St. Jerome, a hero of solidarity and charity in past times of epidemic [1528-1537]
Today’s heroes of solidarity in the current situation of viral epidemic
The current coronavirus pandemic continues to particularly highlight the courage and heroism of many doctors, nurses and hospital service workers who, even taking all the often inadequate precautions, risk their lives, and often lose it , moved by a human and Christian sense of solidarity and altruism towards those who, having being affected by the disease, absolutely need their help.
Besides that, we are deeply touched by the suffering, the loneliness of so many patients who, being in intensive care, lie down on their beds, intubated and with no possibility of movement, if not for some sudden spasm that shakes their limbs. We are touched by their death in isolation, without the presence of loved ones at their bedside. Lastly, the image of so many coffins piled up, waiting for cremation without burial, sinks our hearts in a grip of anguish. A verse of the poet Virgil comes back to mind: “Reality is full of tears and the suffering of men destined for death upsets our mind”.
During its multi-millennial history humanity has often found itself in such situations, described by historians and poets: they highlight our human fragility, but at the same time the nobility of mind and the sacrifice of many people, the value of human solidarity and Christian charity, the greatest gesture of love on this earth: giving one’s own life for the brothers’ sake.
The example of Saint Jerome Miani.
In this perspective, we can also re-read the stories of heroism of many saints of the past, who dedicated themselves completely to alleviating the sufferings of the sick in the several contagions that have marked our civil and religious history over the past centuries.
I think in particular of Saint Jerome Miani, a Venetian lay saint (Venice 1486 – Somasca 1537) who, after his conversion to a fervent Christian life, put his whole life at the service of the poor. Although hailing from a family of ancient nobility, he started taking care of the last and, in particular, of the “putti derelitti”, i.e. the completely abandoned children. In this service, in the course of his life, apart from taking care of people affected by other diseases, Jerome had to face two epidemics by which he was himself affected: the first in 1528, from which he recovered, and the second in 1537, which was eventually the cause of his death.
Crowds of poor people flocking to Venice in 1527
In 1527 Italy was devastated by destruction and calamities caused by the passage of the army of the Lansquenets sent from Germany by the emperor Charles V with the order of sacking the city of Rome, as a way to bend the Pope Clement VII’s opposition to his politics. It was also a year of terrible famine and crowds of poor, deprived of means of subsistence, transported by boats from the mainland, from the other islands of the Lagoon and the Dalmatian territories of the Venetian Republic, flocked into the city of Venice, the capital.
The welfare structures of the city, although quite numerous and scattered all over the main island of Venice, as well as the several hospices of the city reached the point of collapse and were not in condition to cope with the flood of the poor, who were roaming around the streets, squares and bridges, begging for food, and often dying of hunger.
Marin Sanudo, the chronicler of the Venetian Republic, on the date of December 16, 1527, wrote in his diary (using his popular Venetian dialect): And so, everything is expensive, and every evening on the square of St. Mark’s basilica and on the streets and in the suburb of Rialto there are children screaming: “bread…! I am dying from hunger and cold!”. It is a scene that stirs compassion; and the next morning some of them are found dead in the porticoes of the Palazzo Ducale. Nevertheless no solution is sought (by the government).
And in February the situation was even worse. Sanudo writes: But to the purpose of not omitting the mention of noteworthy things, I want to entrust to eternal memory the record of the great famine that is in this land, and, besides, the poor who are crying in the streets are from this land. They have also come from the island of Buran by boat, with their clothes on the back and their children in the arms, asking for alms. Then countryside people, men and women, have come in great numbers, and they are on the bridge of Rialto with their children in the arms, begging for alms. And also a lot of them came from the region of Vicenza and Brescia, which is something astonishing. One cannot attend mass without being approached by ten poor people begging for money. One cannot open his purse to buy anything that the poor will not come to ask for help. Then late in the night they go knocking on the doors, and crying in the streets “I am dying of hunger”. Nevertheless on the part of the public (authority) no provision is made for this.
The public authority, as the diarist of Venice notes in both cases, for the time being did not move, instead the charity of private individuals, moved by religious ideals, was activated.
