Saint John Gualbert

This virtuous disciple of Saint Benedict, nam ed John Gualb Jean Gualbert Founder of the Vallombrosan Order and Benedictine reformer. ert, was bo rn in Fl Florence City where Julie served as a maid. orence around the beginning of the 11th century. His parents were noble and among the most prominent in the country. His father was named Gualbert and followed the profession of arms; as for his mother, we do not have her name. Whether our Saint had not been raised in the true maxims of piety, or whether he had set them aside at the age of passions, he threw himself into dissipation and ostentation. He had already trained in the handling of arms when one of his relatives, perhaps Hugh, his own brother, was killed, and his father urged him to take vengeance and to seek, as he did, every opportunity to destroy the perpetrator of this homicide. One day, as our Saint was going to Florence, dreaming in his mind of how he could find his enemy and dispose of him, he caught sight of him coming to meet him in a place so narrow that neither could turn away. The sight of his enemy only increased his thirst for vengeance; he seized his sword and prepared to run it through his body; the other, who was not prepared for this encounter, threw himself at Gualbert's feet, and with arms extended in the shape of a cross, he implored him, by the passion of Jesus Christ whose memory was being celebrated that day, not to take his life. John Gualbert was singularly struck by what he saw and heard. The example of the Savior praying for his own executioners softened the hardness of his heart; he reached out his hand to the gentleman, then said to him with gentleness: "I cannot refuse you what you ask of me in the name of Jesus Christ. I grant you not only your life, but even my friendship. Pray to God to forgive me my sin." Having then embraced one another, they parted.

John continued his journey to the Abbey of Saint Minias abbaye de Saint-Miniat The first monastery where John Gualbert entered religious life. , which belonged to the Order of Saint Benedict. Having entered the monastery church, he prayed before a crucifix with extraordinary fervor; the crucifix before which he prayed lowered its head and bowed toward him, as if to thank him for the pardon he had so generously granted for His love. This crucifix is still kept in that church. From that moment, Gualbert conceived such a disgust for the world and such a great love for God that, either upon leaving the church or shortly thereafter, he went to find the abbot of the monastery, prostrated himself at his feet, and asked for the monastic habit. This grace was refused to him for fear of his father. He was only permitted to follow the community's exercises in secular clothing. His father, indeed, made the greatest threats against the religious. Thus, no one dared to undertake giving the monastic tonsure or the religious habit to the holy postulant. Then, animated by an extraordinary spirit of fervor, he cut his own hair, and, having asked one of the brothers to lend him one of his habits, he first placed it on the altar, then put it on in the presence of the entire community, who could not help but applaud him and assist him in such a courageous action. His father, informed of the step he had just taken, rushed to the monastery, where he burst into invectives and threats against the religious. In the end, touched by the piety and constancy of his son, he returned to gentler sentiments, approved his resolution, and was among the first to exhort him to perseverance.

John Gualbert, seeing himself as a religious, immediately set to work to uproot the vices from his heart and to acquire the most solid virtues. He was the most temperate, the most humble, the most gentle, and the most devout of the entire convent. Abstinence, fasts, vigils, and other bodily macerations were his delights. He looked upon himself only as the last of the brothers. He was never offended, because he believed that he was always treated with more honor and charity than he deserved. His conversation was so sweet, his responses so respectful, and all his manners so full of circumspection, that he never gave anyone cause for sadness. In contradictions and illnesses, he showed an invincible patience; he obeyed his superiors blindly, and their will was for him an inviolable law. Finally, his whole life was to be with God, to sing His praises, to have Him always before his eyes, to raise himself to Him through prayer, and to converse with Him in the secret of his heart. It was in this way that this great man spent his novitiate and the first years of his profession. However, the abbot of Saint-Miniato having died, Gualbert was elected his successor by the votes of the entire community. But the Servant of God, who preferred the security of obedience to the splendor of the prelacy, refused this office and urgently begged the religious to proceed to a new election. Some time later, our Saint left the monastery of Saint-Miniato with another religious and went to seek a more complete solitude. He visited the hermitage of Camaldoli, to be edified by those who inhabited it; then he reached a very pleasant valley named Vallombrosa (Vallis Umbrosa), because of the multitude of willows that cover it with thei r shade. It Vallombrose A valley in the diocese of Fiesole where the eponymous order was founded. is in the diocese of Fiesole, a half-day's journey from Florence. Two religious, who were already in a small hermitage, received him and his companion with great joy. His reputation also attracted many other people there, who believed that it would be a great happiness for them to live in the company of such a holy man; thus, the troop growing day by day, he built a small monastery of wood and earth, on a site given to him by the abbess of Saint-Hilaire. These new religious, considering his prudence and his holiness, unanimously elected him as their abbot. He resisted as he had done at Saint-Miniato; but his resistance did not have the same success; he was finally obliged to yield and to take charge of the spiritual and temporal conduct of this nascent community. The first care he took was to have the Rule of Saint Benedict observed there, according to the spirit and the letter. This is something so great that it requires wonderful skill and strength of mind in a superior. He wanted his religious to have only garments of vile cloth which he had made from the wool of his flocks; he even exhorted them to wear the hair shirt continually to tame their flesh and make it subject to the spirit; he only allowed them to go out for indispensable necessities, knowing well that the religious easily loses, outside, the spirit of prayer and devotion that he has acquired in silence and retreat. He ordered that there should always be a lamp lit at night in the dormitory: which has also been established very wisely by other founders of Congregations, and ordered by Pope Clement VIII, for all regular houses.

