Saint John of Matha (1160–1213)

Birth at Faucon, in Haute-Provence

Trinitarian tradition has John of Matha born on 23 June 1160 at Faucon, a small village near Barcelonnette, in the Ubaye valley, then attached to the diocese of Embrun, in Haute-Provence.^[10][11] His father, Euphemius of Matha, was a lord whom tradition holds to have been of Catalan origin, settled in Provence; the family belonged to the mountain petty nobility. Critical historians note that the exact date is uncertain — some early sources propose c. 1150 or 1154 — and that the details of his childhood belong to a late hagiography; but the Provençal roots and noble birth are commonly accepted.^[12][13]

The age was that of the Crusades, of Saracen piracy and of raids: on every shore of the western Mediterranean, Christians were carried off and reduced to slavery in Muslim lands — then dominated, in North Africa as in Andalusia, by the Almohad empire (1147–1269) — while Muslims suffered a symmetrical fate in Christian lands. It was in this world of chains and ransoms that John's vocation would mature.^[14][15][16]

Studies: from Aix to the schools of Paris

Destined for study, the young John was first educated at Aix-en-Provence, where tradition credits him, besides letters, with learning the arts of a knight's son — horsemanship and arms.^[17] But it was toward the great intellectual centre of Christendom that he turned: the schools of Paris, then in full expansion — Notre-Dame cathedral, the abbey of Sainte-Geneviève — the nascent capital of scholastic theology, at the time when the corporation of masters and students, which the privilege of Philip Augustus (1200) and then the statutes of the legate Robert of Courçon (1215) would erect into a University, was taking shape.^[18]

In Paris, John devoted himself entirely to theology. He obtained there, according to the sources, the degree of doctor, and acquired a reputation for learning and piety. The Capetian capital, under the reign of Philip Augustus, was also the place where the forms of protection that would make his future work possible were forged: the Bishop of Paris, Maurice de Sully, and soon the king himself.^[19][20]

Doctor of theology and priest

His formation complete, John was ordained priest around the month of December 1192, at about thirty-two years of age.^[21] The event was nothing outward for him: he approached the priesthood as a total gift of self, in a climate of intense prayer. Far from seeking a career as a master or a prelate, he prepared for his first Mass as for a decisive encounter — and it was precisely there that God awaited him.

The angel, the two captives and the red-and-blue cross

The tradition of the order places the founding vision on 28 January 1193, at the first Mass of John of Matha — celebrated, it is said, in the chapel of the Bishop of Paris. At the elevation, John saw appear an angel (or, according to other accounts, Christ himself) dressed in white, bearing on his breast a red-and-blue cross, and holding by the hand two chained captives: one a Christian, the other a Moor.^[22][23][24]

This language is wholly Trinitarian: the red-and-blue cross on a white ground would compose the emblem of the order — the red vertical bar and the blue horizontal bar — white referred to the Father, red to the Son shedding His blood, blue to the Holy Spirit. The two captives, the Christian and the Muslim, signify that redemption extends to all, and that the liberation of bodies is the image of the liberation of souls.^[25][26]

The meaning: a call to the redemption of captives

John understood the vision as a call: to devote himself to the ransom of enslaved Christians. But, aware of the gravity of such an undertaking and of the need for ecclesial discernment, he did not launch out alone. He sought a guide, took time for prayer, and set out in quest of a man of God able to test him and accompany him.^[27][28]

After this vision, John, according to tradition, saw nothing left but one urgency: the captives to be delivered.^[29]

The hermit of Cerfroid

Tradition tells that John withdrew to an aged hermit, Felix of Valois, who lived in the solitude of Cerfroid, in Brie, on the borders of the diocese of Meaux.^[30][31] The two men, so the story goes, prayed at length together; one night, near a fountain, they saw a stag bearing between its antlers a red-and-blue cross — a sign confirming to Felix the mission of his guest.

On the very person of Felix of Valois, modern historians express strong reservations: his existence, as Trinitarian historiography describes it, is disputed, and several critics see in him a figure partly reconstructed after the fact to give the order a co-founder. Caution is therefore required: tradition reserves him a foremost place, which the primary documentation cannot establish with the same certainty as the role of John of Matha.^[32][33]

The project of a new order

From this retreat was born the idea of an order devoted wholly to the redemption of captives. The originality was great: at a time when Christendom answered slavery with the military orders (Templars, Hospitallers), John of Matha imagined an unarmed militia, which would not fight the captor but pay the ransom of the captive. Charity, not the sword, would be the instrument of deliverance.^[34][35]

"The first official institution, unarmed, devoted to the service of redemption, armed only with mercy, with the sole intention of restoring hope and faith to the brethren suffering under the yoke of slavery." — Official website of the Order of the Most Holy Trinity, presenting the work of John of Matha^[36]

The journey to Rome in the winter of 1197

Faithful to the principle that a foundation should place itself under the authority of Rome, John of Matha — accompanied, according to tradition, by Felix of Valois — undertook the journey to the Eternal City in the harsh winter of 1197.^[37] There he found a young, energetic pope favourable to new orders: Innocent III, elected in January 1198, who would reform the Church, soon approve the first companions of Francis of Assisi and Dominic, and make his pontificate the apogee of the medieval papacy.

