Nicholas of Tolentino

Nicholas of Tolentino, known in Italian as Nicola da Tolentino, was born in 1245 at Sant'Angelo in Pontano in the March of Ancona, in central Italy, then within the Papal States. Traditional lives of the saint relate that his parents, Compagnone and Amata, had been childless for a long time and made a pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint Nicholas of Myra at Bari to ask for a child. A son was born to them and received the name Nicholas in thanksgiving. From an early age he showed a strong inclination to prayer and to the religious life. According to the same tradition, the preaching of an Augustinian friar, Reginaldo da Monterubbiano, moved him to seek admission to the Order of Hermits of Saint Augustine. He entered the Augustinian house at Sant'Angelo while still young and began the formation that would lead to priesthood.

He completed his studies in various houses of the order in the Marche, among them Recanati, and was ordained a priest in the later thirteenth century. After assignments in more than one community he was sent, in the mid-1270s, to the Augustinian friary at Tolentino, a town a short distance from his birthplace. He remained there for the rest of his life, a period of some thirty years. At Tolentino he gained a reputation as a preacher and as a confessor whose counsel was widely sought. He devoted much of his ministry to the poor, the sick, and those in prison, and he was remembered for distributing food and for visiting the afflicted in their homes. His personal regimen included frequent fasting, long night vigils, and other forms of asceticism common among fervent mendicants of his time.

Nicholas is associated in hagiography with a rich mystical life. He is said to have had visions of Christ, of the Virgin Mary, and especially of souls in Purgatory who asked him to offer the Mass for their release. That association made him, in later Catholic devotion, one of the principal patrons of the holy souls. Numerous miracles of healing were attributed to him during his lifetime. A practice linked to his memory is the blessing of bread, known as the bread of Saint Nicholas, which the faithful used as a sacramental, particularly in illness. In iconography he often appears in the black habit of the Augustinians, holding a lily or a crucifix, with a star on his breast, a motif drawn from the legend that a star shone over him as a sign of sanctity.

In his last years Nicholas suffered a long illness. He died at Tolentino on 10 September 1305 and was buried in the church of his friary. Pilgrims soon came to the tomb, and accounts of miracles contributed to the growth of his cult throughout the Marche and beyond. The church was enlarged over the following centuries and became the Basilica of Saint Nicholas of Tolentino, where his relics are still venerated. Examinations of the remains in later centuries formed part of the continuing local devotion.

Pope Eugene IV canonized Nicholas on 5 June 1446, the first member of the Augustinian order to receive formal canonization. His feast day is 10 September. Devotion to him was carried by Augustinian missionaries to Spain, Latin America, and the Philippines, where many parishes and towns bear his name. He is invoked as patron of the souls in Purgatory, of mariners and sailors, of the dying, of infants and mothers, and of sick animals, as well as against fire and plague. He is the patron saint of the city of Tolentino and of numerous other places that adopted his cult.