Alexis the Man of God

See also: Holy Alexis

Holy Alexis of Rome or the Man of God died in 412. Festival the March 17th in the East and the February 17th in Occident. (July 10th)

Its life is known by a Vie of saint Alexis , 11th century. According to the legend, Alexis, wire of Euphémien and Agalé, would be a Roman patrician, promised in marriage to a virtuous woman whom he convinces, the evening of its weddings, to give up the marriage. It would have embarked towards Syria of North (current Turkey) to arrive at the town of Édesse (Urfa), where it was made beggar. It returned seventeen years later to Rome and was lodged by his father who had not recognized it. He lived under a staircase during seventeen years, and, with its death, his/her parents were warned by a celestial voice. According to another version of the legend, he died while begging at the hospital for Édesse, and revealed, before dying, that he was of a Roman noble family and that he had fled the marriage to devote himself to God.

Its chief (his cranium) is venerated in the monastery of Holy Laure in the Peloponnese. One can see a statue of Saint Alexis under the staircase of his family home in the church of the Saints Alexis and Boniface (Chiesa dei Santi Alessio E Bonifacio), in Rome. It is a work of Andrea Bergondi.

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