In 1861, a stranger in tattered robes arrived in Cuba, and found instant acclaim as “The Wonder of the Century.” His picture was taken and someone made a pile of money off of selling his likeness. He was a Italian hermit who had taken vows of traveling the earth.
He is also a real historical figure who figures heavily into my upcoming sequel to The Sons of Thunder. My best and most complete source of information on him is David Thomas’s book Giovanni Maria de Agostini: Wonder of the Century. It is a great read. Thomas manages to make an impressive page turner out of a hermit’s travel itinerary. He also provides exceptional context to Agostini’s movements and background. Be sure to check out his book if my post piques your interest in Agostini.
His name was Giovanni Maria de Agostini, of Lizzano, Italy. For nearly twenty years, he walked all over South and then Latin America, commonly selecting a cave in the side of a mountain as his home. Sometimes he stayed in a locality for months or even years, only to disappear and turn up hundreds of miles away.
Over the course of his travels, Agostini kept a diary, and collected a number of “curious books”. After his death in New Mexico, some close friends came into possession of his papers, but between then and now, they have almost entirely disappeared. Yet several historians examined the papers before their disappearance, and through their writings about Agostini, we know a little about what he wrote.
Agostini was born in Italy in 1801, perhaps the son of wealthy or noble parents. Only one good source asserted that his parents were of noble descent, though that source was secondary. He was educated, speaking several languages, and of sufficient means to travel to Rome as a young man. Agostini’s papers are quoted as saying “At the age of five years, more or less, I began to incline toward a solitary life.” At the age of seventeen, he reportedly had a vision of the Virgin Mary pointing him into the distance, which he interpreted as a command for him to travel to the ends of the earth.
For quite a number of years he lived as an ascetic in Europe, as well as undertaking several pilgrimages to Spain. In 1838, Agostini joined the order of Saint Anthony the Abbot. Immediately thereafter, he sailed for Venezuela, where he hoped to lead the life of a hermit.
Over the next few months, he walked around northern South America, passing through Columbia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia, traversing some 2,000 miles on foot. In Bolivia, the pattern of his public life emerged. He would come down off of the mountain on Sundays and attend mass. Villagers would come to consider him to be a pious man, which then led to occasional sermons and then an organization of pietism. Agostini did not create churches; rather, he established devotional rituals that are personal matter added to one’s regular, institutional worship. Pilgrimages are in the same category as the rites he instituted. In fact, he later created formal rules and associations surrounding two holy days, which then led to pilgrimages the caves where he lived, and particularly the springs he discovered.
In Roman Catholic theology, justification is a statement of a fact by God, rather than an act of God. In that system, one becomes sanctified (which is the practical removal of sin out of a person’s character and life till they reach perfection) before becoming justified (the removal of the legal liability to have to pay for sin). To be saved, a person must strive to become perfect their entire life, and usually spend many years in purgatory after death having remaining sins burnt out. Some of this purification is enabled by an influx of grace from God, though one must also perform good deeds and penances that help to neutralize sin or add to their total merit, which is balanced against total sin. The devotional rituals that Agostini was implementing were supposed to be a means of removing sin and acquiring merit. This contrasts with the Protestant system, where a person is justified first, with God imputing Christ’s righteousness to that person. There is a complete paradigm change, though the practical removal of all sin (sanctification), is a gradual, cumulative process that continues for the rest of the person’s life. All strivings to overcome sin are prompted by a thankfulness to God for his salvation and a desire to please him; the action itself has no merit towards salvation, as salvation and grace to overcome sin are all a free gift from God. I realize that this is a very simplistic statement of Roman Catholic and Protestant theology; theologians have spilled oceans of ink discussing and debating these matters, and I shall not try to rival them here.
In Brazil, Agostini became much better known to the world. Rumors began to circulate that a spring under his oversight had attained powerful healing powers. Locals began flocking to see and hear the hermit preach, and to climb the mountain to ritually partake of the miracle water. When people began to visit by the thousands and left claiming recovery from a wide gamut of diseases and wounds, official interest was aroused. A doctor was ordered to prepare an investigative report on the matter. After a four month investigation, he concluded that the waters weren’t especially beneficial. He said, “I observed two hundred patients according to their illnesses . . .. Thirteen made a full recovery, fifty-one got better, many of them I consider to be obvious, one hundred and fifty-three, far from improving, stayed the same, many of them getting worse, and three of them died.” In those times, the health benefits of particular bodies of water was a serious medical proposition. It appeared that Agostini combined his belief that his spring was medically beneficial with natural remedies and an intricate religious process of administering the water. The Brazilian farmers concluded that he had miracle water. The Brazilian government concluded he was a public nuisance, and arrested and deported him. In 1849, less than a year later, Agostini returned to Brazil.
