Patron's History
San Roque the Holy
In almost all over the world people know of Saint Roque. Every church in the Languedoc you will find a representation of a saint who is relatively little known elsewhere. Her name is Saint Roch, a confessor who was born around 1295 and whose death is commemorated on 16 August. He is specially invoked by the Catholic faithful against the Bubonic Plague and other infectious diseases.
So many saints all over the world, but Saint Roch was not a real person, his biography is a reprocessed version of an older story about someone else. Most of the traditional information about him still believed, some comes from Church legends like the Legenda Aurea, which do not represent reliable history.
According to his Acta and his vita in Legenda Aurea, he was born at Montpellier, about 1295, the son of the Governor of that city, He born of an Italian mother. According the same source he showed marked sanctity from an early age for suckling his mother in time to her religious fasting regime.
On the age of 20 when his parents died, he distributed all his worldly goods among the poor and set out as a mendicant pilgrim. When he arriving in Italy during an epidemic of plague, he helped tend the sick in the public hospitals at Acquapendente, Cesena and Rome, and is said to have effected miraculous cures. At Rome he cured the cardinal of Angleria (the pope's brother) by making the mark of the cross on his forehead. He cured cattle using the same technique.
At Piacenza he fell ill with the plague himself the first signs of which were buboes appearing in the groin. He was expelled from the town; and withdrew into the forest, where he made a hut for hem self, which was supplied with water by a spring that miraculously appeared. He would have starved had not a dog belonging to a man named Gothard brought him bread every day. Gothard following his hunting dog that carried the bread everyday and gothard became his follower. Thanks to this series of miracles Roch survived and recovered his health.
On his return incognito to Montpellier he was arrested as a spy by order of his own uncle and thrown into prison, where he languished five years and died on 16 August 1327. Only when he was dead did the townspeople recognised him (by a birthmark). Soon, he was credited with continuing to work miracle cures against the pestilence, and he was soon canonised. Almost identical stories were related about numerous other saints. Saint Roche is the Patron Saint of:
As San Rocco he became a patron saint of the city of Potenza, Italy. When the Council of Constance was threatened with plague in 1414, public processions and prayers for the intercession of Roch were ordered.
His cult spread through Spain, France, Belgium, Italy and Germany, when he was often interpolated into the roster of the Fourteen Holy Helpers, whose veneration spread in the wake of the Black Death. He is known by different names in different places: As well as Roch, he is Rochus (Latin), Rocco (Italian), and Roque (Occitan, Spanish and Portuguese):; Rock (English) and Rollock (in Scotland)
At Ferrara in 1439, the cessation of the Black Death was attributed to St. Roch. For centuries the people of the Languedoc lived in fear of recurrences of the Black Death and later the Plague. This explains why St Roch was always such a favourite here.
Today, the Bubonic plague and similar diseases that killed so many in Medieval and Renaissance times have been brought under control by medical advances. But people still appeal to St Roch for his miraculous intercession, including AIDS suffers among the devout.
Roch's statues in Languedoc churches and displayed on house sides are readily identifiable. Here are the things to look for:He is represented in the garb of a bearded pilgrim, often with a pilgrim's hat and staff, and sometimes with misleading sea shells of St Jacques de Compostella. He hoists his pilgrim's garb to reveal a modest wound on his thigh (rather than on his less modest groin which would be more medically accurate as this is where buboes first appear). Often he points at the buboe to identify himself more clearly.
He is accompanied by a dog carrying a loaf generally depicted as a bread bun in its mouth. The main railway station in Montpellier is named after St. Roch, as are a city church and many squares and streets.
