Saint Peter Nolasco: a life dedicated to ransoming enslaved Christians

Saint Peter Nolasco was born in the Lauragais region of Languedoc (south-west of France) around 1180. The son of a cloth merchant, he accompanied his father on his travels to Muslim countries to buy or sell goods, where he was moved by the physical, moral and spiritual distress of the Christian slaves, kidnapped during raids by Muslim pirates and held in the service of wealthy owners. The temptation to apostatize, in order to escape death, imprisonment or harassment, was ever-present for captives. This is why Nolasco and a few companions his own age founded the Royal and Military Order of Our Lady of Mercy of the Redemption of the Captives (the Mercedarians). This order became a religious order in 1223. Nolasco died on 6 May 1245, and was canonised by Urban VIII in 1628.

Francisco de Zurbarán, The Vision of Saint Peter Nolasque, 1629, Prado Museum, Madrid / © CC0 wikimedia.

Les raisons d'y croire :

Saint Peter Nolasco gave up his profitable trade as a cloth merchant to devote his life and effort to redeeming Christian captives held in Islamic lands. To this end, he founded a dedicated lay religious order. His actions were not driven by self-interest, but by Christian charity: moved by the physical, moral and spiritual misery of the Christian slaves, he worked to give them back not only physical freedom, but above all the freedom to believe in and love Jesus Christ.

In so doing, he was an imitator of Jesus Christ himself, who came to earth to rescue people from the slavery of sin and Satan, and to open the gates of paradise to them once again. Throughout his life, Saint Peter Nolasco particularly embodied the "sequela Christi" - following Christ - which is the watchword of the Christian life.

Nolasco also imitated in his actions another aspect of Jesus' life, which he adopted for his Order: evangelical poverty. Like the apostles, whom Christ asked to renounce their families and homes and whom he sent to preach the Good News of salvation, asking them to beg for their livelihood from those who would listen to them, Nolasco sold his possessions and collected alms in the principality of Catalonia and the kingdom of Aragon. The sums collected made up the ransoms used to buy back the captives.

Nolasco first gathered around him, in the form of a military order (or knighthood), a few companions who would work for some fifteen years on the noble and merciful enterprise he had planned. But a vision of the Virgin Mary prompted him to place the foundation under her holy protection. The bishop of Barcelona, Berenguer de Palou, soon recognised and approved the religious order of Our Lady of Mercy of the Redemption of Captives. The new religious took a fourth vow, in addition to the traditional three: to chastity, poverty and obedience was added the vow to devote their "whole substance and very liberty to the ransoming of slaves", even to the point of acting as hostages in order to free others. Christian heroism and Marian devotion were therefore two major characteristics of the new congregation, inspired by Our Lady herself.

Peter Nolasco never made a decision without deferring to the judgement of the Church: his confessor was Saint Raymond of Penyafort (circa 1175 - 1275), who in 1238 became Master General of the Order of Preachers, founded by Saint Dominic. Penyafort was instrumental in founding the Mercedarian friars (so called from the word "mercy") and was the procurator for this. Nolasco's plan was to establish a well-structured and stable redemptive religious order under the patronage of the Virgin Mary. Penyafort encouraged and assisted him in obtaining the consent of King James I of Aragon. The Order was approved by the Bishop of Barcelona, probably in 1223, and then by Rome in 1235. The inspiration for this undertaking is thus authenticated as coming not from a reckless human idea but from the wisdom of divine Providence, which over the centuries leads all men to itself, through the means it employs and for which it asks certain men to cooperate. Peter Nolasco was one of them.

Synthèse :

Saint Peter Nolasco was born around 1180 in Mas-Saintes-Puelles, near Castelnaudary in south-west France. In Barcelona, where his family later settled (possibly fleeing the Albigensian heresy), young Peter learned the trade under the guidance of his father, who was a merchant.

During the journeys necessary for the supply and sale of goods and commodities, Peter discovered the suffering of Christian slaves held in Muslim countries. Muslim pirates from Majorca, in the service of Almohad power, kidnapped men, women and children during raids and then sold them to the highest bidder. The Almohad caliphate then held the territory around the Christian kingdom of Aragon, which would become the kingdom of Valencia and the islands of Majorca after its reconquest.

We can imagine the conditions of Christian captives. The captivity of body and spirit was coupled with supernatural captivity. The slaves, far from home, could no longer hear homilies, so frequent at that time in the churches or public squares of the cities of Christian countries, through which everyone was encouraged to work for God and carry out daily activities in his honour. They could no longer hear the bells ringing out in praise of a God who is one in essence (i.e. in nature) but three in person. Above all, they could no longer benefit from the help of the sacraments: sacramental confession, which gives divine forgiveness and erases offences committed, was no longer available to them. And the reception of the Holy Eucharist, which strengthened them in the fight against evil in all its forms here on earth, became inaccessible: slaves would have needed it even more than any other Christian not to give in to the fear, anger and despondency into which their state threw them. Communion with the God of love would have been be a great help to them in the face of the intimidation, bullying and persecution of all kinds that their new masters inflicted on them to make them apostatise from the Christian faith and embrace Muslim beliefs and practices.

