Novena of Saint Jerome
By Fr. Giuseppe Oddone.
Translated by Fr. Remo Zanatta and Fr.Julian Gerosa
- Jerome’s charitable activity in Venice (1527-1532)
6.1. The sweet opportunity to imitate Christ: the famine of 1527
The continuous wars brought destruction, death, and famine to Italy. In 1527, the year of the sack of Rome, the effects of the upheaval also arrived in Venice, because a turmoil of hungry poor people poured from the mainland to Venice.
Jerome, driven by an ardent charity, tried to help these poor people in every way: he spent his money, sold clothes, carpets and household goods, fed the poor, making bread in his house, dressed them, received them in his house, some he advised patience, he buried the dead.
At first he limited himself to supporting them with personal alms, but from 1527 onwards, he devoted himself almost exclusively to their service. His relationship with his sister-in-law Cecilia, who worried about her children, began to break down: she would have liked to have Jerome only involved in the small perspectives of the family business, but his vocation was quite different, it was of great social and ecclesiastical importance.
Cecilia would reproach Jerome, telling him that it was bad for him to dispense all of his properties to the poor, and that he was putting his grandchildren in danger of being poor and not cared for. Confident in Providence, he answered that God would not fail to help them. Some of her brother-in-law’s gestures seemed to Cecilia more like those of a madman than an almsgiver, and she took him up again when, not having money with him, he gave his silver studded belt to a very poor man who prayed to him in the name of Jesus Christ: he came home without his belt. Fomented by his family, the idea that Jerome had gone mad spread among the people.
6.2. The arrival of the Teatini in Venice
In 1527 important events took place: Jerome became friends with St. Gaetano Thiene, and with the Bishop Gianpietro Carafa. Gaetano was active in Venice in 1522-1523, where he started the hospital of the incurables, then passed to Rome where he founded with Bishop Gianpietro Carafa the Order of the Teatini. After the sack of Rome, Gaetano returned to Venice where he remained from 1527 to 1533. St. Jerome attended the group of the Teatini at San Nicolò ai Tolentini, befriended them in deep friendship and chose Gianpietro Carafa as his spiritual director. With St. Gaetano, Jerome shared his love for Christ, and for the poor, the ideals of divine love, the choice of service and poverty.
6.3. The foundation of the Bersaglio Hospital
In 1527, Jerome founded the Bersaglio hospital with his friend Gerolamo Cavalli. With the consent of the republic, they tried to offer night shelter to people who came to Venice from the mainland to beg because of hunger, and who thus gave a miserable spectacle for the calli (narrow streets) and little squares of Venice. Initially, to welcome the feverish and those suffering from ringworm, and then the orphans and old people, a simple wooden canopy was built near San Zanipolo in a place known as “Bersaglio” (literally translated, it means “target”), where shooting exercises were done. Shortly after, a terrible epidemic of black plague broke out in the city, some barracks and then a small oratory were quickly built. It was made of stone, and was dedicated to Santa Maria dei Derelitti (Holy Mother of the Destitutes). The name derives from the welcome that Jerome Miani and Fr. Pellegrino Asti da Vicenza, (his first disciple) extended to the abandoned orphans of both sexes, along with the poor old men.
Jerome was in the front line both to treat the sick and to bury the dead at night, carrying them on his shoulders and taking them to cemeteries and sacred places. He also fell ill with the plague. He confessed, communicated, recommended himself to the Lord, the only refuge and only hope, and abandoned himself completely to the will of God. Even though doctors said there was nothing else they could do, he recovered and returned with greater fervor to his works of charity, because he had experienced that God does not abandon those who work in his service, on the contrary, he does new and wonderful things.
6.4. The workshop of San Basilio for the destitute children
Resuming his service of charity, Jerome focused his attention on the destitute children, orphans of father and mother. He had already begun to gather them in San Basilio, founding a workshop there where he was helped by the master Archangel Romitanus, a genius who invented a machine for carding wool. Archangel asked the Senate of Venice that half of the revenue of his patent went to orphans. Then, Jerome gathered a group of orphans at the Bersaglio Hospital.
He organized everything so that teachers helped the orphans to learn to build nails and pitchers for the nearby arsenal of Venice. Then, he also organized another school in San Rocco, where he developed his ideal of Catholic reform, based on charity, on common life. He teaches children how, by faith in Christ and imitation of his holy life, man becomes the home of the Spirit, son and heir of God. He organizes an evangelical life of work, prayer, common life, and poverty, educating children to the fear of God and to the dignity of work as a form of sustenance. He is not the reformer who revolts against the religious system, but he honors the servants of the Lord (the Religious), the Bishops, and the Priests.