The bull Operante divinae dispositionis clementia

On 17 December 1198, Innocent III approved the foundation and confirmed its Rule by the bull Operante divinae dispositionis clementia.^[38][39] The order received its name and its end: Order of the Most Holy Trinity (and, very early, and of Captives). John of Matha became its first minister general. The juridical novelty was considerable: for the first time, an institution of the Church was officially established with, as its constitutive purpose, the ransom of prisoners of the faith.^[40]

"Through the merciful working of the divine disposition…" — Incipit of the bull of Innocent III approving the order, 17 December 1198^[41]

The confirmatory vision of Innocent III

Tradition adds that the pope himself, hesitating, is said to have received during Mass a vision like John's — an angel with two captives — which decided him to approve the work and to fix the red-and-blue cross as the insignia of the order.^[42][43] As with the vision of the first Mass, the historian distinguishes here the historical kernel — the pontifical approval, attested by the bull — from the hagiographical envelope, of later date, which stresses its supernatural character.

The rule, the habit, the cross

The order adopted the Rule of Saint Augustine, completed by constitutions of its own marked by great austerity.^[44][45] Its members wear a white habit stamped with the red-and-blue cross on the breast and the scapular; in France, this sign also earned them the name of Matharins, from their Paris convent of Saint-Mathurin. The motherhouse, the head of the order, was established at Cerfroid, in Brie.^[46][47]

The third of revenues: the "third part"

The most original mark of the order is inscribed in its economic rule: one third of all its revenues — the tertia pars — was to be reserved for the ransom of captives.^[48][49] The other two thirds served for the life of the brethren and for the service of the poor and the sick, the order also staffing hospitals. This "third part" made redemption not an occasional work, but a structural obligation, engraved in the very accounts of the community.

Trinity and mercy: the spirituality of the order

The spirituality of John of Matha unites two poles: the contemplation of the Holy Trinity and mercy toward the captives. To ransom a slave, for him, is to imitate Christ the Redeemer who paid with His blood the ransom of men; and it is to render visible, in history, the love of God thrice holy. The motto of the order — Gloria Tibi Trinitas, et captivis libertas, "Glory to You, O Trinity, and liberty to the captives" — sums up this double passion.^[50][51]

The first redemptions (1201, Morocco, Tunis)

From 1201 onward, the order conducted its first redemptions: brethren crossed the sea to negotiate and pay for the liberation of captive Christians.^[52] Tradition attributes to John of Matha himself several journeys to Morocco, to Tunis and to Spain, and tells that he brought back hundreds of captives — a famous account evokes one hundred and ten prisoners delivered at Tunis in 1202.^[53][54] Twentieth-century historians consider that the precise figures and itineraries of these journeys largely belong to hagiographical amplification; but the fact of a real ransoming activity from the earliest years of the order is well established.^[55]

San Tommaso in Formis and the Roman mosaic

At Rome, Innocent III gave the Trinitarians the hospital and church of San Tommaso in Formis, on the Caelian Hill, which became the second great home of the order and the place of John of Matha's death.^[56] Above the old doorway there still stands a mosaic dated to c. 1210, the work of the Roman workshop of the Cosmati — signed "MAGISTER IACOBUS CUM FILIO SUO COSMATO FECIT HOC OPUS": Christ enthroned, holding by the hand two chained captives, one white, the other black, beneath the inscription "Signum Ordinis Sanctae Trinitatis et Captivorum" ("emblem of the Order of the Holy Trinity and of Captives").^[57] This masterpiece, contemporary with the saint, is the oldest figured witness to the emblem of the order: it attests the symbol as the first Trinitarians wore it, without thereby establishing the private vision of 1193, which no mosaic can prove.

The unarmed "commerce of charity"

The work of John of Matha invented an unprecedented form of charity: a peaceful ransom, negotiated, paid for, without recourse to arms. Where the Crusade confronts the adversary, the Trinitarian treats with him to deliver the weak. It is, in the order's own phrase, the first institution "armed only with mercy".^[58] This logic — paying the ransom rather than shedding blood — gives the order a singular face in medieval Christendom, and brings it close to the work that the Mercedarians of Peter Nolasco would carry on a generation later.

