Saint Seraphin of Ascoli (c. 1540-1604)

A religious landscape in fervour

The Italian sixteenth century is that of the Catholic Reformation. The Council of Trent (1545-1563) revives ecclesiastical discipline, the training of clerics and preaching; the mendicant orders know a new momentum. It is in this climate that, around 1540, in Montegranaro, in the March of Ancona, the boy is born whom the Church will later call Seraphin.^[5][6]

Montegranaro and the Capuchins

The Capuchins, the reformed branch of the Franciscans (see the Franciscan order and the founding of the Franciscans), spread through the small Italian towns with their convents of strict poverty. Montegranaro, a modest town of the Marches, thus saw friars pass through in search of bread and prayer. It is their ideal of evangelical poverty that will touch young Felice.^[7][8]

The Capuchins, founded in the sixteenth century in the wake of the Franciscan observance, insist on material poverty, contemplative prayer and the service of the little ones. This is exactly the programme that Seraphin will live, without theorizing it, for nearly half a century.^[9]

Birth and origins

According to the most detailed sources, Felice was born around 1540 in Montegranaro, the second of four children of a poor mason's family: Gerolamo (Rapagnano, or de Nicola according to other notices) and Teodora Giovannuzzi.^[10][11] (The surname variant is honestly noted: recent Italian usage and the Roman Martyrology give "de Nicola", while several biographical notices give "Rapagnano".)^[12]

The young shepherd

Less robust than his elder brother, Felice is put very young in charge of the flocks. The shepherd's life suits his inclination for silence, retreat and prayer: whole hours alone with his beasts, he prays.^[13] This pastoral childhood is not a gilded legend added afterwards: it is the soil of all his religious life, made of recollection and small tasks.

The call to religious life

Around the age of sixteen, the young man works on a building site with his brother. History retains the role of the foreman's daughter, who, having seen him pious and simple, encourages him to enter the convent; he may first have thought of the hermits of Tolentino.^[14] Whatever the exact path, the essential is constant: the young shepherd of the Marches chooses religious life rather than marriage and a trade.

The novitiate at Jesi

In 1556, Felice is admitted to the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin and sent to the novitiate of Jesi, in the Marches. After the year of probation, he takes the religious name of Seraphin (Serafino), in reference to the seraphim, the angels of divine ardour.^[15][16]

A lay brother, not a priest

Seraphin is a lay brother: he will not be ordained a priest. His place in the order is that of humble service: the door of the convent, the quest for the community, the chores. It is precisely this ordinary condition that will make him a model of both lay and religious holiness.^[17]

A life from convent to convent

After his profession, Seraphin is sent to several convents of the Marches. The notices stress that he is sometimes transferred from house to house for his very excess of generosity: he gives away everything that passes through his hands. But the constant of his ministry is clear: porter (he welcomes the poor and pilgrims at the door) and quester (he goes to beg bread and alms for the community).^[18][19]

The service of porter is no detail in the Franciscan tradition: it is the office that places the friar in permanent contact with the poorest, pilgrims, beggars and travellers. The convent porter is the face of the house to the outside world. Seraphin brought to it a patience and a kindness that struck his contemporaries.^[20][21]

The service of quester (or bread quester) obliged him to travel the roads of the Marches, from farm to farm, to bring back the community's subsistence. It is on these paths, among peasants and small craftsmen, that he exercised the greater part of his silent apostolate: a word, a sign of the cross, a shared rosary.^[22]

Settling at Ascoli Piceno (c. 1590)

Around 1590, he settles permanently at the Capuchin convent of Ascoli Piceno, where he serves for more than ten years as quester. His reputation for holiness is such that in 1602, the people of Ascoli oppose a possible transfer: they want to keep their good brother.^[23]

Nights of adoration

Capuchin tradition holds that he devoted his nights to adoration before the Blessed Sacrament, after the day's toil.^[24] This trait, common to several saints of the century, takes on in him a particular relief: the man who could not read spent long hours before Christ present in the Eucharist. Eucharistic adoration, in Capuchin spirituality, naturally prolongs the contemplation of the crucifix: it is the same Christ, dead, risen and present in the host.^[25]

The crucifix and the rosary

This is the mark of Seraphin's spirituality. Barely able to read, he had no books: he had the crucifix and the rosary. Vatican News sums it up in a phrase that has become famous: he consoled people with "his two books", the crucifix and the rosary.^[26] This simple devotion is exactly what the Franciscan and Capuchin tradition recommends: the contemplation of Christ on the cross (see miraculous crucifixes) and the Marian prayer of the rosary (see why Catholics pray the rosary and what the saints say about the rosary).^[27]

