Saint Dominic

“ Stephen entered Saint Dominic’s thoroughly crestfallen, and fully convinced he was the most ignorant boy that ever entered a public school. The crowds of boys in the playground frightened him, and even the little boys inspired him with awe. They, at any rate, had heard of Vulcan, and knew about the Tenth Fiji War!
“Here,” said Anthony, “is your brother’s study. Sit here till he returns, and make the most of your time, for you’ll have to put your best foot foremost to-morrow in the Doctor’s examination.” ”

“ Dominic had left the earth and soared away to Heaven, and his numerous miracles had decided the Church to inscribe his name in the catalog of her Saints, the Brothers and Sisters of the Militia of Jesus Christ wished to honor their glorious founder, by taking the title of Brothers of Penance of St, Dominic; besides, the merits of St. Dominic and the apostolical labors of his Order had almost banished heresy; exterior combats were no longer necessary, but it remained yet to overcome by penance, the interior enemy of the soul, and hence the new appellation was more becoming than the old one. ”

“ On reaching Saint Dominic’s the three boys discovered that the news of their afternoon’s adventure had arrived there before them. Paul, despite his promise of secrecy, had not been able to refrain from confiding to one or two bosom friends, in strict confidence, his version of the fracas on the tow-path. ”

“ This verdict of a fair-minded and highly competent Protestant church historian on the most controverted point of Dominic’s career is of great value. His method was to travel over the country on foot and barefooted, in extreme poverty, simplicity and austerity, preaching and instructing in highways and villages and towns, and in the castles of the nobility, controverting and discussing with the heretics. He used often to organize formal disputations with Albigensian leaders, lasting a number of days. Many times plots were laid against his life. ”

“ History of Saint Dominic." [30] A Dominican Religious led a holy life in his convent at Zamora, a city of the kingdom of L£on. He was united in the bonds of a pious friendship with a Franciscan brother like himself, a man of great virtue. One day, when conversing together on the subject of eternity, they mutually promised that, if it pleased God, the first who died should appear to the other to give him some salutary advice. ”

“ His holy Mother threw herself at His feet, and prayed for mercy, saying that she had persons who would remedy the evil; and she at the same time introduced to Him Dominic and Francis, as being proper persons for reforming the world, and reestablishing piety; this pacified Jesus Christ.
Dominic, who had never seen Francis, met him next day, recognized him, ran to him and embraced him, saying: "You are my companion; we will work in concert with each other; let us be strictly united, and no one will be able to master us." ”

“ Whatever he paints is to the glory of God: but it is also to the glory of St. Dominic and of the order that he founded. This beautiful altar-piece, for instance, was produced by the Dominican painter of Fiesole for the Dominican church of St. Dominic at Fiesole. The saint himself, with his little red star, is everywhere apparent: and those who have visited Fra Angelico’s own Dominican monastery of San Marco at Florence will recollect that the founder and his red star similarly occur in almost every fresco in that beautiful building. ”

“ The devotion of the most holy Rosary is known to have been revealed to St. Dominic by the divine mother herself, when the saint, being in affliction, and bewailing to his Lady the conduct of the Albigensian heretics, who at that time were doing great injury to the Church, the Virgin said to him: “This earth will always be barren, until the rain falls on it.” ”

“ The reader will doubtless have inferred, from what has already been said, that the young gentlemen of the Fifth Form at Saint Dominic’s entertained, among other emotions, a sentiment something like jealousy of their seniors and superiors in the Sixth. ”

“ Dominic was born April 5, 1170, and died August 6, 1221. His birthplace, Callaroga; his father and mother’s names, Felix and Joanna, his mother’s dream; his name of Dominic, given him in consequence of a vision by a noble matron, who stood sponsor to him, are all told in an anonymous life of the saint, said to be written in the thirteenth century, and published by Quetif and Echard, Scriptores Ordinis Praedicatorum. Par. 1719. fol. t 1. p. 25. ”

