St. Vitus

Who was St. Vitus?

Vitus was a young Christian martyr venerated in southern Italy and Sicily from the early centuries of the Church. The oldest evidence for him is a single line in the Martyrologium Hieronymianum, a list of martyrs whose common source goes back to the 5th century: "In Sicilia, Viti, Modesti et Crescentiae." The same list names a Vitus in Lucania, the Roman province at the instep of Italy. The Catholic Encyclopedia (1912) concludes that this early public cult proves Vitus was a real martyr, while adding that there are "no historical accounts" of him, "nor of the time or the details of their martyrdom."

Everything else comes from a Passion written in the 6th or 7th century, which the same article says was "ornamented with accounts of fantastic miracles" and "has no historical value." It is still the story behind every picture of Vitus, so it is told below as legend. In English he is sometimes called St. Guy, from the French.

The legend of St. Vitus

The Passion exists in several versions. The account here follows the summary in the Catholic Encyclopedia, the Orthodox life, and the Golden Legend of Jacobus de Voragine (about 1260), printed in English by William Caxton in 1483. All of it is traditional.

A boy against his father

Vitus was the son of a pagan nobleman, called Hylas in some versions and Gelas in the Orthodox life. Some versions make the boy seven years old, others twelve. He became a Christian through his nurse Crescentia and his tutor Modestus. When he refused to sacrifice to the gods, the governor Valerian had him beaten, but in the Golden Legend the hands of the men who struck him withered, along with the governor's own, until Vitus prayed and healed them.

His father then tried pleasure instead of pain, with music, feasts and young women. One day the household smelled a sweet scent from the room, and the father looked in to see angels sitting beside his son. He was struck blind and, when Vitus prayed, he was healed. According to the legend he still resolved to kill the boy.

Flight to Lucania

An angel told Modestus to take the child to a foreign land. Modestus and Crescentia found a boat at the river, and an angel crossed with them to Lucania, where the three lived quietly and Vitus went on healing the sick.

The emperor's son

The emperor Diocletian's son was possessed, and the spirit in him said it would not leave until "the child of Lucca named Vitus" came (Caxton's text puts the story in Lucca, in Tuscany). Vitus was found and brought to Rome. "I shall not heal him, but our Lord shall," he answered the emperor, and laid his hand on the young man, who was freed.

The cauldron and the lion

Diocletian was grateful only until Vitus refused to sacrifice. The emperor called the cure sorcery, and the tortures began. Vitus was thrown into a vat of boiling oil or molten lead and stood in it "as if in cool water," in the words of the Orthodox life. A lion was set on him and lay down to lick his feet. Vitus, Modestus and Crescentia were hung up and torn, until an earthquake shook the city and threw down the temples. "Alas! alas! a child hath overcome me," Caxton's emperor cries.

Death by the river

An angel freed the three and set them down beside a river in Lucania, where they prayed and gave up their souls. The Roman Martyrology places their death "at the River Silar," the Sele, south of Naples. Eagles guarded the bodies, and Vitus appeared to a noble woman named Florentia, who found them and buried them where they lay.

How the cult of St. Vitus spread

The Catholic Encyclopedia traces the cult with real documents. Pope Gelasius I (492–496) mentions a shrine of Vitus, and Pope Gregory the Great mentions a monastery dedicated to him in Sicily. In 7th-century Rome a chapel was dedicated to him. The legend says that in the 8th century Abbot Fulrad brought relics of Vitus to the abbey of Saint-Denis near Paris. In 836 they were given to Abbot Warin of Corvey, in Saxony, who carried them to his abbey. From Corvey the cult spread across Westphalia and into eastern and northern Germany.

Francis X. Weiser's Holyday Book (1956) notes that Corvey's monks were missionaries and brought the saint to the Germanic and Slavic peoples. By the 13th century churches of St. Vitus stood across Germany, Bohemia, Scandinavia and eastern Europe.

St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague

The most famous church of St. Vitus is the cathedral at Prague Castle. Its official history says the first church on the site was "founded by Prince Wenceslas around 929," a small round rotunda. Czech tradition says St. Wenceslaus received a relic of the arm of St. Vitus from the German king Henry I and built the rotunda to house it; the Orthodox life repeats that the prince built a church in honor of St. Vitus and was later buried in it.

The present Gothic cathedral was begun in 1344, when Prague became an archdiocese, and consecrated on September 28, 1929. Its full name is the Cathedral of Sts. Vitus, Wenceslaus and Adalbert.

