Baring-Gould’s sources: Roman Martyrology, at Valencia on Oct. 20. Beatified by Paul V. in 1608, and canonized by Clement X. in 1671. Authorities: — the Bull of his Canonization, and his life by S. Vincent Justinian Antesti, a comrade of the saint. Also another life by Bartholomew Avignone, S. Louis Bertrand was born in the year 1526, of pious Catholic parents, John Louis Bertrand and Joanna Angela de los Exarches, his second wife, at Valencia, in Spain. He was baptized in the parish church of S. Stephen, and in the very font in which S. Vincent Ferrer had been regenerated. His biographers think it was a sure presage of his future sanctity, that when he was a little child he would cease from crying if given an image to play with. It was the custom of the boys in Valentia to make little cones of wet gunpowder, and fire them on the eve of S. Dionysius — those small fireworks English schoolboys call “ blue devils.” The father of Louis Bertrand, when a lad, was busily engaged piling up a blue devil one vigil of S. Dionysius, when a spark fell into the bowl of gunpowder he had beside him, and ignited it. The explosion scorched his face and burnt the eyelashes and brows off. Though he was scarred, he providentially lost neither his sight nor his life. His safety he attributed to the intercession of S. Vincent Ferrer, and therefore maintained through life an ardent devotion towards that saint, and had his son Louis baptized in the same font, and instructed him from early infancy in habits of devotion to that apostolic preacher. The commanding figure of Vincent Ferrer, thus impressed on the child’s mind by his father, influenced his whole after life. At the age of fifteen the boy was fired with ambition to make a pilgrimage to Compostella. He had got some way, when his father sent after him, and, under the pretence that his mother was dangerously ill, induced him to return home. As the bent of the boy’s mind was very decided, John Louis Bertrand dressed him in a cassock. His mother, when she came to change the sheets of his bed on Saturday, found that he had often not slept in them throughout the week. He had spent his night in prayer, or lying on the floor. She gave him a scolding, and made a gimlet-hole in his door, through which she might observe him. She saw him one morning tumbling his bedclothes, to make believe that he had slept in them, but in reality he had not lain on his bed all night. He was obedient and gentle. His mother was wont, rather more frequently than was necessary, to scold the servants. Whenever Louis heard her, he caught up a book of pious meditations, ran to the scene, and began to read at the top of his voice, till he had stilled his mother’s voluble tongue.
Louis took a strong fancy to join the Dominican Order, and went to the convent of that society at Valencia, and besought the prior to admit him and invest him with the habit; but when his father heard of his purpose he hurried to the convent, and told the prior that Louis had been a delicate, unhealthy child, and was quite unfit for an austere life. On his representation, therefore, the youth was refused admission. Louis bore his disappointment with resignation, but walked often by the sea, looking at the white walls of the convent. S. Louis Bertrand.
and crying when he heard the Dominican bell ringing for the offices. He waited his time, till the then prior, Fernandez, was removed, and another prior, F. Johannes Mico, was in his room; and then, without saying a word to any one, being at the time eighteen years old, he secretly made his profession to the new prior, and assumed the habit of a novice. His parents were only aware of what he had done when he did not return to their house at night. However, on account of his bodily infirmities, the prior dismissed him shortly after, but was induced once more to receive him by his persistence in his intention to become a friar of the Order of Preachers. For some time he abandoned study, that he might devote himself to contemplation; but as he began to form strange and erroneous religious notions, either his own good sense or the advice of his superior obliged him to read theology, and he studied the works of Aquinas with great profit. He had been invested with the Dominican habit on Aug. 26, 1544; he took his final vows on Aug. 27, in the following year, and was ordained priest in 1547, when aged twenty-two. He was sent shortly afterwards to the convent of Santa Cruz, at Lombai. One November night, in the year following, Louis thought he saw his father standing by his bedside, looking ghastly pale, and wrapped in a winding-sheet. When he woke next morning he talked the matter over with his confessor [in old usage, a saint who was not martyred, or who suffered for the faith without being killed]. An hour or two later came a ring at the convent bell. A messenger from Valencia entreated Father Louis Bertrand to hasten forthwith to his father’s death-bed. The saint at once flew to his home, and found his father dying. “ My son,” said the old man, “ I thought at one time it was a most grievous matter that you, my eldest son, should have entered a religious Order, but now it consoles me to see you in that habit.” After his father’s death, Louis Bertrand beat himself, and fasted and prayed for eight years, to liberate the soul of John Louis from purgatory. When asked why it was that John Louis Bertrand was afflicted with penal fire for so long a time, his son replied that the reason was — so it had been revealed to him — because his father had attended a certain nobleman's funeral. One morning Louis dreamed that he saw a friend, Friar Raphael Gastello, up to his neck in water; he told him of his vision. Not long after, Father Castello went to Majorca, and returned in the ship which was conveying the queen-dowager to Spain. A violent storm arose whilst the vessel was near Ivica. Then “ an internal voice urged F. Raphael Castello to get into the boat accordingly the friar scrambled into the boat, and made off in it, leaving the queendowager, the captain, and all on board the ship to be drowned. They perished accordingly, but the friar got safe to land, though wet by the sea-water up to his neck. And so the vision of the saint was verified by the event.
