LIFE OF
SAINT CAMILLUS
by

C. C. MARTINDALE, S.J.

NEW YORK

SHEED & WARD
1946

FIRST PUBLISHED 1946
BY SHEED AND WARD, INC.
63 FIFTH AVENUE,
NEW YORK, 3

DE LICENTIA SUPERIORUM ORDINIS
MARTIN D’ARCY, S.J.
PRAEP. PROV. ANGLIAE

13 Dec. 1945

NIHIL OBSTAT; EDOUARDUS CAN. MAHONEY, S. TH. D.

Censor deputatus
IMPRIMATUR !

E. MORROGH BERNARD, VIC. GEN.

WESTMONASTERII, DIE 8 MAH, 1946

PRINTED

IN

GREAT BRITAIN

gOpQzin
INTRODUCTION
When I was first asked to write a Life of St. Camillus
for Denmark, I feared I might not find here sufficient
. material for a book which, while short, should yet be
‘scientific’ and up to date. But the Camillan Fathers of
Aalborg most kindly sent me literature in French, Spanish,
English, German, Italian and indeed American, which
convinced me that while much yet remains to be done
as to the history of the Camillan Order, nothing sub­
stantial is likely to be discovered hereafter about the
Saint himself.
gt. Camillus de Lellis lived a life of extreme publicity.
Witnesses to his work and character were innumerable.
He might have been canonised at once after his death
had not Urban VIII (1623-1644) insisted upon new and
stringent rules about canonisation. Hence the official
” examination of Camillus’s career (1618-1629) produced
masses of information else unhoped-for ; 31 MS. volumes
and a multitude of other documents were the result; and,
almost more important, Prospero Lambertini, afterwards
Benedict XIV, by his intensive study of the ‘process’
of Camillus, was inspired to write his magisterial work on
Beatification and Canonisation. One may say that that
‘process’ is a watershed in the history of Canonisation.
Fr. Sanzio Cicatelli was for 25 years a companion of
Camillus and possessed an enormous dossier of what
concerned him even before the Saint died. In 1615 he
produced his biography which was re-edited four times
before his death in 1627. He had however to omit much
for fear of offending many still alive ; nor could he use the
material accumulated during the Process of Canonisation.
Fr. Dolera in 1742, and following editions, incorporated
V

Vi

INTRODUCTION

his and more, and the method of merely padding Cicatelli’s work continued to our own times, thereby dulling
not a little (I feel) his vivacious style. Nor could his work
fully satisfy modern standards of criticism. In fact,
hardly any serious research seems to have been attempted
till the advent of Fr. Mario Vanti, MX This scholar
has indeed deserved well of St. Camillus. His Life of the
Saint (1929) utilised all that was already known but also
a great deal of unedited material; and as time went on
he made many discoveries of manuscripts written by the
Saint himself, and much that enabled him to correct
Cicatelli himself on points, e.g., of chronology. His
monographs on the hospitals of Santo Spirito and San
Giacomo, on the Plague at Milan in 1630, and other
works, display a massive erudition, a treatment of his
material which is at once sincere, sober, and yet lighthanded and transfused with a sense of humour refreshing
to meet with anywhere, but not least in the Life of a
Saint. The same qualities are met with in the Camillan
magazine Domesticum.
For the sake of brevity I seldom refer to authorities,
but may say here once and for all that I rely almost
wholly on Fr. Vanti as to what concerns directly St.
Camillus ; as for the period or what preceded and followed
it, I have used the standard books or notes I had previously
taken. Nor have I tried to write what is ‘edifying’: if a
Saint is truthfully portrayed—even his imperfections
or ‘eccentricities’ undisguised—provides the edifica­
tion without impertinent comments by the author.
I feel that this book should, in some sense, express my
gratitude not only to St. Camillus (whose birthday, I
like to reflect, is also. mine) but to so many hospitals
that I have known either as patient or as visiting the sick
there. My first priestly experience was in the Incurables’
Hospital at Donnybrook, Dublin ; and during the previous

INTRODUCTION

vii

war many of my happiest hours were spent in military
hospitals. And again, I have to thank so many surgeons,
doctors or nurses who have ministered to me personally,
or whose cheerful self-sacrifice I have so much admired.
Certainly I would wish that all of them should have
the added grace of the Catholic Faith; for there is a
Catholic way of looking at life and still more, at death ;
and if it is happier to live in a Catholic atmosphere, it is
almost necessary to die in one, if that tremendous act
of Death is to be accomplished with full spiritual satis­
faction. And St. Camillus would assuredly have agreed
that the Sacraments of the Sick are more likely to be
administered if a hospital staff is not afraid to tell the
- dying that they are gravely ill. In this hour, then, when so
many thousands of—dare I say
‘innocent sinners’
are being hurled into the next world, or crawling into it in
agony, may St. Camillus pray especially for the battle­
fields, and for the famine and pestilence that stalk in the
wake of war. And may we, who all of us are sick, be ever
more vitally incorporated into Christ, in whom alone is
everlasting health.
C. C. Martindale, S.J.
Copenhagen; 1943-45.

P.S.—The last sentence has been left unaltered. These
pages were published in Danish (Arnold Busck), in the
translation kindly made by Fru Benedicta Berggreen and
Count Christian Holstein-Lôvenôrn, somewhat before
this publication of the English original in London. We
thank all who co-operated in this.

PART I
I

The Apennines, marching southwards through Italy,
reach the Adriatic north-west of Rome, and the province
of Abruzzo may be said to be wholly composed of these
mountains, plunging in precipices or sinking by soft
valleys into the Umbrian plain on the one side, and on the
other to the sea. The towns, crowning masses of rock,
look still like the fortified citadels that they mostly used
to be, yet the loveliest vegetation softens all the contours—
the deep pure green of fig-trees : the bronzed and purple­
flushed foliage of vines: the dark and austere dignity of
cypresses piercing upwards through the silvery mist of
olives. The Abruzzesi were the descendants of those
sturdy Samnites-who bowed the Roman necks under the
Caudine Forks, and I am convinced that even to-day they
retain something of that special heredity, the more so
as their territory is away from the great roads that led
armies or commerce up and down Italy from time im­
memorial.1 Italians differ very much among themselves,
though all of them possess that unique endowment of
“Italianità” which has been of such incalculable service
to civilisation. I had once for friend a chauffeur from the
Abruzzi: like his compatriots he was shrewd, yet child­
like; cool, and yet fiery; something of a philosopher
and very much of an artist ... yet with all this he
seemed to me to possess exactly that special quality that I
expected : there was a certain added simplicity, robustness,
1 Since I wrote this, circumstances have changed. Annies have marched
all along the Abruzzi coasts and into the Abruzzi mountains. Pescara,
even Chieti, are no more unknown names.

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LIFE

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independence such as you might observe in Westmorland
or Britanny, though alas, in England you would nowhere
look for just that “culture” which is due to the im­
memorial Italian tradition—Italianità.
In the 9th century, Saracen pirates used to infest the
coast and, so it is said, destroyed a town there, Buca.
The inhabitants fled up the Apennines, and settled
on a hill-top some 1,000 feet above sea-level and made a
new town, destined to be called, as now, Bucchianico.
The town lies some way south of the Abruzzi capital
Chieti. In the 15th century, the great gate of S. Urbano,
flanked by four medieval towers, had formed part of a
Benedictine monastery, and here Braccio di Montone, a
famous condottiere, established himself to repel the attacks
of another such adventurer, Muzio Sforza, and thus and
by other deeds of valour the little town earned from René
of Anjou, king of Naples, within whose realm it lay, the
title of ‘brave and loyal’. The second most noble family
of Bucchianico were the De Lellis (a name spelt in many
different ways): there was a legend that they had des­
cended from the magnificent Roman clan of the Laelii,
and presumably had found their way into these remote
mountains when Totila,. king of the Goths, sacked
Rome in 546, and dispersed the patrician families far
from the capital. It cannot be claimed that these tradi­
tions have much reliability; still, it is always pleasant
to observe what is continuous, and after all, the Lellis
must have got their name somehow. In 1239, at anyrate,
Ugo de Lellis emerges as a famous warrior under the
Emperor Frederick II, that mysterious man, ‘Stupor
Mundi’, after whom the whole world went gaping. From
then on, the name of the Lellis recurs more and more
often in history, and we could collect a long list of lawyers,
prelates, poets, statesmen, who lent glory to the family.
Of these I will mention only two—Simone De Lellis of

LIFE

OF

SAINT

CAMILLUS

3

Teramo, who in three Councils—Pisa, Basel and
Constance—worked towards the healing of the Great
Schism; and Theodoro De Lellis (1428-66), destined
to be Cardinal, who had often acted as Nuncio for the
Holy See, and on being sent by Callixtus III to Rouen
did almost more than anyone to rehabilitate the memory
of St. Joan of Arc and to pave the way for that canonisa­
tion which our own days have witnessed.
About the beginning of the 16th century was born
Giovanni De Lellis, who left his native town of Chieti
to establish himself at Bucchianico where he possessed
lands. Here he fell in love with a young noblewoman,
Camilla De Compellis, and married her there probably in
1525; She was tall, gentle, most modest and simple, and
most generous with her alms. Her life was almost
necessarily a retired one, since her husband was con­
stantly away. Like his father and uncle, and half the men
of his dreadful period, he was insanely in love also with
war. His military career began with the battle of Pavia in
1525; he took part with the Bourbon duke in the sack of
■Rome in 1527. Disgraceful as was this event, we cannot
put responsibility for its excesses on the shoulders of any
subordinate. There is no evidence that Giovanni took
part in the rapes, lootings, and other horrors of the
sack: many gave witness not only to his courage, but to
the respect in which he was held—he was a “good
Christian, feared God and justice, and went to Mass
every morning.” It remains that you must expect a good
many anomalies in a 16th century soldier! After the sack
of Rome, he shared in the defence of Naples : then (1530)
in the siege and taking of Florence; from 1535 to 1538
he took part in the third war that made northern Italy
miserable, and again in the fourth, when he had to cover
the retreat of his associates which he did with honour.
This was in 1544, and afterwards he took part in the war

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between Philip II and Pope Paul IV, and finally received (he
command of 500 men to defend the Adriatic coast against
Turks and pirates.
Meanwhile, a son, Giuseppe, had been born to him and
Camilla, but he died in childhood. The years passed, and
it looked as if they were to have no heir. Suddenly,
when Camilla was all but 60 years old, white of hair and
wrinkled, she felt she was again to become a mother.
She had a dream in which she saw her baby, his breast
signed with the cross, and followed by a troop of chil­
dren similarly signed. Strangely enough she interpreted
this dream pessimistically. She thought she would give
birth to a future bandit, destined to spread terror and
death everywhere, and that the children following him
stood for his executioners. They tried to console her,
and indeed she had other dreams, telling her that her
son would be a saint. As the time for his birth approached,
she deserted the nearer churches that she loved, and hid
herself in little shrines a mile or two away.
1550 was a Year of Jubilee for the whole Church, and
May 25 was a specially great feast at Bucchianico, being
the day sacred to St. Urban, patron of the city.
Camilla resolved to hear ‘at least a low Mass’, and
during it, as she adored Christ in the Holy Eucharist,
she felt her hour was coming. She returned home and
began to suffer most terrible pains. One of her companions, with characteristic ‘supernatural realism’, said
that as the child had clearly been miraculously conceived,
let him be miraculously born—let her go to the stable
that he might lie, like his Saviour, on the straw. Camilla
went there, and her son was forthwith born1 just as the
1 This stable was changed into a chapel in 17J6. We regret the loss of
its original appearance, exquisitely simple and dignified as is the new
architecture. However, at its side are the stones and brickwork of a
much older structure, showing short sturdy pillars and round arches.
This is the front of his home.

LIFE OF SAINT

CAMILLUS

5

Elevation of the High Mass was being made. The people,
pouring out to watch a military review, instantly heard the
news, and from that moment Camilla became called
‘Madonna Elisabetta’, and men asked what manner of
child this should be. As for Giovanni, he was so en­
chanted that he jumped about all over the house; and
when Camilla remonstrated mildly—they were really
too old for such an exhibition !—he asked how she
could object to his dancing around, “seeing that we have
such a big son that we could send him to school this very
day !” And indeed the child grew up to be just on two
metres and 10 centimetres tall—over 6 ft. 6 in. And
his shoulders and chest were broad in proportion:
he was dark-complexioned, with dark brown hair
and practically black eyes. His death mask shows an
; extreme aquiline delicacy of feature that 1 had hardly
expected.
Two, days after his birth, the child was baptised, and
Λ was called Camillo after his mother.1 The small boy was
vivacious and quite beyond the control of his mother:
his father, of whom Camillus was at once afraid and fond,
could keep him in order while he happened to be at home.
But nothing could hold Giovanni for long from his
military duties or pleasures ; Camillus was startlingly
young when he took to playing cards, which afterwards
became a perfect frenzy. He kept running away from
school, and, says one witness whom it is almost difficult
to believe, as an extreme measure he was at last turned
out of the house. But he must soon enough have come
back, for he himself confessed that ‘towards the end of
this time’ he began to feel a certain liking for pious works
—not indeed for helping the sick, but for shepherding
pilgrims who might apply for shelter in his home. But
1 So far as I can see, this is a solitary departure from the baptismal
names of his paternal pedigree. Obviously it was given after his mother.

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alas, his mother died, in 1563, aged almost 73, and having
seen no sign of the fulfilment of her dreams. They gave
him a tutor : the tutor could not manage him. Mis father,
then commandant of the fortress of Pescara, used to
come to Bucchianico, but not often enough to keep an
eye on Camillus: the boy reached adolescence with the
reputation of being gay, fantastic, sharp-witted, and very
clever at reciting pastoral poems, for which he had an
excellent memory.
In 1567, now aged 17, he went off with a friend to
enlist with the Venetian forces against the Turks. Un­
luckily for him, orders arrived from the Spanish Viceroy
in Naples to suspend the recruiting. But it was not long
before all the great Christian Powers together with
Venice joined together for what was nothing less than a
crusade against the intolerable devastations due to
Turkish assaults : these were a real risk to the whole of
eastern Europe. Giovanni, though now an old man,
went off with Camillus and two nephews—after all, he
had to do something ! His mad extravagances and
passion for gambling had ruined him: Camillus was all
too good a pupil. But in Ancona, father and son fell
sick. They began to retrace their steps ; however, at the
fort of San Lupidio near Loreto, Giovanni relapsed,
received the Last Sacraments, and died. As for Camillus,
he was destitute. His father could leave him nothing
but his sword, his dagger, and his honourable name.
Further, he had far from recovered: he suffered from a
recurrent ague. A sore opened on his left leg : this became
better; but the infection broke out next upon his right
foot and ankle: the irritation maddened him and he
made it worse by scratching it and using violent
remedies. The sore place began to suppurate, and
throughout his long life not only proved incurable, but
very soon became worse and worse. This sickness, the

LIFE OF SAINT

CAMILLUS

7

exact nature of which must ever remain mysterious, proved
a governing factor in his life.
On his way home, he had hobbled as far as Fermo,
and there happened to see two Friars Minor passing
by. He suddenly felt how utterly without order his life
was compared with theirs . . . impetuously he resolved
and even vowed to become a Franciscan. He went
straight to the friary of S. Bernardino al Aquila, where a
brother of his mother’s was Guardian, and stated his case.
The wise old man saw in Camillus’s petition the effect of
his disillusionment, since everything had gone wrong
for him, and of his depressing illness. And from his life
hitherto into a friary was too big a leap. He blessed and
encouraged and dismissed him. Camillus felt better, but
still had to wear bandages round his leg which he felt
disgraceful for a soldier so noticeably well-built as he.
He decided therefore to seek a definite cure in the famous
hospital of San Giacomo degli Incurabili at Rome.
We are here confronted with a grave difficulty. All
previous authors, relying on Cicatelli, say that Camillus
entered San Giacomo in 1569, left it the same year,
enlisted with the Venetians against the Turks and went
to Zara in view of the war being officially declared
against the Turks on Feb. 11, 1570. He proceeds to
say that a period of violent military activity was followed
by a period of inaction which was very bad for discipline ;
and indeed, Camillus, in a fury over some gambling
incident, was on the point of fighting a duel when a
sergeant-major stopped him. And further, that in the
summer of 1571 he was sent to Corfu for garrison
duty and at the same time the great Christian fleet
arrived there to prepare to sail to Lepanto. Camillus
could have gone there, but lay prostrate between life and
death owing to an epidemic of ‘naval typhus’, dysentery,

8

LIFE OF

SAINT

CAMILLUS

which was decimating the Venetian forces. The Last
Sacraments were administered to him, and he recovered.
Now Fr. Vanti (San Giacomo degli Incurabili, 1938, p.
55) makes it perfectly clear that Camillus went first to
San Giacomo in 1571. He has consulted the Libro
degli huomini, i.e. the register of sick persons admitted to
the hospital and finds that Camillus was admitted on
March 7, 1571 ; on March 30 he was sufficiently well to
need no more treatment, but stayed on as ‘garzone’,
or servant, for a small salary which is duly recorded as
paid month by month till Dec. 31, after which there is no
more mention of him. (There are two slightly unusual
details in these records—first, Camillus’s surname is
mentioned, ‘de lellis’ (sic); as a rule, the surnames of
admissions were not written in these records : and second,
the cause of his departure is not mentioned though as a
rule the reason of departure is given—in Camillus’s case,
this was for charity’s sake, the reason being that his mania
for gambling when he ought to have been doing his
proper work had exhausted the patience of the officials.
Camillus was, then, at San Giacomo from March 7,
1571 to Dec. 31 at any rate. Moreover, Cicatelli gives
evidence against himself, for he says that at the end of
Camillus’s first stay there he was dismissed by the Maestro
di Casa, the Neapolitan Angelo. But from the beginning
of 1568 till March 1571 (when he died) the Maestro di
Casa was Don Francesco Pecorella. He was succeeded,
from August to the end of 1571, by, precisely, the Neapoli­
tan Angelo Melvio, so none of Camillus’s military
activities, as related by Cicatelli can have taken place
when he says they did; and Camillus was absent from
Lepanto not because he was lying sick at Corfu, but
because he was then serving at San Giacomo.
Were it worth asking why Cicatelli made his mistake
we might find a reason in the fact that during 1569 two

LIFE OF

SAINT CAMILLUS

9

men called Camillus were admitted to San Giacomo as
patients; one was ‘son of John Baptist of Milan’ ‘with
a sick leg’, who came in on Aug. 15: but our Camillus
entered in March, and his father, though called John,
was not John Baptist, and though long ago he had served
at Milan among other places, he was definitely from
Bucchianico. The other Camillus was ‘son of John
Paul of Rome’, who entered in May for the ‘wood­
water’ treatment (see below) and left in a fortnight. But
if Cicatelli consulted the records of San Giacomo, he
might just possibly have jumped to the conclusion that the
Camillus who entered ‘with a sick leg’ in 1569 was the
Saint. But I think it more likely that Camillus told him
that he had enlisted in the ‘League’ (against the Turks)
without defining which League he meant. For there was
a second League, recruiting for which was strongly
urged by St. Pius V who did not want the fruits of the
victory of Lepanto to be lost. This recruiting took place
in Rome between Dec. 1571 (exactly when Camillus was
dismissed) and Jan. 1572: Pius wished 5,000 men to be
enlisted. Why Camillus chose to enlist with the Venetians
rather than in Rome, we cannot tell. But that Camillus
fell sick of dysentery in 1572 and not in 1569 is certain
also because Corradi in his Annali delle Epidémie tells us
that that epidemic broke out in Zara in 1571 and con­
tinued in the Venetian army till 1572. Next year, to the
disgust of the Pope, Venice concluded a separate peace
with the Turks and Camillus was demobilised. The
problem of chronology is thus solved.
But my difficulty is this—All agree that Camillus left
for Ancona to sail for Venice in 1569 : all agree that his
second enlistment took place after he left San Giacomo,
i.e. at the very end of 1571. But hardly had the father and
son reached Ancona than they fell sick and Giovanni
died. Camillus came back via Fermo to Aquila where he

10

LIFE

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CAMILLUS

stayed with his uncle for a ‘few days’. ‘Then’ he went
to Rome. But have we not thus at least a year about which
we know nothing ? Even supposing that Giovanni died
towards the end of 1569 and that Camillus did not start
south quite at once, we cannot give him more than about
a month for getting from Ancona to Fermo and thence to
Aquila where he stayed ‘a few days’ ; allow him another
month for getting to Rome; this seems to leave at least
a year during which we know nothing about him. Did he
wander about Italy getting work when he could ? Did he
spend months in Rome, getting always more ill and at
last resolving to go to San Giacomo ? 1 cannot see what
to answer.
His sojourns at San Giacomo were so important, as
was indeed the place itself, that 1 must give at least a very
brief sketch of its history, basing myself almost entirely
on Fr. Vanti’s monograph, S'. Giacomo degli Incurabili di
Roma nel Cinquecento : Rome 1938, and on his references
there. The name was derived from the assumption that
venereal disease was incurable. Owing to its vast diffusion
after the discovery of America (1492), it became practically
endemic in the Spanish and French soldiery and spread
appallingly in Italy after the long sojourn of Charles
VIII’s troops at Naples (1494—1496). Hence besides the
name syphilis derived from an astounding poem, thus
entitled, by Girolamo Fracastoro (1539), it was variously
called the American, the Neapolitan, the Spanish (and in
Italy of course) the French disease, and the ‘leprosy
of St. Job.’ Its enormous spread was largely due to the new
paganism of the times ; and the Missal contained a Mass
contra morbum Gallicum till the reform of Pius V. The
misery that this occasioned was unspeakable, because of
the disgust it inspired, its extreme infectiousness, the
bewilderment of doctors, and the lack of hygienic safe­
guards. Leo X in 1515 gives an appalling account of these

LIFE OF SAINT

CAMILLUS

Π

sufferers in Rome “to which the poor sick, suffering from
incurable disease, stream together from all parts of the
world”. The use of mercury and cauterisation was known :
but deaths from the simultaneous application of these
were so numerous that their application was at times
forbidden: by the second half of the 16th century, how­
ever, it was no more thought that the disease was
incurable though the name remained. The first found­
ation for “incurables”, was that of Genoa (1499), due
to» that heroic pioneer, Ettore Vernazza, himself the
disciple of St. Catterina Fieschi-Adorno, a woman in
: her time far more remarkable than Florence Nightingale.
By 1523, other such hospitals had been opened in
Rome, Bologna, Savona, Naples, Vicenza, Florence,
Brescia, Venice, Padua, and others, to mention only
Italy.
A hospital had been opened in Rome by Cardinal
Giacomo Colonna and put on firmer foothold in
1339 by his kinsman Cardinal Pietro Colonna: in 1451,
Nicholas V entrusted it to the Society of Our Lady
del Popolo’, and some fifty years later this was re­
placed by the ‘Company of Divine Love’ to which
the future Leo X and very many Cardinals and great
men of Rome belonged. In 1515, when he was Pope,
i he erected it into an Arch-hospital, making it head of
all ‘Incurables’ hospitals everywhere, and in a superb and
; inost pathetically realist Bull defines that by ‘incurables ’
are meant all who suffer from diseases, the French disease
included. The constitutions of the Naples hospital give
an appalling list of the diseases to be attended to. Leo
assigned to it 4 Guardians with a council of 12, half to
be Romans, half non-Romans; two Auditors to control
its finances, and 4 Visitors, who should seek out suitable
cases within Rome itself. But, as I have said, he insisted
L that the sick flowed into Rome from all sides and made

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LIFE OF SAINT

CAMILLUS

a pitiable spectacle dragging themselves about the city
in their little vehicles, repelling rather than attracting
help by the hideous sight and stench of their diseases.
Between 1515 and 1520 the whole hospital was transformed
and its little church was rebuilt on an octagonal plan and
called Our Lady Gate of Paradise. In it Camillus was to say
his first Mass. The hospital was constantly enlarged,
notably by Cardinal Salviati in 1600 and by Gregory XVI
in 1842, so not much of the original structure remains,
though you still can see the numbers, in certain rooms,
that were over the beds and some ‘sanitary niches’.
The terrible sack of Rome in 1527 had destroyed in­
numerable good works, including the Company of
Divine Love; yet the population of Rome constantly
increased, and with it, the number of sick, many of whom,
who could not be accepted by ordinary hospitals because
of the appalling nature of their disease, were frightened
to enter San Giacomo precisely because they considered
themselves incurable and thought that to enter it meant
to die there. VA whole series of splendid engravings,
beginning from 1551, allows us to follow the architectural
development of San Giacomo ; but though Salviati, when
he built his magnificent church there, respected the original
little church which remained on its right, Comporesi,
between 1842 and 1849, pulled it down for the sake of
symmetry or perhaps because he wished to build new
quarters for some of the hospital service. Hence so little
remains of the original structure that we will but say
that it was admirably designed and ventilated : the great
ward for men ran right across from the Via Lata to the
Strada di Ripetta and the parallel one for women seems
to have been almost as long: the great façades at either
end corresponded. There were other wards and large
gardens or orchards between the main buildings and
beside them. The arms of the Hospital represented a

LIFE OF SAINT CAMILLUS ,

13

sick naan in his little carriage, doing homage to his
Patrons, Our Lady and St. James.
The only problem that remained was : Could the
intellectual, moral and spiritual level of the staff be kept
up to the requisite standard ? The answer is : Not for
long at a time. Hence a constant need of reform, never
unattended to. However, an interesting episode in
the history of San Giacomo was due to the discovery of
the wood guaiaco (Guajacum officinale) now no more
much used. This was an ancient Indian remedy imported
into Spain from America by the Spanish doctor Consalvo
in 1508 and obtaining its maximum celebrity in Italy
between 1520 and 1530. Ulric von Hutten having exper­
ienced personally the extreme utility of the ‘ WoodWater ’ or wood-syrup (Acqua di Legno) made from it,
sang its glories in a pamphlet called De guaiaci medicina
et morbo gallico (1519). He called it the ‘ sacred ’ wood,
and everywhere it became known as the Most Holy
American Wood, granted by the mercy of God for the
succour of humanity : Frascatoro, in the third canto (!) of
his poem, acclaimed it as the Hope of Mankind, the new
Glory of the World. Doctors experimented with it, quacks
played tricks with it—it became very nearly a panacea
though the purpose of its original application remained
dominant. Still, Paolo Manuzio used it to cure his bad
eyes and catarrh : Tasso was recommended to use it for
his ‘ melancholic humour ’ : a Messina priest obtained
a special pontifical induit, valid for ever, to make use of
it in curing cases of the Gallic sickness and all ills pro­
ceeding from it, accepting a modest fee from the rich,
but serving the poor gratis, and exhorting all alike to
confession. The details of the cure were appalling—you
were violently purged, fierce perspiration was provoked,
a strict diet was imposed, the wards were kept hot to
suffocation-point—you can imagine why patients described

14

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LIFE OF

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the ‘ cure
which lasted usually forty days (though
Cardinal de’ Medici in 1534 had fifty) as a Lent, if not
a Purgatory. . . . Enough to say, just here, since wc are
keeping to what concerned Camillus, that it was not till
1636 that the value of the cure was seriously doubted and
then suspended; it was renewed, with improvements,
after Innocent X (1644—1655), but it was most intensively
applied between 1569 and 1602, which was just the period
of the transformation and vast development of the hos­
pital, chiefly due to Salviati and the group surrounding
him. It was he who largely financed the administration
of the very expensive Wood-Water. Such was the influx,
moreover, of patients, that beds had to be borrowed from
Santo Spirito, the Lateran, the Consolation, the Trinità
dei Pellegrini, the Brothers of St. John of God in the Tiber
Island and elsewhere. Flocks of attendants had to be
organised during the time of special preparation which
lasted usually from February to May. Doctors wore blue
overalls; nurses, red. The Rules of the Hospital for this
period are very entertaining: a woodcut at the foot of
one page shows a gambler being hoisted on to a man’s
back and flogged under the eye of a judge: further, a
group is being rebuked for playing cards.
To this hospital, then Camillus came and was admitted
as patient on March 7, 1571. The inventory of his clothes
shows that he arrived with a tunic of old black cloth,
a shirt of white linen, stockings of white cloth, socks of
the same. Hat and shirt in a pack.
On March 30 he became a servant in the hospital,
for his board and lodging and about 2s. 6d. (three lire
relatively in modern Italian money) a month. In May, he
was among those charged with preparing the Acqua del
Legno. At the end of December he had exhausted the
patience of the Superintendent, and was turned out.
Cicatelli’s MS. 4 life ’ says : “ he was an appalling hot-head

LIFE OF SAINT

CAMILLUS

15

(di molto terribile cervello), constantly quarrelling with
one or the other of the servants. And also because being
so obsessed by card-playing that he would often desert
the service of the sick and go off across the Tiber to play
with the Tiber boatmen ”/ The Superintendent had con­
stantly rebuked him for this but had never obtained the
slightest improvement: finally, having found a pack of
cards under Camillus’s pillow, he turned him out. Even
apart from this general irresponsibility and quarrelsome­
ness, gambling was a sufficient reason for dismissal. It
was now that he re-enlisted, went to Zara and then Corfu,
and there fell desperately sick of dysentery. However, he
recovered and saw service. He took part in the assault
by land and sea of the Turkish stronghold of Barbagno,
having sailed thither under fire : the final assault cost the
attacking forces much : they went quite mad not only
with rage but with the fearful hunger they had suffered :
they dug the livers out of dead Turks and devoured them.
Camillus relates this himself, but acknowledges that he
revolted against this cannibalism and lived on grass and
horse-flesh.
• On March 1, 1573, Venice to the dismay of Rome,
concluded a separate peace with the Turks. Camillus,
now unemployed, returned to Rome and accepted the
pay of Spain, Philip II planning an attack on Tunis.
Meanwhile he had amassed not a little money. Needless
to say that almost at once he lost it all—even his cloak
(‘ that relic of nobility ’). He met a boyhood friend from
Bucchianico, and implored him not to mention his deplor­
able condition. Indeed, he got himself enrolled in the
company of a certain captain named Fabio, so famed
was it for its high play. He was sent with three other
companies to the reinforcement of the fortress so well
known to us now as La Goulette; but the commandant
disdained this help and the soldiers sailed back to Palermo,

16

çj

3

LIFE OF

SAINT

CAMILLUS

and thus escaped the appalling sack of that fortress by
the Turks on Sept. 24. At Palermo he lost anything that
he had recently accumulated, and on his way back to
Naples, very nearly lost also his life in violent gales, which
so terrified him that he renewed his vow to become a
Franciscan. That was on Oct. 24, 1574.
At Naples, storm and vow were alike forgotten. He
gambled away his sword, his dagger, his powder-flask
and his coat—perhaps consoling himself that in this same
city, before sailing for Africa, he had lost his very shirt,
and had had to take it off in the very street. Afterwards,
over the stone bench on which the gamblers had been
sitting, a ‘ very quaint ’ picture was erected, representing
the future Saint thus stripping himself. A lamp burned
before it, and mothers used to come and pray there for
their sons, Camillans anyhow in the sense that they were
mad for play.1
It was November, and despite rumours of wars in the
Balkans and perhaps in Africa, there was no real hope
of more fighting till the spring. Camillus, with a fellow­
soldier, Tiberio, wandered north and reached Manfredonia. Here they had no choice but to become thieves
or beggars. Though to ‘ beg ’ he was bitterly ‘ ashamed
he could not steal, and on Nov. 30 began to ask alms at
the door of the main church. His remarkable physique,
the nobility of his features, and certainly the tragedy of
his expression, attracted a certain Antonio di Nicastro,
who asked him if he would like to earn at least some
food. Would he do some work for the Capuchins?
Camillus, taken aback, said he must ask his companion.
Antonio agreed and made an appointment at his home,
when he should hear his decision. Tiberio would not hear
of it, and dragged Camillus away, much against his will.
As they proceeded, Camillus remembered his vow, and
11 hold that attempts to soften down this story are not successful.

LIFE OF

SAINT

CAMILLUS

17

asked himself whether this offer had not been God’s way
of leading him to fulfil it. They were approaching Bar­
letta, and asked some muleteers whether they would find
work there. The answer was a categorical No. Camillus,
desperate, felt he was under no more obligation to his
friend, despite their promise to stick together. He rushed
back the twelve miles they had travelled from Manfredonia, and arrived there before daybreak. Antonio,
patient man, welcomed him and escorted him to the
Capuchin Guardian, who dismissed a disloyal servant,
and entrusted Camillus with two mules for bringing stones,
water, lime and so forth to a building in course of con­
struction. You can hardly, today, form a guess of what it
meant to the young nobleman—as he felt himself despite
his career and circumstances—to accept this servile task.
Accept it, however he did, grace and starvation driving
him. He considered, moreover, that in undertaking this
mean task for Capuchins he was sufficiently fulfilling
his vow—-so much so, that when the friars, distressed
to see him shivering in the bitter cold of mid-winter,
offered him some of the rough serge they made their own
habits of, he passionately refused it, lest it should somehow
trick him into joining the Order.
A terrible fortnight passed during which he constantly
thought of running away. On Dec. 13 he decided
that anyhow he might ask for a day off. By chance,
he was refused and given extra work. He flew into a
tempest of rage, biting his very hands in fury, and made off
without leave. The Capuchins, who understood him
better than he did himself, persuaded him to return, and
offered him a scudo—5 lire,—a month. He accepted—
partly because, in his entangled motives, he foresaw
earning enough money to enable him to return to war
and to gambling. Whereupon Tiberio came back and
actually joined Camillus for a time at his work, but soon

1

18

LIFE OF SAINT

CAMILLUS

enough considered it too exhausting and beneath him.
He tried to persuade Camillus to leave it, but this time
he held good, though maddened by the continual mockery
of children, who jeered at the ex-soldier who still wore
rags of his uniform, including the sash of his dagger which
he would not be parted from.
The building came to an end. The Capuchins, however,
pleased with Camillus’s honesty and undoubted nobility
of character despite his violent temper and what they
knew of his gambling-sickness, for it was nothing less,
kept him in the service of the convent. One day they sent
him to a friary some 12 miles off to buy some wine.
The eve of his return, the Guardian took him aside, and,
in a vine-covered arbour, spoke to him about God, and
sin, and how, when evil thoughts beset him, he must
‘spit in the face of the devil’. All that was best in Camillus
awoke: he saw “How much I ought to do for the service
of God and the salvation of my soul ”. Next day, perched
on his mule with two wine-skins slung on either side, he
returned, and on the way a real conflict declared itself
within him. And a certain moment came when his soul
was broken up. He flung himself off his mule on to the
rocky road, and burst into floods of tears at the clear
sight of what his life had been. It was Feb. 2, 1575,
feast of the Purification, which he was ever afterwards
to call the day of his conversion.
When Saul was struck from his horse, he heard the
vision of our Lord say to him: “It is hard for thee to
kick against the goad”. Now that has no meaning save
that for long, and not just for a moment, he had been
feeling the divine onslaught. You cannot kick against a
goad for one moment only, still less, find it ‘hard’ to do
so. That implies a long-drawn experience. When did
Saul begin his real, though unconscious, resistance to
grace ? Possibly from the very moment when he, like the

LIFE OF SAINT CAMILLUS

19

others, saw the face of Stephen ‘as it were the face of an
angel’. Probably that is why Saul, the most sensitive of
men, flung himself so passionately into the persecution
of the Christian^. So long as they so much as existed,
his whole way of life, his whole habit of mind hitherto
his innermost self, were being challenged. Hence what
Ibelieve to have been his mixture of fury and agony
when he watched the faces of the Christians whom he
dragged out of their homes to death, or disaster. Saul
must always have been a saint at heart, else he could
never have been such a sinner.
Hence we must affirm that never so far have we seen
the true. Camillus. On that Feb. 2 no totally new
Camillus was created and substituted for the old one.
There had always been a nobility of character, a con­
tempt for the mean and unworthy—a contempt too for
himself when he saw himself constantly being a mere
victim, unable to conquer the frenzy that kept reducing
him to ignominy. But that would not have been enough.
I must here mention a strange fact. Throughout his
reckless, most abandoned youth, it seems quite certain
that he had kept himself chaste. Not that he was not
tempted, probably as violently as he was in every other
way. Else why should he have so treasured those words :
“When you have evil thoughts, spit in the devil’s face”?
For treasure them, and use them when counselling others,
he for ever did. It does not seem to me enough to say
a man may be so possessed by one vice, that the whole of
his Tower self’ may sufficiently pour itself out into and
through that, as when you may meet a man who is a
habitual and seemingly hopeless drunkard and yet lives
a perfectly chaste life. I think Mat Talbot is an example
of that; I mean, of a man who combined drunkenness
with chastity. One might have thought that Camillus just
expended the whole of his passionate life in gambling.

20

LIFE

OF SAINT CAMILLUS

But no. He had the most unbridled temper, and men who
let themselves go to fits of fury arc not likely io con­
trol themselves in other ways. The)' probably yield to the
fierce instinct of the moment. Fr. Vanti thinks that his
innate sense of ‘nobility’ may have saved him. Is this
probable ? It was the habit of that period precisely
(and alas of others) to assume that nobility of birth
exempted you from any sexual self-control, and indeed,
that you exhibited your prowess by your amorous con­
quests. One might more easily argue that Camillus was
and to the end remained fundamentally a hard man, and
was often a very rough man. Yet I have never noticed that
physical, temperamental, or athletic ‘hardness’ has in any
way checked a man from yielding to ‘soft’ sins, even
though he may have refused to himself any habitual self­
indulgence.
Two reflections occur to me. It is noticeable in the
lives of Saints, and indeed in those of ordinary men,
that to have preserved personal purity, even if not from the
very highest motives, has much facilitated new spiritual
perceptions later on. Certain clouds are not there : there
is less drag towards animality. This is in a sense but
natural; yet in the spiritual sphere the fact is so marked
that we are less amazed by the great change that came
about in Camillus, however various may have been the
stimuli that actually brought it to a crisis. On the other
hand, we wish to emphasise, if only in order to encourage
those who know that their life has not been sinless, that
the great sinner has often become the great saint, and
one may almost say that to be great in the one direction
a man must be able to be great in another. And we would
certainly prefer the man who has sinned violently to the
man who simply from flaccid ‘neutrality’ has never done
anything^very wrong—so far as the likelihood of his
becoming first rate in the service of God or man may go.

