Franz de Neve
The Cures Wrought by Saint Valentine and the Beheading of St. Maximilian
After 1689
Cathedral of St. Stephen, Passau, Germany
In the foreground, St. Valentine cures the sick. According to his vita in the Acta Sanctorum he preached in the Alps "teaching the word of God and doing great good, such that he was able to expel demons from the obsessed and cure those who were sick of all sorts of diseases" (January vol. 1, 370).
This is not the more famous Valentine celebrated on February 14 but a 5th-century bishop whose relics were brought to Passau's cathedral in 768 (Butler, I, 47). His feast day is January 7.
The beheading of St. Maximilian is barely visible in the left edge of the background. It occurred in 284 during the persecutions of the Emperor Numerian in Noricum (modern Austria), where he had served as bishop for twenty years (Butler, IV, 93). His feast day is October 12. For his vitae see Acta Sanctorum, October vol. 6, 23-58.
According to the label in the church, Valentine is the first patron saint of the Diocese of Passau and Maximilian the second.
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Photographed at the site by Richard Stracke, shared under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.