Passages from the book:
Ritratti di Santi by Antonio Sicari ed. jaca Book
Moreover if you
were born in Portugal, the land of the great navigators; Bartolomeo Diaz who discovered the “Cape of Tempests” and the “Cape of
Good Hope” in 1486, Vasco de Gama who in 1497 sailed around the Cape and
arrived in Calcutta; Alvares
Cabral who discovered Brazil in 1500; Magellano who arrived at the Great Strait
to sail into the Pacific Ocean and circumnavigate the globe.
John Cidade
Duarte was born in 1495 in Montemoro-novo (Montemaggiore
Nuovo, a village with a prominent name.
Adventure is
difficult when a father is only a modest shop-keeper who sold fruit on the
corner of a street, even if he is known to be a dreamer who would have wished
to enrol in Vasco de Gama’s expeditions; having a wife and son hindered him.
Very little is
known about John as a child, until at the age of eight he meets a wayfarer; a
wayfarer who came to his home asking for lodgings and entertained his hosts
with tales of his journeys.
It is not
possible to know what happened, but the morning after his parents realise that
the wayfarer has left and that the child has escaped with him; escaped or
perhaps kidnapped. Who knows!
One thing is
certain and that is that they are unable to trace him, and his mother,
broken-hearted from the anguish, died about twenty days later. His father will
end his days in a Franciscan Convent.
Little John will
make a long journey on foot to Madrid, with beggars, acrobats and jugglers,
learning these strange professions.
When they were
near Toledo, the wayfarer abandoned the boy, who was perhaps worn out, to the
care of a kind hearted man of the place, Francisco Majoral, who was the
supervisor of the herds of the Earl of Oropesa, a man of who’s kindness and
virtue are known.
For six years,
John will be educated like a son: then, from the age of fourteen to
twenty-eight, he will live as a shepherd, in loneliness in the mountains and in
contemplation of nature, following the herds.
Finally, when it
seems that he can settle down by marrying Majoral’s daughter, with whom he had
lived as a brother from the age of eight years old, John escapes again.
Charles V is
enrolling troops to fight against the French who have taken Pamplona (where
Ignazio of Loyola, the heroic defender, had been injured and where, on the
other side, Frances Saviours elder brothers had fought).
John Cidade
wanted freedom: “Such freedom, is written in his biography, that only those who
follow wars, running the wide road (even if it costs fatigue) of vice”.
We are in an
epoch in which, after the Medieval Knight, the figure of the “soldier” is
beginning to appear.
However, for our
adventurer military life only reserves misfortune. Once, while galloping on his
horse, it became restive and threw him against rocks on the side of the track,
John remained for a long time, unconscious, as though he was dead.
Another episode:
he was put on guard of the soldier’s loot and imprudently let himself be robbed:
he was degraded and condemned to death; he was granted pardon thanks to the
intervention of the pity of an important man.
Both were
physical experiences of death and grace, which sunk deep in his conscience.
He thus returned
to his old master, Majoral, after an interminable journey on foot of about six
hundred kilometres, a failure, and began, against his will, his old job as a
shepherd.
Two years went
by. In 1527 he heard that the Sultan of the Turks, Solimano 11, has entered
Hungary and was about to attack Vienna. His desire to fight in battles returns.
In 1532, Charles
V began to prepare a Crusade against the Turks and recruits men wherever it is
possible.
John enrolled and
began to travel once more; his troop is sent to Barcelona, and is then
transferred across the sea to Genoa, they then move towards the Lake of Garda
where all the Imperial troops are concentrated. From here, the army moves
towards Verona, Trent, Bressanone, and Innsbruck. Then finally, by boat they
sail down the Inn and to the Danube.
Thus, Charles
troops can enter Wien in September 1532.
A real battle was
not fought, but the danger of the Turks was avoided for a while.
After a few
months, the troops began their return journey, taking the same roads, but John
Cidade’s company was given orders to cross Germany, and at Flanders to hire a
ship for Spain.
They went ashore
at the port of La Coruna, not long from Santiago di Compostela, where they all
went on pilgrimage. The company then broke up.
Only then,
suddenly, did John think of returning to his hometown that he had abandoned as
a child; he walked the six hundred kilometres that separated him from
Montemoro-novo. When he arrived in the town, he looked for his parent’s house,
hoping to find them still alive.
When he found out
what had happened to them, he was shocked and full of pain and guilt. He felt
responsible for their death: “I am so bad and guilty, he says, that I must
spend my life, the Lord’s gift, doing penitence and serving Him”.
He went then to
Siviglia where he begins to deal in livestock: in fact, he goes to work for a
rich Lady as a shepherd. This work will last only for a few months.
