Worn out by the ever growing crowd of devotees who sought his help, the monk wandered into the most secluded and isolated areas of Sagittario. He first reached mount Caramola, where he practiced the delights of poverty for so long that he was called by everyone Jean of Caramola. From this hermitage, every Sunday Jean reached the abbey of Sagittario to listen to mass and where, according to records, he performed the miracle of the loaves.
He spent the last years of his life in the Abbey of St Mary of Sagittario as a lay brother. In the Cistercian monastery, he led a life of great austerity and strict silence, to the point that many thought he was mute. His body became frail and extremely thin due to the abstinence and very strict penance. He died there on 26 August 1339.
As recorded by De Lauro, on the ninth day after his death, some of his relatives arrived at the monastery to request the relics. When the body was exhumed, it released an intense scent of flowers that spread amongst all those present. Abbot Ruggero refused to grant the whole body of the blessed to his relatives and only gave them some relics.
Since 1339, the year the Blessed Jean of Caramola died, his body had been kept in a “crystalline” urn “well protected and with excellent decorations inside and outside”, in the words of De Lauro, placed on the altar of the chapel dedicated to him and communicating with the church.
The image of the Blessed Jean is engraved on the old wooden choir, once in the church of Sagittario and now in that of St James in Lauria.
