Saint Benedict Joseph Labre

The Beggar and the Puritan

Join me today to meet the mysterious beggar saint of the Enlightenment.

Saint Benedict Joseph Labre, by Antonio Cavallucci, 1795.

Name: Benoît-Joseph Labre, Benedict Joseph Labre

Life: 1748-1783

Status: Saint

Feast: April 16

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John Thayer had earned his European vacation.

The Puritan preacher had had an exciting few years. Born in Boston and educated at Yale, Thayer had been in the right place and time when the American colonies had risen up in rebellion against England. Thayer had served as a chaplain in a unit commanded by John Hancock. Afterwards, in his preaching Thayer had gained a reputation for his firm, uncompromising tone. But through all these years, Thayer had kept alive a private dream of seeing Europe. And now, in the early 1780s, the time had come to make the dream a reality.

Americans in New York City tear down a statue of King George III, Johannes Adam Simon Oertel, 1859.

Thayer found it was an exciting time to be in Europe. Philosophers like the long dead René Descartes had written of their hopes for a new science to clear away the cobwebs of the past. Now the most optimistic version of their ideas had filtered into the mainstream, in an age that referred to itself without irony as the Enlightenment and the past as the Dark Ages. People had always supposed that the latest technology revealed human nature to itself. But now it was obvious that, as writers like Julien Offray de La Mettrie argued, a man was in truth a mechanical thing, like a very complicated watch made of meat. Enlightenment seemed to have no downside. The horrors of the French Revolution were still in the future. It was the American Revolution that inspired Europe, where plucky rebels had defeated the mighty British and then drawn upon the ideas of Enlightenment to craft a new republic in the West. Who wouldn’t want to talk to a man like Thayer who had been there?

Thayer turned out to have a knack for languages. He picked up French, then Italian. He practiced in the fashionable coffee houses of France and Italy. He was an Enlightened man too, studying the fallen ruins of ancient civilization, and looking at modern Europe with a scientific eye. He even found himself in conversation with priests, but that was all part of the tour, as he put it, “for the same reason that I should have wished to know the Religion of Mahomet, had I been at Constantinople.”

At least Thayer’s interest in Catholicism had started that way. But Thayer’s religious tourism left him wrestling with what he had learned, and he soon found himself in a very un-enlightened, agitated state of mind. He was now searching out priests to argue with them - and losing. But then in Rome, finally something happened that brought all of Thayer’s old opinions about Catholics back to the forefront. A beggar died in the city, and the superstitious Romans seemed to go mad.

The city was in uproar over the death of one Benedict Joseph Labre. Catholics were now claiming the occurrence of all sorts of miracles, when any enlightened man could tell you that the age of miracles was long passed. Thayer was never one to keep his opinions private.

Not content with denying those [miracles] which were published at that time, I made them the subject of my raillery, and in the Coffee houses passed some very unbecoming jests on the Servant of God, with whose poverty and uncleanliness I was shocked

But day by day, more reports of miracles arrived. There was no way to be in Rome and not be caught up in it. And so, as the Church prepared the process for canonization, the Puritan John Thayer embarked on his own investigation of the story. His first action was to track down a man who had known the beggar Benedict Joseph Labre personally. It was a priest, Father Guiseppe Marconi. He had been Benedict Joseph Labre’s confessor for the last year of his life.

John Thayer doesn’t record what he learned from Father Marconi. But we can make a pretty good guess, because Father Marconi was almost certainly then gathering the information he would soon use to publish the first biography of Benedict Joseph Labre. And so the story the priest told the Puritan preacher would have gone approximately like this.

Benedict Joseph Labre had come from France. He had been born near Arras, in the North of France in 1748. His family were reasonably well off, and Benedict was the eldest of 15 children.

Even after a year, Marconi had known Benedict well enough to know that his early years were characterized by disappointment. Young Benedict had felt called to be a monk, to live an ascetic life of penance. He was pretty sure he belonged at the Trappist monastery, La Trappe, in Soligny-la-Trappe to the Southwest. He had tried to join it in his early teens. His age wouldn’t have been a problem, but his parents were reluctant to let Benedict go. Instead he had ended up assisting his uncle, a parish priest.

