In calling the subject of this sketch Reginald of Saint Gilles, as he himself admits, Father Touron only follows the custom of his day, which was established by Anthony of Sienna, a native of Guimaraens, Portugal, Anthony stated in his Chronicles that Reginald was born at Saint Gilles, a small town in the Department of Gard, southern France. Most later writers think this honor more probably belongs to Orleans, and therefore give our blessed the name of Reginald of Orleans. In so designating him, we follow these authors rather than Touron, who also says that some are of the opinion that the early Friar Preacher first saw the light of day at Orleans. Mortier (I, 96) gives the year 1183 as the date of his birth.(1)

Few of the early members of the Order are mentioned so often, or in terms of such high praise, as Blessed Reginald. No doubt the historians take their cue from Blessed Jordan of Saxony, who knew him personally. Albeit, it is certain that he was one of the most distinguished among Saint Dominic’s first disciples. He sanctified his great learning and rare talent by prayer and an insatiable zeal for the salvation of his fellowman. Renowned canonist and forceful, eloquent preacher though he was, he gloried only in being an ambassador of Christ and a harvester of souls. Doubtless these qualities helped to bring Reginald and Dominic together so quickly and to unite them so closely.

Our future Friar Preacher was sent to the University of Paris in early manhood, where he not only met with signal success in his studies, but also (in 1206) obtained the doctor’s degree with applause. Then he taught canon law for some five years in his alma mater, being considered one of the bright lights of the institution. The high esteem which all showed him did not cause him to be any the less a man of God. His great devotion to the Blessed Virgin stood him in good stead; for, we are told, it acted as a safeguard against the snares of pride, luxury, and ambition. He gave much time to meditation on things divine. One of his pronounced traits was love for the poor; another was humility. Whilst kind to others, he practised great austerity with himself. Thus we are not surprised to learn that his progress in virtue was as rapid as that which he made in knowledge; or that, when the post of dean for the canons at Saint Aignan’s, Orleans, became vacant, all eyes were turned towards the model professor as the best man for the place.

The canons elected Reginald their dean without delay. One of the things which specially recommended him for the position was the fact that he did not desire it. Just when he received this promotion we do not know. But (on page 82 of his Antiquities of the Church and Diocese of Orleans — Antiquities de 1’Eglise et Diocese d’Orleans) Francis Lemaire says that the subject of our sketch was dean of Saint Aignan’s in 1212. Here he found himself bound to the service of God and His altar by new bonds, which gave a fresh impulse to his zeal to walk in the path of justice and to carry on his good works.

History tells us that the life of our dean was most edifying. It was hidden, as the apostle expresses it, in that of Christ our Lord. His charity towards those in need was almost boundless. He showed himself a model in all things. Yet he felt that something more was demanded of him. He feared the malediction which our Lord placed on the rich, reflected on the number of those who die impenitent after lives spent in sin, or without a knowledge of God’s justice, and trembled lest he should be condemned for burying the talent given him. Without any suspicion of the designs of heaven on him, the holy man longed to dispose of all he possessed and to go about the world poor and preaching Christ crucified. This he believed was his vocation; and he doubled his prayers and penances that he might learn the divine will.

At this juncture, providence came to Reginald’s assistance. The Right Rev. Manasses de Seignelay, bishop of Orleans, determined to visit Rome and the Holy Land. As the prelate was a close friend of the young dean, and enjoyed his enlightened conversation, he requested Reginald to accompany him on this journey. The subject of our sketch readily accepted the invitation, for it would give him an opportunity of satisfying his devotion at the places rendered sacred by the tread of our Lord and the blood of His martyrs.

The two travelers arrived in the Eternal City shortly before Easter, or in April, 1218. In a conversation with Cardinal Ugolino di Segni Reginald spoke of his ardent desire to imitate the apostles, and to go from place to place as a poor ambassador of Christ preaching the Gospel. As yet, however, he did not know how he was to put his wish into execution. His eminence (later Gregory IX) then proceeded to tell the pious dean that the way was already open to him; that a new religious order had just been instituted for that very purpose; and that its founder, who was renowned for his miracles, was actually in Rome, where he preached every day with marvelous effect. Filled with joy at the prospect of realizing his design in the near future, Reginald made haste to meet the harvester of souls, of whom he had been told. Charmed with Dominic’s personality and sermons, he determined to become one of his disciples without delay.

Indeed, the attraction between the two holy men was mutual. Meantime, however, Reginald became so ill that the physicians despaired of his life. In this extremity Dominic had recourse to his usual remedy, prayer; and in a few days his new friend was again in perfect health. In their piety both attributed the miraculous cure to the intercession of the Mother of God. Jordan of Saxony assures us that the Blessed Virgin appeared to Reginald in his sickness, told him to enter the new Order, and showed him the distinctive habit which the Friars Preacher should wear. Until this time they had dressed like the Canons Regular of Osma, of whom Dominic had been a member. Practically all the historians tell us that, in consequence of Reginald’s vision, the saint now adopted the garb which his followers have worn ever since, and that the former dean of Saint Aignan’s was the first to receive it from his hands.

Reginald was clothed in the religious habit immediately after the recovery of his health. At the same time, or very shortly afterwards, he made his profession to Dominic. However, this new allegiance did not prevent his journey to the Holy Land; for the saint permitted him to continue his way with Bishop de Seignelay. On his return to Italy from Jerusalem, perhaps in the middle fall of 1218, Dominic, who was still at Rome, sent the former dean to Bologna, which he reached in December. The high opinion which the patriarch had conceived of Reginald is shown by the fact that he appointed him his vicar (some say prior) over the incipient convent in that university city.

More than one thing evidently contributed to this immediate promotion to leadership. The house in Bologna had been started in the spring of the same year. While the first fathers stationed there were very cordially received, and were given Santa Maria della. Mascarella for a convent by Bishop Henry di Fratta, they found it hard to make the rapid headway which both they and Dominic evidently desired to see in the noted educational center. Reginald’s reputation, ability, eloquence, and experience at the University of Paris, it was felt, would combine with his rare virtue to bring about this desideratum. Nor were these expectations disappointed.

Hardly, indeed, had the former dean of Saint Aignan’s arrived at his destination, before the entire city was flocking to hear him preach. The effect of his sermons was marvellous. Hardened sinners gave up their evil ways; inveterate enemies buried their differences of long standing; the religion and moral tone of the people changed notably for the better. None seemed able to resist the attraction of the orator’s personality, or the persuasion of his burning eloquence. All felt that a new Elias had come among them. He held the place, as it were, in the palm of his hand. No one could doubt but that he had found his vocation.

Reginald drew the clergy as well as the laity; those of the university, whether professors or students, as well as the citizens. His example quickened the zeal of his confrères, for he preached every day-sometimes twice or even thrice. Vocations to the Order were so frequent that, within a few weeks, Santa Maria della Mascarella was overcrowded. They came from every walk in life. The university contributed a large number of both students and masters, some of whom were among the brightest lights of the institution with worldwide fame.

Bishop di Fratta and the papal legate, Cardinal Ugolino di Segni, were so pleased with the good effected by Reginald and his Friars Preacher that they gave him the Church of Saint Nicholas of the Vines, in order to enable him to receive more subjects. This was in the spring of 1219. Here a much larger convent was built at once. Rudolph of Faenza, the zealous pastor of Saint Nicholas, not content with surrendering his church to the Order, also received the habit from our blessed Reginald that he might join in the harvest of souls. He helped to erect the Convent of Saint Nicholas, now known as Saint Dominic’s, to which the community was transferred as soon as ready for occupation.

