High Middle Ages (13th century)
Feast: January 28
A French merchant who spent his fortune buying captives out of slavery and founded a religious order to keep doing it after the money ran out.
Peter Nolasco had money, and he knew what he wanted to do with it. In the early 1200s, thousands of Christians were held as slaves in Moorish North Africa, and Peter started buying their freedom, one person at a time. When his personal fortune ran out, he did not stop — he founded the Order of Our Lady of Mercy (the Mercedarians) around 1218, whose members took a radical fourth vow on top of the usual poverty, chastity, and obedience: they would offer themselves as hostages if that was what it took to free a captive. This was not theoretical. Mercedarian friars crossed the Mediterranean, negotiated with slave traders, and sometimes stayed behind in chains when the money fell short. Peter reportedly made the dangerous crossing himself multiple times. Tradition says the idea for the order came to him, to King James I of Aragon, and to Raymond of Penyafort all on the same night, through a shared vision of Mary. Whether or not the vision happened exactly that way, the three men did work together to build something that outlasted all of them. The Mercedarians still exist today.