Father Corapi's Biography

About the year 636 Judoc withdrew from secular life and, it is said, was ordained priest in Ponthieu. After a pilgrimage to Rome he eventually settled as a hermit at Runiacum near the mouth of the Canche, later called after him, Saint-Josse. Here he died about the year 668. We are told that his body was not buried in the earth and that it remained incorrupt; moreover, the surprising circumstance is added that his hair, beard and nails continued to grow with such luxuriance that his successors in the hermitage had to cut them from time to time,

It is said that Charlemagne gave this hermitage at Saint-Josse-sur-Mer to Alcuin as a hospice for cross-Channel travellers, and that Alcuin sometimes stayed there. According to the tradition of the New Minster (Hyde) at Winchester, St Judoc’s relics were brought there, about 901, and this translation was commemo­rated on January 9. The saint’s name figures in half-a-dozen old English calendars, and he is mentioned in the Roman Martyrology. Chaucer’s Wife of Bath swears “by God and by Seint Joce”.

One early Latin life of St Judoc, dating from the beginning of the ninth century, has been printed by Mabillon, vol. ii, pp. 542—547. There are, however, others of later date, notably that of Isembard, a monk of Fleury, and that of Florentius of Saint-Josse-sur-Mer, which have probably contributed more to the relatively wide diffusion of this popular legend. The monograph of J. Trier, Der hi. Jodocus; sein Leben und seine Verehrung (1924) is not exhaustive as regards sources, nor wholly reliable ; see on this the Analecta Bollandiana, vol. xliii (1925), pp. 193—194. For a sermon on St Josse by Lupus of Ferrières, see W. Levison, in the Festschrift Walter Goetz (1927). The cult of St Judoc was widespread:  churches were dedicated in his honour even in the Tirol (Fink, Kirchenpatrozinien Tirols, 1928). Consult also Duine, Memento, p. 49, and Van der Essen, Etude critique sur les saints mérovingiens, pp. 411—413. The treatment of St Judoc in art is discussed by Kunstle, Ikonographie, vol. ii, pp. 330—331; and the folk-lore aspects in Bächtold-Stäubli, Handwörterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens, vol. iv, cc. 70 1—703. For the resting-place of the saint’s relics, see Fr P. Grosjean in Analecta Bollandiana, vol. lxx (1952), p. 404.

   Francis Marinoni was the third and youngest son of a good family of Bergamo, but was born at Venice in 1490. Having entered the ecclesiastical state, he served among the clergy of St Pantaleon’s church; and when he was ordained priest became chaplain, and afterwards superior, of the hospital for incurables at Venice. He was called thence to be a canon in the church of St Mark, where his life was the edification of his colleagues and of the whole city. Out of a desire of serving God more effectively he resigned his benefice and in 1528 joined the clerks regular called Theatines. He made his profession in 1530, being then forty, under the eyes of their founders, St Cajetan and Mgr Caraffa, and on this occasion changed his first name for John.

When St Cajetan was called from Venice to found the house of clerks regular of St Paul at Naples he took Marinoni with him. In that city he never ceased to preach the word of God with admirable simplicity and fruitfulness, and was chosen several times superior of his community, which he maintained in a perfect spirit of apostolic charity and zeal. Both by his prayers and by his exhortations in the pulpit and confessional he was an instrument of salvation to many. When St Cajetan came back to Naples in 1543 Bd John was his right-hand man in the establishment of montes pietatis, benevolent pawnshops for the help of the poor, in the city and its neighbourhood. He refused the office of archbishop of Naples, and died there on December 13, 1562, ministered to by St Andrew Avellino, who wrote an account of his former novice-master.

See a biography by J. L. Bianchi, Ragguaglio della vita del B. Giovanni Marinoni (1763), and another sketch by J. Silos, republished in view of the beatification in 1762.

VINCENT GRASSI, of Fermo in the Italian province of the Marches, was a gentleman of pious life with a great devotion to our Lady of Loreto. When he died in i6oz his son Antony was ten years old, and the boy inherited his father’s devotion while he improved his piety into holiness. As a schoolboy he got into the habit of frequenting the local church of the Oratorian fathers, and there he met Father Flaminio Ricci, a personal disciple of St Philip Neri, who determined the boy’s vocation and encouraged him therein. Accordingly, in spite of some spirited opposition from his mother, Antony when he was seventeen joined the community at the Oratory. He was a keen student and entered the congregation bearing the reputation of a “walking dictionary “, and soon acquired the good grasp of scrip­tural and theological science that he already had of the classics and philosophy. The Oratory at Fermo was the third founded during the lifetime of St Philip Neri, and in the atmosphere of his gracious spirit Bd Antony was formed as a Christian priest. For some years he was tormented by scruples, but these left him entirely from the hour that he celebrated his first Mass, and thenceforward an imperturbable serenity was his notable characteristic. “I have never seen him put out”, said Father Mazziotti, s.j., and Cardinal Facchinetti of Spoleto testified to the same effect.

In 1621, when he was twenty-nine and had been some years a priest, a thing happened which left an indelible mark on Father Grassi: a small scar on his body but a profound impression on his soul. He was kneeling at prayer in the church of the Holy House at Loreto when he was struck by lightning. Such an experience is of sufficient rarity to make his account of it of great interest.

