CHAPTER I
THE FOUNDATION OF THE ORDER
Dominic the Founder
St. Dominic was a spirit-filled man raised up by God to answer the pressing need of the Church for a continuous body of trained preachers. Guided by the Holy Spirit he founded the first apostolic Order, combining the contemplative consecration and apostolic ministry of the twelve apostles and the primitive Church. When Honorius III entrusted to the Order the mission to preach the Word of God, a duty that is primarily episcopal, the Church saw for the first time a religious Order with a mandate as coextensive as herself. By obtaining this universal mission, Dominic threw open the door of preaching to the members of his own Order and eventually to all Orders and priests.
Dominic took traditional elements in the Church-the apostolic life, priests living in community, regular discipline of the monastic Orders, liturgical prayer sung in community, preaching pursued in poverty-and fused them into a balanced unity that enabled his Order to meet the needs of his age and of many centuries to come.
Dominic did all his work as Founder with the full approval of the Holy See, "departing not from the teaching and the authority of the Church militant," to use the words of Pope Gregory IX. This submission to the guidance of the Church rescued his Order from suspicion and saved his sons from the errors that had nullified the good intentions of some heretical groups. Canonizing him in Ice, Gregory IX summarized Dominic's whole life when he likened him to the apostles: "I knew him as a man who followed completely the apostolic way of life. There is no doubt at all that in heaven, too, he is united with the Apostles in glory."
Though Dominic owed much to the centuries-old wisdom of monasticism, he also drew upon the experimentation and renewal that had been in progress for 150 years. From 1150 onward, a great period of reform, called the Gregorian Reform after Pope Gregory VII, had developed in the Church. It returned to the Scriptures and apostolic times as the sources of its inspiration and for the answers to great abuses, particularly among a clergy who were often ignorant, incontinent, without zeal, and who seldom preached.
Seeking to solve this problem, zealous clergy and laity endeavored to return to the simplicity and poverty of the primitive church; the apostolic life lived by the apostles became their great ideal. The clerical reformers implemented their ideas by creating the kind of religious life led by chapters of Canons Regular. They aimed to imitate the prayerful life and ministry of the apostles within a monastic framework. Chapters of Canons Regular multiplied, and several Orders developed from their ranks such as the Premonstratensians (or Norbertines), the Canons of St. Victor, and the Gilbertines. The Dominican Order, a clerical Order from the beginning, sprang from canon-regular roots.
Laymen interested in reform formed penitential brotherhoods that concentrated on poverty, penance, and preaching. In their zeal some of them fell into error, making the extreme claim that apostolic poverty is an indispensable condition for preaching and the valid administration of the sacraments. From the lay brotherhoods emerged a widespread, loose organization known as the Order of Penance, a forerunner of the later Third Order of the friars. In its earliest beginnings, the Franciscan Order shared the characteristics of these penitential brotherhoods.
The century in which Dominic was born witnessed other signs of new vigor and life besides the religious developments just described. Western Christendom enjoyed a new papal leadership, saw an expanding trade and commerce, the foundation of cities, developing vernacular languages, growing motional states, and an intellectual revival. None of these movements came to maturity then, but the seeds had been planted and bore fruit during the thirteenth century, especially in Scholasticism and the infant University of Paris.
The Canons Regular filled a need in the twelfth century when they took care of the pastoral needs of the villages and rural areas where they settled. They were not equal to the task of coping with the new cities and towns of the thirteenth century. The Dominicans and Franciscans, unhampered by an existing apostolate, enjoying great flexibility, and possessing a sound theological training, settled in the cities and towns to take care of the spiritual needs of their inhabitants. In some of the thriving centers of southern France and Tuscany heresy was common. In other wealthy cities, many townsmen and the higher clergy in their love of ease and comfort posed a threat to Christian living. This love for things of the world alerted St. Dominic to the value of apostolic poverty and one of the heresies introduced him to the need Christianity faced.
Dominic was born about 1170 in the town of Caleruega in north-central Spain of Don Felix Guzman and Joan of Aza, both members of the lower nobility. From his earliest youth Dominic was trained to become a priest. Such a decision had to be made early since the choice of vocation determined the kind of training a child was given, either for knighthood or priesthood. After he had learned the rudiments, Dominic was initiated into clerical studies by his mother's brother, a priest. When he was about fourteen, he went to the cathedral school of Palencia to study philosophy and theology. He studied theology for four years, an unusually thorough formation for the average priest in those days. While in Palencia Dominic manifested his great generosity during a famine, using his slender resources to help the poor and gaining additional funds by selling his books. Completing his studies when he was about twenty-four, he joined the chapter of Canons Regular of the cathedral of Osma, and soon afterwards was ordained a priest. Later he became subprior of the chapter.
