Witnessing to Christ by the way of life, not by death.
September 10
Not verified yet
Confessor
Nicholas was born about 1246 near Fermo, in answer to his parents' prayers. A sermon on 'Love not the world' moved him to join the Hermits of St Augustine, and he made his profession before nineteen. After ordination he preached with great success, especially at Tolentino, where he spent his last thirty years, preaching almost daily. Meek, simple and mortified until his last illness, he died on 10 September 1306 and was canonized (officially declared a saint by the pope) in 1446.
The parents of Nicolas, the child granted them, spared no pains in educating him in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, and from early childhood he exhibited a manifest attraction towards the sanctuary.
Build up the community you belong to. This life was lived with and for a community.
Give to people in need. The account records care for the poor.
Learn from the kind of life it was. Witnessing to Christ by the way of life, not by death.
Born at Sant' Angelo, near Fermo, in the March of Ancona, about 1246; d. 10 September, 1306. He is depicted in the black habit of the Hermits of St. Augustine — a star above him or on his breast, a lily, or a crucifix garlanded with lilies, in his hand. Sometimes, instead of the lily, he holds a vial filled with money or bread. His parents, said to have been called Compagnonus de Guarutti and Amata de Guidiani (these surnames may merely indicate their birth-places), were pious folk, perhaps gentle born, living content with a small substance. Nicholas was born in response to prayers, his mother a model of holiness. He excelled so much in his studies that even before they were over he was made a canon of St. Saviour's church; but hearing a sermon by a hermit of St. Augustine upon the text: "Nolite diligere mundum, nec ea quae sunt in mundo, quia mundus transit et concupiscentia ejus", he felt a call to embrace the religious life. He besought the hermit for admittance into his order. His parents gave a joyful consent. Even before his ordination he was sent to different monasteries of his order, at Recanati, Macerata etc., as a model of generous striving after perfection. He made his profession before he was nineteen. After his ordination he preached with wonderful success, notably at Tolentino, where he spent his last thirty years and gave a discourse nearly every day. Towards the end diseases tried his patience, but he kept up his mortifications almost to the hour of death. He possessed an angelic meekness, a guileless simplicity, and a tender love of virginity, which he never stained, guarding it by prayer and extraordinary mortifications. He was canonized by Eugene IV in 1446; his feast is celebrated on 10 September. His tomb, at Tolentino, is held in veneration by the faithful.
Acta SS., Sept. III, 636; BUTLER, Lives of the Saints, III (Baltimore), 440; HAGELE in Kirchenlex., s.v.
…inhabitants of S. Angelo, near Fermo, in the Marches of Ancona, and were people of a poor condition. Having been many years without children, Amata made a vow to proceed on pilgrimage to the tomb of S. Nicolas of Myra, and ask there for a son.
After a long and exhausting journey, the worthy couple reached the church of S. Nicolas, and in the midst of their devotions fell asleep. Then in vision they saw the Bishop of Myra appear to them, and announce that their prayer was heard.
The parents of Nicolas, the child granted them, spared no pains in educating him in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, and from early childhood he exhibited a manifest attraction towards the sanctuary. At a very early age he was given a canonry in the church of S. Salvatore. One day he heard an Austin Friar preach on the text, “ The world passeth away, and the lust thereof,” and was so moved by the sermon, that he resolved to embrace the religious life. He entered a house of the Austin Friars, at Tolentino, and made his profession, at the age of eleven, before the Friar whose words had so moved him.
His fasting was extraordinary. From the age of fifteen, he wore sackcloth and a girdle of iron round his waist. Four days of the week he ate nothing, and wholly deprived himself of milk, fish, and eggs.
A relative, superior of a monastery of another Order, remonstrated with him. He was killing himself, worn already to a skeleton. Such severity to the body was not necessary to secure salvation, God delighteth not in selftorture like a god of the heathens: and he offered him a place in his monastery. Nicolas hesitated. He went to the church, and falling into a trance, saw angels like little children in white robes ascending and descending the altar vol. x. II [Sept. io.
steps, and chanting, “ At Tolentino be thy stay.” This vision consoled and determined him. He was sent shortly after to other convents of the Order, to Recanati, Macerata, Cingola, and Valmanan.
At Cingola he was ordained priest by the Bishop of Osimo. Devout persons strove to attend every day at his mass, as at the sacrifice offered by a saint. At the altar he was filled with the greatest fervour, his face shone with rapture, and tears streamed from his eyes.
So great was the purity of his mind, that those who knew him best thought that no evil wish or thought had ever passed through it to stain it; and his exquisite purity is symbolized in art by his being represented holding in his hand the flower of a white and innocent life. The last thirty years of his life were spent at Tolentino, and his zeal for the salvation of souls produced wonderful fruit there. He preached almost every day, with the same unction and burning love, and his sermons rarely fell to the ground without producing fruit.
His continued self-mortification, and the great exhaustion due to want of sufficient food, and incessant labour, left him a prey to extraordinary fancies. The cats racing over the tiles of the roof above his head at night, and squalling in their combats, he thought were a legion of devils come to frighten him; the rats behind the walls, gnawing and rolling about bits of mortar, were fiends breaking in to disturb his rest or prayers. Through his open window one night there dashed in a large black bat or night-bird and upset and extinguished his candle. He blew upon the long red glowing wick, and it rekindled into flame, and it was thought that this was miraculous. A great stone in the convent of Tolentino, with an inscription, marks the spot where he rekindled his extinguished candle.
