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Although venerated throughout the Christian West, St Roch has nevertheless remained a mysterious personage. Beginning in the second half of the fifteenth century the cult of the holy pilgrim, protector against the plague, spread from Lombardy to Venice and from Venice German merchants took it to Nuremberg and southern Germany , from where it swiftly spread to the rest of Europe . But who was in fact St Roch and what were the causes which led to his cult becoming so deeply rooted with such speed so that traces of it can be seen everywhere including representations of him in works of art? It was to answer these questions that Belgian, French, Italian and German scholars met at Padua in February 2004. Their exchange of views led to the abandonment of opinions previously considered certainties. The joint examination of hagiographic, literary, iconographic and documentary sources as well as the discovery of new texts all gave rise to the problematical image of a new saint who appeared in the wake of a new illness - the plague. It was the result of a process of hagiographic elaboration but not as such a product of pure imagination. It was the invention of printing which led to the rapid progression of the cult by the laity of this lay saint, both at its origins and in its elaboration.