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Catholic Saints
St. Dominic
00:23:22
During times of corruption and heresy in the world, great saints arise to bring renewal to the Church. Learn about the life and legacy of St. Dominic, a 13th century priest who founded the Dominican Order—the Order of Preachers—and lived to promote the integration of the intellectual life and the life of poverty.
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Host
You're listening to a podcast on Catholic Saints. This podcast is produced by the Augustine Institute, an apostolate helping Catholics understand, live, and share their faith.
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Mary McGhehan
Hi. Welcome to Catholic Saints. My name is Mary McGhehan, and this is Dr. Carl Vennerstrom, professor here at the Augusta Institute, too. What do you teach here, Dr. Fender?
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Dr. Carl Vennerstrom
Yeah, good question. I teach church history and I'll be teaching Greek this fall.
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Mary McGhehan
Nice.
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Dr. Carl Vennerstrom
But, yeah, mostly the early church, but sort of dipping into the medievals as well.
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Mary McGhehan
All right, those are fun topics.
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Dr. Carl Vennerstrom
They are. I like them a lot. I'm biased, but for good reason.
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Mary McGhehan
Today we're going to talk about St. Dominic. And this series on Catholic Saints is an opportunity for us to learn about the life of the saint, where they grew up and what formed them. What's their legacy to the church today. Just to look at them as role models and sources of inspiration on our own path and journey to Christ. So we're going to do St. Dominic. His feast day is August 8th, and he is the patron of astronomers, Dominican Republic, and falsely accused people, and I'm sure amongst many other patrons. So can you give us a biographical sketch? Start with the beginning of what we need to know about St. Dominic. He seems like a giant saint, you know, in the tradition of the Church. So where was he born or what? What do we need to know about him in his early life?
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Dr. Carl Vennerstrom
Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, he definitely does loom large through his. His order that he founded, the Dominicans, but also in his sort of personality. So, yeah, he was born in Spain. He was the child of a noble family that was relatively wealthy. His family itself contains or includes his mother, who is blessed, as well as his brother, who is a blessed.
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Mary McGhehan
Oh, I didn't know that.
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Dr. Carl Vennerstrom
Yeah, his brother, who also joined his order. And then, I mean, he had another brother who was a priest, who's a canon regular, which is not a parish priest, but anyways, sort of complicated, but yeah. And then a sister, I think, who had two children who ended up being blessed, too. So he's sort of in this.
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Mary McGhehan
That's a holy family.
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Dr. Carl Vennerstrom
Yeah, it's a sort of garden of saints for his family. So a good start. Definitely. He's one of these saints for whom there's a childhood that contains stories of piety. So he always refused to sleep in a bed, so he always slept on the floor, these kinds of things. But he went for a kind of medieval education, which included the quadrivium. So he studied math and music and these. These different things.
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Mary McGhehan
And roughly, like, what time period yeah, yeah.
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Dr. Carl Vennerstrom
So he is like late 12th, early 13th century. So born in 1170, and then he dies in 1221, the age of 51.
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Mary McGhehan
Okay.
