the full Saint John of God story (11Mb pdf)

Transcription

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Brian O’Donnell O.H.
SJG03_FatherofPoor_FINAL.indd
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John of God
father of the poor
The Story of St. John of God Retold for our Times
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Introduction
L
ope Félix de Vega Carpio, the Spanish playwright of the 16th century, was so impressed by John
of God’s story that he marvelled: “John of God, what novel could be like your life.” I could not agree
more! And from experience I can say that it is even more fascinating to tell John of God’s story than
it is to hear it.
Nobody has told John of God’s story better than his first biographer, Francisco de Castro, whose “Story
of the Life and Holy Works of John of God, and the Institution of his Order and the Beginnings of His Hospital”
was written within thirty years of John’s death. It drew on the knowledge of John of God that inspired
and underpinned the daily life of Granada’s John of God Hospital of which Castro was the Rector.
However, when the Australasian Province of the Hospitaller Order of St. John of God decided to
publish this illustrated book as part of its Golden Jubilee celebrations in 1997 a text was required that
would be more concise than Castro’s and also take into account the fruits of recent research into
the saint’s life. Most of today’s new insights into the events of John of God’s life, and new data, have
been brought forward in two recent publications - José Maria Javierre’s Juan de Dios Loco en Granada,
and José Sánchez Martínez’s ‘Kénosis-Diakonía’ en el itinerario espiritual de San Juan de Dios. I have
drawn extensively on both documents in this retelling. In some chronological choices I have been
influenced by the research and publications of Brother Giuseppe Magliozzi of the Order’s Roman
Province.
I agreed to write this story and it was a pleasure and a privilege to do so. However it was also
mortification. I anguished every time I had to truncate an incident in John of God’s life or was
not able to explore various possibilities that offer themselves in explanation of some events. Only
occasionally have I left out, or paraphrased, John of God’s words when they are part of an event. The
basic facts of John of God’s life come to us from Castro and, in order to avoid repetitious endnotes, I
have not given specific attribution to him.
The need to be succinct compelled me to pass over some episodes in John of God’s life. When a
choice had to be made I left out incidents that seem to have been recounted originally mainly to
encourage piety in the reader. In a story of John of God retold in our more critical times such episodes
are more likely to have the opposite effect. For the complete story, I invite the reader to go to Castro’s
original story that I have merely retold.
That story was written in times when few people had a calendar, or even a clock. Events were
remembered in terms of “it happened on the Feast of St. James”, or “he was born on the day the
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Duke arrived home with his new bride”. Consequently, people who like to know the precise date of
an event could be disappointed in my narration. I suggest to them that they could allow the lack of
chronological precision to evoke a sense of the times in which the story unfolded.
As could be expected in regard to a story that focuses on the 16th century it contains some
inconsistencies and ambiguities. Such questions were addressed at a meeting of some of the Order’s
students of the life and times of St. John of God that took place at Granada from 1 to 4 April 1997.
When I have had to resolve incongruence in the story I have been influenced by the consensus of
that meeting or the more convincing interpretations that emerged at it. In order to achieve the
immediacy in language necessary in a retelling for our times, instead of using existing translations, I have
translated John of God’s words again directly from the original text of Francisco de Castro.
Finally, I chose to include “Father of the Poor” in the title of this work because that is the title by
which the ordinary people of Granada remember John of God today and with which they greet and
salute his statue or remains whenever they are carried in procession through the streets of their city.
Sydney
December 10, 1997
(50th anniversary of the first foundation
of the Order in Australia)
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8 March 1550
O
n Saturday, 8 March, 1550, the city of Granada in southern Spain awoke to the expected, but
unwelcome, news that: “John of God has died. The Father of the Poor is dead!”
Amongst the first to receive the dreaded tidings were John of God’s companions, and the poor and
sick, at his hospital on Los Gomeles Rise. Then the news spread rapidly through the market place and
streets of the city and people began to make their way to Casa de Los Pisa, the family home of Don
García de Pisa, where John had died.
By nine o’clock the crowd in front of the Casa de Los Pisa overflowed into the nearby Plaza Nueva.
Most of the people in the plaza were Granadinos of the lower stratas of society - they had to fall
back and give place to the nobles and leading citizens who pushed past them to enter the house to
view the body of the holy man or, at least, to secure a fitting place in the funeral cortege that was
assembling outside.
As they milled about in the plaza the poor were asking one another: “What will become of us? Who
will look out for us now that our Father has been taken from us?”
No one could answer those questions and the conversation increasingly focused on the man whom
they had loved in life and already missed in death.
Many of them could recall his arrival at Granada twelve years before when he appeared in the
streets of the city hawking books from door to door. Then he secured some space in the market that
flourished near the main entrance to the city—the Elvira Gate. There he sold his books at a modest
bookstall erected under a tarpaulin fixed to the wall against which he propped his larger volumes.
His speech bore a trace of the Portuguese accent of his childhood and, in the beginning, they had
called him “El Portugués”.
It became known that he had peddled books in the countryside around Gibraltar before coming
to Granada.
John was a very private man but during the years that followed his appearance in Granada, often
in conversations around the cooking fires and water cisterns of his two hospitals, he revealed
enough of himself for people to be able to piece together the story of his life before he came to live
amongst them.
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Birth and Infancy
They learned that, in 1495 at Montemor O Novo in Portugal, he had been born into the family of
Andrew Cidade.1 His parents named him João (John) and lovingly nurtured him as their only child.
The family was middle class and young John seemed destined to live a comfortable, ordinary sort
of life, eventually taking over the family business - the marketing of garden-produce.2 Montemor O
Novo lies at the centre of a fertile fruit producing region of Portugal and the Cidades were said to
have lived in Green Street.3
John’s destiny was shaped by an event that, effectively, destroyed the Cidade family. When he was
only eight years old he was taken from the Cidade home by a cleric and transported some 300
kilometres, across the border, into Spain and to estates of Count Fernando Alvarez de Oropesa where
his upbringing was entrusted to Don Francisco de Herruz, a gentleman who owed allegiance to the
Count.4
The Granadinos, when they recalled that part of John of God’s story, could be forgiven for exchanging knowing
looks. Cidade was a family name that indicated Jewish origins.5 In the “ethnic cleansing” of Jews (even those
converted to Christianity and known as the Conversos) that took place in the early 16th century on the Iberian
Peninsula, children were sometimes removed from “unfavourable” circumstances and placed with a “good
Christian family” with a view to ensuring their proper upbringing in the faith and their ultimate salvation.6
Childhood and Adolescence
Don Francisco de Herruz lived at Torralba de Oropesa and made a place in his household for John
whom he put to work with the shepherds who looked after his flocks. This brought John under the
tutelage and supervision of the flock-master whom everyone referred to as “el mayoral” (the boss).
Taught his trade and guided by “el mayoral”, John grew through childhood and adolescence and
passed into young manhood as a well trained and conscientious shepherd. As the flock-master’s right
hand man7 in the management of the estate’s flocks John was engaged in a serious enterprise.
Sheep husbandry was a key area of Spanish life in the 16th century. Before the development of the
colonies in the New World the production of wool and mutton was the basis of wealth and power in
Spain. Major sheep and landowners were united in a national association called “The Honourable
Assembly of the Guild of Shepherds”. This guild was a more powerful and prestigious association
than its title might indicate. It was a highly effective political force to which the Duke of Oropesa
would have belonged.8
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Early Manhood
In 1523 Spain’s Charles the 1st (who was also Emperor Charles the 5th of the Holy Roman Empire)
was at war with France’s Francis the 1st. Their armies engaged with one another at Fuentarrabía on
the northern Spanish/French border. The Count of Oropesa, now Don Francisco Alvarez de Toledo
y Pacheco, because of the allegiance he owed his King Emperor, sent a company of men-at-arms from
his estates to take part in the conflict. Don Juan Herruz, who had had military training and was the
eldest son of John’s protector, Don Francisco de Herruz, was put in command of the contingent.
John, now well into his twenties, sought inclusion in this force and went off to war excited by thoughts
of the adventures that he imagined might befall him as a soldier.
First Military Campaign
John and his companions, as 16th century infantrymen, used both crossbows and smoothbore small
arms and, in charges on enemy fortifications, faced canon. The longer-range musket was then coming
into use and it seemed to John and his comrades that war had reached a terrifying technological
level. John, with his pastoral background, would only be expected to be proficient in the use of
the crossbow which, compared with the ordinary bow, required less skill to aim and less strength to
pull. The matchlock or arquebus, which were then in use, would have been reserved for the more
experienced soldiers. In fact, we only hear of John being involved in sentry and foraging duties.
Two events at Fuenterrabía profoundly affected John’s future. They were episodes that brought him
face to face with the fragile and transient nature of life.
One of these events occurred when John, foraging near the French lines, was thrown by his horse.
The fall knocked him unconscious. On regaining his senses he realised that he was in mortal danger
of being captured. In fear and desperation he prayed to Mary, the Mother of Jesus, for rescue or for
the strength to save himself. Gradually his head cleared and he was able to crawl, and then hobble,
back to his own lines. For the remainder of his life he attributed his deliverance to the intercession
of Mary.
Images, left to right: The house where it is said John of God was born; Spanish shepherds as depicted in a 15th
century miniature; A ceramic mural in the marketplace of Oropesa; A portrait of Emperor Charles V by Titian.
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The second occurrence put his life in even greater danger. In camp he was posted as night guard over
some booty taken from the French. In every army, in every time, there are scroungers. John was the
victim of at least one of these when, during his watch, the goods that he was supposed to be guarding
were stolen.
His immediate superior, enraged by the loss, exercised his battlefield rights and ordered the
execution of John as a sentry who had failed in his duty.
John was standing on the scaffold, noose around his neck, when another officer rode by and stopped
to ask what was happening. When he learned the circumstances that had brought John to the gibbet
he asked that the sentence be revoked. His prestige was such that his request was agreed to, and John
was reprieved. However, he was immediately “dishonourably discharged” from his unit and sent home.
It was a humbled John who made his way back to Oropesa where he resumed the only trade he knew shepherding. As he walked his sheep from one pasture to another he had plenty of time to think and
repent of what had transpired in his life as a soldier.
Second Military Campaign
In 1532 the King Emperor became involved in another war that was to intrude on John’s life. This
was a campaign to resist the Ottoman invasion of central Europe by Turkish troops under Sultan
Suleiman II who had reached the outskirts of Vienna. This time Count Francisco Alvarez decided to
serve his liege lord by personally leading the Oropesa contingent to battle.
John learned of the Count’s preparations for this new military expedition and, tired of shepherding
or wanting to redeem his reputation after what had happened at Fuenterrabía, John “made up his
mind to join the retinue of the Count as, in effect, he did”.
John went off to war again, not as an infantryman this time but as a soldier-servant in the Count’s
headquarters party.
In his second campaign, secure within his lord’s personal entourage, John had no misadventures and
came to be well regarded by the rest of the expedition.
The campaign ended successfully with the Turks in retreat and John, after witnessing the Emperor’s
triumphal entry into Vienna9, returned with the Count by ship to Spain where his party disembarked
at the northwestern port of La Coruña.
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Return To Oropesa
John decided that, rather than go back to Oropesa, he would like to visit the scenes of his early
childhood in Portugal. With the Count’s permission, he made his way south to Montemor O Novo - a
distance of some 550 kilometres.
On arrival there he unsuccessfully sought his parents. Eventually he found an old uncle who told him
that both his parents were dead. His mother had died a few days after his abrupt departure for Spain
and his father, become a widower and childless, had joined a Franciscan community in Lisbon to live
the life of a monk until he died.
John was deeply disturbed by what had happened to his parents and decided that, as the only
surviving member of his family, he should put his life at God’s service.
He felt that, like his father, he had to leave familiar places in order to find God’s will for him. John
and his uncle, who did not expect to meet again, sadly took leave of each other and John once more
left the village that he had known so well as a child.
To Seville Region
From Montemor O Novo John went back again into Spain but not to Oropesa. Instead he continued
making his way south towards Andalusia and its capital, Seville.