In his government of the large Bolognese community Blessed Reginald combined great charity and gentleness with a wise strictness. He did not suffer even slight transgressions to go uncorrected. Yet he was so skillful in his management of men and in his administration of punishment that his confrères, for they knew he ever acted for their good, held him in even greater affection than those not of the Order. All regarded him as a true man of God seeking to lead them to heaven. His every word, his very silence, bespoke virtue. With profound humility and a rare spirit of recollection he joined an extreme personal austerity.

The days the holy man spent in preaching to the people and spiritual conferences to his religious. The nights he gave largely to prayer. God blessed his efforts. Scarcely nine months had he been superior. Within that brief time Saint Nicholas’ had become not merely a large community; it was a famed sanctuary of prayer, the zeal of whose members recalled that of the apostles. Far and wide they bore the message of salvation with wonderful effect.

Such was the status, in point of size, discipline, and labors, in which Saint Dominic found the Bolognese institution on his arrival in the city, after his return from Spain, via Prouille, Toulouse, and Paris. This was late in the summer of 1219. The patriarch’s heart rejoiced at the sight of what had been accomplished. At Paris, owing to a strong opposition, the crooked paths had not yet been straightened, nor the rough ways made smooth. If, thought Dominic, Reginald had done so well in Bologna, why would he not be invaluable to Matthew of France in ironing out the difficulties at Paris. Besides, the saint had determined to make the Italian city the center of his own spiritual activities. So off to the French capital the subject of this sketch now went. His departure was keenly regretted by the community which he had governed so happily. But the voice of God spoke through the Order’s founder, and all bowed in humble submission. To Reginald’s brief sojourn in those far-flung days is due, in no small measure, the bond of regard that has ever since existed between the citizens of Bologna and the Friars Preacher.

Reginald’s arrival in Paris was a source of great joy to his confrères there — especially to the superior, Matthew of France. The newcomer bad been one of the university’s most beloved professors, and had had the only Friar-Preacher abbot as a pupil. Much was expected of his virtue, personality, and eloquence. Unfortunately, these hopes were realized only in part. As he had done in Bologna, so in Paris he began to preach incessantly. Together with this apostolate, he taught at the Convent of Saint James, whilst he relaxed not in the least his penances, or his nightly vigils.

Zeal for the salvation of souls, all the writers assure us, simply consumed the holy man. Enormous numbers flocked to his sermons. Vocations to the Order increased. Many came from among the students at the university. But such labors and mortification were too much for his strength. His health began to fail, and kindly Matthew of France ventured to warn him that he should be more moderate. Yet, as no positive order was given, the relaxation was not sufficient. http://www.willingshepherds.org/Dominican Saint February.html – 8 Possibly Matthew afterwards intervened more sternly. However, it was too late. The fire of life had burned out, and Reginald surrendered his pure soul to God in the first days of February, 1220. In his death the Friars Preacher nearly everywhere mourned the loss of one whom they considered, next to its founder, the strongest support of their new Order.

Had he lived, Reginald would most likely have succeeded Saint Dominic as Master General. In the language of Jordan of Saxony, Reginald lived a long life in the span of a few years. He spent less than two years in the Order; yet he left a memory that still seems fresh after a lapse of more than seven centuries. One of the things which continued to be denied the fathers by the ecclesiastical circles of Paris, at the time of his death, was the right of burial for the community in their Church of Saint James. Accordingly, his remains were laid to rest in that of Our Lady of the Fields (Notre Dame des Champs). The faithful soon began to visit and pray at his grave. Several miracles were reported. When, between 1605 and 1608, his body was taken up to be placed in a shrine, it was found to be incorrupt. This served to increase the devotion towards the man of God.

A few years later (1614), Our Lady of the Fields became the property of the Carmelite Sisters. Thus the tomb of Saint Dominic’s early disciple, because in their cloistered church, ceased to be visited by the people at large, who had been accustomed to seek his intercession for nearly four hundred years. The holy sisters, however, held him in the deepest veneration, and poured out their hearts in prayer before his sacred remains. In 1645, they had Father John Francis Senault, general of the Oratorians, write his life. His relics remained in this secluded place, ever an object of devotion for Christ’s cloistered spouses, until they were desecrated and destroyed by the villains of the terrible French Revolution.

Fortunately, as is proved in the process of his beatification, devotion to Reginald had become too deeply rooted to be annihilated by even such a catastrophe. This was particularly the case in the Order of Preachers, whose members had ever cherished an undying affection and veneration for him. In 1875, Pius IX, after a thorough examination of the matter by the Sacred Congregation of Rites, approved his cult, and granted the divine office and mass of Reginald to the Friars Preacher and the dioceses of Paris and Orleans. http://www.willingshepherds.org/Dominican Saint February.html – 9 February 12 was set aside as his feast, but in late years it has been transferred to the seventeenth day of the same month.

Born: at Saint-Gilles, Languedoc, France, c. 1183

Died: 1220

Canonized: Pius IX confirmed his cult in 1875.

Alexandrina dei Ricci was born of a patrician family, but Catharine Bonza died leaving her motherless in her infancy. She was trained in virtue by a very pious godmother. The little girl took Our Lady as her mother and had for her a tender devotion. The child held familiar conversations with her guardian angel, who taught her a special manner of saying the rosary and assisted her in the practice of virtue.

As soon as Alexandrina was old enough to go away from home (age 6 or 7), she was sent to the convent school of Monticelli, where her aunt, Louisa dei Ricci, was the abbess. Besides learning her lessons for which she was sent, the little girl developed a great devotion to the Passion. She prayed often before a certain picture of Our Lord, and at the foot of a crucifix, which is still treasured as “Alexandrina’s crucifix.” Returning from the monastery when her education was completed according to the norm for girls, she turned her attention to her vocation.

In her plans to enter a monastery of strict observance, she met with great opposition from her father Peter. She loved the community life that had allowed her to serve God without impediment or distraction. She continued her usual exercises at home as much as she was able, but the interruptions and dissipations that were inseparable from her station, made her uneasy.

Finally, Peter allowed her to visit St. Vincent’s convent in Prato, Tuscany, which had been founded by nine Third Order Dominicans who were great admirers of Savonarola. Alexandrina begged to remain with them; however, her father took her away, promising to let her return. He did not keep his promise, and the girl fell so ill that everyone despaired of her life. Frightened into agreement, her father gave his consent; Alexandrina, soon recovering, entered the convent of Saint Vincent.

In May 1535, Alexandrina received the habit from her uncle, Fr. Timothy dei Ricci, who was confessor to the convent. She was given the name Catherine in religion, and she very happily set about imitating her beloved patron. Lost in celestial visions, she was quite unaware that the sisters had begun to wonder about her qualifications for the religious life: for in her ecstasies she seemed merely sleepy, and at times extremely stupid. Some thought her insane. Her companions did not suspect her of ecstasy when she dozed at community exercises, spilled food, or broke dishes.

Neither did it occur to Sister Catherine that other people were not, like herself, rapt in ecstasy. She was about to be dismissed from the community when she became aware of the heavenly favors she had received. From then on there was no question of dismissing the young novice, but fresh trials moved in upon her in the form of agonizing pain from a complication of diseases that remedies seemed only to aggravate. She endured her sufferings patiently by constantly meditating on the passion of Christ, until she was suddenly healed. After her recovery, she was left in frail health.

