Baring-Gould’s sources: Roman Martyrology. Authority: — A Life by Peo Belcaro, d. 1484, and another by Johannes Ba,pt. Rossi, S.J.] John Colombino was a native of Siena, of the noble house of Colombino, one of the most illustrious in that ancient city. His mother was of the noble family of Tornusasi.
When at an age to marry he took to wife a young lady of quality, named Blaisia Bandinelli, by whom he had a son and a daughter. As he was a man of rank, of talents and influence, he obtained several offices of distinction. He became gonfalonier of the republic. His mind was engrossed in the acquisition of wealth, and he was utterly unscrupulous as to the way in which he acquired it; and he paid little or no attention to his religious duties. One day, having returned home hungry, he found dinner not ready. He broke into angry exclamations against the cook and her unpunctuality. His wife came in for a share of abuse. She did not attend to his comforts, look after the servants sufficiently. Blaisia put into his hand a book 1 H. Marryat; One year in Sweden, I. p. 299. John Colcmbino.
the legends whilst dinner was getting ready. John flung the book across the room, and swore at his wife. She gave him a look of indignation, and coldly retired John looked out of the window. There was nothing to be seen but the glare of the sun on a blank wall, and blue sky overhead. He flung himself in disgust on a sofa. The book was open on the floor, and a blazing page of illumination was open. He saw a wondrous picture — a woman with long hair reaching to her feet, standing on yellow sands against a blue ground. What, in the name of wonder, could induce a woman to prowl about a desert with no clothes on, but her own hair? What had become of her clothes ? How came she there ? How was she to get home again, if her clothes had been stolen ? He took up the book, moved by curiosity, and read that marvellous story, the legend of S. Mary of Egypt (April 2nd). He read how the hermit Zosimus lived in Palestine, and how in Lent [the forty days of fasting before Easter] he went forth into the wide desert to be alone with God • how after days of walking he saw one day, as he was praying, a weird figure, bobbing about at his side, covered with white hair — a satyr, or a lemure ? How he ran after the strange creature, and found it was a woman, a penitent who had spent long years in the desert And then John Colombino came to her story which she related to Zosimus, the hermit.
He had forgotten about his dinner. His wife looked in. He was engrossed in the story. The servants brought the dishes, he heeded them not. The steward informed him that the meal was ready. He waved him impatiently away, he must finish the story first. At last he read it all. He shut the book. He could not eat. His conscience was working, he went to his room, and shut himself up to think. The result was a complete change in the life of John Colombino. He fasted and wept, he divested himself of his velvets and silks, and walked in plain habit. His conversation was grave, and of the condition of his soul.
This sudden change brought on a sickness. Still the story of Mary of Egypt haunted him, and beside her penitence he saw the blackness of his own sins. He thought he was too kindly treated by his wife and nurse. One night, in delirium, he got out of bed, and leaving his house, went to the hospital for the poor, and flung himself on one of the beds.
He had a friend, a good man, named Francis de Mino Vincenti. The wife of Colombino came to him in alarm to say that her husband was lost Both sought everywhere, and it was long before they could find him huddled on a mean pallet in the hospital for paupers. They persuaded him to return home, and kept close guard on him, lest he should again run away.
On his recovering his health, his friend Francis joined him in his daily devotions and acts of charity. One day they went together to church. In the porch they found a leper covered with sores. John lifted him on his shoulders, and carried him home, regardless of the derision of the people, who said that the fever had touched his brain. His wife did not receive the dirty leper with the warmth and enthusiasm he wished. She pointed out that the disease, if not infectious, was at least disgusting. John at once quaffed off a bowl of water in which he had been washing the sores of the beggar. The lady precipitately left the room. John Colombino went after her, and entreated her to visit and attend to the poor wretch, whilst he was out. She declined, saying that her nerves were too finely strung to endure ugly sights and support offensive odours. Her husband then went forth with his friend on July 3*0 S. John Colombino.
some new errand of mercy. The Lady Blaisia was noble and kind hearted. Regretting her oppugnance to her husband's whim, she resolved to bend herself to humour him, and she visited the leper in the room where Colombino had deposited him. She mustered up courage to look in at the door. But she did not go further. On her husband's return, he asked her to accompany her to the sick man's room. He led her to the door, and threw it open. An expression of disgust escaped her, Colombino looked reproachfully at her, took her hand, and pointing to the leper, said, “ Inasmuch as ye do it to the least of these my brethren, ye do it Me. It is Jesus Christ who solicits our care."