On his 250 kilometre journey from Montemor O Novo to Seville John earned his nightly shelter and
food by doing odd jobs. As he approached Seville he met up with other travellers whose eyes were
fixed on the New World to which Seville was the main gateway. Like many adventurous Portuguese
and Spaniards of his time, John too may have felt attracted to the Indies or the Americas. If this
possibility entered his head he would have realised that, without seafaring or artisan skills, he
would have to pay for his passage. To earn money for this, or for some other purpose, John took
employment as a shepherd for a few months on the estates of a noblewoman named Doña Leonor
de Zúñiga near Seville. He later told people that, while working for her ladyship, he was struck by the
great care that people would take of their animals while being quite careless about the needs of poor
and sick human beings.
Images, left to right: A 16th century infantryman aims a crossbow; John prays to Mary when hurt and in danger
at Fuentarabia; John depicted as a shepherd; Sultan Suleiman II, commander of the Ottoman invasion of central
Europe; A 16th century painting of Seville.
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To North Africa
While in the region of Seville and in the employ of Doña Leonor John would have become aware
that the Spanish Inquisition regarded Conversos as unreliable conveyors of the Christian faith to the
newly discovered native peoples of the New World and had established a screening process at Seville
to prevent them from going to the colonies.10 If, in fact, John was of a Conversos family this would have
ruined any plans that he might have had to go out to the New World from Seville.
However, King John III of Portugal only introduced the Inquisition into his country in 1536 so up until
then, and for a while after, it was possible for John, as a Converso, to go to a Portuguese colony. John
went from Seville to Gibraltar (150 kilometres) on the southern coast of Spain with the intention of
crossing the Strait of Gibraltar to the Portuguese colony of Ceuta on the North African coast.
In the early 16th century Portugal had a number of colonies throughout the world but colonists
favoured the Indies and Brazil where plantations and trade could bring quick riches. They had little
regard for Ceuta because, located in an arid area, it existed primarily as a base for the protection of
Portugal’s home waters and coast from pirates. It was also a penal colony.
At Gibraltar John met a Portuguese knight, Don Luis de Almeida, who was preparing to cross to
Ceuta with his wife and four unmarried daughters. The King of Portugal, to punish certain offences
of Don Luis, had ordered him to leave his properties in Portugal and go to its least attractive colony
for an indefinite period. John, attracted perhaps by the prospect of free passage and a livelihood in
Ceuta, entered the service of Don Luis and sailed to that city with the Almeida family.
Images, left to right: An illustration of Gibraltar in the 16th century; A painting of Ceuta showing the fortifications
built to protect the city from pirates.
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Ceuta
John’s new master had promised him good treatment and a generous wage. However, once Don Luis
de Almeida and his family settled at Ceuta they quickly used up their modest supplies and finances
and became destitute. Given his situation, and the fact that all the members of his family had fallen
ill, Don Luis had to ask John to help the family in a way that went well beyond a servant’s obligations.
John had to obtain survival money for the household of Don Luis by taking work on the fortifications
that were being erected at Ceuta to protect the city against pirates. This Royal project was carried out,
essentially by convict work gangs, from 1536 to 1538. However, the fortifications were urgent so there
was also work available for unskilled, and casual, day-labourers.
John was in the ‘pickup line’ each morning offering himself for work on the fortifications and he
handed over his pay each evening to Don Luis, thus enabling all of them to eat enough to keep body
and soul together.
Work on the harbour walls, under a North African sun and harsh overseers, was hard and the hired
labourers were treated more like the convicts than employees. The lash landed on free backs just
as readily as it did on those of the convicts in the chain gangs. From time to time John and his
companions were so badly treated that they talked about giving it all up. However, they were virtually
destitute in a penal colony and lacked the money necessary for a berth on a ship to the mainland.
Some of them, in desperation, escaped by taking refuge in the nearby Muslim City of Tituan where
they, of necessity, converted to Islam.
When one of John’s friends did this he reacted by blaming himself and asking, almost in despair,
“How shall I answer for this brother of mine who has, in this way, chosen to separate himself from the body of holy
Mother Church and deny the truth of his faith just because he did not want to suffer a bit in his work?”
John’s emotional reactions were never half-measured and in this case his distress was so great that he
felt tempted to go in search of his runaway friend.
In the midst of this emotional turmoil John spoke with a Franciscan friar who, recognising the state
that John was in and that both his faith and life could be in danger, advised him to leave Ceuta
immediately and return to Spain.
John, in an act of obedience that required him to commit the de Almeida family to God’s providence,
returned to Gibraltar.
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Peddler of Books
John’s experiences at Montemor O Novo and Ceuta had made him more thoughtful about spiritual
things and he spent his first days in Gibraltar visiting its various churches. His desire to give his life to
God was growing stronger but he could not see yet how he was to do that.
Then, while sauntering through the market place one day he noticed some religious books and pictures
on sale. He had a small amount of money and he decided to invest it in some of the books and pictures
and to make a modest profit by re-selling them in the villages and castles of the Andalusian countryside.
John was never slow to put his plans into action and he immediately embarked on the life of an
itinerant book peddler. It was a life that he found quite satisfying. He liked to travel and he liked
people and now he was in constant contact with people from all walks of life. He was able to help
some of them in ways that went beyond just bringing good literature into their lives. He began to
carry a few secular books to attract the interest of people who were not immediately drawn to the
religious. After a while John concluded that he could make God better known and loved by selling
holy books and that this might be God’s plan for him.
John was now in his forties and, as the seasons changed from summer through autumn to winter, “it
seeming to him to be rather burdensome to be always going up hill and down dale, from place to place, with his
pack (of books), he decided to go to Granada and settle down there”.
Why Granada? No doubt John had often heard glowing accounts of this city which had seen the
reunification of Spain as a Christian nation. Even as a child at Oropesa John would have heard of
Granada in connection with the life of his illustrious fellow Oropesan, Hernando de Talavera, who
was the first Archbishop of Granada.
Legend would one day offer a mystical explanation for John’s choice of Granada. A future superior
of the Brothers at Granada inserted into John’s story the myth that, one day, while John was on the
road peddling his books, he rested by a small stream near the village of Gauzín about 50 kilometres
north of Gibraltar. On the bank of the stream he saw a small boy who held out a pomegranate
(granada, in Spanish) to him saying, “John of God, know that Granada will be your cross and through it you
will see Jesus in glory.”11
In the iconography of John of God this scene, reproduced by many artists, represents his decision to
go to Granada - a decision that certainly changed the direction of his life and his future. If he had
decided to go to a different city of Andalusia or anywhere else in Spain, today we might be calling
him St. John of God of Seville or St. John of God of Cordoba! That is, if some other city had received
him as Granada did!
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Granada
John’s Granada was a “tense, turbulent, dangerous city. A constant stream of travellers passed through it en
route to the colonies of the new Americas via the ports of Seville and Cadiz. The streets teemed with mercenaries,
adventurers, beggars, prostitutes and petty thieves. It was only a few years since Granada had been taken by the
Spanish from the Moors ...”12
John’s Granada was a city in transition. It was home to some 200,000 inhabitants. From its beginnings
Granada had been an Islamic city and many traces of Islam remained in the structures and life of the
city, especially in its many fountains and waterways. Mosques were converted into churches, and other
institutions, such as the Royal Hospital and the Royal College, were established as part of the Royal
efforts to Christianise the city as quickly as possible.
Some of those initiatives were slow in producing the desired result and the Royal Hospital was one
of them. Commenced in 1504, its construction was slow and sporadic and the first patients were
not admitted until 1526. Even then its utilisation was limited to the admission of about 30 syphilitic
persons twice a year (in Spring and Autumn) for as long as the mercury used in their treatment lasted
- not long! For a good part of the year the hospital was empty, until in 1535 (three years before John
of God came on the scene), the King Emperor ordered that one of the back wings of the hospital
should be given over to the containment and treatment of mentally ill people.
The people of Granada knew the first part of John of God’s story from his own words and from
hearsay. The second part - what he had done after arriving in their city - they knew from observation.
They had seen him go from being a stranger, to a newcomer, to a madman, to an eccentric, to a good
fellow, to (yes, they were prepared to say it now) a saint.
They remembered that it had all begun when John had only been in Granada a short time.
Images, left to right: Books provided John with an opportunity to travel and make contact with people (Vazquez);
John selling books at the marketplace; ‘View of Granada’ by Diego Velazquez; The site of John of God’s book stall
near Elvira Gate; A small boy guides John of God to Granada.
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Conversion
John, at his bookstall near the Elvira Gate, was one of the first to hear any news that circulated in
the city. He was particularly interested to hear that the noted theologian and spiritual director,
Master John de Ávila13, was to preach the occasional sermon at the solemn celebrations of the feast
of St. Sebastian “that the city of Granada then observed at the Hermitage of the Martyrs”. This hermitage,
established by the Catholic Monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, commemorated the Christians who
had died for their faith during the centuries that the Moors governed Granada. It was situated on
the slopes of the Alhambra - the Moorish complex of citadels, palaces and gardens that dominates
the city.
Father John de Ávila had been living in Granada for two years and was a good friend of the
Archbishop, Don Gaspar de Avalos, whom he was helping to establish a university. During his time
in Granada a group of disciples, priests and laity, drawn by his sermons and teachings, had gathered
around de Ávila . They assisted him in his many ministries and some of them formed what might be
called “the fish market group” that carried out a mission of charity to the poor who congregated in
that central area of the city.14
The feast day of Saint Sebastian, January 20, dawned and John joined the crowd of other Granadinos
that was moving down Elvira Street, through the Plaza Nueva, and up the ‘Los Gomeles Rise’15
towards the Alhambra. When John arrived at the Hermitage he visited its small church and then went
outside to where the sermon would be preached. He found a place near the podium on which the
preacher would stand.16 Father John took his place at the lectern and began his sermon. He focused
his remarks on what our human condition would be if God had not come down from his greatness to
share our human nature. He emphasised the folly of anyone who refused to be healed of his or her
physical and spiritual sickness by such a merciful Lord. He spoke of the blessedness of the poor, the
hungry, the sorrowful, the hated and the reviled. He pointed out that the rich, the endowed, the wellregarded are not to be envied because they have already received their consolation in this world.17
John’s reaction to the words of the preacher was extraordinary and unexpected - and not least by
himself. He had a sudden insight into the values of the gospel and how different they were to the
values that had influenced his life until then. He suddenly grasped that success in this world is not an
indication of God’s favour and that persons who seem to be worth nothing in the eyes of society can
be those who are most precious in the sight of God. The sermon both brought John to this realisation
and challenged him to change his attitude to life and his way of living it.
John accepted the challenge. No sooner was the sermon ended than he began shouting out appeals
for God’s mercy. Completely overtaken by the love of God and newly aware of the significance of his
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past sins he began to punish himself by rolling about on the ground and hitting his head against the
walls of the church. Observers concluded that he had lost his reason. This seemed confirmed when
he leapt to his feet and ran off down the hillside towards the town. Some young men who had been
loitering near the church followed him.
They, seeing more chance of being entertained by a bookseller gone mad than by the bustle of
people around the hermitage, ran after John as far as his lodgings, shouting after him: “Crazy, crazy”.
At the head of this shouting, jeering crowd John reached the place where he slept and stored his
merchandise. He burst through the door and began ripping apart his romantic novels and books on
secular subjects. However he took care not to destroy, but to give away, his books on religion and the
lives of saints. Finally he tore off most of his clothing, leaving himself wearing only a shirt and a pair
of trousers against the infamously cold winter temperatures of Granada.
In this state he went into the streets again, shouting that he wanted to be stripped of everything so
that he could imitate Jesus who died destitute and naked on the Cross. Some of the crowd followed
to see what he would do next. They saw him go into the main church of the city where he knelt down
crying out: “Mercy! Mercy, Lord God, on this great sinner who has so offended you!”
Not everyone in the crowd was amused at John’s actions. Several good men (perhaps members of
Ávila’s group?) took hold of him and began to lead him towards the house where Father John de
Ávila was staying.18 John went quietly with them and when they arrived they explained to the priest
what had happened since John ran from his sermon. Father John de Ávila took John away to a room
where together they talked alone for a while. John told his life story to Ávila who, it is interesting to
note, was of a Conversos family. Perhaps that was one of the reasons that these two men began to forge
the life-long bond that would exist between them. Ávila was so impressed by this dishevelled looking
penitent that, before their meeting ended, he had accepted him as a spiritual son and agreed to
guide his spiritual growth.
The nature and outcome of this meeting puts the ‘madness’ of John of God into proper perspective.