The last years

Worn out by journeys, fasts and the government of the order, John of Matha spent his last years in Rome, at the convent of San Tommaso in Formis, divided between prayer, the formation of his brethren and care for the captives.^[59][60] Tradition shows him exhorting his sons to fidelity, commending to them above all the glory of the Trinity and the service of prisoners.

Death and relics

He died on 17 December 1213, in Rome, aged about fifty-three.^[61][62] First buried at San Tommaso in Formis, his body then knew the vicissitudes of the order's history: tradition reports that his relics were transferred to Spain, to Madrid, in 1655, where the Discalced Trinitarians venerated them.^[63][64] His memory remains inseparably bound to the city of Rome, where he had had his work approved and where he breathed his last.

What the sources establish

The historical kernel of the life of John of Matha is solid: his Provençal origin, his Parisian theological formation, the foundation of the Trinitarian order, its approval by Innocent III on 17 December 1198 (attested by the bull), the mission of ransoming captives from the earliest years, his death at Rome in 1213 and the contemporary mosaic of San Tommaso in Formis.^[65][66][67] These facts do not depend only on edifying stories: they are anchored in documents and monuments.

Felix of Valois and Trinitarian historiography

By contrast, a large part of the traditional narrative comes from late hagiographies, above all of the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries, which enriched — and sometimes invented — details: precise itineraries, figures of captives, miracles, and even the figure of Felix of Valois, whose historicity is today disputed.^[68][69] Twentieth-century research has shown that several famous episodes (the numbered redemptions, certain prodigies) lack documentary foundation. These sources must therefore be read with discernment.

How to read the tradition

This critical finding does not oblige us to reject everything. The amplification of a saint's life by later piety is a constant phenomenon, which does not erase the first fact: a man really did found, at the turn of the thirteenth century, an order devoted to the ransom of captives, and that order really did deliver slaves for centuries. The right attitude is neither the scepticism that would deny the saint on the pretext that his legend grew, nor the credulity that would take every late detail for an established fact: it is to distinguish degrees of certainty, while keeping for the work itself — thousands of captives restored to freedom — its historical and spiritual weight.

From Trinitarian cult to Roman confirmation

Venerated from his death by the Trinitarians, John of Matha was not canonized by a solemn process as the term would later be understood, but by a confirmation of cult — a form of canonization called equipollent. This official recognition was granted by Pope Alexander VII, c. 1665–1666, after the transfer of the relics to Spain.^[70][71][72] His cult, long borne by the order, thus became that of the universal Church.

The feast: from 8 February to 17 December

In the Roman calendar, his feast was first fixed on 8 February.^[73] It is today celebrated on 17 December, the anniversary of his death (dies natalis) and — by a happy coincidence — the anniversary of the approval of the order in 1198.^[74] It is on this date that the Church celebrates the "father of captives".

Patronage and posterity

John of Matha is invoked as patron of captives and prisoners, and of the order he founded. A statue depicts him among the founders of orders on the colonnade of Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome. His work long outlived him: the Order of the Trinitarians, reformed in the sixteenth century by Saint John Baptist of the Conception, still pursues today, in new forms, the service of persecuted Christians and captives of the faith — faithful to the motto received from a Provençal visited by God one morning in January 1193.^[75][76]

In 1998, for the eighth centenary of the approval of the Rule, Saint John Paul II addressed to the Trinitarians a message exhorting them to remain faithful to this charism of redemption and mercy.^[77]

• Reference sources and notices: Encyclopædia Universalis, art. "Jean de Matha"; Catholic Encyclopedia / Wikipedia (FR and EN), art. "Jean de Matha / John of Matha"; Nominis (French Bishops' Conference), notice "Saint Jean de Matha"; Encyclopædia Britannica, art. "Saint John of Matha".
• Sources of the order: official website of the Order of the Most Holy Trinity and of Captives (trinitari.org), historical notice; Trinitarian province of Canada (trinitaires.ca); Message of Saint John Paul II to the Minister General of the Trinitarians (7 June 1998, vatican.va).
• Art and places: the mosaic of San Tommaso in Formis in Rome (Cosmati workshop, c. 1210), the oldest figured witness to the Trinitarian ideal; Cerfroid, head of the order in Brie.
• Related articles on Ignispedia: Pope Innocent III, who approved the order in 1198; the Order of the Trinitarians (rule, habit, redemptions, reform); the Mercedarians Saint Peter Nolasco and Saint Raymond Nonnat, the other family of the ransom of captives; the great contemporary founders Saint Dominic and Saint Francis of Assisi; Saint Louis and the age of the Crusades.