Confessor Dominic

Saint Dominic de Guzmán, commonly styled Dominic the Confessor in older Latin calendars and martyrologies, was born in Caleruega in Old Castile, traditionally in 1170, to Felix de Guzmán and Joan of Aza. He received his first instruction from a priest uncle and then studied the arts and theology at Palencia. Contemporary and near-contemporary lives report that during a famine he sold his books and other goods to relieve the hungry. He entered the cathedral chapter of canons regular at Osma, was ordained a priest, and lived under the Rule of Saint Augustine. Bishop Diego de Acebo of Osma made him a close collaborator. Two brothers, Mannes and Anthony, are named in the family tradition; Mannes later joined the order Dominic founded and is himself venerated as blessed.

In 1203 or 1204 Dominic accompanied Diego on a Castilian embassy connected with a proposed marriage at the Danish court. Crossing Languedoc, they encountered the Cathar (Albigensian) movement. After the embassy and a visit to Rome they obtained from Pope Innocent III encouragement to preach in the Midi. Diego died in 1207. Dominic remained in the region, combining itinerant preaching with evangelical poverty meant to answer the austerity of the Cathar perfecti. About 1206 he established at Prouille a house for women converted from Catharism, the origin of the Dominican nuns. He continued this apostolate through the years of the Albigensian Crusade, holding disputations and insisting on conversion by persuasion rather than by arms, while remaining in communion with the local bishops and with the papacy.

At Toulouse, under Bishop Foulques, Dominic gathered a small community of preachers. At the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 he sought recognition of a new order dedicated to preaching and study. Because the council discouraged entirely new rules, he took the Rule of Saint Augustine. Pope Honorius III confirmed the Order of Preachers by the bull Religiosam vitam on 22 December 1216 and by further letters in 1217. Dominic then dispersed his friars to the university centres of Paris and Bologna and to Spain and Rome, so that the order would be learned as well as apostolic. He travelled widely, obtained further privileges, and presided over the first general chapter at Bologna in 1220, which shaped constitutions combining conventual observance with mobility, study, and preaching. A second chapter at Bologna followed in 1221.

Dominic died at Bologna on 6 August 1221, after exhorting the brethren to poverty and to mutual charity. He was buried in the church of San Nicolò delle Vigne, later rebuilt as the Basilica of San Domenico, where his tomb remains. Pope Gregory IX, who had known him personally, canonized him on 13 July 1234. The Roman liturgy long kept his feast on 4 August; in the present General Roman Calendar it is celebrated on 8 August. Later Dominican and popular tradition associated him with the rosary, a devotion the order did much to spread, though the fully developed Dominican rosary belongs to subsequent centuries. He is venerated as founder and patron of the Order of Preachers, as patron of the Dominican Republic and of Santo Domingo, and as a patron of astronomers, scientists, and those who have been falsely accused.