Shortly after Benedict started to help his uncle, disease swept through the parish. Benedict’s uncle was grateful to have a helper as he tried to support his parishioners. The local farmers were too sick to work, but if their livestock died they would starve. Benedict helped and did the farm chores. Eventually, the disease burned itself out, but Benedict’s uncle was one of its final victims. Benedict went back to his family.

Benedict was now old enough to make his own decision about joining a monastery. But whatever he tried to do seemed wrong. He went back to La Trappe, only to find the monastery had just implemented an age limit, and now he was considered too young. He tried other monasteries. Some turned him away. Others were clearly not a good fit. At home he tried to study philosophy and music and prepare himself for a monastic life.

Now in his twenties, Benedict Joseph Labre finally found a monastery that would take him. He gave away everything he owned in preparation, and left his family, certain that the had finally figured out where he was meant to be. But early in his novitiate, Benedict got extremely sick. After less than a year, the monastery told him that his health would not allow him to go on.

Everything Labre had tried had failed. Jesus’ words in the Beatitudes had long seemed like a call to him, “Blessed are the poor in spirit” (Matthew 5:3). But how was Labre supposed to answer the call? Every place that promised to let him live in a way that was poor in spirit had shut its doors to him, and now he was sick. He didn’t want to go home to a life he had already left behind, to a place where he would be a burden to his family.

And so Benedict Joseph Labre, unsure what else to do, became a pilgrim.

Labre thought he would travel toward Rome, trying monasteries on the way, finding his calling somewhere on the road. He headed for Rome, moving slowly to pray in churches and occasionally collapsing and getting treated in hospitals. Slowly, as he went, Labre realized that his calling was something much rarer than a monastic vocation. He was being called to the road itself. Years later, Father Marconi would would put it this way.

For besides the common and ordinary roads to heaven, there are some which are extraordinary, and some singular: but it would be great rashness to attempt to go by these without evident signs of divine inspiration, and of a vocation to them which has been maturely considered, and examined. (Father James Barnard translation)

Only Benedict Joseph Labre knew all that he had encountered on the road. But Father Marconi had been in contact with some of the people Labre had met in these years of wandering, so he could likely satisfy the curiosity of the American John Thayer to some extent. Marconi knew that Labre’s path had crisscrossed Europe. Labre had wandered through France, through Germany, through Switzerland, and Italy, all alone and unknown.

Some people had noticed the quiet pilgrim. Labre’s rule was to let God provide for the next day. He only took what he needed for himself, and often, those who met him thought, not even enough for that. Any surplus was given away to those poorer than he was. One man remembered trying to get the pilgrim to take a few coins, but Labre already had a few coins and so he declined the offer. The man had persuaded Labre to take an old worn down pair of shoes instead. Another report came from someone who still remembered how much arguing and cajoling it had taken to get Labre to take a new straw hat to replace the disintegrating hat he had been wearing before.

Winters were hard on pilgrims, for the Little Ice Age had not yet come to an end in Europe. But regardless of the weather, Benedict Joseph Labre kept moving, visiting churches of Saint Nicholas, Saint Francis, Saint Romuald and many others.

In 1776, after years on the road, Benedict Joseph Labre felt drawn to Rome again. No one noticed when he came into the city. He found a place to sleep in the ancient ruins that dotted Rome, crawling into a gap where he could get some shelter. The ruins would be Labre’s only home for years. He would spend his days going from church to church in the city.

View of the Roman Forum, Giovanni Paolo Panini, 1747. [The Walters Art Museum]

Labre had lived his life out of sight. But now that he was staying in one place for a long time, people began to notice him. This became obvious in 1780, when Labre got very sick again. Another homeless man noticed, and told a priest who administered a hospital. The priest insisted on bringing Labre in, putting him up in a hostel while he recovered. As Labre slowly got better, the priest who administered the hospital began to realize that there was something extraordinary about this strange man in shabby clothes. Later, men who woke in the hostel at night remembered hearing Labre praying quietly,

Lord have mercy on me; my God have mercy on me.

Father Marconi knew about this period of Labre’s life already. After Labre’s death, he had gotten to know the priest in charge of the hospital, who could tell him what Labre had been like in his daily activities. Labre had used few words, each one carefully chosen. Labre tried to be alone and remain out of the spotlight. His life was one of penance. He was poor. He owned a little basket, some prayer books, and a wooden bowl that he used when someone was willing to give him food. The bowl had broken, and he had wired it back together, but a chunk was missing from the top so that it could only be filled partway. That was fine with Benedict Joseph Labre.