LIFE OF SAINT CAMILLUS

21

In short, we have known those who have carefully guarded
; theii purity either because of a mysterious instinct, or
deliberately, tediously, against strong, recurrent, maybe
continuous temptation, to have preserved a sort of
limpidity of mind enabling them very quickly to ‘see
God’, and, seeing Him, to love Him with all their heart—
their heart had had one element within it which had
always been undivided. And we have known others who
behaved as badly in the matter of purity as Camillus
did with his uncontrolled savage temper and his reckless
gambling, of whom we felt absolutely sure that in reality
they were somehow ‘good men’—we could not see why,
but we knew that God could, and were sure He did.
The old Guardian at San Giovanni Rotondo, then, was
perfectly right in feeling no less sure that Camillus,
despite all appearances, was really a strong, noble and
exalted character deep within himself.

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Camillus, in whom the ‘new’—that is, thé ‘real’ .
self had, by the grace of God triumphantly emerged, full
of gratitude, of horror for sin and resolve never to commit
any more the slightest venial sin (nor, so far as he could
tell, did he, though every characteristic of his special
temperament survived), and to do penance as a Franciscan,
went as rapidly as he could to Manfredonia, flung himself
at the Guardian’s feet, and implored the astounded man
for leave to join his Order. The Guardian, though over­
joyed, said he must consult superior authority. Camillus,
himself overjoyed even by this concession, flung himself
into all the hardest work of the house, and embarked
on a career of penance so severe that the Guardian him. self felt sorry for him and begged him to mitigate it.

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22

LIFE OF SAINT

CAMILLUS

At last the leave was given: the wound on the right foot
seemed no reason for hesitation. He was sent to the town
Trivento, at a considerable distance, to begin his noviciate.
He went on foot. On his way, he had to cross a river.
He began to ford it, when he heard a voice crying out:
“Don’t do it! don’t do it ! do not cross !” ft was dark
and he could not see whence the voice might come, save
that it seemed high up. He prayed, and slept in the river­
side scrub. Next day two Capuchins, also on the way to
Trivento, met him, and said that he would certainly
have been swept away by the water. And indeed, Italian
torrents, in the summer, seem often very shallow if not
almost waterless, and yet, in the middle, the current
streams ferociously. He felt his guardian angel had saved
him.
At Trivento, he took the lowest place of all : his flam­
boyant insolence seemed utterly to have disappeared,
Long years later, his novice-master, grown old and blind,
still remembered how all used to speak of him as the
Frate umile—the humble Brother. But a thunderbolt
fell from the clear sky. Either because the rough Fran. ciscan habit rubbed against his foot, or for some other
cause, his wound re-opened and became angry and caused
him intolerable pain. Superiors had to tell him that he
could not remain a novice so long as it was like that, but
added, that should it entirely heal over, he could be
re-admitted. They parted with deep regret from a man who
would have been in despair had he not felt that much
more penance and sacrifice of self-will was required
of one who had spent so many years of dissolute life. He
left for Rome, hoping to gain the Jubilee indulgences of
1575, and to seek re-entrance to San Giacomo, bringing,
presumably, letters of recommendation from the Capu­
chins, else it is at least doubtful if he would have been
re-admitted after his previous eviction !

LIFE GF SAINT CAMILLUS

23

The records of the hospital in fact show that he was
thus re-admitted on Oct. 23, 1575, being sick of the
leg, and possessing a black tunic, a vest, thick white
drawers, a hat and a shirt. He remained as patient till
Nov. 18 and next day once more became a servant
there, holding down his job till June 20, 1579. Indeed,
he did better than hold it down. On Feb. 28, 1576
till April 24, he was sick and received no pay, being
attended to gratis. On May 22, he had recovered and was
appointed ‘infirmarian’ with a somewhat increased
salary with servants under him. Here he remained till
Sept. 14 of that year. Then, we do not know why,
he himself returned to being a servant, till March 22,
1577, And from that date till June 20, 1579, when he
left the hospital, he held the office of Guardaroba, and,
judging by the frequent recurrence of his name on the
books, he acquitted himself with exceptional merit. If
this position implied the supervision of the whole of the
material effects of the hospital, it was certainly a respon­
sible one. During his stay there he underwent a severe
inguinal rupture, though whether this has to do with the
illness above mentioned, involving his being put to lighter
work when he had sufficiently recovered, and then sent
back to being a servant when he got still better, I can see
no evidence. Anyhow the rupture caused him grave
suffering to the end of his life.
Not only he certainly did his work in San Giacomo to
perfection, but he was intimately concerned in becoming
a man ever more according to Christ, and for that, knew
that he needed direction. Now Rome in that year 1575
was full of Saints, but not all of them lived there. The
true apostle of Rome was St. Philip Neri, founder of the
Oratory (d. 1595). I know of very few Saints to compare
with this extraordinary man, though St. Francis de
Sales (d.1622) had something of his wonderful charm, and

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24

LIFE

OF

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CAMILLUS

St. Vincent de Paul (d. 1660), much of his bonhomie. But
Francis was a great nobleman, and Vincent an organiser
on an enormous scale and in constant touch with the
Court : Philip was at his ease, of course, with men of
every rank from royalties to the poorest, but he was so
in his homely, bluff yet gentle and most amusing way.
(I permit myself an occasional smile at the thought of
Philip’s encounters with the stately Spaniard, Ignatius
of Loyola. Ignatius loved him, and he Ignatius: but
I don’t know what the Jesuit Founder thought of Philip’s
habit of seizing hold of people he talked to by some
button of their dress and twisting it about while he talked
till it came off.) This fascinating Saint, then, of whose
immeasurable influence in Rome Camillus must have
heard long before this, was sought out by him on the
grounds that “I, who have been so great a sinner, have
need of a great Saint ! ” Philip welcomed him, and
evidently, in a flash, understood the young man perfectly.
Camillus was 25, but old, I think, for his years: Philip
was 60, but in a real sense still a boy. The Saint heard
Camillus’s confession weekly and allowed him Communion
on all Sundays and feast days—-much, at that time.
But it had never occurred to Camillus that he was to
remain at San Giacomo. His wound seemed to be healed
—permanently, he hoped. He went to St. Philip and
reminded him of his vow, and said he wished to return
to the Capuchins. Philip advised him not to try that
life again. Camillus insisted: his vow weighed heavy
on him; he wished for more opportunities of penance;
perhaps he was still rather obstinate about taking advice.
Philip smiled, and told him that he would certainly come
back . . . his wound would not stay healed. Camillus
was unmoved, and reminded the Capuchin superior
of his promise to take him back : he was accepted and went
to Tagliacozzo in the Abruzzo for his new noviciate.

The Hospital of San Giacomo (from the Strada di Ripetta)
after the drawing by Maggi-Maupin-Losi, 1625.

%.

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LIFE OF SAINT CAMILLUS

25

Everyone was delighted with this young giant, whom they
at once named Brother Christopher, remembering the
hero of legend who had carried Christ on his shoulders
across the torrent and had all but sunk beneath the whole
world’s weight. His life gave nothing but extreme edi­
fication to the Friars. All the more severe was the blow,
when the wound re-opened, grew angry, and began
again to suppurate. The decision of Superiors rhymed
indeed with what he recognised as inevitable : he had to
return to Rome, resolved, this time, to devote himself
for ever to the sick. Philip laughed, and said the fatal
words: “I told you so . . .”, but received him back
most gently among his penitents.
He returned thus yet again to San Giacomo in midOctober 1579. Not only were all delighted to see him, but
he was very soon appointed to the extremely important
position of Maestro di Casa, or “ General” Superintendent.
The appointment certainly took place in October, though
it should normally have done so in December: however,
the post was vacant, and Camillus was judged the proper
man for it. He retained it till September 1584 (and
possibly was honorary Maestro still later). Immediately
he began to study, feeling the need of a more liberal
culture than had hitherto been his. The “General”
Superintendent had to supervise the entire ‘family’
of a hospital, doctors included. ‘Guardians’ kept him
informed of all that happened down to the smallest
detail. He had to keep three Books, called the Superintendent-General’s Books. The first kept an exact record
of the name, home, wages etc. of each of the servants.
The second was entirely concerned with finances—gifts,
sales, acquisitions, and so forth. The third contained
records of the daily expenses. There are three ‘Camillan’
books covering the whole of his tenure of office. The
first and second were happily discovered by Fr. Vanti
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26

LIFE

OF SAINT

CAMILLUS

in the State Archives of Rome, in 1937. The third Book
begins on Aug. 31, 1581 and ends on Aug. 28, 1584.
Its existence was known, but after being exhibited in 1911,
the book was lost: it was hunted for in vain, till in 1926
it was discovered quite by chance on the then Superin­
tendent’s table. From March 1934, Fr. Vanti could
examine it at leisure. These books, though their contents
are but of secondary interest, are almost entirely in
Camillus’s own handwriting—small and regular and
relatively clear: there are also a number of other docu­
ments drawn up or signed by him.
In these are reflected the official life of the Saint:
though the Maestro was exhorted to show himself, in
that life, with paternal charity towards all, having an eye
for everything like a good and diligent father of a family,
behaviour not always to be met with in officialdom. In so
far as the records are financial, I need say but little, save
that they reveal Camillus’s absolute honesty. When
himself in need of money (thus he had not the patrimony
needed for ordination, nor, rather later, enough money to
get him to Bucchianico), it was not from the hospital that
he borrowed. Alms for the hospital had to be sought. The
Maestro provided those who asked for them with closed
collecting boxes opened weekly or at least fortnightly.
These were either carried about the city and even into
the country, or could be seen, fixed, in churches, public
offices, the antichambers of Cardinals themselves. That
of Sta Maria Porta Paradisi had a marble carving above
the slot for coins—a sick man, naked save for a bandage
or two and a hospital-cap, with hands joined, and squatting
in his tiny chariot with wooden wheels : beneath the slot
is carved : “Alms for the poor patients of the Incurables ”
(Elemosinaper lipoveri Impatati (the ti had to be squashed
into a space above the fine) dell Incurabili). Here too are
marked all gifts in kind and all legacies;. Camillus, I may

LIFE OF SAINT CAMILLUS

27

add, negotiated barters very effectively with Jews who
applied to do business with him. In short, I have to say
that Camillus showed himself an amazingly acute as well
as faithful business man.
At this point we need to say that while the biographers
use many generalities about his penitential life, and
relate a few instances of his selfmortification, such as,
that he would not go to the window to watch processions ;
that he kept a skull on his table when he ate, and insisted
on his measureless self-sacrifices for the sick, we find it
difficult to picture that life in any detail unless we build
up our idea from lines here and there in documents
such as we have mentioned.
Thus two patients were to be sent to the baths at Viterbo.
A letter, written in the name and probably at the dictation
of Camillus, recommends the men to the charity of the
Superintendent there. Enough to say that it begins by
recalling that all hospitals are as a rule united (that is,
are prepared to co-operate), and all tend towards charity,
and then begs the Superintendent to show special kindness
to these men, one of whom is Spanish and cannot walk.
Camillus insists again and again on this notion of recip­
rocal charity, from which he knows the patients are going
to profit. He takes by no means a merely official nor
merely ‘clinical’ view of them. It is worth insisting on
this, because in the hospital itself affectionate nursing
fell grievously short of the proper standard. There was
no trained permanent staff of nurses or ‘servants’. The
original confraternity of the Divine Love had, as we said,
disappeared. In 1529, the Capuchins had tried to do
what they could, and also the Jesuits, but neither of these
was a specifically nursing Order and each had a vocation
of quite a different sort. Hence the Hospital was staffed
by an ever-varying crowd of servants, changing every
month, composed of men who took the work on pre-

28

LIFE

OF SAINT

CAMILLUS

sumably because they had to, and, in that case, loathing
their disgusting task and quite without ‘charity’ for the
sufferers. Camillus himself devoted every moment that
he could to the personal care of the sick: he got leave
from St. Philip Neri for a priest to come to hear confes­
sions every week; he ensured the giving of religious
instruction whenever it was necessary—and when it was
not !—he kept a close watch on the behaviour of the
servants, but after two and a half years he could not but
own that he had been defeated. This (Aug. 15, 1562)
was when it occurred to him that a special Religious
Society should be created, for the care of the sick, who
should serve them not for pay, but as tenderly as a mother
nurses her own sick children.
But both before and after this he had to weather many
storms.
He was haunted by the memory of his vow to enter the
Capuchin Order. St. Philip gave him reason after reason
against it: nothing could move him. He went to Fr.
Giovanni Maria di Tusa, then in Rome, and begged him
yet again to accept him. The Capuchin categorically
refused, and at long last wrote out a very kind, very firm
document stating that since Camillus was suffering, as
had been absolutely ascertained, from an incurable
disease, the Capuchin Constitutions made it impossible
for him to enter that Order : and indeed, he had already
been admitted into it twice, and had had to be dismissed
for the above reason. As for the vow, the mere fact that
it was impossible of fulfilment dispensed Camillus from
it. You would have thought that that settled it. But no.
Camillus began to think that his vow had been made
at the sight of two Friars Minor of the Observantines,
not of the Capuchins. He applied to the Observantines.
They did not answer in a hurry, but doubtless made
enquiries, and then refused him. Even so, he was not

LIFE OF SAINT CAMILLUS

29

satisfied till they too had given him a written document
giving the cause of their refusal.
Lest anyone think that I mean merely that the service
of hospitals was what we should call very rough, very
‘unsatisfactoryI must allude to Cicatelli and other
contemporary witnesses, and to wood-cuts. But I
must premise that what is described refers (especially
the last part) to times of plague, when all organisation
broke down. But even in ordinary times, the most wellintentioned hospital-authorities had to employ whom
they could find—even banished criminals, even men who
were condemned and put to serve in hospitals precisely
as punishment. Hence, spiritually, you may imagine that
the Hospitals were in a terrible condition. “The great
part” of the patients had been allowed to die without
the sacraments, and unassisted : there had been the very
bad practice of ordering men to go to confession the
moment they arrived, maybe half delirious with fever;
dreadful indignities were inflicted more directly on the
Blessed Sacrament, which was given to men who could
not swallow, or were violently coughing, or being sick,
by terrified priests rushing round in a panic lest they should
, become infected. The material side of hospitals had been
in its way as bad. Men were left without food, or without
drink when in a high fever: they were known in their
desperation to drink slops, or oil from lamps, and worse.
Their beds remained untouched, however weak the
patients were, so that they rotted in their own filth. They
used to struggle to rise, fall out of bed, and hurt them­
selves sometimes fatally and die on the floor. Brutal
attendants would tie them to their beds, or hit them, or jeer
at them.1 Quite a long list could be made of instances
11 wish to avoid any appearance of pharisaism by saying that I have
myself known one lunatic asylum where the warders used not only to
make cruel fun of the inmates but were often guilty of malpractices with
as many of them whose mind was too weak to enable them to exert resis-

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of men being carried to the mortuary when not yet dead,
either because the assistants did not trouble to make
sure whether the dying man really was dead, or because
they wanted to get rid of them. Camillus personally
once found (not at San Giacomo) a man among the
corpses on the mortuary with blood flowing from a
wound in his head, due to being thrown violently down
among the dead. He helped to carry him back to his
bed: he died only three days later. I repeat, this state of
things is to be regarded not as normal; it arose when a
whole city or countryside was in a state of panic and dis­
organisation : but the normal condition had been, and
still was, bad enough. And to what I have said must be
added the fraudulent compacts too often made between
hospital officials and the caterers; and even, the more or
less culpable negligence shown by doctors and nurses.
Therefore Camillus, on the alert, night as well as day,
had occasion again and again to rebuke such delinquents,
and not very seldom to dismiss them (as he himself had
been dismissed), and in fine realised that any improvements
he might make in the actual system could only be
palliatives : the system itself must be changed.
Still, until a substantial change could be made, he did
what he could. In a sense the most difficult, and in
another the most easy, reform concerned the spiritual
life and the Sacraments. Helped by St. Philip and
others he ensured the regular weekly administration of
Holy Communion with all decency and devotion. He
himself prayed with those who received it, and, with true
Italian simplicity, cried aloud his homage to the B.
tance and whose accusations would anyhow not be believed. This is
of course exceptional : but it proves that because, today, hospitals and
asylums are kept rigorously clean, the moral aspect of the situation may
remain practically what it was. A base-minded man will seize his oppor­
tunities ; and the very sight of the weak constantly tempts the cruel to be
more cruel still.

LIFE OF SAINT

CAMILLUS

31

Sacrament itself, as it went to and fro in the wards. Every
week, though still a layman, he gave ‘instructions to the
staff, having always for theme (as St. John in his old age
had); the Charity of Christ. His example—the way in
which he met new sufferers at the door, washed their
feet “in tepid water”, devoted himself primarily to the
very worst cases, tending “with his bare hands” those
whom no servant was willing to approach, such was
the reek of their illness, all this was an inspiration to
the staff, and Camillus grouped those who were free and
prayed with them, as Communion-days became more
frequent^ in a little chapel. St. Philip had already banded
together a certain number of well-born young men and
even older men who were willing to visit hospitals regu­
larly, and above all to pay for, and even prepare, and
even administer, good and proper food to the sick.
Camillus did the same ; and his spirit became more and
more widely known. Religious Orders, accustomed to
send their young men, especially novices, to visit hospitals,
and the Jesuits in particular whose novices had always to
spend a month in hospital service, began to choose San
Giacomo, for Camillus’s sake, as the place to which they
should go, though Camillus, discreetly, used to distribute
these ardent young ministrants also among other hospitals.
Fr. Pescatore S.J., the novice-master of St. Aloysius, used
simply to hand over his novices to the layman Camillus
and allow them to stay at his hospital day and night and
did not even visit them to see how they were getting on.
“When they are in the hands of Signor Camillus”, he
said, “I put my faith in him, and remain at home. For
I know him, and regard him as a man of holy life.”
It is then not astonishing that Camillus, whose mind
was now equally occupied with the idea of the religious
life, and the idea of serving the sick, should have com­
bined the two and begun to picture a Religious Order

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devoted to the Service of the Sick. The best of present
arrangements was too precarious, too haphazard. A
specific training in both religious life and service of the
sick, in view of a specific form of life, was essential. This
idea came to its full blossoming, so to say, round about
the feast of the Assumption, August 15, 1582. At once he
communicated his idea to his special little band. No more
did he pass the nights in prayer, and multiply his penances
in solitude. These men would meet in a special room for
prayer, and—what will upset our modern prejudices, for
penance. They flogged themselves and fasted and wore
hair-cloth. Now, after a while, in that secluded room,
was to be found a certain Crucifix.
It may not have become clear, so far, that Camillus
was animated not merely by pity for his fellow-men, nor
even by some abstract idea of God and His services,
but by an intimate and personal love for our Lord, Jesus
Christ. Of course, no one who knows the history of the
Church, and in particular that of the Middle Ages and
indeed the Renaissance, would suppose that men, hitherto,
had been capable of dissociating humanitarian work, or
worship of God, from the Name, work and example, and
appeal of Jesus Christ. In Camillus’s case, that which
does not require to be explicitly stated none the less
reveals itself as it were by accident. When he left the
Capuchins for the second time, he had already resolved to
“follow his beloved Crucified at all times and in all
places and in all adversities”. And I might ask-—How
could any man, obsessed by the wish to be a Franciscan,
have been other than continuously conscious of St.
Francis, in whose very flesh the stigmata of the crucifixion
appeared ? When he re-entered San Giacomo, he resolved
to “give himself in all and through all to the service of
Jesus Christ crucified in His most living image, the
Sick”. It was friends who, to please him and his little

LIFE OF

SAINT

CAMILLUS

33

band, had a Crucifix carved—by an artist unknown to us
—and this became, undoubtedly, a sort of magnetic centre
of his life. It was two metres tall, including the Cross.
The Christ is 90 centimetres. The original cross, being
too small for the figure, and having become worm-eaten,
was replaced in 1742 and again in 1930. The cross is
absolutely simple: the figure, though renaissance, is
exquisitely refined, tender, and dignified. The head
reposes on the right shoulder. When I refer to St.
Camillus’s Crucifix, this is what I allude to.1 In the
presence of this Crucifix, five men, on the staff of the
Hospital; promised to follow Camillus in life and death, in
prosperity and in toil. Prosperity, I may say, was far distant.
Naturally this little group became known, talked
about, and objected to. Biographers at first put down
Camillus’s difficulties to the act of a servant who, not
having been asked to join the group, was angry and
resolved to ruin it. He denounced Camillus as making a
plot, as conspiring for some insubordination, as aiming
at making himself sole head of San Giacomo, as allowing
in consequence the sick themselves to suffer from in­
attention. We agree that some of those who had wished
to become General Superintendents of the Hospital
Were jealous of Camillus. We admit that he was summoned
to answer the charges made against him, and then was
given no chance of explaining himself, but was told
outright that he must disband his little group and get
rid of his ‘oratory’ . . . as if there were not plenty of
churches in Rome without his making a pretend-church
in addition. But I am clear that there were those who
really thought that Camillus was an ambitious revolu­
tionary, aiming at a sort of dictatorship, though this
becomes clearer later on. Meanwhile, on the pretext
1 See M. Vanti : Il Crocifisso di S. Camillo de Lellis, a monograph
issued in Rome, Î937.

34

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that he had not unfurnished his ‘oratory’ quickly enough
his enemies had entered it, pulled down the Crucifix,
and pushed it behind a door. Camillus was indignant.
He decided to offer his resignation and to go elsewhere.
He went to the “Do-Good-Brothers” (the society of St.
John of God) and offered his services. My feeling is that
neither because of his never-healing leg, nor yet because
they feared to quarrel with San Giacomo, but because
they felt sure that he had a vocation of his own, they
refused him. Camillus thus found himself, after all his
efforts, seemingly reduced to nothing, and understood
that whatever he was to do in the future, must be God’s
work, not his.
He was, in a sense, when making such applications,
still kicking against the pricks. On the very night when
he found the Crucifix taken down he had transported
it to his room and prayed long before it. He went to sleep
and dreamed that it said to him: “Don’t be afraid, 0
man of small soul : go ahead, for I will help you and be
with you”. He woke up, and told his disheartened
associates, and they resumed their united prayers, no
more in the dismantled oratory but in the hospital
church, of which one of them was sacristan and held its
keys. Thus when others went for walks or made their siesta,
these men nourished their resolve in the presence of God.
Cicatelli places immediately after this dream a different
yet to some degree similar vision, intended to encourage
Camillus who was “suffering immensely” from “new
and more tormenting difficulties”, which drew from him
“most bitter and painful lamentation”. But it is impossible
to see what events can thus be described until what we
shall have to say about Camillus’s relations with St.
Philip. To my mind (and indeed to Fr. Vanti’s, though he
does not permit himself to change the date normally
assumed for the second ‘vision’), Cicatelli not unnaturally

LIFE OF SAINT CAMILLUS

35

reinembered and wrote about the second vision because
the first was fresh and present in his mind ; and as for the
‘difficulties’, I expect Camillus could foresee from the
outset that they would arise; and that they did in fact
arise in a slow crescendo till they reached a climax, and the
new divine encouragement was needed. I venture therefore
to relate the second and psychologically more interesting
experience when I think that it more probably occurred.
Though Camillus carried on with his work as Maestro
with his usual exactness, it could not but be obvious
that there was a party within San Giacomo that was
hostile to him, though as we shall see the real authorities,
even if they were to disapprove of his plans, remained
personally his good friends. He asked himself if he could
possibly stay there. He consulted a friend, who consulted
his confessor, Fr. (afterwards Cardinal) Tarugi, and both
agreed that Camillus would do well to leave, and thus
be more free to gather round himself a devoted group of
friends who, with him, could serve the sick and even the
plague-stricken when necessary. The plan seemed good
to him, but he waited. Gradually he came to feel that such
a group of men, like himself, laymen, but with home ties
of various sorts, would be inadequate for the really
needed work. They must be, he felt, fully detached—
in a word, men vowed to personal poverty and willing
to provide a whole-time work without remuneration.
And also, seeing that as laymen they could not do what
was by far the more important part of that work—the
spiritual part ; the hearing of confessions ; the instructions ;
above all, the administration of the Sacraments of the
Sick and Dying—should not such men be priests ? Should
not he himself be ordained ?1
r The dismantling of the Oratory took place after Aug. 15, 1582.
Mgr. A. Salviati was then guardian prelate. He became Cardinal some­
what later, and Mgr. Cusano succeeded him at San Giacomo on Dec. 28,
1583. We cannot therefore deny that the Oratory was dismantled by

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LIFE OF SAINT

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Camillus had begun to improve his general education
directly upon becoming Maestro. But now that he fore­
saw the priesthood, he realised that he must refresh
especially his Latin. That he knew some is clear because
he had been able to teach some of his friends the Little
Office of our Lady: this was more significant than the
Litany of Loreto which, we learn, he also said with them.
The first instruction was given by a chaplain of the
hospital, who died in June 1580. Another priest took on
his Latin education, and Camillus was to be seen even in
the streets, Latin Grammar in hand. After a while, he
was able to go to the Roman College, which had been
founded by St. Ignatius in 1551. When Camillus went
there, very famous men were teaching there—Vasquez,
Suarez, St. Robert Bellamine. But philosophy was not
for Camillus, who was placed in the lowest class—this
bearded man of 32 and over 6| feet tall—among boys of
12 and 13. After all, St. Ignatius had done exactly the
same thing: Ignatius too had been a soldier; Ignatius
too had limped to the end of his life. Camillus could
afford to smile at the gibes of little boys who kept saying
that he had arrived late. But a Jesuit teacher there stopped
them, and explained what great things Camillus was doing
—what greater things he certainly would do in the Church
of God. Besides this, he attended classes given in the
house of Virgilio Crescenzi to the sons of that patrician.
The Jesuit Fathers did all they could for him, and in 1583
he was judged fit to receive minor orders. True, the
reforms of the Council of Trent, concerning ecclesiastical
education, could not be put into operation at once, and

ms stay mere.

LIFE OF SAINT CAMILLUS

37

had to be contented by a test in the knowledge of that
Council’s Catechism, but that Camillus was.examined
about the Life of St. Nicholas of Myra, whom he loved
because of his great charity and work during a plague. It
remained that Camillus to the end said he had never
studied theology and knew how to talk only about
‘charity’, and that he had to ask a lawyer who was reading
out some deed in Latin to “put it in Italian, because I
don’t understand Latin any too well”. But then, no
normal man does or ever will understand legal docu­
ments; and, the Apostles were not so very learned, nor was
St. Philip Neri, nor was St. Ignatius. Yet we are assured
that they became good priests,
On the day when he went with his friend Francesco
Profeta to San Giovanni in Laterano alljubilant to receive
the tonsure, it was discovered that the ‘ dimissorial letters ’
received from Chieti, vouching for his suitability for
the priesthood, lacked an essential clause. He had to
return—yet he was not cast down. He assured his com­
panion that God had let him know that the day would not
close without the matter being put right. He went to the
Hospital, prayed before a crucifix that stood in the middle
of a ward, and immediately met an old friend of his from
Chieti itself, who said that he could himself supply one
of the two needed signatures and that he knew a priest in
Rome who could supply the other. So the completed
document was produced that night. He had already put
on ecclesiastical dress on February 2, 1583, anniversary
of his conversion ; and he received the tonsure and then
the rest of Minor Orders from Bishop Goldwell, the only
surviving English Bishop of Mary Tudor’s times, and
Bishop of St. Asaph, and on three successive Sundays
in the sacristy of San Silvestro in Monte Cavallo, a
charming church of which half remains.
But a new anxiety beset him. Camillus had given all

38

LIFE OF SAINT

CAMILLUS

the money he received as Maestro di Casa to the Hospital
itself or to his teachers : but to be ordained, a priest had
to be able to provide some evidence that he could support
himself decently. Virgilio Crescenzi was trying to find
him a ‘benefice’; but the matter dragged. However,
one December evening of 1583, Camillus met, in the
courtyard of San Giacomo, a gentleman called Fermo
Calvi. Though it was pouring with rain, they began to talk:
Camillus found himself explaining his situation. Calvi
promised to pray for him. But at home he thought he
ought to provide Camillus with a patrimony himself.
He returned, and promised him a gift of 500 scudi, which
would amount to about £125 of our money, indeed,
granting that money was then worth four times our own,
a sum of £500. Camillus, enchanted, went to the proper
official, only to be told that more was needed. Fermo
added 100 scudi, sufficient to produce, it appears, 36 scudi
a year, £9 (36) a year. Camillus was therefore ordained
subdeacon and deacon during the Lent of 1584, and
priest on May 26, the Saturday after Pentecost. He then
made a fortnight’s retreat, the details of which were
known to none but St. Philip, who never divulged them.
And at last, on June 10, 1584, he said his first Mass in the
church of Our Lady Porta Paradisi, with a few of his
special friends around him, and also Calvi, who gave him
a chalice, a missal, three chasubles and other necessities
for Mass. Camillus, on his side, gave Holy Communion
to his generous benefactor. It is pleasant to recall that
when Calvi grew old and lonely, Camillus assigned him
three rooms in the Maddalena (of which below) and gave
him affectionate hospitality till he died on August 16, 1612,
assisted, in this last passage, by Camillus himself.
Despite their apprehensions that Camillus might still
want to leave San Giacomo and perhaps in order to keep
him there, the Guardians of the Hospital appointed

LIFE OF SAINT CAMILLUS

39

him chaplain of the little church called “la Madonnina dei
Miracoli”, which stood on the bank of the Tiber not
far from the Piazza del Popolo. It had sheltered the first
conuriunity of the Capuchins, founded by B. Matteo da
Bascia (1529-1530) and contained a famous miraculous
picture of Our Lady and the Holy Child. When Salviati
built his great church for San Giacomo, he transported the
picture thither : it is venerated in the second chapel to the
right as you enter. A copy was placed in the Madonnina,
which became famous in its turn, and was taken to the
present church of Sta Maria dei Miracoli in the Piazza
del Popolo itself when the old church was pulled down.
It seems incredible that Camillus should continue, not
only doing full time as Maestro, but also his studies,
adding to this such work as was needed—perhaps not
much-—at his church. From his point of view, however,
it was a first step out of the Hospital : and by asking two
of his friends to stay with him in the tiny house he hired,
he actually began to create his first Community. These
two friends were Bernardino Norcino and Curzio Lodi.
Bernardino entered the Hospital as servant on September
4, 1580, having done hard work previously as wood-man,
and also as servant in the Roman College. He held
various offices in the Hospital but left it finally in November
1584 to put himself entirely at the disposal of Camillus.
He was a very simple and devout man, who won the
highest opinions wherever he went and had been thought a
mainstay of the Hospital. His spirit of prayer led him to
great heights of holiness. Curzio Lodi came to Rome
from Aquila arid was a penitent of St. Philip’s and indeed
gave witness at the process of St. Philip’s canonisation.
It was Philip who sent the young man to San Giacomo as
a servant, and in fact he replaced Bernardino when he
ascended to the post of guardaroba. This was in 1582. It
is interesting that Camillus, when he began his foundation,

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asked Curzio for a little money he had brought to
Rome with him and had deposited in the keeping of the
Hospital. Curzio took counsel from St. Philip, who did
not approve of this. However, Curzio’s affection for
Camillus won the day and he made the money—and
himself—entirely over to the new enterprise. I mention
this tiny incident to show—as we shall see much more
clearly later on—that holy people do not always see
eye to eye, and that holy ‘directors’ are not tyrants
and do not force their penitents to take their advice.
After his ordination, Camillus asked leave for himself
and Curzio to return for a while to their home-land, the
Abruzzo. He resigned, meanwhile, his office of Maestro
di Casa, and, while he was warned to make his leave as
short as possible—it lasted in fact only about a fortnight
—he fixed no definite end for it. However, he advised
Bernardino to retain his post, but if possible to transfer
himself to the Madonnina together with a third, the
priest Francesco Profeta, from Catania. He had entered
San Giacomo on July 17, 1582, and became sacristan and
confessor to the Hospital. He in fact definitely joined
Camillus early in March, 1585. Camillus’s return to his
home as priest naturally astounded those who remembered
only his earlier reputation, and still more the fact that
having found he possessed, after all, some small property
there, he sold it, and gave the proceeds to the poor.
On August 1st they were back in Rome and went
straight to the Madonnina where they were soon joined
by Bernardino: Profeta was however involved in a law­
suit and could not come yet. Here on September 15th,
Octave of the Nativity of Our Lady, Camillus gave the
“clerical dress’’, i.e. a short cassock reaching the knees
and a black cloak, to his two friends, and, at the foot of
Our Lady’s altar, their Institute was born.
Fr. Vanti rightly lays emphasis both on the annoyance

LIFE OF SAINT

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41

that Camillus’s plan occasioned within the Hospital,
and also, upon the extreme fairness of those authorities
(if not of all their subordinates) towards him. Mgr.
Salviati, when he first heard of Camillus’s aspirations,
disapproved of them not only because of the prospective
loss to the Hospital, but because he thought Camillus
impetuous and hot-headed. Afterwards, not only did
Camillus obtain him for the Cardinal Protector of the
new Congregation, but the Cardinal himself declared
openly that it was the work of God. Mgr. Cusano
succeeded Salviati in 1583 and strenuously opposed
any idea of Camillus’s that might involve his leaving San
Giacomo, precisely because he esteemed him and Ber­
nardino so highly. Later on, he said to Camillus: “Do
you remember how often I tried to prevent your attending
to that absurd society of yours ? Somehow God has
disposed and changed these things Î ” And we could
quote many other witnesses, from Guardians, lower
officials, doctors and surgeons to the enormously high
opinion in which they held Camillus. The testimony of
servants has its particular interest and pathos, and of
infirmarians who were begged by Camillus to let him dress
his own leg—the sick needed them more than he did.
Yet in a sense these witnesses repeat themselves : save in
the one case of the angry servant (p. 33), I can find no
more than vague statements about a kind of ‘party’,
which made things uncomfortable for Camillus, and this
was very natural : he in his way made things uncomfortable
for them, simply by insisting that work must be done
properly, and with charity, and because a superb example
of disinterestedness is always exasperating to those
especially who seek little else but their self-interest. True,
the authorities were distressed at the thought of his leaving
San Giacomo, and even disbelieved in his projects—
how could a man, “idiota e senza lettere”, as we often

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hear—an unlettered man of no standing—hope to found
and control a new religious society of so exacting a sort,
especially when the whole idea of new foundations was
seen with grave disfavour by the Holy See ?
1 will mention two incidents only that belong to this
period, to show what an impression Camillus made on
his contemporaries. A man lay in the Hospital whose leg
was to be amputated next day. The instruments were all
prepared and under his bed. Camillus sat with him that
night, and talked to him till he went quietly to sleep.
Next day the leg was perfectly well. 35 years afterwards,
a man who saw Camillus in the street, began to call out:
“Viva il padre Camillo ! ” “What is the matter,
brother ? ” said Camillus. “Don’t you remember, father,
the grace that I received from God through you ? You
cured my broken leg by means of prayer when I could
find no remedy.” Camillus told him to keep quiet: it was
God who had cured him. The man cried out that if he
lived to be 100 he would always call out “Viva padre
Camillo ! ” Camillus turned to Fr. Gens, who related
the episode, and said : “It was 35 years ago that it hap­
pened and he still remembers it !”
The other episode throws light on the times. Late on
April 26, 1583, the Chief of Police, Gian Battista della
Pace, entered the palace of Lodovico Orsini who, despite
the severe orders of Gregory XIII, gave shelter to bandits
there. The Orsini insisted that in their house they were
privileged. There was a light, and three nobles were
killed, one of them Lodovico’s brother. The Orsini vowed
vengeance, and so did the people, who worshipped the
family that protected their lawlessness. It was feared that
the horrors of the Sack of Rome would repeat them­
selves. The Chief of Police fled : so did his men. Two of
them rushed to San Giacomo and begged Camillus to
t
hide them, which he did. The mob demanded, waving

LIFE OF SAINT CAMILLUS

43

bloody swords, that they be handed over to them.
Camillus implored them to have mercy on men who had
fled to the House of God and of Mercy. They refused.
Camillus withdrew to the church and prayed. When he
felt sure he had been heard, he came out, and offered
; himself in exchange for the two soldiers. The mob was
instantly quelled and went away quietly.
Camillus had managed to extricate himself definitely
from his charge of Maestro: Curzio felt no obligation
to return to the Hospital : Bernardino had removed to the
Madonnina, though we do not know what reasons he
alleged. Naturally Mgr. Cusano felt all this acutely, and
possibly in the hopes that he might persuade Camillus
to return did not deprive him of the chaplaincy of the
little church. But Camillus did what could hardly have
failed to convince Cusano that his hopes were futile. He
went to his old room, and took away the Crucifix. He
carried it, bareheaded at noonday, through the streets
to the Madonnina. People knelt, wept, and called their
friends to the windows. And he solemnly installed it in
his new dwelling.
But the climax was, that Camillus declared that he and
his companions would now work at Santo Spirito, another
great hospital that we must describe in a moment.
Camillus had seen quite clearly that matters would be
awkward if the three companions, intending to attract
yet more, tried to remain at San Giacomo where already
that kind of kingdom within a kingdom had been attempted
(though in a far vaguer way) and had been forbidden
and dissolved. But had he already been negotiating with
Santo Spirito ? There is no record of it that I know of :
but how could he guess that he would be welcome there ?
One might almost have expected that the authorities
would have declined to welcome men whose very presence
might give grounds for ill feeling between them and those

