Saint Nicholas of Tolentino

Feast day September 10

Confessor (1245-1310)

This Patron of the Universal Church was born in 1245, in answer to the prayer of a holy mother. His parents, said to have been called Compagnonus de Guarutti and Amata de Guidiani, were pious folk, perhaps gentle born, living content with a small substance. His mother was a model of holiness. They were childless until a pilgrimage to a shrine of the original Saint Nicholas at Bari, Italy where his mother asked for a son whom she promised to dedicate to God’s service. When her wish was granted, she named the boy Nicholas. Saint Nicholas of Tolentino never lost his baptismal innocence.

He soon gave unusual signs of saintliness. Already at seven he would hide away in a nearby cave and pray there like the hermits whom he had observed in the mountains. His religious formation was greatly influenced by the spirituality of the hermits of Brettino, one of the congregations which came to form part of the “Grand Union” of Augustinians in 1256. Their communities were located in the region of the March where Nicholas was born and raised. Characteristic of these early hermits was a great emphasis on poverty, rigorous practices of fasting and abstinence, and long periods of the day devoted to communal and private prayer.

After hearing the inspired preaching by Reginaldo da Monterubbiano, Prior (local superior) of the Augustinian monastery in Sant’Angelo, he felt a call to embrace the religious life. His parents gave a joyful consent. His piousness so impressed the Bishop of Fermo that he permitted Nicholas to join the minor orders as young boy.

A studious, kind and gentle youth, at the age of 16 Nicholas became an Augustinian Friar and was a student of the Blessed Angelus de Scarpetti. A monk at the monasteries at Recanati and Macerata.

His austerities as a very young religious were conspicuous even in the austere Order to which he belonged. To the protests of his superiors he only replied, “How can I be said to fast, while every morning at the altar I receive my God?” The demons undertook a war against his spirit of prayer, going so far as to beat him and leave him inert on the floor, but they could not separate his soul from his Lord. He did, however, remain lame for life.

He was ordained in 1270 at the age of 25, and soon became known for his preaching and teachings.

Saint Nicholas frequently went out of his monastery to beg for aid to the poor. He visited prisoners and the dying to administer the Last Sacraments. He quickly won over the trust and love of the locals; he was often called upon to pray for the deceased loved ones and was affectionately referred to as the “Patron of Holy Souls”. On account of his kind and gentle manner his superiors entrusted him with the daily feeding of the poor at the monastery gates, but at times he was so free with the friary’s provisions that the procurator begged the superior to check his generosity. Once, when weak after a long fast, he received a vision of the Blessed Virgin Mary and Saint Augustine who told him to eat some bread marked with cross and dipped in water. Upon doing so he was immediately stronger. He started distributing these rolls to the ailing, while praying to Mary, often curing the sufferers; this is the origin of the Augustinian custom of blessing and distributing Saint Nicholas Bread.

During his life, Nicholas is said to have received visions, including images of Purgatory, which friends ascribed to his lengthy fasts. Prayer for the souls in purgatory was the outstanding characteristic of his spirituality. Because of this Nicholas was proclaimed patron of the souls in Purgatory, in 1884 by Leo XIII.

He conceived an ardent charity for the holy souls of purgatory, so near and yet so far from their Saviour. Often, after his Mass, it was revealed to him that the souls for whom he had offered the Holy Sacrifice had been admitted to the presence of God.

Nicholas, who had had visions of angels reciting “to Tolentino”, in 1274 took this as a sign to move to that city, where he lived the rest of his life. Nicholas worked to counteract the decline of morality and religion which came with the development of city life in the late thirteenth century. In Tolentino, Nicholas worked as a peacemaker in a city torn by strife between the Guelphs and Ghibellines who, in the conflict for control of Italy, supported the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor respectively. He ministered to his flock, helped the poor and visited prisoners. When working wonders or healing people, he always asked those he helped to “Say nothing of this”, explaining that he was just God’s instrument.

