Saint Dominic

Founder (1170-1221)

Feast – August 4

Founder of the Order of Preachers, commonly known as the Dominican Order, Saint Dominic was born at in Caleruega, halfway between Osma and Aranda de Duero in Old Castile, Spain, c. 1170. His parents were members of the Spanish nobility, probably related to the ruling family. His father Felix Guzman an honored and wealthy man, the royal warden of the village was in every sense the worthy head of a family of saints. His mother, Bl. Joan of Aza, to the nobility of blood added a nobility of soul which so enshrined her in the popular veneration that in 1828 she was solemnly beatified by Pope Leo XII.

According to one legend, his mother made a pilgrimage to the Benedictine abbey of Santo Domingo de Silos which lies a few miles north of Caleruega. During the pilgrimage, Bl. Joan had a dream of a dog leaping from her womb with a torch in its mouth. The animal “seemed to set the earth on fire.” His parents named him Dominic, a play on the words Domini canis, meaning the Lord’s dog in Latin.

The example of such parents was not without its effect upon their children. Not only Saint Dominic but also his brothers, Antonio and Manes, were distinguished for their extraordinary sanctity. Antonio, the eldest, became a secular priest and, having distributed his patrimony to the poor, entered a hospital where he spent his life ministering to the sick. Manes, following in the footsteps of St. Dominic, became a Friar Preacher, and was beatified by Gregory XVI.

St. Dominic from his seventh year was educated under the tutelage of his uncle, the priest of Gumiel d’Izan, not far from Calaroga.

In 1184 he entered the University of Palencia where he remained for ten years pursuing his studies of theology and arts with such ardor and success that he was widely acclaimed as an exemplary student by his professors. Amid the frivolities and dissipations of a university city, the life of the future saint was characterized by seriousness of purpose and an austerity of manner which singled him out as one from whom great things might be expected in the future. According to the deposition of Brother Stephen, Prior Provincial of Lombardy, given in the process of canonization, Dominic was still a student at Palencia when Don Martin de Bazan, the Bishop of Osma, called him to membership in the cathedral chapter for the purpose of assisting in its reform. To enact these reforms, the bishop realized the importance of having the example of Dominic’s eminent holiness constantly before his canons.

In 1191, when Spain was desolated by famine, young Dominic gave away his money, sold his clothes, furniture and even precious manuscripts to feed the hungry. Dominic reportedly told his astonished fellow students, “Would you have me study off these dead skins, when men are dying of hunger?”

On two occasions, St. Dominic attempted to sell himself into slavery to the Moors to obtain the freedom of others.

In 1194, at the age of twenty-five, he joined a Benedictine order, the Canons Regular in Osma. In the year 1199, while he was still a Canon Regular of Saint Augustine and was preaching near the Spanish coasts, he was taken captive, with all his audience and a Brother in religion, by a band of pirates. They placed the prisoners in their galleys at the oars. When a furious storm broke, the young Saint exhorted the disciples of Mohammed to think seriously of their souls, to open their eyes to the truth of Christianity, and above all, to invoke the Mother of God. They did not listen until his third exhortation, at a moment when it was clear the ship and passengers could not be saved. They swore to him then that if the God of Christians preserved them by the intercession of His Holy Mother, they would dedicate themselves to their service. Immediately the storm ceased, and the pirates kept their word.

In 1201 he became the superior of the chapter and was soon offered an episcopal chair at Compostella. He gave the same answer he had already given many times: “God has not sent me to be a bishop, but to preach”. As a canon of Osma, he spent nine years of his life hidden in God and rapt in contemplation, scarcely passing beyond the confines of the chapter house.

In 1203 he accompanied Diego de Acebo, the Bishop of Osma, on a diplomatic mission for Alfonso VIII, King of Castile, to secure a bride in Denmark for crown prince Ferdinand.

In 1205 on a journey through France with his bishop, Dominic came face to face with the then virulent Albigensian heresy, a variant of ancient Manicheanism. The Albigensians–or Cathari, “the pure ones”–held to two principles—one good, one evil—in the world. All matter is evil—hence they denied the Incarnation and the sacraments. On the same principle, they abstained from procreation and took a minimum of food and drink.