Certainly, the casual observer in Granada that day concluded from John’s dramatic reaction to Ávila
’s sermon that he had gone mad. However, in the midst of the behaviour that gave that impression,
Images, left to right: Ceramic tiles depicting the Catholic monarchs Ferdinard and Isabella; Gateway into part of
the area once occupied by the Hermitage of the Martyrs; Hermitage of St. Sebastian, Granada on whose feast day
John of God changed the direction of his life (Vazquez).
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John met with an insightful and experienced master of the spiritual life who decided that he was
rational enough to be able to benefit from spiritual direction.
Ávila ’s words to John encouraged him to follow the path along which the Lord had begun to lead
him. They also intensified his desire to subdue his body and pride. He had discovered, almost
accidentally, how easy it is to bring scorn and derision down on oneself. In his new zeal for penance
he wanted to be taken for a madman—someone who in those times was despised and derided, rather
than as someone who had received a great grace.
So, going back into the nearby Plaza Bibarrambla, he hurled himself to the ground and rolled about
in the mud and began to perform acts of humiliation that jeering onlookers urged on him. Putting
some of the slime from the ground into his mouth he shouted out all the sins that he remembered
having committed: “I have been a great sinner against my God and I have offended Him in this and that.
Well then, what does a traitor like me deserve for having done that? Above all he should be hurt and abused and
regarded as the lowest in the world. He should be thrown in the mud and slime where the slops are dumped.”
John kept this up for three days; often falling exhausted from hunger, cold and lack of sleep. His
actions and appearance convinced many Granadinos that they had a madman loose in their streets.
Images: top, John of God sorrowfully tells his story to John de Avila; opposite, Plaza Bibarrambla.
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Hospitalisation
Psychiatric illness was a mystery in the times of John of God. However not everyone in Granada saw it
as something frightening and deplorable. Christianity at that time was able to incorporate individuals
and groups known as Holy Madmen (Locos Santos) and Granada had a strong Islamic heritage of
seeing mentally ill persons as ‘touched by God’. Finally two men who were not repulsed by John of
God’s behaviour rescued him from a situation that seemed to be doing no good to anyone and took
him to the Royal Hospital19 where, for the last few years, the insane of the city had been admitted and
treated (provided they were signed in by a one of the Hospital’s Visitors - and there was room).20 They
entrusted him to the care of the superintendent, asking him to treat John with kindness and to put
him in a room on his own where he would not see anyone and would get some rest.
The superintendent of the hospital had already seen John in his ‘madness’ around the town and had
reached his own conclusions. So, instead of putting his new patient in a quiet place he immediately
handed him over to the warders for appropriate treatment. The prevailing common therapy for
mental illness was a programme of floggings and drenchings with cold water. The objective was to
inflict enough pain to shock the patient out of his or her madness back into sanity. So John was
quickly stripped naked, tied up and given a lashing with a double knotted whip.
John was ready to accept this treatment for himself as a form of penance but seeing it inflicted on
others - especially since it had such negligible results - upset him. On behalf of his fellow patients he
reproached the warders and asked them why they took so much satisfaction from inflicting pain on
those in their care. He told them that it would be more therapeutic to wash these sick people, and
feed them and treat them like human beings. He reminded the warders that the revered Catholic
Monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabel, had endowed the hospital so that the poor would receive proper
treatment in their illnesses.
Meanwhile, Father John de Ávila , knowing the reason and motivation for John’s behaviour, sent
one of his followers to visit him and find out if he were happy about his situation and to give him the
message: “ … whilst you have time, start testing yourself for when you will go out into the world ... “. Being
remembered by his spiritual director when his previous friends and acquaintances had forgotten or
distanced themselves from him touched John deeply.
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“May Jesus Christ bring me to the time, and
grant me the favour, of having a hospital where
I can receive the poor and abandoned mentally
ill and serve them as I wish...”
John of God
John saw the negative experiences of his hospitalisation as a way of taming the flesh that had led
him astray in the past. He used to say to the warders while undergoing ‘treatment’ at their hands:
“Brothers, give it to this treacherous flesh, enemy of what is good, that has been the cause of all my wickedness having obeyed it, it is only right that we both pay, because we both sinned.”
John’s time in hospital gave him a sense of purpose and direction which he expressed in a prayer that
he used to offer at that time: “May Jesus Christ bring me to the time, and grant me the favour, of having a
hospital where I can receive the poor and abandoned mentally ill and serve them as I wish.”
In this prayer John indicated the contribution that he would make to the ministry of healing and to
the field of health care in general: “and serve them as I wish”. His wish was to both alleviate their pain
and to help them transform it into something that brought them closer to God, who having become
human, shared their experience of suffering.
To realise his dream John needed to leave the Royal Hospital and he knew that his release depended
on his showing clear signs of rationality. He desisted from his ‘mad’ behaviour and began to act
sensibly. When the warders noted this they congratulated themselves on the effectiveness of their
treatment and removed his shackles so that he could move about the hospital. He immediately
began to do what he could to improve the conditions of his fellow patients by cleaning the wards
and latrines.
John was always happy to help people wherever he found them in need and he spent some months
more in the hospital, acting as a kind of unpaid auxiliary nurse. This was his situation when, on the
afternoon of May 16, 1539, the funeral cortege of the Empress Isabel, wife of the King Emperor
Charles, reached Granada from Toledo. Her body was to be buried in the Royal Chapel.
Father John de Ávila came to Granada for the Empress’s obsequies and preached at the Cathedral
on 26 May. He met John at this time and suggested to him that it was about time to ask the Rector
of the Hospital, Father Miguel Muñoz, for a certificate of discharge from care.21 John did that and
at the end of May, with certificate in hand and in the same state as he had arrived at the hospital - in
threadbare clothing, bareheaded and barefooted - he departed with the good wishes of warders and
patients for the home of his spiritual father at Baeza, a town situated a little more than 100 kilometres
from Granada, where Ávila had gone to establish a university.
Image: John in the Royal Hospital where he experienced, with fellow patients, the psychiatric treatment of his times.
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Guadalupe
Father John de Ávila , from Baeza and during his return visits to Granada, kept in touch with
the group of his followers who worked with the poor around the city’s fish market. He saw John
as a future member of this group who, because of his recent experience of nursing and medical
treatment, would be particularly sensitive to the needs of the sick. With this in mind Ávila worked out
a programme of spiritual and technical preparation that John should complete before returning to
Granada. John spent the months from June to November at Baeza where Ávila , as a preliminary step
to his establishing a university there, had started a school for boys.
Ávila ’s programme for John was that he should learn what he could at Baeza, on both the spiritual
and academic levels 22 and then go north to Guadalupe in Extremadura in the west central part of
Spain. This would give John an opportunity to deepen his spirituality in prayer at the shrine of the
Virgin of Guadalupe, which just happened to be surrounded by a number of excellent hospitals
where he could learn some nursing and medical skills.
Guadalupe had eleven hospitals at that time - four of them being what we would call today ‘general
hospitals’ and seven being a combination of specialised hospital and hostel for pilgrims. Guadalupe
was one of the best health care complexes of Europe with its hospitals and respected medical school.
Although it was against canon law, the Jeronymite Friars, who were responsible for the shrine and its
associated hospitals, had received permission from Pope Eugene IV to practice, and teach, the skills
of physicians and surgeons.
On foot, John made the 300 kilometres journey to Guadalupe, travelling during most of the month
of November 1539. The weather was cold and his clothing unsuitable. The road was rough and he
was without shoes. He had no money so he had to beg, or work, for his food along the way. From his
experiences as a traveller he had developed the practice of gathering, as he went along, a bundle of
firewood to give to those who provided him with food and lodging. If, when he arrived somewhere
for the night, he found a hospital in the place, he would go directly there and hand in the firewood
and ask for the food and shelter that would satisfy his very simple needs.
Soon after arriving at Guadalupe John went to see the little (59 centimetres high), brown statue of
the Virgin and to pray before it. He then sought accommodation in one of the city’s hospitals.
Without doubt John, always ready to work for his keep and with his sense of being called to care for
the abandoned, was soon working in one of the hospitals. There he would have been able to learn
some health care skills in an environment influenced and shaped by the guidelines followed by the
hospital personnel of the Jeronymites’ Guadalupe hospitals. These described a well ordered hospital
as one that: provides good food, and a comfortable, clean bed; a good physician who knows the patients; and a
good administrator and charitable carers - all of which will convert the evil of pain into something good.23
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After some time at Guadalupe, feeling ready for the mission that he and Father John de Ávila
had planned for him, John returned to Baeza to report to his spiritual father. Then, with his
encouragement and blessing, he continued on to Granada.
Return to Granada
John arrived back in Granada as dawn was beginning to light the sky. He waited for a church to
open and then assisted at Mass. His fast still unbroken, he went up on to the slopes of Sacromonte
to gather a bundle of firewood to sell. As he was coming down to the city he began to think about
the reception he was likely to get in a place where he would be remembered as “El Loco”. The dread
of being received as a fool overcame him and he could not force himself to go any further. Seeing
a poor woman who looked to be in need, he gave the bundle of firewood to her and went back up
hungry onto the mountainside where he remained for the rest of the day. He spent the day agonising
about his cowardice.
The next morning, determined that willpower would overcome his emotions this time, John arose
early, attended mass and gathered another bundle of firewood. Making his way to the city he again
began to feel ashamed. Realising how important it was to overcome this psychological obstacle to his
ever having an effective presence in Granada he berated himself saying:
“Don Ass, who does not want to enter Granada with firewood because it embarrasses you and threatens your
honour. Well, you’ve lost this one so take yourself off, with your firewood, to the main square where you can be seen
and recognised by all those who know you. That will take away your self-conceit and pride.”
Thus motivated John went into the city and to the central square where everyone quickly noticed
him. As he had expected, some people began to jeer at him and ridicule him. His gaunt appearance
and ragged clothing made a poor impression.
He took all this in good part and, always liking a pun or riddle, answered the jeers good-humouredly
with a remark that nobody present fully understood: “Brothers and sisters, what you see before you in me is like
the game of Birlimbao, the game in which you plainly see three galleys and a ship but in which the more you see the less
you know what is really happening.” He was referring to a Portuguese children’s game in which the main
player’s eyes are covered and he or she has to ignore the numbers being chanted to them in doggerel
while the other children make representations of a different number of vessels pass in front of them.
John was saying, obliquely, to the people of Granada that there was more to him and his life than they
could hope to judge from appearances.
Images, left to right: A view of Guadelupe; The Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe; John of God collected firewood and
alms daily (Vazquez); Ceramic tiles in Montomor O Novo depicting John of God’s visit to John de Avila at Baeza.
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‘Sleeping Rough’ in Granada
Tolerated, if not welcomed, in the streets of Granada, John provided for his most basic needs at this
time by gathering and selling firewood. He had nowhere to live and, although temperatures were
mild, “sleeping rough” was risky.
Father John de Ávila had instructed John: “As soon as you get to Granada go immediately to the confessor
I spoke to you about. He will be your spiritual director and you should not undertake anything of importance
without first consulting him about it”. John had lost no time in going to meet his confessor, Fray
Domingo Alvardo. Fray Domingo was a member of the “Ávila circle” in Granada. Soon after John had
connected with him (and perhaps on his recommendation) an important man of the city who was
also an admirer of Ávila, Don Miguel Aviz Venegas, offered John shelter at night.
Casa Venegas
Don Miguel, the grandson of Boabdil (originally Abu Abdallah) the last Moorish king of Granada,
was respected and wealthy. His family home was really a palace. We do not know how John and
Don Miguel came to know one another. (Don Miguel may have been one of Ávila ’s “circle” or Fray
Domingo Alvarado could have been his confessor.)
In any case, he told John that he could shelter at night inside the vestibule of his house. This gave
John a safe place in which to sleep and he was grateful for it.
John was now moving in a circle of poverty in which he met other men and women who, unlike
him, had no place to sleep. He felt that he could not go home at night and leave those of them who
were sick and weak to spend the night crouched in doorways in fear of being hunted off by the city
watchmen in the early hours of the morning.
His first reaction was to resolve to do something about this situation as soon as possible. His second
reaction was, in the meantime, to share his good fortune with the weakest and sickest of them by
inviting them to come and shelter with him in the entrance to the Venegas house.
