Thursday 14 May 2020

vittore e corona

Feasted on this day in parts of northern Italy, Austria and Bavaria, Saint Corona (or sometimes going by her Greek equivalent, Stephanie, στέφᾰνος—both denoting one who is crowned) is forever twain with Victor of Damascus, an early Christian martyr serving as a soldier in the province of Syria.
Before being ultimately beheaded for refusing to renounce his faith in 170 A.D. during the reign of Marcus Aurelius, the imprisoned Victor was brought provisions and encouraged to preserve despite the bodily tortures he was made to endure by a woman called Corona, identified according to different sources as either the sister of one his fellow enlisted men or Victor’s wife. The authorities decided to apprehend her as well—and according to her hagiography, and as depicted rather bizarrely on this turn of the century fruit sticker—the crest of the greengrocers’ guild of Vienna, was put to a rather gruesome death for comforting the imprisoned by being bound to opposing palms trunks and being torn asunder once released. Rather than being invoked in times of plague, Corona is the patron of gambling and the lottery and called upon for circumstances involving money or treasure.