If he hadn’t taken a trip with his bishop, St. Dominic would probably have remained within the structure of contemplative life; after the trip, he spent the rest of his life being a contemplative in active apostolic work.

Along with Diego de Acebo, St. Dominic began a program in the south of France, to convert the Cathars. As part of this, Catholic-Cathar public debates were held at Verfeil, Servian, Pamiers, Montréal and elsewhere.

In the beginning a conventional preaching crusade was not succeeding: the ordinary people admired and followed the ascetical heroes of the Albigenses. Understandably, they were not impressed by the Catholic preachers who traveled with horse and retinues, stayed at the best inns and had servants.

Therefore, with three Cistercians, he began itinerant preaching according to the gospel ideal. He continued this work for 10 years, being successful with the ordinary people but not with the leaders. Theological disputations played a prominent part in the propaganda of the heretics. Dominic and his companion, therefore, lost no time in engaging their opponents in this kind of theological exposition. Whenever the opportunity offered, they accepted the gage of battle. The thorough training that the saint had received at Palencia now proved of inestimable value to him in his encounters with the heretics. Unable to refute his arguments or counteract the influence of his preaching, they visited their hatred upon him by means of repeated insults and threats of physical violence.

St. Dominic and his fellow preachers gradually became a community. He saw the need for a new type of organization to address the spiritual needs of the growing cities of the era, one that would combine dedication and systematic education, with more organizational flexibility than either monastic orders or the secular clergy. In 1215, St. Dominic established himself, with six followers, in a house provided by Peter Seila, a rich resident of Toulouse beginning of the Order of Preaching Friars.

His ideal, and that of his Order, was to organically link a life with God, study, and prayer in all forms, with a ministry of salvation to people by the word of God. His ideal: contemplata tradere: “to pass on the fruits of contemplation” or “to speak only of God or with God.” He subjected himself and his companions to the monastic rules of prayer and penance; and meanwhile Bishop Foulques gave them written authority to preach throughout the territory of Toulouse. St.Dominic recognized the need for a physical institution in Southern France to preserve the gains he made against the Albigensian heresy. The nobility needed a place to educate their children and Catholic women needed a safe place away from hostile heretics. St. Dominic established a convent at Prouille in 1206, which would become the first Dominican house. Bishop Diego and St. Dominic established their headquarters there. The monastery remains to this day as the Notre-Dame-de-Prouille Monastery.

St. Dominic founded his Second Order for nuns for the education of Catholic girls, and his Third Order, or Tertiaries, for persons of both sexes living in the world. It was in the little chapel of Notre Dame de La Prouille in 1208, St. Dominic knelt, and implored the great Mother of God to save the Church, that Our Lady appeared to him and gave him the Rosary, bidding him to go forth and preach it. On 15 January of 1208 Pierre de Castelnau, one of the Cistercian legates, was assassinated. During the crusade that followed, famous battles in southern France against the Albigensians, St. Dominic with rosary in hand revived the courage of the Catholic armies and led them to victory against overwhelming numbers. Before the battle of Muret, 12 September 1213, the saint is again found in the council that preceded the battle. During the progress of the conflict, he knelt before the altar in the church of Saint-Jacques, praying for the triumph of the Catholic armies. So remarkable was the victory of the crusaders at Muret that Simon de Montfort regarded it as altogether miraculous, and piously attributed it to the prayers of St. Dominic. In gratitude to God for this decisive victory, the crusader erected a chapel in the church of Saint-Jacques, dedicated to Our Lady of the Rosary. It would appear, therefore, that the devotion of the Rosary, which tradition says was revealed to Saint Dominic, had come into general use about this time.

It is said that 100,000 unbelievers were converted by the preaching and the miracles of the saint. According to Lacordaire and others, it was during his preaching in Lombardy that the saint instituted the Militia of Jesus Christ, or the third order, as it is commonly called, consisting of men and women living in the world, to protect the rights and property of the Church.