Sept, io.] S. Nicolas To lent im. The devil, it is pretended, beat him with a club till daybreak, and then went off at cockcrow forgetting to take his stick with him. The club is preserved in the convent to this day. Nicolas fell ill through exhaustion, and the superior wisely ordered him to take some meat. A partridge was plucked, trussed, roasted, and brought up on a plate swimming in odorous gravy. But the thought of enjoying a bit of partridge filled Nicolas with as much horror as if he were about to commit a mortal sin; with folded hands and streaming eyes he implored his superior to excuse him, and when he had obtained his consent, Nicolas made the sign of the cross over the roast partridge. All at once the bird snapped the threads which had served to truss it, the gravy returned to its body, and began to flow through its veins as blood, feathers sprouted from its frizzled skin, and with the whirr so well known to sportsmen, it flew away out of the window.
Shortly after, S. Nicolas fell into a trance, and saw the B. Virgin appear between S. Augustine and S. Monica, and bid him send to an old lady in an adjoining street for some new bread she had just baked. Having given this command she and S. Augustine and S. Monica vanished. Nicolas opened his eyes, and sent to the woman indicated, who at once gave a fresh loaf just out of her oven, and smelling deliciously. Nicolas ate it with zest, got out of bed, and was well. In memory of this wonderful event, on the feast of S. Nicolas of Tolentino, in monasteries of Austin Friars, little loaves are baked and blessed, with a ceremonial approved by Pope Eugenius IV., and are given away to the sick, who often believe themselves to be benefited thereby.
The charity of the Saint for the poor was so great that he used to carry off some of the food belonging to the brethren of the house, and needed for their meals, to give it to the [Sept ia poor. One day the Superior arrested him, and asked what filled his lap.
“ Flowers,” said the saint promptly. The Superior drew open his garment, not altogether relying on his word, and out poured roses and lilies. It was in the month of December. The same story is told of at least a dozen other saints; and probably has as much truth in it as that of the partridge.
A year before his death, a star shone over the village of S. Angelo, where he was bom, and rested above the altar where he was wont to say mass. After that, wherever he went, the star went before him.
He died on December 10th, 1310, at the age of seventy. The star, it is pretended, was wont to reappear every anniversary of the saint's death.
Forty years after the death of S. Nicolas, a German friar acting as cook in the convent of Tolentino, thinking to endow his native land with some of the relics [the bodily remains of a saint, or objects they used, kept with honor] of the saint, and tired of his sojourn at Tolentino, got a large knife and saw, and opening the shrine of the saint, proceeded to hack and saw off both the arms. Then he wrapped the two arms in linen, and ran away with them. But he walked all night, and in the morning was in the same place.
After this, the body was concealed, and the two arms were enshrined. They are said to bleed whenever any misfortune threatens the Church. They had bloodied the linen in which the friar had wrapped them when he ran off with them.
The Bollandists [Jesuit scholars who since the 1600s have critically studied the lives of the saints] give a list of occasions on which these arms have distilled blood, to the edification of the Tolentinese.
On July 17, 1676, the blood spouted from the left arm, and was examined by the vicar of the Bishop with great S. Nicolas Tolentini.
interest and delight; then by the Bishop, and finally by the magistrates of the town. This time the exuding of the blood portended the death of Clement X. Another eruption of blood on August 19. Others in 1679, and 1698; the great eruption of blood in 1699 was ordered to be celebrated with an octave by Innocent XII., with plenary indulgence to all who visited and adored the bleeding arms. Other effusions took place in 1699. Whether there has been any later pouring out of blood, the author does not know. A finger of the saint is preserved at Trepano, in Sicily. A portion of another, which was shown for long at S. Nicolasde-Port, in Lorraine, and which performed many miracles, appears not to have belonged to a human being. Another finger at Siena. At S. Angelo in the Marches of Ancona is a vial of the blood of the saint which is exposed annually to the veneration of the people on September 10. More of his blood at Ancona, more at Vitalliano, at Valencia, Venice, Nioza in Cyprus, Naples, Pistoja, Ferrara, a rag stained with his blood at Solmona. More of his blood at Ghent on a rag, given by Clement XI.; more at Antwerp, obtained in 1707. Statues of the saint are miraculous. A plaster image of the saint at Cordova bowed down and kissed the feet of a crucifix, and remained with lips adhering to the feet whilst the Apostles’ Creed was being sung. Another image, of marble, blazed.
S. Nicolas is represented with Purgatory open at his side, or with an angel leading him, generally, also, holding a lily, and with a star above his head.
Feast: September 10
One short email a day for nine days. The day's prayer, a line from St. Nicolas Tolentini's story, and a nudge to keep going.
From Sabine Baring-Gould, The Lives of the Saints, new edition in 16 vols. (London: John C. Nimmo, 1897–98); text from the Internet Archive scan (OCR, lightly cleaned; errors possible). Public domain.
From “Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)/St. Nicholas of Tolentino,” The Catholic Encyclopedia (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1907–1914), via Wikisource. Public domain. Matched by name and feast date; text unedited except for our bracketed notes in grey.
From Sabine Baring-Gould, The Lives of the Saints, new edition in 16 vols. (London: John C. Nimmo, 1897–98); text from the Internet Archive scan (OCR, lightly cleaned; errors possible). Public domain in the United States. Reproduced unedited, except for short bracketed notes in grey that we added to explain names and terms (“S.” is the old abbreviation for Saint). Some history and judgments reflect 19th-century scholarship.