In that winter of 1527, so dramatically described by Sanudo, Jerome Miani put at disposal of these poor, all he had: he would bake bread in his house to distribute it. To the limits of his possibility, he would dress, host, help and comfort all the poor he came across. During the night he would pick up and bury the corpses abandoned in the streets. He spent all the money he had in this work and for this purpose he also sold tapestries, clothes and valuables he owned.
In addition to this personal commitment, Jerome in the same year 1527 was among the protagonists in the setting up of the hospital called “Bersaglio”, in an area behind of the Church known as “San Zanipolo” (Sts. John and Paul’s), that had been used for military exercises (Bersaglio means Target), precisely to shelter the poor who from every part of the region had sought refuge in Venice. In a short time several wooden shades were built, both for men and women, equipped with straw beddings, furnishings and essential clothing, and made ready to receive the poor. The improvised hospital was sufficient to give shelter and sustenance to over one hundred poor people.
The epidemic of 1528 in Venice: the case of the Bersaglio hospital
In the early months of 1528 an epidemic suddenly broke out in Venice, “a pestiferous disease, called (in Italian) petecchie, which covered the human body with reddish spots and stains of other colors”. We cannot clearly define the nature of this disease. It could be plague or a form of typhus called petechial: “an infectious, contagious, endemic disease, transmitted to humans by lice, clinically characterized by a sudden onset, petechial rash, high fever and a severe involvement of the nervous system”.
Numerous citizens -among whom Jerome- faced the problem of poverty and cared for the sick with personal sacrifice, compassion and Christian charity. On the contrary the public authority, in order to prevent the spread of the infection, issued on March 13, 1528, after months of inactivity, a very harsh and repressive law, which can be defined even cruel, against the poor who were not residents of Venice, when the plague had already spread around the city. They wanted to drastically prevent the arrival of other poor people from the mainland and the other islands. At the same time they prohibited begging on the streets and in front of churches at any cost. It was necessary to set up two or three “luoghi” (places) where the poor immigrants could find shelter and be given a straw bed. Furthermore, the law established that anyone who was caught wandering around the city had to be imprisoned, or publicly flogged, and then expelled from Venice. In addition to that, the boatmen who ferried people from the mainland to the city were given the order of warning the passengers about the absolute prohibition on begging. Otherwise their boat would have been burned. After the emergency and forced hospitalization, the temporary shelters built in the various places had to be dismantled and the non-Venetians poor had to be sent back to their towns or islands of origin. The on-going critical situation was acknowledged, but for the future no other beggars should be received into the city.
This decision was strongly supported by the “doge” (State governor) Andrea Gritti, linked to the aristocracy and the Venetian bankers, promoter of a renewal program of the city, concerned about the decorum of Venice and convinced -like many fellow Venetians – that begging favored the spread of diseases and brought dishonor to the state capital.
The Bersaglio hospital, that was under Jerome’s supervision, was however already active and was one of those indicated for forced hospitalization; in fact it was a hospital immediately available to receive beggars and infected people. When the law on the poor was issued, the pestilence was already spreading around and had begun to reap its victims in the hospital itself. We are given a clear information by the chronicler Sanudo, who for each day of the months of March, April, May made a report of the number of deaths in the hospital, thus allowing us to trace the curve and the peak of mortality, which – in the case of the Bersaglio hospital, only – was reached on April 16, 1528 with 22 deaths. On April 17, 15 more deaths were recorded, then the number slowly began to decrease until the end of May. A total of 293 people died in three months, 115 in March, 137 in April, 41 in May, in a structure that was meant to host just over a hundred patients.
The chronicler Sanudo still confirms that on April 2, 1528, Jerome Miani, along with Girolamo Cavalli, was superintendent of the hospital and adds the sad information that among the hospitalized many deaths occurred every day.
Jerome’s disease and recovery
It is in this period, between the end of February and the end of May of 1528, that Jerome was infected by the disease he was fighting against in the Bersaglio Hospital. The first anonymous biographer puts it in these terms: “the valiant soldier of Christ contracted the same infirmity”.
Known his diagnosis, Jerome confessed, received the Eucharist, recommended himself to the Lord in a fervent prayer, waiting patiently for the fulfilment of God’s will, absolutely unconcerned about his own treatment, as if the disease were not his own. The doctors told him that his situation was hopeless and that he could not expect anything but death. Against all hopes, however, he recovered and, although not yet fully cured he returned to the service of the sick with greater fervor, certain that God does not abandon those who work in his service and help the poor.