He consistently appealed for mercy for the heretics who were often the victims of atrocities. St. Dominic followed the armies and spent his time reconciling survivors to the Church. He became famous as a result of his mercy and his work, several other prominent religious figures of the time petitioned for him to be made bishop. He refused at least three attempts at promotion, saying he would rather run away with nothing than become a bishop. In November 1215, an ecumenical council was to meet at Rome “to deliberate on the improvement of morals, the extinction of heresy, and the strengthening of the faith.” This was identically the mission St. Dominic had determined on for his order. St. Dominic with Bishop Foulques went to Rome.

He appeared before the Pope in the month of August, 1216, and solicited the confirmation of his order and was finally granted written authority in December 1216 and January 1217 by the new pope, Honorius III for an order to be named “The Order of Preachers” (“Ordo Praedicatorum”, or “O.P.,” popularly known as the Dominican Order).

God abundantly blessed the new Order; France, Italy, Spain, and England welcomed the Preaching Friars. In the summer of 1217, St.Dominic decided it was time to send his followers out to grow the order. The band of seventeen men was ordered to depart Prouille and to go out across Europe. The decision was a fateful one which proved successful. New members began to appear in great numbers across the continent. Shortly afterwards, Pope Honorarius III elevated St. Dominic to the rank of “Master of the Sacred Palace.” The position has been occupied by Dominican preachers since 1218. Pope also issued a Bull, a papal decree, asking all clergy across Europe to support the Order of Preachers.

This Order with that of the Friars Minor, founded by his contemporary friend St. Francis of Assisi, was the chief means God employed to renew Christian fervor during the Middle Ages.

Although St. Dominic traveled extensively to maintain contact with his growing brotherhood of friars, he made his headquarters in Rome. In 1219, Pope Honorius III invited St. Dominic and his companions to take up residence at the ancient Roman basilica of Santa Sabina, which they did by early 1220. Before that time the friars had only a temporary residence in Rome at the convent of San Sisto Vecchio, which Honorius III had given to St. Dominic circa 1218, intending it to become a convent for a reformation of nuns at Rome under St. Dominic’s guidance. The official foundation of the Dominican convent at Santa Sabina with its studium conventuale, the first Dominican studium in Rome, occurred with the legal transfer of property from Pope Honorius III to the Order of Preachers on 5 June 1222.

In January, February, and March of 1221 three consecutive Bulls were issued commending the order to all the prelates of the Church. The thirtieth of May, 1221, found St. Dominic at Bologna presiding over the second general chapter of the order. At the close of the chapter he set out for Venice to visit Cardinal Ugolino, to whom he was especially indebted for many substantial acts of kindness. He had scarcely returned to Bologna when a fatal illness attacked him. He died at noon on 6 August 1221after three weeks of sickness; at the age of fifty-one, he gave up his soul to God.

According to Guiraud, St. Dominic abstained from meat, “observed stated fasts and periods of silence”, “selected the worst accommodations and the meanest clothes”, and “never allowed himself the luxury of a bed”. “When travelling, he beguiled the journey with spiritual instruction and prayers.” “Frequently traveled barefoot.” He constantly prayed or issued instruction as he walked and whenever he faced discomfort, he praised God. His only possessions were a small bundle and a staff. In his bundle he kept a copy of the Gospel of Matthew and the Epistles of St. Paul, which he would read over and over again”. His nights were spent in prayer; and, though all beheld him as an Angel of purity, before morning broke he would scourge himself to blood. His words rescued countless souls, and three times raised the dead to life.

In a Bull dated at Spoleto, 13 July 1234, Pope Gregory IX made his cult obligatory throughout the Church.

References and Excerpts

[1] “Saint Dominic, Founder.” [Online]. Available: http://sanctoral.com/en/saints/saint_dominic.html. [Accessed: 16-Aug-2019].

[2] “Saint Dominic – Franciscan Media.” [Online]. Available: https://www.franciscanmedia.org/saint-dominic/. [Accessed: 16-Aug-2019].

[3] “Saint Dominic – Wikipedia.” [Online]. Available: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Dominic. [Accessed: 16-Aug-2019].

[4] “St. Dominic – Saints & Angels – Catholic Online.” [Online]. Available: https://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=178. [Accessed: 16-Aug-2019].

[5] “CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA: St. Dominic.” [Online]. Available: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05106a.htm. [Accessed: 16-Aug-2019].