Saint Dominic, Priest

Dominic de Guzmán was born about 1170 at Caleruega in Castile. As a student at Palencia during a famine he sold his books, annotated parchments, to feed the hungry, saying, as the early accounts report, that he would not study on dead skins while people were dying of hunger. A canon of Osma, he travelled with his bishop Diego to the south of France, where the Cathar movement was strong, and chose to preach as a poor wandering preacher, debating openly. In 1206 he gathered a community of women at Prouille, and in 1216 Pope Honorius III approved his Order of Preachers, the Dominicans, who spread quickly through the university towns of Europe. He died at Bologna on 6 August 1221 and was canonized in 1234.