643 chapter 21: the restoration of the mystical temple What can those say to this, whose gold groans confined, when it would be most right to use it for captives groaning among the Moors and Scythians? Saint Peter Nolasco, as well as St. Raymond, founded holy congregations of Religious who devoted themselves to the ransoming of captives with such perfection that they gave themselves in pledge for their freedom.176 I grieve that such men as these, so pious and holy, are absent from Poland,177 when legions of the Sarmatic race are detained, with danger to their eternal salvation, both among the Tartars and among the Turks, whom they could help.178 Cornelius the mimic actor is equal to that most holy ascetic Theodulos in God’s reckoning: in order to find a remedy for the shame of a certain noble lady and secure the freedom of her bankrupt husband, confined by his creditors, son of a widow, who had been captured and carried off to Africa by the invaders. It is said that he lived as a slave, gardening in the court of the barbarian king until, recognized as a bishop, he was freed with the other prisoners from his city. The fact to be considered legendary, insofar as it concerns Paolinus, could not be altogether such if it refers to another Paolinus, one of the two homonymic successors of our Paolinus to the See of Nola... to them adapts itself better the chronology relative to the invasion of the vandals”; Celletti, Maria Chiara, Paulinus, Pontius Meropius Anicius, Bishop of Nola, Saint: BS X, 156-160 (P. I: Life). 176 St. Peter Nolasco (d. 1249), founder of the Order of the B.V.M. of Mercede (the Mercedari). This order was dedicated to the ransoming of prisoners. However, it is not possible to verify the assertion that these religious applied themselves to their task with such perfection that “they gave themselves in pledge for their freedom,” because actually “the ransoming was secured with money collected by religious in various places, [and] also through the sale of certain goods that the faithful gave for this purpose,” whilst only as stated by the law — in the case of an insufficiency of material means — “the religious had to offer themselves in place of the slave (this will be the fourth vow of the Mercedari)”; cf. Rubino Antonio, Peter Nolasco, Saint: DIP VI, 1704-1710; idem, Mercedari: ibid. V, 1219-1223. However, no examples of this pledging of oneself are known to us. Saint Raymond of Penafort (d. 1275), contrary to the assertion of the author (which is based on false historical tradition), was not founder of either the above-named Order nor of another Order with the same specific aim, but simply assisted the Mercedari religious with his advice at the beginning of their foundation in 1218. Cf. Rubino, A., ibid. 177 While the Order of the B.V.M. de Mercede extended its activities from Spain into Italy, France, Ireland, Africa and America, there were no members of this Order in Poland; cf. Bartynowski, Maryan, Mercedaryusze: PEK XXVIIXXVIII, 7-8. 178 This statement is confirmed in: Bystroń, Jan Stanisław, Dzieje obyczajów w dawnej Polsce (The History of Customs in Ancient Poland), Warsaw 1934, I, 131-133.
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