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SAINT DOMINIC AND HIS TIMES
 SAINT DOMINIC
AND HIS TIMES

by

M.-H. VICAIRE, O.P.

Translated bv Kathleen Pond

McGRAW-HILL BOOK COMPANY

NEW YORK TORONTO LONDON
 First published by Les Editions du Cerf under the title
Histoire de Saint Dominique

This translation © 1964 Darton, Longman & Todd Ltd

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 62-8965^

67420

Printed in Great Britain by William Clowes and Sons Limited, London and Beetles. Nihil obstat
Carolus Davis, S.T.L., Censor deputatus. Imprimatur E. Morrogh Bernard, Vic. Gen. West-
monasterii, die pa Octobris, ip6l. The Nihil obstat and Imprimatur are a declaration that a
book or pamphlet is considered to be free from doctrinal or moral error. It is not implied that
those who have granted the Nihil obstat and Imprimatur agree with the contents, opinions or
statements expressed.
 CONTENTS

Introduction vjj

Part One: Vir Evangf.licus

I Caleruega 3
II Palencia 23
III Osma
IV The Marches 46
V The Narbonensis 6r
VI Montpellier 80
VII The Preaching of Jesus Christ 98
VIII Prouille lTS
IX Fanjeaux 137
X Toulouse 164

Part Two: In Medio Ecclesiae

XI The Lateran Council 187

XII The Order of Preachers Spread Through the World 217
XIII From Rome to Madrid 240
XIV From Paris to Bologna 260
XV Viterbo and Rome 278
XVI The First Chapter in Bologna 301
XVII ‘The Preaching’ in Fombardy 320
XVIII Santa Sabina and St Sixtus of Rome 337
XIX The Second Bologna Chapter : Dominic’s Death 3^6
XX Canonization 376

Appendices

I Excavations, Constructions and Restorations in Caleruega

(i9£2-i9£T) 399
II The Family of St Dominic (and notes) 403

147887
VI CONTENTS

III Castile in the European Political Scene at the Beginning

of the Thirteenth Century (and notes) 4°8
IV St Dominic’s Apostolate in Toulouse in 1210 411
V The Customs of 1216 4J3
VI The Bulls of Recommendation of Honorius III 418
VII Grant of Blouses at Brihuega (1218) 426
VIII The Rule of St Sixtus 42&

Bibliography and Abbreviation.1; 436

Notes to the text 44S

Index S31

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

facing page

Ground plan of Caleruega 3

Caleruega parish church 14
A canon of Osma on a journey in the thirteenth century 40
Servian, first stop on the journey of the itinerant Preachers 110
Fanjeaux 144
Town plan of Toulouse, 1631 170
Eleventh century bas-relief of Christ and the Apostles 1 90
The citadel of Segovia 2 £4
Town plan of Paris, i£S2 264
Town plan of the Church of St Nicholas of Bologna 301
The Church of Santa Sabina, Rome 3^0
The Church of Santa Maria dei Monti, Bologna 364

Maps after page

The land of the Albigenses

Spain at the time of St Dominic

Italy at the time of St Dominic

We are indebted to the Archbishop of Westminster and Burns <&_ Oates Ltd for permission t-o quote from the Bible
translated by Mgr R.A. Knox.
 INTRODUCTION

T HERE has been no lack of lives of St Dominic. In France alone a

new one is published on an average every ten years. Only a small
proportion has something new to offer—most of them are satisfied
merely to reproduce the same series of phrases and incidents, occasionally
throwing some new light on them. Some of them display certain literary
qualities; others are remarkable for the sureness of their historical intuition,
if they happen to be the work of men such as Lacordaire or Bede Jarrett, who
were deeply imbued with the spirit of St Dominic and what he came to
achieve. Yet it is scarcely an exaggeration to say that no single one of these
has been basically built up from the actual documents, nor is there any
which makes full use of contemporary critical scholarship and history.
The first two-thirds of the thirteenth century witnessed the appearance of
a series of texts which may be considered as the sources of this history, a
series consisting of some hundred and fifty documents contemporary with
Dominic and his foundation: a few letters ; the Libellus of Jordan of Saxony,
a remarkable account of the beginnings of the order that later liturgical
legends have distorted and disfigured but can hardly be said to have enriched;
the documents of the canonization process with the two reports from
Bologna and Prouille-Pamiers; a few chronicles; edifying incidents relating
to St Dominic, preserved in the collections of stories suitable for the use of
preachers. At the close of the thirteenth century, the preacher Thierry of
Apolda made a life out of all these documents. He had some talent as a
compiler, which is not to say that he was satisfactory as a critic. At the
beginning of the fourteenth century the Dominican bishop Bernard Gui got
together valuable collections of documents, the first constitutions of the
order, the acts of the general and provincial chapters, notices about particular
houses or individuals, etc. His work brought the series of sources to a close.
The oral tradition relating to St Dominic did not attain the extent or the
variety of inspiration of that of St Francis. On several occasions during the
thirteenth century it achieved permanent form through written expression.
Almost all the publications of this type whose existence has ever been known
are still extant. There is no likelihood that texts later than the beginning of
the fourteenth century will contain as yet undiscovered data resulting from
this tradition.
viii INTRODUCTION

On the contrary, the fourteenth century provides us, in the person of the
Milanese friar, Galvagno della Fiamma, with the characteristic type of the
corruptor of Dominican historiography. Others, such as Thomas of Siena,
Alain de la Roche, Bzovius, followed. The most formidable was Alain de la
Roche, who at the close of the fifteenth century propagated, simultaneously
and with equal effectiveness, his Rosary confraternities and so-called facts of
Dominican history hitherto unknown—learnt, he said, by revelation.
The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries increased the accumulation of
authentic documents extracted from the archives and the heavy mass of
errors and confusions. The megalomania of the official historiographies as
much as the increasing difficulty experienced in the interpretation of the
medieval documents were contributing factors in this situation. The latter,
from the Historia general of Fernando del Castillo, which was in certain other
respects intelligent and well informed, to the vast Annals edited in the
eighteenth century by the first historical college of the Friars Preachers
under the aegis of Master-General Antoine Bremond, considerably falsified
the already distorted history of St Dominic and his foundation.
Since the end of the previous century, however, one conscientious scholar
after another had been insisting on a return to the sources, which thev
published, and on submitting all the elements of the life of St Dominic in
turn to criticism. This was principally the work of Echard, who brought
the two fundamental sources of the life—the Libellus and the canonization
process—into prominence again, at the same time enriching them with
accurate commentaries; Cuyper, the Bollandist, continued this work in the
Acts of St Dominic. Members of the first historical college, such as Mamachi
and Christianopoulo, in turn continued it in the notes of their Annals or of
the Bullarium of the order.
The revolution of 1789, which very nearly brought complete catastrophe
to the Order of Preachers, necessarily brought this work of scholarship to a
standstill. This situation lasted until the time of the restoration of the French
provinces by Lacordaire, a restoration which brought new and vigorous
vitality to the order. The lives of St Dominic which began to appear once
more were for the most part better than those of the previous age because
they were beginning to get out of the rut of prejudices arising from esprit de
corps and because they were able to utilize as their basis the concise and well-
informed notes of Echard. Moreover, an important work of research and
criticism of the sources was carried out in the French provinces of the order,
and afterwards in Rome and Germany, stimulated by the necessity of re¬
discovering the primitive Dominican ideal in the face of the divergencies of
interpretation which had arisen.
If the research work of Danzas was still somewhat lacking in critical
accuracy, the editions produced under the auspices of Master-General
Friihwirth and under the stimulus of men as different as Berthier, Denifle
 INTRODUCTION ix

and Mandonnet soon provided historians with the best texts of the sources
in the collections of the Analecta and the Monumenta. It was at this time that
Balme and Lelaidier, in their Cartulaire de saint Dominique, almost succeeded
in doubling the number of documents in the archives that had been
available to previous historians. If the commentaries with which they accom¬
panied the texts they edited were lacking in historical perspective and in
soundness, they none the less frequently provided valuable aids to scholar¬
ship. Guiraud, too, procured numerous hitherto unpublished documents for
his Cartulaire de Prouille. In 1922 Berthold Altaner produced a general
criticism of the sources of the life of St Dominic. From 1931 onwards the
second historical college of the order has continued to place at the disposal
of historians in the annual Archivum and in its collections of sources or
special studies first-class instruments of research. Lastly, a series of mono¬
graphs, in particular biographies or histories of the first Dominican
provinces, provides a supplementary number of details for the history of the
foundation of the Preachers.
This long critical investigation which has now almost reached completion
has not so far produced the general history of St Dominic and his work which
constitutes its raison d'etre. Mandonnet, who never ceased to keep this in
mind, only produced partial although fundamental studies, of which the
complete collection, published in 1938, was not sufficient to constitute a
history of the saint. A synthesis of them was attempted by Heribert
Christian Scheeben in 1927, but by him alone. His book, carefully based on
authentic documents, and written in a most attractive style, is scarcely
known outside Germany; it has not been translated, nor has a subsequent
edition been published. The reason for this must doubtless be sought in
certain historical interpretations not accepted by historians, which are
particularly cherished by the author. Unforeseen circumstances, moreover,
have rendered the majority of the critical arguments of this book pointless.

The present biography has endeavoured to give these arguments in detail,

from motives of sincerity and for the sake of usefulness. Moreover, it is an
attempt to replace in their geographical and chronological setting, and within
the currents of development which throw light upon them in the course of
events, the elements of the life of St Dominic and of the foundation of the
Preachers as they are made known to us by the best sources. The combina¬
tion of political circumstances in Castile, in the territory of the Albigenses
and in Lombardy is clearly not the only principle of explanation of events.
Mandonnet has already indicated several of the historical perspectives which
give to the figure of the founder its exact proportions and its special light in
the future of the Church and of medieval Europe—the movement towards
association and common life and the rise of lay piety, the scholastic crisis,
the transformation of the institution of regular life, the evolution of the
X INTRODUCTION

pastoral ministry in the Church. Grundmann has recently drawn attention to

the important role of a movement of ‘apostolic life’ among the heterodox.
(It was to win over the heterodox that Dominic instituted his Preachers). It
was shown in 1938 that the appeal of the vita apostolica reached Dominic and
his work through many other influences than that of the heretics, for this
ideal of a return to the Gospel and to the primitive Church was the clerical
basis of the Gregorian reform and since that time had spread in the most
divergent milieux, giving rise in particular to a movement for canonical life
and a revival of the rule of St Augustine. Throughout the ensuing chapters
other and different viewpoints will be brought forward, especially that of
the negotium fidei et pads, the combined effort of popes, bishops and princes
to unite Europe in the faith and in peace, in which Dominic found himself
engaged through his preaching.
In the formidable backwaters of these interconnected currents, Dominic
opened a unique channel, deep and straight as he was himself. His contem¬
poraries found the term he used—vir evangelicus—a man of the Gospel—apt
for describing the type of man he succeeded in creating among his Preachers.
This type he first produced in his own life. Vir evangelicus is the title of the
first part of this biography. Because, however, it was in the very heart of the
Church and her hierarchy that the founder implanted this form of clerical
life, it seemed fitting to give as a title for the second part of the work the
opening words which, since his canonization, have been sung in the Mass of
the saint: In medio Ecclesiae. We hope we may be pardoned for these Latin
expressions : vita apostolica, negotium fidei et pads, vir evangelicus. . . . They
preserve the flavour and dignity they possessed in the lifetime of the founder
better than the colourless words which translate them. A great number of
things are included these days in the term ‘apostolic’. At that time it
characterized exclusively a gift peculiar to the twelve apostles, or to their
successors the popes, and aroused in people’s feelings a depth of response
it is difficult for us to imagine. It is then in the full sense of their meaning
that we have deliberately used terms of this kind. Similarly, we have
endeavoured not to use expressions which are convenient but anachronistic,
avoiding, for instance, the term ‘Languedoc’ to designate the region north
of the Pyrenees, which the people of that time called Provence, the province
of Narbonne, or the county of Toulouse. By using the words and expressions
proper to the men oi the thirteenth century, we penetrate a little further
into their world and acquire a more living contact with them.
In bringing this introduction to a close, it remains to thank all those who
by their advice, information, or the documents they have procured for us,
have collaborated in this work: our confreres of the Istituto Istorico de Sta
Sabina, our colleagues, Professors Meersseman and Aebischer, Senor Luis
Sanchez-Belda, director of the National Historical Archives in Madrid,
Professor ]. San Martin of Palencia, Canon A. Penalba Gayubo, archivist of
 INTRODUCTION XI

Osma, the Very Reverend Father V. Beltran de Heredia O.P., Monsieur le

chanoine Louis de Lacger of Albi, the Swiss national fund for scientific
research, a grant from which has made our work possible; finally, our
collaborator, Herr Leonard von Matt, some of whose attractive pictures, the
choice of which was a labour of love, have already decorated these pages
before going to form, with many others, a magnificent album in which they
will shed their light on the history of St Dominic.

Fribourg, M.-H.V.

4th October, 19^6.

 PART I

VIR EVANGELICUS
Ground Plan of Caleruega
 Chapter I

CALERUEGA

T O speak of St Francis without calling to mind Assisi, its hills planted

with olives and vines, the simple piety of the people there, is in¬
conceivable. Similarly, before we begin to study the life of St
Dominic, it is only right that we should visit his native village, set on the
plateau of Old Castile. To the south-west of the Iberian mountains, on the
edge of the high plateau which is crossed by the Douro* as it flows from
east to west, geography and history combined to form a region with so
marked a character that the passing pilgrim cannot but be deeply influenced
by it. Clearly this is true to a much greater degree of the child who is born
on this soil and receives from its geographical setting as much as from the
peasant community there, the most fundamental of his human impressions.
This place is the village of Caleruega.
It is up-hill the whole way to Caleruega. The road from Valladolid
follows the green track marked out by the Douro in the midst of the arid
landscape, where the whiteness of the barren hills on the horizon reflects
the intense heat of the sun. The whole way there is a gradual ascent following
the slow rise of the plateau of Old Castile: 2,475 feet at Penafiel, 2,640
feet at Aranda, 3,135 feet at Caleruega, 3,300 at the foot of the mass of
white rock of San Jorge which dominates the large village.
Caleruega is no longer at the world’s end as it was as recently as thirty
years ago. Twice a week a bus starts from Aranda de Duero, where one
leaves the train; this bus goes up to Caleruega and then on to Santo
Domingo de Silos before going down again towards Burgos and re¬
joining the main road. As one leaves the Douro, however, and moves
closer to the frontier of mountains which, to the north, east and south
dominates the plateau with its rugged sierras 7,000 and 8,000 feet high,
the impression of leaving behind one a life of comparative ease is un¬
mistakable. The green landscape disappears. The poplars which line the
route as long as we continue to follow the course of the Banuelos, a small
tributary of the Douro, disappear after six or seven miles, leaving us
with the white ribbon-like road surface in all its bareness. Here and there
thick woods of black pine trees still remain, their sap oozing slowly into
the resin-containers. The very vines disappear. In places the fields continue
* In Spanish, Duero — hence Aranda de Duero — Tr.
 4 VIR EVANGELICUS

but everywhere else there are barren moors. Two or three miles beyond
Caleruega, the landscape becomes treeless. As far as the eye can stretch,
we can no longer see anything but the soil—glorious soil, red, purple, dark
ochre, with white furrows. It has the appearance of a garden that has been
tidily raked over the day before a fete. This is because at this time, the
beginning of spring, it is in actual fact worked over from one end to the
other. It is not always sown with seed, but the whole surface of the soil is
tilled, perhaps as a long-term preparation, perhaps to preserve it from
premature aridity, perhaps to open it more fully to the rain which it is
hoped will come.
The road crosses a slight rise in the ground and Caleruega lies before us.
To right and left there is now a wide view. Immediately in front of us a
new tier of the plateau outlines against a cloudless sky for more than seven
miles or so the unbroken contours of the crest of the ridge. Further away is
a line of lofty peaks: Pena de Cervera, Picon de las Navas. Still further in
the background are the black, rounded crests of the Iberian Mountains. On
the edge of the first terrace are patches of land alternately brick-red and
whitish in colour, completely horizontal, intersected here and there bv the
incursion of small, transverse valleys. The broadest of these valleys is
hollowed out by the river Gromejon. To the right of it, on a spur facing the
edge of the plateau, are two strong towers, a large building, a fortress-like
construction with buttresses, a basilica in the form of a Greek cross, a rocky
peak: such is Caleruega, the torreon, the church and the nuns’ convent;
Caleruega, wholly bathed in the transparent light of April at the close of the
afternoon.
It is not easy to convey the impression of poverty, proud, yet at the same
time humble, that is evoked by such a scene. The village is of the same
colour as the soil and is only distinguishable from the landscape, which is
likewise formed of the soil, by the light and shadows from the torreon, the
royal convent or the basilica. There is poverty in the sun-drenched streets
which climb up through the village but there is noble dignity in the little
romanesque church which St. Dominic knew, and also, and more especially
so, in the peasant stock among whom he grew up, a race supple, wiry, full
of life, brave and immensely hospitable.
It does not take long to see over the village, with its uneven streets, the
old stones of the monastery, the great fountain in the centre of the square,
from which the water flows abundantly like an image of grace. Without
allowing ourselves to linger over the buildings which we shall have to
examine later with closer attention, we are driven by a strong urge along the
paths which climb up to the highest point of the village, towards the hill and
the rocky heights of San Jorge. In order to rediscover St Dominic, it is not
so much the detail that counts, the rare stone touched by him or the
i omanesque portal through which he passed—it is the general setting, the
 CALF.RUEGA
5
atmosphere, the background of this vast landscape over which the sun
spreads. I cannot indeed imagine that anyone could remain for some time
attentive and silent on the heights of San Jorge without being almost
immediately struck by the impression of heroism that emanates from the
landscape.
Behind is the plateau, now completely exposed to view and entirely
barren, rising towards the dark heights over to the north. On the right is the
broad valley of the Gromejon, where a few trees, hardly yet in bud, blurred
and, as it were, submerged in the shadows which rise up, indicate the
presence of running water. The road becomes indistinct and quickly seems
to disappear from sight; it divides and, swerving widely, scales the promon¬
tories until it appears to vanish once more towards an unknown horizon. To
the south, east and west, the Castilian plateau is left to develop unrestricted.
It is nothing but patches of land, hard and arid—not a village, not a tumble-
down cottage, not a clump of trees to be seen over this expanse which
stretches perhaps as far as seventy miles or so from the Sierra de Guadarrama.
The life of the place is hidden away in the invisible valleys hollowed out by
the rivers. Only the dusty roads which cross the dark soil introduce a note
of light which springs up towards the horizon: towards Aranda, Nuestra
Senora de la Vid, Gumiel de Izan. It is a challenge to man and a vista of
unspoken possibilities.
All is tranquillity and bright sunlight. It is one of those rare moments when
winter has just ceased to be and summer has not yet imposed her implacable
presence. During the interminable months of winter—nine months of
winter, three months of hell, they told us at Valladolid—the wind from
the plateau moans and hisses over the heights of San Jorge, lifting the snow
until it forms a chill cloud over the vast icy sui-face. The west winds with
their mighty rains then quickly transform this soil into mire. The summer’s
sun next beats down fiercely on these far-spreading fields, on the roads that
no tree shades and whose dread monotony is broken by no oasis. The
distant horizons speak to us of majesty, of a humanity vast in its extent,
of infinity. Earth and sky, disturbing in their beauty, tell of duty ineluctable,
perhaps almost inhuman. The roads call to us to rejoin invisible brethren,
hidden away over there in the light or in the dark depths of the sierras,
towards the four points of the compass. We are reminded of the harsh
masculine vigour and of an existence subjected to the extreme contrasts of
the elements and of events, and of the necessity for relentless effort some¬
times even without visible hope—such as the ploughing of this seedless
land, ploughing which in this month of April has turned over the greater
part of the soil spread out before our eyes. There is also the human joy,
Christian joy, intense and almost fanatical, of a life which, in spite of every¬
thing, makes a place for itself and expands with incomparable generosity in
this austere setting. Here are to be found the inspirations of nobility of soul,
6 VIR EVANGELICUS

courage, heroism, which are whispered to anyone who seeks for them with
earnest attention by the stones and the fields and the horizon and the moun¬
tains and the sun and the sounds which rise up from the village until they reach
this glittering limestone promontory where St. Dominic came to play and to
cast his eyes over the land, as the boys of Caleruega still do today.
Evening begins to fall, and the shadows over the promontories creep
higher. Gradually we become aware of a kind of invasion. From every
direction the great flocks of sheep, which for so many centuries now have
provided Caleruega with one of its means of livelihood, have begun their
trek back towards the village. The imperceptible white dots which a few
moments ago were scattered over the surface of the distant Helds gather
together and begin to move accompanied by a great cloud of dust which the
sun turns into a haze of light. Already the herd of black cows has returned to
the village—the mules too, and the donkeys with their grey feet, and the
herd of white goats. The sheep move forward slowly. A louder bleating and
a barking of dogs penetrate as far as San Jorge. The running of the dogs and
the shepherds, the movements of the flocks of lambs which dart about in
their panic, the slow advance of the main body of the sheep, come fully into
view. A blanket on his shoulder, a young shepherd, leaving his sheep for a
few seconds, leaps up on the near-by cliffs, calling out a name which re¬
echoes loudly. The bleating now becomes more intense, rising like a tide.
From all sides new flocks appear. The sun goes down. Against the romanesque
belfry of the church the gold is changed into red, into flushed pink, into
light purple. The storks which lodge in the corner of the torreon flap their
wings and fly round and round above the church a few times. The smoke
from the houses rises vertically in the peace of the setting sun. Some of the
sheep have come back into the folds. Others, in groups, wait before the
closed door. Others again, protected from the effects of occasional panic bv
the energetic efforts of a youthful shepherd, continue to crop the grass right
on the side of the hill. The continual sound of their bleating grows persistent
and penetrating. It is difficult to say whether it is a lament, an expression of
hope or a call for help. Perhaps it is the call of the souls coming from the
furthermost horizon that the child Dominic heard of old penetrating right
up to the rocky cliffs of Caleruega.
For at that time this land was weighed down under a greater burden of
human suffering and human hope or, rather of spiritual drama, than any¬
where else. It was here that men by the thousand had fought for their
beliefs in centuries gone by. If indeed Caleruega was not yet many years old
at the time of St Dominic’s birth, it occupied land that had nothing of a new
territory about it. There the populations had succeeded each other without
interruption for thousands and thousands of years, with arrivals and depar¬
tures the tragic character of which had become accentuated since Christian
times.
 CALERUEGA
7
A few miles away from Caleruega the remains of a Roman city can
still be seen. Its destiny in itself symbolizes the history of the whole
territory since the Byzantine Empire. Clunia2 had her hour of fame during
the months of the reign of the Emperor Galba. A colony and a municipium,*
the walls of which could easily have contained 60,000 or 80,000 inhabitants,
with its theatre and its great aqueducts, it constituted one of the seven
centres of jurisdiction of the Roman province of Tarraconensis. It was,
moreover, a place where important highroads met. The road cutting directly
across Spain from Tarragona to Corunna passed through it, coming from
Saragossa by way of Numantia, Olbega (Augustobriga), Osma. At Clunia it
forked. Through Roa (Rondu) and Simancas (Septimanca) near Valladolid, it
continued to Zamora. Through Palencia the other fork led to Astorga and
the sea.3 Now this fork passed close by Caleruega, slightly to the south of
its present site. Its paved, now broken, blocks can still be seen in places.4
In the thirteenth century it was still intact and fully usable.5 It was,
moreover, the most tangible vestige of what still remained of the great city
whose very name was beginning to fade.6

Originally destroyed by the Goths in barbarian times, so it is said, Clunia

must obviously have recovered sufficiently for history to have thought fit to
preserve the memory of its conquest by the Moors. In the first half of the
eighth century, however, Alfonso the Catholic drove them away. They came
back. In 91 2, the Count of Castile and Lara, Gonzalo Fernandez, retook and
repopulated the town. In 918, however, the inhabitants took flight on
learning of the approach of Abd-er-Rahman III, and his soldiers pillaged the
city with appalling havoc. During the second half of the tenth century, Al
Mansour dominated the whole of the upper valley of the Douro and even on
one occasion thrust forward as far as Santiago de Compostela which he
conquered and destroyed. After his death, Count Sancho of Castile recovered
Clunia in 1010. The town, however, was so thoroughly devastated that it
practically disappeared from history. Four villages sprang up on its bound¬
aries.7 Only a hermitage and the chapel of Nuestra Senora de Castro, where
the parish of Caleruega goes to make a pilgrimage8 each year, are left to
remind us of the former fortified Roman town.
The history of the other cities of the neighbourhood, Roa, Aza, Aranda,
Osma, Gormaz, was similar.6 After reaching the line of the Arlanzon, to the
south of Burgos, about the year 880, the Christian reconquest seemed to
slacken. The vast valley of the Douro remained unpopulated like a ramp
against the Moslem. Liberating themselves from this static condition, at the
beginning of the tenth, and again in the eleventh centuries, the colonizers,
the Counts of Castile and other nobles, were able to reconquer the sites,
found or re-establish towns and villages and throw them open to the
* A borough town, subject to Rome but governed by its own laws —Tr.
8 VIR EVANGELICUS

Christian immigrants. The success of this repopulation, however, was

insecure. The region had remained a no man’s land among belligerents far
too long. There was a dearth of men. Men from the Cantabrian mountains,
from the Asturias or Galicia, Basques and Mozarabs driven out from the
south, were slow in arriving and allowed themselves to be discouraged by
the insecurity. Moorish strongholds such as La Aguilera, near Gumiel de
Izan, held out until the middle of the eleventh century.10 It was not until the
end of that century that the capture of Toledo, in i8o^, finally covered the
line of the Douro by securing the line of the Tagus to the Christians and
guaranteed by military force the possible rehabilitation of the intermediate
region. This was not indeed fully possible until the first quarter of the twelfth
century, with the end of the strife between Castile and Aragon and of the
deep domestic disturbances in the stormy times of Queen Urraca, and with
the coming to the throne of Alfonso VII, the Emperor (1126). At last the
plateau of Old Castile, firmly established in peace, was able to repopulate
itself and prosper to any extent.11 By then the birth of St Dominic was
not half a century away.
The religious development had followed a parallel rhythm.12 Up to the
time of the dread Al Mansour (939—1001), dioceses and monasteries had
declined. In the whole neighbourhood only the community of Silos, given
new life by its abbot, Santo Domingo de Silos (f 1073), considered itself
sufficiently well defended by the deep gorges of its mountains some twenty-
five or thirty miles to the north of Caleruega to build, right at the beginning
of the eleventh century, its great romanesque cloister, the glory of monastic
Spain. A few of the old monasteries were revived. After 108^ the bishops
and the secular clergy, simultaneously encouraged by the spirit of Cluny and
by the inspiration of the Gregorian reform, actively took their stand. The
monk Bernard de Sedirac, of Agen, the first Cluniac abbot of Sahagun to
become Archbishop of Toledo, endeavoured to restore the primatial dignity
of Spain to its position of authority. Relying on Pope Urban II, who had
conferred the pallium on him, and on his capacity as legate, he devoted
himself to re-establishing the diocese of Osma, whose see remained vacant,
along the upper Douro. Before providing the see with a bishop, he fixed its
provisional boundaries with the diocese of Burgos at the council of Husillo
(Palencia) in 1088. Urban gave his confirmation of these boundaries in 1094—
io9£.j3 It was not until 1101 that a bishop was appointed. In 1108 and 1109
several bulls issued by Pascal II again defined the boundaries. Was Caleruega
and its surrounding territory included in the diocese thus reconstituted? It
is impossible to say, for it was found convenient to attach to the diocese all
that had come under the authority of Clunia, that is to say, under the
criminal jurisdiction oi that former locality—a pleasant way of defining the
ecclesiastical boundaries.^ At last, in 1x36, a final charter of division
between the two dioceses permanently restored to the diocese of Osma the
 CALERUEGA 9

region comprised between the rivers Esgueva and Arandilla which this time
certainly included the territory of Caleruega. From this time onwards the
diocese had its cathedral chapter at Osma. It was then that the houses of
canons, monasteries or convents that Dominic was to be familiar with were
founded one after the other—Augustinian canons of Roa and Soria (i 1^2),
Premonstratensians of Nuestra Senora de la Vid (1152), Cistercian nuns of
Fuencaliente (1175-) and of Aza (1182).16 Barely a decade or so separated
these foundations from the saint’s birth; some of them, indeed, came
after it.
He was a young man of about twenty when the Cistercian monks estab¬
lished themselves in the former Benedictine house of San Pedro de Gumiel,
only a few miles away from Caleruega (1199). This foundation must
have made a particular impression on him. For they were curious people,
these former monks of the abbey of Fitero in Navarre, and had followed
their abbot when the latter, with more courage than the military displayed,
had accepted from King Sancho III the outpost fortress of Calatrava, along
the road to Cordoba, the defence of which the Templars had abandoned.
Though censured by the chapter of Citeaux, and fought against by their own
knights, they had long claimed for themselves, and for themselves alone,
the inheritance of the military order. Eventually, through negotiations, they
were installed at Gumiel de Izan in an abbey of regular observance indepen¬
dent of the Spanish Cistercians and dii-ectly attached to the French abbey of
Morimont. The first Master of Calatrava, Diego Velasquez (■[■ 1197), went
into retirement among them and the knights continued to frequent the
monastery as if they were part of the brethren there; they had the right of
going to choir with the monks, receiving from them a grounding in regular
discipline and coming to them with their faults to do penance.17 Thus the
Cistercians of San Pedro de Gumiel, with the other recently formed com¬
munities, contributed in their way to the manifestation of the Church’s
dynamism, and to the establishment of the atmosphere of new life and of
generosity on the religious plane. This atmosphere still vibrated with that
enthusiasm over the victories of arms against Islam which was to be found
everywhere in the neighbourhood of the Douro in the second half of the
twelfth century. Even in his own village Dominic would meet with this
atmosphere of youthful enthusiasm.

The site seems to have been colonized only in the recent past. In the
records only two mentions of Caleruega appear before the thirteenth
century.18 The chronicles of King Alfonso VII, those of Compostela or Silos,
do not refer to it, nor does the valuable collections of charters of the abbey
of Silos_all documents which refer to many places in the immediate
vicinity.19 There existed certain lists of these localities in the twelfth
century,20 but Caleruega is not mentioned in them. The silence of the
 1 O VIR EVANGELICUS

charter of division of 1136 between the dioceses of Osma and Burgos is

impressive. This charter in fact enumerates nineteen localities contained
within the 600 or so square miles restored to the diocese of Osma by
Burgos—Caleruega is not mentioned in it, but Valdeande, about two and a
half miles away, a hamlet the territory of which in the following century
certainly formed part of that of Caleruega, is.21 If as far back as this the
village of Saint Dominic had formed an agglomeration really worthy of note,
would not mention have been made of Caleruega rather than of the hamlet ?
The name of the village, so far as we have been able to discover, appears
for the first time in 1062, then in 1117 in the Cartulary of San Pedro de
Arlanza;22 in 1 202 in that of Silos, 23 then in 1234 in the Libellus of Jordan
of Saxony, who afterwards transmitted it to Dominican historiography. 24
Except in the first case when it is written Kalerueca,2s it occurs in the
authentic Castilian form, invariable down to the present day, of Caleruega.26
Jordan is careful to stipulate que dicitur Caleruega, as is usual for names in the
vulgar tongue for which no Latin transcription exists. It is true that certain
manuscripts of the Libellus give Calaroga, Caleroga; this was the usual spelling
of Latin documents whether regional or Roman.2? It cannot be said that it
is a Latinization, scarcely even a simplification. We have, then, the certainty
that in the thirteenth century no Latin name or ancient name of the locality
was known. If a few souls had formerly fixed their abode on the site of
Caleruega, they had left no trace in the memory of man, and their tracks had
been buried by the Moorish invasion.
Confirmation of this is found in the name Caleruega itself. It is slightly
mysterious and forms a sharp contrast with the names of the neighbouring
villages, Villanueva, Banos, Val-de-Ande, Espinosa, which are clear, origina¬
ting in geographical features or in the circumstances of their colonization.
It can, however, be connected with calera,28 chalk oven. Traces of the
exploitation of the great calcareous mass which forms the hill of San Jorge
above the village are indeed to be noted. Caleruega, the little chalk oven,
indicates a name rather than a locality. The word thus preserves no memory of
human occupation prior to the Reconquest. 29
The peopling of the place must have been spontaneous : the village was not
founded by a charter of colonization. The foundation of the parish, however,
is an indication of the period by which the population had become
sufficiently numerous. The parish, as can be seen from a charter of 1 270,30
was never appropriated to a feudal family; it belonged to the bishop and the
canons, a proof that it had been founded by them. That could not have been
done before the restoration of the see, the creation of the chapter, and the
definitive assignment of the territory to the diocese of Osma. We thus find
ourselves taken back at the earliest to after 1136, to the time of Bishop
Bertrand (112^—1140), the third since the restoration of the see, or of
Bishop Stephen (1146-1147), his successor.31
 CALERUEGA I I

An examination of the ancient buildings in the village or of their remains,

enables us to circumscribe the problem more closely.32 These are the
torreon or fortified tower, now belonging to the nuns ; the parish church with
its tower; in the nuns’ convent three groups of buildings where the con¬
struction work carried out from 19^2 to 195T has revealed the existence of
large gothic halls; finally, on the brow of the hill against which the village
nestles, the trace in the rock of a small quadrangular building, according to
tradition a chapel dedicated to St George. In fact, it is the name of this
saint that the rocky cliff still preserves today, Pena de san Jorge.
So far as this tiny chapel is concerned, it is possible to imagine anything;
no trace of it has come down to us in the documents, nor does even a stone
remain. It is possible that it is the last vestige of some Christian site dating
back earlier than the Moorish invasion, perhaps a hermitage or a votive
chapel built by some knight or soldier—St George, after all, is their
patron—in the course of the wars of the Reconquest. One thing alone is
certain. This tiny sanctuary was never that of the parish in the earliest days
of the resettlement. From the earliest documents the parish appears under
the patronage of St Sebastian, not under that of St George.33 In the twelfth
and thirteenth centuries substitution of patrons was not customary.
The gothic halls, which are indeed remarkable, are not of earlier date
than the thirteenth century. Linked with the former nuns’ chapel, as they
are to one another, by certain details of style,34 they formed to all appear¬
ances part of one and the same block. They were built by Alfonso the
Wise after 1266, to install the Dominican nuns at Caleruega.33
The original apse of the parish church, which has been subjected to
numerous reconstructions, is still preserved.36 It is a clearly defined rornan-
esque apse. The nave which formed its extension with its slightly horse-shoe
arches, the door with its concentric arches in full semi-circle, its slender
columns, its capitals with their plant decoration, the three pillars with
Roman capitals discovered in the process of one of the several reconstruc¬
tions and set above the door, the cornice decorated with chess-boards in
relief forming the inner curve of the apse, the corbels with dogs’ heads
supporting the roof on the outside—all go to prove that this church was
constructed in the course of the twelfth century, almost certainly by some
of the workmen in the service of the bishop who had then just finished his
romanesque cathedral with its cloister (ca. 1140).37 It was in a church newly
constructed and still gleaming white that St Dominic received the waters of
baptism.
The church tower was built at two different periods. At about 20 feet
from the ground is a cornice set above a line of figured corbels continuing
those of the apse. The second storey of the tower 30 to 35- feet high and
built on this cornice, is of the same workmanship as the apse; semi-circular
twin windows inscribed in a further great semi-circle look out on the north
 I 2 VIR F.VANGELICUS

side and on both the east and west faces triangular-arched windows are very
roughly hewn out. All this might date from the middle of the twelfth
century. The lower part of the tower, however, is of a different workman¬
ship. The pieces of stone used are smaller. Its construction, independent of
that of the apse which is contiguous with it, does not interpenetrate it.
Finally, and most important of all, it is not hollow, but completely solid.
To enable it to fulfil its function as the basis of the belfry, a small per¬
pendicular stairway must have been cut out, which provided a complicated
means of communication with the first storey.38 Clearly, this first
part of the tower is earlier than the church.
A further fact is no less striking: the different sides of this tower are
parallel to those of the torreon and the plan of both is similar: a rectangle in
a double square. It would thus appear that tower and torreon, which are
about 160 feet or so distant from each other, formed part of a single whole. 39
There is some indication that would lead one to suspect the existence of
still a third tower near the torreon in the direction of the church.40 There
was thus a whole system of fortifications, the date of which is a matter for
investigation.
The torreon,4i a stout rectangular tower about ^ feet high, with walls 2
yards thick, presents, in fact, no element that might be called characteristic
except a very rough triangular-arched door and two double windows with
horse-shoe arch, separated by a slender column with fluted capitals. The
embrasui e of the window and the passage-way of the door, hewn out of the
thickness of the walls, are arched in a full semi-circle. Projecting blocks of
stone, immediately behind the faqade, provided cavities for the hinges of
the leaves of the door which closed the two openings. The semi-circularly
arched corridors, and the romanesque window somewhat mudejar in style,
take us back to the twelfth century at least,42 the door to the second half of
that century. The door, however, is not the original one. It has been clumsily
cut so as to fit into the wall.43 Where, then, formerly was the entrance
into this tower the lower courses of which clearly indicate that it was
occupied? There is no trace of any other opening but the double window.44
On looking more closely, it can be seen that the latter was also inserted
later, with this difference, however, that an opening lower down has been
enlarged to make room for it. The rectangular pieces of stone which block
the lower part of the opening beneath the window ledge can be seen clearly.
This was the original door. There is nothing surprising in this. A tower for
defence and, above all, a keep, had no use for a large window or for an
opening level with the ground which would have made it too vulnerable.
The door was set at a considerable height to protect it from the danger of
an attack. Entry into the tower was by means of a ladder which was with¬
drawn from inside. The bottom part of the tower served as both cellar and
dungeon.45 In these circumstances there is considerable difficulty in dating
 CALERUEGA
*3

this large military construction, of which all that remains today is the
massive base of the belfry of the church and the torreon. No trace of a moat
is to be seen; this is a sign of antiquity. The rectangular towers for their
part represent the oldest elements of feudal architecture in Spain. It is
possible that the original construction was built by one of the conquerors of
910-91 2 who fortified the valley of the Douro by a chain of strong castles.46
We are reminded of that Count of Castile, Gonzalo Fernandez who, sallying
forth from the fortress of Lara which he had just conquered, relieved
Clunia, seven miles or so away from Caleruega, and set up on either side
over the Douro, the barriers of Aza and of San Esteban de Gdrmaz. The
small fortress of Caleruega would at that time have protected the traditional
route which led to the heart of Castile through the valley of the Esgueva,
via Santo Domingo de Silos. It was by this road, which the Romans in
former times had used as the military route from Clunia to Astorga, that
Count Fernandez had come to reconquer the region, and Silos remained in
contact with its property in the vicinity of Caleruega.4? It is possible, too,
that the massive portion of the belfry, whose inconsiderable appearance
forms a striking contrast with that of the torreon, represents an even older
element, such as for instance a watch-tower situated on the frontier of the
original route to Silos which passed right by the hill.
The important point here is that the tower became a belfry in the middle
of the twelfth century, while the parish church was being built, and that the
torreon, losing something of its military importance through the cutting of a
door at ground level and the insertion of a pleasant window through which
one looked out towards the south, was adapted to more peaceful uses.
Everything points to the same conclusion. In the middle of the twelfth
century, the population of Caleruega was rapidly increasing, and it was
becoming a parish. The life of rural toil and religious life were now able to
develop at their ease. St Dominic was soon to come.

The country around must then have been at the height of its development.
There is nothing to indicate that from those distant days to our own, the
nature of the economic resources and the manner of using them to the best
advantage have undergone any violent change. Certain documents of the
future convent of the ‘Sisters Preacheresses’ even affirm the contrary.48 The
crops of cereals and of citrus fruits were centred along the floor of the
valleys of the Gromejon, the Mobrejon and the Banuelos, where there was
water. The vines on the slopes of the hills supplied a red wine which was
stored in the cellars of the few houses built of stone and especially in the
bodegas, deep, cool cellars hewn out of the flank of the hills in the strata of
white limestone which outcrops half-way up the slope. Everywhere else, the
breeding of horses, cows, sheep and pigs utilized to the utmost the vast
expanses of the plateau as pasture-land. A hundred years after the death of
 '4 VIR EVANGELICUS

St Dominic a document assigned to the convent of the nuns alone 10,000

sheep, 2,000 cows, joo mares and joo pigs.49 This document granted the
nuns grazing rights for cattle and right of way over royal lands. The animals
must, of course, have moved to the hills in the summer. Since, however, no
property of any extent belonging to the nuns is known of outside the
territory of Caleruega, the cattle must at least have wintered there. This
enables us to visualize the importance of cattle-breeding in the life of the
neighbourhood.
The appearance of the landscape must have been greener than at the
present day. A local tradition asserts that in former times the hills were
covered with bushes. This is still the natural condition of the hill-slopes in
this neighbourhood, as can be seen towards Valdeande and along the road to
Silos. It is possible that the breeding of goats—those born destrovers of
woods and forests—was in some measure responsible for the deforestation
here as in many other places along the littoral of the Mediterranean. Or
again it may have been the imprudent destruction of the thick woods by the
inhabitants with a view to clearing the ground and procuring the fuel which
was indispensable for winter. It was the deforestation, in any case, that was
the cause of the aridity and of the cracking of the earth which strikes the
traveller so forcefully. A charter of boundary limits in 1272 demonstrates
the presence of relatively abundant water, as, for instance, a pond (laguna),
a pool (lagunilla) on the outskirts of Espinosa, and the rich spring known as
Fuente del Rey.50 The names of Banos and Banuelos (the latter following the
course ol the ancient Roman road) also implied the presence of abundant and
pure water. In the thirteenth century the nuns had springs, water-courses,
mills, woods, certain rights in forests whence they could draw three loads
of wood each day with which to warm themselves in the winter. 51 In a
territory that was less dry, more sparsely populated, the life of Caleruega in
its early days met with conditions more favourable in certain respects than
today. It was, however, no less hard at this initial period of its beginnings
and development. The uncomfortable castle of the lord of the place is a
further proof of this.

What was the lord’s position? It is not difficult to ascertain what was the
condition of the village before the middle third of the thirteenth century,
thanks to the numerous documents which King Alfonso the Wise caused to
be drawn up between 1266 and 1272, when he resolved to found the
monastery of Dominican nuns. He decided to make over to the new institu¬
tion all the feudal rights of Caleruega and succeeded, though not without
difficulty, in persuading their possessors to abandon them.52 Caleruega was
neither a royal domain nor the territorial manor of some great feudal house,
but a domain de behetria, or, more precisely, behetria inter parientes. The
villagers, freed men by origin, thus had the privilege of choosing their lord
 {Photo: Leonard von Matt)
Tower and apse of Caleruega parish church.
 CALERUEGA
IS
among the members of certain families, whose right, known as naturaleza,
gave occasion for the levying of a due known as divisa, equal to one-half or
one-third of the revenues.53 Actually, in the thirteenth century, the behetria
of Castile often merged in fact into hereditary estates, the origin of which
was no longer referred to except for the rights of divisa. 54 This was so in the
case of Caleruega.55 The situation of the overlordship confirms what the
position of the parish already indicated: the spontaneous, natural character
of the locality, constituted independently of the action of the king or of the
great feudal lords.56
In i 266, the diviseros of Caleruega were fairly numerous. The charters still
preserved at the convent list twenty-two of them. Other charters have
disappeared.57 The royal summary names only a few families.58 They were
families belonging to the highest nobility of the realm, of the class of the
ricos hombres, a nobility of blood, whose members placed their signature
preceded by the title of don in a column parallel to that for the signatures of
bishops at the foot of the great royal charters known as wheel charters; in
the case in point, they were the Lara, the Guzman, the Aza de Villamayor,
the Roa, the Sarmiento, as well as the Order of Ucles, that is, of Santiago.
At this time several of these great lords played a predominant role in the
kingdom, sometimes governing vast provinces conquered from the Moors,
as was the case with don Alfonso Garcia de Villamayor, Adelantado mayor of
Andalusia, or his brother, don Juan Garcia, Adelantado mayor de la mar, and
majordomo to Alfonso X, or don Pedro de Guzman, Adelantado mayor in
Castile. There is no reason to be surprised at the presence of such nobles at
Caleruega, they were members of the highest-born families in the neighbour¬
hood. Aza is about twenty miles or so from Caleruega, Roa about twenty-
seven, Guzman about thirty-five. Moreover, such families were inter-related.
On closer examination we find that this multiplicity of ‘natural’ lords could
finally be reduced to a single lineage, that of the Aza de Villamayor, who
had in fact become hereditary lords. 59 It was the Aza of Villamayor who gave
to the nuns’ convent the majority of its property, dona Urraca Garcia who
in i 248 surrendered one of her hereditary lands at Caleruega to the Bishop
of Osma for the maintenance of the first hospice founded near the chapel of
St Dominic,60 or again, don Fernan Garcia, who in 12^8 sold all his estates
to the north of the Duero, including, it seems, the overlordship of
Caleruega,61 to the Order of Santiago, who reinvested him with the property
the following year.62 It was through his marriage with dona Urraca Garcia,
that don Pedro Nunez de Guzman with all his descendants had obtained
rights of divisa at Caleruega.63 Similarly, don Diego Perez Sarmiento, don
Garcia Fernandez Sarmiento, don Gil Gomez de Roa, don Garci Guttierrez
were husbands, sons, grandsons, sons-in-law of some Aza de Villamayor.64
Finally, the lords of Lara, independently of the privilege which granted
them a divisa in each of the behetria of Castile,65 belonged to the stock of the
 16 VIR EVANGELICUS

Aza family. Thus the great majority of the diviseros mentioned by the charters
of 1266-1272 are found to be among the descendants of the Aza of
Villamayor.66 If it is recalled that the common ancestor, Gonzalo Fernandez,
Count of Lara, had in 912 ‘repopulated’ the region of Caleruega and built
the fortresses of the district, perhaps even the torreon, it will not be a matter
for surprise that at its inception the village was placed under the protection
of his line by behetria. Moreover, if we reflect on the complexity which a
right extended by descent, marriage or purchase might present—‘a matter
of behetria the Castilians would say of a case that was proving insoluble6?—
we are surprised to find the situation still so clear round about the year 1270.
The conclusion will be reached that two centuries earlier, at the time
when Caleruega is first mentioned in the documents, precisely when a divisa
right in the locality is mentioned,6^ the origins of this overlordship were
not far distant. This fits in well with what has been discovered from other
sources.
An old tower, a former keep summarily transformed in the middle of the
twelfth century to house the lord or his representative, a population slowly
and spontaneously gathering there since the beginning of that century, a
parish set up by the bishop after 1136 with its completely new church, a
relatively recent behetria of which the Aza, ricos hombres of Castile, were
natural’ lords: such was the village in which the child, St Dominic,
came into this world.

His father was called Felix, his mother Jane.’6^ ‘He had good and pious
parents. 7° ‘His father was a man looked up to by the villagers and wealthy.
His mother, who was virtuous, chaste, prudent, full of compassion for those
who weie unfortunate and in distress, was outstanding among all the women
in the neighbourhood for the excellence of her reputation. ’7i That is all the
Dominican legends of Pedro Ferrando, G6rard de Frachet, Rodriguez de
Cerrato, the sole sources of the story outside the charters of the convent of
the nuns, tell us about the parents of the saint.72 Pedro Ferrando and
Rodriguez de Cerrato are valuable as authorities. The former, who was a
Spaniard, filled out between 1233: and 1239 the more than succinct infor¬
mation on this point given by the first biographer, Jordan of Saxony. 73
Rodriguez, a Castilian, native of a valley no great distance from Caleruega,
was himself in the village at least in 1272.74 He is the only one to give
information that is in any way extensive on the origins of St Dominic.
According to custom, the hagiographical texts give only the baptismal
name of St Dominic’s parents, not their complete civil status.75 They might
have done more than this; the charter of the nuns’ convent gave more
details of the most humble of the village folk. Dominic’s father was a person
of distinction. ‘Vir venerabilis et dives in populo suo’, said Rodriguez. Ought
we to translate the latter expression by ‘the rich man of his village (pueblo)’
 CALERUEGA
17

or perhaps ‘the rico hombre of his village’ ?76 If the second translation is
possible,77 the first, which is probable, does not exclude the information
which the other would have conveyed. The unaccustomed expression in
populo clearly appears to be a superlative. The term venerabilis in fact adds to
this indication the authority of a social position. It does not indeed
characterize the moral value of Felix for in that case Rodriguez would have
equally extended it to the mother whose virtue he is eager to praise.78 In
fact, in a lengthy anecdote, Rodriguez shows us Felix in the midst of the
village folk whom he calls vicini suiiv that is, in the Castilian sense of the
word, his villagers. It is clearly in this condition that they appear: they
gather round him, watch over his property in his absence, march before
him in a body when he returns from a journey, make reports to him.
Mention is made of a large cask,80 famous throughout the neighbourhood,
from which St Dominic’s father slaked the thirst of his retainers.
In those times wealth lay in the land and there was not more than a single
step between holding land and being the lord of it. Now the families among
which the lords of Caleruega were recruited are known. One cannot,
therefore, avoid facing the problem of the connection of the parents of St
Dominic with the ricos hombres of Caleruega. Actually, a tradition worthy of
respect has affirmed in Spain ever since the Middle Ages that the mother of
St Dominic was a d’Aza and his father a Guzman.
Historians outside Spain have either passed quickly over this point or
neglected it entirely.81 They have doubtless considered that nobility of
origin would add nothing to the glory of St Dominic and have striven to
react against the all too prevalent mentality which multiplied books and
libelli from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century in an attempt at con¬
troversy which was more or less pointless. It is not a question of glorifying
St Dominic but of getting to know and understand him. It is difficult to believe
that the family from which a great man is descended is not of considerable
importance in explaining certain aspects of his temperament, particularly at
this period when lineage exerted such a pressure on individuals, when
education was primarily achieved by example and training in a society
already deeply divided into classes. Nor can we say that there is no
interest in ascertaining whether Dominic came from a family of shepherds
and farm workers of Caleruega, or from the line of the colonizers of the
upper Douro, of the conquerors of Toledo and Cuenca who followed their
kings in their daring raids into Moslem territory and saw Christian provinces
as vast as kingdoms rising up again under their feet.
The careful investigation, indeed, of the Spanish tradition and of the
information provided by a series of documents from the archives, dating from
about forty years after the saint’s death, enables us to get on the track of what
the characteristics given by Cerrato led one to presuppose. This somewhat
arid analysis can be read elsewhere.82 It crowns the tradition with real
 i 8 VIR EVANGELICUS

probability. Moreover, it defines it in more detail. It would be through his

mother, Jane of Aza, that the family of St Dominic belonged to Caleruega, his
father, Felix de Guzman, being connected with it only by his marriage. Many
traits of St Dominic’s personality seem to find their proper explanation if
viewed in this light.
The Guzman and the Aza were in possession of the highest degree of
nobility, the ricahombrla or nobleness of blood.83 The particular character¬
istic of the d’Aza family was service of the Church by military activity.
During Dominic’s youth several of its members had joined the very recently
established military orders of Santiago and Calatrava, of which they occupied
the highest office, the Grand Mastership, even during his lifetime.84 It was
probably to the examples of his feudal relatives that the saint owed the spirit
of Christian conquest, his attraction for open spaces, the breadth of vision,
sense of personal engagement and joyous courage that were his, and also the
realism and perspicacity of vision which in each and every situation made
him discover the essential element and the simple fundamental remedy, and
his inflexible constancy when it was a matter of maintaining a decision once
taken. To the relations of his ancestors with the king he owed, perhaps, too,
his great ease in his dealings with the higher authorities, whether counts or
kings, bishops or Sovereign Pontiffs, his habit of consulting the fountain¬
head, his way of envisaging problems from above in a general view, his skill
in using the official charters and the texts of the Law.

Shut away in Caleruega and perhaps dying early, as we shall see, it may be
questioned whether Felix had the opportunity of practising the traditional
virtues of his family. Scarcely anything is known of him. The only indication
we have—it comes on good authority, since it is from Pedro Ferrando—
bears on his piety and the care he took that his children should be given a
first-class religious education. Moreover, he administered his property with
firmness and decision. The only anecdote in which he figures depicts him as
behaving somewhat astutely when confronted with his wife’s deeds of charity
and seeking to embarrass her.
Jane is somewhat better known. The characteristics which the tradition of
Caleruega attributed to her have been noted: 'virtuous, chaste, prudent, full
ot compassion towards the unfortunate and those in distress; outstanding
among all the women of the neighbourhood for the excellence of her
reputation’.8s That is how she appears to us in the episode of the barrel
which Rodriguez de Cerrato heard related a century after the event. ‘Jane
was very compassionate. When she saw the wretched condition of the un¬
fortunate villagers, to whom she had already given many of her things, she
distributed among the poor a certain barrel of wine, which everyone knew
about in the locality. It was then that her husband, returning from a journey
and hearing what had happened, asked her to serve up some of this wine.
 CALERUEGA
19

Jane was filled with confusion. In answer to her prayers, however, the barrel
was once more found full.86
When she died, she was buried first of all at Caleruega, outside the church,
against the end wall. It seems that the body was transferred to San Pedro de
Gumiel, then, between 1334 and 1340 to Penafiel by the Infanta don Juan
Manuel, there to be solemnly interred in the monastery of the Friars
Preachers which the Infanta had just had built. It is still there at the present
day. A chapel, however, was erected about the sixteenth century over the
former tomb at Caleruega incorporated from this time on in the parish
church, the nave of which was enlarged. On the fayade of the tiny chapel an
inscription can still be read: ‘This chapel was erected in honour of the
burial place of Saint Jane, mother of Saint Dominic.’ A religious cultus was
thus preserved and renewed around these different tombs.87 In 1828 Pope
Leo XII recognized this cultus by officially according to Jane the title of blessed.
Rodriguez thinks that the keen sensitivity to the sufferings of others which
St Dominic displayed from childhood onwards was inherited from his
mother.88 Such an opinion is easily acceptable. Jane undoubtedly had a very
strong influence over the child whom she received from God in a deeply
religious spirit and herself directed towards the clerical state. Rodriguez
even claims that right from the beginning she consecrated him to the service
of God—which would be in no way unusual.86
It was in 1170 that she married Felix. The date is confirmed by Thierry of
Apolda in the vast compilation which he made in Germany at the end of the
thirteenth century.60 Thierry added that three sons were born of this union.
The third would have been St Dominic who, if the compiler is to be believed,
would thus be born in 1172 at the earliest. The number of the brothers
seems an assured fact.61 What are we to think of their order of succession?
The Libellus of Jordan of Saxony, the oldest and one of the best sources,
informs us with regard to one of St Dominic’s two brothers that he was his
half-brother.62 The term deserves to be remembered.63 According to
this hypothesis Jane would thus have been married twice and Dominic, the
son of Felix, would not have been of the same marriage-bed as one of his
two brothers at any rate. All the statements made by Thierry could thus not
be true at the same time; either the order of succession he assigns to the
children or the place he assigns to the marriage in relationship to the births,
or perhaps both indications must be called in question, for Thierry’s work
is late and lacks authority. If Dominic was older than his half-brother,
which is plausible since he died much earlier,64 the explanation is that Felix
soon departed this life. The silence of the documents in the archives about
him would thus be explained. Jane would not have been long in remarrying.
If Dominic was younger it is because Felix was Jane’s second husband.
Dominic could already have been born in 1171.
What, then, may be asked, is the value of the date of 1 1 70 ? This item of
20 VIR EVANGELICUS

information has no greater and no less weight than that of the data usually
associated with Thierry, that is, very little, as we have just seen in detail.95
The date, however, is a probability; curiously enough it agrees with the
approximate data which we shall gather later as to the age of St Dominic.96
Of Jane’s two marriages at least three sons were born. Gerard de Frachet
presents the first in these terms: ‘Dominic had also two brothers of great
perfection. One of them, a priest in a hospice, devoted himself unreservedly
to works of mercy in the service of the poor. It is said that miracles made
him famous both before and after his death’.97 The Dominican historio¬
graphers of the sixteenth century call this brother Antony, without its being
known on whose authority.98 There was no lack of hospices at this time in
Castile. They were not hospitals, but houses of hospitality for poor folk,
especially for tramps, pilgrims and scholars. They were kept by lay folk who
did not even in every case belong to an organized order. The situation was
quite different in the houses of the great orders of the Knights Hospitallers
which, in point of fact, had just arisen in Spain in the middle of the twelfth
century, the military orders of Calatrava (n^8), Alcantara (1166) and
Santiago de la Espada (i i6o).99 Although dependent on the Order of Citeaux,
the first two had their own chaplains,100 just as the independent Order of
Santiago had. These priests exercised their ministry in the Comanderias
and hospices of their order. It was probably in a hospice of the Order of
Calatrava, which seems so closely linked through the abbey of San Pedro de
Gumiel with the family of St Dominic,101 that his priest-brother performed
his works of mercy.
The other brother, the one whom Jordan calls his half-brother, is
better known to us. He bore the name of Mames.102 It was the name of a
famous Eastern martyr, Mames of Caesarea, whose cultus, introduced into
Gaul by St Radegunde, had spread to Spain, where even today at least fifteen
localities in the region of Leon and of Old Castile bear his name, notably San
Mames of Burgos and San Mames of Campos (province of Palencia).103
‘Contemplative and holy,’ said Gerard de Frachet, Mames ‘for long served
God in the order’. I04 Leaving his quiet contemplation, indeed, he placed
himself under the guidance of his brother, at least from the foundation of
the order,103 perhaps even much earlier. He was still living just after St
Dominic s canonization (i 2 34) •1 Some forty years later, Rodriguez wrote
of him: ‘This brother Mames was a fervent preacher, virtuous in his habits,
meek, humble, gay and kindly. He died at the monastery of San Pedro de
Gumiel; he was buried there with honour.’107 A Spanish friar who had
visited Mames’s tomb was later to make this statement to Bernard Gui: ‘He
made himself known there by miracles and prodigies. He is held as a saint
in that place and his body is preserved with honour in a tomb venerated at
the side ol the altar.’108 Gregory XVI recognized his cultus in 1833 and ^ave
him the title ot blessed under the mutilated name of Mannes.
 CALERUEGA 2I

Were there yet other children of Felix and of Jane? Perhaps another son
or daughter. Gerard de Frachet in fact mentions that two nephews of the
saint led a holy and praiseworthy life in the order.109 One of them was
perhaps the Brother Juan of Caleruega mentioned by one of the witnesses of
tne canonization process at Toulouse.110 It seems certain that both entered
the Order of Preachers after their uncle’s death since the latter’s biographers
make no mention of them at all. If indeed one had to accept the extravagances
of Galvagno Fiamma in his lengthy chronicle, a third nephew, who was a
hermit, took part in the jubilee of 1300, aged 11 after having already taken
part in that of 1200. He was received in the priory of Genoa where he was
allowed to talk his fill. He wore his hair long in plaits.111

The first hagiographers, to mention only those, have collected together

several edifying episodes about the birth of St Dominic, the sole difficulty
about which is that they have already served for other saints; the little dog
which the mother saw in a dream before her son’s conception and which she
was to bear in her womb whence it would issue forth holding in its jaws a
flaming torch seeming to set the world on fire;112 the bees which supposedly
alighted on the lips of the new-born babe,113 the moon which his mother
saw on the boy’s forehead.114 It was the kind of image which pleased the
people of that time. They liked to perceive grace visibly surrounding the
first hours and first years of the predestined. What people specially liked to
discover, as if it were a presage, was the symbolical resume of their future
destiny. The dog bearing the flaming torch signified, according to the
Libellus, ‘the distinguished preacher who would awaken sleeping souls and
spread over the universe the fire that the Lord Jesus had come to cast upon
earth’.1” Thus the Preachers of more modern times were to display a
certain ingenuity in inscribing this dog carrying the torch in the armorial
bearings of the order, unfortunately destroying the dignity and simplicity of
the primitive coat of arms.116 The image of the light on the child’s brow,
which clearly signified that he would one day be given as a light to the.
nations to enlighten those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,117
was to become the special sign of St Dominic in iconography. At least it
corresponds to a statement confirmed by history. ‘From his brow and his
eyelashes there emerged a kind of radiance which attracted the reverence
and affection of all.’”8 That was how good Sister Cecilia, who had known
him so well in former times, visualized him again in her memories at the
end of her long life; she had been seventeen when he was about fifty. The
transparency and radiance of the look of Dominic as a small child can be
imagined.
It is so easy for us to picture him carried by his noble godmother119 into
the white romanesque church of the parish of San Sebastian at Caleruega, to
receive baptism there. In the recess at the left side of the nave the
2-S.D.
22 VIR EVANGEL1CUS

foundations of the font in which he received the holy ablution can still be
seen. The font itself is no longer there. Sanctified by this very ceremony it
was soon taken away to the convent of the nuns, then transported to
Valladolid and finally to Madrid, there to be used for the baptism of the
Infantas of Spain, descendants of the Guzman.120 But the richness of the
silver casket which encloses it today is not to be compared with the light
which surrounded it when the child of Felix and Jane received through the
water of the sacrament the grace he was to radiate over others.
In baptism he was named Dominic. The name was a common one in
Castile, as it was in the village. It was just a century since the name of the
reformer, St Dominic of Silos (1073), was spreading over the whole country¬
side along with the fame of his numerous miracles. ‘Dominic’ meant ‘the
man of the Lord’—his servitor.121 To belong wholly and entirely to the
Lord Jesus, a magnificent objective for the child.
It may or may not be true that ‘while he was still under the care of his
nurse’, he was frequently caught by surprise at night, lying on the ground,
undressed, having left his bed, as if he ‘ refused to give way to sleep in the
abandonment of a couch that was too soft’.122 It is a fact that he early
acquired the habit of treating his body with hardness, particularly at the
time which others devote to sleep, and that at the end of his life, when cares,
apostolic labours and the attacks of sickness should have modified his
austerities, in his monastery not a cell or even a bed was known as his,
scarcely even a hurdle of rope in a corner.123 Perhaps the small child had
heard people talk of the austerities of some hermit, or those of the soldiers
in the Moorish wars. The harsh, austere lesson of Caleruega, of Castile, of
the times in which he lived, imposed this initial form upon the child’s
generosity.
A further austere sacrifice was soon to be asked of him—to leave his
mother, his brothers and his village forthwith.
 Chapter II

PALENCIA

W HEN the child Dominic was old enough to learn to read, being then
about six or seven, or perhaps even younger,1 his parents handed
him over to the Church lor his education.2 It a strong perfume is
poured into a vessel of new clay, it permeates it in such a way that afterwards
nothing can obliterate the fragrance. Similarly, from his earliest moments
the young boy’s soul was impregnated with clerical sanctity.
According to custom, it was an ecclesiastical uncle who took his education
in hand.3 At that time the family was both larger and more closely knit
than is usual at the present day and it was frequently the uncle, not the
father, who watched over the upbringing of his young nephews, even in its
military and feudal aspects. A fortiori was this so in the case of the education
and upbringing of a churchman. The fatherly care which existed in the
hearts of the clergy and to which celibacy was no obstacle was given with
predilection to the child of a brother or a sister. Very strong ties were
formed from which tenderness was not excluded. Like a big elder brother the
priest-uncle made every effort to pass on his spiritual heritage to the nephew
they had been good enough to entrust to his care. He endeavoured to pro¬
vide a background that would be helpful, and trained and educated the
young cleric by his advice, often, too, using his own money.4
In this case the uncle was a dean.5 Since the sixteenth century, it has even
been asserted that he was parish priest of Gumiel de Izan,6 one of the
parishes nearest to Caleruega. The house in which the child is supposed to
have lived at that time has been pointed out.7 Nothing, however, supports
this relatively modern tradition which a single fact is sufficient to disprove-—-
Gumiel de Izan did not possess a deanery prior to the nineteenth century.
Deaneries constituted the sub-divisions of the diocese of Osma as in the case
of the majority of the Spanish dioceses and their original division must go
back at least to the beginning of the twelfth century when the diocese was
reconstituted.8 The deaneries nearest to Caleruega were to be found in
Aranda, Roa, Aza,9 precisely the places of which the families of Guzman and
Aza held overlordships. Perhaps the dean-uncle had been appointed to one
of these places. We are certainly not told, however, that he lived in the
neighbourhood or even in the diocese.
It may be wondered whether he kept the child with him. Jordan of
 VIR EVANGELICUS
H
Saxony merely asserts ‘that he took special care of his upbringing and had
him educated in accordance with ecclesiastical custom from the beginning. 10
For a secular education a tutor at home would have been sufficient.11
To train a young cleric, it was desirable that he should be sent to a church ot
some size and importance, a collegiate church or a monastery. In modern times
the great monasteries of the neighbourhood have simultaneously claimed
the honour of having brought up Dominic as a small boy—the Benedictines
of Silos,12 the Premonstratensians of Nuestra Senora de la Vid,13 even the
knights of Santiago de la Espada.14 The argument of the latter, set out in two
books, is so much empty air.15 That of the monks of Silos is rather better
established. The presence at Santo Domingo de Silos of a few children, an
indication of the existence of a school within the monastery enclosure, is
attested.16 In the twelfth century, however, Benedictine monasteries restricted
attendance at such schools to their own oblates.17 In the case of the
Premonstratensians of La Vid, who declined to receive anyone but adults,
there is no question of a school for young boys.18 Taking all the factors into
consideration, it must have been in the church of his dean-uncle that the
child was educated by one of the clergy attached to the church.
The expression ‘in the church’ is correct, for the ecclesiastical building
played an important role right from the beginning of clerical education. The
child learnt to read with the help of a primer, and was immediately set to
spelling out the psalms. 10 He learnt Latin at the same time as he learned to
read and the intention was for him to be able to recite this Latin in the
sanctuary in a loud, clear voice and in such a way that he knew how to put
the stress on the essential words and ‘comfort the hearts of the listeners’.20
The order of lector, the lowest rank in the clerical status, would very soon
come to crown this knowledge which was wholly ordained to the worship
of God in church. Thus he learnt to read the psalms, hymns and canticles,
which he had to know bv heart, the lectionary and the gradual. During this
time the music of the sacred chant became familiar to him. He was made to
chant responsories and hymns. With a few other boys of his age he formed a
choir which had its place in the chanting of the offices, while waiting until
his admittance to further minor orders should allow him to serve at the
altar. At an age when the tenderness and freshness of impressions is as yet
unspoilt, it was worship in common and the sacred chant which fed his mind
and laid its mark on him. It was a great privilege to have sung for God
during his early childhood. Throughout his life, Dominic was to preserve
this sensitive feeling for the ceremonies of the Church, the divine office and
the Mass which he could not celebrate without tears coming to his eyes in
such abundance ‘that one tear would not wait for the next’.21
The boy also learned to write on the wax tablets which he held in place
on his right knee.22 He learnt to count and was initiated into the com¬
plexities of ecclesiastical computations. Linally he acquired the first
 PALENCIA 2S

rudiments of the art of grammar. After five or six years of elementary

studies he would be eleven or twelve. Under his schoolmaster, discipline was
severe. Things had changed but little since Augustine begged God to spare
him whippings at school and declared: ‘Who would not feel full of horror
and would prefer to die if he were offered the choice between suffering
death and beginning his childhood again?’23 ‘From this moment the rod
never ceases to threaten them’ is what is foreseen from daybreak onwards in
the rule for scholars in Ulrich’s description of the customs of Cluny.24
Young Dominic, however, would doubtless have made the same reply as the
youthful Guibert de Nogent did to his mother who was beside herself when
she discovered the blood-stained trace of the blows on her small boy’s back:
No, you shall not be a cleric, you shall no longer suffer like this to learn
your letters . . .’—‘Even if it meant dying I would not give up learning or
the clerical state.’23 Dominic, who was later to scourge his flesh to the
point of cruelty in the course of his nocturnal prayers, had no fear of the
blows.26 He doubtless discovered in the harshness of the scholastic methods
of the time a further occasion for satisfying his precocious appetite for
mortification.
Dominic reached the age of fourteen,22 and the time had come to leave
the church of his uncle the dean and to go to the schools.28 In Castile, at
this time, there was scarcely any choice. Whereas Catalonia, the area of
which extended on both sides of the Pyrenees, readily sent its clerics to the
schools in France and Lombardy then in the full flower of development,
Castile, enclosed within its frontiers and, in addition, taken up with the
battles of the Reconquest, had to be satisfied with her own slender
resources. 29

There was, of course, the church of Compostela, constantly invigorated

by the ever-changing ebb and flow of the pilgrimage to Santiago along the
camino frances, also Toledo, where under the protection of the archbishop
from Aquitaine, Raymond de Sauvetat, a group of keen and hard-working
translators made available to the schools of the north the ancient Arabic and
Jewish writings preserved by the Moslems of Spain,30 and a few primary
schools set up in the cathedral chapters, as in Toledo, Salamanca and
Osma;31 but apart from these there existed only one really flourishing
centre of learning in Castile : the schools of Palencia.32 It was in this church
that, in a few years’ time one would see the first Spanish university come
into being (1208-1214) and, what is more, the first university of royal
foundation in Europe, a clear sign of the maturity of the earlier schools and
of the interest which King
O
Alfonso VIII took in this centre of ecclesiastical
learning.33
This was because the see of Palencia, restored towards 1030, long before
Toledo and all its suffragan sees, partially exercised the function during the
26 VIR EVANGELICUS

thirteenth century of provincial metropolitan see, a title which it actually

assumed at one point.34 Situated in the centre of the land, in the midst of a
prosperous agricultural region, close by the royal city oi Carrion where the
kings liked to stay, it was better placed than Toledo to foim the
spiritual centre of Castile. Thus the national councils which reorganized the
institutions and lite of the dioceses in these decisive yeais met in the
cathedral there or in the neighbouring abbeys of San Zoile or Husillo.35 It is
understandable that the school attached to the chapter should soon come to be
regarded as the metropolitan school. On 13th February, 1x48, it acquired
even more widespread fame, when the judgement against Gilbert de la
Porree which was being prepared in Rheims was in the first place pronounced
thei*e, by the verdict of Raymond of Toledo, Juan Avendauth of Segovia and
Inigo de Coria.36 Thus Toledo and Palencia sat in judgement on the master
of Chartres and Poitiers.
In the last decades of the century at least one master taught theology in
Palencia, and his name can perhaps be found in one or other of the lists of
canons which have come down to us from the chapter.37 Befoi'e all else,
however, the schools were famous for the teaching of the liberal arts.38 It
was for these that the youthful Dominic primarily went there. The
programme of studies which was still referred to under the traditional
name of the liberal arts had been considerably enlarged in the course of
the twelfth century.39 It would be interesting to be able to list all that the
archdeacon of Segovia, Domingo Gondisalvi, included in this first cycle of
studies as far back as about the year 115-0.40 This indefatigable translator of
the Ai'abic writers, one of the most celebrated of the Toledo group,
had tried to bring up to date the programme of studies in the West,
taking his inspiration from the wealth of learning which he drew with full
hands from the words of Alfarabi, Avicenna and Isaac Israeli, as much as from
Boethius or Isidore of Seville. His De divisione philosophiae thus regrouped the
whole of the liberal branches of learning, which he called human sciences,
under philosophy. Two preliminary branches of study opened the pro¬
gramme: the science of letters, or grammar, and the civil sciences, i.e.
poetry, histoi-y, rhetoric. The student went on to logic, a necessary instru¬
ment of philosophy and at the same time a science in its own right. Lastly
came what were termed the sciences of wisdom—in the first place physics,
with medicine, navigation, alchemy; mathematics, with arithmetic,
geometry and optics, music and astrology; finally metaphysics, the crown ot
human wisdom. A long road had been traversed since the time when only
the seven arts of the trivium and the quadrivium were known—grammar,
dialectics and rhetoi'ic on the one hand, arithmetic and music, geometi-y and
astronomy, on the other. It is, alas, to be feared that in Palencia the old
programme was more closely adhered to than that of the translator of
Toledo, whose plan was too novel to be put into practice so quickly in
 PALENC1A 27
the official schools, since its influence, even in Paris, would scarcely be
perceptible before the thirteenth century.
Thus Dominic as a boy, after having spent some time on the subjects of
the trivium course, in particular grammar and dialectics which could provide
a training in logic and literature, devoted himself for some time to
philosophy4i and passed quickly through the rest. Jordan of Saxony who
drew his information from former fellow-pupils of the saint in Spain, is quite
definite: ‘When he judged that he had sufficient knowledge of them, he
abandoned these studies as if he feared to waste upon them with too little
fruit the brevity of life here on earth.’42
We must thus conclude that he did not devote to them the seven years
which certain people then assigned as good measure; five or six years (six if
one credits a statement by Pedro Ferrando) must have seemed to him
sufficient.43 He certainly did not study through curiosity or through a mere
appetite for learning. Nor had he any inclination to linger over the pagan
books which served as a basis for these branches of study.44 Still less was it
his intention to utilize his profane knowledge by devoting himself to teaching
it, or to prolong his course by studies in jurisprudence which led to the
highest offices in the Church.45 ‘He was anxious to pass on to the study of
theology and began to feed eagerly on the sacred Scriptures.’46 If he did not
prolong his studies until he became a teacher in his turn, which would have
given him the right to be called master,47 he was at least a divinus as it was
then called, a well-formed theologian.