The crucifix is not for him a mere object of devotion: it is the book in which he reads the love of God. The rosary is the second book: the meditation of the mysteries of Christ's life through the intercession of Mary. Two books, two paths to the same God.^[28]

Humility under every trial

Seraphin is said to have been ridiculed by some of his confreres for his manual clumsiness and his little learning. Tradition reports that he remained at peace, and that a voice from the tabernacle would have strengthened him with these words: "To serve God, one must die to oneself and accept adversity, of whatever kind it may be."^[29]

Other traits of the same humility are preserved: he presented the crucifix to visitors who wished to venerate his hands or his miraculous habit; he had resolved to recite a rosary for those who tormented him.^[30] The Roman Martyrology sums him up in two words: a "true poor man", he "shone by humility and piety". ^[31]

« Ad Ascoli, San Serafino da Montegranaro (Felice) de Nicola [...] vero povero, rifulse per umiltà e pietà. » : Roman Martyrology, 12 October^[32]

A kindness that consoles

Simple people from Ascoli and the surrounding area came to find him at the convent door. He did not preach long sermons: he showed the crucifix, gave his rosary, listened. This kindness and this patience are the two qualities that modern notices unanimously attribute to him.^[33][34][35]

The lesson of the "two books"

What is there to retain from this spirituality, if not a lesson of evangelical simplicity? Where others pile up books and concepts, Seraphin had Christ on the cross and Mary's rosary. It is the same doctrine that Saint Francis of Assisi recommended to unlettered friars: not to be ashamed to pray simply, to let the contemplation of the Crucified and the intercession of the Virgin instruct the heart where school has not passed.^[36][37]

The rosary was not for him one devotion among others: it was his means of evangelization, his way of remembering souls, of consoling the afflicted and of keeping union with the Passion of Christ.^[38] This is why iconography always shows him with the crucifix and the rosary, and never with an open book.

This trait is not a local anecdote: it joins a whole Franciscan and Capuchin tradition that makes simple prayer the path of the unlettered toward God. Seraphin left no writings: his "doctrine" holds in two objects and in a life given.^[39][40]

The last days

Seraphin dies at the Capuchin convent of Ascoli Piceno on 12 October 1604, at about sixty-four years of age. Italian notices specify that he would have insistently asked for viaticum before expiring.^[41][42]

Immediate veneration

Immediately after his death, his reputation for holiness spreads. Pope Paul V authorizes the lighting of a lamp on his tomb, an honour reserved for those reputed saints.^[43] The Capuchin church-convent of Ascoli becomes a shrine where his body rests.^[44]

The beatification of 1729

On 18 July 1729, in the basilica of Saint Peter in Rome, Pope Benedict XIII beatifies Seraphin of Montegranaro.^[45][46] Benedict XIII is himself a pope of the Capuchin family (he had been cardinal-protector of the Capuchins): the beatification of a simple lay brother by his hands is no accident.^[47]

The canonization of 1767

On 16 July 1767, Pope Clement XIII solemnly canonizes him, together with several other saints including Saint John Cantius, Saint Joseph Calasanz, Saint Joseph of Cupertino, Saint Jerome Emiliani and Saint Jane Frances de Chantal.^[48] The bull of canonization praises a saint who "knew how to read and understand the great book of life": a phrase that echoes his earthly "two books", the crucifix and the rosary.^[49]

12 October

The Church celebrates Saint Seraphin of Ascoli on 12 October, the day of his death, on the date fixed by the liturgical calendar.^[50][51] The French Bishops' Conference notes him on this date in the calendar of saints of the day.^[52] In the general Roman calendar, his memorial is attached to the Franciscan family; the Capuchin order celebrates it with a particular solemnity.^[53]

Patron of Montegranaro

Seraphin is the patron of Montegranaro, his native town, where his memory remains alive.^[54]

The iconography of Saint Seraphin is simple and faithful to his life:

The painting by Augusto Mussini in the Capuchin church of Ascoli Piceno (cycle of the life of Saint Seraphin) illustrates in particular his vocation, his virtues and the veneration of flowers around his memory.^[55]

The Capuchin habit (brown woollen robe, hood, three-knotted cord) is his religious sign; the crucifix and the rosary are his constant attributes; the satchel or quester's basket recalls his questing service.^[56][57]

• The Franciscan order: the religious family of which the Capuchins are a reformed branch.
• The founding of the Franciscans: the origins of the order of Saint Francis of Assisi.
• Saint Francis of Assisi: the founder whose ideal of poverty Seraphin follows.
• Saint Clare of Assisi: the Franciscan figure of poverty and contemplation.
• Why Catholics pray the rosary: the prayer that was one of Seraphin's "two books".
• What the saints say about the rosary: the tradition of Marian prayer in the lives of the saints.
• Miraculous crucifixes: devotion to Christ on the cross in the history of the Church.