Saint John of Matha

Saint John of Matha was a priest of French origin and the founder of the Order of the Most Holy Trinity, the Trinitarians, established to ransom Christians from captivity. He died in Rome in 1213. The Church commemorates him on December 17.

He came from Faucon in Provence. He was born about the middle of the twelfth century; accounts give the year 1154 or 1160. Little is known for certain about his youth, since many details of the old Lives were added only centuries later. According to the tradition of the order, he studied in Aix and in Paris, where he became a master of theology and was ordained a priest.

A tradition recalled by John Paul II links his vocation to his first Mass, celebrated in 1193. At the consecration John is said to have seen Christ the Redeemer holding by the hand two captives, to whom he was offering freedom. The scene is shown in a mosaic from about 1210, still visible above the portal of the house of San Tommaso in Formis in Rome. John understood then that he was to devote himself to people carried off into captivity.

To let this purpose mature, he went to live in the hermitage of Cerfroid, about seventy kilometers from Paris. There he met hermits, among them, as tradition has it, Felix of Valois. With their help and that of the bishops of Meaux and Paris and of the abbot of Saint Victor, he drew up the rule of the new community. It required the brothers to live austerely and to set aside a third of all their income for the ransom of captives.

In 1198 John presented the rule to Pope Innocent III. The pope approved it on December 17, 1198, with the bull Operante divinae dispositionis clementia. Thus arose the order whose brothers wear a white habit with a red and blue cross. In March of the following year Innocent III recommended them in a letter to the ruler of Morocco. The Trinitarians began to travel to Muslim lands to ransom captives, and in their houses they took in those who had been freed, the sick, and the poor. New houses of the order were founded in France and in Spain.

Innocent III gave John the house and hospital of San Tommaso in Formis in Rome, on the Caelian Hill. There the founder spent his last years, and there he died on December 17, 1213, exactly fifteen years after the approval of the rule. In 1655 two Spanish Trinitarians secretly carried his relics off to Madrid.

John of Matha was not canonized in a solemn process. In 1666 Pope Alexander VII confirmed the veneration given to him from time immemorial. The order he founded exists to this day and serves people who are imprisoned or persecuted for their faith. Its motto remains “Gloria Tibi Trinitas et captivis libertas,” that is, “Glory to you, Trinity, and freedom for captives.”