Like Saint John of Egypt and Saint Antony, Catherine met Philip Neri in a vision while he was still alive and in Rome. They had corresponded for a long time and wanted to meet each other but were unable to arrange it. Catherine appeared to Philip in a vision and they conversed for a long time. Saint Philip, who was also cautious in giving credence to or publishing visions, confirmed this. This blessed ability to bilocate, like Padre Pio, was confirmed by the oaths of five witnesses. Also like those desert fathers, Antony and John, she fasted two or three times weekly on only bread and water, and sometimes passed an entire day without taking any nourishment.

Like Saint Catherine of Siena, she is said to have received a ring from the Lord as a sign of her espousal to him–a mysterious ring made of gold set with a diamond, invisible to all except the mystic. Others saw only a red lozenge and a circlet around her finder.

Sister Catherine was 20 when she began a 12-year cycle of weekly ecstasies of the Passion from noon each Thursday until 4:00 p.m. each Friday. The first time, during Lent 1542, she meditated so heart-rendingly on the crucifixion of Jesus that she became seriously ill, until a vision of the Risen Lord talking with Mary Magdalene restored her to health on Holy Saturday.

She received the sacred stigmata, which remained with her always. In addition to the five wounds, she received, in the course of her Thursday-Friday ecstasies, many of the other wounds which our Lord suffered. Watching her face and body, the sisters could follow the course of the Passion, as she was mystically scourged and crowned with thorns. When the ecstasy was finished, she would be covered with wounds and her shoulder remained deeply indented where the Cross had been laid.

Soon all Italy was attentive and crowds came to see her. Skeptics and the indifferent, sinners and unbelievers, were transformed at the sight of her. Soon there was no day nor hour at which people did not come, people in need and in sin, people full of doubt and tribulation, who sought her help, and, of course, the merely curious. Because of the publicity that these favors attracted, she and her entire community asked our Lord to make the wounds less visible, and He did in 1554.

Her patience and healing impressed her sisters. While still very young, Catherine was chosen to serve the community as novice- mistress, then sub-prioress, and, at age 30, she was appointed prioress in perpetuity, despite her intense mystical life of prayer and penance. She managed the material details of running a large household well, and became known as a kind and considerate superior. Catherine was particularly gentle with the sick. Troubled people, both within the convent and in the town, came to her for advice and prayer, and her participation in the Passion exerted a great influence for good among all who saw it. Three future popes (Cardinals Cervini later known as Pope Marcellus II, Alexander de Medici (Pope Leo XI), and Aldobrandini (Pope Clement VIII)) were among the thousands who flocked to the convent to beseech her intercession.

Of the cloister that Catherine directed, a widow who had entered it observed: “If the world only knew how blessed is life in this cloister, the doors would not suffice and the thronging people would clamber in over all the walls.”

A contemporary painting of Catherine attributed to Nardini (at the Pinacoteca of Montepulciano) shows a not unattractive, though relatively plain woman. Her eyes protrude a bit too much and her nose is too flared to account her a classic beauty, but she possessed high cheekbones, dark hair, widely spaced eyes, and full lips. Her mein is that of a sensitive woman who has experience pain and now has compassion.

Catherine’s influence was not confined within the walls of her convent. She was greatly preoccupied by the need for reform in the Church, as is apparent from her letters, many of them addressed to highly-placed persons. This accounts, too, for her reverence for the memory of Savonarola, who had defied the evil-living Pope Alexander VI and been hanged in Florence in 1498. Saint Catherine was in touch with such contemporary, highly-orthodox reformers as Saint Charles Borromeo and Saint Pius V.

After Catherine’s long and painful death in 1589, many miracles were performed at her tomb. Her cultus soon spread from Prato throughout the whole of Italy and thence to the whole world. The future Pope Benedict XIV, the “devil’s advocate” in Catherine’s cause for canonization, critically examined all relevant claims. As in the case of her younger contemporary, Saint Mary Magdalene de’Pazzi, canonization was not granted because of the extraordinary phenomenon surrounding her life, but for heroic virtue and complete union with Christ (Attwater, Benedictines, Bentley, Dorcy, Encyclopedia, Farmer, Husenbeth, Schamoni, Walsh).

Born: April 23rd 1522 at Florence, Italy

Died: February 2, 1590 at Prato, Italy

Beatified: November 23, 1732 by Pope Clement XII

Canonized: June 29, 1746 by Pope Benedict XIV

Patronage: bodily ills; illness; sick people; sickness

Perhaps the most famous of all the Dominican saints, today is the feast day of St. Thomas Aquinas.

Thomas was born in Roccasecca circa 28 January 1225, in the castle of his father, Count Landulf of Aquino, in Roccasecca, from which the great Benedictine abbey of Montecassino is not quite visible, midway between Rome and Naples, in what is now Sicily.  Through his mother, Theodora, Countess of Theate, Thomas was related to the Hohenstaufen dynasty of Holy Roman emperors.  His family was related to the Emperors Henry VI and Frederick II, and to the Kings of Aragon, Castile, and France. Calo relates that a holy hermit foretold his career, saying to Theodora before his birth: “He will enter the Order of Friars Preachers, and so great will be his learning and sanctity that in his day no one will be found to equal him.”  Landulf’s brother, Sinibald, was abbot of the original Benedictine abbey at Monte Cassino. While the rest of the family’s sons pursued a military career, Thomas was intended to follow his uncle into the abbacy; this would have been a normal career path for the younger son of southern Italian nobility.

At the age of five, Thomas began his early education from the Benedictine monks at Monte Cassino.  Diligent in study, he was thus early noted as being meditative and devoted to prayer, and his preceptor was surprised at hearing the child ask frequently: “What is God?”However, after a military conflict broke out between the Emperor Frederick II and Pope Gregory IX spilled into the abbey in early 1239, Landulf and Theodora had Thomas enrolled at the University of Naples, which had been recently established by Frederick.

At Naples his preceptors were Pietro Martini and Petrus Hibernus. The chronicler says that he soon surpassed Martini at grammar, and he was then given over to Peter of Ireland, who trained him in logic and the natural sciences. The customs of the times divided the liberal arts into two courses: the Trivium, embracing grammar, logic, and rhetoric; the Quadrivium, comprising music, mathematics, geometry, and astronomy. Thomas could repeat the lessons with more depth and lucidity than his masters displayed. The youth’s heart had remained pure amidst the corruption with which he was surrounded, and he resolved to embrace the religious life.

It was here that Thomas was introduced to the words of Aristotle, Averroes and Maimonides, all of which would later influence his theological philosophy.  It was also during his studies in  Naples that Thomas came under the influence of John of St. Julian, a Dominican preacher in Naples, who was part of the active effort by the Dominican order, which had only recently been established, to recruit devout followers.

At the age of nineteen, Thomas resolved to join the Dominican Order. Thomas’s decision to do so did not please his family, who had expected him to become a Benedictine monk.   Some time between 1240 and August, 1243, he received the habit of the Order of St. Dominic, being attracted and directed by John of St. Julian, a noted preacher of the convent of Naples. The city wondered that such a noble young man should don the garb of poor friar. His mother, with mingled feelings of joy and sorrow, hastened to Naples to see her son.

In an attempt to prevent Theodora’s interference in Thomas’s choice, the Dominicans arranged for Thomas to be removed to Rome, and then to Paris.  However, on the  way to Rome, his brothers who were soldiers under the Emperor Frederick, following their mother’s instructions, seized him as he was drinking from a spring near the town of Aquapendente and took him back to his parents, who were then at the castle of Monte San Giovanni Campano. He was held for in the family homes at Monte San Giovanni and Roccasecca in an attempt to prevent him from assuming the Dominican habit, and to convince him to become a Benedictine.   Political concerns prevented the Pope from ordering Thomas’s release, which extended his detention, during which he spent tutoring his sisters and communicating with members of the Dominican Order.  Family members became desperate to dissuade Thomas, who remained determined to join the Dominicans. At one point, two of his brothers hired a prostitute to seduce him, but he drove her away, wielding a burning stick.   According to legend, that night two angels appeared to him as he slept and strengthened his resolve to remain celibate.

