BERCHMANS, JAN (JOHN), ST.

Scholastic of the Society of Jesus; b. Diest, Belgium, March 13, 1599; d. Rome, Aug. 13, 1621. He was the oldest of the five children of John Berchmans and Elizabeth van den Hove. He grew up in a tumultuous atmosphere caused by a religious war between the Catholic (southern) part and the Protestant (northern) part of the Netherlands. His piety was early directed to devotion to the Eucharist and to the Virgin Mary, so characteristic of the Counter Reformation. He was a student for three years at the public gymnasium at Diest. To continue his studies he worked as a servant in the household of Canon Froymont in Malines, where he enrolled at the "Great School" in 1612. When the Jesuits opened a college in July of 1615, Berchmans enrolled there to complete his course in rhetoric. As a very enthusiastic student, an excellent actor and orator, and an energetic member of the school, he had an unquestionable influence on his schoolmates.

The readings of the life of aloysius gonzaga and the accounts of the apostolic works of the English Jesuit martyrs influenced Berchmans to decide on a vocation in the society. In September of 1616 he entered the novitiate at Malines, which was under the directorship of Father Antoine Sucquet. His spiritual doctrine was that sanctity consists less in unusual, dramatic actions than in the loving practice of fidelity to God in day-to-day living. This realistic appreciation of the value of ordinary things that one finds again and again in the grand tradition of the Flemish school—in all its mystical, aesthetic, and artistic forms—is also the distinctive mark of the sanctity of Berchmans. In Rome, where he went in 1619 to study philosophy, he requested a chaplaincy in the Catholic army, hoping to find martyrdom on the battlefield. He died, however, of a contagious disease. His last year was marked by trials and mystical graces. He was beatified by Pius IX on May 9, 1865 and canonized by leo xiii, Jan. 15, 1888. His body lies in the church of St. Ignatius in Rome, and his heart is venerated at Louvain in the Jesuit church. The profession of faith in the Immaculate Conception of Mary, signed with his blood, is preserved in Brussels.

Feast: November 26.

Bibliography: v. cepari, Vita di Giovanni Berchmans (5th ed. Rome 1751). a. s. foley, A Modern Galahad, St. John Berchmans (Milwaukee 1937, repr. Mobile 1973). a. sÉverin, S. Jean Berchmans: Ses écrits (Brussels 1931). a. poncelet, "Documents inédits sur Saint Jean Berchmans," Analecta Bollandiana 34–35 (Brussels 1915–16) 1–227. a. butler, The Lives of the Saints, rev. ed. h. thurston and d. attwater, 4:427–429 (New York 1956). k. schoeters, Jan Berchmans van Diest (4th ed. Brussels 1962); "War Johannes Berchmans Mystiker?" Zeitschrift für Aszese und Mystik 13 (Würzburg 1938) 239–265. j. n. tylenda, Jesuit Saints & Scholars (Chicago 1998) 401–405.

[k. schoeters]