the ship of this holy man" The poem consists of 125 five-line stanzas. The story follows the Greek version recounted above. Veneration Alexius seems to have been completely unknown in the West prior to the end of the tenth century. Only from the end of the 10th century did his name begin to appear in any liturgical books there. Since before the 8th century, there was on the Aventine Hill in Rome a church that was dedicated to St Boniface. In 972, Pope Benedict VII transferred this almost abandoned church to the exiled Greek metropolitan, Sergius of Damascus. Sergius erected beside the church a monastery for Greek and Latin monks, soon made famous for the austere life of its inmates. St Alexius was added to the name of St Boniface as the titular saint of the church and monastery known as Santi Bonifacio e Alessio. It was evidently Sergius and his monks who brought to Rome the veneration of Saint Alexius. The Eastern saint, according to his legend a native of Rome, was soon very popular with the people of Rome. This church, being associated with the legend, was considered to be built on the site of the home that Alexius returned to from Edessa. St Alexius is mentioned in the Roman Martyrology under 17 July in the following terms: "At Rome, in a church on the Aventine Hill, a man of God is celebrated under the name of Alexius, who, as reported by tradition, abandoned his wealthy home, for the sake of becoming poor and to beg for alms unrecognized." While the Roman Catholic Church continues to recognize St Alexius as a saint, his feast was removed from the General Roman Calendar in 1969. The reason given was the legendary character of the written life of the saint. Johann Peter Kirsch remarked: "Perhaps the only basis for the story is the fact that a certain pious ascetic at Edessa lived the life of a beggar and was later venerated as a saint." The Tridentine Calendar gave his feast day the rank of "Simple" but, by 1862, it had become a "Semidouble" and, in Rome itself, a "Double". It was reduced again to the rank of "Simple" in 1955 and in 1960 became a "Commemoration". According to the rules in the present-day Roman Missal, the saint may now be celebrated everywhere on his feast day with a "Memorial", unless in