Saint Vitus Day is a key Serbian national and religious feast, on 28 June (Gregorian) or 15 June (Orthodox count). In its chronicle the present is 28 June 1914, the eve of “the battle that will be Saint Vitus Day”, and the date is used to open “the door of the garden”.
| Type | Feast day |
| Spanish entry | Día de San Vito |
Description
The feast is public, yearly and kept by the whole Serbian people. Three deaths are layered on it:
- The martyr: a young Christian killed at thirteen under Diocletian, around AD 270 or 280.
- The nation: the Battle of Kosovo of 1389, where the Serbian prince was martyred; it is “the day of the Serbs’ sacrifice to protect Europe from the Turkish attack”.
- A murder: Vito, a guide of Constantinople, says “Saint Vitus Day is the day the murder was done”, alluding to his own past.
The date as a key
Vito says «En el día de San Vito abro la puerta» (“On Saint Vitus Day I open the door”): “if it is necessary to open the door of the garden, let it be on Saint Vitus Day”. The day’s power is held to rest on the blood accumulated in it and on the will to repeat it (“we must save him or kill him, I don’t know”). The companions fear the day, yet are told “we must not fear that it is Saint Vitus Day”.
Open questions
- How the feast is celebrated is not recorded.
- Whether the double date is one day in two calendars or a real dispute is doubted by the sources.
- What the garden door is, where, and whether opening it needs a new death.
- Which murder Vito meant, and what ties him to the saint.
- Whether the feast is kept outside the Serbian world.
- An unexplained fragment: «un guardián, un crónico… su fundador del equivalente en la plataforma» (“a guardian, a chronal one… its founder of the equivalent on the platform”).