He is restless.
He goes to Gibraltar and thinks of enrolling in one of the Charles V
expeditions against the Tunisians.
In Ceuta he puts
himself to the service of an impoverished nobleman, but ends up taking care of
the family who are reduced to poverty, keeping them with what he earned.
Charity opens his heart: he finds a spiritual guide who recommends that he read
the Gospel and other spiritual books.
He returns and
emerges in reading spiritual texts: he spends all his savings to buy books for
himself and others and starts travelling from village to village selling books
to the cultured and holy images to the unlearned and youth.
Before he sold
them, he read as much as he could; then, he put other types of literature on
view to sell but when the young boys came to buy them he would discourage them
and would advise them to buy the spiritual ones. He went as far as to open a bookshop.
The fact that
John had learned is evident; six long letters written by him remain today,
which contain numerous quotations from the Gospel
and The Imitation of Christ.
At forty-three
years of age, he is in the position to live comfortably in his shop in Granada.
God is waiting
for him in that month of January of 1539, the feast of Saint Sebastian, when,
one of the most famous preachers of the time, John d’Avila, the Andaluisa
apostle, arrives in the city.
John is among the
listeners and hears the words, that everyone must “anchor himself or herself to
the will of suffering and even dying rather than commit sin, which is the most
dangerous plague”.
Everyone
understands the referent, because the region is devastated by the plague.
On hearing this
comparison, our “book seller” is caught in an uncontrollable sense of petition;
images of his disorderly life pass before his eyes, and the sins he has
committed since he was a young boy.
From the middle
of the crows of listeners, he began to shout: “Mercy, my God, Mercy”.
He seemed to have
gone crazy: he threw himself on the ground, beat his head on walls, and tore
his beard. He then ran towards his shop, followed by a crowd of children who
running behind him shouted: “Crazy! Crazy”.
He gave his money
to whoever wanted it, he gave away his holy books and pious objects, he tore
up, using his teeth also, the profane books he had, he went as far as to
deprive himself of his clothes.
He then went to
John d’Avila, made a long and complete confession, after this he went to the
Town Square where there was a big quagmire; he rolled in the mud, and started
to confess his sins publicly.
The children
threw more mud at him and John then went away: happy, with a cross in his hand,
which he offered everyone, he met, to kiss.
Some biographies
say that he did this in order to appear to be mad “for the love of Christ”.
Whereas others
maintain that in fact he had gone truly mad: too much of an experience, too
much tension, too much darkness and too much light, too much hardness and too
much tenderness, and above all too much need of love and the absence of real
objects that were worthy of love.
In fact, he ended
up in an asylum: one of those asylums of the times where the cure consisted in
chaining the over agitated, and calm them with huge doses of lashings!
However, this man
was strange, even in his madness.
When he was
whipped, he coaxed the ‘nurses’ to continue “because it was right that that
body that had sinned be punished”.
However, if they
whipped some other poor patient, he would become angry and chide the nurses.
“Traitors, why do
you treat these poor creatures so badly and with such cruelty, they are my
brothers, who are in this same house of God and in my company? Would it not be
better to have compassion on them in their trials, keeping them clean and
giving them food to eat with more charity and affection than you do”?
He also reminded
them of the salary they received; it was to take care of the ill and not to
ill-treat them.
The result was
that he received in return a double ration of lashing.
But John said: “I
pray that Jesus Christ will one day grant me the grace to have a hospital where
I can receive the abandoned and the poor wretched souls who have lost their
sense of reason, in order to serve them as I desire".
The great Spanish
poet, Lope de Vegas dedicated a poem to Saint John of God, in which he
commented the episode of his madness and the humiliation he underwent:
“To be Portuguese
and humiliated is frightening; because to receive whipping insolence and to
suffer such dishonour by the Castigliani, on a Portuguese is something unheard
of; in fact the Portuguese are so honourable that, if God had not taken on
himself that dishonour on His honour, I do not know how it could have been
tolerated. Thus the dishonour was divided between God and him, because, if it
had not been so, John being a Portuguese would never have been able to endure
it”.
A few days later
he went to the director of the asylum and says:
“Blessed be the
Lord God, I fell in good health and free from all anguish”.
To prove this he
asks to be allowed to serve the other patients and shows amazing serenity and
charity in carrying out his task.
When he was
dismissed from the asylum he undergoes another shock: in front of the entrance
to the hospital a funeral procession is passing, it is the funeral of the
beautiful Empress Isabelle Augusta, Charles V’s wife, who is being accompanied
to her burial in the Granada royal chapel.
