Everything Totally Explained


Ask & we'll explain, totally!
Roch
Totally Explained

  NEW! All the latest news in the worlds of computer gaming, entertainment, the environment,  
finance, health, politics, science, stocks & shares, technology and much, much, more.  

View this entry using RSS

Everything about Roch totally explained

Saint Roch (Latin: Rochus; Catalan: Roc; Italian: Rocco; French: Roch; Spanish and Portuguese: Roque; German: Rochus; c. 1295 – traditionally 16 August 1327) was a Christian saint, a confessor whose death is commemorated on 16 August; he's specially invoked against the plague.

The historical truth about Saint Roch

According to the searches of the Belgian historian Pierre Bolle (2001), that represent today the most exhaustive work on ancient lives of the saint, Saint Roch isn't properly a historical saint. The work of Bolle by using a rigorous historical methodology, has cleared which of the hagiographies were the most ancient, and which were instead simple reworks and additions. According to Pierre Bolle, Saint Roch is a hagiographical doublet of a more ancient saint, Saint Racho of Autun (died ca. 660). Invoked against the storms, the figure of Raco would be to the base of the name of our saint (Raco/Roch), and of the patronage of the saint who recovers from the plague, patronage that would have been generated for aphaeresis, for example the fall of the first syllable of one the word, from the French name “tempeste” (storm). From “Racho” invoked to protect from “tem-peste”, to “Roch” protecting from “-peste” (plague) the step was short, and supported by the theories of medieval medicine, that attributed the causes of illness to the corruption of air and to the consequent breaking of the equilibrium inside the human body. The thesis of Bolle has completely revolutionized the studies on the saint, even if in hagiographic field the existence of doublets and homonyms to the base of the creation of new saints is a well known procedure, like in the cases of the saints Vincent of Agen and Alban of Namur.

Biography

According to his Acta and his vita in Legenda Aurea, he was born at Montpellier, at that time "upon the border of France" as Legenda Aurea has it,, the son of the noble governor of that city. Even his birth was accounted a miracle, for his noble mother had been barren until she prayed to the Virgin Mary. Miraculously marked from birth with a red cross on his breast that grew as he did, he early began to manifest strict asceticism and great devoutness; on days when his "devout mother fasted twice in the week, and the blessed child Rocke abstained him twice also, when his mother fasted in the week, and would suck his mother but once that day".
   On the death of his parents in his twentieth year he distributed all his worldly goods among the poor like Francis of Assisi— though his father on his deathbed had ordained him governor of Montpellier— and set out as a mendicant pilgrim for Rome. Coming into Italy during an epidemic of plague, he was very diligent in tending the sick in the public hospitals at Acquapendente, Cesena Rimini, Novara and Rome, and is said to have effected many miraculous cures by prayer and the sign of the cross and the touch of his hand. At Rome he preserved the "cardinal of Angleria in Lombardy" by making the mark of the cross on his forehead, which miraculously remained (Legenda Aurea). Ministering at Piacenza he himself finally fell ill. He was expelled from the town; and withdrew into the forest, where he made himself a hut of boughs and leaves, which was miraculously supplied with water by a spring that arose in the place; he'd have perished hadn't a dog belonging to a nobleman named Gothard supplied him with bread. The lord Gothard, following his hunting dog that carried the bread, discovered Saint Roch and became his acolyte.
   On his return incognito to Montpellier he was arrested as a spy (by orders of his own uncle) and thrown into prison, where he languished five years and died on 16 August, 1327, without revealing his name, to avoid worldly glory. After his death, according to Legenda Aurea, » "anon an angel brought from heaven a table divinely written with letters of gold into the prison, which he laid under the head of S. Rocke. And in that table was written that God had granted to him his prayer, that's to wit, that who that calleth meekly to S. Rocke he shan't be hurt with any hurt of pestilence."

The townspeople recognized him as well by his birthmark; he was soon canonized in the popular mind, and a great church erected in veneration.
   The date (1327) asserted by Francesco Diedo for Saint Roch's death would precede the traumatic advent of the Black Death in Europe (1347-49) after long centuries of absence, for which a rich iconography of the plague, its victims and its protective saints was soon developed, in which the iconography of Roche finds its historical place: previously the topos didn't exist.
   The first literary account is an undated Acta that's labeled, by comparison with the longer, elaborated accounts that were to follow, Acta Breviora, which relies almost entirely on standardized hagiographic topoi to celebrate and promote the cult of Roch
   The story that when the Council of Constance was threatened with plague in 1416, public processions and prayers for the intercession of Roch were ordered, and the outbreak ceased, is provided by Francesco Diedo, the Venetian governor of Brescia, in his Vita Sancti Rochi, 1478; the first documented cult of Roch dates to the 1460s and gained momentum during the bubonic plague that passed through northern Italy in 1477-79. His popular cult, originally in central and northern Italy and at Montpellier, spread through Spain, France, the Low Countries, and Germany, where he was often interpolated into the roster of the Fourteen Holy Helpers, whose veneration spread in the wake of the Black Death. The magnificent 16th-century Scuola Grande di San Rocco and the adjacent church were dedicated to him by a confraternity at Venice, where his body was said to have been surreptitiously translated and was triumphantly inaugurated in 1485; the Scuola Grande is famous for its sequence of paintings by Tintoretto, who painted St Roch in glory in a ceiling canvas (1564).
   Saint Roch hadn't been officially recognized as yet, however. In 1590 the Venetian ambassador at Rome reported back to the Serenissima that he'd been repeatedly urged to present the witnesses and documentation of the life and miracles of San Rocco, already deeply entrenched in Venetian life, because Pope Sixtus V "is strong in his opinion either to canonize him or else to remove him from the ranks of the saints"; the ambassador had warned a cardinal of the general scandal that would result if the widely-venerated San Rocco were impugned as an imposter. Sixtus didn't pursue the matter but left it to later popes to proceed with the canonization process. In fact no pope ever acted on this.
   Numerous brotherhoods have been instituted in his honour. He is usually represented in the garb of a pilgrim, often lifting his tunic to demonstrate the plague sore in his thigh, and accompanied by a dog carrying a loaf in its mouth.
   San Rocco joined San Gerardo as a patron saint of the city of Potenza, Italy.