This arrangement soon came to an abrupt end. Don Miguel came home one night to find the
vestibule of his house so completely taken up with the people whom John had brought there that
he was unable to manoeuvre his horse through them to his own front door.24 This, together with
the complaints that he had been receiving from his family and servants, convinced Don Miguel that
John’s good impulses should be directed away from the Venegas house to a more appropriate part of
the city.
22
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Fish Market
Don Miguel was aware that Ávila ’s “fish market group” was still working with, and for, the poor who,
at night, huddled away from the cold under the closed stalls of the market and the work-benches and
scaffolding around the cathedral which was then under construction.
This group, under the leadership of Juan Loarte, had set up a shelter in the area of the fish market
“to which they brought all the destitute ones that they came across in the streets.” 25 They had tried this out for a
month in premises at the rear of the Star Inn. Their initiative attracted such “a multitude of very sick poor
people” that it was decided to take another, bigger, house in a street in the vicinity of the fish market.
Father John de Ávila (perhaps at the behest of Don Miguel) told John to go to the Loarte shelter and
exercise his charity there where he himself could sleep and where he could bring ‘home’ the poor
people he encountered as he went around the city.
Lucena Street 26
This shelter was in or near Lucena Street and, since the other members of Ávila ’s “fish market
group” were occupied during the day in business or studies and John had no such commitments, he
soon took over responsibility for it: that is, the admission of needy people, the organisation of the
services and the collection of alms for their care.
Soon this shelter became crowded with people, many of them too sick to leave in the morning after
they had sheltered for the night. On the advice of Father John de Ávila , John of God rented other
larger premises.
John bought some second-hand blankets and rush mats for his residents to sleep on. Some charitable
women of the city gave John some beds so that the sick would be more comfortable and his refuge
gained the extra dimension that made it into a hospital.
The function of a hospital in John’s time could be quite broad and he described his hospital in these
words: “This house is of a general nature and it receives all sicknesses and every class of person; here there are
cripples, defectives, lepers, dumb, mad, paralytics, people with skin troubles as well as aged folk and many children.”
Images, left to right: A portrait of Boabdil, the last Moorish king of Granada and the grandfather of Don Miguel;
Casa Venegas where John of God found shelter at night; The Calle Lucena where John of God began his first
hospital (Vazquez).
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A Hospital
People recognised that John was doing something good in taking in needy and sick people and
looking after them. But that, in itself, was not something new. Throughout history, especially
Christian history, men and women had often done what John was doing. When John established his
hospital, there were already some 14 hospitals in Granada. These included the Royal Hospital, the
Charity Hospital for women, the Corpus Christi Hospital for the physically injured and the Diocesan
Hospital of St. Ana for acute infections.
Typically, in John’s times, a hospital had between 20 and 50 beds and addressed a particular
pathology. Many hospitals were established and endowed by an individual as a result of a vow or in
thanksgiving for a divine favour received. The person or group who received the endowment and ran
the hospital often developed a vested interest in seeing that there would be surplus left over for their
own enrichment from the patron’s annual grant to the hospital. Such administrators would not take
more patients than the number of endowed beds; and they would not take people with an illness that
did not come within the terms of the endowment.27
It was in this respect that John of God made an impression. He refused no one, and he took in
people with all kinds of sickness. Plainly his aim was to help the poor and the sick - not to have
a budget surplus. This made him noteworthy and talked about throughout the city and the
surrounding countryside.
There was also something new about the relationship that John had with his patients. He did not act
like a benefactor towards them. He related to them as their brother. He was in solidarity with them
and gave priority to their needs rather than his own preferences and convenience.
People started to recognise the worth of John’s contribution to the care of the poor and sick in their
city and merchants began to give him credit so that he could buy some of the things his hospital
needed. Help also began to reach John in the form of donations of blankets, sheets, pillows, clothing
and other items.
Image, top: John of God tends to the sick.
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25
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Questing
The people John was helping could not contribute much, if anything at all, to what was necessary
for their sustenance and care. So John had to go out begging for them in the streets of the city. He
invented a new way of doing this. Instead of standing with a begging bowl, or extended hand, by
church doors in the centre of the city like other beggars, each evening John went from house to
house with a large basket over his shoulder and two pots in his hands. As he went along each street
he called out: “Brothers and sisters, who wants to do themselves some good? Who wants to do some good for the
love of God?” This was a clear reference to the Christian gospel imperative of storing up treasure for
oneself in heaven by doing good works on earth. The point was not lost on the people of Granada.
They responded generously to John’s appeal for help. As Granadinos, they had a strong tradition of
alms giving. Granada had been an Islamic city for seven centuries and one of the five essential duties
of Islam is to give alms generously. Christians, in a time when there were virtually no state health or
social services, took it for granted that they had to offer charity when and where it was required.
John, in his evening questing, received money, pieces of bread or whole loaves, meat or leftovers from
the family’s own meal.
When he arrived back at his hospital with what he had collected he would come through the door
calling his ‘family’ together with the words: “God bless you brothers and sisters. Pray to the Lord for those who
have been good to you.” Then he would heat up the food that had been donated to him and share it out.
After the meal was over he cleaned up, tidied the house and brought back fresh water for the night
from the nearby public cistern. John had the support of Ávila ’s “fish market group” and other
persons but, in his earliest days, he was the only one with a 24-hour day commitment to his work.
The Page Boy
Even though Father John de Ávila and his disciples in Granada encouraged John, the general
population had its suspicions, or at least reservations, about this unusual man. This attitude changed
significantly after an incident that occurred when he was begging alms from people gathered in the
patio of the Palace of the Inquisition. In the centre of the patio was a fountain and, excited perhaps
by derogatory remarks about John from some of the bystanders, an impish page boy came up behind
him and shoved him into the water. John, soaked to the skin, got out of the pool and people watched
to see what would happen. John showed none of the anger that the crowd expected to see. He said
a few quiet words to the pageboy and departed in his wet clothes. People who saw this incident were
impressed by it and the story quickly circulated in the city. From that day John’s reputation improved
steadily amongst his fellow citizens.
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Prostitutes
John’s spirituality, like that of many of his contemporaries, focused on the passion and death of Jesus
of Nazareth. From the time of his conversion he was conscious always of being in the presence of a
God who loved him enough to die a tortured death for him.
John, as a consequence of that realisation, felt that there was only one thing worthwhile in life—to
eliminate evil and promote good.
In addition to his other activities John now began a practice that, at best, raised eyebrows and, at
worst, caused him to be suspected anew and criticised. Every Friday, the day on which he was most
conscious of the death of Jesus, he visited one or other of the brothels of the town. His purpose was
to persuade at least one of the women to give up her dehumanising and sinful way of life.
His technique was to enter the brothel and go up to one of the women and say: “My child, I will pay you
what any other would pay and a bit more. All I ask is that you listen to a couple of words from me in your room.”
Once they were in her room he invited her to sit down. Then he knelt and held between them a small
crucifix. Next, without any reference to her misdeeds, he started to accuse himself of his own sins and
ended by praying for God’s pardon. Often the woman would be moved by this experience to reject
her life of vice and agree to leave the brothel with John.
For some women that was easier said than done - they were in bondage to the brothel-keeper and
needed to be bought out of their situation. John would brook no obstacle to the liberation of the
women and he would either get the necessary money from amongst the noble and wealthy ladies of
the city or sign a promissory note for the amount in question.
The restoration of a prostitute to normal life was a serious endeavour. John persevered in the task
until he brought it to a satisfactory conclusion. Some of these women became helpers in his hospital
and cared for the children he had taken in. Others felt drawn to a life of repentance and he placed
them with convents of nuns. Most wanted to marry and he found husbands and provided dowries for
them. His Friday visits to the brothels were only the first (and easiest) acts in some long-running life
dramas in which John of God became involved. Once, after an absence from Granada seeking alms, he
returned in time to be present at a ceremony in which sixteen of his ‘ladies’ married at the one time.
Image: John of God the man of prayer.
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‘Robbed’ by a Marquis
John once said that if something in his possession were asked of him in the name of God, he felt
obliged to give it over in its entirety. It was as though he had made a private vow to that effect! 28 If
someone asked him for ten ducats, and John had ten ducats, the person would get them and would
not be fobbed off with, say, five or seven.
There are many examples of that attitude in John’s story. One such is the story of the night that he
called on Don Pedro Enriquez, Marquis de Tarifa, who happened to be staying in Granada to ask him
for some money for his work. He found Don Pedro gambling with some friends. They all responded
to John’s appeal by putting together a purse of twenty-five ducats that John took away with him, well
pleased with the evening’s work.29
Don Pedro, on the spur of the moment, decided to test John’s sincerity and honesty. He quickly
disguised himself and hurried off to waylay John on his way back to his hospital in the darkness.
Keeping his face covered and changing his voice he stopped John saying:
“Brother John, I am a gentleman of some standing, but an out-of-towner and poor. I am here in connection with a
lawsuit and I am in dire straits because I need much to maintain my honour. I have been informed of your charity
and I beg you to give me some help me so that I do not fall into giving some offence to God.”
John noted the man’s appearance and words and replied: “Give me to God! (a common saying of his),
let me give you what I’ve got on me”. Taking the twenty-five ducats from his bag he offered them to the
man who took them, thanked John, and went on his way.
When Don Pedro returned to his friends at the gaming table and told them what had happened they
all congratulated themselves that they had met a truly honest man in John.
The next morning the Marquis called on John, having sent word that he wanted to see his hospital.
When he arrived he began to tease John saying: “What’s all this, Brother John, that they tell me about your
having been robbed last night?” John replied: “Give me to God, nobody robbed me.”
From John’s point of view someone had asked in God’s name and he had given in God’s name.
Where is the robbery in that?
The Marquis returned home and arranged for a hundred and fifty loaves of bread, four sheep and
eight chickens to be sent around to John’s hospital. He continued the practice of sending donations
of food to John’s hospital while he was in Granada.
28
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“It is not so much the example of others we
imitate as the reflection of ourselves in their
eyes and the echo of ourselves in their words.”
Eric Hoffer
The Basis of a Brotherhood –
Reconciliation
John of God, long before he established his second hospital on Los Gomeles Rise, was attracting
some men to him who not only wished to help him in his works but also wanted to follow his example
of a life completely committed to helping the poor. Eric Hoffer, the American philosopher, said: “It is
not so much the example of others we imitate as the reflection of ourselves in their eyes and the echo
of ourselves in their words.”
Two of the men whose lives were changed by seeing themselves reflected in the eyes and words of
John were Antón Martín and Pedro Velasco.
At the same time as John of God was beginning his work of charity in Granada these two men were
engaged in a very different matter. Pedro Velasco was the scion of a wealthy Granadino family and,
in a falling out over women and money, he had killed another Pedro - Pedro of Aragón who was the
brother of Antón Martín. Antón had come to Granada from Aduanas on Spain’s east coast where he
was employed as a city watchman. His life’s purpose had become the prosecution of Velasco for the
murder of his brother.
Pedro Velasco had many relatives and friends in Granada and they exerted their influence to slow
down the judicial process, hoping that Antón would either tire of the matter or be persuaded to
withdraw his charge. Antón did run out of money and, to live, became a protector of prostitutes in
the area that took in the western corner of the fish market and the Bibarrambla Square.
It is most likely that John, coming and going through the fish market and its adjacent square, and
knowing many prostitutes from his work amongst them, sometimes met and got to know Antón Martín.
One day John and Antón encountered one another in Calle Colcha - a street named after the quilts
made and sold there - and John, probably not for the first time, asked Antón to forgive the killer of
his brother. However, this time in desperation John dropped to his knees in the street and implored
Antón, by the Passion of Christ, to forgive the man who had wronged him and his family.
Antón was moved to forgiveness by John’s actions and words and the two went together to the prison
of the city where Antón withdrew his accusation and Pedro was released. Both men, reconciled as
Images, left to right: John of God the man of prayer; Detail of a sculpture of John of God by German sculptor Ignaz
Günther, 1770.
29
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a result of John’s intervention and repenting of their previous actions, went to live with him at his
hospital and became his first and closest companions.
