Novena of Saint Jerome
By Fr. Giuseppe Oddone.
Translated by Fr. Remo Zanatta and Fr.Julian Gerosa
- Renaissance Saints Related to St. Jerome
No saint is an island. All saints are connected to other saints either because they chose them as a model or because contemporary circumstances brought them into contact.
9.1. Saint Francis of Assisi
A saint that Jerome took as a model was certainly St. Francis. He knew his life and learned to love and imitate him through the Franciscans he frequented in S.S. Maria dei Frari and through the Capuchin Fathers. Jerome appreciated and helped them. He collaborated with Gerolamo Molfetta, friar of the convent of Bergamo present at his death, enthusiastic admirer of Miani, and Giovanni da Fano, active in Brescia in 1536, when Jerome welcomed and placed orphans that the zealous Capuchin had gathered. Jerome has extraordinary external affinities with Saint Francis: military life, imprisonment, conversion, attitude towards death, and spiritual and internal affinities. Both Francis and Jerome had a tremendous love for Christ and the suffering humanity, the Cross, the reform of the Church within the Church, poverty.
According to our tradition, Jerome built a chapel in honor of St. Francis in Somasca.
9.2. Saint Gaetano Thiene
Among his contemporary saints, Jerome met and frequented San Gaetano Thiene.
Gaetano was active in Venice in 1522-1523, where he founded the Hospital of the Incurables. He went to Rome where he founded the Order of the Theatines with Bishop Gianpietro Carafa. After the sack of Rome, he returned to Venice where he remained from 1527 to 1533. Jerome attended the group of the Theatines in San Nicolò ai Tolentini, befriended them in deep friendship, and chose Bishop Gianpietro Carafa as his spiritual director. With San Gaetano he shared his love for Christ, and for the poor, the ideals of divine love, the choice of service and poverty. With his spiritual director, Bishop Carafa, shared his contempt for honors, his zeal for faith, his thirst for Church reform, his fidelity to holy Christian traditions, and his organizational prudence. He entered into spiritual harmony with him and allowed himself to be guided by him on the path of the apostolate and holiness.
When, after the Theatine Chapter in Venice on May 15, 1546, four priests from Somasca asked for union with the Theatines (a move certainly stimulated by the Carafa), Gaetano, who was then in Naples, declared himself fully in favor and accepted the union. Soon, the difference between the contemplative style of the Theatine and the active charism of the Somascans became apparent. When the Carafa became pope, with the name of Paul IV, in 1555, he immediately disposed of what he had wanted as a cardinal, leaving full freedom of conscience both to the Servants of the poor (Somascans) and to the Theatines.
It is interesting to note the contents of the two bulls. In the bull of November 8, 1546, Cardinal Carafa talked about the unanimous consent of the union between the Theatines of Naples and the Somascans and mentioned the privilege that the foundation of the ministries of Jerome Miani was receiving through the help and the collaboration with the Theatines. By virtue of holy obedience, it is ordered to take care of the pious ministries. In the bull of December 23, 1555, Carafa, who had become Pope with the name of Paul IV, attributed the attempt to unite the two religious Orders only to the insistence of the Servants of the Poor. He was well aware that the experiment did not work, and he was truly convinced that it was good to dissolve the bond that all the Theatines contracted with the priests, clerics and laity of the Servants of the Poor in Lombardy (Somascans).
We must also remember that Saint Gaetano and Jerome had the same friends from Salo’: Giovan Battista Scaini, his brother Bartolomeo, and indirectly Don Stefano Bertazzoli. Gaetano addressed five letters to both the Scaini brothers while Jerome Miani sent two letters to Giovan Battista Scaini. All of them were members of the Oratory of Divine Love and had as their ideal an intense interior life, the practice of an active charity, and a lively desire for a profound reform of the Church. Gaetano, who left Venice in 1533, died in Naples on Sunday, August 4, 1547.
9.3. Saint Ignatius of Loyola
St. Jerome Emiliani also has notable points of contact with Sant’Ignazio di Loyola. Ignatius was born in 1491, in Guipuzcoa, in the Basque Country, the eleventh son of a nobleman. He grew up in a rough, ambitious and aggressive environment.