The First Steps toward Foundation
In 1203, after Dominic had spent almost ten years as a Canon Regular, the Holy Spirit began to call him to a new vocation as founder. It seemed to happen by accident. Diego d'Acabes, his bishop, chose him as companion on an embassy to Denmark to arrange a marriage for the son of King Alfonso VIII of Castile. In passing through southern France, the travelers came to know the Albigensian heretics; in fact, the innkeeper where they stayed on their first night was a member of the sect. Dominic's zeal for souls, which had ripened during his years of contemplative life at Osma, burst into flame. He stayed up all night arguing with his host. With the rising of the sun, the man gave up his heresy and returned to the Catholic faith.
Though the bishop successfully negotiated a marriage for the King's son, the purpose of the trip was defeated when the princess died, or, as some say, entered a monastery. The bishop and Dominic discovered this two years later when they returned to her country to escort her to Spain. In Denmark the two men observed the intense missionary activity that the Danish clergy were engaged in among the pagans of the Baltic regions. Apparently aiming to join them, they went to Rome, where the bishop tendered the resignation of his diocese. Though this was not allowed and the two never again returned to the North, Dominic's missionary zeal had burst into flame and never again burned low. It became an important part of his legacy to the Order.
Pope Innocent III refused the bishop's resignation and sent him instead to work among the Albigenses. For a long time the Church had been hoping for their conversion. St. Bernard had preached to them, and Innocent had sent legates and preachers to work among them.
The bishop and Dominic obediently turned their steps westward toward France. Arriving at Montpellier, they found the papal legates, among whom was Abbot Arnauld of Citeaux, who were heartily discouraged. Despite all their efforts they had made no headway. After listening attentively, the bishop sized up the situation and gave solid advice. You must meet fire with fire. The heretic leaders live an austere life, keep long fasts, travel on foot, and preach in apostolic simplicity. "Send home your retinues then," advised the bishop, "go about on foot two by two, in imitation of the apostles, and then the Lord will bless your efforts." The bishop's zeal and arguments convinced the legates. They dismissed their retinues after Diego had set the example. They kept only "books and other necessities," as Jordan of Saxony reports. Areas for evangelization were assigned to the new groups of apostolic preachers and they set out to preach. During the following weeks and months they crisscrossed the countryside, preaching and debating with the Albigenses. After each debate, each side presented a written summary of its arguments to its opponents. The Albigenses subjected one of Dominic's summaries to a trial by fire. Three times they threw it into the fire but each time the flames cast it forth untouched.
One of the successes of Diego and Dominic was the conversion of a number of women from Albigensianism. They established a monastery for them at Prouille, near Fanjeaux, their own headquarters. This became the first monastery of the Dominican Second Order. Dominic became its father, spiritual guide, and lawgiver, a position entrusted to him by Bishop Diego when he returned to his diocese late in 1207 to recruit preachers, raise funds for the apostolate, and to regulate his diocese. He died in December soon after his return to Spain. Legate Raoul had died the previous July.
A further calamity befell the missions in January, 1208, when the Albigenses assassinated Legate Peter of Castelnau, a fiery, impatient man, who constantly antagonized them. At the end of his patience, Innocent III proclaimed a crusade against the heretics. When hostilities broke out, a peaceful apostolate became extremely difficult, but Dominic and a handful of companions persevered with their preaching despite every discouragement.
Gradually Dominic came to realize that only a religious Order could give the Church the continuous supply of trained preachers it needed. Experience had shown that volunteer preachers did not come in sufficient numbers and did not always persevere. The character of the Cathar heresy taught Dominic another lesson. Their leaders were austere, educated men, well versed in the Scriptures, who preached convincingly. These facts influenced the kind of Order Dominic founded. Its members would not only assume the usual obligations of religious but would systematically study the Scriptures.