I felt shaken and as though I were outside myself; and it seemed to me that my soul was separated from my body and that I was in a swoon.

Then I was roused by a great crash, like thunder, and I opened my eyes and found that I had fallen head-first down the steps. I saw bits of stone on the floor and the air was filled with a smoke so thick that it seemed like dust. I thought that plaster must have fallen from the ceiling, but on looking up I saw that it was undamaged. Then I saw that a piece of skin had been ripped off one of my fingers, and I remembered a story I had heard of a priest at Camerino who was killed by lightning, on whose body there was no mark except some skin off his hand. So when I saw my finger I thought that I too was going to die. And a sort of heat burning my inside made me feel yet more like it, and when I tried to move my legs there was no feeling in them. I was afraid that that scorching heat would reach my heart and kill me. I was helpless, and lay without moving on the steps, thinking that if I could not die in the Oratory I should at any rate do so in a sanctuary of the Mother of God. Then someone bent over me, and I told him I could not move; he called for help and a chair was brought and I was put in it, when I fainted again. But I was conscious that my head and arms and legs were dangling uselessly, and my sight and speech had failed, though my hearing was acute. I knew someone was suggesting the holy names of Jesus and Mary to me.

When he recovered full consciousness Father Grassi still thought he was going to die, and asked for extreme unction. The doctor recommended that it should  be given, but that Father Grassi be first carried to his lodging. “Then I made the discovery that if we believe death to be close at hand we become quite indifferent to this world and know all earthly things to be emptiness…After this they gave me some soup, and I passed a quiet night.”
    He recovered in a few days, when he found that his underclothes had been scorched: these were given to the Loreto church as a thank-offering. He also states that the shock completely cured him of acute indigestion. A more important result was that henceforward Father Grassi felt that his life belonged to God in a very special manner. Not a day was allowed to pass without his making a special act of thanksgiving for his preservation, and every year he made a pilgrimage to Loreto with the same intention.
Shortly after this happening Bd Antony asked for and received faculties to hear confessions, which for the remainder of his life was one of his most notable activities. He brought to it the same simplicity as to everything else: listening to the penitent’s accusation, saying a few words of exhortation, imposing a penance and giving absolution.
He preferred not to give direction or to suggest rules of life or to give advice on anything not directly bearing on the matter of the confession. At the process of his beatification convincing testimony was given that he possessed the gift of reading consciences, not merely in generalities but in specific actions of which he could have no natural knowledge.
In 1635 Bd Antony was elected superior of the Fermo Oratory, an office that he filled with such satisfaction to his brethren that they re-elected him every three years till the end of his life.
He used to say that in forming an estimate of a person care should be taken not to regard a single action or trait alone but the whole of them, in which more good than bad would generally be found. He was, accordingly, a very gentle superior, and when he was asked why he did not show more severity replied, “I do not think I should know how. Is this the way?” and assumed a sham air of authoritarian pomposity. In the same way he neither practised nor recommended unusual bodily austerities. When some inquisitive person asked him if he wore a hair shirt he replied that he did not, because he had learnt from St Philip that it is better to begin with spiritual mortification. “Humbling the mind and will”, he said, “is more effective than a hair-shirt between your skin and your clothes.”
This did not mean that he was easy-going; on the contrary, he insisted on the following of the Oratorian constitution ad litteram and maintained his community at a very high level of observance and efficiency by his personal example and by quiet encouragement and reproof. His quietness extended to his own voice, and loud speech he would not tolerate. His playful admonition, “If you please, Father, only a few inches of voice”, was quite enough.

Bd Antony’s influence extended beyond his own house; Archbishop Gualtieri of Fermo said he could not bear to think of losing him, and Cardinal Facchinetti of Spoleto and Cardinal Emilio Altieri (afterwards Pope Clement X) used frequently to seek his counsel on both spiritual and administrative matters. When food riots took place at Fermo in 1649 it was Father Grassi who tried to mediate between the cardinal-governor and the people, and was nearly shot by the mob for his pains. At all times he had a great concern for the good of his native town and its people. Nothing would induce him to make social or ceremonial engagements, but he would go out at any time of the day or night to visit the sick or dying or anyone else who needed his services. As he grew older his prescience, both of the future and of events at a distance, increased, and were frequently used both for consolation and warning in his dealings with the many who came to him. 

As he approached his eightieth year Bd Antony had the humiliation of the failure of some of his faculties. He had to give up preaching because, owing to the loss of teeth, he could not make himself understood, and then to cease hearing confessions. But he was still as active as ever in intent, especially when there was any chance of reclaiming a sinner. But after a fall downstairs Bd Antony was confined to his room, and at the end of November 1671 he had to take to his bed. He died a fortnight later, Archbishop Gualtieri having come every day himself to give him Holy Communion. Almost his last acts were to reconcile two fiercely quarrelling brothers and to restore the sight of Father Remigio Leti sufficiently to enable him to celebrate Mass, which he had not been able to do for nine years. Numerous miracles were attributed to the intercession of Antony Grassi, but owing to civil disturbances and other causes his beatification was not achieved until the year 1900.