Saint Nicholas of Tolentino

All these actions, so extraordinary in a child, made the inhabitants of the village say that one day he would be a great Saint. He was still only a young student when he was provided with a canonry in the church of the Savior, in Tolentino. But, because it was a profession that kept him in the world, which he intended to renounce, he resolved to embrace another state where he could give himself entirely to Jesus Christ. He felt even more inclined to this generous undertaking after hearing a religious of Saint Augustine, who, preaching on these words of Saint John: "The world passes away and its concupiscence with it," thundered with force against the vanities, abuses, and illusions of the world; from then on, Nicholas sought only the means to consecrate himself entirely to Jesus Christ. As he had only entered the world through the prayers of his parents, he did not want to leave them without having their blessing. He therefore communicated his design to them; these wise Christians did not imitate most fathers and mothers, who love their children only according to the flesh and blood, and, not considering the salvation of their souls at all, divert them as much as they can from the religious state; regarding this step of their son as a fulfillment of the promises that heaven had made to them, they approved of it with all their heart. Among the religious Orders, he chose that of the Hermits of Sain t Augustine; he was recei Ermites de Saint-Augustin Religious order to which John belonged and whose rule he adopted. ved there at only eleven years of age. After his novitiate, he made his solemn vows, and, from that moment, he practiced virtue in its highest degree.

He had a horror of vanity, which continually sets traps for the holiest actions in order to destroy their merits; to avoid this danger, he constantly observed himself. He walked with extreme restraint and circumspection; he looked upon his brothers as so many superiors who had the right to command him, and felt in his heart a most singular joy when he could receive some order from those very people over whom he had the authority to give them. The most abject ministries were those he cherished the most; and however painful they were, he never failed to perform them with pleasure. One never noticed in him any word of murmuring, nor any gesture of impatience, nor the slightest thing that smacked of bad temper. This admirable modesty made him admired and loved by everyone.

His purity was angelic; to preserve this heavenly virtue, he waged a fierce war against sensuality, afflicting his flesh with fasts, vigils, disciplines, and other great austerities; one would have said he had a body of bronze. From the age of fifteen, when the blood begins to excite the passions, he checked their fervor with iron chains with which he tore his whole body. He wore a rough hair shirt with an iron belt around his loins. He fasted four days of the week, and his most delicious meals were a little bread with poorly seasoned and half-cooked vegetables. He slept only on the ground, or at most on a straw mattress, and had only a stone for a pillow. The devil, frightened by these giant steps that the young monk was taking on the path of perfection, tried to stop him by means of one of his relatives, the superior of a rich convent of another Order, which was quite close to the one where he was. This religious, following the affections of flesh and blood, represented to Nicholas that his austerities had already emaciated him like a skeleton; that in the flower of his youth he was as broken as a man of sixty; that, if he did not soon kill himself, he would at least make himself completely useless to religion, and that he could finally save himself without all these mortifications; he proposed that he move to his monastery, where, the rule being milder and more in conformity with the weakness of nature, he could achieve his salvation with less difficulty, and nevertheless with assurance. Nicholas, after this conversation, went to the church before returning to his convent; and, as he was in the fervor of his prayer, angels appeared to him in the form of little children dressed in white robes, singing very melodiously, and repeated to him three times these words to confirm him in the Order of Saint Augustine: "It is in Tolentino that you must make your stay; remain there constantly in your vocation, and be assured that you will achieve your salvation there." This vision consoled him marvelously, and he awaited the execution of the will of his superiors, who were to make known to him that of God.

Some time later, he was sent, not first to Tolentino, but successively to Recanati, Macerata, San Ginesio, Cingoli, and the hermita Cingoli Place of Nicholas's priestly ordination. ge of Valmanente, near Pesaro. As he was a model of virtue and observance, the provincials often had him change houses, so that, by the holiness of his life, he might edify the other religious and leave everywhere examples of his great regularity. He was ordained a priest in Cingoli by the Bishop of Osimo. His devotion received new increases through this divine character. His love and fervor were visibly apparent at Mass, which he celebrated with admirable piety. It is impossible to describe the graces he obtained from heaven for the people who had recourse to his sacrifices. The deceased also received great relief from them. He had several apparitions of the souls he had delivered from purgatory, among others those of some religious who were expiating in the flames the laxity they had committed in the observance of their Rule.

