Life
The Holy Martyr Vitus (Latin: Vitus, Italian: Vito), known in the Serbian tradition as Sveti Vid, lives in the Church’s memory as a young Christian martyr who suffered for the faith during Diocletian’s persecution of Christians at the turn of the third into the fourth century.
According to church tradition, Vitus was the son of a wealthy pagan nobleman named Hylas from Sicily or Lucania (a region in southern Italy). His father was a prominent pagan citizen who expected his son to remain faithful to the Roman gods and to inherit the family’s prestige. However, Vitus’s Christian teacher Modestus and his nurse Crescentia, both secret Christians, had from his earliest years instructed the child in the faith of Christ. The boy received Christ wholeheartedly and remained steadfast in that faith even when his father, having learned of it, tried by various means — persuasion, coercion, even physical punishment — to dissuade him.
When his father’s pressures became unbearable, Modestus fled with the child and the nurse Crescentia to Rome, trusting in God’s guidance. There news arrived of the son of the Roman Emperor Diocletian who was possessed by a demon and whom no one could heal. Saint Vitus appeared before the emperor and in the name of Christ drove the demon out of the emperor’s son, who immediately recovered. The emperor at first was grateful, but court advisors and priests of the Roman gods suggested to the emperor that Vitus performed his works by magic, not by the power of the Christian God. Diocletian demanded that Vitus sacrifice to the Roman idols.
Vitus refused. Diocletian’s soldiers then cast Vitus, Modestus, and Crescentia into a cauldron of boiling oil to compel them by torment to renounce their faith. But the fire did not burn the saints: tradition says that the grace of God protected them from the fire and the boiling oil could not harm them. The enraged torturers turned to other forms of torture, and finally all three were executed by the sword, ending their earthly journey through martyrdom for Christ. They suffered around 303–304 during Diocletian’s persecution of Christians.
Saint Vitus quickly after his martyrdom gained great esteem in the Western Church, especially in Italy and Sicily, and subsequently in Germany as well. The Serbian people took him especially to heart and honor him particularly on Vidovdan — June 28 by the New (Gregorian) calendar, or June 15 by the Julian calendar. This day became one of the most important dates in Serbian history and collective spirituality.
Tropar (Tone 4)
O Martyr of Christ Vitus, who from thy youth didst preserve the faith of Christ and didst seal it with martyrdom, crowned in glory with Modestus and Crescentia, thou didst overcome the demons with the power of Christ. Pray to Christ God to save our souls.
Kontakion (Tone 2)
Bearing the light of faith from childhood, thou didst renounce a pagan father and idols, and wert crowned with the martyr’s crown together with thy teacher Modestus and nurse Crescentia. Pray, O holy Vitus, to Christ God to preserve us from the spirits of darkness and to save our souls.
About the Feast
Saint Vitus as patron feast
Saint Vitus is the patron feast of a certain number of Serbian families, but his true role in the Serbian people extends far beyond the framework of a family liturgical observance. Vidovdan — the day of Saint Vitus — has risen in the consciousness of the Serbian people to the rank of a national-religious holiday, which at the same time commemorates the martyrdom of a Christian saint and the Kosovo sacrifice of the Serbian people.
Families who celebrate Saint Vitus as their patron feast prepare in the traditional manner: they bake the slava bread, cook the slava wheat (koljivo), light the slava candle, and pray together for the blessing of Saint Vitus. Since Vidovdan falls outside the fasting period — in summertime, after Pentecost — the feast table may include meat dishes, and a variety of home-cooked food is prepared.
Vidovdan — the holy day of Serbian history
Vidovdan (June 28 by the New Calendar) is woven into the Serbian collective consciousness above all as the day of the Battle of Kosovo (1389), when Prince Lazar Hrebeljanović fell in battle with the Turkish army of Sultan Murat I. That day marked the entry of the Serbian people into centuries of suffering under Turkish bondage, but also into a spiritual tradition of sacrificial martyrdom for faith and freedom. The Serbs have from the very beginning interpreted the Battle of Kosovo in a Christian key — as a voluntary sacrifice for the heavenly kingdom, after the model of Christ’s Passion sacrifice. Prince Lazar was canonized as a holy martyr, and the fallen Kosovo knights were celebrated in epic poetry that preserves the Kosovo ethic: it is better to lose one’s head than to trample on the faith.
Upon that Kosovo Vidovdan were superimposed other key dates of Serbian and European history that fell — by chance or by Providence — on the same day. On Vidovdan 1914 in Sarajevo, Gavrilo Princip killed the Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand, which became the immediate cause of the First World War — a war from which Serbia emerged with enormous sacrifices but also with victory and the unification of the Serbian people. On Vidovdan 1921 the Vidovdan Constitution of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes was adopted, formalizing the new united state. Each of these dates deepened the symbolic weight of Vidovdan in the Serbian consciousness.
To celebrate Vidovdan means to remember Kosovo — and to remember Kosovo means to carry within oneself the entire Serbian sacrifice, spirituality, and new hope in resurrection. The Church of Saint Vitus and the entire Serbian Orthodox Church devote Vidovdan to special liturgical attention, and at Gazimestan — the field of the Battle of Kosovo — a solemn Liturgy is served every year in the presence of bishops, clergy, and the people.