martyrdom · 304 · Valentia
Vincent was deacon to Valerius, bishop of Saragossa, and spoke for him because Valerius had a stammer — which is why the deacon and not the bishop was the one the governor Datianus decided to break. Both were arrested and taken to Valencia; Valerius was exiled and Vincent was killed. The account of the torture is Prudentius', in the fifth hymn of the Peristephanon, and it is the earliest connected one, written about a century later by a poet who is himself seed 174 of this dataset. Augustine preached at least four sermons on him and says in one of them that there is no province of the empire where his feast is not kept, which for a Spanish deacon a hundred years dead is an extraordinary spread and is the reason he is here. The raven that guarded his body and the millstone that failed to sink it are hagiography; the speed and reach of the cult are not.
How quickly can a martyr become universal?
Within a century Augustine was saying his feast was kept wherever the Roman name reached.