He devoted four years to sacred studies. Such was his perseverance and his
eagerness to draw upon the waters of the sacred Scriptures that, indefatigable as
he was when study was in question, he spent the nights almost without sleep,
while in the depths of his mind his tenacious memory retained the truth
received by the ear. What he learnt with facility, thanks to his gifts, he
watered with his devotion and caused to spring from it works of salvation. In
this way he obtained the entry to happiness, in the judgement of Truth itself, who,
in the Gospel, proclaims blessed those who hear the word and keep it.48

The biographer points out to us that there are two ways of keeping the
word of God: one by retaining it, the other by practising it. The second is
surely the more important. For the grain is better preserved when it is
multiplied by being left to germinate in the ground than when it is shut
away in a storing-bin. Dominic, however, used both methods in turn.49
His memory, which his training as a young cleric had already developed,
now worked on the Divina Pagina, the sacred text commented on by the
Fathers of the Church. He became so impregnated with it that later he knew
whole portions of it almost by heart.50 His master analysed the text in the
pulpit according to the procedure of the time with the help of the traditional
commentaries. From time to time he would bring out in his explanation of
the text a difficulty in the form of a question which was discussed either in
28 VIR EVANGELICUS

the lesson itself or in a disputation in the regular manner. Dominic showed

great intelligence and facility in this exercise51, which enabled him
to deepen his study of the Bible considerably and to acquire a vision of
revelation as a connected whole, beyond the word-for-word rendering of the
text. At the conclusion of the ordinary lesson, the master condensed his
teaching in brief explanatory phrases, the glosses, which he put before his
students. Dominic would write them down on his tablets. To ponder more
deeply on their meaning, when he got back to his room he would copy
them carefully into the parchment notebooks in which he had the text
of the Bible copied by a scribe. Thus he had his real treasure in his own
home—the books covered with glosses which preserved for him both the
word of God and the instrument to penetrate the riches of it.52

For he now had a home. During the early days of his stay in Palencia, when
he was still too young to live alone, he doubtless lodged with some ecclesi¬
astic, some canon of the chapter of St Antolln, for instance, to whom his
uncle had recommended him;53 such was current practice.54 Afterwards he
had his room, with his books and some personal furniture,55 living on the
allowance made to him by his mother, or perhaps even by the dean.56 No
longer being obliged to conform to the discipline of a presbytery or a
collegiate church, he could follow his bent freely and keep vigil as he
pleased. It was no longer penance alone, as in the days of his childish fervour
at Caleruega, which kept him away from his bed: it was the joy of sacred
study, the lectio divina. ‘Indefatigable when it was a matter of study’, he
must have passed many a night in meditating in this way, almost without
sleep.57 Clearly the spirit of mortification lost nothing thereby. In addition
he imposed on himself for the future abstention from drinking wine, the
fine red wine that the peasants of Caleruega carry about with them every¬
where in a leather gourd from which, in the heat of the day, they spurt
between their half-closed lips a thin stream of sun-drenched sapphire. Fie
continued to practice this abstinence until the day when, having become a
canon regular and under obedience to a superior, he had to soften it a little
by filling his jug in the refectory with wine so diluted with water that no
one, it would seem, was tempted to drink of it.58
He lived a rather solitary life. He has been described to us in a hagio-
graphical cliche as a ‘puer-senex’,59 a child more like an old man, a little
too ‘wise and good’ for a young boy. Doubtless his early boyhood with his
priest-uncle in making him mature before the time, had meant that he was
unaccustomed to the contact of other boys and their usual games. This rather
harsh fervour must have been equally according to the bent of his ascetic
temperament, already preoccupied by the problem of evil and anxious to be
hard with itself. As his adolescence advanced, he discovered among certain
O

of his fellow pupils that liberty in behaviour which the moralists of the time
 PALENCIA 29
never wearied of calling attention to in all the centres of learning, and of
stigmatizing relentlessly without, however, any great result—a shameless¬
ness of manners all the more deplorable since it affected clerics, destined
perhaps one day to receive the priesthood.6° At that time the youthful
Dominic came to be somewhat reticent, musing on his own thoughts. He
was pure through and through. His chastity—that of a boy who has grown
up in the shadow of the sanctuary—preserved, right to the end of his life,
not only his utter purity, but the charming delicacy, open and ready to
take alarm,61 of those who have never known any other feminine tenderness
but that of their mother.
He did not, however, radically shut himself away from others. On the
contrary, in his solitude and his prayer, it was of others that he thought, as
events from this time onward were to prove. At this period there was no
lack of distress in Spain. The war against the Moslems had broken out again
with renewed fierceness since the empire of the Almohades in establishing
itself had restored to Spanish Islam that unity, spirit of enterprise and keen¬
ness which it had partially lost. The struggle among Christian princes had
also begun again. Castile, weakened by her separation from Leon, was
threatened by that kingdom’s rebirth at the same time as by Navarre.
Abandoned by his allies at a most perilous moment, Alfonso VIII finally
experienced the tei'rible defeat of Alarcos in 119^. Innumerable soldiers of
Castile were killed or fell into the hands of the Saracens as slaves. The
Almohades, however, treated their mozarabic Christian subjects so harshly
that the latter fled towards the north. They crossed the frontier in whole
groups, in poverty and uprooted from their usual surroundings, to swell the
tide of the country’s underfed.62
For famines, too, reappeared periodically, caused by wars as much as by
the elements, aggravated by the difficulty of communications. The memory
of a famine more serious than the others, which spread over almost the
whole of Spain65 while Dominic was in Palencia, has been preserved. At
Cuenca, the last town which Alfonso VIII reconquered, the bishop, San
Julian (1196-1208), whom Dominic would soon hear spoken of if he did
not know him already,64 multiplied his charity which was attended by real
miracles.65 Having spent all his revenues on the relief of the hungry, he
worked with his hands to provide his own food, weaving frails, as St Paul
had woven tents. He set up a depot at the entrance gate to his bishop’s
palace—what was called at the time a ‘charity’,66 where the poor came to
seek their daily rations. The granary was empty. Nothing remained. The
poor, however, continued to come. The bishop sent the servant in charge of
the charity6? to the granary notwithstanding—he found it full.
Dominic, too, in Palencia, saw people perishing of hunger.68 Hardly any¬
one among the rich or the authorities came to their help.6^ He could bear
it no longer. ‘Touched by the distress of the poor and yearning with
 VIR EVANGEI.ICUS
3°
compassion, he resolved by one single action to obey the evangelical counsels
and to relieve the wretchedness of the poor who were perishing, with all his
power.’ Establishing a ‘charity’ forthwith, he divided his possessions and
gave them to the poor. By this example of generosity, he moved the heart of
the other theologians and of the masters to such an extent that the latter,
when confronted with theyoung man’s generosity, realizing their slackness and
their avarice, from that time onwards70 began to distribute abundant help.
Let us examine the young theologian’s gesture closely. In the Gospel over
which he spent his vigils he read: ‘If thou wilt be perfect, go, sell all thou
hast and give to the poor.’71 To obtain the premises for the charity centre
and establish the daily distribution ot food there, even all he possessed was
not too much. He then sold all that he had. He became poor. In this way the
compassion preached in the Gospel set him along the road to perfection and
foreshadowed the future.
One of those present has recorded what he said when he sold even his
manuscripts, those manuscripts written on parchment, annotated with his
own hand, which we should so much like to hold in ours—‘I will not study
on dead skins when men are dying of hunger.’72 The man capable of such
words went beyond the limits of simple generosity, for it was not only his
goods and what was necessary for his body that he sacrificed, but even a
portion of his very being: in a certain sense he sacrificed the life of his mind
in the face of his neighbour’s urgent distress. Now nothing was left for
him to give except his liberty. It would seem that it was at this moment
that a woman came in tears to find Dominic. Her brother had fallen into the
hands of the Moors, perhaps in the Alarcos disaster (119^). ‘Full of the
spirit of love, wrung with compassion, Pedro Ferrando tells us, Dominic
offered himself for sale, to ransom the prisoner. The Lord, however, did
not permit that that should happen. ’73 He offered himself for sale, like a slave.
In the cell at Palencia where no longer a piece of furniture or a book
remained, Dominic discovered the meaning of life: to give bread to a whole
nation crushed by famine and to give himself for them. Other people and
not some of the least important, taken aback by his example, came to join
him. They remained faithful to him for the future and later accompanied him
in his px*eaching.74 He still needed to learn what food it was that the people
were so much in need of. God was to send him an ambassador who would
take upon himself to teach him—the prior of the chapter of Osma, the
venerable Diego of Acebo. Jordan of Saxony shows us this great religious
prospecting the countryside to obtain first-class men for his diocese.7s
Dominic’s actions and virtues had caused a certain amount of talk in Castile,
even persons of the ruling class were talking about them.76 Diego pointed
this out to the bishop, who sent for the young man to be near him and
offered him a seat in the chapter of his cathedral. Dominic was ready. He
was to be a canon of Osma.77
 Chapter 111

OSMA

B URGO D’OSMA is a city of clerics-—an episcopal city entirely

dominated by its imposing cathedral. The presence of the bishop, the
chapter, the seminary, the schools, haunts the length and breadth of
its streets, fringed with kindly shade from the wooden porticos. Such was
its aspect even in the closing years of the twelfth century when St Dominic
arrived there. The cathedral and the romanesque cloister, the recently
carved stone of which was still unstained by time for scarcely a
third of a century had passed since the building was finished,1 formed the
centre of the place. The population of the villa or ‘burgo Santa Maria’
had only begun to increase during the past three decades.2 The place was
chiefly inhabited by those who were in the service of the Church and
tenants of church land. Accordingly, from 1170 onwards the bishop had
obtained the privilege that the town should depend only on himself and on
his chapter.3 This was the beginning of the temporal power which he tried
to establish for himself, following the example of his colleagues and the
custom of churchmen of those days. Ten years later through his efforts the king
renounced his right of spoliation. At the beginning of the thirteenth century
the bishop even received the manor and castle of Osma, the somewhat theor¬
etical rights of which holders of the see were to preserve until the close of the
eighteenth century A In this way the see consolidated its independence and
that of its retainers. Protected against the vexatious interference of the men of
the neighbouring castrum,5 the inhabitants of the township shared the tranquil¬
lity of the life of the clergy. The bell which rang out the hours in the choir of
the cathedral timed their occupations and the prayer of the canons was in
harmony with the peace which emanated from the countryside.
When, after having turned up the valley of the Duero and that of its
tributary the Ucero, Dominic crossed the deep gorge hollowed out of the
rocky edge of the plateau by the latter stream as it rejoined the main river,
he would see the small town of Osma directly in front of him. He could not
but be struck by the contrast this formed with the harshness of the landscape
he had just left. All along the Duero there were nothing but hills of earth
and limestone corroded by the elements, bare summits occasionally crowned
by some feudal tower. Behind him, on the rocky barrier cutting into the
Ucero, one could still see here and there the Roman, Moslem and Christian
 VIR EVANGELICUS
32
fortresses superimposed like mighty bolts on this natural gateway through
which the diagonal route from Saragossa to Clunia passed. On the right was
the castrum of ancient Uxama, still inhabited, and dominated by the fortress
of the Castilians; to the left a Moorish tower; the Roman bridge over the river
was buttressed to the rock, a memory of the passage and of the struggles of the
legionaries and of the Saracen knights, and, not so many years earlier, of the
Aragonese.6 Before Dominic’s eyes, however, lay the cathedral and villa of
Osma in the centre of a fertile plain.
Set in a loop formed by the Ucero and its tributary the Avion which on
the west and north surrounded it with the flow of their abundant waters and
with a belt of fine trees, sheltered from the parching winds of the south by
the lofty semi-circle of hills, the town presented the visitor with the restful
picture of a centre of prayer.7 There was indeed a contrast between this
clerical city and Caleruega. Over in Caleruega, the broad horizons, the
sun, the cold, spreading widely over a landscape which lay exposed to them
without defence, expressed the call to heroism that could not be other
than tense. Here the city nestling in the hills at the side of the streams,
spoke only of recollection.
When Dominic thus looked upon the cloisters of the cathedral to which
he was going to dedicate himself by a vow of stability, he must have
murmured to himself the familiar psalm: ‘Quam dilecta tabernacula tua,
Domine. . . .’ ‘Lord of hosts, how 1 love thy dwelling-place. . . . How
blessed, Lord, are those who dwell in thy house. They will be ever praising
thee.’8 Here and there we can still find tangible traces of the habitations
where Dominic lived inserted as relics in the reconstructions of the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries: the chapter room with its graceful
columns and carved capitals, the semi-circular arches of its windows
supported by a twisted cluster of slender pillars, its three romanesque doors
breaking the line of the cloister wall.9 The black cloak with pointed hood
and the white tunic which the young cleric wore10 under his canon’s
surplice must have brushed against these pillars. He certainly must have
leant against this cornice or the base ol that capital the gryphons of which
are intertwined so skilfully. He often stayed behind in the cloister to pray,
in the deepest recollection. At Caleruega he had discovered the fire of the
gospel. At Palencia he discovered its light. At Osma he experienced its
inward tenderness. The sacred text which he had meditated upon and
scrutinized in every possible way, during his days and nights in the schools,
he could from now onwards practice and savour inpeace, by collaborating, in
his own sphere, in the work of evangelization undertaken for a century past
by the bishops of Osma and, more generally, by the bishops of Castile.
This was indeed a noble enterprise, the spiritual counterpart of that
undertaken by the kings of Castile to restore the Christian territory. It
was, moreover, the joint work of kings and clergy in close collaboration with
 OSMA
33
the popes, which had emanated from the Gregorian reform. When the land
had been recovered, the counts and later the kings of Castile turned their
attention to repopulating it. As the villages were built the life of the Church
there had to be organized. As soon as a minimum of basic institutions had
been re-established—the network of ancient or new sees, crowned by the
revival of the metropolitan and primatial see of Toledo in 108^—an
acute problem arose: to find clerics sufficiently numerous and adequate for
the newly created vacancies and, especially, to fill the posts open to the
higher clergy. The peasants and soldiers who had been gathered together for
the conquest and settlement of the land could not easily be made into
churchmen. Three campaigns were made in the province of Toledo, three
successive forward movements to provide the pastors of souls and the
spiritual guides needed for the reconquered lands.
As far back as the eleventh century, thanks to the generous gifts of kings
and lords, the abbeys of the ancient lands had been launching out into new
foundations. Thus, even before it was reconstituted, the diocese of Osma
witnessed a certain number of foundations of religious houses—San Miguel
de Osma (1063),11 San Pedro de Aza, San Esteban y Santa Maria—San
Martin de Gormaz, San Pedro de Gumiel (1073).12 Such new communities,
perhaps ruined by the civil strife and the raids of the Aragonese at the
beginning of the twelfth century, disappeared one after another and their
property and wealth were incorporated in more effective institutions.13 The
first forward movement had come.
At the end of the eleventh century a great change was taking place in the
Church universal. The revolutionary reform movement which came from
the Gregorian popes, from Leo IX to Urban II, ceased to devote its entire
effort to the reform of the monks by creating cities of perfection from which
the world was excluded: it now turned resolutely towards the world to
subdue and guide it towards its Christian destinies. In Castile the monastic
movement itself was associated with this impulse which had come from the
centre of Christendom; indeed, it took the lead. The Order of Cluny,
favoured in every way by King Alfonso VI (106^-1109) (who remembered
having worn a monastic habit for a time at the abbey of Sahagun), became
the most valuable collaborator of popes ^ and kings in the restoration and
regeneration of the Church in Castile.13 Hugh of Cluny and Peter the
Venerable displayed an unceasing solicitude for Castile, which they visited
more than once. What was more important, they sent there men who were
great religious. After the failure of Abbot Robert, Bernard de Sedirac, who
had come from Aquitaine to become Abbot of Sahagun (ca. 1080) and was
later Archbishop of Toledo, was to be the dominant figure in the Church in
Castile for half a century. Consecrated and invested with the pallium in
Rome, soon afterwards legate apostolic, he reorganized the primatial see of
Spain and restored almost all of its suffragan sees. Taking advantage of a
 VIR EVANGELICUS
34
short stay in France on his way back from a visit to Rome, he recruited in the
churches and monasteries of the south a vast contingent of monks and clerics
whom he brought with him to make of them bishops, archdeacons and
abbots in his new country. For a generation or two these clergy who had
come from France occupied the principal sees of Castile, indeed, of the
peninsula: Toledo, Segovia, Palencia, Salamanca, Compostela, Coimbra,
Braga, Valencia, Sagunto, not to mention numerous monasteries.16 Osma,
at its renaissance, drew its very first pastors from among them: St Pierre de
Bourges (i ioi —1109)17 and Raymond de Sauvetat (1110—1128).1® The
former was a saint, whose tomb and memory still have an influence on the
life of the diocese in our own day; the latter, a scholar who, when he was
transferred to the see of Toledo, presided over the great work of Arabic
and Jewish translations there which we have already mentioned. 10
This new ecclesiastical movement not only supplied Castile with a series
of prelates who were outstanding for their piety and learning—inspired by
the most recent developments in contemporary Europe, it reorganised the
fundamental institutions of religious life, the network of dioceses under the
primatial see, the system of abbeys in dependence on or at least inspired by
Cluny, the series of Councils at Palencia which were at one and the same
time metropolitan and national.20 At a time when, in the reign of Alfonso
VII ‘the Emperor’ (1126-1157), the kingdoms of the peninsula were more
united than would again be the case until the fifteenth century, the links
with Rome and the remainder of the West, still so weak at the beginning of
the eleventh century, were firmly renewed. Through its receptiveness to the
spirituality of Cluny and to the spirit of the Gregorian reform, through the
painful sacrifice of the particularism of the Mozarabic liturgy21 and even of
the Visigothic script,22 Spain once more found contact and immense
possibilities of exchange with the Church as a whole and with the Christian
West, contact and exchanges without which St Dominic would not have
achieved the full measure of his stature. That Spain should be open to Europe
and Europe to Spain was essential if the saint who was preparing himself in
Castile was one day to find the stimulus and scope necessary for the world¬
wide institution of the Preachers.
In the middle of the twelfth century, however, the tide which flowed
from Cluny ebbed, for its waters had received no new influx. The time had
come for a work that was more strictly national, more Castilian. It was,
of course, true that forces and ideas of considerable import continued
to come across the Pyrenees, especially from the monastic orders. In the
second half of the twelfth century the Cistercians were to find in Castile,
thanks to the support of Alfonso VII and Alfonso VIII (1158-1214), a
welcome comparable to that which Cluny had received in earlier times.23
The flourishing foundations, however, whose appearance we have noted, for
instance, in the valley of the Duero,24 remained, but confined to their own
 OSMA 3 f

sphere. Now the centre of the Church’s vitality lay elsewhere. A third
stream of clergy swept over Castile—the one that brought St Dominic. This
stream was purely Spanish. It was diocesan and mixed freely with the world.
Foremost in it were the person of the bishop and that of his great officers,
the institutions of the cathedral chapter and of the collegiate church with its
clergy. It was chiefly represented in Osma by two men—the bishop, Martin
Bazan (i i 89-1 20 i)25 and the prior of his chapter, Diego de Acebo, who
succeeded him in the episcopate (1201 — 1208).26 Jordan of Saxony has
sufficiently described them both, at the same time confusing them somewhat
in his description,27 (we are not, moreover, in a position exactly to
determine their respective share in an activity in which actually they seem
to be interlinked),28 when he thus presents to us the second.

There was at this time in Spain a man named Diego, bishop of the town of Osma,
whose life was worthy of admiration. He was distinguished as much for his
knowledge of sacred learning as for the quality of his birth in the eyes of the
world, and even more for his behaviour. He had given himself wholly to God
through love, to the extent that he sought only the things of Christ, despising
himself, and turned the whole effort of his mind and will to render to his Lord
with interest the talents he had lent him, by making himself banker for a large
number of souls. In this way he endeavoured to attract to himself by all the means
at his disposal and in every place he could explore, men recommended for their
honourable life and the good reputation of their morals, establishing them by
giving them benefices in the church over which he presided. As to those of his
subordinates, whose will, neglecting the effort at sanctification, inclined more
towards the world, he persuaded them by word and invited them by his example
to assume at least a more moral and more religious way of life. 29

Such prelates, full of zeal for God, had plenty to do. For those of the
clergy who lived far from the cathedral in parishes and private chapels, and
who were to be known for the future as seculars, the great vices were
ignoranceso and sins against celibacy. At this time Bishop Martin Bazan put
very precise questions to Pope Innocent III on what he was to do in the case
of clergy whose attitude in regard to a woman (doubtless the woman who
looked after their house), was, without being a case of manifest concubinage,
clearly open to suspicion. As to concubinage the bishop had no hesitation
about taking action. But in doubtful cases, how could one invoke legal
action? The Pope advised prudence. 31 Manifestly, instances were not lacking
in Osma any more than in the province generally, where a synod convened
by the Archbishop of Toledo was to legislate on the same question shortly
afterwards.32 There was so little dearth of such cases that in the middle of
the following century all the clergy of a certain rural deanery in the diocese,
that of Roa, obtained from King Alfonso X the right to legitimize their
children and to transmit the whole of their inheritance to them.33 With
regard to the canons of the cathedral, the central clergy of the diocese,
36 VIR EVANGELICUS

Martin and Diego did not remain inactive either. Jordan, in fact, adds the
following item of information.

It was at this juncture that [Diego] set himself to persuade his canons, by con¬
tinually admonishing and encouraging them, to take upon themselves the
observance of Canons Regular under the rule of St Augustine. He was so earnest
over this that he finally influenced their minds in the direction he desired, although
several among them opposed him.34

It may be surmised that in such conditions it was not by mere chance

that Dominic, the pure and generous-hearted student of Palencia, was
attached to the diocese. What awaited him there was not only a haven of
contemplation but a college in process of reform, a task in which he was
better equipped to collaborate than any other. To be completely convinced
of this it is sufficient to sketch in a few words the history of this cathedral
chapter of which he was to become a member. In it will be seen clearly
reflected religious trends, an institutional movement, and supernatural
inspirations which throw a most revealing light on the history of St
Dominic. 35

Bishop (San) Pedro de Osma had established the principles of the life of the
diocese, striven to discover afresh the true limits of his territory, reconsti-
tuted the patrimony of the Church and begun the construction of the
cathedral which Raymond de Sauvetat continued in his turn. It was only
their successor, however, Bishop Bertrand (1128-1140)26 who succeeded in
crowning their efforts and setting up a building sufficiently adequate for the
installation of a chapter of regular life.37 Between 1131 and 1136, canons
practising common life under the rule of St Augustine made their appearance
in the cathedral.38 They depended closely on the bishop who presided over
chapter and office. The prior replaced the bishop in his absence. A provost
or sub-prior, a sacristan, a cantor, with the archdeacons of the diocese
constituted the dignitaries.39
The community certainly did not follow Premonstratensian observance
(arctior consuetudo, ordo novus), which only won acceptance in the diocese in
ny2, at Nuestra Senora de la Vid, a completely isolated religious house
situated in the country.40 Moreover, nothing justifies the assertion+i that it
followed the order of St Rufus (ordo antiquus), one of the most widespread
forms of the life of the Canons Regular in southern Europe, in Aragon as in
Catalonia, but not in Castile.42 Their customs, however, must have been
fairly similar to those of St Rufus, doubtless a moderate observance learnt in
the schools of the Canons Regular in Castile and Aragon which were not
connected with any specific order.43
What is important is not the detail of the customs but the presence of the
rule of St Augustine.44 What was then called by this name was a document
 OSMA 37
composed of two texts, of which only one could be traced back to St
Augustine, that is, to Letter 211, very apposite advice on the spirit of
common life addressed to a community of religious women which his sister
had governed.45 This letter, then, its feminine genders altered to the
masculine, had later been provided with a preface—a brief and somewhat
obscure set of regulations (ordo monasterii) which legislated for the discipline,
the employment of time, the liturgical life and the manual work of a com¬
munity.46 In this way a genuine rule was provided, exact in its demands,
impressive in its inspiration, authenticated by the name of the greatest
of the Latin fathers. Drawn up, perhaps, as early as the sixth century
it was yet only at the end of the eleventh that it emerged from obscurity.
By that time it had become the standard rule of the reform of the Canons.
Its very success had repercussions on the text, which was modified. Around
1130 no more than the opening phrase of the Ordo monasterii remained. The
popes of the early part of the twelfth century had in effect ‘declared’ that
the sequence of this text had not to be observed and that the usual customs
of the Canons Regular must be substituted for the precise regulations,
which were thus made to disappear.4? There remained, however, the
second text, the transcription of Letter 2 11. That indeed was the essential
in the eyes of the clergy of that time.48
This letter began by proclaiming the absolute individual poverty of the
members of the community. ‘Since you are gathered together in a single
society, see to it that you dwell in your house with one mind. Let no one
have anything of his own, let all your goods be common and let your superior
distribute food and clothing to each one of you, not in equal measure to all,
for your health is not identical, but according to each one’s needs’.49
The Augustinian text was already sufficiently eloquent in itself since it
assigned to the clergy who accepted it as their rule, the very ideal of the life
of the apostles and of the primitive Church. The monastic movement had
indeed been living according to this inspiration from the very beginning, so
In the context of the time, however, these words had a supplementary
bearing and connotation which it is difficult for us to envisage. They formed
in very truth the countersign of a spiritual combat, the formula of a rooting
up of less fervent habits, the clarion call of a passionate sursum cor da in the
name of which, for three-quarters of a century past, the demand of the
clergy for reform had begun in the city of Rome, afterwards spreading over
Italy and the whole of the West. In the face of the all too widespread neglect
of the traditional ecclesiastical laws of celibacy and of a certain common life
for the diocesan clergy, in the face of the lack of the priestly ideal in that
chosen portion of the clergy who lived on Church funds in the centre of the
diocese or at the collegiate churches, and who were known as canons, the
reformers, of whom Leo IX was the initiator and Gregory VII the fearless
and uncompromising instigator, had launched the appeal which could
 38 VIR EVANGELICOS

regenerate them—the return to the sources, to the primitive Church, to

the example of the apostles.51

We order those clergy who, obeying our predecessor [Pope Leo IXJ, have pre¬
served chastity, to live within the precincts of the church for which they were
ordained, as becomes religious-minded clerics, eating and sleeping together and
possessing in common all that comes to them from the church; we eamestlv
request them to make every effort to attain to apostolic life, that is to say, to the
common life, in order that, having become perfect, they may deserve to have a
place in their heavenly fatherland, by the side of those who are now receiving the
hundredfold promised.5 2

Not all the clergy had obeyed. Not all the canons had given up the old
Carolingian rule which allowed them a certain amount of personal owner¬
ship.55 Those, however, whose ears were attuned to catch the call of the
Spirit to the Church soon found in the rule of St Augustine that ‘apostolic’
rule which would enable them to live the perfect life in common and so to
allow the pattern of life of the apostles and of the primitive Church to
exert its influence over the whole of their clerical activity. If thev needed a
fine example to increase in them the attraction of the ideal to which the rule
was forming them, they could read5^ a striking story in the works of
Augustine himself.
The incident occurred at Hippo. St Augustine, then a bishop, had long
since taken the decision to live with his clergy in a monastery, in order to
practise apostolic life in common. The clergy understood and accepted this
ideal and the population of Hippo, touched by their example of disinterested¬
ness and spiritual generosity, derived great benefit from it. We can imagine,
then, the reactions of the faithful on learning that one of the priests of the
community, on dying, had left a will. He considered himself, then, as having
the right to own something. The scandal was great. In the cathedral
Augustine assembled his clergy. The faithful stood around. He seated himself
on his throne. The deacon Lazarus came to the appointed place and read the
Acts of the Apostles. ‘There was one heart and one soul in all the company
of believers; none of them called any of his possessions his own, everything
was shared in common.’ Augustine took up the book: ‘I, too, will read in
my turn; I have greater joy in reading you these words than in addressing
my own to you.’ He read the text again; then—‘That is how we seek to
live; pray that we may be able to do so.’55
When, some seven centuries later, one of the most zealous preachers of
the Gregorian reform, St Peter Damian, in turn took up the text of the Acts
to encourage the Italian clergy to discover their ideal anew, he, too, found
therein the programme of perfect poverty in common. He gave to this
clerical poverty, however, an orientation giving final form to its contempor¬
ary significance, the interpretation, very characteristic of the Gregorian
reform, given to it in Spain—poverty that was triumphant and not only
 OSMA
39

ascetic. Such poverty made the priest a soldier of vigour and zeal in the
hands of his bishop, a cleric whose life gave edification in the centre of his
Church, a preacher whose life was a sermon at the same time as his words.
Such were the apostles, not only in the upper room, but along the roads
of Palestine, when Christ sent them on before him to preach, two by
two.56
‘It is important to understand the conduct and the rule of life which the
Church observed at the time when the faith was just beginning. “The
multitude, says St Luke,57 had only one heart and one soul, and no one
called whatever he might have his own, for all was common among them. ”
Should clerics, then, be given the privilege of possessing what Christ did
not allow his apostles? When he sent them to preach, as St Mark says,58 he
gave them instructions to take a staff for their journey and nothing more;
no wallet, no bread, no money for their purses . . . The possession of
even a little money put by leads the clergy to despise the authority of their
prelate ... it causes them to bow their necks before secular persons
under the shameful yoke of a very unseemly dependence. Finally, stimu¬
lating in them the love of money, it makes them unworthy to preach the
word of God, for those alone are apt for the office of preaching who,
possessing nothing as their own, have all things in common. Like lightly-
armed soldiers, expediti, free from every obstacle, they fight for the Lord
against vice and the devil, armed only with their virtues and the sword of
the Holy Spirit.59’
Such was the ideal of the apostolic life to which (under the stimulus of the
Gregorian reformers) the rule of St Augustine won over the communities
of canons one after the other: to live like the apostles in the upper room,
and on the road during their mission as preachers, in utter and manifest
poverty. At the time when the chapter of Osma was established, the rule of
St Augustine, under the double action of the King of Aragon and of the
Pope’s legates, had already won over almost all the chapters of that king¬
dom.60 Osma was to be one of the centres whence this rule and the way of
apostolic life for the clergy would spread into the kingdom of Castile.

At this time a chapter of canons was far from being merely the ornament
of the mother Church and the senate of the clergy of riper years in a diocese.
This community of clerics who celebrated the divine offices in the cathedral
had seen its administrative role increase since the reform of the Church. It
was entrusted with the election of the bishop—a circumstance which did
not altogether exclude the intervention of the king, for there are many
ways of bringing influence to bear on a college of electors, but which never¬
theless assured, much more satisfactorily than in the past, the liberty of
individual churches. At the same time it constituted the bishop’s council
and shared in the administration of the patrimony of the diocese which,
 4° VIR EVANGELJCUS

still undivided,61 assured both its livelihood and that of the prelate. At this
time, men joined a chapter as they entered a monastery. Thus, clergy of all
ages would be found there, a body of priests formed in accordance with
canon law, of more regular life and better instructed than anywhere else.
At a time when seminaries did not yet exist, a chapter was a nursery of
future prelates and church dignitaries: archdeacons, chancellors, professors
of theology. As far back as the twelfth century the chapter of Osma
effectively supplied the churches of Castile with prelates.62 Above all, it
expanded beyond its own confines.
The official populating of Soria, a town near the site of ancient Numancia,
on the side nearer to Osma along the great highway from Tarragona to
Clunia, had begun in 111 3.63 In 1148 the bishop and chapter of Osma
received the church of San Pedro de Soria, with the obligation of setting up
a collegiate church of Canons Regular there.64 Four years later this was an
accomplished fact.65 From the beginning the two chapters appeared to be
linked by close ties of brotherhood and to be so similar that certain members
in the chapter of Osma one day claimed to subject the collegiate church of
Soria to their obedience. The bishop had to intervene in view of the con¬
sternation of the Soria chapter, and point out the reciprocal independence of
the two bodies. He himself constituted the sole head of two identical colleges,
established on a footing of equality.66 On the occasion of this call to order,
he invoked the significant example of the two chapters of Huesca and Jaca
in Aragon, which lived on terms of the most complete fraternal charity,
although one of them was a cathedral and the other only a collegiate church,
under the common direction of the bishop.67
In 1143 the repopulating of Roa began.68 For want of documents it is
impossible to determine whether the college of Augustinian canons which
was installed there drew its inspiration from the chapter of Osma. It is
possible. In any case this inspiration is certain and much more worthy of note
in the case of the Cuenca chapter. The town had been reconquered in 1177.
In 1183 an episcopal see was set up there and the first bishop, Juan Yanes,
was consecrated.60 He asked the Osma chapter to come to Cuenca and
found there a similar institution. A certain number of canons, therefore,
went down to Cuenca and were incorporated in the new community. It is
clear that they took with them their regular customs with the rule of St
Augustine.70 The close relations maintained right down to our own times
between these two chapters provide an indication of their common origin.
Now among the canons whom Osma obtained in this way, may be noted a
certain Master Lope who became professor of theology there.71
In effect, some time earlier the Osma chapter had inaugurated its clerical
school. In 1166 and 1168, there is mentioned in the list of the canons a
certain Juan, called preceptor, that is, master of a primary school.72 In
1168, in addition to Juan, there were two other masters: Master Bernier
 {Photo: Leonard von Matt)

A canon of Osma on a journey in the thirteenth century.

 OSMA
41

and Master Eudes.78 Thus the chapter was organizing within its precincts an
episcopal school similar to that which the ancient dioceses of the West
possessed at this time, even before the Third Council of the Lateran
legislated on this point.A tradition of learning had to be maintained in the
cathedral. The beginning of the thirteenth century was to see a suc¬
cession of great scholars in the episcopal see of Osma. Diego de Acebo
(1 201-1 208),75 Rodrigo Jimenez de Rada (1208-1210), one of the most
cultured men in Spain at that time, whom the see of Toledo lost no time in
claiming for itself, Master Melendo (1 2 10-1 22^).76 The clerical milieu of
Osma when Dominic came to take his place there was thus not lacking in
distinction on the intellectual plane. The catalogue of its library shortly
after this period is still extant.77

On the other hand, there was one problem that arose, that of regularity.
At that time nothing was stable and the most remarkable impulses of
heroism sometimes died away surprisingly quickly. It is a fact that the
common life which seems to have flourished in almost all the newly founded
chapters in Spain in the first part of the twelfth century, was beginning to
waver in several communities in the last third of that century.78 The
absolute poverty of the rule of St Augustine was found too difficult. At
Palencia, for instance, in 1183 the bishop had to authorize certain canons to
make a will, which is an indication of some private ownership.79 What
would the good people of Hippo have said! Osma certainly preserved its
strict regularity for a long time. In 1168 the bishop caused a common
fund to be established on All Saints day in the chapter refectory.80 It
seems, however, that from this time onwards the spirit of private property
was beginning to seep in. This doubtless originated in isolated individuals,
a few clerics recommended by persons in high places who endeavoured to
get themselves incorporated in the chapter, especially as dignitaries, and to
have a portion of the goods of the Church assigned to them, without,
however, assuming the obligation of practising the common life and
observances.81 The troubles during the minority of Alfonso VIII (n^8-
1168), the scandalous pressure then exercised by the nobles and the king’s
agents on the churches of the kingdom must have multiplied such accretions
which were disastrous for the rule of life of the college.82 In 1160,
Bishop Juan had obtained from Pope Lucius III a bull to prohibit the integra¬
tion into the chapter of anyone who had not made profession and sworn to
observe the rule of St Augustine.88 In 1176 a scandal, however, occurred.
The then prior of the chapter, Bertrand, had had himself elected bishop
through simony two years earlier. It was a sorry business in which the
electors were not innocent, for they had allowed themselves to be bought
or manipulated by the king’s nobles who had received 5,000 maravedis
from Bertrand. Alexander III deposed the simonaical bishop, suspended
42 VIR EVANGELICUS

the guilty electors and claimed restitution of the sum handed over.
Alfonso VIII made this restitution through his guardians some thirty years
later.84 Nevertheless, the pressure from candidates eager to obtain a share
of the chapter’s wealth and of their powerful patrons must have continued.
In 1182, the bishop, Miguel, a Benedictine, obtained a new bull prohibiting
the incorporation as a canon or dignitary of the chapter of anyone who refused
to accept regular life. 8s Seventeen years later, Bishop Martin Bazan was to
solicit a third bull on this point (1199).86
The lack of fidelity had been even more serious. On reading the Pope’s
text it would seem that the very principle of common life had been called
in question.8? The reaction was all the more categorical, and, this time,
completely effective. Before asking for the bull, the bishop had made
certain of the support of his archbishop and of the king’s assent;88 then, by
means of a long work of spiritual preparation, carried out with the collabora¬
tion of the prior, Diego de Acebo, had persuaded the canons as a body to
resume the life of total regularity. Some of them resisted.89 It would be inter¬
esting to know if defections, replaced by more genuine vocations procured
by the efforts of the prior, were numerous.90 The bishop re-established
common life in the strict sense of the word and put into force once more
certain of the former constitutions of the chapter.91 Then he obtained from
the Pope a titulus of confirmation. Now the observance was solidly estab¬
lished in law as well as in the hearts of men. The rule of St Augustine was
once more supreme in the Osma chapter. The ideal of the life of the
apostles in all its purity was the canons’ inspiration and was manifested even
in the number of twelve religious which seems to have been regularly
established in the community.92 Twelve canons, like the twelve apostles,
under the guidance of the bishop, the representative of Jesus Christ. Regular
life was not again to disappear from the cathedral before the end of the
fifteenth century. 93 By that date all the chapters in Castile had become
chapters of secular clergy, in some cases had been so for a long time past.94
Osma was to be the last to desire this, so strong had been the renewal of the
canonical spirit of the Gregorian reform in the community in the last years
of the twelfth century. Such was the atmosphere obtaining in the chapter
in 1196 or 119795 when St Dominic entered it at the age of twenty-four or
twenty-five.96
Immediately , wrote Jordan of Saxony, ‘he began to be outstanding among
the canons, shining like the evening star, the last through his humility of
heart, the first in holiness. He became for the others the fragrance which is
life-producing,97 scent of olibanum on the summer air.’98 Each one of them
was astonished at the height of religious life he so swiftly and secretly
attained."
The prayers and mortifications of the child of Caleruega, the clerical life
of the adolescent with the rural dean, the austerities and solitary vigils in
 OSMA
43

Palencia probably provide a sufficient explanation. Familiarity with solitude

prepared him equally for the silence of the cloister and the keeping of his
cell. In the programme of imitation of the life of the apostles which the
community in its full enthusiasm for reform put before him, Dominic’s
attachment seemed principally to be to the interior life of the cenacle and
to the public prayer of the temple of Jerusalem. The canon’s life was
traditionally considered as a pure life of prayer. In contrast to the monks
who worked with their hands out of asceticism, the canons were exclusively
engaged, in the centre of the diocese, in the celebration of the mysteries, in
divine praise and intercession. Thus tradition, coming down from Carolin-
gian times, placed their contemplative life in sharp contrast with the active
life of the monks—a view which runs somewhat counter to our pre¬
conceived ideas.100 At the turn of the thirteenth century the evidence is
clear—the hidden life which Dominic was leading in his religious house was
par excellence the contemplative life.101
It was a community life, certainly, in which friendship and fraternal
correction practised each day in the chapter of faults provided elements of
moral formation and personal development that Dominic had never experi¬
enced ; but, it was principally a life of solitude, a life of complete recollection
in God. Attention has been drawn to the book always at his bedside whence
Dominic derived his initiation into the virtues of his new state as well as
into the processes of spirituality—the Conferences of the Fathers of the Desert by
John Cassian. This Italian monk of the patristic period, trained when he was
quite young in a monastery near Bethlehem, for seven years a pilgrim across
the holy deserts of Egypt and the Near East before himself going to found
two monasteries in Gaul, was the witness and teacher of the solitary life
par excellence. The discipline of Christ, spiritual struggle, and combat
against the demon, silence, contemplation fed by the Holy Scriptures, such
were the lessons of the great anchorites. It was obviously to imitate their
African austerities that Dominic thought out his discreet abstention from
meat.102 He took other things from them.
‘With the help of grace, this book led him to a degree of purity of
conscience difficult of attainment, to much light on contemplation and to a
high summit of perfection.’103
Dominic alternated this interior exercise with the public recitation of the
office in the cathedral. This was the obligation and privilege of the cleric,
and particularly of the canon, because that had been the task of the
apostles. IQ4 Dominic always found both strength and joy in the recitation of
the canonical office, even at the most disturbed moments of his life, even as
he travelled along the highroads; on the last day of his life, worn out
by fatigue and with the hand of death already upon him, he would still go
off to sing Matins in the middle of the night before lying down to rest for
ever.103 Thus he spent little time outside the church and, ‘in order to
 44 VIR EVANGELICUS

procure time for his contemplation, he was more or less never seen outside
the monastery enclosure.’106
He had not forgotten his first feelings as a child in the presence of the
sufferings of the world or the deeds of heroic mercy which they had inspired
in him in Palencia. The evangelical life of the cenacle in no way
excluded the service of others and il the apostles instituted deacons to save
their time, it was not only to devote themselves the better to prayer, but
also to teaching. IQ7 More than of the miseries of the body, the cleric had to
think of the greater misery of the soul which had to be saved. More than the
bread for the body, he had to give the living water of prayer and the bread
of the word of God. Contemplative prayer then became fervent petition and
meditation on the Gospel wholly apostolic.

God had given him a special grace of prayer for sinners, the poor, those in
distress; he made their misfortunes his own in the intimate sanctuary of his com¬
passion and the tears which welled from his eyes were an indication of the fervour
which was burning in him. It was a very usual habit with him to spend the night
in prayer. With the door closed, he prayed to his Father.108 In the course of his
prayer it was his custom to utter cries and words expressive of his heart’s groan-
ings. He could not contain himself and these cries, uttered so impetuously, were
distinctly heard from the storey above. One of his frequent and particular requests
to God was that he would grant him true and effective charity in such a way that
he would devote himself to procuring the salvation of men, for he thought that
he would not truly be a member of Christ until the day when he could give
himself wholly, with all his force, to winning souls, as the Lord Jesus, Saviour of
all men, devoted himself wholly to our salvation. I09

A great event occurred which gave full meaning to this prayer. A short
time after his profession in the chapter, he received the priesthood. He was
now twenty-five—the minimum age, it is true, but adequate for this cleric
who was over-mature for his years.110 Moreover, his religious profession,
by attaching him to one particular church, provided him with the ‘title’
without which he could not be ordained.111 The priesthood. That meant
the possibility of frequently adding the sacrifice of the Word, the Verbum Dei,
to the saciifice oi his lips as they praised the Lord. The possibility, also, of
carrying this Word to other men by preaching. He must have begun to
preach straight away. A few years later, when his ministry was brought out
into the full light of history, Dominic was to appear as a great preacher. He
would then no longer be a beginner. Obviously he had already preached the
Word of God times without number to the faithful of Osma and to others
too. One witness fairly well informed as to his activities at the time relates
that he knew how to win for himself the friendship of all, rich and poor,
Jews and infidels (who were numerous in Spain), and that all visibly loved
him, except the heretics whom he attacked and vanquished in his disputes
and sermons. Yet he exhorted them and invited them with charity to do
 OSMA
45

penance and return to the faith.’112 It was not long before certain functions
were given him which put him more directly in contact with the spiritual
needs of men. A charter of 18th August, 1199 shows that he was sacristan
of the chapter, that is, of the cathedral, organizing the whole of the liturgical
life.113 Two years later, on 13th January, 1201, when aged twenty-eight to
thirty, he was sub-prior, sometimes called upon to govern his brethren.114
From that time onwards Dominic was in charge of souls. He gave Christ
to the faithful. He truly became an apostle in every sense of the word. He
was led to this gift of himself, to this effective work in the Christian commun¬
ity by the deep instinct of his nature, the inspiration of his bishop and
prior, as well as by the general movement of the Church in Castile. From the
days of St Peter Damian more than one Canon Regular in the city chapters
of the cathedrals and of the reformed collegiate churches also aspired to
become apostolic through the sacred ministry. If they led the life of the
apostles, it was clearly to make themselves worthy of this work of salvation
entrusted to them.115 Some of them even dared eagerly to maintain that the
ministry was the true manner of imitating the apostles.116 The customs of
St Rufus, the influence of which on the Canons Regular of Spain was con¬
siderable, did not in any case hesitate to base the primacy of the order of
canons on the fact of this apostolate. ‘For [the canon] is the successor of
Christ and the apostles, substituted for them in the ministry of preaching, of
baptism and of the other sacraments of the Church.’117
Even in a cathedral, it is true, the number of canons able to devote them¬
selves to the apostolic ministry was very restricted. The chapter of Osma
did not even serve its incorporated churches itself. Dominic’s preaching was
an exception. Necessarily applying himself more closely to pastoral work
through his functions as sacristan or as sub-prior, Dominic was already
beginning to give himself to men according to the secret desire of his
prayer. God, however, was preparing for him, also in secret, an even greater
opportunity of giving effect to his prayer.
 Chapter IV

THE MARCHES

W HILE the lovely Rachel was warming him in this way with her
embraces, Lia lost patience. She insisted that he should compen¬
sate her blemish by giving her, through his visit, a numerous
posterity.’1 It was in these terms that the chronicler announced in the
language of symbolic theology the great change in the life of St Dominic.
Rachel signifies contemplation, Lia action. The contemplative life was to
overflow into the life of the apostolate. The cloister of Osma opened its
doors and Dominic, in the train of his bishop, was plunged into the great
game of the ecclesiastical and temporal politics of Christendom. A tiny
pawn, manipulated by a royal hand, he was to move across the whole of the
European chessboard which he would one day fill with the activity of his
sons.
In the month of May, 1203, Alfonso VIII came with his court to the royal
city of San Esteban de Gormaz which was close by Osma.2 Around the king
and his officers could be seen a succession of ricos hombres and numerous
bishops of Castile : Martin, Archbishop of Toledo and Primate of the Spains,
Aiderico of Palencia, Rodrigo of Siguenza, (San) Julian of Cuenca, Juan of
Calahorra, Brice of Plasencia, Fernando, Bishop-elect of Burgos and,
naturally, Diego, the bishop of the place. At the side of the king stood Queen
Leonor, daughter of the all too famous Eleanor of Aquitaine, and a young
boy of thirteen and a half, the Infanta don Fernando,3 sole male heir to the
kingdom since the death of his brother, the Infanta SanchoA
On 13th May, these great ecclesiastics, together with the king, the queen
and the Infanta Fernando, confirmed the foundation of a convent of nuns of the
Holy Spiiit which Diego had just established in Soria.5 Then the court left.
Diego followed it. It is known that he was with it in Atienza on the 18th
and in Berlanga on the 20th.6 This was not the first time that the bishop had
met the court. Immediately after his consecration, in December 1 2 o 1,7 he had
rejoined Alfonso VIII at Burgos and he had seen him again quite recently A It
was, however, the second time in less than a year that Alfonso VIII had come
to San Esteban de Gormaz to hold his court.9 It is very clear that this
was not a case of the royal court coming out of its way for the sole
purpose of confirming the foundation of an obscure convent of nuns.
Jordan of Saxony informs us explicitly that the king ‘ came to find ’ the
 THE MARCHES 47
bishop in order to entrust an important matter to his care. ‘He had conceived
the project of marrying his son Fernando to a noble girl from the Marches.’10
The bishop accepted and was soon on the road, taking Dominic with him.
These lew laconic words have strangely excited and at the same time
embarrassed Dominican historiography down to recent times.11 Which
Marches are in question ? Almost a dozen territories were then so called,
from the Comte de la Marche in the Limousin, the marches of Ancona and
Verona, down to the marches of Misnia, of Lusace and of Brandenburg, and
the Danish march. It must at once be pointed out that for Jordan of
Saxony, a German from the north-east,12 the word ‘marches’ in its absolute
meaning could only refer to one of the last four territories.13 Confirmation
of this may be found in the terms he used to describe the length and hardships
of the journey ;14 the marches of which he was speaking were those furthest
away from Castile, consequently those of the north. This enables us to
accept as certain the new detail introduced some thirty years after Jordan by
the author of a chronicle—‘Marchia Dacie’,15 the Marches of Dacia, that is,
Denmark. We may wonder how Denmark came to enter into the projects
of the King of Castile.
Actually there is nothing mysterious about the plan and contemporary
history gives its significance clearly.16 In the shifting and entangled interplay
of high European politics, Alfonso VIII could not disassociate himself from
what was happening even in Scandinavia. The freer contact between Castile
and Europe in the time of Alfonso VI and of Bernard of Sedirac had not only
brought about fruitful changes in the ecclesiastical order—the sovereigns had
begun to turn their eyes towards affairs beyond the Pyrenees. The dynasty
itself had ceased to be a closed one and the Burgundian, Toulouse and
English marriages had brought such preoccupations even within the range of
family interests. At the beginning of the thirteenth century, Alfonso VIII was
preparing to recover by arms the inheritance of his mother-in-law, Eleanor
of Aquitaine.
He was going to find England against him—its alliance with the Guelph
emperor Otto of Brunswick was already in preparation. Accordingly, to
counter this, he again approached their adversary the King of France, Philip
Augustus. He had given him his own daughter Blanche for daughter-in-law.
Earlier, Philip himself had been linked by marriage to the Danish family who
possessed rights over England, but feared the Guelph. The bonds between
Castile and France against England and the Empire, then, could only be
strengthened by a marriage between the two families of Castile and of
Denmark. These families, moreover, were already closely connected, some
of the alliances being very recent. The late King Cnut VI (d. 1202) had
married a niece of Alfonso VIII, whereas Blanche, the daughter of Alfonso
VIII, by her French marriage had just become the niece of this same Cnut
and of his successor, the reigning King Valdemar II,
48 VIR EVANGELICUS

The Infanta Fernando was thirteen and a half. It was time to seek a wife
for him. Blanche and Louis of France had recently married at the age of
twelve. Alfonso himself had been fifteen when he had had his marriage with
Leonor of England approved by the Cortes of Burgos.17 But who was to
be the fiancee?
A daughter of Valdemar the Great must be ruled out because of the
difference of age.18 Cnut VI had died without children. Valdemar II was not
yet married.10 Thus Jordan does not speak of marriage with a king’s
daughter, but with a young girl of noble blood. A Scandinavian historian who
has devoted particular attention to the problem20 considers, after having
eliminated the other solutions, that it could only be a daughter of the elder
sister of Valdemar II, the wife of Count Siegfried of Orlamund. Connected
with the marches of Misnia through his countship, an Ascanian like the
other Margraves of Brandenburg, a faithful member of the royal family of
Denmark whose leopards his son had incorporated in his coat of arms,
Siegfried belonged par excellence to the nobility of the Marches.21 Jordan’s
expression, ‘a noble girl from the Marches’, would thus be shown here, as
on many other occasions, to be aptly chosen.

The bishop lost no time in getting on the road. It was the end of May.
This journey to the north, which according to Jordan must have cost ‘many
and painful efforts’, would be more easily accomplished during the summer
months. It was an important affair. A bishop did not move about without his
household or a bodyguard. The third Council of the Lateran, a few years
earlier, had expressed astonishment at the large number of horsemen which
bishops in the course of their pastoral visitations considered it indispensable
to take with them and to impose on the parishes which received them.
Certain poor churches found themselves constrained to sell even the sacred
vessels to pay for their ‘procurations’, i.e. requirements, and watched the
bishop s suite consuming in a few hours a whole year’s provisions. Thus
the Council fixed as the maximum for the bishop’s escort twenty to thirty
horses.22 Sees that were poor were clearly not bound to go to the full limit,
and this was the case with Diego’s small diocese. A deed of 1270 shows that
the Bishop of Osma for his ordinary journeys was accompanied by four horses
only, about ten if he was accompanied by an archdeacon and a canon.23 This
time, however, a royal mission was in question. It was necessary to come
within reasonable distance of the ceiling fixed by the Council. There were,
with the soldiers of the escort, several servants, an interpreter, some
merchants from the north who would act as guides,24 finally a counsellor, as
well as a companion in prayer, Dominic, the sub-prior of the church.25 It is
not difficult to imagine Dominic on horseback riding behind his bishop, just
like the canon who follows San Pedro de Osma on a bas-relief of the tomb in
the cathedral (i2y8). He would be covered down to the feet in an ample
 THE MARCHES 49

black cloak whose folds protected his hands, whilst he held the reins and
manipulated the huge bridle-bit of a somewhat lean horse. A narrow hood,
whose point fell behind, entirely enveloped his head. The bishop was dressed
in the same way, but he wore on top of his hood a broad-brimmed hat, the
emblem of his rank.
The sources tell us little of the journey. The only halting-place along the
road which is mentioned is Toulouse.26 The travellers, following the ancient
Roman roads, doubtless went through Soria to Saragossa to rejoin the French
road to Santiago at Jaca.27 Then through the Somport, Oloron, Morlaas, they
reached the capital of the county of Toulouse. This route had the advantage
of avoiding Navarre, the enemy of Castile.

As soon as they had crossed the Pyrenees the two men of God were able
to confirm a fact which up till then they knew only through public rumour—
the countless number of Christians in the lands of the Count of Toulouse who
had allowed themselves to be won over to heresy. There were several sorts,
grouped together under the geographical name of Albigensians, though the
diocese of Albi had not been more contaminated than the neighbouring
regions. Some were the late successors of Pierre de Bruys or of Henri de
Lausanne;28 others were Waldenses or poor men of Lyons, disciples of the
former merchant Valdes;29 above all, there were Catharists.30 This new
religion, brought from the east by traders or pilgrims about 1140, perhaps
even by oriental missionaries, then disseminated by interchanges which
became especially frequent at the time of the second crusade,31 had taken
deep root in the county of Toulouse. In 1173, the religious head of that part
of the country, the Archbishop of Narbonne, Pons d’Arsac, could write to
the King of France, the supreme overlord: ‘The Catholic faith is receiving
tremendous attacks in our diocese and the bark of Peter is undergoing such
buffetings from the heretics that it is almost on the point of sinking.’32
Very early provided with a leader or bishop from the region of Albi, the
sect already counted four such in 1167, and would have five in 1229.
Historians today know the names of more than twenty of these ‘bisbes’ of the
Catharists of the Midi.33 The movement, indeed, which had affected
Champagne, France, the Rhineland, Flanders, England and even the south of
Italy, had likewise taken root in Lombardy. Whereas, however, in the north
of Italy Catharism split up after the end of the twelfth century into several
hostile churches, in the region of Albi it remained monolithic and radical,
under the guidance of its leaders. These leaders, seconded by their ‘elder
sons’, their ‘younger sons’ and their deacons, had available in each genuine
Catharist follower, or ‘Perfect’, an ardent propagandist. Dressed in black,
austere, of an undoubted purity of morals, for they practised absolute con¬
tinence, sober to the point of abstaining from all food produced by carnal
intercourse, such as meat, milk products and eggs, poor indeed, but having
£° VIR EVANGELICUS

at their common disposal very large financial resources,34 the clergy of the
Catharists and the ‘Perfect’ found among all classes of the population an
audience which the Catholic clergy were in the process of losing in a large
number of places.
Earlier heresies had paved the way for their success. Sent to preach in the
neighbourhood just when this religious sect was beginning to spread, St
Bernard had not obtained any permanent result—in one church, even, the
failure had been crushing. In 116^ an ecclesiastical assembly which had called
upon the chief leaders of the Catharists to appear, at Lombers, had turned
into a wrangle from which the sectaries had gone away with more assurance
than ever. Shortly afterwards, in 1167, at St Felix de Caraman, the latter
held a veritable council, presided over by the oriental ‘pope’, Nicetas of
Constantinople.35 After that time, neither the repeated sending of apostolic
legates, more often than not cardinals or Cistercian abbots, nor certain
military expeditions such as the siege of the castle of Lavaur in 11 81, nor the
application of measures which were a prelude to the birth of the Inquisition,
diminished the enthusiasm of the new religion. In the meantime the dis¬
affection of the majority of the lay authorities, and of an important mass of
the population, in regard to the Church, eventually produced its fruit—
mockery, indifference, sacrilege, churches abandoned or confiscated for
profane uses, monasteries despoiled and disorganized, or even contaminated
by heresy, grave and violent injustices against the clergy, going even to the
point of assassination.
As they advanced on their way, Diego and Dominic learnt to appreciate
the extent of the crisis by the sad confidences of the clergy or of the orthodox
faithful whom they met by chance along the roads or in the inns. As con¬
vinced Christians, their hearts sank. More than for the Church herself, for
whom they did not yet quite measure the danger, it was for ‘these innumer¬
able souls who were deceived that they felt moved bv deep compassion’.
They guessed indeed more than they could see. The Christian appearance of
the life of the convinced Catharists did not allow them to be easily unmasked.
One evening, however, Dominic in Toulouse found himself face to face with
one of them—who happened to be his host.36
He must have recognized him for what he was through some word of
spite against the Church—in their eyes the Babylon of the Apocalypse—
through some reticence in regard to baptism or the Eucharist; or perhaps,
what would have been particularly painful to him, from an expression of
contempt in regard to the sign of the cross. One of his companions who made
the sign as he was entering a castle one day heard something of this kind. A
knight who saw him cross himself murmured ‘may such sign of the cross
never assist me.’37 So people calling themselves Christians were enemies of
the cross of Christ.3® In truth, this was indeed the case. Dominic was going
to learn this then and there from personal experience. For he could not but
 THE MARCHES £1
react to the pain of the profound disagreement revealed in this way. He
forced his host to justify his belief. Contrary to the great majority of the
‘believers’ of the Catharists, who held their opinions only superficially, this
man was a convinced believer;39 he may have been one of the Catharist
deacons who ran hospices in the towns. All night long, forgetting his con¬
dition as a passing stranger, forgetful of the fatigue of the road which he was
to resume once more the following morning, Dominic pressed him with his
searching questions.40
This man’s belief must indeed have disconcerted him. At first he saw
before him only a Christian gone astray, sincerely impressed by the Gospel.
Indeed, as will be seen later, the ‘evangelism’ of the twelfth century was
undoubtedly one of the sources of Catharism. As Dominic, however,
gradually constrained his questioner to lay bare the fundamental basis of his
attitude, through that art of discussion which is proper to scholasticism, he
discovered something quite different. With a hundred years of work on the
history of religions behind us, we can today situate Catharism among the
dualist tendencies, the manifold springs of which had begun to bubble up long
before the time of Christ, not only in the Semitic world but also in Persia
and in Greece.41 More precisely, we have no difficulty in placing it among
the forms of Gnosticism, those pre-Christian religions which, as far back as
the second century produced a crop of erroneous tendencies even in the
infant Church. Catharism, however, despite its assertions,42 was not directly
attached to any form of primitive Gnosticism. At the origin of the Albigenses
we can today clearly discern the Bogomils, a movement which began in
Bulgaria in the middle of the tenth century.43 The Bogomils perhaps received
some of their dogmas from the Paulicians,44 who were Gnostics, found in
Armenia since the eighth century, several groups of whom were afterwards
deported to Thrace. The Messalians are also spoken of .... There our
knowledge of the earliest influences to which the Catharists were subjected
comes to an end. These medieval forms of Gnosticism had developed within
the Christian framework and claimed to find their basis in the Gospel rather
than in the Bible, the greatest part of which they abhorred. Their common
source, however, was not the word of God, nor even a formal doctrine
powerfully constructed. It was a spontaneous attitude in the face of life and
of evil, an irrational sentiment of the soul’s radical opposition to the world.
This attitude gave rise to several inter-related doctrines, the elements of
which were in a continual state of flux, and to practices equally variable,
despite fundamental constants.
Two contradictory principles explained the radical opposition of the world
with good. ‘Two Gods’, said the Albigensian Catharists, won over since
1167 to the absolute dualist doctrine of the ‘Dragovitsian Bogomils, which
Nicetas of Constantinople brought to them from the East in that year: the
God of good was the God of the Gospel; the other was the God of the Old
 VIR EVANGELICUS
£2

Testament. Souls were angels fallen into matter, i.e. under the domination
of the God of evil, those at least whose total chastity and purity revealed
their angelic nature. The extreme austerity oi the ‘Perfect was a preparation
for their liberation which was effected by death. The imperfect liberation of
the ‘believers’ required fresh incarnations upon this earth, a metempsychosis
which might go as far as a return into the body of an animal. Such was the
Albigensian belief stripped of its artificial Gnostic cosmogonies, of its
cultural and ecclesiastical features of recent origin, finally of its Christian
veneer. Its Christianity was nothing more than a garment. Those for whom
evil was either the irresponsible fall of a soul into the world, or the acci¬
dental contact with matter and with corporeal life, could have little sense
of sin.45 Those for whom salvation consisted in delivering oneself from flesh
and from matter could scarcely be said to put all their love and hope in
Christ Jesus. For them Christ was master, not redeemer. His death, Satan’s
triumph, had only been an appearance, like his body.46 His cross was not
the sign of salvation, but a scandal.47
Doubtless the poor man who found himself face to face with Dominic on
this night of tense controversy did not see things as clearlv as this. The
philosophical weakness of his dualism—for a God who is not unique cannot
be God —escaped him, whereas he found it so convenient to solve the
anguishing problem of evil in a rough and ready way by invoking two
antagonistic Gods. Above all the anti-Christian character of Catharism
remained hidden from his eyes. It is the deep drama of so much hostile
propaganda in lands that have long been Christian, that unconsciously those
who listen to them transpose the words and ideas which are served out to
them into the nearest terms of their atavistic tradition, so much so that they
finally invest doctrines which are in every sense of the word strange with
colours and sentiments properly belonging to Christianity. They then
allow themselves to be seduced by the doctrines so transformed. In the
austerity of the Perfect, inspired by the hatred of matter, the populations of
the Midi of France certainly believed they recognized the spirit of penance
which the Gospel never ceases to urge upon us, in their cold chastity the
purity which reserves everything to God through love, in their poverty,
abandonment to Providence. Dominic was able to disentangle these absurdi¬
ties and confusions. Being strong, he was able to argue unfalteringly and
using love, he was able to persuade. The innkeeper could not resist the Spirit
who spoke through lips of such conviction. When day dawned, he sur¬
rendered to the light.4$ Dominic went away full of joy at having won over
his brother, slightly taken aback at this close contact with heresy, filled with
encouragement at this first apostolic success outside the frontiers of his ow n
Castile. Already one of the souls whose vague call he had heard in his child¬
hood, from the high cliffs of Caleruega, had now returned to the fold.
Innumerable others were now calling him across this vast territory of
 THE MARCHES
53
Europe into which his road was going to take him.

At last the bishop and his escort arrived at the end of their journey. They
found the court with which they were going to negotiate and were well
received there.46 There, as in Castile, the bishops held the first place in the
Council of the King whose good understanding with the Church was one of
the reasons for they' success. A section of the higher clergy knew the West,
particularly Italy and Paris, where several had done their studies. This was
the case with the new head of the Church in Denmark, the Archbishop of
Lund, Andrew Sunesen, whom we shall soon meet again. The girl, on her
side, granted her ‘consent’.50 The term is in no sense ambiguous. It proves
that the procedure for this kind of agreement was by verba de praesenti which
constituted a genuine marriage though without its forms,51 except in one
case only.52 Such betrothals were, moreover, current in unions between
noble or royal children, in which politics had so large a share. It was, in the
circumstances, a marriage by procuration.53 Afterwards presents were ex¬
changed. The accomplishment of the return to Spain was as laborious as the
outward journey had been. The King of Castile, informed of what had been
done, thanked and dismissed the bishop, then commissioned him to go out
to the Danish March again and this time bring back the girl.54
To read Jordan’s very concise text, one would imagine that the second
expedition was carried out immediately. In actual fact it was only right that
the men taking part should be allowed some rest. Moreover it is not easy to
see, since the matter had been suggested by Castile and mutual consent had
been exchanged in Denmark, why the bishop should have multiplied his
journeys in this way at such a short interval of time. It would have been
simpler, in that case, to bring the girl back the first time he returned.
Doubtless political negotiations which required a certain lapse of time went
hand in hand with the marriage proposals. It was perhaps necessary to wait
for the age for consummation of the marriage. The Infanta reached the
age of fifteen at the end of 1204. The second journey actually took
place in the course of the year 120^, according to all appearances
in summer.55
This time the escort was even more splendid, for it was now a cortege of
honour for the purpose of bringing back the distant princess to Castile. They
took with them the rich presents which were required in such circumstances,
not to mention objects to be sold56 in the course of the journey so as
to provide the finances for it. Dominic again accompanied the bishop, as
did also a fair number of clergy. 57 A disappointment awaited the ambassadors.
The girl, says Jordan, had died in the meantime.58
If, as seems probable, we really are dealing with the daughter of the Count
of Orlamund, matters had perhaps been more complicated than was publicly
admitted. The learned Scandinavian whom we have already mentioned56
3-S. D.
 54 VIR EVANGELICUS

draws attention in fact to two curious documents. One of them proves that
between 1204 and 1206 the Count of Orlamund gave leave to two of his
daughters to enter religion and set aside dowries for them at the abbey of
Saint Mary and Saint Gothard in Heusdorf (today in Thuringia).60 It may be
asked whether the count had two daught ers and whether he was wanting
to settle them both at once. Now the other document61 suggests a hypothesis
that cannot be neglected: perhaps one of the two daughters was the
bride of the youthful Fernando. The text in fact shows Archbishop Andrew
of Lund, the Metropolitan of Denmark, at grips at this time with a difficult
marriage case. A noble lady62 who came under his jurisdiction, had been
united by verba de praesenti, through the intermediary of an ambassador6^
and the giving of a present or symbolic pledges, to a foreigner of noble
birth. 64 Six months later, however, she had gone back upon her engagement
because she had heard, she asserted, that the man was a leper. So, to escape
from a union which inspired her with horror, she had resolved to enter
religion. The abbey had accepted her; however, in view of the fact that she
was in some sort pledged to marriage, she was not given the virgins’ veil
but that of widows.
Her noble fiance, however, on learning of this religious clothing, had sent
a new embassy65 to his wife to claim her, for he was resolved to consummate
the marriage. The archbishop had then intervened, had forbidden any further
step until the Church had pronounced judgement, then, having the ladv
biought before him, had assured himself of the reality of her original
consent. He did not, however, wish to decide the question himself. Only the
lady was under his jurisdiction.66 Perhaps also he wanted to avoid too
much lesponsibility. In the course of the autumn of i2o^,67 he sent a
report to the Pope and asked for his decision: had the lady to be sent back
to her husband or to be kept in the convent ? Such was the matter which
had been preoccupying the head of the Church in Denmark since the
summer.68 It is difficult not to imagine that it refers precisely to the bride
destined for the Infanta of Castile.
The archbishop was certain that the leprosy was a mere tale. It was
manifestly a pretext which enabled the lady to put forward against her
union one of the two exceptions which were still in force at this^period to
dissolve a marriage for which consent had been given but which was not yet
consummated.60 At the same time she had put perself in a position also to
invoke the second: the entry into religion^ As regards the underlying
motive of her action, we can understand only too well the hesitations of
t e young arnsh girl in regard to this marriage which would take her so
ar away, if we think of the painful memory left in her family by the mis-
ortunes of her aunt Ingeburg, sister of Valdemar II.7i It was not twelve
years since Ingeburg had left for the distant west to marry the King of
France. It was the very day after her marriage with Philip Augustus that the
 THE MARCHES SS
unhappy queen, defenceless, and ignorant of the language of her country of
exile, had been flouted, treated with contempt, shut up in a convent and
repudiated, while an intruder occupied her husband’s couch. For twelve
years past, neither the authority of Innocent III, nor the threats of the
Church, nor even the fulmination of an interdict against the kingdom of
France had yet been successful in clearing up satisfactorily the cruel situation
in which the queen found herself. It would seem better to shut oneself up
at once in a convent in the north of Europe, than to suffer, far away in the
south, insults of this type. The girl’s father allowed himself to be influenced.
In the summer of 1205-, however, scruples had arisen in her uncle’s court.
It may be wondered where these scruples, of which people scarcely seemed
aware when she took the veil, came from. It seems probable that they were
elicited by the Bishop of Osma at the time when he was returning to
Denmark to claim the promised fiancee. It was perhaps he, too, who took
upon himself to go and take the request for intervention to the Pope.
Here we can leave the sphere of hypothesis. It is a fact that during the
autumn King Valdemar the Victorious and the Archbishop of Lund sent
simultaneously, through an ambassador, whose name is not given to us,72 a
series of reports and important requests to Pope Innocent III.73 The letter
relating to the marriage case was among them, which emphazises its gravity.
The Pope must have received the packet of letters in December. He replied
to them point by point between 12th and 20th January, 1206. It is also a
fact, moreover, that on taking the return road to the west, in the middle of
this same autumn, the Bishop of Osma, with Dominic still in his train, did
not return to Castile. He contented himself with informing the king of the
frustration of his embassy through a messenger,74 a step that would have
been very casual if all had been ended. As to himself, crossing the Alps, he
went to Rome, to visit the Pope,75 spending a part of the winter at the
papal court,76 for he was the unpaid ambassador of the King of Denmark.
In any case he had several matters to submit in the course of this visit ad
limina. One of them was personal—he had come to ask the Pope to accept
his resignation from the see of Osma. He proposed to devote himself in
future to the apostolate of the pagans.77

This plan, which is known to us from several simultaneous sources,78 is

an unquestioned fact. It is not what one would expect. Nothing in the
bishop’s previous activity in Osma or in his attitude in the course of the
earlier journey allowed such a decision to be foreseen. It was, then, in the
course of his visit to the regions in the north that he conceived it. A proof
of this is given to us by the identity of the pagans whom he proposed to
evangelize. Jordan of Saxony, who did not know their name directly, was
reduced to conjectures about it. The first edition of his Libellus speaks of the
Sheens, the second corrects this and speaks of the Cumans ;79 in both case§
i6 VIR EVANGELICUS

we are dealing with probable suppositions and nothing more.80 Pierre des
Vaux-de-Cernai, a Cistercian monk whose Histoire albigeoise is valuable for
this part of the history of St Dominic, speaks only of the pagans.81 In 1217,
however, Dominic, who evidently shared in the apostolic projects of his
bishop and since then had never despaired of taking them up once more,
spoke of them in confidence to a young cleric in the Roman curia. He
indicated in clear terms his firm intention, as soon as he had finished
organizing his order, of abandoning all position of authority and going
to evangelize Prussia and the other nordic countries.82 It was clearly
these pagans who were in question as far back as 1 205-, for his bishop as for
himself. This time again general history throws a very clear light on his
intention.
It was more than fifty years since the vast movement of Drang nach Osten
had begun. This expansion of Christendom towards the east Irom the central
part of the north had not slackened, but had undergone a considerable
change at the turn of the thirteenth century. 83 In earlier times it was chieflv
the Germans who had been its promoters. At one and the same time
military, demographic, religious and civilizing, the expansion found its
ecclesiastical roots in the archiepiscopal see of Bremen-Hamburg, and its
temporal basis in Saxony (or Brunswick) and Brandenburg. A good part of
the remainder of the country, however, collaborated in it by intense emigra¬
tion. Religious Germany devoted itself to this expansion through the
action of its bishops, its regular clergy, particularly the Premonstratensians
and Cistercians, and its military orders.
After the death of Albert the Bear and the crushing of Henry the Lion by
Barbarossa had broken for a time the force of expansion of Saxony and
Brandenburg, Denmark in full phase of development had taken turns with
Germany. The independence of the metropolitan see of Lund at the ex¬
tremity of the Scandinavian peninsula, acquired since the twelfth century,
had given the Danes an ecclesiastical centre whose influence soon exceeded
that of Bremen-Hamburg, since it finally grouped under its authority as many
as fifteen suffragan sees. In 1201 the great archbishop whom we have just
met, Andrew Sunesen,84 was appointed to this see. A man of interior life,
zealous, a very good theologian, he enjoyed the confidence of Pope Innocent
who several times appointed him legate of the northern countries His
aposto ic energy was later to find itself seconded by the military action of
King Valdemar II as well as by the members of his own family, the
Sunes0nner. Now m this same year 1201, Bishop Albert8* founded the city
o iga to which he transferred the episcopal see of Livonia which had been
evangelized by the Cistercians for the last twenty years. In 120,, the Arch¬
bishop of Lund and the Bishop of Riga prepared in common an extensive
missionary campaign in Livonia and Estonia, which was to be protected by
Pamsh and German forces, in particular those of the crusaders of Livonja and
 THE MARCHES
S7

the knights known as Sword-bearers recently founded in Riga.86 The expedi¬

tion was to be launched the following year and was expected to bear much
fruit. All along the Baltic Sea, however, from Pomerania to Finland, from
the Isle of Oesel to the Isle of Riigen, the religious orders of the twelfth
century and the newly founded sees supported more or less closely by the
German feudal lords and the Danish and Polish nobles, devoted themselves
to similar missionary enterprises. In such enterprises the considerable
progress of the process of Christianization lay either in direct evangelization
of the pagans or in their being driven back by Christian emigration from the
West. 87
In this summer of 120^, in the final stages of their journey and during
their stay with the King of Denmark and the Archbishop of Lund, Diego and
Dominic were thus able to rediscover, in a more intense degree, the
atmosphere familiar to Castilians like themselves—projects, negotiations,
preparations, recruitment of soldiers and apostles, for whom the horizon of
military expeditions was the conquest of sotds and of political expansion the
planting of the Church. They were amazed to discover towards the East
lands with no definite boundary where evangelization could thrust forward
in search of pagans without let or hindrance. For they discerned at the
same time, what was not the case in Spain, an undeniable effort to pass
beyond military enterprises and frontiers and to influence the pagans in their
territory by preaching. The mission of the Danes under the direction of
Andrew of Lund sought to be more independent of military action than that
of the German clerics. Thus, even more than in Spain, workers were lacking
for the harvest for which the fields were white. There was a particular need
of priests and clerics, and the bishops strove to attract them by all possible
means in a recruiting campaign which resembled that of the crusade.88
Archbishop Andrew liked to take zealous religious from the monasteries to
form around himself a fervent community and a team of collaborators ready
for any mission in the Church.86 This was indeed an invitation for apostolic
hearts. The quiet diocese of Osma whose reconstruction dated from less than
a century earlier, already seemed Christian territory of long standing by the
side of these new lands. The savage reactions of the pagans were there, paving
the way for opportunities of glorious martyrdom. Missionaries who under¬
went lengthy tortures and were cut in pieces alive were spoken of. To the
end of his life Dominic would preserve heroic regret for such a martyr’s
death in a very precise image.60 Flenceforward Diego wanted to be a
missionary and nothing else, taking his companion, of course, with him.
That was what he had come to declare to the head of Christendom, asking
him to discharge him from his responsibilities as a bishop. Perhaps the
letters in his hands from the Primate of Lund which asked for extraordinary
powers from the Sovereign Pontiff for the coming mission in Estonia61 pro¬
vided a concrete explanation of this surprising request.
 VIR EVANGELTCUS
S8
Innocent III refused. Ever since the end of the eleventh century the papacy
had been following very closely and seconding energetically the reconquests
and evangelization of Spain. Just as Urban II had not accepted the crusader s
vow of the Archbishop of Toledo, Bernard de Sedirac, in 109^,92 so Innocent
III would not accept a resignation which proved all too clearly the value of
the prelate of which Castile would thus have been deprived. Nor would he
agree, despite the entreaties of Diego, to allow the bishop to go off to the
missions with a crusader’s indulgence, at the same time retaining his
episcopal office.93 On the contrary, he once more enjoined upon him his
pastoral mission in the diocese of Osma.94 As to the matrimonial problem,
Innocent’s decision was likewise against the conjugal bond.95 It was thus
necessary to start the journey back. In every respect the journey was ending
in frustration and the very extensive horizon which had momentarily opened
up seemed to be closing in again. On taking once again the road to Castile
with their escort, an escort that was now pointless, Diego and Dominic
could not help feeling that they were abandoning a providential task. Their
immense pity for souls in the world had not ceased to be exercised under
the most varied forms: the erring souls of Christians tempted by heresy in
the valley of the Garonne and the plains of the Lauragais; the souls of the
pagan Slavs—Wends, Prussians, Livonians, Estonians, savage and often even
hostile in the far-stretching plains of the north. In the depths of his memory
Dominic carried away the image of the sandy coasts of the Baltic sea, of its
grey waters and innumerable islands. He hoped one day to return there as
a missionary or at least to find genuine apostles for them. Already in his heart
this paradox of history was germinating, the paradox that meant that St
Dominic, born so to speak next door to the Saracens, was to dream to the
end of his life of evangelizing the regions of the north, and was to create
among them, during his own lifetime, powerful missionary provinces,
whereas St Francis, who did not know the Moslems through the circumstances
of his birth, succeeded in bringing the Gospel to them himself and sent them
some of his best sons.

What happened then remains rather mysterious. It leads us to think that

peihaps the Pope did not totally discourage the missionary goodwill of the
two Castilians. Instead of returning to Spain by the route through Provence,
the bishop and his companions went back towards the Great St Bernard.
Crossing the Jura they passed over into Burgundy to visit Citeaux.96 Diego,
once more, had just seen the Cistercians at work. The great order which
Alfonso VIII was supporting with all his power in Castile had recently
appeared to the Bishop of Osma in a less favourable aspect, for his diocese
only knew the order under the guise of the fighting monks of Fitero-
Calatrava, who had been received at San Pedro de Gumiel.97 In actual fact
the Order of St Bernard was something quite different—an immense
 THE MARCHES 59

reservoir of religious strength, both edifying and generous. Innocent III was
continually drawing upon it for the general tasks of the Church. He was
going to do so again for the great mission in Livonia-Estonia, for Pomerania,
but above all for the Albigensian lands.98 It would seem probable that he
charged the bishop to urge the Cistercians to send into the territories of
Toulouse the preachers whom up to that time his letters had reclaimed in
vain. 99 Three years later, we learn that, when Milon and Thedise were
appointed in Rome legates for the Albigensian territory, they went with all
speed to Burgundy to meet the abbot of Citeaux before going to Provence.100
Perhaps Diego on his side received some unofficial mission connected with
the Cistercians entrusted with the Albigensian territory.101 An unexpected
incident, related by Jordan, might lead us to believe so. When he arrived at
Citeaux, Diego wanted to be clothed in symbolic fashion102 with the habit
of the white monks and did not take the road to the south again until he was
accompanied by several of the monks, whom the abbey readily consented to
spare.105
The clothing in the monastic habit of a secular prelate was not an unheard-
of thing; nor was it purposeless. It gave the stranger entry into the fraternity
of the order and associated him with its activity. The gesture was particularly
charged with meaning in the case of missionary enterprises.104 When in 1199
Pierre de Castelnau had been provisionally associated with the Cistercian
legate of the Narbonensis, he was a Canon Regular and Archdeacon of
Maguelonne. Now, a few months before he received this office as his
principal function, at the same time as a Cistercian from Fontfroide, in 1 203,
he was seen asking for the habit of St Bernard in this same abbey.105 Before
this, he had shown no wish at all for it, quite the contrary.106 We do not
know of his motives in detail.I0? One thing, however, is certain—his taking
of the habit at Fontfroide ensured unity between the members of the
pontifical mission and suppressed many causes of misunderstanding among
the collaborators at a period when an over-attention to esprit de corps was
everywhere multiplying ruinous quarrels.108 Now Diego, as will be seen,
was going to collaborate in the Cistercian mission immediately it left the
mother abbey. It would seem that his visit and clothing were a kind of
initial contact.
The hypothesis is attractive. It is difficult to decide to abandon it. Other
known facts corroborate it.109 The direct documents, however, do not
support it. Jordan of Saxony, the only one to mention the journey to Citeaux,
has given another significance to the clothing—that the bishop was filled with
admiration on discovering such a large number of servants of God and a
religious life of such a high standard. This would have been the reason for his
gesture. If later he met the Cistercian legates of the Narbonensis on the
return journey to Spain, it was pure coincidence.110
Perhaps Jordan was mistaken or rather did not know the real state of the
bo VIR EVANGELICUS

matter. If he was right, however, the taking of the habit was an indication ol
the place that Diego wanted to make for the Cistercians in his diocese and
even in his own life. It also marked his anxiety to link up the foundations of
the order in his territory with the Burgundian abbey directly and not with
San Pedro de Gumiel, any more than with the network of the abbeys of
Castile.111 Certain monks were given him for this plan of development.112 A
most dynamic prelate, he did not linger over projects that were over and
done with, and without delay thought out new fields of fruitful activity.
The matrimonial mission had ended in failure. Providence, however, at its
good pleasure, disposed the ends of this mission in accordance with its
purposes of salvation. Providence thus used the journey as an occasion and a
prelude for a marriage that was of value in a different way, a marriage
between God and the souls which he intended to bring back through the
instrumentality of the whole Church, from many errors and sins, to the
betrothal of eternal salvation. Events would prove this to be so.114
 Chapter V

THE NARBONENSIS

W HEN Innocent III assumed the government of Christendom in

1198, it was a long time since the Catholic Church had been
guided by a hand so mighty, so sure of itself. Certainly to find a
Pontiff equally decided one would have to go back seventeen years earlier,
through a series of short-lived Popes, to the energetic figure of Alexander III.
Innocent, however, was even greater than Alexander. The extent of the
tasks which this Pope of thirty-seven fearlessly devoted himself from the
first moment of his reign, and the effectiveness of the actions he undertook
on all sides at once to carry out his responsibilities, is truly astonishing.
Spiritual and moral encouragement, preaching and supervision of doctrine,
the government of men and of institutions, settlement of an imperial schism
and the correction of kings, the crusade in the East and the reform of the
West; all these he dealt with, together with many other problems, in the
full consciousness of his duty and his powers.
In the vineyards of the Lord that his immediate predecessors had partially
neglected, one matter was to cause him some of his greatest anxieties. He
inscribed it, indeed, in the programme of the Fourth Council of the Lateran
at the end of his life, as Alexander III had done in the Third Council.1 This
was the peril to the faith in the region that Frenchmen of the time called the
‘Albigeois’ and the Roman documents, Provence—to speak precisely, in the
territories which found their centre of gravity in the ecclesiastical province
of the Narbonensis and in the lay county of Toulouse.2 These lands, which
St Dominic was to travel across in all directions during a dozen years,
comprised the archiepiscopal see of Narbonne with its suffragan sees of
Toulouse, Carcassonne, Elne, Beziers, Agde, Lodeve, Maguelonne (Substan-
tion),3 Nimes and Uzes; to which it was necessary to add a circle of dioceses
—Couserans-Saint-Liziers and St Bertrand de Comminges in the province of
Auch; Agen, in that of Bordeaux; Albi and Rodez, in that of Bourges;
Viviers, in that of Vienne; finally Avignon and Orange in the province of
Arles. To these territories the Pontifical Letters joined, so far as defence of
the faith was concerned, the provinces of Aix and Embrun, which were
partially dependent in temporal matters on the Count of Toulouse.
The activity of St Dominic in the Albigeois was preaching. As such it
formed part of the intensive action against heresies conducted by Innocent in
62 VIR EVANGELIC US

this territory.4 This activity in turn appeared inextricably linked, in the

documents as in actual fact, with an effort which causes us some surprise, a
relentless campaign against bands of mercenaries: ‘Almost the whole uni¬
verse knows how much the Church has struggled through her preachers and
her crusaders to eliminate the heretics and the mercenaries from the province
of Narbonne, and from the neighbouring regions’,s was the way the Pope
summed up his work in the Albigeois on a solemn occasion. About forty
years earlier, the 27th canon of the Council of the Lateran, a result of the
Church’s experience in this very territory, similarly connected the two
together.6 Finally all this was set within the framework of one general
matter, the negotium Jidei et pads,7 the pivot, at the turn of the thirteenth
century, of a variety of individual actions of the Church in the south of
France, of which the movement of the peace of God had been the source.8
What was in question was an enterprise of Christian civilization, in which
the defence of the faith and of ecclesiastical communities went hand in hand
with the safeguarding of peace, the protection of the weak, the freedom of
the highways, the prohibition of usury and of new taxes.6 For this action, in
which the bishops and the Pope followed closely the elementary interests of
Christian society now confronted with the disorders of the first centuries of
feudalism, they had been endowed by that society with means of temporal
coercion which would henceforth support the effectiveness of their spiritual
sanctions. The background of the actions of St Dominic, ‘indefatigable
promoter of peace and faith’10 is thus shown to be singularly complex. The
meaning and value of his actions cannot be measured without evoking their
context in Christendom.

