Saint Roch

Roch was born in Montpellier between 1345 and 1350, into a well-to-do family. Orphaned at around twenty, he gave away his possessions and set out as a pilgrim for Rome. He arrived in Italy while the Black Death was still finishing its sweep through the country. He stopped in Acquapendente, then in Cesena, Rome, Rimini, Novara, Piacenza: wherever he found people with the plague, he stayed and cared for them. He wasn’t a doctor; he did what no one else would, which was to go into the pesthouses. In Piacenza he fell ill too. So as not to infect anyone, he dragged himself out of town, into a forest, and there — the story says — a dog brought him a loaf of bread every day, stolen from its master’s table. That’s why in statues Roch always has a dog beside him and shows the sore on his thigh: these are the two signs anyone recognizes him by, even people who don’t know his story. Once healed, he headed back home. In Voghera he was mistaken for a spy and thrown into prison, where he stayed five years without saying who he was. He died there, on the night between August 15 and 16, sometime between 1376 and 1379. From the Middle Ages on, he has been the saint most invoked against epidemics, and his patronage has spread to farming life, to animals, to earthquakes. He is patron saint of a huge number of Italian towns — probably more than any other saint after Our Lady. If your name is Rocco, today is your name day.