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of San Giacomo. Be that as it may, Camillus's intention
reached the ears of Mgr. Cusano. He was genuinely
furious. What criticism of San Giacomo was not implied
by all these men wishing to leave it ? Of what intrigue
had not Camillus been guilty, not only by not making
it clear long before what he intended to do, but by taking
away with him the very best men of the staff ? Cusano
in fact attacked Camillus, one day, in the hospital court­
yard, in the presence of several others, and called him a
revolutionary, and accused him of very great harm to the
whole work being done for the sick. For my part, I
think that Camillus had not wished to say anything
definite till his own mind was perfectly clear about what
he intended to do; I think that this accurate vision of the
future and consequent fixation of plans came gradually.
That he was to form a society of priests and others devoted
to the exclusive care of the sick, had long been clear to
him: but exactly when, and where—no. I think he felt
it would be better to state only what he knew for certain,
and when he knew it, and then to do it outright. This is
the opposite of Newman’s method, judging by the famous
incident of the “grey trousers” which, with no word
spoken, were meant to indicate to his visitor that he
was renouncing the Anglican ministry. If Camillus did
‘hint’ at what he knew for certain, I think that this was
just as contrary to his disposition as it was in harmony with
Newman’s, and that his hints were never due to an
instinct (Italian or otherwise) for intrigue, but quite
possibly to a real fear of provoking the explosion that
now had come.
Yet this was not the worst. Cusano went to Philip
Neri and implored him to use his authority to prevent
Camillus from leaving his post at San Giacomo and taking
Cusano’s best men with him. Philip said that he always
had tried to dissuade Camillus from founding what

LIFE OF SAINT

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45

Cusano called this grotesque Society, and that he knew
nothing of these last steps of Camillus’s. He said he
would do his utmost to persuade the men to go back.
Soon after this, Camillus arrived, terribly depressed by the
attack of Cusano, and hoping for some word of comfort
from the Saint, who, after all, realised fully what the
service of the sick implied since he sent his own men to
hospitals. Philip might have retorted that he always
forbade them, precisely, to make any sort of society, or
in any way to mix themselves up with the government of
hospitals. Camillus might have answered that that did
not touch the essential question, which was, whether or
no such a society were needed! The proper work could
not be done—still less could the desperately needed
reforms be carried through—by precarious visits, however
charitable. As it was, Philip simply told him to go back.
Camillus was on the rack. He kept hearing an interior
voice bidding him to go forward ; and here was the one
voice which he trusted in the world of men telling him to
go back. He implored the Saint not to be astonished at
what he had done, because he felt himself violently
moved interiorly to do something more than look after
himself. Philip then took the drastic measure of refusing
to hear Camillus’s confessions any more, or to direct him.
“Go”, said he, “to Fr. Talpa.” And the same was to
hold good for Curzio and Bernardino. Talpa was a
man whom Philip called his “right arm”; he was exceptionally prudent, very zealous, an admirable spiritual
director, and highly esteemed by St. Charles Borromeo
and Cardinal Baronius.
All the same, the blow was terrific. Writers struggle to
find reasons why St. Philip administered it. Philip wanted
to test Camillus’s humility : to mortify him : to check any
exaggerated affection for himself or trust in him that
Camillus might have : to resign his care for Camillus to a

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LIFE OF SAINT

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man whom he judged still wiser than he himself was. I
think that all this is perhaps far-fetched. Surely St.
Philip honestly thought that Camillus was not the
man to found a new society; that he was doing what all
acknowledged to be a very good work where he was and
that it was perverse to destroy it for the sake of an un­
developed plan of disputable value, and that Cusano was
really being treated badly. We will not say that Philip
felt piqued by Camillus’s professing to be directed by him
and then going flatly contrary to his direction, but that he
considered that it was not much good his continuing
to give him advice if it was obstinately disregarded over a
considerable space of time, in a matter which concerned
not only the whole career of this young man, but charity
if not sheer justice in regard of others. Let someone else
try what he can do with him. And after all, St. Philip may
have thought, I may be wrong. Fr. Talpa is very prudent
and I am—rather eccentric.
I deliberately wrote that last word. Before I protect
myself for doing so, perhaps we might remember that
neither Philip nor Camillus had yet reached that full
perfection to which God was calling them. Philip had
nearly ten more years to live, and Camillus thirty; much
, was to happen during that time, and we cannot possibly be
saying anything against the achieved sanctity of either if
we suppose that Philip may have felt a little irritated
by the obstinate resistance of his penitent, especially as in
the end he had given his ‘advice in the shape of an order ’ :
or if we suppose that Camillus might have told both
Philip and Cusano more exactly what he had, in the long
run, become clear he was going to do. Hence, given
human ways of thinking and feeling, we can say that both
were almost wholly right, and each, perhaps, not perfectly
so. From Philip’s point of view, Camillus was genuinely
making a serious mistake and being obstinate about it:

CAMILLUS

47

Camillus was sure he was doing right, and kept rather
more quiet about the final steps than he need have done—
for instance, he did not make it clear to Cusano that he and
Bernardino and Curzio, at anyrate, were not coming back,
and that probably Profeta would soon be leaving. And
Cusano was most forgivably distressed at losing four of his
best men at once, without even having been clearly
warned that he was doing so nor having been clear that he
must at once seek substitutes. He was wrong in getting
so angry publicly, but an Italian, in such circumstances,
may well be absolved if he expresses himself with volu­
bility if not violence ! There is here all the material for a
first rate three cornered tragedy—the clash between
three very good men all of them very nearly quite right,
and unable to see how they could be wrong ! And one cannot deny that St. Philip was at times startling—eccentric !
he did not move at all in the curves that might be expected
of the ordinary man.
I can then quite imagine that he realised how delicate
was the case of Camillus, and that it might be wise to
hand him over to a man supremely known as ‘prudent’.
Nor at that time, was the office of confessor sharply
distinguished from that of director as it usually is now.
Anyhow, he will have felt that if Camillus was bent on
defying his direction in a way which Philip thought
wrong, Camillus had better seek not only another director
but another confessor.
The blow remained terrific. All these men were accustomed to regard Philip as the very anchorage on earth
of their spiritual lives. Never to have approached him was
one thing: to have been accepted and then rejected, that
surely was another ! With Fr. Vanti, I am much inclined
to think that this is when Camillus had his second preter­
natural communication connected with his Crucifix. The
former one had been explicitly a dream : this time he was

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awake, and saw the Figure detach its arms from the
cross and reach them lovingly out towards him. And the
divine voice said to him, almost as before: “Why distress
yourself, a man of little soul ? Go on with your enter­
prise, for I will help you, seeing that this work is Mine,
not yours”.1
1 Those who have always lived in a Catholic atmosphere and tradition
will probably accept this narrative without much reflection, as they do
most of such phenomena in the lives of Saints. Others will probably
at once regard it as a hallucination. However, even the Italian Vita feels
that some comment should be made upon it. It is, of course, mere a priori
dogmatism to say that no such experience can be supernatural in origin.
For our part, considering the event independently, we are forced to say
that Camillus seems the least likely of men to have hallucinations. He was
a man of extremely well-balanced brain—‘ an iron-clad head ’, Salviati
used to call him. Visions and the like play little or no part in his history:
he perfectly well distinguished between his previous experience, which
was a dream, and this one. His resistance to adversity was amazing:
the amount of work he did despite really dreadful physical pain was no
less astounding. It is interesting, too, that Camillus immediately told his
friends about his dream, but not about this vision—not even to his close
friend, Philip Biazzi (though he, in time, heard about it from others).
Cicatelli, in his first edition (1615) does not mention it, for it was then,
in fact, not known. But three men, worthy of belief because of their
holiness of life, swore in their ‘ depositions ’ (in 1622, 1625, and 1626)
that the Saint had yielded to the earnest request of the Flemish Fr. Gens
to be told of the origin of the new Institute, and that he then related his
experience to them, binding them to strict secrecy: after his death, this
promise no more held good. We cannot of course give the adhesion of
faith to this or to any ecclesiastical miracle, for these form no part of
revelation. Nor need we even fear to ask what may have been its
‘ mechanism so to say. Fr. Dalia Giacomo rightly says in Domesticum,
July 1922, p. 146, that ‘ the Author of physical nature has infinite numbers
of possible ways of modifying and transforming it ’. I see no quite
insuperable difficulties in the way of a wooden or plaster figure being
made to move, become apparently animated, and speak. It may be
sophistication on my part to feel that aesthetically I should not like that—
if only because in this case the crucifix was much smaller than Camillus.
Nor can we say that God might not have acted directly on Camillus's
physical organs of sight and hearing so that he thought he saw and heard
what really he did not. But would this not be perilously near to creating
an illusion in him? But I should find no difficulty in God’s having acted
directly on his mind, and made him so vividly conscious of our Lord’s
Jove and care for him and of the certainty that his vocation was of divine
origin and not due to himself—“ You did not choose Me—I chose you ”—
that the direct, intimate, spiritual consciousness overflowed upon his
imagination and senses, which is in inverse of the ordinary process in
which a sense-experience precedes the idea which- the mind forms by
means of it. The same problem arises when the Saints ‘ see ’ other Saints,

LIFE OF SAINT CAMILLUS

49

Any how, it is good to know that Camillus loved and
honoured and sought counsel from Philip so long as the
latter lived, and Philip never lessened in the slightest
his affection and esteem for Camillus: as for Camillus’s
spiritual sons, they charmingly spoke of Philip as their
‘holy Grandpapa’—for had he not been ‘Father in the
Lord’ to their Founder ?

in
Camillus and his little band now transferred their
activities, as they had proposed, to the Hospital of
Santo Spirito. A note on its history may be permitted.
Ina, king of the Anglo-Saxons, had instituted an
asylum for English pilgrims on the right bank of the
Tiber between—to make its position easily understood—
the Castle of St. Angelo and St. Peter’s. The quarter
therefore took the name of ‘Sassia’, and the hospital
when confided to Guy de Montpelier and his Brothers of
the Holy Ghost was called Santo Spirito in Sassia. It was
Innocent III, that mighty promoter of hospital-work
throughout Europe, who actually summoned Guy to
Rome to supervise what was to be the ideal world­
hospital—Hospitium Apostolicum or simply Nostrum, as it
was so called, and, since laymen and not only religious
were to share in the good work there, instituted a Con­
fraternity of the Holy Ghost in the same year. This
Hospital did indeed reproduce itself throughout Europe.
or Angels (for all these are discarnate). It is interesting that St Bernadette,
at Lourdes, felt that she saw Our Lady ‘ with her eyes but heard her
voice ‘ here in her ‘ heart —The option is this—Did Camillus’s experi­
ence have its origin outside himself, i.e. from God? or did it arise wholly
from some psychological disturbance within himself? Given his character,
his vocation, and the Church’s seal set upon his sanctity, I have no doubt
that God, in a way known to Himself and never ascertainable by us,
initiated a process in the Saint which set the whole of his body-soul
personality ‘ in movement ’, so to say, so that he saw, heard, felt, thought,
anàknew in exactly the way which he needed and profited by at the time.

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Earlier buildings having been burnt down, the actual
edifice was constructed by order of Sixtus IV in 1471. It
is extremely dignified, and is grouped around a central
hall. In the middle the roof rises into an octagon
turret or quasicupola, under which is the main altar of
the hospital.
The fewness of the Santo Spirito religious made it
difficult to find a superior with all the requisite qualities
from amongst them, though Innocent III had wished
that they should rule it for ever. Popes tried various
experiments as the centuries passed : finally they resigned
themselves to appointing the men they thought most
fit to govern it. It seems to me necessary, if we are to see
Camillus as an organic 'part of its history, very briefly
to outline the career of his great predecessor in the
reform of Santo Spirito—Bernardino Cirillo (see once
more M. Vanti—Un humanista del Cinquecento in
funzione di riformatore: Rome, 1936). He was born in
May, 1500 : both his parents died before he was twenty : the
first part of his life was distracted by his desperate attempt
to pursue his studies, and to assist his family. Ordained
in 1526, he was granted various small ecclesiastical posts.
A brilliant lawyer, civil and canonical, he was called to
many high offices by no means to his taste. In 1556 he was
appointed Canon of Sta Maria Maggiore and almost at
once became head of Santo Spirito. The real point of his
life is that he was a true humanist—he was steeped from
youth up in Plato and the Neo-Platonists (even Iamb­
lichus), in the Aeropagite, Pica della Mirandola and the
rest, and he had Marsilio Ficino for tutor—and yet was
no neo-pagan. He really did believe that the new birth of
‘ letters ’ and the arts could render immense services to the
Church and to religion, as indeed they might have, had
they not been so grievously mis-used.
In 1556 Paul IV appointed a prelate as governor who

LIFE OF SAINT CAMILLUS

51

at once fell sick. But his predecessor died and Cirillo
became temporary Governor. He hated his task. It was
impossible to live there, he said, without oneself falling
sick’, the eye sees nothing but the wounded and the
vision of death; the ear hears nothing but cries and
groans, and nostrils and even taste are horribly assaulted.
However, in October, 1556, the Pope definitely appointed
him Governor, and with true obedience he devoted him­
self wholly to his work. He was therefore in the curious
position of controlling not only the establishment, with
its vast properties and revenues, but a congregation of
religious to which he did not belong. This apart from the
violent rivalries which surround the Apostolic See, was
enough to ensure his future being storm-tossed. Paul IV
was himself a tempestuous man : and when he died, Pius
IV (1559) began to receive endless criticisms of Cirillo, all
based really on his having been too friendly with the
Caraffa, so dear to the previous Pope. He refuted these
without much difficulty. It may, however, have been his
close friendship with St. Charles Borromeo which saved
him from being dismissed. Meanwhile his influence was
great also outside the Hospital, and his advice was
welcomed at Trent, whose Council resumed and completed
its work during that Pontificate. In 1565 the Dominican
Pius V, the very day after his election, summoned Cirillo
back to high office in the papal court, and while himself
so austere, enjoyed the open and genial talk of Cirillo who
also effected great economies in the Vatican. But this
position was lost when Gregory XIII came to the throne
(1572), and ^Cirillo spent-practically the rest of his life
defending his, financial, moral and spiritual governship of
the Hospital...............
. .
His duties had been enorffipus. On arrival, he spent three
months disentangling the situation. He felt he must first
put order into its finances^ even to; Satisfy justice, let alone

____

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efficiency. The properties possessed by Santo Spirito
had been enormous: but those, for example, near the sea
and in theory most prosperous, were exposed to piracy and
pillage : whole areas were reduced to sterility by ignorance
and indolence; maladministration, speculation and fraud
had reduced the Hospital to a fearful state of debt.
The labyrinthine accounts of all this can still be studied.
Indeed, he had first to get the accounts properly drawn up,
and every source of income examined. The practice of
granting indulgences with the duty of giving alms to the
hospital annexed, had, in this case too, given rise to such
pestilent abuses that Cirillo, seeing that he could not
rectify them, boldly got Pius V to suppress all such in­
dulgences, though, of course, he had to make good the
lost income himself.
The inhabitants of the Hospital were, naturally, the
patients and the staff. The former consisted of (i) the
sick: (ii) infants cast away by the destitute at birth, in
reliance that some establishment such as this would
rescue them : and (iii) girls who had grown up there, and
were to be educated and taught simple work, till they
could be married off. The children had a sort of nursery
school of their own. Not all patients stayed very long—
they might-be suffering from wounds, or fevers, especially
in summer, like malaria. Many who should have come,
did not, feeling hospital to be a disgrace : or others came
out of laziness: others, because destitute. In 1549-1550,
10,000 sick were cared for, of whom (incredible as it
sounds) 9,028 died, either because they came too late, or
because resistance had been exhausted by malnutrition if
not starvation, but also, aias" to the forgivable short­
comings of science, and to the disgraceful inadequacy
of the nursing and even inedicaï equipment. The staff
consisted of religious, male and female ; doctors and their
assistants, and various sorts of servants. Idle to give

LIFE OF SAINT CAMILLUS

53

statistics: enough, that when Cirillo arrived, none of
these groups sufficed even numerically to do their work
properly. On paper the organisation was excellent—
kitchen^, laundry, bakery, pharmacy etc. etc., had but
the human element been adequate. Cirillo had to reform
all this in detail, and provide much more with much less
income: he succeeded at least materially—diet, linen,
woollens ended by being excellent : medicines were as
copious as they were curious; the barber had no rest
day or night, nay, nor on Sundays, so occupied was he
with blood-letting. And Paul IV appointed a notary for the
Hospital and ruled that all local legal cases, matrimonial,
spiritual, criminal, should be dealt with inside the Hospital,
lest the inmates should suffer from their seclusion.
Cirillo had to turn next to the actual edifice. Admirable
drawings show us both the outside and the inside of the
Hospital (1577, 1585 etc.), and the vast ward of St. Sisto
with its. 300 beds. Cirillo was indeed fiercely criticised
by men who spent fortunes on their private palaces, for
building too ‘sumptuously’. Anyhow, build he had to,
and he built in the best tradition of his time, and in a way
that he thought proper to the ‘perfect hospital’ and to the
Holy See which wished it to be a model. The church had
indeed begun to be rebuilt from the foundations in 1538 :
Cirillo completed its ‘decoration’. Its lovely little cam­
panile was restored, its three bells re-cast and a fourth
added, Paul IV authorising Cirillo to use cannon for
this. Pius IV stopped further building in connection
with Santo Spirito and even St. Peter’s. But Cirillo,
observing that the whole place was ruinous and that the
kitchen had collapsed, ‘without so much as asking the
Governor for permission’, got leave from St. Pius V to
begin again. The Pope gave him for architect Giovanni
Lippi (Nanni Bigio), sadly famous for having succeeded
(for some time) in getting himself substituted for Michel-

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angelo in the building of St. Peter’s. Cirillo took him up
the campanile and explained to him his comprehensive
plan which included the preservation of the old buildings
of Sixtus IV. No vandal he ! Work then began with the
the house for the older girls: then came the hospital
itself and the palazzo of the Governor, which was what
earned him the sharpest criticisms. He did not live to see
his work completed: but we cannot rebuke its far­
sightedness, its width of outlook, its combination of sense
ot actual requisites with respect for the past. The true
Humanist !
But all this was as nothing to his moral responsibility.
He began by restoring public worship in the church
to some sort of dignity : even so, it remained erratic.
The condition of the orphan girls had sunk to a de­
plorably low level. He at least raised it much. Worst
was the degradation of the Order of the Holy Ghost.
Even had it wished to, it could not have done its work
properly, so had it shrunk. It had quite lost the religious
spirit, and languished till, after endless efforts to reform
it, it had to be suppressed by Pius IX in 1847. But Cirillo
had at least succeeded in getting subordinates appointed
such as he could esteem as they esteemed him. St. Philip
and the Jesuits welcomed his reforms. The record of the
Apostolic Visitation of 1574 goes into every detail, yet its
adverse criticisms are very few. The appalling thing is
to compare it with that of 1585. For lack of space I
cannot even summarise it. All is condemned—the
disgraceful condition of the church and of worship·
the condition of the sick, beds, doctoring, spiritual
assistance even of the dying; the luxury of the Santo
Spirito Prior and the futility of the rest of the Order·
the perfectly appalling death-rate of infants (out of
3,503, 2,672 had died); the deplorable character of the
far too few wet-nurses—and above all the degradation

LIFE OF SAINT

CAMILLUS

55

of the official ‘Brothers’, nearly all of whom observe
none of their vows, but “are scandalous and incontinent”.
Was then Mgr. Cirillo a purely personal and not a
creative force ? Perhaps. Or, more truly, he laid founda­
tions on which others, like Camillus, could build. True,
we may discount his sarcastic and most amusing letters
about the Hospital; but we see that in letters to persons
he really does try to persuade, not to intimidate. It has
been said that his friendly but rather caustic laughter did
less to heal than St. Philip’s gentle, gay yet very firm­
lipped, smile. Well, so long as he lived, we find few of the
disorders that existed before and after him, and that is
much. He was never jealous. He begged St. Philip and his
men to undertake the ‘reform’ of the Hospital. The Saint
refused. The significant change was to be due to St.
Camillus, who arrived, a new man, in Rome, the year when
Cirillo died. The first thing to see is that Cirillo could not
possibly have lived a continuous life through the contra­
dictory reigns of Paul IV, Pius IV, St. Pius V, and
especially Gregory ΧΙΠ, and that Camillus did not enter
on a field of action where nothing yet had been done. Our
Lord Himself did not appear without having had His
Baptist; and it is instructive to see how many Saints (St.
Francis Xavier: St. Peter Claver: St. Vincent de Paul
. . .) had had their forerunners. Cirillo died, almost
blind, and most worthily of his honourable, high-hearted
and self-sacrificing career, on June 19, 1575.
; Life, however, at the Madonnina proved impossible.
The room (about 14 ft. beneath the actual street-level)
was on the Tiber and constantly full of mist. Camillus
and Curzio fell gravely ill: work had been too heavy;
food, too scanty; sleep, too short. Curzio was taken to
the hospital of San Giovanni, where the Prior gave him
his own room. Camillus was taken back to San Giacomo,
and was given his old room where he lived as Maestro di

LIFE OF SAINT CAMILLUS

56

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OF SAINT

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Casa. Did they think that his enterprise had proved itself
impossible, and that he had returned to remain for good?
Anyhow, the moment he was better, he returned to work
at Santo Spirito, but decided he must find new lodgings.
He found a house in the Via delle Botteghe Oscure, socalled because the dark vaults of the shops were those of
an ancient theatre. This street lies behind the little church
of St. Stanislaus, in the tiny ‘piazzetta’ half-way down the
Via dei Polacchi going from the piazza Morgana to the
Via delle Botteghe Oscure. Unluckily the rent was 50 scudi
a year, and half had to be paid in advance. Camillus
possessed not even that half. He prayed, and then, with
his naïve aplomb, on meeting an acquaintance, Pompeo
Baratelli, told him his plans. Baratelli put his hand in his
pocket and presented Camillus with 30 scudi on the spot.
On the first of January 1585 the three companions took
up their abode in the new house. They hoped now to
increase their numbers. One applicant had been received
at the Madonnina, but had left, appalled at the hardness
of the life. Even at Santo Spirito it was terribly hard.
Camillus wished that he and his friends should take up
all the hardest tasks: if the servants found patients too
disgusting to be treated by them, the phrase was current:
“Let us leave this muck to Camillus”: and it was here
that some time later he found the living man in the room
into which the dead were ‘tossed’. None the less, men
began to join him, though not for some time could they
reach a round dozen.
But they began to get known. Baratelli promised them
all the bread they should need: bequests and other gifts
began to reach them. They found themselves called to
private houses, where the danger of men dying unattended
was so great. The’new house was so close to the Gesù
that Camillus asked St. Philip if his companions and he
might not choose confessors from among the Jesuits:

57

Philip approved; the new director was Fr. Ottaviano
Capelli, who facilitated the Camillan priests’ saying Mass
in the Gesù, the others going there for the Sacraments or
sermons. If the weather was very bad, or time too short
for even that small journey, they went to one or the other
of two nearer churches. The first sorrow was the death
of Bernardino Norcino, that well-loved, most simple and
most spiritual of the earliest Three. He had foretold the
purchase of the Mother House and Church of St. Mary
Magdalen, and also, had assured Rodolfo Aquaviva, S.J.,
that he would die a martyr, as indeed he did. He was
buried in the Jesuit vault in the Gesù, having died on
Aug. 16, 1585. Curzio Lodi too became so ill that he
had to go home for two years to recover.
But already Camillus wished to give a name and firmer
shape to his little Company. It was popularly known at
first as the Company of Camillus: but his modesty re­
volted against that. For a brief while, it was called the
‘Servants of the Sick’, a name used in the rule: but at
the end of April 1585 the title ‘Ministers of the Sick’ was
settled on, because other groups were using the word
‘Servants’, or because Camillus liked to adopt outright
the word ‘minister’ so familiar from the Latin of the
Vulgate. We, however, cannot but find it easier to use,
in English, the word ‘servant’. This expression: ‘Ministri
degli Infermi’ lent itself to pleasantries . . . children ran
after them calling out: ‘Ministri dell’ Inferno’.’—the
earliest MS. life delightfully says that this was undoubtedly
due to the Devil, who—proud spirit!—could not bear that
men called by so base a name should win such triumphs
over him, and tried to make them abhorred so that they
should not be called to the dying. As a matter of fact,
they became named, in many parts of Italy, the Fathers
of the Good Death, or of Beautiful Death; so too in
Spain and South America. In Sicily it became proverbial
c

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58
LIFE OF SAINT CAMILLUS
that you could not die without the help of a Crucifer, or
Cross-carrier as they were there called: indeed, so earnest
was the help of these men at the bedside of the dying,
that Sicily even created a proverb: if a petitioner was too
pressing, they said: “You are as insistent as a Crucifer
at a death-bed 1”
The fact that the little Company received its name of
‘Ministers’ as early as April-May 1585 suggests that the
‘Rule’, which still has that of ‘servants’ at its head was
written before that, and maybe had been begun before
Camillus even left San Giacomo. He did not write fast;
he could not write much at a time; he certainly prayed
long before composing so much as a paragraph. The
original text of the “ Rules of the Company of the Servants of the Sick” was lost, and recovered quite recently
in the Secret Archives of the Vatican. It falls into two
parts, not accurately separated, and indeed the rules,
though numbered, as it were melt into one another. At
first, Camillus speaks of the formation of the interior life
of the ‘ Servants’; then, of the character their work must
have. This rule, to my mind, expresses Camillus’s character very well. It is unlike any other such document though
you can see how carefully he had studied the Jesuit rules
(it is said that possibly he had read about the society
created by Bernardino de Obregon formed in Spain in
1522: it spread rapidly but never was papally approved.
It is thought too that he inherited one or two phrases
from the Rule of the Religious of the Holy Spirit). One
inspiration pervades this collection of rules—Charity: but
real charity, that loves men because it sees Christ in them :
and one object is aimed at throughout—the service of the
sick·; all sick people, at all times and in every place.
In consequence of this ideal, a very wide liberty is left
to the conscience of each. Thus if the needs of some sick
man require it, a Brother may omit even Mass on days of

LIFE OF SAINT CAMILLUS

59

non-obligation: when they eat at home, there is a certain
amount of fasting and abstinence; but if they are serving
in a hospital, they must eat what is put before them: they
must eat and pray together when possible. These ideas are
to be found, for example, in rules 8, 9, 10. Another point
on which Camillus insisted even more strongly than the
almost dangerously broad subordination of the external
‘religious’ life to the needs of the sick was poverty. We
need not look for an explanation to his early love for the
Capuchin spirit (not that he ever lost it) ; the Jesuit rules
were just as emphatic. St. Ignatius would have wished
his religious to have done the whole of their work, teach­
ing included, gratis: and he was obstinate that they should
receive no ecclesiastical honours unless directly ordered
to by the Pope, and should, so far as possible, keep out
of all financial affairs so far as could possibly be managed.
The real reason for this was the historical fact that pre­
lacies were ambitiously sought for the sake of their
revenues, and rich prelates risked turning simply into
grand princes. The history of the Hospitaller Orders in
particular gave a terrible example of what happened when
such Orders grew rich. Again and again their houses
became exempted from episcopal control, and the superi­
ors of such Orders found themselves receiving vast legacies,
controlling enormous estates—-all lavished on them by
benefactors really anxious to assist the work for which
the Order had been founded. The temptation to increase
such wealth and to live luxuriously was too much for
human weakness. The headship of the Santo Spirito
Hospital, for example, became so overwhelmingly desir­
able a post that hardly a bishopric was more valuable.
The ‘Commendatore’ of that hospital had actually
power of life and death within his vast territories : mean­
while the actual work among the sick was handed over to
paid servants with the results that we have seen. After a

60

LIFE OF SAINT

CAMILLUS

LIFE OF SAINT CAMILLUS
61
reform in 1371 its religious began to follow the Rule of
sit up, and to hand in a daily accurate account of the
St. Augustine and were able to accept all sorts of benefices
patient’s day to the doctors. In the last rule, he foresees
—provided they were at least in minor orders. Therefore
that others may have to be written if the Holy See sanc­
many received these, but went no further, drawing reven­
tions the development of the Company into an official
ues, that is, but incurring no responsibilities. When the
‘Congregation’. It was to do so : but in 1613 a completely
Holy See again and again tried to bring them back to the
new-set of rules was sanctioned and introduced into
observance of their vow of poverty, they appealed to some
the great hospital of Milan where on Feb. 13, 1595
“immemorial dispensation” which freed them from it.
Pius IX had to suppress them altogether in 1847. Other ’ Camillus had been able to install his own Religious
instead of the paid staff. He hoped that these rules would
such decaying Orders had of course been suppressed
serve for other hospitals too, and indeed they did, in
before. This preoccupation about poverty runs over into
proportion as he introduced his Religious into Naples,
the second group of Rules (27-51 : especially 28, 44 and
Florence, Genoa, Ferrara and Viterbo, besides Milan.
45); Camillus insists even more strongly than St. Ignatius
These second rules, composed after eighteen years of
that financial or other material obligations are completely
experience, seem to me much less naïve than the former :
forbidden to the Brothers: and that if in spite of every­
they, retain, however a certain charm which I feel as
thing bequests are made, they are to be given to the
definitely ‘Camillan’ as I feel the ‘Franciscan’ spirit and
hospital in which the legator dies. And (34) he is deter­
fragrance to be something quite unique and recognisable.
mined that his men shall not appear to be reformers and
It can be justifiably said that Camillus, without troub­
critics in the hospitals where they serve; and wished them
ling
his head about historical precedents, really did initiate
not to notice the defects of management they might notice
reform
within the Catholic Church in what concerned
—any reform that comes about must be the fruit of their
the
service
of the sick. Without doubt the earlier, medieval
unbounded charity.
orders
and
hospitals had begun very well. But, as we
I do not remember that any other rule for men speaks
saw;
they
had
deteriorated till they reached a depth below
of charity as ‘maternal’—‘fatherly’, of course, often.
which
nothing
sank more low save the incredible degrada­
But Camillus wishes the Brothers to ask for ‘motherly
tion
of
eighteenth
and early nineteenth hospitals and
love ’ every day, and to nurse the sick as a mother might
nursing.
Camillus
gradually
withdrew as many hospitals
nurse her only child who was ill; and Sixtus V in fact
as
he
could
from
the
old
bad
form of government. He
incorporated that word into his approbations. He enters
infused
a
spirit
of
charity,
nay,
of holiness, into the
into details—how they must help the sick to eat, holding
ministrations
of
his
spiritual
sons
and
descendants which
their heads up, encouraging them; how they were to lift
lifted
that
service
into
quite
a
new
sphere
of value spiritual
the patients gently without shaking them: and how they
and
bodily.
He
trained
his
children
both
in their con­
must study each case, and be present when the doctor
science
towards
God
and
their
conscience
towards
their
visits each, and have periodical conferences concerning
fellow-men,
and
also,
by
observation
and
experiment,
the needs of the sick, and learn how to make beds and
their intelligence. And in a true sense he anticipated the
cleanse the patients if they are in danger or too weak to
. modern recognition of the inseparability of mind and

I

aiWWMnii

62

LIFE

OF SAINT

CAMILLUS

LIFE OF SAINT CAMILLUS

63

body, so that the cure of either should go far towards
were undesirable. Mondovi, however, appeared in person :
the cure of both—but if the mind be disregarded, the cure
opposition disappeared: on March 18, 1586, Sixtus issued
of the body becomes infinitely more precarious. Only,
a brief containing many ‘tacit quotations’ from Camillus’s
herein, if he was anticipating this modern recognition, he
rule, and approving the Company which was to work
was only applying the practice of Christ, and the im­
always with the approval of ecclesiastical authority, with­
memorial Catholic doctrine of the union of spirit and
out vows (though of course anyone was free to take
flesh in one person.
private ones), and to have the right to ask for alms
Gregory ΧΠΓ, mild almost to weakness-point, died on j wherever he wished, without further local permission.
April 10, 1585. A stronger Pontiff was demanded, and !
On April 20, Camillus assembled his little band who
most assuredly granted in the person of Sixtus V. Sixtus,
at once elected him Superior. The election was obvious,
especially as few of them were priests. It has been well
who had started life by keeping pigs, and became a
said that this merely meant for him being more than ever
Franciscan, ended by a brief reign of five years on the
the servant of them all: and at once he went out with
loftiest throne of the world. His volcanic yet always
another priest to beg—collecting one loaf and some crusts,
righteous energy transformed the city of Rome—hope ·
and ‘many insults’. But the preceding events had inter­
that the cupola of St. Peter’s could ever be finished was
ested the great officials of the Church in Camillus and
quite abandoned : Sixtus, in two years, set it completed
Sixtus wanted to see him. Camillus was taken to the
on the desolate drum—and regenerated the organisation
Vatican and the Pope studied him intently. Sixtus
of the Church itself. Camillus thought he had better
assuredly, as Napoleon professed to, “se connaissait en
obtain the sanction of this Pope for his Company. This
hommes”—could sum up men. He saw a very strong man
must be sought through some Cardinal. He knew none.
Who had been strong enough to obtain mastery of himself.1
As usual, he prayed, and then waited to ‘meet’ one. One
He then said he would in all ways befriend him . Camillus
day, he descried in the courtyard of a palace Cardinal
next, with his irrepressible simplicity, asked the Pope for
Lauro (best known from his episcopal see as Mondovi).
leave for his Religious to wear a ‘red’ cross on the right
He humbly, yet serenely and with perfect aplomb ap­
side of their cassock and cloak, to distinguish them from
proached him, and told him what he wanted. The
all other groups of ‘ Clerks Regular’, or clerics living under
Cardinal listened, surprised, amused, then deeply im­
rule. The Pope agreed, asking Camillus to send him an
pressed. He, who might well have become later on Pope
aidé mémoire on the matter. A great number of religious
himself, went to Sixtus who was pleased and referred the
Orders had worn a cross on their habits—the Trinitarians,
matter duly to the Congregation of Bishops and Regulars.1
occupied with rescuing slaves : the Crociferi, chiefly deMoreover, he showed him a copy of the rules which he
‘happened’ to have on him. Some members of the board
11 must be forgiven if I recall that most striking scene when Aloysius
Gonzaga, into whom the whole heredity of that frightful clan had flowed,
were reluctant to approve: new religious congregations
knelt at the feet of the Pope who had been a swineherd and a Franciscan
1 This Congregation discussed all such subjects as might lead to a clash
between religious orders and the Ordinary of the place where they might

and was very nearly the Hildebrand of his brief reign, and asked but to
renounce all coronets and money-bags. Sixtus enquired if really he under­
stood what he was undertaking. The young Saint said Yes, and the Pope
blessed this youth of ‘ twisted iron ’ and sent him to his vocation.

64

LIFE OF

SAINT

CAMILLUS

voted to pilgrims (these had proved too decadent to sur­
vive and were suppressed by Alexander VII in 1656): all
sorts of ‘Hospitaller’ Orders like the Knights Templar;
and in fact the badge of Santo Spirito displayed, beneath
the Dove, a double-barred cross made, when worn on the
dress, of white cloth. Camillus asked for a cross that was
not precisely red, but ‘lion-coloured’, or tané, i.e., the
rare heraldic tincture tenné, i.e., tawny. Thus, said he, it
would be more like the wood of the Cross. As time went
on, the cross became larger than what Sixtus had granted,
and the colour more vivid—in fact, it settled down to
being quite simply red. Into details of size we need not
enter, but simply register the suggestion made by a
religious of a different Order that the Camillans should
wear a dress entirely of the tenné colour. This startling
suggestion was naturally turned down. The Cross was
officially granted by a Brief of June 26, 1586, and on the
29th, feast of SS. Peter and Paul, Camillus with seven
companions went to St. Peter’s wearing it.
The crowds were quick to notice it. Who were these
men ? Jesuits back from India or the Holy Sepulchre ?
Well—anyway, the Knights del Sasso, of the Rock, a sort
of vague pun upon Sassia. Above all, they wished to
know why it was worn on the right breast, and not on
the left, according to custom. They were told that it was
done just to distinguish it from other crosses, and lest,
when the right-hand folds of the cloak were drawn across
the breast, the crosses should be hidden. And also, to
alarm the Devil. When worn on the left, the cross
represented a shield: on the right, it became a sword.
But as Camillus said, it indicated that his Society was a
society of the Cross, that is, of toil, suffering and even
death, for none could live in it without thus entirely re­
nouncing self and following Christ, and Him crucified. Of
the further history of this symbol, we speak later on (p. 171).