The attitude of the Christians of that time was relatively simple. The
prince, in their view, wielded the sword to ensure the temporal security of
the values essential to man. None of them mattered more than peace, the
liberty of the Church, orthodoxy. Orthodoxy was more important than all
else, since an error in the way of salvation might prove permanentlv
irreparable. It was thus for the Church to watch over orthodoxy and to
remind the prince of his duty of defending it at the same time as spiritual
liberty and peace. The prince had not the right to constrain the infidel and
the Jew to accept the faith, for faith cannot be forced; but he had the duty
of obliging the baptized to remain faithful to the promises of their baptism, u
He protected the people by eliminating heretics, that is to say, those holding
perverted opinions who actively propagated their sect from his territory. If,
however, the prince did not fulfil his threefold task of peace, of liberty and
of fidelity, it was the duty of the hierarchy to constrain him to do so by
spiritual sanctions. Equally it could set in motion against him the arm of his
overlord or of the king whose vassal he was. Should the suzerain himself be
in default the hierarchy was not without a weapon. By releasing subjects from
 THE NARBONENSIS
63

their oath of fidelity, by ‘exposing as a prey’12 the territory of the defaulter,

by binding the vassals together in an oath of peace, the hierarchy constituted
a half-revolutionary force of coercion in the service of peace and orthodoxy.
To defend these essential values it might even summon a real crusade
against the unworthy prince. The 27th canon of the Lateran gave the essential
rulings for this.13
Such were the formulae which governed the negotium fidci et pads in the
time of St Dominic. These formulae appeared logical and natural enough.
They were to prove as provocative of bloodshed in actual fact as the
feudal formulae and were to lead to massacres which inspire us with
horror, because they introduced into religious controversies the summary
proceedings of political and military operations and the uncontrolled
reactions of the instincts of defence and fear of the popular masses. Before
judging them, however, it should be remembered that such dramas were the
consequence, a consequence which on this point was disastrous, of ideas and
sentiments which made Europe and Western civilization—the desire, spon¬
taneous and sincere, despite its compromises with conscience and its
blunders, of building a complete human order on a single faith.
Such formulae made the smooth working of Christendom depend on a
system of actions which controlled and supported each other in turn. Should
one of those responsible for such actions come to default, the reaction of the
others should re-establish the equilibrium. A grave crisis could not break out
, unless such defections extended to almost every sector of the Church. The
catastrophe which threatened Christianity in the Albigeois thus had causes
which were genuinely complex, and were as much temporal as they were
ecclesiastical and spiritual.

They were of relatively recent origin. At the time of the Gregorian

reform, nothing had enabled men to foresee this crisis. Careful research14
has recently shown that the province of the Narbonensis then contained only
a very limited number of simoniacal prelates, side by side with good, some¬
times very good, pastors. The lower clergy seem to have been less con¬
taminated by incontinence than elsewhere. The abbeys, which were
numerous, were still following the influence of the reforming movement
which with St Benedict Aniane had gone forth from their midst to renew
the spirit of Carolingian monachism. As to the feudal lords of the region,
they had supplied the first crusade with its basic contingents and its military
leader in the person of the Count of Toulouse, Raymond de St Gilles, most
loyal to the mind of the Pope. The reform, coming upon the scene in the
midst of these circumstances, had met with good will in the various milieux.
Abuses existed, but they were in part unconscious. The laity restored, at
least in exchange for repurchase, numerous churches and tithes. The
episcopal sees and many abbeys recovered the freedom of their elections.
 64 VIR EVANGELICUS

To defend their independence the bishops could develop their temporal

power. The abbeys, moreover, saw assigned to them a sometimes consider¬
able number of parishes which they were to provide with more worthy
clergy. Finally Citeaux, after Cluny, obtained a foothold in the land. After
such an inauguration in the twelfth century, this province might have been
expected to be particularly brilliant on the Catholic plane. It was the
contrary that happened; it may well be wondered why.
As to temporal affairs,^ one great fact dominated the history of these
regions—the powerlessness of the Counts of Toulouse, Counts of Albi,
Dukes of Narbonne and Marquises of Provence, to set up a powerful and
unified principality, a genuine replica of the kingdom of France which the
Capetian dynasty was creating to the north of the Loire. It was true that
Raymond V (d. i 194) had extended his suzerainty over vast regions east and
west of the Rhone, between the Garonne and the Alps. For the territories to
the east, however, he had had to struggle interminably against the house of
Aragon. Too weak to continue the struggle, he had finally abandoned the
county of Provence to Aragon, and had contented himself with the marqui-
sate, that is to say, with the suzerainty over the fiefs of the north. Around
Toulouse, towards the west, his successor Raymond AI had obtained a few
victories—Agen, Rodez, Viviers, the Gevaudan; he even finally obtained the
homage of the Viscount of Narbonne, a Lara of Castile. He did not, however,
bring under his authority either his immediate neighbours to the south, the
Counts of Foix and of Comminges, those petty kings of the Pyrenees, or the
Lord of Montpellier. Moreover, he possessed only an illusory authority over
the chief of his vassals and his adversaries, the powerful Trencavel, Viscount
of Beziers, Carcassonne, Raz^s and Albi, whose domains, solidly grouped to
the immediate west of Toulouse, intersected his own territories from north
to south and broke his power.
Now the King of England, present in Aquitaine, periodically exerted
pressure on the Count of Toulouse to constrain him to do him homage. The
King of Aragon, the enemy of Provence, was also master of the Roussillon to
the south of the Narbonensis and even, from 1 204 onwards, of Montpellier.
From there he gave his effective aid to Trencavel’s rebellions. Finally, the
King of France, the theoretical overlord to whom Count Raymond V had
recently launched an anguished appeal for help, 16 paralysed at the turn of the
thirteenth century by his own quarrels with England, could not and would
not do anything to remedy the disorder of these lands in the south. Add to
this the insubordination of the great vassals of Trencavel—the lords of the
Lauragais, the Saissageois, the Cabardes, the Minervois, the Termenes
t e Razes and of the land Sault; the even more pronounced insubordination
of the towns of Toulouse, Carcassonne, Beziers, Nfmes or Avignon-
and finally the anarchical spirit of a peasant nobility that was num¬
erous and half-starving—and it will be understood what factors of
 THE NARBONENS1S

disruption were at work in the domains of the Count of Toulouse. This

land of rebellion was becoming in particular the refuge of heresiarchs
expelled in turn from the other principalities of the west. Christian peace
and justice were the first to suffer from them.
The life of the Midi of France at the outset of the thirteenth century is all
too easily painted in idyllic colours-—toleration, easy love, the song of the
troubadours.17 The brilliant splendour of the courts of Carcassonne and of
Toulouse in the time of Roger II and of the ‘good Count’ Raymond V is
beyond question. The deep-rooted immorality of these southern princes is
likewise beyond question. Far, however, from being an unending source of
joy, this lack of moral discipline was one of the causes of the blood-stained
dramas of the land. We have only to think of Eleanor of Aquitaine or of
Pedro II of Aragon. In any case the drama was real enough. The land was laid
waste by continual violence of which the principal cause was the frustration
of the effort of unity aimed at by the house of Saint-Gilles. Treaties between
Toulouse and Aragon (1176, 1184, 1200)18 might be multiplied, marriage
ties formed between Aragon, Toulouse and Trencavel, the sworn peace
renewed in 1191 and 1 19S19 —all such remedies were only provisional so
long as the political problem of the supreme unity was not solved. Moreover,
violence was so deeply rooted everywhere that it continued even within a
period of truce-—sudden attacks, confiscation, pillage, brigandage by bands
of ruffians, continued to increase even in the time of peace.
This was because the vagueness of the link between vassal and lord, by
restraining the military power of the feudal leaders, forced them to recruit
mercenaries to maintain their enterprises. Thus there arose those bands of
mercenaries, Aragonese, men of Navarre, Gascons and even hired soldiers
from Brabant, whose brutalities filled the documents of the time.20 Com¬
manded by the princes who had engaged them or left to their own devices
when they were dismissed, the mercenaries recognized no limits. ‘They
exercised such cruelty in regard to Christians’, the Third Council of the
Lateran had already declared,21 ‘that they respected neither churches nor
monasteries, spared neither widows, orphans, old men, children, age nor
sex. Like pagans they destroyed everything and laid waste everything.’ With
the poor folk whose defence she had undertaken, the Church was thus the
first victim of these ruffians who found in sacrilege an additional zest to their
cruelties. They were also thought to be linked with the heretics, since
they shared their hatred of the clergy. The Church in any case pursued both
one and the other with the same movement, in the illusion that by snatching
the weapon of mercenary troops from the hands of the feudal lords, she would
force them to peace and would then enable them to fulfil their role as
Christian rulers better by defending the faith.
Her utterances, however, were in vain. At the turn of the thirteenth
century the feudal lords, beginning with Raymond VI, kept their mercenaries.
 66 VIR EVANGELICUS

Raymond VI did not content himself with keeping them despite the Church;
he was the first to set them against her. When he entered the province of
Arles at the head of his Aragonese, ravaging all he found in his way, he was
met by the Bishop of Orange who begged him to spare the monasteries and
at least to refrain from devastating the land during the times of truce and the
great feasts. Raymond, then seizing the bishop’s right hand, swore by that
hand that he would respect neither times of truce nor Sundays, and would
spare neither holy places nor churchmen. Now this oath, or rather this
perjury, added Innocent III,22 ‘he observed more scrupulously than any of
those he had taken in a just cause’. Pillage and devastation, the usurpation of
lands and rights, churches robbed, burned or transformed into fortresses,
monks and clerics molested, a bishop despoiled and driven from his see,
another imprisoned with his clergy whilst his palace and his chapter were
destroyed—such was the violence against the Church to which in 1209
Raymond had to plead guilty. He had committed many other violent
actions.23 Lists equivalent in length or even longer could be established in
regard to the other feudal lords of the vicinity2^—Roger II of Beziers,
Raymond-Roger Count of Foix, Bertrand de Saissac, Olivier de Termes,
Raymond de Niort and his brothers, etc. Such lists could also be established
in connection with certain towns—that of Lodeve which robbed and mal¬
treated its bishop in 1198,2s that of Carcassonne which in 1207 expelled its
bishop;26 that of Beziers which two years earlier had assassinated the holder
of the see. 27 We may wonder what was the cause of such violence.
At this time both the lords and the communes were tempted by the hope
of easy gain to assaulting the property of the Church without scruple in many
other places of Christendom. The instability and disorder of the Midi,
however, lent themselves to this more particularly. The failure of the Count
of Toulouse in his efforts at hegemony further exasperated him when con¬
fronted with the possessions and temporal powers of the Church, to the
enlargement ol which the restitutions of the Gregorian period had contri¬
buted in a curious way at the expense of the laity. 2» At the other end of the
feudal hierarchy the wretchedness of the country nobles sharpened their
instinct for pillage. Egalitarianism of succession, a heritage from Roman law,
had brought the feudal patrimonies to nothing, multiplying co-lords in the
same locality2?—thirty-five at Mirepoix, forty-three at Rabasteins, fifty at
Lombeis, more than fifty at Fanjeaux.3o The disproportion between the
poverty of the knights and the wealth of the monasteries accumulated
by mortmain was marked.

The principal cause for the attacks of the laity, however, lay elsewhere
The documents leave no doubt at all as to this. The reason must primarily be
sought in the virulent anti-clericalism which the nobility and the townsmen
of the Albigensian lands derived from their contacts with the heretics. 31 If the
 THE NARBONENSIS 67

burghers of Carcassonne had banished their bishop in 1207, it was because

he had dared to speak against the heretics from the pulpit.32 If the Count of
Foix allowed two monks of Saint-Antonin de Pamiers to be cruelly massacred
by one of his loyal followers, then starved the monks and the abbot by bolting
them into their chapel whilst he defiled, pillaged and destroyed the abbey,
and finally drove these unfortunate men almost naked out into the country,
it was because they dared to close the place whose lords they were against a
certain ‘Perfect’, his aunt.33 Bertrand de Saissac, like Guillaume de Minerve,
Pierre-Roger de Cabaret, Pierre-Roger de Mirepoix, Raymond or Olivier
de Termes, was a notorious heretic. Moreover, he was guardian of the young
Raymond-Roger Trencavel, whom he was bringing up in reverence for the
sect. 34 Raymond-Roger, Count of Foix, of whom we have just been speaking
had allowed Phillippa, his wife, to become a ‘Perfect’ and to go and keep,
in Dun, a house for ladies belonging to the Catharists, at which house he
actually used to go and visit her.35 He also had two sisters in the sects.
He was personally present at the solemn reception into heresy of his sister
Esclarmonde and of four other ladies, about 1204, in Fanjeaux, in the
presence of the nobility of the district, almost all congregated there.36 Such
assemblies of nobles were usual in the Albigeois for participation in some
solemn rite of heresy, to listen to a disputation, or to receive the ordinary
teaching of a ‘bisbe’ or of a deacon of the Catharists; instances at this time
are mentioned by the documents in the majority of places in the Lauragais,
the Razes, and the region of Toulouse. A number of lords had a mother or
a sister living in one or other of the communities of Catharists and they
willingly entrusted their children to them for their upbringing. 37 The
information acquired later by the Inquisition or by the investigators com¬
missioned by St Louis leaves no doubt: at the beginning of the thirteenth
century almost the whole of the feudal class in the County of Toulouse and
the Viscounty of Beziers-Carcassonne was favourable to the heresy, or at
least influenced by its preaching. Whole families of Catharists existed going
back three or four generations. The situation was the same in the majority
of the cities with borough rights. The case of Carcassonne and of Beziers has
already been seen; Toulouse—Tolosa, Tota dolosa,38 said the proverb—had
for long been contaminated to such an extent that the bishop scarcely felt
himself safe there.39 Finally certain strongholds or castles: Castres, Lombes,
Lavaur, Mirepoix, Fanjeaux, Cabaret, Termes, Montsegur, were veritable
bases and strongholds of heresy.4°
Earlier, however, there had been one exception. On the topmost rung of
the ladder of temporal authority Count Raymond V (d. 1194) sought in all
sincerity to arrest the spread of the heresy. He felt himself, however, crushed
to the extent of appealing in 1177 for help to the kings of France and of
England, while he sent to the General Chapter of Citeaux the significant
avowal:
 68 VIR EVANGELICUS

I myself, although I am armed with one of the two divine swords and confess that
I am established as the avenger and minister of God precisely for this end, seek
in vain the means of putting a limit or a term to such heterodoxy and I have to
recognize that my strength is not sufficient to overcome so widespread and so
difficult a problem, because the most important nobles of my land are ravaged by
this disease, drawing away after them a very great multitude of men who
apostatise from the faith; so that I neither dare nor can undertake anything.4i

His son, Raymond VI, no longer suffered this anguish. He refused in fact,
and he sometimes declared this expressly, to disturb any of his subjects for
reasons of heresy.42 This may be thought indifference or liberalism but such
were not the sentiments of the time. It was rather an anxiety not to weaken
his power in any way by taking measures against a large number of his
followers. It was also beyond question a holding back in his belief. If he gave
no formal sign of apostasy and now and again made gestures in favour of the
Church or of the monks, he made more substantial ones still in favour of
the Catharists. He had also suggested to one of his numerous ‘wives’—succes¬
sive or simultaneous—that she should enter a house of the ‘Perfect.’43 He
was surrounded with familiars who were suspect; it was even said that he
kept two of the ‘Perfect’ with him wearing ordinary dress.44
It was not that any of these feudal lords became a complete Catharist, i.e.
a ‘Perfect’. For that it would have been necessary for them to abandon their
occupations and their wealth, practising an austerity and a chastity which
certainly did not enter into their habits of life. There existed, however,
several ways of attaching oneself to the Catharists and many degrees in one’s
adherence. A good many contented themselves with appreciating the
preaching and the good example of the Perfect and above all their profession
of absolute poverty. A clergy absolutely poor, living on alms from the
faithful without asking for anything except what people willingly gave, was
attractive. So were communities who were not only poor but very gener¬
ous. The contrast with the wealthy abbeys of the neighbourhood, and with
the prelates of the Roman Church, was striking. However little one might
be persuaded, as was Raymond of Toulouse, for instance, ‘ that such and
such a Bishop of the Catharists could easily prove the superiority of his
faith over that of the Catholics’,45 it can be understood that the feudal lords
felt inclined not only to leave the ministers of heresy in peace, but even to
favour them in every possible way.
Many went a step further: they became ‘believers’ in the heresy. Cathar-
ism in the West had largely increased its following by deriving every possible
advantage from the consolamentum, a real kind of sacrament bequeathed to it
by the Bogomils. Through an imposition of hands which restored to their
followers his ‘holy spirit’, a kind of guardian angel of consolation dwelling
near to God 46 he received the certainty of belonging to the community of
the angels, destined to recover in Heaven, at the moment of death, his
 THE NARBONENSIS 69

spiritual body in beatitude. Now if the consolamentum was usually only

conferred after a long and austere penance, it could be granted to the dying
without any preparation and by anyone belonging to the Perfect. The
‘believer’ was in his last hour a candidate for the Perfect. While awaiting
this ultimate transformation he could continue his ordinary life. A Perfect
linked with him by the contract known as convenientia had undertaken to
procure the consolamentum for him at the right moment. Thus more than one
lord kept a Perfect at hand, from whom he expected this service. It was
claimed that this was precisely the case of Raymond VI.
It must be recognized that the advantages of this position were considerable,
for the feudal lords as well as the burghers. It took them back to those
times, before Charlemagne, when the great persuaded themselves that the
prayer and penance of the monks whom they maintained by their bequests
dispensed them from the obligations of Christian morality. Things were no
longer like that in the Western Church, particularly since the time of the
Gregorian reform, when popes and bishops had definitely turned towards
the world to orientate that too towards the Kingdom of God. They demanded
from the ministers of the secular sword, at the same time as the profession
and maintenance of orthodoxy, respect for justice, peace and conjugal
morals. This was what Innocent III demanded, at the risk of alienating the
best political supporters of the Church, even in the Albigeois, an attitude
which lacked neither courage nor nobility;47 whereas the Catharists, so
austere in their personal lives, permitted everything to their followers, who
were also their protectors.48 The burghers found them favourable to their
policy of unlimited gain, to their commercial transactions and to that
loan with interest which the Church then obstinately prohibited. The feudal
lords were assured by them of eternal salvation—concerning which they
were no more disinterested than their contemporaries—without having to
retrench anything from the licentiousness of their morals, or from the
violence and injustice of their enterprises. Even more, Catharism, especially
relentless against marriage which it accused of multiplying by generation
souls which were captives of the demon, preferred the transitory character
of debauchery to the stability and fecundity of conjugal relations.49 At the
same time its hatred against the Roman Church—‘Synagogue of Satan’
‘cavern of thieves’, ‘great prostitute’ of the Apocalypseso —-fanned the flame
of the anti-clericalism of the laity and justified their enterprises against
ecclesiastical persons and property.
A firm Catholic conviction would clearly have enabled them to resist
temptation. It remained to be seen whether the action of the clergy of the
south of France was capable of maintaining or reawakening such a conviction.

One must not be too ready to speak of a corrupt clergy. Clearly, the
clergy in the Albigeois had its defects.si The commissioners sent by the Pope
 VIR EVANGELICUS
7°
did not cease complaining of the ‘disgraceful conduct of the clergy .52 The
lawsuits instituted, for instance, against the leader of the Province, Berenger
de Narbonne, provided evidence that the prelate was simoniacal, avaricious
and negligent, and did not hesitate to take as his assistant a leader of the
mercenaries. In 1198, in 120^ and particularly in 1211 — 13, the majority
of the bishops of the Narbonensis and of the neighbouring dioceses found
themselves deposed, or transferred.53 All things considered, however, the
clergy here were perhaps no worse than in former times nor than was the
case elsewhere. There is scarcely any talk of immorality nor even of lack of
personal piety. It was perhaps secular preoccupations, especially the cares ol
the temporal power which a good number of them had been developing
since the Gregorian reform, that, by absorbing too great a share of their
activity, paralysed their pastoral action. This may well have been the case,
since it was for his avarice that one or another of them was reproached.
Nevertheless, an historian has justly pointed out that the situation of the
Church was immeasurably better in dioceses where the prelates enjoyed an
extensive temporal power and a considerable revenue.54 This was the case
at Narbonne, with the scandalous Berenger in particular, and at Montpellier,
where the prelates had succeeded in preserving the orthodoxy of their city
incorrupt since the twelfth century. On the other hand, it was the two
ruined and disarmed dioceses of Carcassonne and of Toulouse that were the
most affected. Toulouse, ‘the dead diocese’,55 where Bishop Fulcrand had
had to live in the style of a humble townsman; where Bishop Fulk, entering
upon his office in noj,- found in the episcopal treasury only ninety-six sous
of the local currency. s6 It was indeed a diocese so vast, so difficult to govern
that in the fourteenth century a whole province could be carved out of it:
an archbishopric with seven suffragan sees.57
The capital defect revealed by the Pope was, with pastoral negligence, the
cowardice of the prelates who dared not tackle the heresy face to face, nor
have it proscribed by the lay authorities. ‘Dogs, who no longer know how
to bark’, ‘mercenaries who take flight and drive away the wolf neither by
theii voice nor with their stick , soldiers who ‘do not mount upon the
breach , who forbid their sword to shed blood’. Such were the invectives
which Innocent III let fly at the prelates of the Narbonensis.58 The attitude
of one of the best of these bishops, Guillaume Peyre,59 who governed his
diocese of Albi in peace from 11 8S to 1227, should be noted. Belonging to
the nobility of the land, like the majority of his colleagues, he did not even
succeed in preventing the members of his own family from adhering
politically to heresy, let alone a number of his subjects. His art of govern-
ment consisted in lending an ear to everyone, even to the heterodox, in
establishing peace and maintaining it among the princes of the region while
he strove, with genuine piety, to reform the discipline of his monks and
clergy, without moreover being absolutely certain of their orthodoxy. He
 THE NARBONENSIS 71

finally achieved a diplomatic tour deforce, that of governing his diocese for
nearly half a century without it being possible, among the vast collection of
his official decrees, to come across any word which might indicate the
presence in his territory of a heresy which was nevertheless in the process
of ravaging it. He had sometimes preached but in a paternal way, without
supporting his words with the weight of authority. His prudence will be
understood when the fate is recalled of one of his predecessors at Albi,
arrested by Trencavel, and entrusted, through mockery, to the safe-keeping
of the heretics,60 the fate of the Bishops of Agen, Rodez, Carpentras and
Vaison, ill-treated by Raymond of Toulouse,61 that of the Bishops of Lodeve,
of Beziers62 or of Carcassonne, imprisoned, assassinated or expelled by the
townsmen, and finally, that of the pontifical legate, Peter of Castelnau,
massacred in his turn. It may be asked what the one or the other would have
gained by setting up opposition and speaking out.
In actual fact, the drama was not on the plane of morality, or of regular
procedure or even of courage. At the head of such dioceses not even heroes
would have succeeded in breaking the general will of the laity which
favoured, or at least tolerated, the activity of the heretics. Saints capable of
changing the hearts and convictions of the temporal authorities as well as of
their subjects would have been necessary. Holy parish priests would also
clearly have been necessary to counter-balance the action of heresy among
the masses of the people.
It is here perhaps that we shall best measure the weakness of Catholicism
in the face of the preaching of the heterodox. Knowledge about the state of
the lower clergy at this time in the Albigeois is inadequate. Neither the
reforming legislation of the Councils nor the rare anecdotes which can still
be read today in the documents justify us in supposing that it was very
different from that of the rest of France.63 All that is known is that it was
under the influence of fear, and sought in its day-to-day life to conceal the
signs of its clerical state.64 This humiliation can scarcely have given it bold¬
ness in the ministry. If the clergy in the Albigeois conformed to the current
type of parish priest of the time, it would have been incapable of measuring
itself against the heretical preachers. Chosen by the patron of the parish to
suit his own ideas, the ‘chaplain’ of the Midi was only a minister of the
sacraments ; no moral or doctrinal formation had prepared him to become an
ascetic, a spiritual leader and teacher. Nothing, however, could prevent his
being placed side by side and compared with the some two thousand63
preachers of the Waldenses or of the Catharist Perfect who travelled the
country edifying men by their words and their austerity, or presided over
the diffusion of the sect in the fixed centres maintained by the houses or
communities of heretics.66
We are thus brought back to the most important of the causes of the
collapse of the Church in the states of Raymond of Toulouse—the spiritual
 72 VIR EVANGELICUS

causes, and, more precisely, the spiritual disproportion between the

ministers of Catholicism and the heretical preachers. Naturally when
doctrine was in question the disproportion was not in favour of the innova¬
tors. In the disputations, in which, as we shall see, the Catholics confronted
their adversaries on the plane of ideas, it would seem that the former had no
difficulty in carrying away the victory. This was a fortiori the case in their
writings—the literary production of the Catharists was non-existent.67 What,
however, were such victories worth in the case of simple folk, or even of
their lay lords ? Such men, who knew nothing of Latin or of books, were
more responsive to the example of someone’s life than to the value of ideas.
Now it should be made clear at this point that at first sight the life led by
the heretics gave no outward sign of its scandalous character from the
Christian point of view—on the contrary. The Waldenses and even the
Catharists seemed to those of the faithful who were not on their guard,
authentic Christians—one might go further, more authentic Christians than
the others—‘good Christians’ was, with ‘good men’, the name given to the
Perfect.68 They were called—let us admit it—the Christians of the latter
days, those who through the Gregorian reform had been reborn on the
model of the infant Church, the genuine apostles or successors of the early
Christians.
It was not only in collegiate churches and chapters of regular life that the
challenge to imitate the life of the apostles66 had resounded, the challenge
which the preachers of the Gregorian reform had been addressing to the clergy
since the middle of the twelfth century and to which the canonical movement
had given expression by the revival of the rule of St Augustine. It was the special
characteristic of this reform, which had sprung from the very apex of the
Church, to achieve its aims within the framework of Christendom. Nothin^
was done that had not its influence throughout the whole of the Western
world, if needs be by introducing upheaval into it to the extent of civil war.
In their eagerness for reform, indeed, the ecclesiastical leaders following
Gregory VII did not fear to appeal freely to the conviction and elementary
dynamism of the populations, in order to bring pressure to bear, if necessary,
on the ecclesiastical and lay rulers oi the Christian provinces.70 Prohibitions
against the faithful being present at the Mass of married priests, against
receiving the sacraments from them, the order to disobey priests and
prelates who refused to accept the apostolic precepts, the intimation to hold
onesdf as not bound by the oath of loyalty in the case of princes who had
rebelled against the new discipline of the reform—it was not long before
these imperative decisions, broadcast by papal letters or by the decrees of
the Councils, caused deep disturbance and sometimes insurrections. The
turbulence of the masses in this century of rising national groups, of social
change, of practical religious fervour, is sufficiently well known. The com¬
munal movement, so often in opposition to long-standing institutions
 THE NARBONENSIS 73

whether ecclesiastical or feudal, likewise brought its spirit of revolution into

the question of the apostolic reform of the clergy. It was not only in the
urban milieux, however, that this seething fervour was displayed. In all
classes of society and even in country districts,71 both isolated individuals
and crowds were to be met with full of enthusiasm for the programme of
apostolic life which the popes intended to renew among the monks and
canons. This enthusiasm led first to their irritation being allowed to
turn into anticlericalism in the case of the clergy who did not accept this
programme sufficiently fully, then to turning their backs on them, and
finally putting themselves in their places by accepting the reform themselves.
It is indeed clear that the impressive picture, always moving for Christian
hearts, of the primitive life in Jerusalem from the book of the Acts, and of
the preaching of the apostles from the Gospel, was capable of inspiring
something quite different from the monasteries or collegiate churches.
Historians today recognize a large number of institutions or of original
tendencies, directly issuing from the strictly religious movement which it
has been proposed to call the ‘apostolic movement’.72 They have not yet
come to the end of discovering the manifestations of such tendencies in the
course of the twelfth century.73 The Midi of France, where the Gregorian
influence had brought about reforms of chapters, foundations of Canons
Regular, and new monastic foundations, equally witnessed the appearance of
the most unexpected manifestations. Such were, for instance, during the
first two decades of the twelfth century, itinerant preachers such as
Robert d’Arbrissel, whose two religious houses of Ardorel and Candeil in
the Albigeois, off-shoots of his foundation at Cadouin,74 maintained the
original spirit for some time. Jesus had sent his apostles, two by two, to
preach in the localities he was to pass through himself. Thus the new
apostles73 went off, thin from fasting, with long beards and barefoot, in
accordance with the idea they formed to themselves of their model, wearing
only one tunic, carrying neither gold nor silver and accepting their food
from the populations they evangelized. Austere and impressive in their
preaching of penance and of the imminence of the Kingdom of God, they
presented a type of wandering or peripatetic clergy, quite different from the
traditional clerics, whose canonical status precisely implied attachment to
one church.76 They did however realize much better than even the reformed
canons of the diocese the ideal evoked by the mission of the apostles, their
detachment and their absolute poverty. This was already the poverty and
preaching of mendicants. The crowds were not satisfied with merely listening
to them. Certain men left all to follow them. Around these new apostles
was set up a circle of believers, credentes.77 It was the primitive Church
beginning again, the Church of the poor of Christ.78 Moreover this Church
did not conceal its feelings of opposition to the clergy of the classical type.
The latter emphatically reproached the itinerants for their attitude. Their
 VIR EVANGELICUS
74

movement, however anarchical it was, remained in the line of the

Gregorian reform, within the Catholic community, to which the apostle
remained firmly attached. Such an itinerant was not a preacher without a
mandate, the kind of false shepherd dreaded by the Church since her earliest
years, against whom she objected in the words of St Paul, Quomodo
praedicabunt nisi mittantur: ‘how shall they preach unless they be sent?’7? As
far as the documents enable us to determine the point, the itinerant preachers
expressly received their preaching mission from the bishop, often from the
Pope himself, like their leaders, as, for instance, Robert d’Arbrissel or
St Norbert.80

This was no longer the case with the new itinerant apostles who collected
in the province of Gallia Narbonensis in the second quarter of the century,
after they had been expelled in turn from all parts (the fact is significant for
the process of contamination in the Midi). Pierre de Bruys,81 a priest from
the Dauphine who had broken his outlaw’s ban, had finally organized his
preaching in the neighbourhood of the Rhone centred around Saint-Gilles,
whence he sometimes extended his operations as far as Gascony. He had
been working unchecked in the province for about twenty years until he was
burnt at the stake by a mob82 over-excited by his iconoclasm (he had crosses
burnt because they were the sign of the humiliation of our Saviour). Henri,83

an apostate monk, was only a deacon. He had nevertheless formerly received

the right to preach in the diocese of Le Mans; but he soon forfeited it and
did without it. It is explicitly stated of him that he practised the life of the
apostles and begged his bread from his flock. As a preacher he must have been
impressive as much for his apostolic aspect as for his eloquence. During
the bishop’s absence on one occasion, he caused such an upheaval in the
diocese of Le Mans that the people and even certain of the clergy accepted
him as their true pastor. He was reconciled for a time by the Council of Pisa
0 I3^)> finally welcomed and installed in Toulouse by Count Raymond IV.
It needed nothing less than the sending of a legate and the preaching of St
Bernard (i 145) to make him cease his efforts. He had however drawn after
him a section of the people who had doubtless already allowed themselves to
be disturbed by Pierre de Bruys, his predecessor, and by certain imitators
who have not emerged from the silence of time. Despite Bernard’s success in
Albi, in Toulouse, though not at Verfeil,84 many souls remained disturbed.
Pierre, like Henri—those imitators of the apostles—taught a kind of spiritual
Christianity founded, at least for Pierre de Bruys, on the Gospel alone,
without churches, without Mass or Eucharist, prayer for the dead or baptism
for infants. They were separated from the Church of Rome and stirred up their
heaieis against the clergy whom they reproached for not practising apostolic
poverty, refusing them any title to respect, any sacramental r61e, the right
to approach the sick and, of course, to receive the tithes and offerings.
 THE NARBONENSIS 75

When the Erst Waldenses or poor men of Lyons8s reached the Narbonensis
during the final decades of the twelfth century, there were many who
were alarmed by this new type of imitator of the apostles. ‘Of no fixed
abode,’ related Walter Map, ‘they go off two by two, barefoot, without
baggage, having all things in common, after the example of the apostles.
Naked they follow the naked Christ.’86 Such had their founder, Waldes, the
rich merchant of Lyons, resolved to be from the very first day of his con¬
version.87 So had he sent his disciples to preach the kingdom of God.88
Certain priests of the Midi, whether more or less aware of the condemnation
of the Waldenses in 11 84, received them with all the more facility since
these edifying preachers supported the Church against the Catharists whom
they attacked with violence. One report mentions their presence in the
parish churches of Aigues-Vives and Castelnaudary where they taught and
sang their hymns without let or hindrance.89 Their doctrine does not seem
to have been very far removed from orthodoxy.90 They did not, however,
think they were doing any wrong by their violent criticism of the clergy.
Above all, they set themselves up in the place of the clergy. They ignored
Pope, bishops and priests and claimed that ‘only the imitators of the apostles
had a right to obedience’.91 Since they imitated them, they had every right
to exercise the ‘grace of preaching that God had granted them’,92 without
any other mandate. Even women could preach, from the moment they
practised this form of life.93 Moreover, the real imitation of the life of the
apostles, symbolized by the wearing of sandals which meant that the foot was
bare, conferred on the layman, though he were unlettered, the right ‘to give
his blessing after the manner of a priest, and even the power of binding and
loosing’.94
Now it was equally as successors of the apostles and continuators of the
primitive Christians that the Catharists represented themselves, in Cologne,
in Perigord, in the Narbonensis, in England,9$ from the very beginning of
their vigorous development in the West, from 1140 onwards. At the turn of
the thirteenth century nothing had changed on1 this point. The Catholic
controversialists, Prevostin, Joachim of Flora, Raoul Ardent, in argument
against the Catharists, were aware of their claim to be the only ones to
practise apostolic life.96 This was neither contagion nor imitation on their
part. The oriental Bogomils who had transmitted to them the core of their
doctrines and practices, joined to the dualist attitude which formed the
foundation of their religious position a practice of life which they claimed
to derive, with much seriousness and fidelity, from that of apostolic times.97
They derived this from many traditions of the Eastern Church. The signifi¬
cance of the declaration of the Catharists of Cologne in 1143 will thus be
understood—‘Their religion had remained hidden from the time of the
martyrs and had been preserved in Greece and a few other countries. Thus
they were called apostles.’98
 76 VIR EVANGELICUS

The historical continuity of the Bogomils and the Catharists with the
Gnostic Christians of primitive times is outside the scope of the documents
we possess and remains more than doubtful." Despite their dualism, how¬
ever, their will and determination to continue the life of apostolic times
as it is described in the Gospels and the Acts were beyond question. The
natural climate of the West, especially of the Albigeois, which had changed
the Bogomils into Catharists had only accentuated the apostolic character of
the latter. Their poor and penitent Church, community of worldly goods
and the begging sermons of the Perfect, the hierarchy restricted to bishops
and deacons, prayers reduced to the Pater, their homilies on the Gospel
which the Perfect carried about with them in a leather bag, down to the
baptism in the Paraclete (consolamentum) by imposition of hands, all savoured
of the spirit of the New Testament, of the desire to be in all things what
the Christians of Jerusalem were, and that alone.100 Many Protestant
controversialists have allowed themselves to be deceived over this since the
sixteenth century, and, having been unwilling to consider anything but the
practice of life of the Albigensian Catharists to the exclusion of their
absolute dualism, have proclaimed them as pure and evangelical Christians.101
It was not then surprising that at the time of Pope Innocent and St Dominic
a great number of simple lay folk should have sincerely accepted them as
Christians, Christians perhaps more faithful to the Gospel than the others.
Since the temporal rulers, partly won over by a similar judgement, partly
attracted by the advantages of a counter-Church which would have cost them
so little for it would have left them so many liberties and possibilities, felt
themselves more and more disposed to prefer that to the traditional Church,
the situation of the latter had become perilous. It was not, however,
desperate.

All this uncertainty of Christians in the Narbonensis did not come so

much from decadence as from an overflow of religious vitality and gener¬
osity. i°2 Before manifesting itself in a burst of pietist fervour in the different
classes of society in the Midi, the apostolic evangelism of the Greaorian
reformers had borne fruit in the Church. 103 The provinces wher^e the
preaching heresies were the most widely implanted were precisely those in
which the orthodox apostolic movement had earlier been most developed
in the chapters of canons with a rule of lifeA" Until the thirteenth century
it continued to inspire in these lands, as it did in the whole of the West
numerous gestures of Catholic fervour. The Church, it is true, had no[
sought for the majority of the clergy absolute poverty and temporal depriva¬
tion-some ownership of private property was doubtless inevitable to pro¬
tect their independence in the feudal atmosphere of violence and injustice—
but she had at least striven to give them the spirit of poverty by multiplying
among them the example of the clerks regular and of fervent monks There
 THE NARBONENSIS
77
have been tew periods in which religious foundations have been more
numerous in the Narbonensis than the twelfth century. Side by side with
the ancient abbeys, many of which continued to live a carefully controlled
rule of life, there multiplied the canonical houses of Saint Rufus or of
Premontre, the Commanderies of the military orders, the different houses
which provided hospitality. Of the latter the hospital of the Holy Spirit in
Montpellier, expanding at the call of Innocent, soon diffused over the whole
of Europe the most important of the orders of this type, and was not the least
striking. I05 One name, however, sums up better than others this Catholic
fecundity—Citeaux, from which the Narbonensis and the neighbouring
dioceses saw emerge a dozen great abbeys, Belleperche, Grandselve, Eaunes,
Boulbonne, Callers, Feuillans, in the diocese of Toulouse; Candeil and
Ardorel,106 in the diocese of Albi; Villelongue, near Carcassonne, Font-
froide, near Narbonne, Valmagne and Franquevaux in the dioceses of Agde
and of Nimes.
The Cistercian abbeys were not only the centres from which Catholic
fervour and asceticism and personal poverty radiated. The result, in part, of
the brief appearance of St Bernard in the Albigeois, they supplied the bases
and the effective workers for the counter-thrust of the Church, which hence¬
forward reserved this to them as one of their special missions. Preachers,
model bishops, papal commissioners and legates during three-quarters
of a century, the Cistercians were called upon without respite for the affairs
of the faith in the Midi by the Sovereign Pontiffs.
Similarly, it was a monk of Citeaux, Master Alain of Fille, who wrote the
most remarkable of the first systematic critical studies of heresy at the end
of the twelfth century, dedicated to Guillaume de Montpellier (d. i2o2).10?
This large work, well arranged, benefiting by the double light of
exegesis and of reason, made a brilliant opening to the series of polemical
and theological works which developed in the following half-century. Of
these it was possible to say that they struck heresy a mortal blow, when the
inquisition was barely inaugurated.108 The fact was that, at the time when
apostolic laymen turned in increasing numbers to the Catharist preachers,
because they found a means in their theories of satisfying at little cost
their taste for explaining everything, the same thirst for knowledge and
understanding gave rise among the Catholics to the extraordinary develop¬
ment of the Schools and paved the way for the inception of the Universities.
To bring the religion of the Catharists, which had been born of a sentimental
recoil in the face of evil and the world, to be examined on the intellectual
plane, was to force it to reveal the philosophical weakness of its dualism, the
deep-rooted incoherence of this dualism and of its apostolicity, the
gratuitousness of its rejection of the Biblical dogma of creation and of the
evangelical dogma of the Ci'oss, the evil-mindedness of its radical condemna¬
tion of life and matter. There was, however, a dearth of theologians to
 78 VIR EVANGELICUS

multiply such attacks. Moreover, it was not the time for arguments when the
negligence of the prelates and the favour of the princes towards the heretics
seemed on the point of bringing about in the Narbonensis the complete
success of the latter.
It was not so much, however, that there were no bishops adequate to the
task. Geoffroy of Beziers, Berenger of Carcassonne, Navarre of Couserans,
Garric of Comminges, Hugh of Riez, Raymond of Uzes, were worthy of
their mission. Among the princes the Pope had certain loyal followers who
seemed reliable—the family of Montpellier and that of Aragon. I09 In 1 204,
the marriage of Pedro de Aragon with Marie de Montpellier, which
meant the introduction of the Catholic dynasty into the heart of the Albigeois,
was followed by his coronation in Rome. The king took an oath of obedience
to the Pope and of loyalty as his vassal. He had already renewed the measures
against heresy decided upon by his father in accordance with the law of the
Church.110 If others joined him, if new prelates, in substitution for the
defaulters, backed the zealous bishops, the heresiarchs could be eliminated
from the neighbourhood by the joint action of the spiritual and temporal
authorities.
Already the 27th canon of the Third Council of the Lateran (1179)111
and the decisions of Verona (1184)112 had clearly defined and condemned
these heresies of the Midi, detailed the procedure for the seeking out and
conviction of the heretics, the penalties incurred by their abettors and
protectors, the sanctions and even the crusade that the Church could put
into operation to oblige a Catholic prince to fulfil his obligations to
defend the faith. Finally a decree of Innocent III himself, in 1199,113 had
set forth the fundamental motive of the combined action of the authorities
of Christendom. Heresy fell under the ancient law of lese-majcste, that is to
say it attacked God at the same time as the principal foundation of Catholic
society, the truth.
The hour for such action was approaching. Linked with it were the
campaigns against war and against the mercenaries. As far back as 1198
Innocent had appointed legates^ to whom he gave the mission of reawaken¬
ing the conscience of prelates and princes in the struggle against all these
isorders. This, however, did not prove sufficient. The heretics could indeed
be destroyed or dispersed with the collaboration of the temporal sword-
hearts and convictions still had to be won over. Preaching alone could do
is. Embodying all the measures against heresy, because it was their
pnnciple and their term, preaching remained the chief occupation of all
those who had the religious problem of the Narbonensis at heart and viewed
A with clear-sightedness. The trail of light of the mission of St Bernard
was swiftly fading; as one of his companions had remarked—‘a province
e astray by such a number of erroneous doctrines would need preaching to
for a long time to come’ us Others had resumed the doctrinal task from
 THE NARBONENSIS 79

time to time; but their faint trail was in turn fading swiftly. Innocent III had
every intention that his legates should be primarily preachers.116 In 1203,
he had it in mind to renew the work of St Bernard, with the help of his
Cistercians, through a much more extensive mission. Providence undertook
to send him preachers of its own choosing.
 Chapter VI

MONTPELLIER

O NE June evening in 1206,1 a small company of horsemen arrived

at the gates of Montpellier. Diego of Osma was on his way back
from Citeaux with his religious household—the bishop himself, the
sub-prior of his chapter and very dear companion, Dominic, a few of the
clergy of the diocese, some Cistercian monks, the serving men. The baggage
followed on pack animals. The suite was less magnificent than when the
riders had left Castile nearly a year before. Perhaps, however, they were not
sorry to have abandoned the most ostentatious part of their baggage on
making the journey to the Curia the previous December. Along these
roads of the south infested by Aragonese or Basque mercenaries, it was
better not to awaken appetites for greed. The riders came down the valleys
ol the Saone and the Rhone, which they left at Beaucaire, passed through
Nimes, then travelled close to the Mediterranean. At last they entered the
city of the Guillem. The mighty ramparts of the town crowned a broad and
lofty hill. It was a citadel, a place of respite and peace for Catholicism in the
heart of a region which was becoming increasinglv less loyal.2
A few minutes after passing through the gates, the travellers thought
themselves back in the very places they had just left. They ran into another
group of churchmen holding session inside the walls.3 All Citeaux was there,
in the person of its abbot, Arnaud Amaury, monks from Fontfroide, Peter of
Castelnau and Maitre Raoul, and their suite.4 Rome was there too. For
between the close of 1 203 and May 1 204,5 Arnaud, Peter and Raoul had been
invested with the office of papal legates to deal with the heretics.
Scarcely a month or even a week passed without some series of letters coming
to biing them the instructions, counsels, encouragements of Innocent III
himseli who watched over their legation with most assiduous care.6
Events, unfortunately, scarcely corresponded to the Sovereign Pontiff’s
hopes. Despite their goodwill, their courage and their efforts the legates had
no success at all. In the multitude of affairs in which for the past two years
they had been obliged progressively to engage, success was rare, disappoint¬
ment and frustration all too frequent. As their crowning misfortune, they
had at times the impression that Rome did not understand them. This was
particularly the case in the matter of Archbishop Berenger of Narbonne
which seemed to them of capital importance.7 God knows the Pope was
 MONTPELLIER Si

under no illusion as to the greed for gain, the avarice, simonaical practices
and above all the religious laxity and inertia of this prince of the Church
who, satisfied with not finding heresy in his archiepiscopal town, dis¬
associated himself completely from the rest of his province to the extent
that he had not even once visited it. From their first contact with the arch¬
bishop, when they came to present their mandate and ask him to support
them in their action against the heretics and to accompany them on their
visit to the Count of Toulouse, whose temporal sword was to move hand in
hand with their spiritual activities, the legates had sensed that nothing could
be done in the Narbonensis so long as this egoist, this useless and scandalous
trafficker, was at the head of the province. The Pope was entirely of the
same opinion, and on 28th May, 1 204 had given them orders to institute
a canonical trial with the power to depose the prelate without right of
appeal.8 The necessary investigations had thus been made, and the most
detailed evidence obtained on oath; the matter seemed on the point of being
satisfactorily concluded. Now, a few days earlier, the legates had just
received a letter which nullified the efforts of the past two years. Berenger had
gone to Rome. He had caught the Pope off his guard and won his indulgence.
He was restored to favour. At the foot of the barren fig-tree, which had
previously been pruned, Innocent still wished to hoe out the weeds and
fertilize the ground, in a last hope that the tree would yield fruit.9
The heretics whom the legates thought to impress by this sensational
justice thus began once more to pour scorn on their preaching and to cast in
their teeth with an air of triumph the deplorable example of the clergy. What
hope could there be of reforming the heretical members of the Church in the
Midi if the head remained corrupt ? Moreover, was it the role of the legates
to plunge into a reform which would never be achieved, in the place of an
archbishop who himself did not trouble about it?10 The Pope’s ambassadors
had already felt their courage weaken. This time the measure was full to the
brim. Quite simply they were considering renouncing their mission.
Diego and his companions arrived just at the right moment. Castile was
not so very remote a land. The legates, all men from this part of the
country, knew the bishop of Osma by repute. They knew him to be a man
of holy life, upright and zealous for the faith.11 His recent visit ad limina
might have given him an insight into some intention or sentiment on the
part of the Pope. Perhaps Diego even had some commission for the Abbot
of Citeaux and for his two colleagues. However this might be, they begged
him to give his opinion. In those days great importance was attached to these
secret councils before action, in which each one must give his opinion in
turn and thus take his share of responsibility. Counsel was not only the right
but the duty of the vassal to his lord, the baron vis-d-vis the king, the canon
to his bishop, the monk to his abbot. Similarly, men took counsel of the holy
man of the town, of the recluse, of the hermit, of the pilgrim met with
82 VIR EVANGELICUS

along the road. Good counsel delivered by a stranger came directly

From God.
Diego and Dominic, made acquainted with the situation as regards heresy,
with the precise mission of the legates, with their efforts and reactions in
the face of the decisions from Rome, came face to face with a world with
which their contact for the past three years had grown continually closer.
These two judges of men were able to assess at once the strange opposition
between the principal actors in the scene which was described to them—
namely, the Pope and the three Cistercians.

Peter of Castelnau12 was the oldest of the legates. In 1199 he had been
associated for some time with the Cistercian, Frere Rainier, for the affair of
the Abbot of Saint-Guillem. He was then a Canon Regular and archdeacon
of MaguelonneA-t In the papal letters he is several times given the title of
Master, which presupposes theological learning.^ An experienced canonist,
moreover, he had just finished pleading for three years in Rome to defend
his office, which the provost of the chapter refused to recognize.16 He had
finally won his case. In Rome his tenacity and his skill in canon law had won
admiration and there had followed at once the intention of making use of
him for the reform of the Midi. When at the turn of the year 1203 the
archdeacon had taken the habit of the order of Citeaux at Fontfroide,*7 he
had become more fitted than ever for the mission in the Narbonensis which
the order had made illustrious.18 He received this office without delay, in
October or November of the same year. For five years he was primarily the
man of Law, the law of the 27th canon of the Lateran as defined by the
decretals. In his fearless hands, these texts were to reveal all their force. It
was because he had succeeded in grouping together against the Count of
Toulouse, who was recalcitrant in the matter of the heretics, the principal
vassals of Provence, in a pact of peace which might one day become a
crusade, that Peter of Castelnau was eventually assassinated, on the morning
of 14th January, 1208.*9 This intransigent legate, who was effective if he
was anything, had several times before this received threats of death.20
Maitre Raoul,21 who was also a monk of Fontfroide, appointed legate the
same day as his colleague, found himself in opposition to him as the clear
light of truth may find itself in opposition to the constraint of a severe law.
He was a man of great learning.22 He had been chosen as theologian, for he
had taught in the Schools.23 His activity in preaching, which unlike the legal
action of Peter of Castelnau was not set down in the charters, was none the
less very real. We can sense that it was extensive and beneficial in its
influence. Raoul and Raoul alone was to remain in close contact with Diego
and St Dominic for a whole year, before his death on 9th July, 1207.24
Across seven centuries of distance this significant contact throws a fleeting
light on the features of a countenance which for us are almost effaced.
 MONTPELLIER 83
The legate Arnaud Amaury25 on the other hand is almost too well known.
A former monk and Abbot of Poblet, the monastery of the kings of Aragon,
then abbot of Grandselve near Toulouse before becoming Abbot of Citeaux,
he had inspired some six hundred monasteries and tens of thousands
of monks who anticipated both the Church and the princes in all the
Christian enterprises of the period. Thus Arnaud might seem specially
qualified for directing the campaign against the unbelievers of the Midi. He
assuredly was so from the day when this campaign was transformed into a
crusade of bloodshed. He had the virtues of the leader—the initiative, the
uncompromising energy, the sense of organization, skill in drawing up
reports and in keeping archives. For the task entrusted to him all that he
lacked was perhaps certain aspects of the love of souls. A man of the lineage
of the soldier-bishops of the feudal age, he is completely summed up by a
phrase of the Histoire Albigeoise. The chateau of Minerva, under siege, was
on the point of surrendering to the crusaders. Arnaud was entrusted with
deciding the fate of the vanquished. As supreme leader, he could not evade
this decision. It was painful to him not to give a free hand to the soldiers of
the north whose taste for burnings at the stake he knew. ‘For he keenly
desired, though as priest and monk he dared not do so, to condemn to death
the enemies of Christ.’26 Regretfully, he had to leave them with their lives
safe. Clearly, as when, plunged into the midst of the Albigensian crusade
and moving over the whole of Spain, he led over forty thousand men to
collaborate with the armies of Aragon, Castile and Navarre in the campaign
of Las Navas de Tolosa which for three centuries marked the frontiers
of Islam,27 he was more at home in action than when directing the conversion
of the Catharists. Attached after the event on 3 1st May, 1 20428 to the other
two legates that they might have at their disposal the resources and the
authority of Citeaux, it was only after the death of his colleagues that he
fully concerned himself with this mission. Then he truly dominated the
history of the enterprise and orientated it towards its most radical form.
Convinced that any religious action in the Narbonensis would be fruitless so
long as men like Berenger of Narbonne or Raymond of Toulouse were left
in peace, he resolved to remove them as quickly as possible. Sometimes he
succeeded by legal astuteness savouring of deception towards both the Pope
and the victims. Ambitious to extend his powers, whatever the Pope might
say, when he became Archbishop of Narbonne, he was seen to take
possession of the title of the duchy and, to the general scandal, to embark
upon a struggle with the Comte de Montfort whom he had just praised
to the skies. To crush heresy, he could not do without using authoritative
gestures and the terror provoked by bloodshed.26 He may or may not have
been right on the military plane. This implacable adversary of unbelievers,
however, with whom the prosecution of the law was scarcely tempered by
mercy, was at the opposite pole from the thoughts of his master the Pope,
 84 V1R EVANGELICUS

with whom his disagreements were multiplied almost to the point of rupture.
Innocent was of a different temper.30 It is true that he was authoritarian
and meticulous in applying the canons of the Church. From the very year of
his accession, he had indeed strengthened, by invoking the law of lese-majeste,
the legal dispositions which enabled him to compel princes as much as the
clergy and, through them, the Christian people as a whole, to respect
ecclesiastical liberties, peace and orthodoxy.31 He never forgot, however,
that the sole purpose of these powers, which he succeeded in making
effective throughout his whole pontificate, was that of saving souls. As soon
as this objective seemed to him achieved, he was ready to stay the course of
justice and to relax the penalties which he had inflicted upon the culprits in
conformity with the law. This was perhaps a political weakness, and the
cause of a continual hesitation which baffled his lay and even his ecclesiastical
collaborators, but it was a pastoral attitude in every sense of the word.
For him, penalties served not so much to punish as to cure.
That was what he demanded of his missionaries.32 In dealing with the
heterodox they were never to forget that they were attacking men capable
of conversion, or the weak whom shortcomings or scandals had perhaps led.
There were good men among them, whose practices, though not customary
in the Church, were nothing but edifying and should bring forth greater fruit
in the Catholic order of things. He was told of certain of the faithful in Metz
who met in secret groups, were hostile to the Church, and claimed to draw
their religion from a direct reading of the Gospel. He did not like this
contempt for Christian unity, this taste for secret meetings or this preaching
without a mandate. He recognized explicitly, however, that the eagerness
to read and understand the Holy Scriptures was worthy of nothing but praise.
‘It is not right’, he said, ‘to weaken the religion of the simple.’33 It took
more than twelve years and innumerable investigations for Innocent to
decide to deal severely with schismatics who had avowed themselves to be
such.34 In Lombardy certain weavers, rather similar to the evangelicals of
Metz and the poor men of Lyons, were leading a kind of religious life that
was unorthodox, but poor, pious and edifying. The Pope laboured so
devotedly that despite the prelates of Lombardy who were more than
suspicious, despite even his predecessors who had contented themselves with
excommunicating these ‘Humiliati’, he succeeded in bringing back these
apostolic communities into the unity of the Church, under a very original
form.33 He would soon be seen, in 1208, and again in 1210, reconciling
out and out Waldenses and putting their effective evangelism at the service
of orthodoxy against the Catharists.36
Thus in the mission that he had entrusted in that part of the world to his
two, then to his three legates, the Pope attributed major importance to
preaching. This point merits a careful examination for it is sometimes mis¬
construed. Innocent had defined the original and chief mission of the legates
 MONTPELLIER 85
by the stereotyped formula: ad extirpandam haereticam pravitatem,37 ‘to
extirpate erring heresy’. The words did not specify an administrative and
legal mission alone, as we should be inclined to think if we confined ourselves
to analysing them in the light of the dispositions of contemporary (canon)
Law. The letters and instructions of the Pope, as well as the practice of the
legates were proof that the task was infinitely more complex. Here as in
many other points, the real depth and quality of the medieval Church can
only be discerned in the light of patristic tradition.

St Augustine, in the course of his thirty-four years of pastoral struggle

against the Donatists, had progressively adjusted the procedure of the Latin
Church for bringing back dissidents, or at least for diminishing the harm
they did.38 Such procedure comprised four terms: argument, warning,
excommunication, temporal penalties. For a long time he had thought he
could limit himself to the first step, which corresponded so well with that
liberty of the faith of which, together with the whole body of tradition, he
never ceased to remind men. All he asked of the good will of the prince was to
facilitate the colloquies of the Catholics with their adversaries. He was,
however, obliged to recognize that the patient explanation of the faith even
supported by the heart and genius of a saint, was not adequate. Preaching
had to become more insistent: exhortation, reproaches, entreaties, fraternal
threats transformed it into a warning, in accordance with the forms envisaged
by the Gospel. If the unbelievers remained adamant, it was then necessary to
decide to separate them from the flock by pronouncing an anathema, as the
apostles had done; for a heretic known to be such is less dangerous for the
other faithful than a bad Catholic. After further hesitation, St Augustine had
equally accepted the support of the imperial legislation against the heretics,
with the exception of the death penalty. With a certain number, fear of
temporal sanctions was the final means of making converts of those on
whom the word of faith had had no effect.
Preaching, admonition, reconciliation or excommunication, sanctions,
such were still the four stages of the operations against heresy which St
Bernard recommended to those who wrote to him, or that he distinguished
in his sermons;39 they were the stages that he in turn practised in 1145,
against the Albigensians; those he transmitted to his successors and sons, the
Cistercian missionaries of the Narbonensis. ‘It is certainly not by arms but
by arguments that heretics must be won’, that is, ‘convinced and converted .
‘The faith is transmitted by persuasion and not by constraint. If the un¬
believers, however, would not allow themselves to be converted after one,
two and even three warnings’, they must be separated from the community
and ‘henceforth avoided’. Finally, if they persisted in their obstinacy and
became a danger for the whole flock, it was best to ‘put them to flight ,
expelling them through the secular arm.40 Between the lines of the
4-S.D.
86 VIR EVANGELICUS

documents, which unfortunately give few details, we can find traces of the
application of this procedure in the later campaign against the Catharists.
It was so firmly inscribed in tradition that it can still be found, clearly
discernible, in the succession of the acts of the Inquisition from the thirteenth
century onwards.41
It cannot, however, always be recognized at first glance in the pattern of
the Narbonensis mission from 1203 onwards. This is because the special
circumstances of the Midi constrained the legates and the Pope to engage in
secondary and collateral actions which, in the documents which have come
down to us, often occupy the foreground of the picture. Ill-will on the part
of the secular arm made the fourth stage of the procedure, namely, the
expulsion of hardened heretics, impossible. Thus, to bend the lay princes to
the will of the Church, a series of enterprises, of which the crusade con¬
stituted the supreme resource, was necessary.42 From the very beginning,
Innocent III had sketched out this collateral action, of which Peter de Castelnau
was the principal agent.43 The grave defection of a section of the prelates
of the Midi, who did not of themselves take the initiative of action against
the heretics, did not collaborate with the legates’ effort, or even frustrated
it completely by the bad example of their lives, induced Innocent moreover
from 31st May, 1204 onwards, to give the three Cistercians secondary
missions which involved them in numerous judicial actions of correction or
deposition.44 Independently of the very extensive powers which he finally
granted them on this point, 4s he insisted on renewing these powers for them
in a special way in each particular case. Such commissions became multiplied
during the course of the year 1204.46 They formed the theme of the
majority of Innocent’s letters. To some extent they absorbed the enerav of
the legates. Such commissions, however, never took priority of place over
the primordial mission the legates had received, namely, direct action
against the heretics. Finally, among the measures which this main mission
had at its disposal preaching, admonition, reconciliation or excommunica¬
tion Innocent, as was natural, though his insistence was remarkable,
wished that preaching and conversion should have pride of place in all
circumstances.

When in his correspondence the Pope summed up in a brief phrase the

ministry of his legates, he spoke of ‘going to convey the word of the Lord’,4?
of consecrating oneself to the ministry of the word and of doctrinal teach¬
ing ,48 If one of the legates was losing courage, he gave him fresh heart by
renewing his formal order to him to ‘carry out from his heart his own
ministry, his office as evangelist, insisting in season and out of season, by his
arguments, entreaties, reproaches, in all patience and clearness of doctrine’ ;49
and in the circumstance this order was all the more significant since it was
addressed to Peter of Castelnau, the jurist.
If the Cistercian legates were tempted to overstep the limits of their
 MONTPELLIER 87

reforming action vis-a-vis the clergy, Innocent brought them firmly back to
their essential task, for it was not fitting, he said, to leave aside a task of
‘ineluctable necessity’, to avoid an obstacle which after all could be borne
with.so Finally he even took care to indicate the spirit of this action. At the
end of an important letter in which he had meticulously set down the duties
and powers of his representatives, he added as a post-scriptum: ‘We will and
exhort you to proceed in such a way that the simplicity of your attitude is
clear to the eyes of all, closes the mouth of the ignorant as it does that of
people without common sense, and that nothing should appear either in your
acts or words in which even a heretic could find room for criticism’.51 Here
again was that desire ‘not to extinguish the smoking flax’ that the Pope
had formerly displayed in regard to the evangelicals of Metz.
However, to give this preaching an even wider scope, on 29th January,
1 204 the Pope sent a series of letters to the Abbot of Citeaux, to the Abbot
of Valmagne, to Maitre Raoul of Narbonne, so that they might put their own
preaching or that of certain of their sons at the legates’ disposal.52 At the
same time he wrote to all the prelates, abbots, priors and other dignitaries
of the Narbonensis to second the action of these preachers.53 A few years
later these letters produced undoubted fruit. The Cistercian mission would
then fully merit the name of ‘the preaching of the Narbonensis’, the legates
and their collaborators that of ‘preachers against the heretics’, which people
gave them or which they gave themselves in documents of all kinds. 54

From the beginning they deserved these names in principle. M/e know
nothing of the detail of the intervention of the legates at Toulouse in
December 1 203 ;55 we know that at Beziers they could not exercise any kind
of activity, through the ill will of both the bishops and the consuls.5^ At
Carcassonne, however, in February 1204, the good dispositions of the king,
Pedro de Aragon, who held the title of Count of Carcassonne, enabled them
to introduce action against heresy.57 By order of the king, one day the
Waldenses were invited, another day the Catharists. The bishop, the legates
and certain other clerics represented the Catholic Church. The account of
the proceedings, drawn up by Pedro de Aragon, laid the emphasis on the
legal summing up. He allows us, however, to catch a glimpse of the public
dispute which had preceded it. Before a jury composed of Pedro de Aragon,
thirteen Catholics and thirteen Catharists, Bernard de Simone, bisbe of
Carcassonne, replied by explanations which were at first vague and confused
to the doctrinal questions which were put to him. Pressed with questions he
ended by replying more definitely in the Catharist sense. The legates took
these explanations point by point, and showed the incompatibility of these
doctrines with the Catholic faith which they developed with the help of the
words of the New Testament. The disputation was prolonged throughout the
whole day. The next day the king and his assessors made a formal declaration
88 VIR EVANGELICUS

of the heresy of the Catharists. There the action against the heretics rested.
It had brought the heresy clearly to light; neither temporal sanction nor
even excommunication was pronounced. The power of the King of Aragon
over Carcassonne was purely nominal.58 The only one who governed in
actual fact was the Viscount Raymond-Roger.
We have no knowledge as to whether the crowd which, here as elsewhere,
was present at the disputation in which it displayed the liveliest interest,
was impressed by this exposition of Catholic doctrine from New Testament
sources in opposition to the tenets of the Catharists. Given the general
atmosphere, conversions can have been but few. This was frequently the case.
It was in point of fact in their principal mission, namely that of doctrine,
that the legates experienced the deepest of their disappointments. This was
what they confided to Diego and Dominic in the secret meeting at
Montpellier. At the end of their two and a half years’ work, ‘they had
obtained nothing or almost nothing by their preaching among the heretics’.59
And immediately there came once more the excuse, or rather the inevitable
accusation—‘through our own fault’ or rather ‘through the fault of the
clergy’, for it is difficult not to look for the explanation of the failure of the
Christians in the lapses of those responsible. The heretics themselves
su§§es*-ed this explanation. ‘Each time the legates wanted to preach to them,
they were greeted with the objection of the bad conduct of the clergy.’
Now if they wanted thus to reform the life of the clergy, it was clearly
essential for them to interrupt their preaching’ ,6° The situation seemed to
be a deadlock, a genuine case of ‘perplexity’, to use the word of the
moralists of the time, a situation wherein no matter which alternative he
may choose, man has the certainty of failing in his task.
The depth or shallowness of a man’s personality is revealed in situations of
this type. Diego s reply shows the quality of his apostolic mind and the
lealism of his understanding of the obstacles. More than ever was it essential
to continue their preaching. For that every other measure must be left
aside.61 That alone, in fact, was indispensable, and it would be adequate.
When one had used up one s strength in reforming the clergy, even sup¬
posing one succeeded, one would not really even have touched the fringe of
the conversion of souls. Moreover, it was perhaps an illusion to attach such
importance to the lapses of the clergy in regard to the canonical ideal.
Diego and his sub-prior were beginning to know the Albigensian heretics.
The legates had once more explained their way of living, of preaching, of
winning souls, but the heretics demands in regard to the trustees of the
word of God were radical in quite a different sense from those of the most
rigorous Catholic leform. Henricians, Catharists and Waldenses were in
agreement in recognizing as an authentic preacher of the Gospel only him
who lived according to the rules which they discovered in the Gospel.
Whoever practised the manner of life of the apostles was authorized to
 MONTPELLIER 89

convey their message. Whosoever did not do so had no right at all to a

hearing. Now, according to their conceptions, to live like the apostles was
to go on foot, two by two, in great humility, without carrying on one’s
person gold, silver, or money, without possessing anything in the world, or
expecting one’s daily bread from any source but the charity of the popula¬
tions : it was, in a word, to become a beggar. Naturally, these demands
were inacceptable on a universal plane. They were not compatible with the
long-standing experience of Christendom and distorted the distinction
between precept and counsel. But, once this had been said, everything had
not been said. Something remained to be done that was perfectly possible.
Men were free to take these demands upon themselves, free to adopt that
particular manner of preaching.
This fervent canon, this bishop and former canon, had for long been
meditating on the ideal of the apostolic life and had even been living it in
many respects. It was sufficient for ihem to develop it on an itinerant plane.
Why should the dissidents have the monopoly of such a way of life ? There
was one point on which the Catholics were closer to the apostolic pattern
than the heretics: the mission of the Church. To preach because of their
mission, to preach in a unique way and with more intensity than ever,
joining the example to the word after the pattern of the good Master, on
foot, without gold or silver, in perfect imitation of the method of the
apostles,62 such was Diego’s advice.
The legates were disconcerted. ‘They did not want of their own accord
to adopt a method of action which savoured too much of novelty.’ This
word, indeed, from their lips was pejorative. They might have remembered
the apostolic life of the papal legate whom St Bernard had held up as an
example.63 We must not, however, under-estimate the lawfulness of their
doubts. Clearly they had never imagined the possibility of preaching in
this way. As the Pope’s legates, representing the supreme authority of
Christian Europe, they had up to the present endeavoured to emphasize the
fact by their attitude, their equipment, their escort, indispensable in these
parts and moreover a moderate one for the circumstances, and even by their
authoritative word. The letters of the Pope showed clearly enough the
Church’s sorrow over the contempt in which the spiritual sword was held
in these parts because it was unsupported by the temporal sword.Was it
necessary to increase this contempt by mendicancy ? That a priest, even moie
that a prelate, should beg his bread from door to door would be an occasion
of shame for the clergy and for Christian society.65 Moreover, it was a
thing particularly repugnant to Cistercians.66 Lastly and most important of
all, if they agreed to link their preaching with such behaviour, this might be
tantamount to countenancing and thereby spreading the principal error of
the heretics—namely, the absolute interdependence they maintained
between pastoral activity in general and mendicant apostolic life.
90 VIR EVANGELICUS

They thus received Diego’s advice with consternation. In the deadlock

which they had just admitted, however, it unexpectedly opened a door. In
the inmost heart of the monks of Fontfroide it stirred a courageous response
and a hope which could not fail to be impressive to anyone who realized
their situation. Stoop to beg ? Why not! With a touch of irony they turned
to the Bishop of Osma, and gave their answer: ‘If some person of real moral
authority was willing first to show them the example by preaching in this
way, they would very willingly follow him.’6?
Diego, being impetuous, was always ready. He offered himself. Full of
divine inspiration, he immediately organized the return of the rest of his
household to Osma and disposed of all his means of travel—horses, baggage
and other objects of equipment. He also dismissed his clergy and kept with
him only a single companion, Dominic.68
Naturally Dominic was ready. He listened. The entire initiative was his
bishop’s. With all his heart, however, he approved and made it his own.
No document has preserved the direct echo of his reactions for us. Facts,
however, are more eloquent than words. In the course of ten years of close
companionship, at Osma as in Toulouse, in Denmark as in Rome, he had
shared the bishop’s daily life, his prayer, his labours and his apostolic
projects. When his own trail had separated itself for a time from the deep
furrow carved out by the bishop, as in the incident of the innkeeper of
Toulouse, the profound identity of inspiration had only appeared more clearly.
Then the two trails had again become indistinguishable. They were to
continue thus, interlinked, almost inseparable, until Diego’s death. Then
Dominic was to press more heavily on the handles of the plough, yet without
modifying the course of the furrow. It was no longer the time for the some¬
what disorderly outburst of generous enterprises, or even for the resumption
of the common plans of former days. The mission in the north-east of
Europe would remain in the saint’s heart as a hope loved, cherished, but
never fulfilled. One single purpose would henceforth count in his activity
upon earth—to be a preacher of apostolic life, to provide the Church in the
Narbonensis, to provide the Church as a whole, with good labourers for the
word of God, imitators of those whom Christ had sent two bv two before
his face, capable of corresponding by their words and example to what was
expected ol them, or rather, to the true needs of the soul of their neigh¬
bours.66 When at the moment of his death, Dominic was to leave in the
Church an army ol preachers already superior in numbers to those of the
heretical preachers whom he had formerly met on the lands of the Count of
Toulouse, he would but have realized, in a measure of fulness at that time
scarcely conceivable, the idea glimpsed in embryo when he was with Diego
at Montpellier. His contemporaries were not mistaken. Dominic had dis¬
cover ed the idea ol the Order ot Preachers by sharing from the depths of his
being in the decision of his bishop at this memorable encounter. ‘And this
 MONTPELLIER 91

was the seed that produced the institution of the Preachers. I have heard it
affirmed by the first brethren who were with the blessed Dominic in these
parts.’70 Stephen of Bourbon was not the only one to speak in this way.71
Seven centuries later there is nothing different that can be said. Yet what a
long way there was still to travel in order to arrive at this institution or
even to imagine it in its full reality.

Each one then reacted according to his temperament and his possibilities.
The organizer, Arnaud Amaury, was preparing to preside over the general
chapter of his order, which was to assemble from 1 3th September onwards.
He would thus be separated from his companions. Earlier the Pope had
asked him to provide the first two legates with Cistercian preachers. He had
reminded him of the request when he appointed him third legate.72 Arnaud
had it in mind to comply with this request and to bring back with him after
the chapter some of the abbots whom he had met at that world-wide
gathering. He would take them as his collaborators in the preaching mission
which had been enjoined upon him.73
Peter and Raoul, on the other hand, were ready to leave at once. They,
too, sent back their escort, their horses, their baggage. They kept only the
books necessary for the chanting of the liturgical hours, for theological study
and for the immediate preparation of the disputes that they were planning
to counter.74 The little band was formed. It began by giving itself a
leader—the Bishop of Osma himself, who for the future directed the
affair.75 They set off on foot, bare-foot even, claims one chronicler,76 who if
somewhat later in date is usually well informed. No charges or expenses;
they had taken no money with them. Thus these important legates, this
bishop, this sub-prior, and doubtless a few monks or clerics in addition,
were now begging their bread from door to door.77 Today we should find
the scene an unusual one. At that time, in those parts, people were even
more astonished. This was indeed the voluntary poverty, the humility of the
preaching of the Gospel. Jordan notes that from then onwards Dominic no
longer bore the title of sub-prior but was called simply Brother Dominic.78
It is understandable that several historians, in order to explain such a
great change in the psychology of the legates, and especially in that of the
Abbot of Citeaux, should have suspected the intervention of some higher
authority supporting the Bishop of Osma—that of Innocent III himself.70
Certainly if the Pope had asked the bishop on his return to Spain to convey
verbally to his legates in the Narbonensis certain counsels requiring too much
tact to be entrusted to writing, many mysterious details to which attention
has been called in passing would at once become clear.80 The journey to
Citeaux, the symbolical taking of the habit, the meeting at Montpellier, the
bishop’s participation in the council of the legates would be explained; and
the harmony between Diego’s inspiration and that of the Pope himself, the
 92 VIR EVANGELICUS

eagerness to preach before all else, with intensity and without allowing
themselves to be turned aside by anything else, the carefulness not to be
deceived, not to allow anything of the authentic values the heretics possessed
to be lost, the anxiety to respond with tact to requests, requests unbalanced
but legitimate in principle—all this would be understandable.
In this case only one gesture would have been unexpected—Diego’s
decision, at the instigation of the legates, to suspend his return to Castile
for a time and to share in the enterprise of apostolic preaching, a spontaneous
gesture, quite after the manner of the bishop. In the outburst of his charity,
at the challenge of circumstances, Diego was prompt to give expression to
the living impulses of the Spirit.81
This indeed caused a curious legal imbroglio. A bishop neglecting his
diocese, was preaching without a mandate, in a foreign land, unbeknown
to his archbishop, and was allowing himself to be constituted the ‘guide and
leader’ of two pontifical legates in the very sphere of their mission. Finally,
to crown the anomaly, he was making them adopt a way of life notably
under suspicion in the Church at this time and in this province.
Obviously the legates could take as a guide anyone they thought right;
but had they, on the other hand, the power to confer a mandate upon
preachers whom they had met casually? Perhaps it might be legitimate as a
provisional measure.82 This was sufficient for the initial stages, and at the
beginning the bishop doubtless did not know himself that his collaboration
in the apostolic work would be relatively long. As the experiment continued,
Maitre Raoul preferred to refer to the Pope. It is, moreover, possible that
at this date the chapter of Citeaux expressly requested him to obtain
Innocent s confirmation of the apostolic method thought out by Dieao.83
The reply left Rome on 17th November. In somewhat over-stylized
Biblical language, it covered both the method and the preaching of the
Castilians and their Cistercian collaborators whom Arnaud had gone to seek.
We are informed, said the Pope, that the number of apostates in the Narbonensii
province has multiplied to such an extent that, through the defection of the
temporal sword, the spiritual sword has become an object of contempt ... and
flltG 1,C.da;m in the measurc Possible those who are already lying in the prison
of their blindness, no one is rising up as a rampart to protect the house of the
Lord) no one has the courage to mount the breaches (Ez. XIII, S). It is true that
this news . coming to the ears of a few religious, has stirred their courage
and has urged them to turn against the heretics the streams of their learning and
to distribute their waters in public places (Prov. V, 16) in the fervour of the
pint. But, having received no mandate from anyone soever (Rom. X, 1 r) they
have not dared to assume the office of preacher on their own authority, in orde^
ot to share the lot of Dathan and Abiram whom the earth swallowed up alive
(Num. XVI, 32 and Deut. XI, 6). So much so that finally there is found no one
maintain the cause of God before the people who wander adrift
We therefore ordain and prescribe by this apostolic letter that in your discretion
 MONTPELLIER 93

you take proved men, apt to fulfil the office which we reserve to them, and
determined, in imitating the poverty of Christ who was himself a poor man, to
approach the humble in lowly garb, but with the fervour of the Spirit, and that
you enjoin upon them in remission of their sins to go among the heretics without
delay, so that through the example of their action and the doctrine they preach,
they recall them so completely from error, if the Lord deigns to grant this . . .
that they may have the joy of one day possessing that which the Gospel saying
justifies them in hoping for—‘Do not be afraid you, my little flock, your Father
is determined to give you his Kingdom. (Luke XII, 32). . .

Innocent was far away. He was perhaps under a certain illusion about
Diego’s scruples. At this time the bishop had already been preaching against
the Albigenses for nearly six months with Maitre Raoul and Brother
Dominic.

Hardly indeed had he taken his decision and sent back his baggage to
Osma than he left Montpellier accompanied by the two legates and his
companion. The Guillem territory had no need of their services, nor had
the diocese of Maguelonne. They moved quickly towards Beziers, travelling
along the ancient Domitian Way. After half a day’s march they passed into
the diocese of Agde; at the day’s close they were already entering that of
Beziers. From now onwards they were in the midst of completely heretical
territory. The extensive overlordship into which they entered belonged to
Etienne de Servian, one of the principal vassals of the viscounty of Beziers-
Carcassonne.85 Etienne was a convinced ‘believer’ and a great protector of
the Catharists.86 He had thrown his lands open to all the heresiarchs who
wished to come there and received them in his castles, where he defended
and maintained them, allowing them to preach and argue in public and even
to keep schools. He thus harboured a whole series of famous preachers, in
particular Bernard de Simone, ‘bisbe’ of Carcassonne,8? Baudouin and above
all Thierry de Nevers.88 The latter was assuredly one of the most dangerous
propagandists of the sect. Originating from France and of noble origin he
had for long, under his real name of William, been a canon of Nevers and,
according to all appearances, also archdeacon of that diocese. Implicated at
the same time as several of his friends, members of the upper clergy, in the
heresy trials at Charite-sur-Loire from 1198 onwards, he had seen his uncle,
the Chevalier Evrard de Chateauneuf, the trusted friend of the Counts of
Auxerre and Nevers, condemned and burned in Paris in 1201. He had then
thrown off the mask, changed his name and taken flight. Like so many
others, it was in the Narbonensis that he sought refuge. There he was held
in special honour, because he was more brilliant than the others and because
they were proud of having as their coreligionist and apologist a former
cleric from that country of France from which a stream of learning was
flowing at that particular time.8?
 VIR EVANGELICUS
94
Scarcely had they arrived in the township of Servian, at the end of June
or the beginning of July,9o than the preachers of the faith succeeded in
organizing a public debate under the presidency of the lord of the place.
An exposition by the Catholic preachers, with a counter-exposition by the
heresiarchs Baudouin and Thierry and the succeeding controversial dispute,
followed its course of development during the week9i amid a plentiful supply
of texts from the New Testament. The population attended, in some
excitement. Feeling soon ran high. The bishop seemed to have things all his
own way. When he had forced Thierry de Nevers to follow him to his final
conclusion, the atmosphere was tense almost to the point of hurling insults.
The same Thierry who one day when at the end of his arguments was heard
to repeat in a rage: ‘The prostitute’—he meant the Church—‘has held
me for a long time, she shall have me no longer,’92 now hurled brusquely
in Diego’s face the insult ‘I know not of what spirit thou art. It is in the
spirit of Elias that thou art come.’ To which the bishop retorted: ‘Perhaps
in the spirit of Elias; but thou in the spirit of Antichrist.’93 Thierry wanted
to startle his Catharist believers by denouncing in Diego a reincarnation of
John the Baptist, in their eyes one of the worst henchmen of the god of evil,
the god of the Old Testament.94 The hour had come for interjections,
warnings, threats and entreaties. The people were visibly impressed. They
were ready, we are told, to return to the way of salvation in a body, and
were already beginning to detest the heresiarchs who had led them astray,
and were desirous of expelling them. On similar occasions the crowd had
lighted the fires despite the opposition of the clergy.95 All now depended
on the attitude of the lord of the place, Etienne de Servian. He made no
move. The heresiarchs were living in his house and had his friendship, for
he shared their belief. Despite the success of the preaching, the Catholic
cause was again compromised. It seemed certain that, following the
departure of the preachers, the heresiarchs, protected by the temporal
authority, would soon have won back all their influence over this fickle
population. Nevertheless, when the small band of legates went on their way
again, the crowd went with them in procession. It accompanied them for
nearly a league, that is, almost to the gates of Beziers. For a long time
already the disquieting city had been in sight, its towers and belfries standing
high up on its rocky promontory, in the loop of the Orb.

