François of Paule

François of Paule , founder about the Tiny , born the March 27th 1416 with Paule, in Calabria, dead on April 2nd 1507 with the convent of Plessis-lez-Turns. Its festival is celebrated the April 2nd.

Its family

François of Paule is the son Giacomo Martolilla de Salicon (1370-1465) and of Vienna de Fuscaldo, born with Appunto di Fuscaldo, a couple of landowners, catholic very believers. They married in 1401 and do not have a child during 15 years. Already of a advanced age, they make prayers with saint François d' Assise. Born, elder the future fore-mentioned saint thus Francesco. According to a catholic site: … while Vienna de Fuscaldo, woman of Jacques Martotille, is being confined, of people sees his surrounded house of flames, as an aureole of fire, and they hear supernatural musics. Oracles predict that this newborn would astonish Christendom.

François of Paule has a sister, Brigitte Martolilla , which Marie with Antoine d' Alesso .

They have several children, of which:

Andrea d' Alesso , which comes to France with his/her uncle, the future François Saint of Paule. He is Contrôleur with the attic with salt of Lagny-sur-Marne, lord of Leseau and Lyons in Beauce, Master of the fourrery of the king, servant of King Louis XI, wine waiter in his hotel. Its marriage contract is made in Dionet and Charron, notaries in Châtelet, on June 21st, 1501. It writes its will on July 19th, 1530 and asks that its burial be in the church of the Catches, close to Tours. He is the father of Jean d' Alesso.
Nicolas and Pierre d' Alesso, Tiny in a monastery in France. François of Paule ressuscite, appears it, seven dead of which another of its nephews, this Nicolas d' Alesso.
Angele and Paul, which remained in Calabria.

Biography

A very sick child and very practitioner

Child, Francesco contracts a serious form of infection in an eye. All its family requests holy François d' Assise and promises to him, in the event of cure, that the child would become franciscain.

He cures very quickly.

But as of its more young age, Francesco is attracted by all that touches with the religion and becomes very practitioner. It is a teenager humble, flexible and obeying.

At the thirteen years age it respects the promise made by his parents and is found with the Couvent franciscain of San Marco Argentano (province of Cosenza), where there remains one year, thus achieving the promise of his/her parents with saint François d' Assise.

As of its entry it is announced by its mysticism, its interest for the supernatural one and we will find that all his life and it will be adored for that after its death. During this first year with the convent, small Francesco is very practitioner, but achieves also the drudgeries, like the cleanliness of the floors, the kitchen, the service of the canteen…

Pilgrim, hermit, general superior…

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In 1430, at the 14 years age, it makes with its family, a long pilgrimage with Assise, but also in some of the principal centers of Italian catholic spirituality: Loreto, Rome, the Abbey of the Mount-Cassin, and with the Luco Mount. The ostentation of the Eternal City displeases to him. It points out to a cardinal that Jesus had had clothes so sumptuous only him.

Returned with Paule, it starts to live in Ermite, in an inaccessible place, the Inheritance , located in one of the properties of its rich person family, at the fine bottom of the Calabria. This life in the desert fills with wonder the inhabitants at his birthplace. In 1435, it is joined by other believers, attracted by his fame of holiness, and who join this experiment. They recognize it like their spiritual guide.

It is there the first core first about the Minimes With his/her the first twelve companions, François of Paule builds a vault and three dormitories. He becomes the general superior of the new order, that of the Minimes, meaning the last between all . They make wish of humility, especially deliver to the exercise charity and are made call the hermits of saint François d' Assise . Never founder of order started to be it in the age of François of Paule: he is only nineteen years old.

To the first adhesions, they of are added many others. They are so numerous besides that on August 31st 1452 the new Archbishop of Cosenza, monsignor Phyrrus Caracciolo, grants approval diocésaine to found an oratorical , a Monastère and a church.

The construction of the new monastery is the occasion for the noble ones of its town of attest their major regard to him. They work their hands to hasten construction of it.

Congregazione eremitica paolana di San Francesco d' Assisi

The reputation of holiness of Francesco is spread quickly and at such a point so much that in 1467 the pope Paul II sends to Paule his emissary to have news of the Ermite Calabrian.