Dominic remained true to his training and experience. Within the month that he founded the Order, he enrolled six disciples in the lecture course of Alexander Stavensby at the cathedral school of Toulouse. He himself had an excellent education and a deep love of God's word. He always carried Matthew's Gospel and Paul's Epistles. Constantly he urged the friars "by word and letter" to study the books of the Old and New Testaments. Studying the Scriptures was the medieval way of studying theology. The Bible was the chief textbook of the schools and universities. All other studies prepared the students to enter the classes of the master of theology, who unfolded the deepest meanings of the Sacred Text. Against this background, Dominic's sending seven friars to Paris in August, 1217, takes on new meaning. By preference he founded houses in university cities, at Bologna, Palencia, Montpellier, and Oxford. By design he sought to enroll university students in the Order.
The Founding of the Order
Dominic and his companions first discussed the founding of an Order seriously during 1213 and 1214 at Fanjeaux. In the spring of 1215 they were ready, and Bishop Fulk of Toulouse established them as a preaching brotherhood for his diocese. Dominic gave vows to Thomas and Peter Seila, citizens of Toulouse. Seila deeded some houses he owned to the Order. The larger became the Order's first priory when Dominic and the brethren took up their residence there. Soon afterwards the bishop gave the church of St. Romanus for their community prayers. Thus the Order of Preachers began on a small scale with episcopal approval.
The next step was to obtain papal confirmation of the foundation. The opportunity came when Bishop Fulk set out for Rome in 1215, with Dominic in his company, to attend the Fourth Lateran Council.
Jordan describes their project: "They petitioned the Lord Pope Innocent to confirm for Brother Dominic and his disciples an Order that would be an Order of Preachers; likewise that he would confirm the revenues that had been assigned to the brothers by the count and by the bishop." A hurdle to confirmation had to be faced. On the agenda for the Council was a proposal to prohibit the founding of new religious Orders. To surmount it, Innocent advised Dominic to choose one of the existing religious Rules. He promised that when this had been done, he would confirm the Order.
In the spring of 1216, Dominic and the friars chose the Rule of St. Augustine and framed statutes to supplement it. These became the first half of the permanent Constitutions of the Order. Adapted from the Constitutions of Premontre, they regulated the religious life of the friars. Nothing was legislated until four years later to govern the Order's apostolate. Dominic wisely waited to learn from experience what laws and organization would best suit a preaching Order. In October, the friars added to the property of St. Romanus' church and began to build "a cloister with cells above it suitable for study and sleeping." Returning to Rome, Dominic "obtained to the fullest extent both the confirmation of his Order as he conceived it as well as the other things he desired." On December 22, Honorius III (Innocent had died in July) granted a bull of confirmation, approving the Order as a body of Canons Regular. A second bull, issued on January 21, 1217, recognized the newness of Dominic's ideas and approved his foundation as "an Order that would be called and would be an Order of Preachers." Honorius addressed its members as "Christ's unconquered athletes, armed with the shield of faith and the helmet of salvation. Fearing not those who can kill the body, you valiantly thrust the word of God which is keener than any two-edged sword, against the foes of the faith."
The Order's Charism
The Order of Preachers was an entirely new kind of religious Order. For the first time an Order incorporated as an integral part of its religious life a ministry that shared the bishop's fundamental duty to preach the word of God, a mission conferred by the Holy Father, the universal bishop of the Church. The Order seeks to place at the service of the bishops a body of educated and trained preachers prepared to assist them in the laborious duty of preaching. The Lateran Council called on bishops to appoint just such cooperators with themselves to remedy the long-standing need of the Church for regular and competent preaching, especially in the towns and cities. Eventually the preaching ministry was opened to other Orders, but it has remained the vocation of the Order of Preachers to be concerned that the preaching needs of the Church be met. Preaching remains its special mission and duty.
Shortly before or after the bull of January 21, which granted this mission, Dominic had a vision of the apostles Peter and Paul while he was praying in the old church of St. Peter that was prophetic. Peter handed him a preacher's staff and Paul the book of Gospels, saying to him, "Go and preach; for this you have been sent." Then he saw his sons going two by two through the world preaching.
The vision of Dominic was authentic and captured the genius, spirit, and purpose of the Dominican Order. It repeated in a dramatic way the ideas Pope Honorius expressed in one of the very earliest bulls he issued to the Order:
God Who continually makes His Church fruitful in new children, wishing to bring our times into conformity with earlier days and .spread the Catholic faith has inspired you to embrace a life of poverty and regular discipline and to devote yourselves to preaching the word of God and proclaiming the name of our Lord Jesus Christ throughout the world.
