Nicholas of Tolentino

Born around 1245 at Sant'Angelo in Pontano in the Marches, to a couple long childless who were said to have obtained him by a pilgrimage to Bari, he entered the Hermits of Saint Augustine at about eighteen. Ordained priest, he was sent in 1275 to Tolentino, a town torn by the struggles of Guelphs and Ghibellines, and never left it for thirty years. His life came down to an unspectacular routine: preaching daily in the streets, visiting the sick and the imprisoned, hearing confessions for hours, reconciling feuding families. The canonisation enquiries, remarkably detailed, gathered three hundred and seventy-one testimonies that give a precise picture of a medieval town. He is credited with the custom of blessed rolls distributed to the sick, still practised among Augustinians. His devotion to the souls in purgatory, which he said he saw in dreams, made him their patron. He died in 1305. Canonised in 1446, he is commemorated on 10 September.