Saint Vincent of Spain

At that time, Diocletian and Maximian, cruel tyrants and sworn enemies of Jesus Christ, sent Dacian to Sp Dacien Roman governor in Spain and persecutor of Christians. ain, ostensibly to govern it, but in effect to be the minister of their impiety, for he yielded nothing to them in rage and fury against Christianity and against the honor of our altars. Dacian, having arrived in Saragossa, cruelly persecuted the Church of God through the torments he inflicted upon the faithful, inventing a thousand kinds of horrible tortures to shake the constancy of the firmest. When the Christians who were among the people had felt the first blows of his rage, he turned his fury against those who held some authority in the Church. Learning that Bishop Valerius and Vincent, his deacon, held the first rank there by the eminence of their doctrine and the holiness of their lives, he had them brought, and because he wished to conduct their case with more leisure, he had them taken to Valencia loade d with Valence Place of Ismidon's early studies. iron; they went there on foot, with much suffering on their part and little charity on the part of the guards who accompanied them.

Having arrived in this city, they were first thrown into a sewer where they remained for several days entirely abandoned as far as the necessities of life were concerned; but, in exchange, they were visited from heaven and aided by the favors of that Lord for whose name they were afflicted on earth. The president hoped, in time, to soften these hearts through the rigor and slowness of the torments; but he was quite mistaken: their courage increased through persecution. He had them brought into his presence, and seeing them in good condition, with fresh faces, he became angry with the jailer, thinking that he had abundantly provided them with everything they needed. "Is this," he said, "what I had commanded? It is a fine thing to see the enemies of our empire come out of prison thus strong and in such good health." And, turning then toward the holy martyrs, he asked them: "What do you say to me, Valerius? Will you obey the emperors and worship the same gods they worship?" The holy old man replied gently and very softly, because of the difficulty he had in speaking, so that his answer was not well heard. Vincent said to him: "I will speak, my father, if you command me to." — "My son," replied Valerius, "I have already entrusted to you the care of announcing the word of God; thus I charge you now to answer to make the apology for the faith that we defend here." The holy Deacon therefore took the floor and said to the governor: "May your gods, Dacian, be for you; offer them your incense and your animal sacrifices, and worship them as the protectors of your empire; we Christians know well that they are only the works of the hands of those who fashioned them; that they have neither feeling nor movement, and that they are deaf to your invocations. We recognize the sovereign Lord who created heaven and earth by his will alone and who, by his providence, rules and governs the world. We believe only in this one God and in Jesus Christ, his Son, who, clothed in our flesh, died for us on the cross; and in order to acknowledge, as much as it is possible for us, this love and this death by our own death, we desire to shed our blood and give our lives for his glory."

These words had very diverse results: the Christians who were present received a marvelous consolation from them, and Dacian was filled with rage and fury; he ordered that the holy bishop be banished and Vincent cruelly tormented. The executioners stripped him and tied him to a long post, then they tightened his feet with ropes attached to pulleys, and, stretching his body by pulling, they dislocated all his limbs. During this torture, Dacian said to him: "Do you not see how your body is all dismembered; what more are you waiting for to submit to the will of our gods?" The generous martyr replied with a smiling face: "I have always desired to suffer; and believe me, Dacian, there is no man who could give me greater pleasure than the one I now receive from you and against your intention. You are more tormented than I to see that I cannot be overcome by the tortures I endure; that is why I pray you not to change your will toward me; for the price of my crown and the glory of my combat depend on the excesses of your cruelty." These words were like oil thrown on the fire of rage, already quite ardent in the heart of Dacian. He ordered the executioners to invent some new torture and to tear the body of the Saint with gaffs and iron hooks. But, as if Vincent had been insensible, he reproached his enemies for their weakness by saying to them: "How small your strengths are and how short your inventions! I thought your cruelty would go further." They were weary of tormenting him, and the martyr was not weary of suffering, for his courage increased with his joy, and he found new strength in the midst of his pains; God having armed him with a confidence so perfect that the torments themselves seemed like delights to him. One would have thought, seeing this spectacle, that there was an obstinate combat between the fury of Dacian and the fervor of the holy martyr: fury of the one to do evil and fervor of the other to endure it; but Dacian would have lacked torture sooner than Vincent would have lacked courage. So that this judge, having become furious, had the executioners themselves mistreated, whom he accused of cowardice as weak ministers of the justice of the gods and the emperors, who allowed themselves to be defeated by the patience of the criminal. They therefore renewed his sufferings, and by a detestable refinement of cruelty, they stretched him on an iron bed, under which they placed fire; they applied at the same time burning copper plates to his chest and other limbs, so that the blood flowing from the wounds he had already received extinguished the fire that was devouring him. His flesh was consumed, only his bones, already black and burnt, remained, and nevertheless the brave soldier of Jesus Christ, as if he had been on a bed strewn with roses and flowers, despised his executioners and the impiety of Dacian; so that, to study a new invention, this cruel tyrant had him taken back to a prison which he had strewn with pieces of broken pots, ordering that he be rolled upon them in order to renew his pains in all the limbs of his body.

