English: Saint Cajetan of Tiene.
Italian: San Gaetano di Thiene.
Latin: Sanctus Caietanus.
Artist: Francesco Solimena (1657–1747).
Date: 1725.
Collection: San Gaetano, Vicenza.
(Wikimedia Commons)
Text from “The Liturgical Year”.
By: Abbot Guéranger.
Time After Pentecost.
Volume 13.
Book IV.
Cajetan appeared in all his zeal for the Sanctuary at the time when the false reform was spreading rebellion throughout the World.
The great cause of the danger had been the incapacity of the guardians of The Holy City, or their connivance by complicity of heart or of mind with pagan doctrines and manners introduced by an ill-advised revival.
Wasted by the Wild Boar of the forest, could the vineyard of The Lord recover the fertility of its better days ?
Cajetan learned from Eternal Wisdom the new method of culture required by an exhausted soil.
The urgent need of those unfortunate times was that the Clergy should be raised up again by worthy life, zeal, and knowledge.
For this object, men were required who, being Clerks, themselves, in the full acceptance of the word, with all the obligations it involves, should be to the Members of the holy hierarchy a permanent model of its primitive perfection, a supplement to their shortcomings, and a leaven, little by little raising the whole.
But where, save in the life of the counsels with the stability of its three vows, could be found the impulse, the power, and the permanence necessary for such an enterprise ?
The inexhaustible fecundity of The Religious Life was no more wanting in The Church in those days of decadence than in the periods of her glory.
After the Monks, turning to God in their solitudes and drawing down light and love upon the Earth seemingly so forgotten by them; after the mendicant Orders, keeping up in the midst of the World their claustral habits of life and the austerity of the desert; The Regular Clerks entered upon the battlefield, where, by their position in the fight, their exterior manners of life, their very dress, they were to mingle with the ranks of the secular Clergy; just as a few veterans are sent into the midst of a wavering troop, to act upon the rest by word and example and dash.
Like the initiators of the great ancient forms of Religious Life, Cajetan was the Patriarch of The Regular Clerks.
Under this name, Pope Clement VII (reigned 1523 - 1534), by a Brief dated 24 June 1524, approved the institute he had Founded that very year in concert with The Bishop of Chieti, from whom the new Religious were also called “Theatines”.
Soon, The Barnabites, The Society of Jesus, The Somaschans of Saint Jerome Æmilian, The Regular Clerks Minor of Saint Francis Caracciolo, The Regular Clerks Ministering to the Sick, The Regular Clerks of the Pious Schools, The Regular Clerks of The Mother of God, and others, hastened to follow in their tracks, and proved that The Church is ever beautiful, ever worthy of her Spouse; while the accusation of barrenness, hurled against her by Heresy, rebounded upon the thrower.
Cajetan began and carried forward his reform chiefly by means of detachment from riches, the love of which had caused many evils in The Church.
The Theatines offered to the World a spectacle unknown since the days of The Apostles; pushing their zeal for renouncement so far as to not allow themselves to beg, but to rely on the spontaneous Charity of The Faithful.
While Luther was denying the very existence of God’s Providence, their heroic thrust in it was often rewarded by prodigies.
Cajetan was born at Vicenza, Italy, of the noble House of Tiene, and was at once Dedicated by his mother to The Virgin Mother of God.
His innocence appeared so wonderful from his very childhood that everyone called him “The Saint”. He took a Degree of Doctor in Canon Law and Civil Law at Padua, and then went to Rome, where Pope Julius II made him a Prelate.
When he received the Priesthood, such a fire of Divine Love was enkindled in his Soul, that he left the Papal Court to devote himself entirely to God.
He Founded hospitals with his own money and served the sick, himself, even those attacked with pestilential maladies.
He displayed such unflagging zeal for the salvation of his neighbour that he earned the name of “Hunter of Souls”.
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