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LIFE OF SAINT

CAMILLUS

65

Only one more event need be mentioned before we
consider the origins of St. Camillus’ society as sufficiently
dealt with. The Society continued to grow: the tawny
cross was recognised in the streets and kissed. Among
the recruits was a most brilliant Sicilian, Biagio Opertis,
born in 1561 and received by Camillus in November,
1586: he was already a priest and something of a genius
and most versatile. This makes it the more remarkable
that he was also very prudent and something of a curb
on Camillus’s ardent impetuosity. Meanwhile the house
in the Street of Dark Shops had grown too small, es­
pecially as it contained no chapel and with an increasing
number of priest associates they had inconveniently to
seek an altar in the churches round. On the vigil of the
feast of St. Mary Magdalen, Camillus passed by the
church dedicated in honour of that Saint in the Rione
Colonna near the Pantheon. He went in to gain the
indulgence, and thought that the church would be very ,
suitable to his Society, though it was in a deplorable state
of deterioration. Negotiations were successfully through :
even the public authorities came to his aid : in December
the Camillans were able to take possession of the church
and the adjoining^, houses, which bit by bit were adapted
to the use of a Community. Hither, too, came Fr. Curzio,
fully convalescent, and Fr. Profeta, who had been ex­
tricated from his lawsuit. There arrived, too, a certain
Juan de Adamo, a Spaniard, who had come to Rome to
get a new Spanish community intended to nurse the sick
in hospitals approved in Rome. Everyone persuaded him
to join Camillus. He remained perplexed till one day he
took from his pocket a little white cross that he had
brought from Spain—and lo! it had turned red. This
settled him. From December 1586, therefore, Camillus
took over St. Mary Magdalen’s (which we shall call more
briefly the Maddalena) and the church and the house

66

LIFE OF SAINT

CAMILLUS

have remained ever since the centre of the Society of
Servants of the Sick.
The Society therefore had been founded, and its habita­
tion had been chosen and occupied. Henceforward, we
have to look towards growth, and outward spread.

IV

Camillus foresaw development ad indefinitum, because
he wanted the service of the sick in private houses to be
pressed forward: for if the Hospital was like an ‘inland
sea’, work in private houses was like an ocean without
shores. He can hardly however have failed to realise that
its dangers were much greater for the unformed or
unstable. First of all, he himself abdicated the hearing
of the confessions of his associates. It is always unwise
for a superior to hear his community’s confessions, for
it may be hard to keep the knowledge of what is actually
said in confession absolutely separated, as it must be
kept, from knowledge or surmise obtained in other ways,
e.g. by avowal outside the confessional, by legitimate
information, by sheer intuition, or observation. But he
himself thought he was scrupulous and might do harm to
consciences : and Philip Neri had to tell this intransigent
and ardent man, who measured others by himself, that he
was forming apostles, not hermits, and ought to go more
gently. He appointed, therefore, a confessor for the
house, and a priest who should supervise the year of
‘noviciate ’ before an applicant might be admitted to make
what was called his ‘profession’, though of course no
vows were taken. The candidate made a protestation, in
the form of a prayer, that he wished to spend his life in
poverty, chastity and obedience and in the service of
“ our sons and my brothers,” the sick. After this, Camillus

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LIFE OF SAINT CAMILLUS

67

gave him the cross, while the brothers sang: “He that
will follow Me, let him renounce himself, and take up
his cross, and follow me”, and : “Far from Me to boast
save through the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through
whom the world is crucified to me and I to it”. Camillus
was firmly convinced that he himself walked in the common
or ordinary paths, and did not want his disciples to be
sentimental or extravagant and wished that while their
whole lives, in one sense, in and out of the house, should
be prayer, yet that that prayer should not be made for the
sake of heavenly sweetness, nor was a prayer satisfactory
which “amputated the arms of charity”. One ought
always to have one’s coat on, to go out to do charity.
So while he was pleased if his men learnt this or that
from books, his own books were ever first and foremost
the sick and the dying. He wrote, in large letters, over
one of the doors in the house: “Brother, if you do a
bad thing with pleasure, the pleasure passes and the
badness remains: if you wearily do a good thing, the
weariness passes, and the good remains.” We must
definitely see in Camillus a Saint proper to the period of
Action. The history of the religious life has not always
equally esteemed activity. Camillus was clear that his
vocation and that of his Order was : the service of the
sick. But, the sick man, to be served Christian-wise, must
always be “the Sacrament of Christ”: the veil of Jesus.
This was the explanation of his quite extraordinary
influence over men : and, of his no less amazing intuition
of their thoughts and inner movements. When he per­
ceived that a soul would be responsive, or needed stimulus,
he simply laid his hand on the man’s head: that seemed
to suffice. In fact, it became almost a joke : young men ran
away, it was said, lest Camillus should thus touch them,
and lest they should feel they had forthwith to renounce
the world and self: but, better, when in temptation,

$

LIFE

OF

SAINT

CAMILLUS

men constantly found that it sufficed that Camillus should
trace the cross on their forehead, or lay his hand upon
their head, for the too-strong attraction to be vanquished.
After a while, he appointed a group of three priests and
six Brothers who should meet usually twice a week, to
discuss the needs of the moment and give him advice.
One counsel which pleased him much was that the sick
in prisons should be specifically remembered.
After the opening of the Maddalena, a certain Dr.
Mira of Naples, (afterwards bishop and archbishop)
used to say Mass there, and was lost in admiration of the
new Society. He had spoken to an Oratorian of Naples,
Fr. Borla, a true disciple of St. Charles Borromeo and
of St. Philip Neri, and indeed of his own archbishop,
the B. Paolo d’Arezzo. He wished to reform all the
hospitals of Naples, and in view of this had invited the
Brothers of St. John of God to go there. Even they were
insufficient. So now the Camillans were to go there. It
will be impossible to describe all the new foundations
in detail. Enough to say of Naples (then under Spanish
rule) that it had seemed impossible so much as to interest
the soft, seductive and yet most miserable city in its
hospitals, and yet, throughout' the history of Italian
sanctity you will perceive two main fields fertile in Saints—
Turin and the north ; Naples and the south. In this very
year (1588) the ‘‘Regular Clerics Minor” were welcomed
there with their founder, the very noble Neapolitan, St.
Francis Caracciolo : the Servîtes, the Theatines, the
Oratorians, the Do-Good Brothers, St. Gaetano of
Vicenza and St. Andrew Avellino were all working there
or soon would be. A true reform was in progress and a fair
number of distinguished and wealthy persons recovered
hope and helped it forward, notably Donna Giulia delle
Castelle, whose generosity earned her the right to be
thought of as Mother of St. Camillus’s Congregation there.

LIFE OF

SAINT

CAMILLUS

’ Fr. Opertis was the first superior of the new house—
the first of four that the Camillans were to possess there,
including the noviciate. Their first work lay in the In• curables’ hospital, founded in 1517-1519 by Vernazza
(see p. 11): St. Gaetano had worked there in 1533; yet
it had languished and sunk incredibly low. The apparition
of the Camillans blew into a blaze all sorts of smoulder­
ing fires: a witness says that he remained stupefied at
the sight of so many noble persons, right up to the Viceroy
and the Cardinal Archbishop, who began to minister in
most intimate ways to sick persons near whom he did not
see how anyone could bear so much as to stand, let
alone to feed them, to make their beds, and to clean their
tongues. These layfolk formed groups among themselves
who divided up the work, and did away with “that
mountain of fear and panic” which barred the way to the
‘Incurables’ even in the case of the most devoted. The
Camillans further assumed the care of the Annunziata
hospital: but above all, towards the end of 1588, new
Spanish troops had arrived in Naples. They were in an
appalling state, and put for quarantine into Pozzuoli. The
Viceroy implored Opertis to succour them. He set aside five
men for this. It was out of the question to leave the sick in
galleons dripping with infection: the Camillans carried
them in their arms to the Incurables’ and afterwards
removed all the soldiers from the ships into a special
building. Most of them had no resistance left and died:
three of the Camillans themselves succumbed, and
practically all, many more than the original five, for
substitutes had to be found, fell sick.
In February, 1589, Camillus returned to Naples—did
he look, with grief and gratitude (he will forgive us if
we look also with a smile . . .) at the stone bench
where he had gambled away his shirt in that ‘other life’
already distant ? Perhaps he was too intent upon the

■*

70

future and the work to be done forthwithAnyhow young
men rushed to his succour : he accepted twelve young
candidates in a single day, one of them being that Cicatelli,
who, constantly at his side, became his first biographer.
Men were drawn to him in different ways : on the whole
by the example alike of the Founder and of his disciples.
One, having wandered into a hospital to sec how the
Camillans behaved there, saw an old Father trying to
persuade a young man to eat. The patient kept his food
in his mouth and then spat it all out into the old man’s
face. He, on his side, smilingly encouraged the sick lad
and gave him the kiss of peace. At times, of course,
neophytes left, or had to be sent away : others, tempted to
do so, were encouraged by Camillus and obtained, by his
all-night prayers, their perseverance. Here is one curious
case. One of the twelve we mentioned, the priest Cesare
d’Agostino, fell sick of some frightful infection that they
half thought was ‘leprosy’. In his profound despondency,
he was visited by a ‘most kindly’ Brother, Stefano da
Modena, who did all he could to persuade him that his
joining the Camillans had proved a mistake ; that he would
never get well there, and had better go home. Cesare,
profoundly distressed, sent for Camillus and asked how
he could have sent and made use of Stefano for such a
task. The Saint was astonished and then sent for Stefano
that Cesare might hear from his mouth how he had been
absent from the house for eight whole days and that the
visitor could not have been he. The illusion was assigned
forthwith to the devil: not for us either to affirm or to
deny it.
In the spring of 1589 Camillus had been ‘superior’
of his society for three years. The brothers met, and re­
elected him. And at this time Cardinal Paleotti of Bologna
implored Camillus to send men there too. He refused, for
lack of numbers, a lack itself due to the difficulty of

finding the necessary small ‘patrimony’ for priests. The
Cardinal suggested: “Why not try to get the Congrega­
tion elevated to being a Religious Order with solemn
vows, which would enable Religious to be ordained ‘with
the title of Poverty’,” i.e. committing the Order itself to
support them ? Camillus hesitated. The Cardinal anyhow
insisted that a beginning should be made at Bologna.
Camillus went: but the enterprise failed: the Hospital
would not accept him, and the two priests who came
With him were too few for adequately nursing the sick
in private houses. However, Paleotti continued to urge
his point, and finally Camillus felt his doubts dissolve, and
threw himself with characteristic ardour into drawing
up a draft-rule for the future ‘ Order ’■—Mondovi and other
experts examined and corrected this draft. Sixtus V
was
it and sent
it to the . Congregation
■T»'
·. pleased. · with
......
......
. ......of
against the solemn vows: these rendered the dismissal
of unfit subjects more difficult. Cardinals Mondovi, Paleotti and Sfondrati (afterwards Gregory XIV) said that
this objection would lie against all Religious Orders
alike: anyhow dispensation was possible. The favourable

■

put back into uncertainty.
Anyhow, in August, 1590, an obscure but terrible
epidemic broke out in the quarter of Rome where the
ruins of the Baths of Diocletian stand (part of them are
now the Church of Sta Maria degli Angeli: the ruins of
the Baths extend over a space of 420 by 380 metres and
were built by some 40,000 slaves, most of them Christians).
The whole district was stiflingly packed with workers
sent for by Sixtus V from Lombardy, Liguria and Naples
to develop the wool and silk industries. The over-crowd­
ing was dreadful ; and when the season became abnormally

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hot, broken into by torrential rain, and the flooding of
the Tiber, the epidemic began to rage, with unparalleled
fury. The population of Rome, which under Gregory
ΧΙΠ (1572-1585) had risen from 90,000 to 140,000, had
sunk by the beginning of 1591 to 116,698; and naturally
the numbers of sick who did not actually die must have
been colossal, Camillus began, of course, by organising
the distribution of food, and by searching out the sick—
for often an entire family would be stricken, and helplessly
remain unknown and most likely add to the frightful reek
of the city by dying and remaining unburied Food was
distributed not only in the houses but down whole streets,
hundreds of yards long. It must certainly have been
startling to see the huge Camillus, climbing through win­
dows when doors were blocked; escalading the ruins,
reaching the very roofs, in his search for sufferers, and all
this, you remember, always in great pain from his un­
healing wound and the heavy iron band that he always
had to wear to compress his hernia: but what startled
people even more was his astounding success with babies.
Often he had to take them from dying or infectious
mothers, and after the first wails, he always managed to
quiet them and even to make them drink fresh milk
from two goats that he took around with him; and that
strange world was almost more impressed when he met
a Cardinal, no less, who affably enquired how the sick were
getting on; Camillus said laconically: “They’re getting
better”: the Cardinal continued his enquiries—Oh,
most illustrious my Lord” exclaimed the poor man,
“I beg you for the love of God not to go on talking to me :
I’m already late with this medicine that I’m taking to a
man.” And off he went, leaving the illustrious one stupe­
fied with admiration. But Cardinals and Sixtus himself
were often at Camillus’s side as he made his rounds, and
were deeply touched alike by his force and his tenderness.

- <' - : ■

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73

Alas, Sixtus himself caught the infection and died but a
few days later.
The blow was severe, but the new Pontiff, Urban VII,
promised whole-hearted help. “The treasures of the
Church”, said he, “exist but for the poor.” Alas,
he too died hardly a fortnight after his election. The
following conclave lasted two months : Cardinal Sfondrati,
another friend, became Pope as Gregory XIV. But
famine had added itself to plague, and the vile practices of
profiteering by conscienceless grain-merchants had made
things wickedly worse. Howling mobs patrolled Rome,
or flitted like ghosts around the walls : and as winter
approached, you would see those who but recently had been
perishing with thirst and chewing the last remaining
blades of grass, crawling into dung-heaps in the hopes of
warmth. Camillus had for a long time organised an
immense soup-centre at the Maddalena, where he first—as
always—began by distributing the hot food and a little
cup of wine, and then washed the sick and listened to
the special woes of each, and, when possible, lifted their
thoughts also to spiritual things. But now he had to
collect all the old clothes he could, and get such cloth as he
might, and, with a staff of fifteen tailors, made, or re-made,
clothes for these shivering creatures, whom, if he met
them in the street, in bitter cold or rain, he would cover
with his own cloak and bring them home. Finally, albeit
he knew that he was cheated, not least by men having
gambled away what he had given them, and then coming
back for more . . . perhaps he remembered his own past
days when he had to go shirtless, in no case would he
merely rebuke them, but reminded himself, and his critics,
of the presence of Jesus Christ in them, and then did what
he could for them.
One feature of his charity that profoundly impressed his
contemporaries was this—the enormous Roman ruins

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—the Forum, the Colosseum, the Palatine, the Baths of
Caracalla and many another, are full of mysterious
pits, caverns, labyrinthine corridors and secret vaults.
Hither streamed a throng of sick who were most of them
also desperate criminals. And hither, by day and by
night, came Camillus with eight of his strongest men, and
four litter-carriers, and himself carrying a sack containing
brandy and first-aid necessities, heralding his approach
by the cry: “God save you, you sons of God !” antici­
pating thus the panic into which any unknown footsteps
threw such men—and such panic is, how often, but the
prelude to murder. Even he had to hold his breath lest
he should be too sickened by the reek of these horrible
recesses. And into such a state of nervous paralysis had
sickness and starvation not seldom reduced these living
skeletons, that he might have to force their teeth open
in order to give them a mouthful of food and drink. The
new Pope, a man of learning and piety rather than of
practical energy, felt overwhelmed by the situation and
handed over most of the control of Rome to his nephew
Cardinal Paolo Emilio Sfondrati; but despite all food­
rationing the situation got out of hand, not least because
when an attempt was made to allot the homeless to
hospitals, and, in particular, to the hospice for the destitute
created by Sixtus V, they fought against this infringement
of their ‘liberty’ and either rioted or hid from the soldier­
police who had to be sent to excavate them. Camillus
tried to get in first ; nothing stopped him. Once, when he
had found eight such men lurking outside the Porta del
Popolo, he persuaded them to come back to Santo Spirito :
one fell exhausted by the way : Camillus held up a grand
carriage full of noblemen and demanded, for the love of
God, to put the dying man into it. The gentlemen got out,
and Camillus, with his eight deplorable clients, rode

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him that these men, however little claim they had on
Rome (for they had poured in from the country, imagining
that in Rome all was gold) . . . should have to be
driven forth, back to their homes, even though life would
be easier there, and though to each was given a little
journey money and food. When the first sorry little fleet
was for starting down the Tiber, Camillus stood imploring
the boatmen to pause. Their captain refused. Camillus,
something of the old red-hot temper stirring within him,
said ‘through his teeth’, that he could not understand
how, if there was enough bread in Rome for so many
Jews, there could not be enough for these poor Christians.
The captain was obstinate. Camillus undertook to sup­
port them himself. After a while, the captain, who
was only doing his duty, got furious. Camillus recovered
his calm, knelt down, and begged to be given at least the
most sick, lest they perish by the roadside. The captain
reluctantly allowed him to choose ten out of the whole
multitude. Agony of such a choice ’. Torture to have to
refuse all but those ten ! He stood on the quay, weeping,
till the boat was lost to sight. However, the captain referred
the matter to the Governor of Rome, who sent for Camillus
and reprimanded him, and indeed the Pope himself had
to say to him that discipline must, after all, be observed.
At the beginning of 1591, he realised that yet another
hospital must be opened.1 Sixtus V’s hospital was
XL ought perhaps to recall that the Camillans were by no means the
only men who laboured during this plague, but this is a Life of St. Camillus,
and so I say nothing of the specific work of the Oratorians, the Brothers
of St. John of God, or the Jesuits, who opened at least two hospitals and
so many of whose members, both older and young, fell victims to their
heroism. Still, I may recall that it was in this plague that St. Aloysius
Gonzaga caught the infection from carrying a man to hospital. From
evidence connected with his life too, one can gather how truly the hospitals
were a Purgatory on earth—so many men rushing about naked, shouting
and blaspheming, and dying on staircases or in the streets. St. Aloysius
recovered from the plague as such, but could not regain his strength :
he died on June 20-21, 1591.

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horribly over-crowded, and the filth and lice were in­
credible. It was impossible to breathe freely : “lungs and
blood were saturated with the exhalations: the mental
faculties were paralysed.” The Camillans became so
poisoned with the atmosphere that they could retain no
food : between January and February, five of the original
eight died. In January of 1591 exanthematic typhus
declared itself, rising steadily in intensity till mid-summer.
Gregory XIV in his goodness wanted to endow the
Camillans with an income : they refused this, and seized
the opportunity of petitioning to be made into an Order.
But they begged that the Pope in place of enriching them
would open a new hospital near Sta Maria in Cosmedin,
which he did, in the via Santo Stefano delle Carrozze. He
did so: and the new house became in a special sense
Camillus’s Hospital. Into it he carried from San Sisto a
seemingly strange assortment of convalescents and of the
very worst cases: yet after all, the plan was reasonable:
the convalescents had to get out to make room for new
cases: and the really bad cases made the place intolerable
for the intermediate ones. So in two parts of the new
hospital, Camillus cared for these two categories and it was
on their account that even his own companions were
liable to lament, when he took away their last sack of
llouri that he was guilty, so to say, of certain “holy
imprudences, holy indignations”. And when he went to
Mgr. Centurione, administrator of the food department
of Rome, asked for grain, and was refused because there
was hardly enough for the bakers of Rome, he shouted
with a ‘terrible voice ’ (to be heard by Centurione who was
ill in bed) that he, Camillus, would hold himself inno­
cent before God, but would cite the Administrator before
the divine tribunal. Fie simply could not understand that
the sick should not come first. In spite of everything,
his companions kept dying. Bubonic plague too was

KM·
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discovered: doctors and infirmarians lost their heads
arid many left their posts : a contemporary doctor insisted
that he could not stay a quarter of an hour in Camillus’s
hospital where the worst cases were, without getting
appalling headaches : he simply could not understand how
Camillus was there all the time, and recognised it must be
due to a grace of God, in whom, whatever he was saying
or doing, Camillus seemed to remain absorbed. And
indeed, he now appeared able to do also without sleep :
he wept, because he had to eat, while others went hungry :
but he now spent half his nights cooking what he thought
could tempt the exhausted patients, and displaying
astonishing ingenuity and inventiveness in this: all the
same, he would not profit by dispensations from fasting
or abstinence, partly from pious motives, but also because
he thought people ate and drank too much, and that the
relative immunity of his associates was due to their
abstemiousness. We have, however, to confess that once
the plague began to abate, he had not only to order
them to halve their work, or to take turns, day in, day
out, or even, as at Naples, to reduce their work in prisons
to daily visits—they were being treated almost as warders
—but he himself had to take for some time an enforced
repose. The wound in his leg had become much worse,
and the other leg was swelling up badly.
But this unusual leisure permitted him to turn his mind
again to the future of his Society. He entrusted the matter
to Fr. Opertis, knowing him more apt than himself for
legal and diplomatic transactions. Mass was offered many
a time and penances done to obtain divine guidance
for those concerned : Camillus went—or, I think more
probably proposed later on to go—to Loreto. The Pope
handed the matter back once more to the proper’Congregation, whose members, having seen what Camillus and
his comrades had done during the last year, could have

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nothing now to say against his plans. However, the
impetuous man felt they were going too slowly and went off
to their Office, the Dataria, and urged haste with such
vigour that he earned a sharp rebuke for his importunity.
Still, it had been fortunate. On September 21, the Pope
signed the Bull erecting the Congregation into an Order
with solemn vows : next day the Pope fell sick, took to his
bed, and died on October 29. Without Camillus’s
‘importunity’ probably the whole thing would have had
to be off till the next Pontificate. As it was, Innocent IX
could immediately promulgate the Bull that his prede­
cessor had signed. Meanwhile Camillus had thought of
placing the actual ceremony of the Profession of the
Solemn Vows on September 29 (which would really have
been too rushed !) or on October 4 : these were the feasts
of St. Michael the Archangel and of St. Francis of Assisi
whom he had always devotedly loved—in fact he placed
the new Order under their special protection-—but the death
of the Pontiff and the preoccupations of the Conclave
and the new reign decided him to put it off still further. He
chose December 8, Feast of the Immaculate Conception.
Camillus’s life had kept pace, in its main phases, with
our Lady’s Feasts. On February 2, 1575, feast of her
Purification, he had been converted: on August 15, the
Assumption, 1582, he had been inspired to create his special
Institute: on the Octave of her Nativity, September 15.
1584, he had actually inaugurated it at the Madonnina.
The Order should be born on the Feast of her Immaculate
Conception. This permitted, too, the completion of the
work of restoring the Maddalena and adapting the two
houses he had bought beside and behind it. It is note­
worthy that the earliest biographers of Camillus and other
Camillan documents always speak of the Immaculate
Conception, though the belief in it was not of course
defined till long afterwards (1854); and devotion to Our

LIFE OF SAINT

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79

Lady, thus entitled, was continuous and fervent through­
out the history of the Camillans.1
On December 3, Camillus wrote to his cousin Onofrio
at Bucchianico in a reply to a letter recently received
to tell Kim of the great event now imminent : this letter still
survives. In it, he regrets to hear of the death of his aunt
and a cousin Vittoria: is distressed that brigands are
reappearing now that the firm hand of Sixtus has dis­
appeared and hopes that Onofrio will not suffer at their
hands. Camillus himself is terribly busy because next
Sunday, December 8, will see the Foundation of the new
Order : he hopes that some Cardinals who are favourable
to it will be present at so great a solemnity—he would
have asked Onofrio to come had not the roads been
insecure and the house-room too restricted. He cries
out with amazement not only that God should have
worked such a miracle as to create this order, but that He
should have made use of, for doing so, such a great
sinner as himself who deserves but 1,000 hells. He hopes
that all will be done according to the wilt of God, both
1There is a tradition that these solemn Vows were pronounced at the
feet of a certain statue representing the ‘ Immaculate Conception ’ more
or less after the fashion of Murillo’s famous picture, and that the statue
had formed part of the adornment of the Maddalena when the Camillans
took the church over. No document attests this or anything else about
the statue. (See an article—anonymous—in Domesticum, 1941, 5, pub­
lished in Rome on Dec. 8 of that year .the 350th anniversary of the first
Profession.) Experts, however, declare that the statue seems to be derived
from the art-style of the Caracci : in that case it cannot be earlier than
1595, when Annibale, the first of the Caracci to arrive it Rome, came
there: and if it is a derivation, it must be later still. The House contained
three other representations of the Immaculate Conception : one is a
rather conventional stucco statue of over two metres high: this is in the
part of the house that has been taken over by the State for a school. The
second is part of a fresco on the roof of the sacristy and belongs to 1791 :
it represents Our Lady Immaculate, a little lower, St. Philip Neri, and then
Camillus who was about to be beatified. The third is in a niche in the
corridor leading from the piazza to the sacristy. It represents Our Lady
stooping towards St Camillus who is offering to her his sons. It may
belong to the Neapolitan school of plaster-work and dates from perhaps
1750. A northerner may possibly feel that it owes its real charm to its
extreme naivety.

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here and at Naples. He then exhorts his cousin to walk in
the way of the commandments, and tk.give generous alms,
and be the friend of the poor, in these calamitous times,
especially as the Lord has given him the means to be so.
On December 7, the Superior-General was voted for:
all votes in Naples as in Rome went to Camillus, who with
much simplicity had begged the Fathers and Brothers
to take no heed of personal feeling, but vote exclusively
according as they thought would be best for the Order; to
remember his roughness, his ignorance, his many defects,
his age and his grave illness. And only then twenty-five
out of the thirty-five Religious were selected for Pro­
fession the next day. Camillus then formally restored to
Fermo Calvi the patrimony that he had given to him to
enable him to advance towards the priesthood. Next
morning, the 8th, a considerable crowd filled the Maddalena: Religious Orders were represented, especially the
Capuchins, the Oratorians and the Jesuits. Men who had
early been Camillus’s friends, Calvi, Virgilio Crescenzi
and his sons, were present. Finally, the Archbishop of
Ragusa celebrated High Mass, read out the Bull, and
accepted the vows of Camillus on his knees before him.
Camillus himself then accepted the vows of his twenty-five
companions. Then he said Mass, and gave Holy Com­
munion to each of the new Professed. This was followed
by a meal slightly less austere than that was normal among
the Camillans : and at the end of it, Camillus asked Fra
Giuseppe of Malta, a Capuchin who had been with him
in the noviciate of Manfredonia, to relate how God had
converted him—Camillus—and the kind of life they had
noted in him in the noviciate. Fra Giuseppe said what he
could, but was not nearly condemnatory enough to please
Camillus, who took up his prosecution into his own hands
and proceded to make what amounted very nearly to a
general confession.

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I break off for a moment, to acknowledge that a modern
reader may well feel disconcerted by this tiny episode and
indeed dislike and actually disapprove of it. Such lack of
reticence is distasteful to him: he is ready to believe that
Camillus was no hypocrite nor wanted to win praise under
pretence of seeking humiliation; but, he feels, why talk
about Self at all ? why obtain that Self be talked about
and not rather be eclipsed? And if we northerners can
imagine this sort of digging up of past and not too edifying
memories, we can possibly picture it as being meant for
a sort of joke, not in very good taste, as when a middleaged man swops memories with another of their youthful
revels. I will say at once that while what little is quoted
as having been actually said by Camillus (I do not count
prayers or speeches, etc., that are the sort of thing the
biographer feels suitable to the moment) is brisk, indeed
sometimes racy, and in short what I have called ‘rough*,
I honestly cannot find any symptoms of a sense of humour ;
and whatever wit or rustic humour may have been his, he
most certainly did not look at his early misdemeanours
as Jokes or material for facetiousness. Further, he was
extremely realist (Italians are), and at the same time intense
in what he felt. He saw he had reached a point at which
much honour was being done him. He had created a
religious Order just when others, much more suitable than
he, had been refused: he had been unanimously elected
General. All this, he felt acutely, was falsifying his
personal perspective. People must not be left with so false
an impression. He did not feel merely that his new halo
was but tinsel, and cynically hold his tongue about it: he
felt he must tear it off, and fancied in his simplicity that
Fr. Giuseppe would do so. But he that was called, if not
to curse, at least not to praise, did praise; and Camillus
saw that just, what he had feared would happen, was
happening. It seems also that he thought his work was

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really over, once he had founded the Order: he felt inapt
to govern it. It has often been quoted about Newman:
“Thou couldst a people raise, but couldst not lead”:
Camillus certainly thought that about himself, though he
would have insisted that God, not he, did the ‘raising’.
But then, his friends could have retorted, and doubtless
did, that God could do the leading equally well, by means
of His instrument Camillus. Anyhow, that evening there
was a pathetic little ceremony of self-expropriation: all
brought everything that was at their service, and placed
it upon the ground. They, and Camillus equally, then
received back for their use, not their personal property,
what was necessary, as alms from the entire community.
During the following days, Camillus took the Bull around,
showing it to friends: Philip Neri visited the house, em­
braced Camillus, and declared that the Foundation
seemed to him a true miracle and the work of God, not
of men; and later, when Virgilio Crescenzi was dying,
Philip returned and urged one of the Camillans to take
special care of this duty to the dying, for, said he, “I
have seen the Angel of the Lord setting the very words
upon the lips of one of you, when he helped a man to
die. ” Thus these days were spent in gratitude, and in
arousing a spirit of trust for the future, seeing that God
who had begun so good a work would assuredly be true
to it and bring it to perfection.

PART II
In this second part, I must omit more than in the first.

For it consists largely of the story of the development of
the Order, which means, its continually passing through
difficulties always more or less of the same sort, earning
successes not very different from one another, losing by
death and acquiring by new vocation men whose names
might often enough be surrounded by a detail or two, a
date or two, but whose brief ‘notice’ would not help
readers to gain a view of the work as a whole. That
Camillus had done a really original work we see from this
—The Company of Divine Love (Genoa, 1497) in a true
sense inaugurated a new idea of hospital-work, and in­
deed created or inspired a whole series of ‘Incurables’
Hospitals, and set up a Society of Sta Maria del Ridotto
to concern itself with the well-being of the first one. But
neither of these two Societies had, as its specific work, the
care of the sick : still less did they develop any systematic
method of caring for the sick, nor did their members
devote themselves to such care as a whole-time occupa­
tion, let alone vocation. Now Camillus did exactly that.
He learnt from the past, inasmuch as all his first experience
was at San Giacomo, nor did he ever dissociate himself
therefrom: the charitable life continued to flow in the
organic unity of the Church. But Camillus, by his specific
creation of the Order of Ministers of the Sick, carried the
whole of that flow further, and made possible a reform
of a most definite kind within the Church, to be copied
only after a very long time elsewhere.
On January 30, 1592, Cardinal Aldobrandini became
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Pope, as Clement VIII, in succession to Innocent IX who
had died after only two months’ reign. The new Pope was
very devout, highly experienced, learned and hard
working, and though he had opposed the formation of
Camillus’s new order—or of any new order—what he had
seen had thoroughly converted him too; he confirmed the
Order and indeed simplified certain points previously
insisted on. Camillus, full of gratitude, went to Naples,
and then, accompanied by Br. Curzio, to Bucchianico.
His arrival brought people trooping from all directions:
the Red Cross on his breast revived the memory of that
old dream of his mother’s and explained it. However, he
found his cousin Onofrio in a deplorable condition—
paralysed and filthy, though having accumulated much
wealth. It was said that this man was unstable and shifty
in all ways save the one quality of avarice. Camillus
nursed him, and won his heart—at least for a time.
Better, he discovered a certain Giovanni Mammarella, a
“mighty man of blasphemy”. His life had been lived
among beasts . . . how should his thoughts and talk not
have become degraded ? Camillus characteristically said:
“Here is the Great Beast?” on entering the poor man’s
house. Then, crucifix in hand, he entered various rooms,
saying: “Come out of here, Great Beast.” After this very
informal exorcism, he reached the poor old blind man’s
room: here was no talk of beasts? He was with him daily,
yes, and nightly, studying his soul with much labour:
finally the old man made an excellent confession and soon
died. While not visiting the poorer sick, he spent all the
time he could with Onofrio, who had been given up for
dying. Camillus prayed long and did much penance:
then, one morning, he approached his cousin, took him
by the hand, and told him to cheer up—“for God, this
time, has forgiven you?” Onofrio rose, cured: but
spiritually, we shall see, he relapsed, and therefore, also
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bodily. After this, Camillus astonished various people by X,
paying off small debts which the creditors had forgotten :
he also “introduced the practice of teaching Christian
doctrine to children and the people ”, an enterprise hitherto
unknown in that town. He then went, according to plan,
to Loreto: but, returning, he fell from his horse and hurt
his leg so badly that when he was able to proceed, he and
Curzio sat in two baskets, suspended across the poor
animal’s back. (Yet you will see how fond Camillus was
of animals, as he was of children and convalescents and
all the weak and helpless.) He returned to Rome to find
that the confraternity from whom he had bought—but not
yet paid for—the Maddalena were proposing to throw all
the furniture out of the window and they did in fact levy
a distraint upon a house which Calvi had recently pre­
sented to the Order. Camillus recalled what Christ had
said to St. Catherine of Siena—“Think of Me, and I will
think for you”: “Let us think of Christ and His Poor”,
said Camillus, “and He will give us in abundance what
He has not refused even to the Turks and the Jews!”
He went in fact to the Pope, on the feast of the Poor Man
of Assisi, and the Pope, touched, promised to pay the
annual rent and taxes, 370 sc. Camillus thought that this
eternal paying of interest was no good : he would buy the
house outright. The Confraternity jeered at him, but he
said he would have the money within the year—maybe
within a month or two. This indeed happened, though
the ways of Providence were disconcerting. Cardinal
Mondovi fell sick : Camillus nursed him and was with him
when he died. The Cardinal, after making a few bequests,
left the mass of his fortune to the Order begging that his
funeral might be carried out without any grand ceremonies.
The Confraternity heard of this bequest, and prepared a
magnificent grant of “participation in all its privileges”,
which they presented to Camillus in the middle of the

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funeral—he had asked the Pope to allow it after all to be
‘ceremonious’—in fact, just as the procession was cross­
ing the bridge of Sta Maria, hoping thus to recall to
Camillus the debt. (This bridge was swept away in the
inundations of 1598. You see its ruins close to the Island
of the Tiber.) Camillus thanked God that the debt could
be paid, and at once. Yet not so easily! Cardinal Mon­
dovi had not felt sure that the Order, vowed to poverty,
could inherit. A nephew of the late Cardinal's instantly
started a law-suit. Camillus remained indifferent. The
lawyers finally decided that Camillus, of course, could
inherit nothing personally; nor could the Order inherit
anything to be kept and used for annual revenue, but that
it could inherit and sell the bequest, and apply the money
to necessary purposes. Having paid his debts, Camillus
made further improvements to the Maddalena house—
edifying everyone by the humility with which he joined in
the work of the bricklayers, the mortar-mixers and so
forth. I mention this simply to indicate once more how
different has become our perspective. We might think it
good fun, or a bore, to help bricklayers: but which of us
would find it a humiliation? who would be ‘edified’ by
our doing so ? And who, save Religious Orders, would
try to be unable to inherit ?
Meanwhile Camillus begged Clement to provide the
Order with a Cardinal Protector, now that Mondovi had
died. He asked if they might have Cardinal Salviati, once
so well known at San Giacomo. “You have chosen well”,
said the Pope, and when he twice visited Santo Spirito in
person, and always found Camillus working there at the
genuinely humblest tasks, took him for over an hour into
a private room, and discussed all the reforms that Camillus
thought ought to be introduced into the Hospital. And
all the while, by letters and by visits, Camillus was guiding
Naples, its work, and its novices.

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Camillus now began to be preoccupied with the idea of
extension—though he was ruthlessly kind in sending the
unfit away: novices had multiplied. He consulted Salvia ti
who was against it. Also Opertis, who hesitated. Finally,
he sent Fr. Nigli with five companions, and followed them
with eight more, to Milan, trusting to the prayers of
St. Charles Borromeo, who had died just ten years earlier.
He arrived in Milan without any letters of recommenda­
tion on June 4, 1594, obtained approbation, and did no
more than to establish his Religious there, leaving it on
August 12 for Genoa with, this time, letters of introduc­
tion, possibly because the famous Hospital there might
have thought it could look after itself. On arriving at
such a place, he first adored Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament,
and then, in the sick of the Hospital : over the door of the
hospital church at Casai Monferrato in Piedmont was to
be carved: “To Christ, God and Man, sick in the person
of the Poor—homage of Love.” This vital spark, animating all he did, without which he would have known his
work to be dead, must never be forgotten unless we wish
utterly to misconstrue St. Camillus. Thence he went for
a brief while to visit two of his Religious at Turin, and
thence to Milan once more. The visit was to be momentous, for during it, at Magenta, he realised that his
associates should be more ‘learned’ than he had at first
foreseen—and this was only what St. Francis’s friars came
soon enough to experience. But by learning, Camillus
did not mean anything recondite or general: they were
to learn more theology, philosophy, ethics, and all that
could be of service not only in the Hospital, but in church.
At first he had been very reluctant to allow them to
perform any apostolate outside the hospitals or at most
the sick-room.
I think Camillus made this decision, humanly speaking,
because he noticed into what close contact with the sick

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a priest may come, and how very important it is to under­
stand minds when you are trying to heal the body. True,
I think he saw this first in terms of directly instructing the
sick (or others) and of explaining the Faith to them; but
it is almost impossible to suppose that with all the experi­
ence of human nature that he was accumulating, he did
not realise how important it was to pacify a patient’s
anxieties, and often to ‘build up’ a mind in one who was
too confused or too will-less to be able to co-operate with
his cure. Camillus by this education did not mean medical
(or nursing) training. In this department, he simply at­
tended doctors on their rounds, took notes, and did what
they told him to. Afterwards, he watched and took notes
about the patients he was nursing, and mentioned to
doctors what he might have observed, and so forth. But,
so far, at any rate, he does not seem to have received, or
looked forward to, any professional training. True, he
was so extraordinarily sensitive as to possess practically
second-sight: how much of this was a preternatural gift,
no one can estimate: but we need not suppose that all of
it was. Unselfish sensitive people are often astoundingly
‘intuitive’. Anyhow, Camillus, who began by being
rather antipathetic towards studies, became less so, and
we recall the Jesuits, who certainly now welcome the
development of their lay-brothers’ intelligence, whereas
St. Ignatius ruled that they were not to learn more ‘letters’
than they arrived possessed of. Thus Camillus opened the
door to every future development, and the Camillans, like
any Catholic nursing community, welcome every increase
of knowledge, practical or theoretical, that their members
may acquire. He will be a very willing Patron for those
groups of Catholic doctors, or medical students, or nurses,
lay or ‘religious’, and of course of Catholic hospitals, all
of which we trust may develop more and more, both in
numbers and in quality.

