St. Vincent of Saragossa

A Spanish deacon martyred at Valencia under Diocletian. Bound to a cross and tortured with hooks and salt, he answered his judges with such serenity that the executioners themselves ran away. Augustine preached on him repeatedly. He is the patron of vintners, perhaps because his feast (January 22) falls on the day vines are pruned in the Spanish countryside.

Vincent served as deacon and spokesman for Bishop Valerius of Saragossa, who suffered from a speech impediment and entrusted the preaching to his young assistant. When the governor Dacian arrested both men during the Diocletian persecution, it was Vincent who spoke for both before the tribunal, proclaiming the faith with an eloquence that enraged the governor and sealed his fate.

His tortures, recounted in detail by Prudentius and Augustine, were among the most savage in the martyrologies: the rack, iron hooks tearing his flesh, a bed of red-hot coals, and imprisonment in a cell strewn with broken pottery. Yet witnesses reported that his composure never broke. His body was cast into the sea weighted with a millstone, but the waves returned it to shore. Vincent became one of the most widely venerated martyrs of the early Church, with shrines from Lisbon to Le Mans bearing his name.