Saint Dominic

Priest, Founder of the Order of Preachers
(1170–1221)

Saint Dominic was born around 1170 at Caleruega in Castile, Spain, into a noble family. His mother, Blessed Jane of Aza, had prayed at the shrine of Saint Dominic of Silos for a son, and when she conceived she dreamed that a dog leapt from her womb carrying a torch in its mouth and set the world alight. Dominic was educated at Palencia, where he sold his books to feed the poor during a famine, declaring that he could not prize dead skins when living skins were perishing from want.

He became a canon of the cathedral chapter at Osma under its reforming bishop Diego de Azevedo, and in 1203 he accompanied Diego on a diplomatic mission to Denmark. Passing through southern France they encountered the Albigensian heresy, which had taken root among the educated classes and was tearing the fabric of Christian society. The official preaching missions against this heresy had largely failed, and Dominic saw why: preachers who arrived on horseback with great retinues could not effectively preach apostolic poverty. He and Diego adopted a new method, going on foot, in poverty, meeting the heretics in open debate and winning souls by the power of truth combined with the witness of Gospel life.

From this apostolic experience grew the idea of a new order of preachers, men formed in theology and Scripture who would combine the ascetic rigour of the monastic life with the active apostolate of preaching. The Order of Preachers, the Dominicans, was formally approved by Pope Honorius III in 1216. Dominic governed his growing family with remarkable wisdom, holding the first general chapters, establishing studia in the great university cities, and sending his friars throughout Europe and beyond.

He was himself a man of intense prayer, spending entire nights before the Blessed Sacrament in nine characteristic modes of prayer that his friars observed and recorded. He is credited with propagating the Rosary as a weapon against heresy. He died at Bologna on August 6, 1221. He was canonised in 1234 by Gregory IX. His feast is celebrated on August 8th.