Peter Nolasco, Saint

PETER NOLASCO, Saint. - Born in the south of France in the last quarter of the 12th century; still a young man, he moved around 1213 to Spain, largely dominated by the Saracens, and after visiting in Catalonia the famous sanctuary of Montserrat as the beginning of his divine mission (a gesture later imitated by St. Ignatius, St. Joseph Calasanz and other saints), he went to Valencia, not yet freed from the Mohammedan yoke, to devote himself there to the ransom of Christians reduced to slavery.

Divinely inspired and under the auspices of the Madonna, with the cooperation of St. Raymond of Peñafort and King James I of Aragon, he founded in Barcelona in 1218, according to the most common opinion, or in 1223, or rather in 1228, as some writers hold, the Order of the Most Holy Virgin of Mercy for the redemption of the wretched captives held by the Moors. The cradle of the new family was the hospital of St. Eulalia, donated for that purpose by the aforementioned monarch, who also granted the heroic religious the arms of Aragon, which they still bear on their white habit, similar to that of the Dominicans. Like these, they adopted the Rule of St. Augustine, to which some simple constitutions were added. Their co-founder St. Raymond obtained in 1235 the confirmation of the Order through a very brief bull of Gregory IX. Memorable is the Saint's expedition into African lands; in 1247 or 1248 he is found in Seville with King St. Ferdinand, conqueror of that city.

At his death a few years later the Saint left his Order spread through Catalonia, Aragon, Valencia and southern France. Alexander VII in 1655 had his name inserted in the Roman Martyrology and his Office in the universal Breviary.