Sometimes, he takes the boat and as the “universal father of the poor”, he goes to help and gather the poor of the lagoon (Mazorbo, Burano, Torcello, Chioggia…).
6.5. A group of lay people committed to works of charity
It is significant what the nuncio Girolamo Aleandro tells us in his diary of January 6, 1530. His observations open up a window on Jerome’s friendships during those Venetian years. The nuncio wants to visit the Giberti. He meets him on the street and together they go to the Carafa. They stay there until nightfall and there they find the people who were the soul of the Venetian charity of those years. Along with Jerome Emiliani, at that meeting were present: Vincenzo Grimani, son of the doge Antonio Grimani and brother of Cardinal Federico Grimani, he died in 1535. Agostino De Mula, a leading figure in Venetian political life, who was several times Captain in the Venetian Navy; it was his ship that brought Gaetano Tiene and his companions to Venice from Civitavecchia in 1527; at the behest of the Venetian Senate, he served as consul of Dalmatia and stayed in Spalato; after his military experience, in 1529, he devoted himself completely to charity works. The group also includes Antonio Venerio (an aristocrat from a ducal family); Girolamo Cavalli, co-founder with Miani of the Bersaglio hospital; Giacomo di Giovanni, a Venetian citizen. Aleandro, who knows them all and remembers precisely the names in his diary, concludes: “omnes viri probi et sanctis augendae religionis et pietatis operibus intentissimi” (all men of great honesty, with all their strength stretched to the holy works to mature religion and piety). They are friends first and they all work together for the organization of works of charity and for the hospital of the Incurables. Aleandro and Giberti stayed there until 24 (six of the evening) and then walked from there to the Temple of Charity.
At the Tolrntini, also used to gather the Confreres of Divine Love of the other cities of the Venetian Republic: Verona, Salò, Brescia, Bergamo, Vicenza, Padua. Jerome was able to get to know some of them.
6.6. The definitive separation from the family
Jerome’s latent tension with his relatives continued. One time, while Jerome was working with the destitute children at the Hospital of Bersaglio, Cecilia (his sister-in-law) returned to reproach him, because he ate poorly. He replied that he ate only that food that was earned through his work. What he had left at home, was to be used for the sustenance of her and her children.
In any case, this situation required clarification. Jerome made the decision to distance himself definitively from his family. On February 6, 1531, he summoned the notary to his home. Cecilia was present with her three children, Dionora 16 years old, Elena 15 years old, Alvise 14 years old. Jerome gave an account of how he had administered the property of his grandchildren, affirming: “in my conscience, I am sure that, with integrity and fidelity, I have administered everything like it were my property”. He donated the goods that remained to his nephews, recommending obedience and reverence to their mother. He ordered that the ten ducats that were to be paid for public taxes be paid as soon as possible. Finally, he laid down his patrician habit and left his house so that he would never return.
Jerome abandoned his life, his habit, and his social status to embrace the lives of the poor, to share everything with them, and that made an extraordinary impression on his friends. Of course, there were no shortage of nobles who had left their status as lay nobles and had embraced religious life. However, usually it was a pre-requisite for being part of some religious life (Jerome’s cousins for example) or for some advancement into the ecclesial status with great gratifications. It is enough to mention what happened to Gasparo Contarini (“del Zaffo”, of “Santa Maria dell’Orto”). He was a noble and he was made Cardinal and papal legate, judged the best gentleman in Venice. Or to his friends Marco Contarini dello Scrigno, who aspired and had opted for an episcopal chair. Or to his brother Pietro Contarini, a noble Venician, who nurtured the ambition of becoming Bishop, and will become indeed Bishop of Pafo.
Jerome totally overturned this logic. He was a noble layman, he neither raised himself nor aspired to be Bishop or Prince of the Church, but lowered himself to the lowest level on the social ladder, so as to share his life with the poor and miserable.