What gave his word an invincible strength was that he commanded nothing without first setting the example, and he practiced everything himself with more exactitude and rigor than he required of his religious. He possessed a universal charity, a sincere humility, an invincible patience, and a fervor that was never seen to slacken. If he was severe in the correction of vice, no one was gentler than he toward those who acknowledged their faults and promised to correct them. Temperance was so dear to him that he ate only what was necessary for him not to die. Far from having more delicate dishes than the religious of his community, he wished, on the contrary, to be the worst served of all, in order to keep abstinence with greater perfection. This mortification gave him a stomach ailment and asthma that lasted for the rest of his life; his sufferings were so violent that, without the care his children took to have him frequently take a little food, he would have fallen several times a day into dangerous fainting spells. It was believed that God sent him this infirmity so that the experience of pain might make him a little more indulgent toward his disciples, and that he might diminish some of that extraordinary austerity which prevented many people from embracing his institute. He received several lay brothers for external ministries, so that the choir religious, not being obliged to the labors of the fields, could apply themselves more tranquilly, and with less dissipation, to prayer and other spiritual functions.

While he was governing his abbey with such admirable wisdom, Emper or Henry III came to l'empereur Henri III Holy Roman Emperor who accompanied Bruno during his accident. Florence; informed of his virtues, he conceived a particular benevolence for him and sent a bishop to consecrate the high altar of his church, which was later dedicated in its entirety by Cardinal Hubert. As his reputation grew ever greater, many wealthy people offered him funds and revenues to build new monasteries for his Congregation, and he was asked to reform some older ones according to the model of observance he had established at Vallombrosa. His zeal for the glory of God and the salvation of souls led him to embrace this great work, and he applied himself to it with such success that he soon had the consolation of seeing the Rule of Saint Benedict, with the constitutions he had added to it, observed very exactly in eight or ten different houses. He took care to visit them often to maintain the spirit of poverty, silence, prayer, and mortification he had introduced there, and to correct whatever he found worthy of correction. One day, while visiting the one at Moscetta, which was a new foundation, he found that the abbot, named Rodolphe, had built structures there that were more splendid and ornate than was fitting for religious poverty. He felt a sharp pain, and, looking at this abbot with indignation: "You have," he said to him, "used for your building large sums with which many poor people could have been fed, and you have built yourselves palaces to lodge in like lords; it shall not be so." Then, turning toward a small stream that watered the walls of the convent, he prayed to God, who uses the smallest things to overturn the highest, to use this water to ruin this superb building which was only the work of human ostentation and ambition. His prayer was immediately answered: for no sooner had he left this place, where he could never be stopped for a moment, than this stream, which had almost no force, swelled so immeasurably and became so violent that, rolling trees, rocks, and masses of earth and sand from the top of the mountain, it entirely overturned the whole convent, without leaving any mark of magnificence. The abbot and the monks, frightened by this accident, wanted to move their dwelling elsewhere; but the Saint prevented them, sending word that this flood was only for that one time, and that, in the future, the little river would no longer overflow.

In another monastery, Gualbert learned that upon receiving a novice, they had made him sign a general donation of all his goods in favor of the community, without leaving anything to his heirs: he asked to see the contract; it was brought to him immediately; but when he had it in his hands, he tore it up and threw the pieces to the wind, saying "that it was much more fitting to have few goods than to enrich oneself by such uncharitable means." He was not content with that; but, leaving the convent in anger, he prayed to God to make him feel the weight of His indignation on the spot. Indeed, he was not a hundred paces away when fire suddenly broke out there, without anyone knowing who had lit it: the greater part of the building was consumed. The monk who was accompanying him, having seen the fire from afar, begged him to retrace his steps to provide a remedy; but he would not even turn his head to see it, and, in the ardor of this zeal, he promptly returned to his monastery of Vallombrosa.

