CHENGDU - SEP 21: Concert of Austrian St,Florian Boys Choir at JIAOZI concert hall SEP 21, 2008 in Chengdu, China.

His feast day is 4 May.

St. Florian is also the patron of Upper Austria, jointly with Saint Leopold.

He joined the Roman Army and advanced in the ranks, 3 rising to commander of the imperial army in the Roman province of Noricum.

Florian organized and trained an elite group of soldiers whose sole duty was to fight fires.

Florian was not enforcing the proscriptions against Christians in his territory.

Standing on the funeral pyre, Florian is reputed to have challenged the Roman soldiers to light the fire, saying If you wish to know that I am not afraid of your torture, light the fire, and in the name of the Lord I will climb onto it.

Apprehensive of his words, the soldiers did not burn Florian, but executed him by drowning him in the Enns River with a millstone tied around his neck.

Later a woman named Valeria had a vision in which she saw him; Florian, in this vision, declared his intent to be buried in a more appropriate location.

His body, recovered and was eventually removed to the Augustinian Abbey of St.

It stood at the main firehouse of Vienna, in the citys main square, Am Hof.

After the firehouse was bombed in 1945 during World War II the statue was moved on to the Fire Brigade Museum ( Wiener Feuerwehrmuseum ).

In the southern, Catholic parts of the German Empire (mainly present Bavaria and Austria ), peasants regularly have used the name, Florian, as one of the given names for at least one of their male children: to secure the saints patronage against fire.

The call sign Florentine for firefighting-related, handheld radio equipment is also derived, somewhat inaccurately, from that usage.

He is invoked against fires, floods, lightning, and the pains of purgatory.

His veneration has been particularly intense since 1528, when a fire burned the neighborhood without destroying the church.

This saying is used in German much like the English not in my back yard, when the speaker wants to point out that some person tries to get out of an unpleasant situation by an action that will put others in that very same situation.

In some cases call for a fireman will actually be spoken as calls for Florian.

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Florian Poddelka Download