In the Footsteps of a Saint
- Canons Regular of SJC
- 7 hours ago
- 9 min read
The lives of saints, especially those who lived centuries ago, aren’t always easy to separate from legend. Such has been the case with St. John Cantius, patron of the Canons Regular and the Chicago church that bears his name.
Although most parishioners know him best from the painting over the high altar, which shows the saint presiding over the famous “Miracle of the Jug” a new biography by Fr. Dennis Koliński, SJC, St. John Cantius: The Good Teacher, makes the first serious attempt in the English language to go beyond the legends and uncover who the 15th Century Polish scholar and theologian really was.
Koliński first ‘met’ St. John Cantius while doing graduate studies during the 1970s at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, where the latter had once taught. The saint’s presence could still be felt throughout the city, which was then experiencing a tumultuous period.
“That was a fascinating time (in Kraków), because I was there when John Paul II visited for the first time as Pope,” Koliński says. “I was there the following year when Solidarity formed. Then the communist government clamped down and declared martial law.”
Even with the tension, faith thrived in the “City of Saints.” John Cantius’ grave at the Collegiate Church of St. Anne had attracted pilgrims almost from the time of his burial in 1473. When the pope visited the university, he alluded to St. John Cantius when speaking of “knowledge and wisdom seeking a covenant with holiness.” This experience of Polish spirituality and its influence on everyday life made a profound impact on Koliński.
As a founding member of the Canons Regular of St. John Cantius in 1998, he became de facto historian of their patron, about whom little was known. “Almost everything that’s been written about him is in Polish,” Koliński explains, “and I was the only one who knew the language.” He began to collect books and articles, and soon noticed problems when he compared them to English manuscripts.
“There were errors in the English sources,” he says. Over-reliance on the legends had resulted in contradictions and conflicting dates. John Cantius’ actual origins seemed shrouded in mystery. And while Koliński believed that the legends surrounding him held some truth, they also obscured the reality that saints are far more complex as individuals than is generally thought.
“I began to have this sense that I needed to do something,” Koliński says. “The Canons needed to know better who he was. And I was the only one to do it because all the materials were in Polish.”
Yet his duties with the order, including taking over as Pastor of St. Peter Parish in Volo, forced the project to take a back seat for several years. Then, in 2019, he was approached by Fr. Scott Thelander, SJC, then Superior General of the Canons Regular.
“He said, ‘Father Dennis, I want you to go to Kraków for 10 weeks to do research on St. John Cantius and write a book. Our members really need to know more about him,’” Koliński remembers. “And I thought: Oh sure, he’s just dangling this little carrot in front of my nose, and now he’s going to tell me he’s joking. But he was serious.”
The Journey to Kraków
From the beginning, Koliński planned on a biography, rather than an academic study. He also wanted to go beyond a hagiography or devotional work, believing that the actual facts of John Cantius’ life could offer clues as to how one becomes a saint.
This was a view strongly shared by Dr. Roman Maria Zawadzki, emeritus historian of the Pontifical University of John Paul II and the leading scholar on St. John Cantius in the world. Koliński flew to Poland with then-Brother Joseph Brom (who was taking a course in Polish language), hoping to track Zawadzki down.
“I didn’t even know if he was still alive,” Koliński says, “because he had to be in his eighties.” As it turned out, Zawadzki was still active in Kraków. The latter agreed to meet with Koliński several times, patiently answering questions and filling in details. As someone who’d researched St. John Cantius for over 25 years, Zawadzki, like many passionate scholars, almost seemed to know his subject personally.
One day, he took Koliński to the Archive of the University Library and arranged for four of the saint’s books – copied down in his own hand – to be brought out of storage. The effect of paging through them moved Koliński deeply.
“These were the pages that St. John Cantius had touched and written upon,” he remembers. The books were remarkably well-preserved, aside from stains on the edges of the linen pages; the leather covers looked new. Zawadzki explained how John Cantius would, in the evenings after teaching, spend hours by candlelight making copies of philosophical and theological works for his personal library. He favored patristic fathers like St. Augustine, as well as works by Aristotle.
At the end of each manuscript was a short note of thanksgiving – what’s known as a gratiarum actio – which was typical for medieval copyists, but in this case seemed heartfelt and original. The notes praised God and the Virgin Mary, as well as the saints, and also looked like they’d been recently jotted down.
A second, fortuitous meeting in Kraków – this one by chance – resulted in a huge leap in Koliński’s research. The Dominican Friary where he was staying held a gathering every Wednesday night. A casual chat at one of these led to an introduction to Dr. Dagmara Wójcik-Zega, a young medieval scholar and archivist at the Jagiellonian University Library. Her specialty was the history of the University in the 15th Century – the exact period when St. John Cantius taught.
“When we got together, she already had a stack of materials for me,” Koliński remembers. “It’s amazing how thorough those 15th Century documents were. In a list of a year or semester, I could see that John Cantius taught this, and this, and this.” His name also came up frequently in proceedings of meetings. Throughout it all, Wójcik-Zega was able to provide context, describing how professors like John Cantius met with their students, and what his daily life would have been like.
