Saint Rose of Viterbo

Rose was born in Viterbo in 1233 and died there in 1251, at eighteen. She was a Franciscan tertiary, and her city has held on to her like few others: she is its co-patron, and her remains lie in the sanctuary that bears her name. Piecing her life together is harder than it looks, and it’s right to say so. Over the centuries, a vast hagiographic tradition has settled on top of the testimony closest to the events. The oldest source, which scholars call Vita I, is an anonymous and incomplete text written shortly after the middle of the thirteenth century, probably from the accounts of people who had known her. Vita II, from the early fifteenth century, draws on it and adds episodes that came later. Then there are the acts of the canonization process held in Viterbo in 1457: many depositions, but gathered two centuries later, when oral tradition was doing the talking. What has never stopped is the devotion to her. Her liturgical memorial falls on March 6, the day of her death, but Viterbo celebrates her above all in September: on the evening of the 3rd, a towering votive structure — the Macchina di Santa Rosa — is carried on the shoulders of its bearers through the streets of the old town. It’s a tradition handed down for centuries, recalling the translation of her body. If your name is Rose, today is your name day.