In view of their intentions the missionaries needed a certain courage to

enter the city. Beziers, the most revolutionary of the communes of the
Midi, the one most devoted to heresy, was also the one most aiven to
bloodshed. On 15th October, 1167, the townsmen had assaulted their own
lord, Viscount Raymond Trencavel in the church of the Madeleine; there
they had killed him, with the same blow breaking the jaw of the bishop
who was struggling to defend him.96 Ever since, the town had remained in a
 MONTPELLIER 95
state of ferment and as far removed as possible from orthodoxy. A rough
list drawn up by the bishop in 1209, before the advent of the crusade,
enumerated more than two hundred notable families who were heretics.97
Some pushed their hatred of the Church as far as aggression and sacrilege.98
The viscount and his guardian, Bernard de Saissac, despite formal and recent
promises, did nothing to stop them." Thus, when at the beginning of their
office as legates, Peter and Raoul had presented themselves before the bishop
of the place, Guillaume de Roquessel, to beg him to go and find the consuls
and summon them to abjure heresy and for the future to support the Church,
he had refused, and had even prevented the legates from taking such action
themselves.100 This had not saved him. A year later, suspended by the Pope,
he was assassinated ‘by the treachery of his own people’.101
The preachings and disputations began again at Beziers in the same way as
at Servian. The contest must have been even sharper. It lasted for a fortnight.
The heretics were more numerous, the population was more genuinely
favourable to them, and in view of the importance of the city, the Catholics,
too, were more relentless. People were soon afraid of some untoward
happening. The violence and harshness in legal procedure of Peter of
Castelnau particularly roused the hatred of his adversaries. Diego and Raoul
feared he would be assassinated. They advised him to separate from them
for a time.102 Peter accordingly did so. In the middle of that month of July
he had just received a fresh mission from the Pope.1" It was not until five
or six months later that he rejoined the group of preachers. The apostolic
character of the preaching undoubtedly gained from this.
It did not however obtain the same success as in Servian. Put to confusion,
the unbelievers remained none the less convinced. Only the Catholics of the
town, not very numerous, we are told, were strengthened in their faith.1"
Diego, Raoul and Dominic then left Beziers and resumed their journey
following the Domitian Way.
All along their route both villages and castles were deeply affected by heresy.
A few years later, at the announcement of the arrival of the crusaders and of
the taking of Beziers, all the inhabitants of the region left.1" The preachers,
however, did not want to stop on the way. They went direct to the principal
centre, Carcassonne. The city stood out then, just as we see it today, on the
crown of its high hill, not far away from the Aude. Its principal wall,
liberally adorned with towers, the strong castle of the viscount, the two
concentric outer bastions each girded with its walls and moat,106 gave it a
formidable aspect. It was a true stronghold of heresy, for its townsmen were
known as ‘the worst heretics and sinners before God’.1" The traces of the
apostolate of Peter and Raoul had quickly been obliterated. Bishop Berenger,
however,108 continued to expend all his energies against the unbelievers and
his fruitless preachings became increasingly violent. Beside themselves but
not converted, his fellow-townsmen soon drove him from the city (mid
 96 VIR EVANGELICUS

1207) by herald’s proclamation forbidding the people to have any dealing

with him in future, or to buy from or sell anything to him or those of his
household.

‘You will not listen to me’ (the bishop thundered). ‘Believe me, I shall raise such
a clamour against you that men will come from the farthest confines of the world
to destroy this shameful town. You can be certain that the walls of this city, were
they of iron and raised as high as heaven, will not be able to protect you against
the deserved vengeance that the most just Judge will visit upon your incredulity
and your malice’.109

The band of legates had nothing of this threatening aspect, especially since
Peter of Castelnau had left them. They devoted themselves for a week to
preaching and disputations. Then they went on their way again.

The chronicler, Pierre des Vaux-de-Cernai, whose account is an invaluable

source because he was in direct contact with the majority of the actors in
this story and had access to reports and archives of the Narbonensis mission
which the legate Arnaud Amaury110 kept with great care, has not thought it
worth continuing to follow the journey, which was prolonged, step by step.111
We know, however, from another chronicle that one of the first halts after
Carcassonne was made quite near Toulouse.112 The intention of this first
part of the expedition was clear—to reach the capital of the county as
quickly as possible. Beziers, Carcassonne, Toulouse, in this way the chief
centres of heresy which significantly coincided with the political centres of
the land, the capital cities of the Saint-Gilles and the Trencavels, would have
been dealt with. They would then turn back and by a zig-zag march make
the round of the villages and fortified townships to sow the truth of the.
Gospel everywhere, while disputing with the heterodox. IJ3
Each one of the localities in the Toulouse region, in the Lauragais or the
Razes had its own history in the sect, often a long-standing one" inscribed
within the situation of their beliefs as much as in the memory of men.
Lavaur, for instance, which the missionaries must have visited about this
time,114 had been the subject of a siege in 1181 by a holy army recently
levied by Cardinal Pietro d’Albano, former Abbot of Clairvaux and pontifical
legate.n5 This was the first application of the 27th canon of the Lateran.
The effect of it had not been lasting. Neither was the effect of the preaching
of Diego and his companion decisive. In 1 211, a second siege was to end in a
massacre of Catharist knights, u 6 At Verfeil, the last stage before Toulouse, the
insulting reception given to St Bernard was still in men’s minds a century
after the event. “7 When, in the church, he had tried to speak of the heresy
and of the responsibilities of the lay authorities, the lord of the place had
risen and all had left the church after him. There were then more than one
hundred knights in the town. Bernard had moved out to the public square
so as to speak at least to the humble folk; but his adversaries began to cry
 MONTPELLIER 97

out and slam their doors with such violence that Bernard, shaking the dust
off his feet, had departed, cursing the town—‘Green leaf (Ver(te)feuille)
may God wither you.’ Many thought in the years to come that the later
misfortunes of this brilliant company of knights were due in part to a saint’s
curse. They listened with more readiness to Diego who defended the
reality of the divinity and humanity of Christ.118 Once more he revealed
the theological naivety of his adversaries Pons Jourdain, Arre Arrufat and
other heresiarchs.119
Such was the drama of the Albigeois—the doctrinal poverty of the
Catharists and the strength of the influence of their personal attitude, which
was austere and apostolic. This would be clearly seen in the single disputa¬
tion that the documents make known to us in some detail, the one in which
for the first time, the figure of Dominic comes into view, the dispute of
Montreal.
 Chapter VII

THE PREACHING OF JESUS CHRIST

B ETWEEN the Mediterranean and the wide valley drained by the

Garonne as far as the Atlantic, the plain of the Lauragais offers easy
passage. The highest point, two or three miles beyond Castelnaudary,
is less than 600 feet high. To the west, a long and shallow river1 flows
down in the direction of Toulouse. On the east two other rivers2 flow
towards Carcassonne, where, joining the Aude, they move slowly down until
they disappear in the blue waters of the sea by Narbonne On both sides of
the fringe of the Lauragais, however, the hills soon begin to mass together
and rise into clumps. To the north there is the Montagne Noire, with its
4,000 feet, on the edge of the Cevennes. The torrents hollow out in it deep
ravines, the edges of which are crowned with castles like eagles’ nests. To
the south are the successive tiers of the first plateaux, of the Petites Pyrenees
and the Corbff.res, which form a step-ladder to the high peaks which some¬
times rise to 10,000 feet.

This route has been a highway for men to travel along since prehistoric
times, when the final retreat of the sea first opened the corridor of the river
valley to the flow of the streams of humanity. There the Romans established
a lateral branch of the Domitian Way. Later the waterway of the Canal du
Midi and the track of the railway would pass that way. From the beainning
Toulouse at one end, Carcassonne at the other, formed as it were the bolts
of this indispensable corridor. The political axis of the region was thus set in
a determined pattern, at the same time as the economic axis. In the twelfth
century the intensive travelling to and fro of reformers, merchants, pilgrims
crusaders or preachers, promoters in their different ways of spiritual innova¬
tions, made this route equally a religious axis. At the beginning of the
thirteenth century the Toulouse-Carcassonne axis was one of heresy. Since
1206 the Catholic missionaries had been able to do nothing more than travel
slowly through this section of the country, multiplying their deep incursions
into the secondary valleys. r

A series of strong castles and fortified townships on the southern edge of

1KkTI C.°mjman,Mthe Pki" °r controlled the ways of access'"to a

ifhcult hinterland at the foot of the Pyrenees—Razis, the Pays de Sault, the
County ol Foix Three ol these townships formed a group-Lauracle-Grand
Panjeaux and Montreal. At the beginning of , toy, the missionaries seemed
 THE PREACHING OF JESUS CHRIST 99

to become more centred on these townships and not to move far from their
neighbourhood. This was because they were now in the very heart of the
Catharist heresy.

The castle of Laurac,3 the former capital of the Lauragais, was the outpost
fortress of the Trencavel and the centre of their power in the direction of
Toulouse. The powerful family which held it had been completely Catharist
for three generations. The grandmother, Blanche, was still living. A series
of documents describe her activities between 1200 and 1210. She was
then formally garbed as a heretic and directed a community of Perfect women
in the place. She had founded similar communities in different localities. She
had likewise founded a house of hospitality for the Perfect, kept by Isarn de
Castres, a Catharist deacon. The nobility of Laurac and the surrounding
district met together with Blanche’s community to hear the sermons of
another deacon, Raymond Bernard. On certain days Bernard de Saissac could
be seen making his appearance there, and even Raymond-Roger de Foix. In
i2 2£, Isarn de Castres would return from Montsegur to preach to this loyal
aristocracy in the great hall of the castle.
Blanche's! five children were likewise known as declared heretics. One of
her daughters, Mabilia, directed a community of Perfect women as she did.
Another daughter, Giraude, Dame de Lavaur, was to be thrown to the
bottom of a well by the crusaders after the taking of the town. A third,
married to one of the Niort family, had transmitted her belief to her three
sons, Raymond, Guillaume and Bernard-Othon, who would one day inherit
Laurac. Lastly, we shall soon meet again Aimery de Montreal, the eldest of
the family.
Five miles or so to the west of Laurac, FanjeauxS constituted the most
important centre of communications of the region. From the high hill on
which it was perched, the town in fact dominated a network of valleys which
opened in turn towards the Aude, the Ariege and the Garonne. Set
like a gateway at the point where the road from Carcassonne to Pamiers
climbed before crossing the plateau, it controlled the route which led to the
upper valley of the Ariege, looking from behind as it were on to the counties
of Comminges and of Foix. Thus the Romans had established themselves at
this crossroad, erecting a temple to Jupiter there as is recalled in the name
of the place—Fanum Jovis. The feudal lords in their turn had made of
Fanjeaux a fortified place with walls and moats, the vestiges of which can
still be seen despite numerous sieges, fires and later destruction. More than
fifty noble families had their dwellings there. The seignorial rights were
divided to the last degree. There were, however, two rulers6 who pre¬
dominated over the rest—the Domina miles, Dame Cavaers, and Count
Raymond-Roger de Foix, who thus secured the gateways of his own

territory.
 I 00 VIR EVANGELICUS

As at Laurac, the noble families of Fanjeaux had been devoted to the

Catharists since the twelfth century, several of them for two, three and even
four generations. This was the case with the Tonneins, the Assalit, the
Mazeroles, the Durfort, the Feste, the Mortier, the Saint-Michel, thelsarn.?
Dame Cavaers was already a Catharist in 1193. She had had her daughter
brought up by the ‘Perfect’, and the girl for long remained loyal to them.8
Finally the Count of Foix, though he did not participate in the heretical rites
himself, did not hesitate to be present at them, as in not; at the sensational
entry into heresy of his sister Esclarmonde.9
Guilabert de Castres10 had been directing a community of ‘Perfect’ at
Fanjeaux since 1193. It was still in existence in 1 204 and even in 1 209, and
served as a centre for his preaching. This indefatigable propagandist had been
bishe of the Toulouse region11 since 1208 at least, residing, it seems, at
Lavaur. He frequently returned, however, to Fanjeaux. Already in 1195-,
Guilhelme de Tonneins directed a house of Perfect women there; her
daughter Aude succeeded her. Other Catharist communities, male and
female, were still to be met with in the locality.12 Finally a number of
women converts to Catharism threw open their houses for sermons,
ceremonies or religious discussions, which the nobility of the district were
not slow to frequent.
Fanjeaux possessed even more exceptional phenomena. At least two
Catharist doctors of medicine were to be found there, Maitre Amaud and
Bernard d’Ayros,^ who practised throughout the Lauragais. With their de¬
voted services they combined religious propaganda and direct invitations to
receive the consolamentum. Finally there were workshops for craftsmen^
recalling the connection with weaving of the original heterodox groups of
the neighbourhood half a century earlier. Thus equipped, the Fanjeaux
centre could reach all classes of the population. It presented the character¬
istics and had the effectiveness of a headquarters of the dualist religion.
About five miles from Fanjeaux on the road to Carcassonne, Montreal^
was just such another similar centre. Situated on the crest of a group of hills
which served as an outpost, the fortified town cut off the road and looked out
over the whole plain. The view from it also took in the boundary of the
viscounty and diocese of Carcassonne with the diocese and county of
Toulouse. Its lord, Aimery de Montreal et Laurac, 16 was Blanche’s eldest
son. He was the most powerful lord in the Lauragais and one of the principal
advisers of Raymond of Toulouse and of Raymond-Roger of Beziers-
Carcassonne. A Catharist believer, like all his family, he was to flee from the
crusaders m 1209, submit to them twice to preserve his fief, and twice
betray them. It was this that led to his execution at the termination of the
siege of Lavaur, together with his sister Giraude. He was the patron of the
Perfect. Two deacons were permanently stationed in his township as well
as several communities of both sexes. The principal nobles and townsmen
 THE PREACHING OF JESUS CHRIST lOI

received and entertained the preachers in their houses. They were present
in large numbers at their solemn rites, their prayers and their sermons.
With Aimeiy de Laurac at their head, all rendered to their Perfect, at the
conclusion of the ceremonies, those signs of veneration which the Catholics
classed as ‘adoration’.

Such was the stronghold of Montreal where the pontifical preachers were
summoned to meet in the spring of 1207. It was about March or the
beginning of April.17 The hills, on the edge of the plain, were covered with
almond-trees in blossom. The moist ochre of the soil, still apparent among
the vines, formed a sharp contrast with the green of the growing corn. The
faint rose colour of the Roman tiles on the flat roofs of the houses was
hardly visible in the midst of the clumps of pine trees and cypresses. Neither
Diego, Raoul nor Dominic, however, paid attention to the beauty of the
countryside in this southern spring. They were on their way to combat. A
disputation of importance 18 awaited them in the stronghold of the Catharists.
Their hearts were stirred by mixed feelings in which were mingled the joy
of the pugilist, the sense of responsibility as champions of the Church, and
primarily the charity and hope of the apostle.2° They thought of the souls
they would snatch from the devil and damnation—of mounting the breaches
and forming of their persons a rampart for the Church.21 In any event, they
were desirous of bearing witness to their faith and of proclaiming it higher
than the roof-tops22 of Montreal and were determined to give in the
presence of these stray sheep the reasons for the faith and hope they bore in
their hearts. 23
It was perhaps the Catharists who had taken the initiative in the matter of
the meeting.24 Momentarily disconcerted by the action of Diego and Raoul,
they were no longer satisfied with defending themselves from day to day, as
opportunity offered. The closeness of their hierarchical organization in the
Narbonensis was considerable. For forty years now they had held what
amounted to veritable councils there, imitating the Catholic councils.2$ In
1206, it seems, nearly six hundred of them had met at Mirepoix.26 Perhaps
they had there discussed their counter-thrust against the legates. In any case
their resistance quickly stiffened and became organized.27 It is possible that
they themselves conceived the idea of a general meeting in their fief of
Montreal.
The famous Guilabert de Castres came down from Fanjeaux for the
contest, perhaps even from his bishop’s residence in Toulouse. Pons
Jourdain, whom the legates had already met at Verfeil, came with him.28
From the south came Benoit de Termes,29 future Bishop of the Razes, and
from the north the deacon Arnaud Othon,30 who had been preaching in the
Cabardes under the protection of the Sire de Cabaret. Peter of Castelnau,
however, joined his colleagues again on the occasion of this disputation.31
 VIR EVANGELICUS
102

A large number of secondary collaborators were also present.32 Thus the

leaders, surrounded by their followers, were four against four, bishops
against bishops, Church against Church. This was indeed the general
disputation33 spoken of by a contemporary. After ten months of local and
partial encounters, the Catholics and the Catharists were going to come to
grips in their full strength and on every ground.
The meeting could not have taken place without the intervention of the
lord, Aimery de Montreal. It was doubtless he who presided over it. As
was customary in this kind of contest, four judges were to be arbitrators of
the disputation and to declare which side was victorious.34 They were
chosen among the nobles and the townsmen—Bernard de Villeneuve and
Bernard d’Arzens, on the one side, Raymond Got and Arnaud Riviere on
the other. The astonishing fact and one which spoke volumes for the religious
position of the neighbourhood was that although elected by both parties, the
four judges were Catharist believers or supporters. The Histoire Albigeoise
says so expressly and it is confirmed by the documents. The knights had been
declared ‘faidits’ at the time of the crusade and were dispossessed on that
account; the townsmen had frequented heretical ceremonies and sent help
to the Catharist preachers.33
Fifty years after the disputation, Guillaume de Puylaurens was astonished
at the nature and circumstances of this debate. When the theses forming
the subject of the disputation were enumerated, he exclaimed: ‘How heart¬
rending. Has the position of the Church and the Catholic faith fallen so low
in this Christian land that one is obliged to abandon to laymen the
responsibility of pronouncing judgement on doctrines that are so
critical?’36 It was surely to the bishops meeting in council that it appertained
to settle questions touching revelation so closely. Shortly afterwards the
inquisitor Bernard Gui, in the name of long-standing experience, formally
discouraged the debating of questions of faith with certain heresiarchs in the
presence of the laity. The simple, he said, might be disturbed by this—‘for
they are convinced that we have at hand reasons for the faith which are so
clear and obvious that no one can put forward any objection without our
being able to convince him there and then and in such a way that the
illiterate themselves can clearly understand these reasons’.37 Truth is often
less specious than error. Such is the feeling of the Church of our own times,
above all since the disappointments of the meetings of the sixteenth century.

This was not the position adopted by the preachers. They were relying on
a tradition much older than the Albigensian missions since it went right back
to St Augustine. The Bishop of Hippo had not ceased his efforts until he had
obtained from the imperial authorities the organization of discussions with
the leaders of the Donatists. For a long time the latter made excuses. When,
however, the emperor had forced their bishops to discussions with the
 THE PREACHING OE JESUS CHRIST I03

Catholics, the collapse of their church, until then solidly unshakable, was
precipitated.38

In the twelfth century, the mission against the heretics included such
discussions together with the sermons, in the very midst of the legal trials.39
What differentiated one from the other was sometimes difficult to discern.40
At Lombers,4i at Toulouse,42 at Narbonne,43 at Carcassonne,44 highly con¬
troversial meetings took place. Bernard himself had agreed to participate in
them. 45 ° r

Discussion indeed obliged the sectaries to renounce what Christianity

most abominated in them by tradition—the clandestine or, at the very
least, private character of their ‘conventicles’, the indoctrination of lay
people by preachers without mandate or control ;46 for the future the
heresiarch would have to defend his beliefs publicly against theologians and
in the presence of bishops. And because the disputation took place before the
very people who had heard the heterodox preaching through the evidence of
those present, such discussions enabled the identity between the public
confession of the heretics and their ordinary teaching to be checked.47 This
was particularly necessary in the case of the Catharists, who excelled in
dissimulating their true position, and in turn, according to the circum¬
stances, emphasized their practice which was genuinely evangelical, or their
dualist teaching which was in truth so little Christian.48 put to confusion, the
heresiarch was not converted, but he lost his authority. The laity again heard
the authentic word of God in circumstances that were clearly impressive.
Finally, the temporal authorities who presided over the disputation were
clearly once more set face to face with their responsibilities.
It is true that the heresiarchs often needed courage to present themselves
for the public controversy, more dangerous for them than a private inter¬
rogation. Henri de Lausanne in Toulouse had not been willing to face up to
St Bernard’s challenge.49 This had been the signal for his downfall, since the
people did not forgive him for this evasion. The men of that time indeed
did not lack the quality of courage. ‘To give an account of the hope they
cherished.’ This phrase of the epistle of St Peter,so often met with in the
documents, expressed their attitude clearly.si In 1207, in the Narbonensis
and especially at Montreal, in view of the disposition of the public and of
the authorities, such courage was particularly necessary for the Catholic
missionaries.

The controversy lasted a fortnight. Arnaud Othon, the deacon, attacked.

He set forth the basis52 of the dispute from the side of the Catharists.

The Roman Church [he said] is not holy; she is not the bride of Christ. She is, on
the contrary, the church of the devil and her doctrine is demoniacal; she is that
Babylon which John, in the Apocalypse, calls the mother of fornications and
abominations, drunk with the blood of the saints and martyrs of Jesus Christ.
 I 04 VIR EVANGELICUS

Her discipline is neither holy, good nor instituted by the Lord Jesus Christ;
never did Christ or the apostles impose or dispose the rite of the Mass as it
exists at present.53

The classic themes of the attacks against the early Church will be recog¬
nized, themes which the Protestant controversies were so eager to take up
again in the sixteenth century. The choice of themes was lacking not in
cleverness but in novelty. It was not easy in the simplifications and passions
of a controversial meeting to make the necessary distinctions between the
divine and human elements of the Church. It was difficult to make the
crowds, who were completely lacking in any sense of history, grasp the
legitimacy of a homogeneous development of rites.
The Bishop of Osma led the debates on the Catholic side. He was only
able to use the New Testament, since the Catharists rejected the rest of the
Bible. One can imagine that the missionaries did not remain on the defensive.
The question was not concerning the authority of the Roman Church or of
the Catharist church, but of the errors for which the Roman Church
rejected the Catharists, in regard to the oneness of God, the role of Christ
and of the cross in the redemption, the nature of sin, of the soul, of salvation.
Everyone eagerly bustled around Diego. That it might be more effective, it
was resolved to conduct the controversy in writing.54 That is, the texts and
arguments intended for use in the public discussions were set dowrn in
writings5 after which the plan of the arguments and replies was drawn up
anew. These texts were then transmitted to the judges to enable them to
give their verdict.56 The drawing up of these different documents before
and after the session demanded a great deal of work. If we are correct in
relating to this controversy an incident of which all that is known is that it
happened in the course of an incident at Montreal, 57 Dominic had been put
in charge of certain parts of the debate. One evening he wrote down on a
sheet of paper the ‘authorities’, that is, the texts of the Bible and of the
Fathers of the Church, which he had used in the discussion, and transmitted
them to his opponent so that he might reflect upon them. The following is
what was reported of him later, as it was related to Pierre des Vaux-Cernai:

In the course of the night, the heretics were sitting round the fire. The particular
one among them to whom the man of God had handed the sheet of paper passed
it to those around him. His companions then suggested that he should throw it
into the midst of the fire; if the paper was burnt, it was their belief, that is to
say their misbelief, that was true ; if, on the contrary, it did not burn, they would
acknowledge the truth of the belief of our preachers. In short, all were in agree¬
ment. The paper was thrown into the fire, but although it remained for some time
in the veiy midst of the flames, it dropped out of them again without being burnt
in any way at all. All were amazed. One of them, harder than the others, said:
Let it be thrown into the fire again, we shall thus see more fully what the truth
is.’ It was forthwith thrown into the fire and forthwith it dropped out again
 THE PREACHING OF JESUS CHRIST ioy

unburnt. On seeing this the man who was hard and slow to believe said: ‘Let it
be thrown in a third time, we shall then know the truth without any more
uncertainty.’ It was thrown in for the third time and not only did it again not
burn, but dropped out of the fire perfectly whole and intact. Nevertheless even
at the sight of so many marvels, the heretics were not willing to be converted to
the true faith. They persisted in their ill-will and stubbornness and rigorously
forbade each other to allow news of the miracle to reach us by talking of it. A
knight who was with them, however, and already somewhat inclined to our faith,
had no wish to hide what he had just seen and told it to several persons.

The anecdote is typical. The dissidents were not intellectuals and the
truth of the parchment seemed to them easier to prove through the inter¬
mediary of a miracle than by the reading or study of the texts. They
then tried an ‘ordeal’ by fire, that type of God’s judgement of which the
feudal and even the ecclesiastical courts made considerable use, despite the
reprobation of the Popes.58 As a rule it was men who were made to pass
through this cruel test.59 The ordeal of a book, however, is not unknown.
In former times Alfonso VI of Castile, urged to choose between the
Mozarabic and the Roman rite had, so it was said, thrown the books of both
liturgies into the fire. The book of the Mozarabic rite did not burn. The
king however decided in the sense contrary to the miracle.60 The men of
Montreal did likewise. To touch hearts something more than miracles was
necessary.
Dominic’s intervention is a proof that in the discussions the procedure of
the theological disputations of the time was followed. The themes were
divided into series of questions and the process began by allowing secondary
theologians to dispute. Then the masters took up one by one the questions
which had been unravelled, to arrive at the conclusions or determinations.
When the whole of the questions had thus been debated, each of the
opposing groups met separately and drew up the scheme of the disputation
with arguments for and against, and the conclusions. If credence may be
given to a report by Jordan, several preachers summed up the disputation;
Dominic’s memorandum was judged the best and chosen to represent the
Catholic thesis.61
As to the lay judges, impressed, we are assured, by the patent defeat of
their champions, they refrained from giving their verdict and even from
deliberating. They further refused to give the Catholics back their memoran¬
dum, lest it should come under the public eye, and gave it to their
adversaries. It was lost—either destroyed by the Catharists, or perhaps
disappearing a few years later in the upheavals of the crusade.62 The fact did
not prevent imagination from setting to work feverishly on the subject of the
memorandum drawn up by St Dominic and the report ol the disputation.
Between the thirteenth century and the sixteenth century several people
claimed to have rediscovered the text.63
106 VIR EVANGELICUS

More lasting and more valuable traces, however, remained in men s

hearts. If the Perfect came out of the contest more eager than ever to
contradict the pontifical missionaries, if Aimery de Montreal and the secular
authorities had no intention of changing their attitude in the slightest degree,
one hundred and fifty persons abandoned their heresy. Bernard de Villeneuve
later revealed this to Guillaume de Puylaurens. Villeneuve is worthy of
credence, for at this time he favoured the Catharists.
After the end of the disputation, Peter of Castelnau left for Provence,
for the purpose of binding together the greatest possible number of the
vassals of Toulouse in a league for peace. The temporal force thus assembled
would enable them to drive out the Catharists. It might even impress the
count to the extent that he would be brought to swear peace in his turn and
to drive out his heretics. If necessary, he would be constrained to this by the
revolt and war of the vassals of the league at the same time as by the
excommunication.65
Diego, Raoul and Dominic, however, followed quite a different pro¬
cedure. They did not leave Montreal.66 They followed up the initial success
obtained and journeyed through the neighbourhood, visiting villages and
castles, and sowing the seed of the word of God. Vagrants of Christ, con¬
forming to the pattern put before them by Diego, they lived like the apostles
and begged their bread from door to door. The Bishop of Osma in particular
made an impression. The humility and moral beauty which emanated from
the person of this man of God ‘won him the affection even of the infidels
and penetrated to the very hearts of all those among whom he lived; thus the
heretics asserted in regard to him that it was impossible that such a man was
not predestined to eternal life. Perhaps he had only been sent to these parts
to learn from them the rules of the true faith. ’6?
On 17th April, Dominic obtained from Berenger de Navarre an important
donation for an establishment of converted women which had just been
founded between Montreal and Fanjeaux, to which we shall again refer
later.68 The deed is dated from the see of Carcassonne. The Archbishop of
Narbonne had doubtless followed the recent important disputation, at the
side of the local bishop. The promises he had been forced to make to the
Pope in the previous year obliged him to manifest this minimum of goodwill.
At the end of April fresh and impressive support reached the missionaries :6$
Arnaud Amaury arrived in Montreal accompanied by twelve abbots of his
order. Twelve, in accordance with the most sacred number of the
apostles ,70 under the guidance of their leader; each one had with him a
companion, lor Jesus had sent forth his preachers two by two. The band, to
the number of thirty or less, had concentrated at Citeaux in the course of the
month of March, faithful to the rendezvous fixed by the chapter in the
pievious September. It had reached the banks of the Saone and embarked.
Letting themselves drift down the Saone and the Rhone, the company had
 THE PREACHING OF JESUS CHRIST I07

landed at Arles or Beaucaire.71 ‘Without money for the journey, without

horses’, to show that in all things they were ‘men of the Gospel’, the
Cistercians came to make contact with heresy, ‘armed with the prestige of
learning and eloquence, ready to give satisfaction to anyone who should ask
them to justify their belief, ready even to risk their lives boldly for the
faith.’72 The promise made by Arnaud a little less than a year earlier, the
request made by the Pope to the order as a whole three years before, were
now realized.73

The mission of preaching decided upon by Innocent III at the beginning of

1204 was at last bearing fruit. For the future the documents would make
frequent mention of the preachers, ‘the holy preachers’, ‘our preachers’,74
‘the preachers of the word of God, ministers of His Holiness’;75 they speak
moreover of the ‘abbots to whom the lord Pope had given mandate to
preach against the heretics’.76 The enterprise as a whole was called ‘the
Preaching’,77 ‘the Holy Preaching’78. In view of the held of operations of the
delegation, one might call it ‘the Preaching of the Narbonensis’. The
missionaries’ seal, however, displayed a more definite and quasi-official
title: ‘Preaching of Jesus Christ’. 79
The name of Jesus Christ had in fact been set up since the twelfth century
as the fitting insignia of the enterprises against the infidel, especially against
the Catharists. The vocabulary of the Albigensian crusade was to make great
use of this. The armed crusade was the militia Jhesu Christi; its activity the
servitium Jhesu Christi; its leader the comes Jhesu Christi ;8° it was in the name
of Jesus Christ that the challenge against the supporters of the Catharists81
was launched; a military order against the heretics was soon to be founded
in the Albigeois: the militia fidei Jhesu Christi.82 The name, however, was
not confined to military activities, a bishop who did not preach against the
heretics was an ‘enemy of Christ’ ;83 the negotium Jhesu Christi, mentioned by
the Histoire Albigeoise,g4 covered all matters of faith in the Narbonensis; the
‘Preaching of Jesus Christ’ was an essential part of it.
Of the forty or so religious who had composed it since April 1207, only
certain names are known to us—primarily those of the three Cistercian
legates and the two Castilians. Among the twelve abbots were Gui, Abbot
of Vaux-de-Cernai85 (near Paris) ; he had not yet with him his secretary and
nephew Peter, the author of the Histoire Albigeoise, who arrived only in
1212.86 Henri, Abbot of Mont-Sainte-Marie87 (diocese of Besan^on) was
there too. Perhaps, but it is pure conjecture, the Abbot of Bonnevaux88
(near Vienne) and the Abbot of Preuilly86 (diocese of Meaux), were also
there, and it is possible that the Abbot of Valmagne (diocese of Agde) whom
the Pope had requested to furnish preachers, had joined the legates. We
know nothing of Canon Raoul de Narbonne, likewise placed by the Pope at
the disposal of his representative. On the other hand the Abbot of
 108 VIR EVANGELICUS

Villelongue00 (near Limoux) was on several occasions seen working with

Dominic for conversions. The name of another Cistercian, the future
Cardinal Rainier Capocci, then Abbot of Trois-Fontaines, was also men¬
tioned. 91
The group, as will be seen, was composed only of religious, the Bishop of
Osma forming no exception. All were Cistercians with the exception of
Dominic, the Canon Regular. This type of recruitment clearly had a purpose.
It corresponded to the intentions of the Sovereign Pontiff when he decided
upon the great mission at the beginning of 1204: a preaching by word and
example of which the Cistercians were to be the heart and soul.92 The
inspiration of the Pope in regard to apologetics: ‘to say nothing, to do
nothing which might provoke criticism even from a heretic’,93 had
developed in a positive way by the integral practice of the imitation of the
apostles. The general confirmation of this as well as all its details, can be
gathered from the documents.94
The missionaries properly so-called all had the title of prelate—the Bishop
of Osma, the thirteen Cistercian abbots—or the title of master—Peter de
Castelnau, Raoul de Fontfroide and Raoul de Narbonne. There still existed
at this time a close link between the prelacy and teaching on the one hand,
and preaching on the other.95 It will be noted, however, that no bishop
from the neighbourhood joined the group directly; as if, in this phase of the
mission against the Albigenses, there had been a desire to make a distinct
cleavage between the acts of evangelization and the pressure of authority. 96
In the same order of ideas the thrusting aside of Peter de Castelnau, who was
wholly concerned with the manoeuvring of his instruments of spiritual and
temporal coercion, was charged with meaning.
Up to this time the missionaries had acted in concert. The company
moved from town to town, or spread out in all directions from a centre.
After the arrival of the preachers from Citeaux, it became too numerous to
continue to move in a body. Arnaud immediately distributed the abbots over
the whole of the Narbonensis.97 He provided each of them with one or two
auxiliaries,98 assigning to him his own sphere of action or termini,99 within
the limits of which he was to move about the district, devoting himself with
zeal to disputations and preaching.
Abbot Guy de Cernai left for Carcassonne, of which place he eventually
became bishop. He arrived there on 24th June. 100 Abbot Flenri de St Marie
established himself at Pamiers, where he had arrived by 11th June.101
Master Raoul must have reserved for himself the Saint-Gilles neighbourhood :
he was there at the beginning of July.102 Dominic remained where he was,
between Montreal and Fanjeaux.i°3 At the foot of the latter township, at the
point at which the Sesoine which flows down the hill along the ravines
crosses the route to Montreal, there were a chapel and a few houses. This
was Prouille, scaicely a hamlet, which for a few months past now had come
 THE PREACHING OF JESUS CHRIST 109

into the life of the Canon of Osma. He returned there as to his headquarters.
A charter of 17th April, another of 8th August, showed him to be
strongly linked to this corner of the earth. A priest who was a native of
Pamiers, of the name of William Claret,104 was with him from this time
onwards.
This centre of the apostolate, more permanent than the others, enables
us to surmise what this kind of home base of the apostolic preachers must
have been like. Prouille formed a pied-a-terre, a place with a permanent
personnel, the women converts earlier mentioned.105 It was a place of rest
and recollection; also a centre of supplies, the economic basis of which will
be more clearly defined later. It was doubtless similar to the hospices where
the passing Catharist preachers were received. The freedom of movement of
the apostolic life had its own needs and everywhere gave rise to similar
institutions. The differences, however, were notable. The feminine group
at Prouille was of its nature more stable than the hospices kept by the ladies
of the Perfect. It would shortly be made into a regular institution in
accordance with the traditions of monastic life. The centre equally con¬
stituted the primitive curia where Dominic, in his office as pontifical
preacher, delivered the letters of reconciliation.106 As an official personage,
by delegation of the legates of the Holy See, he possessed in effect the seal
of the mission. In this way he could stamp with an authentic wax seal the
charters he delivered to the converted to certify their return to the faith
and to remind them of the conditions of their penance.
The name of Preaching applied to the general enterprise was now trans¬
ferred to the centre of Prouille. It is in this way that we have precise details
of the seal of the mission, which was still found at the foot of certain letters
of penance at the beginning of the fourteenth century. I07 Unlike personal
ecclesiastical seals, which were in the shape of a shuttle, this was round, in
white wax—the shape characteristic of the ecclesiastical tribunals.I0§ It
corresponded to the powers of jurisdiction of the missionaries against the
heretics. An Agnus Dei, such as one sees in the hands of St John Baptist, was
represented in the centre—the symbol of Christ, crucified and risen again.
It equally served as a sign on the standards of the next crusade against the
Albigensians.109 The inscription, somewhat obliterated, can nevertheless be
read with certainty: S[igillum] predicationis Jhesu ChristiA10 On 8th August,
1 207 Sans Gasc and his wife Ermengarde Godoline, both of servile condition,
crave themselves and their property to the ‘Holy preaching and to the Lord
Dominic of Osma’.111 This formula has given rise to some confusion among
historians. Since the group of women converts later became the famous
monastery of Sainte Marie de Prouille, it was thought that the name of
‘Holy preaching’ was the original name of the house of sisters as such. This
was not so at all; it was the name of Dominic’s centre of operations of which
the group of convert ladies still formed part. Moreover this name disappeared
 1 Io VIR EVANGELICUS

from the documents after the year 1208, when the Preaching of Jesus Christ
was almost completely overshadowed by the crusade.
It was, however, to reappear eight years later with the Preaching of
Toulouse, the first house of the order of Preachers. At that moment Dominic
would bear the title of predicationis humilis minister.112 In 1217 the house in
Toulouse would be called: ‘the Preaching of the church of St Romain’.1”

In 1221, Fulk, the bishop of the diocese, remembering the origins of the
order of St Dominic would once more give to its leader the anachronistic
title of master of the Preaching’.1” Moreover it was for long to remain the
custom to name the Dominican houses in the south of France ‘the Preaching
of the house of Prouille, of the convent of Toulouse, of Limoges’1” and in
the early days the order itself was sometimes to bear the name of ‘Order of
the Preaching’.116

Despite the dispersion of its centre and of the division of the ‘territories’,
the Preaching of Jesus Christ preserved its unity. This was clearly due to the
goveinment of its leaders. Mention has already been made of the role of
Innocent III. The Pope had conceived, decided on the enterprise, brought it
together and continued to direct it closely. Arnaud’s role was important too.
He had obtained fresh recruits from his general chapter and brought them to
the site of their labours. Gifted organizer as he was, he divided the region
up so that it was distributed among his apostolic workers.
Arnaud could not, however, remain there permanently. His exalted office
too frequently called him elsewhere. A stable authority, that of the other
legates for instance, was necessary. Peter de Castelnau had other cares and
other gifts than that of preaching. Thus, from the beginning, Diego of Osma
replaced him at the head of the mission, at the side of Raoul de Fontfroide.
If it was not to a decision on the part of the Pope that he owed this position,
ie at least held it by the will of the legates. The documents are categorical.
To Diego as well as to Raoul, Cernai assigns the title of predicationis princeps
et magister. The title of magister should be noted.”8 The term is primarily
of scholastic origin and indicates an intellectual and moral rather than a lecral
authority. 119 After the beginning of the twelfth century it was traditionally
used to designate the leader of a company of itinerant preachers holding a
mandate from the Church. Robert d’Arbrissel, St Norbert, Bernard de
hiron had already been designated in this way.”6 The leaders of heterodox
preachers, Catharists or Waldenses, also used it.”i It was later given to St
rancis, at the head of his first brethren when he preached in the*Sudan. ”2
e reason for the use in this teaching is clearly the doctoral”3 character
° t e preacher s sense (predicator et doctor) when he has received an official
mission (gfficium predicationis, insistens doctrine). Dominic revived the
tit e at Toulouse in 1216 :fr. Dominicus, prior et magister predicatorum.”4 In
1221 the bishop would still call him magister predicationis, although this
Servian, first stop on the journey of the itinerant preachers.
 THE PREACHING OF JESUS CHRIST I I I

original title had at that very moment been replaced by the definitive
appellation magister ordinisfratrum predicatorum. I25
The role of the Bishop of Osma in the Preaching was considerable. Not
only had he introduced the new apostolic method adopted, but he had given
the spiritual stimulus which had led to its acceptance and its being put into
practice. He was the inspirer and restorer of the papal preaching. He con¬
tributed to its organization, directed it and, finally, kept it in being by
securing its economic basis.
During its initial years the Preaching of the Narbonensis lived in accord¬
ance with the pattern of life of any ordinary legation. The maintenance and
expenses of the legates were assured by the ‘procurations’ which the
churches among whom they carried out their ministry provided.126 In view
of the avarice of the Archbishop of Narbonne and the ruinous condition of
the sees of Toulouse and Carcassonne, the financial position of Peter and
Raoul was far from brilliant. Berenger sometimes refused them neces¬
sities. I27 The nomination as legate of Arnaud, who had the revenues of
Citeaux at his disposal, improved things considerably.
In any case, after the Montpellier disputation, the Preaching’s economy
was suddenly simplified. The baggage and unnecessary servants were sent
away, they travelled on foot and begged. Berenger naturally found nothing
to complain of in this. This life of ‘the poor of Christ’, which now became
the rule of all the missionaries, gave them a remarkable freedom of move¬
ment and facility of adaptation.
After the arrival of the twelve abbots, however, some degree of organiza¬
tion was introduced. The interior fervour of men like Diego or Dominic
could doubtless easily adapt itself to a continual effort of heroism; it was
not possible to ask this of a body of forty or so religious. It was necessary to
be able to breathe in between these evangelical rounds of preaching; to
gather one’s forces together again in some friendly house of hospitality
without being solely at the mercy of the very restricted charity of hostile
territory. The more systematized taking possession of the region, first given
shape by the distribution of April 1207, enabled a minimum of economic
organization to be carried out. The Bishop of Osma had the advantage oi
personal revenues. The proximity of Spain enabled him to have recourse to
his funds there fairly rapidly. He made use of them for the upkeep of the
missionaries.
From his revenues, relates the chronicler Robert of Auxerre,128 he
provided supplies of food which he deposited in various centres, for the use
of the preachers. This was the economic basis of the centres or local
Preachings. In August 1207, he decided to consolidate the system and to
return for the time being to Castile. He wanted to put his domestic affairs
in order and to bring back sufficient resources to provide for the needs of
the preachers of the Narbonensis. I29 Dominic’s centre at Prouille was
 I I 2 VIR EVANGELICUS

clearly to be the first to benefit from this generosity.130 Already the

donations obtained from Berenger of Narbonne, from Sans Gasc, from
Ermengarde Godoline and from a few other persons,131 were consolidating
the material life of this centre. For the future, the brothers and sisters of
Dominic in Prouille would enjoy common revenues.
This was in no way a departure from the pattern of itinerant imitation of
the apostles. It was the custom of the Catharist and Waldensian apostolic
preachers in these parts, who received their food and lodging in solidly
endowed hospices in the course of their rounds.13 2 The analogy of the Preaching
of Jesus Christ with that of the Albigensians was once more accentuated.
The analogy, however, was perhaps even closer to the ideal of episcopal
apostolic life that Diego had been meditating upon at Citeaux. St Bernard,
as has been said, had formerly drawn attention to the example of this in the
person of his friend, St Malachy.133 The great Irish bishop imitated the
apostles by travelling on foot, in strict poverty, the parishes of the diocese
which he evangelized unremittingly. He rested now and again for a short
while, humbly effaced in the midst of the community, in the holy places he
had himself multiplied in Ireland. When he was on the road, however, he
sometimes lived by the Gospel, that is to say, on alms, and at other times,
with even less demand on charity, on the provisions he had with him, the
fruit of his brethren’s labour.
The complex system which was thus that of the Preaching of Jesus Christ,
in which the itinerant mendicant apostolate depended on a centre which was
economically more stable, was in turn to be reproduced at the inception of
the Preaching of Toulouse, that is, of the order of St Dominic. From this
fact, as from other initial attempts which have been emphasized in the
course of the narrative, the influence of the pontifical mission in the life,
heart, intentions and experience of the father of Preachers, will be
surmised.

At the beginning of the summer of 1207, however, Dominic had very

little idea what the future held in store for him. As assistant to the Bishop of
Osma, he contented himself with devoting all his energies to his work as
evangelist. This was not easy. The Pope had destined his legates to a work
that was particularly unrewarding. Guillaume d’Auxerre at this time recalled
the memory of Maitre Prevostin ‘who had for long lived among the
Manicheans (i.e. the Catharists) but had only been able to bring back a small
number of them to the way of truth’. 134 All the Catholic labourers in the
Albigeois were in this position. Peter and Raoul at the beginning had not
effected less than their predecessors. In May 1204, the Pope was pleased to
emphasize that already ‘their labour had not been in vain’.135 Nevertheless
the harvest was too disproportionate to the efforts made for one or other of
the legates not to feel discouraged. In May 1206, it will be remembered,
 THE PREACHING OF JESUS CHRIST I I 3

they wanted to resign their office, ‘because their preaching had had no
result, or scarcely any, among the heretics’.J36
The arrival of the Castilians had given them fresh hope. The first disputa¬
tion at Servian had been a real success; the later ones achieved less. Soon
the ardour of the heretics, aroused by contradiction, was unleashed with
more zeal than ever. *37 The arrival of the twelve abbots had no effect on it.
Formerly the problem had been the disproportion of the apostolic potential
among Catholics and heterodox. The enormous difference of numbers
remained. After three months of hard and tiring labours, when they had
visited castles, townships and towns, the work of the missionaries could be
summed up in two phrases: ‘they bring back a small number, they instruct
more thoroughly and confirm in the faith the small number of faithful whom
they find’ ;J38 they saw the others, infinite in number, imitating the asp of
the psalm and stopping its ears with its tail so as not to hear the charmer.
At the beginning of July, Maitre Raoul, exhausted, had withdrawn to the
abbey of Franquevaux, near Saint-Gilles. He died there on the 7th or 8th
of that month.J39 Certain of the abbots, discouraged, were beginning to
leave the battlefield.140 At this moment, the result of the Preaching would
still be characterized, according to the Histoire Albigeoise, by the melancholy
note of the previous year: ‘by their sermons, by their disputations, they
have only been able to achieve very little, or even nothing at all’.141 The
words of the preachers did not reach men’s hearts, they were mocked at:
‘It must be said,’ exclaimed Guillermo de Tudela, ‘bless my soul, these
people take no more notice of sermons than of a rotten apple. For a whole
five years or thereabouts, they have continued to behave in this way. These
erring people will not be converted.’142
A few words suffice to sum up the later history of the Preaching. In
September or October, almost all the abbots returned to their monas¬
teries.143 No more than the crusaders did they conceive of their mobilization
by the Pope as an indefinite service.144 The feudal lord judged that he had
done enough when he had given his forty days, just the duration of a Lent of
penance; he returned having gained his indulgence. The abbots had served
four or five months. Other ministries called them elsewhere. The withdrawal
of Raoul, that of Diego which would soon be in question, finally the
assassination of Peter de Castelnau on 14th January, 1 208 and the tidal wave
of the crusade of the barons, practically ended the Cistercian Pleaching.
Not totally, however. Guy des Vaux-de-Cernai in turn was named ‘prior
and master’ of the Preaching.143 He preached unremittingly. It must be
admitted, however, if the accounts of the Histoire Albigeoise are to be relied
upon, that his fashion of exhorting the heretics under the threat of the stake
was more calculated to send them there than to cast them into the bosom
of the Catholic faith.146 Arnaud, who was to become Archbishop of
Narbonne in 1212, and Fulk, Bishop of Toulouse, did not fail to address
114 VIR EVANGELICUS

similar words to their flocks when the war permitted them to approach
them. ‘There is the bee buzzing about’, the Catharists would say mock¬
ingly. J47 Eventually a certain number of ‘preachers of the faith’ at the
disposal of the Church were again found for the Albigeois. In 1213 they
would be sufficiently numerous for Maitre Robert de Courson, pontifical
legate, in difficulty over finding preachers for the Holy Land, to judge it
profitable to round them up and only to release some of them the following
year. These, however, were preachers of the crusade and the majority of
them preached in France. !48
There remained, indeed, the humble centre of Prouille. Diego, who saw
the Cistercian mission collapsing, now placed all his hope in the apostolate
of Dominic and his small group. When in September 1207 he decided to
return to Castile to bring back subsidies, he also contemplated bringing back
subjects capable of preaching. H9 If Jordan of Saxony is right, Diego’s
intention was to ask the Pope’s consent to set up a permanent organization
with the mandate to ‘attack unceasingly the errors of the heterodox and
maintain the truth of the faith’.iso The centre of Prouille, clearly, was to
have been its model and basis.
 Chapter VIII

PROUILLE

I T is impossible to state with certainty when St Dominic came to Prouille

and Fanjeaux for the first time, perhaps as early as i 206 if the preachers
preferred to reach Toulouse through these heresy-infected regions rather
than by the direct route from Castelnaudary—at any rate not later than the
winter following.
It was an important moment in the life of the father of Preachers. Unlike
Diego de Acebo, whose overflowing generosity never ceased to imagine
new apostolic tasks and to plunge into them impetuously, Dominic was a
man of a small number of plans which ripened for a long time in silence and
were then carried out with tenacity. It is true he was no less responsive than
his bishop to the call of human beings and of events, that is, of Providence.
Primarily, however, his encounters with God produced secret heart-
stirrings rather than gestures of immediate action. Everything seems
to confirm that he received some shattering experience of this kind at
Fanjeaux.
The ancient route he followed to climb up to the fortified township can
be seen, steep and straight, parallel with the modern road with its twists and
turns.1 At the top of the mountain it passes between two hummocks. The
town is on the western summit; its gate opens towards the south. Dominic
plunged into the by-ways. Near the rough road of the knights2 which was
bordered by the manorial dwellings of the noble families of the town, he
reached the church and the castle, situated at the culminating point of the
locality. He had but to take a few more steps northwards to come out right
against the walls, at the steepest place, on to a limestone rock. There he
saw a sight which moved him deeply. The whole of the Lauragais was spread
out before his eyes—this land which must be won back for Christ crucified.
At the foot of the long rise which he had just climbed, there stretched
out over the plain five roads which diverged to lead to Laurac-le-Grand,
Villasavary and Castelnaudary, Bram and Villepinte, Montreal and Carcas¬
sonne, Limoux. Behind him the route he had followed continued its course
towards Mirepoix, Pamiers and the county of Foix. Twenty-five miles or so
to the north-east stood the dark silhouette of the Montagne Noir. Behind
him, fifty miles or more away, were the sparkling snows of the Pyrenees.
A promontory, a white rock, a widely extending landscape, roads which
 116 VIR EVANGELICUS

seemed to move swiftly in quest of men, mountains equally forbidding in

their sombre colour or in their inaccessible whiteness—Dominic had seen
all this once before. Earlier he had grasped its message with a perspicacity
so keen as to be almost shattering. A flood of memories invaded and over¬
whelmed him. The small boy from Caleruega who used to look out over the
land from the heights of San Jorge suddenly came to life in him again A Now
the meaning of the call which he had formerly heard was clear. It was, then,
for this that he had become a cleric, priest, religious, missionary after the
manner of the apostles. God was showing him his flock.
Here the landscape was less barren than on the plateau of Castile. On the
contrary, the land was covered with houses, villages and towns. It was rich
and cultivated everywhere. The Catholic heart of the young preacher,
however, experienced, as he looked at it, an anguish which the boy had
never known. The winter wind which swept over it at this year’s close was
more icy than that of the Duero and of the Iberian Mountains. In the
inhabited places hostile towers were more frequent than were friendly
belfries. An endemic war had ravaged the countryside. Countless ruins were
visible on every side even to the crumbling chapels that could be seen along
the road. But this was nothing to the dramas in the consciences of the
people of this land. Many sincere Christians had lapsed, dangerously led
astray by sects far from the ways of salvation, and had set themselves up
against the Church of the Cross and the Eucharist. The indifference and
immorality of the great mass were increased by the discord in belief. The
vices of violence, of love of gain, of lasciviousness, pullulated in the midst
of civil and religious anarchy. Was there anyone to restore true peace and
the true faith to this people? ‘Lord, have compassion on your people. What
will become of sinners?’s Some such groan doubtless escaped Dominic, as
it did so often on his nights of prayer in the church.
From the foot of his observation post, Dominic now looked out over the
great cross-roads where the routes diverged to all points on the horizon.
There he could see the remains of an inhabited place, with a chapel near.
This was Prouille.6 He probably understood from that moment that it was
at this crossing of the ways that the base and centre of his missionary
operations should be established. He may even have had a supernatural
intuition which interiorly stimulated his choice. One tradition, the sources
of which cannot be verified and are somewhat doubtful,7 asserts that a
miraculous event determined this choice. Three evenings running, while
Dominic was looking over the plain from the promontory of Fanjeaux a
globe of fire came to a standstill over Prouille.8 The name of Seignadou
(Sanatorium) given to the place at least since the fifteenth century^ and the
presence there of a cross and a chapel™ recall this tradition. Whatever its
value and origin may be, it does commemorate a profound reality—the
certainty acquired by St Dominic as he stood on this promontory that it was
 PROUILLE 1X7

in these parts that he had to respond to the call he had heard as a child at
San Jorge in Caleruega and that Prouille was to be the centre of his super¬
natural mission.

Prouille had had a certain importance in the earliest feudal age. In the
eleventh and twelfth century the documents sometimes mentioned its noble
lineage as, for instance, an Isarn (112^), a Guillaume de Prouille (1139,
IX4G II45')> vassals of the Viscount of Carcassonne.11 From the eleventh
century a lortified mound 12 was erected between the river Sesoine13 and
the acute angle of the cross-roads, clearly to control the traffic which
was beginning to be considerable. A square tower, similar to the torreon of
Caleruega, crowned the summit of an artificial hummock, moats and a
palisade completing the defence. A few houses had grouped themselves
beneath the hummock for protection. Finally a wall, enclosing the whole,
had made it into a fortified township, which still figured in the documents
at the beginning of the thirteenth century1^. There was found there a com¬
munal oven,13 a fountain16 and finally a church dedicated to Our Lady.1?
The church ranked as a parish and had its own cemetery.18 It also had its
tithe-area (decimarium),16 a clearly delimited portion of the surrounding
countryside, within the boundaries of which the tenants of the land owed
their tithe to the parish priest of Ste Marie. Another sanctuary, the chapel
of St Martin, existed nearby, likewise provided with its tithe-area.20 There
was a whole series of others to be found in the hinterland of the place, on
the slopes which climbed up towards Fanjeaux—St Pierre de la Terre-
Caplade, St Sernin de la Ilhe, St Etienne de Tonneins, St Pierre de Rebenti,
each one provided with its decimarium.21
At the time when Diego, Raoul and Dominic inaugurated their apostolate
round about Prouille, the turret on the mound was dismantled and had
perhaps disappeared; a windmill stood in its place.22 The wall had partially
collapsed.23 The surface of the ancient borough and the slopes of the mound
itself, having lost their military significance, were parcelled out into a
mosaic of fields, gardens and dwellings.2<* The church, in bad enough
repair, was no longer a parish;23 with its tithes, if they were still
collected,26 it was attached to the parish of Fanjeaux.27 The chapel of St
Martin was falling to pieces.28 The war had passed that way. During the
course of the twelfth century, the countryside of the Lauragais had served
as a field of operations for the permanent hostilities of the houses of Toulouse
and of Beziers-Carcassonne. In the face of the redoubled assaults and the
progress of military art, the mound offered only an absurdly inadequate
defence. After the dispersal of the people living in the area, to which the
numerous chapels round Prouille bore witness, the place had proved
untenable. The rural population, like the nobility, had sought refuge in a
body in the fortified town of Fanjeaux.
5—S.D.
 11 8 VIR EVANGELICUS

The Catholic missionaries soon collected a few faithful at Prouille. The

ancient seignorial family, now dispossessed, was then represented by the
brothers Isarn,29 and Guillaume Peyre30 of Prouille. The second was an
irreproachable Catholic.31 The former, who in 1204 might have been seen
at a Catharist ceremony,32 seemed strengthened in his orthodoxy, perhaps
thanks to the preachers. The latter further attracted a few good Catholics
among the poor folk.
The chapel was open to them for the recitation of their office and for
sacred worship. The parish priest of Fanjeaux clearly did not refuse them the
use of it. It was dedicated to the Most Blessed Virgin and for a long time, it
was said, had been the centre of a popular devotion.33 Their ministry began
and soon harvested its first-fruits, some of which were valuable but at the
same time created difficulties.

The pictures it has been found possible to form of the life of the Catharists
sufficiently demonstrate the role of women in the sect, 34 an echo of the
important part they played in the religious life of the time.33 Since the
eleventh century, the movement towards mysticism in Europe had
developed particularly in their ranks. Never had they felt such a nostalgia
foi the angelic life . To such nostalgia the Catharism of the Midi supplied a
particularly attractive response. More generous than their menfolk, above
all more easily withdrawn from contacts with matter than their warrior
husbands, a fair number of noble girls or women had received the
consolamentum and were leading the life of the Perfect. Like Blanche at
Laurac36 or Fabrissa de Mazeroles at Montreal,37 Guillelme de Tonneins3^
at Fanjeaux figured as a matriarch. Their wealth and their labours which
they did not spare, their castles, their hospices, without mentioning their
personal proselytism, constituted invaluable assets for the activity of the
Perfect. In accordance with the custom of the Catholic convents moreover,
they received adolescent girls, and sometimes even quite young children of
seven, five and two and a half, 39 in their communities to form them according
to their own way of life. The customs of the Catholic nobility were repeated
among the Catharists. The reasons for which small girls were entrusted to
the dualist convents were not only those of education or religious perfection
The frequent poverty of the noble families of the south found itself thereby
relieved, 4c'and the loyalty of these poor girls to the Perfect was strengthened
by the needs of their material life. 5
Thus the return of these ladies or noble girls to Catholicism set not a few
problems Conversion was only the beginning. After their return to the
Church it was essenttal to find for these women a form of life no less exactino
than that of the women of the Perfect, for a conversion should never
s.gmfy a chm.nutton of generosity. It was also necessary to find them a
cent.e and often even means of subsistence. As to returning to their
 PROUILLE
119

families, some could doubtless do so, but for others the hostility of a
Catharist family made any return impossible. The influence of their lineage
was far stronger than that of the actual family tie, but also very much more
oppressive. Instances were not lacking at this time in which some member
of a family was treated atrociously, sometimes kept in prison for a long time,
for matrimonial or religious motives. Even if there were no hostility the
poverty of the family caused the convert to be treated as a piece of flotsam
and jetsam.
Diego was never at a loss. He decided to set up a convent41 for these
various lady converts. They were thus assured of a refuge at the same time
as a milieu of prayer and sanctification. It was thus possible to retrieve the
girls whom the women of the Perfect were educating. Moreover, this
feminine community, thanks to its stability and to the services rendered by
its members would be the support of the daily life of the small group
of preachers, as the hospices of the Catharists were for the itinerant
Perfect, and would help on their apostolate by prayer and sacrifices. Thus
was begun in embryo in the enclosure of Notre Dame de Prouille, at the
turn of the years 1206—1207, a Catholic missionary centre which served
as a model, a few months later, for the preaching centres of the Cistercian
abbots.

It was first of all necessary to obtain the bishop’s authorization in con¬

formity with Canon Law. It was likewise from him that the grant of the
church of Ste Marie must come.42 Prouille depended on the see of Toulouse.
The bishop, Fulk,43 had just entered upon his functions at the beginning of
1205-, succeeding a bishop who had been deposed. The electing canons,
guided by the legates, had chosen for this post of primary importance a
remarkable man. A native of Marseilles, a friend of the kings of England and
of Aragon, a collaborator of Guillaume de Montpellier, Fulk in his time had
been a famous troubadour. In 1196, however, he had entered the Order of
Citeaux, with his wife and his two sons. Soon afterwards, he had become
Abbot of Thoronet. It was there that they went to seek him to give him the
charge of this ‘dead diocese’. As a Cistercian bishop, he was well placed
for collaborating with the legates and missionaries of his order. He made no
difficulty about authorizing the foundation and assigned to it the church. As to
the concession of the tithes and first fruits, which could scarcely be separated
from the gift of the chapel, to make this concession would indeed have been
meritorious, in such straits were the episcopal finances.44 Doubtless, how¬
ever, there was hardly anything to give. It would not seem that a charter of
concession was drawn up.45
The members of the seignorial family of Prouille, Isarn and Guillaume
Peyre, were not in a position to grant anything. They were ruined, like so
many of the knights of the region and no longer even had rights over the
 I 20 VIR EVANGELICUS

feudal mound other than those shared by a family of rich peasants and
Dame Cavaers, the mistress of Fanjeaux.46 The latter enjoyed seignorial
rights at Prouille. No indication justifies 'he assertion that she intervened in
the new foundation.47 Her daughter, heir to her rights as she was to her
name, would not leave the sisters her portion of the mound until February
i 244,48 barely a few days after the departure of the French conquerors from
the neighbourhood and her return to the overlordship of Fanjeaux. More
than twenty years later, she was to give herself to the convent, living and
dying there as a good Catholic,49 at the term of a long adventure in the ranks
of the Catharist church.so The other lords of Fanjeaux who possessed
property within or near the ancient township of Prouille, Isam Bola,si
God, Maurin, Pierre-Roger and Guillaume-Arnaud Picarella,S2 Guillaume
de Durfort,53 gave nothing either. Their names only appeared in the
charters of the convent later, in respect of exchanges, sales or confiscations
of lands. The big landowners of the place, those peasants enriched to the
detriment of the family of Prouille who were known as the ‘Babons’
(Babones),54 Arnaud, Rouge and his son Pierre, waited until 1215- to give
their portion ol the mound;5 5 Guillaume and his sister Alazaice sold only in
1229 a dwelling they had near the cemetery,s6 an irritating enclave in the
sisters’ lands.
Fortunately there were people more generous than these families who had
more or less acquired their nobility from the Catharists, or than the
enriched peasants. A cleric and his sister, natives of Pamiers, offered their
property and their persons for the work that was beginning.57 They were
the first to do so and thus may be said to have started the foundation. They
were William and Raymonde Claret. William was to remain St Dominic’s
companion and his second in the administration of the convent. 58 He would
become a Friar Preacher, Prior of Prouille.59 Later, however, at the end of
1224, on the occasion of the deep upheaval that was so profoundly to
disturb the neighbourhood and its institutions after the departure of the
French conquerors and the return of the ‘faidits’,60 he was to pass through
a very serious crisis. He tried, it is said, to cause the monastery under his
charge to pass over to the obedience of Citeaux.61 Possibly he thought this
action necessary to save the house which was itself going through a
severe crisis.He himself left the order and joined the Cistercians of
Boulbonne.63 At the time of the canonization process of St Dominic he was
nevertheless interrogated, in a manner most unsatisfactory from our point of
view 4 for his deposition, which might have told us so much, was
completely lacking in detail.
A few months later, two serfs of Villasavary, Raymond Case and
Ermengardc Godoline, in their turn gave themselves to the ‘Lord God
blessed Mary all the saints of God and the Holy Preaching and to all the
brethren and the sisters. They likewise gave their house in Villasavary,
 PROUILLE I 2 I

their garden and all their fixed and movable goods. Their lord freed them to
allow them to make this offering. He also freed men of Villepinte for
certain gifts to the Holy Preaching, reserving however his own taxes.6 5
Perhaps it was again at this time that another household ‘entered the
monastery’ by abandoning its property to it—Arnaud Ortiguers and his wife
Alazaice.66 They would have liked their young son, Guillaume, to do like¬
wise. He must, however, have been more than the age of fourteen.* He
refused, but at the same time remained a friend to the community.67 He
became a cleric68 and, upon reaching an advanced age, carried out his
parents’ wish by giving himself to the monastery in 12^6, long after they
had done so.6^
Already, however, on 17th April, 1207, Dominic had obtained for the
monastery a much more important gift—the church of St Martin of Limoux
which was granted to him by the lord of the province, Berenger of
Narbonne.7o Certain circumstances of this donation on the morrow of the
great disputation at Montreal have already been mentioned.71 The number
of lady converts to be helped had increased in the course of the disputation;
Dominic thus possessed an additional argument to persuade the prelate to
support his infant work. The gift was considerable: tithes, first fruits,
oblations and other revenues of a large parish, to which were added the
revenues of Taich, a neighbouring place. There was only one counter¬
obligation—the responsibility of presenting and maintaining a parish priest.
For the future the sisters considered their property of Limoux one of the
best parts of their patrimony. It was necessary, however, to defend it
energetically. In 1207, had Berenger really the right to dispose of it ? The
actual taking possession was only carried out two years later.72 Things
were even worse afterwards. The powerful abbey of St Hilaire tenaciously
claimed this church as its own possession. Long-drawn-out lawsuits in Rome
were necessary in order finally to persuade the abbey to desist from its
claims. 73
Prepared for in this way by the gifts of the people of the place who were
attached to the Church, as much as by those of the bishop and archbishop,
it was thus possible to make the foundation. Whilst Dominic and his
companions were tramping the countryside begging their way as they
preached, the brethren and sisters of Prouille would have their subsistence
practically assured.

In the course of our narrative, we have already met one or other of the
first sisters—Sister Raymonde Claret, Sister Alazaice. The first known list
of the community contains a dozen names.74 The origin of three other
sisters is definitely known—Richarde, dame of Barbaira (Aude),75 Guillelmine
de Belpech (Aude), Guillelmine de Fanjeaux (Aude). The others are no
* And so been free to refuse. Tr.
 I 22 VIR EVANGELICUS

longer anything but names to us—Raimonde-Passerine,76 Berengere,

Jourdaine, Curtolane, Gentiane, Ermessende.77 The details it has been
possible to gather show that several of the nuns belonged to the nobility—
if not all of them, as Jordan of Saxony asserts.78 Their places of origin
were not a little varied but were nevertheless spread along the Beziers -
Carcassonne-Pamiers route, the scene of the labour of the Catholic
missionaries since the end of 1206. Despite the general indication of
Berenger’s charter—‘nuns recently converted by the examples and exhorta¬
tions of Brother Dominic of Osma and his companions’,79 all were not
necessarily converts from heresy.
Among the converts properly so-called, several were from Fanjeaux. A
certain Berengere would give evidence at St Dominic’s canonization process
that, about the time of the foundation, she had witnessed with her own
eyes and heard with her ears a horrifying scene in the church of this town¬
ship. Nine noble ladies (matronae) had just abandoned their errors. Dominic
then commanded them to look at him who had possessed them until that
time. The devil immediately appeared in the shape of a cat ‘whose eyes, as
large as those of an ox, seemed to be burning flames; its tongue, protruding
to the length of half a foot, seemed to be of fire; it had a tail of half an arm’s
length and was easily the size of a dog. At the command of blessed Dominic,
it escaped through the hole in the belfry.’80 The terrifying figure exactly
corresponded to what these poor ladies were prepared to see appear.
The Catholics indeed claimed that the Catharist masters adored Lucifer who
appeared to them under the figure of a cat. They adored him in an ignoble
manner. Thus it was revealed in the great summa against heresies that Master
Alain de Lille had recently published at Montpellier. It was from this ‘cat’
it was said, that the name of Catharists had been formed.81
About the middle of the century the alarming anecdote became consider¬
ably embellished in the official legend of the saint by Constantino of
Orvieto82. It was then asserted that among the nine converted ladies several
had entered at Prouille.83 The thing is possible. It is certain, however,
that Berengere herself was not among them, whatever may have been said,
nor the whole of the group that was converted. Neither, moreover, did
those who were able to enter constitute the initial nucleus of the monastery,
which was in existence before their adventure.84

The convent was founded at latest in March i2o7.8s At that date there
was only the group of nuns established with their prioress. The house
moreover, had not yet its full observance. There could be no possibility of
enclosure or even of completely common life. The smallness of the pro¬
visional lodging of the sisters, a mere abandoned hovel near the church of
Ste Mane, did not enable them all to be grouped together. On 17th April
several of them were still living in Fanjeaux.86 This was so in the case of the
 PROUILLE 123

prioress, Guillelmine. They must have built a convent in the course

of the summer. A tradition which cannot now be verified claims that the
sisters were all together by 22nd November. 87 It is practically certain that
enclosure was established on 27th December,88 perhaps in 1207, or
even in 1212. An attempt will be made later to define the date more
accurately.
In any case the enclosure was still elastic. Farmers in the place for many
years retained certain fields on the sisters’ land.8?1 Not until 1294 was a
continuous stone wall erected and water brought inside the boundary. 90
Certainly none of the numerous documents of the Prouille cartulary men¬
tions the presence of a nun outside the monastery, not even of the prioress.
If it were a question of a gift to be received or of legal action, the affairs of
Prouille were exclusively treated by male representatives. At this time,
however, cases of abbesses leaving their enclosures to appear in lawsuits
were not infrequent.91 The Prouille enclosure was thus strict. It is possible it
was made stricter in 1218 and 1221 as will be related in due course,92 and
perhaps again in the time of Innocent IV. In 1246 the Fathers of the
monastery busied themselves with obtaining from the Bishop of Toulouse
the chapel of St Martin, which had fallen into ruins and was unsuitable for
sacred worship.95 They reconstructed it inside the house, for celebrating the
office and providing for the worship of the lay-brethren and donati. They
were thus able to make over to the sisters (the church of Ste Marie) more
completely and to isolate the two communities entirely. Shortly after this,
the pontifical bulls began to give the sisters the title of sorores inclusac
‘cloistered sisters’, a title which they retained for the future."

This time one would be wrong in seeing in the application of this epithet,
for the future fairly common, an accentuation of enclosure. It merely
signified the entry of Prouille into the general group of feminine monasteries
which since 1 204 the Pope had been definitively incorporating into the Order
of Preachers, giving them this epithet among others.95 The rule of enclosure,
if not its practical realization or rather its provisions in Prouille, cannot have
changed since the death of Dominic. In any case it must be admitted that
during the initial years, in buildings which were still very inconvenient, the
sisters of Prouille kept a sufficiently strict if not completely literal enclosure.
It must have resembled that of the Cistercian nuns, the most strictly
cloistered of the nuns of the time,96 a century before a decretal of Boniface
VIII defined the classic rule of solemn enclosure."
There were some men forming part of the household. At the beginning
Dominic and William Claret took charge of the government of it jointly.98
As early as the summer of 1207 Diego had assigned to each his role. Dominic
was to have the spiritual direction and chief authority, William charge of the
temporal affairs.99 Later, Friar Noel replaced Dominic.100 Then William
 124 VIR EVANGELICUS

was made prior.101 The prior, or procurator, had other priests around him.
Dominic decided, doubtless in 1218, that there would be four of these.102
It was not only with the sisters that this group of priests was occupied. In
1207 it constituted the Holy Preaching. After the institution of the
Preachers, we come across the ‘Preaching of the house of Prouille’.105 A few
lay-brothers,104 who could not move to any other religious house,105 helped
with the material side of life. Finally a series of donati of different types,106
clerics, individual freedmen, whole families of freedmen or of serfs,I0? had
attached themselves to the convent. The majority administered or cultivated
the lands adjoining the monastery or its distant domains. More often than
not they had given their property to the house, at least in return for a life
interest, and in exchange shared in its life and its spiritual advantages. Some
of them had even made a vow of chastity, of obedience or of loyalty.108 The
gesture marking their engagement was that of feudal homage made into the
hands of the superior.100
This personnel was varied both from the human and from the religious
point of view.110 The economic and social circumstances were such as to
elicit donations, as in the case of the sisters. In the face of the difficulties of
life or the uncertainty of the times, many people preferred to give them¬
selves to a powerful lord or to some community, both being better equipped
to defend them if need arose.111 Some indeed had given themselves to the
dualists for similar reasons, as, for instance, the poor man whom Dominic
had converted, who could not leave his Catharist protectors for fear of
dying of hunger.112
Thus, with its two communities, the monastery and the Preaching, the
convent of Prouille fell into the category of double convents, frequent in the
twelfth century but in the process of disappearance in the thirteenth.115
The male section followed the evolution of the Preaching of Jesus Christ,
then of the Preachers. The feminine community experienced the painful
vicissitudes of the Dominican nuns.”4 Certain particular uncertainties were
added to these vicissitudes.

In the initial years, the life of the community depended too closely on its
economic system not to follow its fluctuations. The gifts originally given to
the sisters by the people of the neighbourhood or by Berenger of Narbonne
doubtless assured their daily subsistence, but did not allow of the construc-
tion of a wide range of regular buildings. It was not even possible to
think of setting up an enclosure of any size around the chapel. As far back
as the middle of 1207 Diego concerned himself with bringing them other
resources from Osma. He did not succeed.»s History is absolutely silent on
the life of the convent in 1208, 1209, 1210. It was the time of the great
dramas of the Albigensian crusade. For the future war revolved around
this very neighbourhood. The flight of the lords of long-standing who were
 PROUILLE I2£

compromised with the Catharists, and the upheaval of the region by cease¬
lessly renewed military operations, clearly increased the community’s
distress. The town of Limoux, whence came the best part of its revenues,
was to be demolished and twice forced to abandon its site and reconstruct
itself in the plain. The convent’s material future was thus seriously
compromised.
It would seem, indeed, that in the year 1210 Dominic himself was absent.
At the side of Bishop Fulk he was devoting himself to an intensive preaching
ministry in the city of Toulouse.116 In February 1211 a visitation of the
sisters enabled him to realize the difficulties of their situation.117 A few
weeks later, at the conclusion of the siege of Lavaur, he rejoined Bishop
Fulk, who had been forced to abandon Toulouse where Count Raymond had
just turned against the church, and Simon de Montfort, the military leader
of the crusade.118
Dominic made the bishop understand ‘that it would be an act of devotion
and mercy’110 to make over permanently the sanctuary of Prouille, with its
revenues and other rights of the church there, to the lady converts who
were living there. It would seem that Fulk agreed to restore to them the
tithes, which were beginning to come in once more.120 One nevertheless
gets the distinct impression that he hesitated.121 The economic situation of
his see had not improved at all.
Simon de Montfort, however, whose friendship for St Dominic will be
seen later, gave the example. On i^th May, the Frenchman granted Prouille
a vineyard situated quite close to the monastery, on the verge of the Sesoine,
which came from the confiscated property of the ‘faidit ’ Bertrand de Saissac.
In particular he gave to the prioress, the brethren and the sisters all he had
just acquired in the territory of Sauzenc, between Bram and Villepinte, to
the north of Prouille.122 This time Fulk was persuaded. That same day he
granted the parish of Bram with its revenues ‘to the converted ladies, living
the religious life by the church of Sainte Marie of Prouille’A 23 The form in
which the deed was drawn up at the same time revealed the reason for the
bishop’s hesitations. Fie did not grant this property to the institution as such
but to the sisters considered individually, whose names he enumerated,
beginning by Guillelmine, the prioress. He gave them this property for the
duration of their existence, showing that he had doubts as to the permanence
of the community. It will be seen that the monastery’s poverty and the
uncertainty of the times were responsible for this. Everything, however,
was to change.
The great successes of Simon de Montfort in the course of the year 1210
had decided a good number of knights of the region to make their submission
to him. These now made their appearance at Prouille and at Fanjeaux.12*
Those who were Catholics by conviction, or even certain lords suspected of
having protected heresy who wished to rectify or destroy such suspicions,
 I 26 VIR EVANGELICUS

began to multiply their generous gifts. In December of that year, a certain

Raymond de Villar gave the monastery all the property he possessed in his
native placets before himself becoming a canon of St Antonin at Pamiers.
About twenty years later when he was sacristan of that same chapter
Raymond would find himself entrusted with the inquiry preparatory to St
Dominic’s canonization.126 Then Hugues de Rieux, Isam Bola, Bernard
Hugues, Amiel Cerdana, others again, made a number of generous gifts. I27
On 9th February, 1212, the brothers Usalger and Raynes granted to
Prouille their ownership and rights over the land of Fenouillet, that is, over
their patrimony, for they were descended from a younger branch of the
Viscounts of Fenouilledes.128 Simon de Montfort repeated his gestures of
generosity several times. I29
The French crusaders, abundantly provided with confiscated lands from
the viscounty of Beziers-Carcassonne, then made similar gestures. A leader of
the mercenaries, Pedro the Aragonese, who had been reconciled, had given
the initial example.J3o Between February 1212 and June 1214, Fremis le
Fran^ais, Robert Mauvoisin, Guillaume de l’Essart, Enguerrand de Boves,
Flugues de Lascy, Lambert de Thury, Alain de Rouey,x3i to whom should
be added Pierre de Vic, Hugues de Nantes and Guy de Levis, J32 all loyal
companions of Simon de Montfort and settled by him in places bordering on
Fanjeaux, gave the monastery some of their new lands. After 1212 the
‘Institutions de Pamiers’ authorized them to give in alms up to the fifth part
of them. ^3 Finally in 1214 the Bishop of Toulouse granted the sisters certain
tithes from Fanjeaux. 134 In some three years Prouille in this way became
solidly endowed, through Limoux, Fenouillet, Villasavary, Villesiscle, Bram,
Villenouette and Sauzenc, apart from the place of Prouille itself and
Fanjeaux.
Without delay Dominic busied himself in getting the principal donations
confirmed. The origin of a good number among them made them extremely
precarious. The intervention of Simon de Montfort would cover them with
the protection of the real head of the country. He did not refuse it.135
Soon, as we shall see, Dominic was to succeed in obtaining other, much
more valuable protection, that of the Pope.
These lands, however, which had been acquired at random and piece by
piece from the donations, remained scattered to the four cardinal points.
Dominic endeavoured to establish an unbroken domain, at least around the
centre, Prouille; his successors would do the same with the lands on the
periphery. He sold, bought, exchanged parcels of land, not without a
certain ability for business. He thus succeeded in liberating the greater part
of the ancient township and enclosure of the sisters, rounding off the
neighbouring lands, acquiring a mill and its appurtenances. 136
After the spring of 1212, indeed, he had at his disposal‘sufficient lands to
undertake another task—that of building a monastic cloister with its
 PROUILLE 127

dependencies at the side of the church. The building began at the beginning
of March or April. It was soon completed. After this a series of charters
made mention of the ‘monastery’ and even of the ‘newly constructed
abbey’. *37 Whether or not this latter designation is to be taken in its
technical sense, it was certainly not adopted definitively, for there are found
substituted for it at the same moment the more modest titles of domus,138
locus,139 ecclesia,140 or, quite simply, the names of Ste Marie de Prouille and
even of Prouille alone. Moreover, neither prior nor prioress ever bore the
title of abbot or abbess. Finally, after 1213, the word disappeared. Primarily,
we can see in this somewhat grandiloquent title the reflection of the
impression made on contemporaries by the relatively ample proportions of
the new buildings. The Prior of Prouille probably himself abandoned this
name which was valueless from the point of view of apologetics in the
territory of the Albigenses. It is probable, however, that the appearance and
disappearance of the word abbey possessed a deeper significance, linked with
the spiritual orientation of the house.
From the beginning the feminine community had appeared as a ‘monas¬
tery’, the sisters as ‘nuns’ with a ‘prioress’ at their head.^i They had
established themselves ‘for ever’1*2 in their poor lodging. A challenge, in
some sense, to the communities of women of the Perfect, Prouille was
essentially distinguished from them by the manner in which it conceived the
interior life of the community. Their installation in a church alone was
charged with meaning. No word or expression in the documents gives the
slightest hint that their ordo [or rule of life], which at this point was scarcely
beyond the embryo stage, was intended to differ from the types that had
become classic in the West. On one essential point, it can even be stated
that the contact of the monastery with contemporary Catholic ideas limited
the design which had given rise to the foundation—Prouille set itself against
any transformation, like certain of our modern convents, into an institution
for small girls. Mention is never in fact found in the numerous charters of
the convent of any other element than the sisters, or nuns. This allows the
following prescription, drawn from a later rule closely associated with the
monastery, to be attributed to Prouille**3:

It is by no means our custom to receive girls of less than eleven [the precocious¬
ness of children in that century and that part of the world must be remembered].
If one or other is received before that age, to prevent a grave occasion of falling
or to procure some spiritual benefit, let them be educated apart and be carefully
formed until the age of fourteen.144

The first part of this prescription, the equivalent of which is found in

contemporary rules,J45 has as its context the reaction of the religious
congregations against the disorders that the presence of too great a number
of small children had brought into the cloisters. The second part, on the
 I 28 VIR EVANGELICUS

other side, made provision for the intention which had brought the found¬
ation into being, that of preserving souls from danger.
By 1 2 11-1 2 1 2 the ideal had not changed. The community had remained
stable despite trials. The names of the eleven initial sisters are in fact, found
in the list of sisters given in Fulk’s charter on the occasion of the concession
of the church of Bram.!46 Seven new sisters had joined the others. Among
them was Sister Blanche, a rich lady of Toulouse, who had recently given
herself to the religious life at the same time as her husband and whose
fortune was to allow one half of the sisters’ dormitory to be erected in fine
dressed stone. J47 The house remained solidly established under the govern¬
ment of the same prioress. What, it maybe asked, was the regular orienta¬
tion of the community ?
The reply can be made with assurance—the orientation was Cistercian.
This is already marked in regard to the enclosure and an ancient tradition
asserts it in respect of the costume. All the circumstances suggest the
same reply. Prouille was born and had grown up among the Cistercians,
who were the principal educators of nuns at the time. ^9 At the time of
the foundation Diego’s sympathies were markedly Cistercian and Dominic
was in close touch with the order.iso jt is true, indeed, that when Dominic
had first come to the Narbonensis he was neither prepared nor resolved to
become the founder of an order, much less of an order of nuns, for until that
time he had never directed any. On the other hand he could easily procure
from Arnaud, or from one of his numerous confreres, the rules of Citeaux. r5i
There is some justification for thinking that he did so from the beginning and
that from that time, like Diego, he thought of having his religious house
incorporated in the order of St Bernard as an abbey of women.
It was necessary, however, to wait for it to be sufficiently established. By
1212-1213 the time seemed to have come. It is possible that he took
certain steps to this end. Moreover, it is proved that in this year 1213 the
Order of Citeaux displayed indeed for the first time a resistance which
became increasingly stiffer against incorporations of feminine abbeys. 152 it
was perhaps owing to this circumstance that Prouille was not officially
recognized as a Cistercian abbey or handed over to the administration of
monks of St Bernard.
It was perhaps now that the enclosure was set up. It would be natural
to await the completion of the regular buildings, that is. the end of , 2,2
before doing so. It is possible that Dominic then also drew up a rule for the
sisters. The care and efficiency with which he had just laid down the basis of
he temporal affairs ot the monastery led him to concern himself also with
e spiritual affairs. It is possible, however, that on this point he contented
himself with maintaining at Prouille the customs of Citeaux. The situation
only becomes a little clearer after 1 2,6. At that time there was drawn up
either written out in full or adapted from a corrected version of an earl£
 PROUILLE 129

text a rule of observance which took as its basis the customs of St Dominic’s
order for men.153 In 1221 Dominic was to summon to Rome eight sisters
from Prouille in order to form for regular observance a new community
which he would gather together at the convent of St Sixtus.154 Now the rule
of St Sixtus, as it existed around the year 1232, is still extant.*55 The
observances taught by the sisters from Prouille, and consequently the rule of
Prouille itself, cannot but be there in part.156 Otherwise, how could the
Prouille sisters declare to the Sovereign Pontiff in 1236 that at the ‘moment
of their conversion’, i.e. at the beginnings of regular life in their monastery,
they had commonly adopted as rule ‘the rule of the nuns of St Sixtus in
Rome’J'S? This declaration, anachronistic but comprehensible, which
indicated to the Pope a particular legislation by designating it under the form
which would be most familiar to him, cannot signify anything else but
textual continuity of the rule of Prouille previous to 1216, with the rule of
St Sixtus. It is, however, impossible, in view of the modifications which the
documents have undergone, to rediscover with any certainty in the text of
1232, the only one we still possess, the rule of Prouille as it was in 1 2 i6,J58
a fortiori a possible rule of 1 2 1 2.159
However it was regulated, the life of the sisters of Prouille was devoted to
liturgical prayer, asceticism and manual work. A document of the fourteenth
century recording a visitation mentions the tradition of the monastery in
this connection.
Each year [it was said] fifteen quintals of wool, very clean and carefully chosen,
are distributed to the sisters. They spin and weave it at the hours when they are
not engaged at the Divine Office, and they do so according to ancient custom
and the formal order of our father St Dominic, who willed this so as to drive
away idleness, the mother of all vices.160

Independently of the general tradition of Western monachism, the

primitive Cistercian orientation of the house would have been sufficient
to lay the emphasis on the manual work of the contemplative sisters,
the habit of which has become less strong in the modern age of the
Church.

