He was born in 1550 at Bacchianico in Abruzzo, in the kingdom of
Naples. He lost his mother in his infancy, and six years after his
father, who was a gentleman, and had been an officer, first in the
Neapolitan and afterward in the French troops in Italy. Camillus
having learned only to read and write, entered himself young in
the army, and served first in the Venetian, and afterward in the
Neapolitan troops, till, in 1574, his company was disbanded. He
had contracted so violent a passion for cards and gaming, that he
sometimes lost even necessaries. All playing at lawful games for
exorbitant sums, and absolutely all games of hazard for considerable
sums are forbidden by the law of nature, by the imperial or civil
law,[153] by the severest laws of all Christian or civilized nations,
and by the canons of the Church.[154] No contract is justifiable
in which neither reason nor proportion is observed. Nor can it be
consistent with the natural law of justice for a plan to stake any
sum on blind chance, or to expose, without a reasonable equivalent
or necessity, so much of his own or antagonist’s money, that the
loss would notably distress himself or any other person. Also many
other sins are inseparable from a spirit of gaming, which springs
from avarice, is so hardened as to rejoice in the loss of others,
and is the source and immediate occasion of many other vices. The
best remedy for this vice is, that those who are infected with it be
obliged, or at least exhorted, to give whatever they have won to the
poor.
Camillus was insensible of the evils attending gaming, till necessity
compelled him to open his eyes; for he at length was reduced to
such straits, that for a subsistence he was obliged to drive two
asses, and to work at a building which belonged to the Capuchin
friars. The divine mercy had not abandoned him through all his
wanderings, but had often visited him with strong interior calls to
penance. A moving exhortation which the guardian of the Capuchins
one day made him, completed his conversion. Ruminating on it as he
rode from him upon his business, he at length alighted, fell on
his knees, and vehemently striking his breast, with many tears and
loud groans deplored his past unthinking sinful life, and cried to
heaven for mercy. This happened in February in the year 1575, the
twenty-fifth of his age; and from that time to his last breath he
never interrupted his penitential course. He made an essay of a
novitiate both among the Capuchins and the Grey Friars, but could
not be admitted to his religious profession among either on account
of a running sore in one of his legs, which was judged incurable.
Therefore leaving his own country he went to Rome, and there served
the sick in St. James’s hospital of incurables four years with great
fervor. He wore a knotty hair shirt, and a rough brass girdle next
his skin; watched night and day about the sick, especially those that
were dying, with the most scrupulous attention. He was most zealous
to suggest to them devout acts of virtue and to procure them every
spiritual help. Fervent humble prayer was the assiduous exercise
of his soul, and he received the holy communion every Sunday and
holiday, making use of St. Philip Neri for his confessarius. The
provisors or administrators having been witnesses to his charity,
prudence, and piety, after some time appointed him director of the
hospital.
Camillus grieving to see the sloth of hired servants in attending
the sick, formed a project of associating certain pious persons for
that office who should be desirous to devote themselves to it out of
a motive of fervent charity. He found proper persons so disposed,
but met with great obstacles in the execution of his design. With a
view of rendering himself more useful in spiritually assisting the
sick, he took a resolution to prepare himself to receive holy orders.
For this purpose he went through a course of studies with incredible
alacrity and ardor, and received all his orders from Thomas Goldwell,
bishop of St. Asaph’s, suffragan to cardinal Savelli, the bishop
vicegerent in Rome, under pope Gregory XIII. A certain gentleman of
Rome named Firmo Calmo, gave the saint six hundred Roman sequines of
gold (about two hundred and fifty pounds sterling), which he put out
for an annuity of thirty-six sequines a year during his life; this
amounting to a competent patrimony for the title of his ordination,
required by the council of Trent and the laws of the diocess. The
same pious gentleman, besides frequent great benefactions during his
life, bequeathed his whole estate real and personal on Camillus’s
hospital at his death. The saint was ordained priest at Whitsuntide
in 1584, and being nominated to serve a little chapel called our
Lady’s _ad miracula_, he quitted the direction of the hospital.
Before the close of the same year he laid the foundation of his
congregation for serving the sick, giving to those who were admitted
into it a long black garment with a black cloth for their habit. The
saint prescribed them certain short rules, and they went every day to
the great hospital of the Holy Ghost, where they served the sick with
so much affection, piety, and diligence, that it was visible to all
who saw them, that they considered Christ himself as lying sick or
wounded in his members.
They made the beds of the patients, paid them every office of
charity, and by their short pathetic exhortations disposed them for
the last sacraments, and a happy death. The founder had powerful
adversaries and great difficulties to struggle with; but by
confidence in God he conquered them all. In 1585 his friends hired
for him a large house, and the success of his undertaking encouraged
him to extend further his pious views; for he ordained that the
members of his congregation should bind themselves by the obligation
of their institute, to serve persons infected with the plague,
prisoners, and those who lie dying in private houses.