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Dr. Carl Vennerstrom
Yeah. So. And as a young student, there's a really beautiful story which encapsulates an important feature of his character and his order's character, which is the intellectual life and then poverty. So he's a student studying philosophy, and he has these texts which are very expensive because, I mean, they're written on sheets of leather and they have to be handwritten, so they're expensive. And he has his own annotations in them and this kind of thing. So they're very treasured. There's a plague, and so he sells all of these in order to feed the poor. So it's these, like, two things, like this life of the mind, but which he's willing to sacrifice, at least in its material form, to serve and help the poor. So that's a bit about his early life. There are other really important episodes. I mean, his life is full of important episodes. But at one point in time, he joins his bishop on this trip, and on that trip through the country, they. They run into a lot of superstition. They run to a lot of heresy. So the Albigensians, you could think of them as like Manichees, if you know about Manichaeism. It's this sort of like, dualist heresy, or the Cathars, this idea there's like an evil God who created the world, and there's like this good God. And so there's like a hatred of nature and creation, or the belief, at least, that it's evil. Okay, so there's a lot of that. And at the same time as like, that's happening, there's. This is a kind of historical context. In the cities, there's a great deal of prosperity. And the great universities are starting up, like the University of Paris. So there's this thriving intellectual life through the Arabs. There's this reintroduction of Aristotle, the study of philosophy. So blossoming intellectual life in the cities. But there's also a great deal of clericalism. So a lot of the priests are very unconvincing in their message because their personal lives are hypocritical, so. Hypocritical. Yeah, that's right. And then to fight those heresies, they have to sort of combat the fact that while at least many of the priests were living sumptuous lives with a lot of wealth, the heretics, the Albigensians lived lives of poverty and renunciation. So the People who'd been forgotten, they at least found the, the message of these heretics a lot more convincing than the message of the Catholic Church, in part just because of the way of life of the clergy. So they encounter all of this and there's sort of calls from the Pope to renew preaching. And so the bishop that, that, that Dominic was accompanying, he is very enthusiastic about this. And so he joins with the Cistercians, which is this monastic order. And typically this is another sort of historical thing that's kind of difficult to understand. Typically when you think of monks in this period, we want to think not about monks who are sort of like living in a city with an apostolate or something, but who are living generally a more sort of remote life that's like really focused on prayer and not so focused on service or preaching. But they have this sort of poverty aspect. At least the good monks do. And they're called upon to preach, even though that's not their sort of like natural function. And so eventually this is the role that's filled particularly by Dominic's order, which is op, the order of preachers. Okay. So this is one of their great functions is to live according to a sort of monastic rhythm of life, with a life in community, a life of poverty and a life of prayer, but then also to be dedicated to preaching and evangelization. So his order, we'll get to this a little bit, but they're traveling all over the place and preaching to these people and fighting the heresies and then evangelizing people who need to be evangelized. So, yeah, it's this very fascinating period in the church's history.
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Mary McGhehan
There are a lot of just tensions as you're mentioning, high intellectualism, but then also extreme poverty at war and at play. And um, it just, it's always interests me how the context of what heresies or what crises are happening in that time period, the Lord, you know, send saints for particular antidotes and almost medicine for that time of sickness that people are going through. Spiritual and, you know, literal, but also just fascinating that in that, you know, commitment to poverty, they also have this more availability to be filled for preaching. So in that emptying and commitment to poverty, it makes sense that there's just more space for God to fill so we can give more of God in that self emptying.
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Dr. Carl Vennerstrom
Yeah, that's right. And One aspect of St. Dominic's character was just to be able to move quickly between places, as quickly as you could move in this period, because you're walking everywhere. Right. But still, like, he, he did travel all over the place. And part of that is that he didn't have, like, these things to carry around. He didn't have all this luggage or. Yeah, he didn't have, like actual luggage. Yeah, like when he died, he died in a habit that he borrowed from someone else because he didn't have his own. So. Yeah, in exactly the way you're saying he. Part of his analysis of the culture, if you will, is that it was going to be much more difficult to be a successful evangelist if you're tied down to a bunch of stuff and.
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Mary McGhehan
Like you're saying, an authentic witness, if the people were surrounded by a lot of hypocrisy, you had to be very authentic.
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Dr. Carl Vennerstrom
That's right. Yeah. People notice, like, if you care less about them than you care about your stuff. This is not something that is an elusive fact.
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Mary McGhehan
Right, yes, very good. So let's see. Are there particular topics that Dominicans and Saint Dominic in particular is known to preach on? You said, I think the bishop really mentored him to preach the Gospel. Are there other particular, I don't know, teachings? And why was that a priority for St. Dominic?
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Dr. Carl Vennerstrom
Yeah, so we have much less in terms of what St. Dominic actually said than we would with his later followers. But you could sort of maybe fill in the gaps.
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Mary McGhehan
Can you also mention. He's so interested.
