Crescentia

Holy Martyr Crescentia, according to the legendary tradition, was the nurse of Saint Vitus; she died in Lucania in the year 304.

Together with Vitus and his tutor, Modestus, who later became her husband, she fled to Lucania from the persecution of Diocletian. There she was captured and thrown into boiling oil, but an angel saved her and carried her home. Only then did the couple die together. The earliest testimony to her veneration is the Hieronymian Martyrology: "In Sicily, of Vitus, of Modestus and of Crescentia". From the sixth and seventh centuries images of their martyrdom spread, enriched with motifs from other legends and with fantastic miracles of no historical value. Her commemoration is kept on 15 June in the West; at Paderborn and Riga the translation of the relics is also kept, on 10 March. She is a saint of the undivided Church, without synodal canonization.