The time spent in captivity was not lost. His mother relented somewhat, after the first burst of anger and grief; the Dominicans were allowed to provide him with new habits, and through the kind offices of his sister he procured some books — the Holy Scriptures, Aristotle’s Metaphysics, and the “Sentences” of Peter Lombard. After eighteen months or two years spent in prison, either because his mother saw that the hermit’s prophecy would eventually be fulfilled or because his brothers feared the threats of Innocent IV and Frederick II, he was set at liberty, being lowered in a basket into the arms of the Dominicans, who were delighted to find that during his captivity “he had made as much progress as if he had been in a studium generale.”

Thomas immediately pronounced his vows, and his superiors sent him to Rome. Innocent IV examined closely into his motives in joining the Friars Preachers, dismissed him with a blessing, and forbade any further interference with his vocation.  In 1245, Thomas was sent to study at the University of Paris‘s Faculty of Arts where he met Dominican scholar Albertus Magnus, then Chair of Theology at the College of St. James.

 

The theological program Thomas entered in Paris was a grueling one, with the master’s typically attained in the early thirties. Extensive and progressively more intensive study of the scriptures, Old and New Testament, and of the summary of Christian doctrine called the Sentences which was compiled by the twelfth century Bishop of Paris, Peter Lombard. These close textual studies were complemented by public disputations and the even more unruly quodlibetal questions. With the faculty modeled more or less on the guilds, Thomas served a long apprenticeship, established his competence in stages, and eventually after a public examination was named a master and then gave his inaugural lecture.

When Albertus was sent by his superiors to teach at the new studium generale at Cologne in 1248, Thomas followed him, declining Pope Innocent IV‘s offer to appoint him as  abbot of Monte Cassino as a Dominican. Albertus then appointed the reluctant Thomas magister studentium. In the schools Thomas’s humility and taciturnity were misinterpreted as signs of dullness, but when Albert had heard his brilliant defense of a difficult thesis, he exclaimed: “We call this young man a dumb ox, but his bellowing in doctrine will one day resound throughout the world.”

Thomas taught in Cologne as an apprentice professor, instructing students in the books of the Old Testament and writing Expositio super Isaiam ad litteram (Literal Commentary on Isaiah), Postilla super Ieremiam (Commentary on Jeremiah), and Postilla super Threnos (Commentary on Lamentations). Then in 1252, he returned to Paris to study for a master’s degree in theology. He lectured on the Bible as an apprentice professor, and upon becoming a baccalaureus Sententiarum (bachelor of the Sentences); he devoted his final three years of study to commenting on Peter Lombard‘s Sentences. In the first of his four theological syntheses, Thomas composed a massive commentary on the Sentences entitled Scriptum super libros Sententiarium (Commentary on the Sentences). Aside from his master’s writings, he wrote De ente et essentia (On Being and Essence) for his fellow Dominicans in Paris.

In the spring of 1256, Thomas was appointed regent master in theology at Paris, and one of his first works upon assuming this office was Contra impugnantes Dei cultum et religionem (Against Those Who Assail the Worship of God and Religion), defending the mendicant orders which had come under attack by William of Saint-Amour.   During his tenure from 1256 to 1259, Thomas wrote numerous works, including Questiones disputatae de veritate (Disputed Questions on Truth), which was a collection of twenty-nine disputed questions on aspects of faith and the human condition and which was prepared for the public university debates he presided over on Lent and Advent.  He also wrote   Quaestiones quodlibetales (Quodlibetal Questions), a collection of his responses to questions posed to him by the academic audience;  and both Expositio super librum Boethii De trinitate (Commentary on Boethius’s De trinitate) and Expositio super librum Boethii De hebdomadibus (Commentary on Boethius’s De hebdomadibus), commentaries on the works of 6th century philosopher Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius.  By the end of his regency, Thomas was working on one of his most famous works, Summa contra Gentiles.

Around 1259, Thomas returned to Naples where he lived until he went to in Orvieto in  September 1261. In Orvieto, he was appointed conventual lector, in charge of the education of friars unable to attend a studium generale. During his stay in Orvieto, Thomas completed his Summa contra Gentiles, and wrote the Catena Aurea (The Golden Chain). He also wrote the liturgy for the newly created feast of Corpus Christi and produced works for Pope Urban IV concerning Greek Orthodox theology, e.g. Contra errores graecorum (Against the Errors of the Greeks).  In 1265 he was ordered by the Dominican Chapter of Agnani to establish a studium for the Order in Rome at the priory of Santa Sabina.  He remained there from 1265 until he was called back to Paris in 1268.   It was while in Rome that Thomas began his most famous work, Summa Theologica, and wrote a variety of other works, such as his unfinished Compendium Theologiae and Responsio ad fr. Ioannem Vercellensem de articulis 108 sumptis ex opere Petri de Tarentasia (Reply to Brother John of Vercelli Regarding 108 Articles Drawn from the Work of Peter of Tarentaise).   In his position as head of the studium, he conducted a series of important disputations on the power of God, which he compiled into his De potentia.

In 1268 the Dominican Order assigned Thomas to be regent master at the University of Paris for a second time, a position he held until the spring of 1272. Part of the reason for this sudden reassignment appears to have arisen from the rise of “Averroism” or “radical Aristotelianism” in the universities. “Averroisms” was the belief that there is no God, that the soul has two parts, one individual and one eternal; the world is eternal; the soul is not eternal.  (During this period in history, Averroism was virtually synonymous with atheism.)  In response to these perceived evils, Thomas wrote two works, one of them being De unitate intellectus, contra Averroistas (On the Unity of Intellect, against the Averroists) in which he blasts Averroism as incompatible with Christian doctrine.   During his second regency, he finished the second part of the Summa and wrote De virtutibus and De aeternitate mundi, the latter of which dealt with controversial Averroist and Aristotelian beginninglessness of the world.   Disputes with some important Franciscans such as Bonaventure and John Peckham conspired to make his second regency much more difficult and troubled than the first. A year before Thomas re-assumed the regency at the 1266–67 Paris disputations, Franciscan master William of Baglione accused Thomas of encouraging Averroists, calling him the “blind leader of the blind”. Thomas called these individuals the murmurantes (Grumblers). In reality, Thomas was deeply disturbed by the spread of Averroism and was angered when he discovered Siger of Brabant teaching Averroistic interpretations of Aristotle to Parisian students.  On 10 December 1270, the bishop of Paris, Etienne Tempier, issued an edict condemning thirteen Aristotlelian and Averroistic propositions as heretical and excommunicating anyone who continued to support them. Many in the ecclesiastical community, the so-called Augustinians, were fearful that this introduction of Aristotelianism and the more extreme Averroism might somehow contaminate the purity of the Christian faith. In what appears to be an attempt to counteract the growing fear of Aristotelian thought, Thomas conducted a series of disputations between 1270 and 1272: De virtutibus in communi (On Virtues in General), De virtutibus cardinalibus (On Cardinal Virtues), De spe (On Hope).

In 1272 Thomas took leave from the University of Paris when the Dominicans from his home province called upon him to establish a studium generale wherever he liked and staff it as he pleased. He chose to establish the institution in Naples, and moved there to take his post as regent master.  He took his time in Naples to work on the third part of the Summa while giving lectures on various religious topics. On 6 December 1273 Thomas was celebrating the Mass of St. Nicholas when, according to some, he heard Christ speak to him.

