St Andrew Avellino: Life, Prayer and Feast Day

St Andrew Avellino (1521-1608) was a priest of the Kingdom of Naples, a lawyer turned Theatine, who spent more than fifty years reforming clergy, directing souls and preaching, and who was struck down by apoplexy at the foot of the altar as he began Mass at the age of eighty-seven. Because he died of that stroke, yet lived long enough to receive the Last Sacraments, the faithful invoke him against strokes and against a sudden and unprovided death. His feast is kept on 10 November in the calendar of 1962; below are his life, the popular prayer to him, the collect of his Mass, and an honest account of the wonders recorded about him.

Who was St Andrew Avellino?

He was born in 1521 at Castronuovo, a small town of the old Kingdom of Naples, and was baptized Lancelot (Lancellotto). The lessons of his feast in the Roman Breviary say that from his youth he guarded his chastity with great care, more than once escaping the snares laid for a handsome young man, and that he never lost sight of "the beginning of wisdom", the fear of the Lord.

Already a cleric, he went to Naples to study law, took his doctorate in civil and canon law, was ordained priest, and began to plead cases in the ecclesiastical courts. That work, Butler says, "too much engrossed his thoughts". The turning point is the best-known episode of his life. While pleading a cause he let slip a small lie; the same evening he opened the Scriptures and fell upon the words of the Book of Wisdom: "The mouth that belieth, killeth the soul" (Wisdom i. 11, Douay). The sorrow it caused him was so sharp that he gave up the courts for good and gave himself entirely to the ministry of souls.

The reformer who was wounded for it

His seriousness was soon noticed. In 1556 he was given the hard task of reforming the convent of Sant'Arcangelo at Baiano in Naples, a house with an evil reputation. The resistance was violent: the Breviary records that, after escaping a first attempt on his life, he received three wounds in the face from a hired assassin, and bore the outrage calmly. The convent was eventually suppressed.

The Theatine

He then asked to be received among the Clerks Regular called Theatines, the congregation founded by St Cajetan some thirty years earlier, whose priests lived under a rule and worked for the renewal of the clergy; his novice-master was Blessed John Marinoni. If you know St Cajetan, our novena to St Cajetan tells his story. Lancelot was about thirty-five. Out of love for the Cross, the Breviary says, he asked to take the name of Andrew, after the Apostle crucified for Christ.

As a religious he bound himself by two difficult vows: to fight his own will continually, and to advance always further in the way of Christian perfection. That second vow is the very subject of the collect of his feast, quoted below. He was master of novices and then superior at Naples; among the men he formed was Lorenzo Scupoli, who entered the Theatines at forty and wrote the classic handbook The Spiritual Combat.

In 1570 St Charles Borromeo asked for him in Lombardy. Andrew founded the Theatine house at Milan, became the friend and counsellor of St Charles, and founded another house at Piacenza, where his preaching moved so many that complaints reached the Duke of Parma. He satisfied the duke, and the duchess chose him as her director. In 1582 he returned to Naples, where he spent his last twenty-six years preaching, hearing confessions and countering the first inroads of Protestant teaching in southern Italy.

The man behind the miracles

The Breviary and Butler describe a priest of great mortification and patience. When his nephew was murdered, he bore it without disturbance, restrained his family from seeking vengeance, and even begged the judges to show mercy to the killers. He had a tender devotion to the Mother of God. He left a large body of devotional writings, five volumes of which were printed at Naples in 1733-1734. Among the Catholic saints of the Counter-Reformation, he is the model of the priest who never stopped climbing.

How did St Andrew Avellino die?

On 10 November 1608, in his eighty-eighth year and worn out by labour, he went to the altar to say Mass. The Breviary is precise: at the words Introibo ad altare Dei, "I will go in to the altar of God", which he repeated three times, he was seized by a sudden attack of apoplexy. He was given the sacraments and died peacefully among his brethren that same afternoon. (The Introibo is a verse of Psalm 42 (verse 4), said as the antiphon of the prayers at the foot of the altar at the very beginning of the traditional Mass; see the Order of the Tridentine Mass.)

The popular prayer said to him (below) adds that before dying he endured a terrible agony from the assaults of the devil, from which the Blessed Virgin and St Michael delivered him. This belongs to the devotional tradition about his death; the official lessons of his feast do not mention it.