In the same
manner as the Earl Frances Borgia had decided to take up the way of sanctity,
that sight definitely convinced John, if it was still necessary, to dedicate
his life to the service of Our Lord, taking care of the poor.
He was forty-four
years old and he had only eleven years left to live. Nevertheless, in such a
short time, he will become “the Father of the Poor”, “the patriarch of
Charity”, “the Magnificence of Granada”, “the Honour of his Century”; he will
be endowed with all these titles.
He began working,
gathering and selling wood, until he had the means to buy a hovel in front of
the fish market, where he will gather is first forlorn.
At the market he
will ask for the fish which has not been sold, it was impossible to conserve it
in those days, and he cooked it for his patients, so much so, that he became a
expert in preparing fish soup.
Every evening he
would go to the richer areas of the town, with a pannier on his back and two
pots hanging from each side, held by a cord which he passed around his
shoulders, shouting:
“Does anyone want
to do themselves good? My brothers, for the love of God, do good to
yourselves!”.
This is the
significant motto that, today gives his religious Order its name:
“Fatebenefratelli”, (which means: do well, my brothers). The expression
originally did not mean that one had to take care of the poor, but that it was
necessary “to do good” being good to your neighbour.
It is not
possible to really love the poor if first we have not discovered our own
incredible poverty, our duty to enrich our own miserable lives, doing good to
ourselves by doing good to others.
The Saints that
loved poverty and the poor had seen richness in that love that filled their
existence more than any treasure could have done.
The first
donations began to arrive and so he could enlarge the house. John began to
accept the sick selecting and distributing them according to their illness: a
room for those who had a fever, one for the wounded, one for the invalid; the
ground floor was reserved for the wayfarers and beggars who could not find a
roof to shelter them.
All this was
happening in times when in hospitals all patients were gathered together
without distinction, with more than one or two in the same bed.
Our Lombroso, who
was certainly not tender towards the Church, defined John Cidade “the creator
of the modern hospital”.
He personally
took care of everything: he received the wanting, he washed them, he looked for
the food and did the cooking, he did the cleaning, swept the floors, washed
clothes, and he went for the water and wood.
The visitors were
highly impressed by the order and cleanness.
If they
considered him ‘crazy’ when he began this task, now they called him: “The
Saint”.
The donations and
credits increased: some were willing to help him and to share his fatigue; the
poor themselves who were fit to do so became nurses.
Another prelate
in Granada began to protect him; one day however, he ordered him to change his
clothes and to wear a sober but clean tunic. He then gave him a name: “You will
be called John of God”, he said. “Oh yes, replied John, if God likes to”.
His biography
reads: “He had pity on the slightest sufferings of all his neighbours, as
though he himself lived in comfort and richness”.
His aim was
always clear. He used to say: “Through the bodies to the souls!”.
For this reason,
he called the best priests to collaborate with him in his hospital.
When he had to
explain about his charity, because he did not keep count of anything, even of
the fact of being robbed or deceived, he would use a beautiful expression,
strange but beautiful: “Robbed? No! I give myself to God!”.
The most famous
image that remains of John is that which Murillo immortalised and which tells
of a famous episode.
One winter
evening when he was returning home with a basket full of food, leaning with his
other hand on a walking stick and carrying a poor sick person on his back, who
he had found on one of the streets.
The street was
up-hill and he was making his way with fatigue, while the rain poured down.
John slipped and
fell. On hearing the shouting of the sick man, some people came to their
windows to see John who was beating himself with the stick on the shoulders,
while shouting:
“Mister donkey,
stupid, weak, lazy, haven’t you eaten today? Then why don’t you work? The poor
are waiting for you and look at what you have done to this poor dying soul!”.
He then lifted
the dying man and put him on his shoulders, he gathered the basket and slowly
made his way to the hospital.
His first stable
collaborator was Anthony Martin, whose brother had been assassinated for
motives of honour and he had spent his entire life preparing revenge.
Nothing would
have stopped him; it was an obligation of honour and blood.
Nevertheless,
Anthony was a kind and generous man to the poor. John of God’s wish was to
obtain “the conversion of this Christian”.
He spent an
entire night in prayer and whipping; the morning after he went to Anthony and
throwing himself on his knees he showed him the Crucifix: “Look, my brother
Anthony, he said, this is He who will forgive you if you forgive, but if you
revenge your brothers blood, the Lord will vindicate His blood that He pours
everyday because of your sins, on you”.
The answer he
received was through falling tears: “Brother John, I not only forgive, but for
the love of God I give myself to you and the poor”.
He thus became
his friend and successor. He will found the hospital in Madrid naming it: “Our
Lady of God’s Love”.