John now disposed of his only daughter that remained unmarried in the convent of S. Abundius; and divided his fortune into three parts. One portion he gave to the great hospital at Siena, another to the convent of S. Abundius, a third to the hospital of Our Lady of the Cross, charged with an annuity to his wife. His friend Francis followed his example. He took his little child and laid her on the altar, to offer her to God, and at the same time made over all his possessions to the convent of S. Abundius. These two zealous enthusiasts began thenceforth to beg their daily bread from door to door. It does not seem to have struck them that if God had given them fortunes, to throw them away and then prey on the means of other persons, some of whom were ill able to support themselves, was neither reasonable nor just In winter they walked barefoot even in the snow, and accepted chilblains as privileges. They mortified their bodies in every possible manner, and sought to be despised by men, thinking the more men scoffed at them, the higher their honour in heaven.
Both John and Francis had exercised offices in the state VOL. VIII. 20 of the little republic, they had been in the number of the nine priors of the city, and had often met in conference in the municipal palace, where they had been received with deference by the menials. They now constituted themselves water carriers to the palace. There was no well in the building, all the water had to be brought from the fountain in the market-place. The scene of their pride they sought to make to witness their humiliation. The servants who had doffed the cap and bowed the back, as the priors in their gold chains and velvet robes had swept by, now found a mean gratification in flouting the same men converted into ragged beggars, who swept the streets and carried water cans.
In 1365 other enthusiasts joined John Colombino and Francis de Mino Vincenti. The Fraticelli were at this time surprising and scandalizing Italy and Provence. These men were Franciscans, or an offshoot from the Minorite Order, holding peculiar views. They denounced the evil that was in the world, and lashed and starved their bodies till they were, or were supposed to be, cold to passion, when, to exhibit their superiority to temptation, they placed themselves in positions of the greatest peril, sometimes to conquer the temptation, not infrequently to succumb to it. They taught that the dispensation of the Holy Ghost was come, an inward religion, not one of forms and ceremonies, of a stately Papacy and a constituted priesthood, but one of direct inspiration by the divine Spirit; a religion of mystic union with the Deity, not of sacramental communion. The ascetic Paterines of the North of Italy, and the Albigenses of the South of France, when forced by the stress of persecution into outward conformity to the Church, carried with them the seeds of heresy. They concealed themselves and their tenets under the cowl of S. Francis. The leaven worked, and the Fraticelli John Colombino.
became a dangerous body, everywhere spreading, inflaming the minds of the people against the Papacy and the Sacerdotal Order, and more dangerous still dissociating in their minds spirituality from morality.
The asceticism, the enthusiasm of the Fraticelli, drew towards them the zealous, mystically inclined, puritanically disposed among the Italians and French. John Colombino rose opportunely to set an example of orthodoxy united to fanaticism, to create a diversion, and draw towards himself those impressed with penitence, awakened souls which might otherwise have fallen into the heresy of the Fraticelli.
The number of his adherents grew. Clothed in rags, with dishevelled hair, and dirty faces, they swept the country in flying trains, their heads garlanded with olives, howling pious ejaculations, like the Glory-band among English dissenters.
The admission of a novice was a fantastic ceremony. The postulant was mounted on an ass, with his face to the tail, his head wreathed with olives. The members of the fraternity, bearing branches in their hands, and crowned with olives, escorted him, shouting at the top of their voices, “Long live Jesus Christ! Praised for ever be Jesus Christ.” Sometimes the candidate was naked to the waist, at other times in his secular garments. On reaching the market-place, where stood an image of the Virgin, the novice was led before it, his hands tied behind his back; the people were expected to pray incessantly for the conversion of the poor sinner. Then he was stripped to the skin before the image, and the filthiest and most tattered rags of a beggar were thrown over his nakedness, which they barely concealed. Then the whole company, waving their olive boughs, burst into spiritual hymns, and congratulated the novice on his conversion, on the death in him of the old man, and the putting on of the New Man.