“ Later he was sent to Bologna to pursue the studies considered necessary for a gentleman in those days, but Providence had other designs and uses for him. He was yet in his teens when the call came; he answered it at once, renounced the world and took the Habit of the Preachers, the sons and followers of Saint Dominic. The Breviary says, “With great splendour did his virtues shine in religion,” especially in his gifts of preaching, which brought the strayed lambs back to the fold by thousands at a time. ”

“ A Church which embraced, with equal sympathy, and within a hundred years, the Virgin, Saint Bernard, William of Champeaux and the School of Saint- Victor, Peter the Venerable, Saint Francis of Assisi, Saint Dominic, Saint Thomas Aquinas, and Saint Bonaventure, was more liberal than any modern State can afford to be. Radical contradictions the State may perhaps tolerate, though hardly, but never embrace or profess. Such elasticity long ago vanished from human thought. ”

“ After a contest of humility between the two patriarchs, as to who should speak first, Dominic, urged by Francis to take the lead, said to him:—"You excel me in humility, and I will excel you in obedience." He then gave the cardinal this answer:—"My lord, my brethren may well consider themselves as holding a very elevated rank. What is there more honorable than teaching others from the Evangelical pulpit? What should well-thinking minds desire more than to be employed in defence of the faith, and to combat the enemies of the Church? ”

“ Dominic and Francis, confident of the protection of the Blessed Virgin, entered into a strict friendship and resolved to spare no pains in their exertions for the glory of God, and concerted together as to the best means for attaining their object. Upon which an author quoted by Wading, makes a most appropriate reflection: "It was," he says, "something admirable to see two men, who were poor, badly clad, without power or interest despicable in the eyes of the world, divide between them the world itself, and undertake to conquer it. ”

“ They mark him out as a lower kind of Saint Dominic, differing from the fierce and gloomy enthusiast who founded the Inquisition, as we might imagine the familiar imp of a spiteful witch to differ from an archangel of darkness. ”

“ Towards the end of the war Dominic established a brotherhood which should devote itself to preaching with a view to refuting heretics. In 1215 he appeared at the Lateran Council, in order to obtain the papal approbation of this new Order. Innocent III, while taking under his protection the monastery of Prouille, desired Dominic to choose an already existing rule for his new community. The Dominican legend depicts Innocent as converted to the recognition of the Order by a dream, in which he saw the Lateran Church tottering and upheld by the support of the Spanish saint. ”

“ Frankly, I am not convinced that we ought to have spent so much on the Abbey, but having done so, we must obviously try and put ourselves on a sound financial basis. I should like to hear what Brother Dominic has to say."
Brother Dominic was a slight man with black hair and a sallow complexion, whose most prominent feature was an, immense hooked nose with thin nostrils. Whether through the associations with his name saint, or merely by his personality, Mark considered that he looked a typical inquisitor. ”

“ Dominic was an organizer and statesman. There was a strain of ecclesiastical anarchism in the early Franciscan Order; certain “spiritual” Franciscans of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth century rebelled against religious authority as no Dominicans have ever done. Where the Italian saint puts an example ahead of precept, the Spaniard put precept ahead of example. To him the weakness of the Church was that not enough of her clergy [Pg 195] knew thoroughly her doctrine and were able to teach it. For him, as for the prophet Hosea, the “... people were destroyed for lack of knowledge.” ”

“ It is one of the aims of the book to bring out the view that the prince of scholastics and the king of dialecticians was a man of the purest and deepest “monasticism.” But he was not destined to be as an Anselm, a Bernard, or a Hugh of S. Victor.
The Saint was sent to Naples for the prosecution of his studies, and whilst there he asked for and received the habit of S. Dominic. ”

“ For it must be said of the Dominicans—and I think it may be said of a good many English public schoolboys besides—that, however foolish they may have been in other respects, however riotous, however jealous of one another, however well satisfied with themselves, a point of honour was a point which they all took seriously to heart. ”

