Saint Vincent of Zaragossa

He was born at Saragossa to a father named Eutricius and a mother, Enola, from Osca. ¹ Under Valerius, the bishop of Saragossa, "Vincent made great progress in his studies." ¹

Then the detail that decides everything else. He was ordained deacon "and commissioned to do the preaching in the diocese, the bishop having an impediment of speech." ¹ Vatican News says the same from the other side: "He was an great preacher and a courageous man." ²

He was, in other words, his bishop's voice. When the persecution came, that made him the one they wanted.

By order of the governor Dacian, Vincent and Valerius "were dragged in chains to Valencia and kept in prison for a long time." ¹ Then the two were separated, and the difference in what happened to them is the story. "Valerius was banished, but Vincent was subjected to many cruel torments, the rack, the gridiron, and scourgings." ¹

He was imprisoned again afterward, "in a cell strewn with potsherds" - made to lie on broken pottery. ¹ Vatican News summarizes the whole of it in one clause: "Despite terrible tortures, he never denied the Faith." ²

What they tried last is the part worth stopping on. "He was next placed in a soft and luxurious bed, to shake his constancy, but here he expired." ¹ Having failed to break him with pain, they tried kindness, and he died before they could find out whether it would work.

They were not finished with the body. "His body was thrown to be devoured by vultures, but it was defended by a raven." ¹ That is where the raven among his emblems comes from. ¹

"Dacian had the body cast into the sea, but it came to shore and was buried by a pious widow." ¹ After the persecutions ended, a chapel was built over the remains outside the walls of Valencia. ¹

After that the relics scattered, and the article is honest that the claims conflict. The bones were brought to Lisbon in 1175; "others claim that they came to Castres in 864"; Cremona, Bari and other cities claim relics too. ¹ Childeric I took the stole and dalmatic to Paris in 542 and built a church for him that later became Saint-Germain-des-Pres. ¹ Rome had three churches dedicated to him, and Regimont near Beziers had one as early as 455. ¹

The spread is the evidence. Augustine testifies in Sermon 275 that his Acts were being read in the churches of Africa by the end of the fourth century - within a century of his death, on another continent. ¹ Vatican News puts it simply: he was "immediately venerated as a saint." ²

The encyclopedia gives a specific list: "He is honoured as patron in Valencia, Saragossa, Portugal etc., is invoked by vintners, brickmakers, and sailors, and is in the Litany of the Saints." ¹

Vintners and brickmakers and sailors is an odd trio until you look at the emblems. The grate and the fire-pile made him a patron of anyone who works with a kiln; the sea that refused to keep his body gave him the sailors. ¹

The feast of Saint Vincent of Zaragossa is January 22. ¹² The encyclopedia names its source for the date in its first sentence - he is "mentioned in the Roman Martyrology, 22 Jan., with St. Anastasius the Persian" - and Vatican News keeps his day page there, listing him as "St. Vincent, Spanish Deacon and Martyr". ¹²

The Greeks honor him on November 11 instead. ¹

Begin with the bishop's stammer, because it is the least heroic fact here and it is why Vincent is in the calendar. ¹ Valerius could not preach, so Vincent did. It was a practical arrangement to cover somebody else's difficulty, and it put him at the front of the diocese when being at the front became lethal.

The tortures are listed without adjectives and there are four of them. ¹ The article does not dwell and neither should a reader; what it establishes is only that they were thorough and that they did not work.

The bed is the thing to remember. ¹ After the rack and the gridiron and the potsherds, somebody thought of a different approach: give him comfort, and see whether he will let go of what pain could not take. It is the more intelligent attack, and every reader of this page is far likelier to face it than the other kind. He died before it could be answered, which may be its own kind of answer.

Then the raven, and the widow, and the sea that gave him back. ¹ None of it is necessary and all of it was remembered, and a century later, across the Mediterranean, congregations in Africa were hearing his story read aloud. ¹ He had been a man who spoke for someone who could not. Afterward a great many people spoke for him.