The verb _cresco_ (to increase or grow) has descended into all our
modern languages. It has formed the French _croître_ (to grow), our
_increase_ and _decrease_, and our _crescent_. Its participle was
already adopted as a name in St. Paul’s time, at least it is thus that
his companion, Κρήσκης, is rendered, who had departed to Dalmatia; and a
later Crescens is said to have brought about the death of Justin Martyr,
in the second century. The occasion, however, of the modern name was one
of the many holy women of Sicily—Crescentia, a Christian nurse, who
bred-up her charge, the infant Vitus, in her own faith, fled with him to
Italy, and was there seized and martyred, under Diocletian. Crescenzia,
and the masculine, Crescenzio, prevail in both Naples and Sicily; and
the election of the Angevin-Sicilian Carobert, to the throne of Hungary,
carried the former thither as Czenzi; whence Bavaria took it as Cresenz,
Zenz, Zenzl.