After some time, Labre recovered from his illness and resumed his old way of life. And it was then, in the last year of his life, that for some reason Benedict Joseph Labre sought out a stranger to hear his confession. That stranger’s name was Father Giuseppe Marconi.

Saint Benedict Jospeph Labre. In this image his wooden bowl is attached to his belt, but the break is not visible.

Priests often say that they have trouble remembering confessions - a comforting thought. But for Father Marconi, his first encounter with Labre in the confessional would be something he would recall for the rest of his life. He would try to explain what it had been like, while keeping the seal of the confessional. In the confessional, Benedict Joseph Labre shocked the priest with the clarity of his words, effortlessly dipping into philosophy and theology and illuminating the priest’s soul along with his own. He spoke about what would be in the future. Marconi had never heard anything like it before. Afterwards, Labre set a date for his next confession, and went on his way.

Over the next months, Labre would return to confess and sometimes speak with Marconi. The priest became convinced that Labre’s vocation was real. He also saw that it was taking a toll. Labre came to confess on the Friday before Holy Week in 1783. Marconi noticed that Labre was now walking with a stick. And he seemed to have grown forgetful. After Labre had left, it occurred to Father Marconi that the beggar had forgotten to schedule a time for his next visit.

But it had not been forgetfulness. For, as Father Marconi must have sadly told John Thayer, this was destined to be Benedict Joseph Labre’s last confession. Marconi later found out what had happened next. Labre had been fasting through Holy Week. On Spy Wednesday, Wednesday of Holy Week, he had been leaving a church service. He had collapsed on the church stairs. Someone gave Labre some water. A local butcher, who had noticed Labre’s sincerity, offered the beggar a bed to sleep in as he recovered.

A group of men carried Benedict Joseph Labre to the butcher’s home. But even once he was made comfortable, Labre’s condition kept getting worse. The butcher put out word, and soon several priests had arrived. They were by the bed when Benedict Joseph Labre, the beggar saint, died quietly in the night of April 16th.

And that, as the Puritan John Thayer knew from personal experience, was when things had started to get a little bit strange.

Soon children in Rome’s streets were shouting the message that a saint had died in the city. Adults were saying it too. When it was time to move Labre’s body to a local church for viewing, a huge procession followed the casket. People who knew Labre often assumed no one else had noticed him. Now they looked around at the crowds and realized how many lives he had affected. The local church where Labre’s body was on display decided the viewing would go on for four days.

Death mask of Saint Benedict Joseph Labre, Church of Amettes. [Musaraigne]

Father Marconi went, and was amazed to see the crowds pushing in, people who had in some way been touched by the beggar saint. Aristocrats lined up along with the homeless. By day four, the crowds had not diminished. They had gotten bigger.

On Easter Sunday the saint was buried inside a local church. The church announced that it would be open on Easter Monday for anyone anyone who wished to pray for help or healing at the saint’s tomb. The church anticipated a bit of a crowd, so they hired a few soldiers to act as security.

Early on Easter Monday, it was clear that the local church had miscalculated. The church was packed. The handful of soldiers were completely unable to keep order. The church had to cancel Easter Monday Mass because there was no way to get enough people out to get the priests in. That night, they closed the church, using the soldiers to guard the doors. But now the crowds just camped out outside, on the roads. After two days of this, when the crowds seemed to be thinning out, the church cautiously reopened their doors - just in time to catch the first big wave of pilgrims coming from outside Rome. Finally, the church resorted to architecture, and built a walkway so that people could come to the tomb without mobbing it.

Who were all these people, the preacher John Thayer wondered. What did they want? Did they really believe the tales of healing through the intercession of the saint? Thayer did not think miracles occurred any more. But Father Marconi assured him otherwise. As Marconi would later write, reports of healings were coming in almost daily.

For we see that cancers have been cured, fistulas, epilepsies, gangrenes, mortifications, rickets, schirrus, wens, imposthumes, dropsies, apoplexies, ulcers, consumptions, asthmas, scurvies, blindness, deafness, fractures, and broken limbs … not only at Rome, but in a multitude of places far distant both from this Capital, and from each other; that is to say; at Naples, Genoa, Malta, Milan, Bergame, Capua, Peruggia, Boulognia, in the County of Venaissin, in [Southeast] France, and in a great number of other places which would be too tedious now to enumerate.