Returned in Rome, the pontifical envoy, monsignore Baldassarre De Gutrossis present an objective report/ratio on the life of prayer and austerity which reigns in this monastery.

July 4th, 1467, four cardinals sign the letter which grants indulgence to those which contributed to the construction of the church of the monastery of Paule, as with those which visited it.

In 1470 the legal-canonical process for the final approval of the new order of hermits starts. The " cause paolana" is defended by monsignore Baldassarre da Spigno.

May 17th, 1474, the pope Sixte IV officially recognizes the new order with the denomination: Congregazione eremitica paolana di San Francesco d' Assisi .

The recognition of the rule of extreme austerity comes on the other hand with the pope Alexandre VI, in concomitance with the change of the name in that still current, of Ordre of Tiny the .

Francois, man of big size, is not held right, under the weight of mortifications . He does not change clothing and wears a dress of bore-hole, like his parents before him. The future saint does not shave. He wanders on the rocky ways of Calabria and Sicily, without shoes and layer with very the ground. The hermit eats only once per day after laying down it sun of grass and roots. He also passes from many whole Lents without eating. Its body, of course very odoriferous, feels the ambergris or the musk, according to its faithful.

New monasteries

With this approval, the hermitages, on the model of that of Paule, become numerous in Calabria and Sicily. Annonciade with Paterno Calabro, in 1472, Spezzano della Sila, in 1474, the Very-Holy-Trinity with Corigliano Calabro, in 1476, Jesus and Marie with Cortone, and Milazzo, in 1480, are most active.

Francesco becomes, therefore, a point of reference essential for the catholics and the poor of his native soil. To him, they are addressed for councils of spiritual nature, but also for councils of the councils on their material life.

The Royaume of Naples is with this is at that time a kind of protectorate of the Aragoneses which had founded a colonial mode with the detriment of the population. It is in this historical context that François of Paule gave himself the mission of diffusing the Christian faith.

Miracles

The supernatural phenomena allotted to Francesco do not miss:

the cure of a boy reached of an incurable wound to an arm, cured with banal common grasses,
of the blind men see,
the leprous ones are cured,
mentally ills become again normal,
the miraculous gushing of a source of the Cucchiarella , which it makes spout out by striking with a stick a rock, close to the convent of Paule,
the stones of the miracle which remain in unstable balance during instead of falling on the convent
the crossing from the strait from Messine on its extended coat, after the Patron of boat Maso refused to him to make it pass with some disciples free. What will make of him the owner of the Italian sailors.

Child, it to deposit with his fingers of burning coals in the censer, without burning itself. Thereafter, it makes prophecy that the town of Otranto will fall to the hands from the Turks in 1480, but to be reconquered by the king of Naples.

And then François of Paule ressuscite, appears it, seven dead, which will make that this Ermite will be found at the Court of kings de France.

At the court of Louis XI

From 1481, François of Paule lives at the court of Ferdinand Ier of Naples. But as that which one calls from now on the holy man , to the reputation to operate miraculous cures, it will not be able to regain Paule. The Neapolitan merchants speak about its miracles with Louis XI, dangerously patient and the sovereign written to the Pope Sixte IV, which sends two briefs to François of Paule to order to him to go to France. He obeys this command. The king hopes to be cured by his prayers. Before his arrival at the Court, the king believed to prolong his days while being surrounded of relics. but in spite of that its days are counted.

The Pope and the king of Naples benefit from the occasion to reinforce the fragile relationship with the large powerful one of the time, France. Their goal is to find an agreement to abolish the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges of 1438. This king and the Pope must convince Francesco to leave his native soil to cross the the Alps, and to give up his austere lifestyle and to find himself at the Court of France.

Crowned voyage besides, François of Paule is attacked by pirates, the small ship which leads it Ostie to Marseilles is also found in full storm. In short, arrived there still very, miraculeusement in Marseilles, our hermit cannot unload, because Provence is devastated by the Peste. However it succeeds in unloading with Bandol. There, it looks after the patients by the affixing of the hands and that seems to have positive effects, because it makes new followers so much, that it creates the convent Our-Lady-of-the-Pity with Fréjus.