In 1506 (he had already received the tonsure by order of his father), he went to Arevalo, in Castile (Spain) as a page of Don Giovanni Velasquez. He and his brother, a priest, got into troubles on “Fat Tuesday” 1515 in Loyola, and ran the risk of a trial.
At the siege of Pamplona, on 10 May 1521, he was injured in one leg. The leg was broken again by surgeons a second time, because it was poorly healed. For the third time, the surgeons intervened by removing a bone that protruded below the knee. During his convalescence, he read the lives of the Saints of Iacopo da Varagine and other pious books. A slow invasion of grace took place and he decided to take the vow of chastity. He went on pilgrimage to Monserrato and planned a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. He stopped in Manresa, where in 1523 he wrote his spiritual exercises. In the same year, he left for Barcelona, then for Venice. Ignatius lived like a homeless. Marcantonio Trevisan, who met him at the “Procuratie Vecchie”, (he lived as a homeless, in dire poverty), had him hosted by Andrea Lipomano. On July 24, 1523, Ignatius left for the Holy Land and he arrived on September 4th. After several misfortunes, on mid-January 1524, he left from Jaffa on his way to Venice. He returned to Spain to study as a priest and attended the universities of Salamanca, Barcelona, and Paris.
In Venice 1527, the hospital of Bersaglio was founded. The founders were: Bartolomeo of Marco the lawyer, Sir Alvise the haberdasher under the sign of the Leone Bianco, Sir Bartolomeo Bonimparte. Everything happened under the influence, direction, and solicitude of Jerome Miani, who closed and covered the whole area with boards, stimulating public collaboration. From the beginning, the Hospital of Bersaglio hosted a flood of poor people: convicts, soldiers, sick sailors, orphans, widows, and destitute. The priest Pellegrino d’Asti was called to the spiritual direction of the hospital.
At the end of 1535, Saint Ignatius arrived in Venice after a disastrous voyage of land and sea (See: Bartoli, “Life of Saint Ignatius”, 31,33,34). He spent all of 1536 in Venice. He dictated the spiritual exercises to Pietro Contarini, director of the Hospital of Incurabili. He practiced charity and met Pellegrino d’Asti.
In January 1537, Ignatius was joined in Venice by: Pietro Fabro (priest), Francesco Saverio, Giacomo Lainez, Alfonso Salmeron, Alfonso Bobadilla, Claudio Iaio, Giovanni Caduret, Pascasio Brouet. They stayed at the Bersaglio and at the Incurabili. Father Bartoli said it was for them a school of charity and mortification. The influence of Jerome Miani, even if physically far from Venice, was certainly felt. With the exception of Ignatius who remained in Venice, always a guest of Andrea Lipomano, they all went to see the Pope Paul III in order to receive permission to go to the Holy Land and to become priests. On June 24, 1537, when they returned to Venice, with the exception of Salmeron, who was still too young, they all were ordained priests by Negusanti, Bishop of Arbe, in his private home. Not being able to return to the Holy Land because of the war with the Turks, they delayed their departure. First, they went to the mainland, living on alms. They found refuge in the dilapidated monastery of San Pietro in Vivarolo. From here, in August 1537, Saint Ignatius wrote a beautiful letter to Pietro Contarini (friend and admirer of Jerome). Ignatius, expressed the desire to have him among his followers, urging him not to attach his heart too much on wealth, begging him to regulate certain personal affairs with a certain Mr. Gaspare in his name. Among other things, Ignatius wrote, “Near Vicenza, a mile from the door of Santa Croce, we found an uninhabited monastery, called San Pietro in Vairello (Vivarolo), where no one lives. The friars of Santa Maria of Grazie are happy that we stay as long we need. That is what we are already doing. We will live there for a few months, if the Lord allows it”.
Given the political situation that was not improving and the impossibility of travelling to the Holy Land, they chose Rome as their definitive destination. In November 1538, they made the vow of obedience to the Pope. On Christmas Day 1538, Saint Ignatius celebrated his first Mass at the altar of the Crib in St. Mary Major. His pilgrimage was over.