The bull of January 21, the vision of Peter and Paul, and perhaps the discouraging conditions in southern France determined Dominic to scatter his friars to the four winds. Both they and his friends tried to dissuade him. "It seemed to their worldly prudence," Jordan of Saxony wrote, "that he was tearing down rather than raising up the building that he had started." Dominic's
answer was: "Seed when scattered fructifies, when hoarded, rots: " He urged his men to go without fear, promising that he would pray for them and they would succeed. On August 15, 1217, the day of Our Lady's Assumption, he sent seven to Paris "to study, preach, and found a priory," and four to Spain. Three stayed in Toulouse and two at Prouille to help the .sisters. He himself remained in the area until December 13, when he left for Rome. As he passed through Milan and Bologna, he prepared for future foundations.
Growth anal Organization
From December until mid-May Dominic was in Rome, consulting about his Order, preaching and obtaining a series of letters of recommendation for presentation to the bishop when the friars arrived in a city to make a foundation. The letters show Dominic's reliance on the Holy Father, help us trace the opening of houses in France, Germany, Spain, and Italy, and reaffirm the Order's name, mission, and voluntary poverty.
In Rome, Dominic took Reginald of Orleans into the Order. A magnetic man, powerful preacher, teacher and administrator, Reginald had a distinguished career as professor and diocesan official behind him when he became a friar. Soon afterwards he became seriously ill with a burning fever, but Dominic's prayer gained his recovery. The Blessed Mother appeared, anointed Reginald, and approved his new vocation by showing him the Dominican habit. Later that year his leadership and preaching made the community at Bologna, founded at this time by Dominic, the equal of Paris in strength and influence.
When Dominic left Rome in May, 1218, he began a visitation that occupied him until July, 1219, and carried him through Italy, southern France, Spain and Paris to Bologna. As he went, he admitted new members and founded new houses: Bologna, Lyons, Segovia, Montpellier, Bayonne, Limoges, and perhaps Reims and Metz. In Paris he discovered thirty friars who were taking full advantage of the educational and preaching opportunities presented by the university city. Besides, Jordan of Saxony, a bachelor of theology who was destined to be his successor, declared his intention of joining the Order. It had been a most fruitful year. Not only had the number of men and houses increased, but Dominic had amassed a wealth of data and experience about the Order: how the friars lived the religious life and implemented their mission, how they observed poverty, and what kind of laws were needed to establish good government and guide the ministry.
In Bologna Dominic was delighted to find that the fledgling community he had founded a year before had, under Reginald's guidance, become a strong, vigorous group of students and scholars of reputation, such as Roland of Cremona. Dominic now took personal charge at Bologna, sending Reginald as superior to Paris. Within a few months of his arrival, before he could repeat his experience at Bologna, Reginald died. However, Providence provided a successor for him and Dominic, when Jordan of Saxony took vows in his hands. Jordan outstripped both of them in the thousand or more men he recruited during the years he was master general, from 1222 to 1237.
Dominic was now ready for the final, most fruitful years of his life. He took steps that gave his Order stability and a sense of identity, rooted in a definite mission and a clear understanding of the means to achieve it. Contributing not a little to this effect was the formation of an excellent set of laws and an efficient government. Preliminary to these results were several visits to the papal court at Viterbo, a new series of papal letters of recommendation, and a stay of several months in Rome, during which he supervised the organization of the monastery of San Sisto (a work entrusted to him by the pope). These works occupied him from late October, 1219, until May, 1220. Meanwhile, he sent out letters calling representatives of the priories to meet in general chapter at Bologna in May.
The time was ripe for this step; whereas in 1216, when them were only one or two houses and a handful of men, none had the experience and knowledge to devise laws for an Order that for the first time in history combined the contemplative life with a general active ministry, now Dominic's ideas had been tested by experience and his tour of visitation had prepared him to devise a government for a world-wide Order incorporating laws for preaching, formation of new members, studies, and poverty. By summoning a chapter of brethren, he declared his intention to proceed democratically through representation and consultation.
The 1220 General Chapter
With the opening of the first general chapter on Pentecost Sunday, May 17, 1220, the two major elements of Dominican government were in existence-the office of Master General and the Chapter.
