SAN VITO MARTIRE NELLA LITURGIA LATINA E ITALO-BIZANTINA

Saint Vitus is one of the most popular saints of the Christian tradition. The importance and spread of his cult are attested in many European countries that have a church or a small chapel dedicated to his cult or some relics jealously guarded. During the Middle Ages, devotion to the Martyr Saint spread rapidly in the major European cities that boasted of possessing his relics; groups of believers from different backgrounds went to the most important sanctuaries consecrated to his cult as well as to his small rural chapels in Italy, Saxony, Bohemia, Germany and throughout Europe. According to tradition, based on historical and liturgical sources, the young Martyr was born in Sicily, in Mazara del Vallo, from pagan parents and was educated to Christianity by his tutor Modesto and his nurse Crescenza. The story of his martyrdom proposes the style and themes typical of martyrology and is rich in descriptive elements that strike the imagination of the reader because of the thaumaturgical powers of the Martyr. Saint Vitus is inserted in the group of the fourteen "Saints who help", to whom a particular veneration was reserved during the Middle Ages. His intercession was often invoked because he was considered particularly effective against illnesses or calamities that struck towns and cities.