Two testimonies of friends of both noble births are enough: the “Anonymous” (almost certainly one of the family Contarini) who speaks of Jerome as a Venetian gentleman in a rustic dress and in the company of many beggars (or rather better, “reformed Christians” and “noble gentlemen” according to the Gospel), who is in contrasts with other nobles who stand idle and fat in their palaces and their golden rooms. Or the testimony and the amazement of Pietro Lippomano of 1533, who affirms that the “magnificent and generous Sir Hieronimo Emiliani, Venetian patrician, removed from himself any fear of poverty or future poverty, distributed his goods to the poor, abandoned his social status and dedicated all his strengths, his intelligence to help any miserable person, (“maxime de vidue et pupilli orfani”)”. “O unprecedented tolerance or immense pity, that in our times such a generous homo demonstrates”.
Jerome’s relatives did not immediately understand the detachment from his family and the spiritual motivations that led to it. In 1535 again, when Jerome returned to Venice, he did not pass through what had been his home, he stayed at the hospital of Bersaglio. Urgently, he was called back to Lombardy. Before leaving, he sent a priest who worked with him, Don Pellegrino Asti, to greet his grandchildren.
6.7. Jerome, director of the Hospital of the Incurabili (incurable)
Jerome was called on April 14, 1531 by the directors of the Hospital of the Incurables, for the charity he showed, to bring in this hospital the two schools for children he founded (that of Saint Basilio and of Saint Rocco) and also to take care of the sick of the hospital. He accepted, following in all the will of the Lord. Here he worked and gave witness of his life.
The request is signed by the directors whom Jerome certainly knew: they are:
– Pietro Badoer;
– Giovanni Antonio Dandolo (expert in exchanges of prisoners in the years of the Battle of Agnadello, in 1509; the Contarini family had approached him and he is probably also involved in the exchange of Luca Miani);
– Sebastiano Contarini (who first married a Grimani and remained a widower he married Maria Donà, Francesco Gritti’s widow with two daughters: Vienna who will marry Paolo Contarini, brother of Marco and twin of Peter, who was always working at the Incurabili; Sebastiano died in 1533);
– Pietro Contarini;
– Diego Onorandi;
– Francesco Locatelli, from Bergamo;
– Antonio Venier, who was also interested in the hospital of piety in favor of Elisabetta Cappello, so that Andrea Lipomano would leave its benefits to the said hospital; he enjoys the full trust of the Carafa. He is linked to the hospital of piety, to the Theatines, to the Divine Love, to the same friends of Jerome: Carafa, Tiene, Giberti, Lipomano, Elisabetta Cappello;
– Mattia Cagnolo, a soldier of Bergamo origin; until 1529, he was the protagonist of military actions, in relation with the Miani family. With Marco Miani, Mattia was defending the castle of Treviso, when Jerome arrives from his prison; in the military operations in Lombardy, he probably dealt with Carlo Miani. He was a friend of Giovanni Vitturi, who had employed Jerome; he converted to a life of good works in 1528/1529).
Describing the time that Jerome spent at the Incurabili, the first biographer felt the need to abandon himself to the wave of memories and relived Jerome’s holy and pure love: “how many times did I visit him, how many holy reasonings, how much attention he showed to his children, he invited me to live with him”. But this friend doesn’t feel like joining Jerome… He cried for him for the desire of the heavenly homeland and his words were flames of living love.
6.8. Friendship with madonna Elisabetta Capello and madonna Cecilia
Jerome also became friend with Madonna Elisabetta Capello and Madonna Cecilia, who were the directors of the Hospital of the Pietà in Venice. It was an orphanage that housed hundreds of destitute and abandoned children (“putei ‘bandonai”): eight hundred in 1528, even a thousand and two hundred in 1559. In the Miani’s house, there was a deeply rooted affection for the hospital of the Pietà. In her will (1512) Jerome’s mother leaves a sum of money “so that we can commit ourselves to feeding a child of the Hospital of the Pietà for a year and if there is still money left, we can pay it for the exit of a poor man from prison”. But before her, Cristina Miani, daughter of Angelo Miani’s first wife, also stated in her will (1511) that “two boys from the Hospital of Piety should be maintained and educated and left six ducats for the poor in prison”. Elisabetta and Cecilia (aunt and niece) are therefore two women who dedicate their lives to the last, to foundling. They are also linked to the Miani family by kinship through marriages of their respective families. If Jerome Miani prays and has the Servants of the Poor pray for these two women, it is because, in addition to personal knowledge, he identified in them his own ideals and a model of love for foundlings and abandoned childhood, a witness of love to the last to propose for himself and his companions.