When the Chapter began Dominic startled the delegates by tendering his resignation: "I deserve to be removed from office, as I am unfit for the post and remiss," a mixture of humility and fact. After the Chapter was over, his personal guidance would no longer be indispensable. The Order would be able to stand alone. Furthermore, his health was failing. Years of exhausting labor, severe asceticism, and constant traveling had left their mark. The friars refused to hear of his resignation; therefore he deferred to their will but stipulated that while in session the chapter would be supreme. He also would be subject to it. This is still the case. Though presiding, the master general is but first among equals. Each shares authority and has a vote of equal weight. The chapter is the supreme executive, legislative, and judiciary authority in the Order.
The 1220 chapter added a prologue to the Constitutions, granting superiors the important power of dispensation:
The prelate shall have power to dispense the brethren in his priory when it shall seem expedient to him, especially in those things that are seen to impede study, preaching, or the good of souls, since it is known that our Order was especially founded from the beginning for preaching and the salvation. o f souls. Our study ought to tend principally, ardently, and with the highest endeavor to the end that we might be useful to the souls of our neighbors.
This text crystallizes the Dominican mission and spirit. It aims to facilitate the Order's ministry and reconcile its demands with those of the religious life. Both are necessary to achieve the
Order's purpose, yet exist in a natural state of tension-it takes effort to harmonize the life of a contemplative and the activity of an evangelist-a tension that exists in the Church herself, who is "eager to act and yet devoted to contemplation" (Vatican II, SL 2).
Dominic did not set up an impossible standard when he coupled the consecrated life of prayer and the ministry. He himself harmonized both and a realistic view of his life does much to relieve the tension. Though he was Spirit-led and enjoyed great gifts of prayer, the record shows that the basic qualities of his contemplation can be matched by any Dominican. Gerald Vann could have had him in mind when he wrote: "To be a contemplative man is to be a prayerful person; that means to be thoughtful before God." Dominic prayed at night and during the day. He preached, worked, and traveled, but took the time to pray. Always he was "thoughtful before God."
Even so, tension remains when a man faces two sets of demands that cannot be met at the same moment. To take care of this practical situation, Dominic created the functional dispensation (an innovation in the religious life), given to facilitate study, the ministry, and the salvation of men. Besides, dispensation gives his sons the assurance that when they study, preach, or do any work of the ministry, they are serving God and keeping the Constitutions as well as when they stand in chapel. Dispensation gives them flexibility, mobility, and the liberty of the sons of God, free to do his work. To increase this freedom, Dominic made it clear that the Order's laws of themselves do not bind under sin.
Dominic wanted Gospel men in his Order. The Church gave it the mission to proclaim God's word, and Dominic knew from experience that this word can be proclaimed rightly only when it has been prayerfully pondered before God. Though he prescribed systematic study of the Scriptures, he understood that God's word is a heavenly reality that cannot be fathomed by a purely intellectual process; its proclamation must be the fruit of prayerful savoring that becomes love when it matures. He wanted his sons to be prayerful men who had experienced the word. Coupled with study, their prayerful life was the condition of their becoming apostles.
The 1220 chapter completed its work by passing laws for preaching, study, poverty, visitation and organization of the priories, and the procedure of general chapters. By requiring that each priory have a professor it laid the foundation for the Order's schools. It also tightened the Order's poverty. In 1216 the men had decided "not to own possessions lest concerns for temporal things impede the preaching ministry . . . for the time being the Order would] retain only revenues." The chapter ruled that "possessions and revenues are not to be accepted under any circumstances." The Order would trust in God's providence and the offerings of the faithful. Preachers would go out in pairs as Gospel men, traveling on foot, and "neither accepting nor carrying gold, silver, money, or gifts, except for food, and books."
The chapter had completed its work. Under Dominic's skillful hand, the -representatives, probably not more than thirty, among them theologians from Paris and canon and civil lawyers from Bologna, had done a superb work. They had given the Order a strong government and wise laws to guide its ministry. Dominic's work would endure.
After the chapter ended, Dominic plunged into a preaching campaign as head of a papal mission sent to preach in northern Italy. His own tours in Lombardy enabled him to visit the priories at Milan and Bergamo, and perhaps prepare for one in Piacenza. Upon returning to Bologna, he decided to found a monastery for Diana d'Andalo and her companions. Under his guidance, she had vowed in 1219 to enter the religious life. Though he entrusted the project to four friars before he left for Rome in December, the monastery could not be founded until after his death.
