LORENZO GIUSTINIANI, Saint. — Born in Venice to Bernardo Giustiniani and Querina Querini on 10 July 1381; died there on 8 January 1456.
At the age of twenty-one (1402), he went to the island of San Giorgio in Alga, where a few young priests, Venetian nobles, had recently gathered to devote themselves to prayer and penance. With them Lorenzo (already a deacon) founded in 1404 the Congregation of Secular Canons of San Giorgio in Alga. In the canonry he began a life of penance and prayer; he also loved to perform the humblest services (his “delight” was sweeping the city). In 1407, at the age of twenty-six, he was ordained priest by the will of Gregory XII, also a Venetian, and accepted the priorate of Sant’Agostino in Vicenza together with that of SS. Rustico and Fermo in Lonigo; but after five years he resigned in favor of his Congregation. In 1409 he was elected prior for a year at San Giorgio; likewise in 1413, 1418, and 1421. After completing the year of his third priorate (1419), he wrote his first work, Lignum vitae. In 1423, while
Having completed the year of his generalship, he retired to the solitude of Sant’Agostino in Vicenza, where he composed the treatises De casto connubio Verbi et animae and De disciplina et spirituali perfectione; and in 1426, the Fasciculus amoris and De triumphalis agone Christi. In 1427 he had to assume the office of superior again; so too in 1429 after a year’s interval, when he wrote the opuscula De interiori conflictu and De complanctu christianae perfectionis. In 1431, at the request of the Carthusians of Montello, he composed the treatise De vita solitaria; the following year, the treatise De contemptu mundi. To these “treatises” there were added, from time to time, on the principal feasts of the Lord, the Virgin, and the saints, the “sermons” (thirty-nine of which have been handed down).
Admiring Lorenzo’s life, Eugenius IV—once his confrere at San Giorgio in Alga—wished to appoint him to the see of Castello (Venice) on 11 May 1433. On 5 September 1433 he was consecrated bishop, and on the 18th he took possession. His private life, insofar as it could be consistent with his new dignity, did not change from that of the cloister. He began with the reform of the discipline and morals of the clergy, convening a diocesan synod in 1434 at which he issued sixty constitutions. Four years later he promulgated a code of forty constitutions, which he called the Synodicon. With the nuns he combined gentleness and firmness, joined to the most prudent charity; and he succeeded. He regulated the Chapter of the Cathedral, especially regarding residence and the plurality of benefices. To adorn the sacred functions he founded six new minor benefices. He established a perpetual college of twelve poor clerics under the immediate direction of a master of grammar and one of ecclesiastical chant. Against the immoderate luxury of the upper classes and the fashions of ladies’ dress he issued several constitutions, which brought him no small measure of bitterness.
In 1447 (during the plague that was raging in Venice), he spared no thought for his own safety but tirelessly devoted himself to the plague-stricken (he also obtained from Nicholas V [18 August 1447] a special indulgence for priests, physicians, and the faithful for each day on which they assisted the plague-stricken). Around 1450 he wrote two books: De spirituali, rituali interitu animae and De ejusdem resurrectione spirituali; and the treatise De institutione et regimine praelatorum. Nicholas V, for the dignity of the Republic of Venice and the decorum of the Dominante, with a bull of 8 October 1451 suppressed the patriarchate of Grado and the bishopric of Olivolo-Castello and established the patriarchate of Venice with all the rights and prerogatives of the suppressed patriarchate and bishopric, naming Lorenzo its first patriarch of Venice (who, overwhelmed by the new responsibility of shepherding a larger and metropolitan diocese, wrote [1452] the treatise De humilitate, which was vulgarized at his request so that it might be understood by the faithful, by the Camaldolese Mauro of San Mattia in Murano). He then set about convening a provincial council to uproot not a few abuses, when he was overtaken by a long and serious illness. The Council, of which unfortunately little remains, was convened for the Fourth Sunday after Easter (4 May) of 1455. Meanwhile the patriarch, ever anguished by theories contrary to obedience, wrote the treatise De oboedientia and in 1455 put the final touches to the treatise De gradibus perfectionis. His last work was to be a cry of love, De incendio Divini Amoris.
He was canonized by Alexander VIII on 16 October 1690. Feast day: 5 September.