Although John had not gone out recruiting followers to live with him and serve the poor, he accepted
with equanimity the spontaneous formation of a brotherhood (hermandad) around him. Such was
not unusual at that time—in fact so many brotherhoods came into existence that, about twenty years
after John of God’s death, Pope St. Pius V felt impelled to bring some order into the situation by
publishing the Bull Lubricum Vitae Genus that required such groups to decide whether or not to adopt
a recognised Rule, take vows and become Religious Congregations.30
Los Gomeles Rise
Soon after Granada had been taken from the Moors and the process of its Christianisation launched
by royal command, a community of Franciscan Nuns had come from Castile to live at the top of
the steeply sloping street leading to the Alhambra called Los Gomeles Rise. This location proved
unsuitable for the nuns and by 1540 they had moved to a better location near the Los Molinos Gate.
Their empty convent became available for other purposes.
Some of John of God’s supporters, including Doña Francisca de Cáceres whose daughter, Leonor
de Cáceres had facilitated the transfer of the nuns to a new location, recommended to him that
this building be bought so that he could transfer there from the centre of the city. He, seeing the
advantages of the new site, agreed and, with money that he had collected and donations of his
benefactors, the property was purchased for 400 ducats.31
The move to ‘Los Gomeles’ was the watershed in the process of John of God’s acceptance by the
people of Granada. After moving to his second hospital John ‘never looked back’ as far as public
acceptance and support was concerned. While still near the fish market he had been seen by some
people as a dubious character who had been treated for psychiatric illness and attracted to himself
the riffraff of the city. We can also note that the Los Gomeles Rise was in a much better part of the
city than that occupied by the fish market and its environs. The willingness of his wealthy supporters
to set him up at Los Gomeles shows their confidence in what he was doing, and in its basic integrity
and permanence, and the unlikelihood of their initiative coming to embarrass them.
Images, left to right: The abandoned convent in Los Gomeles Rise became John of God’s second hospital
(Vazquez); A statue of St John of God by De Agapit Vallmitjana to be seen in the entrace hall of the Order’s
children’s hospital at Barcelona, Spain; A letter showing John of God’s signature.
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Name and Dress
Although John may have called, and thought of himself as, ‘Don Ass’, his fellow Granadinos had a
much higher opinion of him. One day, John forwent his simple meal at home to dine with his friend
Don Miguel Muñoz, who had known and supported him from his earliest days in Granada when, as a
long time disciple of Father John de Ávila and Rector of the Royal Hospital, he had overseen John’s
admission to hospital and had signed his certificate of discharge.
Muñoz was a zealous pastor who, on 28 January 1540, had been nominated Bishop of Tuy - a city
some 80 kilometres from Granada. As Bishop of Tuy, the King Emperor called on him to assist in
the government of his realm by serving as President of the Chancellery of Valladolid. When the
appointment of a President of the Chancellery of Granada was delayed, Don Miguel Muñoz served,
for some months, as Visitor of that Chancellery.
At dinner Muñoz asked John how people referred to him in the city. The man whom some had
already dubbed “John of the Poor” replied that he was known simply as ‘John’. The bishop said to John
that he should be called ‘John of God’. John acquiesced to that, saying: “If God so wishes”. From then on
everyone began to call him ‘John of God’.
Many people in John’s time were called “of” somewhere or something, e.g., ‘de Ávila ’, ‘de los Cobos’,
‘de Córdoba’, ‘de Toledo’, ‘de Africa’, etc. John’s social history, as known in Granada, did not identify
him strongly with any particular place. Ciudad, the Spanish version of the surname Cidade, which
Castro never mentions and which we do not hear from John’s own lips, might have been taken as
indicating Jewish ancestry and compromised his work and popular support. John had gone past the
stage of being called ‘the Portuguese’ and even less ‘El Loco’. It seems that the bishop thought that
John needed some sort of patronymic and, given John’s evident orientation and the danger of reattaching to him the Conversos name that he seems to have avoided using, was inspired to say that the
surname most appropriate for him would be “of God”.
John did not exclusively enjoy the appellation of God, which can sound somewhat awkward at first
hearing to the ears of English-speakers. In Spain, and probably elsewhere in Europe, the words of God
were sometimes given as a surname to foundlings, or applied to people of outstanding goodness.32
Images overleaf, left to right: Frontispiece of the first edition of Francisco de Castro’s life of John of God, published
in 1585. It shows John of God in typical dress; John of God begging for bread to feed his patients; Columbus
receiving gifts of gold from the Indians of Watling Island.
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The bishop also seems to have been in a mood to settle, while still in Granada, how John would be
seen, called and dressed in the future. John of God was prone to exchange whatever he was wearing
at the time with poor men whom he met on the street who needed new clothes. This exchange often
left John of God wearing very ragged smelly clothes. However, as the bishop said to John of God, this
meant that his clothing could disgust and repulse people who were devoted to him and invited him
to their table.
So the bishop said: “Brother John of God, just as you take that name from here for the rest of your life, you will take
also the way to clothe yourself. So now you are to dress yourself in underwear, serge trousers and a flannel tunic.”33
John of God agreed to this and so the bishop immediately sent someone out to buy these items which
were readily available in the marketplace and he presented the articles to John of God with his own
hands. John of God wore this form of dress until the day he died. And those of his companions who
emulated his ascetical and dedicated life-style did the same.
More Space Needed
Even the new larger premises at Los Gomeles did not meet the demands made on John of God’s
hospitality. Besides caring for vagrants, itinerants and the sick, John of God helped widows, orphans,
the ashamed poor, people with lawsuits, wounded soldiers and farm labourers who were unemployed
because of the disastrous drought of that time.
He did his best to help everyone that came to him and tried never to send anyone away disappointed.
He generously gave whatever material help he could. When he could not help people materially he
listened to them and encouraged them to have hope.
At the initiative of Doña Francisca de Cáceres a wing was added to the hospital to increase the available
space. This wing was constructed hurriedly and in wet weather. It collapsed before the end of the year in
which it was built.34
A Third Hospital Conceived
Doña Francisca de Cáceres was upset, naturally, by the collapse of the wing she had added to the
hospital. In December that year, although the exchange of Christmas visits preoccupied the nobility
of Granada, time was found for a meeting at the Alhambra between the Marquis de Mondéjar, Doña
Francisca and Doña Leonor Cáceres (mother and daughter), and Father Diego de Linares, the Prior
of the Jeronymite Friars. They soon called in Father John de Ávila and then went to talk things over
with Archbishop Gaspar de Avalos. In this meeting it was decided that no further additions should be
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made to the Los Gomeles hospital but that they should look for land on which to build a new hospital
for John of God. They expected to begin the construction of such a hospital with funds that could be
made available for such a purpose from the legacy of a bishop of Gaudix for whom Don Gaspar de
Avalos, although no longer Archbishop of Granada, was executor.35
The following year work began on the construction of the new hospital on land that had been made
available by the Jeronymite monks through the good offices of Prior Diego de Linares.36
The land given by the Jeronymites was insufficient for the planned hospital and Doña Francisca went and
discussed the matter with the authorities of the city. They acceded to Doña Francisca’s request and gave
land that could have been set aside for a public street to be used for the construction of the hospital.
Although John of God knew that this was happening he seems to have given all his attention to the
day to day problems of maintaining the existing hospital.
Ashamed Poor
John of God had plenty to keep him busy within his hospital. However, his concern for others was
limitless and, for some reason, he was particularly sensitive to a group of people that could be called
the ashamed poor. These were people who had not been born into poverty but had been made poor by
a phenomenon that overtook Spanish society at that time.
The inflow of wealth from the New World, and the demands of its colonisers for supplies and
equipment from home, brought about the imbalance between available currency and available goods
that we know today as inflation. It was a new experience for the Spain of John’s times and people
on a fixed income saw its purchasing power shrivel to almost nothing. Amongst these were spinsters
and single mothers and retired clerks and other functionaries. Their previous experience of life and
their treasured standing in the community made it very difficult, if not psychologically impossible, for
them to beg. When John of God heard about such people he would go to see them and he took many
of them under his wing. He begged for them also and bought them bread, meat, fish, charcoal and
the other things they needed to survive.
Having seen to their bodily needs, John of God turned his attention to how these people occupied
themselves at home. He was no friend of idleness. He went to the merchants and got for them silk,
wool and linen from which the women could make clothes. He would visit them from time to time to
talk about their work and also spiritual matters.
John of God always wished to offer hospitality to others in a particular way. What was his way? To
answer that question it is only necessary to watch a day unfold in what was being called John of God’s
hospital on Los Gomeles.37
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A Day in John of God’s Hospital
The day began with John of God coming out of his little room at dawn and calling out to everyone in
the house: “Brothers and sisters, let’s give thanks to Our Lord just like the little birds are doing.”
Then John of God led the patients and residents in saying some prayers while one of his brothers
went to the itinerants’ kitchen and did the same there. John of God, who knew what it was to be an
itinerant, would speak to each of them before they departed, giving them whatever help he could,
especially in the way of clothing that had been given to him for that purpose.
Not all the itinerants would be planning to leave that day so John of God would say to the younger
of them: “Come on brothers, let us go and do something for Christ’s poor people!” Then he would lead them
up onto the slopes of the Alhambra or Sacromonte to collect firewood. Each of them, John of God
included, would bring back a big bundle of firewood for the house or the poor.
For itinerants and beggars who did not need nursing John of God had set up within his hospital a
‘night shelter’. It could comfortably accommodate up to two hundred people and had its own kitchen.
Once breakfast was over and he had made his rounds of the house, before going out into the city
begging, John of God used to walk up Los Gomeles and go through the Imperial Gate into the
grounds of the Alhambra. Waiting for him in the woods, strolling around and trying not to look as
though they were seeking charity, would be some of his ‘ashamed’ poor. John of God helped them in
any way that he could. Some of them looked more prosperous than he did. If anyone, seeing that, were
to say to him that he was being duped by some of these people he would reply: “They are not cheating me.
That’s something for which they themselves are answerable. For my part, I am simply giving for the love of God.”
Before leaving the house to seek the alms and help that the hospital needed John would make sure
that everyone knew what he or she had to do during the rest of the day. His own questing often took
him away from the hospital for long hours and then he would not return home until late at night.
Before retiring to pray and sleep he would go around and visit each patient with a few friendly words
and an enquiry as to whether they needed anything for the night.
Another Juan de Avila
John of God’s closest companions and some volunteers helped him look after the poor and the sick
who came into his care. However, he saw the need for someone, left relatively free from the daily
routine of the hospital, to accompany him as he went about the city and into the countryside and, at
other times, to stand in for him, as major-domo, when he was away from the house. So, he employed
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a man whom he had come to know for his practical bent and his holy life. The man’s name was Juan
de Ávila . This was the same name as John’s spiritual guide and, initially, caused some confusion. John
solved this eventually by giving his employee a nickname: Angulo.38 The relationship between the two
men was one of deep affection and trust. It lasted until John’s death. Then Angulo continued to serve
John’s hospital for many more years.
A Brush in the Street
As the years went by John of God, by his complete dedication to the poor and the sick and his
untiring efforts to help them and involve others in his charitable works, imprinted himself on the life
of Granada and became one of its most widely recognised citizens. However, newcomers and visitors
to the city sometimes came to know him by reputation before they came to know him by sight.
This was the case when, late one morning, John of God, weighed down by a basket full of supplies
that he had begged for his hospital, was making his way up the Los Gomeles Rise when a haughty
gentleman, at the head of a small retinue of servants, came towards him. The street was crowded and
John’s basket accidentally caught the corner of man’s cloak and pulled it from his shoulders. The
man angrily turned on John and berated him for not looking where he was going.
John of God patiently replied: “Will you pardon me brother, I was not watching what I was doing.” This
reply infuriated the man because of John’s ‘presumption’ in addressing him, a gentleman, as
‘brother’. John used to address everyone this way!
In his anger he struck John on the face. John responded to the blow by saying: “I’m the one in the
wrong, that was well deserved. Give me another!” Since John continued to speak to his attacker in a
familiar way39 he ordered his servants: “Lay into him, this ill-mannered villain!”
At that moment one of John of God’s neighbours, Don Juan de la Torre, came along and, seeing
John at the centre of a milling throng of people, asked: “Brother John of God, what is going on?” When
the offended man heard the reference to John of God he was aghast at what he might have done and
asked: “Is this the ‘John of God’ that everyone is talking about?” Told ‘yes’, he apologised profusely.
When John of God also apologised, the man invited him to dinner. John, understandably, pleaded
other commitments but they parted good friends. Later in the day the gentleman made some amends
by sending to the hospital an alms of fifty gold escudos.