Finally arrived the time in which God wished to accomplish what He had revealed through His angels; our Saint was sent to Tolent Tolentino Location of the convent where Seraphin began his religious life. ino, where he remained for thirty years. His exercises in this monastery were to work for the salvation of souls. He was often occupied with catechizing the simple, preaching the word of God, and hearing the confessions of penitents; he did so with great success. His zeal was so animated that the most rebellious hearts yielded to his exhortations. He set those who were icy ablaze with the fire of divine love; the most obstinate were shaken and finally converted by the powerful movements of his words: in a word, he won over, by his gentleness, all the people who were sent to him, to lead them into the path of salvation. All the time that remained to him, after these divine functions, he employed in prayer and mental orison, during which his body remained motionless, and his soul, dealing familiarly with God, enjoyed the delights of beatitude. When, during his great illnesses, his body was most burdened with suffering, it was then that his spirit rose to heaven with more fervor, and the sweetness he tasted in this state took away all feeling of his pains. He meditated with an inconceivable tenderness on the mysteries of the Passion of Our Lord, and gave Him tears in abundance for the blood he saw Him shed on the cross. The ingratitude of men, who did not cease to offend the divine Savior after He had endured a cruel death for them, pierced his heart and made his whole body tremble. His recollection during the divine office, which he never failed to attend, inspired those who saw him.

As there is no exercise in the cloister that the demon fights with more obstinacy than prayer, where the religious finds invincible weapons to triumph over his malice, he waged a continual war against our Saint, either to make him abandon it, or to disturb him while he was performing it. He sometimes let out terrifying cries, counterfeiting the bellowing of bulls, the roaring of lions, the howling of wolves, the hissing of serpents, and the voices of the wildest animals. He pretended to uncover the roofs, to break the tiles, to break the framework, and to overturn the house; but Nicholas, mocking his ruses, remained firm as a rock without changing his posture. One day, this spirit of darkness entered his room in the guise of a bird of prodigious size, and, by the beating of its wings, extinguished the lamp that always burned before his oratory, and threw it to the ground, where he smashed it to pieces. The Saint, having finished his prayer, gently gathered the pieces, and rejoined them together so marvelously that it did not appear that it had been broken: he also relit it with his breath. He performed the same miracle two other times, as is marked at the convent of Tolentino, on a large stone. One also shows there a club that the demon used to mistreat him: for he was not content to persecute him by the ruses that we have just described; but he struck him very cruelly, until he sometimes left him half-dead stretched on the floor, his flesh bruised, his body covered with wounds, and his face almost drowned in his blood; he was found one day in this state by the religious in the cloister where the demon had dragged him. In this harsh combat, where he defeated his enemy by the invocation of the name of Jesus, he remained lame, and was so for the rest of his life. One still sees this signal victory written above the door where this battle began.

Besides these temptations, he had one that he only overcame by an extraordinary favor from heaven. He kept an abstinence so rigorous that he ate neither fish, nor milk, nor cheese, nor fruit, and the mere sight of delicate dishes, which exhaust the purse and ruin the health of the voluptuous, gave him a disgust that he had difficulty enduring. The demon put into his thoughts that this way of life was not pleasing to God; that the other religious, although very virtuous, eating indifferently of everything that was served in the refectory, it was an unbearable singularity for him not to conform to their example; that he would certainly ruin his health, and that thus he would make himself useless to his neighbor, burdensome to the community, and a charge to the whole Order. These reflections put him in great perplexity and afflicted him all the more as he had no other view than to do the will of God. While Nicholas was tormented by these doubts, Jesus Christ appeared to him in his sleep, and, after having reproved him for this distrust, which the brilliant and miraculous marks that He had given him of His love should have dissipated, He assured him that his services were pleasing to Him; that his fear was only an artifice of Satan, and that his name was already written in the book of life. His heart was then filled with an inestimable sweetness that made all the bitterness that his apprehensions had caused him vanish. He could not remember it without uttering, with admirable joy, these words of the King-Prophet: "I rejoiced at the things that were said to me: we shall go into the house of the Lord." Since then, he mocked the demon, and always treated him with extreme contempt when he solicited him to relax his austerities. It is to reward or to authorize them that God has several times changed water into wine, in his consideration, as one still sees the history reported in an inscription of the old refectory of Tolentino.