The juridical position of the house was strengthened on 8th October, 1 2 1 £

by the short bull which Dominic obtained from the Pope that day; it
extended the protection of the Holy See especially to the various properties
which the sisters had acquired from the crusaders.161 On 30th March, 1218,
a consistorial privilege finally brought the supreme Roman sanction.162 The
document was really an extension to the use of the brethren of Prouille of
the privilege of confirmation of the Order of Preachers. It primarily con¬
cerned the men’s community, or Preaching, of the convent. It was, however,
drawn up in the name of the monastery whose property it finally confirmed.
The sisters were thus officially attached to the Preachers, through their
 130 VIR EVANGELICUS

male community. It is possible that they received the rule modified or

arranged in accordance with the customs of the Preachers.
In 1236, after a period of acute difficulty when the monastery seemed on
the point of being abandoned by the Fathers, it was officially assigned
to the direction of the Preachers by a decision of Pope Gregory IX.l63
About this time Prouille merited the praise of Jordan of Saxony in these
words: ‘The house . . . still exists; the servants of God continue to offer
an agreeable worship to their Creator there and lead, in zealous sanctity and
the pure light of their innocence, a life which is salutary to themselves,
exemplary to other men, pleasing to the angels and agreeable to God.’l64
In 1248 Innocent IV reiterated this Dominican privilege. l6s He did so again
in 125-2, by an almost unique exception, the Preachers being allowed
by the Pope, in order not to be distracted ‘in their studies and their
doctrinal teaching’, to be free from the care of all nuns.166 After 1 248 the
sisters were officially styled ‘Cloistered Sisters of the Order of St Augustine,
of the diocese of Toulouse’.l67 In 1258 this detail was added to the title:
‘according to the institutions of the Order of Preachers’. 168 At this date,
Humbert de Romans, fifth General of the order, had just definitively saved
the Dominican nuns and edited for them a common rule.16? The second
order was founded and Prouille formed part of it, occupying the place of
honour.
At the end of this historical survey which has been extended throughout
the thirteenth century in order to show the development of Prouille, it is
possible to discern more clearly the part played in the monastery by the
different founders. Jordan of Saxony assigned this function to the Bishop of
Osma.i7o Later, the Dominican legends reserved it for St Dominic, m In
1230 Fulk in a document attributed it to himself.172
Diego was the first to decide upon the foundation. As usual, his resolution
was prompt. He continued to bear the responsibility for it. When he left
the neighbourhood shortly afterwards, it was with the explicit intention of
going to seek help for the monastery. 173 Fulk had necessarily to intervene in
the foundation since he had to authorize it. This was his right and his duty
as bishop of the diocese. In the beginning his rile stopped there. It took 'a
considerable time for him to realize the importance of the house and not
until 1211 did he show himself really generous in regard to it
Dominic was in quite a different case. He was the father, the nurse, the
gis ator. The most ancient documents in the archives, contemporary with
the origins of the foundation, attribute to him the principal rSle {n the
recruiting of the •converted ladies’. They also attribute to him the measure
which procured the best part of their patrimony for the sisters. Dominic
continued to serve them. It was he who set flowing the stream of endow¬
ments of 12,1-12,2. He then constructed and organized the abbey He
organized the system of direction, the number of fathers, the interior
 PROUILLE 131

traditions, the sisters’ manual work. Between 1212 and i2i£ he refused a
bishopric which was offered to him, as was the case with several of the
collaborators of the Holy Preaching, in order not to neglect, he said, ‘the
tender plantation of Prouille of which he had the charge’. From that time
onwards he watched over it with even more attentive care. In the year 1214
he was to be seen established in Fanjeaux, depriving himself of all he could
to maintain the sisters.175 He was, however, even more preoccupied with
feeding their souls with his spiritual instructions. Tradition has carefully
preserved the track of the winding path by which he went to and fro between
his lodging in Fanjeaux and the monastery down on the plain.J76 Up in
Fanjeaux again, while he worked at the labour of converting a town that was
relentless in its hostility or while he continued his long prayers in the
church, he could hear, ringing in the distance, day and night, the bells of
the nuns of Prouille calling to prayer, and the sound gave him courage.
Dominic undoubtedly enjoyed a special grace for the ministry to women.
Prouille alone would give proof of this. History has preserved other
documents during the Albigensian mission which testify to the same thing,
reminiscences of his apostolate among noble ladies who were ‘believers’ of
that sect, whom he brought back to the bosom of the Church by asking
them for hospitality.177 There was the evidence of several women in the
investigation of Toulouse. They did not mind showing their tenderness
mingled with admiration and maternal compassion, still vivid after thirty
years, aroused by the extreme austerity, the fervour in prayer and the
generosity of the preacher. *78 Anecdotes emphasize his heroic charity at the
appeal of the grief of some mother or sister. *79 Scarcely had Dominic arrived
in Toulouse, in i2i£, than he opened a house for poor converted girls.180
He moved on to Madrid and it was the new convent there which has
preserved the only letter of his which has been kept. He went to Bologna;
there again there was a convent of sisters. In Florence, in Rome, his ministry
among women bore new fruit. It was there finally that the papacy entrusted
him with an exemplary creation—St Sixtus, which was to serve as a model,
not only in the eternal city but in one half of Christendom, for its
influence, under the stimulus of Gregory IX, would exceed the sphere of
action of the Preachers themselves.
Dominic had not sought this ministry. Neither his childhood with the
rural dean nor his studies in Palencia had placed him in contact with women.
He rather tried to avoid them, fearing the danger of their company
to one who sought to shun the world.181 It was precisely this reserve which
made for his success among them. They sensed that in his evangelization he
was wholly disinterested. Moreover this nature of his chastity gave a
naturalness and freshness to his spiritual outpourings which added to their
value. The confidence at the end of his life that despite his efforts he had
not been able to avoid the imperfection of finding more attraction in the
 132 VIR EVANGELICUS

conversation of girls than in that of old ladies, is delightful.182 Dominic was

essentially an apostle. He knew how to make himself all things to all men.
Because, however, he gave himself very generously to those who sought
him, he discovered, without seeking it, the joy of the communication of
spiritual things. As exacting for others as he was in the first instance for him¬
self, he was none the less deeply loved, and this affection, the echo of his
friendship which flowed back upon himself, gradually opened to him a joy
he had not so far experienced. Now the solitary of Palencia, or of the
cloister of Osma, was no longer alone with God. He had found his family,
a home, where without having to give up anything of his austerity of life or
losing anything of his reserve, he could restore his strength, find support for
his prayer and finally, to some extent open his heart.
The noonday of life had not yet come nor the hour of maturity in his
work. He was, however, at the age when a man leaves the father of his
youth to enter upon his definitive task. This time had now come for
Dominic. God was giving him Prouille as a strong support just when he was
asking a further sacrifice of him. He was to lose Diego.
The Bishop of Osma, who could see the work of conversion to which he
had devoted himself for more than a year past taking deep root at Prouille,
whereas in the course of this summer of 1207 the Cistercian mission was
beginning to show signs of weariness, wanted to leave the neighbourhood
for the space of some weeks. He wanted to go to Castile, so that he would
not be accused of wholly neglecting his diocese, and to put his domestic
affairs and those of his see in order. 183 As ever, he was overflowing with
projects of generosity. There he would collect men and resources The
assent of the Pope would be asked, he would then set up in the province of
Narbonne a truly permanent Preaching. 184 He allocated the various tasks at
Prouille and set off on his journey. *85

For the first stages, the journey was naturally made in common Every
occasmn of travel in these parts provided an opportunity of meeting the
heterodox. The bishop thought of crossing the Pyrenees by the upper valley
of the Anege.186 He would thus take the route through the county of Foix
whmh Fanjeaux in fact controlled: Mirepoix, Pamierf, Foix. ComW into

o ™“*-»» -■ *4-!

»»• -
 PROUILLE
133

erected outside the walls, half a mile or so from the town.192 The canons,
however, had not been able to avoid enfeoffing their town to Raymond-
Roger, Count of Foix.J93 The latter occupied the castle, the terrace of
which can still be seen at the side of the cathedral. The count had sworn
everything that could be desired for the protection of the faith and the
liberty of the canons. He attached, however, too high a value to the
possession of the city and he clutched at any means of driving the principal
lords from it. One such means was assuredly the diffusion of heresy. He
disseminated it through his own family, among them his wife and two of his
sisters, one of whom was the famous Esclarmonde. All three were devoted
to the sects, two of them to the Catharists, the third to the Waldenses. *94
For a time even, the count had succeeded in establishing in the town his
aunt Fais de Durfort,^ Gf Fanjeaux, a major heresiarch of the type of
Blanche de Laurac, whose penetrating prosyletism was not without its
effect on the population. This was too much for the noble canons. They
had reacted and driven Fais from their city. The count’s wrath was un¬
leashed. A canon was attacked while he was in the act of celebrating Mass,
and cut to pieces. For several years the blood could be seen upon the altar.
Another had his eyes tom out. The count entered the monastery by force,
locked up the abbot and religious while he destroyed part of their buildings,
then drove them half-naked into the open country.
Raymond-Roger knew how to control his violence when it suited him.
Towards the missionaries he was all consideration.196 He welcomed the
participants in the disputation at his own expense, one day entertaining the
Catholics and the next their opponents. These were principally Waldenses,
but there were also some Catharists.197 The disputation was held in the
castle. ig8 The Dames of Foix were not so aloof as their husband and
brother and intervened in the course of the debate. One of the sisters was
rebuked by a Catholic religious, Fray Etienne de Misericorde: ‘Madam,’ he
said, ‘get back to your distaff. It is not your business to speak in such
meetings.,J99 This was truly the tradition of the New Testament: Mulieres
in ecclesiis taceant.200 It was not an argument.
The Catholic champions had better reasons at their disposal. By common
consent there was chosen as arbitrator a remarkable man, Master Arnaud de
Crampagna, then a secular priest well known in the town. He had been
attached to the Waldenses.201 He was convinced and gave his verdict in
favour of the Catholics, against both the Waldenses and the Catharists. He
then abjured his sect and, in an impressive gesture, gave himself to the
Bishop of Osma, both as to his person and his property, by an oath of
dependence in feudal form.202 From that moment he never ceased bravely
to attack the sectaries whom the count’s family were protecting.2°3 Having
become a canon and sacristan of St Antonin, greatly attached to St Dominic,
he sought him out again for the last time in 1221 in Rome where the affairs
 VIR EVANGELICUS
134

of the county of Toulouse had brought him.20* He was later to give evidence
at his friend’s canonization process.205
Many others were shaken. Here, as at Servian, Montreal or Fanjeaux, the
poor and the friends of poverty were easily influenced.206 An important
group of Waldenses who had for long been attacking Catharist dualism in
terms fairly close to those of the Catholics, returned to the bosom of mother
Church.20? At their head was Master Durando de Huesca. They went off to
Rome to ask for absolution from their error and for canonical penance. They
wanted something more that no prelate of the Narbonensis could have given
them—the right to continue, as Catholics, their apostolic life and their
work of evangelization, in particular against the Catharists. Innocent III was
sympathetic to their desires. He had been strengthened in his attitude of open¬
heartedness towards the Humiliati of Lombardy and the Waldenses of Metz
by the success of the apostolic preaching in the Narbonensis.208 He accepted
the offer of Durando and his companions who were recommended by Diego.
Having asked them for an immediate oath of loyalty, and at the same time a
profession of orthodoxy, he granted them a certain form of regular life and
the right to preach. Thus were established in 1208 the Poor Catholics,200
who spread particularly in Catalonia and the Narbonensis. The first mendi¬
cant group of the Roman Church, they worked at their evangelical mission
with courage, and knew how to remain faithful. They nevertheless came up
against the instinctive hostility of the populations and of the local clergy,
who could not succeed in distinguishing them from the anticlerical
Waldenses. Despite the definite support of a series of popes, their movement
scarcely developed at all. It was eventually submerged, in 12^6, like a
stream in a river, in the fourth mendicant order then organized, the
Hermits of St Augustine. In 1210 another group of the Waldenses of the
Albigeois, led by Bernard Prim, had obtained from the Pope a rule of life
identical with that of Durando de Huesca.210 They likewise disputed against
the dualists.211
Certain Catharists, moreover, had also felt themselves shaken by the
Pamiers disputation.212 Nothing shows more clearly the deep root taken by
the dualist church in the territories of the Midi than the dialogue engaged
between Bishop Fulk and Pons Adhemar de Roudeille, a knight of
Saverdun,2I3 a dispute which did not lack finesse. ‘We should never have
been able to imagine’, he said, ‘that Rome had such telling reasons against
these people.’ ‘Do you not recognize’, said the bishop, ‘that they have
nothing left to say against our objections?’ ‘We recognize it’, he said.
Why , said the bishop, ‘do you not expel them from your lands, driving
them away from this place?’ ‘We cannot. We have been brought up in
their midst, we have certain of our close relatives among them and we see
them living lives of perfection.’2^
More than anywhere else, the example of a perfect life was needed for the
 PROUILLE
13S

men of these parts, if the truth was to touch their hearts. The Bishop of Osma
had sensed with more perspicacity than anyone the need of joining the
one to the other in preaching, doubtless because he felt this himself as a
need of his personal life. Facere et docere the Gospel said of Jesus. ‘To put
one’s teaching into practice.’ The insistence of the charters of Prouille,
speaking of the ladies converted ‘by the examples and exhortations of
Brother Dominic is worthy of note.215 Verbo et exemplo, the formula was
an old one.216 Diego had been able to give it a new freshness by his inspired
generosity. On his lips the words the others were using acquired fresh value.
A new evangelization was springing to life from imitation of the apostles.

And now Diego was leaving. It was the first time that Dominic had been
parted from him for ten years or more. The separation must have been
painful to him. His emotion would have been infinitely deeper had he
guessed that this farewell was final. It was September, iioj.217 Diego
reached Osma in a few weeks. The crossing of the mountains, the journey
on foot at the end of three years of travelling, preaching and controversy
in an atmosphere of very great austerity, used up his strength. He had
already entered upon his declining years.218 The work in Osma left him no
respite. He made a further effort, put everything in order and was already
preparing to start back again,2I9 when sickness overtook him and he died.
It was 30th December, 1207.220
Three weeks later, one blow falling after another, Dominic learnt of his
decease and of the assassination of Peter of Castelnau.221 A member of the
household of the Count of Toulouse had killed the Cistercian, in the
Trinquetaille quarter of Arles. This last loss must have disturbed Dominic
beyond all measure. The whole of Christendom, struck in the person of a
representative of the Pope, was shaken and would react in a dramatic
fashion. Anything might happen. The announcement of the death of the
Bishop of Osma, however, caused in Dominic’s whole being an upheaval of
a very different nature, the feeling of a crumbling away of his life.
Diego was not only the most prominent personality, whose highminded¬
ness, divine inspiration, knowledge, moral purity, zeal full of effectiveness,
all the documents emphasize.222 For Dominic he was his father and master.
After all, they had had all things in common for more than ten years. More
than that, each completed the other. Diego, imaginative, excitable and
generous, who could not see a supernatural task without devoting himself
to it, not superficial or unstable, however, but of incomparable activity;
Dominic, calm and thoughtful, however much moved by emotion his
sensitive nature might be, of inconceivable continuity in thought and effort,
because all in him emerged from a steadily flowing interior life. Less gifted
than Diego on the side of the imagination, he was no less dynamic and
capable of achievement, because he was the man of a single and great idea.
I36 VIR EVANGELICUS

The idea came from Diego, with the impulse. Dominic could not imagine
himself without his father. His humility liked to remain under the shadow
of his leader. And now, all that was over.
Raoul de Fontfroide was dead, his colleague, Peter of Castelnau, assas¬
sinated, Arnaud Amaury, the third legate, was absent. The Cistercian
preachers had left for their abbeys. Diego had just died in Castile. To
assume the immense apostolic task, Dominic was alone.
 Chapter IX

FANJEAUX

D URING the year 1208 and the first part of 1209, lowering skies'
pressed heavily over the Midi of France in unceasing preparation for
a storm.1 On 10th March letters that made sad reading had left
Rome. They announced simultaneously to the king, the great churchmen,
the chief barons and the populations of the north as of the Midi of France,
the tidings of the murder of Peter of Castelnau and the strong suspicions
which rested upon Raymond of Toulouse. The crime had occurred the
morning after a scene of violence, in which the count, brought to bay, had
uttered threats of death against the legate. The Cistercian was preparing
to cross the Rhone. Some feudal vassal, approaching from behind, had run
him through with his lance. The count, however, far from disavowing the
criminal, received him on terms of friendship. Raymond had not yet
accomplished any of his promises in the matter of peace and faith and the
Pope accordingly pronounced a fresh excommunication against him, released
his vassals from their oaths of fidelity and ‘exposed his land as a prey’. In
strong terms he called upon faithful Catholics to lend their assistance to the
Church and conferred on those who did the recognized indulgence of the
crusades. One single right remained in reserve, that of King Philip Augustus,
the overlord. The Pope once more addressed to the latter a pressing
invitation to assume direction of the punitive operations, and to reduce his
Toulouse vassal to Christian obedience.
The king, paralysed by the simultaneous threats from England and the
Empire, had plausible excuse for not putting himself at the head of the
crusade; he could no longer, however, stand out against the deep feeling of
his barons. Outdone in generosity by his subordinates, he finally allowed
them to respond to the call of the Church as individuals. The enterprise had
immense success. Two new series of pontifical letters, in October 1208 and
February 1209, completed its organization. Navarre of Couserans and Fulk
of Toulouse, in the name of the prelates of the Midi, had gone to Rome and
advised the Pope.2 Arnaud de Citeaux and Guy de Carcassonne tried to
influence Philip Augustus and his barons in France.3
In June 1209 the storm broke. The elements of the crusade were con¬
centrated in Lyons from the 2£th onwards. It was a strange army, the
contingents of which moved forward staff in hand, like pilgrims going to
 I38 VIR EVANGELICUS

gain an indulgence.4 Their clergy, who were in their midst, encouraged

them by their ceremonies and their preaching; they then assembled them to
the cry of ‘The indulgence’ .5 But with the baggage, the trappings of war
accompanied the pilgrims.6 When the call ‘To arms’ should ring out, only
a few minutes would be necessary to transform this huge mass of men into
a fanatical army. At the beginning of July, the legates joined it. On the 1 2th,
it passed through Montelimar. On the 22nd it camped before Beziers, where
for the first time it met with resistance. At the instigation of the young
viscount Raymond-Roger, the stubborn town defied the Church and refused
to disassociate itself from the heretics. Tents had scarcely been erected when,
without the knowledge of the knights, the rougher elements of the camp,
armed with clubs and stones, assaulted the town and took it at a single
stroke.7 They then began to pillage and to massacre all they met at random.
They even set fire to the city but at this point the knights intervened and
tried to control the pillage. It was an appalling slaughter. The official
account mentions twenty thousand dead; there were seven thousand alone
in the church of the Madeleine where part of the population had taken
refuge. The dome of the cathedral collapsed and crashed down in the flames.
Terror spread throughout the neighbourhood. A good hundred townships
and castles were emptied of their defenders; no time was lost in occupying
them. On 1st August the crusaders arrived before Carcassonne where the
viscount had entrenched himself. Two weeks later the unconquerable city
had to capitulate. The inhabitants only saved their lives by leaving all their
wealth and goods and fleeing naked into the open fields. Young Trencavel,
falling into the hands of the crusaders, was not long in meeting death in the
tower whex e he was held prisoner. At the end of the month the crusade was
in possession of the whole of the viscounty of Beziers-Carcassonne.
Had the King of France put himself at the head of the expedition, it would
doubtless have taken the form of a military crusade, like the Albigensian
pilgrimage of his son, the future Louis VIII, in 1 2 1 8 The king’s suzerainty
in the south of Fiance assured him a right of intervention less disputed among
the barons of the neighbourhood than the right of holy war in Christendom
formulated by the Church in the course of the twelfth century. The operation
would certainly not have been effected without countless cruelties. The
king, strong through the submission of Raymond of Toulouse, Raymond-
Roger of Carcassonne and their vassals, would clearly have exacted effective
measures against the mercenaries and the heretics. Whereas in the case of
the latter the pontifical prescriptions only demanded their expulsion and the
confiscation of their property,9 the customs of the north of France and of
the Empire had long demanded the stake. 10 The crusaders would not have
failed to burn ‘with great joy’ in town and borough hundreds of Catharist
Perfect, as they did at Minerva, Lavaur and Casses. 11 They would have hanged
the mercenaries.12 Eviction of the local dynasties would at least have been
 FANJEAUX 139

avoided, as would the almost general spoliation of the feudal lords of those
parts, a source of ceaselessly renewed acts of treason and of a continuous
state of revolt of the population of the Midi, eliciting a ferment of hatred
against the north which, for thirty-five years, was to continue to multiply in
this unhappy land the anarchy and dramas of earlier times.
If the barons of the Midi had succeeded in coming to an understanding,
they might perhaps have been able to resist the invasion of the crusaders. The
deep nature of their dissensions, however, did not permit of this.^ As far
back as 1208 Raymond had made up his mind. Incapable of effecting unity
around his person he had decided, unlike the young Viscount of Beziers, to
bow before the storm. At the beginning of June he met Milon, the new
legate whom the Pope was sending him at his request. On 18th June, at
Saint-Gilles, in front of the magnificent romanesque basilica which his
ancestors had built, a humiliating penance re-established him in the Church
in exchange for weighty promises—he would give way to the wishes of the
Church, especially in the matter of the heretics, would re-establish liberty
and restore ecclesiastical property, would suppress unjust taxes and finally
would take then and there and would cause to be taken by every one of the
rulers and men of his lands, aged fourteen and upwards, the solemn oath of
peace. Finally, on the 22nd he took the cross and, for the future, would
ally himself with the cruel operations of war. Matters thus ended in this
anomaly that the person chiefly responsible for the disorders in the south,
against whom the crusade had been explicitly convened, not only escaped its
clutches, but collaborated in its work. By so doing, Raymond VI re¬
established his compromised authority and kept his territory outside the
operations of the crusaders.
No one was more conscious of this paradox than the leader of the crusade,
the legate Arnaud de Cxteaux. He was not the man to allow himself to be
deceived by vain promises. Raymond VI was obliged to carry out the
programme he had sworn at Saint-Gilles and in particular genuinely to
engage himself in the struggle against heresy; otherwise, he would be
excommunicated again, and his land, laid under an interdict, would be
abandoned to the conquering efforts of the crusaders. It is, moreover, clear
that Arnaud’s history of events was already written. He had known the
count too long and no longer had any confidence in him. The affairs of peace
and faith in Provence would only be settled by his disinheritance. To replace
him the legate soon had his man: Simon de Montfort, Count of Leicester.IS

Simon was a lord of the lie de France only modestly endowed. Because of
the King of England, he had not been able to take possession of the county
of Leicester which he had inherited from his mother. He thus formed part
of that body of knights of average position not closely attached to their land
who remained available for any great feudal enterprise. A convinced
 I40 VIR EVANGELICUS

Catholic, pure in his married life, he had the sense of the service of God
through arms and of loyalty to the Church. Engaged in the fourth crusade,
in 1204 he had separated from it before Zara when he had realized that it
was being deflected from its Christian purpose. A number of companions
had then accompanied him in his deeds of prowess in Palestine. Now he had
found them again in another crusade, in which his neighbour and friend,
Guy des Vaux-Cernai, was involving him. He was a man immediately out¬
standing among his equals. A soldier of amazing activity, continually in the
saddle and always at the breach, intrepid, loyal to his companions, brutal,
if not cruel,16 towards his enemies, never discouraged by setbacks or
treason, he possessed the qualities of the tactician as well as those of the
strategist. He had a taste for the offensive and for crushing attacks, the
genius for tackling his adversary at his strongest point, the art of manipu¬
lating the drags and mangonels. Thus when Raymond-Roger of Beziers, for
his resistance to the Church, had been declared ‘faidit’1? and his lands
vacant, it was Simon de Montfort who, by common consent of the crusaders,
had acquired the succession. After the Assumption 1209, Carcassonne with
all its booty, belonged to him. In a few days he succeeded in occupying a
large number of places in the flat countryside around. Gradually he estab¬
lished his loyal companions of France on the lands of the other ‘faidits’. On
1 2th November the Pope sanctioned the transfer of the fief. Simon received
the feudal confirmation which was most important to him at the beginning
of 1214, when the king, Pedro de Aragon, suzerain of the greater part of the
land, agreed to admit him to homage. Simon de Montfort, leader of the
crusade, would hold in future, with the consent of the chief of the southern
princes, the Bitterois, the Carcasses, the Lauragais, the Razes and the
Albigeois. At this juncture the lack of willingness or of power on the part
of Raymond VI to fulfil the engagements he had undertaken at Saint-Gilles
gave the legates the opportunity of finally excluding him from the Church.
Excommunicated, a ‘faidit’, he lost his land. Simon de Montfort, aided by
Arnaud de Citeaux and all the churchmen round about, prepared to take
possession likewise of the inheritance of the Count of Toulouse. The
operation, begun as early as 1211, reached its peak at the victory of Muret
on 1 2th September, 1213, when the death of Pedro II of Aragon, who had
turned against the crusaders, meant the supreme collapse of the resistance
of the southerners. Two years later, succeeding at the same time both
the Saint-Gilles and the Trencavel, Montfort obtained, east and west of the
Rhone, a territory that was equivalent to a kingdom.
This boundless appetite for feudal power was the unpleasant side of Simon
de Montfort and his weakness. Others, seeing a dishonour in accepting,
even by right of crusade, patrimonial territory which belonged to another’
had found strength to refuse. 18 pedro II, realizing that Simon wanted the
whole of the Midi, had made a complete change of front, despite the links
 FANJEAUX 141

which attached him to the Roman Church. Innocent III, who had confirmed
the possession of Carcassonne to de Montfort, was alarmed to see him attack
Toulouse. At the end of 1210, he had put a certain restraint upon him by
demanding that Raymond VI be allowed to defend himself against the charges
of murder and heresy; in 1 2 1 3 he tried to stop de Montfort and the legates
completely and reversed his policy; in 1214 he suspended operations and
reserved the final decision to himself; in 121^, despite the almost unanimous
pressure of the churchmen, he for long refrained from confirming and,
eventually, would not agree to accept without restrictions the substitution
of the de Montforts for the Saint-Gilles in the county of Toulouse.10 The
legates, however, like the churchmen of the Midi, were convinced that
there was no better way of accomplishing the work of God in those parts.
They continually arranged matters so as to prevent Raymond from freeing
himself by clearing himself through a liberating oath of the crimes of which
he was accused, from the excommunication which threatened to deprive
him of his domains. Coming from him, this oath seemed to them com¬
pletely unworthy of credence. Like the promoters of the Gregorian reform,
they considered that the prince was merely the functionary of the Christian
people and that he lost his land by right the moment he ceased to fulfil his
mission in the Church. Simon had still less difficulty in persuading himself
of this. The populations of the south, however, reasoned in a different way.
When they understood that the French barons were going to entrench
themselves in the land, the struggle became implacable.
The religious inspiration of the holy war, which, in the intention of
Innocent, was to facilitate the establishment of order and peace, on the
contrary over-excited men’s passions in the struggle, making it more
dramatic. The eternal salvation of a multitude of people and the community
of minds and hearts in the bosom of Western Christendom surely depended,
in the eyes of the combatants of the north at least, on the outcome of the
battles. If the Perfect among the Catharists, if not their feudal friends, were
absolutely convinced in their faith, the crusaders were none the less so. The
confessions and pardons exchanged on the morning of combat, which the
documents mention,20 were not mere formal rites; as for instance, the
offering to God ‘of body and soul’ pronounced by Simon at the offertory of
the Mass said before the battle;21 the chant, so much dreaded, of the Veni
Creator by all the clergy at dawn, while the knights attacked Lavaur, St
Antonin, Moissac, Casseneuil ;22 or the fervent prayers, shouted to deafening
point by legates, bishops and monks, in the basilica of St Sernin at Muret,
whilst the decisive battle was being fought.23 It even seemed to them that
God continually intervened in the contest by veritable miracles.2+ On both
sides the engagement was until death and men held their own lives cheap
as they did those of others.
Simon had in his favour his military valour, which went hand in hand with
 142 VIR EVANGEL1CUS

the vigour and loyalty of an heroic family—the countess, his brother, his
brother-in-law, his cousins and his sons25—and companions truly worthy of
him; interior strength coming from his religious conviction, the purity of
his morals and from a position that was simpliste but coherent; the collabora¬
tion of the Pope, the bishops and the preachers of France and Germany who
procured for him armies that were sometimes of considerable strength.
Against him he had the precariousness, irregularity and lack of discipline of
these contingents, too often dispersed in the course of the battle because
the crusaders had finished the forty days service required by the indulgence,
while their recruitment dried up almost totally in winter-time. Above all
he had against him the hatred of all those who were attached to the Catharists
or other heretics, to the lords who were ‘faidits’, to the townships in ruins,
to the dynasties of Saint-Gilles and the Trencavels. Not all the men of the
Midi detested the crusade. The convinced Catholics hoped for a great deal
from it and it was in their thousands that the members of the ‘white con¬
fraternity of Toulouse collaborated in its operations.2^ The local churchmen
wanted Simon de Montfort and many of the clergy received him with
gratitude. Certain lords, like Raymond of Toulouse’ own brother, Count
Baldwin, were sincerely loyal to him and a number of Frenchmen, like
Guy de Levis, founded families in the neighbourhood.27 Nevertheless, the
general mentality was frankly hostile to the crusaders, even in the Catholic
cities of Narbonne and Montpellier, which had not had to suffer from
them.28
Such interlocking factors of strength and weakness explain the vicissitudes
of the sentiments and events which, after the murder of Peter of Castelnau,
dominated the life of the Narbonensis, where Dominic was pursuing his
work of salvation.

Between August 1207 and May 1211, no dated account of an event, no

ocument in the archives, has preserved for us the detailed narrative ofthe
saint’s activity. The preparation and launching of the crusade, precisely in
t ese Aery years, meant an upheaval in the Lauragais from end to end. It was
not until 1212 that the war, moving away from the ancient domain of the
Trencavel, would be carried over into the county of Toulouse. It is not
surprising that in the bustle and confusion of the movements of cavalry,
sieges, massacres and councils, it should be difficult to catch the modest
echo of the activity of the Castilian. Jordan of Saxony, however, is our
authority for the continuity of his presence and action in the neighbourhood
After the withdrawal of the Bishop of Osma and the departure of the
Distercian missionaries, he tells us, ‘Brother Dominic remained where he
was and, alone, unremittingly continued his preaching’.2* Several documents
confirm and throw light on this general evidence.
The first is a living document—the permanence and development of the
 FANJEAUX H3

house of Prouille. At a time when the population was fleeing before the
military, when the enemy forces did not cease to scour the country by
turns, the recent and not very strongly rooted foundation would have been
unable to survive without the presence and effort of the two men to whom
Diego had entrusted it at his departure—soyyflliam Claret and Dominic.
On 19th March, 1209, the former was given actual possession of the property
of the church of Limoux31 which the Archbishop of Narbonne had given
Prouille two years earlier by then simply handing them a charter.32 Doubt¬
less Berenger had profited by the dispersions and upheavals of 1208 to
postpone the fulfilment of his promises. In March 1209 the announcement
ot the early return of Arnaud de Citeaux and of the coming of a new
pontifical legate,33 probably roused the archbishop’s zeal. Dominic and
William hastened to profit by this. Then came the crusade.
In the last week but one of July, the terrifying news of the Beziers
massacre reached the monastery. From that moment, the knights and the
Dame de Fanjeaux3 4 left the township with the whole of the inhabitants, to
take refuge in the fortresses on the periphery of the lands of the viscounts of
Trencavel, or of the county of Foix. As they fled,35 they dismantled their
fortifications, at least in part. A few days later, a leader of the mercenaries
who had rallied to Simon, Pedro the Aragonese, passed through Prouille to
occupy Fanjeaux, the fortifications of which he once more put in a state of
defence.36 Fie must doubtless have guaranteed then and there the security
of the religious house. In any event he showed it positive favour and a short
time afterwards made over to it a small property at Alzonne.37
As soon as the first days of September arrived, de Montfort came in person
to secure Fanjeaux and its important junction of routes.38 There he replaced
Pedro the Aragonese, endowing him with lands recently conquered. 39
Prouille must have been relieved at this. The close company of mercenaries
was scarcely reassuring for a religious house. Whereas Carcassonne, thanks
to its military strength and to the renewal of its population was to constitute
the centre and stronghold of de Montfort’s power, Fanjeaux would for the
future be his headquarters if one can attribute any centre of operations to
this warrior who was always on the move. He reserved to himself the direct
overlordship,40 and occupied the castle, by the side of the present church,
near the viewpoint over the plain of the Lauragais, which has been named the
Seignadou. It was there he liked to station himself between two campaigns,
in his observation post as it were, ready to set off again immediately
in the direction of Carcassonne, the Razes, the county of Foix, Toulouse or
Albi. He must have made prolonged stays there in winter, when the gradual
disappearance of his effective forces would oblige him to cease operations
and hold himself on the defensive. This began as early as September
1209 with a series of raids spreading out in all directions like the points of a
star,4i which enabled him to install his followers in the country round.42
 144 VIR EVANGELICUS

On the 29th of that month, however, when de Montfort had ridden away
on a distant expedition, Raymond Roger de Foix tried to take the city of
Fanjeaux by scaling the walls.43 A few soldiers mounted by means of ladders
and ran through the streets. Caught by surprise and repulsed, they had to
leap from the walls, and every one of them was killed. Nevertheless the
resistance of the Midi was stiffening. Montreal, with some forty other places,
fell away.44 At the year’s end, besides Carcassonne and Fanjeaux, de
Montfort only retained Saissac, Limoux (gravely threatened), Pamiers,
Servian and Albi.43 We can imagine the atmosphere which then obtained
around Prouille until at the end of the winter de Montfort gave Fanjeaux a
little breathing space by seizing Bram46 and Bellegarde,4? a mile or two
away from the convent. In September 1221 there was the same dramatic
atmosphere once more. After the brilliant campaigns of the summer which
had driven Raymond VI back to Toulouse and Montauban, de Montfort
again found himself alone. Toulouse and the allies of Foix and Comminges
resumed the offensive and laid siege to Castelnaudaury, the gateway to the
Lauragais, where de Montfort rushed to sustain the courage of his handful of
loyal followers.48 During this time his wife, the countess, was isolated at
Lavaur. His youngest daughter, an infant, was put out to nurse at Montreal,
his eldest son, Amaury, lay ill at Fanjeaux.44* The plain was controlled by the
forays of the enemy. From the heights of the Seignadou the varying fortunes
of the encounters could be followed. Treason penetrated even into the
town; Guillaume Cat, a native of those parts whom de Montfort had
knighted, godfather of his little girl and nurse of his son Amaury, had come
to Fanjeaux to plot his own defection and the capture by treachery of Guy
de Levis, marshal of the crusade.so A column of reinforcements was
attacked a short distance away from the walls. The Bishop of Cahors and
the clergy of the escort made their way to the city for refuge, while the
decisive combat was being fought.si A little later two knights fell into an
ambush at the gate of the town. One of them was killed; an anniversary was
instituted in his memory at Prouille.s* Finally after 1212, peace was
established in the neighbourhood of Prouille; at each season, however, the
passage of crusaders in large bodies continued to be an indication of the
presence of the war and its tumults. In May and June 1213, de Montfort
was living by turns in Carcassonne and in Fanjeaux.S3 It was from the latter
that one September morning he set out in haste to deliver Muret, which
was being besieged by Pedro de Aragon. 54 The victory that he won there
secured peace for the future throughout the Lauragais, as in the rest of the
viscounty, until his death.

“ the ™penor of Prouille from the very beginning found himself in

contact with the man whom the crusade had just chosen as leader. Loyal
Catholics were not numerous enough in Fanjeaux for the count to take no
 {Photo: Leonard von Matt)

Fanjeaux overlooking the plain ; just visible on the right: the tower ol Seignadou
church.
 FANJEAUX x4£

interest in the monastery. In reality there was no priest or religious in the

neighbourhood more important than Dominic, whatever his humility. Close
links were established between the two men. Jordan of Saxony speaks of the
peculiar and warm devotion’ which the count55 showed towards Dominic.
One chronicle, very well informed on this point, calls attention to the close
friendship which bound St Dominic to the count and his family, particularly
to his eldest daughter, Amicie de Joigny, and to the youngest, Petronille, a
nun of Saint Antoine.56 In fact the documents in the archives, from 1211
onwards, show the generosity of Simon, of his brother Guy, and of his
eldest son Amaury, in regard to the house of Prouille and its superior—
domains or lands at Sauzenc, Fanjeaux, Villarzens, Montbajou, Casseneuil,
revenues, exemptions, confirmations, permits.5? Moreover, certain signifi¬
cant gestures, the memory of which has been handed down to us, throw
light on their reciprocal relationship. The countess having given birth to a
little girl in February i 2 11, probably at Montreal, Dominic baptized the
child.58 At the beginning of June 1214, a much more solemn ceremony took
place at Carcassonne. Amaury de Montfort was married to Beatrice, the
daughter of the Dauphin. To bless this wedding which was to increase the
power of the de Montforts in eastern Provence, the count, now arrived at
the height of his glory and surrounded by the highest prelates of the Church,
would have no difficulty in finding clergy. The fact that for this office he
preferred Dominic, then deputy for the bishop of the place, speaks
sufficiently for his sentiments.59 That same year he helped Dominic to set
up a fresh ‘Preaching’ at Fanjeaux. After 1 2 1 £ the institution of the Preachers
in Toulouse naturally increased the reputation of their founder. One can
understand de Montfort’s consternation when he learnt in the middle of
1217 that Dominic had in mind the dispersal of the first brethren, and
he made efforts to cause him to reverse his decision.60 Dominic, on his side,
followed the vicissitudes of Simon’s fortunes with great concern.61 A year
before the count’s death, he saw in a dream ‘a wide-spreading tree of lovely
appearance, which was harbouring a great number of birds in its branches.
The tree fell to the ground. The birds which were nesting in it flew away in
all directions.’62 In this he saw the announcement in prophecy of the
crusader’s early death. This decided him to take momentous steps.65
History, and even more so literature, have given impassioned and con¬
tradictory judgements on Simon de Montfort. It is understandable that he
should have been detested. It is likewise understandable that many have been
sparing neither of admiration nor of devotion to his memory. His gifts were
not limited to the military qualities we have mentioned. He possessed the
ability of an organizer and his ‘Institutions de Pamiers’, by their provisions,
suppressed many of the causes of the anarchy of the Midi.6* He knew how
to acquire and keep his friends. An adversary like Raymond VII could
recognize his chivalrous qualities,65 Finally, as has been said, he was simple
 146 VIR EVANGELICUS

and pure in his morals and sincerely wished to serve God and the Church.
None the less, even assessing at their true value the accusations of unbridled
ambition66 and of brutality which have been levelled against him, it must be
said that he was primarily a warrior whose figure stands out for us against a
background of battlefields, embellished with too large a number of gallows,
stakes and even of massacres. We should have preferred St Dominic not to
have been seen at all against this background, by the side of the count and
his friends.
Dominic was of his time; he could not always choose his horizons. The
pillage and brutalities around him had not begun with the crusade. More¬
over, it is probable that he considered the latter legitimate. The almost
universal view of the men of Europe on the role of the temporal sword in
defence of the Kingdom of God has already been recalled. The service of
orthodoxy, of peace, of the liberty of the Christian people was not onlv the
duty of temporal authority, but its very basis. Dominic had known this ideal
since his childhood in the Castile of Alfonso VIII, in the full vigour of the
reconquest. In 1216, after eight years of the crusade, it would seem that he
still retained it if one is to believe two anecdotes, neither of which, it is
true, is very well authenticated.67 The first associates him with one of the
repressive actions of Simon de Montfort against the heretics.6§ This was not
the Inquisition, the hour of which had not yet come.6? Apparently he was
called on to judge the belief of suspects whom de Montfort’s officers had
arrested, and to try to convert them in extremis.70 It is alleged that he
snatched one of the condemned men from the stake, although the unfor¬
tunate man was convinced but in no wise repentant, and that Dominic knew
through a private revelation that this Catharist follower would be converted
twenty years later and would become a member of the faithful, full of
sanctity. 71 A little earlier, before a crowd of people whom the cultus of
otre Dame de Prouille had gathered around the monastery on the feast of
the Assumption, he is said to have pronounced these significant words:

I have sung words of sweetness to you for many years now, preaching, imploring
weeping But as the people of my country say, where blessing is of™ avail, the
s ick will prevail (on no val senhagols, val bagols). Now we shall call forth against
you leaders and prelates who, alas, will gather together against this country the
power of the nations and will cause many people to die bj the sword, wilfruin
your towers, overthrow and destroy your walls and reduce you all to servitude-
oh wha, sorrow! Thus the tagoU, that is, the force of the stick, will prevail
where sweetness and blessing have been able to accomplish nothing.» P

The curiously similar speech of Bdrenger of Carcassonne^ has already been

after thfm0 fT n T ‘Lord’ he had exclaimed,

‘let h f rer t, BJemaad’74 hl tHe PreSenCe of the hardened nobles
stretch forth your hand and smite them.‘75 Sacred invective doubtless
formed part of the exhortation, the final stage of the preaching against the
 FANJEAUX 1 47

Heretics.76 Such threats, however, were only verbal. The speech attributed
to Dominic, if it really came from him and not from Berenger, though less
violent than that of Diego, would have a weightier effect. It would make its
author one with the bishops and the Pope who had summoned the crusaders
to action.

It is essential to remember, however, that a cleric had many ways of

identifying himself with the crusade. One could visualize and bring it into
being like Pope Innocent III. One could direct it like Arnaud, the legate,
who, with his council of churchmen of the Midi, was really responsible for
the military and political operation of the enterprise. One could collaborate
directly, after the fashion of the numerous archbishops and bishops of France
and Germany, who in turn brought their troops and their money to the help
of Simon de Montfort and induced the great barons of their neighbourhood
to accompany them. Certain of these crusading clerics, like the archdeacon
Guillaume de Paris, depicted in such vivid colours by Pierre des Vaux-
Cernai,77 really did go as far as the extreme limit of that boundary between
combatant and non-combatant which they had not the right to cross,
recruiting men and money, collecting siege material, stimulating carpenters,
servants and soldiers to action at the supreme hour of the assault. Others,
finally, more spiritual, put their preaching at the service of the holy war,
whether they preached to the crusaders in the camps and on the field of
battle, or whether in vast circuits in the north, they strove to procure new
contingents for the crusade.78
Not a single document justifies us in thinking that Dominic collaborated
in the crusade in any of these ways. Many of them, on the other hand, clearly
establish that if he felt himself to be linked closely with the crusaders, he
was not prepared to be their collaborator but kept himself apart.70 Among
the many tasks of the ‘affair of faith and peace’80 in which the Church was
engaged in the Albigensian lands, Dominic had chosen his part the one he
had discerned with Diego one day in May 1206, in Montpellier, and since
then had never abandoned—‘to preach, with a mission from the Church,
according to the way of the apostles, in humility not in authority .
This task was no less urgent than in former times, and was no less
demanded by the Church. In the bull, even, in which he launched the
crusade, Innocent had again imposed on all the Church authorities in the
Midi, by virtue of obedience and in the power of the Holy Spirit, the further
development of the preaching which had been inaugurated and to devote
themselves unswervingly, with all their effort and all their care, to counter¬
acting the heretical aberrations and confirming the Catholic faith, to uproot¬
ing vices and implanting virtues’. At the very beginning of the crusade, the
Council of Avignon had reiterated this order of Innocent in its first canon,
developed the positive and negative doctrinal and moral programme of the
 I48 VIR EVANGELICUS

preaching in precise terms, and imposed on the bishops the obligation of

obtaining the help of preachers ‘full of discernment and moral value’.81
It was truly this function, a silent but a fruitful one, that Dominic fulfilled
in nurturing and expanding the centre of spiritual life of the brethren and
sisters of Prouille. We have just read how, in preaching at Prouille, he
summed up his action as a ministry ‘of gentleness’, ‘preaching, imploring
and weeping’. He had not, in fact, confined this ministry to Prouille and
Fanjeaux. Often taking the road, as at the time of the preaching in the
Narbonensis, he would go off on extensive itineraries. No report, no
chronicle has related for us day by day these apostolic campaigns, as was
done for the crusade. We are reduced to gleaning with difficulty chance
echoes of them in the form of some edifying anecdote, an account of a
miracle, certain depositions from the canonization process, or belated con¬
fessions before the Inquisition. When, however, these scattered items of
information are pieced together, the extent of the territory to which they
relate is surprising. From east to west—Servian, Beziers, Carcassonne,
Montreal, Fanjeaux,82 Castelnaudary, Treville, Villeneuve-la-Comtal,83
Lavaur,8^ Verfeil,8s Toulouse,86 along the principal axis of the country, that
is of the valley of the Aude and the plain of the Lauragais; towards the
south-west—Pamiers,87 Boulbonne,88 and the valley of the Ariege going
back towards Toulouse;»9 further to the west, in Couserans and its neigh¬
bourhood ;»o towards the north-east—Saissac ;9i finally, northwards "to
Castres,92 into the Albigeois properly so-called. These data, fragmentary as
they are, outline sufficiently clearly the map of the places penetrated bv
heresy in the dioceses of Toulouse and Carcassonne, or rather in the domains
of the Saint-Gilles, the Trencavels and their allies of Foix and Comminges.
Let us evoke in passing the profiles of some of those whom St Dominic
reconciled. They emerge from the shadows only for the space of a lightning
Hash—a chance phrase in a document—to fall back again into shadow^ almost
immediately It is a gallery of the young, of children even—Guillelmine
Martine who took canels^ to the heretical weavers, from whom she

°f nUtS and bread; P< de Marte1’ who> after his conversion,

attached himself to the saint and for the future lived near him; several little
girls confided to Catharist communities by their close relatives, taking the
abit of the Perfect and remaining there several years—Na Segura, given to
hem at the age of ten, Saura at seven, P. Covinens handed over to "them at
twelve by her brother, little Arnaude de Fremiac, given to them by her
guardian, Isarn Bola of Fanjeaux-There were adults, too-the ‘Perfect’
ladies Raymonde the wife of Case, Ermengarde, the wife of Boer; and men
Perfect-P. Jaule of Saissac, Raymond d’Autier of Villepinte and Pons

CeT- °ffTrlle Wh°Se aUStCre 1Ctter °f reconcihation is still extant.

Certam of these penitents came from a great distance. Arnaud Baudriga de
Las-Bordes, a Perfect, had taken refuge in the fortress of Monsegur; the
 FANJEAUX 149

mother of Marquise, wife of Bertrand of Prouille, had fled, concealing her

life as a Perfect in the Catharist centre of Lavelanet, also near Montsegur,
whence her daughter brought her back; both were eventually reconciled by
Dominic at Fanjeaux or Prouille.94 Side by side with these silhouettes, with
the names that are definite and yet, for us, veiled, there must also be set
those of the first nuns of Prouille; those of the noble ladies who saw the
devil appear after their conversion; the hostesses who were amazed at and
became converted by St Dominic’s austerities one Lent, several of the
witnesses at the canonization process in Toulouse, of course, without indeed
forgetting the Toulouse inn-keeper in 1203. These blurred figures, however,
can tell us little as to what Dominic really did to convert souls during ten
years of ceaseless journeying.

A few chronological indications can be noted. Several of the dates we have

indicate a ministry in the Lauragais and in Carcassonne before the crusade,
that is, in the middle of 1 209.95 In 1210 should be placed a lengthy ministry
in Toulouse and its neighbourhood mentioned by several documents.96 The
interdict on the city had been lifted on 28th March.97 Fulk had returned to
Toulouse, of which he occupied the fortress, the castle of Narbonne.98
Taking advantage of the agreement between Raymond VI and the crusade,
which respected his territory, Fulk devoted himself actively to the reform
of his flock. Loyal to the programme of evangelization reiterated by the
Pope,99 in his daily preachings he did not content himself with attacking
heresy; he attacked vice, especially usury, which there was no doubt had
developed among this people of traders.100 He relied much on a Catholic
organization known as the white confraternity which he had founded for this
purpose and solidly implanted in the city; whereas on the outskirts a black
confraternity was not long in springing up to thwart his action.101 Several
documents link the name of Dominic with that of the bishop in this apostolic
work. Fulk imposed canonical penances on people whom the saint had
previously reconciled.102 Becede, a nun of Ste Croix, was later to declare at
the canonization enquiry in Toulouse that she provided them both with
hair-cloths firmly strengthened with the tails of oxen.103 They had doubtless
given each other her valuable address. Two other women, moreover,
were equally occupied in supplying Dominic with penitential garments,
woven of goats’ hair.104
The situation in Toulouse, however, was worsening. Excommunication
had again been fulminated against Raymond VI on 6th February, 1 2 11.105
When the March Ember days came Fulk, who wanted to hold the ordinations
in his cathedra], innocently asked the excommunicated count to allow him
the opportunity to do so by going outside the town for a few hours.106 This
was the count’s opportunity to give vent to a terrible outburst of anger. In
reality Raymond VI was already preparing to break with the crusade and
 15° VIR EVANGELICUS

attack it. At the end of May the city, which had followed him in his revolt,
was placed under an interdict. All the clergy and religious, in liturgical
vestments, barefoot, left Toulouse, carrying away with them the Blessed
Sacrament.107
Dominic must have left the town a considerable time before this, for it
was in the neighbourhood of Fanjeaux that he had baptized de Montfort’s
daughter in the month of February.108 He was, however, again to be found
by the side of his bishop and the count on i yth May before Lavaur, and then
on 2oth June at the siege of Toulouse.100 Perhaps he had hoped for the rapid
fall of the city, which would enable him to resume his apostolate at once,
though he doubtless continued it in the country around the besieged town.
One day as he was praying in the chapel of St Antoine near the ramparts
and the Garonne, he heard cries.110 About forty English travellers who were
making their way as pilgrims to Santiago de Compostela, learning of the
interdict which hung over Toulouse, had crossed the river to avoid the town.
Their boat, which was overloaded, had just capsized. Dominic, hastening to
the spot, saw that they were drowning. Through his prayer he brought it
about that the shipwrecked men floated to the surface and could thus be
brought back to the bank safe and sound, with the help of lances and boat¬
hooks.
The siege, however, failed. Dominic had just obtained from the count and
the bishop two generous donations for Prouille, whose economic condition
must have worsened during his absence.m He went back there and Prouille
again became his centre for almost two years. From that time he busied
himself actively in establishing a patrimony for it. Donations accumulated.
From this time numerous documents give proof of the habitual, if not
continuous, presence of Dominic in and around the monastery. 112
During the Lent of 1213, however, he was living in Carcassonne. 113 The
Bishop, Guy des Vaux-Cernai, who had gone to France to seek reinforce¬
ments,!^ had appointed him vicar-general in spiritualibus. ns This office, of
recent institution meant that he replaced the bishop temporarily, without,
however, having his legal or administrative powers. Dominic conceived the
o ce primarily as a mission to preach without intermission. He spoke
frequently, especially during Lent, in the incomparable nave of the cathedral

° TV,*? f°]°t °f thC St°Ut Pillars With their Romanesque capitals.

the cathedml g “ ^ biSh°P’S sitUated t0 the north'"est of

, . Tueu°IIOWin§7ear ^ WaS 3Sain in FanJeaux- On 2 yth May a charter from

town'm^T -1? thC tlde °f caPeIlanus> that is, of parish priest of the
town !6 Jordan informs us, indeed, that Fulk had granted him this church

much thTh°nS 1 1CS andirevenues-U7 He signed the place to him not so

h that he might pursue his ministry among the people of the neighb
our-
 FANJEAUX I^I

hood, as to give him a position in the diocese. Dominic intensified his

preaching even more, taking advantage of the peace. ‘He gave himself up to
it with all his energies.’ An increasing number of collaborators helped him
in this activity of salvation. A group thus appeared to be in the process of
organization.
A tradition dating back before the sixteenth century118 points even today
to the house in Fanjeaux behind the parish church where Dominic then
lived with his companions. It was not far from Seignadou and his companions
called the place the ‘bourguet Sant-Domenge’. This tradition is very
probably true. The place was a dependency of the castle, traces of which
have now disappeared. It was natural that St Dominic should have been
lodged under this protection in a town where Catholicism still had to reckon
with many enemies.
The house is not ancient throughout, but a thick wall in which there is a
small oven, exactly similar to the ovens discovered in the ancient houses of
the neighbourhood, and two stout beams with their pillars may possibly be
authentic. Above all, the bare simplicity of this small house which has been
preserved with intelligent piety—an altar has been set up there—irresistibly
evokes the presence of the poor preacher, the man of mortification and
prayer who, in these days of waiting in 1214, busied himself with regrouping
preachers to evangelize the region of Toulouse and, without yet knowing it,
through his brethren, the world. The following year Dominic established
himself in the capital of the county, to remain there until the end of 1217.
Such was the external framework of the ten years of St Dominic’s
apostolate in the Midi, with its military and political events, such the chronology
of his activity, his moves, his social position, his relationships. We must
now approach the source of it all—the pattern and inspiration of his
apostolate. Nothing shows more clearly the extent to which he held himself
apart from the crusade, that he might remain faithful to his ideal and his
discovery of 1206 in Montpellier—to be a preacher of apostolic life.

On his arrival in the Narbonensis, he was ‘the lord Dominic, sub-prior of

the church of Osma’,110 but as Jordan of Saxony informs us, ‘from that time
onwards he no longer had himself called anything but Brother Dominic, and
ceased to he called sub-prior’.120 The fact is duly confirmed. If the charters
drawn up by the scriveners often bore the official title of ‘Lord Dominic,
canon of Osma’,121 for such he was still, the depositions of the witnesses who
related what they remembered used the term of ‘Brother Dominic’ which
they had formerly used.122 The episcopal curias of Narbonne and Toulouse
did likewise. I23 He himself, moreover, when he allowed himself to be
inscribed as a witness at the foot of a solemn charter in 1 2 11, wrote on it
these simple words : ‘Brother Dominic, preacher’.124 This signified primarily
that his canonical mission of preaching, conferred on him. by a papal legate,
 VIR EVANGELICUS
IP

took priority from the legal point of view over his affiliation to the chapter
of Osma and gave him the right to reside at a distance from it. It also
signified his love of humility.
It was perhaps due to this love of humility that he systematically
refused at this time the episcopal office offered to him. The fact is authenti¬
cated. It happened on one occasion and probably two.I25 In i 2 i y, Garsic de
L’Orte had just been transferred from the see of Comminges to the archi-
episcopal see of Auch.126 As pontifical legate, he knew Dominic well.
Backed by the unanimous choice of the canons, he offered him the bishopric
of Couserans, his suffragan see. A similar election must have taken place in
Beziers after July 1212, or perhaps in i2i£.127 Dominic refused both one
and the other. Guillaume Peyre, abbot of St Paul of Narbonne, mentions in
this connection the friar’s extreme contempt for the honours of the world
and earthly glory,128 as do several of the witnesses who relate the incident.
St Dominic, however, had justified his refusal to the authorities by instancing
the care he had to take of the recent foundation of the Preachers and of
Prouille.12^ But to simple folk he had uttered a phrase which came straight
from the heart, which tells us something more: ‘He was resolved to flee by
night, carrying nothing but his staff, rather than to accept the episcopate or
any other ecclesiastical dignity.’ 130 There was no longer any question of
Prouille or of the brethren. Something, then, was more important to him—
the liberty to be a preacher and nothing more.
If there is one point, in fact, which is clearly inscribed in his behaviour,
his decisions and even in the texts of his legislation, it is the necessity
of radically separating the activity of preaching from all responsibility of
administiation, spiritual as much as temporal. With his own ears he had
heard the legates declare at the Montpellier disputation, after three years of
experience that if they had to continue thus to correct the clergy, they
would have to cease their preaching’. 131 To correct the clergy, an obstacle—
yet this was the essential duty of the bishop. What then was to be said of his
judiciary functions, so highly developed at that time, of the temporal
administration of his diocese and of his episcopal residence, of his feudal
obligations, of his service as leader of an armed force and of all that went
with it? Such was the state of things by which at that time a bishop was
prevented from preaching by a thousand obligations; a canon of the general
council was to give official confirmation of this in that same year of 1 2 1 £.132
For Dominic, the facts were particularly clear. Guy des Vaux-de-Cernai, his
companion in the Narbonensis preaching, had done nothing else but work
for the holy war since 1208 and was continually present with the army, when
he was not in France for the purpose of recruiting troops ; he could not then
have preached in his Parisian abbey, and later in the diocese of Carcassonne of
which he received charge.* 33 Fulk of Toulouse, at war with his
diocesans as with-the count, caught between the hostilities of the black
 FANJEAUX
1 £3

and white confraternities, the latter his own creation, before being exiled
by the revolt of his flock, was no less paralysed in his apostolate. Arnaud de
Citeaux, continually overwhelmed since 1204 by the highest political and
military negotiations, had had no more freedom to preach when, having
become Archbishop of Narbonne and religious leader of the country, he
engaged in a scandalous quarrel with the new political leader, Simon de
Montfort, over the duchy of Narbonne which he claimed for his see. To
such a pitch was the quarrel raised that the count was accused of penetrating
by force into the archiepiscopal city and having Mass celebrated there
despite the prelate who excommunicated him, but to no purpose. I34 All
these examples and innumerable others had only strengthened Dominic’s
fully determined will ‘to give himself more earnestly than ever to preaching,
leaving aside every other care’, in accordance with the advice formulated in
earlier days by Diego,133 jn consequence of the great need of souls :
He forbade the brethren to concern themselves with temporal things, [we learn
from an eye-witness of the years which followed]136 with the exception of those
of them who had charge of such matters. As to the others, he wished them to
apply themselves unremittingly to study, prayer or preaching. And if he knew
that one particular friar preached with success, he forebade any other office
whatsoever to be given to him.
This in fact is what one would shortly be able to read in his constitutions.
The text would specify the reason for it—‘so that, in greater liberty, they
may be in a better position to carry out the spiritual ministry which has been
entrusted to them’.137 And he was to add: ‘They shall not take part in pleas
and lawsuits unless it is for some matter of the faith.’138 The preacher then,
must not be distracted from his office by any responsibility or administration,
temporal, judicial or even ecclesiastical, such as that of bishop or prelate.
Truth which is spiritual must be preached by a spiritual man and by spiritual
means, the same indeed that were used at the time of the Gospel, and to the
heretics as to the faithful. That was Dominic’s ideal, the novelty he quietly
introduced into the system of medieval evangelization. Hitherto the preacher
had been a bishop, a prelate, a parish priest, having authority and power of
spiritual and, at least indirectly, temporal coercion. Moreover, this temporal
power and authority were daily becoming weightier in the complex
structure of Western Christendom. Now the preacher was to be a spiritual
man, with no other authority than that which would come to him from the
mission he had received from the Church, from his knowledge of the Gospel
and from his manifest practice of imitating the apostles. Obviously in the
long run this silent revolution proved more effective in spiritualizing the
diffusion of the Church’s message than a protest, sterile and moreover
psychologically unthinkable at the beginning of the thirteenth century,
against the contemporary system of a holy war and civil coercion in the
matter of belief.
 VIR EVANGELICUS
If4
Before promoting this revolution in the West through his tens of thousands
of mendicant religious, despite the fact that a small number of them
exercised the functions of bishop or inquisitor, Dominic first carried it out
himself. All those who knew anything of his ministry to souls, in particular
the many eye-witnesses who describe his relentless activity against the
heretics, instance the same means of action and those alone: controversy,
preaching and the example of his personal life.139 On this latter point
Dominic even dared, in the case of certain people who could be moved by
this argument alone, to let his mortification, his poverty, his apostle’s
detachment be seen in all simplicity, judging that the time had come to put
into practice the precept of Christ: ‘Your light must shine so brightly before
men that they can see your good works and glorify your Father who is in
heaven.’x4o We are fortunate in being able to picture him without difficulty
in this continuous apostolate in the Narbonensis. The documents extant for
these ten years or so of his life happen to consist of convincing anecdotes told
by eye-witnesses.

Here he is, then, on the road from early morning. A companion, often a
Cistercian, accompanies him—to go two by two is part of the imitation
of the apostles and a tradition in the Church.1^2 He grasps in his hand the
staff authorized by St Mark, the top of which is barred with a short cross-
piece.1 43 He carries a knife in his belt.144 Into the fold of his tunic above
the belt he has slipped a copy of the Gospel of St Matthew and the epistles
of St Paul.^s He has only one tunic, coarse and patched, J46 and a cloak
poor in quality. J47 No money at all, no purse, no wallet. He has not even the
small coin which would enable him to pay his passage across the river. J48
As he goes through the villages he keeps his eyes lowered. *49

He walks barefoot. J5o This also forms part of his imitation of the apostles,
as everyone knows.I3i After i2i£, however, to satisfy the Council of
Montpellier and distinguish himself from the heretics who, in their
literalism, went so far as to make the right to preach dependent upon this
bareness of the apostolic feet,J52 he takes care to put the shoes he has been
cairying over his shoulder on again when he enters an inhabited place.J53
Thus he only keeps the austerity of walking bare-foot for the bad country
roads. If he hurts himself on a sharp stone, it is with joy that he says, ‘It’s
a penance.’154 He is sad when rain makes the road so slippery that he is
obliged to put on his shoes again. 155 His enemies reserve for him an additional
mortification. One day he is on his way to a general disputation in company
with the bishop of the place. On his advice the bishop has sent away his
mounts. They walk on bare-foot. The road is long and difficult. A guide
offers his services gratuitously; a secret heretic, he maliciously leads them
through so much brushwood and thorns that soon their legs and feet are
bleeding. Dominic bears it all with patience. He even sings and joyfully
 FANJEAUX !^

exclaims: We can hope for victory, for already our sins are washed in
blood.’ In fact, they converted many people, beginning with their guide.1*6
There were innumerable other occasions of doing penance along the road,
as, for instance, the rivers, so cold when they had to plunge into them to
fold acioss, so dangerous in autumn when they were transformed into
seething torrents. Friar Noel, the second prior of Prouille, was to be drowned
in the flooded Blau in 1218.167 Dominic would approach the swirling
waters singing the Ave mans Stella; making a sweeping sign of the cross,
he plunged boldly in.i*8 One day, half-way across the Ariege, he had to tuck
his tunic into his belt higher than usual. His books slipped from the fold
of the tunic in which he was carrying them and were swept away.1*6 A
serious loss. Then there were the wolves, who attacked many people in the
iorests, especially those travelling alone,*6° or the dog days of summer
which burnt like fire and made one parched with thirst.161 Dominic was
careful to drink from a spring before entering an inhabited place in order not
to cause trouble to those giving him hospitality.162 Near Montreal a small
monument over the spring he used is still preserved. l63 Finally, the deluge
of the southern storms, which transformed the streams into rivers, the paths
into ruts, made coarse woollen garments appallingly heavy. On certain days
Dominic would arrive at the halting place chilled to the bone. While his
companions, however, pressed around the fire using many complicated devices
for drying their cloaks and tunics, he would go to the church and give
himself up to prayer. l64
It was night-time. His hostess had prepared a bed. He did not use it.

In the morning [she related] I found the bed just as I had made it the night before.
Moreover I often found the blessed man lying on the ground, without any
covering over him. I used to cover him up and if I came back afterwards, I found
him at prayer, either standing or prostrate. I was full of concern for him.16*
Very often he was taken with great pain. His companions would then put him on
a bed, but I saw him pick himself up quickly and lie on the ground, for it was not
his custom to rest on a bed.166

His austerity was expressed, indeed, in many other ways: the hair-cloth,
that is the shirt woven of rough horse-hair which he wore next to the
skin;167 the iron chain which he had bound about his loins and which would
be removed only after his death;168 the discipline, a bundle of small iron
chains, with which he scourged himself at night in the course of his
prayers ;l69 finally, his privations in the matter of food. ‘Never’, related the
hostess again, ‘did I see him eat at one meal as much as the quarter of a fish
or two egg-yolks, or drink more than one glass of wine three parts filled up
with water; or eat more than one slice of bread.’170 In Lent,171 he passed
the entire forty days on bread and water. He slept on a bare board. He
multiplied his vigils further. Finally he reached such a degree of mortification
 VIR EVANGELICUS

as exceeded human strength. Only supernatural help, those who saw him
considered, could enable him to persevere.
It may be wondered what reason he had for such violence towards a body
that was so pure. Was he trying to rival the Catharist Perfect, to challenge
their prestige in the eyes of simple folk by outdoing their prowess in
austerity ? There is some trace of such intention in this wrestler engaged in a
disproportionate struggle. J72 He was alone against several thousand. Emula¬
tion, however, in this case, only stimulated him to a deeper decision. Love
of Christ’s cross can inspire a more determined austerity than the hatred of
the Catharist Perfect for diabolical matter. Dominic knew that the cross
was the weapon of victory. Whereas Simon de Montfort massacred the
adversaries of the cross, risking his own life with imprudent daring, the
preacher, abstaining from the act of killing, could also offer his life through
penance, with equivalent heroism. The blood he shed along the road as he
went on his way to preach was the pledge of his success.173
Thus he never shunned mockery, humiliation, contradiction or violence.
They were not lacking in this country, whose hostility against the Catholic
clergy had increased since the war had broken out. One enemy spat upon
him. Others threw mud at him.174 ‘He received insults as if they were a
gift and a great reward. ’J75 Thus he preferred to stay on in Carcassonne and
that diocese, rather than in the diocese and city of Toulouse, ‘because’, he
said, ‘I find in Toulouse many people who honour me, whereas on the
contrary in Carcassonne everyone is against me’.T76 It was not always merely
insults or dried grass hooked behind his back in mockery that he received.177
The feudal lords had few scruples about molesting a cleric. One day he was
threatened with death. He answered: ‘I am not worthy of the glory of
martyrdom; I have not yet deserved this end.’^8 Later, men were waiting
or him in an ambush to seize him—perhaps half-way along the road from
Prouille to Fanjeaux behind the hummock where the traditional cross is
erected.179 Dominic suspected the fact, but he walked on with joyous mien
and singing, probably the Ave mans stella or the Veni Creator which he liked
to recite at the dangerous moments of the journey. This joyful calm,1*® this
intrepidity, disarmed the soldiers. They let him go past and admitted the fact
to their heretical masters, who were possibly knights of Fanjeaux. The
latter, through cynicism, or rather through one of those psychological quirks
so frequent among feudal knights, discussed it with Dominic. Was he not,
then, afraid of death ? What would he have done had he fallen into the hands
or nis enemies ?

should have asked them [he replied] not to wound me mortally at once, but to
prolong my martyrdom by mutilating all my limbs one by one. Then to display

finTTl °! hlCkCd lmbS bef°re ^ 6yeS and neXt t0 Pluck out m7 eyes>
y to let the trunk steep in its own blood or finish it off completely. Thus7 by
a more lingering death I should earn the crown of a more gloriousmartyrdom. 18,
 FANJEAUX I ^7

These words should he weighed in the light of Dominic’s daily experience.

As an habitual companion of the Cistercians, and under the protection of the
crusaders, he ran every risk. Guillaume de Roquefort had just brutally assas¬
sinated the Abbot of Eaunes and one of his monks whom a chance encounter
had placed in his way, simply because they were from Citeaux.182 The
Count of Foix and his son daily provided themselves in their castle with the
amusement of atrocious and long meditated tortures upon the persons of
crusading pilgrims whom they had caught unarmed along the road, particu¬
larly of priests whom they tortured in their private parts. l83 Dominic,
however, had offered the sacrifice of his life as Peter of Castelnau,l84 Fulk
of Toulouse,l8s and so many others around him had done earlier. The
sacrifice of the preacher, indeed, is purer than that of the others, for he has
brandished against his adversaries no other weapon than that of speech. Thus
to suffer persecution for the name of Jesus was surely one more way of
imitating the apostles.186

His offering went hand in hand with his prayer. To pray in Osma or even
in Prouille was no problem. Here, however, he had to contend with a life
of uninterrupted preaching and harassing journeys. From morning onwards
he kept silence along the road and ‘thought of his Saviour’.l8? His downcast
eyes scarcely left the ground.188 He drew inspiration from the silence of
the forests; he lingered behind; when they sought him, his companions
would find him on his knees, regardless of the hungry wolves.189 When he
arrived at an abbey at the hour of the liturgy, he immediately went to recite
the office with the monks;190 otherwise he recited it along the road at the
canonical times. He especially loved to visit the basilicas where the relics
of the saints were kept. In Castres, where the remains of the martyr St
Vincent were particularly dear to his Spaniard’s heart, it was his custom to
remain a long time at prayer after Mass. One day, he experienced there a
kind of ecstasy, so impressive that it was this which later decided the prior
of the chapter to become one of his sons.191 But it was especially the nights
that he devoted to prayer. No sooner had he arrived than, without even
relaxing or drying his clothes, he would go to pray.192 If he fell asleep for a
moment, he quickly recovered himself and prolonged the liturgical vigils by
his deep prayer. I93 He prayed in order to come face to face with God. He
also interceded for sinners. ‘The thought of the sins of others gave him such
excruciating pain, the Abbot of Boulbonne said later, that one might apply
to him that saying of the apostle, “Who is weak and I am not weak?’’ ’I9+
The Abbot of St Antonin of Pamiers heard him ‘uttering deep groans in his
prayers’. I95 And the Abbot of St Paul of Narbonne heard him cry out ‘so loudly
that what he said could be heard all around’. It was the phrase already recorded:
‘Lord, have pity on your people. What will become of sinners.’ He spent
whole nights in this way, weeping and groaning over the sins of others.196
 i 5& VIR EVANGELICUS

Strong in the confidence won in prayer and set free by his poverty,
mortification and the joyful dismissal of every anxiety and fear, Dominic had
no difficulty in approaching men. Discreet with those who lived with him
to the extent that a woman who gave him a meal more than two hundred
times was to claim that she had never heard an idle word from his lips,197
he was always ready to ‘announce the word of God, by day and by night, in
the churches and in men’s houses, in the fields and along the roads, in short,
everywhere’.198 Sometimes it was to a travelling companion that he
addressed himself, at other times to Catholics gathered together in church,
or again and primarily, to the heterodox, ‘whom he opposed by preaching,
controversy and every means in his power’. J99 What he had done in Beziers,
Carcassonne or Montreal, he began again unweariedly throughout the
country.
He was a gifted orator. ‘When he preaches,’ declared one of his listeners,
‘he uses tones so shattering that very often he moves even himself to tears
and makes those who listen to him weep. I have never heard anyone whose
words elicited tears of repentance so effectively’.200 Two sentiments coming
from his own personality and stimulated by his prayer, in fact dominated his
apostolate—‘the thirst to save souls, and compassion’.201 He had the art of
finding words which soothed and gave comfort and then uplifted those in
trouble.202 His gentleness and understanding endeared him to all, ‘rich and
poor, Jews and unbelievers’. His charity was equally able to find the
necessaiy reasons and approach to arouse men to repentance and for the
conversion of the Christian apostates who at first detested him because he
pursued them and convinced them of their error.2°3 Yet it was difficult to
resist one who, over and above the reasons which convinced and the friend¬
ship which touched the heart, was ready even to give his own life to snatch his
neighbour away from the bonds of sin or heresy. For he did not merely offer
his life by despising each day’s perils. One day, learning that it was extreme
poverty alone which bound a certain believer to the Catharists who provided
for his sustenance, he again proposed, as he had done formerly, he who
owned nothing, to reduce himself to slavery to buy back the man’s freedom.
Providence happily made provision in another manner.2°4 Jordan was indeed
justified in writing: ‘He devoted himself with all the strength of burning
zeal to winning for Christ as many souls as possible. In his heart there was an
amazing and almost incredible ambition for the salvation of all men.’2°5

In this inspiration of zeal, he converted people and brought them back to

the Church. The rites and penalties for absolution were fixed. The recon¬
ciliation of heretics, or rather of apostates, for that is how they were
regarded at that time, formed part of the major or public cases in law; such
people were thus assigned the public penances that the Carolingian church
had formerly resuscitated. 2°6 The administration of such penances belonged
 FANJEAUX 159

to the bishop, the legate, or their delegate, alone.207 A letter of reconcilia¬

tion informed the parish priest of the fact and from then onwards he was
commissioned to keep an eye on the penitent who for the future must not
leave the boundaries of the parish.208 The rite Erst of all comprised a
ceremony of declaration in which the convert, with bare feet and bare chest,
was beaten with rods along the road that led to the church one Sunday or
feast-day;209 then followed a certain time of fasting and abstinence in the
matter of food; finally prayers, and the wearing of the distinctive penitent’s
dress.
Doubtless, as a contemporary has remarked, there was no question of
imposing on physical constitutions which no longer had the health or
resistance of those of former times210 the twelve years of penance prescribed
by Pope Julius which the canonical collections211 continued to recall.
The year on bread and water and the three ‘Lents’ or quarantines before
Christmas, Easter and St John’s day in summer must be understood in the
restricted sense indicated by the penitentials.212 The reconciler had to
proportion the penalty to the fault and to the penitent’s possibilities.215
Thus Dominic acted, in the letter of reconciliation he gave to Pons Roger,
the converted Perfect.2I4 Its elements are well known—the rods, the total
abstinence, the three Lents, the fast three days weekly, stability within the
bounds of the parish, under the surveillance of the parish priest, the wearing
of the religious habit. Certain details, however, are special or new. The
wearing of two small crosses each side of the breast appears in this document
for the first time in history;215 it was to become the standard practice in the
Albigeois. Particularly painful for the convert because it publicly recalled
his former apostasy,216 it was effective in manifesting the genuineness of the
conversion and the penitent’s perseverance, for a Catharist follower, even
were he one secretly, would not agree to wear upon his person the hated
sign of the cross.217 Moreover, Dominic did not fix the duration of the
penance. He left this to the judgement of the Abbot of Citeaux, from whom
he held his office as reconciler,218 manifesting in this way his hierarchical
position and his subordination. Finally he added to the penalty abstinence
from any kind of meat, the practice of continence, and prayers seven
times a day as well as in the middle of the night. Whatever may have been
the alleviations introduced by the text into certain of these provisions,219
looked at as a whole they are severe. It may be asked what has become of
the sweetness and the charity with which Dominic touched the heaits of
erring men and converted them.
It is not difficult to understand the reasons for this sternness. One of them
is the very reason that inspired the penitential discipline of the time.
It was by proportioning the external penance to the gravity of the fault that
the Church formed the conscience, wholly objective and unskilful at moral
reflection, of the men of the time; there was no fault more dangerous than
 i 6o VIR EVANGELICU5

apostasy. Dominic was, however, moved by another consideration. The

fasts, the abstinences from certain food, continency, the prayers he added,
were the very things that the Perfect had practised in his sect.220 It would
not do for an austere Catharist follower to have an impression of a lower
standard of perfection on returning to Christianity. If the former Perfect
lived as a true religious his fervent intention of earlier days would not be lost.
Compassion which converts, and demands which uplift—the whole of
Dominic is there in these two complementary traits, the product of a single
sentiment which governed his neighbour’s salvation. Such a love reached its
objective, despite the difficulty of the task, for he added to the persuasive
strength of eloquence and knowledge, the communicative force of personal
heroism.
Austerity, the gift of self, unceasing prayer, the saint’s charity, surrounded
him with a veritable supernatural halo. If he was jeered at and detested by
some he was proportionately loved and admired by others.221 Not only did
the leaders of the crusade, the prelates or religious, the good hostesses who
were impressed as they watched him pray and mortify himself, hold him in
honour and attach themselves to him; the most humble Catholics surrounded
him with affection and considered him as a saint. ‘Public opinion, the nun
Becede was to declare, fully confirms all that has been said on this subject,
throughout the whole extent of the dioceses of Toulouse and Couserans, as
indeed eveiywhere where the blessed man stayed during his journeys among
religious, clergy and lay folk of both sexes.’222 The inhabitants of Fanjeaux,
summoned for the canonization process ‘were to proclaim with unanimous
voice that they had never seen on earth a man of such great Avorth and
holiness’.223
Miracles in turn seemed to add the divine sanction to this approbation of
the crowds. Bereng^re had seen him discover and drive out the demon from
nine poor converted ladies.224 The parish priest of Villar saw a possessed
woman cured by his prayer.225 A cleric of Fanjeaux, a canon of Pamiers,
were cured of the fever by the imposition of his hands.226 A Premon-
stratensian saw him put his hand on the eyes of a blind man who instantly
recovered his sight.227 A girl was restored to health through his inter¬
cession.22^ The prior and one of the canons of Castres, in amazement saw
im laised in ecstasy a good foot above the floor of the church 229 The rain
which was falling in torrents stopped all around him and his companion and
this clear space moved with them as they advanced.23o His books, lost in the
Ariege, were found mysteriously hooked to the line of a fisherman who
pulled them up absolutely undamaged.23i A coin was found at his feet by
chance, just when the boatmen were roughly clamouring for his fare.232 On
two occasions he was found with his companion on the other side of a fast-
locked door.M3 And everyone knew that it happened to him to predict the
future, for God, in the intimacy of prayer, revealed to him many things
 FANJEAUX 161

Dominic’s companions could see another halo on his face, a human one
this time, but one which made a deep impression, that imprinted upon his
features which were ever changing by the continual succession of his
feelings. Habitually calm and serene, his face would suddenly contract when
confronted with the suffering of others.233 He was moved to the extent of
tears at Mass, at the Pater, at the recitation of the psalms.236 Then prayer
would establish peace in him once more. Dominic was open and frank when
addressing men.233 All of a sudden a flame of joy would pass into his eyes,
his brow would become radiant. His companions knew what that meant—■
he had met with some suffering, a humiliation, some threat or adversity.238
He rejoiced in trials and contradictions and they were not lacking. The
most painful he experienced in his ministry—the fewness and poor quality
of the conversions, which were sometimes the outcome of fear. His joy,
however, did not come from the easiness of the task or its success. It was
the joy of a supernatural heart which had learnt how to see in the cross both
purification and the promise of the grace to come and even now the sign of
the presence of Jesus, the joy of the combatant in the full fire of battle who
has no time to think of himself and remains convinced that, when God wills,
the tide will turn.
The years he spent in this way were full of fervour and enthusiasm. Stripped
of all responsibility except that of the direction of his not very numerous
daughters whose temporal affairs were administered by William Claret, he
was free to go off wherever the Spirit and the need of souls called him.
Poor, he was freed by his very poverty from all dependence and painful
anxiety as to his daily bread, for the perspective of lacking absolute
necessities aroused in his heart a gladness of hope for men s salvation. He
was consecrated to an urgent task of spiritual apostolate, of which no-
one sought to deprive him, fearless in the midst of brutal enemies and traitors
from whom he would perhaps receive the martyrdom desired. He was
without any thought of self in the privations and bodily sufferings of cold,
hunger, journeying or vigils. And he possessed, as a superabundance of joy,
the certainty that by living in this way, he was imitating down to their daily
life, with their bare feet and their single tunic, their belt always empty of
gold, silver or coin, the apostles as they preached the kingdom of God along
the lake of Gennesareth, or crossed hostile Samaria on their way to
Jerusalem. To live the Gospel thus, in this way to put one’s feet in the
imprints of the Saviour, along the road to speak to him alone in order to
speak only of him, with the very words of a man of the Gospel, there was no
more impressive way of loving Jesus Christ and of bearing him within
oneself,239 nor was there a better way of taking him to others. He must
save souls by identifying himself with the divine Preacher.
And he must do this within the context of the Church.2*o The remote
preparations of Caleruega and Palencia, the apostolic meditations in the
 I 62 VIR EVANGELICUS

cloister at Osma, the harsh discipline of the journeys to the north and the
ministry in the Midi, gradually formed Dominic to this evangelical life. Now
he dominated his own ideal by an austerity, a gift of self, a heroism which
astounded both clergy and laity, corresponding on a higher plane to the
feudal heroism which was shown in the army of the crusaders. But no more
than the mighty deeds of the ‘Strong count’,24i were his feats of holiness
performed for the beauty of the gesture. The joy he derived from them did
not only come from the fact that he was thus imitating his Master. He
rejoiced in the thought of working by the methods of Christ in the work of
Christ himself, that which was being effected by his Church—negotium fidei
et pads. For him the phrase was true in a different way from the use for the
crusade. Under the orders of the Pope and the bishops, in continuous
relation with the legates from whom he received his powers and solicited
their confirmation, he himself was the Church who proposed, enlightened,
corrected and reconciled. What others attempted to do by the sword of
spiritual sanction or by the temporal sword, he effected verbo et exemplo.
What Catharists and Waldenses undertook by a preaching which was not
enlightened by God because it was without mandate, he achieved in the
Church. In medio Ecclesiae. That was his programme. The poverty of the
apostle which freed him from so many frustrating obstacles made of him
the expeditus, the swiftly moving soldier of the Church, always ready to
betake himself where souls were being lost, to pass through each door he
found even slightly open.

