He was born at Venice of a patrician family; and, in the most
troublesome times of the republic, served in the troops from his
childhood. Whilst he was governor of the new castle in the mountains
of Tarviso, he was taken prisoner, cast into a dungeon, and loaded
with chains. His sufferings he sanctified by penance and prayer;
and being delivered by the miraculous protection of the mother of
God, arriving at Tarviso, he hung up his chains before an altar
consecrated to God under the invocation of the Blessed Virgin, and,
returning to Venice, devoted himself to the exercises of prayer and
all virtues. At that time a famine and a contagious distemper having
reduced many families to the greatest distress, he laid himself out
in relieving all, but was particularly moved with compassion for
abandoned orphans. These he gathered in a house which he hired,
clothed and fed them at his own expense, and instructed them himself
with unwearied zeal in the Christian doctrine and in all virtue. By
the advice of St. Cajetan and others, he passed to the continent and
erected like hospitals for orphans at Brescia, Bergamo, and other
places; and others for the reception of penitent women. At Somascha,
on the frontiers of the Venetian dominions, between Bergamo and
Milan, he founded a house which he destined for the exercises of
those whom he received into his Congregation, and in which he long
resided. From this house it took its name; though it was sometimes
called St. Mayeul’s, titular of a college at Pavia, which St. Charles
Borromeo put under his direction.
The instruction of youth and young clergymen became also an object
of his zeal in his foundations, and continues still to be in his
institute. The brothers, during the life of the founder, were all
laymen, and it was only approved as a pious Congregation. The
holy founder died at Somascha on the 8th of February, 1537, of a
contagious distemper which he had caught by attending the sick. He
was beatified by Benedict XIV.; and canonized by Clement XIII. An
office in his honor was appointed for the 20th of July, by a decree
of the holy see published in 1769. Three years after his death, in
1540, his Congregation was declared a religious Order by Paul III.,
and confirmed under the rule of St. Augustine by St. Pius V. in 1571,
and again by Sixtus V. in 1586. It has no houses out of Italy and
the Catholic Swiss Cantons. It is divided into three provinces, of
Lombardy, Venice, and Rome. The general is chosen every three years
out of each province in its turn. See his life written in Latin by
Aug. Turtura, Milan, 1620, 8vo., and Helyot, Histoire des Ord. Rel.
t. 4, c. 33.