The Roman centurion of Capernaum

The Roman Centurion: "Master, I am not worthy to receive you ..." James Tissot - Brooklyn Museum.

A respectful soldier of the population of Capernaum, he had the city's synagogue built.

Jesus is not a stranger to him: a month ago, an officer of King Herod went to Cana to obtain from Jesus the healing of his son. This distant healing caused a great stir in the town.  

The centurion himself, on a surveillance mission, slipped into the crowd listening to the Sermon on the Mount. He was touched by the teaching given.

He asks Jesus to heal his servant in an act of faith that remains famous: "Just say the word...":

"I have a servant ill, Lord. He lies in my house on his bed, paralyzed by a bone disease, and he suffers terribly. Our doctors do not heal him. I invited yours to come, for these are diseases that come from the corrupted air of these regions and they know how to treat them with the herbs of the feverish soil of the shore where the waters stagnate before being absorbed by the sand of the sea. They refused to come. I am greatly distressed because he is a faithful servant."                                                                        

"I will come and heal him."        

"No, Lord. I do not ask so much of you. I am a pagan, unclean to you. If the Hebrew doctors fear contamination by setting foot in my house, all the more so it would be contamination for You who are divine. I am not worthy that you enter under my roof. But if from here you say just one word, my servant will be healed because you command all that exists.
I am a man subject to many authorities, the first of which is Caesar, for whom I must do, think, act as I am ordered, I can, in my turn, command the soldiers I have under my orders, and if I say to one: 'Go,' to another: 'Come,' and to the servant: 'Do this,' the first goes where I send him, the second comes because I call him, the third does what I say.

You who are He who is, you will be immediately obeyed by the illness and it will leave."

  Jesus (...) turns smiling towards the centurion:

"Go ahead, I am coming."

But the centurion repeats: "No, Lord, I have told you: it would be a great honor for me if you entered under my roof, but I do not deserve so much. Just say one word and my servant will be healed."

"And so let it be. Go with faith. At that moment the fever leaves him and life returns to his limbs. Make sure that Life also comes to your Soul. Go."

The centurion salutes militarily, bows, and then leaves.

Jesus watches him leave and then turns to those present and says:

"Truly, I tell you, I have not found such faith in Israel. Oh! it is true! (...)"

Later, under the pretext of maintaining order, he discreetly listens to Jesus teaching in the synagogue.

During a teaching by Jesus in this same synagogue, Eli, a hostile Pharisee whose grandson he had saved, picks a quarrel and provokes an uproar. The centurion intervenes:

"You have hundreds of Rabbis and they all give bad teaching. The only virtuous one is Him. I order you to leave!"

As the Pharisee does not comply quickly enough, he wants to expel him from the synagogue and report to the Proconsul. The threat is only canceled by Jesus’ intervention.

His name

Anonymous in the Gospel, as in the Maria Valtorta's work.

Where is he mentioned in the work?

EMV 171 EMV 177 EMV 182

EMV 269

EMV 447

EMV 514

More about this character

A centurion commands a century (100 men), itself grouped into a maniple (2x100 = 200 men) itself grouped into a cohort (3x2x100 = 600 men) forming finally a legion (10x3x2x100 = 6,000 men).    

In his book, Abbé Maistre cites Flavius Lucius Dexter, a 4th-century historian and friend of Saint Jerome: this centurion would be an Andalusian from Malaga, named Gaius Cornelius. Returning to Spain, he would have been instructed by James the Greater.    

The information is taken up by Bishop Jean-Joseph Gaume in his Evangelical Biographies.     A tradition gives him as the father of the centurion Cornelius "of the Italian cohort", baptized in Caesarea by Peter.