Paul III took very seriously the offering of these reformed priests. Ignatius was immediately faced with the problem of the internal and external structure of the order. He wanted the good of the souls, the organizational lightness without specific clothing, choir, penances; he wanted obedience inspired by the love of Christ. On these points, he was particularly inflexible. A first five-point sketch was presented to the Pope on September 23, 1539. There were resistance from some Cardinals, in particular Card. Guidoccioni, against the creation of new religious orders. After months of suffering for Ignatius, on September 4, 1540, a compromise was reached. The company should not exceed 60 members. On September 27, 1540, the Pope officially approved the company of Jesus. The Company needed a leader and Ignatius was elected, and after some resistance, on April 19, 1541 he accepted.
In 1544, Paul III lifted the restriction to 60 members. Ignatius supported the need for a strong formation with three years of novitiate (two at the beginning and one at the end of the formation process) and tended to delay by many years the final acceptance of the order. The rules were elaborated until 1550 and the final approval was reserved to the Company.
The first years of Ignatius’ activity in Rome did not differ much from what Jerome did in Venice and Lombardy: care for the poor and the sick. The house of the Frangipani in which Ignatius and his family were housed, became the home for the poor. Santa Marta was the home for the converts, the hospice of Santa Caterina housed young girls at risk, Santa Maria in Aquiro was designated for the orphans. Ignatius and his companions were teaching the Christian doctrine in the streets, squares, and churches of Rome. He had a serious concern for the adequate training of the clergy. Cardinals such as Contarini, Cervini, Carpi, Carafa, nobles, Vittoria Colonna and Michelangelo felt its positive influence.
Later on, after some initial hesitation, he courageously threw himself into the education of the youth. In 1548 he founded the College in the city of Messina, then the Roman College, in 1551. He had the intuition of sending his own companions to all over the world. Xavier in India in 1541, Rodriguez in Portugal, Iaio and Salmerone in Ireland, Fabro in Germany. In 1548, Francesco Borgia joined the Company of the Society of Jesus; on July 31, the spiritual exercises were approved and recommended. On 21 July 1550, with a second approval the teaching of youth was expressly declared the ministry of the Company. Ignatius himself was concerned with writing a “ratio studiorum” to remove any improvisation from the educational commitment. From 1550 to 1556, Ignatius left us 6641 letters, while in the previous years, he wrote only 920. Of course, very good secretaries such as Polanco and Nadal assisted him. Ignatius died in Rome on July 31, 1556.
In the early months of 1547, while waiting to formalize the union with the Theatines, there was an attempt to unite the Somascans with the Jesuits. It was a friar minor in Pavia who began the correspondence negotiations with St. Ignatius, through the mediation of Francesco da Mede, the priest Giovanni Battista Pezzano da Parma, and the Jesuit Pascasio Brouet (who had been in Venice and was one of the first companions of Ignatius). Saint Ignatius replied that the union with the Somascans was not possible. He knew that there were already negotiations underway between the priests of Somasca and the Theatines. He also knew that the Somascans had another spirit, another way of life, institutions and rules. Ignatius was extremely reluctant to contaminate his Company with any other spirit or form of life.
However, union with the Jesuits remained an ideal for Giovanni Cattaneo, one of Jerome’s companions. He was one of Jerome’s first collaborators and friends in Bergamo as early as 1533. In his life Giovanni Cattaneo will be an indefatigable organizer of orphanages in Mantua, Rome, Ferrara, Naples, Reggio Emilia, Siena. He dreamed (April 3, 1559, letter to Laynez) of a combined action between Somascans and Jesuits. He thought, “Next to every Jesuit college, why not also erect an orphanage? One could obtain vocations from it, put the aspirants of the Society to the test.” In a second letter (May 27, 1559, from Ferrara) he asked to be admitted to the Company himself. The answer, written by the Polanco secretary of Laynez is in the two cases negative. “It is better to provide for the ministry of the orphans by other means. The Lord will be better served by the Jesuits and by the servants of the poor separately, than making such a union. As for the request of Cattaneo, it is better that he continue his apostolate; he is not suitable for the Jesuits because he was bred in another Spirit.”
