Thomas of Villanova

Born in 1486 in Castile, son of a prosperous miller who handed out flour to the destitute, he taught philosophy at Alcalá and turned down a chair at Salamanca to enter the Augustinians in 1516. As provincial he sent the first religious of his order to Mexico. Charles V named him archbishop of Valencia in 1544; he accepted after declining the see of Granada, and arrived in his diocese on foot, wearing the habit he had worn in the friary. His governance came down to one practice: he gave away very nearly everything he received. He opened his house to orphans, provided dowries for poor girls, ransomed captives and supported hundreds of beggars — to the point of being reproached for encouraging idleness, to which he answered that it was not his place to judge before giving. He held a synod, reformed the clergy, founded a college for Morisco converts. At his death in 1555 he had left his bed to a prisoner and borrowed it back to die in. Canonised in 1658, he is commemorated on 8 September.