“ When the embassy was over, the bishop and Dominic repaired to Rome, and Innocent III. charged them to preach among the Albigensian heretics in Languedoc. For ten years (1205–1215) this mission in Languedoc was the work of Dominic’s life.
The Albigenses (q.v.) have received much sympathy, as being a kind of pre-Reformation Protestants; but it is now recognized that their tenets were an extreme form of Manichaeism. They believed in the existence of two gods, a good (whose son was Christ) and an evil (whose son was Satan) ”

“ Dom. And I love to hear of charity; 'tis a comfortable subject.
Lor. Being in the late battle, in great hazard of my life, I recommended my person to good Saint Dominick.
Dom. You could not have pitched upon a better; he's a sure card; I never knew him fail his votaries.
Lor. Troth, I also made bold to strike up a bargain with him, that, if I escaped with life and plunder, I would present some brother of his order with part of the booty taken from the infidels, to be employed in charitable uses.
Dom. There you hit him; Saint Dominick loves 412 charity exceedingly ”

“ To the left, an angel kneels in prayer. In the lower part of the painting with faces uplifted to the sky 78the hosts of the blessed, distributed in two groups, adore and contemplate. On one side, are Moses, Saint John the Baptist, the apostles, the bishops, and the founders of orders, distinguished by some emblem, and for greater certainty bearing their names inscribed around their nimbus, or upon the embroideries of their vestments. Saint Dominick holds a branch of lilies and a book. A sun forms the agrafe of Saint Thomas Aquinas's mantle ”

“ While there he probably came under the influence of the Dominicans, who were doing their utmost to enlist within their ranks the ablest young scholars of the age, for in spite of the opposition of his family, which was overcome only by the intervention of Pope Innocent IV., he assumed the habit of St Dominic in his seventeenth year. ”

“ Just before this council terminated its sittings, Dominic, presented to Pope Innocent III., obtained, as a recompense for the services which he had rendered to the Church militant, leave to found the order of Preaching-Brothers, who from him took the name, by which they are more generally known, of Dominicans. ”

“ He took up his residence at Rome, and at once rose high in the favour of the Pope. His eloquence, his earnestness, his absorbing enthusiasm, his matchless dialectic skill, his perfect scholastic training--all combined to attract precisely those cultured churchmen whose fastidious sense of the fitness of things revolted from the austerities of St. Francis and the enormous demands which the Minorites made upon their converts. While Francis was acting upon the masses from Assisi, Dominic was stirring the dry bones to a new vitality among scholars and ecclesiastics at Rome. ”

“ One of Dominic's delights was to be dressed as a cleric for the great Procession of the Blessed Sacrament on the Feast of Corpus Christi. His whole bearing revealed the depth of his Faith and the excess of his love. ”

“ No one else who comes directly into our story has set [Pg 85] in motion such a force as did St. Dominic. He and St. Francis more than any men since the conversion of the Roman Empire, were to give to the Catholic Church new power over men’s thoughts and affections. ”

“ Dominic, an order which has rendered itself eminently illustrious for adorning the Christian Church with a brilliant galaxy of popes, prelates, and preachers, equally distinguished for their pious zeal in cultivating the Lord's vinevards, as for the purity of their principles and edifying sanctity of their lives. ”

“ If Francis inspired Dominic with the worship of poverty, Dominic supplied the followers of Francis with his zeal for theology. Within a year of the foundation of the Jacobin convent, four years before St. Francis’ death, the English theologian, Alexander of Hales, who was then teaching with great applause at Paris, entered the Minorite fold, and was celebrated as the ‘first Paris doctor of the Franciscan religion.’ Before long he resumed his teaching, and henceforth the Parisian convent of the Franciscans was only second to the Dominican cloister in its intellectual activity. ”

“ Dominic looks up in adoration; St. Catherine, wearing the crown of thorns, fervently embraces the feet of the Saviour. On the base, a child angel, in a high unearthly light, with a half extinguished torch, points with hope to the figure of the crucified Lord. The whole is emblematic of belief in a glorious Resurrection, through the aid of the Dominican prayers. Interesting inscription on the rock: “Lest earth should weigh too heavily on his father’s soul, A. van Dyck rolled this stone to the foot of the Cross, and placed it in this spot.” ”