His charity toward the poor was extreme, and in times of need he would willingly have given them all the provisions of his monasteries: on various occasions he had the wheat from his granaries and the meat from his herds distributed very liberally to them. God endowed him, in reward, with several gratuitous graces, such as the gift of miracles, that of prophecy, and the grace of the discernment of spirits. His biography, reported by Surius, cites some supernatural healings that he performed through the efficacy of his intercession. He read into the depths of hearts and saw the most hidden thoughts and inclinations. A young man, named Gerard, was preparing to receive the habit and made his confession according to custom; but he concealed his most serious sins. The Saint warned him of it and pointed out the circumstances of his faults so distinctly that he was obliged to confess them, along with the sacrilege he had committed in confession, and he asked for penance for them.

So many extraordinary gifts earned Saint John Gualbert such high esteem in the world that the Popes themselves wished to see him and converse with him. Saint Leo IX, knowing that Saint Léon IX Pope who visited the saint's sepulchre in 1049. he was at his convent of Passignano, came there with his entire court to share a meal. There was no fish in the monastery to present to His Holiness, and everyone assured him that none could be found in the lake nearby. But our Blessed one sent to fish there nonetheless, and, by a miracle of divine Providence, which wished to testify to its love for these two holy personages, the Pope and the Abbot, two large fish were caught which served to receive such an illustrious guest. Stephen IX, being in a town quite close to Vallombrosa, sent for the servant of God. The Saint, who preferred the silence of his poor solitude to the noise of the papal court, prayed to God insistently to deliver him from this predicament without him becoming guilty of disobedience: he was heard; a furious storm, with an impetuous wind, having suddenly arisen when he was already on his way, the deputies recognized well that Our Lord did not want him to make this journey, and, indeed, they had him escorted back to his monastery. The Pope, informed of what had happened, showed no displeasure.

Gualbert had the greatest horror for the detestable crime of simony, which was also the subject of the tears and groans of the greatest men of his time, as can be seen in the Letters of the Blessed Cardinal Peter Damian; he constantly pursued, at the risk of his life, Peter, Archbishop of Florence, whom he accused of having bought his bishopric. This false bishop took revenge through the mistreatment he inflicted upon the religious of the Congregation of Vallombrosa. One day his satellites came to the convent of San Salvi, pillaged it, set it on fire, and having indignantly stripped most of the religious, beat them with great cruelty and covered them with wounds. Gualbert congratulated these religious: "You are now true religious," he told them, "oh! why did I not have the happiness of being here when these executioners came, to share in the glory of your crowns!" He finally won a glorious victory through this great event, to which all ecclesiastical history bears witness. His religious having offered to prove, by fire, the iniquity of the bishop of Florence, one of them, named Peter, who was later, for this reason, surnamed Igneus ( Igneus, of fire), and was raised to the dignity of Pierre, et qui fut depuis, pour cela, surnommé Igné Monk of Vallombrosa famous for having undergone the ordeal by fire. cardinal, generously entered a burning pyre and remained there for a long time in the presence of the entire city of Florence, without receiving any harm: then the Pope, at the prayer of the clergy and the people of that city, solemnly deposed the archbishop and restored, by this means, peace to that Church, which the malice of this tyrant had devastated.

This triumph crowned all the actions of our blessed Abbot. Thus, shortly after, having devoutly received the sacraments of the Church and exhorted the abbots of his Congregation, whom he had summoned, to maintain regular observance everywhere, he rendered his soul to God, more laden with merits than with years, although he was seventy-four years old. This was on July 12, 1073. Angels accompanied his passing with celestial music. A note was placed in his tomb which he had dictated before his death, containing these words: "I, John, believe and confess the faith that the holy Apostles preached and that the holy Fathers confirmed by four Councils." As he died at Passignano, he was als o buried t Passignano Place of death and burial of the saint. here. Immediately, many miracles occurred at his tomb, which later prompted Pope Celestine III to include him among the Saints (1193) pape Célestin III Pope who confirmed the election of Albert and appointed him cardinal. . Only a commemoration was made of him in the Roman Breviary; but Pope Clement X permitted a semi-double office to be celebrated. It is now a double feast of precept, by a decree of Innocent XI.

He is often depicted at the moment that decided his conversion, that is to say, sword in hand and ready to pierce a man who is begging for mercy; at other times, carrying a church or a hermitage in his hand, because he established the Benedictine Congregation of Vallombrosa.

Acta Sanctorum, tom. III July.