It was in the year 1170, during the
pontificate of Alexander III, that Dominic Gusman, the founder of the order of
Friars Preachers, was born at his father's castle of Calargo, in Old Castile.
The history of a genealogy, however illustrious, seems scarcely to find its
place in the biography of a saint; though indeed few families can boast of one more honourable than that of the Castilian Gusmans. But
if their long line of chivalrous ancestors, and the royal privileges granted to
them by the kings of Spain, have no claim to be noticed here, the immediate
ancestors of S. Dominic possessed at least one distinction which had a more
powerful influence on his life. They were a family of saints. The household of
his father, Don Felix Gusman, was so remarkable for the religious character of
its inmates, that it was said to resemble rather a monastery than a knightly
castle. His mother, Joanna of Aza, after being constantly held in popular
veneration, has, almost within our own time, received the solemn beatification
of the Church. The same testimony has been borne to the heroic sanctity of
Manez, her second son; and though Antonio, the eldest of the three brothers,
has not indeed received similar honours, yet was he no unworthy member of his
illustrious family. We read of him that he became a secular priest, in which
position he might have aspired to the highest ecclesiastical distinctions; but,
enamoured of holy poverty, he distributed his patrimony to the poor, and
retired to an hospital where he spent the remainder of his days in humble
ministering to the sick.
The future greatness of her younger son
was announced to Johanna even before his birth. The mysterious vision of a dog,
bearing in his mouth a lighted torch which set fire to the world, appeared to
indicate the power of that doctrine which should kindle and illuminate men's
hearts through the ministry of his words. The noble lady who held him at the
font saw, as the water was poured on his head, a brilliant star shining on the
infant's forehead: and this circumstance, which is mentioned in the earliest
life which we have of the saint (that of Blessed «Jordan), bears a singular
connection with the beautiful description of his appearance in after-life, left
by his spiritual daughter, the Blessed Cecilia ; in which she says, among other
things, that "from his forehead, and between his brows, there shone forth
a kind of radiant light, which filled men with respect and love." Nor were
the expectations which were excited by these prodigies in any way diminished by
the promises of his childhood. His early years were passed in a holy household,
and his first impressions were received from the all-powerful influence of a
saintly mother. Amid the associations of a Christian family, his mind was
moulded into a religious shape even from his cradle; and the effect of this training
is to be traced in the character of his maturer sanctity. From first to last we
admire the same profound and unruffled tranquility of soul. So far as his
interior life is revealed to us, he seems to have known nothing of those storms
and agitations through which the human mind so often works its way to God;
nothing seems to have interrupted the upward growth of his soul; and even the
tales of his combats with the powers of evil give us more the idea of triumphs
achieved, than of temptations suffered and overcome.
When seven years old, he was committed
to the charge of his uncle, the arch-priest of Gumiel di Izan, a town not far
from Calaroga. Here he grew up in the service of the altar, finding his
pleasure in frequenting the churches, and learning to recite the divine office,
in singing hymns, and serving at mass, and other public ceremonies; and in all
those numberless little devout offices which make the life of so many Catholic
boys much like that of the child Samuel in the Temple. To Dominic they were all
labours of love; and his biographers dwell on the devotion kindled in the
hearts of those who saw the grave and reverent manner with which he bore
himself in the presence of the Most Holy Sacrament, or busied himself in the
cleaning and adorning of the altar. At fourteen he was sent to the University
of Palencia, then one of the most celebrated in Spain. He was but young to be
suddenly removed from so retired and sheltered a home into intercourse with a
world, of which as yet he knew nothing. With how many would such a change have
brought only the rapid loss of all which had hitherto rendered his life so
innocent and happy. But to Dominic it did but give room for larger growth in
holiness. During the ten years of his residence at Palencia, he was equally
distinguished for his application to study, and for the angelic purity of his
life. Worldly pleasures afforded no seductions to one who from his very birth
had received an attraction to the things of God. Even human science failed to
satisfy his desires, and he hastened to apply himself to the study of theology,
as to the only fountain whose limpid waters were capable of quenching the
thirst of his soul after the highest truth. He spent four years in the most
profound application to philosophy and sacred letters; often spending his
nights as well as his days over his books; and, convinced that Divine Science
can only be acquired by a mind that has learnt to subjugate the flesh, he
practised a rigid austerity, and for ten years never broke the rule he imposed
on himself at the commencement of his studies, to abstain entirely from wine.