The Hospital of San Giacomo, after the drawing by
G. B. Falda (1676).

LIFE OF SAINT CAMILLUS

89

All these stories of travel are starred with little anecdotes,
which, while they throw more rays of light on the character
of Camillus, cannot possibly be all of them recounted here :
indeed, too great an accumulation of them would be
tedious; as any conversation composed of anecdotes is
bound to become. Yet I will mention, here and there,
some of them, of various sorts, if only because a list of
dates and of names of places would be even more monoton­
ous and unilluminative. I deliberately omit some which
merely underline the devotedness of Camillus—if readers
have not already guessed it, despite remembering the
continuous torment due to his leg and rupture that ac­
companied his work, which seemed to the most enthusias­
tic, even, of his companions, superhuman—they never will.
I omit, too, numerous small incidents which may or may
not have been miraculous or prophetic. We hold it as
quite certain that Camillus saw into men’s minds and had
intuitions of the future which outstrip what is merely
normal; but only because of the circumstances, at times,
can we surmise that they were probably helped by some
special grace from God; the same holds good for many
of the cures he effected. And some I shall insert simply
because they show how strangely different were many of
the external circumstances of sixteenth century life from
our own. Here is one example. When, about the end of
August,- he went on board at Genoa to sail for Naples,
he perceived a crowd of young sailors behaving indecently,
and in public, with a Spanish girl. Crucifix in hand, he
turned on them, exclaiming: “I do not know how the
tremendous justice of God can have such patience with
you, and does not cause you to be instantly swallowed up
by the sea or send thunderbolts from heaven to blast you
to ashes. But God does not pay every Saturday—keep in
mind what I tell you—for His punishment will not fail
both you and all this ship, if you do not change your fife
P

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soon.” And indeed within a year they were all drowned
in the Gulf of Lyons. Now how are we to judge that?
I do not mean, Was this a prediction and was the future
preternaturally foreseen ? For Camillus was quite certain
to make some such threat (he very often did), and ship­
wrecks were terribly common: let anyone who has sailed
the Mediterranean in a gale think what would so easily
happen to those clumsy ships. Nor do I take for granted
that we have Camillus’s exact words—he is said to have
cried out, in ringing tones, much more than that. But I
think it is certain that he said something of the sort, and
in particular the little sentence about God not paying his
wages every Saturday—that is exactly the rough, almost
savage sort of thing missioners like St. Francis Regis or
men of Camillus’s character constantly said: it will have
stuck in men’s minds. But besides that, I will ask you to
recall how very far from ‘enclosed’ was the life led by
such men by no means only in hospitals or prisons; and
when you read of the rigid care that men like him, or
St. Aloysius Gonzaga, maintained over their own senses,
remember that they were surrounded by, and never hesi­
tated to confront, the most dreadful spectacles when the
service of God demanded it. There was nothing 're­
spectable’—there could not be—let alone ‘prudish’—
about the lives they lived : our eyes and ears need seldom
be thus assaulted by what was then commonplace and
public. As a contrast, on the same journey, Camillus
spent his first night in a cabin. But he heard a gambler
uttering the most appalling blasphemies, and, since he
could do nothing about it, spent the remaining nights on
deck, propped up against a cannon. Can we, too, sur­
mise, that the incident had aroused too vividly memories
of his own youth ? We know that somehow he had never
let himself slip into blasphemy: but what of his habitual
companions then ?

LIFE OF SAINT

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Another quaint little incident. He returned from Naples
and again went to Naples with several com­
panions. They could not .afford a horse each, but took
it in turns to ride. A novice lost himself, one evening.
Camillus hunted for him all night, but he had got into a
hut for shelter. Next morning however he made his way
to Velletri, and Camillus and his band caught him up
there. Had he been to Mass? No. Camillus “plunged
himself into a deep thought, and was much distressed by
this, and could find no rest”. He wanted to dismount,
and make the novice ride off “to find a Mass”. But they
assured him that it would be impossible to “find a Mass”
at that place, and at that hour.
Winter came. It was announced that there was plague
at Milan. Camillus with seven companions instantly decided to go there. Only five horses could be found. No
matter, they would again take turns. Camillus’s doctor
implored him not to go—The winter! the rotten roads!
the rain ! He would provoke erysipelas and his whole leg
would become inflamed! No: Camillus went off, travelling all day and often at night, fearful lest the frontier into
the Milanese territory should be closed. He rode ahead,
especially in dangerous country, so that the others might
have due warning of flood, of broken roads, of brigands.
They left Tortona at dawn for Pavia. The sun rose on an
exquisite scene of hillsides sparkling with snow. Camillus
halted and prayed. Then turning to his friends he said:
“Does not this lovely landscape make you pray ?” And
they, too, prayed—his own prayer had never left off, and
indeed once he never noticed that they had had to ford
a torrent. Are we reminded of St. Bernard, who so often
did not notice what was around him ? Perhaps we are
nearer to St. Gertrude, a soul so deeply mortified, yet
who loved to watch birds fluttering round the water that
ran so musically through the convent enclosure. Light,
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LIFE OF SAINT CAMILLUS

colour, harmony, helped her to pray better. Anyhow, we
like to catch Camillus, that 'hard’ man, as we keep say­
ing, thrilled by the sudden enchantment of the Italian
‘vast’ view, and the snow dancing beneath the dazzle of
the dawn. Thereupon they met peasants. “Do not go
to Milan,” they cried. “There is plague there!” “That
is exactly, that is exactly,” he cried joyously, “why we
are going there!” Between April and December, then, of
1594, Camillus had travelled some 2,000 kilometres by
land, and as much by sea. Remember that quite apart
from pirates who infested the coasts, and storms, the
galleys were often manned by criminals who were con­
demned to the oar and who rowed only when forced to.
A fine weather trip from Genoa to Naples would take
eight or nine days. Though I do not think we read of
Camillus devoting himself to these poor men as St.
Vincent de Paul so soon was to do, I feel sure he did,
and that he found an admirable response. There is
always something about the sea which stirs the best in
men—or at least makes it most easily accessible: I do not
know that these galley-crews were in much worse con­
dition than stokers in a smaller coal-ship, in the Red Sea,
to-day. However, one must, again, remember that the
structure of the galleys was frightfully cramped : Camillus,
poor giant, never could stand upright, below decks, and
half the time had his head bent down and was “practically
on his knees”. As for the roads, they were, of course,
appalling: St. Aloysius, crossing a torrent in a very grand
carriage, found the carriage break in half in the middle,
was swept away, and saved only because he stuck in a
fallen tree. . . . But you need not be crossing a river for
disaster, and Camillus hardly ever found himself in a
coach save perhaps in a town. Manzoni, so much later,
tells how the roads even then were no better than dried
river-beds—dried? they were full of pits, out of"which

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it was all you could do to drag your feet, not to mention
your shoes. No wonder that Camillus, so little able to
help himself with a leg that was now almost gangrenous
from knee to foot, fell thirty times from his horse—falls
that might have been fatal: ‘ easier’ falls were uncountable.
Camillus, who never could bear anyone saying that a
sick man was ‘disgusting’, but who covered them all with
the cloak of most tender charity, as themselves being truly
Christ, suddenly remembered, at Milan, as though he had
woken up (said he) from a profound sleep, that his early
idea had been to substitute, for paid servants, men who
worked for the sole love of God in the hospitals. He
called this the ‘complete’ service, physical as well as
spiritual. The governing body of the Milan hospital
after long discussion invited him to assign some of his
Religious to this ‘complete service’. This would have
meant not only daily, and all-day, visits (such as they
already paid) and preparedness to go there at night if
called for, but, actually living in the hospitals and doing
all the work that paid servants did. Camillus jumped at
the idea, and wished to oblige all his companions to
accept it as part of the concept of their Institute and as
imposed on them in virtue of their fourth vow. Hereupon
a really grave division of opinion made itself felt. Even
though the complete substitution of Religious for paid
servants was to admit some exceptions (e.g., holding the
post of ‘barbers’, who did the blood-letting), it seemed
clear that Camillus’s plan would serve ‘more for the
benefit of the Governors than of the sick’, and free the
former from great expense without corresponding gain.
How would the sick be better served because a Religious
cleaned the lamps, did the washing—and thereby was
removed from direct attention to the sick ? It was pointed
out that Camillus himself had written to Opertis that the
sick at the Maddalena were far too many and the Religious

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far too few for the work to be done properly, and that
the Brothers were continually falling ill themselves through
over-work and even dying. Work could not be added.
Again, ‘religious’ life would in such circumstances become
almost impossible: Camillus’s original idea had occurred
to him when he did not foresee his companions being
‘religious’ or even priests. Camillus continued to argue
that in any case he wanted charity and humility to lead
them to take the lowest places, and that authority would
be far more ready to admit the Religious into hospitals
if they were ready to do, gratis, also the work that hitherto
the paid servants had done so badly. Inevitably a com­
promise was reached : into the details of this evolution we
need not go. But the first phase marked so great a crisis
that it has been called the Order’s ‘baptism of blood’. It
earned thus the right to survive even when circumstances
forced on it the modification, if not abandonment, of the
suggested system—not only hospitals have been very
largely laicised out of sheer anti-clericalism and the nurs­
ing orders of all sorts evicted (not but what they have
constantly had to be called back)—but from the second
half of the nineteenth century onwards, nursing began
to emerge from the foul degradation into which it had
sunk, and innumerable women, even more th^n men,
nobly exercise that office, even without the conscious
support of that Grace on which, when all is said and
done, full success depends.
But we must insist that Camillus at any rate had ex­
treme need of grace in what must have been a period of
agony to him—and, we will not forget, one of extreme
distress also to those who loved him so dearly and looked
up to him with profoundest veneration. They could not
but think him wrong—him, without whom they would
never have had, nor have, their inspiration. Yet they
tried as long as they could to disguise their feelings, so

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95

terribly afraid they were of hurting him. He saw that at
Milan they were accepting only with extreme reluctance
the ‘complete’ charge of the hospital: he went off to
Genoa to find men, as he hoped, ‘more generous’: at
Genoa opinion was still more solid against him. He re­
sumed to Milan : there, discontent had spread ; the local
superior made him all too sharply aware of it: Camillus
retired, his eyes full of tears, without showing any resentment, yet remembering that he had the very awkward
duty of giving his disciple a penance for what amounted
very nearly to direct disobedience. But this Religious was
a good and humble man, and accepted the penance,
which was, to work personally at humble tasks in hospitals,
With good heart. Camillus hurried to Naples: there at
least he would find enthusiasm: and indeed Opertis,
against his better judgment, began to negotiate for the
taking over, in all departments, the Annunziata hospital.
But God, after asking for a sacrifice, constantly opens
new doors to generosity, and did so now for Camillus.
Clement VIII had sent his nephew to rescue from the
Turks Esztergom, the mother-city of Hungarian Christian­
ity and the baptism-place of St. Istvan. He asked the
Jesuits for eight of their members, and Camillus for eight
more, though he refused to allow him to go in person to
the field of battle. However, he went by way of Genoa,
Mantua and Verona to Trent, and there gave his final
instructions as to ambulances, ‘advanced dressing­
stations’, as we would now say, and the like. He then
returned to Naples. The expedition had at least sent the
Camillans for the first time to what was to become
specially dear to them as a field of work.
Camillus arrived in Naples in high spirits. He felt sure
that here at last he would be able to carry out his plans
for ‘ complete service ’ with the wholehearted co-operation
he so much desired and had failed to obtain elsewhere.

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But alas: the Professed Fathers had explained to Opertis
that they could not possibly approve of the plan, and
Opertis in his heart could not either. Opertis put this as
respectfully as he could to Camillus: the difficulties
attendant on this innovation would be overwhelming.
Camillus was ‘stung’ by the word ‘innovation’: the idea
had been his since the beginning. (Doubtless, when—I
recall again—he was foreseeing a smallish company of
laymen.) Camillus called the Community together twice,
and spoke to them fervently: but now he found that they
were openly against him. In fact, they had composed a
memorial, all thirty-six of them, in which they set forth
their reasons for holding that the ‘total service’ of hos­
pitals was, if not impossible, most undesirable. This
memorial they gave to Opertis. Camillus called them
together a third time, and said that if he could not per­
suade them, he would have recourse to authority—the
Pope’s, and his own. Opertis implored him not to do
this: indeed, Camillus’s personal authority was not
absolute: Camillus remained obstinate: Opertis produced
the memorial, and begged him to convoke the Chapter
General to decide. Camillus stood stunned. Then very
gently he said he would convene the Chapter in the spring.
Thereafter he spoke no more of the ‘total service’, save
that that evening he again assembled them, and begged
their pardon for any fault of his; assured them that his
intention had been good, and recalled that even between
Saints there could be sharp differences of opinion—look
at St. Paul and Barnabas. During Paul’s first mission­
journey, Barnabas’s young kinsman John Mark could not
bring himself to cross from Cyprus to the mainland and
went home. Later on, Barnabas suggested John Mark, a
second time, as companion. Paul refused: and a ‘bitter­
ness’ arose between him and Barnabas, and Paul was
separated from both those early companions. Happily,

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friendship was restored: nor was there any embitterment.
between Camillus and his associates—it was still he who
was their best support, and in but a few days he was able
to restore the ‘will to live’ to a certain priest who had
come back to Naples very sick, and having lost all
inclination to make the necessary effort.
But this did not mean that Camillus had in the least
changed his mind. On the contrary. He began to have
the scruple that he had been weakly false to his primitive
idea: and critics were not lacking to tell him that his
companions were losing their first fervour and were not
true to the cross they wore. Tn October the election of
; those who should assist at the Chapter was to take place.
The question arose—Had the Brothers (or only Priests)
the right to vote ? Camillus, who thought that they at
least would be on his side, thought Yes. Everyone else
—all canonical or theological authorities in Naples and
then Rome, said No, till a Jesuit father suggested that
he might ask the Pope for a special permission on behalf
of the Brothers. He did so, and it was granted. Opertis
came to Rome to discuss the shape in which Camillus’s
proposal could be made more palatable to the Chapter.
Camillus would have no ‘shape’ for it save his own, and
said he was certain that the Chapter would accept it.
Qpertis returned in torment of mind to Naples, and
Camillus went to Milan, where, in that hospital, he found
himself “like a fish in water”. But even there, the Re­
ligious were experiencing that for priests to be doing the
rough work of the house at the bidding of ‘ despotic and
disrespectful subalterns’ might be valuable to them as a
humiliation, but was of no use to the sick. Camillus re­
turned to Rome and Santo Spirito : he continued to serve
the patients, to read their souls, and to cure them. “ It
is that long Father^ said one, to the astonished doctor,
“who has cured me.”

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The Chapter met, attended by twenty-nine Religious,
on April 24, 1596. Camillus put his point of view. “Even
if the Bull and the Rules,” he said, “do not explicitly
mention ‘total service’, I, as founder, must know what
was my intention from the outset.” “But,” he was
answered, “this interpretation cannot be imposed with­
out the approval of the Professed.” “But as a matter of
fact the Bull and the Rules in reality do speak of it . . .
in words clearer than the sun. ... 1 am afraid it is you
who will not understand them.” Deeply saddened by
having to disagree with one they so much loved and
venerated, the Chapter suggested the examination of these
documents by four theologians, two chosen by him, two
by themselves—yes, and he could add a fifth, whom he
might especially trust. Camillus having ‘ much masticated ’
. the proposal, agreed. His own theologians assured him
that his argument was untenable. Camillus asked the
Pope to suspend the decision arrived at by this method,
and the Pope did so. On May 3, four Consul tors were
elected (this was the proper procedure), and obliged
Camillus to take no decision save after listening to them.
Camillus sighed that “the sons had so tied their Father’s
hands”, and again applied to Clement. But the Pope
meanwhile had heard that the Chapter and the Cardinal
Protector himself, Salviati, were opposed to him : Clement
gave no authoritative interpretation of the rule but told
Camillus to accept no new hospitals for the future. This
did not at all relieve Camillus of his most sincere scruple;
but he dissolved the Chapter, saying with much simplicity
that “Our Lord the Pope has given me to understand that
he does not wish more hospitals to be undertaken in the
fashion that would be conformable to my new (!) inten­
tion. But the sick are to be served day and night as
hitherto, or in a way that shall seem better to our Order:
so that this controversy is ended—for now; and all that

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remains is that each should salvage his soul for the future,
as I myself shall do.” He felt, somewhat later, that he
could ask them to give him a little more liberty: they did
so, but not quite so generously as he would have liked.
He said that they really might have shown “a little more
confidence in him, who had shed so many tears in
establishing the Order then, kneeling down, he begged
their pardon for all the faults of his past government­
awe are all weak and make mistakes—but none of mine
have proceeded from bad will . . . and I hope that for the
future I may place myself in all and through all entirely in
the hands of my companions (the Consultors), and not
trust any more in my personal opinion as perhaps I have
done in the past.” They went, full of gratitude and peace,
to obtain the Pope’s blessing, which he gave with pleasure
redoubled because peace reigned amongst them. The end,
however, was not yet : and a sorrow of a different sort befell
him, in the death of St. Philip Neri, May 26; Camillus
assisted the aged man in this his last journey, and maybe
the memory of past disagreements, ending in so perfect a
reconciliation, encouraged him to feel that somehow, in
God’s good time, the present deep division of sentiment
would be substantially, and not only superficially, healed.
Camillus, in reality sad at heart, went back to work at
Santo Spirito harder than ever, determined to fulfil at
least in himself what seemed to him to be undoubtedly
God’s will, however inexplicably his companions might not
realise it. He loved that hospital: it was, said he, his
‘garden’ where he was so happy—and indeed they
noticed how he was always “ fresh and cheerful in charity.”
He regarded it, in short, as the General’s privilege to
work at just those cases that terrified the paid servants
or even some of his own Religious. “These are my
Lords and Masters”, he kept saying: “it is an honour to
serve them”, Or better still—“These are my Lord and

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Master - what joy to serve Him !" “This must be the
refreshment, the comfort and the quiet of our souls—
as befits Religious, chosen and vowed to minister to the
Sick”. And God gave Him at once a new chance of thus
serving Him.
A mysterious ‘pestilent fever’ broke out in Rome, and
especially in the Borgo, close to Santo Spirito. The Pope
ordered the various Cardinals to cater for the sick in their
respective neighbourhoods, reserving to himself that
specially foul district extending from the Trastevere
right across to Monte Mario. It had been intended to
drain the low-lying parts of this properly, but this had
not been done, and the Vatican itself remained extremely
unhealthy. The Pope entrusted this to Camillus, and gave
him a new house in the Borgo, equipped with all necessities
and the service of doctors. But hospitals could not hold
all the sick : and the infinite labour of visiting each house,
nay, the huts of shepherds and the ovens in which men
hid, began again. Happily, this sort of work, which
exhausted others, was precisely what gave new strength to
Camillus, who wilted when there was not enough to do.
We read of sick men, or their messengers, refusing to
leave the doors of the Maddalena till some Father should
return, and then they would forthwith ask him to start
out again. No wonder that one poor priest, snatching
a moment of sleep, was roused at least sufficiently to get
up, dress, go forth to the place to which he was summoned,
and walked reeling through the streets, once more fast
asleep, till some soldier woke him up properly. He had no
idea how he had got there. And more than once that
happened, of which we have so many well-attested
instances in our own time—Priests were summoned, or
even escorted, by unknown visitors, to some dying man,
who, in his complete loneliness had been unable to invoke
human aid. Ï have known too many cases where priests

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have thus been summoned in no ‘natural’ way, to the
bedside of the dying, to have any doubt but that God
permitted the same to happen, and often, during these
ancient plagues. This was in July 1597. The same could
be said about alms. His religious complained vigorously
to Camillus that he was neglecting the affairs of his Order
in general, and the feeding and health of his own men in
particular. He agreed: he said that during a crisis like
this one, everything must be subordinated to the service
of the sick, and that God would not fail men of Faith. Nor
did He. Alms poured in : sometimes Camillus even sent
back large sums that he thought must have been given
by mistake. But possibly he had to learn also that a
Founder must legislate not only for men like himself,
but for the more average : and, that a' Superior must at
times deny himself the joy of doing direct work for God,
and sit at desks, give interviews to innumerable visitors, do
accounts and see to the meals. Camillus knew he was very
strong, but did not realise always that others were not : he
was on fire with charity, and simply could not believe
that others were not. In fact, being a very humble man, he
ranked himself in every way below them, so that he simply
could not understand how they could fail to do as much as
—and more than—he did. In short, a Saint-in-the-making
always has to learn, always to overcome something in
himself, probably till the very hour of death. Thus he
did not tread a path different from ours. He does but
climb more steeply, and so, more quickly and more high
than we.
Perhaps I had better finish once and for all with the
topic of ‘total service’ in the hospitals. I recall that
Camillus vvas determined that, if possible, his Religious
should undertake the entire care of hospitals where they
worked and in which they'were to live. Nearly all his
men wefe against this, the- main arguments, I recall, being

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that it was absurd to withdraw these men (especially
when priests) from the direct care spiritual and material
of the sick, and put them to scrub floors etc. which others
would do better: and, that it would be almost impossible
to prevent men who did the 1 total ’ work of a hospital from
wanting to have some share in its management. Early
in 1599 Opertis came to Rome to discuss possible com­
promises, and with extreme audacity suggested that the
Institute should be divided—some should adopt Camillus’s
conditions ; the others, continue as at present. It has been
suggested that Opertis, a daring diplomat, suggested
this to force Camillus to see that no one would foliowhim.
Well, Camillus was ready to tolerate even that. On May
12 the 2nd Chapter was opened, presided over by Mgr.
Tarugi, nominated by the Cardinal Protector and approved
by the Pope. Camillus at once set forth a dilemma.
The original Bull spoke neither of ‘total’ service, nor yet
of ‘higher studies’. If the Chapter would not accept
his ideal of ‘total service’ and quoted the silence of the
Bull, then he would withdraw his sanction of ‘higher
studies’ which the members of the Institute wished for.
If, as Founder, he could permit the studies, similarly, as
Founder, he could impose ‘total service’. Frankly, as
Fr. Vanti notes, the two things were not parallel. Camillus,
as Founder, could set forth his ideals and a programme
(and even new ones) : but he had no right to impose any
of them: they had to be known, discussed, and freely
consented to by all.1 The case was submitted to Camillus’s
great friend, Cardinal Baronius. The Cardinal could not
but decide against the Founder. He, though “wounded in
the very pupil of his eye”, submitted the matter to two
theologians along with Tarugi. They leant to the side
1 It is quite probable that a Religi6u^ of another Order, who disliked
the Institute and wished to injure it, deliberately; urged Canu'JJus towards
an obstinate insistence on his idea, hoping that thus he would destroy
the Institute itself.
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..of the Chapter at large, and Tarugi, sorry for Camillus,
went to the Pope and tried to find a decision in some sort
in favour of Camillus. But the representatives of the
Chapter went too, and protested that their rights were
being over-ridden. Clement VI11 was at first very annoyed
and said that Tarugi must be obeyed. Tarugi remained
behind, and implored the Pope, personally, to let Camillus
alone, since the Institute was doing more good than “any
of the old religious orders.” The Pope was touched,
the more so because a few days later the Duke of Savoy,
plague having broken out in Piedmont, petitioned the
Pope to send eight priests and seven brothers (Camillans)
; to the rescue. Everyone, Camillus at their head, implored
to be sent. The Pope saw that there was no ill will in the
Institute·—no question of its having relaxed its first
fervour. He told Tarugi to try to do all he.could to arrive
at what would satisfy both the Father and his sons.
The Chapter was so overjoyed at the evident trust put in
it by the Holy Father, that on August 9 the Chapter
dissolved itself, leaving (we have to confess) the main
point undecided, but having done much good work of
other sorts.1
For a time, Camillus, resolute to succeed in his designs,
turned wholly to penance, prayer, and harder work.
The year 1600 arrived with its solemn Jubilee; French
pilgrims were pouring into Rome because of the conversion of Henri IV and peace between France and
Spain; conversions multiplied—Clement VII himself
confirmed a nephew of Calvin’s. Camillus more than ful1 We can judge how almost hopeless was the work of those who would
work for the sick. When the plague reached Piedmont from France,
the Duke of Savoy tried to conceal the fact, so that the Asti ‘ fair ’ could
take place, because Turin merchants poured thither and brought much
money with them. The result was that the plague, unchecked, made its
way to Turin, Mondovi, Monferrato, Asti and many other towns. Thus
the Duke, having left the tap running as long as he could, then, unable
to turn it off, sent for the poor Camillans to arrive with mops.

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filled the Jubilee regulations, making again and again the
prescribed visits to the great basilicas, over appalling
roads, and consenting to use a stick only when his leg was
too horribly painful. He won his reward. Opertis drew
up a long ‘formula’, in which Camillus’s desire for
‘total work’ was acceded to, except as regards heavier,
purely material occupations which could be far better
carried out by seculars. Camillus abruptly agreed. His
Religious were therefore to be permitted to live in the
hospitals themselves ‘as though in their own house’,
but, were not to undertake the ‘heavy work’ that did not
befit their state of life. Such work was later defined in
Clement’s Bull, which in no way therefore ‘reformed’
the Institute but made more explicit the way in which
Camillus’s original idea could be developed and stabilised.
The ‘ Formula ’ was su bmitted to the various houses, and
accepted. But one last storm remained to be weathered.
Certain Roman malcontents, though they had agreed
to and signed the Formula, began to criticise it and
appealed to Salviati who entrusted an enquiry to a
certain Mgr. Benagfia. Unhappily, this prelate had a
grudge against Camillus who, long ago, had refused to
mitigate, at Benaglia’s request, a penance he had imposed
upon a Religious. Benaglia suddenly produced a decree,
allegedly “by order of the Holy Father”, forbidding the
admission of any more novices, or the profession of any
more Religious, or the ordination of those even who
had been professed. . . St. Ignatius had once said that he
thought that should the Company of Jesus be suppressed,
after a quarter of an hour’s prayer his soul would remain
serene. Camillus accepted at once, interiorly, the des­
truction of his own Institute, but entrusted its defence to
Fr. Profeta, and himself went off to serve the plaguestricken at Nola. His sons resisted this departure in vain :
the Saint actually thought that if he died, his death might

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be accepted as a sacrifice for the survival and well-being
of his institute.
Conditions at Nola were terrible. “The dead, since
there was no one who would bury them, were murdering
the living”» Many priests had died; some had fled;
others, in Rome for the Jubilee, dared not return. Again
and again, some solitary Camillan had to visit a sick
man, try to cure him, give him the Last Sacraments, and
then carry him forth and bury him. Camillus had promised
not to stay there long, and felt he had kept that promise
by going to Naples, collecting eighty Professed Fathers
(for whom lots were drawn—they all wanted to go),
and bringing them back to Nola. But Rome decided that
Camillus must not be allowed to prolong this second
escapade^ and he went back to Naples. Meanwhile the
fame of this Camillan heroism spread wide abroad: the
bishop of Nola himself was in Rome for the Jubilee.
The Pope asked him why he was not with his flock; he
said that it was in the hands of Camillus—-“a far more
charitable shepherd than I am”, and in fact not only wrote
to Camillus several times, but appointed him his Vicar
General with full powers alike spiritual and over the
material possessions of the diocese. Camillus however
was not allowed to go back there: the seven Fathers
originally sent there, however, all caught the plague and
most of the others died : Camillus reserved to himself the
right of nursing them: none the less, five of those seven
died. For the second time, plague had saved the Institute.
The Pontiff ordered a revision of Benaglia’s decree by a
Mgr. Seneca who studied the ‘Formula’ and said that
there were not “so many monstrosities in it” as Benaglia
had described: the Pope caused Seneca’s view to be
submitted to Salviati and Baronins who implored that it
should be approved : and on December 28, 1600, Clement
issued a Bull, Superna Dispositione, confirming the

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Formula, though making its contents obligatory only as
from the promulgation of the Bull. But all the older
Fathers voluntarily accepted the contents of the Formula
now papally approved. Four ‘simple’ vows were added
to the four ‘solemn’ ones; of these, one re-affirmed that
the Camillans, even when living in a hospital, must not
accept its governorship or administration. Camillus
cannot be said to have been fully contented with the Bull,
and found it easier to carry out the substance of his
plan in Florence, where he received an enthusiastic
welcome, and at Mantua, whither Duke Vincent Gonzaga
had invited him.
I now return to a rapid sketch of the development of the
Institute from a rather earlier date. The focus of all its
activity and development was, of course, Camillus himself.
He wished that his Religious should rest a little after
three hours’ work : but he disregarded this rule in his own
case: directly after Mass he would go to Santo Spirito,
receive a written account of the arrival of new patients
and the condition of those already there: he inspected
the kitchen—he was a very good cook and loved cooking
small delicacies for fastidious or convalescent persons—
then he looked after the worst cases till dinner time when
he returned to the Maddalena ; then, after prayer and
doing necessary business, he went back to the Hospital
and remained there often all night, always regarding
as his prerogative the worst cases, feeding, for instance,
as best he could, those whose mouths and throats were
helpless for eating.
As for ‘necessary business’—well, it must be difficult to
manage a house when a Saint is its Superior ! Camillus,
of course, was quite sure that God would never allow His
servants to starve ; so he regarded the poor as his immediate
care ; anything extra (if anything could be extra, given the
conditions of poverty then prevalent) might go to feeding

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the Community—poor men, they were often appalled, not
having ‘heroic faith’ all of them and all the time ! Cer­
tainly, alms flowed in. Often they were anonymous.
More than once; when a benefactor sent his regular
contribution, the sum turned out much in excess : Camillus
sent it back, assuming that a mistake had been made.
If it had, the benefactor was touched, and told Camillus to
keep the surplus: once, a man who helped Camillus
monthly by the gift of the rent of a certain house, left an
envelope which turned out to contain 300 gold scudi.
Camillus sent the money back, saying that they were not
!
in so great a need as the donor said he had heard they s
were. The gentleman again returned the money, scenting
a miracle, for his purse had contained, he knew, only the
:
normal rent—a very small sum, and none of it in gold. But i
these events are almost normal in the lives of the Saints of
i
Charity !
1
In 1597-1598, the Institute established itself at Bologna,
jj
■ whither after a short time Camillus went himself, by way
of Loreto, so as to be absent during the discussions
■
belonging to that moment about his ideal of a “total”
hospital service. Thence he went to Milan, partly to see
1
; whether the Fathers there approved of his ideas. On all
these journeys, he always insisted that some small money
;
; and plenty of bread should be carried with him and his
'
companions, that they might help the poor whom they
3
might meet. Perhaps a word is necessary about this
$
‘indiscriminate charity’ and the ‘undeserving poor’.
i
Apart from the fact that a Christian’s greatest joy (not
to mention that of the Angels . . .) is to bring back the
"undeserving’, whether rich or poor, to the love of Christ
and of their fellow-men, we have to recall that Camillus
lived in a certain sort of society which he could not have
altered fundamentally so that there should be no more
very poor, even had he wanted to. Not only he was not a

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social-economic philosopher; not only would his learned
treatises on human inequality and injustices, had he been
able to write any, have had not the slightest effect on his
period, but, to put it in the way most likely to offend
modern ideas, he would have felt himself ‘out of work’
had there been no poor, no sick, to attend to. Where
would he have found ‘Christ-Suffering’ to serve? To
state my own opinion bluntly, Camillus had an infinitely
easier task than ours. I do not foresee a world without
poverty, and certainly not without suffering, bodily or
mental. And I consider it vastly more degrading for a very
poor man to demand sustenance, as his right, from the
‘State’, than to hope for it, as an act of loving service,
from some humble individual. As for the sick, in a
country where official care for health has been developed
to an extremely high degree, you may see as many
neurotics and mentally half-sick as anywhere else.
Where nursing has become a profession instead of being
a vocation, you will not get that spiritual contact between
nurse or doctor and patient which is infinitely more
important than administration of drugs. Along with the
crudest materialist, I believe that physical well-being
ought to be aimed at: along with those who profess to
believe that the body is illusion, I am sure that spiritual
well-being should be sought. But I am certain that so long
as one without the other is sought, chaos will be the result.
And experience, not theory only, has convinced me that the
Catholic way of starting a ‘cure’ by way of the spirit
(I don’t allude, obviously, to what is surgical, like cutting
off a leg ... or the administration of e.g. morphia
at moments when pain is going to prove too much for one’s
heart) is the right one. Anyway, since Camillus could
not live 400 years ahead of his time, what was to be done
for men and women who were destitute, even if not ill
(though they practically all were and could not but

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109

be)? Put them all into a lethal chamber had it been
possible, as men have now been doing when those
who differ from them politically or racially require to
be dealt with? Disregard the suffering individual for
the sake of a philosophy however correct, yet at the
moment impotent ? No. Camillus did perfectly right in
dealing with individuals when and where he found
them, even if he could help for a day only or for an
hour.
Camillus too had his accidents. He was both tender
and brusque. He always shook up straw mattresses and
turned pillows that no one else would touch. Once he
did so too roughly and the absurd knob that crowned
the canopy which surmounted a bed, fell down and
wounded the head of the patient. Surgeons could not
heal the wound : Camillus stayed the night with the sick
man, and next day the wound, which had bled terribly,
was perfectly healed (and the patient had not been
annoyed). Again, leaning over
iron crucifix to fall on the patient
his prayer, the wound, and tl
spiritual, of the sufferer were hea
that Camillus, ‘excessive’ in his c
seemed austere and rigid when
others (i.e. his own Religious).
Camillus, who had fifteen more y
the perfected Saint. He saw clear
heart that was like Christ’s Hea
suffered spiritually or physical!}
realise that those who had—as
dedicated themselves to the ser
possibly see themselves as incap;
exertions that came—by nowHence, so far, there was not
Camillus’s soul; but there was g<

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Meanwhile, ever new claims on his charity were being
made. At Christmas, 1598, torrential rains caused the
Tiber to overflow: this event was so frequent (the last
flood was only seven years ago) that it seems incredible that
authority had not concerned itself more definitely with a
remedy. Camillus insisted on having the sick in Santo
Spirito transported to a higher floor: he spent all Christ­
mas night carrying them higher still, in spite of the
appalling pain that this caused to his leg: in the Maddalena
the water had risen above the high altar itself. Camillus
got two boats, and rowed around, rescuing unfortunates
marooned in upper storeys. When the water subsided, a
whole new category of sick, of homeless, of orphans
besieged even the hospitals : Camillus worked there all
night : when he returned to the Maddalena in the morning,
he would first visit the sick there, then sit down in the
infirmary, leaning his head on his hand, for a short time,
and consider he had ‘slept’ enough. Then he made his
meditation, said Mass, and returned to his work.
In this same year and a little later the Institute was
earnestly invited to Madrid : but the enterprise, at the
time, came to nothing. Houses were however opened at
Florence (much helped by the B. Ippolito Galantini), at
Ferrara, and at Messina, and then at Palermo. Camillus
meanwhile was travelling around—to Bucchianico and
Loreto, to Assisi, and thence to Florence, after which he
went to Bologna and Ferrara; thence to Venice, and
Padua, Mantua, Cremona and finally Milan. In ail these
places he studied the hospitals, and not only made
suggestions, as a rule a thankless task, but tried to learn.
He was always seeking to improve his methods. Finally,
he came to Genoa, and it was there that he heard of Mgr.
Benaglia’s attempt to make an end of the Institute, and
after this, the episode of Nola occurred. When the Bull was
published he felt he had better re-visit the various houses

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to give them a viva voce explanation of it, and thus he
found himself for the first time visiting Sicily where he had
not been since 1573—how different a man ! Then, the
gambler-soldier had to return to Italy destitute: to-day,
the Viceroy, Duke of Macheda, would not speak to him
otherwise than bare-headed. Enthusiastic crowds flocked
out to meet him, dogged his steps, tried to kiss his hand,
demanded miracles, or, failing these, ‘just one word’.
All this was anguish to the Saint, who, in proportion as
his sanctity increased, saw ever more clearly the gulf
between the highest human holiness, and God’s all
holiness, source of every grace. On escaping from
Palermo, he fled to Messina, where he found rest, indeed,
‘newlife’, serving in the hospital. “His cheerfulness made
the whole hospital cheerful ”—it appears that he even made
jokes. Thence to Naples and Rome, where he proposed
new work in yet other hospitals: his consultors would
not approve this suggestion, being anxious to consolidate
what existed : however, they referred it to the next General
Chapter. Camillus did not insist, but went off to Florence,
where more than anywhere else he could always work to
his heart’s content. Passing through, once more, the
cities we have already named, he received a summons
back to Rome, where a General Chapter was to take
place. It was in fact opened on April 15, 1602; and by a
strange chance, Cardinal Salviati died next day. All
differences of opinion had long ago been forgotten:
Camillus assisted the Cardinal through his last hours.
Odd as it may seem, Mgr. Benaglia presided, papally
approved. The Chapter lasted a week, and is passed
over in Fr. Vanti’s Life in a single paragraph, so far
as its agenda are concerned. The ‘salient point’ was
Camillus’s desire to be exempted from all interference
in the government of his Institute—not even the consultors were to control him. Naturally Benaglia was