Accommodated everywhere with famous brands of respect and devotion, François of Paule the Dauphine one, Lyon and Bourbonnais with the Castle of Plessis-lez-Turns, on April 24th, 1482. The King throws himself to his feet and beseeches his blessings. It flatters it, it begs it and makes build two convents of its kind… .

Louis XI with the foot of François Saint of Paule

But the piles hermit, returned on the spot, can only prepare the king, like his doctor paid 10.000 ecus per month, to resign themselves and die chrétiennement. Louis XI dies the August 30th 1483, at the 60 years age.

Time of Charles VIII and Louis XII

After the death of Louis XI, François of Paule will remain a quarter century at the court of France, where he is protected by Charles VIII and Louis XII. Affectionately called the catch by the people, which venerates it, but also by the court, scorn, this simple brother-laic blesses candles and chains inlassablement. However it controls with wonder the spiritual life of the priests, bishops and kings. It can be made appreciate humbler, like scientists of the Sorbonne. It has its housing with the Château of Plessis-lez-Turns. Bossuet says to us that: Cependant incomparable François of Paule is solitary until in the Court… François does not find anything which is worthy of him but the sky. . And Bossuet adds: François of Paule, the burning O in love one! It is wounded, it is transported one cannot draw it from its dear cell, because it kisses there its God in peace and loneliness.

Many religious franciscains, Benedictines and hermits, fascinated by his lifestyle, unite with him in France, as in the past in Italy and contributes thus to the universalization of its kind. François of Paule establishes in France some houses of his kind. In 1489, Charles VIII makes build the convents of Turns and Amboise which it equips with invaluable privileges.

At the time of the free-Breton War (1489-1491), François of Paule pleads for a marriage between Anne of Brittany and Louis XII, which would establish peace. The queen Anne of Brittany founds the royal convent of Our-Lady-of-All-the-Graces, with Chaillot and a monastery with Gien.

François of Paule dies in the monastery which it had founded with the Plessis-lez-Turns, the Good Friday of the year 1507. Coincidence or divine reward for a saint who had begun his retirement at 12 years?

After its death

François of Paule is still at the origin of a miracle after his death. Its body, according to its close relations, remained without burial during eleven days, remains without corruption, and makes even an odor pleasant.

In 1507, one does not count less than 13 convents in the kingdom of France, then 38 in 1600 and more than 150 at the end of the 17th century. The Order, after Italy and France in Spain, where the monks receive arrive after the successes gained by Ferdinand V over the Moors. In the Saint Worsens, the emperor Maximilien accommodates them with devotion.

The Tiny ones respect part of its rules of life. During centuries, they wear a coarse cloth dress of black color which goes down to the heels, a wool belt tied of five nodes; they can take off this dress neither the day, nor the night. It is to them interdict to carry closed shoes, except on a journey, shoes of wood or sandals reminding the monks that they are among poorest. On a journey they go to foot or on the back of an ass or, only when they do not find an ass, on a mule or a horse.

Jules II, in 1512, allows the opening of an apostolic lawsuit for the canonization of François of Paule. Leon X who, by short Illius, dated July 7th, 1513, had authorized his private worship, canonizes it, on May 12th, 1519, by the bubble Excelsus Dominus, the first canonization of its pontificate, which rents as a François saint of Paule the force confused by the weakness, the science which swells yielding to the simplicity which builds.

During the religious revolution of the 16th century, its mortal remains is burned by reformed.

The family of François of Paule is extinct. But after the death of the last of Alesso, Saussaye and the of Ormesson held with the honor to put at the number of their first names that of the famous consolator of the last days of Louis XI. April 2nd 1745, in Paris, in the church of Tiny, Massillon pronounced the panegyric of François saint of Paule in front of the chancellor of Aguesseau and his wife, Jeanne d' Ormesson, who went down from the sister of the saint, Brigitte d' Alesso.

Notes and references of the article

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