Note 3 — Chapter XXII

The Order of the Holy Trinity was founded primarily by St. John of Matha, a native of Provence who was ordained to the priesthood. On the occasion of his first mass, he determined to devote himself to the redemption of Christian captives from the Mahometans. Retiring for a season of prayer to the cell of the aged French hermit, St. Felix of Valois, the latter approved the plan, and in 1197, they both went to Rome where they obtained the approbation of Pope Innocent III for the erection of a new order. The pope ordered the bishop of Paris and the abbot of St. Victor to draw up the rules for the order, which received papal sanction in 1198. A white habit with a red and blue cross on the breast was assigned as a distinctive dress. It received a new confirmation and additional privileges by a papal bull of 1209. The French monarch Philippe Auguste authorized the existence of the order in his kingdoms, and Gauthier III, lord of Châtillon, granted them land for a convent. Later as the order increased, the latter, seconded by the king, granted them Cerfroid, near Grandlieu, on the borders of Valois, which became the chief house of the order. The two saints founded many houses in France. Many Christian slaves were ransomed in Morocco and Spain. It was a fundamental rule of the order that at least one-third of its revenues should be set aside for the redemption of captives. It was estimated in the seventeenth century that since its foundation the order had ransomed 30,720 Christian captives. At one time there were as many as two hundred and fifty houses. See Baring Gould’s Lives of the Saints, ii, pp. 226–230; and Addis and Arnold’s Catholic Dictionary, p. 810. ↑