He was a Sicilian youth, who, together with Modestus and Crescentia, suffered martyrdom at the time of the persecution of the Christians, under Diocletian, in the year 303.

The legends respecting him are obscure, and he would certainly have been passed over without notice among the innumerable apocryphal martyrs of the first centuries, had not the transfer of his body to St.Denys, and thence, in the year 836, to Corvey, raised him to a higher rank.

From this time forth it may be supposed that many miracles were manifested at his new sepulchre, which were of essential service in confirming the Roman faith among the Germans, and St.Vitus was soon ranked among the fourteen saintly helpers (Nothhelfer or Apotheker).

His altars were multiplied, and the people had recourse to them in all kinds of distresses, and revered him as a powerful intercessor.

As the worship of these saints was, however, at that time stripped of all historical connections, which were purposely obliterated by the priesthood, a legend was invented at the beginning of the fifteenth century, or perhaps even so early as the fourteenth, that St.Vitus had, just before he bent his neck to the sword, prayed to God that he might protect from the Dancing Mania all those who should solemnise the day of his commemoration, and fast upon its eve, and that thereupon a voice from heaven was heard, saying, "Vitus, thy prayer is accepted." Thus St.Vitus became the patron saint of those afflicted with the Dancing Plague, as St.Martin of Tours was at one time the succourer of persons in small-pox, St.Antonius of those suffering under the "hellish fire," and as St.Margaret was the Juno Lucina of puerperal women.
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