The influence of a holy life is never unfelt by those who would be the last to
imitate its example. Dominic's companions bore witness, by their respect, to
the sublimity of a virtue far above the standard of their own lives. Boy as he
was, none ever spoke with him without going away the better for his words, and
feeling the charm of that Divine grace which shone even in his exterior
gestures. "It was a thing most marvelous and lovely to behold,"
says Theodoric of Apoldia; "this man, a boy in years, but a sage in
wisdom; superior to the pleasures of his age, he thirsted only after justice;
and not to lose time, he preferred the bosom of his mother the Church, to the
aimless and objectless life of the foolish world around him. The sacred repose
of her tabernacle was his resting-place; all his time was equally divided
between prayer and study; and God rewarded the fervent love with which he kept
His commandments, by bestowing on him such a spirit of wisdom and
understanding, as made it easy for him to resolve the most deep and difficult
questions."
Before we quit his University life, two
circumstances must be recorded, which happened during its course, and
illustrate the peculiar gentleness and tenderness of his character. Such terms
may seem strange to a Protestant reader, for there is, as it were, a
traditional portrait of S. Dominic, handed down from one age to another by
means of epithets, which writers are content to repeat, and readers to receive,
without a thought of inquiry as to their justice. We can scarcely open a book
which professes to give the history of the thirteenth century and its religious
features, without finding some thing about "the cruel and
blood-thirsty Dominic," or the "gloomy founder
of the Inquisition;" and under this popular idea the imagination
depicts him as a dark-browed, mysterious zealot, without a touch of human
tenderness, remorselessly handing over to the flames the victims of his morose
fanaticism. The author of the well-known "Handbook,"
from which so many English travelers gather their little stock of knowledge on
Italian matters, finds something of an almost providential significance in the
fact that the tree planted by the father of the Friars Preachers in his convent
garden at Bologna, should be the "dark and
melancholy cypress." And all the while the true tradition of his
character is one preeminently of joy and gentleness. With his fair auburn hair
and beaming smile, he does not present in his exterior a more perfect contrast
to the received notion of the Spanish inquisitor, than may be found in the
tales of tender-hearted compassion, which are almost all we know of him during
the first twenty years of his life. We find him, in the midst of the famine
which then desolated Spain, so sensibly touched with the sufferings of the
people, that not only did he give all he had, in alms, selling his very clothes
to feed the poor,—but he set a yet nobler example of charity to his
fellow-students by a sacrifice which may well be believed- to have been a hard
one. His dear and precious books were all that remained to give; and even those
he parted with, that their price might be distributed to the starving
multitudes. To estimate the cost of such an act, we must remember the rarity
and costliness of manuscripts in those days, many having probably been
laboriously copied out by his own hands. Yet when one of his companions
expressed astonishment that he should deprive himself of the means of pursuing
his studies, he replied, in words preserved by Theodoric of Apoldia, and
treasured by after-writers as the first which have come down to posterity, "Would you have
me study off those dead parchments, when there were men dying of hunger?"
This example roused the charity of the professors and students of the
university, and an effort was soon made which relieved the sufferers from their
most urgent wants. On another occasion, finding a poor woman in great distress
on account of the captivity of her only son, who had been taken by the Moors,
Dominic, having no money to offer for his ransom, desired her to take him and
sell him, and release her son with his price: and though this was not permitted
to be done, yet the fact exhibits him to us under a character which is
strangely opposed to the vulgar tradition of his severity and gloom.
It is said by some authors, that his
early desires led him to form plans for the foundation of an order for the
Redemption of Captives, similar to that afterwards established by S. John of
Matha; but of this we find no authoritative mention in the writers of his own
order; and it is probable that the idea arose from thereof of to which allusion
has just been made.
Source:
Alemany, Most Reverend J. S., D. D. Life of St. Dominic and a Sketch of the Dominican Order. New York: P. O'Shea Publisher, 1867
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