Koliński began to get a sense of John Cantius as both a cleric and a scholar – and especially what made him stand out from his contemporaries. He’d resigned as rector of the parish school in Miechów to take up his university position in Kraków. Later, he was appointed as both cantor at St. Florian’s Church and pastor of St. Andrew’s Church in Olkusz, some distance away. At this time, he was already teaching a full load of philosophy courses and studying theology on his own (a prodigious undertaking that continued for 14 years and strongly influenced his own spirituality). He also copied manuscripts in the evening.
But after only two months, John Cantius resigned from the two new positions. His refusal to take on benefices he couldn’t personally fulfill was highly unusual for the period.
“He was honest to a fault,” Koliński remarks, noting that it was common for clergy to collect such benefices, which paid well. The usual practice was to hire another priest to say Mass, give him a percentage, and keep the rest.
As a university employee, John Cantius was already comfortable, thanks to his salary. This allowed him to help the poor, including his students, most of whom were lower and middle class.
“He certainly helped the students with their studies,” Koliński says. “But he also seems to have helped them financially. We don’t have a lot of details – it’s mostly anecdotal – but he became known as the Bonis Magister, the Good Master.” In this respect, John Cantius also went against the grain, appearing more humble and accessible than many of his colleagues. Even after becoming a high-level university administrator, these remained predominant traits.
Over time, a portrait began to emerge of someone seeking an intellectual understanding of God, but also deeply committed to living a Christ-like example in the world. John Cantius also seems to have been a proponent of devotio moderna, an influential movement within the Catholic Church, which began in the Netherlands in the 14th Century and reached Kraków via Prague. It emphasized interior piety and attention to practical virtue – seeing holiness in everyday duties.
All these qualities suggest why an extraordinary groundswell of devotion rose up around John Cantius after his death. So many signs and miracles were recorded by those who visited his grave that it eventually drew kings, clergy, and laity from around Poland. Although he wouldn’t be officially canonized until 1767, John Cantius very quickly became a popular saint among ordinary people, especially the citizens of Kraków.
A Life in Perspective
When one only has fragments of a life to work with, it’s difficult to write a chronological narrative. For his book, Koliński opted to approach St. John Cantius through various lenses: the world he lived in, the liturgy he knew, his work as a theologian and scholar, the events of his canonization, and the legends that have sprung up around him.
With the latter, Koliński is more open-minded than many scholars, but he continues to believe that pious legends – unlike myths – need to be taken seriously on their own terms.
“They’re not just fabricated stories,” he says. “They’re a literary form used in early hagiographies, which are grounded in a certain truth.” In other words, the story of the Miracle of the Jug may well have happened as it did, or perhaps it’s more allegorical, and meant to show us how God’s grace works through His saints to heal a broken world. Legends, after all, are not based on realism, but on what is True.
The different perspectives laid the groundwork for Koliński to consider St. John Cantius’ interior life. “Piecing together his life was like making a patchwork quilt,” he says. “But trying to put together a person’s soul is much more difficult. He never left a diary, like St. Faustina. He never left any writings, like St. John of the Cross. I had to search in different places to get glimmers of what his spiritual life must have been like. That’s why I started out with his liturgical life, because his spiritual life would have been formed by the liturgy. Then the devotional life – what devotions did he have? And finally, the life of virtue, because that’s what makes a saint.”
He eventually had a breakthrough early in 2025, while on retreat at St. Michael’s Abbey in California. Among the reading material he’d taken along was Thomas Dubay’s The Fire Within, about St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa of Avila.
“I was reading the section about what true mysticism is. A mystic is a person in deep, intimate union with God. He or she lives in the world, but sometimes you get a sense that the person is no longer quite in the world. Like John Paul II, when I saw him; there were definitely those moments. And that idea seemed to define St. John Cantius.”
Koliński says he finds other similarities between St. John Paul II and St. John Cantius. Both spent their childhoods in small towns, living next to the parish church. They studied at the same university. Both were philosophers who became theologians. And both favored an approach to faith that allowed anyone – even the simplest person – the possibility of becoming a saint.
“All the faithful of Christ of whatever rank or status are called to the fullness of the Christian life and to the perfection of charity,” as the Second Vatican Council tells us. This idea seems to have exemplified the life of St. John Cantius, who as a priest, scholar, and teacher sought no more than to serve God every moment of his life, as best he could.
For Fr. Dennis Koliński, few things speak more profoundly than how God can take the life of someone as ordinary as St. John Cantius, and use it to bring people closer to Him, even today. “St. John Cantius shows us that your life doesn’t have to be remarkable to become a saint,” he says. “You just have to live the Gospel.” If readers can take that simple lesson from his new book, then he will be very pleased.
St. John Cantius: The Good Teacher is available through Biretta Books. To order a copy, please visit www.birettabooks.com.