Despite the tragic times in which he lived these years truly saw the
finest and most fruitful (lowering of his genius. He still possessed his full
strength. His mortifications, his apostolic labours, and his unending vigils 0f
prayer had not yet worn him out. He came out of the austerities of Lent
more vigorous than when he embarked upon them.24a He was still
independent. The time however, was approaching when he would no
onger be completely alone. Already a few companions accompanied him
regularly. These were no longer only lay-brethren or Cistercian abbots, or
William Claret h,s companion at Prouille from the earliest days There
was, perhaps also from the earliest days, a Friar Dominic whose native
country was Spain.243 There was the future Friar Stephen’ of Metz who
ived with him in ,2,3 at the bishop’s palace in Carcassonne.244 There was
Friar Noel who was soon to be his successor at Prouille. 24s There aval

r 3 PrieS‘ iS <» *. documents covlin^

In . 2,4 these men were living with Dominic supported by the tithes of
Fanjeaux.247 September, Simon de Montfort assigned ,0 them and “al
those who should participate in their ministry of salvation, the revenues o
his latest conquest, the fortified township of Casseneuil whose walls he had
just razed. 248 A „ew group of preachers was being formed. They even spoke
 FANJEAUX 163

of becoming a permanent community.249 Certain traits of accentuated

poverty were defined; they distributed their resources to those who were
poorer than they, keeping only what they must for themselves.250 At the
frontier of the dioceses of Carcassonne and Toulouse, in that centre of
Prouille and Fanjeaux where Dominic now had much more than a mere base,
it was clear that the Preaching of Jesus Christ was in the process of a
renewal in a wholly original form.
And then, everything changed. Dominic was transferred to Toulouse. It
was there that the new institution was to come into bein'*.
O
 Chapter X

TOULOUSE

A FTER 12th September, 1213, the fate of Toulouse was sealed. The
L\ crushing defeat of the men of the south at Muret had finally broken
jL jLtheir power. No other resource was left to them but to appeal to the
arbitration of the Sovereign Pontiff. For the past eighteen months the Holy
See had been uneasy over de Montfort’s excessive ambition, and now it
intervened. The Cardinal of Santa Maria in Acquiro, Pietro di Beneventi,
legate a latere of Pope Innocent III, came to take affairs in hand and primarilv
to bring about peace. He arranged for the son of Pedro II, the young Jaime
de Aragon whom Simon de Montfort was bringing up at his court, to be
handed over to him. He negotiated the absolution of the Counts of Foix and
Comminges and of Raymond VI of Toulouse.1 One hundred and twenty
hostages were furnished by the town and sent to Arles. On 25th April, 1214,
Toulouse was reconciled and its clergy came back within its walls after three
years’ absence.2 The church and cloisters where thousands of refugees had
crowded with their poultry and their animals were once more opened to
worship. 3

Toulouse, however, remained restless. The count had gone off to his
brother-in-law, King John of England, to see whether he could not obtain
some help from him. His son and his family were still occupying the fortress
of Toulouse. The legate, after his brief intervention, stayed on in Araaon
where he had gone to install the boy king and to organize the regency’
People were waiting for the hour of decisions and of the general reorganiza-
tion. It struck on 8th January, 1215, at the Council of Montpellie?. Five
archbishops, twenty-eight bishops, a host of abbots, prelates and clergy took
part in the assembly, which was a veritable assizes of the Church in the Midi
under the presidency of the cardinal legate.4 Earlier, after the initial
successes of the crusade, the Council of Avignon had promulgated a remark¬
able series of measures in regard to preaching, the repression of heresy
public and private morality, peace, the life of the clergy and of monks 5 The
Council of Montpellier completed this legislation, particularly as to the two
latter points, in concert with that laid down the previous year by another
legate at the Councils of Paris, Rouen and elsewhere, to pave the way for
the decrees of the Fourth Council of the Lateran.6 It now remained to put
this into practice. The cardinal formed special commissions and delegated
 TOULOUSE
I 6$
p°wers to a whole series of persons.7 Unanimously, we are told, the clergy
emanded that the county of Toulouse, whose governorship had fallen
vacant by the revolt of Raymond VI, should be assigned to Simon de
Montfort, as lord and king’. The legate had not the power to do this of his
own authority. He transmitted the request to Rome. Meanwhile he once
more had handed over to him as hostages twelve of the consuls of Toulouse,
with possession of the castle of Narbonne, the fortress of Toulouse, from
which the Saint Gilles were expelled.8 Bishop Fulk took possession of the
castle in the name of the legate at the end of January or beginning of
February, and installed a garrison.9 Provisionally, the political problem of
the capital was settled. As to the pastoral problem, it is clear that at the same
time, the legate persuaded Fulk and Dominic to transfer to Toulouse the
Preaching they had just reorganized at Fanjeaux with the support of the
Count de Montfort.

It is true that the presence of the Preacher in the city is not attested by
charter earlier than 25th April [i2ij].io This charter, however, makes it
clear that he had already been there for a fairly considerable time. He could
have been in Toulouse as early as the second half of 1214,11 though it does
not seem that this was the case. The only direct document as to his activity
which is extant shows that he was acting in Toulouse under the authority
of the cardinal legate.12 Now he could not have met the legate and received
his delegated powers earlier than January 121^, at the Montpellier
assembly. 13 As superior of Prouille, friend and counsellor of the bishops of
Carcassonne and Toulouse, it is not surprising that he should have taken
part in this council,14 neither is it astonishing that he should have received
from the cardinal a mission for Toulouse—the very mission he had received
in 1206 through delegation of the legate, Arnaud de Citeaux, and still
retained in 1211 ;Js that which he held from Bishop Guy of Carcassonne in
1213—1214, as vicar-general in spiritualihus;l6 that which he had been
exercising in short ‘uninterruptedly and with all his strength’^ for nearly
ten years now—the office of preacher of the faith. In 1210-1211 he had
helped Bishop Fulk to fulfil his pastoral obligations by preaching at his side
in Toulouse.18 The interdict and the war had prevented the exercise of this
ministry in the capital for three years. At the beginning of 121^, the time
had come for Dominic to take up once more the task willed by the Pope,
demanded by the Councils and delegated by the legate, at the bishop’s side.
He went back to Toulouse.
The Lauragais route, the general direction of which was towards the west,
veered brusquely northwards just as it reached Toulouse. Following the
slight rises in the ground which prevented the river Hero from dashing
straight into the Garonne, it approached the city from the south. At the
precise point where the great river, till then flowing in a north-easterly
 i 66 VIR EVANGELICUS

direction, radically changed its course and set off again towards the Atlantic,
Toulouse had been mounting guard over the gateway to Aquitaine for two
thousand years. The capital of Western art, a rose-coloured town under the
blue of a Tuscan sky, the city of the Raymonds displayed to advantage its
churches and its Romanesque cloisters—La Daurade, St Sernin, with its
incomparable belfry, the cathedral of St Etienne and the white Dalbade.
What chiefly caught Dominic’s eye when he arrived, however, were the
dark walls encircling the city and its outlying fortifications. In front of him
there stood the mighty silhouette of the castle of Narbonne. The rectangular
fortress, Roman in origin, flanked by broad towers with a platform to them,
defended the Narbonne gate.19 Now occupied by the Church it was no
longer formidable. One day Dominic would install himself under this mighty
shadow.
His ministry to souls began at once. The habitual pattern of it is already
familiar to us. A preacher by delegation, his activity of reconciliation of
heretics meant that he drew up for them official letters certifying their
conversion and reminding them of their penance. To these unfortunate men
such letters were of primary importance for they restored them to normal
relations with the Catholics. An orthodox Christian, in fact, ran the risk of
incurring the sanctions against the heterodox if he knowingly gave hospitality
in his house to one of them.20 For a repentant heretic the case was different.
One day a master furrier, Raymond Guillaume d’Hauterive, who already
had a converted Perfect among his companions, wanted Dominic expressly
to authorize him to keep him with him and to confirm in an official document
that he would incur neither penalties nor obloquy on this head. In the
fourteenth century this testimonial letter, of which we now have the copy,
was still extant.21 Formerly a seal had been appended to it, the one that
Dominic had used earlier for the preaching in Prouille.22 He himself, in the
text, taking care to reserve the authority of the cardinal legate, gave himself
the title Predicationis humilis minister. The former Preaching of Jesus Christ
was to flower again in Toulouse under his direction and under the guidance
of Innocent Ill’s legate.
Dominic s action produced its usual fruit. This time again it had a deep
influence among women. At the beginning of the summer^ Fulk granted
Dominic a hospice which was dependent on the chapter of St Etienne and
on the abbey of St Sernin.24 He gave it with its dependencies, for the work
of the converted ladies and for the brethren who governed them in spiritual
as in temporal matters. There was no indication in the text as to where
these converted ladies originated from. It has been thought that what was
projected was the provision of a counterpart and daughter house of Prouille.
A year and a half later, however, a letter of Pope Hononus III gave important
details.25 The house had become a true convent, with sisters and a prioress
at the head. It was suffering from very great poverty. Dominic had taken
 TOULOUSE 167

advantage of a visit to the Curia to obtain from the Pope a pressing appeal
to the charity of the people of Toulouse and of their capitouls. To stimulate
their generosity the Pope hinted at what a disturbing eventuality it would be,
if the distress were to increase still further, when these poor girls, * regret¬
ting the delights of Egypt’, would become ‘for others as much as for
themselves, a snare and a danger of moral collapse’. It is easy enough to see
why the Pope spoke in this way. He was referring to a house of penitent
girls who had become nuns.26
Prostitution, which had made its reappearance in the West with the
renaissance and prosperity of the towns, particularly worried all prelates
worthy of the name.27 Conscious of the fact that origins of this evil
were primarily economic and social, they did not hesitate to propose the
boldest solutions. Innocent III had tackled this problem from the beginning
of his pontificate by daring to advise certain charitable Christian men to
seek a bride among these poor girls.28 In Paris, Fulk of Neuilly, a great
reformer and preacher of the crusade whom Fulk of Toulouse had certainly
known, in 1206 had organized communities of repentant girls, which soon
developed into the great monastery of St Antoine.2^ In Toulouse the
problem had long been acute. In the middle of the twelfth century the
heresiarch Henri de Lausanne, then at peace with the Church, had already
initiated a measure for getting prostitute girls married. 30 At the turn of the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the sermons of a famous Franciscan
were so thoroughly to convert some of these women of pleasure that the
abbey of St Sernin gave them a near-by hospice which afterwards became
the monastery of the Sisters of St Sernin.31 This was perhaps the hospice
that, less than a century earlier and for the same purpose, the abbey had
given St Dominic at the bishop’s request. In any case history was repeating
itself. The monastery of St Sernin took over and brought to completion the
institution formerly initiated by the Arnaud Bernard hospice. Dominic’s
work had not lasted very long. Doubtless the upheavals of the Toulouse
revolt in 1217 had swept it away soon after its inception.
Thus it was not only to the heretics that Dominic preached. He did not
only instruct—as a true apostle he also attacked the vices contrary to
salvation. When he had touched heart and mind, he stretched out a helping
hand to his penitents, paid with his own person and did not hesitate to
create yet another convent to eliminate as far as possible the material causes
of a moral fall. By so doing, it was not only women he succeeded in gaining.
His zeal for souls was so ardent that he collected around him men who were
convinced believers. There was no lack of such in Toulouse. Dominic had
always had devoted friends and admirers in the town. Some of them wished
to go further than admiration. They wanted to follow and imitate him.
They were not satisfied, however, with becoming part of the Preaching;
they wanted to become his religious, his brethren.
 168 VIR EVANGELICUS

Then there took place the chief revolution in the life of St Dominic, the
one which would finally give him his place in history and carry the echo of
his personality across the centuries. In the course of his ministry at Toulouse,
at last accomplishing a long-standing design, the preacher became a founder,
the apostle a patriarch. The order of St Dominic was born into the world.
In April i 2 1 two important townsmen of Toulouse offered themselves to
him.32 The term—obtulerunt se—which the sources use to designate this act,
has only one possible interpretation.33 They bound themselves to him by a
religious profession, to form a community. The Libellus of Jordan of
Saxony emphasizes the solemn nature of this gesture :

When the date on which the Lateran Council was to open drew near, at the time
when the bishops were preparing to leave for Rome, two distinguished and
capable men of Toulouse made their oblation to Brother Dominic. One of them
was Friar Peter Seila, the future prior of Limoges; the other, Friar Thomas, who
was gifted with much charm and eloquence. The former, Friar Peter, was the
owner of some tall and imposing houses near the castle of Narbonne. He made
them over to Brother Dominic and his companions who, for the future, would
make their first home in Toulouse in these houses. From then onwards, all those
who were with Brother Dominic began to descend the steps of humility and to
conform to the behaviour of the religious.34

The historian is not limited to this summary account presented by Jordan

under the significant title: Of the first two brethren who made their oblation to
Brother Dominic. Two documents of primary importance and a few secondary
texts enable us to test its accuracy and to comment upon it.
On 7th April, 1214, two brothers, Peter and Bernard Seila, discharged
themselves in common of a debt which burdened their undivided property,
recently inherited from their father.3s The late Bernard Seila was a person
of high position; as Provost of Toulouse, he had administered the rights of
the Count in the city and rendered justice in his name.36 The inheritance
was fairly considerable. On 2£th April of the following year, the two
brothers divided it between them.37 The remarkable fact about it was that
whereas the elder, Bernard Seila, received his share direct, Peter did not
receive his himself; another person by the advice and will of whom the
division was made, was substituted for him, Brother Dominic. In 1214 Peter
Seila was acting in his own name. It may be wondered what event had
since intervened to deprive him of the legal right to dispose of his fortune
and accept his inheritance, and to necessitate his making over
this light to Dominic. The answer is a public act which in our con¬
temporary societies as a rule no longer deprives a man of such civic rights,
but which did however produce such a state of affairs in the Middle Ages
and down to modern times—religious profession to a superior. The charter
of division is explicit on this point. It even sets down that Brother Dominic
did not receive the inheritance from his religious in his personal capacity,
 TOULOUSE

but in the name of a community, a ‘house of regular life’, which he had

established.

Jordan of Saxony was thus expressing himself with accuracy in speaking

of Peter Seila s oblation to St Dominic. It is from his account, too, that we
know the name of a second townsman of Toulouse, Friar Thomas, who off¬
ered himself at the same time. Finally he stated that these two professions
were the community s first. It was thus between mid-January and 2^th
April, i 2i^, probably very close to the latter date, that St Dominic set up
his religious house in Toulouse, that is, as will soon be clear, his Order of
Preachers. 38

The charter of division instances a few further details on the installation

of the community. Of the property of the late Bernard Seila, Dominic and
his brethren received only some houses with what was necessary to live in
them—half the plate, linen and furniture. The invested monies, the shares
in the drapers’ mills—one of the riches of the artisans of Toulouse—the
fiefs and other sources of revenue were abandoned to Bernard, the younger
brother. The poverty of the foundation, without endowment or lands, or
property of any kind apart from the ownership of the houses, will be noted.
These houses, to the number of three, were situated near the Narbonne
gate. The principal one was joined on the right to the Gallo-Roman wall
which still served as the city boundary; on the left it adjoined the house of
Pons Esteve; in front of it was the public track or highway, behind it the house
of Guillaume de la Plaine. The second house was situated at the back of that
of Guillaume. The third was on the other side of the highroad and outside
the walls, adjoining the castle of Narbonne and the entrance of the count’s
palace. Providence had served Dominic and his brethren well. Doubtless he
had not expressly sought the protection of the castle of Narbonne and the
following year he would move with his community right into the heart of
the city. The proximity of the bishop’s men and his soldiers, however, must
have established in this neighbourhood a calm favourable to regular life.
And, after all, the Narbonne gate was that which led to the Lauragais,
Fanjeaux and Prouille.
The Seilas’ principal house is still standing at the side of the main
street—almost unchanged outwardly,39 although its Dominican relics have
recently been profaned. Jordan has described it for us in two neat terms:
sublimis et nobilis domus;*0 that means that it was of stone and provided with
an upper storey or upper room. That is still the condition of it today. One
can touch the Gallo-Roman wall, particularly an old tower in it which has
been named St Dominic’s tower. Left by the community the very next year,
the house nevertheless remained in the order. After 1233 it was used by the
Inquisition.41 Abandoned in the eighteenth century, it then belonged to
religious communities who respected the commemorative chapel which had
been installed on the upper floor. This was the actual room of St Dominic,
 170 VIR EVANGELXCUS

that is, the original dormitory of the brethren where Dominic, when he
consented to do so, could lie down during the night. At the beginning of the
twentieth century people still venerated there a stone seat about three
feet from the floor along the south wall; it was known as St Dominic’s
bench. It was probably the top of the Gallo-Roman wall, the superfluous^
width of which on the inside had been left by the medieval masons when
they erected the upper room. In this way the friars had enlarged the room in
this way by more than a yard and gained a stone bench such as they liked to
have among them. After the expulsions of the twentieth century the
residence of the Archbishop of Toulouse was installed in the premises.
About 1930 a new occupier did away with the altar and the Dominican
pictures and levelled the venerable wall. The house was made into apartment
premises which it still is today. 43 Will the order of St Dominic find no-one
to buy back its true cradle, to clean up the walls by stripping them of their
flowered paper, remove the partitions and restore the simplicity of the
thirteenth century upper room, as has been so well carried out at Fanjeaux
in the case of a maisonnette which does not offer the guarantees of absolute
authenticity of the house of Peter Seila ?

On the kind of life lived in this house and the activity to which the com¬
munity devoted itself, a further document, two months later than the charter
which made the division, throws considerable light. The time referred to
must have been about the middle of June and important events had just
occurred.44 At the beginning of April the Pope, refusing to assign to
Simon de Montfort the domains of Raymond VI, with independence vis-a-
vis the King of France, had contented himself with entrusting to him the
guardianship of the conquered territories until the decision of the Fourth
Council of the Lateran convened for the coming November had been made.
In the same month Philip Augustus at last allowed his son Louis to accomplish
his crusader s vow; he was accompanied by Guy des Vaux-Cernai and by
numerous barons. Simon de Montfort, Pietro di Beneventum, Arnaud de
Citeaux hastened to meet him. Everything went off splendidly. Louis’ forty
days amounted to nothing more than a military procession across the Midi
which was already subjugated. At the beginning of June, the entire body of
these high authorities, both religious and political, entered the capital. Simon
had just taken possession of the castle of Narbonne. Before Louis’ departure
important political and military measures were taken, beginning with the
lengthy work of demolishing the walls of the town. The necessary religious
measures were likewise taken. Before the middle of June, Pietro di
Beneventum left Toulouse to return to Rome. It was necessary’to regulate
the situation of the Preaching before his departure. Legate, count, the
bishop and his advisers turned their attention to this together. 45 Up to’ that
time Dominic had held his powers from the legate. It was now for the
 1K WP
fbr
lit

suif/ntnf.- rjp

\ft

1631 town plan of Toulouse; the street plan is still that of the thirteenth
century. On the right, Porte St Michel on the site of the Narbonne castle.
Slightly to the left of this, Peter Seila’s house (No. 38). On the left, at the
end of the Grand Rue, St Romain (No. 43).
 TOULOUSE 171

bishop to delegate them to him. In accordance with the law of the times, it
was likewise for the bishop to approve the religious house which had just
been established.46 He did both things and his intervention was set down in
a charter by his chancellery.
The bishop did not assign the function of preaching to Dominic alone—
he gave it to all his companions both present and future, that is, to all the
members of the community as such. In addition, in conformity with the
normal procedure for approval, he inscribed in the charter the ‘religious
intent’ or brief summary of the rule of these brethren. Lastly by means of
this document he conferred on the brethren an alms in accordance with
certain definite conditions. Such was the charter of Fulk, an authentic charter
of approval and mandate for the order of St Dominic. It will be well to quote
the text in full.
In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. We bring to the knowledge of all men,
both present and to come, that we, Fulk, by the grace of God humble minister
of the see of Toulouse, in order to root out the corruption of heresy, to drive
out vice, to teach the creed and inculcate in men sound morals, institute as
preachers in our diocese Brother Dominic and his companions, whose regular
purpose is to comport themselves as religious,4? travelling on foot, and to preach
the Gospel word of truth in evangelical poverty.
Yet, because the labourer has a right to his maintenance48 and one should not
muzzle the ox that treads out the corn,49 and because a fortiori the Lord has
bidden the heralds of the Gospel live by preaching the Gospel,50 we will that
these men, when they go to preach, receive their food and all that is necessary
from the bishop. With the consent of the chapter of the church of Bl. Etienne,
and of the diocesan clergy of Toulouse, we assign in perpetuity to the aforesaid
preachers and to those whom the zeal of the Lord and love of the salvation of
souls may raise up to accomplish the same office of preaching in the same manner,
one half of the third part of the tithe which is set aside for the furnishing and
fabric of all the parish churches which depend on us. Thus they will be able to
clothe themselves, to provide themselves with what they need in sickness, and to
take rest when they wish to do so. If something is left over at the end of the year,
we will and decree that it revert to us for the embellishment of the same parish
churches or for the use of the poor, as the bishop shall judge fit. Since Canon
Law envisages that a considerable part of the tithes be assigned and distributed to
the poor, it is clear that we are bound to assign by preference a part of the tithes
to those who, for Christ, have chosen, with great labour, to enrich all and
everyone with the gifts of heaven as much by their example as their teaching. In
this way the faithful, whose temporal riches we reap, will provide us with the
opportunity of sowing spiritual wealth through ourselves and others,51 in all
appropriateness and opportuneness.
Given in the year of the Incarnation 1215-, in the reign of Philip, King of the
French, the Count de Montfort holding the principality of Toulouse and the
same Fulk being bishop thereof.
At first sight it is not clear whether the religious intent of the preachers
 I72 VIR EVANGELICUS

referred to in the charter was not an individual purpose rather than a

community programme. It is, however, known that St Dominic and his
companions had already been formed into a community for more than two
months. Furthermore it will be noted that the bishop’s alms were given to
the group as a whole, without specifying any system of distribution. This
confirms the fact of the group’s organization.
The preaching programme was expressed in striking terms : ‘To root out
the corruption of heresy, to drive away vice, to teach the creed, to inculcate
in men sound morals.’ This was, word for word with its four clauses, the
complete programme of pastoral preaching of which Pope Innocent had
reminded the bishops of the Midi in his letter of 8th March, 1208.52 The
first Canon of the Council of Avignon, which the legates Hugues de Riez
and Maitre Milon presided over, on 6th September, 1209, had given the
contents of it in detail,53 ‘to set themselves like a wall’ against heretical
errors and ‘to preach the orthodox faith’; ‘so vigorously to detest in word
and deed adultery, fornication, perjury, usury, hatred, aggression with
violence and other mortal sins that one would at the same time instil the
virtues of perfection, peace, patience and justice’. The canon gave the
bishops a brisk reminder of their pastoral duty of preaching more frequently
than ever and with greater care. It required that for this they should have
recourse to the help of virtuous and wise preachers. Fulk’s charter referred
to this provision in its final phase, ‘through ourselves or through others’.
It might be wondered whether the charter, indeed, was anything; other than
a putting into execution of the Avignon canon.
The community in Peter Seila’s house really constituted a Preaching. We
have seen that at this time the saint gave himself the title of predicationis
minister humilis and continued to use the seal of the Preaching of Jesus Christ.
There was thus definite continuity between the old Preaching of the
Narbonensis and that of i2iy. Neither had other territorial limits than
those of the province or diocese in which they were instituted. The object
of the new Preaching, however, was wider in extent than that of the
Preaching of the Narbonensis. The perspective of the Avignon canon had
transformed it. Although the Preaching of the Narbonensis had not neglected
to evangelize Catholics, to confirm them in the faith,54 it only specifically
assumed in the preaching of the bishops, action ‘against the heretics’. That
of Dominic now addressed itself to both the faithful and the heterodox; it
was concerned with the morals of the Gospel as much as with the doctrines
of the faith. Dominic and his brethren would be actual substitutes for the
bishop in the matter of preaching.
The great novelty of this Preaching mission, however, was not primarily
the nature and extent of its purpose, but the fact that it was conferred in a
permanent way and conferred on a community. Delegation of the officium
predicationis by a bishop to a preacher was not an uncommon thing.55 At this
 TOULOUSE 173

time there existed even, despite the reprobation of the Councils, ‘hired
preachers’ and a veritable ‘farming’ of the preaching of a parish and even of
a diocese.56 Preaching delegated to an entire body, however, was something
entirely new, particularly its delegation to the future57 members of a com¬
munity in perpetuity. The provision was so new from the legal point of view
that in the drawing up of Fulk’s charter, the most elementary details as to
the system of attribution of this charge to each of the members of the
community and as to the check on the knowledge and morals of the
candidates for preaching, were neglected. For this Fulk relied on Dominic,
a sign of his complete confidence, and equally a sign of his haste to find
collaborators. Consequently it must be said that the taking over of the
bishop’s preaching, such as it was contained in the charter of approval of the
Preaching of Toulouse, constituted an important innovation and signified a
decisive step in the development of the pastoral system of the Church. Its
consequences would soon be clear.

The proposed way of life of the preachers of Toulouse was equally unheard
of for religious. There was doubtless continuity with that of the Preaching
of the Narbonensis. The will of Dominic and his companions to pursue ‘the
imitation of the apostles’, of which Diego had been given both the rule and
the example: ‘to go and preach on foot the word of evangelical truth and
to practise the ‘evangelical’ type of poverty—can be clearly seen. If we
should hesitate as to the interpretation of this latter expression, Dominic’s
constant practice in his preaching since 1 206 would serve as a commentary.
The evangelical poverty of the charter of 121 y clearly comprised the
command not to ride a horse, the refusal to carry money on one s person, the
chance shelter and food of those seeking hospitality, begging from door to
door and all the other points of the regula apostolica. A fortiori it comprised
the absence of productive property instanced in connection with the charter
of the Seila brothers. Jordan in fact confirms this, assigning to it this motive:
‘so that concern for temporal affairs might not be an obstacle to the ministry
of preaching’.59 The mind of Dominic will be recognized here. To live on
alms was not only an imitation of the Saviour and his apostles, but a spiritual
liberation. Fie had experienced this ever since the days of the mission in the
Narbonensis.
The members of the Preaching of the Narbonensis, however, had not
formed a community. Dominic and his future companions in the Preaching
of Prouille had been living in a community which was not their own and
which they had not to feed. Peter Seila’s house, on the contrary, was to be
a permanent centre where the preachers were to live,60 prepare themselves
for their task, recuperate after their ministry, be cared for during sickness,
find clothes and other indispensable supplies.61 The continued existence of a
house with so many requirements was a problem. Were they to do as the
 174 VIR EVANGELICUS

Catharists did and endow the hospice which was to shelter them ? It would
be better to give effect to Diego’s ultimate intention at the time of his
departure by asking some bishop for the necessary resources for maintaining
the life of this centre.62 To be certain of food and shelter through an
endowment, however, would seem to run counter to the preachers’
evangelical poverty.
One has the impression that those who drew up the charter went to
enormous trouble to resolve a quasi-contradictory situation. In any case their
solution proved imperfect and unstable. They did not even envisage the
principal data of the problem, those which seemed calculated to remove
evangelical poverty as far away as possible from the community—the direct
preparation of their preaching by intellectual work and the moral and
scholastic formation of the recruits, two charges that were equally expensive
and unproductive. The bishop assigned part of the tithes in perpetuity for
the upkeep of the house. We have called this endowment an alms. Jordan of
Saxony, not unreasonably, gave it the name of revenue.63 It was genuinely a
revenue since it was assured each year. Jordan, however, hesitated in his
turn the second edition of his Libellus marked a restriction. This was
because, indeed, the donor had endeavoured to give to his act the precarious
and limited character of an alms.6^
It was limited in those to whom it was destined. Only the sick and those
w ho were tired and had to rest between two missionary expeditions were
to be entitled to it. It was limited, too, in its scope—the purchase of clothes,
indispensable medicines and food for those who were resting. Finally it was
limited in the time and the extent to which it was permissible to use it.
Whatever remained at the end of the year was to be returned to the bishop
who would dispose of it as he pleased in favour of the poor and of parish
buildings. There had been a similar idea in Fanjeaux, the previous year, of
making over to the sisters of Prouille all that could be saved from the tithes
of the parish and the revenues granted by de Montfort.63 Thus the great
majority of the community, on the road far from the priory, would not
profit by this gift. This majority would continue with the ministry of souls
and would be called upon to practise the mendicant life of the apostle.
The nature of the alms, moreover, clearly showed its evangelical character.
What was to be given was half the third part of the tithes of the diocese, of
those at least which were at the bishop’s disposal. Canon law recognized,
indeed, in Gaul and in Spain, a division of tithes into three parts. The first
two parts were destined for the bishop and the clergy. The third, simul¬
taneously for the fabric of churches and the poor.66 It so happened that
certain religious were considered as ‘the poor of Christ’.67 Even more was
this the case of preachers and masters in sacred learning whose spiritual
ministry could have no direct remuneration. In 1220 Bishop Tello of
Palencia granted one-quarter of the third part of the tithes of the diocese
 TOULOUSE 17 S
for the upkeep of clergy assigned to teaching and for the construction of
buildings for the Palencia Schools.68
The four Scripture quotations cited by Fulk’s charter were traditionally
used to justify the system of tithes; here they emphasized that this con¬
cession did not affect the apostolic character of the preachers’ poverty.69
To recognize this it is sufficient to replace them in their context: Do not
provide gold or silver, or copper to fill your purses, nor a wallet for the
journey; no second coat, no spare shoes or staff; the labourer has a right to
his maintenance.To Thus Matthew wrote in the first text quoted. Similarly,
St Paul in the other three, claiming the apostles’ ‘right not to have to devote
themselves to material work’, wrote: ‘Here are we, who have sown in you
a spiritual harvest; is it much to ask that we should reap from you a temporal
harvest in return? For the Lord has bidden the heralds of the Gospel live
by preaching the Gospel.’71 By granting them a portion of the tithes pro¬
visionally and in a limited way, St Paul’s rule was applied. Thus there was
no departure from the usual norms of imitation of the apostles.
It must be admitted that the solution was not so clear as the charter
intended it to be, even if it be noted that Dominic had at this time abandoned
to the sisters all the property received earlier, with the Fanjeaux tithes, and
that the Casseneuil donation had provisionally disappeared.72 Bishop Thierry
of Livonia, for instance, the ‘new apostle’ whose poverty Innocent III
recommended to the faithful of Saxony in November 1213, considered it
necessary to go further in his poverty than the system of tithes authorized by
the words of St Paul:
Although it was allowable to him [wrote the Sovereign Pontiff]73 to reap material
goods from the people among whom he was sowing spiritual goods (since one
must not muzzle the ox which treads out the corn and the Lord has commanded
those who preach the Gospel to live by the Gospel), he none the less refused to
allow himself to use this power, in order not to create an obstacle against the
Gospel of Christ among those to whom he was ministering who were neophytes.
Thus he carried the Gospel without staff or wallet. . . .74

Durando de Huesca and the Poor Catholics in their formal proposals of

1208, 1210 and 1 2 1 2, took upon themselves an even more radical poverty.
‘We have renounced the world’, they wrote, and have given to the poor
what we possessed, according to the counsel of the Lord; and we have
decided to be poor in such a way that we may have no kind of anxiety about
the morrow and not receive from anyone at all either gold, silvei, or any
such thing, only our clothing and our daily food.’73
Comparing the system of the Preaching of Toulouse, with its security as
to necessities through a regular alms, with the conventual mendicancy
practised some years later by the Order of St Dominic, certain historians are
surprised. They think that the ideal of poverty laid down by the founder has
undergone an evolution in the course of those years, in the direction of
 176 VIR EVANGELIC US

mendicancy.76 They are mistaken. Dominic’s ideal from as far back as 1206,
as has been seen, was ‘the rule of the apostles’. It included mendicancy as an
essential. Dominic practised it as the Poor Catholics did. Before 1 2 1 how¬
ever, no more than the Poor Catholics or the Bishop of Livonia, did he need
to inscribe it in conventual life. There lay precisely the difficulty. It is
understandable that he should have felt his way before finding the definitive
solution. The only evolution that it is possible to discover is not in the ideal
but in the legal and practical dispositions which permitted him, between
121S and 1220, to establish mendicancy even in the conventual life of the
Preachers. 77
Even such as it was, the itinerant mendicancy of St Dominic’s companions
in 1215- was already a great innovation. This was remarked in connection
with the disputation of Montpellier.78 To return to the subject would serve
no useful purpose. It must, however, be added that in 1213—1214 the
Councils of Paris and Rouen, convened by the legate, Robert de Courson,
had just given expression once again to the traditional opinion on this point!
They enjoined upon the superiors of monks and canons a formal precept,
each time they authorized one of their religious to go out, ‘to take care to
supply him in sufficient quantity with the horses and provisions for the
journey which were indispensable both for him and his acolytes; for it would
be a disgrace both for the Lord and for the position in society of this religious,
that he should be constrained to beg’.79 In 121^, however, nothing of this
kind appeared in the canons of the Council of Montpellier, the reforming
legislation of which was nevertheless parallel with that of the French
Councils. Fulk and the other prelates had had time to gain some knowledge
o the experiences of the Narbonensis mission and to appreciate Dominic’s
ministry. They knew that between 1 206 and 1 2 1 2 a fair number of lettersSo
rom t e Pope had approved mendicant preaching both in this instance and
in several others which we shall mention. Perhaps even Fulk the Cistercian
recalled the example of St Malachy related by his friend St Bernard.
He travelled on foot, with other men likewise on foot, when he went to preach
in accordance with the apostolic way of life, bishop and legate though he was
n serving the Gospel he lived by the Gospel,81 as the Lord had laid down in

of "doIScI'0 defend the itinerlnt preaching and the

There the information given by the principal documents comes to an end
There is unfortunately no charter extant to inform us about the interior life
the c°m,™n‘p. ‘heir prayer, their observance, as the charters of the
breth ^ °f 1 ”7° f°r the house- the poverty and the preaching.84 The
rel tu”’ .85
religious s7:Jdrh-n SaX°ny> ‘liVed
And ]lls commentary on ^ “ phrase
C°nformity
an ‘he cuftoms ^
of
 TOULOUSE 177

monastic spirituality from a well-known chapter of the rule of St Benedict.86

Indications which confirm and detail Jordan’s general information can be
gleaned from isolated texts.
O

Dominic’s companions were clerics. No one contests this. They would

not otherwise have been able to accept the office of preaching. Their prayer
was that of the clergy, that is to say, the canonical office.87 This much can
be said at once ; this was the universal prerogative of the clergy at this time,
both as to their rights and in fact. No indication contradicts this. St
Dominic’s attachment to this office right until the hour of his death,88 his
perseverance and his extraordinary assiduity at prayer,89 to say nothing of
his fidelity in imitating the apostles,90 are manifest proofs ol it. The com¬
munity may perhaps have chanted the hours in the house of Peter Seila. On
the other hand, since the brethren had not the privilege of a portable
altar—this they did not obtain until 1221—‘it was quite impossible for them
to have Mass in their house’.91 They were thus obliged to ‘run into the
town’.92 One text justifies us in thinking that to celebrate the conventual
Mass they went ten minutes’ walk away, to the chapel of St Romain,
possession of which was granted to them the following year.93 It was in this
chapel indeed that Dominic, in the middle of year 121^, gave the habit to
and received the profession of a new religious, Fray Juan de Navarra.94 The
very gesture of the profession is noted—he received it ‘into his hands , that
is to say, in accordance with the forms of feudal homage that Cluny had
adapted to the religious engagement,95 he took between his hands the
joined hands of the brother which were already laid on the Gospel, while
the vow of obedience was pronounced.
It will be noted that both ceremonies took place on the same day. Dominic
was, then, receiving recruits who were sufficiently reliable for it to be
unnecessary to envisage a time of trial or novitiate. It was one problem less
to solve in this period of beginnings. Furthermore it was an advantage for
the poverty of the house and for the immediate effectiveness of the Preaching.
Since there was a clothing ceremony there was necessarily a habit.96 One
can be sure of this beforehand. The ancient tradition which piactically
identified the clothing with the profession was still too strong for matters
to be otherwise. Even the Catharists and Waldenses had their special habit.
Dominic’s brethren clearly wore the white tunic of their father.97 They also
wore the clerical tonsure. The Council of Montpellier had just given a
reminder about the rule for this and its dimensions for different categories
of ecclesiastics.98 Midway between the upper and lower tonsures it was
a circle of hair narrower than that of secular priests, but wider than that of
the monks. Finally, they wore high boots.99
This was doubtless the costume that was represented on Dominic’s seal.
The seal was still in existence in Prouille in the seventeenth century at the foot
of a charter of 1221. Jean de Rechac there read the customary inscription
 i78 VIR EVANGELICUS

‘S (igillum) D (ominici) ministri predicationis’. Quetif made a drawing

of it which Echard had engraved. This engraving in its turn served as a basis
for later reproductions. It was shuttle-shaped and in the space that sur¬
rounded the inscription there was represented a religious in a cloak, a staff
in his right hand.100 The title ‘minister predicationis’ had been used a few
months earlier in the letter to Guillaume-Raymond d’Hauterive.101 It went
to prove the real continuity of the Order of St Dominic with the Preaching
of Toulouse and the Preaching of Jesus Christ, the seal of which, it will be
remembered, had also been used at the foot of this letter. The existence of
a new seal, on the other hand, signified legal discontinuity: the transfer from
preaching authorized by legates against heretics to diocesan preaching for
the instruction of all, faithful and infidels, in the teaching and morals of the
Gospel. Dominic retained this personal seal to the end of his life.10 2The
contrast between the symbols used by each of these two seals was charged
with meaning—the risen Lamb for the Preaching of Jesus Christ, the
itinerant preacher for the Preaching of St Dominic.
It would seem that the visit paid one fine morning to the theology
professor of the chapter of St Etienne, Alexander Stavensby, the Englishman ,
should be assigned to some time during the summer of i 2 i 5\I03 The master
was giving his course. He saw the preacher come in with six (?)i°4 com¬
panions, all wearing the same habit. They assured him that they wanted to
enrol in his school and greatly desired to attend his lessons. They were not
all equally in need of them. After this, for a long time to come, the master
enjoyed their familiar friendship and instructed them as his pupils. Some ten
years later, he evoked the memory of this meeting which had impressed him
all the more in that, that very morning, suffering from drowsiness as he was
preparing his course, he had dreamt of seven bright stars which soon
increased in size so that they filled the world with light. The anecdote is
attractive and if its trimmings are not very original, 105 its historical founda¬
tion is beyond question. i°6 It goes to show the fundamental importance
attributed by the saint right from the beginnings of his community to
theological studies, the source of preaching. He had been trained in'this
way himself m Palencia. The ministry at Toulouse was urgent. Fulk was in
most pressing need of his preachers. Dominic none the less found the time
to take his brethren to school. From this one may judge how important it
was to him. Among the indispensable equipment which the tithes were to
finance, Jordan of Saxony gives pride of place to books.i°7 It is hardly
necessary to point out that no trace is found, either at this period or in the
following one of any manual work by the brethren, despite the monastic
tradition which was equally current among the Clerks Regular.i°8 Its place
was taken by study and the ministry of souls. On this point againf the
r er of St Dominic in Toulouse showed itself to be original and daring
Many years later this would also be made a subject of reproach.
 TOULOUSE 179

The number of the brethren increased rapidly. In April 1215-, a few days
after the professions of Peter Seila and Brother Thomas, another brother
entered. He must have been older and more mature than the others, as is
evident from the charter of 2^th April, for Dominic at once gave him a
privileged place in the community, a kind of sub-priorship. IQ9 His name was
Guillaume Raymond. There is no further trace of him and it is possible that
he did not persevere or that he died soon afterwards. Whereas Brother
William Claret, Brother Noel and Brother Vital had remained at Prouille,110
it is very probable that Dominic the Spaniard later joined Dominic in
Toulouse if he had not accompanied him there straight away. On 28th August
Juan de Espaha took the habit, as has been said. From the middle of the
summer, then, the Preaching of Toulouse numbered at least six religious—
probably many more, for Jordan of Saxony states clearly that the main house
was not large enough to lodge everybody. They had to occupy the remain¬
ing111 houses and the following year they moved.112

A foundation the development of which was so rapid was clearly not the
fruit of chance or merely of circumstances, nor was it solely the work of the
founder. In the history leading up to his order we have seen other figures
appear in the course of events—Simon de Montfort, the bishops of Osma,
Carcassonne and Toulouse, several legates and finally Pope Innocent himself.
Now that we have come to the end of the account of the foundation, it is
profitable to cast a glance backwards, to determine, so far as it is possible to
do so, the help that Dominic received from men and events. The traits of
his personality, his own merits and his inspirations will stand out so much
the more clearly.
The Preaching of the houses of Peter Seila was certainly not an improvisa¬
tion. What we know of the firm and reflective character of its creator would
suffice to convince us of the contrary. As has been seen, the foundation made
at Toulouse was prepared in Fanjeaux the year before.113 It is doubtless
there that it would have come into being if a perfectly legitimate interven¬
tion had not happened, deciding Dominic preferably to give effect to his
work in the capital of the county.
If we go even further back, we come upon the projects and realizations of
Diego of Osma eight years earlier—the plan he made of a group of competent
preachers who would be established with the Pope’s consent for the spread
of the truth of the faith and its defence against heresies ;114 the inauguration,
in which he had taken a decisive part, of the Preaching of Jesus Christ.
It was precisely from this Preaching against heresies, re-established in
Toulouse in the first months of 1215-, that the community of the houses of
Peter Seila emerged. Dominic had never ceased to be loyal to the inspirations
and institutions of his bishop, Diego. The work of 121^ was the fruit of
lasting thought, ripened in the light of an exceptional experience. It was
 i 8o VIR EVANGELIC US

only circumstances which had so long delayed its execution. As soon as the
time was ripe, however, through the reconciliation in Toulouse, the
foundation was made.
As he accepted the convent of Prouille from the hands of his bishop,
multiplied its recruits, laid down the lines of its spiritual life, set up its
patrimony and erected the buildings, so Dominic accepted the project of a
body of preachers who, to defend the Gospel, would use as their weapons
imitation of the apostles. The idea, which first arose during the plans of i 207,
of applying to the Pope to obtain permission to preach, will be noted. This
was quite natural in the case of the members of a pontifical mission. It gave
to the project, moreover, a very vast, broad and, so to speak, universal
horizon. Eight years after his death, Diego remained St Dominic’s principal
inspirer, at the very root of his order.
Fulk, moreover, occupied an important place at the side of the Bishop of
Osma. If he had been the perfidious, cruel and oppressive prelate presented
by too many historical works, it would be difficult to understand the share
he took in the foundation or the feelings which united him to Dominic.

Bishop Fulk of Toulouse, indeed of happy memory [relates Jordan], who felt a
tender affection for Brother Dominic, beloved of God and of men, when he saw
the regular life of the brethren, their grace and fervour in preaching, was
transported with joy at this dawn of new light. With the consent of his whole
chapter he granted them the sixth of all the tithes of the diocese, so that with
this revenue they might procure themselves what was necessary in the matter of
books and of food.1 !5

This text is not a bad summary of the bishop’s charter. That the founda¬
tion was prior to the gesture of Fulk is noted with precision. It is thus unlikely
that the evocation of the sentiments that prompted the gesture would be
erroneous. In actual fact the factor which led sincere historians astray and
ishgured Fulk in their eyes has recently been discovered—the use of a
document, now known to be completely without authenticity and, indeed
contradicted by almost all the sources. IHS The sources leave of Folquet of
arseille now Fulk of Toulouse, the picture of an austere, brave and dis-
in erested prelate, firmly determined to save the faith of his flock but full of
pastoial zeal and in no sense unmerciful to men’s bodies and souls m He

the PnnWn ,DO™,niC;inCe ,2°?- Desirous of applying the prescriptions of

the Pope and of the Avignon Council, in ,, ,o-i,,, he associated Dominic

asbciateinTz '^T1' 7“ natUra',that h<= sh°uld again want him as his

associate in .2, j m Toulouse, together with the methods he valued
Of himself, however, he would have kept him in Fanjeaux, in that centre
operations so particularly well placed whence his ministry had been
pending m all directions for over ten years. After all he had just endowed

Beneventum, however, the legate, had intervened at the Council

 TOULOUSE I8 I

of Montpellier. He had his own ideas and, perhaps, precise instructions. He

who had assembled the Council fairly close to Toulouse, ‘because this city,
as is known, is the head and sink of all the malice of the perversions of the
heretics’,118 wanted Dominic and his companions likewise to be installed in
the capital. The Preaching against the heretics was thus re-established in
Toulouse under the legate’s authority. Some months later it would become
the community of regular life which Fulk was to endow. It then expanded
into the diocesan Preaching.
The intervention of Pietro di Beneventum continued that of the previous
legates, beginning by Arnaud de Citeaux.11^ The many and continuous links
between Dominic and the Pope’s representatives in the Albigeois120 finally
set the problem of the share, at least the indirect share, to be attributed to
Innocent III in the Toulouse foundation.
Innocent III bears the chief responsibility for the events in the Midi of
France in the course of which the Order of St Dominic was born. No one
was more fully aware of the crisis in preaching in this region as throughout
the Church. With great perseverance, through his letters or through his
legates, even after the launching of the crusade, he endeavoured to maintain
and intensify the bishops’ preaching to the full extent of their pastoral
programme. The first canon of the Council of Avignon (i 209), an earnest of
the 10th canon of the coming Council of the Lateran (November 1215-), of
which Innocent was the chief author, must be attributed to the Pope’s
insistence. The charter of approval of the Preaching of Toulouse referred
back to this legislation. Dominic owed it to the action of Innocent III that
he discerned so clearly both the mission of the Church in defining his order,
and the place which this order was to occupy at the bishop’s side, as
collaborator and ‘ vicar ’ of his pastoral mission.
Should one go further and attribute to the Pope the idea of a group of
mendicant preachers? It is certain that from 1203 onwards Innocent was
concerned with launching, wherever the ordinary preaching was proving
itself dangerously insufficient, missions of exemplary preachers, contingents
of whom were principally asked for from the Cistercians. The Preaching of
the Narbonensis was not the only one of this type.121 The Pope endeavoured
to inculcate his own spirit in these missionaries—to convert rather than to
destroy, to avoid what might shock the heretic himself, to understand and
respect in the dissidents all that might be considered as authentically
Christian.122
In November 1206 he approved the method of apostolic mendicancy among
his preachers. Moreover, when in December 1208, as has been related,I23
Durando de Huesca, leader of the group of preachers without a mandate,
closely linked with the Waldenses, whom Diego had brought back to the
Church on the occasion of the dispute at Pamiers, presented himself before
him, the Pope welcomed him with hope and joy.12* He approved the
7-S.D.
 I 82 VIR EVANGELICUS

purpose of regular life of his company of preachers, their habit, their

mendicant poverty and, for Durando’s lay companions, the right to refuse
to take part in wars against Christians. I2$ For the next five years, he officially
supported by his letters the mission of the Poor Catholics against the heretics
and the dissidents in the provinces of Tarragona and the Narbonensis,
upholding them with all the weight of his authority and endeavouring to
dissipate the tenacious prejudices of the prelates there, who continued to
find them too much like the Waldenses. He acted in this way from 1210
with the similar group of Bernard Prim, of Milan, who for several years had
been bravely struggling against the Catharists of the Albigeois using the
weapon of a mendicant apostolic life.I26 With their houses of converted
penitents, their schools, their kind of life and their method of apostolate,
these companies of missionaries commissioned by the Pope were an
earnest12? of the order of St Dominic. If after 1213, in the face of the
resistance of the local hierarchy and doubtless the blunders of the Poor
Catholics, Innocent finally gave up placing his hope for the defence of
orthodoxy in these converts of too recent date, he turned immediately
towards the ranks of the strictly Catholic clergy in order to elicit or maintain
forces of this kind among them. We can understand that a careful historian
should have suspected that the legate, Pietro di Beneventum, was only fulfilling
an intention of Innocent when he gave Dominic at the beginning of 1213^
the powers necessary to re-establish the Preaching of Jesus Christ in
Toulouse. 128 For lack of documents this remains a sheer hypothesis, but a
hypothesis that is plausible.
However, to show that Dominic, by giving effect to long-tested projects,
was responding to invitations coming from his bishops, from legates of the
Holy See and perhaps from the Pope himself, and was deriving his inspiration
from the experiences which for the past ten years he had watched developing
under his eyes, both in the Church and among the heretics, is not perhaps
sufficient to explain the work of the founder and might seem to lessen his
merits. These facts merely prove his loyalty and responsiveness to the
promptings of the hierarchy, his keen sense of the needs of the Church, his
farsightedness in the presence of men and events, all very characteristic
of him. Moreover, they strangely enhance his genius in that, replying to
calls coming from all sides and too often contradictory, and collecting
together elements of right conduct, activity, and spirituality so little
compatible among themselves that the many attempts to combine them
during the previous century and a half had only given rise to unstable,
ephemeral or revolutionary combinations, he succeeded in creating an
order which would transcend time and would be no less alive in^ the
twentieth century than in the thirteenth. The order of St. Dominic was in
some sense a cross-roads. The avenues leading from it opened on very
varied perspectives. There was the evangelical work of the canons apostolic,
 TOULOUSE 183

the itinerant preachers, the Poor Catholics; then again the work among
the Catharists and the Waldenses. There was the development of the
doctrinal mission of the bishops, of monastic poverty, of scholastic studies.
Yet the order itself was something quite different from each of its elements
and from each of its initial endeavours, just as in geometry the final point
is clearly to be distinguished from the lines which converge towards it.
Because, however, it came in point of fact at the end of a mass of research
and of efforts, it retained their richness and inspiration. If it achieved great
success very rapidly, it was because it gathered together many ideas and
forces scattered about the world and responded to the aspirations of a large
number of people, to the aspirations primarily of those Christians and true
prelates anxious to satisfy such longings—above all, to the aspirations of the
Head of the Church, Pope Innocent III, whose concern for faith and peace
in the southern part of Gaul was one of his greatest cares.
Dominic in the beginning of the month of September linked himself
with the authorities of the region when by a unanimous movement and
urged by the whole of Christendom they responded to the appeal of this
great Pope for the holding of a general council. The Fourth Council of
the Lateran, held in November 1213- in the eternal city, was the most
impressive assembly of the Middle Ages. Thus when the founder came to
speak to the Pope about his communities of Toulouse and Prouille, he
might legitimately hope to obtain all he desired without difficulty.
He came, Jordan of Saxony tells us, to ask for ‘confirmation of an order
which would be called and would be in fact the order of Preachers’.129
 PART II

IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE
 Chapter XI

THE LATERAN COUNCIL

W H E N in the midst of a century undergoing every possible upheaval

the Order of Preachers spread widely over the earth with its
twelve provinces, its hundreds of convents, its thousands of
religious, the friars were amazed. They could not but think that its universal
preaching of the Gospel and its effective struggle against vice and error,
despite the contradictions which grew in proportion as its activity increased,
were the result of a very miraculous intervention on the part of God. It thus
seemed inconceivable that an institution so visibly called into being by
Providence1 should have made its entry into the world unheralded. It was
sufficient indeed to listen, to interrogate spiritual men favoured with divine
visitations, to read the inspired books and the lives of the saints—to find on
every side clear2 premonitions, intuitions, prophecies about the imminent
coming of the order of Preachers.3
In 1207 a devout monk, unconscious for three days in ecstasy, had seen
the Blessed Virgin, kneeling and with clasped hands, begging her Son Jesus
not to abandon men, and so obtaining the institution of the Preachers from
him. A dead man, who rose again after three days, had told one of the
twelve Cistercian abbots during the mission in the Albigeois of an identical
scene—which he had witnessed during his unexpected journey. Further,
Dominic himself in 1215- had seen this heavenly contest, in a vision he had
had in Rome.
Moreover, Blessed Stephen of the Chartreuse of Portes and Guillaume
Helie, the Cistercian bishop of Orange (d. 1221), Ste. Marie d’Oignies, the
visionary of Liege (d. 1213), Bl. Bona of Pisa (d. 1207), and the Cistercian
abbot Joachim of Flora in Calabria (d. 1202), as earlier still St Hildegarde
herself (d. 1179)—had foreseen, predicted, described, sometimes even to
their very dress, the apostolic Preachers who were to come.
The young Dominican friars who scrutinized the texts of the Bible in the
studium of Paris or Bologna were surprised on many an occasion to discover
in the books they were studying, the very name of the ‘Order of Preachers’
and the description of its prerogatives and qualities. One friar picked out
about fifteen such explicit passages in the marginal and interlinear gloss
alone, that compilation of the beginning of the twelfth century which made
a brief paraphrase of the Bible, following the text word by word. The basis
i 88 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

of the gloss was innumerable extracts from the Fathers of the Church.
Indeed Augustine, Jerome, Gregory the Great, Alcuin, Rabanus Maurus,
Peter Damian, Anselm of Canterbury,4 and many others, had similarly
foreseen the appearance of the Preachers, and even pronounced the particular
name of their order long beforehand. At the dawn of the thirteenth century
references of this kind were particularly noticed in commentaries on the
Apocalypse which were read with renewed interest in those dramatic times.
In certain expressions of the seer of Patmos, Anselm of Laon (d. 1117),
Richard of St Victor (d. 1173), Martin de Leon (d. 1 203) and in particular
Joachim of Flora (d. 1 202)5, discerned the prophetic announcement of the
‘Order of Preachers’. Joachim of Flora considered that the world was at its
second age, the age of God the Son, who was communicating himself to it
through the clergy and preachers. The last twenty years of the twelfth
century in which he wrote constituted the passage from the fifth to the
sixth periods of this age. A new type of religious was to appear in the
Church. With his disciples an indomitable champion of the faith would form
the ordo praedicatorum, who would imitate the life of Jesus and the apostles
and, though attacked by all the false prophets, would preach the Gospel to
their contemporaries.6
We are not concerned to judge the supernatural inspiration of these
visions and prophecies, nor the value of the confidences that the sons of St
Dominic with touching simplicity, accepted from all men’s lips in the middle
of the thirteenth century. The texts, on the other hand, were authentic.
The name of ‘order of Preachers’ found in them was not merely the result of
pious interpolation. It had not on the other hand the meaning given to it in
more recent times by the institution of the Order of St Dominic. When
St Gregory—who was, it would seem, the first to do so—had begun to
pronounce the phrase with insistence, by ordo praedicatorum he intended to
designate the hierarchical class of Catholic preachers, which, according to
tradition, was for him identified with that of the pastors or doctors of the
Church. The majority of the texts cited were thus only prophetic by a play
on words. It would be strange, however, if history had nothing further to
say in this connection.
The commentaries of St Gregory, the gloss in particular, were in the
hands of all the clergy. Abbot Joachim of Flora had drawn up his com¬
mentary on the Apocalypse at the request of Pope Lucius III, and with the
approval of his successors, and in the thirteenth century his writings were to
meet with remarkable success.7 The holiness of his personal life and that of
his monastery had given him such a privileged position in the eyes of
Innocent III that, when in 1 21 g at the Council of the Lateran the Pope had
to reject certain doctrinal interpretations of the Calabrian abbot, he con¬
cluded the particular canon of the Council which corrected the Cistercian
by an eulogium of his spirit of orthodoxy and his religious work.8 It is thus
 THE LATERAN COUNCIL I 89

of no slight importance from our point of view that at the beginning of the
thirteenth century impressive texts should have set out under the name of
ordo praedicatorum, traditional or even new-fangled conceptions as to the
condition and quality of the preachers. They were indicative of the ideas
which were coming into existence as to the status of preaching in the Church
at the time when Dominic established his order.
The tradition of the Fathers of the Church was formal.9 For them the
preacher was the bishop. To teach the doctrine of Christ by homilies and
commentaries on the Holy Scripture constituted his chief function, his
essential work as a pastor—a function that was equally represented by the
terms which were continually being employed as interchangeable, of ‘doctor’
and ‘preacher’. These two formal functions were to be distinguished by
their audiences. The subject-matter, the Holy Scriptures, was the same, but
the doctor taught the clergy and the preacher the general flock. The
bishop exercised both functions; so that according to a unanimous
tradition10 the ordo praedicatorum was identical with the ordo doctorum and
the ordo episcoporum. Ordinary priests were doubtless associated with this
order, as they were with the bishop’s pastoral work, but through the
bishop’s delegation and in solidarity with him.
In the twelfth century the traditional conceptions which subsisted as of
legal right had remarkably developed, whereas the expressions designating
them remained the same. The enormous increase in the number of parishes
and their reorganization in the course of the last century had increased the
importance of the clergy who formed the second rank in the order of
preachers. The clerical order in turn was largely moving out of its earlier
framework, the monks having, generally speaking, taken up the clerical
state. Thus, right from the beginning of the century, a good number of them
claimed the right to be preachers.11 The new life infused into the clerical
milieu by the Gregorian reform, however, thanks to its return to the
apostolic ideal, strongly emphasized the connection which should exist
between the practice of preaching and the practice of the life of the apostles.
This was indeed the fundamental idea of the Italian reformers, of St Peter
Damian, for instance. In the face of this movement the bishops of the time,
burdened by so many legal and administrative tasks, weighed down by such
numerous temporal rights and duties, were far from taking a firm line. These
reformed monks and canons seemed more directly faithful to the heritage
of the apostles. The heretical apostolic preachers were not the only ones to
call in question the monopoly of the bishops and of their clergy. The
patristic tradition itself offered the inducement of a distinction within
the circle of the classic ordo praedicatorum. Among its elements Gregory the
Great had discerned a privileged category, the ‘sancti praedicatores’ who,12
because they were detached from the world to the extent of having
renounced all possessions, were able to preach ‘by word and example’.
 I90 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

Such men, it might be thought, were the precursors of the orthodox

apostolic preachers much more than twelfth-century prelates.
Thus from this time onwards people began to discover in the order of
preachers several different types, not all equally adapted to their task. The
idea of evolution, suggested by the theme of the ages of the world, differen¬
tiated the class as a whole according to different epochs. The commentators
of the Apocalypse attached themselves particularly to the idea that each age
was to have its own type of order of preachers raised up by God to deal with
new situations; sucn was, for instance, the idea of Richard of St Victor.13
Joachim of Flora indeed prophesied that, in the age of the Son of God, the
sixth period which had just been inaugurated would be characterized by a
new type of preachers of truth. In his visions of the future, visions inspiring,
indeed, but blurred and indistinct as is usual in the case of prophecy, he
hopefully envisaged this order of preachers no longer as a class, but as a
society, if not a religious order, whose exemplary life would be especially
devoted to the imitation of the earthly life of Christ and his apostles.
It matters little for our purpose that these apocalyptic views could
scarcely be said to be coherent; that they in some degree falsified the
patristic or even Scriptural texts on which they were based; that, to the
Abbot of Flora, this type of preachers to come at times very strongly
resembled that of the religious of Flora ... AS For us the essential is the
effort of these spiritually minded men to place their time in the line of
historical evolution, and to orientate the Church’s investigations accordingly.
Tnis work which in the thirteenth as in the twentieth centurv, was
accompanied by so many illusions—for God alone knows the significance of
earthly history and he has not revealed it, even in the Apocalypse—was not,
however, illusory. It forced these men to look at their own time, its crises,
its needs, its mentality. In short, it revealed, better than the documents of
canon law, or the theological theories of the moment, the anxieties and
longings of the fervent Christians of the time. Even if these prophetic or
apocalyptic texts remained unknown to the public and without any influence
upon it, which was not always the case, they would still retain for us their
value as evidence. At the beginning of the thirteenth century, preaching in
the Church was no longer strictly confined in the common view to the
bishop and his delegates. The possibility was conceived of a series of ordines
praedicatorum better adapted to the traditional task and to the needs of the
new times than the episcopate itself, orders of preachers which would be
religious orders of apostolic life.
At the time when Joachim of Flora died, Innocent III partially gave effect
to these visions of the spiritual by multiplying the groups of preachers drawn
from the Order of Citeaux, despite the latter’s opposition. Later, he did the
same by supporting in the Albigeois and in Aragon the companies of Poor
Catholics. When in 1216 Jacques de Vitry, one of the most lucid observers
 to: Leonard von

Eleventh century bas-relief of Christ and the Apostles; this was the first
representation of the Apostles seen by the boy Dominic in the cloisters of
Silos.
 the LATERAN COUNCIL 19I

of the Church in his time, journeyed across Italy, he discovered in the

province of Milan another foundation of which the Pope was patron, some
hundred and fifty houses of Humiliati who were edifying their brethren and
defending the Church against the heretics by their preaching.16 Coming
down from the direction of Rome, the bishop met another preaching com¬
munity which he described with some feeling, the Brethren of St Francis.
‘It is’, he said in one of his writings,‘an order of preachers which we call
the order of Minors.’1? A few years later he saw another, even more
chaiacteristic, in Bologna. It was not content with uniting the ‘order of
preachers’ to the order of canons with the consent of the Pope it
appropriated to itself as a particular title which it alone was to bear, the
ancient and glorious name. This was, in fact, the Order of Preachers’ the
Order of St Dominic. By what astonishing ways had it obtained the title
which but recently designated a whole hierarchical class ?

At the beginning of September 1215, Dominic had set out for Rome,
accompanying his bishop.16 It was the end of summer and the route over the
Alps was open. Most probably it was this route they took.20 The Council of
the Lateran had been convened for November. From Esthonia to Portugal,
from England to the commercial ports of the Levant, the prelates had set
out to meet together and form the solemn assembly. No one was dispensed
from attendance, at least by delegation. Only one bishop in each province
was authorized to remain at home. At the Council one could count three
patriarchs, four hundred and twelve bishops, more than eight hundred abbots
and priors, the representatives of those prevented from appearing in person,
finally the ambassadors of the majority of the Christian sovereigns. It was
one of those rare moments in the history of the world towards which all
previous movements appear to converge. The problems that Innocent had
vigorously tackled from the beginning of his reign with varying results were
approaching their solution. The foundation of the Latin empire of the East
and the succession of the Germanic empire, the quarrels of Lrance and
England, the crusades of Spain and of the Albigeois, the reform of the
clergy and the monks and the constitution of the university of Paris, the
government of doctrine and of institutions, each and every one of these
problems of the Pope was in the process of settlement, of pacification, of
solution, precisely in the sense he had willed. Through him the Church had
experienced an appearance of triumph. How much more dramatic would
this hour have appeared to the participants in the mighty assembly had they
known that its inspirer and leader was to disappear barely a few months after
its conclusion.
The Pope had reserved to the Council the final decision in the affair of the
faith and peace in the Midi of France. None of the great personages involved
in the debate had failed either to be present or to be represented there.
 192 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

Almost all the bishops of the Narbonensis and the majority of those of the
adjacent provinces were present around Archbishop Arnaud.21 Raymond VII
and his son, Gaston de Foix, Arnaud de Comminges and numerous lords of
the Midi came to demand the return of their patrimony. Guy de Montfort
represented his brother.22
As the participants arrived the various committees were formed. At the
end of the summer, the first among them held session in the gardens and
palace of the Lateran:25 there was the dispute as to the primacy of Toledo,
the suspension of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the choice of the German
emperor, the elaboration of the doctrinal and reforming canons, the
preparation for the crusade in the East. The business of the Albigenses was
then treated at length, in heated debates.24 The way was thus paved for the
supreme decisions which the Pope was to promulgate in the Lateran
basilica in the three full sessions of the i ith, 20th and 30th November. In
the interval of the meetings, moreover, Innocent continually received groups
or individuals for matters of lesser importance.
As early as the first-days of October,25 he received Dominic with Fulk.
They spoke of the Preaching that had just been inaugurated in Toulouse and
in mutual agreement presented their request to him: ‘that the Pope would
deign to confirm, to the benefit of Dominic and of his brethren, an order
which would be called and would be the Order of Preachers ; that he would
equally confirm the revenues assigned to the brethren both by the Court and
by the bishop.’26

The significance of these words, which Jordan of Saxony did not use
lightly, must be weighed. To confirm is not the same as to approve.27 It
means, precisely, to make stronger. He who confirms at this stage neither
innovates nor gives: he merely indicates the existence of an institution or of
an earlier gift to which through his intervention he accords a greater
solidity. In this way an already valid election, a statute already obligatory or
validly constituted, is confirmed. In particular, to have something confirmed
by a higher authority is to remove beyond any chance of repeal or modifica¬
tion on the part of subordinate authority, that which has been established bv
institution or approbation. In 1213, it had long been customary to solicit
such confirmations and Dominic’s action in itself had nothin^ unusual
about it. b

The confirmation of the Holy See had at first been concerned with
material wealth, the possessions of a monastery for instance. It prevented
the donor from changing his mind about his generosity and threatened an
unjust aggressor with the major fulminations of the Church. After the
twelfth century, such confirmation extended to all sorts of statutes. Le^al
prescriptions already in force were submitted for the Pope’s confirmation;
in this way they became inviolable without the Sovereign Pontiff’s specific
consent. Thus the Preachers in 1228 considered asking for the confirmation
 THE LATERAN COUNCIL
*93
of the Holy See on three fundamental points of their legislation in order to
make them inviolate.28 They did not do so, however. The only Dominican
constitution that was ever invested with the supreme sanction of Rome was
the clause whereby the superior-general of the order, unlike the heads of
other mendicant orders, had no need to obtain the confirmation of the
Holy See.29 This last objective, indeed, might require certain steps in Rome.
Innocent III used this power of authentication and control in a special way,
in respect of inventors of new forms of religious life.so
Independently of the reasons usual in the case of religious superiors,
Dominic had his own reasons for having the revenues of the Preaching of
Toulouse and the possessions of the monastery of Prouille, with which he
was concerned at the same time, confirmed. A good part of this property
had been acquired by right of war in the course of the crusade.31 The
revenues of Casseneuil, moreover, did not even belong to the donor, Simon
de Montfort, who had only obtained the custody of them; the donation was
very debatable. The tithes granted by the bishop were certainly more solidly
established, but what one bishop had done, another could undo; confirma¬
tion from the Pope would give the community in Toulouse security from an
eventual change of mind on the part of Fulk’s successors.
It has been supposed that Dominic also asked for confirmation of a rule.32
Neither Jordan, nor any of the documents, say anything of the kind. It can,
on the other hand, be affirmed with certainty that the founder had no
intention at all of having constitutions inscribed in a consistorial bull
according to the usual procedure for the confirmation of a rule. This had
been done under Alexander III in 117^ for the rule of the Knights of
Santiago; again, under Innocent III for that of the Trinitarians, of the
Humiliati, of the Order of the Holy Spirit, for the propositium of the Poor
Catholics, and of the Brethren of Bernard Prim; this would be the case
shortly, under Honorius III, for the second rule of St Francis, which for this
reason would bear the name of Regula bullata.33 St Dominic, however,
would never have anything of his legislative work confirmed, in particular
anything of the great legislation of 1 220-1 221, to which reference will be
made in due course. The brethren were not to have their statutes confirmed
at any future time either. The constitutions of the Order of St Dominic have
never been confirmed. Still less in 121 g, could there be any question for
the father of Preachers seeking from the Holy See legal sanction for
prescriptions which time and the life of the order had not put to the test.
The constant attitude of St Dominic, an attitude so prudent and so loyal to
the lessons of experience, excludes such an hypothesis.
On the contrary, according to Jordan of Saxony, 34 St Dominic expressly
asked for confirmation of a thing to which he clung above everything,
because it was the raison d’etre and very essence of his order—the title and
function of preacher, of Preaching friars.
 194- in MEDIO ECCLESIAE

It was indeed a confirmation that was in question here. The community

of Toulouse already possessed this title and function legally granted to them
by the official decree of the proper authority, the local bishop. Once more,
however, what a bishop had done a bishop could undo. The earlier associa¬
tions of preachers, for half a century past, had indeed come to naught in the
face of the bishops’ mistrust, in these very provinces of Tarraconensis and
Narbonensis where Dominic’s ministry was exercised. It was not possible to
found an order in the face of this uncertainty. Moreover, if a bishop had the
right and duty to entrust the office of preaching to certain clergy of his
diocese, even for their whole lives, had he the power to grant it to a
permanent community, so that a man had only to enter this community to
obtain the name, and, according to the internal rules of the association, the
office of preacher? The Bishop of Toulouse had done so. This was a bold
step.35 It was fitting that it should receive confirmation by the Pope, just
when the Lateran Council was clearly disposed to make definitions in such
matters.
It may be asked whether we should add to these matters offered for the
Pope’s confirmation a further point not stated in the text of theLibellus:
poverty. It is clear that Fulk had already recognized and authorized in his
charter of i 21 ^ certain traits of the mendicant poverty of the future
Preachers, at any rate, the mendicity of the preacher on his round, in
default of that of the convent. Such poverty, however, in some sort
individual, had been confirmed by Innocent III in the case of Dominic and
his early collaborators, by letter of 17th November, 1206.36 As to the
poverty, if not collective mendicity, of the Preachers of Toulouse, it was
real and could claim special confirmation. The practice of renouncing landed
property and accepting only revenues, without being entirely unheard of,37
set the first Dominican community apart from almost all existing com¬
munities. The concession of the diocesan tithes, as has been said, was made
in such a way as to maintain Dominic’s sons in the category of the poor
and even of the poor according to the mode of the Gospel.
There is no evidence, however, that Dominic asked for confirmation of
this kind of collective poverty. It would not, moreover, be confirmed, and
Dominic would have his hands free to modify it in 1220, when he would
finish establishing conventual mendicity in his order.
Innocent was no longer solely the spiritual leader who was urging the
Bishop of Metz ‘not to weaken the religious feeling of the simple’, and"who
was struggling against the bishops of tire Midi to maintain in the service of
orthodoxy apostolic preachers all too recently converted. The hour of
audacious and ephemeral measures was past. Innocent III was sitting in the
midst of these very bishops to form the General Council. With them he was
about to proclaim the authentic tradition of the Church. He was preparing
to define a legislation which would rule Christendom for a long time to
 THE I.ATERAN COUNCIL
*9£
come. This necessitated prudence and reflection. But he knew Fulk and
Dominic. Without our being able to measure exactly his share in the
institution of the Preaching of Jesus Christ and the preaching of Toulouse,
we know that it had been considerable. What would his reply be now?

The confirmation ot possessions was an easy matter. Innocent accorded

this immediately for all the possessions of Prouille. A few days later, on
October 8th, his chancellery regularized the favour in the form of a short
bull, or titulus, which was sufficient for so limited a matter.38 The con¬
firmation of the revenues of Casseneuil could only be regulated after the
decision of the Council as to the inheritance of Raymond VI. That of the
donation of the tithes would go with the confirmation of the Preaching of
Toulouse.
There lay the crux of the matter. The Pope neither could nor would give
an immediate and definite reply. The Council was going to concern itself in
a special manner with preaching and with the new religious orders. The
Toulouse foundation would be discussed again in the sessions preparatory to
the canons relating to these two matters. Meanwhile, Innocent turned over
Dominic and his request to a cardinal, for examination. Such was his
constant practice in the case of religious who asked for confirmation. 39 The
person of the cardinal whom he chose this time may be surmised. It was
probably his own relative, Ugolino, Cardinal-bishop of Ostia. The following
year a young cleric who was living with the cardinal there frequently met
Dominic who had just concluded the business of the confirmation.40 These
visits had doubtless begun from the autumn of i 21 £.41
The preaching commission met during the first days of November. Fulk
and Dominic there occupied the front of the stage. The canon was promul¬
gated on i ith November,42 at the first full session. Like the majority of the
canons of the Council, it directly expressed the ideas and decisions of the
Sovereign Pontiff. He condensed, in a text remarkably worded, the findings
and conclusions of the Curia in this field, those of the popes and their
legates since the Third Council of the Lateran; more especially since the
seventeen years of Innocent’s pontificate. In this case the experience had
principally been acquired in the Albigeois. The practical solution had been
elaborated in the Narbonensis and in Toulouse. The link was so direct that
at times the canon of the Council seemed to evoke the Preaching of St
Dominic. For the Bishop of Toulouse this was a reason for just pride. Among
his fellows he appeared as the far-sighted and loyal prelate who, anticipating
the demands of the Church, provided the pattern of what should be done.
It was also a good portent for Dominic. Not everything, however, was
equally favourable. The canon emphasized with asperity the insufficiencies
and failings of the bishops. Nevertheless, it reasserted the tradition un¬
mistakably. The bishop was, and was to remain, the preacher par excellence.
 196 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

Certainly he was to get himself assistance, but nothing more. Certain

prelates would probably find in this the opportunity to react more strongly
against all originality in the matter of preaching. The following text is of
paramount importance and must be cited.