We do not know if Jerome faced the disease in his home, or – much more likely – in the very poor hospital that was under his responsibility. They were, as we know, wooden shacks equipped with poor straw beds and scarce furnishings, which were gradually increased by charitable donations. The masonry constructions for the men and women’s wards were only started in 1529 around a small chapel dedicated to St “Santa Maria dei Derelitti” (St Mary of the Derelict). (This chapel was later, in 1575, converted into a church by the famous architect Palladio, and its facade was rebuilt in 1670 by the architect Longhena).
It is certain that Jerome resumed with renewed fervor his charitable service on behalf of the people affected by the disease, trying his best to improve the conditions of the hospitalized people and to seek subsidies for the hospital. Another testimony dated 21 June 1528 gives us a sort of inventory of the goods in the wardrobe of the “poor of Jesus Christ”, who were hosted at Bersaglio: in addition to mattresses, bedsheets, skirts, jackets, etc. the donation of 95 new shirts is reported on that day.
Finally, a last important document of July 3, 1528 gives us the list of 103 people hosted at the Bersaglio, called by their first name and, in some cases, with the indication of their origin: they were Venetians from the city and islands of the Lagoon or from the Dalmatian coast, but most of them had come from the mainland, from the cities of the Venetian state, many of which in the future would be the field of Jerome’s charitable action: Bergamo, Brescia, Verona, Vicenza, Treviso, Udine. There were also people who arrived from the Duchy of Milan, Slavonia and Greece. They were all, men and women alike, derelict people, and among them there were lots of orphan children of both sexes, in whom Jerome recognized and served Jesus Christ with particular affection.
Jerome’s fight against infectious diseases of children
After the plague was over, Jerome dedicated himself in a special way to the “putti derelitti”, i.e. to children without parents and sustenance. Many of them, if they had managed to survive, ended up finding refuge in the various hospitals, where they continued to live in an idle situation of poverty. He thought to solve the problem at the root, giving these children tools to become autonomous and productive in their adult life. He collected them in some houses that would be reserved only for them. First he opened for them a house in Venice, near the church of St. Basil, then he put up a school for them next to the church of St. Roque, and finally he started gathering them in an area specially reserved for them in the so called Hospital of the Incurables. Then in 1532 he set out for a charity mission throughout the regions of Veneto and Lombardy, and did practically the same thing as in Venice, by putting up houses for the little ones in Bergamo, Milan, Somasca, Brescia, Pavia, Como. In all these communities, Jerome was concerned about giving the orphan children an education and a Christian upbringing. He also set up artisan workshops for them to learn a job that would afford them an honest livelihood in the future.
The expertise acquired by Jerome as head of the Bersaglio hospital and later of the hospital of the Incurables in Venice, as well as, in the course of his journey, his visiting the hospitals of Vicenza, Verona, Brescia, Bergamo, Milan allowed him to develop an excellent knowhow in the care of the sick and acquaintance with the treatments that were used at that time to counter various diseases: it was a knowledge that came in handy especially in looking after the abandoned children he gathered and educated.
One of the most common diseases among the young was scabies , a highly contagious infection due to parasites, invisible to the naked eye, the mites, which dig microscopic tunnels in the skin. This causes a continuous and relentless itching and ends up turning the infection into scabs and sores. Jerome managed to treat and cure this disease. This is attested by the Capuchin Friar Girolamo da Molfetta, one of St Jerome’s companions who was also witness of his death, and wrote a message to the poor and abandoned children gathered by the holy man : “Jerome began to carry out his desire by picking you up from manure in Bergamo first and then in other cities, where you were living afflicted by hunger, cold and nudity, to the point some of you would often be found dead… And with so much sweetness and kindness he welcomed you, healing your souls with the holy examples and testimony, and with his hands he would treat your physical infirmities, like ringworm and other very bad diseases … “. Also in his last letter, written by Somasca on January 11, 1537, Jerome asked the person in charge of the community of Bergamo to send him for the orphans “ointment to treat their mange“, adding the words “they need it very badly”.
This ability to cure is also attested in the beatification processes: “they also said that he used to treat and heal those poor (derelict children) who had ringworm … and at that time I spoke with some of those who claimed to have been children raised by said father Jerome… and these who had been cured by the ringworm were Cristoforo from Cedrì and the other Domenico from Zelo, (province of) Bergamo … “.