His body was laid out in the church of St Paul at Naples, where, the Breviary says, it was still honoured "with the same great concourse of people" that had attended his funeral. He was canonized by Pope Clement XI in 1712.

What is St Andrew Avellino the patron saint of?

St Andrew Avellino is invoked above all against a sudden and unprovided death, that is, a death that comes without warning and without the sacraments, and against apoplexy, the old name for a stroke. The patronage comes directly from the manner of his own death: struck at the altar, he was nonetheless granted time to receive the Last Sacraments and to die in God's grace, which is exactly what his clients ask for themselves. He is honoured above all at Naples, where his body rests.

People today often look for "St Andrew Avellino for high blood pressure". No traditional source makes him the patron of blood pressure as such; but high blood pressure is one of the chief causes of stroke, and it is natural and right to ask the patron against strokes to protect those who live with that danger, while taking the remedies medicine provides. The prayer below is the one to use.

For the larger grace he obtains, a holy death, see also our prayer for a happy death.

The prayer to St Andrew Avellino against stroke and a sudden death

This is the Prayer to St Andrew Avellino against a sudden death and against strokes, found in older Catholic prayer-books. It is a private devotional prayer, with no liturgical text and no approval of its own that we can cite; the prayer of the Church on his feast is the Collect given further down. It has three parts, each followed by an Our Father, a Hail Mary and a Glory Be, and the same versicle and response. It can be said for oneself, or for someone who has suffered a stroke, changing "us" as needed.

I.

O most glorious saint, whom God has made our protector against apoplexy, seeing that thou thyself didst die of that disease, we earnestly pray thee to preserve us from an evil so dangerous and so common.

Our Father. Hail Mary. Glory be.

V. By the intercession of St Andrew, stricken with apoplexy,

R. From a sudden and unprovided death deliver us, O Lord.

II.

O most glorious saint, if ever by the just judgment of God we should be stricken with apoplexy, we earnestly beseech thee to obtain for us time enough to receive the Last Sacraments and to die in the grace of God.

Our Father. Hail Mary. Glory be.

V. By the intercession of St Andrew, stricken with apoplexy,

R. From a sudden and unprovided death deliver us, O Lord.

III.

O most glorious saint, who didst endure, before dying, a terrible agony through the assaults of the devil, from which the Blessed Virgin and St Michael delivered thee, we earnestly beseech thee to assist us in the tremendous moment of our death.

Our Father. Hail Mary. Glory be.

V. By the intercession of St Andrew, stricken with apoplexy,

R. From a sudden and unprovided death deliver us, O Lord.

A prayer for stroke victims

For someone who has already suffered a stroke, the second part of the prayer is the heart of the matter: that the blow, if God permits it, never rob the soul of its preparation. Many add a short petition in their own words for the sick person's recovery, for patience in a long convalescence, and for those who nurse him, and close with the versicle of the prayer above. If death seems near, the Church's own prayers are given in our page on the prayer for the dying.

The novena to St Andrew Avellino

The same prayer, said once a day for nine days, can form a novena, prayed from 1 to 9 November so as to end on the eve of his feast. The full nine-day form, with how to pray it, is in our novena to St Andrew Avellino.

The collect of St Andrew Avellino (Missal of 1962)

The prayer the Church herself says on his feast does not mention strokes at all. It asks for what made him a saint: the daily, arduous resolve to climb higher.

Collect, 10 November

Deus, qui in corde beáti Andréæ Confessóris tui, per árduum cotídie in virtútibus proficiéndi votum, admirábiles ad te ascensiónes disposuísti: concéde nobis, ipsíus méritis et intercessióne, ita ejúsdem grátiæ partícipes fieri; ut, perfectióra semper exsequéntes, ad glóriæ tuæ fastígium felíciter perducámur. Per Dóminum nostrum Jesum Christum, Fílium tuum: qui tecum vivit et regnat in unitáte Spíritus Sancti Deus, per ómnia sǽcula sæculórum. Amen.

O God, who, by the arduous vow of advancing daily in virtue, didst dispose wondrous ascents unto Thee in the heart of blessed Andrew, Thy Confessor: grant us, by his merits and intercession, so to become partakers of the same grace, that, ever doing what is more perfect, we may happily be brought to the summit of Thy glory. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. Amen.