Among everything that touches the salvation of the Christian people, the regular
dissemination of the word of God is, as we know, supremely necessary to them,
since the soul is nourished with spiritual food as the body with material. Man
cannot live by bread only, there is life for him in all the words that proceed from the mouth
of God.*3 Now it frequently happens that the bishops alone do not suffice to
distribute the word of God to their people, because of their many occupations,
their infirmity of body, the attacks of their enemies, or other circumstances
(not to mention their lack of knowledge, which we must reprove in the most
absolute manner and which will not be tolerated in the future). The extent of the
dioceses aggravates this inadequacy still more. We therefore lay it down, by this
general constitution, that the bishops must recruit persons mighty in word and
work, capable of fulfilling to useful purpose the duty of holy preaching, who will
carry out carefully in the place and stead of the bishop the visitation of the
populations entrusted to him when he himself cannot do so, and will edify them
by word and example. The bishop will provide them with what is necessary,
should the circumstances demand it, in a suitable manner, to avoid their being
constrained to interrupt their enterprise for lack of such necessities. We thus
prescribe that there shall be established in cathedrals and also other conventual
churches, a category of competent men whom the bishop can use as co-adjutors
and co-operators, not only for the office of preaching, but also for the ministry
of confessions, the assigning of penances and other activities relating to the
salvation of souls. Anyone who should neglect to put these prescriptions into
practice would be liable to a severe sanction.44

In the 11 th canon which followed this, the Council promulgated further

dispositions with regard to teaching. The existence of two distinct canons
clearly showed the distance which henceforward separated the bishop’s
pastoral ministry from that of his preaching. Certainly he was always the
doctor of his Church as he was its preacher. Since Carolingian times,
however, the institution of a professor of theology in the cathedral chapter
had enabled him to be free from his mission of teaching the clergy. In the
twelfth century the multiplication of episcopal schools and their internal
development gave such consistence to this decentralization that the bishop
no longer even concerned himself with nominating the professor of theology
or conferring the licence to teach. He left this matter to the chancellor of
his chapter. Things were not all that could be wished for in this domain
however. Many churches did not make provision for the theology professor’s
subsistence and he sought remuneration from those he taught or, more often
than not, deserted his charge. The school then declined and those clergy
who were poor were unable to study. The Third Council of the Lateran had
t us insisted that every cathedral should maintain a master by means of a
 THE LATERAN COUNCIL 197

prebend, in order that he might, according to Christian traditions, teach

without charge.45 The 1 ith canon of the new Council of the Lateran once
more required the institution in every diocese and even in every collegiate
church of such masters, duly remunerated, who would at least provide
instruction in grammar, that is, would teach secular learning. At the centre
of each province, the archbishop was to maintain a school of theology.46
Dominic could recognize in the Council’s insistence a weakness he knew
only too well. The marvellous flowering of the schools in the course of the
twelfth century, which had recently led to the foundation of the university
ot Paris, had long been prepared for by a concentrated movement. It is
unquestionable that the religious schools of Liege, Tournai, Laon, Rheims,
Chartres had been alive in the middle ot the twelfth century in a way that
was very different from their present condition. The attraction of Paris
sterilized sacred studies in the other provinces. The result was that matters
ended in the painful paradox of a theological learning that continually
developed and deepened on the banks of the Seine while it vegetated or
receded in the dioceses, leaving the field more open to rising heresies every
day. Dominic not only discovered this crisis in the development of the
Albigensian errors and of the doctrinal incompetence of the clergy of the
Midi; he felt it no less keenly in his responsibilities as founder. Preachers
of the Gospel could do little if they were not animated by a constant study of
the Holy Scriptures. At Toulouse he was of course well situated in that
respect. On this point, too, Fulk was in advance of the Council.
After all, in his simple diocese he maintained a master of theology, as was
done in an archbishopric.47 Master Stavensby’s small school was none the
less a very minor affair for so vast a diocese and for the severe crisis with
which the truth was faced. Moreover, when Dominic let his mind dwell on
the theological riches of Paris, the dozens of Regent-Masters, the thousands
of students who were gathered there, he could not but be haunted by an
image. The good grain, piled up, rots. Scattered and sown, it bears fruit a
hundredfold. 48
The 1 2 th canon embodied an all-important step for the reform of isolated
houses of monks or of Clerks Regular. In each kingdom or ecclesiastical
province it instituted triennial chapters which were to assemble houses of
this kind and secure for them the benefit which the General Chapters of
Citeaux provided for most of the abbeys of the order. The Cistercian
customs were given as a model and the religious were asked to have recourse,
for the organization of their system of chapters, to the counsels and the
assistance of two abbots of that order. The canon also organized the canonical
visitation of isolated houses by visitors who would be nominated in such
chapters. 49
The 13th canon was now promulgated. For Dominic the most dis¬
couraging moment had arrived. He who a few months earlier had founded a
 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE
198

new religious community and was now in Rome on its behalf, had to hear
the formal prohibition of any new foundation proclaimed. The text was not
at all long; its very brevity made it all the more trenchant.

To prevent the excessive variety of religious societies introducing a serious state

of confusion into the Church, we formally forbid anyone soever from founding
a new religious society in the future. Anyone who wants to enter religion must
give himself to one of the approved orders. Similarly, anyone who in the future
wants to found a religious house must take the rule and constitutions of some
approved religious society.50

There were a few explanations of terms. By ‘rule’ must be understood

the fundamental and stable part of the legislation already accepted, a
particular or general rule after the fashion of the rule of St Benedict; by
‘constitutions’, the canonical statutes of a religious society fixed by the
prescriptions of the Councils and the confirmations of the Pope.si This
canon of the Lateran Council thus prohibited the foundation of new com¬
munities and even the adoption by an isolated individual of a new form of
life. Dominic had reason to be uneasy about the religious status of the
Preaching of Toulouse.
In actual fact, he had expected this obstacle. He knew of the difficulties of
the Poor Catholics. The increasingly firm resistance of the bishops in the
face of the extraordinary expansion, one might almost say fermentation,
of institutions of regular life must have formed the subject of his discussions
with the Pope or with Cardinal Ugolino. This was both one of the sources
and the echo of the movement of association which on all sides, in the
cities as in the countryside, in spiritual affairs as in temporal, brought
men together at this time through what they had in common to form
communities for trade, habitation, for travel, for devotion—as well as for
brigandage—without its always being possible to foresee whether they
would not one day pass from one particular community to another. The
preaching associations of which the silhouette has already so frequently
passed through our narrative, only represented an insignificant part of the
many foundations, as ephemeral as they were stirring, which were an
indication of the desire of the men of that time to group themselves together
with a view to practising the Gospel better. The eremitical movement, of
which there had been a renewal for more than two centuries now, had
multiplied foundations, especially in Italy. It oscillated between the sporadic
forms of the solitary and the recluse, and those of the great contemplative
orders of the type of the Carthusians. A different inspiration, closely linked
with secular life, was penetrating the masses in the towns, and even the
married people, whom it grouped in organizations that proved unstable—the
penitential movement from which the beguinages and the third orders were
one day to emerge.52 The world of the brethren and sisters who were
 THE LATERAN COUNCIL I99

serving the hospices and the leper-houses, which had undergone a consider¬
able expansion from the High Middle Ages onwards, was now giving place
to religious life.53 The foundations concerned with the provision of
hospitality had led in their turn to institutions that were not unexpected,
such as the military orders—religious who were warriors and, particularly
in Spain, bound by the ties of conjugal life.54 Moreover, these currents were
active along the fringe of the traditional movement of the monks, which was
continually working at reform; and of the movement, equally longstanding
but renewed fundamentally, of the canons which, by the variety of its
reforms if not by its stability, came very close to the monastic movement.
Not only this, but these various movements overlapped each other and
sometimes fused to the extent that entire congregations had changed their
rule and a movement inaugurated under apostolic forms of life ended as a
body of monks or canons; the religious associations which had dispersed,
lost or transformed their ideal or which sometimes had turned to
anarchy, schism or heresy, could not even be counted. The anxiety of those
responsible for Christian order in the face of these tendencies charged with
energy, indeed, but capable of almost any metamorphosis-—is understand¬
able. Up till this time the Church had tried to control this overflow of
social sap,55 to stifle what there was in it of extreme anarchy, to orientate
it towards forms that were tried and tested, to forbid transfers from one
association to another, except to some more severe form of religious life,
arctior religio.56 She now took up a more radical position. In Carolingian
times she had been able to legislate on the movement for the life of perfec¬
tion as a whole in two series of parallel canons, namely in respect of the
monks and again of the canons. At the close of the eleventh century, this
attitude still found spontaneous expression in the formularies of the Curia. 57

At the beginning of the thirteenth century, it was still a normal way of

regarding things, although it corresponded less than ever with the facts. The
Lateran Council showed a more realist attitude in its 13th canon. Abandon¬
ing the outmoded framework of the two traditional types, it simply
demanded that people should confine themselves to one of the approved
forms of the life of perfection.
The decision, however categorical it might be, was not in itself intended
to stifle the Spirit. Surely the Church had the right to think that she had made
sufficient experiments to provide anyone with the wherewithal to satisfy his
attractions and inspirations. The approved orders offered candidates for the
communal and perfect life an extremely varied range of institutions.
Nevertheless, if among the eremitical, hospitaller and military move¬
ments, and naturally, those of the monks and canons, there was
superabundance of choice, the penitential and apostolic movements in
particular were very badly provided for. The apostolic movement, a century
and a half old, had up to the present found no place in the Catholic order of
 200 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

things except under the form of the Canons Regular. Preaching, however,
did not play an essential part in the definition of the canons. No society
devoted to preaching as such had succeeded up to that time in stabilizing
itself in the Church, less still in obtaining confirmation. Moreover, we can
understand the prudence and the anxieties of the hierarchy. In the
administration of charity, even in the military defence of Christendom,
there is no risk of compromising the truth. Preaching, however, continually
implicates doctrine, for which the bishops alone have received responsi¬
bility. The Humiliati of Lombardy had the Pope’s authorization only for
‘moral exhortation’, the word of brotherly edification, which had been
expressly distinguished from the preaching of the faith. 58 The order, more¬
over, was much closer to the penitential movement than to the apostolic.
The Poor Catholics were not confirmed as an order, only their individual
and particular ‘intention’ had received the sanction of the Sovereign
Pontiff.59 The brothers of St Francis, who likewise might be said to be in a
category on the fringe of the penitents and the men of apostolic life, were
in their initial stages and so far had only the right to exhort to penance.60
On the other hand, the preaching movements of the Waldenses and above
all the apostolic Catharist churches, so violently anti-Roman, constituted by
their very existence a terrible liability for the orthodox followers of
apostolic life. It was clear that the 13th canon of the Council had been
primarily directed against the collective foundations and even against the
individual vocations of the apostolic preachers. It did not leave them, it
would seem, any way of access into the Church. It was precisely from this
that Dominic was able to derive reassurance. The canon went directly
against the Pope’s initiatives in this matter since the beginning of his
pontificate, especially against the approval he had granted to the proposed
way of life of Durando de Huesca, Bernard Prim, St Francis, and their
companions;61 he would know how to defend his own work.
The second full session of the Council came, then the third. At this last
session, on the last day but one of November, Innocent promulgated his
decision on the Albigeois. Impressed by the general position of the legates
of Provence and of the clergy of the Midi—with the exception, it is said^
of Amaud, who was now opposing de Montfort—the Pope definitively
renounced the support of Raymond VI. The Count of Toulouse was dis¬
inherited without ever having been formally judged on the count of heresy.
This was a serious wrong even in respect of contemporary law 6* Simon
received the part of the county of Toulouse which he was already occupying
situated to the west of the Rh6ne. The rights of Raymond VII over the
marquisate of Provence were, however, protected. The decision was dis¬
patched by the chancellery on 14th December.63
At this point, the period of business of very grave importance was closed
Lesser affatrs could now be dealt with. The Pope had retained the young
 THE LATERAN COUNCIL 201

Raymond VII for some time, in order to discuss matters with him. He then
had to send for Fulk and Dominic to communicate his decision to them.
From the legal point of view, this was independent of that of the canons of
the Council. Dominic s order had been validly constituted and approved,
prior to the great assembly. The Pope was free to treat it as he thought fit.
He had, moreover—perhaps it was at this particular time—granted con¬
firmation to the Order of St Francis, which was thus free from the Council’s
interdiction.64 But he would not have been either correct or prudent had
he taken no account of the 13th canon. If the Pope had thought fit to give
way to the reaction of the bishops on the plane of the religious associations
as he had done on the political plane of the Albigeois, it was neither through
want of courage nor of authority. At this time a Council was such in every
sense of the word, and the head of Christendom both respected and listened
to it. Moreover Innocent understood the feeling of the Fathers of the
Lateran. Without approving the narrowness of view of the majority of the
bishops, he had no liking for the anarchy of the ‘spirituals’ and the ‘con¬
venticles’ and throughout his reign he worked to bring this back to more
normal and more traditional forms. Yet he knew how to discern the spirits
and trusted Dominic as he did Francis. On the second he had imposed a
direct profession of obedience to his own person, before approving his rule,
which was again to be twice modified by the Pope who succeeded Innocent;
he only entrusted to him preaching that was limited in its scope.6$ The
former he asked to choose, in common with his brethren, an approved rule
which would serve as a guarantee for their order so far as the bishops were
concerned and would avoid its falling under the grave suspicions which the
Poor Catholics had incurred. As soon as Dominic had given his order
protection by the choice of a rule, he would only have to present himself to
the Curia once more. Innocent promised him then to confirm all he was
asking for—possessions, the preaching, and the name of Preacher.66
Dominic was able to draw breath. He already had a fairly good idea of
what the rule to be chosen would be—clearly the Rule of St Augustine which
he had been observing for nearly twenty years. The prescriptions of personal
poverty and fraternal charity, and the high standard of morality which it
contained, were so fundamental that they could not but go further in the
direction he desired, completing the spiritual capital of the brethren without
restricting their ministry of the word, so general were their terms. Doubt¬
less the profession of the rule which for more than a century people had
become accustomed to consider as the rule of the canons par excellence
would involve, directly or indirectly, some obligations or customs which
would otherwise not have been assumed. They could not, however, be
difficult for a cleric such as Dominic. In his obligations as a canon of Osma,
he had found nothing to hamper his preaching and his imitation of the
apostles since 1206. No more than the Pope had Dominic a liking for
 202 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

anarchy or a contempt for clerical tradition. The obligation of the choice of

an approved rule, which for St Francis or Durando de Huesca would have
been heartbreaking, seemed to him a burden easily borne.67 Moreover in
return, the Pope, for the first time in the history of Christendom, promised
him to confirm in his order the preaching of the faith.
Friar John of Navarre who saw Dominic as he returned from the Curia,
would for twenty years to come retain the memory of the founder’s deep
satisfaction. The year i 2 i which had been that of Friar John’s entry into
religion, would remain in his memory as ‘the year in which the Order of
Friars Preachers was confirmed at the Council of Pope Innocent III’.68 The
expression is not quite correct. The confirmation was only promised. Such
a promise, however, really made it certain. All of them experienced the
same feeling.6° Confirmation was in fact granted immediately upon the
founder s return to Rome, after choosing the rule—‘confirmation of
the order and of all that Dominic had wished, fully and in everything, in
conformity with the plan and organization which he had conceived of
them’.70
Addressing himself now to Fulk, the Pope asked him to assign a church to
the infant order.71 There was no question of binding the brethren to the
parochial ministry. The house of Peter Seila, however, had no consecrated
chapel, as has been said ; it was thus not possible, according to the canon law
of the time, to celebrate Mass there. The brethren were to have their own
sanctuary. This would confirm their stability and their fidelity to a very
ancient tradition which required that every cleric should be attached to a
church. 72 It would also emphasize the official and public character of their
preaching. The possession of a church would give them a permanent pulpit
in the cities, independent of the goodwill of the parish priests. Fulk,
however, had no chapel at his disposal in Toulouse. It needed nothing less
than the formal order of die Pope to induce the clergy of the town, through
the intermediary of the bishop, to grant this place of worship.

The departure for Toulouse took place in January i 2 i6.73 At this period
of the year the passes over the Alps were not open. Dominic and the bishop
doubtless travelled by ship from Genoa to Marseilles^ in the suite of some
prelate returning in the direction of the Narbonensis. Raymond of Toulouse
had left, en route for Aragon.
In February the travellers passed through Narbonne. Fulk stayed on there,
detained by the quarrel of Archbishop Arnaud and Count Simon on the
matter of the duchy. 7s The quarrel had then reached its sharpest point
Without waiting for the conclusion of this painful matter, Dominic went on
to Proudle There there was great rejoicing over the confirmation by the
Holy See of the monastery’s possessions. On 2nd March, Dominic, Friar
Noel and William Claret received the donation of Pierre de Castillon,
 THE LATERAN COUNCIL
2°3
of Saissac, who was making over certain property to the monastery and
made donation of himself with his son, if the latter were willing. 76
Dominic then left for Toulouse. Simon, Fulk and his supporters also
hastened to reach the capital. Whereas the Count was taking possession of
the city which the Council had granted him definitively (on 7th March
he received the oaths of the capitouls and the population, and pronounced
his own on the following day),77 Dominic was once more in contact with his
brethren in an atmosphere of most understandable satisfaction.
The community was increasingly uncomfortable in the houses of the Seila.
They had not enough room there. Moreover, the situation in the locality was
losing its advantages. With his habitual efficiency de Montfort had begun
to fortify the castle of Narbonne.78 The earth with which the fortress was
filled up to the summit was removed. A door was opened on the side leading
away from the town to the country, to enable the French to enter and leave
unbeknown to the inhabitants. Between the city and the castle, on the site
of the gate and walls which had just been razed, a deep trench was dug, and
was fortified by strong palisades. The dwelling-place of St Dominic was now
separated from the castle by the large trench, the defences of which reared
up right in front of the house. Toulouse, moreover, was in a state of
upheaval. The destruction of the walls of the borough and of the city,
inaugurated ten months earlier by the order of Louis of France, continued
relentlessly and with increasing force. Ditches were levelled, the turrets of
houses, of which there were many, were knocked down, the chains across
the streets done away with. Toulouse acquired the appearance of a city that
had been conquered, razed, half ruined—Toulouse which had surrendered
peacefully to the Church. On account of this the attitude of the inhabitants
underwent a profound change of feeling. The crusaders had never been loved,
but how could people have experienced sentiments of anything other than
ill-suppressed revolt as they paid their forced homage to Simon de Montfort ?
Dominic could congratulate himself that he owed his installation in the city
to the generosity of a townsman of Toulouse and to that alone. He felt himself
more determined than ever to keep his ministry apart from the crusade.
There must be no question of being behind laymen in carrying out the
Pope’s decisions. The first step was the choice of a rule. In view of the
objective and the circumstances, the assembly charged with this choice took
on the aspect of a foundation chapter. The Pope had particularly insisted on
the necessity of full deliberation and of unanimous consent.79 Dominic had
no need to have this suggested to him. It was his constant line of conduct in
his relations with his brethren. It was his intention to do everything in
collaboration—better still, to leave the community of the brethren to take
the fundamental decisions by provisionally abandoning his powers to them.80
The brethren of Prouille, especially Noel and William Claret, took their
part in this chapter. They later figured, in fact, as bound by its engagements
 2 04 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

and members of the community which emerged as a result of its decisions.81

This fact was perhaps the source of a tradition which locates this chapter at
Prouille.82 The fact is not certain. There is nothing to prove that the chapter
did not meet at Toulouse, as was normal. As to the date, it was necessary to
wait at least until the week after Easter.83 The intensive ministry of Lent
was particularly all-absorbing in this year of 1216 when, for the first time,
the canon Omnis utriusque sexus on Easter confession and Communion, came
into force. There were many sins to absolve, and spiritual lives to recon¬
struct in this city of Toulouse, which had been so deeplv disturbed in its
religion. For this reason it is particularly tempting to suppose that they
waited for Pentecost to assemble the Chapter, in order to place it under the
light of the Holy Spirit ‘by whom the sons of God are given life’.8* From
this would have come the custom, universal from this time onwards right up
to the middle of the nineteenth century, of holding the Dominican General
Chapters at Pentecost. In 1216 this feast fell on 29th May.
In the Western Church there existed a certain number of rules recently
approved—those of St Stephen of Grandmont, of the Templars, of the Holy
Spirit, for instance. They had a very limited field of application and were not
nearly so well known as the two general rules, of St Benedict—the regula
par excellence—and St Augustine. The latter had met with so much success
since the end of the eleventh century among foundations of canons and
hospitallers, that it had completely superseded the earlier rules for the
canons. It had even experienced the inevitable penalty of its success. It has
already been recounted how the earlier of the two texts which traditionally
composed it, the ordo monasterii, adopted for some time by the canons of
strict observance, had finally disappeared.83 Its prescriptions, precise but
anachronistic, had finally proved impracticable. All that had remained of this
part of the text, which had been suppressed by order of the Popes, was the
opening phrase, left as a prologue to the moral part of the rule of St
Augustine.
For the brethren, as for Dominic, there could be no hesitation. Preachers
themselves, with common accord they adopted the rule of the eminent
preacher, St Augustine.86 Humbert de Romans would later explain that the
blessed Augustine in formulating his rule had taken as his model the
apostolic life. ‘The proof of this is found in the antiphons and lessons of his
office wheie it is said that he set himself to live according to the rule instituted
under the holy apostles” *1 Did not he himself say in one of his writings—
“We seek in fact to lead the apostolic life” ?’88 It can be seen how well suited
the regula apostolical of St Augustine was to the design of the brethren of
St Dominic.
Doubtless it only aimed at expressly renewing the communal poverty of
the early Christians and had nothing to say either as to mendicacy or preach¬
ing. Yet it did not exclude detailed prescriptions of this sort; it even called
 THE LATERAN COUNCIL 20 S

for them by its reference to the apostles. ‘Although it is permitted’, Humbert

de Romans was to say again, ‘when one follows this rule, to have landed
property and revenues or not to have them, it is better for the preachers
who are living under its authority not to have any, for the preaching of the
Gospel is much less suited to the rich than to him who is voluntarily poor’.90
Moreover, he was to add¬

in instituting the new Order of Preachers, it was necessary to make full and detailed
provisions as to the studies, the poverty and other similar points, which had
to be added to the rule of the order. It was thus necessary to choose a rule such
as would present nothing which would come into conflict with constitutions of
this type; a rule such that these constitutions might be added and adapted to it in
a suitable manner. Such was in actual fact the rule of the blessed Augustine. It
contains only a small number of data, a few prescriptions of spirituality or of
common sense, which are not found in the other rules. Thus all the provisions
demanded by the statute of preaching can be added to it very conveniently.91
In these conditions it may be asked why the Preaching of Toulouse had
not placed itself under the rule of the Bishop of Hippo from i 2 i £. For the
precise reason that it had no need to do so. The rule had lost its normative
value at the beginning of the twelfth century by the disappearance of the
ordo monasterii, which in itself constituted a detailed code of observance. At
that date it nevertheless still preserved its value as a symbol, because of the
clearness of its position in the matter of individual poverty. This value,
however, no longer existed at a period when religious poverty was moving
in the direction of mendicancy. Several indications clearly show that the rule
of St Augustine was beginning to lose its high reputation at the beginning of
the thirteenth century.92 Had it not been for the 13th canon of the Lateran,
it would perhaps have come to be completely forgotten. On the contrary,
after 1215, it once more found its value, at the head of the particular
legislation of the new religious orders and their authentication for the
future.
The first effect of the rule would be to facilitate the formalities of con¬
firmation. As Augustinian Clerks Regular, the brethren of St Dominic would
enter the recognized category of canonical orders. A current procedure was
in existence for confirming the property and the constituent elements of
these orders, and it was sufficient to have recourse to such procedure. The
title of canon, moreover, would cover the new community so far as the
local clergy were concerned. Thanks to this, they would avoid arousing the
hostility of the traditionalists, at least at a first contact. Experience was to
prove that the danger was no chimerical one.93
On the other hand, entrance into the canonical category would from the
very first confer a certain canonical status. Since the end of the eleventh
century, councils and popes had been legislating or taking decisions on the
Canons Regular. Preserved in certain collections of official texts, these
 2 o6 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

documents fixed the distinct nature of the Order of Canons in relation to the
monastic order, and its clerical character, defended the stability of its
profession, determined the obligation of the rule of St Augustine, the
poverty of the religious, their right to exercise the ministry of souls.94 Such
provisions clearly could not in any way interfere with the special character¬
istics of the Toulouse foundation. On the contrary, they brought
considerable advantages to a cleric as attached as Dominic was to the
tradition of the Church. It was on this canonical status, for instance, that
Dominic depended for defining the obligation of chastity of the brethren;
their formula of profession was to make no mention of it.
Quite recently the Council of Montpellier had legislated on the Canons
Regular of the province of Narbonne.95 In the majority of its provisions it
limited itself to recalling the conditions of individual poverty and moral
rectitude of the canons, the prohibitions against acting as lawyers,96 and
passing to another form of religious life unless it should be a higher one,97
but it added certain regulations of its own which would be found in the
practice at least of the brethren of St Dominic. For instance, the precept to
collect the remains at the end of the meal so that the whole of them could
be given to the poor;98 the requirement that in the priories which were to
serve tire churches assigned to them there should be at least three
brethren ;99 finally regulations as to clothes by which the Council seemed to
set great store, for it imposed them under strict obedience. It was necessary
to wear shoes that were close fitting and came high up, long closed tunics
most important of all a surplice, a black cloak of simple material, a wide
tonsure in the form of a crown. Joo This may perhaps have been the classic
insistence on regular poverty, but it was also the reaction of the authorities
against the inferiority complex of the clergy of the Midi to which attention
has already been drawn, ioi The Council was forcing clerics, in particular
the Clerks Regular, to make known by the tonsure and surplice their
priestly character, which they sought to hide so as to avoid insults. The
close-fitting shoes, on the other hand, were to distinguish them from the
preachers of the Waldenses.
In taking upon themselves these special obligations, the rule of St
ugustine and its canonical status, Dominic’s brethren were carrying out the
will of the Pope. This heterogeneous collection of regulations, however
was in no w,se sufficient to direct the life of the community of Toulouse!
Ifie foundation chapter pursued its legislative task.
Jordan of Saxony expressly relates that after the choice of the rule of
St August,ne, the brethren decided to take upon themselves ‘customs of
stnct observance relating to the food, the fasts, sleep and the wearing of
wool ..or To characterize these constitutions he uses the expression
arctwres amuetudina. These words tell us more than seems possible at first
 THE LATERAN COUNCIL 207

For a long time past, the orders who were following a traditional rule had
added to it under the influence of the various currents of reform. The most
ancient type of these additions bore the name of customs, consuetudines. It
was ‘a written law, established by use’,103 which interpreted and developed
the observance of the official rule. Since the twelfth century, however, the
development of the great centralized orders and of their representative
assembly, the general chapter, of which the Order of Citeaux had provided
the model, gave rise to additions which were original in form. Thus there
was legislation from a single source, the elements of which were of day-to-
day importance, to which was given the name of statutes (statuta, institu-
tiones). These statutes had a bearing both on the customary observances,
which they corrected or adapted according to the circumstances, and on the
organization or constitution of the society formed by a great order—whence
the name of constitutiones which would be given to them in the course of the
thirteenth century. In the case of the rule of St Augustine, so poor in
precise juridical dispositions, these customs and constitutions played the
principal part. Substituted for the prescriptions of the abolished ordo
monasterii, they represented the real code of the community.
When the canons had revived the ancient Augustinian rule, to complete
it they simultaneously adopted observances that were more or less moderate.
This was the ordo antiquus, IQ4 the moderate observance of the canons of the
twelfth century, of which the Order of Saint Rufus supplies the classic
example; it was this the chapter of Osma followed, as did the majority ot
the chapters of the south. The institution of Springiersbach, however, then
of Premontre in the second decade of the century, introduced a second type
of customs, the ordo novus, or arctior consuetudo.105 This was diffused through
especially fervent communities or even won the support of communities of
longer standing—a thing that did not happen without causing a stir. It was
to this arctior consuetudo that the community of Toulouse had recourse.
Clearly, they would not seek the model of strict observance from the
reformed canons of Springiersbach in Germany. They took it from
Premontre.
A few decades later Humbert de Romans would testify to this fact. His
commentary deserves to be quoted at length—

The Premonstratensians [he recalled] have reformed and developed the religious
life of the blessed Augustine, as the Cistercians have done in the case of blessed
Benedict. They outstrip all the members of this family by the austerity of their
life, the beauty of their observances, the wisdom of their government of very
large numbers of religious, thanks to the general chapters, canonical visitations and
other institutions of this kind. Thus, when the blessed Dominic and the brethren
of his time could not obtain from the lord Pope a new and severe rule in
accordance with the fervour which inspired them, and when, turned aside from
their project, they chose the rule of the blessed Augustine, with just reason they
 2o8 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

adopted, in addition to this rule, all they found that was austere, beautiful,
wise and yet adaptable to their purposes in the constitutions of those religious
who surpassed the others in the Augustinian family.106

During his childhood at Caleruega Dominic had known the Premon-

stratensians well in the nearby abbey of Nuestra Senora de la Vid, the only
one of this type in the diocese. He often heard it spoken of again when he
was Canon of Osma, especially when the observance for the reform of the
chapter was discussed. During his ministry in the Narbonensis, he saw still
more of the Premonstratensians. Navarre d’Acqs, indeed, the Bishop of
Couserans, a place where he often preached, was Abbot of the Premon¬
stratensians of Combelongue.10? Nothing was easier for him, moreover, than
to procure their customs. It is possible that he had already used them to
provide a rule for the sisters of Prouille.10^
We still possess the findings of the chapter of i 2 16. Written on parchment
before being inscribed in the daily life of the brethren, who had too rapidly
become founders of convents in their turn, this law of observance subsists
m the text of the primitive constitutions of the order, where it forms the
prologue and the first distinction (or part), to which must be joined the
rule of the lay-brethren’ ;I09 the second distinction, as Mill be seen,
represents the fruit of later legislation.110
The prologue, the division and the first part of these constitutions are for
the most part textually borrowed from a version of the customs of Premontre
which goes back to the last quarter of the twelfth century, m These texts as
a whole have only been very slightly modified since. They constitute a pure
law of observance-canonical office, meals, fasts, food, sleep, the sick,
novices, silence, clothing, the tonsure, list of faults and of the penances
which correspond to them. In the prologue they bear the very apt title of
iber consuetudinum. They are also given, however, the significant title of
regula canonicorumA12 These names exactly fit the contents."
The comparison of this primitive rule with the customs of Premontre
wnch served as its substance is very significant. Dominic and his brethren
ma e their choice. What they borrowed was not selected at random. What
they left, or replaced by new dispositions, still less so. If they took over into
t eir text words or prescriptions which they might have left aside, it is
ecause they desired them, or at any rate, did not find them repugnant
Now this is the case with terms as typical as ‘canons’, ‘canonical order’'
canonical religion (or discipline)’.H3 Once even, and in an original text’
they mentioned the promise of ‘stability’,m which was to "close the
noviciate If they had had the least desire not to entangle themselves in the
canonical traditions, they would carefully have avoided words of this kind
capable of an interpretation disastrous to the special characteristic of the
order—its liberty of operation and its independence.
Dominic and his brethren thus adopted the canonical life without hesita-
 THE LATERAN COUNCIL 209

tion. What they sought from it, through the text of Premontre, was
regularity, that is to say, liturgical life—the morning chapter, Mass, the
canonical hours solemnly recited in the church; ascetical life organized
down to its very details in accordance with the strictest monastic tradition—
fast from 14th September to Easter, and on Fridays, vigils and Rogation days,
perpetual abstinence, the hard couch, the poverty and roughness of the
woollen garments;1^ the formation of the moral life by the attitude of
constant humility and common charity and by the frequent chapter of
faults, with penances graded in accordance with a detailed and severe
scale;116 finally, the best part of the classic conventual inheritance, the
contemplative life for which the brethren appeared to have an aptitude from
the beginning.11? It will later be seen more clearly how Dominic reconciled
these provisions of austerity and contemplation with the ministry of the
word, precisely through his idea of the evangelical life.
As early as 1216, it seems,118 he showed something of his inspiration in
the chapter on the master of novices, in a long original text, as fresh and
moving as the ideal novice whose portrait he intended to draw.

The master teaches his novices humility of heart and of body and strives to form
them to this, according to this saying—Discite a me quia mitis sum et humilis corde.
He teaches them to go to confession frequently with sincerity and discernment,
to live without possessions, to give up their own will, in all things to practise
spontaneous obedience in regard to the will of their superior. He teaches them
how to behave in every circumstance and in every place; how to remain in the
place where they have been put; how to make the inclination to whoever gives
them anything or takes anything from them, to whoever speaks to them kindly,
or harshly; the reserve to be kept in certain places, keeping one’s eyes lowered;
the prayer to be recited, and how to say it in silence so that the noise does not
disturb the others. To ask pardon whenever they receive a reprimand from the
superior; not under any circumstances to argue with anyone at all; finally, to
obey their master in all things; to see that they carefully follow the companion
who walks at their side in the procession round the cloister; not to speak at
forbidden times or in forbidden places; to say Benedictus Deus when they are given
some garment, making the deep inclination; never to judge anyone deliberately.
If they see something done which seems to them evil, let them ask themselves if
it is not perhaps good, or at least done with a good intention, for the judgment
of man often goes astray. He shall show them how to make the venia at chapter or
wherever they receive a reprimand, frequently to undergo the discipline, not to
speak of the absent except to say good of them, to drink with both hands and
seated. He shall teach them with what care they must handle the books and
clothing and other property of the monastery; what application they should have
in study, so that by day and by night, in the house and on a journey, they are always
occupied in reading or meditating on something, striving to retain by heart all
they possibly can; and what fervour they will have to have in preaching when the
fjrrie comes,!I9
 2 Io IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

The last phrases are especially remarkable. We can go carefully through

the earlier canonical customs, those of St Victor, of Marbach, of Ste-Marie-
du-Port, of Premontre, of St Rufus, but we shall find nothing like this.I2°
Dominic was giving to regular life a strong impulse and orientation towards
preaching, but as an outcome of study and contemplation; no interior dis¬
position seemed to him more important in this sense than humility of heart
in poverty.
The same orientation inspired a series of hitherto unknown dispositions.
A code of silence, in which the penances became more severe with the
number of infractions, helped to maintain the atmosphere of recollection
and study even in the refectory. 121 To the faults which formed the subject
of culpae, collected and classified by the Premonstratensians into five
categories, a certain number were added—all of them bore on study,
preaching, absences from the monastery required by the ministry.122
The most notable, however, of the transformations which Dominic and
his brethren imposed on regular tradition to adapt it to the ministry of
preaching, was the extensive system of dispensations which they provided
for in the life of observance, for reasons of study and no longer only for that
of health. 123 No mistake would be made in viewing this as one of the most
characteristic innovations of the Dominican order, preoccupied as it was
with maintaining the balance between elements of the life that were rich
indeed but sometimes in opposition. Dominic introduced this in 1216, in
five paragraphs of the customs, in regard to the conventual chapter, recitation
of the office, the fasts, meals in common and the sick. 124 Later he was again
to make general the rule of dispensation for reasons of study and the
ministry, to the extent of making of it a fundamental law of the observance
of his order.
Regular austerity and liturgical life, however, did not at first manifest
themselves to Dominic’s eyes as an eventual obstacle to the ministry of
souls. He saw in them much more a direct preparation, the point of
departure of the imitation of the apostles and the condition of a ministry
verbo et exemplo; from which sprang the severity of the observance he chose
more rigorous than the strictest of the canonical observances.
The ‘apostolic rule’, however, did not as yet influence the customs. It is
to be found only in a single disposition, the suppression of the prohibitions
in the matter of food, should the friar find himself in the position of a
guest. 125 The prohibition against riding a horse without grave necessity, to
e ound in the manuscript, is an addition later than 1216.126 The rule of
poverty, in particular, was not set down in the text. Jordan of Saxony tells
us,^however, that it was brought forward by the chapter under the form of
an institutional proposition’-not to receive landed property, but to accept
revenues provisionally. 127 For the brethren of St Romain, however, the
apostolic rule was already explicitly contained in a document which still
 THE LATERAN COUNCIL lit

retained its value, the charter of Fulk of 1215-.128 This was sufficient to
define the purpose of the order, the preaching, and its fundamental inspira¬
tion, evangelical poverty.
On Pentecost evening 1216, the community of the preachers of Toulouse
could consider that it had made a satisfactory achievement. It possessed a
classic rule against which to judge the sincerity of its life; it had fixed its
own status and form of life within the framework of the Augustinian family
by its customs and observances. The charter of its bishop gave it its hier¬
archical mission and sanctioned its own particular spirituality. These
documents had both the detailed precision and the elasticity necessary to
obtain the confirmations promised by the Pope and to enable the brethren
to face the future without fear. If the detailed law of observance could
assure fruitfulness and unity in daily life, the constitutional law, on the other
hand, reduced now to two or three principles, could be developed almost
indefinitely. Times were not ripe to give it more precise shape. It was first
necessary for the order to live and develop.
The years which were coming would see the order extended throughout
the world. The customs of 1216 would be put into practice by increasing
numbers of brethren who had not been present at the foundation. Dominic
could now put these detailed regulations into practice among them with
rigorous fidelity. 129 It is not, then, surprising that these brethren should
have attached to this set of regulations such importance that it eclipsed in
their thoughts the rule of St Augustine itself. It is a fact that twenty years
later, when the brethren spoke of this legislation, they would use terms
which would signify its exact value—‘the rule of the order’, ‘the rule of
St Dominic’, ‘the rule of the Friars Preachers’, or simply, ‘the rule’.130
It was, moreover, the name that was given to it.131
Dominic’s role at the centre of the community was not only that of a
father, of a counsellor full of experience and inspiration. He was the master
and leader to whom all had given themselves by the profession of obedience.
It remains for us to consider this point, which will throw considerable light
on the sequence of this narrative.
In the customs of 1 2 16, an archaic formula of profession is met with which
the present formula shortly afterwards replaced. The novice after his time
of probation was to promise ‘stability and common life’ and to make vow
‘of obedience to the superior and his successors’.132 This formula had
emerged out of that of the Canons of Premontre.133 The original element,
the gift of the religious to the church of the monastery, had been dis¬
continued. I34 Similarly, the qualifying phrase which specified the local
character of the stability promised had been dropped.135 Dominic and his
brethren were thus careful not to dedicate themselves to the service of a
sanctuary and its patron, as all the canons did. They thus avoided confining
themselves within the precincts of a monastery, in accordance with the
2I 2 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

ancient conception of the monks. The promise of stability which they agreed
to make had no meaning apart from that of stability in the order.136 It was
really a duplication of the promise of common life. The latter was finally to
be identified with the vow of obedience to the superior, who was the
guardian of this common life. Thus the ultimate formula of the Dominican
profession would retain only the third promise. Eventually, the construction
of the order would thus rest, as it still does today, on a single vow—the
immediate profession of obedience to the superior of the order and his
successors. This was in fact the case right from the beginning. The first sign
of the coming into being of the order was the oblation which Peter Seila
and Thomas of Toulouse made of themselves to St Dominic. Such a disposi¬
tion was indeed unusual.
At that time it did not, however, lack models or precedents, as, for
instance, profession of obedience into the hands of a superior pronounced
by the vast number of Cluniac monks to the single Abbot of Cluny,13? or,
more precisely, the profession of the Spanish Knights of Santiago de la Espada
(i 175), reduced to a single vow of obedience into the hrnds of their master,
without any vow of chastity or common life;138 or again, an even more
direct instance, the vow of obedience into the hands of a superior that Diego
received from Arnaud de Crampagna after his conversion, in Pamiers,13^ or
that which Pope Innocent had exacted of the apostolic preachers, Durando
de Huesca, Bernard Prim, St Francis. J40 All these precedents, had indeed
one single source despite their deep variety—the general system of ties of
dependence which, in every sphere of Western civilization, sought to add
to the various hierarchies in order to strengthen the traditional communities
by ties from man to man sealed by an oath. Through his homage as a vassal,
a man made over his activities to his lord, linked his lot to his and gave him
his fidelity. The lord in return became his protector and his guarantor,
henceforward bearing the responsibility for his acts. Now such bonds of
feudal dependence had for a long time past made their appearance in the
framework of the Church. Pope Innocent III had given them a considerable
place in the sphere of Christian politics by the system of vassal kings. In
the absence of any institutions capable of welcoming and directing the forces
of the apostolic movement towards their real goal, it was in an oath of
this kind that he placed his confidence. The profession of pure obedience of
Dominic’s brethren to their ‘prior and master’, was an echo of these oaths
to the Pope, as it was the parallel of the professions of serfs and donated
persons which the founder had received at the monastery of Prouille. 142
Such a position might have turned to absolutism, if not to tyranny. It
found its natural counterpoise in the mentality of the times, that of the
community. Hence the attitude already noted in the case of Dominic_the
continual anxiety to stand aside before the counsel, deliberation, the
common decision of his brethren. He knew how to use his authority; he
 THE LATERAN COUNCIL 213

also knew when it was necessary to waive it before the community in the
interests of a happy equilibrium. This explains the extreme elasticity
of the Dominican foundation during its initial years. Nothing as yet
depended on authorities or external documents. Everything rested on
the brethren and on the founder. In 1213-, when the order had not yet fixed
its observance and when its activity was not yet approved by the bishop, it
was already solidly constituted in the house of Peter Seila by the profession
of obedience. In 1216, when the exigencies and prohibitions of the Council
of the Lateran might have endangered the new foundation, the order had
adapted itself without difficulty, because the essential of its constitution was
the obedience of the brethren to Dominic and the obedience of Dominic to
his bishop. In 1217, when the order would experience rapid growth, and a
the same time a dispersion far and wide, it was to remain solidly united
by grace of the direct bond between the brethren and the founder. Neither
the bishop nor the Pope would have need to intervene in the order, to
consolidate it. The legislation would remain in the hands of the community
of the brethren alone, the brethren in the hands of Dominic who had
received their oaths, and of him alone. This legislation, however, elaborated
stage by stage in accordance with the lessons of experience, would soon
lay down and make plain in a collection of texts the rules of obedience and of
common life, eventually permitting the founder to efface himself without
danger. Then would be realized, by harmonious exchange between the
authority of the master, to whom all are linked by the profession of
obedience, the evidence of the text, which each friar can read over for
himself, and the unanimity of hearts—the work of perfection and fraternity
which had been recalled as far back as 1 2 16 by the prologue borrowed from
the customs of the Premonstratensians.

Since the rule commands us to have only one heart and one soul in the Lord, it is
meet that, li ving under a single rule, bound by the vows of a single profession, we
should find ourselves equally unanimous in the observance of our canonical
religion, so that the unity which we should conserve in our hearts may be
fostered and shown forth to the world outside by the uniformity of our behaviour.
Now it is very certain that we shall be able to practise this observance and keep
it in mind with more resolution and more completely, if what should be done is
set down in writing, if each one can learn from the evidence of a written document
the way in which he should live, if no one has permission to change, add, or
retrench anything whatsoever of his own will. For if we were to neglect the
smallest details, we could not but fear a progressive fall from grace. Thus in
order to provide for the unity and peace of the order as a whole, we have carefully
drawn up the book which we call the book of customs.143

The question, of the church and of the new convent now became of first
importance. The brethren had, however, to wait a few more weeks for it to
be settled. On the morrow of his return to the capital, Fulk had set off again
8—S.D.
214 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

to accompany Simon de Montfort, who was going to France, in an atmos¬

phere of triumph to pay homage to the king, Philip Augustus.144
The bishop only returned in June. A few days later,145 he gathered the
canons of his cathedral together in chapter. Strongly urged by Fulk,146 the
provost and community consented to deprive themselves of the chapel of
St Romain14? in favour of Brother Dominic, ‘prior and master of the
Preachers’, and of his companions present and to come. They gave him the
sanctuary and the offerings of the faithful, in exchange for a quit rent of
three ‘sous’ yearly, but not the parish rights. The brethren might set up a
cemetery for their personal use. The canons, however, would not authorize
them to bury any stranger, and there they laid down in minute detail
what should happen in the case of some dying person who was desirous of
profiting by burial by the brethren and their suffrages and, in order to
get round the prohibition, should take the habit in extremis and make
profession. I48 There was no danger, however, of the Preaching of Toulouse
lessening the revenues of the chapter of St Etienne, particularly since the
bishop was soon to incorporate in the cathedral community several churches
in the diocese.149
It is possible that the brethren had been using St Romain since the previous
year.1 so They could not, however, do anything more than celebrate the
office there. The donation of July 1216 enabled them to lodge in some
adjoining premises, then to begin to build. Three months after this donation,
they received from a Toulouse couple, Raymond Vital and Bruniquel his
wife, a house with dependencies and newly planted vineyards. The house
was adjoining the convent, whose domain it increased. The vineyard, whose
value was increased by the share of one-eighth in a land mill situated by the
weir of the Daurade, permitted them to buy through exchange from Vital
Autard and from Grande, his wife, a house adjoining the convent. The share
of the mill belonged to Thomas de Tramesaygues, whose widow would later
become a nun of Prouille.151 The Vital belonged to the best burghers of
Toulouse. A man of experience and integrity, one of the twenty-four consuls
of Toulouse—like his brother Pierre, Raymond Vital had played his part in
the administration of the borough and the city. And it was his paternal
mansion, it seems, that he was giving to enlarge the convent.J52 The
Toulouse foundation of St Dominic, made possible by the donations of the
Seda and of Bishop Fulk, maintained by the gifts of the canons of St Etienne,
of Raymond Vital and ot Pierre Tramesaygues, marked by the religious
profession of several members of the town, thus proved itself to be strictly
local and independent of the crusade.
Having now sufficient room at their disposal, the brethren were able to
carry out the majority of their projects. A cloister was erected beside the
church. A storey of cells was installed above the cloister. Jordan gives the
detail that these cells enabled them ‘sufficiently’ to sleep and study.153 That
 THE LATERAN COUNCIL
2'S
is to say, they remained poor. The brethren, however, were not lodged in
a dormitory after the manner of other religious. The distinctive character of
these preachers was emphasized by this fact.
New brethren had entered the order since i 2 i Certain of them came
from the world, others from religious communities. The Dominican ideal
made an evident appeal to generous hearts. On his side Dominic inaugurated
from this time onwards the policy of intensive recruitment which he
pursued until his death, particularly in the case of young clerics. Finally the
choice of the rule and of the statutes of strict observance made it possible for
religious or canons of common observance to go over to the arctior religio of
the preachers of Toulouse. Canon law explicitly reserved the possibility of
this, even despite the opposition of superiors or of earlier established
communities.154
It was at this time, at all events, that Matthew of France left the chapter
of Castres, of which he was prior, to join his friend Dominic once more, *55
Flaving come from France with Simon de Montfort, this great religious
would soon be returning there to spread the new order. A group of Castilians
or Spaniards entered the community before the summer of 1217. Among
them was Mames, Dominic’s own brother.^6 Another came from the
neighbourhood of Osma—Miguel de Ucero.I57 The others were Miguel de
Espana, Pedro de Madrid, Gomez. T58
Another of the brethren was a native of England—Lawrence the English¬
man ;159 a lay-brother, Friar Odier, was from Normandy.160 Finally,
Toulouse again supplied Dominic with one of his best collaborators, Friar
Bertrand of Garrigo,161 whose family was later to hand over to the order its
rights over the site of the future convent of Toulouse, when the cloister of
St Romain had clearly proved itself too small.162
If we add to these neAvcomers those who were already in the order in
i2iy-—Friar William Claret, Friar Dominic of Spain, Friar Noel, Friar
Vitalis, Friar Peter Seila, Friar Thomas of Toulouse, Friar Guillaume
Raymond, Friar John of Navarre, perhaps Friar Stephen of Metz—it will be
seen that the number of the brethren at the beginning of 1217 would amount
to about twenty, twelve of whom were certainly present in the middle of
1216, doubtless with a few others—Jordan says, about sixteen. l63
From the completion of the foundation chapter, or for the newcomers
from the end of the time of probation that was perhaps assigned to one or
the other of them, the brethren had to pronounce their vows according to
the new rule and constitutions. It is very probable that Dominic was the
first to give them the example of this.164 A change of observance, naturally
in the direction of what was more austere, necessarily involved the change
of profession. It was only then that the founder broke the legal ties that
bound him to his original chapter and that he ceased to bear the official
title of Canon of Osma.l65
2i6 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

The order was henceforward definitely established in its rule, its convent,
its profession, its ministry. Wearing the white tunic and hooded scapular166
which partially concealed the linen surplice of the canons of the Narbonen-
sis,167 wrapped in the black cloak and wearing the close-fitting shoes, their
heads encircled with the large clerical tonsure,168 the brethren of the
preaching of Toulouse worked at the salvation of souls, in accordance with
the mandate received from the Bishop of Toulouse. Their important and
increasing number could not but fill the latter with hope.
Fulk was obsessed by the vast extent of the diocese he had to evangelize.
At this time he was considering decentralizing it. Taking advantage of the
restitutions of churches that Simon de Montfort had just made to the diocese
in September169 in compliance with the statutes of Pamiers,J70 he set aside
six of these in October to the profit of the canons of the cathedral of St
Etienne. The latter, moreover, undertook to resume regular life to its
fullest extent.17i Thus they secured for these parishes, through a parish
priest whom they knew how to choose with care, or even by a subordinate
priory which they might found there, a fruitful pastoral ministry. J72 The
bishop acted similarly with his other college of canons, the preachers of
St Romain. This time, however, the concession of churches arose out of
an even more deeply rooted inspiration. With an abnegation rare among
prelates, the bishop adopted the heroic means of cutting down his authority
for the major part, by dividing his diocese into sections. He was soon to
write to the Pope to submit his project of dismemberment. J73 At the same
time he agreed with Dominic to divide the sphere of operations of the
Preaching of Toulouse in accordance with the same plan. Supplementary
centres of ministry would be founded, priories of the order,174 where three
brethren at least would lodge and exercise their influence over the cor¬
responding portion of the diocese. J75 With this end in view, he granted the
Pleaching two new churches. One at Loubens,I76 about nine miles away
from Pamiers, would serve the valley of the Ariege, that is to say the part of
the diocese situated in the county of Foix to the south-west of Toulouse.
The other, between Puylaurens and Soreze,I77 would work the north¬
eastern portion of the diocese, which bordered on that of Albi. Prouille,
however, at the frontiers of the diocese of Carcassonne, would continue to
serve as a centre for the ministry of the Lauragais. Freed by William Claret
from the cares of the administration of the monastery, Friar Noel and,
doubtless, some companion with him, there pursued Dominic’s ministry.
At the time when he was preparing to travel to Rome to obtain the
confirmations promised by the Pope, the founder attached himself more and
more systematically to the evangelization of the diocese of Toulouse.
Nothing indicated that he was envisaging a wider sphere of action. Everything
was, however, to be transformed, in the course of a stay of a few weeks at
the centre of the Church,
 Chapter XII

THE ORDER OF PREACHERS

SPREAD THROUGH THE WORLD

D OMINIC set off about the middle of October.1 It would be

interesting to know who the companion was who made the journey
with him, but this time we are left in the dark.2 Before leaving, the
Master had appointed a brother from the neighbourhood of Toulouse, Friar
Bertrand of Garrigo, to act on behalf of St Romain.3 Bertrand received the
gifts necessary for the new convent in the name of the founder and of the
community.4 He thus had the mission of superintending the building
operations. This was no light responsibility, as Friar Rodolfo, procurator of
the convent of Bologna, would later experience to his cost. It did not take
Dominic long to criticize the constructions as over-fine or over-spacious.5
Friar Bertrand would not abuse the saint’s trust.6 He was on intimate terms
with him and had received his confidences as he went with him on his
apostolic journeys—there were few brethren who were to such an extent
impregnated with Dominic’s thoughts and example. Bertrand believed
himself a great sinner and was so excessively distressed over his faults that he
was finally told to pray in future only for the sins of others—this he did
from then onwards with much zeal. Moreover, he mortified himself
with equal zest. Jordan describes him at this period as a brother ‘of great
holiness and of inexorable rigour in his own regard, who mortified his
flesh very severely’.7 The cells of the new convent complied with what
was expected. They were just sufficient and no more for the installation of
a mattress with a desk for study.8
The development of the situation since the earlier journey to the Curia
had been unexpected. It can even be said that it was reversed. In i2i£
everything seemed indicative of peace and of hope. Now everything gave
cause for anxiety. Events had been particularly precipitate during the last
few months, both in Rome and in the county of Toulouse.
A few weeks before his departure, Dominic had been present at scenes
that were extremely painful.9 The Count de Montfort, returning in July
from his triumphant journey to the King of France, had found the marquisate
of Provence in open rebellion through the work of the youthful Raymond
VII. Only the castle of Beaucaire still held out with a few loyal followers.
Despite all his efforts, Simon was unable to deliver it and retake the city.
The echo of this first cruel set-back resounded over the whole country for a
 2 I 8 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

long time. Now everything was going wrong. The pendulum of fortune,
motionless for a short time, was beginning to swing again, but in the reverse
direction. Simon learnt that the people of Toulouse were plotting with
Raymond VI, who was collecting troops in Aragon in order to win back his
capital. Irritated by his set-back, by these intrigues and by certain acts of
treachery which cut him to the quick, he violently attacked the turbulent
town. Toulouse, three parts dismantled, was as incapable of triumphing
totally over the Count as the latter was of mastering the city by street
combats. At one particular moment the crusaders, driven back into the
cathedral and the houses adjoining the castle of Narbonne, reacted by setting
fire to the city at various points. Simon even contemplated destroying it
from end to end. He finally contented himself with hostages, seized unawares,
and with an enormous fine. Such was his first appearance as the man who
was to govern the capital. He had never won the heart of the men of
Toulouse and now he had lost his last chances of holding the land peacefully.
Besides this, he had gravely compromised his bishop.10 On two occasions
Fulk, helped by the Abbot of Saint Sernin, had intervened between the
Count and his subjects. Misinterpreting the exasperation of the feudal lord,
Fulk had probably gone too far. His promises were not kept. He was
accused of having drawn his fellow-citizens into a trap, of having plotted for
their ruin, of having delivered them up by ruse to their adversary. The
bitterness of these townsmen had ample time to become inflamed during the
months which followed, when by order of the count his men continued to
knock down the walls and feudal towers with which the city was covered,
the symbol and instrument of the power of the urban dynasties;11 on the
other hand the exactions, necessitated by the collection of the fine, daily
kept alive in their hearts a particularly bitter wound.™ After this, Fulk
had little chance of obtaining a hearing for religion from his flock. The
work of reconquest or of strengthening of the Catholic faith would seem to be
dangerously threatened by a political conjuncture as unfavourable as this.
Such were Dominic s discouraging thoughts as he hastened towards Rome.
What would he find there ? That side of the horizon, though not so dark,
showed itself uncertain. Five months earlier, when the chapter of St Romain
had made choice of the rule of St Augustine and set down the customs of the
order in detail, Dominic had thought that all the obstacles in the way of
confirmation were lifted. The unexpected death of Pope Innocent III on
16th July, i 216, news of which had reached Toulouse in the middle of the
summer, might easily lead to a revised decision. One can imagine the
uneasiness of the man of God. For one who during the General Council of
the Lateran had lived over again the history of this pontificate, in some sense
at its greatest moment, the disappearance of the great Pope in the prime of
life could not but be a crushing loss. All the more was this so for the founder
of a preaching order which had only pledged itself to go forward boldly
 THE ORDER OF PREACHERS SPREAD THROUGH THE WORLD 219

because it was well aware of the courageous and uncompromising attitude

of the Sovereign Pontiff in the matter. The Pope had for long fought against
the misgivings of the bishops; if he had none the less been obliged, and that
at the height of his power, to give way in some degree to their opposition,
who would keep that opposition within bounds for the future? He had
made formal promises to Dominic’s order—his successor would have no
obligation to keep them. He might not understand the order’s vocation and
the necessity for its continued existence.
As soon as he arrived in the eternal city, Dominic was reassured. Cardinal
Cencio Savelli, whom the Sacred College had elected two days after
Innocent’s death, had no other programme than that of his predecessor. He
was, wrote Jacques de Vitry on the morrow of the election, ‘a good old
man, full of religion, very simple and kindly, who had distributed to the
poor practically all he possessed.’15 Organizer of the pontifical finance, he
had played his part discreetly in the brilliant college of cardinals which
Innocent’s genius had gathered together, formed and utilized throughout
the Church as legates or commissioners. The college of cardinals was fully
determined to continue this work. So swift an election of Innocent’s
successor could be taken as a guarantee of this.
Such was the good news which the founder learnt immediately upon his
first visit to the Cardinal of Ostia, Ugolino, perhaps the most prominent
member of the whole sacred college. He was able to verify the correctness
of this information on the occasion of the first audience the Pope granted
him in his palace of the Vatican.14 The confirmations asked for and promised
would be given him. As to the canonical community and their property, the
matter would be dealt with without delay. The formula of the great
privilege Religiosam vitam was precisely framed for that purpose.15 Dominic
was invited to set down in detail the provisions he wished to see incorporated
in the bull. The Pope granted him these in a later audience and had the
definitive text drawn up by his chancellery. It was necessary to wait some
time longer for a meeting of the consistory, that is to say of the college of
cardinals met together in the council of the Sovereign Pontiff. The con¬
sistory was held a few days before Christmas and at it the bull was accepted.
On 22nd December, at St Peter’s, Dominic finally received the document
so long desired.16
The consistorial privilege of 22nd December, 1216 bore irom the
beginning the name of ‘confirmation of the order’.17 It is indeed the classic
document of confirmation, an important bull corroborated by the rota of
the Pope and the signature of eighteen cardinals, among them Ugolino,
Cardinal-bishop of Ostia and Velletri,18 and Robert de Courson, Cardinal-
priest of St Stefano. The original, brought back by Dominic to St Romain
and preserved in the convent of Toulouse until its suppression, is today to
be found in the archives of Haute-Garonne.
 2 20 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

It was not the first time that the Roman chancellery had transcribed the
formula Religiosam vitam. Innocent III had often made use of it for monks,
canons, certain hospitallers. Honorius made use of it even more: in the last
three months of 1216, he issued it six times at least.10 This formula, or
rather this collection of stereotyped formulae, some of which had been
static since the ninth century, in effect made it possible for the most varied
institutions to be confirmed and enriched with privileges. Founders had the
choice between about fifty traditional provisions; they took one or rejected
the other according to their own intentions; the prologue, equally tradi¬
tional, was added, as were the final clauses. After this, if the Holy See were
in agreement, the text was confirmed as a whole by the Pope and cardinals
in the course of a consistory. Thus the great privilege was merely a mosaic
of ready-made formulae. The composition of this mosaic, however, remained
charged with significance. This was the case with the privilege obtained by
Dominic.
Aftei the formula of address and the prologue, the privilege took under
the protection of St Peter the church of St Romain and confirmed the
observance (or do) instituted in that church. It then confirmed the present
and future possessions of the brethren and declared their gardens20 and the
pasture ground of their beasts exempt from all tithes. It secured liberty of
recruitment and stability of profession, guaranteed the right to choose the
incumbents of the incorporated churches, protected the house against
unjustified exactions and censures—finally, granted privileges, in the case of
a general interdict, for clerical consecrations and ordinations and for
burials.21 The confirmation of the liberty of the elections and of the
legitimate immunities and customs of the church completed the terms of
enactment of the privilege, which was rounded off by anathemas and final
privileges.

The bull was addressed to Dominic, prior of St Romain of Toulouse, and

to his brethren, present and to come. Thus it gave confirmation only for the
house of Toulouse, the only part of St Dominic’s projects which had so far
been carried out. Only that which is in existence can be confirmed. This
house, however, like every other foundation, had the right to expand. The
confirmation would be extended, with the order, to any new houses or
priories. It is in this sense only that the bull confirmed the order, that is to
say, the society of Dominic. On 30th March, 1218, for instance, the brethren
of Prouille would in their turn receive the same privilege.22 At the same
time, the brethren in Paris, in the process of founding their convent, would
again be called brethren of Saint Romain23 and the confirmation of 22nd
December, 1216 would cover them with its authority.
Thus the ordo which the first phrase of the terms of enactment confirmed
1 not refer to the Dominican society but to the observance of the clerics
attached to the church of St Romain. Here the society was only given
 THE ORDER OF PREACHERS SPREAD THROEIGH THE WORLD 22 I

precise form through the rule of St Augustine. Complementary constitutions

were not mentioned.
The official formula defined the ordo more precisely by an epithet: ordo
canonicus. The brethren had in fact entered the category of canons and,
through it, that of approved religious. This title would be given to them
in different documents for more than thirty years.24 Later history would
show, however, the distance which separated them from the canons in the
ordinary acceptation of the word. In the privilege Religiosam vitam, the word
canonicus preserved great elasticity. The chancellery of Innocent III, for
instance, had applied it equally to Premonstratensians and other Canons
Regular, to the clerical portion of the Humiliati of Lombardy, 25 to the
religious of the hospital of Caen.26 Such a formula thus expressed the genus
rather than the proper species of the foundation of Toulouse. It was this
canonical genus that was solemnly confirmed at the request of St Dominic
with its clerical character, conventual organization, novitiate, regular life,
office —in short, the institutio or Augustinian canonical statutes. If we reflect
on Dominic’s extreme reserve in his requests for confirmation2? and on the
liberty he enjoyed for the composition of his collection of formulae in the
bull Religiosam vitam, we shall attach considerable importance to this first
series of confirmations.
In the paragraph confirming the property, its enumeration was equally
charged with significance. Seven properties are mentioned. There were four
churches—St Romain of Toulouse, Prouille, Ste Marie de Lescure, Ste
Trinite of Loubens ; the hospice Arnaud-Bernard; the town28 of Casseneuil;
the tithes granted by Fulk. Now these churches also housed or were to
house communities of brethren. The Arnaud-Bernard hospice, indeed,
housed a collateral work entrusted to St Dominic.
It now remained for the Preaching to be confirmed and for the brethren
to be given the name which corresponded to the founder’s ambitions. There
the difficulty really began. Under what form was the Preaching to be con¬
firmed without giving flagrant proof of the novelty of the order and incurring
the risk of contravening the Thirteenth Canon of the Lateran ? Consultation
and search were necessary. Dominic multiplied his visits to Ugolino, who
appeared in his role of counsellor and patron of religious foundations.
Nearly a month had to elapse before a solution could be reached.29 In the
meantime many events had occurred which gave a new turn to the handling
of the problem.
After the Christmas festivities during which all audiences were inter¬
rupted, the Pope left St Peter of the Vatican and took up his residence at
the Lateran basilica30 where his youth as a cleric had been spent. He was
overwhelmed by a multitude of cares. The royal minority in England, where
his legate had succeeded in rallying the barons to the boy king whom he had
crowned ;3i the reassembling of the crusade for the Holy Land, the date for
2 2 2 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

which was approaching;32 disorders in Bohemia, instigated under cover of

the crusade.33 The affair of faith and peace of the Midi of France was not the
least disturbing of these cares. Now that he had quarrelled irrevocably with
the Count de Montfort, Arnault de Narbonne was no longer sending in the
triumphant reports which he formerly composed after the victories of
Beziers, Carcassonne or Muret—‘Gloria in excelsis Deo ... .’34 He now
denounced the enterprises of Simon. There was no longer a legate actually
present to give the Pope information in a less one-sided manner. Instead of
this, a most alarming letter had arrived from Fulk of Toulouse.
The situation was not improving. Plots and antagonisms were increasing
in number. The exceedingly false situation in which the bishop found
himself was paralysing his ministry. After eleven years of futile attempts in
all directions, in which his efforts as preacher and pastor had alternated
with those as judge and leader in collaboration with the temporal authorities,
in the face of the doubtful fortune of the crusade and the uncertainties of
peace, the old wrestler was discouraged. What could he do for his unruly
city that would not be taken in bad part ? He wrote to the Pope to offer his
resignation.35 If the Pope would not accept it, at least he asked to be dis¬
charged from the major part of his responsibility by the dismemberment
of his all too vast diocese.
Honorius III fortunately had at hand an exceptionally well-informed
adviser who could ring the bell to a different tune from that of the prelates
of the Midi. Already there was a beginning between the Pope and Dominic
of that confident relationship, with authority commanding obedience on the
one side, and generous initiative on the other, which would open the way
to a daily increasing collaboration, the founder placing at the service of the
Church, under the direct impulse of the Sovereign Pontiff, a spiritual army
increasingly more numerous and better adapted to its task. The Pope
would protect this work with his authority, enriching it with privileges and,
more important still, making full use of it in the most varied fields of the
ministry of souls. More than sixty bulls, letters and privileges of the Popes
to Dominic’s order during the five remaining years of the life of the founder
would soon provide impressive evidence of this collaboration and were,
moreover, its instrument.
Instructed and perhaps guided by the suggestions of the preacher and of
his ordinary advisers, Honorius had drawn up for the Albigeois four decisive
bulls, on the 19th, 21st and 28th January. The first appointed a legate for
the whole of Provence, ‘torn by continual wars, wallowing in the errors of
perverse heresies’—Bertrand, Cardinal-priest of SS John and Paul.36
The second was addressed to the university of the masters and students of
Paris.37 The Pope recalled the religious crisis of the region of Toulouse and
the route which had just been thrown open by the servitors of the faith,
crusaders or preachers. He endeavoured to persuade some of the university
 THE ORDER OF PREACHERS SPREAD THROUGH THE WORLD 223

men to come and devote themselves to the teaching and preaching of the
Christian faith and morals there. ‘For long enough’, he said, ‘you have been
sitting beside the stack of wheat. If you transfer yourselves there, you will in
the future bear more fruit.’38 Dominic thought precisely the same. If the
bull was to persuade some men of goodwill to offer themselves, the route
he had just traced out for the Lord in Toulouse, the form of life which
he had set up, might suggest itself quite naturally to them. It was precisely
this form of life which was referred to in the third bull :3°
Honorius, bishop, servant of the servants of God, to our dear sons, the prior
and brethren of St Romain, Preachers in the country of Toulouse, health and
the apostolic blessing.
‘Preachers.’ The Pope was giving them the name so much desired. As
to how he had arrived at this solution, possible explanation would soon be
provided by an anecdote in the order, the details of which are uncertain.40
A dialogue was supposed to have taken place between the Pope and his
notary. After having tried another title, ‘brethren who preach in the country
of Toulouse’, whose import was merely transitory, the Pope was said to
have finally resolved to assign to Dominic’s brethren a term with lasting
significance, that of Friars . . . Preachers. A letter emanating from the
Sovereign Pontiff thus confirmed the title and the function, previously only
assigned by Fulk. Because they were the brethren of Dominic, present and
to come, the bishop had recently considered them en bloc as preachers,
leaving to their community itself the responsibility of determining who
should exercise this function. The Pope did the same in the bull. No more
than this was needed to give Dominic the essential thing he wanted. In fact
when, in a not far distant future the brethren of St Romain were to set off
to propagate the order and to preach throughout the diocese, they would
bear this glorious title of preachers by the will of the Pope and could
exercise its function, in their own churches as elsewhere, without it being
necessary for them to obtain anything else than the investiture of their order.
No appeal to the bishop would be necessary. No trace of the intervention of
anyone among them in this sense was to remain in the documents. When
later in the legislation of the Preachers the position of the brethren in
regard to the bishops would be defined, it was to be written: ‘Let no one
preach in the diocese of a bishop who forbids him to do so. . . .’4I Thus the
bishop would retain only the right of veto which the Pope could in point of
fact suspend. The brethren, moreover, would impose upon themselves the
duty of deference and of subordination. ‘When our brethren enter some
diocese to preach, they shall first visit the bishop if they can do so, and shall
take inspiration from his counsels to produce among the people the spiritual
fruit which they seek.’42 Deference and veto are something different from
institution. For the first time in the Church, the canonical mission, without
which there is no authentic preacher of the Gospel, would no longer be
 224 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

conferred by the bishop, but by incorporation in a society, explicitly con¬

firmed in this function by the Pope. The ministry of the Preachers would no
longer totally depend on the arbitrariness and good will of the local clergy.
The obstacle on which all preaching movements since the twelfth century
had come to grief had been removed.
Between 1217 and 1221, Honorius would be occupied with inserting in
the Bulls of Recommendation which he was to multiply in favour of the
Preachers, increasingly explicit formulae as to their delegation to preach the
word of God, by virtue even of their profession as regulars.43 The most
precise of these formulae, however, were found implicitly contained in the
address of the bull Gratiarum omnium largitori of 21st January, 1217.
Thus the text of this bull seemed no longer to have anything new to say.
It contained enthusiastic expressions of satisfaction, a warm exhortation to
pursue the task without discouragement—‘for the issue alone, and not the
struggle, confers the crown’. ‘You are Preachers’, it seemed to declare,
‘well, be Preachers!’ The mandate, the principal part of the bull, did not
express anything different. Composed of Pauline phrases—‘each day, con¬
firmed more deeply in the Lord, you should apply yourselves to announcing
the word of God, insisting in season and out of season and gloriously
fulfilling your function as ministers of the Gospel’44—it did not confer on
the brethren of Saint Romain the mission they already possessed; it affirmed
it as their essential and particular business. This was truly the confirmation
of Dominican preaching by the Pope, while the expressions used in the
prologue and the terms of enactment—‘inwardly burning with the flame of
charity and spreading outwardly the odour of good renown’, ‘careful
physicians of the souls whom you make fruitful by your salutary eloquence’,
unconquered athletes of Christ . . . who magnanimously brandish the
sword of the word of God against the enemies of the faith . . .’—surrounded
this concession with a halo of truly exceptional praise.
The terms of enactment, however, granted the brethren two privileges of
value. The burden of their apostolic labour was assigned to them, ‘in
remission of their sins’ ;45 this was to grant them a share in the privileges of
the crusade. This would seem only just, at a time when the first cleric who
came along, if he joined the crusade in the Albigeois and spent forty days
there, could obtain such an indulgence. Finally in its last phrase the bull
conferred on the Preachers the title of specialesJUios, special sons of the Holy
See. Recently indeed, in the time of Alexander III, this title had signified
exemption from excommunication.4& If it had lost this meaning, it at least
conferred the assurance that for the future the brethren would no longer be
able to incur excommunication except from the Pope or from a legate
a latereA7 This was a security for evangelical preachers, so readily an object
of suspicion to the diocesan clergy in those difficult years.
The address of the bull, while it set down the name of the brethren, did
 THE ORDER OF PREACHERS SPREAD THROUGH THE WORLD 22$

not give that of the order. This was still being sought for. In the course of
this year a charter of Fulk was to use with some insistence the expression,
‘Brethren of the Preaching’.48 The phrase was an old one; it had served from
the beginning to designate the Preachers of the Midi.49 In another charter of
1217, and frequently afterwards, the expression would be used ‘Brethren of
the Preaching of St Romain’, of the Preaching of Toulouse, of Prouille, of
Limoges.so The title ‘Order of the Preaching’ derived directly from this.
It would be used in Spain in 1219.51 Fulk would again use it in 1221.52 The
use of the name of Preachers, however, as early as 1217, in a pontifical bull,
orientated the Curia towards quite a different title. At the beginning of the
following year, Honorius III himself inscribed in his first letter of general
recommendation of the order, the title, definitive at last, of ‘Brethren of
the Order of Preachers’.53
The fourth bull of Honorius (28th January) was addressed to Fulk of
Toulouse.54 The Pope restored his courage. He accepted neither his resigna¬
tion nor the dismemberment of his diocese. Once more, it was not a
mediocre cleric of scandalous life who was proposing to lay down his charge ;
he represented a force which it was necessary to maintain at the service of
the Church. The Pope, however, did not content himself with verbal refusal
and encouragement, since he had just taken a number of very wise steps
with a view to giving fresh vigour to the evangelization of Toulouse.
Dominic was certainly there whilst he was drawing up the bull. The same
day, indeed, the Pope wrote a letter to the capitouls of Toulouse and to
their fellow-citizens, to recommend to them the Arnaud-Bernard hospice
and its community of penitent women, which was in danger of perishing if
help was not forthcoming quickly.55

While the Roman chancellery was dispatching these documents, there was
considerable excitement in Rome over the arrival of new visitors. The
thrust towards the east and the north of Europe had continued with its
contrasting aspects of pure mission, migration of peoples and conquests that
were sometimes cruel. Innocent had, however, endeavoured, through the
sending of missions of Cistercians and Premonstratensians, to make the
religious aspect predominate. In Livonia and Esthonia two bishoprics had
been formed, whose bishops had been present at the Council of the
Lateran.56 So great, however, was the agitation in these frontier regions in
the course of recent years, that whole provinces had not been able to make
up their minds to participate in the great assembly. Despite Innocent’s
severe objurgations,57 almost all the Churches of Scandinavia had defaulted.
One single ‘bishop of Dacia’ for the provinces of Lund, Uppsala and
Nidaros arrived.58 It was little indeed.
In the middle of the month of January, the Scandinavians arrived in the
eternal city, in the person if not of the metropolitan of Denmark and
 226 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

primate of Sweden, Archbishop Andrew Sunesen of Lund,59 at least in that

of an archiepiscopal and royal embassy which must have been fairly impres¬
sive. 60 A few days later Polish envoys arrived in their turn.61 Then some
Hungarians.62 At the same time news flowed in about the preparations for
the crusade in the east. On 23rd January, Cardinal Ugolino received from
the Pope the mandate to organize the crusade in Tuscany and Lombardy. 63
On 2yth, Andrew of Lund, a personal friend of Pope Honorius,6^ obtained
his first privileges^ which were to crown the granting or renewal of the
titles of legate and of apostolic visitor of the Churches of Denmark and
Sweden.66 The archbishop was then preparing, at the same time as Scan¬
dinavian participation in the crusade in the east, a new campaign in Esthonia.
All the discussions in the Curia were now of distant expeditions, missions to
the north or in the east, the cruel reactions of the pagans against the newly
baptized, 67 who also had to be protected against the enterprises of the
Christian adventurers,6» of convents which were installed or developing in
the new lands of Christendom, of the dearth of priests and apostolic
workers.69 The pontificate of Honorius was already marked by this orienta¬
tion towards the outer lands, with which for the future it would be deeply
marked.
If we admit that Dominic, as is possible, had already known and desired
to join the Archbishop of Lund in his missionary ministry on the occasion of
his two great journeys to the north, we can imagine his emotion when he
heard his new expedition spoken of. It is, however, not even necessary to
invoke this plausible hypothesis to imagine that the Preacher was deeply
moved on meeting the living witnesses of a Christianity in full development.
For him their presence evoked unknown lands and'distant peoples, still
‘sitting in darkness, in the shadow of death’. Less than this was needed to
fill him with compassion. He saw himself once more in Rome, eleven years
earlier, at the side of Diego of Osma. The bishop was begging the Pope to
receive his resignation so that he might be free to go and evangelize the
pagans, with his companion. Eleven years—it seemed like a Iona parenthesis
in the life of Brother Dominic. It was in some sense a dream, almost a
nightmare. Eleven years of preaching, almost alone and without striking
result, m the Albigeois, whereas in the north, where he first thouaht of
going, bishoprics were rising up, nations were accepting baptism.
The latest news from Toulouse came back to his mind. A dull irritation
surged up in him against these old Christian lands of the Narbonensis where
the sowing of the seeds of the Gospel no longer produced harvests; against
the Cathansts unconvertible despite their apostolic garb, obstinate in their
poor philosophy and their sectarian spirit, ‘enemies of the cross of Christ’ •
against the debauched and impious feudal lords; against the usurers and
worldly townsmen And to think of the Catholic preaching paralysed by
the military and political enterprises with which it appeared to be inextric-
 THE ORDER OF PREACHERS SPREAD THROUGH THE WORLD llj

ably linked, to say nothing of the moral laxity and temporal ambitions
disguised under the cloak of zeal which in the end were choking it! Whilst
he was wearing himself out over there, whilst here he was using up his
energies in negotiations with the Curia to organize the apostolate in an
ungrateful diocese, soul after soul was being lost on the confines of
Christendom when he would have been able to win them to Jesus Christ in a
less equivocal and more lasting manner than that of the German crusaders.
Without renouncing the work begun, there was perhaps a possibility, as
soon as that work was self-sufficient, of going to seek, under other skies,
new souls who would not abuse grace.
Dominic certainly did not keep secret these thoughts which were
tormenting him. He had entered into contact with many people—clerics, in
particular, whom he tried to win over to his apostolic ideal and to his
mission of salvation. He had no success with an archdeacon of Macon,
Barthelemy de la Cluse, who went to confession to him.70 His efforts with a
young cleric of very noble origin who was then lodging with Cardinal
Ugolino were differently rewarded. Guillaume de Montferrat was preparing
to keep Lent in the city of the Popes.71 He made the acquaintance of the
founder on his frequent visits to LIgolino, was won to him by his attitude
and began to love him. A close friendship was established between the two
men. They talked about their own salvation and the salvation of others.
Never had Guillaume met so spiritual a man among the many religious with
whom he had spoken. Above all, he had never seen one consumed to the
same extent with zeal for the salvation of the human race. Dominic, for his
part, loved the young cleric and opened his heart to him in complete trust.
One of the characteristics of his temperament that most drew men to him
was this gentle confidence which turned him towards the young with their
pure hearts and spontaneous generosity, He attracted them without imposing
himself in any way, by sharing with them the very high ideal by which he
was living himself. He confided in Guillaume about his longing for the pagan
missions and an immediate ministry. Doubtless when he instituted his order,
in preparing a generation of true apostles, he was indirectly working for the
conversion of souls. Yet, if he could no longer preach the Gospel himself,
his misfortune was great indeed. He wanted to begin again, and for all he
was worth, to preach—especially to the pagans. Guillaume understood this
perfectly. He wanted to do this too. He resolved to follow him. He was,
however, fully aware of the insufficiency of his studies. Finally they decided
together that Guillaume should go to Paris forthwith and that two years later,
when he had studied theology and Dominic had sufficiently organized his
order, they would both go off to convert the pagans who lived in Prussia
and in the other regions of the north. About this time, it is said, the founder
allowed his beard to grow, as was the custom for missionaries.72
The mystery of Rome was influencing St Dominic. Already, in Toulouse,
 228 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

he had begun to enlarge his horizon. After having devoted himself to

preaching against the heretics for nine whole years, he had assigned to the
company of Preachers a programme of preaching in its widest sense,
preaching that should be positive rather than defensive, moral as well as
doctrinal, and directed alike to the faithful and to the infidel. In 1216,
however, he again confined the activity of the order to the field in which
he had laboured without respite since 1206, the Narbonensis, the diocese of
Toulouse itself, on which henceforward he concentrated his effort. In
Rome he came to realize the universality of the Church and of her mission.
The barriers were broken down. His vision overran the narrow viewpoint
oi the Albigeois and of its crises, and, moving to the centre of the Church,
became universal. Doubtless in the course of the two journeys in Dacia and
on the occasion of his first visit to Rome he had sensed this catholicity. The
Council of the Lateran had given him an impressive manifestation of it, the
sight of the Churches of East and West gathered in the person of their bishops
around the Sovereign Pontiff to decide the universal rules and tasks of the
Catholic world and to share experiences and resources in common. The 10th
canon of the Council on preaching had expressed one of these universal tasks
in terms which moved him at once. Dominic, however, was at that time
deeply engaged in the body of the clergy of the Narbonensis, fully occupied
by the cares of the affair of faith and peace in which in founding his Preachers
he intended to collaborate. Now, at the side of Honorius who had confidence
in him, in this centre to which the life of all the Churches, especially the
Churches of the Christian Marches, came to derive new vitality and to'bear
it back again whence they came, he heard the Catholic call. He could not
continue to be linked to a single diocese, to a province, to one sole problem.
It was difficult to accept a field of action more limited than the field conferred
by Jesus on the apostles—‘all nations’.
Everything in Dominic’s thought was focused around this point—the
anxieties which drew his attention away from Toulouse, his missionary
aspirations, his sense of universality. He had seen the Pope striving to attract
some theologians from Paris to Toulouse to improve the Catholic"preaching
there. Why not reverse the position and move the brethren from Toulouse
to Paris, and indeed all over Christendom? This intention was already half
revealed in the advice to Guillaume de Montferrat. In 1216 there had been
no question of this at all. A great change had thus come about in the heart of
St Dominic.
Clearly in a soul as profound as his no conversation, no emotion produced
by a chance meeting would have sufficed to bring about this change. He was
a man who methodically pursued a long-term policy and for him" to modify
seriously the route he had traced out for himself and along which he had
progressively travelled during the course of eleven years, he must have
become aware by repeated meditations of a clear call from God. In the
 THE ORDER OF PREACHERS SPREAD THROEIGH THE WORLD 229

intervals of his audiences with the Pope and the cardinal, Dominic had full
leisure to continue his life of charity and prayer in Rome. Certain documents
show him to us visiting the prisoners, who in Rome were incarcerated in
the towers of the ancient city wall,73 and visiting those voluntary women
prisoners known as recluses, devout women who had themselves shut up
in narrow cells near to some holy place.74 Wholly concerned with higher
realities, they were disinterested and much sought after religious advisers
and Dominic loved to consult them, after having conferred on them his
priestly ministrations. Above all, he had ample time to continue his untiring
prayers in the most moving sanctuaries of Christendom.
All those who approached him in the course of these years, whether
strangers or his own brethren, were convinced that in his meditation he
received special messages from God, true light as to the future or on the
conduct to be followed.75 Such faithfulness in keeping himself in the
presence of his Creator would seem to invite God’s intimacy. The religious
men of the time, accustomed to set great store by the intuitions and
images which they experienced during moments of semi-consciousness,
half-way between true sleep and recollection, especially during prayer in
the night hours, would have been astonished if the saint had not been
favoured with visions of authentic prophecies. They had manifest proof of
this when, on leaving his interior colloquies, Dominic announced decisions
that were unexpected for all of them but for him unshakable, the success of
which soon gave sanction to the inspiration.76
Thus in the Dominican thirteenth-century sources we meet with a good
number of accounts of supernatural visions with which Dominic is said to
have been favoured at the time of the order’s confirmation. Not all these
accounts are equal in value.77 One only is solidly attested—the vision of
the approaching end of Simon de Montfort, under the figure of a great fallen
tree; it was no doubt this that decided Dominic to disperse his brethren.78
There is one other account equally worthy of record and valuable.
Very little is known about the saint’s spiritual history. His confidences
were always rare. Up to his last hour a great modesty guarded the secret of
his relations with God.79 The account of this vision, however, entrusted
perhaps to some discreet companion, would seem to reveal that, in the early
months of 1217, his life saw the occurrence of & certain serious event in the
interior life, a kind of mystical experience, an illumination which gave him
the certainty of a new mission and opened to him vast horizons on which
contemporary events and. his later actions provide the commentary.
Constantino d’Orvieto relates this event in his inner life, the date of
which he did not learn directly, but which he inserts with confidence
in his legend at the only moment at which it could be placed, at the time
when Dominic was asking for confirmation of the order from Rome.80 After
the fashion of medieval writers, the chronicler makes the interior
 230 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

phenomenon objective and describes it under the form of an imaginary

vision.
Whilst God’s vassal, Dominic, was in Rome and was pouring out his prayers in
the presence of God in the basilica of St Peter for the preservation and extension
of the order which God’s right hand was propagating by his care, the hand of God
came upon him. He saw Peter and Paul, those princes full of glory, appear. The
first, Peter, gave him the staff; Paul, the book; and both added—‘Go and preach;
for God hath chosen thee for this ministry’. Then in a flash it seemed to him that
he saw his sons scattered throughout the world, going off two by two to preach
to the people the word of God.

