named after him in England, Italy (Florence and Padua), Greece (Thebes), Czech Republic (Prague), and France (Notre Dame).
I have been doing a lot of shopping in St Luke's charity shops which raise money for their hospice(s?) in north west London. They have seventeen shops in North west London and sell online through ebay. I searched for shop locations and found other organizations with hospices in other parts of England which had a different logo. So the London hospices called themselves St Luke's but had no monopoly over the name. After all, saints are created by the Roman Catholic church, presided over by the Pope, who decides who are saints because they were martyred or did miraculous deeds, or good deeds, hence the word saintly.
Who Was St Luke?
St Luke - the doctor
St Luke was a physician or medical doctor, preventing, diagnosing and treating diseases and injuries.
St Luke - The Writer
He wrote two books of the New Testament. The Gospel according to St Luke. The Acts of the Apostles.
St Luke - The Painter
He is sometimes shown with a brush or items connected with painting.
His symbols are the bull and the winged ox. The ox represents sacrifice and wings represent the travel - of the message.
He was not one of the twelve apostles seen sitting with Jesus in the famous painting of the last supper. He was with Paul (who later changed the rules of Judaism by eliminating the requirements of circumcision, and the ban on eating pork, to make the message about resurrection more acceptable to gentiles meaning non-Jews).
That rang a bell in my mind - so St Luke is associated with the sick? Why? Who was St Luke? What did he do? Where? Which country or countries? Which churches, buildings, monuments, streets, oranizations, statues, holy places or cities, are associated with him?
I googled St Luke and found that he was buried in Padua, Italy. Actually, according to Wikipedia, which summarises many sources, listed at the end of the article, most of his body is there, but his skull is elsewhere, and a rib was donated to Thebes. Carbon dating of the bones has shown they date back to the first century during and/or after the life of Jesus and those who knew him. (This is assuming the story of Jesus is about a real person, one person, at one time, not a myth, nor a conglomerate of several people, descendants and disciples, and/or unrelated namesakes from different eras).
I recall the words with the memorable rhyme, Mathew, Mark, Luke and John, guard the bed that I lie on. So, if you are interested from either a cultural, historical or religious point of view, you can see paintings of St Luke in the USA, Roman Catholic countries in Europe, as well as in the UK from the pre-Protestant era (before Henry VIII separated England from the Pope) as well as Eastern Orthodox countries. Plus statues, churches, schools, hospices, shops and other buildings.
ITALY
St Luke is known in Italian as San Luca.
See the statue in Florence. (Cathedral or museum or both?)
Statue in Milan, Milan Cathedral.
Padua.
FRANCE
Statue at Versailles.
When?
His feast day is celebrated in October, on October 18th.
GERMANY
Berlin Cathedral.
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LITHUANIA
Statue on the facade of the cathedral in Vilnius.
MALTA
Wooden statue in the National Museum.
UK
St Luke's churches in the UK inlcude St Albans, and London's Chelsea, Kensington.
USA
Statue in St Louis, Art Museum.
Statue in a cemetery in Houston.
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