Saint Roch churches

Europe

North America

  • St. Roch Church in St. Louis, Missouri
  • St. Roch's Church in Staten Island, New York
  • St. Rocco's Church in Johnston, Rhode Island
  • St. Rocco's Church in Dunmore, Pennsylvania
  • St. Rocco's Church in Glen Cove, New York
  • St. Roch Church in Indianapolis, Indiana
  • St. Roch Church in Mentz, Texas
  • St Roch Church In Flat Rock, Michigan
  • San Rocco Oratory in Chicago Heights, Illinois
  • St. Rocco's Church in Cleveland, Ohio
  • St Roch Church, Oxford, Massachusetts
  • San Roque Church in Santa Barbara, California
  • St Roch Church, Quebec City, Canada
  • Campo Santo and St. Roch Chapel in New Orleans, Louisiana
  • St. Rocco's Church in Pittston, Pennsylvania
  • St. Roch Church in the Chickahominy section of Greenwich, Connecticut.
  • St. Rochus Croatian Catholic Church in Johnstown, Pennsylvania
  • St. Roch's Catholic Church in Kahuku, Hawaii

    South America

  • Iglesia de San Roque in Tarija, Bolivia

    Asia and Australasia

  • Saint Roch Catholic Church in Kahuku Hawaii
  • St. Roch's Church in Glen Iris, Melbourne, Australia
  • San Roque Church in JP Rizal St., San Roque, Marikina City, Philippines.
  • San Roque Parish Church of Navotas (Metro Manila, Philippines)
  • San Roque Cathedral, Diocese of Caloocan (Metro Manila, Philippines)
  • San Roque Church of Mandaluyong City (Metro Manila, Philippines)
  • San Roque de Manila Parish in Rizal Avenue, Sta.Cruz, Manila (Philippines)

    Middle East

  • San Roch Church in Rayfoun, Lebanon

    Other things named after St Roch

  • São Roque (disambiguation), a list of Portuguese towns named after Saint Roch
  • St. Roch Avenue in the Gentilly neighboorhood of New Orleans, LA
  • Sveti Rok Tunnel (Croatian Tunel Sveti Rok) in Lika, Croatia on the A1 Motorway

    Trivia

  • A popular Spanish tongue twister is El perro de san Roque no tiene rabo porque Ramón Ramírez se lo ha robado ("Saint Roch's dog has no tail because Ramón Ramírez stole it").
  • In Bolivia, Saint Roch's day, though not as celebrated as it once was, is considered the "birthday of all dogs", in which the dogs around town can be seen with colorful ribbons tied to them.
  • The main train station of Montpellier, France is named after St. Roch, as well as a church and many squares and streets.
  • In Bingen, Germany there's a St. Rochus pilgrimage church on top of a hill. Every year in August a one week pilgrimage -the "St. Rochusfest"- is held in memory of a 17th century vow of the city council.
  • Some churches that are named after the saint distribute, as a pietistic practice, the "bread of Saint Rocco" to parishioners on August 16th, his feast day.
  • Saint Rocco's procession is the Saint featured in the movie The Godfather Part II.
  • The Society of San Rocco Di Simbario (Italy) was officially founded in April of the year 1920 in Chicago by Bruno Bertucci. He owned and operated a small grocery store at the corner of 24th Street and Princeton Avenue, near Chinatown, at the St. Therese Chinese Church, formerly known as Santa Maria Incoronato.
  • According to Montague Summers' The Vampire in Europe, St. Roch was prayed to in Poland to ward off vampire attacks.Further Information

    Get more info on 'Roch'.


    External Link Exchanges

    Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:

      <a href="http://roch.totallyexplained.com">Roch Totally Explained</a>

    Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
       As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned.



    • Copyright © 2007-8 totallyexplained.com | Licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License | Site Map
    This article contains text from the Wikipedia article Roch (History) and is released under the GFDL | RSS Version