The rest of the Mass is taken from the Common of a Confessor not a Bishop, Os iusti: "The mouth of the just shall meditate wisdom", a fitting antiphon for a man whose conversion began with a lie of the mouth.

St Andrew Avellino's feast day

In the calendar of 1962 his feast falls on 10 November, the day of his death, as a feast of the third class, with a commemoration of the martyrs Saints Tryphon, Respicius and Nympha. It sits in the month the Church gives to the holy souls, a fitting place for the patron of a good death. You can see it in our traditional Catholic calendar of 1962.

In the reform of the calendar promulgated in 1969, 10 November was given to Pope St Leo the Great, and St Andrew Avellino no longer appears in the General Roman Calendar; he is still honoured in the Theatine order, at Naples and in local calendars.

The miracles of St Andrew Avellino

The Breviary relates that, coming home one stormy night after hearing the confession of a sick man, when wind and rain had put out the torch, neither he nor his companions were wet, and a strange brightness from his body lit their way. It adds that he was gifted with prophecy and could read hearts, and that he said he heard the angels singing with him at the Office.

Butler records a Eucharistic wonder: a man who did not believe in the Real Presence received Communion out of human respect, took the Host from his mouth and wrapped it in a handkerchief, which he later found stained with blood. Terrified, he went to St Andrew, who made the event known but refused ever to reveal the man's name, lest he be prosecuted for sacrilege.

The most discussed phenomena concern his blood after death. Butler, writing with the critical care of his revisers, says that cuts made in his face by people snipping locks of his hair as relics bled thirty-six hours later; physicians made further incisions, which also bled; and in later years the solidified blood was said to liquefy on his anniversary, "after the manner of that of St Januarius" in the same city. But Butler also notes that the body was still warm, so that he may not yet have been truly dead, and that when these facts were proposed at his canonization the evidence was judged inadequate: the future Pope Innocent X testified that a phial of the blood in his keeping never liquefied. His canonization rested on other miracles; the blood is a curiosity, not an article of devotion.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is St Andrew Avellino?

A priest of the Kingdom of Naples (1521-1608), first a canon lawyer, then a Theatine Clerk Regular, master of novices, founder of houses at Milan and Piacenza and friend of St Charles Borromeo. He died of a stroke at the altar on 10 November 1608 and was canonized in 1712.

What is St Andrew Avellino the patron saint of?

He is invoked against apoplexy (stroke) and against a sudden and unprovided death, and for the grace of a happy death. He is honoured above all at Naples, where his body rests.

When is St Andrew Avellino's feast day?

On 10 November, the day of his death. In the 1962 calendar it is a feast of the third class.

Why is St Andrew Avellino the patron saint of stroke?

Because he died of one: struck by apoplexy as he began Mass, he still received the sacraments before dying. The faithful ask him for the same mercy, to be preserved from a stroke or, if it comes, to have time to prepare their souls.

Is there a St Andrew Avellino prayer for high blood pressure?

There is no separate prayer for blood pressure. People who fear a stroke for that reason use the popular prayer against stroke and sudden death given above, which asks for exactly that protection.

What are the miracles of St Andrew Avellino?

The Breviary records a light that shone from him on a stormy night, the gift of prophecy and of reading hearts, and many miracles in life and after death. The bleeding and liquefaction of his blood, often repeated, were examined at his canonization and not accepted as proof.

Where is the body of St Andrew Avellino?

At Naples, in the church of St Paul (San Paolo Maggiore), the Theatine church where he was laid out after his death.

The Iter Fidei app follows the calendar of 1962 day by day, with the Roman Missal and the Breviary in Latin and English, so that you can pray the Mass of St Andrew Avellino on his feast. Join early access here.

Sources. Alban Butler, Lives of the Saints, 10 November (St Andrew Avellino). Roman Breviary (edition before 1960), 10 November, lessons of the second nocturn (in the Breviary of 1962 this third-class feast has a single, contracted lesson). Roman Missal (1962), Proper of Saints, 10 November, and Common of a Confessor not a Bishop. Holy Bible, Douay-Rheims version, Wisdom i. 11. The Prayer to St Andrew Avellino against a sudden death and against strokes, as printed in older prayer-books (a private devotion).