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vehemently opposed lo this, which may be the reason
why such of the Fathers who themselves did not like the
suggestion (Opertis chief among them) came round, and
approved of it during a session when Benaglia was not
there. He prophesied the ruin of the Institute, and retired.
In general, one would have thought that the conferring
of absolute authority on one man was dangerous, and that
this universal responsibility would be too much for
anyone. However, the case was not general, but particular,
seeing that the ‘autocrat’ was Camillus. But I am not
surprised that Fr. Vanti, after telling us that Camillus
soon set out on a tour of all his houses, introduces a
section concerning the ‘spirit of the Founder’.
If I may venture an opinion, it is, that Camillus knew
that he posessed the spirit of supernatural charity and faith
which he wanted to be that too of his Institute, and was
afraid that others—however excellent both as men and
as Religious—might fall short in it. Soon after the end
of the Third Chapter General, Fr. Profeta and Br. Curzio
Lodi, “who had been with him since the beginning”, died.
These had fully understood one another: Camillus may
have felt that it would soon be his turn—he lived however
for over ten years more. Camillus, in any case, dis­
played, during these months of journeying, a power of
organisation that one might not have foreseen. His
instructions as to the trainingof novices are very practical.
He himself could display a sort of objective mysticism
which is very interesting : here is a sort of symbolic
instance. One summer day he was crossing the bridge
of Sant’ Angelo to Santo Spirito with a young novice
whose head ached violently in the heat. “Come closer to
me”, said the towering Saint: “I am very tall, and my
shadow will keep the sun off you”. I like this sentence,
which, to me, is full of a rather naïf humour and uncon­
scious mysticism. Anyhow, the boy walked in the shadow

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of Camillus, who, on his side, tried not to go too fast.
Not but what Camillus could be very direct. When leaving
Genoa, he went to the hospital to say goodbye to his
community and the staff. Camillus asked for a Fr. Testa,
and, since Testa was saying Mass, waited for him. When
he arrived, Camillus put his hand on his shoulder, “Come
along,"Father Stefano; we have to go to heaven, and we
must prepare for that !” Stefano Testa was perfectly
well: all the same, ten days later, he died. Another time,
Camillus was about to leave Naples for Rome with some
companions. One of these said he was ill and that the
doctor had forbidden him to travel. Camillus saw deeper
into the priest’s character, which was timorous and
indolent. “That”, said he, “is what the doctor has
ordered : right ! But Obedience orders you a hat and a
couple of spurs ; you will take these and forthwith leave
with me, to-morrow”. AU went well.
In October, 1602, Camillus returned to the Milan
Hospital where more than anywhere else he found both
peace and charity—the peace that charity creates. And
at once, a quaint and illuminative little incident. On
arriving, without even taking off his travelling boots,
he went straight to the beds occupied by two young
English Protestants, travelling-companions, who had had
a fight and wounded one another. It was impossible
that CamiUus should have heard about this ; but at once
he said : “My brothers, how can it be that you, who are
companions and such good friends, have struck one
another ? And why don’t you believe in God?” Perhaps
they had drifted away even from orthodox Protestantism!
'Anyhow, Camillus made peace between them and finally
reconciled them with the Church. Tn fact, Milan became
his ideal hospital ; Florence and Ferrara were almost as
perfect: while at Milan he made a few new simple rules
full of common sense, and underlining the absolute

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obedience due to the doctors : the Camillans must never
forget that they were nurses, and should do what they were
told. Their personal contribution must be a total charity.
“A Servant of the Sick”, he repeated, “without charity
is simply a fish out of water ! ”
We now enter upon an interval of four years, 1603 to
1607, when Camillus resigned the Generalate. A full
Life of the Saint (like Fr. Vanti’s) would of course duti­
fully relate every available detail of that period; but for
my part I should find it impossible to do so if I am to
keep this little book within reasonable limits, though
every episode has some picturesque or characteristic
that could be quoted,. For example, half the journeys
undertaken by Camillus seemed to involve him in some
accident—if he was in a carriage, the horses ran away, or
a wheel went over the edge of a precipice, or a bridge
was rotten : if he was on a mule or on horseback, the
animal fell on the appalling roads—usually on the poor
man’s bad leg : again and again only at the last moment
would he and his companions find a lodging for the
night, when they had resigned themselves to await the
dawn in rain or snow. But worse than this were the con­
stant money-difficulties in which this or that house was
involved: the Institute seemed quite unable to avoid
running up debts. And worse still were the continual
difficulties connected with the service of the sick in
hospitals, and these were grievous precisely in proportion
as that service approximated to Camillus’s ideal of
‘totality’. In 1604, the Consultons decided that the Milan
Hospital must be given up—it was impossible to find a
decent house for the Community, or a church where they
could regularly say Mass. In the end, a compromise was
arrived at, as Cardinal Frederic Borromeo was so hurt
by the proposed departure. But a more radical reason
for misunderstandings was the jealousy of the legal

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administrators of various hospitals, in regard of these men
who certainly did all the hard work, and could hardly
but be supposed to be aiming at the control of the ad­
ministration too. Some time later, in fact, the Camillans
had to leave Florence by order of Ferdinand de’ Medici,
Grand Duke of Tuscany, whose mind had been poisoned
against them. I fear that I cannot but think that jealousy
was not solely and always the cause of irritation. Allow­
ing for human nature, which certainly survived in some
members of a large Institute like that of the Servants of
the Sick (large, because novices kept pouring into it), I
feel that some of its members may at times have appeared
officious, critical, and even interfering. They themselves
must often have been driven almost frantic by governors
who were incompetent, indolent, or even venal. Speaking
as an ‘outsider’, it seems to me that the only method
which would ultimately prove satisfactory was that
the Camillans should possess and administer the hospitals
in which they served. Nowadays, when hospitals are
more and more ‘secularised’, such a system seems even
necessary. In fact, the exact opposite to Camillus’s diffi­
culty seems to have arisen—in State Hospitals, it may be
impossible for Religious to play any part at all : we are
thankful when there is a Catholic chaplain officially
appointed, and doubly grateful when the Hospital records
(as English military hospitals do) the fact that a new
arrival is a Catholic, so that the Chaplain knows at once
whom to visit. But when a hospital is definitely Catholic,
and served and managed by Religious, difficulties con­
stantly arise—unless extraordinary tact be shown—if
non-Catholic nurses are admitted as, for example, pro­
bationers, and do much very hard work, but have no say
in the administration whatsoever. I think a compromise,
or concordat, might well be arrived at. Let there, cer­
tainly, be Catholic hospitals, owned and managed by

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Religious (men or women), under the spiritual control,
of course, of the Bishop, and regularly inspected hy the
Stale so that on the material side the standard of work
done in them may be kept sufficiently high. Probably we
shall see something of the sort happen also as regards
schools, and also, private property, and even, private
businesses. Meanwhile, when Camillus found that too
serious difficulties arose within hospitals, he directed his
own work and that of his associates to service in private
houses. I cherish one remark of his—addressed, this
time, to the Devil. This evil spirit was tempting a dying
man. “Go away” cried the Saint: “If he has sinned, he
has sinned as a man-—a human sin ; and God has forgiven
him ! ” So the interference of the Devil was wholly out of
place. Need I say that a man who had that perspective was
not going to neglect the material side of service ! Once,
after an appalling storm, during which shipwreck seemed
inevitable till Camillus started to pray and got the ship
safe to port, he went straight to a church, and said Mass,
and then, in no time, managed to get “soup, meat, bread,
wine and fruit” for the whole crew of 300persons. On the
spiritual side, he was able to install the Blessed Sacrament
in a chapel within the Naples Annunziata Hospital, which
provoked criticism as an innovation, but was manifestly
at once a joy, and prudent, in case Viaticum was suddenly
needed for some very sick man. It is interesting to see
how slow were the Roman authorities to allow the
Camillans “total service” in the Eternal City, even in Santo
Spirito. As a matter of fact, the responsibilities they had
already undertaken would seem to have been amply
sufficient, if not too heavy, especially as in 1604 Camillus
developed a grave illness of the kidneys, and stone. This
added enormously to his sufferings, and to the anxieties of
his associates. It is then doubly touching to read of his
kindness to animals, for instance, to a dog that had hurt

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its leg. “I cannot walk either, at present”, he said: “this
is a creature of God, and 1, ungrateful man that I am,
ought to learn fidelity to my Lord from the faithfulness
of this dog to his master.”
At the end of this year, he was earnestly invited to open
a house at Bucchianico, which later on he did, and also
at Chieti.
On March 4, 1605, Clement VH1 died, a terrible loss
for Camillus, a loss destined to be mitigated, it might have
been thought, by the accession of Cardinal Alessandro de’
Medici as Leo XI; he had known Camillus well in Flor­
ence. But he died twenty-six days after his election, having
just had time to summon Camillus and assure him of his
good will. On May 16, Cardinal Camillo Borghese be­
came Pope, as Paul IV. He had been Vicar of Rome, and
so knew Camillus well. As for Camillus, having divided
his Order into five provinces, he went to Bucchianico.
Marchese Marino Caracciolo, over-lord of the town, gave
Camillus an old palace of his for dwelling, and the
University undertook to provide quite a large sum, in
instalments, to support the Religious. The palace needed
much adaptation. One day Camillus was sitting at dinner
with his cousin Onofrio, when he turned white and seemed
appalled, then recovered himself, and said: “God be
praised”. At that moment a young man rushed in—a
whole wall of the building had collapsed, burying the
workmen. “It will be nothing,” said Camillus. “Come,
Father, and help them!” cried the youth. Camillus went,
and indicated certain spots where excavation should begin.
The young man said that the buried workmen could not
possibly be there—he had been present at the disaster.
Camillus insisted, and there they all were, uninjured, save
one, who had had a knock on the head—and he, that
morning, had been grumbling against the Saint. The
event cannot be disputed, whatever view we take of

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‘second sight’ in general and this instance of it; and, as
a cautionary tale, what more satisfactory ? Here are two
more incidents, that have, for me, their charm. The
water supply was bad. The new house had a cistern, which
caught rain-water, but this must be filtered through a
sandy soil called ‘pozzolana’. There was none of this at
Bucchianico: it had to be fetched from over ten miles
away. Camillus, however, was looking at some ants,
throwing up their little hills of dust. “But what is this
earth ?” asked he. It was genuine pozzolana, and exactly
enough of it could be dug up to make a useful filter.
The second incident is this. Camillus decided to visit
some surviving relatives a considerable distance from
Chieti. He took with him an old Brother, Orazio, and
an escort of three men, lent to him (together with horses),
by Onofrio. On the way, of course, Orazio’s horse fell
and rolled on the poor old man. They all thought he was
dead. Camillus dismounted, blessed him, and Orazio sat
up, shook himself, and was perfectly well. On arriving
at the Capuchin convent where they had meant to stay,
they were warmly welcomed, but there was next to nothing
to eat. “There will be, ” said Camillus calmly: “God will
help us. ” The three servants were taken to the refectory,
and were given a few crusts of bread, some salad and
some soup. They lamented having to “sacrifice a good
deal of their formidable appetite”, and altogether lost hope
when presented with a glass of water—there was no wine.
They resolved not to drink at all, “unless owing to extreme
necessity and at the end of the meal”. Camillus came in
and blessed the food. They ate and ate, till even their
formidable appetite was satisfied. “Alack,” they cried,
that we cannot anoint our food with a little wine!”
One of them resolved to drink—and lo, it was wine.
The others then drank, and found it “good as malvoisie
and—spirited”. It took a great deal to persuade the

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Brother who had served them that it was wine. “If,” said
he, “I poured it from this jug, it must be water.” Well,
they not only drank till they “were tired of it”, but left
some in the cups as a proof of the miracle.
Camillus then went back to Naples, taking a grand, nephew with him as novice, though the boy’s relatives
highly disapproved of this step. In short, Camillus was
only intermittently in favour within his family.
In March 1606, Paul V assigned Cardinal Ginnasi to
be the new Protector of the whole Camillan institute.
In June broke out the appalling plague of Naples which
lasted till the spring of 1607. In the single hospital of the
Annunziata, twenty-five to thirty patients died each day:
Camillus did all he could with disinfectants ; but half the
staff had fled, half was sick . . . the reek of decaying
corpses filled not only the hospital but the city. Most of
Camillus’s own men caught the infection : several of them
died—including the young Ottavio de Lellis, his grand­
nephew, still a novice. In the midst of all this, the crisis
in the hospital of Sta Maria Nova at Florence came to a
head. Sooner than see his hospital work stultified there,
Camillus withdrew all his men, and put them to work in
private houses, rather startlingly asserting that the Grand
Duke would not survive for more than two years and
fifteen days. This prophecy, which was undoubtedly made,
was verified to the letter.
I have asked myself whether we can detect, about this
- time, a slight touch of ‘feverishness’, so to say, in
Camillus’s activities. He enquired from the famous
theologian (afterwards Cardinal) Toledo whether his vow
of ‘ serving the sick ’ did not oblige him to serve them in
some measure daily. Would one day on which he did not
actively serve them, constitute a breach of that vow ?
And undoubtedly his burning zeal led him to ask more
from himself and his companions than they could per-

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form, and debts were mounting up. Cardinal Ginnasi
feared lest “so important an Institute might collapse
owing to its desire to do too well”. The Pope asked the
Cardinal to talk it over with Camillus, who was called
to Rome. Camillus’s decision was drastic: he would
resign from the Generaiatc and live wholly under obedi­
ence. Ginnasi suggested convening the Consultors and
Provincials and discussing this proposal. Camillus, dis­
tressed, said nothing to his colleagues, but went to the
Pope twice: the Pope would not decide, but referred the
matter again to the Cardinal Protector. On October 2
the Fathers were assembled, and after some affectionate
words spoken by the Cardinal, Camillus offered his
resignation, and the Cardinal said sorrowfully but
definitely that he had the Pope’s authority to accept it.
Camillus then begged pardon for faults committed during
his tenure of office, and confessed that they—if any—
arose from mistaken zeal; his aim had always been the
glory of God and charity to the sick. He added, that he
was convinced he must die soon, and wished to spend his
last remaining days in preparing for a good death, and
in obedient charitable work. So far, he felt, he never
had obeyed'. He had founded: he had governed; he had
worked—but on his own initiative. The resignation
was accepted though with many tears, and Fr. Opertis
was appointed ‘Vicar’ of the Institute.
We can say definitely that for the creation of the
Institute and for its preservation on the loftiest level of
self-sacrifice, an extraordinary man had been needed.
Camillus, like all founders of great Religious Orders, had
been extraordinary. But there comes a moment when
such an Order is firmly established, and then something
less than the extraordinary is needed for its enduring
welfare. Camillus had given full example of the ‘extra­
ordinary’; yet, at the same time, he led an absolutely

The Church and Hospital at Aalborg.

1

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/ normal life in such matters as concerned the external life
of the house where.he was—he ate normally; he refused
, even the least ‘special’ privilege or distinction: at recrea­
tion, he made jokes and played piastrelle (a sort of
i marbles) when invited to, though he liked older priests
1: to be present too. In fact, a young novice who wrote his
t letters for him, and from time to time felt a little irritated
jv by his work, grumbled to himself asking why everyone
i; called Camillus a Saint “though he drinks, eats, sleeps,
■ and talks like the rest of us and does everything else like
the rest of us”. Camillus read his thoughts and laughed
gently at him. The young man must have been rather
obtuse, because it is evident that Camillus was not ‘like
! the rest’ of them: at the same time, it is important to
see that the Saints have an ‘ ordinary ’ side to them. They
, are not afraid of their own ‘ nature’, which grace does not
destroy however much it uplifts and ‘supernaturalises’
I it. However, I hope to try to picture Camillus’s character
I at the end of this little book, though I should much
‘ prefer the mere story of his life to have done that of
itself. It is dangerous to risk an opinion upon the person­
ality of any man : but ten times more so, when the man
is a Saint.
π
Camillus, therefore, had governed the Institute that he
had created for sixteen years : when he resigned his
Generalate, it numbered 242 professed Religious, and
80 novices, distributed among fifteen houses and eight
hospitals. Moreover, at least 170 had died in the exercise
of their special vocation. I must now try to describe the
‘last few days’ that remained to him, which lasted, as a
matter of fact, for seven years. I confess to being beset
by a certain difficulty.—Just as after his request to be

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allowed a free hand and to be independent of his Consuitors I cannot see that he acted in any more autocratic
way, so now, when he had abdicated the Generalship, his
successor, Opertis, and the Consultors, did all they could
to give him an exceptional position as Founder, A circular
letter addressed to all Superiors declared that Camillus
must be allowed to live in whatever house or hospital he
pleased; that he had authority over every Superior save
Opertis himself; that he must be supported in all his
enterprises, and might fulfil the obligations of the Rule
“as he found it to be convenient’’. Camillus undoubtedly
intended to make use of none of these privileges, and
refused precedence whenever he could, and so forth;
but in the concrete, he seems to me to have acted with
much liberty, and continued to appal his associates by his
indifference to debts, and his devouring zeal and over­
work. I have to insist yet once more that if Camillus had
not been filled with a heroic spirit of faith and of un­
limited charity, his more cautious associates would have
been in the right. As it was, nearly all of them recognised
the fount and origin of his spiritual life and of his energies,
and not only loved Camillus, but venerated him. Opertis
was a very cautious man! He certainly tried to curb the
‘exorbitant’ Saint; but he never made any mistake about
his lovableness or holiness. I would like to register my
high veneration for Fr. Opertis, who seems to me to have
acquitted himself of his terribly difficult task superlatively
well. He had to rebuke—or at least to resist the wishes
of the man whom beyond all others he loved and vener­
ated: he had to call upon prudence (which after all is a
‘cardinal virtue’!) to keep charity in bounds—I quote
Fr. Vanti textually, lest I be thought rash in saying even
so much as I have—Opertis had “ancora una volta,
dinanzi aile difficoltâ enormi che sovrastavano, tentato
di porre un argine aile straripanti attività del nostro

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Santo”. I cannot but recall the struggles that Fr. Nadal,
S.J., had with St. Francis Borgia! Perhaps it is worth
remembering that the Renaissance was a period of
extremes, and, oddly enough, that the extremes under­
stood one another! Thus Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga of
Mantua said (and, I am convinced, meant') that when he
heard Camillus speak, he seemed to see and hear (or feel)
the spirit of St. Paul ... so full was he of the Holy Spirit.
Yet Vincent was, judging exteriorly, a most horrible
young man. The only person to whom he submitted in
his family quarrels was his cousin St. Aloysius Gonzaga;
and, foreseeing he would have to submit, did all he could
not to meet that adamantine and wholly imperturbable
youth. It is true that most of these elegant and ferocious,
adulterous and devout tyrants were assassinated: but,
between whiles, they knew perfectly well what the Saints
of their generation were talking about. Our generation
is ugly, not elegant; tame (or barbarian), not hotly
ferocious; certainly no less adulterous but in no way so
devout, and cannot even begin to understand what being
a ‘Saint’ means. But then, and let us hope now, there
are a few ‘prudent’ and levelheaded men who both act
with ‘caution’ and realise into what ‘extravagances’ the
whirling flood of Charity may sweep a Saint.
Camillus therefore now spent some time at Santo
Spirito, largely engaged in fighting against sleepiness, for
he wished never to sleep for more than three or at most
four hours in the twenty-four. Then he went to Bucchianico, where, not unexpectedly, the University found
that it could not keep its financial promises. Nor was
Onofrio—a careful if not (too readily named, I think) a
miserly man, prepared to help his kinsman. Thence
(after the usual travelling accidents and astonishing
assistance from unknown persons who appeared, put
things right, and disappeared, so that they were easily

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124

LIFE OF SAINT CAMILLUS

surmised to be angels and very likely were), he went to
Naples, where Opertis had found that, after all, the work
in the Annunziata hospital need not be given up. At
Naples, he did all he could to be treated as a man without
privileges: indeed, he refused to take part in the fourth
General Chapter. He spent all the time he could in the
hospital, and with children; nursing the smallest ones
‘as if they had been the Baby Jesus’, teaching the rather
older ones their Pater and Ave; and making use when­
ever he could of Bellarmine’s Catechism, of which indeed
he wished each of his Religious to have a copy, and to
learn it by heart. Faith was the first essential—and if he
could not go to the Foreign Missions, he consoled him­
self by the certainty that his vocation had a petitionary
value also for pagans and heretics—The hospitals are my
India and Japan! (The phrase must have been current.
Jesuits who were horrified by the state of Italy, protested
against distant mission-fields. ‘Italy is our India’; and
so forth.) It might interest those who wonder how it will
ever be possible again to get a de-Catholicised society to
see the truth of the Faith, that Camillus, on his side,
could not imagine how anyone could fail to appreciate
the truth of the Catholic Faith, so luminous it was to
him. That is perhaps not astonishing: but I well remem­
ber, in my youth, how almost impossible it was to persuade
southern Catholics that ‘Protestants’ could be in good
faith, as I myself had once thought about Catholics.
Camillus went to Genoa. I cherish one little anecdote
because it reveals the charming illogicality of Saints—of
this Saint anyhow. Camillus was determined to be obedi­
ent and exercise no more authority. He presented himself
to the head infirmarian and asked what he must do. The
infirmarian, who was very young felt shy of issuing
commands to the Founder. He said; “Your Reverence
must be where you like.” “No,” said Camillus: “ You tell

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125

me.” Theinfirmarian assigned him an easy ward. “No,”
said Camillus: “ You go there—I’ll go to such and such
a place,” and he chose the worst of the wards. Charity
apparently had taken precedence over technical obedi­
ence: besides, Camillus had realised that the young man
had given him his easy job ‘out of respect’. Charity was
the constant theme of his talk and instructions. Like
St. John’s disciples, his own begged him to talk about
something else sometimes.1
In November of this year, his kinsman Onofrio died.
Camillus was frankly disappointed that he made no
bequest to the advantage of the Church, let alone of the
Camillan Institute. Onofrio on his side had not the least
intention of leaving anything save to his children: “One
fool in the family is plenty,” he had said. Camillus’s
anxiety and urging Onofrio—not in the most tactful way,
it seems to me—to give him alms were due to his distress
about the debts which he felt his impulsive generosity had
incurred. A large bequest enabled them to be fully paid
in 1622.
Camillus had no wish but to remain working at Milan ;
but the Cardinal Protector and the Consultors were clear
that his work as Founder meant preservation and develop­
ment too. They sent him to Genoa and made him Visitor
1 In July, 1608, he went to Milan. It is here that we see an accumulation
of examples revealing his interest in hygiene as such. He was determined
that the wards should be kept high, full of light and air : that the beds
should be properly made and kept clear of vermin—those great carriers
of infection : he actually demolished certain rooms that he thought too
low or damp: rather later, you find him insisting on a proper headinlirmarian—“one is worth a 1,000,” he repeated, “ and 1,000 are not
worth one ”... and how each patient must have a good nightcap—“ so
that they may not be as they are, with nothing on their head. Who knows
how those poor fellows suffer, on winter mornings, being like that with­
out anything! ” Above all he is preoccupied with the humblest of all
necessities: he goes into great detail, and exclaims: “God knows how
many die yearly from getting up to go to those foul and reeking places! ”
1 have left out so much that might disgust the sensitive modern ear, that
I feel I should be doing Camillus an injustice if I failed to indicate how
here too, he was far ahead of his time.

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of the house there. He returned to Milan; and went on
to Piacenza, Mantua and Ferrara. At Milan, a charac­
teristic incident. The Superior was out when Camillus
arrived. The Saint made his visit to the Blessed Sacra­
ment and the sick, and persuaded the porter, who seemed
exhausted, to let him have the keys while the poor Brother
himself went and lay down. After a while the Superior
returned and knocked. Camillus did not understand the
key, which turned round and round in the key-hole. The
Superior grew angry: “Don’t you know even how to open
a door?” he shouted. Finally the door opened, and the
Superior recognised the Founder. Camillus laughed, and
insisted he was nothing but the Superior’s very obedient
son. “Tn? you ?” said the Superior to himself. Some days
later, he gave Camillus some new clothes to replace the
deplorable rags in which he arrived. Camillus kicked
against the gift. “Are you or are you not my very obedient
son ?” asked the Superior. Heaven knows what Camillus
wanted to retort! But he had to crush his hands against
his mouth to suppress whatever he had felt inclined to say.
At Ferrara, he heard that Opertis again proposed to set
limits to the work of the Camillans in hospitals: Opertis
had told Camillus to proceed from that city to Chieti and
Bucchianico to visit those houses too: Camillus felt that
despite this order he ought to go to Rome, to stop Opertis
from trying to make innovations in various towps. Some
Jesuit Fathers, whose advice he asked, agreed that he
should go to Rome. I do not see how Camillus was ever
quite to get out of these difficulties: he was no more
General, with accurately defined rights: but he was
Founder, with manifest authority, but of no defined or
definable sort. On this occasion, Opertis ended by yield­
ing. The visit to the Abruzzo now took place; after it,
Camillus returned to Santo Spirito and asked Ginnasi,
and Opertis, if he might have a room in the hospital,

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and spend the night there at least sometimes. The
Cardinal gave him leave : Opertis (poor man—he always
had to look ahead and foresee possibilities) saw—what
everyone immediately would see now—that this isolation
of Camillus might seem mysterious: people might think
that he had been set aside, if not dismissed from the
Institute. Camillus decided for the hospital, “though
Fr. General was very reluctant to give me leave.” He
stayed there from November, 1609, to the end of January,
1612, except May-September, 1610.
He was given a tiny room, which barely held a bed:
a small window overlooked the yellow swirl of the Tiber.
At midnight, he made his rounds: prepared food, gave
medicines, talked to the sleepless. Towards dawn he went
back to his room; treated his own leg; said part of the
Breviary with a companion, went to confession perhaps
at the Maddalena, where he said Mass and then returned
to the hospital. Everyone, the hospital governing staff,
doctors, men and women nurses, joined later in witnessing
to the super-human impression he made on them. But
these testimonies repeat themselves: would that we had
more witnesses from among the sick whom he tended!
But of course many of them died, and anyhow as a rule
they were too poor or ‘obscure’ to be kept track of, and
usually would have been far too timid to present themselves
before the courts concerned with Camillus’s beatification.
However, it is certain that when he entered a ward, there
was a shout of welcome: the blind ended by knowing
when he approached their bed. Of course, he was often
insulted by new-comers, furious that they were sick: but
he usually bound them by his spell of limitless charity.
His fello w-Camillans naturally are enthusiastic witnesses ;
now and again they relate some small details that we can
fit into the mosaic-picture we must make of Camillus’s
life—how he would warm a man’s feet before putting

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him into bed (hot-water bottles were not yet taken for
granted); how carefully he would de-louse his patients;
how he would bathe them in tepid water from head to
foot and then ‘powder’ them with aromatic herbs. Let
us emphatically say that any illogicalities of behaviour,
and deficiency in, e.g., prudence, simply disappeared
when the eye was filled with the vision of his tremendous
pity and illimitable love.
I need not say that Camillus’s ‘nest’ at Santo Spirito
was not a place where he sought his own ease nor even
(as Opertis had hoped) a little needed rest. His obedience
to the ‘common life’ consisted on the whole in what was
negative—never asking for anything special. He did not
see that he was abandoning it if he ate noticeably less—
in fact, he took as a rule only one meal a day: his supper
was a slice of bread and a glass of wine or of water. He
was a little sharp about Religious who were too easy
with themselves: he called them ‘soft-water sailors’:
idle to remark that he paid no attention to cold, heat,
rain or dark—I mention dark, because he had so often
to go out at night through the unlit streets: they were
often blocked by stones and chains : often they had holes
in them: no wonder that Camillus suffered horrible
accidents to his leg. It is interesting to know that he
suffered intensely from thirst, and also a ‘false hunger’;
medical reasons connected with his ulcerated leg and
kidney-disease are given for this: enough to say he refused
to yield to either thirst or hunger. As for his very brief
sleep, he took it, on Fridays and Saturdays, on the floor.
He, at any rate, asked leave to discipline his body daily
—that body which in any case was so ‘afflicted’ by his
‘five great mercies’. Of these the first was the ‘in­
explicable’ wound in his leg, which ended by devouring
the flesh from knee to toes and going nearly quite round
the calf. He lost much blood from this and it was always

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suppurating. The sinews were attacked, and you could
see the bone. We mentioned that this wound had begun
in the left leg and then got better. But that leg never
got quite better: its several small wounds ended by
coalescing; and plenty of witnesses affirmed that they
had never known Camillus without two very sick legs;
and since he had to be bandaged several times daily
(I, perhaps cowardly, spare my readers any detailed ac­
count of this bandaging and of the wounds), the evidence
must be trusted: it is entirely that of eye-witnesses, nor
does it try to make the worst of the case : doctors were
puzzled that the frightful wound did not send Camillus’s
temperature up, nor produce other secondary results
that they expected. Apparently when Camillus lay down,
the tissues began to contract : when he rose, he could not
at first put his foot to the ground: to conquer this, he
stamped two or three times violently on the pavement:
then, I suppose, the tissues adapted themselves, and off
he went on his daily work, which might keep him on foot
and moving about for several hours on end. The ‘second
mercy’ was his rupture. Sufferers from this had to wear
a heavy iron band exercising an inguinal pressure which
much increased the difficulty of work. The third con­
sisted in two large corns on the soles of his feet, which
made walking an agony : he could not always do without
a stick: it made him realise, said he, “that this earth is
not our fatherland!” The fourth ‘mercy’ was his renal
‘colic’ and the formation of stone, which had to be dealt
with by operations which to us would seem simply bar­
baric. Finally, for thirty months before his death, almost
everything he ate made him sick. Yet in spite of all this,
we have to recall three facts: first, he did more active
work than several other men taken together could do:
he was always cheerful and was sought for because of his
caustically amusing conversation: and he regarded these

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physical sufferings as nothing compared with the sacrifice
of his will to God and to those superiors whom he was
vowed to obey, but whose direction did not always seem
to him so spiritual as it should have been. And on the
top of all this, he was tormented by a certain Religious
who considered himself a mystic, and that it was his duty
to teach Camillus how to unite himself properly with
God.
Benedict XIV declared that the word ‘martyr’ was
sometimes loosely used about those who had suffered
much, but who had not actually been killed for the Faith.
He said that in his book on Canonisation he had not
been able fully to approve this use, which was more
suited to a panegyric than a theological work. Still, if
the expression ‘martyr of charity’ was to be used at all,
he could certainly have found a supreme example in the
person of Camillus.
Camillus now (January-July, 1612) went home for the
last time, after various other journeys on which we need
not dwell. In January of 1612, he was involved in another
of those incidents in which the preternatural seems to
enjoy mingling itself with the humorous. In Rome, he
saw several poor men at the Maddalena door. He took
two by the hand, led them to the under-cook, and de­
manded soup and meat for each. Then he said : “ Wouldn’t
you have liked to do as much for the others ?” The cook
went to the door, returned, and said there were forty-two
of them. “Give them as much as the others,” said the
Saint. The cook said there would be nothing left for the
Community. Camillus laughed and insisted. The cook,
in a very bad temper, went to the Prefect of the house:
“We must manage with bread and cheese,” said he. The
cook, still very upset, went back to his kitchen, passed
by Camillus’s room and noticed that he was praying, and
then found in the kitchen dishfuls of fine macaroni and

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as much meat as before. He rushed wildly back, calling
out ‘A miracle’, and so did the Superior, especially as
the bell for dinner had just rung. I add an instance of
his ‘second sight’, if you like to call it that (such instances,
especially perhaps at this time, could be multiplied : they
involved so much concrete material, and so many persons,
that it would be hard indeed to discredit them). A certain
Urbanucci had come from Bucchianico to Rome, looking
for his brother who had deserted his wife and four
children. He could not find him; but before leaving
Rome he went to pay his respects to Camillus. “What,”
said he—“you have been four days in Rome without
coming to see me ? And meanwhile, you go hunting for
lunatics ? Come back to-morrow : your brother hasn’t
yet come to Rome, but he will be home with you in a
fortnight.” Urbanucci duly returned, and Camillus gave
him a letter for his nephew Alessandro. “Tell him”, he
added, “that if he doesn’t marry soon, he will die: in
fact a certain Cupano proposed to murder him, but is
already under arrest.” Alessandro, as you may suppose,
was furious, and thought that Urbanucci had told his
uncle of his misdoings : but when the story about Cupano
proved true, was stupefied, said he would change his life,
but didn’t. And then, Urbanucci’s brother returned, and
in fact was mad : as for the nephew, we relate the epilogue
below.
In April, 1612, Camillus was summoned to Bucchianico
where there was a terrible famine which he was expected
to cope with. (On the way he rescued a lost lamb, and
carried it back, well wrapped up, to its shepherd. There
are many ‘Franciscan’ incidents in his life, but we can
hardly ‘group’ and analyse them.) The entire population
came out to meet him; yet oddly enough, a certain re­
ligious community there disliked him and was doing all
it could to hinder the completion of the new House, and

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LIFE OF SAINT CAMILLUS

was trying io divide public opinion about him. (After­
wards, he cured that Community’s Superior, who had a
festering finger and could not say Mass or play the organ,
of which he was very fond. He also managed to supply
the Community with food during the famine, which quite
brought them round to approve of him.) Camillus began
by seeing to the immediate needs of his home-town; and
then went to Chieti and devised a system of public assist­
ance, with a whole method of coupons dealt out most
scientifically according to needs. He returned suffering
from fever and had to stay in bed: but the eight men
charged with distributing food were told to visit him daily,
and he supervised their activities during a two hours’
interview. Perhaps feeling that nothing really so wins a
man’s heart, if he does not like you, as to get him to
do you a kindness, he asked his nephew Alessandro to
lend him a horse for a necessary journey. Alessandro
did—acknowledging that it was a “very impetuous one”.
Camillus, who could manage any horse, said he didn’t
mind, and got on to it. Whereupon the horse kicked
Alessandro very hard. He fell down howling that he was
for ever crippled. Camillus touched his head and said it
would be nothing. Nor was it. When Alessandro took
off his shoes and stockings, he found only a slight bruise.
The hint, however, was not sufficient. Nothing that
Camillus could say touched him at all. Even a severe
illness, of which Camillus’s prayers cured him, helped
nothing. Camillus said that it would not happen
twice like that—“and I don’t know how you’ll die”.
Alessandro continued his dissolute life and died suddenly
in 1620.
The time then came to say Good-bye for the last time
to his city. He said it first in the pulpit, adding that he
meant to go to Rome and die there. But first, in July,
he went to Naples, and arrived very ill. All food nauseated

him. They told Cardinal Ginnasi, who had suggested
that Camillus should be sent to Spain and establish his
I Order there: the Cardinal gave up the idea, insisting,
however, that Camillus should return to Rome when
possible. Thereupon Camillus grew a little better and,
though he kept death always before his eyes, resolved to
spertd whatever time remained in yet harder work: he
left Naples, therefore, for the last time—did it now seem
but the other day to him, when he had swaggered his
raffish way through those same streets and gambled away
his very clothes ?
In Rome, he returned at once to his old service, choos­
ing always what most disgusted human nature for his
privilege. It is now, too, that you chiefly hear of his
ecstasies and the radiant beauty of his face. Men felt
that he was conscious of only two realities—which in a
sense made one: of God, and of the Sick, in whom he saw
nothing but Christ; if he thought of himself at all, it was
with wonder that God had chosen so feeble a servant as
he, to do His will. Feeble ? Well, his leg was now so
bad that he had sometimes to walk on all fours ; and at
times could no more stand up at all. They feared he
might die actually in the wards; but he asked where better
could a soldier die than on his field of battle ? He used
many such military metaphors; and, when asked why
he had given up visiting Cardinals, he said that he
must stand booted and spurred, ready at any moment
to obey the command to present himself before his
Lord.
In April, 1613, Opertis decided to resign from the
Generalate: the 5th General Chapter elected Fr. Nigli as
his successor. Many (though not all) had criticised
Opertis severely for having not seldom opposed the
wishes of Camillus, and for having all-but put the
Institute for ever on the wrong track. These criticisms
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LIFE OF SAINT CAMILLUS

(which did not cease after his death) certainly caused
Opertis to think too ill of himself and to feel he was not
fit to govern. He obtained leave to establish himself at
the Incurables’ and to be as like Camillus there as he
could. I can but repeat: It was the duty of Opertis to
support the Founder in every way that he could: it was
also evident to him that the future Institute (and even
the present one) would not be, nor was, composed wholly
of Camilluses. He had to build a bridge. Nothing is
harder, when the bridge is a spiritual one. Dare I say
that St. Paul, in his epistles, is seen as a Bridge-Builder
between ^the Sermon on the Mount and the Corinthian
Christians ? St. John, between the Supper-Room, and
the church in Ephesus ? Ask yourself how the good
Catholic of to-day looks, when you compare him with
the Beatitudes. If you think there is a difference, what
would you advise ? I for my part wish again to pay a
very sincere homage to the un-canonised Opertis, across
the gulf of years.
Nigli, at any rate, did not propose to dissociate himself
from Camillus, and in fact decided to visit all the Houses
of the Institute and to take Camillus with him. This
seemed to demand a major miracle. But the Saint ac­
complished the journey without disaster, including in it
a three days’ visit to Loreto—and indeed seemed to spend
as long doing homage at the shrines of Saints as in
hospitals. At Mantua, he^spent much time with Francis
Gonzaga, bishop of that city; and I feel I should express
my regret for having spoken of Duke Vincent Gonzaga
(in The Vocation of Aloysius Gonzaga) in none but
opprobrious terms. I did not then know the fascination
that St. Camillus exercised upon him. “I have never
met a man , said the Duke, 4iwho has made me grieve
over my sins as Camillus did—and yet I have talked
with the most famous men of letters and pf spirituality.”

