VINCENZO MARIA STRAMBI, Saint. — Ecclesiastical writer, Bishop of Macerata and Tolentino, b. at Civitavecchia on 7 Jan. 1745, d. at Rome on 7 Jan. 1824. Having entered the ecclesiastical career, he studied at the seminary of Montefiascone, at Rome in the Casanzio College, at Viterbo with the Dominicans of Gradi, and again at Rome in the Dominican convent of S. Sabina. Ordained priest in 1767 at Bagnoregio, where he was already rector of the seminary, the following year he was received among the Passionists by the holy Founder Paul of the Cross (q.v.).
He distinguished himself by his outstanding virtues, by his theological teaching opposed to the Jansenist and Gallican trends of the time, by the high offices he held, and by his preaching of Missions and Spiritual Exercises, being regarded as one of the best orators of his age. His favourite authors were St John Chrysostom, St Thomas Aquinas, and St Alphonsus Mary de’ Liguori. Promoted by Pius VII in 1801 to the See of Macerata and Tolentino, he took St Charles Borromeo as his model; he revived in the clergy a commitment to virtue, study, and pastoral care; he enlarged the two seminaries and restored their studies and discipline; he stimulated religious to perfection; he founded asylums for orphans and the elderly; he showed solicitous care for the sick and prisoners; he succoured the poor with inexhaustible generosity, going so far as to sell his own furniture, clothes, and even sacred vessels. For himself, he practised the strictest poverty and the austerities of penance. Untiring in preaching and pastoral ministry, he devoted many hours of the day and night to prayer, and was favoured by God with supernatural gifts. In 1808, firmly refusing to take the oath of loyalty imposed by Napoleon I and condemned by the pope, he was taken to Novara and then to Milan. Even in exile he sought to assist his dioceses by letter and to exercise a fruitful apostolate. Returning in 1814, he resumed his pastoral labours with zeal. In 1815 he saved Macerata from the devastation wrought by the belligerent troops of Joachim Murat and the Austrians. Weighed down by years and toils, he repeatedly sought to be relieved of the government of the two dioceses, and finally obtained it in October 1823 from Leo XII, who summoned him to Rome as his counsellor in the Apostolic Palace at the Quirinal. But at the end of the same year, to preserve the life of the gravely ill pope, he offered his own life to God and was heard, dying a few days later.
As a spiritual director, V. guided many souls to perfection, among them Bl. Anna Maria Taigi, Ven. Maria Luisa Maurizi, Charles Emmanuel IV of Sardinia, and his wife Ven. Maria Adelaide Clotilde.
As a writer, he was the first esteemed biographer of St Paul of the Cross, whose beatification cause he also promoted as postulator; he published the three-volume work *Dei tesori che abbiamo in Gesù Cristo* (1805) and various spiritual booklets, especially written during his exile; he is also the author, together with Msgr G. Bonanni, of the widely circulated booklet *Il mese di luglio consacrato al Preziosissimo Sangue di G. C.*
He was beatified by Pius XI in 1925 and canonized by Pius XII in 1950; his body rests in the basilica of SS John and Paul in Rome. His feast is kept on 10 January.
VINCENZO
Vincenzo Maria Strambi, Saint. Portrait, anonymous 19th-century, Rome, Retreat of SS John and Paul.
ENZO, ORONZO, and VITTORIO, Saints, Martyrs. — The Roman Martyrology commemorates them on 22 January as victims of the persecution of Diocletian at Embrun in France; other sources assign them to Gerona in Spain.
An attempt has been made to reconcile the discrepancy by supposing that they were martyred at Gerona and that their relics were later transferred to Embrun. Their *Acta* are legendary and fabulous; perhaps Vincenzo is to be identified with the well-known deacon of Saragossa, martyred in 304. Oronzo, bishop, martyr, and patron of Lecce, would be distinct from the one mentioned in this group of martyrs.