Today October 23

Today is the (new) feast of St. John of Capistrano (1386-1456 AD), which is really too bad, because the swallows come home to Capistrano on his OLD feast day, not in late October!

I think I already wrote about him in March (March 28th is his old feast day), but since I haven't posted it to my blog yet (having posted March 27th and March 29th, but for some reason not March 28), we are going to go with him. He was a lawyer, layman, married, and yet somehow he became one of the bright lights of the Franciscan order --- and not as a tertiary, but as a brother and then as a priest. No doubt he secured the consent of his wife before he left his well-to-do and comfortable life for one of humility and poverty. And I DO mean humility: he rode backwards on an ass with all his sins written out (by him) on a dunce cap. And I DO mean poverty: one rough brown habit, no money, no shoes. And he traveled about, preaching; many heard him -- they were positively DRAWN to him: up to 150,000 of them at a time, according to some estimates. People -- even the elders, priests and princes -- came out to hear him. Often they'd come in procession, carrying sacred relics. (We Catholics do processions well.) And he really gave it to them. Although he was a tender-hearted and merciful man (and well ahead of his time in advocating mercy to accused witches and disavowing torture), he didn't sugar-coat the truth, but called a spade a spade and lambasted the lax and popular culture.

He also worked to continue the mighty unifying effort of St. Bernadino of Siena -- preventing the total breakdown between the Observants (known as the Spirituals) and the Conventuals (the majority; referred to -- derogatorily -- by the Spirituals as "the Relaxed") -- but unable to prevent the split off from the Observants of a group that became the radical (and heretical) Fraticelli.

He did engender peace talks between Milan and Burgundy, and between Greece and Armenia. He evangelized in Hungary and Poland, Italy, Bavaria, and Saxony. He preached severely against the heretical (and patriotic) Hussites, who died out but who foreshadowed the Reformation. It does appear that their leader, Jan Hus, was promised safe passage (by the Dominicans) and then betrayed. He was arrested, condemned and burned at the stake. St. John had nothing to do with this, but the Bohemians WERE sore at him for a long time.

He put his money where his mouth was by not only proclaiming a crusade against the invading Turks, but leading men into battle at Belgrade. He was not killed in the fighting itself, but he was a casualty of that war: he contracted plague from the dead bodies on the hill. He died on this day in 1456 (probably why his feast was returned to this date) and was canonized 268 years later, there being no less than 2,507 miracles attributed to him! St. John Capistrano, pray for us.