The courageous levite was lying on this painful bed with a body almost dead, but with a spirit full of life and preparing for new combats. Then Our Lord, looking at him from the throne of his glory, wished to grant him new favors and show the faithful that he never abandons those who have true confidence in him. He had filled him with an interior gladness in the torments and had given him the desire to suffer more of them; but he wished to complete the measure of his graces and put him in a state to triumph even more gloriously over the enemies of his name.

In the middle of the night, when the jailers believed they were assigned to guard a skeleton rather than a man, and, based on this opinion, had fallen asleep, the blessed spirits came to share their felicity with this generous soldier of their King; they illuminated the prison, perfumed it with a celestial odor, and filled it with sweet harmony. The guards, waking with a start, already believed that their prisoner had been taken from them: Vincent, seeing them anxious, cried out to them: "I am not fleeing, no, here I am; I am here in the midst of my brothers, and I am tasting the graces that God is granting me; recognize by this the greatness of the King whom I serve and for whom I suffer; but, being witnesses of the truth, go tell Dacian on my behalf that he should invent new tortures, for I am already completely healed and more ready than ever to suffer more of them." The soldiers went to find Dacian to tell him what was happening; he was seized and dismayed by it, but he persevered in his hardening, while the jailer and most of the guards were converted at the sight of so many wonders and received baptism. While Dacian was thinking about what he could do, the angels were singing around the holy deacon, and, as Prudentius says, encouraged him with these words: "Courage, invincible martyr, fear no more; for you have conquered the torments themselves, they have lost all their strength against you. Our Lord Jesus Christ has seen your glorious combats, he already wishes to crown you as victorious. Leave then the remains of this weak flesh and come with us to enjoy the glory of heaven."