Sickness is often the most severe and grievous of all trials, whence
the devil made it his last assault in tempting Job.[155] It is a
time in which a Christian stands in need of the greatest constancy
and fortitude; yet through the weakness of nature, is generally
the least able to keep his heart united with God, and usually
never stands more in need of spiritual comfort and assistance. The
state of sickness is always a visitation of God, who by it knocks
at the door of our heart, and puts us in mind of death; it is
the touchstone of patience, and the school or rather the harvest
of penance, resignation, divine love, and every virtue. Yet by a
most fatal abuse is this mercy often lost and perverted by sloth,
impatience, sensuality, and forwardness. Those who in time of health
were backward in exercising fervent acts of faith, hope, charity,
contrition, &c., in sickness are still more indisposed for practices
with which they are unacquainted; and to their grievous misfortune
sometimes pastors cannot sufficiently attend them, or have not a
suitable address which will give them the key of their hearts, or
teach them the art of insinuating into the souls of penitents the
heroic sentiments and an interior relish of those essential virtues.
This consideration moved Camillus to make it the chief end of his new
establishment, to afford or procure the sick all spiritual succor,
discreetly to suggest to them short pathetic acts of compunction and
other virtues, to read by them, and to pray for them. For this end
he furnished his priests with proper books of devotion, especially
on penance and on the sufferings of Christ; and he taught them to
have always at hand the most suitable ejaculations extracted from
the psalms and other devotions.[156] But dying persons were the
principal object of our saint’s pious zeal and charity. A man’s
last moments are the most precious of his whole life; and are of
infinite importance; as on them depends his eternal lot. Then the
devil useth his utmost efforts to ruin a soul, and _cometh down,
having great wrath, knowing that he hath but a short time_.[157] The
saint therefore redoubled his earnestness to afford every spiritual
help to persons who seemed in danger of death. He put them early in
mind to settle their temporal concerns, that their thoughts might
be afterward employed entirely on the affair of their soul. He
advised those friends not to approach them too much, whose sight or
immoderate grief could only disturb or afflict them. He disposed
them to receive the last sacraments by the most perfect acts of
compunction, resignation, faith, hope, and divine love; and he taught
them to make death a voluntary sacrifice of themselves to the divine
will, and in satisfaction for sin; of which it is the punishment.
He instructed them to conjure their blessed Redeemer by the bitter
anguish which his divine heart felt in the garden and on the cross,
and by his prayer with a loud voice and tears, in which he deserved
to be heard for his reverence, that he would show them mercy, and
give them the grace to offer up their death in union with his most
precious death, and to receive their soul as he with his last breath
recommended his own divine soul into the hands of his heavenly
Father, and with it those of all his elect to the end of the world.
He instituted prayers for all persons in their agony, or who were
near their death.
Every one was charmed at so perfect a project of charity, and all
admired that such noble views and so great an undertaking should
have been reserved to an obscure illiterate person. Pope Sixtus V.
confirmed this congregation in 1586, and ordered that it should be
governed by a triennial superior. Camillus was the first, and Roger,
an Englishman, was one of his first companions. The church of St.
Mary Magdalen was bestowed on him for the use of his congregation.
In 1588 he was invited to Naples, and with twelve companions founded
there a new house. Certain galleys having the plague on board were
forbid to enter the harbor. Wherefore these pious _Servants of the
sick_ (for that was the name they took) went on board, and attended
them; on which occasion two of their number died of the pestilence,
and were the first martyrs of charity in this holy institute. St.
Camillus showed a like charity in Rome when a pestilential fever
swept off great numbers, and again when that city was visited by a
violent famine. In 1591 Gregory XV. erected this congregation into
a religious Order, with all the privileges of the mendicant Order,
and under the obligation of the four vows of poverty, chastity,
obedience, and perpetually serving the sick, even those infected
with the plague; he forbade these religious men to pass to any other
Order except that of the Carthusians. Pope Clement VIII. in 1592
and 1600 again confirmed this Order with additional privileges.
Indeed the very end of this institution engaged all men to favor
it; especially those who considered how many thousands die, even
in the midst of priests, without sufficient help in preparing
themselves for that dreadful hour which decides their eternity; what
superficial confessions, what neglect in acts of contrition, charity,
restitution, and other essential duties, are often to be feared;
which grievous evils might be frequently remedied by the assiduity of
well qualified ministers.