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135

He insisted that Camillus should bequeath his crucifix
to him. And we cannot but be touched when we remem­
ber that St. Aloysius’s father retained his young son’s
crucifix, and, having been as mad a gambler as Camillus
was, gave the whole thing up under the influence of that
crucifix. Thence to Milan. But in June, Camillus asked
to be relieved from following the rest of the Visitation,
and in fact went thence to his beloved Genoa. Here he
was so ill that he was ordered to stay in bed, but could
not resist visiting such sick persons as asked to see him,
even being carried through the town (for he could not
walk) to do so.
When it was feared that Camillus might die, and that
if he did the Genoese would never let his relics leave the
city, his associates asked that he might return, well or
ill, to Rome. Such, too, was his prayer. The only possible
way of transporting him was by sea. Duke Doria pro­
vided him with a galley reserved for great personages:
for once Camillus accepted the privilege; and “the Holy
Spirit breathed it on its way”, for it arrived at Civita­
vecchia in the incredibly short space of three days. There,
too, they wanted to hurry him to Rome—he could not
even say good-bye to the sailors, whom he always loved.
But he said they would reach Rome earlier than 8 or
9 p.m., which was what they expected, especially as his
litter was harnessed to “two ancient and evil mules”. But
“the wind seemed to carry those mules”, and they got
there about three or four o’clock, it being October 13,
1613. There are those who (quite rightly) have no care
where their remains shall lie: others (far from wrongly)
may have definite desires about that. Camillus was
intensely desirous that his dead body should lie in earth
soaked with the blood of Martyrs, and sanctified by the
ashes of Apostles and the great Princes of Christ.
At the Maddalena, he first visited the Blessed Sacra-

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ment: then, his beloved Crucifix: then, the sick in the
Infirmary, and finally went to his room. The doctor
insisted of his being dispensed from the Breviary for a
fortnight—and this alleviation, despite his protests, was
renewed again and again. At last he obtained a priest
who should recite it aloud near him, so that he could
associate himself to what was said, without saying it.
In November, Fr. Nigli, who had been ill in Sicily,
returned, and with a ‘crown’ of Religious, dear to
Camillus, surrounded his sick bed.
He remained united in heart with his sick. When the
bell rang to say it was time for the Fathers to go to
Santo Spirito, he, as it were, went with them: every
Sunday, he had the detailed record of the week’s work
read to him. In fact, one day when he was rather better,
he asked the doctor if he mightn’t be taken out to get a
breath of fresh air. The doctor hesitatingly gave leave.
At once Camillus, gleeful and almost like a naughty boy,
had himself driven to Santo Spirito—well ! he had always
said that the air there was better than anywhere else!—
and with the utmost difficulty visited the wards. Every-'
one rushed to kiss his hands. As for the servants, appar­
ently they said: “Here’s Fr. Camillus! We had better
keep our heads and go straight to look after our sick!
Else we shall get our knuckles properly rapped ! ” Thence
he was carried to St. Peter’s, and thence home. However,
after a few days, he got back to the hospital for
what really w'as the last time. He knew this—and yet he
would not allow the keys of his room there to be given
back to the ‘Prior’. He knew he would never return
there—yet he liked to feel that he still, somehow, was
there, and not only “ in spirit and heart ”, We have finished,
then, in this book, with Santo Spirito. It is said that the
mere name of Camillus is but inscribed casually in one
place there. Well, I am happy to have experienced that

LiFÉ ÔF SAINT CAMILLUS

137

to walk near to its walls to be conscious of
the sweet fragrance of the Saint’s memory, indeed of his
presence, and that whether the modern hospital forgets
him or not, he does not forget it, nor disregard the sick,
who, generation by generation, are nursed within its
ône has but

walls.

in

Naturally, in proportion as his friends realised that he
was dying, they treasured as many minute details about
what he did or said as they could. Unfortunately, we
cannot relate many of these, if only because he often
repeated himself, and said very simple things, such as,
that he was happy to die . . . that they must go on serv­
ing the sick. But they all noticed his extreme serenity
which communicated itself to, refreshed and transformed,
all who came to visit him. This is the more remarkable
because while he felt it his duty to eat, lest he let himself
die of starvation, the very sight of food made him feel
horribly ill, and, if he did eat anything, he was violently
sick. He said he deserved it “because of the time when
I ate with such great appetite”! And now—how do the
Saints disconcert us if we want to be romantic about
them! One day, he confided to someone that he could
‘fancy’ some Bologna sausage. They said he ought at
once to write to Fr. Pieri, Prefect in Bologna, and he
did so, saying that Signora Francesca Castella would
provide it—but adding twice that it must be a little one.
A whole business grew up around this sausage. Fr. Pieri
had in any case to come to Rome, and arrived complète
with sausage. Being a remarkably good cook, he “several
times” prepared some of it for the Saint who apparently
enjoyed it. Pieri was so enchanted that he asked if he
might not remain in Rome at Camillus’s service: but

LIFE

OF SAINT CAMILLUS

Camillus said that had the request been made for soinC
sick man other than himself, he would have granted it:
as it was—No.1
But the day came when Camillus heard the doctors
standing around him discussing some new treatment.
“Listen,” said he. “I have had so many medicines—in
Naples, in Genoa, in Rome, and they none of them
have done me any good. God does not want me to be
cured. I ought to suffer a little, at any rate at the end of
my long life ...” And he told them more horrible things
about his suppurating leg than even they had known.
Then they told him he could not get better. At once he
was flooded with joy. He could “go home” with a good
conscience, and with no fear for his Order: “God will
cause men to be born strong enough to help and defend
it.” He continued to struggle to carry out the spiritual
rules of the house: he strained his ears to catch echoes
of what was being read in the refectory: when he could,
he dragged himself to the infirmary (fifteen paces from
his room) so as to be present at Mass: finally he trans­
ferred himself altogether there, two strong Brothers just
able to help him into it—poor Camillus ... he was so
doubled up with pain that his head was almost touching
his knees. Here then he lived for the fifty-eight days
remaining to him.
1 We smile to read that during the discussions about Camillus’s canonisa­
tion, the Devil’s Advocate, as we called him, adduced this story as a proof
that Camillus had not observed ‘ temperance ’ heroically. The objection
was ‘ exhaustively ’ replied to. I hope it was recalled that St Francis of
Assisi, on his death-bed, asked a devoted lady for a little cake of raisins
and almonds : possibly it was not yet known that St John of the Cross
himself, when mortally ill, said that he would like some asparagus, and
got it. . . . Oddly, a young man with whom I was when he was dying,
also asked for sausages (and indeed, for onions). His mother produced
them. The consequences were appalling. Yet this young man, who I
cannot pretend had lived like a Saint, died very nearly like one ; in any
case, it is clear that undoubted Saints had not annihilated their human
nature, and are not. afraid or ashamed of it, and from time to time grant
it some little treat.

- 57;t

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Life of saint camillus

139

During those days, he said good-bye to friend after
friend who passed through Rome or had to leave it,
blessing them and asking their prayers, dictated a number
of letters, signing them as best he could, and above all,
dictated a very long “Testament-Letter” in which he
“expressed his mind” about his Order. This was to be
sent to every Superior and read and explained to each
Community. It is far too long and involved—it begins
with twenty-three lines (in the Italian book in which I
am reading it) without a full-stop, but, given the period,
this is not extraordinary—to be fully translated here.
He regards the origin of his Institute as ‘miraculous’,
chiefly because he, such a sinner, so ignorant, so full of
incompetencies» had been chosen to be its Founder. He
insists that the devil—always ‘under the appearance of
doing good’—Camillus never dreams that his men will
do harm knowing that it is harm—will try to ‘adapt’ his
ideal, especially as regards the Vow of Poverty. They
must be true to the Papal Bulls which had approved the
Institute as he had designed it. Camillus, a very simple
man, could not foresee (any more than the most sophisti­
cated man of his day) the future. The modern Camillan
cannot live as if he were a sixteenth or seventeenth
century man, any more than a modern Franciscan,
Dominican or Jesuit can live exactly as their Founders
did. This does not imply, as cynics say, degeneration.
Anyhow, Camillus, relying always on papal approbation,
would always have accepted (after a pious kick or two)
any modification in method that successive Popes might
impose or agree to. But what he insisted on was, first,
that the spiritual welfare of his Religious and of those
they served must come first. Christ must live in his men;
and, in the sick, it was Christ that they must see. And
then, “I intend that never must the care for the spiritual
as such be separated from the care of the body.” His

MO

LIFE

OF SAINT

CAMILLUS

Institute was different from all others, in that it aimed
of course at spiritual sanctification, but always in
the person of Servants of the sick, and of the sick them­
selves. I have perhaps never read, a statement about a
Saint s intentions so clearly defined. He was distressed
if he did not hear at once that his letter had been received
and read aloud and explained.
The dreadful ordeal of being visited then began.
Cardinals, Ambassadors, Generals of Religious Orders,
all wanted to see Camillus before he died. To the General
of the Discalced Carmelites, a great friend and very
frequent visitor, he said that he begged that all the
Carmelite Friars should pray for him in “this last step
of death’. He asked this on his knees, because he had
been a great sinner, a gambler, a man of bad life. He
preferred to be visited by someone, like doctors, who
could tell him about his sick: but even these were, so
far as possible, prevented from approaching the ex­
hausted man. One youth, having been twice repulsed,
sat down on the threshold of the house, and said: “If
you won’t let me alive into his presence, you will have to
take me away dead. For I am not going to move.” So
they let him in. Other young men, helpless victims of
sensuality, found themselves suddenly set free by a single
visit to this Founder of an Order, who was dying like
the poorest of his confrères in an infirmary. Camillus,
on his death-bed, was exercising a new Apostolate. He
made promises about spiritual and even temporal affairs
that he had to repeat “four or five times” before visitors
could believe that they would be kept. But they were.
Nor could men leave him—even the most exalted—
without kneeling for his blessing; and anything that
he had so much as touched was taken away, as
were the ‘handkerchiefs’ from the body of St. Paul
Acts 19, 12).

LIFE OF SAINT CAMILLUS

141

But behind all this, his mind never left God. He said
that he was “stupefied—knocked silly—how the Creature
should not perfectly love its Creator”. But then, since
he felt that he himself did not, he begged for prayers
that his soul might be saved. Hence he wished to con­
centrate on the salvation of sinners by Christ. He asked
for a picture of Christ Crucified with Angels receiving
the Sacred Blood in chalices. Above was seen the Eternal
Father and the Holy Spirit and two Angels offering to
God that Precious Blood for the remission of the sins
of Camillus. Beneath were Our Lady and St. Michael
praying for him. At the bottom was written the liturgical
invocation “Save Thy servant whom Thou hast redeemed
by Thy precious blood”. Fr. Mancini, whom Camillus
had asked to have the picture painted, did so, but added
a small figure of Camillus himself with the words quoted
above issuing (after the fashion of those and later times)
from his lips. Camillus was not pleased: He said: “Lord,
You knew that that was not my intention. But since
You willed it like that, it is a sign that I must hope all
; the more that You will show mercy towards me.” He
. saluted each personage portrayed in turn, saying to Our
Lady : “ Most holy Mother, obtain for me grace from
your Son that I may willingly suffer all pain, and if that
is not enough to send me still more.” From that time
onwards, he seems to have been entirely preoccupied
with the thought of his sinful life—which appeared to
him always to have been so—and the five wounds of
Our Lord, who had given the whole of His sinless life
for us, and had not refused even the most terrible death,
though so innocent.
Camillus had now lost any wish to live that he might
have had : Mancini said he had been praying that
Camillus might live a little longer; but the Saint answered
that a long life as such simply increased the fear of

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death, whereas alone hope in God’s mercy not only
made the thought of death less sad, but happy and
something to be longed for: when someone else said he
hoped that on the feast of St. Mary Magdalen (July 22)
Camillus would be strong enough to go up to the Maddalena church to watch the ceremonies, he answered
with some of his old abruptness: “On that day I shall
be under it.” On May 1 he called Fr. Mancini and asked
if he had obtained new oil for Extreme Unction, for,
said he, in a few days you will need it for another priest,
“and then for myself”. Cardinal Ginnasi, the Protector
of the Institute, heard that Camillus wanted to receive
the Last Sacraments: on July 2 the Cardinal came him­
self, said Mass in the infirmary, and then prepared to
give Viaticum to the dying man. Camillus repeated the
triple Domine non sum dignus, and then said “with many
tears”: “My Lord, I confess that I have never done any
good and am a wretched sinner; so I have nothing left
but hope in Your divine Mercy and Your Precious
Blood.” Afterwards, the Cardinal asked him if he was
at peace and comforted: he said that he felt no fear, but
asked for prayers, and then begged that his dispensation
from saying Office might be renewed. They assured him
it was unnecessary: he said that even if the candle of the
dying was lighted and beside him, still that dispensation
should be asked for, “for the quiet of my conscience”.
On Thursday, July 10, he asked for the Holy Oils and
made a general confession: he was in fact anointed next
day, after Holy Communion (which, despite his raging
thirst, he always received fasting): he said the Confiteor
with a clear voice; and finally, helped to sit up in bed,
he cried out twice: “Glory to God!” Then he asked
leave from Fr. Nigli, the General, to speak to the Fathers
and Brothers. He once more recommended to them
obedience to the Roman Church and the Pontiff, fraternal

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143

charity, loyalty to the Rules and to the Apostolate of the
Sick, reiterated his assertion that the Institute had been
miraculously founded, begged pardon for the bad ex­
ample he had given, and, “ so far as God grants it to me,
I give you all a thousand blessings, and to the absent,
and to those yet to come”. They all knelt and then kissed
his hand with many tears. Then they left him alone to
rest, though he said he would never grow tired in the
service of his beloved brethren.
But in a few moments Fr. Mansi returned saying that
persons of distinction wanted to visit him. Camillus
begged them to excuse him—he had just received Unction
and wished to recollect himself. Mansi insisted that they
were important persons, and wanted to satisfy their
devotion. “Their devotion?” exclaimed Camillus, hor­
rified. “By seeing a man in bed with his body already
half decayed ? Let them go and practise charity in a
hospital and not waste time looking at the worst of
men.” And he recalled that death could be died only
once and that the most must be made of the short time
left. However, that same evening the private Chamberlain
of Paul V came to give Camillus the papal benediction
he had asked for: Camillus thanked the Divine Majesty
for having brought him back to die in Rome, and
thanked and prayed for the Pontiff with intensity and
tenderness. He could still dictate and sign short
letters, and even wrote one with his own hand to the
Bologna Provincial and he received visits from members
of half the Religious Orders in Rome, so was he
loved: but naturally little was quoted from these save
his expressions of sorrow, gratitude and trust in the
Precious Blood, and his hopes that they would meet
again in heaven.
However, on Saturday, July 12, he dictated’a “last
will and testament” to his Confessor, which next day he

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CAMILLUS

caused to be read and witnessed by a number of his
brethren. Tt is, to me, a most strange yet characteristic,
vivid and moving document : yet far too long for quotation
here especially as it includes so many repetitions. He
bequeaths his earthly body to the earth, whence it came,
and also in penance for the sins which it had committed
through sensuality and had caused its soul to commit.
He bequeaths his sins against God to the wicked Tempter,
and desires to repent perfectly, from the love of God
rather than “his own interests’’ or fear; and may God
punish the tempter-demons if they give him scruples
about having made bad confessions, and may God’s
mercy forgive him even if he had made nothing but bad
ones, for God can save him without Sacraments : if he
remembers anything un-confessed, he will confess it;
if he has forgotten anything, he is sorry inside his heart,
and hopes for salvation only through the merits of the
Blood of Christ. He bequeaths to the World all vanities,
transitory things, worldly satisfactions, empty hopes,
curiosities, yes, even friends and relatives, because he
wants to exchange what is passing for what is eternal, and
all worldly curiosity for the true vision of the Face of God.
He bequeaths to his Flesh all the pains that he may yet
have to suffer, partly as penance, wholly for the love of
Him who endured a much worse agony for him ... his
inability to eat or sleep, “bad words”, and all the hateful
things, outrages and insults of which he has been guilty
towards his neighbours and forgives all that he has
suffered from them and asks forgiveness for himself
and them. He bequeaths his soul and its faculties to his
beloved Jesus and His Most Holy Mother and to St.
Michael and His Guardian Angel—thus . . . his Memory
to his Guardian Angel recognising what that help has
meant to him, and begging God not to “judge or discuss”
what has seemed to him to be good—why, even David

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145

3aid: ‘'Enter not into judgment with Thy servant, O
Lord . . . ” “If he said that, how much more should
I !” But there has been good ! So many Sacraments,
good inspirations, and in particular the guardianship of
“so beautiful an Angel”, whom he then addressed, saying
that if Camillus conquers, the glory will revert to the
Angel who helped him to do so. And he leaves his
intellect to St. Michael and protests that he does not
intend to discuss or dispute with the Devil what regards
the Faith : he dies loyal to the Catholic Apostolic Roman
Church, to the Creed, to all that the Fathers and Doctors
of the Church and the Councils have taught and ruled,
and the Faith in which so many Saints, men and women,
have lived, and he wishes to die ever confessing that he is a
soldier of Jesus Christ Crucified; and in case the Devil
tempts him, he wills not to consent, and if by “curiosity
of mind I totter or consent”, “nunc pro tunc—now, in
view of then”, “I intend that that should mean nothing
and now that I am of right mind, I break and annul any
such consent being of any value”. And he prays St.
Michael (the immemorially venerated Safe-Escort of the
passing soul) to rescue him. He bequeaths, much more
briefly, his will to Our Lady, queen of Angels, his Protectrix and Advocate and begs her to accept this his choice.
Finally he bequeaths himself, body and soul, to Jesus
Christ Crucified, who once received him as that good
Father did his Prodigal Son, and asks that he may be
forgiven as the Magdalen and the Good Thief were, and
asks that his soul may be received, in this last step of
life, into eternal rest together with the Father and the Holy
Spirit. Then he asks his friends to witness this his last will
and testament, to help him and defend him against
temptations in this his agony and death, and by their
prayers afterwards. Seven priests signed the document
and dated it. He asked that it should be tied to his right

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OF SAINT CAMILLUS

arm and buried with him, while copies (of which certainly
two still exist) were sent to the other houses.

On the one hand, it seems to me impossible to write the
‘life’ of a Saint and in no way to comment upon his
‘character ’ ; yet, on the other, we must always feel how
grave a thing it is thus to lay hands upon the Ark of God.
However, we have full authority for saying that Saints
were men and women and had each of them, therefore,
their personal character, temperament, instincts and all
else that goes to make up a living individual. Grace
purifies, uplifts, and gives a new birth to all of this, but
does not destroy any of it. Besides, we may assume that
Saints die not only when their external work is finished,
but not before their personal sanctification is complete:
there is at least a probability, then, that God had not
finished His work in them before He called their soul to
Himself. In writing the following lines, we are bound
sometimes to repeat what we have already said.
It is evident that Camillus was not only physically
strong, but had a violent temper, and, after his conversion,
held sin (especially blasphemy) and unbelief in such
horror that many a time he felt, and showed, horror of and
anger with the sinner himself. He would shudder and
sweat if he heard blasphemy: clap his hand upon the
blasphemer’s mouth, cry out “with a suppliant yet terrible
voice”, with a “loud and imperious voice”: “Silence!
silence ! do not blaspheme !” Once he saw a Jew, riding
in the same coach as himself, looking with contempt
at his crucifix. He spoke forcefully yet lovingly to him :
the Jew maintained his sneer. Camillus flew into an
“extreme fury” and was for throwing the Jew out of the
coach. His companion had to restrain him. Camillus
called the Jew all sorts of names and said that only the

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fear of God kept him from hurling him that very moment
into a ditch. The unhappy man, terrified by Camillus’s
distorted face, preferred to get out of his own accord.
And after all, Camillus was over six and a half feet tall
and broad-shouldered in proportion. We are certainly
not wrong in seeing, at the root of this episode, Camillus’s
passionate love for our Lord; yet we need not be afraid
of detecting in his violence of indignation something not yet
perfected. Perhaps he referred to incidents like these when
he mentioned, in his ‘Testament’, the “hatreds, outrages
and insults” of which he felt himself to have been guilty.
We have already said that Camillus, incredible as it
may seem, even during his headstrong youth preserved his
purity intact, nor did he ever sully it ; on the one hand, he
safeguarded it with extreme care (almost, at times, one
might think, fantastically): on the other, the appalling
circumstances into which his hospital-work constantly
led him, left him no possibility of being what we should
call a prude. Indeed, I doubt whether anyone living at that
time could have been prudish. Prudery is a later, and
perhaps on the whole a northern product. Nor was the
violence of his self-inflicted penances enough to account
for what came to be his complete freedom from tempta­
tion. One day he said to a friend : “I know a man who for
thirty years has had no more temptations than this wall
has ”, and he struck the stones so hard that you would have
said “he had an iron glove on”. Add to this the quite
motherly tenderness he felt for the sick, and you will feel
confronted by contrasts so vehement that you will not seek
for the origin of his virtue in anything merely psycho­
logical : here we recognise, quite simply, a grace of God.
But it has well been said that this exterior purity was a
sort of coat-armour within which was enclosed his
absolute singleness of heart. In those days, confessors
could speak more freely than they now may, and all,

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who heard his confessions from his definitive conversion
to his death, insisted that they did not believe he ever,
throughout those years, committed even a deliberate
venial sin. With his customary plain-spokenness, he said
that he believed that this was true. Yet here too he was
conscious that it was God who guarded him. A man must
know very little about himself if he is not conscious that
he has in him the possibility of every sin, nay, that natural
self-love which makes probable the commission of every
fault that suits his temperament. Not everyone will be
equally likely to commit every sort of sin ! So, if a Saint
sees clear-sightedly, that God has in fact preserved him
from such faults, he will also be able to see himself as a great
sinner in potentia, especially when he has so spontaneous,
forth-right and intense a temperament as Camillus’s was.
And naturally he often caught himself out in all those
first movements, as they are called, which have nothing
to do with the will, and are matters of instinct rather than
conscience. None the less, he confessed them daily, and
even, as we have seen, was afraid of scrupulosity not least
in regard of his Breviary. Still, he acknowledged that he did
all that was humanly possible to say it properly. As for
the hour of morning meditation, he made it kneeling
upright without support, suffering torments in his leg.
During these meditations “of rule” he did not, 1 think,
experience any special or preternatural ‘consolations’,
to say nothing of ecstasies : he wished to be an example
to his religious of the “ordinary path” which they should
tread. But we must modify that statement somewhat, or
amplify it. He became so accustomed to referring every­
thing to God that recollection was not difficult to him:
he “could not help” seeing everything in the divine light:
when there was no need to attend to anything in particular,
his mind reposed entirely on God, partly with the help of
his crucifix or rosary which he always held while walking

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or riding: when he had to think of, speak of, or do
something definite and exterior, it was still “from God’s
point of view” that he looks outwards. He was helped
too by what seems to me his extraordinary simplicity of
character: not but what his mind was active—he three
times mentions ‘curiosities’ in his Testament; and
though his spirit of faith and trust was so childlike and also
so robust, he does affirm to St. Michael that he does not
intend to “discuss, or dispute” with the Devil about the
Faith or anything pertaining to the Creed and tradition
of the Church. It is conceivable therefore that even he
was at times puzzled about this or that point of religion ;
but the Testament does not suggest that he experienced
temptations against either hope or trust.
I think, however, that God communicated Himself very
intimately to him during his hours of ‘unofficial’ prayer,
so to call them, and especially of Eucharistic prayer,
during his visits to the Blessed Sacrament and after Mass.
I do not know whether I am right in this—but it is certain
that Camillus remained a relatively unlettered man and I
cannot see signs of his having read much (and indeed,
when would he have found time ?), so that maybe not
only the saying of his Breviary was not easy for him—so
careful was he to pronounce each word exactly, to carry
out accurately each smallest rubric—but there may
have been something of this even about Mass, especially
as his iron truss and his wounded leg made the genu­
flections very difficult. However, his Mass inspired the
deepest devotion in all who assisted at it : they even rang
the bell in a special way when the hour for his Mass
approached, and people flocked to be there. He was
conscious of irreverences around him and even turned to
rebuke those guilty of talking, for example : he also liked
music during more solemn Masses, hymns or organ­
music. I quote two small anecdotes because of their—

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shall I say, picturesqueness, rather than because the first
at any rate contains much that is directly edifying, as they
put it. One day a cat, fiercely pursued by a dog, rushed up
the church and leapt the altar at a single bound, just
clearing the Chalice which Camillus had consecrated. He
could not guess how, save by a miracle, it had not been
upset. Again, he was descending the altar-steps to give
Holy Communion when his fool caught in his alb and he
fell full-length, on his face. Despite the agony this caused
him, he managed to hold the Ciborium high and steady,
so that not a particle fell from it. His entire thought was
for the Blessed Sacrament.
Perhaps I have said enough about his devotion to Our
Lady, in particular to the mysteries of her Immaculate
Conception, her Purification and her Assumption. He
could not fail to see how her intercession had kept pace
with his own conversion and the foundation and develop­
ment of his Institute. Nor need we dwell further on his
devotion to the Saints; his heaven was populous with
brothers and sisters lovingly interested in the struggles of
his pilgrimage not yet over. But I should not be surprised
if the hints we obtain from his ‘Testament’ do prove
more illuminating than comments made upon Camillus
by even his near acquaintance.
All that Sunday, Camillus seemed alive ‘only to pray’,
which he did continuously, helping himself by that picture
of the crucifixion which reminded him of that Precious
Blood for the sake of which alone he felt he could ask for
his salvation. The night seemed to him intolerably
long, though he knew he would not die during it and
insisted that only one priest should remain with him,
adding: “This is the last night you will have to do so,
because to-morrow evening I shall pass from this life. I

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do not know if the Fathers are thinking about my burial ?”
Fr. Califano said it had been spoken of, but nothing was
decided. “I say so,” replied the Saint, ‘because you will
not have longer than to-morrow.” In the morning he
asked what time it was. “Twelve,” he was told.1 “ So late ?
And you have not thought of celebrating Mass yet ?
Yet it will be the last that I shall hear.” It was then
celebrated: he followed it closely, making special signs
during the Creed at the words ‘Suffered under Pontius
Pilate’ and at ‘Thence He shall come’. At the Memento
for the Living, he said: “Brothers, help me! Now is the
time ! Prayer, prayer, that the Lord may save me.”
At the Elevation, he whispered: “Lord, Lord, mercy
through Thy Precious Blood ! ” and again he said this at the
Confiteor before that Communion which was his last
before the eternal one.
During the day he sent to ask for prayers but would
have no visitors save the Cardinal Protector whom he
thankedand then two doctors. To one he said : “I am very
soon expecting the Lord’s call.” To the other: “Hullo,
Signor Galliano, a different Doctor is expecting me ! ” At
three in the afternoon, he asked the time. (“ Oh how long,”
he said, “is to-day !”) He begged that his companions
should remain around him, saying psalms and other
prayers to which he answered as best he could. His
confessor sprinkled him—sparingly—with holy water.
“More water ! more holy water !” he murmured. The
confessor complied. “Now that is all right,” said he. He
recited the evening Ave Maria‘very well’. After an hour
and a quarter, they asked him if he would not take some
refreshment. “In another quarter of an hour,” he said,
“I shall be refreshed.” After that quarter of an hour, he
did indeed seem supernaturally better. A priest bent
1 Hours were reckoned from the evening Ave Maria : this meant therefore, in the summer, 8 a.m.

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over him, and said that since God was desirous of recalling
him to Himself, he must fix all his hope in Christ crucified
and His Precious Blood shed for us—in Him in whom
is our salvation, life and resurrection—through whom
we are saved and are set free. Camillus’s eyes showed that
he understood so dear a recollection. The Passing Bell
was sounded, and all his Brothers came. The Penitential
Psalms (as he had wished) were said, and then the prayers
for the Dying. He looked once more at the Crucifix, and
then towards heaven. He spread his arms out cross-wise
and then died, while they said the liturgical words:
“ May the vision of Jesus Christ gentle and joyous appear
to thee.” This was about 9.45, on Monday evening
July 14, 1614: Camillus was sixty-four years old, two
months and twenty days.
He was carried, dressed in priestly vestments, into the
church, and, as usual, when a Saint dies in Rome, all the
city knew of it in a moment. Yet strangely, children
first knew of it, and came running, or had to be carried
there in their mothers’ arms ; and then, the hospitals—“ The
Father of the Poor is dead !” Such were the throngs,
that the Cardinal Vicar had to be begged to send a
military guard to protect the bed of death.1 The Camillans
asked for nothing save quiet. An order was issued strictly
forbidding that anything of Camillus’s should be given
away as relics: his Requiem must be without music,
sermon, or funeral decorations ; he must be spoken of
without mention of sanctity or miracles ; he must be buried
1 In honesty, I must say that a priest, whom 1 will not name, had come
to that death-bed, gave Camillus what they call a Judas-kiss, was formally
excluded by the Saint from the number of his sons ‘because he reeked of
heresy’, and left saying: ‘When will this deluded old man finish?’ He
went to the Cardinal Vicar and said it was a sacrilege and profanation to
allow in the Maddalena the body of a man ‘no better and probably worse
than everybody else’. The Cardinal very wisely, for fear of pious tumults,
said that Camillus must be buried that night. It is good to know that after
much suffering this ex-Religious died a very happy death.

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in the earth on the left of the altar without inscription,
though on the coffin (they allowed themselves to place
him in a triple coffin after a time—wood, lead, and
again wood), with a leaden statement that “ Here lies Fr.
Camillus, Founder of the Clerks Regular of the Ministers
; of the Sick,” followed by dates and the attestation of the
General of the Order. A simple brick cross marked the
place of the burial.
But the very stones—and the heavens—cried out. It is
quite certain that Camillus was seen by many, at a distance,
who could not possibly have heard of his death : in no
long time all Italy knew of that death. Then the populations
could not be kept in control. Votive offerings piled
themselves up on the place of the tomb as fast as the
Fathers took them away. Finally, the Pope said that the
devotion of the people must not be interfered with. In
Naples, simple folks decorated all the streets leading to the
church while the church itself was left rigorously un­
adorned. Everything was done to avoid a premature
‘cultus’; but accounts of graces obtained through the in­
vocation of Camillus arrived in showers at the Maddalena.
A death-mask had been taken of the Saint ; and in October,
1614 pictures of him were allowed to be circulated. Eleven
years after Camillus’s death—in 1625—permission was
obtained from Urban VIII to open the tomb and see if
the Saint’s relics were intact. In that damp soil, the outside
coffin had fallen to pieces; even the leaden one in the
middle had suffered much : on opening the third all were
amazed to find the body perfectly incorrupt, its limbs
fresh and flexible though its vestments had fallen to
pieces and the face bore (as it had done from the outset)
some marks where the boiling wax used to make the mask
had scorched it. One of the doctors present actually made
an incision (an autopsy had been made immediately
after death and the heart removed) and the flesh was found

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‘as fresh as if it had been alive’. Also, for the nine days
that the body remained above ground, an ‘oil’ distilled
in great quantities from this wound and indeed had
already so filled the bottom of the coffin that clothes
were soaked in it and cures operated by means of it.
Paper soaked in it burned vividly. Enormous crowds
came to behold this prodigy. Again in 1640, because of
the danger of new infiltrations of water, the tomb was
re-opened. The coffin indeed was destroyed, and even
sand and mud had entered it. The body was, however,
intact, the skin unharmed, though slightly discoloured.
This saddened the Camillans, and a better tomb was built
and a new coffin made. But the Tiber’s floods were such
that the Maddalena itself was deluged and in 1661 a
third recognition was made, and in 1694 a fourth, by which
time the relics had been reduced to the skeleton and some
fragments of the vestments. These were then transferred
to chapels in the church itself, and, to anticipate, I add
that on the final solemn ‘recognition’ at the time of
Camillus’s beatification, 1742, the chief relics were placed
in a magnificent reliquary under the Altar raised in honour
of the new Beato. The heart and the left foot are kept in
other reliquaries.
Perhaps I should add a paragraph for the sake of those
who are unaccustomed to the veneration of ‘relics’.
Men are men—that is, body-soul, and not angels, who are
simple spirits. And if a man is holy, it is the man who is
sanctified, not exclusively his soul. It is St. Paul who says
that our bodies are the Temples of the Holy Ghost
(1 Cor. 6, 19). Moreover, in a true sense our bodies
are to rise again1 and we shall immortally be ourselves
1 Since men of science now know less and less what ‘ matter ’ is, and
have reduced it practically to a mathematical hypothesis, I shall not be
expected to offer here a philosophical formula defining what this means.
Enough to say, that Catholics believe we shall be for ever true men, and
not discarnate souls.

it

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155

and not some different species. Therefore, in our simple
way, we venerate not only the soul of a Saint (and certainly
not merely his memory) but all that had anything to do
with him—even, as in the case of St. Peter’s shadow
and St. Paul’s handkerchiefs—and that body which was
not only his but he. Yes. The Catholic mind is very
simple, and very inclusive
«---- —1 1
not be so ?). If a mother
little baby who has died,
mock her, we shall under
and help ourselves by me
do with a Saint. If but i
Catholics how much more.
rich is the Catholic belief
who have rejected it !
to be sure that what c
less ‘materialistic’, is n
because less human ! j.
Christian Faith is not a
Incarnate !
As for the architectura
cannot go into them. In
enlarged; but not inevita
were ancient rooms like t
Aloysius or even St. Igna
sometimes destroyed. Th
them ugly and ‘ unworthy
that we would now have v
touched : to see with our ί
Happily, we can still se
Philip’s spectacles, St. Cai
he put upon his wound,
Saint that I have held in
happy to do that, rather e
lace or her jewels—which

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CAMI L L U S

love the memory of the very park in which she
danced, and the room in which she died, when I
was a little child. Of course I do—the very memory
of the scent of that house is different to me from any
other. But such things are of course secondary. Let
them disappear, even if it was a Saint who lived there or
used them.
Almost immediately after Camillus’s death it was asked
that he should be named a Saint. His process of beati­
fication was accomplished in 1628. But then, infinitely
stricter regulations about beatifications and canonisa­
tions began to be introduced especially by Prospero
Lambertini (later Benedict XIV) and they endure to
this day—a solitary serious exception being made (I
think) for S. Thérèse de Lisieux whose personality
defeated all rules. Anyhow, after this long delay Camillus
was proclaimed ‘Beato’ on April 8, 1742. Rome roared
with artillery; the Maddalena and half Italy were trans­
formed. The Canonisation followed only four years
afterwards, Aug. 29, 1746. I hope that readers will
understand how slow Rome is to decide about anything
so enormous as is Sanctity. No popular enthusiasm, no
sentimentalism, ever stirs Rome. For her, 100 years are
but as yesterday. Rome is eternal. We small excited little
men do not matter at the moment—may possibly matter
after sixty years—may seriously matter after two hundred
years. Therefore I am in no way concerned about the
slowness of the Canonisation of St. Camillus de Lellis.
On the contrary, I am glad if for the sake of the world at
large and secondarily for the sake of her own reputation
for carefulness, and above all for the sake of her own
responsibility before God, the Church is very slow to tell
her children that a man may safely be regarded as a
‘Saint’—a Christian so totally ‘according to Christ’
that God Himself seals him as being so.

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VI

The moment Christianity came into the world, Christ’s
doctrine that those who cared for the sick, cared for
Himself began to be translated into act. Nor was the care
for the sick compassionate only: close study accom­
panies it: Tertullian, (d. about a.d. 200) called medicine
the sister of philosophy. In the East, St Basil founded a
hospital so vast as to be called a “new city”, with its
special quarters for the sick, the wounded, the insane,
lepers . . . without distinction of creed or nationality
(d. 379). In Italy, when round about the year 400 such
throngs of wealthy men and women abdicated their great
position for the “ascetical life”, they nearly always served
in hospitals or indeed created them, such as Fabiola, St.
Paula ; and we can safely say that hardly a diocese would
have been without its hospitals and asylums, had these
not been constantly destroyed in the barbarian invasions,
so that all had to be begun again. St. Benedict (d. 550) by
insisting that his monks should study medicine, created a
universal precedent and even mystics like St. Hildegarde
(d. 1179) wrote long treaties into which all available
knowledge was gathered. Nor was the quality of this
knowledge poor: the medical school of Salerno was the
first we know of to have a curriculum imposed on it by the
State: King Roger II in 1140 insisted that prospective
doctors should do five years of study and one of practical
work before receiving, after due examination, their
qualifications. But the main encouragement came from
the Church : great prelates were glad to serve as doctors to
secular personages : John XXI (d. 1277) composed a
variety of medical treatises before he became Pope: one
was “ The Poor Man’s Treasury”—advice for those too
poor to pay doctors’ fees: another, on ophthalmology.

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The mere fact of such a man who, after lecturing in
Siena, was appointed ' Archiaier ’, chief medical officer
for the whole of Rome, being elected Pope, is indicative
of the attitude of the Church towards medicine. Gerbert
d’Aurillac (afterwards Pope Silvester II, d. 1003) had
long taught in the diocesan school of Rheims.
.Meanwhile Fraternities had been founded to look after
the sick : the first was created by Soror in Siena (d. 898).
The Antonine Brothers (at first designed especially to look
after erysipelas) was begun about 1095 in France and made
into a definite Order by Honorius III in 1218. Of couise
the Crusades created an enormous need for hospitalservice-—I mention only the Order of St. John of Jerusalem
(the hospital it cared for in Jerusalem—which had
several hospitals—contained over 2,000 beds). The
Teutonic Order was approved by Clement 111 in 1191.
But most important was the opening of a hospital at
Montpelier about 1145 which Guy of Montpelier put
in charge of Brothers named in honour of the Holy
Spirit. Innocent III approved this in 1198 and in 1204
built that hospital of Santo Spirito in Sassia of which we
have said so much. Practically every greater city in Europe
soon contained one of these, thanks to the powerful
impetus of that Pope. But as we also said, “charity grew
cold”, and the service of these hospitals degenerated ;
so did the Hospitaller Orders themselves : and with the
arrival of the Renaissance so also—in spite of all that
is conceitedly assumed—did medical science itself, for
the Renaissance took for granted that nothing of any
value had happened since the Greeks, and even so fol­
lowed the ‘school’ of Galen (d. about a.d. 200), who
developed medical theories and worked back thence to
the treatment of the body, rather than that of Hippo­
crates (d. about 380 b.c.) who, like the medievalists,
started from observation and induction.