Christ asked him what he desired, being pleased with his meritorious life. Thomas replied “Only you Lord. Only you.”  After this exchange something happened, but Thomas never spoke of it or wrote it down. Because of what he saw, he abandoned his routine and refused to dictate to his secretary, Reginald of Piperno.  When Reginald begged him to get back to work, Thomas replied: “Reginald, I cannot, because all that I have written seems like straw to me,”    And he seemed to be seriously ill.  What exactly triggered Thomas’s change in behavior is believed to be some kind of supernatural experience of God. After taking to his bed, he did, however, recover some strength.

Looking to find a way to reunite the Eastern Orthodox churches with the Catholic Church (the Eastern Orthodox were excommunicated by the Roman Catholic Church in A.D. 1054 over doctrinal disputes) Pope Gregory X convened the Second Council of Lyon to be held on 1 May 1274 and summoned Thomas to attend.  At the meeting, Thomas’s work for Pope Urban IV concerning the Greeks, Contra errores graecorum, was to be presented.  On his way to the Council, riding on a donkey along the Appian Way, he struck his head on the branch of a fallen tree and became seriously ill again. He was then quickly escorted to Monte Cassino to convalesce.  After resting for a while, he set out again, but stopped at the Cistercian Fossanova Abbey after again falling ill. The Cistercian monks of Fossa Nuova pressed him to accept their hospitality, and he was conveyed to their monastery, on entering which he whispered to his companion: “This is my rest for ever and ever: here will I dwell, for I have chosen it” (Psalm 131:14).  The monks nursed him for several days, and as he received his last rites, he prayed: “I receive Thee, ransom of my soul. For love of Thee have I studied and kept vigil, toiled, preached and taught…” He died on 7 March 1274.

When the devil’s advocate at his canonization process objected that there were no miracles, one of the cardinals answered, “Tot miraculis, quot articulis“—”there are as many miracles (in his life) as articles (in his Summa).” Fifty years after the death of Thomas, on 18 July 1323, Pope John XXII, seated in Avignon, pronounced Thomas a saint.

In a monastery at Naples, near the cathedral of St. Januarius, a cell in which he supposedly lived is still shown to visitors. His remains were placed in the Church of the Jacobins in Toulouse in 1369. Between 1789 and 1974, they were held in Basilique de Saint-Sernin, Toulouse. In 1974, they were returned to the Church of the Jacobins, where they have remained ever since.

In the General Roman Calendar of 1962, in the Roman Catholic Church, Thomas was commemorated on 7 March, the day of death. However, in the General Roman Calendar of 1969, even though the norm in the Roman Catholic Church is to remember saints on the day of their death, Thomas’s memorial was transferred to 28 January, the date of the translation of his relics to Toulouse.

Saint Thomas Aquinas is honored with a feast day on the liturgical of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America on 28 January.

 

As a child, Andrew Grego lived on the southern shore of Lake Garda, in northern Italy. His training for a life of heroic sanctity began early, with voluntary penances and unquestioning obedience to his father. Andrew’s first desire was to be a hermit, an ambition that was met with ridicule from his brothers. Failing to realize this hope, he made for himself a severe schedule of prayer and penance, and, in his own house, lived the life of one wholly given to God.

After the death of his father, it became increasingly difficult to carry out his plan, so he resolved to enter the cloister. Although his brothers had persecuted him without mercy, he knelt and humbly begged their prayers and forgiveness for having annoyed them. Then he gave them the only possession he had, a walking-stick. This stick, thrown carelessly in a corner by the brothers, was forgotten until, long afterwards, it bloomed like the legendary rod of Saint Joseph in token of Andrew’s holiness.

The 15-year old received the Dominican habit at Brescia and then was sent to San Marco in Florence. This convent was then at its peak of glory, stamped with the saintly personalities of Saint Antoninus and the Blesseds of Lawrence of Riprafratta, Constantius, and Antony della Chiesa. Andrew’s soul caught the fire of their apostolic zeal, and set forth on his mission in the mountains of northern Italy.

Heresy and poverty had combined to draw almost this entire region from the Church. It was a country of great physical difficulties, and, in his travels in the Alps, he risked death from snowstorms and avalanches as often as from the daggers of the heretics. Nevertheless, he travelled tirelessly, preaching, teaching, and building–for his entire lifetime.

Churches, hospitals, schools, and orphanages were built under Andrew’s direction. He would retire from time to time to these convents for periods of prayer and spiritual refreshment, so that he could return with renewed courage and zeal to the difficult apostolate. He was known as “the Apostle of the Valtelline,” because of the district he evangelized.

Blessed Andrew performed many miracles. Probably his greatest miracle was his preaching, which produced such fruits in the face of great obstacles. At one time, when he was preaching to the people, the heretics presented him with a book in which they had written down their beliefs. He told them to open the book and see for themselves what their teachings amounted to. They did so, and a large viper emerged from the book.

Blessed Andrew closed a holy life by an equally holy death, and died in 1485.  He was buried in Morbegno. He had labored so long among the poor and the neglected that his place in their hearts was secured. Because of the miracles worked at his tomb, and the persistent devotion of the people, his relics were twice transferred to more suitable tombs.  He was beatified in 1820.

Born in at Forli, Italy in 1317, Marcolino Amanni entered the Dominicans at age 10. He occupies a place unique in Dominican annals because he was almost purely contemplative . There is outwardly little to record of Blessed Marcolino, except that for 70 years he kept the Dominican Rule in all its rigor. That is a claim to sanctity that can be made by very few, and is of itself enough to entitle him to canonization. He did accomplish the reform of several convents that had fallen from their primitive fervor, but this he did by his prayers and his example rather than by teaching or preaching.

It is said that Marcolino was most at home with the lay brothers, or with the neighborhood children who enjoyed talking to him. He seldom went out of his cell, and could not have engaged in any active works; neither did he leave any writings. His work was the unseen labor presided over by the Holy Spirit, the work of contemplation. “To give to others the fruits of contemplation,” is the Dominican motto and one might be curious to know how Blessed Marcolino accomplished this. In order to understand the need for just such a type of holiness, it is well to remember the state of the Church in the 14th century. Devastated by plague and schism, divided and held up to scorn, preyed upon by all manner of evils, the Church militant was in need, not only of brave and intelligent action, but also of prayer. Consistently through the centuries, God has raised up such saints as could best avert the disasters that threatened the world in their day, and Marcolino was one answer to the need for mystics who would plead ceaselessly for the Church.

The interior life of Marcolino was not recorded by himself or by others. He lived the mystical life with such intensity that he was nearly always in ecstasy and unconscious of the things around him. One of his brothers recorded that he seemed “a stranger on earth, concerned only with the things of heaven.” Most of his brethren thought him merely sleepy and inattentive, but actually he was, for long periods, lost in converse with God. Some had heard him talking earnestly to the statue of Our Lady in his cell; some fortunate few had heard Our Lady replying to his questions, with the same simplicity.

At the death of Marcolino,  on 2 January, 1397, a beautiful child appeared in the streets, crying out the news to the little town that the saintly friar was dead. As the child disappeared when the message was delivered, he was thought to have been an angel. Many miracles were worked at the tomb of Marcolino. One was the miraculous cure of a woman who had been bedridden for 30 years. Hearing of the death of the blessed, she begged him to cure her so that she could visit his tomb.

He was confirmed as a saint in 1750 by Pope Benedict XIV.

