Peter Nolasco - Life

Life

Sources for the origins of the Mercedarians are scant and almost nothing is known of the founder, St. Peter Nolasco. A narrative developed between the fifteenth and early seventeenth centuries that culminated in Nolasco's canonization as a saint in 1628. The two earliest accounts, those written by the mid-fifteenth-century Mercedarian chroniclers Nadal Gaver and Pedro Cijar, declare the founder, the son of a merchant, to be from the French village of Mas-Saintes-Puelles, near the town of Castelnaudary, in the modern department of Aude. A fuller account of his life by Francisco Zumel appeared in 1588 and is the basis for the biography given in the Acta sanctorum. Here Nolasco is given an aristocratic lineage, and his credentials as a Catalan figure are established with a report of the migration of the young Pere's family to Barcelona.

According to Butler, Nolasco followed Simon of Montfort, in the war against the Albigensians. In the battle of Muret Montfort defeated and killed Peter, king of Arragon, and took his son James prisoner, a child of six years old and sent him back to Aragon with Peter Nolasco, then twenty-five years old, appointed his tutor.

All the biographers agree that at some point in his youth Nolasco became concerned with the plight of Christians captured in Moorish raids and that he decided to establish a religious order to succor these unfortunates.