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 Saint
Vincent was born at Huesca but lived in Saragossa and in the Aragon region
of Spain.
Vincent served as the deacon of Saint Valerius, bishop of Saragossa.
Imprisoned in Valencia for his faith, and tortured on a gridiron a story
perhaps adapted from the martyrdom of another son of Huesca, Saint Lawrence
Vincent, like many early martyrs in the early hagiographic literature,
succeeded in converting his jailer. Though he was finally offered release if
he would consign Scripture to the fire, Vincent refused. The earliest
account of Vincent's martyrdom is in a carmen (lyric poem) written by the
poet Prudentius, (348 after 405), who wrote a series of lyric poems,
Peristephanon ("Crowns of Martyrdom"), on Hispanic and Roman martyrs,
including Lawrence. Prudentius describes how Vincent was brought to trial
along with his bishop Valerius, and that since Valerius had a speech
impediment, Vincent spoke for both, but that his outspoken fearless manner
so angered the governor that Vincent was tortured and martyred, though his
aged bishop was only exiled.
When the Catholic bishops of Visigothic Iberia succeeded in converting King
Reccared (586-601) and his nobles to Trinitarian Christianity they built the
cathedral of Cordoba in honor of St Vincent the Deacon. When the Moors came,
in 711, the church was razed and its materials incorporated in the Mezquita,
the "Great Mosque" of Cordoba.
The Cape Verde island of Sγo Vicente, a former Portuguese colony was named
to honor him.
Saint Vincent the Deacon is also the patron of vintners and vinegar-makers.
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