Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 8.djvu/541

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

JOHN


473


JOHN


known, John of God, also l)iciding him go to Granada. There he was so deeply impressed by the preaching of Blessed John of Avila that he distributed his worldly goods and went through the streets of the city, beating his breast and calling on God for mercy. For some time his sanity was doubted by the people and he was dealt with as a madman, until the zealous preacher obliged him to desist from his lamentations and take some other method of atoning for his past life. He then made a pilgrimage to the shrine of Our Lady of Guadeloupe, where the nature of his vocation was re- vealed to him by the Blessed Virgin. Returning to Granada, he gave himself up to the service of the sick and poor, renting a house in w-hich to care for them, and after furnishing it with what was necessary, he searched the city for those afflicted with all manner of disease, bearing on his shoulders any who were unable to walk.

For some time he was alone in his charitable work, soliciting Ijy night the needful supplies, and by day at^ tending scrupulously to the needs of his patients and the care of the hospital; but he soon received the co- operation of charitable priests and physicians. Many beautiful stories are related of the heavenly guests who visited him during the early days of herculean tasks, which were lightened at times by St. Raphael in person. To put a stop to the saint's habit of exchang- ing his cloak with any beggar he chanced to meet, Don Sebastian Ranu'rez, Bishop of Tuy, had made for him a habit, which was later adopted in all its essentials as the religious garb of his followers, and he imposed on him for all time the name given him by the Infant Je- sus, John of God. The saint's first two companions, Antonio Martin and Pedro Velasco, once bitter enemies who had scandalized all Granada with their quarrels and dissipations, w-ere converted through his prayers and formed the nucleus of a flourishing congregation. The former advanced so far on the way of perfection that the saint on his death-bed commended him to his followers as his successor in the government of the order. The latter, Peter the Sinner, as he caUed him- self, became a model of humility and charity.

Among the many miracles which are related of the saint the most famous is the one commemorated in the Office of his feast, his rescue of all the inmates during a fire in the Grand Hospital at Granada, he himself passing through the flames unscathed. His boundless charity extended to widows and orphans, those out of emplojTnent, poor students, and fallen women. After thirteen years of severe mortification, unceasing prayer, and devotion to his patients, he died amid the lamentations of all the inhabitants of Granada. His last illness had resulted from an heroic but futile effort to save a young man from drowning. The magis- trates and nobility of the city crowded about his death-bed to express their gratitude for his services to the poor, and he was buried with the pomp usually reserved for princes. He was beatificfl by Urban Vni, 21 September, 16.3S, and canonized by Alexan- der Vni, 16 October, 1690. Pope Leo XIlI made St. John of God patron of hospitals and the dying. (See also Brothers Hospitallers of St. John of God.)

Acta 5iS., 1 March, I, 813: de Castro, Miraculosa vida y santas obraa del. b. Juan de Dios (Granada, 1588); Girard de Ville- THIERRY, Vie de s. Jean de Dieu (Paris, 1691); Butler. Lives of the Saints, SM.arch; Beissel in Kirchenlex.,s. v. Johannes von

Goa. F. M. RcDGE.

John of Hauteville, moralist and satirical poet of the twelfth century (flourished about 1184). Little is known of his life. There is not much probability in the opinion that he was born in England, and he was not a Benedictine monk. The only work that can be attributed to him with certainty has for its title the name of its hero " .Archithrenius" (The Prince of Lamentations). It is a Latin poem in eight cantos. In a prose prologue the hero deplores the unmerited woes of men, beginning with his own, and announces


that he is going to Nature to seek the remedy for them. He begins by entering the palace of Venus and describes the beauty of one of the members of the goddess's retinue (I). Thence he passes to the Land of Gorging, inhabited by the Belly-worship- pers {V entricolai) , and to the prevailing sensuality he opposes the sobriety of the "White Brothers" (II). He comes to Paris and delivers a pompous eulogy of that city, describing, in contrast, the WTetchedness of the students — a valuable piece of first-hanil evidence in regard to the period when the LTniversity of Paris was lal.)oriously developing itself (III). Archithrenius then visits the Mountain of Ambition, which is situated in Macedon, near Bella, the birthplace of Alexander, greatest of conquerors, and is crowned with the palaces of kings (IV). The Mountain of Presumption forms a pendant to this, and is inhabited mostly by ecclesiastics and monks. A eulogj' of Henry II, King of England and Duke of Normandy, is here dragged in clumsilj'. But the hero discovers a gigantic monster. Cupidity, ami the en- counter calls forth a picture of the greediness of prel- ates. In another digression the hero contrives to relate the fabulous history of the Kings of Britain, in the main following Geofjrey of Monmouth (V). In the next canto we come to Thule, the abode of the philosophers and sages of ancient Greece, and they vie with each other in declaiming against vices (VI- VIII). Lastly, Archithrenius meets Nature on a flowery plain, surrounded by a brilliant throng of attendants. He falls at her feet. She begins with a complete course of cosmography and astronomy in five hundred lines, and ends by listening to the re- quest of Archithrenius. For remedy, she prescribed for him marriage with a young girl whose physical beauty is minutely described. In the prologue this damsel was Moderation, but here there is nothing abstract about her, and Nature instructs her disciple in his conjugal duties (IX). These and other passages in the work exhibit a certain degree of sensuahty. The imitation of the Latin poets is betrayed in the plagiarizing of whole verses at a time. John of Haute- ville dedicated his work to Gautier de Coutances just when the latter had left the See of Lincoln for that of Rouen (11S4). The poem had a great success. It was frequently copied and commented before being published in 1517, at Paris, by Jodocus Badius Ascen- cius. The latest edition is that of Th. Wright in " Latm Satirical Poets of the Twelfth Century" (Rolls Series, London, 1872).

GlNGUENF in HistoiTe litteraire de la France, XIV (Paris, 1817), 569; BuL.EUS (Dn Boulay). Htstoria universilalis Pari- siensis, II (Paris. 1665), 750. For a supplementary bibliog- raphy see Chevalier. Bio-bibliographie, II, 242.

Paul Lej.\y.

John of Janduno, an Averroistic philosopher, theo- logian, and pi)litic:d \\Titer of the fourteenth century. John of J:induno (.Johannes de (_ienduno, de tianduno, and de Gandavo) and John of (land (or less correctly, of Ghent) are now generally said to have been two differ- ent persons. The former was born about the year 1.300, graduated in arts at the College of Navarre (University of Paris), WTote a work entitled "De Laudibus Parisiis", and, in collaboration with Marsil- ius of Padua, composed the celebrated " Defensor pacis", directed against Pope John XXII, for which the authors were condemned in 1327. John of Gand was born about 1270 or 1280, studied theology at the Sorbonne, and after having served as curt' at Kiel- drecht was made a canon of the cathedral of Paris. These facts seem to be clearly established. However, there are extant a number of works, mostly philosophi- cal, which are ascribed to Johannes de Genduno, Gan- duno, or Gandavo, and it is difficult to say whether they were wTitten by John of Janduno or by John of Gand.

These works include commentaries on Peter Lom- bard's "Books of Sentences", on Aristotle's " Phys-