St. Martha of Bethany in Her Kitchen (Detail) Keychain

We don’t give keys much thought until we lose them. We use them daily to lock up our homes and start our cars. Everyone has them from the latch-key child to the teenage diarist to the elderly safety deposit box holder. Keys were once a status symbol, however. At her waist, the extracted figure of St. Martha wears a chatelaine. A chatelaine is an ornamental belt fitting from which a Medieval and Early Modern woman suspended small items for everyday use. In the Medieval fashion, a small purse and a conspicuous set of large keys among other objects are attached to St. Martha’s chatelaine. The keys indicate that St. Martha is the senior woman of the Lazarus household in charge of its valuables, its stores, and its domestic staff. * The upper torso of St. Martha here has been extracted from the central panel of a triptych altarpiece painted in 1503 by an anonymous Middle Rhenish artist. This panel depicts the dinner mentioned in John 12:1-3 that took place in Bethany after the raising of Lazarus and just before Jesus arrived in Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. Donated by Canon Peter Lutren, the triptych still graces the Martha altar in the southern choir of the Church of Our Lady (Liebfrauenkirche) at Oberwesel, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. (See our Dinner at Bethany COLLECTION for the full image, additional information, and related items for purchase.) + While the saint’s figure is derived from the painting, the background comes from a Pixabay pic that has been repurposed and reworked resulting in a pastiche that is a Saints_Aplenty exclusive. + St. Martha is the third saint featured in our Apron Series. She is patron of single laywomen, homemakers, restaurant workers, cooks, and the hospitality industry in general. She shares a feast day with her siblings St. Mary of Bethany (not to be confused any longer with the Magdalene) and St. Lazarus on July 29. + Special Image Credit (extracted figure of St. Martha): Photo by Rolf Kranz of a public domain painting that is well over 100 years old from WikiMedia Commons (By Rolf Kranz - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=106002864).