Images, left to right: The Albambra Woods where John of God collected firewood (Vazquez); The Los Granadas
Gate gave access to the Alhambra woods and was situated next door to John of God’s house (Vazquez).
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Toledo Adventure
Not all John’s contacts with the ladies of easy virtue of Granada had perfect endings. Four women
once approached John telling him that they had decided to give up their immoral life as prostitutes.
However, they would only feel free to do this if he first saw them safely to Toledo where they had some
matters to settle. After that, with clear consciences, they would do whatever he thought best for them.
Accompanying these ladies to Toledo would mean a journey of over 300 kilometres. Persuaded by the
ultimate good to be obtained, John agreed to take them. He himself went everywhere on foot but he
knew that suitable transport would have to be hired for the women. This he left to his major-domo,
Angulo, who would go with them to Toledo.
Angulo hired two donkeys and some other gear, John committed his hospital to Antón Martín,
and the party started for Toledo. As it made its way through the various towns along the route this
unusual group of travellers attracted a lot of attention. The two men, poorly dressed and barefooted,
looked low types, and the four women, by their clothes and overuse of cosmetics, looked very much
what they were, or had been. Consequently, the party’s passage through each town drew from the
bystanders comments and jeers that ranged from the obscene to the pejorative. People called the two
men pimps and asked the ladies what they charged, and even more intimate questions.
John, with great patience remained silent and let it all pass over his head, but Angulo, less accepting
and provoked by what was being said about them, reproached John saying: “What is it all for, this
expedition with these contemptible persons who have brought down so many insults on us - especially since I saw
one of them slip away from us when we passed through Almagro?”
Worse was to come. The moment they arrived at Toledo two of the remaining women vanished down
a side street. This brought an explosion from John’s companion: “What madness this has been! Didn’t
I tell you that you could only expect this sort of thing from such wicked people? For goodness sake leave them to
themselves and let’s go home. They are all the same”.
John answered him: “My brother Juan, what if you went to Motril40 for four cases of fish and on the way back
three of them went bad and only one stayed fresh? When you threw away the ones that had gone bad, would you throw
the good one away with the others? Well then, of the four women that we brought along, one has stayed with us and
shows good intentions. Be patient with the way life unfolds, and we will go back with her to Granada. Let’s hope in
God that, by keeping our word to this woman, our journey will not have been in vain and without some benefit.”
And so in due course they returned to Granada with the sincere woman who had put her affairs
in order in Toledo. At Granada John found a good man to marry her. Around 1580, when Angulo
showed Castro his notes on this expedition, he said that the lady was still alive, but a widow, and living
a praiseworthy and exemplary Christian life.
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To Valladolid and the Court
From his first days in Granada John of God was always under the guidance of a spiritual director. The
first, appointed by Father John de Ávila , was Father Domingo Alvardo. Father Luis Perez Portillo
later took his place. Ávila was in Granada most of the first half of 1548 so he probably assisted, with
John of God, at the funeral of Father Alvardo on the 6th of April 1548.
John’s debts grew rapidly again and it is likely that he was encouraged by Ávila 41 to go to the Court at
Valladolid to get financial help from the Prince Regent42 and his courtiers. Accordingly, he entrusted
the overall management of the hospital to his companion Antón Martín and, late in the spring of
1548, he set off on foot on the 500-kilometre journey to Valladolid. Although his destination was
Valladolid John of God visited several other important centres on his way there. On the journey he
sought alms, not only for his own immediate needs but also for his poor.
Toledo
Toledo is situated half way between Granada and Valladolid. When John arrived there he found
that his fame had gone before him and people wanted to meet him and give him alms. John had
it brought home to him that the poor in Toledo were just as needy as the poor of Granada and he
resolved to do what he could to help them. When he eventually returned to Granada, he sent a
member of his brotherhood, Ferdinand, to Toledo in early 1549 to set up a refuge for transients and
emarginated people. In time this became a hospital like that of John of God’s at Granada.
Oropesa
West of Toledo was Oropesa and John included the scene of his youthful years in his itinerary. He
was welcomed back ‘home’ as a favourite son who was remembered for the charitable works he had
carried out while still a shepherd. John’s good humour, ready smile and unfailing trust in providence
caused his old friends and companions of Oropesa to prefer a different appellation to John of God.
They said that he should be called “John Hope-in-God”.43
Images, left to right: Statue of John of God by Pedro de Mena in the Casa de los Pisa Museum, Granada;
Ceramic tiles in Toledo signpost the street named after John of God.
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Salamanca
Salamanca was John of God’s next important stop on his way to Valladolid. Its university, founded
in 1218 and with an enrolment of almost 7000 students, made Salamanca the most sophisticated
city that John had ever visited. The citizens and students were amazed at John’s appearance and
actions. They had never seen or heard of such a way of seeking alms - going about bareheaded and
barefooted, basket on shoulder, and inviting people to do themselves some good by giving something
to the poor!
The turning point in Salamanca’s attitude to John was when they saw how he reacted to a syphilitic
patient being refused at one of the city’s hospitals - Santa Maria la Blanca. John asked that the patient
be entrusted to him and he carried the sick man to another hospital, San Bernardo, where he asked
for a place where he could personally care for the patient. This he did and his fame grew in this city
which had been a centre of culture and learning since the beginning of the 13th century.
During his stay at Salamanca John was seen and sketched by a young artist Alonso Sánchez Coello. Some
years later, as an established artist, Coello executed a portrait from this sketch. A copy of his image of
John of God is conserved at the Granada Basilica.44
Valladolid
Valladolid was always John’s destination so he travelled northeast from Salamanca and arrived at
Court about two months after he had left Granada. Valladolid, where Christopher Columbus died,
served as the capital of Spain until 1561 when Philip II moved the Royal Court to Madrid.
When John of God arrived at Court the Count de Tendilla and other nobles who knew John told the
Prince of his coming and of what he was doing in Granada. The Prince gave orders for John to be
brought to him and they spoke together at some length. At the end of their conversation he ordered
his quartermaster, a man whose family name was Angulo45, to give some alms to John. The sisters of
the Prince, with their ladies-in-waiting, were also at Valladolid and John went to see them every day.
They too gave him alms and jewellery that he used to help the poor of Valladolid.
When the Prince and John of God met for the first time, John said: “My Lord, I am accustomed to calling
everyone my brother or sister in Christ; you are my Sovereign and Lord and King (sic) and I owe you obedience,
how would you have me address you?” The Prince replied: “John, address me as you wish.” Then, because at
that time he was Regent and not yet King, John of God said: “Then I shall call you good Prince.” He goes
on, seeming to make a pun of the words ‘prince’ and ‘beginning’ which are similar in Spanish: “May
God give you a good beginning in your reign, a good right hand in your governing and then a good end in which
you are saved and gain heaven.”
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Besides his general appeal for alms John had a particular matter that he raised with the Prince.
Amongst his ashamed poor at Granada was a woman named Luisa de la Cruz. She had been left a
widow with five children, the eldest of whom had gone to serve in the galleys of the Spanish navy.
The Moors had captured him in battle and were offering him for ransom. The Prince responded to
John’s story by commanding that the boy’s ransom be added to the alms he had ordered to be given
to John.46
One of the ladies-in-waiting to the Princesses at Valladolid was the mother of the Duchess of Sessa,
one of John’s best friends and supporters. She was Doña Maria de Mendoza Sarmiento, a widow and
generous benefactor of many causes. She took John of God into her home and provided for all his
needs while he was at Valladolid. She also gave him alms, which he, in turn, distributed to the poor of
the city.
It seemed paradoxical to some people that John of God was giving away at Valladolid the alms that
he was collecting there to resolve his debt problems at Granada. One of those persons asked him:
“Brother John of God, why don’t you keep your money and take it back to your poor at Granada?” His reply was:
“Brother, to give it here or to give it at Granada, it’s all for God who is everywhere.”
John of God’s visit to Valladolid was, financially, quite rewarding. However the flow of donations began
to dwindle and John, who had spent most of the summer and the early autumn months at Valladolid,
wanted to be back in Granada before winter began to exert its special pressures on his people.
He took his leave of his new friends at the Royal Court and started on the return journey to Granada.
John did not return empty handed. So that he could not give away what he had collected before he
arrived home, Doña Maria de Mendoza Sarmiento and the Marquis de Mondejár and other nobles
had given him promissory notes that could be cashed only in Granada.
Images, left to right: ‘Phillip II’ by Coello; ‘Saint John of God’ by Coello.
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The Ascetic
Anyone who met John of God during that return journey to Granada would have known immediately
that they had met an ascetic. John of God travelled everywhere on foot. He never wore coverings on
either his head or feet with the result that, on a journey, his feet became scarred and stubbed and his
scalp became sunburned and scaled. Since he wore nothing but a pair of rough woollen breeches
with a tunic tied around the waist by a cord the lack of an under-shirt meant that his thick tunic stuck
to his skin and irritated it.
At the table, when he was away from home and invited to dine with others, he always chose the least
preferred portions. (At home he usually ate a baked onion or some other common sort of food.) On
prescribed fast days he skipped breakfast and ate little during the rest of the day. On Fridays he took
only bread and water.
He was used to sleeping on a coarse mat on the floor with a thin blanket as covering. (At home
he slept in a small alcove beneath the staircase on a trolley that had belonged to a physically
handicapped person.)
The true asceticism of his life, however, was brought about by his complete dedication to serving the
needs and welfare of others.
Other Torments
In John of God’s time the presence and malicious activity of the devil was kept in the public
consciousness by religion, folklore and art. The Inquisition made its own unique contribution to this
state of affairs. Many stories circulated about John being visited and afflicted by the devil. He himself
always countered such stories by changing the conversation and passing on to other matters. We will
do the same.
Back Home
Granada warmly welcomed John of God back from Valladolid and the Royal Court. The poor had
missed him most. After all, he was like a father to them and they had begun to call him “Father of
the Poor”. The ordinary citizens of Granada also were happy to see John of God back amongst them
again. They recognised that he served their city and added lustre to its image and reputation.
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John of God immediately settled the debts that had been worrying him when he went to Valladolid.
Nevertheless, the life of his hospital had not stood still while he was away and he found himself
responsible for a new set of debts. And it was John who had to deal with the more difficult situations
and personalities.
A Difficult Client
John of God exercised some caution in his relationships with women but, overall, he had good
rapport with the opposite sex and he was not loath to spend time in their company. There was one
woman, however, who was a constant trial to him. He had helped her to give up prostitution and
found her a suitable husband. Whenever she needed anything she immediately had recourse to him
and he would give her whatever she asked for. This, of course, brought her back for more. On one
occasion John had nothing for her. He had just given his own cloak away and, feeling rather sick,
he was sitting wrapped in a blanket. He told her to come back later and she flew into a rage saying:
“You’re a bad man, you sanctimonious hypocrite!” He answered her saying: “Here, take these two coins and run
down to the plaza and shout that out loudly.” She continued to rail at him but he looked at her and said:
“I am going to have to pardon you sooner or later, so I forgive you right now.” At his funeral this same woman
was one of those who proclaimed that John of God’s goodness and example had saved them from a
life of sin and sorrow.
John of God’s motivating force in all he did –a great love for God—found its expression in a desire to
serve Him in all creatures. His basic life principle was that he could render glory and honour to God
by “caring for the (neighbour’s) body as a means of caring for the soul.”
The Angulo Wedding
With less than a year to live John of God, on May 14, 1549, had the happiness of seeing his friend
Angulo married to Beatriz de Ayvar. By special permission from the Vicar General of the Archdiocese
the marriage ceremony took place at John of God’s hospital and, undoubtedly, in his presence. The
first fruit of the marriage was a boy, called (of course) John, who was born the following year, only 12
days after John of God’s death.47
Image: Saint John of God by Alonso Cana. Museum de Bellas Artes, Granada.
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Fire at the Royal Hospital
Some three months after that wedding another festivity in Granada was to have a less happy result. At
the Royal Hospital, on July 3, 1549, there was a banquet in honour of Doña Magdalena de Bobadilla.
In the kitchens of the hospital a big fire was lit to roast an ox stuffed with small birds and various spices
and seasonings. About 11 a.m. the fire got out of control and began to spread through the hospital.
When John of God heard of the fire he rushed to the scene. His intimate knowledge of the layout of
the hospital enabled him to go immediately to the place where the psychiatric patients were housed.