What relief did the nascent order bring to such distress? The fourth vow obliged the mercedarian religious to take the place of a Christian slave, who was likely to apostasise, or to give himself up as a hostage if there were insufficient resources to pay the ransom. Following in the footsteps of their founder, mercedarians were intrepid defenders of the faith. This earned Saint Peter Nolasco and his brothers a special place among religious orders, including those responsible for the redemption of Christian captives (Trinitarians and various autonomous brotherhoods that predated the mercedaries).

The Order of Mercy, founded under the rule of Saint Augustine in Barcelona cathedral, probably in 1223, in the presence and with the authorisation of the local bishop, Berenguer de Palou, received the support of King James I of Aragon, thanks to the intervention of Raymond of Penyafort, who approved it. In 1235, Pope Gregory IX granted the order pontifical authority with the bull Religionis vestare, which Innocent IV confirmed in 1245 and again in 1246. During Saint Peter Nolasco's lifetime, the order had around one hundred friars in fifteen convents, mainly located in the kingdom of Aragon and in the south of France (James I was lord of Montpellier and count of Roussillon, and the counties of Comminges and Foix, the viscounty of Carcassonne and the county of Provence were vassal lands: it is easy to understand why James I supported the mercedarian order there). The number of establishments and religious was small compared to the Dominicans and Franciscans, who were soon very numerous, but it must be recognised that the practice of the fourth vow could only attract exceptional men, as the history of the order shows. When Nolasco died on 6 May 1256, the order had accomplished approximately 70,000 rescues - some 2,700 during the founder's lifetime, and already had a protector in heaven: the Englishman Serapion of Algiers, who had received the mercedarian habit in 1222 and was the first of his Order to merit the palm of martyrdom by being crucified by the inhabitants of the coast of present-day Maghreb, on 14 November 1240.

The remains of the holy founder are buried in the Basilica of La Merced (the former La Mercè convent, the mother house of the Order). As a result of the constant veneration shown towards him, both during his lifetime and after his death, by both the Mercedarian friars and the faithful, the Congregation of Rites issued a "sentence of immemorial veneration" in 1628, after a two-year canonical process, which was confirmed by Pope Urban VIII, in accordance with the process of beatification: Peter Nolasco was now officially counted among the blessed. In 1664, Pope Alexander IV extended his feast to the universal Church, declaring him a saint.

Fr. Vincent-Marie Thomas. Ph. D. in philosophy.

Au-delà des raisons d'y croire :

In 1628, the Mercedarian friars of the Seville convent commissioned the painter Francisco de Zurbaran to paint twenty-two frames illustrating the life of their holy founder. These were intended for display in the cloister of the monastery. Probably not all of them were painted. The desire of the friars of Saint Peter Nolasco not only stemmed from an act of filial piety but also had an educational purpose: the subjects depicted were inspired by engravings made from documents gathered during the canonisation process. Only half of these paintings have been found. They are on display in the convent for which they were intended, which has since become the Seville Museum of Fine Arts. Among other subjects, the master of the Seville school depicted the saint's vision of the Virgin Mary.

In the same year, at the request of the friars, Zurbaran also painted a picture depicting the martyrdom of Saint Serapion. The work, which once adorned the convent's chapel dedicated to watching over deceased monks, along with another painting that has now disappeared, is now in the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut, in the United States.

In 1930, the French poet Marie Noël published the Chants de la Merci (Paris: Crès), in which she makes a clear reference to the order founded by Saint Peter Nolasco. In the "Chant de la divine Merci", she extols the mercy of Jesus Christ, who redeemed mankind through the sacrifice of the Cross. "Divine Mercy" is the mercy of God, who wants no man to be lost.

Aller plus loin :

Ransoming Captives in Crusader Spain: The Order of Merced on the Christian-Islamic Frontier, by Brodman, James William, 1986 (online)

En savoir plus :

Short biography of St Peter Nolasco on the Order of Mercy's website.
Aleteia's article "800 Years of saving lives all started with this man: St. Peter Nolasco"
Allaria, Anthony. "St. Peter Nolasco." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 11. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1911. 22 Feb. 2013
Pietro Cijar, Opusculum tantum quinque super commutatione votorum in redemptione captivorum, 1446. The work was republished in Vasquez, Monumenta ad historiam Ordinis de Mercede, Toledo, 1928, pp. 51-60.
Natal Gaver:
- Speculum fratrum ordinis beatissima Virginis Mariae de Mercede redemptionis captivorum, Valladolid, 1533. The work was written in 1445.
- Cathalogus Magistrorum, 1445.
The text of these two works can be found in Vasquez, ibid, pp. 1-13 for the Speculum and pp. 14-37 for the Cathalogus . These two books, together with the previous one, are the most reliable ancient sources on the life of Saint Peter Nolasque.
Guillermo Vasquez Nunez, Mercedarios ilustres, Madrid, Publicaciones del Monasterio de Poyo^no 22,1966, XVand 770 p.
Mercy, Ransom, Redemption: The Mercedarian Order and Their Mission to Set the Captives Free by Larry Peterson, Catholic Treehouse (September 23, 2024) - For young readers.