Margaret, the daughter of King Bela IV, and Queen Mary Lascaris of Hungary, was offered to God before her birth, in petition that the country would be delivered from the terrible scourge of the Tartars. The prayer having been answeredin 1242, the king and queen made good their promise by placing the rich and beautiful three-year-old in the Dominican convent at Vesprim. Here, in company with other children of nobility, she was trained in the arts thought fitting for royalty.

Margaret was not content with simply living in the house of God; she demanded the religious habit–and received it–at the age of four. Furthermore, she took upon herself the austerities practiced by the other sisters–fasting, hairshirts, the discipline (scourge), and night vigils. She soon learned the Divine Office by heart and chanted it happily to herself as she went about her play. She chose the least attractive duties of the nuns for herself. She would starve herself to keep her spirit humble. No one but Margaret seemed to take seriously the idea that she would one day make profession and remain as a sister, for it would be of great advantage to her father if she were to make a wise marriage.

This question arose seriously when Margaret was 12. She responded in surprise. She said that she had been dedicated to God, even before her birth, and that she intended to remain faithful to that promise. Some years later her father built for her a convent on the island in the Danube between Buda and Pest. To settle the matter of her vocation, here she pronounced her vows to the master general of the order, Blessed Humbert of the Romans, in 1255, and took the veil in 1261.

Again, when Margaret was 18, her father made an attempt to sway her from her purpose, because King Ottokar of Bohemia, hearing of her beauty, had come seeking her hand. He even obtained a dispensation from the pope and approached Margaret with the permission. Margaret replied as she had previously, “I esteem infinitely more the King of Heaven and the inconceivable happiness of possessing Jesus Christ than the crown offered me by the King of Bohemia.” Having established that she was not interested in any throne but a heavenly one, she proceeded with great joy to live an even more fervent religious life than she had before.

Margaret’s royal parentage was, of course, a matter of discussion in the convent. But the princess managed to turn such conversation away from herself to the holy lives of the saints who were related to her by blood–King Saint Stephen, Saint Hedwig, Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, and several others. She did not glory in her wealth or parentage, but strove to imitate the saints in their holiness. She took her turn in the kitchen and laundry, seeking by choice much heavy work that her rank might have excused her from doing. She was especially welcome in the infirmary, which proves that she was not a sad-faced saint, and she made it her special duty to care for those who were too disagreeable for anyone else to tend.

Margaret’s austerities seem excessive to us of a weaker age. The mysteries of the Passion were very real to her and gave reason for her long fasts, severe scourgings, and other mortifications detailed in the depositions of witnesses taken seven years after her death (of which records are still in existence). Throughout Lent she scarcely ate or slept. She not only imitated the poverty- stricken in their manual labor and hunger, but also in their lack of cleanliness–a form of penance at that time. Some of her acts of self-immolation have been described as “horrifying” and verging on fanaticism, and there seems to have been an element of willfulness in her mortifications.

She had a tender devotion to Our Lady, and on the eve of her feasts, Margaret said a thousand Hail Marys. Unable to make the long pilgrimage to the Holy Land, to Rome, or to any of the other famous shrines of Christendom, the saint developed a plan by which she could go in spirit: she counted the miles that lay between herself and the desired shrine, and then said an Ave Maria for every mile there and back. On Good Friday she was so overcome at the thoughts of Our Lord’s Passion that she wept all day. She was frequently in ecstasy, and very embarrassed if anyone found her so and remarked on her holiness.

A number of miracles were performed during Margaret’s lifetime and many more after her death because Margaret had an implicit faith in the power and efficacy of prayer. The princess nun was only 28 when she died. Most of the particulars of her life are recorded in existing depositions of witnesses taken in 1277. Her friends and acquaintances petitioned for her to be acclaimed a saint almost immediately after her death. Among them was her own servant, Agnes, who rightly observed that this daughter of a monarch showed far more humility than any of the monastery’s maids. Although their testimony expressed Margaret’s overpowering desire to allow nothing to stand between her and God, the process of canonization was not complete until 1943. The island where her convent stood, called first the “Blessed Virgin’s Isle,” was called “Isle of Margaret” after the saint.   She died 18 January 1271 at Budapest, Hungary.  Her remains were given to the Poor Clares at Pozsony when the Dominican Order was dissolved, and most of her relics were destroyed in 1789, but portions are still preserved at Gran, Gyor, Pannonhalma.

 

She was beatified on 28 July 1789 by Pope Pius XII.

The 17th century was a period of great missionary activity. Many martyrs shed their blood on distant shores. Dominicans and Jesuits contributed a great share to the blood of martyrs. Among this glorious company, the Dominican Francis de Capillas has become the type and exemplar of them.

Francis was born in 1608 in Old Castile, Spain.  Nothing is known of his childhood. He entered the Dominicans at Valladolid at age 17. The Spain of his youth was still ringing with the missionary zeal of Saints Louis Bertrand, Philip de las Casas, and Francis Xavier; the report of the martyrdom of Alphonsus Navarette (June 1), in Japan, was news at the time. Perhaps the bravery of these men helped to fire the young Francis with apostolic longing, for he volunteered for the Philippine mission while he was a deacon.   In 1631 at the age of 23, he left Spain and was ordained in Manila. Here, at the gateway to the Orient, the Dominicans had founded a university in 1611, and the city teemed with missionaries traveling throughout the Orient.

The young priest labored for 10 years in the province of Cagayan, the Philippines, where heat, insects, disease, and paganism made life very hard. But it was not hard enough for Francis. He begged for a mission field that was really difficult; perhaps, like many of the eager young apostles of that time, he was hoping for an assignment in Japan, where the great persecution was raging. He was sent to Fukien, China, where he worked uneventfully for some years. Then a Tartar invasion put his life in jeopardy. He was captured by a band of Tartars and imprisoned as a spy.

Francis was subjected to a mock trial. Civil, military, and religious officials questioned him, and they accused him of everything from political intrigue to witchcraft. He was charged with disregarding ancestor worship, and, finally, since they could “find no cause in him,” he was turned over to the torturers.

He endured the cruel treatment of these men with great courage. Seeing his calmness, the magistrates became curious about his doctrines. They offered him wealth, power, and freedom, if he would renounce his faith, but he amazed and annoyed them by choosing to suffer instead. They varied the tortures with imprisonment, and he profitably used the time to convert his jailor and fellow prisoners. Even the mandarin visited him in prison, asking Francis if he would renounce his faith or would he prefer to suffer more. Being told that he was glad to suffer for Christ, the mandarin furiously ordered that he be scourged again “so he would have even more to be glad about.”

Francis was finally condemned, and was beheaded on 15 January 1640.  He was beatified on 2 May 1919 by Pope Pius X.

Today we celebrate the life of Saint Raymund of Pennafort.  His feast day was inserted in the General Roman Calendar in 1671 for celebration on 23 January. In 1969 it was moved to 7 January.  In keeping with Dominican tradition, we celebrate him on his original feast day.

From the bull of his canonization, by Clement VIII in 1601, and his life, written by several Spanish, Italian and French authors. 

