LIFE OF SAINT DOMINIC. BY THE REV. PÈRE H. D. LACORDAIRE, OF THE ORDER OF ST. DOMINIC, AND MEMBER OF THE FRENCH ACADEMY. TRANSLATED BY MRS. EDWARD HAZELAND. LONDON: BURNS AND OATES. 1883. APPROBATION OF THE ORDER Having by command of the most Reverend Father Angelo Ancarini, Master-general of the Order of Friar Preachers, examined a book entitled Vie de Saint Dominique, par le Révérend Père Henri Dominique Lacordaire, de l’Ordre des Frères Prêcheurs, I declare that I have not found in it anything contrary to morals or faith. It is marked by great purity of style, and by the golden eloquence and grace so characteristic of the writer. Therefore I consider that the publication of such a book would be a general boon, especially to France, in which country the Order of Friar Preachers was so useful and so flourishing in days gone by. Fr. Tomaso-Giacinto Cipoletti, Formerly Master-General of the Order of Friar Preachers, Theologian of La Casanate, Consultor of the Congregation of the Index, And of the Bishops and Regulars. Rome, Santa-Maria-Sopra-Minerva, 26th July 1840. PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. In publishing the Memorial for the re-establishment of the Order of Friar Preachers in France, my object was to place under the protection of public opinion a useful thought perhaps daring undertaking. I have had to congratulate myself on my course of action. Neither book nor work has been animadverted upon or openly denounced, nor any feeling of contempt, hatred, or dislike been manifested; and yet the question in point was St. Dominic and the Dominicans, and the replanting on the soil of France an institution long calumniated both in its founder and in his posterity! But we belong to a century placed at a new point of sight, whence, soaring above the ruins out of which Providence caused it to arise, we can discern things hidden from the intervening ages and from the passions by which they were swayed. Times of political vicissitude allow free scope to evil as well as to good; with the past they unroot hatred of the past, and convert the world into a battlefield where Truth bivouacs with Error, and where, amid the confusion, God descends to succor His hapless children. Although I have to congratulate myself on the way in which my Memorial and scheme have been received, I am not yet content; for the grand figure of St. Dominic could be but imperfectly sketched in a writing intended to convey a general idea of the Order of St. Dominic, and therefore I immediately applied myself, as far as the duties of the Cloister have permitted, to portray with a firmer hand the life of the Sainted Father. Few Frenchmen know much about him, and the majority know naught save he established the Inquisition and carried on the war against the Albigenses; two assertions so entirely false that it becomes a curious metaphysical question to know how such things could ever have been believed. Perhaps some day, should I meet with any serious opponents, it may be necessary for me to enter on the examination of this question, ad manifest the origin and progress of those causes which have rendered the harmonious name of St. Dominic so discordant to the ear of posterity. For the present, I have contented myself with describing the facts of his life as they have been furnished to me by contemporary evidence, and this evidence is my stronghold. From him who shall speak otherwise of St. Dominic I will request on line from the thirteenth century, and, if he find me too exacting in this demand, I will content myself with a single word. So much for the book; now for the work. On the 7th of March 1839, I left France with two companions. We were going to Rome to take the habit of St. Dominic and make the one year’s novitiate which precedes the vows. Our year finished, we knelt, but two Frenchmen, at the feet of Our Lady de la Quercia; and, for the first time in fifty years, St. Dominic beheld France represented among his children. At the present moment we inhabit the monastery of Santa-Sabina on the Aventine Mount. We are six Frenchmen, all called out from the world by diverse ways, all having led lives different from that to which God now summons us. We shall, if it please God, spend many years here, not to defer the moment of struggle, but in order to prepare ourselves seriously for our difficult mission; and we shall take back with us to France, not only our claims as citizens, but those claims which a time-tried fidelity always justifies. It is hard for us to be separated from our country, and lose all that we might there enjoy; but He who demanded from