Among many abuses and dangerous evils which the zeal of St. Camillus
prevented, his attention to every circumstance relating to the care
of dying persons soon made him discover that in hospitals many are
buried alive, of which Cicatello relates several examples,[158]
particularly of one buried in a vault, who was found walking about in
it when the next corpse was brought to be there interred. Hence the
saint ordered his religious to continue the prayers for souls yet in
their agony for a quarter of an hour after they seem to have drawn
their last breath, and not to suffer their faces to be covered so
soon as is usual, by which means those that are not dead are stifled.
This precaution is most necessary in cases of drowning, apoplexies,
and such accidents and distempers which arise from mere obstructions
or some sudden revolution of humors.[159] St. Camillus showed still
a far greater solicitude to provide all comforts and assistance
for the souls of those that are sick, suggesting frequent short
pathetic aspirations, showing them a crucifix, examining their past
confessions and present dispositions, and making them exhortations
with such unction and fervor that his voice seemed like a shrill
trumpet, and pierced the hearts of all who heard him. He encouraged
his disciples to these duties with words of fire. He did not love to
hear anything spoken unless divine charity made part of the subject;
and if he had a sermon in which it was not mentioned, he would call
the discourse a gold ring without a stone.
He was himself afflicted with many corporal infirmities, as a sore
in his leg for forty-six years; a rupture for thirty-eight years
which he got by serving the sick; two callous sores in the sole
of one of his feet, which gave him great pain; violent nephritic
colics, and for a long time before he died, a loss of appetite.
Under this complication of diseases he would not suffer any one to
wait on him, but sent all his brethren to serve poor sick persons.
When he was not able to stand he would creep out of his bed, even
in the night, by the sides of the beds, and crawl from one patient
to another to exhort them to acts of virtue, and see if they wanted
anything. He slept very little, spending great part of the night
in prayer and in serving the sick. He used often to repeat with
St. Francis: “So great is the happiness which I hope for, that all
pain and suffering is a pleasure.” His friars are not obliged to
recite the Church office unless they are in holy Orders; but confess
and communicate every Sunday and great holiday, have every day one
hour’s meditation, hear mass, and say the litany, beads, and other
devotions. The holy founder was most scrupulously exact in every word
and ceremony of the holy mass, and of the divine office. He despised
himself to a degree that astonished all who knew him. He laid down
the generalship in 1607, that he might be more at leisure to serve
the poor. He founded religious houses at Bologna, Milan, Genoa,
Florence, Ferrara, Messina, Palermo, Mantua, Viterbo, Bocchiano,
Theate, Burgonono, Sinuessa, and other places. He had sent several
of his friars into Hungary, and to all other places which in his
time were afflicted with the plague. When Nola was visited with that
calamity in 1600, the bishop constituted Camillus his vicar general,
and it is incredible what succors the sick received from him and
his companions, of whom five died of that distemper. God testified
his approbation of the saint’s zeal by the spirit of prophecy and
the gift of miracles, on several occasions, and by many heavenly
communications and favors.
He assisted at the fifth general chapter of his Order in Rome in
1613, and after it, with the new general, visited the houses in
Lombardy, giving them his last exhortations, which were everywhere
received with tears. At Genoa he was extremely ill, but being a
little better, duke Doria Tursi sent him in his rich galley to Civita
Vecchia, whence he was conveyed in a litter to Rome. He recovered so
as to be able to finish the visitation of his hospitals, but soon
relapsed, and his life was despaired of by the physicians. Hearing
this, he said,--_I rejoice in what hath been told me: We shall go
into the house of the Lord._ He received the viaticum from the hands
of cardinal Ginnasio, protector of his Order, and said with many
tears,--“O Lord, I confess I am the most wretched of sinners, most
undeserving of thy favor; but save me by thy infinite goodness. My
hope is placed in thy divine mercy through thy precious blood.”
Though he had lived in the greatest purity of conscience ever since
his conversion, he had been accustomed to go every day to confession
with great compunction and many tears. When he received the extreme
unction he made a moving exhortation to his religious brethren, and
having foretold that he should die that evening, he expired on the
14th of July, 1614, being sixty-five years one month and twenty days
old. He was buried near the high altar in St. Mary Magdalen’s church;
but upon the miracles which were authentically approved, his remains
were taken up and laid under the altar; they were enshrined after
he was beatified in 1742, and in 1746 he was solemnly canonized by
Benedict XIV. See the life of St. Camillus by Cicatello his disciple,
and the acts of his canonization with those of SS. Fidelis of
Sigmaringa, Peter Regalati, Joseph of Leonissa, and St. Catharine de
Ricci, printed at Rome in 1749, p. 10, 65, and 529, and Bullar. Rom.
t. 16, p. 88. Heylot, Hist. des Ordres Relig. t. 4, p. 263.