Today, 16 August, is the feast of ... 

Joachim (first century BC?): Father of the BVM. The Benedictines celebrate
the feast of Joachim and Anne (the mother of the BVM) on 26 July. 

Arsacius, Christian soldier (358): Predicted that a terrible earthquake
would hit the city of Nicomedia, but no one believed him. A few days later
an earthquake destroyed most of the city. The building in which Arsacius
lived was one of the few to escape destruction; unfortunately the
same cannot be said for Arsacius. When some of the people of Nicomedia ran
to the building where Arsacius lived to seek safety, Arsacius was found on
his knees but dead. 

Armel, abbot (570): It is reported that Armel was converted to the
religious life upon entering a church and hearing a deacon sing: "And
whosoever does not carry his cross and come after me cannot be my
disciple." 

Laurence Loricatus (1243): Born in Apulia. As a young man Laurence
accidentally killed someone. In expiation he made a pilgrimage of penance
to Compostela, and on his return in 1209 went to Subiaco, where he joined
a community but was soon given permission to be a solitary. He lived in
a mountain cave near the Sacro Peco of St Benedict for thirty-three years
and practised bodily mortifications. In fact the name *Loricatus* was
given to him because he wore next to his skin a coat of mail studded with
sharp points. 

Rock or Roch, healer (1378): Saint par excellence to be invoked against
pestilence. 

Two years ago year Louise Marshall provided very useful information
concerning the cult of St Roch:

ROCH: Throughout the Renaissance, Sebastian remained the most popular and
universally venerated plague saint; his cult was never supplanted or 
overshadowed by that of Roch. Roch is a strange case, a really shadowy 
and ahistorical figure (sometimes I think he was actually just 
invented!); his earliest life is an anonymous & undated vita (1st half of 
the 15thc?) which is composed almost entirely of hagiographic cliches 
and has little or no specific historical details, let alone dates. It ends
by claiming that Roch was canonized but more recent research has 
proven this to be fictitious. The same seems to be true of the claim in a
later 15thc vita (written in 1478) that Roch was appealed to during an 
outbreak of plague at the Council of Constance in 1416. How Roch's cult
ever gets going at all still puzzles me: there's no body, no tomb, no
pilgrimage site, and no interested order, city or even, as far as one can
tell, family. My guess is perhaps it might have started as a localized 
cult in Piacenza (Emilia), where he is supposed to have cured plague
victims & which has been suggested as the place of origin of the anonymous
writer of the earliest vita. If anyone else on the list has any thoughts
I would love to hear it. Roch's cult as a plague protector seems only to
become more widely known during the second half of the 15thc and, as far
as I can tell, seems to have been localized primarily in northern
Italy. He starts appearing alongside Sebastian in altarpieces from the
Veneto in the 1460s & around this time there are confraternities that 
start to be dedicated to him (eg in 1467 an existing confraternity in
Padua rededicates itself to him). In fact, in several central Italian
cities in the 1460s & 70s it seems to be confraternities dedicated to Roch
which are the main sponsors of his cult in their town/region, organizing
processions etc and commissioning images. The biggest impetus to the
proliferation of his cult I think was the devastating series of plague
epidemics which occured throughout Italy from 1477-79. A new life is
written by the Venetian governor of Brescia in 1478, which went into 
several editions in the next decade; his name is inserted in the
Venetian missal in 1481; and finally in 1485 his relics are triumphantly
installed in Venice. From then on his cult has a physical focus and
interested institutions to promote it, and he becomes the second universal
plague saint after Sebastian. Of course, there is always the Virgin
to appeal to if things get too bad, and even Christ himself, but that's
another story... 

The best studies on Roch I have found are: Andre Vauchez, "Rocco", in
*Bibliotheca Sanctorum*, vol. 9, Rome, 1968, 264-73. Irene Vaslef, "The
Role of St. Roch as a Plague Saint: A Late Medieval Hagiographic 
Tradition", Ph.D., Catholic University of America, 1984 (with English
translations of both lives). More problematic though still important to
consult are the studies by A. Fliche, *L'art et les saints: Saint Roch*, 
Paris: Laurens, 1930; and "Le probleme de Saint Roch", *Analecta 
Bollandia*, 68, 1950, 343-61. There is also a published German PhD on
images of Roch, which is useful as a topographical survey of extant
images: M.T. Schmitz-Eichoff, *St. Rochus: Ikonographische und
medizin-historische Studien*, (Kolner medizin-historische Beitrage, 3),
Cologne: F. Hansen, 1977. I have published on the imagery of plague
saints, including Roch: L. Marshall, "Manipulating the sacred: Image and
Plague in Renaissance Italy", *Renaissance Quarterly*, 47, 1994,
485-532; I also have a chapter on Roch in my dissertation, " 'Waiting on
the Will of the Lord': The Imagery of the Plague", PhD, University of
Pennsylvania, 1989. 

Thanks Louise!

*************
Carolyn Muessig
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