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The
history of the Church is the history of a love relationship between God
and his people. All throughout this relationship God has shown a
particular love for those who suffer and a special care in times of
distress. Such times marked the end of the 12th century when Christians
and Moslems were endlessly at war for the control of Southern Europe
and the Holy Land. Those were times of violence and confusion, of
social upheaval and ruined economies, of destroyed families, and of
numberless prisoners of war who were held in captivity.
It was then, in the year 1194, when God, in his love, inspired a man -
John De Matha - to found a new and original religious community in
Paris, France.
John De Matha was born in Faucon, a town in the south of France, around
the year 1154. He completed his graduate studies with honors at the
University of Paris, where he later taught theology. Ordained to the
priesthood, on the day of his first Mass he experienced a heavenly
vision which made him understand that God wanted him to become a
redeemer of Christian captives.
John De Matha felt deeply the pains of the Christians kept in bondage
by the Moslems. His revulsion for human servitude and his love for
God-Trinity led John to call his community The Order of the Holy
Trinity for the Ransom of Captives, or The Trinitarians.
He wrote the Order's Rule, which was approved by Pope Innocent III on
December 17, 1198.
John spent the rest of his life founding houses of
the Order, ransoming Christian captives and opening hospitals for the
sick and hospices for the poor. John de Matha died in Rome on December
17, 1213, in the house and hospital of St. Thomas in Formis which he
had founded.
The earliest Trinitarians first raised funds; then, braving perils and
risks, they would embark on ransoming missions throughout the slave
markets of North Africa and the Middle East. Upon returning to the home
ports, the Trinitarians were confronted with the challenge of providing
physical and spiritual assistance to those who had been freed. This
they did by establishing hospices and hospitals, which they managed
with the help of Trinitarian lay organizations. Their mission
accomplished, the friars would return
to their monasteries to live and pray with their fellow religious,
while other Trinitarians prepared to undertake other ransoming
missions.
During the next 500 years the Order grew vastly throughout Europe. In
the 15th century the Trinitarians joined the historic voyages of Vasco
da Gama, DeSoto and Cortez to bring the faith to the New World and to
India. Among the great and the notables involved with the Trinitarians
was Cervantes, the great Spanish writer of Don Quixote. He had been
captive for five years when he was freed by the Trinitarians.
Thomas Jefferson, as ambassador to France, also enlisted the aid of the
Trinitarians to free 21 American seamen captured by Barbary Pirates.
Rescue efforts were thwarted, however, due to the outbreak of the
French Revolution. But the Order's greatest glory is the score of
Trinitarian men and women whom the Church recognizes as saints, blessed
or venerables for having lived an intensely holy life or died
as martyrs.
For eight centuries, the Trinitarians, faithful to the
spirit of their Founder, have rendered glory to the Most Holy Trinity
by alleviating the pains of suffering humanity.
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