Dominic was born in 1171, in Caleruega, a small Spanish village near the harsh, rugged but beautiful plain of Castile.

At this time the whole of western Europe was being shaken by striking political, social and ecclesial changes:

ü feudalism was in crisis and losing its power: many small independent states were being created and the rights of individuals were asserted against the power of the nobility;
ü  a relative peace encouraged development of commerce. New towns were founded and jealously guarded their independence;
ü  this peace encouraged population explosion: people left country areas for the towns. The new city-dwellers organised themselves into corporations with their own rules, and monasteries, formerly important centres of evangelisation in rural areas, lost their influence. This is the time when cathedrals were built.
ü the Church itself went through a time of intense crisis: the wealth of the hierarchy, compared with the poverty and poor formation of the clergy, caused great scandal; people were confused by the apparent success of heretical movements, and churches were left almost empty.

Dominic belonged to this time; he was born into a noble family characterised by great tenderness and faith. While still a boy, he was entrusted to his uncle, a priest, for his education. It was almost natural for his life to be oriented towards a priestly vocation.

His studies continued at the university of Palencia. During a time of famine he came into close contact with human suffering; he realised that studying and preaching the Word of God meant, first of all, to put it into practice: so, with no hesitation, and with characteristic passion, he decided to sell all his books: “I cannot continue to study on dead skins while the poor, my brothers and sisters, die of hunger”.

In 1198, as a young priest, he was living as a regular canon in the shade of the Osma cathedral, where, in silence and prayer, he dedicated himself to contemplation and study, yearning to know God’s true face as revealed in the Scriptures but most of all in Jesus crucified. In this period Dominic experienced the strength and support of community life.

One might think that Dominic’s life was conclusively planned out. But in 1204, invited by his bishop Diego to accompany him on a diplomatic mission to Denmark, Dominic set off from the security of Spain on an adventure that would enrich him and many others. He was 33 years old and he would never return to his homeland.

Nobody who is travelling and crossing frontiers, having to confront different realities and mentalities, can ever remain the same person, and this was especially true of a man like Dominic, who had a consuming desire of communicating to others his deep experience of the God who made his life free and happy…

Two encounters… a double shock… would be the crucible where the Lord formed  Dominic’s preaching identity:

ü In Toulouse, while talking with the innkeeper – a Catharist heretic, refusing to acknowledge the mystery of Incarnation – Dominic experienced an urgent need to reach out to this heresy-tainted world, and to show it the features of a God who is a compassionate and merciful Father, and who desires everyone’s salvation.

ü At Montpellier he met a party of catholic missionaries, richly provisioned, and on that account scorned by the heretics.   Dominic felt deeply that the God represented by Jesus, “the servant with no glory or prestige” cannot be proclaimed by power or force: “Get off your horses and go two by two, in voluntary poverty…” he said to them.
  

His encounters with those who were hungry for bread, or for truth, and encounters with the Word itself, were from that time onwards the place of continual contemplation and radical self-giving, making him into a “living preaching”.

This is why, when he began to gather the first friars together, he sent them out on the roads two by two, in spite of advice to the contrary.  Dominican grace had been born and the power of its vivifying spirit filled the famished hearts of many men and women, religious and laypeople…

ü in Prouille… a monastery founded for young women converted from Catharism, who dedicated themselves to prayer and silence;
ü in Toulouse… where Dominic’s first community received official approval as a “Holy Preaching” from Pope Honorius III in December 1216;
ü in the whole of Europe: Paris, Bologna, Oxford, Cologne…

“if the grain is not scattered far and wide,

it will rot…”

 

Between 1220 and 1221, Dominic laid down the first principles of his Order: the friars, in order to dedicate themselves completely to the “preaching of the Word”, were sent to the frontiers, grounded in the Word and distinguished by their search for Truth incarnate, in a fraternity that moved constantly outwards…

Consumed by his passion in God’s service, bringing Life to the world, Dominic died at Bologna on 6 August 1221. He was proclaimed a saint by Pope Gregory IX on 3 July 1234.  
 

* illustrations by Augusta Curreli