The house of Pegnafort, or, as it is pronounced, Pennafort, was descended from the counts of Barcelona, and nearly allied to the kings of Aragon. Raymund was born in 1175, at Pennafort, a castle in Catalonia, which in the fifteenth century was changed into a convent of the order of St. Dominick. Such was his rapid progress in his studies, that at the age of twenty he taught philosophy at Barcelona, which he did gratis, and with so great reputation, that he began then to be consulted by the ablest masters. His principal care was to instil into his scholars the most perfect maxims of a solid piety and devotion, to compose all differences among the citizens, and to relieve the distressed. He was about thirty years of age when he went to Bologna, in Italy, to perfect himself in the study of the canon and civil law, commenced Doctor in that faculty, and taught with the same disinterestedness and charity as he had done in his own country. In 1219 Berengarius, bishop of Barcelona, who had been at Rome, took Raymund home with him, to the great regret of the university and senate of Bologna; and, not content with giving him a canonry in his church, made him his archdeacon, grand vicar, and official. He was a perfect model to the clergy, by his innocence, zeal, devotion, and boundless liberalities to the poor, whom he called his creditors. In 1222 he took the religious habit of St. Dominick at Barcelona, eight months after the death of the holy founder, and in the forty-seventh year of his age. No person was ever seen among the young novices more humble, more obedient, or more fervent. To imitate the obedience of a Man-God, who reduced himself to a state of subjection to his own creatures, to teach us the dangers and deep wound of self-will, and to point out to us the remedy, the saint would depend absolutely on the lights of his director in all things. And it was upon the most perfect self-denial that he laid the foundation of that high sanctity which he made the object of his most earnest desires. The grace of prayer perfected the work which mortification had begun. In a spirit of compunction he begged of his superiors that they would enjoin him some severe penance, to expiate the vain satisfaction and complacency which he said he had sometimes taken in teaching. They indeed imposed on him a penance, but not such a one as he expected. It was to write a collection of cases of conscience for the instruction and conveniency of confessors and moralists. This produced his Sum the first work of that kind. Had his method and decisions been better followed by some later authors of the like works, the holy maxims of Christian morality had been treated with more respect by some moderns than they have been, to our grief and confusion.

Raymund joined to the exercises of his solitude the functions of an apostolic life, by laboring without intermission in preaching, instructing, hearing confessions with wonderful fruit, and converting heretics, Jews, and Moors Among his penitents were James, king of Aragon, and St. Peter Nolasco, with whom he concerted the foundation of the Order of the B. Virgin of mercy for the redemption of captives. James, the young king of Aragon had married Eleonora of Castile within the prohibited degrees, without a dispensation. A legate was sent by Pope Gregory IX. to examine and judge the case. In a council of bishops of the two kingdoms, held at Tar rayon, he declared the marriage null, but that their son Don Alphonso should be reputed lawfully born, and heir to his father’s crown. The king had taken his confessor with him to the council, and the cardinal legate was so charmed with his talents and virtue, that he associated him in his legation and gave him a commission to preach the holy war against the Moors. The servant of God acquitted himself of that function with so much prudence, zeal, and charity, that he sowed the seeds of the total overthrow of those infidels in Spain. His labors were no less successful in the reformation of the manners of the Christians detained in servitude under the Moors which were extremely corrupted by their long slavery or commerce with these infidels. Raymund showed them, by words full of heavenly unction and fire, that, to triumph over their bodily, they must first conquer their spiritual enemies, and subdue sin in themselves, which made God their enemy. Inculcating these and the like spiritual lessons, he ran over Catalonia, Aragon, Castile, and other countries. So general a change was wrought hereby in the manners of the people, as seemed incredible to all but those who were witnesses of it. By their conversion the anger of God was appeased, and the arms of the faithful became terrible to their enemies. The kings of Castile and Leon freed many places from the Moorish yoke. Don James, king of Aragon, drove them out of the islands of Majorca and Minorca, and soon after, in 1237, out of the whole kingdom of Valentia. Pope Gregory IX. having called St. Raymund to Rome in 1230, nominated him his chaplain, (which was the title of the Auditor of the causes of the apostolic palace,) as also grand penitentiary. He made him likewise his own confessarius, and in difficult affairs came to no decision but by his advice. The saint still reserved himself for the poor, and was so solicitous for them that his Holiness called him their father. He enjoined the pope, for a penance, to receive, hear, and expedite immediately all petitions presented by them. The pope, who was well versed in the canon law, ordered the saint to gather into one body all the scattered decree of popes and councils, since the collection made by Gratian in 1150. Raymund compiled this work in three years, in five books, commonly called the Decretals, which the same pope Gregory confirmed in 1234. It is looked upon as the best finished part of the body of the canon law; on which account the canonists have usually chosen it for the texts of their comments. In 1235, the pope named St. Raymund to the archbishopric of Tarragon, the capital of Aragon: the humble religious man was not able to avert the storm, as he called it, by tears and entreaties; but at length fell sick through anxiety and fear. To restore him to his health, his Holiness was obliged to consent to excuse him, but required that he should recommend a proper person. The saint named a pious and learned canon of Gironne. He refused other dignities with the like constancy.

For the recovery of his health he returned to his native country, and was received with as much joy as if the safety of the whole kingdom. and of every particular person, had depended on his presence. Being restored again to his dear solitude at Barcelona, he continued his former exercises of contemplation, preaching, and administering the sacrament of penance. Except on Sundays, he never took more than one very small refection in the day. Amidst honors and applause he was ever little in his own eyes: he appeared in the schools like a scholar, and in his convent begged the superior to instruct him in the rules of religious perfection, with the humility and docility of a novice. Whether he sung the divine praises with his brethren, or prayed alone in his cell, or some corner of the church, ho poured forth an abundance of tears; and often was not able to contain within himself the ardor of his soul. His mildness and sweetness were unalterable. The incredible number of conversions of which he was the instrument, is known only to Him who, by his grace, was the author of them. He was employed frequently in most important commissions, both by the holy see and by the king. But he was thunderstruck by the arrival of four deputies from the general chapter of his order at Bologna, in 1238, with the news that he was chosen third general, Jordan of Saxony being lately dead. He wept and entreated, but at length acquiesced in obedience. He made the visitation of his order on foot, without discontinuing any of his penitential austerities, or rather exercises. He instilled into his spiritual children a love of regularity, solitude, mortification, prayer, sacred studies, and the apostolic functions, especially preaching. He reduced the constitutions of his order into a clearer method, with notes on the doubtful passages. This his code of rules was approved in three general chapters. In one held at Paris in 1239, he procured the establishment of this regulation, that a voluntary demission of a superior, founded upon just reasons, should be accepted. This he contrived in his own favor; for, to the extreme regret of the order, he in the year following resigned the generalship, which he had held only two years. He alleged for his reason his age of sixty-five years. Rejoicing to see himself again a private religious man, he applied himself with fresh vigor to the exercises and functions of an apostolic life, especially the conversion of the Saracens. Having this end in view he engaged St. Thomas to write his work ‘Against the Gentiles;’ procured the Arabic and Hebrew tongues to be taught in several convents of his order; and erected convents, one at Tunis, and another at Murcia, among the Moors. In 1256, he wrote to his general that ten thousand Saracens had received baptism. King James took him into the island of Majorca. The saint embraced that opportunity of cultivating that infant church. This prince was an accomplished soldier and statesman, and a sincere lover of religion, but his great qualities were sullied by a base passion for women. He received the admonitions of the saint with respect, and promised amendment of life, and a faithful compliance with the saint’s injunctions in every particular; but without effect. St. Raymund, upon discovering that he entertained a lady at his court with whom he was suspected to have criminal conversation, made the strongest instances to have her dismissed, which the king promised should be done, but postponed the execution. The saint, dissatisfied with the delay, begged leave to retire to his convent at Barcelona. The king not only refused him leave, but threatened to punish with death any person that should undertake to convey him out of the island. The saint, full of confidence in God, said to his companion, “A king of the earth endeavors to deprive us of the means of retiring; but the King of heaven will supply them.” He then walked boldly to the waters, spread his cloak upon them, tied up one corner of it to a staff for a sail, and having made the sign of the cross, stepped upon it without fear, while his timorous companion stood trembling and wondering on the shore. On this new kind of vessel the saint was wafted with such rapidity, that in six hours he reached the harbor of Barcelona, sixty leagues distant from Majorca. Those who saw him arrive in this manner met him with acclamations. But he, gathering up his cloak dry, put it on, stole through the crowd, and entered his monastery. A chapel and a tower, built on the place where he landed, have transmitted the memory of this miracle to posterity. This relation is taken from the bull of his canonization, and the earliest historians of his life. The king became a sincere convert, and governed his conscience, and even his kingdoms, by the advice of St. Raymund from that time till the death of the saint. The holy man prepared himself for his passage to eternity, by employing days and nights in penance and prayer. During his last illness, Alphonsus, king of Castile, with his queen, sons, and brother; and James, king of Aragon, with his court, visited him, and received his last benediction. He armed himself with the last sacraments; and, in languishing sighs of divine love, gave up his soul to God, on the 6th of January, in the year 1275, and the hundredth of his age. The two kings, with all the princes and princesses of their royal families, honored his funeral with their presence: but his tomb was rendered far more illustrious by miracles. Several are recorded in the bull of his canonization, published by Clement VIII. in 1601. Bollandus has filled fifteen pages in folio with an account of them. His office is fixed by Clement X. to the 23d of January.