In 1549 S. Louis Bertrand was made master of the novices, and ruled them harshly, 1 being anxious that they should taste the discipline of the Order in its full severity before they took the irrevocable vows. He was accustomed to scourge himself severely, and had certain chosen spots for the performance of this discipline, which he particularly affected. Such was the sacristy of the convent of Our Lady of Mercy, to which he was most partial, as it was a gloomy spot, and very frightening to a nervous person. Another favourite locality was the schoolroom of the novices; and there the walls and floor were sometimes splashed with his blood. One of the novices threatened to tell the prior. “Silence, I implore you, for the love of God,” said Louis; “ I will act more discreetly in future.” His discretion consisted in tying a towel round his loins to prevent the blood from dribbling on to the floor. He did not, however, confine his blows to him1 “ Novellos illos rigide aspereque educans." 8. LOUIS BERTRAND. After Cahier.
oct. 9 ] S. Louis Bertrand. 2 1 7 self, in his charity he distributed them freely among his pupils, whom he whipped on the smallest excuse — for breaking silence, for sleeping a wink too long, for a wrong note in choir, and for the most trifling faults. 1 The reason why he so severely lashed their backs was, as he was careful to explain to them, to reduce the amount of suffering they would have to endure in purgatory.
He urged on the novices the necessity for reading, for he found that the more learned a friar became the more he loved his cell; but he was very decided in forbidding the laybrethren the use of any book. The Rosary and the Lord’s Prayer were the only books for them, he said. He possessed some common sense. When he noticed how scrupulous two novices were about the saying of their offices, how particular they were about mere trifles, “ They will never do any good,” said Louis Bertrand. And so the event proved, for they had to be turned out for disorderly and disreputable conduct. A novice of a few months came to him to inform him he was favoured with visions. “ Oh, so soon?” said Louis. “ Then you are no good.” Father Clemens Benet having died, Louis informed the brethren that he had seen him tortured in purgatory because he had once allowed himself in hot weather to wear linen next his skin. Father Clemens was at length liberated by the prayers of the saint; but his example served to awe the brethren and novices, and make them renounce shirts with holy horror.
An Indian was sent to the convent from America, who had been converted and transformed into a Dominican. He proved a very indifferent friar, but he was interesting as a man. He fired the imagination of some of the brethren, especially that of Louis Bertrand; and when he assured them that preachers were often killed, and sometimes eaten, by the savages, the enthusiasm of Louis was beyond restraint. He implored his superior to send him to America. The prior would not hear of his going, his relations refused money; but Louis was intent on seeking martyrdom in the New World. Finding him so resolved, leave was tardily accorded, and he departed on foot for Setabi. When he was gone, the friars overhauled his box, and found that it contained a choice and varied collection of instruments of self-torture — horsehair shirts, iron chains, wire whips, and flat strips of tin perforated with holes, for slapping the flesh and raising blisters. At Setabi, a messenger from the prior overtook him and gave him money for the purchase of an ass on which to ride the rest of his way. So he reached Seville and embarked on board a ship bound for the mouth of the Magdalena. Unfortunately, little of the history of the mission of the holy man in Bolivia is known. He traversed great distances and preached to the Indians. He suffered severely from the intense heat and from the remoteness of the stations from each other. In Spain he had been able to confess twice a day, whereas now he was deprived of this solace, save occasionally. He arrived with his two servants, Moors [the Muslims of North Africa and Spain] armed with guns, at an Indian village, where he preached for several days without success. He ascertained that the natives superstitiously venerated the bones of an idol priest, and kept them enshrined in their temple. Louis, one morning early, stole the bones, bundled them into a bag he carried, and made off with them, along with his two guards. It was not long before the Indians were aware of the robbery, and Louis was pursued. The natives threatened him with instant death unless he gave up to them what he had taken, and Louis, alarmed at their gestures and threats, surrendered the bones. The Indians would have given him poultry and some peacocks in gratitude for having restored to them their inestimable treasure, but Louis refused the 0 ^ present sternly, perhaps insolently, for he so irritated them that they nearly fell on him again, but was rescued by the cacique, who feared to embroil himself and the villagers with the Spaniards, if the father was murdered. As Louis addressed the natives in Spanish, not having acquired their tongue, it is, perhaps, not wonderful that his sermons did not produce instant conviction in their minds. His biographer indeed asserts that though he spoke in Spanish the Indians understood him, but this was probably near the Spanish settlements. He took with him at first an interpreter, but the man, either by malice or through ignorance, did not faithfully explain the words of the preacher, and Louis was obliged to dismiss him.
