St. John Gualbert

St. John Gualbert

John Gualbert, born of a noble Florentine family, took up a military career at his father's wish. His only brother, Hugh, was slain by a relative, and it happened that on Good Friday, attended by armed soldiers, John met the slayer alone and unarmed on the road where they could not avoid each other. Because of John's reverence for the sign of the holy Cross, which his enemy, seeing death at hand, made with his arms in supplication, John graciously spared him and received him as a brother. Then he went to the Church of St. Minias, where, as he adored the Crucified, the image bent its head to him. Moved by this, he gave up the military life and, at the persuasion of St. Romuald, then living in the hermitage of Camaldoli, he put on the monastic habit. Later he founded a monastic Order under the Rule of St. Benedict in Vallombrosa, which had as its primary aims to do away with the stain of simony and to promulgate the apostolic faith. Full of virtues and merits and blessed with the companionship of Angels, he went to the Lord in his seventy-eighth year, the 12th day of July, 1073, at Passignano.

From New Liturgical Movement

In the altarpiece show above, by Giovanni del Biondo (ca. 1370), St John is shown forgiving his brother’s killer in the upper left section. Below it is depicted an especially famous episode in the ecclesiastical history of Florence, one which is connected to a contemporary of St John known as “Petrus Igneus - Fiery Peter.” A simoniac prelate, Peter of Pavia, was made bishop of Florence, much to the indignation of the populace, who demanded a trial by fire to determine the legitimacy of his appointment. Their appellant, a monk of St John’s order also called Peter, celebrated Mass in the presence of a crowd of some 3000 people; then, removing his chasuble (of course), he walked between two raging pyres set very close to each other, remaining totally unscathed, even though the fire seemed to fill his alb, and he sank into the hot coals up to his ankles. This was taken as God’s judgment that his cause was just, and Peter of Pavia was removed from the See at the order of Pope Alexander, while Peter the monk was eventually made a cardinal and Papal legate. He is now a blessed, and his feast is kept in Florence and by the Vallumbrosian order on February 8th.