In later years the main church was dedicated to Saint Dodekanus and the relic moved thither and enclosed within that silver statue of the saint which is carried abroad in procession at his annual festival, or on any particular occasion when his help is to be invoked.  And all through succeeding ages the cult of the saint waxed in pomp and splendour.  Nobody, probably, has done more to foster pious feelings towards their island-patron than the Good Duke Alfred who, among other things, caused a stately frieze to be placed in the church, picturing in twelve marble tablets the twelve chief episodes in the life of the Saint—­one for each month of the year.  This frieze indeed was admired so unreservedly, so recklessly, that the Good Duke felt it his duty to remove the sculptor’s eyes and (on second thoughts) his hands as well, in order that no other sovereign should possess works by so consummate a master of stonecraft.  There the disciplinary measures ended.  He did his best to console the gifted artist who was fed, henceforward, on lobsters, decorated with the order of the Golden Vine, and would doubtless have been ennobled after death, had the Prince not predeceased the sculptor.

Such, briefly, is the history of Saint Dodekanus, and the origin of his cult on Nepenthe.

Legends galore, often contradictory to this account and to one another, have clustered round his name, as was inevitable.  He is supposed to have preached in Asia Minor; to have died as a young man, in his convent; to have become a hermit, a cobbler, a bishop (of Nicomedia), a eunuch, a politician.  Two volumes of mediocre sermons in the Byzantine tongue have been ascribed to him.  These and other crudities may be dismissed as apocryphal.  Even his name has given rise to controversy, although its origin from the Greek word DODEKA, signifying twelve and alluding to the twelve morsels into which his body was superstitiously divided, is as self-evident as well can be.  Thus a worthy young canon of the church of Nepenthe, Giacinto Mellino, who has lately written a life of Saint Eulalia, the local patroness of sailors—­her festival occurs twelve days after that of Saint Dodekanus—­takes occasion, in this otherwise commendable pamphlet, to scoff at the old-established derivation of the name and to propose an alternative etymology.  He lays it down that then pagan inhabitants of the island, desirous of sharing in the benefits of Christianity which had already reached the mainland but left untouched their lonely rock, sent a missive to the bishop containing the two words do DEKANUS:  give us a deacon!  The grammar is at fault, he explains, because of their rudimentary knowledge of the Latin tongue; they had only learnt, hitherto, the first person singular and the nominative case—­so he says; and then proceeds to demonstrate, with unanswerable arguments, that Greek was the spoken language of Nepenthe at this period.  Several scholars have been swayed by his specious logic to abandon the older and sounder interpretation.  There are yet other conjectures about the word Dodekanus, all more or less fanciful. . . .