The charity, but above all the competence, the cold blood, the manual and curative ability of Jerome who did not retreat in front of any repugnant infirmity, had impressed the bishop of Bergamo Pietro Lippomano, a Venetian and personal friend of the Saint: “… he (Jerome) shows immense charity, so much clemency and pity, as he, using his own hands, washes ulcerative sores, cleanses infections, treats them with various medicaments and poultices, tolerating fetid smells and other types of filthiness,… and not only does not show any repulsion, but he smears them with his own hands as if they were redolent with sweet scents … “.
To treat his boys he also resorted to expert nurses or surgeons, as shown by his satisfaction with a certain Basilio, who regularly visited his orphans in Bergamo. Thus he writes to Ludovico Viscardi , the person in charge of the orphanage in the city of Bergamo: “If it is possible for you to assist him when he does the medications. Upon his arrival, make arrangements for him to be assisted, for the nurses to be ready to follow his orders, for everything to be in order: medicines, bandages, threads, gauze, needles and everything else “. As a reward for the work of this doctor, Jerome will see to it that his public consideration is increased, by sending him some good treatment for the children’s diseases, and will also look for it in some hospital of Brescia, where he is currently located or in some other city.
Another nursing skill of Jerome’s concerned eye care. In fact, we have a letter, written to Giovan Battista Scaini, friend and correspondent of our Saint and St. Cajetan Thiene, as a response to pressing request for a recipe that was prepared by Jerome himself for an eye ailment, almost certainly conjunctivitis. In fact, “tuzia” was used as a base, a greyish powder obtained from the processing of zinc, consisting of zinc, zinc oxide and other metals. An ancient medical dictionary specifies: “Tuzia is only used externally as an anti-ophthalmic. It is an ingredient of some ointments that are used to ease acute and chronic pains of the eyelids and conjunctiva. “
Jerome, on the basis of his competence, explains to his friend how the medicament should be prepared: it is necessary to start on June 24, the feast of St John the Baptist; take the ” tuzia officinalis” already prepared (available in the pharmacies of the time), and spread this grainy powder in a flat-bottomed cup. Then unripe grapes are squeezed (the medicine could therefore be made only in the months of June, July and the first days of August) and when the juice is clear, it is poured into the cup so that it only covers the layer of the tuzia; the product is exposed to the sun for forty days, alternating one day with spring water, and another with grape juice. After 40 days the tuzia thus treated is left to dry well, then it is ground in order to make it very fine, and it is sieved with a linen or cotton cloth. What remains is sealed in a tightly closed ampoule, ready to be used with a metal stick, sprinkled with this powder, which is gently inserted under the eyelids, raised and closed with the left hand, and then extracted with the right; the eye is to be kept closed for a quarter of an hour. It is better if the medication is applied when the patient goes to sleep.
In summary, Jerome with this recipe adds astringent, disinfectant and aseptic acids to the already medicinal qualities of the tuzia, produced by the pressing of unripe grapes.
This competence in the treatment of this eye disease leads us to deduce that Jerome had developed his specific ability to treat some kinds of conjunctivitis, allergic or bacterial and highly infectious. That is an illness that is frequent also today among children; and for sure it was much more so in the time of Jerome, because of the hygienic conditions and malnutrition. The Saint wrote this letter to his friend on the day of Our Lady, most likely on August 15, 1536.
Jerome’s death
Plagues, fueled by wars, bad harvests were very frequent in the society of the early sixteenth century. In Veneto, epidemics are reported in 1502, 1507, 1510, 1511, 1513, 1523, 1528. This recurrent calamity continued to increase the number of poor people seeking shelter and help in Venice. As was narrated above, Jerome contracted the plague for the first time in 1528 while he was at the service of the sick and recovered from it in an unexpected way.
He continued his service to the poor in Venice until the spring of 1532. Then he left for a charity mission in the regions of Veneto and Lombardy. It is not excluded that Jerome, who belonged socially to the Venetian aristocracy, but had made the radical choice of living with the poor, taking particular care of the orphans, and had experienced the wave of desperate homeless people who came from the mainland to die of pestilence at the Bersaglio hospital, willingly accept this mission, for which he had been requested, and somehow desired it.