Ignoring personal danger he began to get them out of the building.
When he had rescued the patients John rushed back to where the fire was raging to help put it out.
He began hurling beds and bedding from the windows. Suddenly a great sheet of flame engulfed
him and billows of smoke poured out onto the people outside. Everyone concluded that the flames
had consumed John of God. Then he emerged from the building without a mark on him, except for
singed eyebrows. Many people who saw all this considered that he had had a miraculous escape from
the fire and death.
Drowning
As his life ran out in his last year John of God was not only tested by fire but also by water.
Worn out by his labours and travels John of God had become quite ill. He was in no fit state to react
as he did to the news that recent heavy rains had put the bitterly cold Genil River ‘in flood’ and that
it was sweeping through the city carrying unusual quantities of logs and branches that could be sold,
or used, as firewood.
Throughout John’s life the free firewood that he had gathered had come to seem like a manna48
that, gathered and sold, helped to sustain him and ‘his’ poor. There was no question of allowing this
firewood to be lost, even if that meant his having to ignore his illness to lead some of the stronger
men and bigger boys to the river bank to reap this transitory harvest.
The river, fed by snow and sleet, was ice-cold. One of the youngsters with John of God fell into
the river and was swept away. John plunged in to rescue him but was unable to do so and the boy
drowned. This sad experience left John depressed and soaked to the skin. It aggravated his illness
and, from that day, his health deteriorated rapidly.
John of God was forced to take to his bed, however he was still in immediate contact with ‘his’ poor
and he was able to encourage and guide his companions and fellow workers. He continued to serve
the poor but from a prone position.
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Summoned
John was no stranger to criticism but this time it was from people who should have known better.
With John confined to bed, some well-meaning busy-bodies who did not understand his way of doing
things felt that they now had a chance, even a duty, to rectify an aspect of his administration of which
they did not approve. They went to the Archbishop, Don Pedro Guerrero, and told him that at John
of God’s hospital there were some men who were quite capable of working and should not be allowed
to stay there and that, similarly, there were some worthless women around the hospital who, forgetful
of all that John had done for them, disparaged him whenever they did not get their way. These
people told the Archbishop that he was the only one who could remedy the situation and that it was
his responsibility to do so.
The Archbishop, recommended for his post by Father John de Ávila and with a certain “watching
brief” over John of God and his activities, took note of the complaints and, not knowing that John was
ill in bed, sent for him. When John of God received his summons he immediately got out of bed and
went to the Archbishop.
The Archbishop said to him: “Brother John of God, I have been led to understand that your hospital shelters
men and women who give bad example and are trouble-makers, and who give you much work because of their illbreeding. So, send them away and clear the hospital of such persons so that the poor who want to live in peace and
quietness are not afflicted and maltreated by them.”
John of God listened carefully until the Archbishop had finished and then he replied: “ My Father and
good Prelate, it is I alone who am wicked, incorrigible, useless, and deserve to be thrown out of the house of God;
and all the poor people who are in the hospital are good and I do not know anything bad about a single one of
them. God suffers the bad and the good and every day He lets his sun shine on them all. There is really no reason
to throw the abandoned and the afflicted out of their own house.”
John of God’s response, full of sympathy for ‘his’ poor and assuming any blame that had to be
assigned, moved the Archbishop deeply. He told John: “Blessed of God, Brother John, go in peace. I give
you permission to do in the hospital as you would in your own home.” John of God went back to his hospital,
and his poor, healed in spirit if not in body.
Image: ‘Saint John of God’ by Gomez Moreno, Casa de los Pisa Museum, Granada. This painting shows John of
God rescuing patients from the Royal Hospital Fire.
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A Last Duty
In February 1550, feeling that his life was slipping away, John of God still had one essential task to
carry out. He had to put his financial affairs in order so that his creditors would not lose their money
when he died.
One morning John took a clerk with him and called on his creditors throughout the city. Some of
them had forgotten that he owed them anything. He listed his debts and creditors and, back home,
had a copy made. He then tucked the original into his tunic and placed the copy in the hospital’s safe
so that whatever happened his creditors’ entitlements would be remembered and honoured.
Final Sickness
John of God had been a ‘man-about-town’ in a very literal sense. He had gone out into the city or
the surrounding countryside almost every day. He was in and out of the Archbishop’s Palace, the
dwellings of the clergy, the palaces of the nobility and the homes of the wealthy and the poor; he
visited inns and brothels, lawyers’ offices, merchants’ counting-houses, shops, the market place, the
prison and so on.
There were several households in Granada that John visited almost daily. One, ‘Casa de Los Pisa’,
was the household of Don García de Pisa. On his way home from questing, John would turn into
the courtyard of this house and sit by the fountain, taking a drink of water and chatting with the
mistress of the house, Doña Ana Osorio, or anyone else who was around. More often than not he got
something here for his poor. From this house it was only a few minutes walk to his hospital on the Los
Gomeles Rise.
Towards the end of February several days passed without John of God appearing at Casa de Los Pisa.
Doña Ana enquired as to what had happened to him. She was told that he had become so sick that
he was confined to bed at his own hospital. Doña Ana immediately went to visit him. She saw that the
constant stream of people coming and going from his room, asking for help and advice, prevented
him from getting the rest he needed.
She begged him to come to her house where he could have a bed and everything he needed. There,
in his own hospital, he was just lying on a plank with his basket for a pillow. John declined her
invitation because he wanted to die, and be buried, amongst his own people. However, at Doña Ana’s
prompting, the Archbishop intervened and ordered him to go to her house to be nursed.
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Doña Ana sent a sedan chair to transport John to Los Pisa. As soon as he got into the chair his poor
realised that he was being taken from them. They surrounded him to try to prevent his departure.
John dissolved into tears when he saw ‘his’ poor so distraught. He said to them: “My brothers and
sisters, God knows that I want to die here amongst you. However, God is better served if I do His will and die out
of your sight.”
His last words to ‘his’ poor and his companions were a blessing: “Remain in peace my children. Should
we never meet again, pray to Our Lord for me.” As the people around him began to cry and lament he
slumped unconscious in the chair. As soon as he recovered sufficiently the servants of Doña Ana lifted
him and carried him to Casa de Los Pisa.
Death Bed
On arrival there he was taken to a room that was brightly lit by an outside window and was put to bed
in a clean nightshirt and prepared for a visit by the family physician.
The eight children of the Pisa family (five boys and three girls) were warned not to make too much
noise and a watchman was put at the foot of the stairs with instructions not to let any of the poor in to
disturb John with their troubles. Two of the Pisa children, Cristobal and his little sister María, one day
crept into his room and, seeing John kneeling up in bed as though he was on the floor, asked him
why, so thin and weakened by his illness, he had taken that position. John answered them that what
he was doing was necessary and that he needed to do it.49
Archbishop Guerrero, hearing that John of God had arrived at Casa de Los Pisa, went immediately
to see him. Speaking kindly to John he encouraged him to get ready to set out on his final journey. As
part of this preparation he invited John to tell him if he had any worries so that he could take care of
them for him. John of God replied: “My good Father and Pastor, three things give me concern. Firstly, I have
served Our Lord so little, while I have received so much from Him. Secondly, there are the poor people to whom I
have been especially attentive - those who have given up wicked and sinful lives, and those who are shamed by their
poverty. My third concern is the debts that I owe, that I have entered into for the sake of Jesus Christ.”
Then John passed the list of his creditors and debts to the Archbishop who received them saying:
“My Brother, with regard to what you say about not having served Our Lord, trust in the mercy of Him who will
make up for all your failures with the merits of His Passion. As for the poor, I accept them because I am under an
Images, left to right: The Casa de los Pisa where John of God was cared for as her died (Vazquez); the room in the
Casa de los Pisa where John of God died on 8 March 1550 (Vazquez).
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obligation to take them into my charge. As for the debts you owe, I will quickly ensure that they are all paid off.
I promise you that I will handle everything just as you would have yourself. So be at peace now and do not give
another thought to anything except your salvation and recommending yourself to Our Lord.”
The Archbishop’s visit and promises greatly consoled John of God. The two men spoke a few
words of farewell and John kissed the Archbishop’s hand and asked for his blessing. This given,
the Archbishop left John’s bedside and went straight to his hospital where he told John’s ‘family’
of the imminence of their father’s death and gave what help he could in the turmoil caused by the
realisation that John of God would not be seen back in his hospital again.
During the first days of March John of God’s condition deteriorated to the point where he could no
longer take Holy Communion but he received the Sacrament of Reconciliation. As the first week of
March came to an end he called for his companion Antón Martín, who had been with him since the
Lucena Street days, and entrusted to him the care of the poor - especially the orphans and those who
felt shamed by their poverty.
Death and Interment
About thirty minutes after midnight on Saturday March 8, 1550, John of God felt the moment of his
death to be imminent. The women and priests keeping vigil in his room saw him climb out of bed
and kneel on the floor holding, and gazing, on his crucifix. Then with the whispered words: “Jesus,
Jesus, into your hands I commend my soul” he was gone from them, and this life, into the next.
John of God’s body did not fall forward or sideways in death - it remained in a kneeling position, so
that he seemed to be meditating or praying. Those present silently and respectfully left him like that
for about fifteen minutes before laying him out in the normal way.
Images, left to right: The Plaza Nueva, Granada (Vazquez); The Plaze de la Victoria where John of God
was buried.
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Back to the Plaza Nueva
This was the story that, in fragments, the poor people in the Plaza Nueva recounted to each other on
the morning they waited for the funeral arrangements to be completed and the final earthly journey
of the ‘Father of the Poor’ to begin.
Word came back to them that John of God’s body was beautifully laid out on a bed in the room where
he had died. Three altars had been set up and masses were being celebrated by the clergy of the city.
There was a stir as the Governor of Granada and his officials arrived and took control of the proceedings.
Soon afterwards the news was passed along that the pallbearers had been selected. They were the
Marquis de Tarifa, the Marquis de Cerralvo, Don Pedro de Bobadilla and Juan de Guevara.
Next, everyone was told to let through the poor people from John of God’s hospital and the women
for whom he had arranged marriages, and the spinsters and widows whom he had befriended. They
were to lead off the procession.
The procession began inside the house, in the room where John of God had died, when the
pallbearers lifted the deceased upon their shoulders and carried him down into the street below.
There Father Carcamo of the Order of Friars Minor, stepped forward with eight of his friars and
said: “It is fitting that we should carry this body, because during his lifetime he imitated so closely our Father, St.
Francis, in his poverty, penance and divestment.”
These friars were allowed to carry the coffin for a while and then it was passed on to the religious of
other orders who took turns in carrying it until they arrived at the Church of Our Lady of the Victory
where, since his own hospital had no church, John was to be buried in the tomb that had been
prepared for Doña Ana.
The procession was lead by the residents and walking patients of John of God’s hospital, followed by
the women John of God had befriended. Weeping, they carried lit candles and loudly proclaimed
John of God’s goodness to them. Then, bearing their crosses and banners, came the city’s many
confraternities. The city clergy and the different orders of friars followed them. John’s hospital
was located in the parish of Santa Ana and its clergy had a special place in the cortege. Finally,
immediately before the bier, came the dignitaries of the Church.
Then, following the bier, came the Council of Twenty-four and the Justices of the city with their
wives and the knights and gentlemen with their ladies. The officials and lawyers of the Royal
Tribunal followed these and, last of all, came the multitude of people who had waited their turn in
the Plaza Nueva.
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Not only did the old Christians mourn John of God, but his funeral was attended by the Moriscos50
as well. These, watching the body of John of God being carried by, spoke of their experience of John
of God’s kindness, generosity and good example. In their own Arabic language they called down a
thousand blessings on him.
Every bell tower in the city, from the Cathedral to the parish churches and monasteries, tolled
his passing.
When the cortege arrived and halted at the entrance to the church of Our Lady of the Victory people
pushed forward to touch the body with their rosary beads, prayer books and various things that they
could take away as a relic.
At last the remains were taken into the church and placed on a decorated catafalque during the
requiem mass at which a Franciscan Minim Friar preached a sermon in which he spoke about how
God raises up the humble and scorned of this world.
John was buried in the vault of the chapel of the García de Pisa family. His life on this earth had
ended but, from heaven, he would continue to be, for Granada and the whole world,
The Father of the Poor.
