SAINT VINCENT MRTIR
Deacon and martyr (+304). His party is celebrated on January 22
Vincent the Victorious is one of the three great deacons who gave their lives for Christ. Along with Lorenzo and Esteban—Corona, Laurel and Victoria—he forms the most distinguished triumvirate. Covered with the sacred dalmatian, he holds in his hands the unfading palm of the undefeated martyrs.
This very famous martyr in all of Christendom found his panegyrist in Saint Augustine, Saint Leo the Great and Saint Ambrose. And he had his singer in his fellow countryman Prudentius, who dedicated hymn V of his Peristephanon to the “Levite of the sacred tribe, distinguished column of the mystical temple.”
Vicente descended from a consular family in Huesca, and his mother, according to some, was the sister of the martyr San Lorenzo. He studied the ecclesiastical career in Zaragoza, next to Bishop Valero. “Our Vicente”, sing Prudencio, vindicating this glory for Zaragoza, the city in Spain that had the most martyrs. San Valero, who had little facility for expression, appointed him Archdeacon or first Deacon, to replace him in the sacred chair.
We are at the beginning of the fourth century, in the tenth and cruelest persecution against the Church, decreed by Diocletian and applied in Spain by Dacian. Prisons, previously reserved for common criminals, were soon filled with bishops, presbyters, and deacons, writes Eusebius of Caesarea. It was the tactic faithfully followed by Dacianus.
As Daciano passes through Barcelona, he sacrifices San Cucufate and the girl Santa Eulalia. When he arrives in Zaragoza, he orders the arrest of the bishop and his deacon, Valero and Vicente, and transfer them to Valencia. There the first interrogation took place. Vicente answers for both of them, intrepid and with fiery words. Daciano is irritated, sends Valero into exile, and Vicente is subjected to the rack’s torture. His body is ripped open with metal nails.
While they tortured him, the judge ordered the martyr to abjure him. Vicente indignantly rejected such offers. The poet of “Las Coronas” puts words of sublime Christian stoicism in the mouth of the martyr: “You are deceived, cruel man, if you think you are afflicting me by destroying my body. There is someone inside me that no one can violate: a free, serene being. You you try to destroy a vessel of clay, destined to break, but in vain you will strive to touch what is inside, which is only subject to God.
Daciano, disconcerted and humiliated by this attitude, offers him forgiveness if he gives him the sacred books. But the courage of the martyr is unassailable. The Prefect, exasperated again, ordered the supreme torment to be applied to him, placing him on a bed of incandescent iron. Nothing can break the strength of the martyr who, remembering his countryman San Lorenzo, suffers the torment without complaining and joking among the flames.
He is then thrown into a sinister, dark and fetid dungeon “a place blacker than darkness itself,” says Prudencio. Then the poet presents a choir of angels who come to comfort the martyr. They illuminate the horrible den, cover the ground with flowers, and brighten the darkness with their harmonies. Even the jailer, moved, converts and confesses Christ.
Dacian orders the martyr to be cured in order to subject him to torment again. The Christians prepare to cure him. But as soon as he was placed in a soft bed, as he had predicted, the tyrant is disappointed because Vicente’s winning spirit flies to paradise. It was the month of January 304. He orders Dacianus to mutilate the body and throw it into the sea. But the waves are more merciful, they return him to land to proclaim to the world the triumph of Vicente the Undefeated. The cult of him spread far throughout Christendom.
Saint Vincent is the patron saint of Portugal, the city of Valencia (Spain) and the city of Vicenza (Italy).
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