The miracles of St. Vitus

Vitus lived long before the Church began formally examining miracles. Sorted by the labels this encyclopedia uses:

• Healing the governor's hands, the father's blindness and the emperor's son: traditional, from the legendary Passion.
• The cauldron, the lion and the earthquake: traditional.
• The rescue by angels and the eagles guarding the bodies: traditional.
• Cures of epilepsy and chorea at his shrines: reported. Weiser quotes a 12th-century German chronicle that says whoever had "the falling sickness" went to Vitus for help, and the relics were long believed to heal; none of these cures was formally investigated.
• The boy bitten by a dog at San Vito lo Capo: traditional, recorded by the 17th-century Sicilian historian Rocco Pirri. A spring under the church there is still kept as a healing well.

St. Vitus' dance

The phrase "St. Vitus' dance" has two meanings, and both go back to his shrines.

The first is the dancing mania of the late Middle Ages. In outbreaks across the Rhineland and the Low Countries, crowds danced, jerked and collapsed for days. A review of the history of chorea by Vale and Cardoso (2015) says that during an outbreak in Strasbourg the sufferers were taken to the chapel of St. Vitus at Zabern, now Saverne, in Alsace. Weiser writes that victims were brought to his shrines and "led three times around his altar or statue" to obtain relief. Paracelsus (1493–1541) gave the condition the Latin name chorea Sancti Viti and argued that not all of it was supernatural.

The second meaning is medical. In 1686 the English physician Thomas Sydenham described a disorder that "attacks boys and girls from the tenth year until they have done growing," with jerking movements of the limbs, and called it St. Vitus' dance. Doctors now call it Sydenham's chorea and know it as a complication of rheumatic fever after a streptococcal infection.

Why St. Vitus is the patron saint of dancers and epilepsy

• Epilepsy and chorea: Weiser explains that such illnesses were once blamed on the devil, and since the boy had freed the emperor's son from an evil spirit, people asked him to do the same for them.
• Dancers, actors and comedians: later centuries carried the patronage from sick dancing over to real dancing. Weiser says this is how he "also became the patron of dancers and actors."
• Dogs: from the story at San Vito lo Capo, where he was invoked against the bite of rabid dogs. The Litany of the Fourteen Holy Helpers calls on him "against chorea, lethargy, and the bite of venomous or mad beasts."
• Against oversleeping: from the rooster in his pictures, the bird that wakes people up.
• Prague and Bohemia: from his cathedral and relics.

He is one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers, the saints whom Christians in medieval Germany called on together in times of plague, with St. Blaise, St. Christopher, St. Barbara, St. Giles, St. Erasmus, St. Pantaleon, St. Denis and others. See all his patronages on our patron saints page.

Symbols of St. Vitus in art

Vitus is almost always a beardless boy or youth, often richly dressed as a nobleman's son, with a martyr's palm. To pick him out, look for:

• A cauldron: his most common attribute, from the vat of oil or lead. He either holds a small pot, as in the Messkirch panel, or sits in a large one with his hands joined in prayer.
• A rooster: Weiser links it to the medieval custom of offering roosters, hens and eggs at his shrines around midsummer.
• A dog or two dogs: usual in Sicily, especially at San Vito lo Capo.
• A lion: from the beast that would not harm him.

On Prague's Charles Bridge, a Baroque statue shows him standing on a rocky outcrop above a cave of lions.

St. Vitus' feast day

The feast of Sts. Vitus, Modestus and Crescentia was kept on June 15 for centuries. In 1969 it was removed from the General Roman Calendar, but Vitus remains in the Roman Martyrology on June 15. Our feast days page shows his neighbors on the calendar.

Orthodox churches keep June 15 too. In countries on the Julian calendar the date falls on June 28 of the civil calendar. In Serbia that day, Vidovdan, is also the anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo in 1389.

Weiser describes how his day was once kept as a holy day with Mass, pilgrimages, rest from work and festivals. A 2013 essay in the CDC journal Emerging Infectious Diseases adds that people danced before his statue on the feast, since he was the patron of dancers and entertainers.

Prayer to St. Vitus

No prayer composed by Vitus survives. The traditional Latin Mass for June 15 had a collect for the three martyrs, given in Weiser's Holyday Book:

Grant to Thy Church, we pray, O Lord, through the intercession of Thy holy Martyrs Vitus, Modestus and Crescentia, not to be proud-minded, but to grow in humility which is so pleasing before Thee; shunning the things that are evil, may she with eager love practice whatever is right.

Vitus is also named in the Litany of the Fourteen Holy Helpers, written by the Franciscan Benjamin Francis Musser and published in his Kyrie Eleison: Two Hundred Litanies (1944) for private use:

Saint Vitus, invoked against chorea, lethargy, and the bite of venomous or mad beasts, Protect and help them who need help.

Catholics today ask St. Vitus to pray for people with epilepsy, seizures and movement disorders, and for dancers and performers.