Saint Roch (Italian: Rocco; c. 1295 traditionally 16 August 1327) was a Christian saint, a confessor whose death is commemorated on 16 August; he is specially invoked against the plague. On the death of his parents in his twentieth year he distributed all his worldly goods among the poor like Francis of Assisi though his father on his deathbed had ordained him governor of Montpellier and set out as a mendicant pilgrim for Rome. Coming into Italy during an epidemic of plague, he was very diligent in tending the sick in the public hospitals at Acquapendente, Cesena Rimini, Novara and Rome, and is said to have effected many miraculous cures by prayer and the sign of the cross and the touch of his hand. At Rome he preserved the "cardinal of Angleria in Lombardy"[8] by making the mark of the cross on his forehead, which miraculously remained (Legenda Aurea). Ministering at Piacenza he himself finally fell ill. He was expelled from the town; and withdrew into the forest, where he made himself a hut of boughs and leaves, which was miraculously supplied with water by a spring that arose in the place; he would have perished had not a dog belonging to a nobleman named Gothard supplied him with bread. The lord Gothard, following his hunting dog that carried the bread, discovered Saint Roch and became his acolyte. On his return incognito to Montpellier he was arrested as a spy (by orders of his own uncle) and thrown into prison, where he languished five years and died on 16 August 1327, without revealing his name, to avoid worldly glory. After his death, according to Legenda Aurea, "anon an angel brought from heaven a table divinely written with letters of gold into the prison, which he laid under the head of S. Rocke. And in that table was written that God had granted to him his prayer, that is to wit, that who that calleth meekly to S. Rocke he shall not be hurt with any hurt of pestilence." The townspeople recognized him as well by his birthmark; he was soon canonized in the popular mind, and a great church erected in veneration.