VITO, MODESTO and CRESCENZA, saints and martyrs. - Commemorated in the Hieronymian Martyrology on 15 June, they appear to have been victims of the Diocletian persecution; V. Gelasian Sacramentary, whereas M. and C. were added to it in the Roman Missal (Milan 1474).
The various recensions of the Passio (BHL, 8711-12; V. Sicily; 8713-14; V. Lucania; 8715-16 [translations: 8717-23]) do not deserve credence; rather, the first topographical indication of the Hieronymian, and in Lucania, which must derive from a local calendar, is to be taken into consideration. From the 5th century onward, churches and monasteries were dedicated to St V. Rome, Sicily, and Sardinia, and his cult underwent extraordinary development in the Middle Ages, especially among Germans and Slavs, above all because of his thaumaturgical power against the nervous illness called St V.'s dance and against hydrophobia. For this reason he was numbered among the Helper Saints (v.). The relics of St V. were first transferred to the Parisian monastery of St-Denis (second half of the 8th century), then to that of Corvey in Saxony (836); the head of St V. was brought from Pavia to Prague in 1355 by order of Emperor Carlo IV. St V. is depicted immersed in the boiling cauldron in which he is said to have been tortured, or holding a tiny one in his hand, with a dog on a leash.
Kunst, II, Freiburg in Br. 1926, pp. 583-88; J. Braun, Tracht u. Attribute der Hl. in der deutsch. Kunst, Stuttgart 1943, cols. 728-38. A. Pietro Frutaz