9.4. Saint Angela Merici
Angela Merici lived like Jerome in that troubled and magnificent historical period, known as the “Renaissance”. It was a period that goes from the end of the fourteenth century to the end of the sixteenth century, and that was the beginning of modern civilization. On one hand, there were unrest and wars, such as those of Emperor Charles V (1500-1568), which rocked Europe and led to the sadly famous ‘Sack of Rome’ of 6-17 May 1527, by the Lanzichenecchi, (undisciplined troops under the orders of Charles V). On the other hand, there was a whole flourishing of art, with the greatest artists of various specialties, such as Masaccio, Donatello, Brunelleschi, Michelangelo, Raphael Sanzio, etc…
When humanism was manifested through the need to discover the world and man, within Christianity there was a desire for inner reform and rebirth. During that time, we see the emergence of many religious congregations:
– the Theatines founded by St. Gaetano in 1523,
– the Somascans in 1528 (or 1534) from St. Girolamo Emiliani,
– the Barnabites in 1533 by St. Anthony Maria Zaccaria,
– the Jesuits in 1534 (1540) by St. Ignatius of Loyola,
– the Fatebenefratelli in 1540 by St. John of God,
– the Philippines or Priests of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri (1515-1595), etc.
All these religious orders, after the upheaval created by the Protestant Reformation of Martin Luther (he died in 1545), actively collaborated in the preparation and execution of the directives of the great and basic Ecumenical Council of Trent (1545-1563).
The work of Angela Merici began within this framework of great educational and spiritual movement, which was mostly aimed at the formation of the male part of society at the time. Angela Merici set out a particular program for the systematic formation of girls: in the moral field by integrating the education received in the family, in spiritual field by nourished the one already received in monatseries, but especially in intellectual field.
Angela Merici was born on March 21, 1474, in Desenzano sul Garda (Brescia), then the territory of the Republic of Venice. Her father Giovanni, a “Brescian citizen”, rather educated, loved to read to his wife and children the first books of devotion printed in Venice; probably the “Legenda aurea”, a famous collection of lives of Saints and Martyrs, written by the Dominican Jacopo da Varazze (1220-1298).
It was on those evenings, spent listening to those reading, that Angela met and began to love two holy martyrs, who became her points of reference: Saint Catherine of Alexandria and Saint Ursula with her companions.
Angela lived in Brescia from 1516 to 1540. She came into contact with the work of St. Jerome Miani, who was in Brescia in 1532 and 1536. She proposed (like Jerome), with democratic management from below, a consecration without convent, without solemn vows, and without distinctive dress. She was attentive to the dignity of every woman, whatever her state. The Ursuline Company proposed an alternative form of monasticism to be lived in one’s own home, with the absence of the category of power and the insistence given to the development of the person as a human being, albeit within a transcendent purpose of existence.
In 1524, when she was in Venice, some nobles and clergymen asked her to stay in the city and to take care of the hospital of the Incurables. In 1532, she was invited to go to Milan by Duke Francesco Sforza II. She preferred to decline the invitation and to stay in Brescia. Some of Angela’s followers worked at the Hospital of the Incurables: Stefano Bertazzoli, of the Salò group. He became a priest after he was converted by Angela.
Faced with the desolation of Brescia, which was constantly scourged by the passage of various armies, Jerome Miani took a small house near Porta San Giovanni, which became the house of mercy. Those who most helped him with offerings and moral authority were the same people who helped Angela and who revolved around the hospital of the Incurables and the work of the Converts: Paolo Averoldo, Giacomo Chizzola, Agostino Gallo, and Giovanni Battista Luzzago.
Saint Angela Merici had the particular grace of calming irritated souls, of restoring peace and harmony among enemies, and of attracting to Christ souls immersed in sin. One of these people was Stefano Bertazzoli, born in Salò in 1501, a student in Padua. Out of curiosity, he wanted to go and visit Saint Angela. She invited him so strongly to leave the vanities of the world that the young man was converted and he set out on a priestly life. According to a common opinion, St. Angela invited him to join St. Jerome Miani.