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Dr. Carl Vennerstrom
Yeah. So his most important follower, at least in the Dominican order, St. Thomas Aquinas. Okay, of course, yeah. So we can presume without a doubt that St. Dominic had tremendous intellect and was able to discourse about like, any sort of theological topic. And so since he was preaching against these sort of Gnostic or Manichean type heresies, we can sort of presume that he probably preached a lot about creation and the goodness of the created order. Another evidence of his theological acumen would be that he ended up in Rome. And the Pope, rather than letting him leave Rome, sort of forced him to stay as his personal theological advisor. And so he was, at least in a theological sense, sort of like the most trusted person for the Pope at this time. And in fact, since St. Dominic, there's continuously been a Dominican who's sort of like the theologian in residence to advise the. To advise the Pope. So there's that. But then also, I mean, especially in preaching the Gospel, preaching poverty and preaching, preaching renunciation. So just to come back to the sort of twofold aspect of the intellectual life and poverty, part of the heritage of that is that St. Dominic made sure there were friars in Paris from the beginning to be near the great schools in Paris. And so this was not a life of poverty that was opposed in any way to the intellectual life. In fact, just as poverty made it possible for them to be more effective preachers, both to just be able to get places and not be attached to stuff, but also be an effective witness, they saw that poverty also had the same kind of effect on the intellectual life. If you free yourself from material attachments, you actually have a sort of clearer mind and calmer spirit to address sometimes, like, very complex, speculative questions and to make interventions in the sort of intellectual life of society. So Paris would be sort of like the intellectual center of the world at this point in time. And so he wanted his friars to be sort of right in the middle of that. And then once we get again to Thomas Aquinas, he ends up being a sort of professor, if you will, in. At the University of Paris. So there ends up being this long heritage of Dominicans in universities for which.
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Mary McGhehan
They'Re still known for teaching and intellectual life. And the Dominican sisters run so many Catholic schools as teachers still today, which is incredible.
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Dr. Carl Vennerstrom
Yeah. And the first sort of Dominican sisters were at least supposed to be converted heretics, like converted Albigensians that he. He formed into a monastery of sisters.
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Mary McGhehan
Interesting. I was also pondering how a lot of religious orders were formed in this time period. I was curious your thoughts on that. Like, why in this particular time was the Church so fertile in new religious orders? And also if there's any connection with Dominic and St. Francis.
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Dr. Carl Vennerstrom
Yeah, yeah. So we were talking about this a bit before. This was a period of. I mean, there were a lot of problems with society that was sort of outlined and problems within the Church too. And the sort of. The scope of the solution matched the scope of the problem. So there's that. So, yeah, we have. I mean, the Cistercians are. Are very rapidly expanding at this time. This is. This sort of. That comes out of the Benedictine tradition. At the same time, we have also St. Dominic and St. Francis, like you said. So these two great giants. Giants, yeah. And there are, as kind of evidence of their scope and impact, there are two gigantic statues of St. Dominic and St. Francis in St. Peter's and Rome, sort of flanking St. Peter. Yeah. So both mendicant religious orders. So like, both religious orders that focused heavily on poverty, the Franciscans and the Dominicans, St. Francis and St. Dominic are supposed to have met at the Lateran Council, but their religious orders, although having, like, a much different style in a sense, and sort of a different aspect now I would say in general, probably the Franciscans are more sort of like, overtly focused on poverty, possibly, whereas the Dominicans are maybe like, more overtly focused on the intellectual life. But that's just sort of like a period in their history, I think. I don't think it's indicative necessarily of, like, the larger trend because there are a lot of Franciscan universities and a lot of famous Franciscan theologians, this kind of thing. But despite their, I don't know, the sort of difference in style, there is this kind of, like, mutual dependence on one another. So each religious order traditionally called the founder of the other religious order, like the. The Holy Father. Maybe I'm getting that wrong. But anyways, they would have. The Dominicans would have a Franciscan come and preach on St. Dominic's feast day, and the Franciscans would have a Dominican come preach on the feast day of St. Francis. Yeah. And you have, like, humility. Yeah. And I think in Dante's Paradiso, you also have, I think, Thomas aquinas talking about St. Francis and St. Bonaventure, or Franciscan talking about St. Dominic. So. Yeah, there's this sort of like inter.
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Mary McGhehan
Brotherhood, in a sense.
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Dr. Carl Vennerstrom
Yeah, true kind of brotherhood. Yeah, that's right.
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Mary McGhehan
Fascinating. That's good. A good healthy rivalry and balancing each other out, I guess.
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Dr. Carl Vennerstrom
That's right. Yeah. I mean, it's sort of the kind of rivalry we would long for now in the church.
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Mary McGhehan
That is very true. Fascinating. Well, is there other. Any other interesting facts about St. Dominic or his life or. I feel like the word dog, like, is there some tradition? What is that connection?
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Dr. Carl Vennerstrom
Yeah, his mother is supposed to have had a vision before he was born of a dog carrying a torch, like, throughout the world. So I think there's, like, an etymology of Dominic that it's like Domino canis, like the dog of the Lord. Okay. So carrying this flame and lighting everything on fire.
