Serapion of Algiers (1179 – 14 November 1240) was an English Catholic

Mercedarian The Royal, Celestial and Military Order of Our Lady of Mercy and the Redemption of the Captives ( la, Ordo Beatae Mariae de Mercede Redemptionis Captivorum, abbreviated O. de M.), also known as the Mercedarians, is a Catholic mendicant order es ...

priest and martyr. Thomas O'Loughlin says Serapion was Scottish by birth. Serapion is acknowledged as a proto-martyr. He was the first of his Order to merit the palm of martyrdom by being crucified and cut to pieces.

Life

It has been said that he once served in the armies of

Richard the Lion-Heart Richard I (8 September 1157 – 6 April 1199) was King of England from 1189 until his death in 1199. He also ruled as Duke of Normandy, Aquitaine and Gascony, Lord of Cyprus, and Count of Poitiers, Anjou, Maine, and Nantes, and was ove ...

and Leopold VI during the time of the

Crusades The Crusades were a series of religious wars initiated, supported, and sometimes directed by the Latin Church in the medieval period. The best known of these Crusades are those to the Holy Land in the period between 1095 and 1291 that were ...

. He accompanied his father during the Crusades in his childhood and was present at a battle at

Acre The acre is a unit of land area used in the imperial and US customary systems. It is traditionally defined as the area of one chain by one furlong (66 by 660 feet), which is exactly equal to 10 square chains, of a square mile, 4,840 square ...

in 1191. He participated in the

Reconquista The ' ( Spanish, Portuguese and Galician for "reconquest") is a historiographical construction describing the 781-year period in the history of the Iberian Peninsula between the Umayyad conquest of Hispania in 711 and the fall of the N ...

while serving in the armed forces for either

Alfonso VIII of Castile Alfonso VIII (11 November 11555 October 1214), called the Noble (''El Noble'') or the one of Las Navas (''el de las Navas''), was King of Castile from 1158 to his death and King of Toledo. After having suffered a great defeat with his own army a ...

or Alfonso IX of León. Baticle, Jeannine
"Saint Serapion", ''Zurbarán'', Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1987
, p. 102 He met

Peter Nolasco Peter Nolasco (1189 – 6 May 1256), ''Pere Nolasc'' in Catalan, ''Pierre Nolasque'' in French and ''Pedro Nolasco'' in Spanish, is a Catholic saint, born at Mas-des-Saintes-Puelles, Languedoc, today's France, although some historians claim h ...

Barcelona Barcelona ( , , ) is a city on the coast of northeastern Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within c ...

and became a professed member of the Mercedarians in 1222. The Mercedarians' goal was to free Christian captives held in

Muslim Muslims ( ar, المسلمون, , ) are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abrah ...

states. He was assigned to recruit for the order in England but pirates besieged the ship and left him for dead. He survived and wandered to

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

to preach which landed him in trouble and he was ordered to leave the town.

Death

There are various accounts of his death. By one account, he was beaten to death by French pirates at Marseilles.Zirpolo, Lilian H., "St. Serapion", ''Historical Dictionary of Baroque Art and Architecture'', Rowman & Littlefield, 2010
, p. 496 He made two journeys for the ransom of captives, in 1240. The first was to Murcia, in which he purchased the liberty of ninety-eight slaves: the second to Algiers, in which he redeemed eighty-seven, but remained himself a hostage for the full payment of the money. A widely circulated early account holds that the ransom did not arrive in time and so his captors decided to have him killed. He was nailed on an X-shaped cross and was dismembered. The most authoritative account comes from the early annals of the Mercedarians. "Captured in Scotland by English pirates, Serapion was bound by the hands and feet to two poles, and was then beaten, dismembered, and disemboweled. Finally, his neck was partly severed, leaving his head to dangle."Remón, 1618. fols. 165-166 The

Baroque The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including ...

artist

Francisco Zurbarán Francisco is the Spanish and Portuguese form of the masculine given name ''Franciscus''. Nicknames In Spanish, people with the name Francisco are sometimes nicknamed "Paco". San Francisco de Asís was known as ''Pater Comunitatis'' (father of ...

depicts the Martyrdom of Saint Serapion in one of his paintings. Pope Benedict XIII declared Serapion a martyr, and approved his veneration in the Order of Mercedarians, by a decree in 1728.

Pope Benedict XIV Pope Benedict XIV ( la, Benedictus XIV; it, Benedetto XIV; 31 March 1675 – 3 May 1758), born Prospero Lorenzo Lambertini, was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 17 August 1740 to his death in May 1758. Pope Be ...

added him to the

Roman Martyrology The ''Roman Martyrology'' ( la, Martyrologium Romanum) is the official martyrology of the Catholic Church. Its use is obligatory in matters regarding the Roman Rite liturgy, but dioceses, countries and religious institutes may add duly approve ...

. Serapion is commemorated on 14 November.

References

External links

Den hellige Serapion av Alger (1179-1240)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Serapion of Algiers 1179 births 1240 deaths 13th-century Roman Catholic martyrs 13th-century English Roman Catholic priests English Roman Catholic saints Mercedarian saints Beatifications by Pope Urban VIII Canonizations by Pope Benedict XIII

Life

Death

See also

References

External links