Another who will
become his collaborator is the assassin, Peter Velasco.
John gave
particular attention to those sinners that especially attracted his mercy and
tenderness: prostitutes.
Every Friday, in
memory of Christ’s passion, he would go to a brothel and choose a woman who
seemed to be the most insolvent and say to her: “My child, I will give you
anything, and even more than anyone else would give you. I only ask you to
listen to two words, here in your room”. While the woman remained looking at
him, he would fall to his knees before his Crucifix and start to cry and accuse
himself of his multiple sins, he would then say: “Just consider, my sister, the
price that Our Lord paid for you”.
Some of them
repented, but the situation remained irresolvable, tied as they were to debts
and threatening.
So John would go
to some noble dame to ask for money: “My sister, I know a prisoner of the
demon, please help me, for the love of God to free her and we could tear her
away from that miserable slavery”.
If he did not
succeed, he himself would pay all the debts that the poor soul had accumulated.
What he had to
undergo, dedicating himself to such an apostolate, goes far beyond all
imagination, but John believed that his apostolate was particularly necessary.
When the
accusations and calumny to his person became intolerable, he would say to his
offenders: “Sooner or later I will have to forgive you, so it is best that I
forgive you immediately”.
He had to beg
also for his poor, and this took him to Valladolid’s Court.
His begging was
always a failure: he asked for money for his hospital in Granada, but then he
would spend it for all the poor that he found in the city where he had gone to
beg.
This question
became so ridiculous that the Earl of Tendilla thought of an idea that would
resolve the problem, by giving him a Letters of Credit that could be paid only
in Granada.
He was literally
burned by the fire of charity.
When the huge
hospital in Granada was destroyed by fire, John went through the flames and
smoke in order to save the patients.
On his feast day,
the old Breviary commented this episode as follows: “Teaching what charity was,
John showed that external fire had less force on him than the fire that burnt
within him”.
This scene was
represented in the Glory of Bernini on the day of his canonisation.
Meanwhile, his
hospital was flourishing.
John writes in a
letter:
“The number of
the poor who come here are so many that many times, I myself, cannot feed them,
but Jesus Christ provides for all their needs and gives them food, because the
cost of wood alone is seven or eight reali a day; because the city is big and
very cold, especially now that it is winter, many are the poor who come to this
house of God; between the sick and healthy, the people who are at our service
and the wayfarers, there are more than a hundred and ten in all. There are
benumbed, mutilated, lepers, dumb, lunatics, paralytics, people affected with
ringworm, and a lot of old people and children; and without counting many more
wayfarers and wanderers who arrive, and receive fire and water and salt and recipients
for cooking and eating, for all this there is no income; but Jesus Christ
provides for all…
In this way I am
in debt and prisoner only for Jesus Christ”.
He would say. “I
have not the time for a Creed of breath”.
In the beginning
of 1550, he becomes grievously ill; one of his noble beneficiaries finds him in
his poor bed, which was a nude wooden board, his begging basket for a pillow,
with a high fever.
She obtained
permission from the Archbishop, and an order for John, to take him to her noble
palace. While they were taking him away, the poor people shouted and protested
gathering around the litter, John was distraught. He blessed them, crying and
said: “God knows, my brothers, that my desire is to die here with you! But as
it is His will that I shall die without seeing you, let His will be done”.
In his bed that
John considered too comfortable, John revealed to the Archbishop, three things
that were anguish for him:
“The first: that
I have served Our Lord so little, while I have received so much.
The second: the
needy, the people that have left their sinful ways and the poor that I have
taken under my care.
The third: the
debts that I have contracted for Jesus Christ”. In addition, on saying this he
put the register of debts that he carried close to his heart, in the
Archbishop’s hands.
|
Painting of John of God washing Christ’s feet. |
He could not find
peace until the Archbishop promised personally to take care of the question.
Towards dawn of
the 8th March, when no one was yet at his bedside, he got out of
this ‘too comfortable bed’, he knelt on the floor embracing his Crucifix close
to his heart and passed away at the age of fifty five.
They found him in
this position; he had been dead for some time, but was still kneeling. The
funeral rites were impotent; four gentlemen of high rank carried the coffin,
but in front of the procession were the poor of his hospital.
Lope de Vegas, in
the poem that we have already mentioned, writes:
“He loved poverty
to such an extent, that if he had met an angel or a poor person, he would has
discarded the angel and embraced the poor person”.
And again:
“In Bethlehem God
the Child loved you in his manger, at the hospital God the infirm in His bed”.
Whereas, a recent
biography synthesises his strange adventure, acutely like this:
“He was a man who needed to meet someone like Saint John of God; he discovered him in himself”.