Saint Dominic

Saint Dominic, known in Spanish as Domingo de Guzmán, was born in 1170 at Caleruega in Old Castile to a family of the regional nobility. Tradition names his parents as Felix de Guzmán and Juana de Aza, the latter later honored as Blessed Jane of Aza. Later medieval lives surround his childhood with symbolic legends, among them a dream in which his mother saw a dog carrying a lighted torch, a story afterward linked to the nickname Domini canes (hounds of the Lord) given to his order. He was educated first by a priest uncle and then in the arts and theology at Palencia. In the 1190s he joined the cathedral chapter of Osma as a canon regular and was ordained priest. Early witnesses describe him as given to study, night prayer, and practical charity; one widely repeated episode holds that during a famine he sold his annotated books to feed the hungry.

In the opening years of the thirteenth century he accompanied Bishop Diego de Acebo of Osma on journeys into northern Europe, generally understood as diplomatic efforts to secure a bride for a Castilian prince among the Danish royal house. On the road through southern France they met the Cathar or Albigensian movement, whose dualist teaching and local strength impressed both men as a pastoral emergency. After the embassy failed and Bishop Diego died in 1207, Dominic stayed in Languedoc to preach. Together with Diego he had already adopted a style of poor, itinerant preaching meant to match the austerity of Cathar perfecti and to correct the scandal caused by wealthy papal legates. A house for women converted from Catharism was founded at Prouille near Fanjeaux around 1206 or 1207 and is counted as the earliest Dominican community. When the Albigensian Crusade began in 1209, Dominic remained a preacher and organizer of communities rather than a military leader; later claims that he founded the Inquisition or directed crusading violence are not supported by the earliest sources and are treated cautiously by modern historians.

From companions assembled at Toulouse, Dominic sought recognition for a new religious order devoted to preaching orthodox doctrine. He attended the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 with Bishop Fulk of Toulouse. Because that council barred entirely new rules, the group took the Rule of Saint Augustine and added constitutions that required study, communal poverty, and mobility for preaching. Pope Honorius III confirmed the Order of Preachers in bulls of December 1216 and January 1217. Dominic then sent friars out from Toulouse to Paris, Bologna, Rome, Spain, and other centers so that the order would be international and university-based from its first generation. General chapters, especially the chapter of Bologna in 1220, defined a centralized yet itinerant mendicant structure. Dominican nuns following related statutes also spread in these years. The founder spent his last period visiting houses in Italy, France, and Spain, preaching and settling disputes over poverty and organization.

Dominic died at Bologna on 6 August 1221 and was buried in the friars' church, later rebuilt as the Basilica of San Domenico, where a prominent thirteenth-century arca still marks his tomb. Pope Gregory IX, who had known him personally, canonized him on 13 July 1234. His liturgical feast, once kept on 4 August, is now celebrated on 8 August in the General Roman Calendar. The Order of Preachers became a major force in medieval universities, missions, and pastoral life, and Dominic is invoked as patron of astronomers, scientists, the Dominican Republic, Santo Domingo, and persons who have been falsely accused.