In two years the wild troop numbered seventy; some of them men of rank and fortune. Colombino and his followers travelled throughout the country, preaching repentance, and astonishing people into conversion. As he passed through Monticellio, one of the estates that had been his, but which he had given away, his clothes were, at his desire, stripped off, his hands bound behind his back, and he was dragged along as a culprit at the end of a rope, whilst he exhorted his retainers to repentance, and confessed his sins aloud. “ I am he/' said he, “ who half-starved you, consuming your substance by my extortions. I gave you bad grain for your fields, and made you pay for it as good.” On April 20th, 1367, Pope Urban V. set sail from Marseilles, with the intention of returning to Rome, from which so many popes had lived in half-voluntary, halfcompulsory exile, at Avignon. The galleys of Joanna of Naples, of Venice, of Genoa, and of Pisa, crowded to escort the successor of S, Peter back to Italy. He landed at Genoa, was received in great state by the doge and the seignory, and celebrated Ascension Day in the cathedral church. He embarked and reached the shore near Corneto. He was received by Albornoz, the Legate; silken tents were pitched upon the sands, amid arches of green foliage. He said mass, mounted a horse, and rode to Cometo. The ambassadors of the Roman people presented themselves to acknowledge his sovereignty, and to offer the keys of S. Angelo.
But a deputation of another sort caught his eye — a line of ragged men, bearing palm branches, crowned with olive leaves, who burst into loud cries of “ Lodato sia Giesu Christo e viva il sanctissimo Padre I” 1 8 “Praised be Jesus Christ, and Jong live the most holy Father I' 6 ". John Colombino.
“Who are these strange men?” asked the Holy Father. John Colombino stepped forward, and explained the mature of his confraternity; then falling at the feet of the Pope, besought his blessing on it Urban V. hesitated. “Get them decent clothes to cover their nudity and squalor J* he said. And long tunics were thrown over their shoulders.
The pope went on to yiterbo. The beggar brotherhood ran along the way beside his horse, shouting their monoto nous cry, and waving their branches. It was whispered into the ear of Urban that these men were Fraticelli, or cousin germain to them. The pope looked coldly on his eccentric guard, and ordered Cardinal William Sudre, bishop of Marseilles, to examine their doctrine. He pronounced their innocence of every attempt to circulate error, and in the same year, 1367, Urban V. ratified the constitution of the Order, but required that the brethren should abandon, or conceal, their tatters under white tunics girt with leather, that they should bear a white woollen cap to be worn on the shoulder when not on the head, and that their feet should be shod with wooden sandals. Cardinal Angelo Grimoard, brother of the pope, also gave them tan coloured cloaks. The congregation assumed the name of Jesuates of S. Jerome [translator of the Bible into Latin (d. 420)], because the name of Jesus was ever on their lips, and they adopted S. Jerome as their patron.
S. John Colombino did not long survive the confirmation of his order. As he was returning to Siena with his comrades, he was attacked by fever at Bolsenna. He was carried to Aquapendente, and there he received the last Sacraments. His disciples hoped to convey him to S. Abnndius; he -was desirous of dying there \ and they attempted to carry him further. But his sickness increased, and they were obliged to halt in the abbey of S. Lives oj the Saints.
Salvator, where he died, on the last day of July, 1367. His religious did not execute his dying request, which was that he should be taken, with his hands tied behind his back, to S. Abundius, and buried outside the monastery wall, without pomp. He was conveyed in a coffin of wood, all who accompanied him bearing tapers and torches, to Siena, and he was buried at S. Abundius with great pomp. His name was inserted in the Roman Martyrology by Pope Gregory XIII.
