St John of Capistrano was an Italian Franciscan friar who led Christian forces into victory against an army Ottoman Turks besieging Belgrade, ending the threat of a Muslim invasion of Europe for at least 70 years.
In response to an all-out assault on the city on July 21 1456, the “soldier saint” personally led a small detachment of 2,000 poorly-armed peasant Crusaders – from an army of some 40,000 Christians – in a surprise attack against the Ottoman rear. This provoked the full-scale battle that the massive force of more than 70,000 Turks lost on July 22, with their wounded leader, Sultan Mehmet II, compelled to abandon the siege.
The battle indirectly cost St John his life, however. He died from bubonic plague that infested the area probably as a result of the thousands of unburied corpses that littered the battlefield for a month afterwards. He died peacefully at Villach on October 23rd, 1456.
Although he became known as the “soldier priest” and later the “soldier saint”, St John was essentially a Franciscan reformer. He was a zealous and gifted speaker and he preached a life of simplicity.
He was born in 1386 and, academically talented, he studied law in Perugia and was made governor of the city in 1412. He also married a daughter of one of the local inhabitants.
During fighting between Perugia and the Malatestas he was captured and imprisoned and he underwent a religious awakening. He was determined to change his life and also felt the call to a religious vocation. Butler’s Lives of the Saints tells us that it is unclear how he overcame his marital status.
Nevertheless, in 1416, and aged 30, he rode backwards on a donkey through Perugia wearing a huge paper hat listing his worst sins. He was pelted by children and he was covered in filth by the time he reached the headquarters of the Friars Minor where he asked admission into the novitiate.
St John was ordained a priest in 1420. He then made extraordinary progress in his theological studies and he was extremely austere in his style of life; he wore a hair shirt, slept little and he travelled barefoot. Among his colleagues was St James of the Marches and his master was St Bernardino of Sienna. He was soon noted for his exceptional gifts of oratory.
Italy at that time was convulsed by social unrest and the collapse of moral standards and St John began to preach the Gospel with remarkable effect.
Nicholas of Fara later wrote about the saint that “no-one was more anxious that religion should flourish, or had more power in working wonders; no-one was so ardently desirous of martyrdom, no-one was more famous for his holiness”.
“He was welcomed with honour in all the provinces of Italy,” Nicholas tells us. “The throng of people at his sermons was so great that it might be thought that apostolic times were revived. On his arrival in a province, the towns and villages were in commotion and flocked in crowds to hear him. The towns invited him to visit them, either by pressing letters, or by deputations, or by an appeal to the Sovereign Pontiff through the medium of influential persons.”
St John later worked with St Bernardino to reform the Franciscans and he was responsible for drafting the conclusions of the General Chapter in Assisi of 1430. These would become known as the “Martinian statutes”, following their confirmation by Pope Martin V, and are deemed among the most important in the history of the Franciscan order.
The saint also took a strong interest in the reforms of Franciscan nuns, initiated under the inspiration of St Colette, and in the tertiaries of the order.
He was also bestowed by the Holy See with inquisitorial powers to investigate allegations of heresy and was sent by Pope Nicholas V to the dominions of Emperor Frederick III to combat Hussites and other emerging Bohemian heretical sects.
He has been severely criticised by some historians for his role as “inquisitor general” and in his treatment of European Jews, of whom he was a critic, but his defenders have on the other hand often argued that the saint was way ahead of his time in his attitude to witchcraft and to the use of torture.
Other commentators have also pointed out that St John’s mission in Austria, Bavaria, Saxony and Poland was characterised by the great kindness and attentiveness he showed to the many sick people he encountered on his travels. Some have claimed to that St John’s journeys were also accompanied by miraculous healings.
This work was brought abruptly to an end by the Fall of Constantinople in 1453 to Muslim Turks who then attempted to invade Europe through the Balkans. St John, like so many other people in Western Europe at that time, including Pope Callixtus III, saw the Ottoman threat as a battle for the survival of Christendom itself.
He was sent by the Pope to preach a Crusade against the invading Turks at the Imperial Diet of Frankfurt but there appeared to be little appetite for military intervention. After failing to rally an army in southern Germany and Austria, St John gathered a force around him in Hungary, a land directly threatened by the encroaching Ottomans. In league with John Hunyadi, a Hungarian nobleman, he led his troops to Belgrade as the Turks were about to lay siege to the city.
St John commanded his soldiers separately from Hunyadi and his men, armed mostly with just slings and scythes, were said to have been animated both by his prayers and by his example in the field.
Although he was a small and frail man who was by then 70 years old, St John attacked the enemy lines shouting: “The Lord who made the beginning will take care of the finish!”
At the same time Hunyadi burst out of the fort in a simultaneous attack on Turkish positions, causing panic as many of the Ottomans turned and fled. The Turks lost a total of 13,000 men in the battle.
Hunyadi died three weeks afterwards, another victim of the plague that would later sweep the area, but his victory meant Hungary was able to stabilise its borders for half a century, and as result guarantee security for the European continent.
Pope Callixtus, who had despatched nuncios to the major European powers in the hope of raising a Crusade to defend Europe, was delighted by the victory and he ordered that bells should be rung at noon in churches every day as an invitation to pray for the welfare of the continent’s defenders.
St John of Capistrano was canonised by Pope Benedict XIII in 1724. He is the patron saint of Hungary, jurists and of military chaplains.