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The history of Sanctity itself, during the 15th century,
shows a decline, at least to our human eyes. God forbid
that 1 should be blind to many an instance of heroic
charity (for it is of this that we are thinking rather than of,
for example, ecstatic mysticism). Such were St. John of
Kenty in Poland (1397-1473) ; St. Frances of Rome (13841440); notably St. Catherine of Genoa (1447-1510: see p.
11); St. Jerome Aemilian (1481-1537); St. Thomas of
Villanova (1488-1555) ; to mention only a few : but what an
efflorescence of self-sacrificing holiness appears just as the
world became supremely self-worshipping ! Observe that
St. John of God, consecrated to the care of hospitals
especially for the insane, born in 1495, died in 1550, the
year in which St. Camillus was born, (the year too in which
the ardent little Polish prince, Stanislaus Kostka, was
born): but he died at 18, in 1568 : his successor, Aloysius
Gonzaga, a Lombard prince, was born in 1568 and died
in 1591 of that plague (see p. 71) in which Camillus and
his friends worked so heroically. St. Charles Borromeo
(1538-1584), whose friend and adviser was St. Andrew
Avellino(1521-1608),remained intimately dear to Camillus.
Need I mention again St. Philip Neri (1515-1595), or
stress St. Vincent de Paul (1576-1660), or St. Francis de
Sales (1567-1622), whose names are household words
among Catholics? We are less likely to be familiar
with St. Toribio (1538-1606), a Spanish archbishop of
Lima, or the B. John Glande (Pecador) who died in 1600
in Spain, a Hospitaller of St. John of God and devoted
not only to hospital-work, but prisons, and a score of
others that might so easily be mentioned. Observe that I
have said nothing, once more, about Saints who lived
enclosed and ‘mystical’ lives such as St. Teresa (d. 1582)
or St. John of the Cross (d. 1591), or of theologians like
St. Peter Canisius or St. Robert Bellarmine (d. 1597 ; 1681),
or great missionary apostles within Europe like St.

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Fidelis Sigmaringen (d. 1622) or St. Josaphat (1623) both
of whom died martyrs; or even of that hero of charity
and apostle of negro slaves in America, St. Peter Claver
(d. 1654, the same year as St. John Baptist de la Salle,
a true educationist), not yet of the army of foreign
missionaries like the sons of St. Vincent de Paul and of
course St. Francis Xavier (d. 1552) nor even of the
martyrs who in America and Japan no less than in England
died at the command of tyrants and of heretics, But 1
stop, lest I seem to exclude or even to forget the names of
so many for whom we thank God yearly at Mass. What
becomes of the great rulers of this world when we think
of those heavenly princes ? In certain ways we remember
Ivan IV, Boris, Michael Romanoff of Russia (1584,
1613, 1646); Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden (d. 1632);
here in Denmark, Christian IV, (1648); Elizabeth of
England (d. 1603); Henri III and IV and Louis XIII
of France (d. 1589, 1610, 1643); Charles 1, Phillip II and
III of Spain (d. 1556, 1598, 1621); Emperors like Rudolf
I (d. 1612), but as often as not our memories are tinged
with sadness if not horror and we have to beg pardon for
their crimes or lament their mistakes. Probably with
more gratitude and admiration we recall names like those
of poets or men of science—Ariosto and Tasso (1533;
1595); Shakespeare, Spenser and Milton (1616, 1599,
1674); Ronsard, Corneille (1585, 1636) and with more
mixed feelings Rabelais or Montaigne (1553; 1592);
Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Calderon (1616, 1635, 1681);
Kepler, Lipsius, Tycho Brahé (1630, 1606, 1601).
Two reflections occur to me-—first, how periods of
which we often think so ill are found to be, if we examine
them closely, full of holiness : but what school-book helps
us to do that? Yet if we do not, how totally false a per­
spective we get of human life as lived then ! And second,
how false in a particular way ! I mean, how beautiful,

161

lovable and living a thing is holiness ! How thin and poor
appear those other lives compared with holy lives ! how
mean their psychology ! how non-integrated their per­
sonality ! how deplorable their exploits ! Think for a
moment of Camillus, and then of Drake ! I find more
romance, even, in a year of Camillus’s life than in the
whole history of Elizabethan piracy or the wars of Gus­
tavus Adolphus. And the Catholic knows experimentally
that he can talk and have dealings with Camillus even
now—a living soul: but who, alas, would wish to talk
with half of the heroes of the battlefield or the ornaments
of those courts? Light, sweetness, humanity and heaven,
enter the world along with the Saints.
The Camillan organisation numbered less than 300
Professed Fathers at the time of Camillus’s death—this
excludes lay-brothers and novices. But already 220 had
sacrificed their lives in the service of the sick. The sur­
vivors were distributed among sixteen houses, all in Italy.
Not till 1643 did the Order succeed in establishing itself
in other lands, passing by way of Spain to Portugal and
finally to Peru. But it would be tedious to relate in detail
its gradual expansion, though for various reasons it has
never become very large. One reason is that the Order
exists entirely for a single object—the care of the sick—
and this is not one which attracts attention : others, whose
duty it may be to write, to preach, to educate, to go
abroad as missionaries, draw to themselves a greater variety
of characters and earn inevitably more publicity. Again,
until hygienic methods began rapidly to improve, the death­
rate among Camillans was very high. Finally, even apart
from the political upheavals which became endemic in
Europe and which caused the suppression of religious
houses periodically, the progressive secularisation of hosnitals took awav a good deal of work from Religious,

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the enormous amount of hospital work done by Religious,
though especially by nuns, and for men and women of all
creeds, and by how glad Governments have often been
to avail themselves of men and women whose healing
work is a vocation rather than a profession.
Camillus had obtained that a fourth vow should be
added to the customary three—that of serving the sick,
the plague-stricken included. We have seen how heroic­
ally the Camillans performed this service to the plaguestricken during his life. But the plague continued to
return. In 1624 it broke out at Palermo; the superinten­
dence of the new lazzaretto of Sta Lucia was given by the
Viceroy to Fr. Terzago and was so perfectly organised
that Prof. A. Corradi who describes it minutely can call
it a model for all such institutions. But in 1630 to 1631
the plague became almost universal in Italy. Manzoni, in
his Promessi Sposi describes its horrors so far as Milan
was concerned : about 60 Camillans served there of whom
seventeen died, among whom was Fr. Terzago himself.
The same story might be related of Mantua, of Bologna
(where 30,000 persons died) and of many another Italian
town. It is interesting to note that although nothing
was then known of microbes as such, it was held certain
that the plague was communicated by contact, and that
some material of “infinite subtlety” conveyed it from
an infected to a healthy person. Disinfection-posts were
therefore by as many city-gates and elsewhere as possible,
and disinfection certainly seems to have been pretty drastic
(it was applied also to all correspondence, and Religious
were thought specially fitted for this part of the work, as
they could keep secrets better and be trusted not to steal
what might be enclosed) ; in fact, there is a good deal of
amusement to be derived from these records—quite as
many people objected to being scrubbed in extremely hot
baths reeking with sulphur as they now dislike being

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vaccinated. Fr. Zazio, who was sent to Imola, became
; nicknamed the Angel of the Probatic Pool. 11 is interesting
’ to note that by now doctors by profession were beginning
to enter the Camillan Order—the greatest help to the
Camillans who could thus intensify their own medical
training at home and at less cost. 1 select one anecdote
from the annals of this plague. Fr. Marapodio was
working at Borgo Nuovo Piacentino : all the priests of the
town had died : then he saw the fatal signs of the bubonic
plague break out on his own body. He went to the church,
consumed the Blessed Sacrament, and was found later
on still kneeling and leaning against the altar, having
died there.
In 1656-7 plague broke out worse than ever, and only
by the grace of God the Camillan Order did not expire
altogether. At Naples, ninety-six out of one hundred
Fathers died, and the remaining four became infected.
True, in Rome, owing to the energetic measure of Alexander VII, mortality was less. He ordered doctors to
visit every family twice daily, and the moment they
observed signs of infection, the entire family was put
into quarantine for forty days, and the infected persons,
Cardinals included, were put into the Island of the Tiber,
entrusted to Camillan care. But, for example, at Genoa,
where of its 90,000 inhabitants 64,000 died, the Camillans
lost thirty-seven out of their fifty men. While we regret
that for the sake of space we cannot treat this chapter of
Camillan history at greater length, we regret still more
that we know all too little about it—it can be well
imagined that the Camillans themselves had no time, and
often no strength, to write long records of their own
history. Other but more localised outbreaks of plague
can be noted—in 1667, 1709, 1743 at Messina (with such
violence that the very prisoners had to be freed that they
might disencumber the streets of corpses) and we may

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here recall that during the terrible earthquake (here in
1908 no less than nine Camillans were killed during
rescue-work.
Cholera is said to have arrived in Russia from India
in 1823 and reached Italy in 1835. it would now be
possible to make a list of places where the Camillans
worked from 1835 to 1911. I prefer merely to mention
Fr. Giovanni Baravalle, who served especially in Genoa
during the epidemics of 1835, ’36, ’37, ’54, ’55, ’56, ’66,
’67, ’73, ’84 and ’87: he died, aged eighty-six, in 1889.
And by now we begin to have photographs, instead of
the rather disconcerting engravings which craft made
possible and custom agreeable (I suppose) in earlier times.
He seems to have been a fine and most burly man, with
perfectly horizontal eyebrows, piercing eyes ready to
twinkle with caustic Italian humour, a jutting nose and
a mouth so firm and down-turned at the corners that you
might have feared he would be truculent (and at times
he doubtless was) and even ruthless, did you not know
that type, with its endless kind-heartedness. He was
completely convinced that cholera was in no way con­
tagious, and, what is more, convinced Cavour, no less,
that it wasn’t. So not only were the King and some of
his extremely reluctant Ministers paying rapid visits to
the hospitals, but Cavour used to go there “as to a public
garden” and developed a sort of mania for touching the
patients to see how ill they were. This did the patients
a lot of good, and himself, no harm. For all I know,
cholera is not contagious; but everyone else then thought
it was, and the incident is psychologically interesting,
and throws a pleasing light upon Cavour, not to mention
Baravalle, whose motto was: “Have a good conscience
and you won’t catch cholera.” He must have had much
public recognition, since his broad chest carries not only
the Camillan Red Cross, but half a dozen medals.

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165

Balzac said that alcoholism was much more to be
feared than cholera. Fr. Dalia Giacomo quaintly re­
marks that the Camillans took up what we in England
call ‘temperance-work’ just when modern science was
endeavouring to extract alcohol from all that it could.
Already in 1899 the Camillans along with others built
the first ‘sanatorium’ for alcoholics—the first in Germany;
possibly in Europe—at Werden-Heidhausen : it was an
enormous building, in which both Gothic and Baroque
are seen melting into what may be called YesterdayPractical. Other such German sanatoriums followed.
The treatment lasted for at least six months: I cannot
judge how far it would be now regarded as physically
perfect, but psychologically it certainly was. And it was
hence that a whole series of societies was inaugurated
in many countries, and the first Skt Kamillus-Haus is
(or was) the central secretariate of the great League of
the Cross round which the other societies grouped them­
selves, whether or not leagues of ‘total’ abstinence.1
But as I write (1944), the words ‘Red Cross’ are associ­
ated almost entirely with War—the wounded; prisoners;
their friends and so forth. Well, Camillus had been a
soldier. We have already related how Naples in the very
life-time of Camillus had implored help for the inrush
.of soldiers from Spain, and we have recalled how
Opertis and at times Camillus himself worked there. The
horrors of modern warfare are no better than those of
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—well! are they
1 The present writer may be allowed to say that he had always thought
drunkenness a northern rather than a Latin calamity. In country parts,
this is probably still true. But from evidence before him, it is clear that
alcoholism has enormously increased also in the south. Already in 1915
it had to be stated, officially, in Italy, that in 10 years the ‘victims’ of
alcholism had risen from 16 to 110 per million. This may be due to the
increased ‘nervousness’ of modern times, which seeks for sedatives; but
much more, maybe, to the iniquitous adulteration of liquors which pre­
vails despite all efforts to stop it. I trust that the Camillans will take also
drug-victims into their consideration. And no doubt they do.

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not worse ? They cannot be worse physically and morally;
but they are, in that their origin is so much more scientific.
We spare the reader most of the details of the sicknesses
that had then to be treated: but observe the Camillans
de-lousing the soldiers’ hair; cutting their nails; changing
horrible bandages; washing men from head to foot “in
disinfectant water”; spending days and nights where
doctors would spend hardly ten minutes. But they ap­
peared on the field of battle first, 1 think, in 1595 when
the Turks were menacing, you may say, the whole of
Europe. Among those who went out personally to com­
bat them were Prince Aldobrandini, the Grand Duke of
Tuscany, and Duke Vincent Gonzaga of Mantua whose
young kinsman-Saint had died four years before. These
great personages appealed to the ex-soldier Camillus,
who, they were sure, knew all about it. He appointed
a certain number of his associates, and started himself,
having made a splendid oration to his men on their duty
towards soldiers. He laid down very exactly what rules
should be observed in home-hospitals; what, in inter­
mediate hospitals; what, in advanced ‘dressing-stations’;
what, in field ambulances. He perceived that rivers and
canals were, at that time, often the quickest way of
transport, and organised a whole water-service. But this
war, as such, came to an end. But what war ever finishes
—or has, so far, finished ? There were new wars, e.g., in
Croatia in 1601 when at once recourse was had to the
Camillans and in which Fr. Girolamo Bevilacqua “of
gigantic stature and herculean strength” played a notable
part. It is important to see that the Camillans served
any sufferers whom they encountered, Turks as well as
Imperialists and Italians—the negative idea of ‘neu­
trality’ was already and at once out-passed and the
universal active service of men for Christ’s sake was
immediately reached.

It is impossible to relate in detail the wars, or the warservice of the Camillans, which followed. Even before
I hostilities opened (e.g., in 1672 between Carlo Emmanuele
I and Genoa), they were asked to serve ; and almost everyI where in the thirty years’ war (in Italy, 1627-1631) about
I which Mr. Aldous Huxley has written (Grey Eminence)
I relating all that was horrible—quite justly—but unable,
I one would say, to recognise all the good things that were
I happening between the extreme of mysticism, and the
I lowest of opportunism. I am sorry that I cannot devote
I even a line to the work of the Camillans during the sack
1 of Mantua (1629-1630) which in reality meant the end of
I the Gonzaga clan. Wars, pestilence and famine—that
I Un-holy Trinity—followed over most of the world, and
I
we could have much to say about Fr. P. Marieluz,
I
military chaplain in the Peruvian Spanish army, who was
shot, put (still alive) into a box, and thrown into the sea
I
for refusing to say what men suspected of sedition had
told him in confession. “We command you”, General
Rodin said, “in the name of the King!” “I refuse”, said
the priest, “in the Name of God.”
The sun of civilisation rose, of course, in mid-nineteenth
century. The Camillans, suppressed, like many other
orders, were found to be necessary after all during the
blood-thirsty battles that went on from 1848, an ‘epic’
year, to 1859 when Solferino was fought. It is at this
point that we have to ensure that the creation and develop­
ment of the modern international Red Cross be seen in
their right perspective. We have been kindly sent some
- information hitherto unknown to us. First, Nurse Agnes
E. Parsy, S.R.N., writes in her book The Story of the
Growth of Nursing as follows: “. . .to Queen Isabella
(of Castille) seems to belong the credit of having intro­
duced field hospitals and ambulances on a large scale.
Speaking of the siege of Alora in 1484, the Spanish

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historian Fernando del Pulgar writes: ‘For the care of
the sick and wounded the Queen always sent six large
tents and their furniture, together with physicians,
surgeons, medicines and attendants, and commanded
that they should charge nothing, for she would pay for
all. These tents were called the Queen’s Hospitals.’ On
the surrender of Malaga in 1487, the Spanish army, on
entering the besieged city, was followed by the Queen’s
Hospitals, in 400 ‘ambulancias ’. At the siege of Granda
in 1489, an eye-witness wrote to the Archbishop of Milan:
‘ Four huge hospital tents, the careful provision of queenly
piety, are a sight worth seeing. They are intended not
only for the wounded but for those labouring under any
disease. The physicians, apothecaries, surgeons and other
attendants are as numerous, the order, diligence and
supply of all things needful, as complete, as in your own
infirmary of the Holy Spirit or the great Milan hospital
itself. Every sickness and casualty is met and provided
for by the royal bounty except where Nature’s appointed
day is at hand.’ The Queen herself frequently visited
the wounded, and when her courtiers hinted that this
was contrary to Castilian etiquette, she is said to have
replied: ‘Let me go to them, for they have no mothers
here, and it will soothe them in their pain and weakness
to find that they are not uncared for.’ And the chronicler
adds: ‘Surely the Queen deserved as much as those
ancient Greek and Roman princesses that famous title
“mater castrorum”.’ Pedro Bosca records that the
Queen’s Hospital comprised nearly 400 waggons with
awnings and that the wounded were not nursed by the
highly unsuitable persons who usually follow armies but
by honest and competent matrons. These waggons were
called ‘ambulancias’—probably the first use of the name
and the first use of a mobile ambulance service with
independent transport of medical store.”

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We are glad that due homage has thus been done to
Queen Isabella; but we regret that the authoress con­
tinues: “It would seem as though, at one bound, the
active mind of the Queen had reached an understanding
of the needs of the wounded which the rest of the world
failed to appreciate until four more centuries (sic) of
human suffering had passed. It is strange that this great
effort should have been almost an isolated one, and with
the decay of the hospital tents and the falling to pieces
of the waggons it should have died, and that wounded
men should again lie on the battlefield for days and
nights before any succour was given. And then, in the
chaos of the Napoleonic wars and the European conflicts
of the nineteenth century, it should be born again as the
result of a Swiss traveller looking out over the battle­
field of Solferino.” Thus we see that the authoress is
entirely unaware of the Camillan history : and as for
what the ‘Swiss traveller’ (of whom more in a moment)
saw when he thus ‘looked out’ over Solferino, I will
quote Carlo Andersen: En Skabone under Genferkorset
(Carl Allers Bogforlag, 1941, p. 120):
“Finally it must here be made clear that the Red Cross
had already been seen on the battlefield of Solferino in
1859. From the cities of Verona, Mantua and Cremona
about 100 Camillan Brothers (whose religious habit is
black with a red cross on the right of the breast) took part
in the voluntary health-service during and after the battle.
Together with thirty-six nurses, headed by a French lady,
they joined in a great work and most commendable. It
does not greatly serve to the honour of the Protestant
Dunant, that this strong infusion of Catholic Religious
is not mentioned even by one word in his Memories of
Solferino. He cannot possibly have been ignorant of it.”
In the same book, Note 11, p. 260, we find a short but
sympathetic account of the origin of the Camillans. He

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adds: “The religions impulse of the enterprise was more
strongly emphasised among the Catholic Camilians than
among the Protestant Johannites from Prussia: but both
Orders take a prominent place in merciful work for
humanity.”1
We are far from wishing to decry Dunant’s work
during battle: why, in the f irst Aid book published by
the Danish Red Cross we read that there is an example
of humane thinking in the Icelandic Viga Glums Sage
(c. a.d. 1000), where we learn that Haldova, Glum’s
wife, had collected women and said: “We will bandage
all there is hope of saving no matter to which side they
belong.” We rejoice, too, in this, which can hardly be
other than an effect of Christianity. Nor is it quite true
to say that social and moral ‘discoveries’ occur simultane­
ously in many places, rather as scientific ones do. Martin
Gumpert in his book on Dunant writes: “The Civil War
in the United States produced two things which are of
lasting importance in American history: the United
States Sanitary Commission and Clara Barton (her motto:
‘Follow the Cannon’). It is astonishing how infallibly,
again and again, in different parts of the world, things
for which the right moment has come are. realised
simultaneously and independently. In the Civil War . . .
the Sanitary Commission accomplished unheard-of
triumphs. Even under the difficult circumstances resulting
1Endelig skal det her fremhaeves, at dette rode Kors allerede blev vist
paa SJagmarken ved Solf'erino i 1859. Fra Byerne Verona, Mantova, og
Cremona deltog c. 100 Kamillianerbrodre, hvis Ordendragt er sort med
Rodt Kors paa hajre Side af Brystet, i den friviilige Sanitætstjeneste
under og efter Siaget. Sammen med 36 Piejersker, anfort af en fransk
Dame, unforte de et stort og paaskonrelacsvacrdigl Arbejde. Det tjenerikke til storre Aere for Protestanten Dunant, at denne store Indstats af
katolski Ordensbrodre ikke omtales med et Ord I “Erendringer fra
Solferino”. Han kan umuligt hav vaerct udvende om det . . .
Gerningens religiose moment var staerkere betonet mellem de katolske
Kamillianere end mellem Preussens Johanniter, men begge Ordener
intager en fremskudt Stilling i det menneskekaerlige Barmhjertigheds
arbejder.

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from the duration of the struggle, the climate, the enor­
mous masses of men, the deficient military apparatus
(he might almost have been describing St. Camillus’s
circumstances), it made the first (sic) attempt uniformly
to organise the care of the sick and wounded on hygenic
principles. Much that seemed Utopian in Dunant’s
proposals for Europe was translated into fact on the
battlefields of South America without his knowledge.
Nearly 2,000 women served as nurses in the Civil War.
They contributed substantially towards the victory by
their Samaritanism, which had until then been a privilege
of the Catholic Church, but which was foreign to Pro­
testantism. In Germany since 1836 there had been the
Deaconesses; in England, the Protestant Sisters of
Charity had been organised since 1840; in 1848, the
Sisters of Mercy; in 1851, the Sisterhood of All Saints,
etc. In 1860 Florence Nightingale founded the school
for Sisters at St. Thomas’s hospital in London. But all
these organisations still bore essentially the character of
religious Orders.—Florence Nightingale was the first
Samaritan on a field of battle. Dunant followed at
Solferino. And Clara Barton . . . was the third in this
spiritual league which brought the humanitarian move­
ment of the century.” Clara Barton went to Europe to
recuperate, met the Red Cross, and returned to America
and worked for years to get the States to sign the Geneva
Convention. They were the thirty-second country to
do so.
The italics above are mine. They indicate that the
author at least knew that organised charitable work—
on battlefields included—had previously existed, and had
been done by religious Orders. And, given that St.
Camillus’s Order badge was a large Red Cross, I cannot
see why we have not the right to call it “the First Red
Cross”. Negatively, the modern ‘Red Cross’ is not a

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religious Order: its badge is iwt a Christian symbol
(though, as J said, I expect that most people think it is
and are, in fact, animated by a Christian wish to relieve
suffering and remove its causes). Positively, it is inter­
nationally accepted by Governments, which is a very
good thing; but even had Camillus thought of trying to
get his organisation thus internationally agreed to, he
would not have succeeded, simply because it was a
religious Order and no Protestant Government would
have agreed to a convention even if the Catholic ones
would have, and it would have entered no one’s head to
make a convention with the Turks. It remains that
Camillans were perfectly ready to succour the wounded
of enemy armies if they could, and were themselves
international or rather, super-national. The Camillans
with whom I am just now in touch are mostly Dutch:
but they belong to the same organisation as the Italian
and German Camillans, and would certainly co-operate
with them in assisting the wounded or the sick, should
occasions arise which would make it possible. Nurse
Parsy writes quite explicitly:
. . the plain red cross on
a white ground was officially authorised because it was
realised that it must be clearly distinguishable from a
distance, and that any heraldic details might lead to
errors of observation; but the convention of 1906 also
emphasised the fact that the emblem had no religious
significance. This was necessary in order to preserve
uniformity, for Turkey had already replaced the cross by
the crescent.”1
1 The psychology seems to me inadequate. It is quite impossible to
divest the Cross of a religious significance. The Cross was really intro­
duced in compliment to General Dufour who had invented the Swiss
flag, a small white cross on a red ground. Presumably Turkish and
Persian susceptibilities were not at the moment thought of. When it was
too late or undesirable to change—c.g. by substituting a red square, or
dividing the badge into quarters, gules and argent—it had to be explained
that the Cross meant nothing religious.

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Dunant himself in his book ‘Memoirs of Solferino’
said that the basic ideas of his Red Cross were comprised
in four points : preparation in advance: neutralisation of
doctors and nurses: uniform emblem; and extension of
its activities to include natural catastrophes. The original
resolution laid down the two essential foundations of the
Red Cross—‘internationalisation, and centralisation in
Geneva to ensure freedom from partisan or religious tieups’. We see then that nothing in Dunant’s four points is
notin Camillus’^ ideal, save the political neutralisation of
Red Cross officers and institutions which is certainly
very important but could not have been conceived
in Camillus’s day: if had it been manageable, doubt­
less Camillus would have suggested it: as it was, we
repeat that his society was spiritually super-national—
but then, Geneva had to get rid of ‘religious tie-ups’. As
things are the religious and the secular Red Cross have
co-operated remarkably well. Not only, at the battle of
Custoza ( 1886), the unbounded charity of the citizens of
Verona displayed itself equally towards Austrians and
Italians, but the Camillans of Verona and Mantua not
only served in all the hospitals, including the official
military one, but established little hospitals at the very
doors of the railway stations. In 1867 and in Rome itself
in 1870, Fr. Ferrini led his Camillans wearing both red
crosses—their own, the large one, as usual on their
breast, the new little Genevan one on their arm; the
same in France in the war of 1870 and in hospital-ships
later on. The same collaboration was effected in the
world-war of 1914 especially in Germany, some of the
Camillans serving at the front and others managing
hospital trains as well as their own hospitals; they also
manned a hospital train provided by the Knights of
Malta, of which the German Empress said that it was the
finest and most practically organised of all the hospital­

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trains she had so far seen. In Rome they worked in their
own houses and in others placed al the disposal of the
Geneva Red Cross and I have an interesting photograph
of the Camihan house at Cremona with the two crosses
working in unison. Benedict XV in May 1915 wrote to
the Camihan General a letter of thanks and admiration
for the enormous number of wounded men succoured by
the Camillans especially in Germany and Austria.
Therefore, so far as I can sec, the ‘religious tie-ups’
of the Camillans meant a bond which united them by
charity with Christ, and that while the official, mechanical
and international organisation of the Geneva Red Cross is
of incalculable value to all the world for which we are
duly grateful, the essence of the work had been carried on,
with the infinite enhancement of a spiritual impulsion,
under the same emblem with a nobler meaning, ever
since St. Camillus and indeed from the earliest days of
active Christianity.
We may at once hear the objection that the Camillans
being Religious their numbers must always remain
very small, whereas innumerable laymen and women
can co-operate with the Red Cross, even though they do
not .make it their wholetime task. Camillus, however,
from the outset wished to have groups of lay collabora­
tors, and as briefly as possible 1 will allude to a few of
these of which the first is to be found in Naples. If we
remember the social framework of those times, it is the
more impressive to find that these bands of regular visitors
to hospitals were chiefly composed of persons of the
highest rank, even royalties and Cardinals: eye-witnesses
relate their amazement when they saw them ‘cleaning
the sick men’s tongues, and their hair’ and cleansing
and bandaging wounds, that reeked so horribly that one
could hardly imagine so much as standing near them.
The custom became general in Italy and Sicily and then

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extended itself to Spain where princes and grandees
would pay similar visits, daily, both to hospitals and
posons. This lasted for two centuries, when political
upheavals and the anticlericalism which went hand in
hand with the Enlightenment destroyed all that was
noblest along with much that was worthless in such
countries. Yet even in 1796 the ever-upspringing fount
of Catholic charity created new such organisations, such
as the Fratellanza degii Spcdalieri at Verona. The
bishop himself, nobles and many another, dressed in the
hospital uniform, would serve even all night at the
humblest tasks. Women often had their own ‘third
order’, like that to which the very holy Rosa Grimaldi
of Bologna belonged, beginning her work in 1739: the
French groups, especially one at Paris, did heroic services
during the Napoleonic wars, but, being chiefly devoted to
work during epidemics, ultimately expired.
I must mention specially Mother Giuseppina Vannini,
of whose Life I have read only the German version
translated from the Italian of 1927—Eine CarHasblame.
She was born in 1859 of working-parents in Rome, both
of whom died in her childhood : till she was twenty-one
she stayed with the St. Vincent Sisters near Sant’ Onofrio.
Determined to be a Religious, she was sent to their
noviciate but returned after a year, ill, to an aunt. She went
back, butin 1888 was dismissed without being told why.
She then stayed with the Sisters of the Blessed Sacrament
doing manual work and then went to Naples to teach it
among the St. Vincent Sisters, but misunderstandings arose
and she came back to Rome aged thirty-one. These abor­
tive enterprises remind one somewhat of Camillus’s own.
Her Lazarist confessor obtained leave for her to assist at a
retreat preached to the Cenacle nuns by a Camillan, Fr.
Tezza, who—half jestingly—asked her if she would like
to found a religious Order ‘to her own taste’, and then

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suggested she might fall in with his own ideas. On
Feb. 2, 1892 she and two others put on the Camillan
scapular and after a spell of extreme poverty spent in
visiting the sick found that their numbers increased. They
asked Leo XIII for official recognition, but he would have
no more religious Orders in Rome. So in 1893 she made
private vows and the first house was opened in Cremona.
The new Congregation developed well, but was not
allowed in Rome, though she took over the management
of a clinic there and extended her work to the care of defec­
tive children. Her Congregation began to develop outside
Italy—France, Belgium, Germany, the Argentine. In
1909 it became a regular Congregation with simple vows.
In April 1910 she began a tour of all her Italian houses,
went on to Belgium, and returned to Rome just a week
before her cabin had been booked for America. However,
there she had to go to bed exhausted and endured six
months’ illness of which one month was a Purgatory of
depression and fear. She died on Feb. 23, 1911, not yet
fifty-one.
But here you perceive the tendency of Catholic good
works to revert to the form of Religious Institutes. I like
therefore to recall those ‘Lay Apostles of the Sick and
Dying: the Society of the Guilds of St. Camillus de
Lellis’ (an account has been written by Fr. J. Kelly,
O. S. Cam.; Irish Messenger Office, Dublin; 1939),
which was founded in Dublin in 1921. Originally it was
meant to visit only the sick of the South Dublin Union,
but the Order of the Ministers of the Sick heard of it, sent
it a statute, and immense expansion was seen as necessary.
Tn 1930 the Apostolate was affiliated to the Order and in
1934 an Irish Camillan foresaw the extension of the
apostolate to the sick of the whole world, whether in their
homes, in hospitals, workhouses or any other sort of
asylum. No fee or reward is in any case allowed. Our

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Lady Health of the Sick is its patroness. Her earliest
picture is allegedly by Fra Angelico and belonged to St.
Pius V. Then it was bequeathed to the Camillans and
exposed for veneration in the Maddalena. 11 was ‘ crowned
but when Rome was conquered by Napoleon in 1827,
the crown has to be sold for war-debts. In the nineteenth
century, epidemics beset Rome ; an arch-Confraternity was
formed—it is said that not one of its members fell sick.
When Leo ΧΠΙ was eighty-nine and had to be operated on,
a triduum was held at the Maddalena : he recovered, went
himself to pick flowers in the Vatican gardens and sent
them to the church. This is the special 'devotion’ of the
Guilds. It is not necessary to describe in detail the
organisation of these Guilds, but it seems very practical,
that is, for Ireland where everyone is Catholic. The sheer
fact of its being ‘practical’ therefore implies that it would
be modified in different circumstances. But anyone can
see what a help it is that such a lay organisation should
exist, and be composed of men and women in different
walks of life—in barracks, workshops, factories, clubs,
schools. For thus innumerable more sick—sick of body or
soul or both—are likely to become known, than if their
discovery were entrusted wholly to priests. This is
particularly important when the Last Sacraments are
concerned. Pius X greatly encouraged such work by
giving the privilege, in 1905, of a portable altar to all
Camillan priests. If a bed-ridden and dying person has
not been to Mass for a long time, it will be a great comfort
for him actually to assist once more at the Mass that he
knew and had neglected before dying.
I should feel myself disloyal to one great ideal of
Camillus’s were I not to insist for a moment on the giving
of Viaticum to those in danger of death. The Codex
of Canon Law (864, I) emphasises the precept of giving
Holy Communion to those in danger of death from

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whatsoever cause. Camillus can be said io be the only
Apostle of this sacramental duly. He insisted that Viaticum
must: ‘absolutely be given’, and by this he meant ‘in spite
of every difficulty1, and of these difficulties—apart from
that of knowing when someone is dangerously ill·—the
worst is the fear of others that the sick person may be
‘ frightened’. The idea is due to ignorance--they do not
know that the point of extreme Unction, at any rate, is
the cure of the sick person, if that cure be God's will, for
evidently the sick will not always and for ever be cured,
but someday will die. None the less, the Church keeps
asking that the sick man may recover and be restored to
his customary work in the Church. It is due also to an
unconscious paganism—i.e. that a man must at all costs
be kept physically alive so long as possible—even when
unconscious, and, short of a miracle, certain to die.
But you do not obtain miracles by disregarding the most
powerful (because supernatural) remedy that exists. It
has been said that every Sacrament has its special enemy—
e.g., there are those who defer baptism indefinitely,
whereas in days of more robust faith, a child was baptised,
if at all possible, the very day after its birth: others
deprecate frequent Communion : others turn Confir­
mation into a social event : some have abolished Ordina­
tion altogether: and God knows how many enemies
Marriage has 1 The enemy of Viaticum are the Healthy.
To delay Viaticum and Unction is ‘the most cruel perse­
cution and harmful fraud that the devil could invent Io
remain master of the field.’ The ultimate moment has
come which decides defeat or victory.1
As always, we beg pardon if we have written ill or
misleadingly about a Saint indeed, about any fellow1 There is a good little pamphlet read by Fr. G, Curti, Pref. General
of the Ministers of the Sick at their third Regional Eucharistic Congress at
Chieti in Sept. 1929.

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human, of whom God alone is the judge. We might more
easily be excused for asking whether we think that the
Tamilian Order will prosper in the modern world. We
think that it will experience most of its ancient difficulties
(save that of continued infection the risk of which is
now so largely obviated), for we expect the world to be
periodically victim to those waves of anti-clericalism
which constantly surged across the old world, and in any
case, there will be the more cold-blooded desire to bring
everything, hospitals of course included, under the direct
control of the State and indeed into its possession. But
we do not think that the fact that Camillans are Catholics
will stand in their way, if only because in whatever con­
tinent we have been, we have found Catholic hospitals
packed with non-Catholic patients. I have heard the
argument that the proper persons to be nurses are women :
nursing is in their nature—not in men’s. I expect there will
always be more women-nurses than men-nurses : but there
is much heavy work which, it seems to me, women ought
hardly to be asked to do; I have experienced excellent
nursing at the hands of men; and presumably what is
happening now will continue to happen—collaboration. In
no hospital in which 1 have been were women-nurses
able to do all that was necessary, nor would I wish them
to try. But the most plausible argument probably is that
all ‘voluntary’ hospitals are bound to be inefficient
and have to resort to precarious methods for raising
funds, like bazaars, ‘rags’, broadcast appeals and so forth.
So far, voluntary hospitals have seemed to me even more
efficient than State-run hospitals ; but that may have been
chance. I certainly hold that there should be a State
Health-Department to which a due percentage of public
money ought to be allocated: but the State, in its turn,
ought to allocate a certain amount of that money to
‘voluntary’ or ‘private’ hospitals, as it ought to to

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‘confessional1 schools, for example. Ought then such
schools or hospitals to be entirely free from State super­
vision ? Most certainly not. The State has every right
to see that the}' are kept up to a proper level of efficiency,
somewhat as I think property ought to be owned privately,
but may well be 'controlled’ by the State in this sense,
that if land is needed and not used, it could either be
expropriated with due compensation and applied to the
needed purposes, or, left in private ownership provided it
was properly used by its owner. Anyhow, I have never
known a ‘private’ hospital which was not fully open to the
inspection of government officials, and their approbation
is very highly valued. As for the Camillan hospital at
Aalborg, it is not only recognised as fully efficient, but as
one of the finest ornaments of the town, so noble is its
church, built-—if I may risk calling it so—in the DanishRomanesque tradition.
But I end as I began : we all do homage to the noble
work done by nurses, doctors, surgeons and all their
collaborators whatever their creed—and indeed if they
do their most unselfish work even for purely philanthropic
reasons. If they do it exclusively for the sake of earning
their living, we do not think it will be done so perfectly
as it would be if some ‘spiritual ideal’ lay behind it. But
if it be their happiness to possess the Faith which enables
them to do it for the sake of Christ, and indeed to see and
serve Christ in the person of their patients, and to pray
for them, and never to forget the soul while ministering
to the body, then indeed their work should be perfect, and
their very presence a healing one, as Christ’s was, unless
indeed He met with an obstinate will set against His
ministrations.
In Camillus’s person, you see all these qualities raised
to their very highest power. His unselfishness was dis­
played not only in the work that he, so physically strong,

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mentally indomitable, did for the sick in the most
horrible circumstances, but in the fact that he was all the
time suffering such physical pain himself that he might
have been forgiven had he stayed all his life in hospital as
a permanent invalid, being waited on. But he thrust all that
behind him, even if he could not actually forget it. And
besides that, you have to remember that he had to achieve
the most tremendous self-conquest in his interior life itself:
he was not a Saint from his cradle·—very much the
opposite. But having burnt what he once adored, he,
after many a bitter disappointment, found, first, his true
work at which he laboured till the evening, and then, after
that strange quarter of an hour, his Refreshment.
so