Faced with the terrible sufferings of the Catholics imprisoned by the Mohammedans, God raised up two men in the 12th century to found a religious order to help them, with the main aim of saving their souls: St. Felix of Valois and St. John de Matha.
Newsroom (20/09/2023 16:57, Gaudium Press) Saint Felix of Valois, grandson of the French King Henry I, was born in 1127 in the northern city of Amiens.
When his mother was pregnant, she was praying a novena to Saint Hugo – nephew of Charles Martel, the victor of the Battle of Poitiers in 732 – and Our Lady appeared to her, holding the Divine Infant in her arms with a cross on his shoulders. Next to him appeared another boy holding a wreath in his hands. Our Lord gave his cross to the child, who handed him the crown.
The fleur-de-lis and the Cross
Then St. Hugo said to her: “This child is your son, who will exchange the fleur-de-lis of France for the cross of Jesus Christ.” The fleur-de-lis was the symbol of the kingdom of France.
Belonging to the Valois family – who reigned in France from 1328 to 1589 – Felix was called by King Louis VII, his cousin, to serve at court.
One day, while riding with the monarch, he fell from his horse and died. The saint took the corpse by the hand and said: “In the name of the Holy Trinity, get up!” At the same moment, the king rose completely healthy.
Louis VII took part in the Second Crusade and brought Felix with him, who stood out in all the battles for his fortitude.
When the king returned to France, the saint accompanied him and decided, moved by divine grace, to lead a life of prayer and penance in a forest near Paris. Thus, he exchanged the fleur-de-lis for the Cross of Christ, as his mother had been told through a mystical vision.
St. Felix gathered several disciples around him, including St. John de Matha, son of the Count of Provence – southeastern France – and Doctor of Theology at the University of Paris. Both founded a religious order with the aim of helping Catholics who were imprisoned by the Mohammedans.
Dangers of the soul are more terrible than those of the body
In order to understand the reasons why they instituted this Order, we summarize some comments by Dr. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira.
At that time, the Mohammedans “lived by piracy at sea and on land, stealing as a habitual source of income and seizing captives as a customary way of gaining manpower and instilling terror in the adversary. […]
“Sometimes important prisoners were disfigured, horribly mistreated, killed and, very often, morally corrupted. It was therefore a miserable situation from a moral point of view too.
“So the idea of freeing the captives was aimed at rescuing our brothers in race, but above all our brothers in faith. It was much more to save from the dangers of the soul than from the tremendous risks of the body.”[1]
Approved by Pope Innocent III, the institution came to be called the “Order of the Holy Trinity and the Redemption of Captives”, or Trinitarians, and spread to various regions.
Here’s a fact that happened in São João da Mata that proves the above.
With the donations they received, the Trinitarian monks gave money to the infidels so that they would free the captives. On his second trip to Tunis – Africa – in 1210, St. John de Matha managed to rescue 120 Catholic prisoners. He obtained a ship and began sailing with them across the Mediterranean Sea. But the Mohammedans attacked them, stole the money they were carrying, tore the rudder off the ship, tore the sails and set sail for other regions to carry out further assaults.
The saint ordered the sailors to spread their cloaks like sails, knelt down and, with the Crucifix in his hands, chanted psalms and other prayers, accompanied by everyone. In a few days, the ship arrived unharmed at the port of Ostia in Italy[2].
The Virgin and the Angels dressed in the habit of the Order
St. Felix experienced a wonderful manifestation of the supernatural.
In a monastery of which he was superior, preparations were being made for the Solemnity of the Nativity of Our Lady, but the monk sacristan forgot to sound Matins – part of the Divine Office, prayed during the night.
At the usual time – high dawn – everyone was asleep. St. Felix went down to the choir to make the necessary arrangements and found it occupied by Angels, dressed in the garb of their Order: a white habit with a red and blue cross. The Blessed Virgin, also wearing a habit and seated on a throne, presided over the assembly.
She intoned the antiphon which was continued by the Angels with incomparable harmony, and St. Felix accompanied them in song. After a while, the monks went to the choir and noticed that the saint’s face was in extraordinary splendor.
Saint Felix died in 1212 at the age of 85. Saint John of the Woods gave his soul to God in 1213, at the age of 53.
Tyranny exercised by the gnostic and egalitarian Revolution
We should dwell raptly on the contemplation of these events, because in this way we understand what God’s mercy is and how many splendors Christian civilization is capable of. If these episodes took place in the Middle Ages, what marvels will we see in Mary’s Kingdom, which will be even greater than that historical era?” (…)
“Indeed, each one of us will be able to say this, because we will have, by the power of Our Lady, overthrown the whole city of iniquity and given birth to the Kingdom of Mary, a thousand times more splendid than those splendors we have just considered.” [3]
The Order of Trinitarians, whose patron is Our Lady of Good Medicine, has spread throughout Europe, America and even the Orient. It has a female branch as well as tertiaries, among whom St. Anne-Marie Taigi (1769-1837) stood out, a mother who received extraordinary mystical visions. Her body, incorrupt, is venerated in the Basilica of St. Chrysogonus in Rome.
Humanity today is tyrannized by the Gnostic and egalitarian Revolution, which drags people into sin, including pride and sensuality.
By surrendering to sin, man becomes its slave, as Our Lord said (cf. Jn 8:34). Let us pray to Our Lady for the graces we need to fight firmly against the Revolution, in order to glorify God and save our souls.
By Paulo Francisco Martos
Notions of Church History
[1] CORRÊA DE OLIVEIRA, Plinio. He sang with Our Lady and the Angels. In Dr. Plinio. São Paulo. Ano 23, n. 272 (November 2020), p. 26-27.
[2] Cf. ROHRBACHER, René-François. Lives of the Saints. São Paulo: Editora das Américas. 1959, v. III, p. 106.
[3] CORRÊA DE OLIVEIRA, Plinio. Ibidem, p. 29.