He converted and baptized a small Indian boy and took him about with him as server at mass. On one occasion, whilst Louis was absent, the natives, who were keeping a feast to their gods, took the boy and sacrificed him, and on the return of the father told him the lad had been eaten by an alligator.
The barbarity with which the unfortunate Indians were treated by the Spanish governors moved his soul to indignation. On one occasion, when he was preaching in the cathedral to a crowd of naked savages, the governor entered with his men, cudgelled them, and saying, “Get to your work, you idle rascals,” drove them from the church before S. Louis had finished his sermon.
At this time that most noble and heroic of men, Bartholomew de las Casas, wrote his famous appeal to the Emperor Charles V. against the treatment the poor natives met with from Christian hands. He abdicated his bishopric of Chiapa, and visited Spain, to wring from the sovereign protection for the unfortunate, suffering people, and devoted the rest of his life to the advocacy of their cause. When Louis Bertrand heard that Las Casas was returning to Spain, a vehement [Oct g.
desire came over him also to revisit his native land. He had spent seven years in Bolivia, and he had had enough of it. He sailed for his native land on S. Luke’s day, 1579, and on reaching Seville pushed on at once for Valencia. He reached that city late in the evening, and was obliged to sleep outside the walls; he laid himself to rest in his brother’s garden. On the morrow, when he came to his convent, the friars were excited and delighted to see him again, sunburnt and thin, but looking pale. He remained there till the following year, when he was made prior of S. Onuphrius near Valencia; the convent was poor and in bad repair. Ixmis rebuilt the tottering walls and retiled the roof. In 1575 he was elected prior of the convent at Valencia. One day he was rebuking a friar for his ignorance; “Well,” said the friar, “the devil was learned and yet was damned.” Some years after the friar died and his soul appeared to Louis, according to the account of the latter, and informed him that he burned in flames till pardoned by him for having answered so pertly. Louis is said to have performed many miracles. In Bolivia he suspected he was poisoned because he felt a pain in his stomach, and a worm came out of his mouth. On another occasion, to convince a native cacique of the truth of Christianity, he drank a cup of poison before him without injury. The miracles he performed were numerous. One rainy evening a Jesuit put up for the night in his convent, his clothes were drenched, and he had evidently caught a feverish chill. All night he tossed on his bed with a racking headache; but in the morning, when he visited Louis Bertrand and began to talk to him, his headache went off. He was of the greatest assistance to women in childbirth, and seems to have been sent for on such occasions by the matrons of Valencia. His prayers were believed to expedite matters. On one occasion, when he could not attend personally, he wrote on a strip of S. Louis Bertrand.
paper, “ Nesciens Mater Virgo virum, peperit sine dolore Salvatorem, ipsum Regem angelorum sola Virgo lactabat ubere de ccelo pleno,” and bade the suffering woman hold it in her hand. She did so with the happiest results. That great saint and reformer, S. Theresa, had recourse to I^ouis Bertrand, and received comfort from his advice under her greatest difficulties. When she wrote to him about her design of establishing a reformation of the Carmelite Order, he sent her the following answer: “ Because the honour of God is highly concerned in your intended undertaking, I took some time to recommend it to Him by my poor prayers. For this reason I deferred so long my answer. I now bid you take courage in the name of the Lord, who will favour you. It is in His name that I assure you your reformation will be, within the space of fifty years, one of the most illustrious Orders in the Church.”
S. Louis preached the divine word during twelve years, without intermission, in several dioceses in Spain. He trained up excellent preachers, who succeeded him in the ministry of the word. The first lesson he gave them was, that humble and fervent prayer must always be the principal preparation of the preacher; for words without works will never have the power to touch and change hearts. Words must be animated by the spirit of prayer, and must derive their force and efficacy from this source, or they will be but as sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal, pleasing indeed to the ear, but not touching and firing the heart. During the last two years of his life he was afflicted with several disorders, under which he constantly prayed to God, in the words of S. Augustine: “ Here cut, here bum, here spare not, that I may find mercy for eternity.” Under his infirmities he showed no failing of zeal. In 1580 he preached the Lenten course of sermons at Xatwa, and went thence to preach in the cathedral of Valencia, but was so ill, COct 9.
that he had to be carried from the pulpit to his bed, from which he never rose. Amidst the tears of all who surrounded him he remained cheerful. The archbishop of Valencia ministered to him with his own hands, giving him medicine and food, till he gave up his soul to God, on the 9th of October, 1581, at the age of fifty -five. A portrait of the saint, painted after his death, was placed by the Archbishop of Valencia in a chapel of his cathedral. An engraving from it is given by the Bollandists [Jesuit scholars who since the 1600s have critically studied the lives of the saints]. The body of the saint reposes in a silver shrine in the church of the Dominicans at Valencia; it is visible through glass. A silver statue of him has the breast open, and exhibits one of his arm bones behind glass. •S'. Pinitus.
