Thomas Villanueva
Santo Tomás de Villanueva, O.S.A., (Fuenllana, Kingdom of Toledo, 1486 - Valencia, Kingdom of Valencia, September 9, 1555), was a Spanish Augustinian friar who held the chair of Valencia.
Biography
Tomás García Martínez was born in Fuenllana after November 21 and before December 18, 1486; It was the town where his maternal grandparents lived. His birth occurred there because a plague epidemic had been declared in the village where his parents lived and they decided that his mother's town was a safer place for birth.
Despite this, Tomás' childhood and youth were spent in Villanueva de los Infantes, which is why he will be called Saint Thomas of Villanueva. Although his family was wealthy, the boy often went around naked because he had given his clothes to the poor. Currently, part of the original house remains standing, with a shield in the corner, next to a family oratory. He always declared himself from the town where he grew up.
Friar and priest
Although Tomás studied arts and theology at the Colegio Mayor de San Ildefonso of the University of Alcalá de Henares, he entered the Order of San Agustín, in Salamanca, in 1516, and in 1518 he was ordained a priest. In the Augustinian order he held the positions of conventual prior, general visitor and provincial prior of Andalusia and Castile. He was also a university professor, adviser and confessor to King Carlos I of Spain.
He enjoyed great fame for his great personal austerity (he even sold the mattress where he slept to give the money to the poor) and for his continuous and indefatigable exercise of charity, especially with orphans, with poor maidens and without dowry and with the sick. She owned; however, an intelligent conception of piety, so that, although he was a beggar, he tried to solve poverty definitively and structurally by actively redeeming it, giving work to the poor, and thus making his alms bear fruit; about it he wrote:
The almsgiving is not only to give, but to remove from the need the one who suffers it and to deliver it from it when possible.
In 1533, as provincial, he sent the first Augustinian priests to arrive in Mexico. He began to have mystical ecstasies at mass or when he prayed the psalms.
Archbishop of Valencia
Although King Carlos I offered him the position of Archbishop of Granada, he never accepted it; It is said that he became Archbishop of Valencia on October 10, 1544 by mistake of a notary, but he continued refusing until his superior in the Order ordered him to; At the time of his appointment he was in the monastery of Nuestra Señora del Pino, in Cuéllar land.In Valencia, helped by his auxiliary bishop Juan Segriá, he brought order to a diocese that had not had direct pastoral government for a century. He organized a special school for the Moorish converts and especially organized an effective plan of assistance and social aid and charity.
He composed beautiful sermons, among which stands out Sermón del amor de Dios, one of the great manifestations of the sacred oratory of the 16th century.
He is the author of several Booklets, including the Soliloquy between God and the soul, about communion.
He had a great reputation as a preacher, in a sober and simple style. Carlos I upon hearing him preach, exclaimed:
This Monsignor moves to the stones.[chuckles]required]
His preaching caused resounding conversions. Some of his sermons attacked the cruelty of the bullfighting festival.
He also had a great devotion to the Virgin Mary, whose heart he compared to the burning bush, which was never consumed.
In 1547, he ordained the future Saint Luis Beltrán as a priest.
He founded the Colegio Mayor-Seminario of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the Temple and Santo Tomás de Villanueva in 1550, an ecclesiastical and academic training center for future priests, at the service of the Church of Valencia.
Death and canonization
Tomás died of angina pectoris in 1555 at the age of sixty-eight. He is buried in the main chapel of the Salamanca Cathedral
He was canonized on November 1, 1658, being one of three saints, all Spanish, canonized during the pontificate of Pope Alexander VII.
Francisco de Quevedo wrote a biography of him, An epitome of the story of the exemplary life and glorious death of the blessed Fray Tomás de Villanueva.
The University of Alcalá de Henares dedicated the first patio of the Colegio Mayor de San Ildefonso to him, having been part of the first promotion of the University, and being the first Saint to emerge from the Complutense classrooms.
Work
As a mystical writer, the most important work of Santo Tomás de Villanueva is On the lesson, meditation, prayer and contemplation, but his numerous sermons in Spanish and Latin also stand out; among them stands out the Sermon on the love of God, imbued with Neoplatonism. He warns the contemplative of the errors to which he may be subjected by the work of the devil and which may drag him into heresy; in his words it is possible to find an implicit warning against the lighting. He distinguishes between infused contemplation, whose values come from the Holy Spirit, and acquired contemplation, the fruit of effort and exercise. His Commentary on the Song of Songs indicates six progressive degrees within the mystical life: Faith, Devotion, Drunkenness, Inaction, Sleep and Ecstasy. The complete works of him were published in Manila in 1881, Opera omnia , six volumes. Nicaise Bax, on the other hand, wrote a biography of the saint to which she added some Orationes sacrae under the title Beatus Thomas à Villanova Elemosynarius Achiepiscopus Valentiae (Antverpiae: Hieronymum Verdussen, 1622) and Simplicio Saint-Martin wrote another: La Vie de S. Thomas de Villeneuve, dit l'Aumosnierä Archevesque de Valence. Avec la Relation de l'Appareil, Pompe et Ceremonies observées en sa Canonisation à Rome le premier Novembre 1658. Et de ce qui s'est passé en la Feste de ladite Canonisation célébrée en quelques villes pendant huict jours. (Toulouse: Iean Boude, 1659)
Santo Tomás de Villanueva was one of the biggest whippers at the bullfighting festival. The Archbishop of Valencia came to wonder:
Is there greater brutality than to provoke a beast to fire the man?
And, after describing this show as "hard and cruel" denounced "in the name of Jesus Christ, all those who act and consent or do not prohibit bullfights" and he threatened all of them in this way:
Not only do you sin mortally, but you are murderers and debtors before God.
Villanueva's canonization was celebrated, paradoxically, with bullfights in Valencia, Zaragoza and other cities.
Complete Works
The ambitious modern edition of the complete works of Santo Tomás de Villanueva was carried out by the Library of Christian Authors between 2010 and 2016, in a bilingual and critical edition of the Conciones and other writings of the Santo, in 10 volumes (ISBN o.c.: 978-84-220-1511-6.).
Sponsorship
Saint Thomas of Villanueva is the patron saint of the prestigious Villanova University, located in Pennsylvania, United States of America and established by the Augustinians in 1842.
He is the patron saint of the University of Santo Tomás de Villanueva in Havana, Cuba, which was closed by the Cuban government in 1961, after the expulsion of the Augustinians, considered enemies of the Revolution for their frequent complaints against the government. Exiled Augustinians established St. Thomas University in Miami Gardens, Florida, United States of America, in 1961.
He is also the patron saint of numerous schools of the Augustinian order such as the one in Granada.
He is also the principal patron of the diocese of Ciudad Real (Spain).
He is also patron saint of the Alicante town of Orxeta, in Alicante, which celebrates its patron saint festivities on the penultimate weekend of September, and of the rural district of Cap Negret, in Altea (Alicante), where its festivities are celebrated on the first weekend of september. He is also from Villanueva in La Guajira, Santo Tomás, (Atlántico) in Colombia. And, for obvious reasons, from his hometown of Fuenllana and Villanueva de los Infantes. In these last two places his festival is celebrated on September 18.
His feast day, in the Catholic calendar, is celebrated on October 10.
| Predecessor: Jorge de Austria | Archbishop of Valencia 1544 - 1555 | Successor: Francisco de Navarra y Hualde |