13.
2. Rufin. & Pallad. loc. cit.

MARCH VIII.

ST. JOHN OF GOD, C.

FOUNDER OF THE ORDER OF CHARITY.

From his life, written by Francis de Castro, twenty-five years after his
death, abridged by Vaillet, p. 98, and F. Helyot, Hist. des Ordres
Relig. t. 4. p. 131.

A.D. 1550

ST. JOHN, surnamed of God, was born in Portugal, in 1495. His parents
were of the lowest rank in the country, but devout and charitable. John
spent a considerable part of his youth in service, under the mayoral or
chief shepherd of the count of Oropeusa in Castile, and in great
innocence and virtue. In 1522, he listed himself in a company of foot
raised by the count, and served in the wars between the French and
Spaniards; as he did afterwards in Hungary, against the Turks, while the
emperor Charles V. was king of Spain. By the licentiousness of his
companions, he by degrees lost his fear of offending God, and laid aside
the greatest part of his practices of devotion. The troop which he
belonged to being disbanded, he went into Andalusia in 1536, where he
entered the service of a rich lady near Seville, in quality of shepherd.
Being now about forty years of age, stung with remorse for his past
misconduct, he began to entertain very serious thoughts of a change of
life, and doing penance for his sins. He accordingly employed the
greatest part of his time, both by day and night, in the exercises {542}
of prayer and mortification, bewailing almost continually his
ingratitude towards God, and deliberating how he could dedicate himself
in the most perfect manner to his service. His compassion for the
distressed moved him to take a resolution of leaving his place, and
passing into Africa, that he might comfort and succor the poor slaves
there, not without hopes of meeting with the crown of martyrdom. At
Gibraltar he met with a Portuguese gentleman condemned to banishment,
and whose estate had also been confiscated by king John III. He was then
in the hands of the king's officers, together with his wife and
children, and on his way to Ceuta, in Barbary, the place of his exile.
John, out of charity and compassion, served him without any wages. At
Ceuta, the gentleman falling sick with grief and the change of air, was
soon reduced to such straits as to be obliged to dispose of the small
remains of his shattered fortune for the family's support. John, not
content to sell what little stock he was master of to relieve them, went
to day-labor at the