Thus passed that night, after which Dacian ordered the Saint to be brought into his presence. His cruelty having been unsuccessful, he wished to try to win over by gentleness this invincible heart that had overcome so many torments; he therefore began to flatter him with fine words, saying to him: "Your torments have been great and excessive; it is only reasonable that you should rest now on a bed and that we should cease to make war upon you." This discourse of Dacian did not proceed from repentance for what he had made the Saint suffer, but from the sole movement of his rage; his design was to win him over by delights, or, if he remained steadfast in his resolution, to torment him with new tortures. But it was here that the glorious martyr clearly showed that the sweetnesses of the world were more unbearable to him than its most cruel rigors, and that he suffered more pain on this delightful bed where he was laid than he had suffered on the racks and in the midst of tortures; for, as if he had only wished to have life in order to suffer, he refused to live when he saw that he was no longer suffering, and he wished to die in the sweetness that was unbearable to him just as he had wished to live in the torments for which alone he seemed to have loved life. His glorious soul therefore left, in the midst of rest, this blessed body from which it had not been able to distance itself during the efforts of the cruelty of its enemies. It was in this state that the invincible martyr Saint Vincent died, departing from the present life to go and receive the palm from the hands of Him who had given him the strength to triumph: which happened on January 22, in the year 304. Dacian, seeing his designs aborted by this happy death, which placed Vincent out of the world and out of his power, poured out the rest of his rage against this holy body that he had not been able to conquer. He therefore ordered that it be exposed in the middle of a forest, to serve as pasture for animals, and thus deprive the Christians of the consolation they would have felt in paying honor to these precious relics. But what can the malice of impious men do against the power of a living God, who knows how to defend his servants during their life and after their death? The body of this admirable martyr was thrown completely naked at the foot of a mountain, so that the greed of the animals might be more easily attracted there by the solitude of the place; but a raven was destined by heaven to guard this precious treasure. The first beast that approached it was a wolf: and this bird, swooping down on its head, and perching between its ears, compelled it by the pecks it dealt to its eyes to leave intact the mortal remains snatched from the impiety of Dacian and to go seek elsewhere for something to feed upon. O sovereign goodness of God, who so powerfully succors his friends! O omnipotence of God, to whom all creatures obey! Which of the two miracles is the greater, that a raven brings food to the starving Elijah, or that another raven, famished, does not eat the dead body of Vincent, and, what is much more, does not even permit other birds of prey or wild beasts to eat it? O insane fury of Dacian! says Saint Augustine, the raven serves Vincent, the wolf reveres him, and Dacian persecutes him and is not ashamed to persist in his malice and to show himself more cruel toward him than the wild beasts who forget in his favor their natural cruelty and strive to defend him.

Dacian, warned of what was happening, began to shout like a madman: "O Vincent! you triumph over me even after your death, and your cold and naked limbs, which have no more blood or life, still make war on me; it shall not be so!" Then, addressing the executioners, he ordered them to take the body of the martyr and sew it into an ox skin to throw it into the depths of the sea, so that it might be eaten by fish and never be seen again, hoping to conquer in the sea the one by whom he had been conquered on land, as if God were not the Lord of one element as well as the other. The impious men therefore took the body and carried it in a boat so far out into the sea that they could see nothing but the sky and the water, and having thus thrown it into the high sea, they returned to land, believing they had entirely satisfied the desire of the president. But the powerful hand of the Most High, who had received into his bosom the spirit of Vincent, also withdrew his body from the midst of the waves and carried it so promptly to the shore that the ministers of Dacian found it there upon their return, with the stone they had attached to it, which was floating on the water like a sponge. They remained so terrified that they dared no longer touch this holy body; the waves gradually dug a pit and covered it with the sand of the sea to give it burial, until it pleased God to dispose of it otherwise.

Providence permitted the holy Martyr to appear to a man among the faithful, and to command him to take his body and render him the duties of Christian charity; but this man, fearing the fury of Dacian, deferred this good office. Vincent addressed himself to a pious widow, called Ionique, warned her of the place where his precious relics were, and commanded her to bury them. This courageous woman promptly executed what the timid man had not dared to undertake. She took the body and placed it in the ground outside the walls of Valencia, in a church that was later dedicated under the name of this invincible Martyr.

Such were the combats, the victories, the crowns, and the trophies of the glorious Saint Vincent who, as Saint Augustine says, intoxicated with that wine which makes one strong and chaste, opposed the tyrants who wished to ruin the reign of Jesus Christ. He patiently endured the pains and torments, and even mocked them, so constant was he; but if he was strong to resist, he was no less humble in triumph, knowing well that it was not he, but grace which, in him, won the victory: this is why the torments could not bend him nor reduce him to acquiesce to Dacian, to show the strength of the Almighty, and so that the faithful servant, when it is a question of exposing his life for the honor of his Lord, does not fear for his weakness, remembering that it is not he who must fight, but God in him.