A couple years later, Agostini started another community in Argentina. It was similar to the community in Brazil, also having a holy spring attended by pilgrims. He called himself there the Solitary Hermit, though he was also commonly known in the northern part of South American as The Monk. He left behind a document that formally organized the devotional community he had established in Argentina. As he had done before, Agostini moved on when he thought the community could survive without him.
For the next five years, Agostini lived in various caves in Chile and Bolivia. While in Chile, the religious authorities pressed him to become a priest and go preach to the Indians. Their insistence had some merit in Agostini’s eyes, for he agonized over whether their near order to join the priesthood trumped his vow of seclusion and command to travel. He eventually concluded that it did not. At some point in Chile, he was accused of impersonating clergy on account of the friar’s habit which he wore. After the accusation, he changed his standard attire and left for Bolivia, which coincided with his decision not to accept the priesthood. Local priests tended to be jealous of the followings that Agostini collected, so perhaps the accusations were leveled by a jealous clergyman. Perhaps they were retaliation for not accepting the priesthood. Or maybe entirely unconnected with either. Agostini does not say who or why he was accused.
In 1859, he left for Mexico, where he settled on a volcanic mountain, just above the snow line. As in South America, his presence attracted attention, and he began to administer natural remedies and lead devotional exercises. Soon as many as four thousand people at a time were coming to see him. Many brought gifts of money, wax, and clothing. Agostini urged them to stop, so it appears that he was cognizant of the current political situation. Mexico had just fought a civil war, and the liberals had won. The conservatives favored a centralist government heavily influenced by the Catholic church, while the liberals favored a federal government and the destruction of any state support for religion. Agostini’s notoriety inspired alarmist fears that he was fomenting an uprising against the new government.
The government decided that he was a threat based on falsehoods published in some of the newspapers. According to Agostini, 18 policemen, “armed like so many assassins” arrested him, stole everything they could lay their hands on, and carried him to Puebla, the capital of the state he was in. He was committed to a mental asylum for the next five months, despite a physician certifying that he was in no way mentally unbalanced. Eventually, the authorities decided the solution was to deport him to Cuba.
Agostini was a sensation in Cuba, where his picture was taken and sold under the sobriquet of “La Maravilla de Nuestro Siglo” (The wonder of our century). Yet he decided Cuba was too warm and too flat, and sailed on to New York. From New York, Agostini traveled to Canada to preach to the Indians, but found them completely unresponsive. As a result, he decided to travel to the American West.
He showed up in Missouri, eventually wintering in a hollow tree near Westport, which was the headwaters of the Santa Fe trail. In the spring of 1863, he walked to Council Grove, Kansas, the last stop on the Santa Fe before New Mexico. There he made a cave in the bluffs of the Neosho River. A month later, he accompanied a wagon train to New Mexico where he eventually found a suitable cave in a mountain located twenty miles from Las Vegas. He again attracted followers who began to make pilgrimages to the peak of his mountain. Agostini laid down rules for this community, though less formal than his previous religious societies. No doubt his previous brushes with Church authorities and Protestant America’s distrust of Catholics induced Agostini to avoid any appearance of creating a Catholic cult.
Three years later, he traveled on, visiting parts of New Mexico and then Texas, before moving back into Mexico. He attracted followers along the way. While in Mexico, in 1868, he reportedly was visited by two assassins. He said to them, “Come on gentlemen, I know you have been sent to kill me, I am ready for you.” The ill-intentioned strangers left without harming Agostini. But they did manage to destroy his sense of security, for he traveled back to Mesilla, New Mexico. Friends there were worried about his safety, so he placated their fears by agreeing to light a bonfire near his cave every Friday night, so that they would know he was alive and well.
And for several months the bonfire burned. In April of 1869, the fire did not burn. A search for the hermit ensued, which eventually led to the discovery of his body quite a distance from his cave. An inquest returned the verdict of murder. No one was ever convicted of the crime, though a local padre and an Indian known to be mentally unstable were both accused, with charges being brought against the padre. There is also a strong possibility that a raiding band of Indians killed him, which is suggested by the coincident appearance of Indian raiders within days of his death and by the wounds that killed him. This is a point where I disagree with Thomas’s conclusion that it was an Indian attack. Agostini, from all appearances, was roused from bed and marched away in his nightshirt. Raiding Indians had no reason to worry about his body being found in the cave. Now, they may have kidnapped him in order to torture him to death in order to test his bravery, which wasn’t unknown among the Indians of the southwest. It is strange, however, that there is no mention of anything at the cave being stolen or destroyed, or of Agostini’s scalp being taken. That leads me to suspect that it was in fact an attempt to cover up a murder by making it look like an Indian attack.
Agostini’s legacy includes several religious sites in North and South America, some of which still have yearly pilgrimages. He yet has a handful of followers in New Mexico who are the direct institutional descendants of Agostini’s religious community; they continue to make pilgrimages on the two days prescribed.
Source:
David G. Thomas Giovanni Maria de Agostini: Wonder of the Century. (Las Cruces: Doc 45 Publishing, 2014.)
Dusty Trails 