At the River Silar in Lucania, the natal day of the holy martyrs Vitus, Modestus, and Crescentia. They went there during the reign of the Emperor Diocletian. Through the power of God they endured a vat of hot lead, beasts, and the rack. They ran the race of glory successfully. – Roman Martyrology for June 15
St. Vitus was a Sicilian boy of seven who embraced Christianity during the reign of Diocletian and performed numerous miracles and conversions. This drew the attention of the governor Valerian, who persecuted Vitus even though the boy had cured his withered arm. So an angel guided him to Lucania in Italy, along with his tutor Modestus and his nurse Crescentia. The Emperor Diocletian then summoned him to Rome to help his son, who was possessed by a devil. At Vitus's prayer the devil was driven out, but that did not stop Diocletian from ordering Vitus to be tortured into worshiping the gods. The boy and his companions were imprisoned, squeezed under heavy iron weights, exposed to lions, and put into a vat of molten lead. Finally they died after being stretched on a rack1,2.
St. Vitus is customarily pictured as a youth with curly blond hair. He saved himself from the lions and the molten lead by making the sign of the cross, so in some images he holds a cross (example). In San Vito lo Capo, the town named for him in Sicily, the attribute in his images is a dog or pair of dogs, as in the first picture at right. There is also a dog in this portrait in a church in Rome. In the 17th century the historian Rocco Pirri noted that in San Vito lo Capo the saint was invoked for protection against the bite of rabid dogs. To this day a spring with healing waters is maintained beneath his church, where Pirri says the saint saved a boy that a dog had bitten and left its teeth in his arm.3 ![]()
Prepared in 2020 by Richard Stracke, Emeritus Professor of English, Augusta University.
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![]() A pair of dogs serve as the saint's attribute in a medallion of St. Vitus at the base of the reliquary bust in the crypt beneath the church in San Vito lo Capo, Sicily. (See the description page.) ![]() The reliquary bust. ![]() A statue of Saint Vitus in his church in San Vito lo Capo. At his feet are dogs, his attributes. (See the description page.) MORE IMAGES
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