There are many tales and legends which relate to Nicholas. One says the devil once beat him with a stick, which was then displayed for years in his church. In another, during an illness, he was ordered to eat meat by a physician, which he had made a vow never to do. A plate containing well-prepared fowl was brought to him. In the presence of several witnesses, he made the sign of the cross over it, and the bird flew away out the window.

Nine passengers on a ship going down at sea once asked Nicholas’ aid, and he appeared in the sky, wearing the black Augustinian habit, radiating golden light, holding a lily in his left hand, and with his right hand, he quelled the storm. An apparition of the saint, it is said, once saved the burning palace of the Doge of Venice by throwing a piece of blessed bread on the flames. He was also reported to have resurrected over one hundred dead children, on one occasion bringing back to life several who had been under water for several days.

According to the Peruvian chronicler Antonio de la Calancha, it was St. Nicholas of Tolentino who made possible a permanent Spanish settlement in the rigorous, high-altitude climate of Potosí, Bolivia. He reported that all children born to Spanish colonists there died in childbirth or soon thereafter, until a father dedicated his unborn child to St. Nicholas of Tolentino (whose own parents, after all, had required saintly intervention to have a child). The colonist’s son, born on Christmas Eve, 1598, survived to healthy adulthood, and many later parents followed the example of naming their sons Nicolás.

He was known for his humility, meekness and sanctity. His preaching, instructions and work in the confessional brought about numerous conversions, and his many miracles were responsible for more, yet he was careful not to take any credit for these miracles. “Say nothing of this,” he would insist, “give thanks to God, not to me. I am only a vessel of clay, a poor sinner.”

“He was a joy to those who were sad, a consolation to the suffering, peace to those at variance, refreshment to those who toiled, support for the poor, and a healing balm for prisoners.”

Nicholas’ reputation as a saintly man and a worker of miracles led many people to the monastery of Tolentino.

During the year preceding his death, a star always appeared over the altar where he said his Mass; afterwards it would conduct him to his cell, or lead him back again, later, to the altar. Amid his loving labors for God and man, he was haunted by thoughts of his own unworthiness. The heavens, said he, are not pure in the sight of Him whom I serve; how then shall I, a sinful man, stand before Him? One day, as he pondered on the greatness of God and his own nothingness, Mary, Queen of all Saints, appeared before him. Fear not, Nicholas, She said, all is well with you: My Son bears you in His Heart, and I am your protection. Then his soul was at rest.

At the hour of his death, which occurred on September 10, 1310, he heard, it is said, the songs which the Angels sing in the presence of their Lord. He died and was buried in the chapel where he was accustomed to offer Holy Mass and say his prayers. He was canonized in 1446 by Pope Eugene IV. Three hundred and one miracles were recognized during the process. His tomb has become renowned by many more, despite the fact that his relics have been lost, save for two arms from which blood still exudes when the Church is menaced by a great danger. This occurred, for example, when the island of Cyprus was taken over by infidels in 1570. The religious of Saint Augustine continue to maintain the service of the large basilica of Saint Nicholas in Tolentino. Saint Nicholas of Tolentino, like Saint Joseph, virginal father of Jesus, has been declared a Patron of the Universal Church.

References and Excerpts

[1]     J. G. Shea, Little Pictorial Lives of the Saints, New York: Benziger Brothers, 1894.
[2]     “Lives of the Saints, St. Nicholas of Tolentino,” Magnificat, 24 February 2016. [Online]. Available: http://sanctoral.com/en/saints/saint_nicholas_of_tolentino.html . [Accessed 1 September 2016].
[3]     “Nicholas of Tolentino,” Wikipedia, [Online]. Available: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_of_Tolentino. [Accessed 1 September 2016].
[4]     “Our Patron – Nicholas of Tolentino,” Helpers of the Holy Souls, [Online]. Available: http://www.helpersoftheholysouls.com/ourpatron.htm. [Accessed 1 September 2016].