In a Christian perspective he shared the opinion of the rulers, who wanted the poor to be assisted in their cities of origin, although unfortunately he knew that adequate means were not offered by the Venetian state.
“Seeing that the Christian people were like sheep without a shepherd, he left Venice and went to Bergamo”, which constituted the peripheral territory of the Venetian republic, where the service of help and assistance to the least in the society was still largely to be organized .
In Veneto and Lombardy he worked for about five years, being a “fervent and refuge of the poor, incendiary of charity”, organizing homes for orphan boys, orphan girls and women converted from prostitution. Some 300 people were involved in this network of help and assistance to the needy and this led Jerome to founding the “Company of the servants of the poor”, the name given by the Saint to the group of his followers, that after the Tridentine Council was destined to become the Order of the Somascan Fathers.
Periodical pestilences however continued to plague, constantly and inexorably, the territories of the Venetian republic, manifesting themselves with an almost endemic permanence now in one place now in the other, even though, -it must be specified-, the disease was sometimes confused with other epidemics such as smallpox or petechial typhus, or severe flu.
In the early days of the year 1537 a “pestiferous illness, which, poorly known by doctors, killed the person affected in fourteen or more days” spread in the Bergamo valley of St. Martin. Jerome himself in the letter written on January 11, 1537 writes: “we have almost all of the house members infected with serious illness and they reach the number of 16”. For the small community of orphans of Somasca it was a very high number. Jerome devoted himself to the care of his little ones with extraordinary concern and tenderness. The same children were aware of that and felt the affection of a father who did not spare himself and risked his own life. One of them, close to death, suddenly awoke and said:“I saw a beautiful chair surrounded by a great light, and in that light a little boy with a lettering in his hand that read: this is the chair of Jerome Miani”. The dream was the unconscious projection of a profound feeling: this child was expressing all his gratitude to Jerome who was at his bedside, perceiving his paternal love and sacrifice and expressing the conviction that he was an extraordinary man, a saint.
In those same days, Jerome had received from the Theatine bishop Msgr. Gianpiero Carafa, made cardinal by Pope Paul III on December 22, 1536, the pressing invitation to go to Rome to organize the care of orphans, “to work the work of the Lord” also in the capital of Christendom. Jerome gathered his collaborators, but he felt that this plague was to be deadly also to him and to them “he manifested that he was called both to Rome and to Heaven and said:” I think I will go to Christ. And almost suddenly he was caught by the pestilential fever, and in a few days he reached the end of his life giving a great example of holiness “.
Jerome had not spared himself, taking care of the sick at home and outside the house. He lived with his group of orphans in the castle of Somasca. On Sunday 4 of February of 1537 he suddenly felt ill. By his companions he was taken down to the village of Somasca and sheltered in a poor room belonging to the Ondei family. The course of the disease was very rapid. On his deathbed he consoled his orphaned children and his brothers Servants of the Poor, received the sacraments and died on the morning of February 8, assisted by the Superior of the Company Fr. Agostino Barili and by other religious collaborators such as the Capuchin friar Girolamo Molfetta and the Dominic Friar Tomaso da Bergamo, vice-prior of the convent of St. Stephen in Bergamo and confrere of Michele Ghisleri, the future Pius V, assistant inquisitor in that city.
The Dominican Friar Tomaso da Bergamo outlived Jerome by a few days. The same is to be said of an excellent doctor from the Italian region of Piedmont, whose name is not mentioned, who had helped the Saint to look after the sick. All of them were buried in the church of St. Bartholomew in Somasca, we do not know if on the same day as Jerome or some days after.
Today we remember with admiration doctors, nurses, priests, who give their lives for coronavirus patients. However, they renew the heroism of many others who, for an ideal of solidarity and charity, in the past centuries served the patients affected by contagious diseases: this is exactly what was done by those heroes of the past during the plague fever which raged in the small village of Somasca in February 1537, namely: Jerome Emiliani, head of a community of orphan boys and founder of the Company of the Servants of the Poor, his collaborating Dominican priest Friar Tomaso, and the excellent Piedmontese doctor who has put himself at the service of his children.
There is no greater love than someone’s who gives his life for his brothers.
Fr. Giuseppe Oddone crs