Thread by @DouayRheims1

ST VITUS, MARTYR; FEAST JUNE 15

~thread~
1. St Vitus appears in early lists of Christian martyrs, and probably died during the persecution of Diocletian, which reached its climax in 303.

He is a patron saint of Prague, actors,

#StVitus #Christianity #FourteenHolyHelpers

2. and his intercession has been invoked against snake bites and sleeplessness. Chiefly, though, he has been associated with St Vitus’s Dance.

Historically this term has been used to describe nervous disorders involving rapid, jerky, involuntary movements;
#insomnia #sleep

3. it has also been applied to epilepsy. Today, St Vitus’s Dance is more austerely defined as Sydenham’s Chorea, a disease which induces grimacing and jerking in children and pregnant women, and which is often linked to rheumatic fever.

Tradition relates that Vitus
#epilepsy

4. hailed from Sicily, where he was converted to Christianity while still a boy, to the great disgust and rage of his father, a senator.

Guided by an angel, and sustained with food brought by an eagle, the youth escaped to Italy with his tutor Modestus and his maid Crescentia.

5. The miraculous cures he effected led to accusations of sorcery, while his refusal to worship pagan gods attracted the malignant attention of authority.

Flung into a cauldron of molten lead, Vitus apparently emerged
#pagan #authority #politics #faith #ChristiansOnTwitter

6. as from a refreshing bath. Then a lion to which he was exposed crouched before him and licked his feet. Yet Vitus eventually perished from the tortures he suffered, as did Modestus and Crescentia.

St Vitus Church on the Esquiline Hill in #Rome dates from the 8th century.

7. In 775 his relics found a home at St Denis (now in #Paris) until translated in 836 to Corvey in Saxony.

During the Black Death, in the 14th century, there were outbreaks of hysterical dancing in Europe, seemingly caused by mental breakdown in the face
#BlackDeath #medieval

8. of the irresistible incursion of mortality.

Prayers to #God were offered through St Vitus in the hope of allaying this “dancing plague”, and he became recognised as one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers to those in extremis.
#medievaltwitter #CatholicTwitter #History #Christians

9. ‘If St Vitus’s Day be rainy #weather, it shall rain for 30 days together, ‘ ran the old saw, a forecast applied with equal unreliability to the feast of #StSwithin on July 15.”
(Excerpts from: “Saint of the week”, published in the “The #Catholic Herald”, issue June 14 2013)