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Epilogue
The legacy of the Father of the Poor was a movement of compassion that has continued and grown
through the ensuing centuries. The Christian community affirmed the authenticity of John’s
heroic goodness when it declared him a saint by means of the processes of beatification (1630) and
canonisation (1690). In 1886 John of God was declared to be heavenly patron of hospitals and the sick.
The followers of John of God today sum up his spirit in the word Hospitality. Hospitality, in this unique
sense, was nurtured and safeguarded throughout the centuries by the religious order that evolved
from the group of followers that continued John’s work in Granada and elsewhere after his death.
Known as the Hospitaller Order of St. John of God, the Brothers of this religious family date its
existence from 1572.
From its very beginning Hospitality has been promoted and expressed by lay men and women. St.
John of God, in his letters, repeatedly spoke of his co-workers who were not brothers and the help he
received from them. The St. John of God story is one in which employees, benefactors and volunteers
have supported Hospitality at every moment of its history.
Image: Bartolomé Estéban Murillo’s ‘Caridad’ now in the Church of Santa Caridad, Seville.
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End Notes
1. There are competing claims with respect to the origins of St. John of God. His first biographer, Castro, states that John
was born at Montemor O Novo. Ten years earlier, in its report for the Royal Census of Philip II in 1575, the Spanish town
of Casarrubios del Monte claimed that it had produced John of God, “the founder of the famous hospital of Granada”.
Unfortunately baptismal records were not kept at Montemor O Novo until 1542, so the only certainty in the matter of John’s
birth is that he was born on the Iberian Peninsula at the end of the 15th century. The Granada Meeting (1-4 April 1997)
concluded that the Casarrubios claim did not prevail over the other evidence that John of God was born in Portugal at
Montemor O Novo.
2. Giuseppe Magliozzi, St. John of God and His Religious Order, St. Paul Publications, Manila, 1992, p.4.
3. Witness 85 at the process of beatification of John of God stated that “the father and mother of the holy man John of God always
lived in the street called Green in this town of Montemor O Novo.”
4. The name of the man to whose care little John is confided is given by José Maria Javierre in Juan de Dios Loco en Granada,
Ediciones Sigueme - Salamanca, 1996, Ch. 7; pp. 157-158. He cites his source as being the research carried out by Julián
García Sánchez, some of which has been published in an article entitled San Juan de Dios en el Señorio de Oropesa, 1992.
5. José Maria Javierre argues convincingly in Juan de Dios Loco en Granada, (Ch. 5, p. 126) that John of God came from a
converted Jewish (Converso) family.
6. There were strong links between Oropesa and Montemor O Novo and between the members of the nobility who had estates
in both places, and between Jewish families that came and went between the two cities according to the ebb and flow of
persecution. It seems quite possible that young João Cidade was taken from Montemor to Oropesa for what seemed at the
time to be benevolent reasons.
7. Castro says that those responsible for John at Oropesa regarded him as a son. (Castro, Chapter II.)
8. See A Concise History of Spain, Melveena McKendrick, Cassell, London, 1972, p.80.
9. Juan Ciudad Gomez, Historia de la Orden Hospitalariade S. Juan de Dios, Granada, 1963, p. 5.
10. Juan de Dios Loco en Granada, p. 245.
11. Dionisius Celi, The Miraculous Life and Holy Works of the Blessed Patriarch John of God, Burgos, 1621.
12. Santiago Moncada, voice-over commentary during opening scenes of film about John of God, The Man Who Knew Love,
Spain, 1975.
13. Master Juan de Ávila is the name of the priest who directed a number of Spanish saints of his time and who was himself, in
time, canonised. He is known in the English-speaking world as St. John of Avila. He, like St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa
of Avila, was of a Conversos family. The ‘de Ávila ’ in his name is his surname and not a reference to where he was from,
accordingly in this account he is referred to as Father John de Ávila .
14. José Maria Javierre, Juan de Dios Loco en Granada, Ch. 24; p. 471.
15. Known then as la Cuesta Gomeles, today this street is called ‘Calle Gomerez’.
16. José Maria Javierre, Juan de Dios Loco en Granada, Ch. 17; p. 324.
17. Father John de Ávila ’s notes for this sermon exist.
18. José Maria Javierre, Juan de Dios Loco en Granada, Ch. 17; p. 325, says that Ávila was accommodated by the Archbishop
“in a room of his palace”.
19. At this time (January 1539) Ávila ’s disciples included the rector of the Royal Hospital, Father Miguel Muñoz, and one of its
Visitators, Don García de Pisa. José Maria Javierre, in his Juan de Dios Loco en Granada, Ch. 19, p. 363, suggests that they
were personages who could have arranged John’s hospitalisation.
20. José Maria Javierre, Juan de Dios Loco en Granada, Ch. 23, p. 458.
21. José Maria Javierre, Juan de Dios Loco en Granda, Ch. 19, p. 375.
22. José Maria Javierre, in Juan de Dios Loco en Granada, Ch. 21, p. 411, suggests that John may have sat in on classes in Ávila’s
school in order to improve his literacy skills before going to Guadalupe.
23. Book of Offices, Guadalupe, 1462, conserved in the monastery archives.
24. During the beatification process of John of God the grandson of Don Miguel told how his grandfather, on horseback,
arrived to find the portal of his house so full of poor people that there was not room for him to dismount.
25. Witness Benito de Los Rios, Chaplain of the Royal Chapel, in his testimony to the tribunal hearing the case between the
first Brothers and the monks of St. Jerome in 1572-73, reports the Loarte initiative on behalf of the poor of Granada. He is
quoted by Brother José Sanchéz Martínez O.H., in his Kénosis-Diakonìa, 1995.
26. Visitors to Granada who are interested in John of God make one of their first stops at Lucena Street where there is a
building that bears a plaque erected in 1896 by the Granada Municipality saying: “In the year 1537 the illustrious Father
of the poor, St. John of God, founded his first hospital in this house”. Recent research, while leaving no doubt that John
did work for the poor and sick on that site, raises some doubts about just when the Lucena house comes into John’s story.
Was it the house he rented when he had to leave the Venegas vestibule? Was it the second house he took when his first
proved too small? Was it the shelter that some disciples of Ávila had set up, and in which John worked, until he rented a
place of his own down the alley without exit that runs off Lucena Street? Those questions have not been settled at the time
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of writing so I have tended to refer more to John’s first hospital as being in the vicinity of the fish market, rather than in
Lucena Street. This is not very satisfactory but it avoids being caught up in the current polemic on this question. There is
no doubt that John’s charitable activities, prior to his establishing his second hospital on Los Gomeles Rise, were in, and
around, the city’s fish market (and Lucena Street).
27. Witness Father Benito de Los Rios, who was rector of the Hospital of St. Ana, at the hearing of the dispute between the
Brothers and the Jeronymites, said that even he could not easily get a poor person into the hospital of St. Ana.
28. A witness at the hearing of the dispute between the Brothers and the Jeronymites testified that John of God had said that
he would have to give whatever was asked of him in God’s name—even if that were his very life.
29. What were twenty-five ducats worth? If gold were allowed to ‘float’ on the market so that it is constant in its purchasing
power, then this amount today would represent the purchasing power of about one thousand US dollars. (A 16th century
Spanish ducat contained 3.52 grams which today are worth approximately $US 43.53 per gram.)
30. The members of John of God’s brotherhood would decide to take on canonical status and, in 1572, were given the Rule of
St. Augustine to follow.
31. The price of the ex-convent was reported by Juan de Ávila (Angulo) in his evidence at the hearing of the dispute between
the Brothers and the Jeronymites.
32. John of God’s successor, in his Testament written in Madrid before his death, referred to himself as Antón Martín de Dios.
There is a street in modern Granada named Calle Luisa Maria de Dios.
33. Brother B. O’Grady in his annotated English translation of Castro, “The First Biography of St. John of God” has a note
(17:5) to the effect that this combination of items of clothing was quite common and had originated in France, at Anjou,
and was known as the ‘angeo costume’. He points out that John of God can be seen wearing it in a woodcut used for the
frontispiece of the original publication of Castro, 1585.
34. Leonor de Cáceres, witness No.2 at the dispute between the Brothers and the Jeronymites.
35. Leonor de Cáceres reports this meeting.
36. Father Diego de Linares was a good friend and constant supporter of John of God. Eventually his confreres punished him
for his generosity in giving land for the John of God Hospital by removing him from office during his second priorate
at Granada.
37. Witnesses at the dispute between the Brothers and the Jeronymites attest that the Los Gomeles hospital was called by
this name.
38. The origin of the nickname is unknown.
39. The Spanish language provides two styles of address: one familiar and the other formal. If you call a person ‘brother’
the accompanying verb form will be in the second person singular. It might seem to be a mere point of grammar but its
egalitarian implications could be offensive to someone concerned about maintaining their personal dignity.
40. Motril is a town on the coast about 100 kilometres from Granada and it supplied most of the fish eaten there. In hot
weather fish would be transported from Motril to Granada during the cool of the night so as to avoid its being spoiled by
the heat of the sun.
41. Suggested by José Maria Javierre in Juan de Dios Loco en Granada, Ch.31, p. 633.
42. The Prince was to become Philip II of Spain when his father, as Charles I, abdicated Spain in favour of him in 1556. He was
Prince Regent for eight more years after John met him in 1548.
43. José Maria Javierre, Juan de Dios Loco en Granada, Ch. 31, p. 643.
44. Brother Matías de Mina, in the magazine «JUAN CIUDAD», March 1993, outlines the results of his investigation into the
origin of Alonso Sánchez Coello’s painting of John of God.
45. John of God seems to have given the nickname ‘Angulo’ to his friend before his visit to the Royal Court, however if this
were not the case, one would suspect that John had seen that he had an equally faithful and reliable quartermaster in Juan
de Ávila , and called him “Angulo” after this man.
46. Reported by a witness at the beatification process of Toledo, Francisco Lopéz Chico, on 17 December 1622.
47. Matías de Mina in an article, Angulo - Juan de Ávila , “Hermanos Hospitalarios”, May 1991.
48. The nourishment given to the Israelites by God in the desert (Ex 16:4-35; Dt 8:3-15).
49. José Maria Javierre’s Juan de Dios Loco en Granada, Ch. 37, p. 784, tells of the children’s visit to John, quoting one of them
- Cristobal. Since this is a retelling of John of God’s story for our times it may not be considered flippant to suggest that the
sense of John’s words is to be found in the film actor John Wayne’s trademark observation that “What a man’s got to do, a
man’s got to do.”
50. Moriscos were Muslims who converted to Christianity after the Christian re-conquest of Spain. After the retaking of
Granada by the Christians in 1492 Muslims there were allowed to practice their religion for a time (particularly while the
Oropesan Hernando de Talavera was Archbishop) but they were later coerced into conversion. The Inquisition was just as
suspicious of the Moriscos as it was of the Conversos.
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Photographs
Pages, 1, 12, 15, 17, 22, 23, 28, 30, 34, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48 taken from El Camino de San Juan de Dios en Granada, Catalogo de la
Exposicion de Obras del Pintor Manuel Lopez Vazquez, Museo de la Casa de los Trios, Granada 1980. Used with permission.
Pages 6, 7, 9, 10, 13, 20, 21, 37 taken from Johannes von Gott: Hirte, Abenteuer, Krankenhauspionier by Werner Crobak,
Bavarian Province of St. John of God, Munich 1995. Used with permission.
Pages 8, 12, 13, 16, 18, 25, 26, 32 taken from cards of paintings by Onifrio Bramante. Used with permission from the order of
St. John of God Generalate, Rome.
Page 15 by Catherine Harrison 1996. Used with permission.
Page 31 from 500 Jahre Johannes von Gott, Austrian Brothers of St. John of God, 1995. Used with permission.
Page 8 section from tryptich of life of St. John of God, copyright sisters of St. John of God, Perth Western Australia, 1995 Used
with permission.
All other photographs of paintings are used with permission from the Hospitaller Order of St. John of God.
Design: Pearshop www.pearshop.com.au
Front cover: ‘St John of God’ by Pedro de Raxis, Granada
Inside front cover: ‘El Patrocinio de Maria’, Granada
Inside back cover: ‘St John of God’ by Gomez Moreno, Granada
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© Brothers of St John of God, PO BN1055, Burwood North 2134 AUSTRALIA
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the full Saint John of God story (11Mb pdf)

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