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Mary McGhehan
Flame of the Gospel.
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Dr. Carl Vennerstrom
That's right. Exactly. Yeah. So that's. Yeah. So the. You often see like, a. A dog in, like, stained glass for the Dominicans.
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Mary McGhehan
Okay, that makes sense.
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Dr. Carl Vennerstrom
Yeah.
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Mary McGhehan
Very cool.
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Dr. Carl Vennerstrom
Yeah. A humble but sort of effective evangelist.
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Mary McGhehan
The dog. Yes. And lovable, I guess.
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Dr. Carl Vennerstrom
Yeah. And lovable. Well, that's right.
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Mary McGhehan
The two scripture verses that were coming to mind that I was looking for, the Galatians, 2, 10. I don't know if it's Paul or the apostles, but they're directing to remember the poor and just knowing their love for Scripture and taking to heart, remember the poor, even in their intellectual gift, almost like intellectual. Yeah. Richness. They have that union in remembering the poor and the poverty of the people around them.
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Dr. Carl Vennerstrom
Yeah, that's good. Yeah.
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Mary McGhehan
And Then 1st Peter 4:11, that mentions whoever preaches, let it be with the words of God and whoever serves, let it be with the strength of God as well. Just comes to mind as you're explaining more about, like, their charism and ethos.
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Dr. Carl Vennerstrom
Yeah, beautiful. Yeah. And then just maybe the last sort of reflection on his life. I think it's difficult sometimes when you read these lives of the saints, and it's like, oh, he had this, like, very clear mission and call, and then he did was awesome. But in, like, point of fact, like, his life was much more complicated. Right. I mean, he was like a canon. So like, more like a parish priest. Not exactly. For, like, eight years. And, like, things took time to develop. But I think one thing you can sort of take away with this idea of poverty and preaching, that once his mission was very clear to him, he had a heart set on fire to accomplish it. And that meant he was perfectly willing to let everything, even, like, good stuff, kind of fall by the wayside in order to accomplish it. So this is helpful, I think, that these things sort of take time to develop. And most people aren't gonna be St. Dominic anyways, but you're gonna be called to maybe humble and small things. But once you know that, you need to do that thing, to focus on that and then to have a detachment from everything that would prevent you from accomplishing that mission. I think this is a worthwhile thing to meditate on.
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Mary McGhehan
No, that's a wonderful reminder. And often, like, one. Yes. Leads to another. Yes. And refined. Yes. That the Lord takes you upon. You're not always exactly sure, even in the messiness of it, where it's going, but the Lord.
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Dr. Carl Vennerstrom
Precisely.
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Mary McGhehan
Yeah.
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Dr. Carl Vennerstrom
And this is something. This is something his followers. So he sent out his first 16 friars sort of all over Europe, in a sense, and they were all, like, very upset at him. Like, we're not ready to go. We don't have enough training. We're not good preachers, all this stuff. And he's like, nope, you're going. And so sometimes, you know, it's made clear to us, even though we'd rather it not be the case.
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Mary McGhehan
Yes, yes. I love that. Okay. And you also were just mentioning, supposedly he was St. Dominic. Could have been a redhead.
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Dr. Carl Vennerstrom
Yeah, that's right. Yeah. I called my friend in the Dominican order this morning and said, what should I tell people about St. Dominic? And he said, I have to go to class in two minutes. But he had red hair, so I didn't double check that. This is part of the oral tradition.
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Mary McGhehan
So if nothing else, it's the flame of fire.
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Dr. Carl Vennerstrom
That's right. Yeah.
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Mary McGhehan
The mother prophetically saw of her son into the world. So that's wonderful.
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Dr. Carl Vennerstrom
Beautiful.
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Mary McGhehan
Yes. Great. Well, thank you for all that about the life of St. Dominic. Lots to ponder on in that beautiful union of poverty and intellectual life.
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Host
Thank you for being a dedicated listener to the Catholic Saints podcast. Your support truly uplifts us. For those seeking additional thought provoking content, go to formed.org It's a platform brimming with resources, including insightful videos that align seamlessly with our podcast themes. If you're finding value in our podcast, please consider taking a moment to leave us a review. Your feedback serves as a cornerstone for our growth and outreach.
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Dr. Carl Vennerstrom
Sam.