Thayer discovered that the men who were reporting these miracles were as much children of the Enlightenment as he was. Indeed, Benedict Joseph Labre’s body had been subjected to a number of rather unseemly on-the-spot examinations and experiments, being manhandled by priests to determine whether it was incorrupt, as well as what diseases Labre might have been suffering from. (Father Marconi took the opportunity to examine his knees, which had long been a source of trouble.) The same standard, Marconi said, applied to reports of miracles. He was learning of cures for conditions that had lasted decades yet vanished in days, accompanied by notes from baffled doctors.

For the American preacher John Thayer, it was too much. Even then, he seemed to realize that his objection to these miracles was his last remaining reason for not becoming a Catholic. And so he set out to investigate the miracles for himself.

I visited four persons, who were said to have been miraculously cured; I was convinced by my own eyes of the state in which they then were; I questioned them concerning the state in which they had been; I informed myself of the nature and continuance of the illness with which they had been attacked, and the circumstances of their cures, which had been operated in an instant. I collected the evidence of those to whom they were known, and after all these informations, made with the greatest care, I was fully convinced

One of the people Thayer met with was a nun. She said she had been dying. Unwilling to take her word for it, Thayer had checked with the other nuns at the convent, who said the same thing. Unwilling to take their word for it, he had tracked down the nun’s doctor, who said she had been on a slow decline with no hope of recovery. She had received a relic and prayed for the intercession of Saint Benedict Joseph Labre. The nun was back on her feet, performing her regular tasks the same day. Of course, she might just have been pretending to be healed. Hoping to catch her in a lie, Thayer went back on a surprise visit four months later. The nun was still healthy.

For the Puritan preacher John Thayer, this was the last straw. With that mingled sense of wonder and homecoming that many converts feel, John Thayer realized that he was going to become a Catholic. His first step was to tell the people he was staying with in Italy. His second step was to tell his friends. His third step, because he was still the same man he had been as a Puritan preacher, was to go back into the coffee houses and argue as forcefully for his new convictions as he had argued against them.

I went in the evening to the Coffee-house, where I imparted my change to all my Protestant friends; And to repair, as much as I could, the scandal which I had given, I defended the sanctity of Venerable Labre, and declared that I had more proofs of the truth of his miracles, than I would require for any fact whatever.

And so it was that people from all over Europe, plus one American, found themselves changed by their encounters with the beggar saint. John Thayer became a Catholic, and in time a priest. He would return to Boston, and thunder out from a tiny Catholic Church there. The new United States would be shocked and amazed by the story he brought back with him, as well as by his new attitude toward enlightenment.

One critic would challenge Father Thayer to explain why he would credit a miracle, reported by a nun “in this enlightened age”? Thayer who would not mellow with time, fired back.

Facts, Sir, are facts in an enlightened as in an ignorant age and the proofs of facts, which we have not seen ourselves, are always the same, that is, human testimony. Observe that in an enlightened age, such as ours, miraculous facts, are with more difficulty imposed on the world, because of the facility of detecting their falsity. Yet, at this very time our Church proposes to the Public an infinity of such facts, and this at Rome, the resort of the curious and inquisitive of all the nations … Rome, where open and hardy discussion, even in public Coffee houses, is as free as in any other part of the world… and she defies the most scrutinizing critics to invalidate their truth. Such facts, Sir, are to be believed, or there is an end to all human faith.

But this was only one side of Thayer’s Enlightenment. It now seemed to him that something else was happening behind the new discoveries and new nations arising in the West. As Thayer had seen, saints still moved quietly through the new cities, and Providence guided even the most enlightened age. If beggars could be saints, who knew what else might happen in Thayer’s homeland of the United States?

Perhaps, and I dwell with pleasure on the consoling thought, perhaps, I say, he who raises up, and casts down empires, as he pleases, who does all for his elect, and for the interest of his Church, has only permitted and brought to an end, the surprising Revolution of which we have been witnesses, in order to accomplish some great design, and much more happy Revolution in the order of grace.

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