Having become old and infirm, he fasted and treated his flesh with the same severity as in the prime of his life; which caused him to fall into a long and dangerous illness. They wanted to make him take better nourishment, but they could never persuade him to buy health at the price of his abstinence, and the superiors, so as not to oppose the conduct that God held over him, contented themselves with obliging him to eat a little meat: which he did out of obedience. As the illness worsened, he believed it would lead him to the grave; the thought of the judgments of God, in whose presence the angels are not pure enough, then threw him into great fear. He called the Blessed Virgin to his aid, and, at his prayer, heaven opened, and this Queen of angels appeared to him visibly, accompanied by Saint Augustine a nd Saint Monic saint Augustin Cited for his definition of fraternal charity. a. She cast a look of tenderness upon him and said these amiable words: "Fear not, Nicholas, all is safe for you; my Son carries you in his heart, and I take you under my protection; Augustine and Monica are your powerful intercessors." She then advised him, for the restoration of his health, to send and ask a very charitable woman, a neighbor of the monastery, for a piece of the bread she had baked that same day, to soak it in a little water, and to use it as a sovereign remedy. The Saint did so, and, at that very hour, he found himself without fever and as perfectly recovered as if he had not been ill. It is in memory of this wonder that on the day of his feast, in the monasteries of the Augustinians, small breads are blessed with very solemn ceremonies, approved by Pope Eugene IV; the sic petits pains Tradition of blessing breads in memory of the saint's miraculous healing. k who use these breads while invoking the Blessed Virgin and Saint Nicholas often obtain relief from them.

The charity of our Saint for the poor was incomparable: God confirmed it by several miracles. He kissed the feet and hands of those who came to ask for alms at the door of the convent, adoring in them Jesus Christ who made himself for our love the first of all the poor. He begged for them in the best houses of the city, and drew from them large alms which he distributed to them. He shared with them the bread that was given to him at his meals, and sometimes gathered the leftovers of the community to bring them to them. One day, as he was carrying some to the poor who were at the door of the monastery, the father prior met him and asked him what he was holding in the cloth he had under his robe; the holy old man replied that they were flowers. And, indeed, the pieces of bread he had were found changed into very beautiful roses, although it was in the month of December. The prior, convinced by this prodigy that God accepted the alms of Nicholas, permitted him to continue them, without fear of impoverishing his convent. Another day, when he was begging for bread for the monastery, a very needy woman gave him one as an alms, assuring him that she had no more flour left than to make a similar one for the whole family. The Saint, touched by the liberality of this woman who was thus snatching the morsel from her mouth to give it to the servants of Jesus Christ, prayed to God to reward her for it and to multiply the flour she had left, so that she could feed her children. Immediately this multiplication was done: so that this woman found at her home a large quantity of excellent flour.