Stefano Bertazzoli was the brother-in-law of Giovan Battista Scaini who was one of Jerome’s friends and collaborators. In his late old age, Goivanni Battista Scaini dictated his memoirs on Jerome to Fr. Evangelista Dorati. He recalled when, in 1536, his friends from Salo’ and Jerome Miani went to Verona. They greeted “the most reverend bishop of Chieti, of whom they were friends and relatives, and stayed in the place where the Bishop of Chieti and Mr. Reginaldo Pole, who was later a cardinal, were staying, meeting at that time the most illustrious monsignor Giberto, bishop of Verona”. After the departure of the Carafa (Bishop of Chieti) and the Pole, Miani accepted the invitation of the friends of Salò. In Salò he spent three days at Bartolomeo Scaino’s house, but after a refined lunch, which caused him tears of penance and pain, Jerome didn’t want to eat anything but bread and water. He refused to read a book that Bertazzoli had given him on the meditations of St. Augustine if his spiritual director had not authorized it.
Immediately after Miani’s death, the Theatine friends, in particular Fr. Bernardino Scotti, advised against Bertazzoli going to Rome to have an office in the Curia, at the court of Pope Paul III. In 1539, he was dissuaded from becoming religious, because he had not left all his possessions. In 1542, he was one of the founders of the brotherhood of charity in Salò, part of Confraternity of the Divine Love. In 1545, the “Monte di Pieta’” was erected and the council gathered in his house. He followed with particular attention the union between the Somascans and Theatines. Informed of the events by Scotti and by the other Theatine Father Foscarini, he met Fr. Angiolmarco Gambarana, who on his return from Venice, had said he wanted to stop in Salò. He was commissioned in 1545 to greet the two priests of Somasca with all their orphans. He was still dissuaded by Scotti to become a Somascan, because he doubted his perseverance and advised him to continue the life of charity in the world, as he was in fact doing. He died around 1579.
9.5. Saint Pius V
The ancient biographers of St. Jerome, Tortora, De Rossi, and De Ferrari state that Michele Ghisleri (the future Pope Saint Pius V), born in 1504 in Bosco Marengo (Province of Alessandria), a priest since 1528, met St. Jerome Emiliani and was in contact with him, without however specifying the place of their meeting. We know that in the same years (from 1532 to 1537) both travelled in the same cities of Lombardy, Bergamo, Como, Pavia, Milan, and that Michele Ghisleri exercised the office of inquisitor in Pavia, Como, Bergamo. In those years, Jerome was an apostle of charity and a teacher of Christian doctrine, and the young Friar Michele was a preacher and inquisitor.
In Bergamo, on October 22 of the same year, the notary Giorgio Medolago was interrogated in the prison of the monastery of Santo Stefano by the Dominican inquisitor Domenico Adelasio, accused of Lutheran heresy. The vice-prior Tomaso da Cremona (also a friend and collaborator of Jerome and present at his death in Somasca) and Friar Michele Ghisleri are present. The Medolago does not retract and strongly supports his heretical theses. He escaped from prison the night between the 5th and 6th of December, freed from an assault by friends and relatives. He was condemned by default as a heretic pertinacious by the bishop on December 23, 1536.
When in 1568 the disciples of St. Jerome resorted to the supreme authority of the Church for the Company of the Servants of the Poor to be recognized as a religious order, Pius V accepted the petition with the utmost benevolence, and, in public Consistory he praised Jerome Miani, comparing him in charity, zeal and humility to the apostle St. Paul. Indeed, with evident complacency the Pope took on the words of St. Peter, “We ate and drank with him,” and those of St. John: “We heard him, we saw him and our hands touched him”.
Even the bull “Iniunctum nobis” of December 6, 1568, despite its cadences and bureaucratic language, common to the other papal bulls, presents an esteem and enthusiasm that go beyond the simple legal dictation. The bull lists the exemplary religious life of the Servants of the Poor, the care of orphans educated in Christian life, in letters and in work according to the particular nature of each, the teaching and direction of the first seminaries. At the end, the Pope wrote that prophecy that today we would proclaim with enthusiasm and gratitude, “For all this, there is no doubt that this Congregation will last forever”.
The austere Pius V recognized Jerome Miani as a great champion of the holiness of the Church and of its educational capacity.