The saints first learned in solitude to die to the world and themselves, to put on the spirit of Christ, and ground themselves in a habit of recollection and a relish only for heavenly things, before they entered upon the exterior functions even of a spiritual ministry. Amidst these weighty employments, not content with reserving always the time and means of frequent retirement for conversing with God and themselves, in their exterior functions by raising their minds to heaven with holy sighs and desires, they made all their actions in some measure an uninterrupted prayer and exercise of divine love and praise. St. Bonaventure reckons it among the general exercises of every religious or spiritual men, “that he keep his mind always raised, at least virtually, to God: hence, whensoever a servant of God has been distracted from attending to him for ever so short a space, he grieves and is afflicted, as if he was fallen into some misfortune, by having been deprived of the presence of such a friend who never forgets us. Seeing that our supreme felicity and glory consists in the eternal vision of God, the constant remembrance of him is a kind of imitation of that happy state: this the reward, that the virtue which entitles us to it. Till we are admitted to his presence, let us in our exile always bear him in mind: every one will behold him in heaven with so much the greater joy, and so much the more perfectly, as he shall more assiduously and more devoutly have remembered him on earth. Nor is it only in our repose, but also in the midst of our employments, that we ought to have him present to our minds, in imitation of the holy angels, who, when they are sent to attend on us, so acquit themselves of the functions of this exterior ministry as never to be drawn from their interior attention to God. As much as the heavens exceed the earth, so much larger is the field of spiritual meditation than that of all terrestrial concerns.”

(Taken from Vol. I of “The Lives or the Fathers, Martyrs and Other Principal Saints” by the Rev. Alban Butler, the 1864 edition published by D. & J. Sadlier, & Company)

Born of a warrior race to noble parents in the diocese of Litomerici, Bavaria , Zedislava lived in a fortified castle on the borders of Christendom, in an age when the fierce Mongol hordes were the world’s worst menace. Her whole life was spent surrounded by  the sounds of clashing arms, and the moans of the dying. The gentleness and purity of her life stand out in surprising beauty against the dark background of a warlike and materialistic people.

Zedislava learned Christian charity early in life from her mother, who taught her not only the secrets of preparing medicinal herbs but also the healing balm of prayer. Going each day to the castle gates with alms and medicines for the poor and the wretched who crowded there for help, she was soon well acquainted with human misery. Cheerful, prayerful, and alert to see the sorrows of others, the child became a light of hope to the miserable. Because of her sweetness and natural charm, she was able to teach many lessons to those about her.

As a child, she is said to have fled from her home for a time to live as a hermit, but she returned to live a more normal life that included an early marriage to a soldier, the duke of Lemmberk, who, like her own father, was a rich nobleman in command of a castle on the frontier. The couple produced four children. Zedislava cared judiciously for her own family and lavished great care on the poor, especially the fugitives and victims of the Tartar invasions.

Her husband was a good man, but a rough and battle-hardened soldier who liked nothing better than the clash of swords. He may have treated Zedislava badly and he certainly tried his young wife’s patience and obedience in a thousand ways. He insisted that she dress in her finest gowns and attend the long and barbarous banquets that pleased him so. (In return, she tried his patience because of her generosity towards the poor.)

Being of a retiring disposition and much given to prayer–and having a family and a large castle to care for–she found this a real sacrifice. However, obedience and patience had been an important part of her training, and she taught herself to spiritualize the endless trials that would beset the mother of four children in a medieval fortress.

The Polish missionaries, Saint Hyacinth and Blessed Ceslaus, brought Zedislava the first knowledge of the new religious order which had begun but a few years before. Saint Dominic, had met them in Italy, where he had gone to have his order approved. Zedislava was the first Slavic Tertiary of the Dominican Order.

Enchanted with the possibilities of an order that allowed her to share in its benefits and works while caring for her family, Zedislava threw herself into the new project with enviable zeal. She encouraged her husband to build a hostel for the many poor pilgrims who came homeless to the gate. She visited the prisoners in the frightful dungeons, and used her influence to obtain pardons from the severe sentences meted out to them. She fed and cared for the poor, taught catechism to the children of the servants, and showed all, by the sweetness of her life, just what it meant to be a Christian lady and a Dominican Tertiary. On the occasion of a Mongol (Tartar) attack, when homeless refugees poured into the castle stronghold, her calm, invincible charity was a bulwark of strength to all.

With her own funds, Zedislava determined to build a church (Priory of Saint Lawrence) where God might be fittingly worshipped. As an act of zeal and penance, she herself carried many of the heavy beams and materials that went into the building. She did this at night so that no one would know of her hard work. Zedislava experienced visions and ecstasies during this time. She also received Holy Communion nearly every day in an age when this was not customary.

Her death came soon after the completion of the church in 1252. The mourning people who knelt by her deathbed could see evidence of her strong Christian virtues in the monuments she had left: her children, her church, and the inspiration of a saintly wife and mother. She consoled her husband in life and appeared to him in glory after death, which strongly encouraged his desire for conversion. Numerous miracles are ascribed to Saint Zedislava, including the raising of the dead to life.  She was beatified in 1907 by Pope Pius X.

Born to pious parents in 1457 in Soncino, Italy,  her father became a Dominican tertiary while Stephana was very young. She was taught the catechism by the stigmatic Blessed Matthew Carrieri who lived at the nearby Dominican convent. Even though she was too small to understand, he told her that she was to be his spiritual heiress.  She began receiving visions of Dominican saints from age seven, at which point she made vows of poverty, chastity and obedience.  Carrieri died when Stephana was 14, and soon after he appeared to her in a vision and she received the stigmata.

She became a Dominican tertiary at Soncino at age 15, and was devoted to caring for the poor and sick. She founded a community of Third Order sisters in Soncino, and served as its first abbess. Her counsel was sought by many,  including Saint Angela Merici, Blessed Augustine of Biella, and Blessed Osanna of Mantua.

Although she had no formal theological training, she could discuss mystical theology at the most profound level. She could read the hearts and minds of the people around her, and had the gift of prophesy and healing. She lived in a nearly continuous fast, and inflicted severe penances on herself. Stephana accurately predicted the date of her own death.  She died of natural causes on 2 January 1530, and was beatified 14 December 1740 by Pope Benedict XIV.