A year before his death, an extraordinary star having risen over the village of Sant'Angelo, where he was born, came to rest, in the sight of everyone, above the altar where he was accustomed to say Mass and offer his prayers. From then on, it led him from the oratory to his cell, and from his cell to the oratory. During the last six months of his life, angels descended every night into his room to gladden him with their melody, to give him foretastes of eternal glory, and to show him with what eagerness they awaited him in heaven. When he saw his hour approaching, he had a holy image of the Ecce Homo brought to him, before which he had often offered his prayers; he melted into tears at the sight of such a touching object; his heart entered into great transports of love and sorrow, and his spirit was raised to a very high contemplation of this mystery. Jesus Christ, accompanied by the Blessed Virgin and Saint Augustine, also appeared to him and gave him new assurances of his happiness. Thus this man, already entirely celestial, after asking the religious for forgiveness for the scandal he believed he had caused them and for the trouble he had given them through his long and continual illnesses, made his general confession to his superior and then received the holy Viaticum and the sacrament of Extreme Unction with incredible fervor and devotion. During the last three days of his life, he had continual colloquies with God, which caused him raptures, swoons, and loving faintings; one heard him express nothing more than acts of penance, contrition, and trust in God, of abandonment to His will, of sacrifice of his heart and spirit, and of love for Jesus Christ. Never did he enjoy a deeper peace or a greater tranquility of mind; it even appeared on his face, and his perfect serenity was enough to judge the interior joy with which his soul was filled. On the day he died, he urgently prayed that they bring him a cross in which was encased a piece of that of Our Lord; he adored it, watered it with his tears, and embraced it with such fervor that one would have said he wished to breathe his last upon it. Then, turning toward his infirmarian, he said to him: "My brother, instead of asking your pardon for the trouble I have given you during my illness, I think I am still giving you more. I beg you, for the love of Our Lord, when I have lost the power of speech, repeat to me often in my ear these words of the Royal Prophet: Lord, you have broken my bonds; I will forever offer you a sacrifice of praise, so that I may say them with my heart when my tongue can no longer pronounce them." Finally, looking fixedly at the cross, he recited the psalm: In te Domine, speravi: "In you, O Lord, have I hoped." And while pronouncing this verse: In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum, he rendered his pure and innocent soul into the hands of Our Lord, on Wednesday, September 10, around the year 1310.

## CULT AND RELICS.

His body was buried in the chapel where he was accustomed to say the Holy Mass and offer his prayers. God rendered his tomb illustrious through a great number of miracles. His canonization was performed by Eugene IV Eugène IV Pope who sent Nicholas Albergati to the Council of Basel. in 1446. S ixtus V Sixte V Pope who edited the works of Ambrose. had him inserted into the Roman Breviary and recommended that his office be celebrated; Clement X ordered that this office be a double. The Roman Martyrology commemorates Saint Nicholas of Tolentino. Forty years after his death, a religious, the sub-sacristan of the convent of Tolentino, burning with an indiscreet zeal to honor his homeland with some of his relics, opened the reliquary where his body rested and cut off both arms. A great quantity of blood immediately flowed out, which he gathered as best he could so as not to be discovered; and, having placed this rich treasure in a cloth he had prepared, he secretly departed the convent; but, after having walked all night with great speed, he found himself back at the monastery: which compelled him to confess his theft and ask for forgiveness. This prodigy caused the religious and the inhabitants of Tolentino to take greater precautions to preserve this precious treasure. They placed these arms in a gilded silver reliquary, enriched with diamonds and precious stones, which they locked in a large, well-secured chest surrounded by iron bands. One can still see the chest filled with such rich remains. It is locked with three keys: the convent has one, the city the second, and the illustrious and devout Mauricia family the third. It has been noted that when the Church is threatened by some misfortune, these arms still exude blood, as happened at the capture of the island of Cyprus by the Turks; for, shortly before, the right arm was oozing blood from the palm of the hand to the elbow. The same prodigy has occurred several other times in similar circumstances.

The faithful still go to visit his tomb with great devotion. It is now a beautiful church served by the Augustinian religious, and which holds the title of basilica. The tomb of Saint Nicholas is shown there, but his relics are not seen. They have been so well hidden that no one knows where they are located.

The church of Saint-Nicolas-de-Port, in Lorraine, believes it possesses a relic of Saint Nicholas of Tolentino. It is a first phalanx of a finger, or a bone of the metacarpus. The history of this relic caused a great stir in Lorraine from 1635 to 1652. Since then, its authenticity has been attacked, perhaps with foundation; for "the texture of this bone does not appear very consistent with the texture of various huma n bo Brou A location in France possessing a relic of the saint. nes." The church of Brou, in the diocese of Belley, possesses a relic of our Saint, sent by Pope Leo XII who, by a brief of November 24, 1834, deigned to grant, in perpetuity, a plenary indulgence to the faithful who, having received communion, visit the church of Brou on the Sunday following September 10, or one of the eight following days; and furthermore, an indulgence of fifty days to all persons who go to pray for a moment in this church.

Acta Sanctorum; Surius; Life of the Saint, by the Reverend Father Simplicien de Saint-Martin; Hagiological History of the Diocese of Belley, by Mgr Dopéry; Notes provided by M. the Abbé de Blaye, pastor of Imling.