Among those who speak with praise of Saint Vincent, one can count Saint Augustine, Pope Saint Leo, Saint Bernard, Prudentius, Isidore, Metaphrastes, and all those who have written the Martyrologies. France was enriched with the greater part of his holy relics. They were transported, among other cities, to Metz, to Castres, to Besançon. In 876, Charles the Bald, passing through Besançon, presented to Thierry, bishop of this city, two vertebrae of the famous martyr of Saragossa. The cult of Saint Vincent was in great honor in the Middle Ages in the diocese of Besançon and his feast is still celebrated there on January 22, under the double rite. In Paris, the abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés was built by the piety of King Childebert, in ho nor of this gl roi Childebert King of the Franks who supported the saint. orious Martyr who is its patron and titular. This prince, on his victorious return from the Spains which he had freed by the force of his arms from the tyranny of the pagans, contented himself, as his only reward, with an arm of Saint Vincent and his deacon's tunic, as is reported in the tunique de diacre Relic brought back from Spain by Childebert. Annals of France. The church of Le Mans had the good fortune to possess the head, which was given to its bishop, Saint Domnolus, by the same Childebert. But the church of Le Mans does not currently possess the head of Saint Vincent, deacon and martyr. These precious relics had been received at Le Mans by Saint Domnolus, bishop, and deposited by him in a monastery that he had had built in honor of this glorious Martyr (year 572). This monastery, occupied by the Benedictines of the reform of Chazel-Benoît, and later of the Congregation of Saint-Maur, subsisted until the Revolution. At that time, the relics that the abbey church possessed were lost. Today, the ancient abbey of Saint-Vincent of Le Mans is occupied by the diocesan major seminary.

The religious ladies of Le Charme, of the order of Fontevrault, in the diocese of Soissons, preserved, before the French Revolution, as a rich treasure, two notable bones, one of an arm, the other of a leg. But we cannot write without pain of the signal loss that the city of Dun-le-Roi, in Berry, suffered when in the year 1562 the Calvinist heretics besieged and took it, and contrary to the faith given, pillaged the small church of Saint-Vincent, where the heart of this invincible soldier of Jesus Christ was preserved in a beautiful silver reliquary that Thibaut, Count of Sancerre, had formerly offered there. For these wretches stole the silver and burned the precious relic with ignominy in the public square, without the very sweet odor that it exhaled toward heaven ever being able to soften the hearts of these fanatical men, who were crueler than tigers. But, although the heretics have stolen the heart of Saint Vincent from France, they have not taken away its affection for this great Saint, since it recognizes him as one of its defenders and patrons: of which many churches that it has consecrated under his name bear witness, even cathedrals, such as those of Mâcon and Viviers, in Vivarais.

Vitry-le-François currently possesses (1872) the forearm of Saint Vincent, brought back from Spain by King Childebert, with its authentic documents.

Finally, we do not wish to omit that Saint Vincent is invoked particularly for recovering lost or stolen items, as can be seen in the history of the translation of these holy relics, where the monk Aymoin reports several examples of this devotion.

Saint Vincent is represented, like Saint Lawrence, in deacon's vestments, having as an attribute an iron bed with sharp spikes; nearby, one sees whips, chains, iron claws, and a millstone. He is also represented carrying a boat, which may signify two things: firstly, it recalls that his body was embarked to be submerged at sea; secondly, that he was long invoked against the risks of the sea by the sailors of the Iberian Peninsula: it is known, in fact, that his relics were long honored on a cape that still bears the name Cape Saint-Vincent today. He is often found with a pruning hook, a grape tub, bunches of grapes, and vine shoots in his capacity as patron saint of winemakers. This patronage is probably due to the fact that the Saint's name begins with 'vin' (wine): it is a pure pun.

The life of Saint Vincent, deacon, is drawn from Prudentius and from sermons 274, 275, 276, and 277 of Saint Augustine. The acts published by Hollandes are the only ones worthy of belief.