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The saints

St Dominic

A Spanish canon who would not be a bishop, and sent a handful of friars out to win a continent.

Feast: 8 August · about 1170 to 1221 · Caleruega, Spain, and Bologna, Italy

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The Arca di San Domenico in Bologna: a white marble tomb carved with scenes from the saint’s life.

Palickap, 2016. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Home / The saints / St Dominic

Toulouse, southern France, early 1200s

Two Spanish churchmen, a bishop named Diego and his prior Dominic, are riding through Toulouse.1

They behold with amazement and sorrow the spiritual ruin wrought by the Albigensian heresy.1

The preachers already sent there had failed. Dominic decided the answer was poverty, learning and the open road.

01St Dominic

Preachers, poor and learned

Diego and Dominic saw that the failure of the Cistercian mission was due to the monks’ comfortable habits, and persuaded them to adopt a more austere life.1

Offered bishoprics, Dominic refused, saying he would rather take flight in the night with nothing but his staff.1

On 22 December 1216 Pope Honorius III issued the bull confirming his Order of Preachers.1

Convinced by his own years at the University of Palencia, he wanted his friars to have the best education they could get.1

02St Dominic

The scattering

On 15 August 1217 he gathered the brothers at Prouille, and then sent them out, to Paris and beyond.1

Next he made a foundation at the University of Bologna.1

In May 1221 he presided over the second general chapter of the order at Bologna, and had scarcely returned there from preaching when a fatal illness struck him.1

He died on 6 August 1221.1

The Arca di San Domenico in Bologna: a white marble tomb carved with scenes from the saint’s life.
The Arca di San Domenico in Bologna, the tomb of St Dominic. Palickap, 2016. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.

He wrote almost nothing. He built a family of preachers that has never stopped talking.

Notes

  1. Catholic Encyclopedia (1913), “St. Dominic”. New Advent edition. newadvent.org

The Catholic Encyclopedia (1913) is in the public domain; we quote the New Advent edition. Texts of the Holy See are quoted briefly from vatican.va. Scripture: Douay-Rheims, Challoner revision (public domain). Photographs: Wikimedia Commons, credited under each image; full list on the photo credits page.

Lines in the narrator’s voice, without a note, are our reflection, not a historical claim. Stone & Incense restates Church teaching in plain words; our wording is not an official Church text. Report an error.