Ordo Praedicatorum

Today is the day on which the universal Church celebrates the feast of Our Holy Father, St. Dominic. St. Dominic was born around the year 1171. He died on the Feast of the Transfiguration, August 6, 1221. Until the liturgical reforms of the Second Vatican Council, his feast day was celebrated on August 4th. The Order now celebrates with the whole Church on this day, August 8th.

In honor of the feast, we have uploaded a PDF file with a few short excerpts from some of the Popes of the 20th century on the Dominican Order.

In addition, below are the verse lines in honor of St. Dominic from Dante’s Paradiso. In this great epic poem, these lines are spoken by St. Bonaventure in honor of the virtues of St. Dominic.

From The Comedy of Dante Alighieri the Florentine
Cantica III: Paradise (Il Paradiso)
(Canto XII, Lines 37 – 105)
Translated into English by Dorothy L. Sayers

Following its banner with uncertain stride,
Christ’s army, once rearmed at such dear cost,
Was straggling on, thin-ranked and terrified,

So that the eternal Emperor was disposed -
Not by their merit, but by His sole grace -
To reinforce His gravely threatened host,

And for His Bride’s relief was pleased to raise
Two champions, fit (as has been shown to us)
By word and deed to rally those poor strays.

Within that province where sweet Zephyrus
Swells till the springtide foliage is unfurled,
Wherewith all Europe is made beauteous,

Nor distant from that coastline where the hurled
Waves beat on which, his longest course pursued,
The sun at times hides him from all the world,

Long time hath happy Calahorra stood,
Protected by the mighty shield which shows
The lion by turns subduing and subdued;

And in that town was born the amorous
Sweet leman of the Faith, the wrestler-saint,
Kind to his friends and ruthless to his foes;

A soul created so pre-eminent
In living might, that a prophetic power
From her womb’s burden through his mother went.

And when the sacred font in nuptial hour
Had wed the Faith to him and him to her,
With their salvation for their mutual dower,

The lady who stood sponsor for him there
Dreamed of the wondrous fruit that afterward
He and his heirs should foster by their care;

And there, that name and nature might accord,
Seeing Whose he was, the Spirit going forth
Named him by the possessive of the Lord.

Dominic was his name, whose work and worth
I publish, as the husbandman whom Christ
Called to His garden to help till the earth.

Right well the friend and messenger of Christ
He showed him, for the first love he displayed
Was love for the first counsel given by Christ.

Full many a time his nurse would find him laid
On the bare ground, silent and wide awake,
As though to say: ‘For this end I was made.’

O father, well named Felix for his sake!
O thou his mother, rightly named Joanna
If name makes meaning, as ’tis said to make!

Not for the world’s love, ill the modern manlier
Of those who pore on him of Ostia, and
Thaddeus, but for love of the true manna

He grew a mighty doctor soon, who scanned
In every part that vine which, all too sure
Withers if dressed by an unskillful hand.

And from that See which once, but now no more -
(I blame not it, but him who there doth fix
His cankered sway) cherished the righteous poor,

No leave to pay out three or two for six,
No tithes quae pauperum Dei sunt sought he,
Nor first cut at fat stalls and bishoprics,

But only license to fight ceaselessly
Against the erring world for that good seed
Whence four-and-twenty scions girdle thee.

With Apostolic sanction guaranteed,
Equipped with doctrine and with zeal as well,
Like some high torrent thundering down at speed

On briars and brakes of heresy he fell
Uprooting them, and still was swift to go
Where opposition was most formidable.

From him, unnumbered rillets took their flow
To irrigate the Catholic garden-plot
Thenceforth, whence all its bushes greener grow.

If such was one wheel of the chariot
That Holy Church employed for her defense
In civil war, and thus her victory got.

And, finally, a quotation from President Ronald Reagan on the Dominican Order from December 5, 1985:

All Dominicans understand the pivotal role their Order has played in the unfolding of Western history. [Dominican] preachers, scholars, and men of action have able defended the bedrock principles of Western civilization; and many of them hold a secure place in the history of thought and deed.

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