Dominic stayed in Rome until mid-May, 1221. He went to report to the Pope on his preaching in Lombardy, to deal with the Papal curia about the Order's affairs, and establish the nuns at San Sisto. He preached in the churches, talked with recluses, and instructed the nuns at San Sisto and the friars at Santa Sabina, the friars who had gone there in February, 1221. Dominic also sent two friars to Siena in March, planned foundations in Metz, Spires, and Lund, and received papal letters of recommendation to the bishops of Amiens and Piacenza and the people of Sigtuna, Sweden, and obtained for the Order the privilege of using a portable altar. Now the friars could set up a temporary chapel while awaiting the completion of their church and need not hold their services in the parish church.
The Chapter of 1221
The second general chapter convened under Dominic's presidency at Bologna on May 30, 1221. Though we do not have a detailed account of its work, we do know that it created the province and its chapter as an intermediate form of government and ministry. The Order's government now embodied its principles of collegiality and subsidiarity, so highly valued in our country. Also, during the sessions Dominic made another innovation in monastic practice, declaring that the Order's laws do not bind under sin. Some years later, when friars who had not known him began to doubt this, the 1235 chapter put it in writing. Dominic respected the freedom of his sons as children of God, expecting them to act responsibly under the prompting of the Holy Spirit and not through fear of sin. The trust that runs like a golden thread through the government and life of the Order is featured by collegiality, subsidiarity, and accountability, Dominic's gifts to his sons. In these matters the Dominican heart beats in time with the pulse of the thirteenth century, a period noted for the introduction of representative procedures into state and municipal governments and the proliferation of voluntary and local associations-guilds, charitable organizations, confraternities, and universities. All of them employed elective and representative methods of government.
The province, governed by a provincial and a provincial chapter, is a subdivision of the Order and unites groups of priories in one administrative unit. Each priory in the province was given the right to send its prior and an elected delegate to represent it at the provincial chapter. The assembly cannot enact
constitutions but, acting on information brought by priors and delegates, it may issue ordinances and admonitions regarding the religious life, study, teaching, and the work of the ministry. It elects the provincial and supervises the conduct of the friars, of its provincial, priors, professors, and students, and may send petitions to the general chapter. One of the chapter's permanent elements was the presence of preachers general. They were outstanding preachers (one was appointed for each priory) and brought their wisdom and experience to the chapter's deliberations. After 1407 masters of theology joined them. Especially the presence of the masters, whose numbers were theoretically unlimited, weakened the democratic character of the chapter. The constantly changing membership of the chapter harnesses the wisdom, experience, and ideas of a wide spectrum of friars in providing for the good of the province, Order, and Church.
Until modern times, as provinces grew in size they were subdivided into visitations. The provincial appointed a visitator to inspect these subdivisions, judge their performance and make recommendations to the provincial chapter. Each visitation also included certain schools as we shall see later.
The priory was the most important and smallest administrative and territorial division of the Order in medieval times. Though under the jurisdiction of the province, it was self-governing and held various rights, privileges, and obligations. Governed by a prior, who was elected by the community, it established the atmosphere in which the friar lived and from which he carried out his ministry. When the spirit of priories was high, the province and Order functioned well; when the morale was low, the province and Order were paralyzed and functioned with difficulty.
The general chapters after 1221 completed the Constitutions, so that by 1228, the Order boasted a completely developed system of government. It was well integrated and well balanced between monarchical elements of the administration and democratic elements of community control. Collegiality, subsidiarity, and representation were among its prominent features. When functioning properly, the Dominican Constitutions promote the Order's work, pay due regard to the ideas and desires of the friars, and impart a flexibility that enables the Order to expand its membership, territory, and kinds of work. It adjusts itself to new times and new societies by its own legislative action.
The Death of Dominic
Dominic filled the last six weeks of his life, following the second general chapter, with intense preaching throughout Lombardy. When he returned to Bologna at the end of July, he was burning with fever. He died on the feast of the Transfiguration, August 6, 1221. He had planned so wisely, governed so prudently, and structured the Order's government so well, that the Order could survive without him. He was laid to rest under the feet of his brethren in the chapel at Bologna. Gregory IX canonized him on July 3, 1234, comparing him as he did so to the apostles and to the great founders, Benedict, Bernard, Francis. His flame has never gone out.
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