Abraham the blood of an only son has made renunciation of a present blessing the condition of a future and greater good. Without sowing there would be no reaping. We therefore entreat those who hope aught from us, to pardon our necessary absence, retain our memory in their hearts, and our names in their prayers. Years speed fast away; and when we shall meet once more in the tents of Israel and of France, it will not be amiss for all to have grown a little older, and doubtless, Providence, on its side, will have made some progress too. CONTENTS CHAPTER I Situation of the Church at the end of the twelfth century CHAPTER II Parentage of St. Dominic CHAPTER III St. Dominic arrives in France – His first journey to Rome – Interview at Montpellier CHAPTER IV Apostolate of St. Dominic, from the interview at Montpellier to the commencement of the Alibgensian War – Founding of the Monastery of Notre-Dame-de-Prouille CHAPTER V The Albigensian war CHAPTER VI St. Dominic’s apostolate from the commencement of the Alibgensian War until the close of the Fourth Lateran Council – Institution of the Rosary – St. Dominic and his first disciples CHAPTER VII Dominic’s second journey to Rome – Innocent III’s conditional approval of the order of Friar Preachers – Meeting of St. Dominic and St. Francis of Assisi CHAPTER VIII St. Dominic and his disciples meet at Notre-Dame-de-Prouille – rule and constitution of the Friar Preachers – Foundation of the Monastery of Saint-Romain-de-Toulouse CHAPTER IX Dominic’s third journey to Rome – Confirmation of the Order of Friar Preachers by Pope Honorius III CHAPTER X Re-union of the Friar Preachers at Notre-Dame-de-Prouille, and their dispersion through Europe CHAPTER XI. Dominic’s fourth journey to Rome – Founding of the Monasteries of Saint-Sixtus and Santa-Sabina, and accompanying miracles CHAPTER XII St. Dominic at Santa-Sabina – St. Hyacinthus and the Blessed Celsus enter the Order – Our Lady anoints the Blessed Reginald CHAPTER XIII Founding of the Monasteries of Saint-Jacques-de-Paris and San-Niccolà-de-Bologna CHAPTER XIV Dominic’s journey to Spain and France – His vigils in the grotto of Segovia – His manner of traveling and mode of life CHAPTER XV Dominic’s fifth journey to Rome – The Blessed Reginald’s death – the Blessed Jordain de Saxe enters the Order CHAPTER XVI First general Chapter of the Order – St. Dominic’s stay in Lombardy – Institution of the Third Order CHAPTER XVII St. Dominic’s sixth and last journey to Rome – Second Chapter-General – The Saint’s illness and death CHAPTER XVIII Translation and canonization of St. Dominic NOTES REGARDING EARLY RECORDS OF ST. DOMINIC’S LIFE CHAPTER I Situation of the Church at the End of the Twelfth Century. The twelfth century of the Christian era dawned amid splendid auspices. The faith and the current ideas of the age were in perfect harmony with each other; together they guided the West; out of a variety of races, at the same time obedient and free, they built up one single community. At the head of this vast social edifice was seated the Sovereign Pontiff, on a throne whence Majesty descended to succor Law, violated through human weakness, and Justice hastened to the succor of Obedience, the claims of which were rendered almost intolerable by the despotic abuse of power. Vicar of God and of man, Christ at his right and Europe at his left, the Roman Pontiff, weak in his own weakness by strong in divine strength, urged on the nations in the ways of righteousness. Never had faith, reason, and justice met together on so lofty a pedestal; never had the reunion of the severed members of the human race appeared so probable or so near. In Jerusalem, the banner of Christendom already waved over the Holy Sepulcher, and invited the Greek to a glorious reconciliation with the Latin Church. Islamism, defeated in Spain and chased from Italian shores, beheld itself attacked in the very stronghold of its power, and twenty nations, marching together to the frontiers of Christendom to defend the gospel of Christ from the pride of might and from the brutality of ignorance, promised Europe a cessation of those sanguinary migrations of which Asia was the home. Who could foretell the end of those triumphal ways just opened up by Christian chivalry in the East? Who foresee what the world might not become under a pontificate enabled to create, within, so vast a unity, without, so mighty an impulse? But the twelfth century ended not as it had begun; and when, at eventide, it sunk beneath the horizon to rest in eternity, the Church too seemed to set, her brow o’erclouded by a gloomy future.