It is essential to grasp the symbolism of this vision, of which the second

part is of paramount importance. Peter and Paul symbolize the Roman
Church. The staff is the official insignia of God’s messenger;81 the book,
that of doctrine. Dominic understood that he must make his order coexten¬
sive with the world and receive his mission direct from Rome. At the same
time he understood that he must separate preaching, more completely
than was possible in Toulouse, from the defence of the faith. Finally he
understood that the order given by the Council to all the bishops to attach
preachers to themselves was to open to his brethren all dioceses without
exception, and that the determination of the popes to enforce the application
of a canon which they had for so long been preparing would, if necessary,
force open these doors. Everything had prepared him for the understanding
of this. Only one final light was lacking. He obtained it from God in prayer.
And at Rome.82
Dominic’s task was not ended. In the projects he confided to young
Guillaume de Montferrat, he was still giving himself two years to organize
his order,83 for the work was not completed by the confirmation. What,
then, was Dominic discussing with the cardinal, who was heir to the
deceased Pope, collaborator of the present Pope and himself future Pope,
and finally special promoter of new religious orders ? Clearly the trans¬
formation of his society, under the mandate of the Holy See, into a universal
order, as the mystic vision in the basilica of St Peter had required of him.
It was that which he would in point of fact carry out, Avith an astonishing
decisiveness, on his return to the Narbonensis, choosing Rome as his focal
point for the future, and as the pivots of his society of Preachers, Paris and
Bologna, the two intellectual centres of the Christian universe. Constantino
concluded the account we have just quoted with these words : ‘that is why he
returned to Toulouse . . . gathered his brethren together and told them that
he had taken the resolution to disperse them all, despite their small number,
to different parts of the world; for he knew that if the good grain were
scattered it bore fruit, but that stored up, it rotted’.84 We can recognize the
words of Honorius.85
Before leaving Rome to carry out his plans, Dominic obtained a final bull
 THE ORDER OF PREACHERS SPREAD THROUGH THE WORLD 23 I

on 7th February.86 At first glance the text is surprising. It is a short bull, in

point of fact a titulus. It copies, in a less solemn framework, a paragraph of
Religiosam vitam, that which protects the order against the instability of its
members.86A No one can leave the order without the permission of his
superior; one can only do so to enter a more austere order; no one can
retain a fugitive religious. On comparing the two formulae, however, a new
feature can be perceived. The earlier text said, ‘after having made profession
in your church’. The new text substituted ‘monastery’ for ‘church’. The
earlier document ran ‘without the permission of the prior’. Now it was
worded, ‘without your permission as prior, my son, and that of your
successors’. A new phrase at the same time puts a new power in the hands of
Dominic. To sanction its authority, the order will be able to promulgate a
sentence in due form and order against its defaulting sons and the
religious of other orders who retain them unduly.
Thus the bull of 7th February provided Dominic with a new copy of an
important clause of the great privilege—as if the founder, foreseeing the
separation which would deprive him of the original, which was addressed to
and was intended to remain at St Romain in Toulouse, wished at least to
preserve in documentary form a provision which in his eyes was essential.
The substitution of ‘monastery’ for ‘church’, which was to be reproduced in
the reissue of the great privilege on 30th March, i2i8,87 was equally
significant. To make profession in a church had a precise meaning in
canonical institutions. It was to bind oneself by a vow of local stability, again
insufficiently flexible, to the church building of stone and to its holy patron.
Dominic had endeavoured to avoid this bond by eliminating the mention of
the saint in the formula of profession; yet so strong was the general custom
that the Preachers were to be named for a long time to come, despite the
resistance of certain of their superiors, by the name of the patron of their
conventual church.88 People would speak of the brethren of St Romain, of
St Nicholas, of St Jacques. The latter name would even become, up to the
end of the eighteenth century under the form of ‘Jacobin’, the usual name
of the Preachers of Paris and in France. There was no such inconvenience if
one made profession in a monastery. The brethren no longer appeared bound
to Dominic by their donation to the church of some particular saint, but by
their profession in the community. They were becoming mobile in quite a
different way. Above all, the new text, by recalling the personal powers of
the founder in regard to his brethren, added still further to these powers.
In these conditions the bull Justis petentium which the saint obtained from the
Pope at the moment of leaving Rome, does not seem wholly insignificant. In
its own way it prepared the decisive transformation of the order.
In the absence of any legislation on this point, the social constitution of
the Preachers was again reduced to a single element—the direct bond of
obedience of each brother to Dominic. That which constituted its flexibility
 232 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

might, however, become its weakness. The bolder Dominic’s plans in

January 1217 were, the more difficult were the task and sacrifice he sought
to impose on each of his brethren-to-be, the more acute the temptations to
become discouraged, and the more necessary the strengthening of the links
of dependence on which the order hung. The bull Justis petentium demanded
by the saint at the moment of departure is perhaps more eloquent than any
ol the documents as to the revolution which had taken place in his soul.
Arriving in Rome with the intention of permanently settling his community
of Preachers in the Albigeois, Dominic set out again with projects on a
world-wide scale and the instruments necessary to carry them out.

He had no longer any reason to linger in Rome and he now returned to

Provence. From the beginning of March he was again in Toulouse8? and
gathered his brethren in chapter. The brethren from Prouille whom he
collected on the way were also there.?0 In the presence of the assembly, he
communicated the letters from Rome—the confirmation, the letter of 21st
January, so well adapted to give them courage, the title of 7th February
which strengthened the cohesion of the brethren. We can imagine the joy
and relief of the community. Did the founder then reveal his projects for
the future? Perhaps not yet. There was no particular hurry about sending
brethren to Paris; it would be necessary to wait for the summer and the
approach of the beginning of the academic year on the feast of St Denis.
One detail, however, preoccupied the chapter. The property of the
Prouille community in Limoux had once more been called in question by
the monks of Saint Hilaire. A formula of settlement elaborated by Maitre
Thedise, Bishop of Agde, was adopted. A few days later, on Friday, 31st
March,?1 this settlement was signed by Dominic and William Claret for the
one part, and by Alboin, Abbot of St Hilaire, and Prior Anselm of the other
part; the Abbot of St Michel de la Cluse et de St Salitor, visitor of the abbey
of Saint Hilaire, which depended on his own house, subscribed the
document.?2
After his return to Provence, Dominic could see that the political
situation, despite its fluctuations, was continually deteriorating.93 It was no
longer a question now of Catharists or Catholics. The Midi was defending
its political independence against the north and protecting itself against new
compromises with the heretics. As to Simon, he defended his conquered
possessions, stiong in his title as crusader. The line of the Rhone indeed was
intersected by the towns handed to Raymond VII—Marseilles, Arles, Saint
Sernin (which would later be Pont Saint Esprit), Beaucaire and Tarascon,
Avignon. The bridges were in the hands of de Montfort’s adversaries.’
Bertrand, the legate, was blocked in Orange, to the east of the Rhone. When
Simon, who had been fighting all the winter to the south-west of Toulouse,
came to join him, the legate had to go back as far as Viviers to find a passage!
 THE ORDER OF PREACHERS SPREAD THROUGH THE WORLD 233

De Montfort forced the crossing of the Rhone. For him the whole summer
was to pass in re-establishing the situation in eastern Provence. His absence,
however, was taken advantage of in the west. Now it was in Toulouse that
the storm was gathering. Whilst the de Montfort ladies took refuge in the
castle of Narbonne, plots were being hatched in the city. Raymond VI had
regrouped his followers in Aragon. The nobles of that country were burning
to avenge the death of their king, Pedro II, while the Aragonese and Catalan
mercenaries were ready to provide new contingents.
On 13th September, 1217, taking advantage of a ‘miraculous’ mist,94
Raymond VI came out from his advance post and, crossing the Garonne at
the ford of the Bazacle mill, plunged into an attack upon his capital. From
that moment everything was lost. The immediate thrusts of Guy or d’ Amaury
de Montfort, the lightning return of Simon, the most pressing, the fiercest
attacks, could not make the city yield, despite the fact that it was demolished.
Soon the moats were dug out, the defences were taken over; the mangonels
and the perriers flung their blocks of stone. The tragedy of Toulouse was
played out to the bitter end; the citizens stood firm in a struggle in which—
Simon and the legate did not disguise the fact—the final destruction of
the city was intended. One day a missile, flung by a perrier thrower ‘hit the
mark’. Struck on his iron helmet, Simon collapsed ‘bloodstained and
black’.95 A few weeks later Amaury, the heir, raised the siege. Never again
would Toulouse belong to the de Montfort family.
Long before this Dominic and his religious had left the town. Warned by
his brethren and friends in Toulouse, Dominic was able to follow the
premonitory symptoms of the insurrection in men’s minds. He remembered
1211 when the convents, following the clergy carrying the Blessed
Sacrament, abandoned the city which remained closed to them afterwards
for nearly four years. The same painful situation might easily recur. In
any event a long lasting revolt would confine all the brethren to Toulouse
and separate them from their diocesan field of action. Why then wait
until the last moment? The time had come to carry out the plans conceived
in Rome and to extend the order. The decisive scene took place at the
end of the spring, perhaps at Pentecost (14th May).96 All the brethren
summoned to St Romain, were met in chapter. Dominic declared to them
that he had taken the resolution to send them throughout the world, despite
their small number; they would no longer all live together, for the future,
in the cloister which was scarcely finished. Each one was astonished at the
unexpected decision, which seemed to them to have been taken so rapidly.
Dominic, however, appealed to his authority, to which his sanctity gave
additional prestige. The majority acquiesced easily enough. Full of hope,
they already saw in imagination the happy issue of this decision. 9? All,
however, were not in agreement.
Dominic’s friends and protectors were even more disconcerted. He had
 234 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

been able to join de Montfort in May.9** Fulk of Toulouse, Amaud de

Narbonne and other prelates approached in turn, were in agreement with the
Count that they would resist with all their power a project which seemed
to them fatal to the order itself as well as to its ministry in Toulouse.99
Dominic asked the brethren that they should put fear aside, telling them
that all would succeed. To the prelates, to the Count, as to the brethren, he
repeated these words which throw some light on his character: ‘Leave me
alone; I know what I am doing. ’100
On i £th August,101 1217, the feast of the Assumption, the Preachers met
again for the last time. It was perhaps at St Romain of Toulouse, IQ2 where all
those who were going away were gathered, or at Prouille, in accordance
with a fairly weighty tradition. 103 We cannot be quite certain. The time to
scatter the seed had come. Before the community dispersed, Dominic made
them elect a superior. The choice fell on Matthew of France,104 who would
henceforth bear in Paris, up to 1220, the title of Abbot of St Romain.1"
We may wonder what was the reason for this title, which would not be
continued in the order, and for this election.
Jordan of Saxony, who knew Matthew under the title of abbot, thought
that it already signified the authority of the superior-general who would
soon be called master of the order. 106 This is not quite correct. The
superior-general was Dominic, to whom all the brethren were linked by
their obedience. He would remain superior-general and would be the first
to bear the title of master of the order. ‘Abbot’ had not this significance.
In the traditions of the canons of France, it designated the superior of a
particular chapter and signified the same thing as prior in the regions of the
south. 107 in 1217, Matthew was merely elected Prior of St Romain, in
conformity with the provisions of the privilege of confirmation. 108 The step
was natural and did not signify that Dominic had abandoned the supreme
authority or was preparing to do so. 109 On the contrary he affirmed this
authority by setting up between his person and the general body of the
brethren, a local superior.110
Until further orders, however, the one juridical community of the
brethren would remain the convent of St Romain. The dispersion would not
dissolve it. Legally, Matthew would thus remain abbot of all the Preachers.11!
If Dominic were to disappear, the brethren, scattered throughout the
Church, would nevertheless remain united under the authority of Matthew.
Without being in any sense Dominic’s vicar, since he had not been invested
wit the powers lor this, he was as it were a provisional heir, a leader in
the case of his death. We do not know what to admire most in the founder
t e boldness ol his decisions or their juridical strength. These two
characteristics, however, are really linked.
Dominic looked upon his brethren, met together for the last time He
was moved. He loved his community. It was true he was not losing them
 THE ORDER OF PREACHERS SPREAD THROUGH THE WORLD 2$t;

for ever. He would soon see them again one after another in the course of
his visits to wherever they were dispersed. But they would no longer be
quite what they were now, the first loyal and brotherly band. They would
be surrounded by new faces. Such and such among them would have become
prior, founder, provincial, the mainspring of a whole region. Another
would have lost the initial generosity of his religious life. There would
perhaps be dramatic gaps in the little flock.
For Dominic’s first brethren were not all outstanding men. In general
they were simple and for the most part without much learning.112 There
were some who were afraid of sacrifices; others who lost their footing in
material difficulties. The special genius of a founder, however, is to bring the
best out of all those who come under his influence. Dominic made apostles
of mediocre men of good will. This was because he placed his trust in the
man each of them might become and above all in the grace with which God
would inspire them and in the Providence which was guiding them. He
trained them by example. He raised them to the supernatural plane by
prayer. Then he launched them into full activity, ready to correct them
severely, but not without charity, in their false steps or their discourage¬
ment. One has the right to be weak, but not faint-hearted when it is a
matter of saving souls. ‘Full of confidence in God, he sent out even the
least skilful to preach’, relates John of Navarre. ‘ “Go with assurance”, he
said, “because the Lord will give you the gift of the divine word. He will
be with you and nothing will be wanting to you.” They went away and
everything happened as he had told them. ’113
Later, Peter Seila would often relate to the young religious whom he
received into the order, how Dominic sent him to found a convent. ‘He
put forward the difficulty of his ignorance, his lack of books, for he only
possessed a single notebook of the homilies of the blessed Gregory. “Go,
son”, the Father answered him, “go with confidence; twice a day I will
take you with me before God. Do not doubt; you will gain many souls to
God and will bear much fruit.” ’II4
The most important group was destined for Paris, the university city,
capital of theological thought. They were seven, split into two sections.113
The first comprised, with Matthew of France, Friar Bertrand, Friar John of
Navarre and Friar Lawrence the Englishman.116 Matthew of France11? was
the chief of the entire band. A native of that part of the lie de France from
which the principal crusaders and the monks of Vaux-de-Cernai had come,
he had recently come to the Midi with de Montfort, who made him prior of
the new chapter of Castres. He was a tested churchman, who would replace
Dominic among the group of brethren. He was charged with the responsi¬
bility of ‘making known the order’ in France, with founding convents and
preaching with his brethren. John of Navarre and Lawrence the Englishman
were still young and ill-instructed. They were sent to Paris especially for
 236 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

their studies.1^ Lawrence“9 was a contemplative. In the course of the

journey he received light, which the future would confirm, on the installa¬
tion of the brethren in Paris. John of Navarre, 120 a native 0f Saint jean Pied_de_
Port, the senior of the brethren who gave evidence at the canonization
process, was the enfant terrible of the band. Impulsive, capable of gestures of
generosity but equally of revolt and discouragement, all things considered,
very obstinate, he was to cause the founder many a disappointment. He
loved Dominic, however, and admired him. Deeply sincere and a realist, he
did not hide either his own faults or the sanctity of his leader. And eventually
he learnt to serve as a true Preacher. Bertrand of GarrigoI2i was just the
opposite. He pursued his life of apostolic austerity with singlemindedness.
A great servant of God and the order, he was to be the first provincial of
Provence.
A second group also left for Paris. It was led by Friar Mames,I22 the
contemplative, the half-brother of Dominic, whom he had joined, coming
from Spain to do so. He was accompanied by Friar Miguel de Cabra,^ a
noble Castilian who, going later to Catalonia, became confessor to King
Jaime I, and would share in the expeditions to Majorca and Valencia, where
he was to found a convent of Preachers. Learned and a good theoloaian,
he would be, it was said, the first professor of his brethren in Paris. Friar
Odier,i24 a lay-brother, accompanied the two Spaniards, whose vitality
proved to be greatly superior to that of the first group. Leaving at the same
time as the other group of friars, they arrived in Paris on 12th September
The other four only reached the city three weeks later.
Dominic did not forget his own country. He sent four of the brethren
to Spain. Friar Pedro de Madrid^ and Friar Gomez^6 met with CTOod
success. They preached with fervour and made the order illustrious. In the
I olio wing year Dominic’s visit to the parts where they had alreadv been
working made the foundation of convents of Preachers possible.^ The
otier part of the team, Friar Dominic the Spaniard's and Friar Mi j
dUcero,i29 was less brilliant. Theirs was not the temperament of founders,
ey were not however, lacking in generosity. Jordan of Saxony and
lenne de Bourbon had edifying things to relate of the first of these two
brethren. He was a man of exceptional humility, of little knowledge but
magnificent virtue.’iso His naivety suggested to certain unkind persons
e idea of drawing him into a trap, with the complicity of a courtesan.
15 magnificent virtue alone drew him out of this difficult situation, to
e benefit of his ministry, moreover, for he converted her. Meeting one
ay at St Antoine de Paris, doubtless on the occasion of a general chapter
e young Petromlla de Montfort whom the founder had baptized in 1211
near Fanjeaux, he obliged her, not without severity, to adopt a more modest
ead-dress. 1 He was perhaps tactless. It is a fact that neither he nor his
companion would succeed. The pair became discouraged and soon left
 THE ORDER OF PREACHERS SPREAD THROUGH THE WORLD 237
Spain, to shelter themselves once more under the shadow of their chief.132
It is possible that both had been colleagues of Dominic in the chapter of
Osma.I33 Their canonical life had given them an insufficient preparation to
become Preachers.
St Romain was not abandoned. It was, however, assigned to brethren who
were natives of Toulouse. The nationalistic character of the insurrection
made this step desirable. The privileges they had received enabled the
brethren to remain and continue their religious life even in the case of
interdict. Peter Seila, who may be said to have received the order rather
than the order receiving him, for it was lodged in his house,13,3 was not to
leave to make a foundation in Toulouse until two years later. He would
come back to Toulouse as prior and inquisitor. Friar Thomas,135 who had
received a special gift of preaching from God, remained with him, and Friar
Guillaume also, if he were not dead or had not left the order. Protected by
his friends in Toulouse and by the authorities of the town, who were
careful no longer to give any religious pretext to the action of their
adversaries, St Romain passed safely through the dramatic events in the
Midi until the day in 1230 when the Preachers, abandoning their cradle
which had now become too small, would let it pass out of the order, without
in any way allowing themselves to be moved by so many cherished
memories.136
Prouille kept its first religious, of whom Friar Noel was superior and
Friar William Claret administrator. The house was already too firmly rooted
for the war, when it began again, really to put it in danger. The neighbour¬
hood, moreover, remained calm for some time longer.
Such a separation was not effected without suffei'ing or anxiety. The
replies Dominic made to the brethren’s hesitation,137 and even certain
direct information, enable us to estimate the gravity of this trouble. Several
of the brethren were anxious about the order’s future. They doubted them¬
selves, if not Dominic. Only the founder’s supernatural firmness gave them
strength. ‘I know what I am doing.’ What made the master’s strength was
that his decisions were never in any sense taken at the level of daily events.
They came from a deeper source, were long in forming and were linked
with a whole network of facts and intentions which controlled each other.
Thus they were irrevocable. John of Navarre,, however, resisted almost to
the point of rebellion. It was against his will that he was being sent. He was
not willing to set off in such conditions. He afterwards related to Etienne de
O

Salagnac, from whom our account of the incident is derived,138 the painful
scene he then made in the presence of his founder.

When our father St Dominic sent him, as has been said, with the Brother
Lawrence of whom we have spoken, John demanded something for his expenses,
a provision for the journey. The saint did not want to give him this. He exhorted
him to go on his journey like the disciples of Jesus Christ, without carrying gold
 238 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

or silver. It is for jou, his chosen servants, to fear the Lord; those who fear Him never
go wanting (Ps. XXXIII, 10). John, however, would not give in; on the contrary,
he directly refused his obedience to what the saint had said. When the holy and
loving father saw the unhappy man’s disobedience, he threw himself at his feet,
wept and lamented over this unfortunate friar who would not weep over himself,
and finally gave orders that they should give him twelve pence merelv as provision
for the journey as far as Paris.

Salagnac saw in the revolt of John of Navarre real disobedience. It would

be so in the light of later legislation but not in that of the time. The brother’s
position is much more subtle. John took advantage of a real juridical
difficulty to embarrass his leader and marked his opposition in a way that was
certainly very cruel for the founder.
The itinerant mendicity of the Preachers was in no sense optional at this
date, and formed as essential a part of the programme of the brethren as it
did ot Dominic himself. The document which imposed this, however, was
the charter of the Preaching of Toulouse, the text of 1215-. It was an epis¬
copal charter and was valid only for the diocese. Dominic, as has been seen,
had not had this provision confirmed by Rome. He reserved the legislation
on poverty for a later stage.
Now in the Paris towards which the first seven Preachers were making
their way and indeed in the whole of France, obligatory prescriptions had
been in existence for the Canons Regular since 1213. They imposed on the
superior of a chapter or religious house, under a formal precept, each time
they sent one of their religious on a journey, ‘to be careful to see that they
provided him in sufficient quantity with the horses and provision for the
expenses of the journey which were indispensable for the canon, as for his
acolytes; for it would be a disgrace for the Lord and for the category of this
religious that he should be constrained to beg’.139
The fluidity of the legislation might present advantages in the transition
period. It was not without its disadvantages. In the face of the decisions of a
provincial council sanctioned by a legate of the Pope, Dominic could not
appeal to the authority of the diocesan charter of Toulouse. He could not
even appeal to the authority which came to him from the profession of
obedience. All that remained to him was his moral authority. He humbled
himself, he entreated, he wept. His emotion was all the more intense, since
John s action raised the question of the future loyalty of the Preachers of
Paris. There was a danger that, enlarging on the example given by John of
Navarre, they might make the statutes of the synod of Paris the basis of
their legislation as canons and Preachers and leave aside the Gospel pattern
of theii master inscribed in Fulk’s charter.
Dominic, however, had to give way. He had to give John the twelve
pence. He felt them burn his fingers like the thirty pence of Judas. He was
however, reassured by the attitude of the other six brethren assigned to
 THE ORDER OF PREACHERS SPREAD THROUGH THE WORLD 239

Paris. Their loyalty was sufficient indication of the soundness of the evangelical
tradition of the Preachers. In the years that followed, however, Matthew of
France would turn to the legislation of the Parisian synod for justification
for departing from this tradition in certain particular cases.140 The idea of
dispensation, it has been said, is at the root of Dominic’s legislative ideas.
Not until the important general chapter of 1228 would it be laid down
clearly what could or ought to be dispensed and what, in the programme of
the Preachers, could not be abrogated.141
The last of the itinerant brethren has disappeared from sight along the
high road and Dominic returns to the convent. Small as it is, how large and
empty the cloister of St Romain now seems. The warm fraternal atmosphere
has gone. So has the motionless presence of the brethren, impressive
in its silence, as they worked in their cells; and the return from the ministry
each evening of the preachers who asked his blessing; and the liturgical
prayer, in which Dominic, going from one choir to the other, encouraged
the brethren in their chanting. The founder sometimes wondered if he
had not perhaps undermined or destroyed his work by this dispersion.
Dominic drove away these images of discouragement. He took advantage
of his last hours in the city to give himself to a more intense apostolate and
to finish putting the affairs of St Romain in order. On nth September, he
was to meet Fulk at Castelnaudary to settle a difficulty in the collection of
the sixth part of the tithes.142 Two days later, he learnt of the insurrection
of Toulouse. After that time he was cut off from his sons who were unable
to leave the city.
He remained in the neighbourhood, however, for two months more. On
13th December, he obtained a guarantee from Simon de Montfort for the
property of Prouille, and the revenues of St Romain in Carcasses and the
Agenais.I43 It was a farewell. The interview was dramatic for them both.
Dominic was plunging his person and his order into the unknown. Simon
was at the end of his strength. He was no longer the bold, indefatigable and
ever victorious warrior of the early days, nor the ambitious and triumphant
leader of 12 14; he remained merely the loyal soldier, a noble, in short, who
really believed he was putting his sword at the disposal of Christian truth
and morals. It seemed to him that God was abandoning him. His troops, like
his resources, were dissipated. His most desperate attacks failed one after
the other. After nine years of daily battles, each day of which was spent in
the saddle, his body was exhausted. The cruel ironies of the legate, who
reproached him for being ignorant and cowardly, crushed his pride without
succeeding in spurring him on to fresh efforts. It is said that he asked God
to give him peace with death.144 Dominic suffered in his friendship for the
Count. He knew that he would not see him again.
In the middle of December 1217, for the fourth time, he went down to
Rome.
 Chapter XIII

FROM ROME TO MADRID

I IKE a good husbandman, Dominic had sown the seed of the Preachers.
Now it was essential that the harvest should come to fruition and
.-/increase. In the meantime the founder did not remain inactive. He
journeyed to the centre of the Church to obtain the support of the Pope.
He was already gathering together other fruitful seed and was preparing
other fields with a view to sowing his grain there.
Nothing is known of his journey. Having set out from the neighbourhood
of Toulouse after 13th December,1 he reached Rome a little before nth
February.2 Two months—double the time necessary for the journey. It is
possible that he made a detour and lingered en route. A chronicler somewhat
late in date, and of no great reputation, mentions his passing through Milan,
another, a visit to Bologna.3 The second piece of information would
corroborate the first. It is, indeed, very plausible. Bologna was the second
intellectual centre of Christendom; 4 the universal centre of canon law, as
it was of Roman law. On account of the thousand and more students the
town had gathered together, 5 the influence of its masters in the religious
and political life of the Catholic nations, the echo of its doctrines in the life
of the Church, finally through its geographical position between the Empire
and the Pontifical States, turned towards Germany and Central Europe as
much as towards France and the remainder of the West, Bologna could not
but attract Dominic. He had sent the most important group of his sons to
the university of Paris—the theological centre—to study and to make the
order known. Just when anxiety about recruitment was coming to the
forefront of the matters that preoccupied him, he came to Bologna, rather
than any other place, to seek for new brethren. There, more than anywhere
else, young clerics were in danger of losing their generosity and wrapping
themselves round with selfish and sterile self-interest. The study of Law
threw open to them the most lucrative careers in the Church and even in
the world. To win them over to theology and the apostolate was to give
them back to their vocation and to the urgent tasks of the hour.
Adjoining the small church of Santa Maria di Mascarella, on the northern
edge of the city, a hospice had been opened for Spanish pilgrims.6 It was
run by men from Navarre, canons of Roncesvalles. If Dominic’s companions
were shortly afterwards seen to take up residence with them, this was
 FROM ROME TO MADRID 24I

because their master had begun by residing there thus paving the way for
their friendly reception among his compatriots. It would even seem that he
won over a certain recruit there, who was quickly formed and linked to the
order by profession. A certain Richard the elder figures from the outset as
superior of the Preachers of Bologna;7 he does not seem to have come from
elsewhere and Dominic must thus have recruited him from Bologna itself,
perhaps with a companion. Then, leaving this small nucleus as a touchstone
and promising to send reinforcements soon, the founder set off again and
reached Rome.
Immediately on arrival he saw the Pope. Fourteen months earlier, when
he was still envisaging establishing himself firmly in the neighbourhood of
Toulouse, the support he then asked from the head of the Church consisted
of a series of confirmations—of his order, of his preaching, of his privileges.
Now that his sons were setting forth to preach on the great highroads and
were presenting themselves as unknown men—particularly under suspicion
at this time, for they had the external appearance of apostolic preachers—a
letter of recommendation from the Sovereign Pontiff would be an invaluable
help to them in overcoming or surmounting initial mistrust. Honorius was
perfectly ready to draw up such a letter. It was issued by the chancellery on
1 ith February.8
This was the first of a series of bulls, the initial drop of moisture of a
veritable shower of recommendations which would in future emanate from
the Curia and during three years penetrate to every corner of Europe where
the Friars Preachers made their appearance.9 After seven centuries, after
the destruction or the falling into oblivion of a large number of texts
belonging to the archives, even today more than thirty copies of such
recommendations issued by the Pope between 1218 and 1221 can be found
in different places.
One fact emphasizes the principal share of Dominic in this shower of
recommendations—he was scarcely dead, in the middle of 1221, when it
ceased entirely until the end of the pontificate of Honorius. Clearly the
initiative came from the founder, not from the Pope. Having elicited this
series of recommendations himsell, Dominic showed considerable skill in
maintaining and directing it. It was not continuous but, during the course
of these three years, followed the rhythm of the preacher s action. It was
to hand at each period of intense creative activity, on the morrow of the new
dispersions which were the seeding-grounds of convents at the beginning
of 1218, the end of 1219, the first part of 1221. On the other hand it
ceased almost entirely in 1220, the year devoted by Dominic to the organiza¬
tion and strengthening of what he had just established.
Dominic, however, was not alone. In 1218, as at the end of 1219 and
beginning of 1 2 2 1, he once more found Cardinal Ugolino at the Curia. The
part played by the Cardinal at the time of the confirmation is not the only
 242 IN MEDIO ECCI.ESIAE

reason which suggests his intervention. One fact enables us to establish it

beyond doubt. Scarcely had Ugolino, whose influence seemed to suffer a
decline after the death of the founder, succeeded Honorius III under the
name of Gregory IX (1227), when he resumed the distribution of bulls of
recommendation which had ceased for the last six years. To do this, he
utilized the formula obtained by St Dominic a few months before his death.
In 1218, he was almost at the summit of his prestige.10 The former
Pope had concentrated his limited energy on the crusade and the missions,
but Ugolino, the most conspicuous among Innocent’s former cardinals,
carried on his shoulders the weight and burden of the important affairs of the
previous reign, problems of high politics, problems of faith and peace, the
problem of the religious orders. His spiritual sensitiveness, prompt to be
moved in the presence of the evangelical simplicity of St Francis, attached
itself with a sort of nostalgic regret to the generosity of St Dominic, so very
like that of the apostles.11
He saw in the order which the founder had built up with a master hand,
the providential instrument of that orthodox learned and reforming preach¬
ing, the urgency of which he recognized as Innocent III did. He thus
again brought the Preacher into touch with the Pontiff and supported him
with all his credit. He helped him to prepare the text of the bull by the
formulation which he gave to the request.
The bull was addressed under the form of an ‘apostolic pastoral letter’ to
the whole of the prelates of the Church. It described the brethren under the
name coveted since 1215-, and for the future to be definitive, of ‘brethren of
the Order of Preachers . It described in two phrases their useful ministry
and their religious life, which, the Pope thought, was pleasing to God. They
set the word of God before all men (he said) and did so gratuitously, for thev
had no other ambition but the profit of souls and followed the Lord alone,
proud of the title of poverty. In his name and the name of the apostolic see,
the Pope recommended them to all the prelates, to whom he addressed an
insistent command to support them in their praiseworthy design and to
assist them in their daily needs.
Dominic had the Pope’s recommendation registered forthwith in the
books of the Curia.12 He asked for and obtained a certified copy sealed with
lead on hempen cord. At the first opportunity he transmitted this to the
brethren in Paris. In the following year, the brethren who left Paris to
found the convent of Poitiers took this bull with them. It is still in that city,
in the archives of the department of Vienne.
The founder could congratulate himself on such a document. A long
stretch of road had been traversed since 1215-. All they had then desired
was now granted and recommended by the Pope. But it would be naive
to think that the bishops would give an immediate welcome to these genuine
preachers who gave their services freely, and support these poor volunteers
 FROM ROME TO MADRID H3
who were offering themselves as their collaborators. It was not long before
Dominic received news from Paris, from Toulouse and from Spain, that
was not encouraging.

One day, two religious exhausted from their long tramp, had just rejoined
Dominic at the hospice where he was lodging.13 He could not dissimulate
his somewhat sorrowful surprise, for indeed he did not expect to see them.
They were two Preachers—two Castilians, his old companion, Friar Dominic
of Spain, and Friar Miguel de Ucero. He had recently sent them in the hope
of reaping rich harvests in Spain. They came to admit their failure and dis¬
couragement. Whereas Friar Gomez and Friar Pedro of Madrid were
meeting with abundant success, they had reaped nothing in Spain. It was
difficult to be a prophet in one’s own country! The intellectual mediocrity
of Friar Dominic was scarcely compensated for by Friar Miguel. Still
insufficiently adapted for this life of heroic initiative, they had not been
successful in their preaching and had perhaps experienced insults in their
begging. They had soon reached breaking-point and, being humble, had
judged that their only resource was to return to the founder.
Dominic understood men too well to waste time pitying or consoling
them. It would not do for them to remain in this state of frustration for a
single moment. They must set off again and do better in some other place.
There was nothing for them to do in Rome, where he had no convent and
where he did not intend to stay permanently. He was at the centre of the
Church only to promote and direct the first expansion of the order,
backed by the Pope’s authority, but he was ready to leave his observation
post as soon as he had seen the effect of the initial measures. So the founder
sent the two brethren to Bologna, to the small nucleus of friars whom he
had recently left at Santa Maria di Mascarella. They could remain there;
he would not be long in joining them.14 Somewhat bewildered, Friar Miguel
took up his staff again and set out, accompanied by Friar Dominic.
About the month of April, two other brethren arrived from Paris.13
These Dominic expected, at least the elder one, Friar Bertrand.16 His
companion, John of Navarre, was, according to instructions, to continue
studying theology in Paris and not to tramp the roads.17 Doubtless he had
again been creating difficulties, and this had decided Matthew of France to
provide him with a little breathing-space by assigning him to Friar Bertrand
as socius.
The latter came to render account of the arrival and installation of the
brethren in Paris. Dominic, it will be remembered, had sent them off in
two parties.18 The group of Spanish friars had moved more cjuickly than the
others. Leaving shortly after iyth August, they had entered the capital on
1 2th September. The others, headed by the superior, abbot Matthew of
France, had followed only after three weeks. The academic year was about
 24-4 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

to begin once more at the university. Time was pressing. They had dealt
with the most urgent problem and rented19 a poor house by the side of the
hospital of Notre Dame, opposite the gates of the archbishop’s residence.
The brethren were thus now lodged in the heart of the capital, on the lie de
la Cite opposite the cloister of Notre Dame where the oldest school of the
Faculty of theology held session.
Yet it was a difficult position for the sons of St Dominic—to be forced
to rent their lodging and consequently to beg for the rent, since they had
nothing of their own. This fact alone indicates the kind of welcome which
the city of the King of France gave to them. During the eight months they
had actually been there, no one had yet offered these poor religious
hospitality. It was clearly thought that the canons of St Romain of Toulouse20
who had come to study, could not be lacking in resources. It was not for
public charity but for their house in Toulouse to supply them with what was
necessary, in conformity with the decisions of the recent synod of Paris.21
It was ‘a disgrace for the Lord and for their profession that they should
be thus constrained to beg’. God was for all, but each one in the city was
for himself. Moreover the scarcity of lodgings in Paris was assuming
alarming proportions and in the city the invading flood of partially starving
students increased daily.22
The group of Preachers, however, was not a haphazard collection of
needy men. Their voluntary poverty was the basis of their ministry of
the evangelical message. It was this principle that did not meet with
universal acceptance. It had about it a flavour of the Waldenses, the
Catharists, those heresies of the south . . . like the brethren. Moreover,
it is abundantly clear that among those who might be expected to make
full use of their help, the ministry of the Preachers had excited no greater
interest than had their poverty. The clergy of Paris, strong in their orthodoxy
of which the presence of the university was a guarantee, did not in general
experience the need of assistance.23 The friendships which Matthew of
France had kept up with several of the clergy, especially with the university
men,24 were not sufficient to awaken an interest of any significance at all in
the brethren of St Romain. And then scarcely any of the brethren—
Castilians, men of Languedoc, even Englishmen—knew anydring of the
speech of the lie de France. Their influence was limited to those who could
be reached by the language of the Church, the scholastic milieu of the Latin
quarter.
Yet the bull of recommendation dispatched on nth February had
certainly reached the bishop, Pierre de Nemours. Although he was the one
to whom it was chiefly addressed, he seemed scarcely impressed at all by
the mandates of the Sovereign Pontiff. He was preoccupied by other cares.
Fie was preparing to leave for the crusade in the East, where, moreover, he
was to lose his life in the course of the siege of Damietta.25 In June i 2 i 8, a
 FROM ROME TO MADRID 24 S
very few days before his departure, he made his will. The text, which is
still extant,26 bequeathed legacies to numerous convents in Paris and the
provinces, to the canons of the Cathedral, to various hotels-Dieu. Nowhere
was there a mention of the Preachers or brethren of St Romain. Yet this
was surely the moment to think of the proteges of the Pope. If he forgot
them in this way and left Paris, others were not likely to know of their
presence. Dominic, in Toulouse, known to everyone, backed by the Count,
the bishop and the legate, had had to wait a year and a half to obtain a
chapel; Matthew of France and his brethren, almost an unknown quantity
if not objects of suspicion to those who thought themselves the models of
orthodoxy, found themselves in anything but a comfortable position in
Paris.
Other news, more mixed in character, at last arrived from the Midi.
If Prouille was pursuing its regular life without difficulties and even saw
its patrimony further increased,27 this was not the case in Toulouse.
The siege of the town continued, increasingly relentless. The brethren,
unable to leave the city, did not allow themselves to be considered bad
citizens and stood firm. Nobody would later reproach them for having
abandoned the place, as a good number of townsmen had done from the
very beginning of the revolt. St Romain would be neither confiscated nor
sold by auction with the property of those who had fled.28 Their position,
however, was becoming difficult. In the besieged city, their preaching
carried no weight with a population which was struggling for its very
existence against a papal legate and filled with hatred for all the crusaders.
Moreover, the brethren’s Catholic opposition to Raymond VI could
scarcely be disguised. The position of Peter Seila was particularly delicate.
Recently bound through his family and his own person to the house of the
Count de Montfort, he had now become his adversary.26 There was reason to
fear that someone might wreak vengeance on him.
Dominic’s reaction was immediate. He had already on 30th March had
the privilege of confirmation of the order drawn up in the name of the prior
and the brethren of the monastery of Prouille.36 The text of the document
was identical with that of the privilege granted on 22nd December, 1216 to
the prior and brethren of St Romain of Toulouse. There was only one
change—the word ‘monastery’ was substituted for the word ‘church .3I
Dominic had already effected this substitution in the bull of 7th February,
1 2 17.32 It obviated the necessity of tying down his canon-preachers to a
definite sanctuary. The property confirmed was, or very nearly so, that
which already appeared in the titulus of 8th October, 1216. Thus the
masculine section of the house of Prouille was confirmed as a community of
Preachers and received its privileges accordingly. The document established
its independence in regard to the community of St Romain, of which the
brethren of Prouille had legally formed part since 1 2 16.33 Should St Romain
9-S.D.
246 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

come to disappear before any other convent was founded, in Paris or

elsewhere, the flame of the order would not for that reason be extinguished;
it would continue burning in a legally constituted community, the Preaching
of the monastery of Sainte Marie de Prouille.34

On 26th April Dominic had a new issue registered of the bull of recom¬
mendation. 35 A phrase of primary importance was added to the earlier
letter, at the head of the terms of enactment. The first duty that the Pope
imposed on the prelates of the Church in relation to the Preachers was
‘with kindness to admit the brethren to exercise the office of preacher, to
which they have been assigned’. The Pope understood the position exactly,
and this clause would never disappear from the later bulls.36 The text
inscribed in the registers of the Curia mentions three brethren of the Order
of Preachers whose initials alone are given—P., T., R.37 If we take up the
list of the brethren at the time of the dispersion, little different from the
list in April 1218, one single reading is possible and must be accepted—
Peter Seila, Thomas of Toulouse, Raymond de Fauga, the three principal
brethren of Toulouse. Dispatched in one single, or in three distinct certified
copies, the bull of 26th April paved the way for an eventual dispersion of
the house of St Romain. Whatever might happen, the future was safeguarded.
Peter Seila, in fact, would not be long before taking the road to Paris, where
Dominic would meet him again the following year. Raymond de Fauga,
who remained in Toulouse, was to go off in 1220 to found the convent of
Montpellier.38 He would later become Bishop of Toulouse.
A further certified copy of the bull was addressed that very day to the
bishops of Spain. Over in Spain Friars Gomez and Pedro of Madrid wrere in
no need for the moment of such a document. ‘They are sowing the word of
God in this place and that, said Jordan of Saxony, ‘and are gathering
abundant fruit.’39 Thus the clergy of the provinces they passed through had
understood their mission and could make use of it. Dominic, moreover,
was preparing to join them, as will be seen. This bull w^as to help the first
foundations there, and, in fact, it led to the foundation of the convent of
Salamanca, in whose collection of archives it formed the first document.40
Something must now be done for the brethren in Paris. Dominic had an
audience at the Vatican.41 Shortly afterwards, an insistent letter was
dispatched by Honorius III to the university of Paris.42 Next to the bishop,
indeed, the corporation of the masters and students of Paris constituted a
most important and powerful ecclesiastical body. It had, moreover, no
reason for refusing anything to the Pope, who had confirmed it, reformed it
and protected it in its independence. It had a particular responsibility
towards the Preachers, who were students of the university. The Pope thus
earnestly begged the university to procure a lodging for these poor religious
in one of the hospices which the corporation was beginning to receive from
donors in favour of poor students, an earnest of the future colleges.
 FROM ROME TO MADRID H7
Finally there was Bologna. Dominic had sent Friars Bertrand and John of
Navarre there. It was now the end of April.43 He doubtless gave them also a
copy of the second bull. After the departure of the two Preachers, his
ministry brought him fresh recruits. One of them was a lay-brother whose
name we do not know. The other was called Christian. It seems indeed that
he should be identified with the Cistercian brother who would later be one
of the founders of Cologne.44 After listening to Dominic, he desired to
become a Preacher. This was not easy. The Order of Citeaux in its extreme
austerity was not considered an order from which one could easily depart, for
at that time the passing from one order to another was only possible if the
subject entered a more austere order. Moreover profession in the order
was defended by strict privileges. The Preachers themselves had had to
inscribe in their first constitutions a prohibition against receiving Cistercians.
They had made the reservation, however, of any intervention by the Pope,43
and it was this that set Friar Christian free from his Cistercian engagement.
With the lay-brother, Dominic sent him to enlarge the group in Bologna.46
Despite his great longing, Dominic still had to wait to join them for
another companion, whom he had just persuaded to leave everything to
become a Preacher. This was the most remarkable of all his conquests for the
apostolic work and the history of it was clearly providential.
While the founder was concerned with the promotion of his order with
the support of the Sovereign Pontiff, he did not in effect remain idle. A few
audiences, visits to the chancellery, conversations with Ugolino, were
little for his apostle’s heart. Lent had begun on 28th February. Dominic
preached without intermission in the churches and convents of the town,4'
as he had preached the Lent in Fanjeaux, Carcassonne or Toulouse. It was
one of his special characteristics that he was never completely absorbed by
his tasks as founder, legislator or superior. His effectiveness in the organiza¬
tion, which sometimes seems to us bewildering, was only an addition to, or
rather the overflow of a fulness of earlier generous activity. The direct
ministry of souls, through prayer or the spoken word, continued to form the
thread of his life and the subject of all his cares. Thus he had a certain
detachment in respect of his work, an interior liberty in regard to it, which
in no sense diminished his effectiveness—on the contrary. He would not
have elicited solid vocations among the young, if he himself, in his ardent
love of souls and of Christ, had not been the type of apostle-preacher.
Now at this particular time, a group of clergy from Orleans were keeping
Lent in Rome, with Manasse de Seignelay, their bishop.48 The French
prelate was on his way to join the pilgrimage to the Holy Land,46 with his
household. In their number was the dean of the important collegiate church
of St Aignan of Orleans. Reginalds6 was an outstanding priest. He was well
known, for he had recently been teaching canon law for five years in Paris.
As dean, singe MM fie had displayed exceptional qualities of prudence.
248 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

love of peace, human feeling. Matured by his teaching and his earlier life,
he was endowed with keen sensitivity. Formerly he had given himself up
too much to the comfortable dignity of a life of culture and ‘delicate’ living,
as was the expression of the time—with its suggestion of something
derogatory.51 His heart, however, had remained generous. He had the gift
of revolutionizing men’s lives by preaching. Very well informed as to the
wretchedness of souls and the needs of the Church, in particular in regard to
the Albigensian crisis, for his bishop had gone on crusade there in 1 2 1 3,52and
he himself had been there in 1214,53 he was troubled by the wretched
condition of the Catholic preaching which the Council of 1213 had
emphasized. In the heart of this mature priest who was almost crushed by
administrative cares, a great appeal made itself heard. The well-to-do life
of a chapter dean weighed down upon him like remorse. He wanted to
liberate himself from this life which was too worldly and produced too
little fruit. He dreamed of leaving it all, of living Tike an apostle’, going
from one township to another preaching, in voluntary poverty.54 Many a
great heart had felt this call during the past hundred and fifty years.
At Rome, it is said, he confided in Ugolino. He had heard him speak
about the Preachers.55 He heard Dominic preach. One dav the founder
missed him; the reason was that Reginald was ill. He visited him and
spoke to him of following the poverty of Christ, of sharing the lot of his
brethren. The two men understood one another perfectly. Reginald agreed
and then and there bound himself by vow to the order. The following year,
in a conversation in Paris, Dominic would relate the sequel to this story.
The illness became very dangerous. Death seemed almost inevitable.
Reginald was cured, however, but not without a miracle.

For the Virgin Mary, queen of heaven, mother of mercy, came to him under
visible form amid the fire of the fever, and rubbed him with a healing ointment
which she brought with her. She anointed his eyes, nostrils, ears, mouth, navel,
hands and feet, adding these words: ‘I anoint your feet with holy oil, so that they
may be ready to announce the Gospel of peace.’ Then she presented him with the
complete habit of the order. He felt himself cured forthwith and so suddenly
made whole throughout his entire body that the doctors who had almost despaired
of saving him, were astonished to note the indications of a perfect cure.s6

On learning of Reginald’s vow, Manasse of Orleans was greatly distressed.

Perhaps he remembered Dominic, with whom he had been in contact for a
lew days in Fanjeaux in May 1213.57 He had no suspicion then of what
would be taken from him. He was attached to Reginald whom he called
his father , doubtless because he asked him for advice and confided his
spiritual life to him.58 The dean ot St Aignan had given his word however.
Yet Dominic had to agree to allow him at least the time to finish the
pilgrimage to the Holy Places with Manasse. It was understood that
immediately upon his return, Reginald would m^ke his way to Bologna,
 FROM ROME TO MADRID 249

Dominic realized what an influence this former professor of law, whose

apostolic soul was so close to his own, would be able to exert over the
university. To this recruit who had not yet even the habit, he abandoned
himself with such an impulse of joyful confidence that he already gave him
the delegation of his authority over the community of the brethren. As soon
as Reginald reached Bologna, he would be there as his vicar.59
It was in the midst of the Paschal season in the first half of May.60 This was
the time for the pilgrims to reach Genoa if they wanted to take advantage of
the ‘general passage’ towards the East fixed for 24th June next.61 Perhaps
Dominic accompanied them for part of the way. There was nothing to keep
him in Rome any longer. Ugolino himself had left.62 The founder was going
to begin the visitation of his groups of brethren throughout Italy, Spain,
Provence and France, to encourage, organize, reform and, if possible,
stimulate them to go further and higher. Thus he would give the impetus
to the unending journeys of the Dominican Masters-General, who for a very
long period, would have no permanent seat, but would be always travelling
from country to country to keep alive and renew among the Preachers the
spirit of their institutions and of their ministry.
Before leaving Rome, however, Dominic obtained one last audience with
the Sovereign Pontiff. It was perhaps then that a new project was outlined—
the installation of a Dominican house in Rome. It is quite certain that the
idea was in the air. In the course of his ministry Dominic had seen the
benefit that would accrue from this, as he had seen its possibility. The
Papacy too, moreover, had precise and long-standing projects. One thing is
certain in any event. On 3rd August, 1218, Honorius III set down in a letter
the first of a series of acts which were to secure the convent of St Sixtus for
the Preachers as soon as the founder returned to Rome.63

For six months, all direct trace of the traveller is lost. It cannot, how¬
ever, be doubted that he first visited Bologna. O It was there that the
first of his four groups of brethren were. It was time, moreover, that he
should visit them to give them courage. In their hospice of the Mascarella,
they were experiencing poverty which bordered on distress, ‘angustia’ said
Jordan of Saxony.65 The provision of 1216, in Toulouse, which authorized
that ‘there should still be revenues’ seemed rather like irony. Here there
was mendicant poverty. Dominic saw in it a sign from Providence. As he
would so often do, he invited his brethren joyously to give thanks to God.
Certain measures, moreover, were to reduce these material difficulties.
He sent back to Paris the brethren John and Bertrand, certainly before the
end of June.66 The former, at least, was to continue his studies. Bertrand,
who had his full confidence, acted as liaison officer between the Master and
his communities. The founder would moreover take the two Castilians with
him to Spain; the fact is certain at least in the case of one of them, Friar
2 i;o IN MEDIO ECCIF.SIAE

Dominic the Spaniard, who was later to become prior in his own country.67
Thus of the recent arrivals, there would only remain in Bologna Friars
Christian and his socius, the lay brother who had come from Rome. In a
swift apostolate, however, Dominic enlarged the contact of the Preachers
with the clergy. He once more made known the pontifical recommendations.
And then he went away, leaving the brethren reassured. He could not
linger, for other tasks claimed him. Moreover, he judged it right to oblige
his brethren to be self-sufficient.
Thus after thirteen years of absence, he set off again for his native country.
He had not seen it since 1205-. It would be interesting to know by what
route he travelled, and what wrere the places he visited on his w'ay. It would
seem that a sea crossing, from Genoa to Barcelona, for instance, can be
excluded, for the passes over the Cottian Alps are free from snow in summer
and open in the direction of Provence. He most probably paid a visit to his
brethren in the Narbonensis. He certainly visited Prouille once more.
He brought the bull which canonically erected the male section of the
community into a convent of Preachers. This implies a certain legislative
change. It was perhaps at this time that Dominic also inaugurated among
the sisters a revision of the rule of Prouille, redrafted in accordance with the
‘customs’ of the Preachers.68 After 2yth July, it w^as possible to enter
Toulouse once more. Amaury de Montfort, who for a month past had
succeeded his father Simon, then abandoned the siege of the town.6? It was
perhaps at this moment that Dominic sent Peter Seila to Paris70 and the
founders of the convent to Lyons.71 Despite everything, St Romain had stood
firm under the trial and several brethren of note had entered there.
The later stages of the journey are totally unknowm to us. Did Dominic
pay a visit to his native Castile, Osma for instance, or Caleruega, Burgos72
or Palencia? Unreliable modern traditions, of insufficient antiquity and
unsupported by valid documents, merely express the likelihood of one
or other of these visits.73 Those traditions which, on the other hand, claim
to attribute to St Dominic the foundation of other houses than those of
Segovia and Madrid, are incorrect, because they contradict the explicit
assertion of Jordan of Saxony.74 The only plausible v ition, for it appears
to be supported by numerous thirteenth-century documents, concerns
the Dominican nuns of San Esteban de Gormaz, w'ho were to transfer their
convent to Caleruega in 1 266.75 It is sufficient, however, to examine these
documents closely to realize that they in no sense attribute to Dominic, on
the occasion of a visit in 1218 or at the beginning of 1219, the creation of
their monastery; still less, as Fernando del Castillo who in this respect
corrupted the later historiography, claimed in the sixteenth century, do
they prove the transformation by the efforts of St Dominic of a so-called
Augustinian monastery into a monastery of Preacheresses.76
It is thus necessary to accept that we cannot know what the patriarch did
 FROM ROME TO MADRID 2£1

between July and November i 2 i 8, the date on which one next finds trace
of him again. He certainly did not spare himself during this time. Four long
months; for the Preacher that meant many a journey, much apostolic
sowing and reaping.
About the middle of the autumn, he was in Guadalajara, on the road from
Saragossa to Toledo. The ancient Roman and Moorish city stood erect on
the banks of the Henares, in the heart of New Castile. Friar Dominic of
Spain was no longer with him now. He had perhaps sent him with some
socius to join Pedro of Madrid. He was however surrounded by a new group
of clerics and lay brethren who had been won to the ideal of the Preachers
in the previous weeks and were already bound to the order by oath. The
devil had been causing the wind of acute discouragement to blow upon the
saint’s little company. What the tempter suggested to them can be guessed
only too easily—the uncertain future of this new order, the fatigue of the
road, the begging of one’s bread, the hard beds of the mendicants. ... In
spirit Dominic saw the mouth of hell swallowing up these deserters and
these perjurers. His despairing words could avail nothing. They fled. Only
Friar Adam and two lay brethren remained faithful. What Dominic had not
obtained from men, however, he obtained from God. He gave himself to
prayer. Soon all, or almost all, came back to him.77
Shortly afterwards he received a gift in the Roman city of Brihuega, a few
miles away.78 The priest of the church of San Miguel, Emiliano, granted him
and the brethren of the order a house which had come to him from a certain
Juan el Calvo. This may have been with a view to a foundation at Brihuega
or elsewhere. The gift was only conditional. There was a possibility of
its reverting to Emiliano, either the latter reserving the right to take
back his gift in the case that the foundation should not succeed, or
Dominic himself not wishing to acquire landed property as a permanent
possession.
In the course of the month of November, the founder had the opportunity
of getting this donation confirmed and completed by the Archbishop of
Toledo himself.79 He found Rodrigo Ximenes de Rada at Talamanca, twenty
miles or so to the north of his favourite see of Alcala. Dominic visited the
ecclesiastical head of the province where he intended to sow the word of
God. In addition to this general motive, he had a more personal reason.
The prince of the Church whom he was going to meet, Primate of Spain
and legate of the Sovereign Pontiff, a prelate who was both a great historian,
a theologian and a preacher with a scintillating gift of expression, had for
some time been his bishop before he was transferred to the primary see of
all the Spains.80 Appointed to Osma, in effect, on the morrow of the death
of Diego (i 208), this former Cistercian must have regulated Dominic’s case,
authorized him to remain far from his brethren and to preach in the
Narbonensis; he had sent him a socius and perhaps even other brethren.
2 £2 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

Later he had doubtless noticed him at the Council of the Lateran, while he
himself, in Eve different languages, was defending the rights of his primacy.81
He was, moreover, most fully aware of the canons of the Council in regard
to preaching. Thus we should not find it surprising that every one of the
authentic documents in relation to the ministry of Dominic and his brethren
in Spain in these years 1218-1219, depicts them as being in some locality of
the jurisdiction of the great archbishop.82 As he had recently welcomed
Friar Gomez and Friar Pedro of Madrid, so Rodrigo Ximenes generously
welcomed Dominic. He opened his^province to the Preacher’s ministry.
Finally he authorized the gift of the house in Brihuega by the parish priest of
San Miguel and granted it as far as it lay in his power. He laid down that
if this gift should come to be no longer required after the death of the priest
Emiliano, it should revert to the archiepiscopal see. The donation was
addressed to ‘Brother Dominic, minister of the order of the Preaching, and
to other brethren of this same order’.83
This welcome was a stimulant. The Guadalajara temptation would not
recur. After Talamanca, Dominic went to Madrid. We do not know whv
he chose that place whose future glories were as yet hidden. Alcala, Toledo,
both seats of an archbishopric, were better suited to a foundation. It would
seem likely that Pedro of Madrid had, very naturally, returned to his native
town the previous year to carry out his ministry there.84 The ground was
already ploughed, sown, and the harvest was whitening. In fact the founder,
Jordan of Saxony tells us, soon ‘began’83 a convent. The word was well
chosen. It was as yet only a rough outline, a preaching of humble dimensions.
It was not isolated, however. As in Prouille, in Toulouse, later in Bologna
and in Rome, the Dominican apostolate had borne fruit in feminine hearts.
Dominic himself gave the habit to several women and attached them to the
community of the brethren.86 They were still scattered and, for lack of a
suitable installation, could not yet live together. The positions of Prouille
were, in short, reversed. There it was the monastery of the sisters which
served as a basis for the Preaching. Here it was the house of the brethren
which furnished the centre to which the sisters were attached.
The gift of the archbishop and of Emiliano provided the initial endow¬
ment. In the following month of May, in Madrid, Jaime Mames and his
relatives gave to the ‘Order of the Preaching’, a rural property situated at
San Julian de Val Sadobral.87 In the month of March 1220, Honorius III
thanked the people of Madrid for their generosity towards the brethren
‘of the Order of Preachers’.88 The Madrid house was thus at this date still
a male community. In the month of May following, however, in the general
chapter at Bologna, Dominic gave the order to transfer to the sisters the
building and the entire property. For the future the house was to become
a monastery of nuns.89
The impossibility of obtaining for the sisters a house capable of holding
 FROM ROME TO MADRID 2£3

all of them so that they could live a regular life together, and the necessity
of not multiplying communities of his order in a locality that was still rather
unimportant, doubtless led Dominic to this solution, but it was due above
all to the wish to give immediate effect to the decision of the chapter of
1220, which renounced any kind of property for the houses, as for the
individuals of the Order. The brethren would remain in Madrid as directors
and confessors to the sisters, a function which would not prevent them from
exercising their outside ministry in mendicant poverty. Here we have the
position of the preaching of Prouille in regard to the monastery—that
of the Catharist Perfect in relation to the communities of women
Perfect.
At the same moment Dominic wrote to the nuns, who were taking
upon themselves the burden of regular life to its fullest extent, the only one
of the letters of his which we still possess.90 It does not waste time in
expressions of feeling, but its virile tone is perhaps the founder’s finest gift to
the brethren and sisters of his order. Short, vigorous, balanced, it touches
the essential points and leaves to the superior of the sisters, whom it endows
with the indispensable authority and powers, the care of regulating every¬
thing else. It came indeed from the hand of the religious legislator who had
just organized his order in a masterly way, from one who was a tense, heroic
wrestler, but sensitive to human weakness for which he made provision
by dispensations. Here is the document. Although he was addressing
sisters it was drawn up in Latin—the current practice at the time.91

Friar Dominic, Master of the Preachers, to the dear prioress and to the whole
convent of the nuns of Madrid, health and daily progress.
We greatly rejoice and give thanks to God that He has granted you the favour of
such a holy life and has liberated you from the sordidness of this world. Wage
war by your fasts, daughters, against our ancient enemy, for only he who has
honourably fought will be crowned.
Up to the present you had not a suitable place for carrying out your religious life;
now you can no longer plead this excuse for, by the grace of God, you possess
buildings sufficiently well adapted for the maintenance of regular life. I therefore
wish you for the future to keep silence in all the places where speaking is normally
forbidden—refectory, dormitory and oratory; as to all the other places observe
your rule. Let no one cross the threshold to go out, let no one come in, unless it
is the bishop or some prelate to preach to you or to make a visitation. Spare
neither disciplines nor vigils. Obey your prioress. Do not chatter among your¬
selves and do not lose your time in gossip.
Not being able to help you in economic matters, we do not want to burden you
by empowering any of the brethren to receive women into or impose them on the
community. Only the prioress has this power, with the council of her convent.
Moreover we prescribe to our most dear brother, who has gone to very great
trouble to enable you to embrace this most holy estate, to dispose and ordain all
things as it shall seem useful to him so that you may conduct yourselves in a most
 IN MEDIO F.CCI ESIAE
2 £4
holy and religious fashion. Finally, we give him power to visit and correct you,
even to depose the prioress in case of necessity, with the consent of the
majority of the nuns, and we grant him permission to dispense you in certain
points, if it seem good to him.
Fare you well in Christ.

The most dear brother to whom the letter refers, the superior whose
name it does not give because he is known to all, is Mames, Dominic’s
brother. This is confirmed by one of the variants of the text.92 Mames,
however, was not there from the beginning. At the close of this year 1218
when the community in Madrid was beginning to take shape, it was Dominic
the Spaniard who was placed at the head of the brethren and the sisters.93
He, indeed, knew something of the life of the nuns of Prouille at the same
time as that of the Preachers. He stayed in Madrid a little under a year. In
the middle of 1219, when Dominic had left Spain and arrived in Paris before
returning to Italy, he found Friar Mames there. It was then that he sent him
to the convent of Madrid to relieve Dominic of Spain, charging him to pave
the way for the regular installation of the sisters. The letter alludes to his
meritorious work and to his good success. It also indicates that the sisters
have already had for some time a rule (ordo) which fixed the details of their
daily life. This was clearly the rule of Prouille, in accordance with which
Mames had striven to form them before gathering them together in the
convent.
Around the feast of Christmas Dominic crossed the Sierra de Guadarrama,
which, bordering the plateau of New Castile, marks the limits of the diocese
of Toledo, and went to Segovia.94 The warrior city raised its crenellated
walls on the summit of an abrupt rock which separated the dark waters of the
Eresma and the Clamores until they met beyond it. The friars may have
come there before him. No house, however, was in existence for the
Preachers. As in Toulouse, Dominic was lodged with a good lady who
gathered up memories of the saint with devotion.95 It was thus that, deeply
moved, she preserved the tunic of coarse sack-cloth which he wore under his
clothes in the guise of a hair-shirt and which he abandoned when he found a
genuine hair-shirt which pricked as much as he could wish. The tunic was
later to work miracles. In the end it found a home among the Cistercian
nuns of Las Huelgas in Valladolid.96
In Segovia as elsewhere, Dominic was a preacher before all else. Certain
anecdotes, for once fortunately preserved, allow us to glimpse his manner of
acting.97 He did not only make Latin sermons for a few initiates. He preached
in the vulgar tongue, on every occasion, to the entire population as a whole
or category by category. His audience could not be contained in a church,
nor even in the city, for at that time, in the towns of the thirteenth century,
large public squares were not yet known. The sermon was delivered on some
unappropriated ground outside the city wall, it is said on the banks of the
 {Photo: Leonard von Matt)

The citadel of Segovia at the confluence of the Clamores and Eresma.

-
 FROM ROME TO MADRID 2 SS
Eresma.98 The saint was not abstract in his language, nor were his words
remote from the sentiments of his hearers. He felt keenly the hopes and
trials of this agricultural population which at the time was suffering from
the effects of a persistent drought. For lack of rain, and because it was
already the end of December, they had not yet been able to sow the crops.
Moved with compassion, he promised in the course of a sermon that the
Lord would soon give them rain. Heaven’s reply was not long in coming.
Before the sermon was ended a terrible downpour occurred. The congrega¬
tion had difficulty in hastily regaining the town and their houses.
With the important men of the towrn council, Dominic was more severe.
The council had been assembled on a certain feast-day, doubtless immediately
after Mass. This time again, the meeting was held in the open air. The
nobles were present, proudly seated on their horses. A letter from the
King of Castile communicating his edicts was read aloud. Dominic seized
the opportunity to present the commandments of the King of eternity. One
of the nobles grew angry with this chatterer who was preventing him from
getting to his dinner. He turned his horse and went off. This contempt for
the word of God drew down upon him a terrible denunciation from the
preacher, the announcement of a drama the fulfilment of which would not
be long delayed, in which the proud man would unhappily succumb.
This ministry threw Dominic and his Preachers into the full current of
the religious life of the city. Recruits offered themselves to him. A house
was given to him.99 The convent of Santa Cruz was founded at the very
place where it still stands today, below the gate of San Ciprian which leads
towards the bridge. History makes no mention at any time of a change of
place. Since the Madrid house soon became a monastery of nuns, the convent
of Segovia would in fact be the first convent of the Preachers in Spain.100
Once more it was a humble house. It did not, indeed, take long to erect.
At the close of the Middle Ages the Catholic kings built in Segovia a master¬
piece of the architecture of the time.
Below this house, half-way down the slope which drops towards the
Eresma, and facing towards the north, a grotto is hollowed deep into the
rock. A modern tradition claims that Dominic at the time of his stay, spent
long hours in prayer there, bruising his flesh by disciplines that drew blood.
In the sixteenth century drops of blood, as fresh and brightly coloured as if
the saint had just shed them, could still be seen on the walls.101 Fernando
del Castillo, Colmenares and the later historians even declare that it was by
this grotto that the convent began, Dominic having chosen the harshness of
this site to withdraw to, to sleep there and give himself over to his macera¬
tions.102 This description is opposed to the primitive data which assert that
the gift of a house was the origin of the convent. Above all, it gives a false
picture of the founder and depicts him in the perspective of an eremitical
life of which there is no trace in the course of his history. Dominic was a
 256 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

community man, a man of the town, he lived in the midst of men and not
among rocks and savage beasts. As Jordan said:I03

He manifested himself everywhere as a man of the Gospel, in word and in deeds.

During the day, no one mixed more than he did in the society of his brethren or
his companions along the road, no one was more joyous. But in the night hours,
no one was more eager to watch, to pray and make supplication in all possible
ways. His tears pervaded the evening and his joy the morning. IQ4 He gave the day
to his neighbour and the night to God, knowing that God assigns His mercy to
the day and his song to the night.105

If in Segovia Dominic did not live the hermit’s life that has been claimed,
it is possible on the other hand that, at the same time that he lived with his
brethren in the house in which the first Spanish convent was founded, he
liked to retire and pray at night in this grotto, which for him did duty as an
oratory while the chapel was being constructed and that there, as in all
places through which he passed, he accompanied his prayer with his usual
mortifications. Thus the sacra cueva where so many holy persons—Teresa of
Avila for instance106—and in particular so many Friars Preachers, have come
to derive edification from the memory of the prayers and penances of St
Dominic, does nevertheless transmit an authentic message. It is
men to listen to what it has to tell, in order the better to understand and
imitate the saint. For, in truth, it was in the course of these prayers and
penances that he learnt love and compassion towards Christ and the men who
were his brethren. If he was so indefatigable in seeking out the wretched,
sinners and those who had gone astray, so bold in approaching them, so
anxious to convert them, it was because during his nights he had wept un¬
ceasingly over the tragedy of their lives and desired for them as for himself
the salvation and joy that God alone can give. Then prayer became urgent in
him, to the point of causing him to cry out; then the discipline with die
three iron chains which John of Navarre mentioned at the canonization
process,10? struck his shoulders with greater cruelty. This was one of those
weapons which, if united to the Cross, proved the sincerity of his prayer of
intercession and prepared the shower of graces of die morrow. If, however,
these interminable vigils and these penances frighten our weakness, do not
let us forget that they were only one expression of his affectionate love of
Christ and his brethren. Thus when the light of day drove away the tears of
the night, to speak like Jordan of Saxony, the same affectionate love was
transformed into joy and friendship in the life of brotherhood,108 into mercy
ever ready to be moved on meeting the suffering, or sinners. I09 Such was
the attitude, austere in the secret of prayer, lovable and compassionate in its
relations with men, that Dominic showed in Segovia, as throughout his
whole ministry. He was neither a hermit among the rocks nor an ascetic in
the desert, but an apostle of Christ, crucified with his master, yet open and
joyous after the manner of the Gospel.
 FROM ROME TO MADRID

For the first four months of 1219 his history again eludes us. Did he
return to the diocese of Toledo to preach the Lent there? Did he go to
Palencia where not so long ago he had made his sacred studies ? Its schools
had since become a university, the first in Spain, through the collaboration
of King Alfonso VIII and Bishop Tello.110 After a beginning full of pi'omise,
it had been undergoing a crisis since 1214, by reason of the disorders which
followed the death of the king.111 The apostolic constitution of 22nd
November, 1219, which renewed with insistence the scholastic decrees of
the Lateran and took steps to facilitate their application, would revive the
bishop’s courage. The latter took steps, confirmed by the Pope in October
1 220,112 which would cause the university to flourish again for a few years.
Nothing justifies the assumption, however, that this movement was launched
in the spring of 1219, and that it was this that attracted Dominic, still less
that it lead him to plan a foundation in Palencia. No glimpse of the convent
of Palencia can be derived from the documents before the spring of 1220.
This was to be the second house of the province of Spain.115
Dominic left the peninsula. He crossed over into the Narbonensis about
May.11"*- Prouille had been experiencing certain difficulties. Since the death
of Simon de Montfort the disorders in the viscounty had increased. Bernard
de Rochefort, the Bishop of Carcassonne under grave suspicion who had had
to resign in 1 2 11, had returned to his see, and Guy des Vaux-Cernai left for
his abbey again.115 This was a revenge of the clergy of the Midi on the
clergy of the crusade. At once the monks of St Hilaire, whose abbey was in
the same diocese, became emboldened to the point of force. By force of
arms they occupied the church of St Martin of Limoux, which they had
never ceased to claim from Prouille, and drove out the brethren who were
in charge. William Claret reacted with energy, appealing to Archbishop
Arnaud de Narbonne, in whose diocese Limoux was situated. Despite this
intervention, however, on 26th November, 1 2 1 8,11 and that of Bernard de
Rochefort on 13th April, 1 219,^7 the sisters were to wait a long time yet
before recovering their property.118
Another misfortune had occurred. Shortly before November i2i8”9 the
faithful Friar Noel, prior of Prouille since i2iy, was drowned in the Blau,
a small tributary of the Hers which was in spate. The brethren of Prouille, in
conformity with the privilege of 30th March, elected William Claret as prior,
and he effectively bears that title in the two deeds mentioned—he is even called,
in the second, 'prior and procurator of the monastery of Ste Marie de Prouille .
In the midst of these vicissitudes the life of the monastery continued to
flourish. At the beginning of this year 1219 several people in the neighbour¬
hood made certain fresh gifts to Prouille, i2° a proof of the deep root
the institution had taken in the neighbourhood. Two new brethren, 01
rather 'two canons-priests to use the terms of a charter, had enteied
the men’s community, Friars Noel and Guillaume-Pieiie de Mafias A2'
 2^8 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

In Toulouse, St Romain had likewise been consolidated. The convent

would develop in the ensuing years, despite the new and fruitless siege of
Louis of France and his crusaders against the city of Raymond from 16th
June to ist August, 12 19.122 It was to give birth to convents of Preachers
in the Midi: Lyon, if it had not already been started, Montpellier,
Bayonne. I23 Although at this time there was no further indication of the
existence of the hospice Arnaud-Bernard, it had not perhaps disappeared. At
St Romain, Dominic found Friar Bertrand again; he brought news fresh
from Paris.
Both left for France at the end of May or beginning of June.I24 The old
pilgrimage route crossed the Quercy and passed through Rocamadour to the
north-west of Cahors. Dominating the deep and narrow valley, a mighty
precipitous rock bore on its very summit a strange tier of chapels, crowned
by a fortress. There lay the crypt where, according to tradition, the
mysterious hermit Amadour, who has been identified with Zacheus, paid his
homage to the Most Blessed Virgin. How many pilgrims to Santiago, above
all since the twelfth century, have lingered in this sanctuary! I2s Faithful to
his custom, Dominic, and Bertrand who emulated him, spent the whole
night in prayer.126

The next day [relates Gerard de Frachet]127 along the road they fell in with some
German pilgrims, who joined themselves to them through devotion, when they
heard them recite their psalms and litanies. Arrived at the halting-place, the
Germans invited them and, according to their custom, shared with them a very
abundant meal. They did this for four days. Dominic said one dav to his com¬
panion, sighing Friar Bertrand, truly I have a bad conscience; we are reaping
the earthly goods of these pilgrims, without sowing the goods of the spirit among
them. Thus, if it please you, let us pray the Lord on our knees, that he grant us
both to understand and speak their tongue, so that we may preach the Lord Jesus
to them. Having done this, they spoke German in an intelligible manner, to the
stupefaction of all. They marched with them once more for four days and spoke
to them of the Lord Jesus. They then arrived at Orleans. The Germans, who
wanted to go to Chartres, left them on the road to Paris, recommending them¬
selves to their prayers with humility.

A few days later, Dominic and Bertrand arrived in the capital. At the
beginning of the summer the lie de France displays all its attractions. 128 The
Seine meanders lazily along its broad valley. In the midst of a curved sweep
of the stream, we see the fie de la Cite with Notre Dame and King Philip’s
palace, we see the bridges and the pointed towers of the churches, and on
both sides of the river the battlements of the fortresses crowded together on
a mighty wall. In the foreground the hill of St Genevieve and the Porte St
Jacques, the direct termination of the road from Orleans. Scarcely had they
crossed the gate, towards the left, when Friar Bertrand pointed out to
Dominic the former hospice of St Jacques, now the convent of the Preachers.
 FROM ROME TO MADRID 2£9

About thirty129 young friars, deeply moved, welcomed Dominic and

embraced this father to whom they were bound, though they did not know
him, by a profession of obedience. Matthew of France and his early com¬
panions had worked well. The Preachers had taken their place in the
university of Paris.
 Chapter XIV

FROM PARIS TO BOLOGNA

T HE urgent step taken by Honorius III did not remain without effect.
The Pope’s letter which was dispatched from Rome about the month
of April 1218 was successful in obtaining a lodging for the Preachers
in Paris, from the month of July. A master of the Faculty of theology in the
university there1 gave them a hospice with a chapel at the far end of the
Grand rue Saint Benoit , near the Porte d’Orleans.2 The Preachers took
possession on 6th August. 3
The donor, Maitre Jean de Barastre, chaplain to Philip Augustus and at
the same time dean oi the chapter of St Quentin, had been teaching in Paris
for more than ten years A He was a generous man. He had founded this
house of hospitality in 1209 with the help of his friend Simon de Poissy5
who was preparing to join the Albigensian crusade,6 and had entrusted the
house to the care of some lay-brothers.7 The chapel was dedicated to the
apostle James the Greater, whose name would soon be that of the nearby
gate. One day, moreover, the Grand’ rue Saint Benoit would be renamed
and become well known to future generations under the name of the rue
Saint Jacques. Pilgrims to Compostela, at the moment when they were
preparing to pass through the Porte to the Route d’Orleans as they left the
city, said a final prayer in the chapel. The hospice was able to receive
pilgrims such as these and other necessitous travellers, in the course of their
journey. The intervention of the university of Paris at the side of Jean de
Barastie in the deed which placed the hospice at the disposal of the Preachers
made it abundantly clear that this asylum had not been primarily intended
for poor travellers. It had been instituted for students and that was how the
corporation of the masters and students came to have supreme control over
it.8 At the request of the Pope, the abbot of St Romain and his Friars
Preachers were not only received as poor men or even as religious, but as
students of the university of Paris.
As Jordan of Saxony expressly remarks, the donation was only provisional.
It would be necessary to wait two years for it to be made absolute and
final. In the meantime, the bonds between Maitre Jean de Barastre and
the Dominican students were to be strengthened in an unusual way. At the
formal request of Honorius III, 9 but also through a feeling of attachment to
which he would give clear expression in the charters, he would give his
 FROM PARIS TO BOLOGNA 26l

lectures in the actual convent of his ‘very dear Friars Preachers’, ‘whose
religious life, fruitful and pleasing to God, and indispensable ministry, he
would strive to promote’,10 he said, borrowing the Pope’s own terms.11 In
giving them full and entire possession of all he owned in front of the church
of St Etienne des Gres on 3rd May, 1221, he would only claim the usual
privileges of the founder and patron, on a personal title to be valid during his
lifetime.12
The university on their side, while renouncing their special rights about
the same time, demanded privileges which may seem onerous^—confra¬
ternity and participation in the fruits of the brethren’s prayers and good
works, two solemn Masses of intercession each year, one for the living and
the other for the dead, right of burial and suffrages for the Masters of all
Faculties, with the right of burial in the brethren’s chapter for the Masters in
Theology. The Preachers made no difficulty about these conditions for,
beyond all question, they strengthened the bonds between the convent of
St Jacques and the university of Paris.
Possessing within its own walls, thanks to the ordinary teaching of
Maitre Jean de Barastre, one of the schools of the Faculty of Theology, and
linked by confraternity and the religious services to the corporation of the
university, the convent of Preachers in Paris would figure at the very centre
of the order and among the general run of the religious houses of the period
as one of the most original of institutions, a university college which was at
the same time a convent of regular life. This position was to give it a role in
the Order of St Dominic that was of primary importance and at the same
time irreplaceable.14 From now onwards it would constitute the studium
generale towards which students from all the provinces of the order would
flock and whence the doctors and preachers, solidly trained, who were to
propagate the splendours of the theology of Paris in the cities, townships and
even in the missions beyond the Church’s periphery, would return to their
different convents. This situation would in turn react on the order as a
whole—an order which had become by force of circumstances, because it
was the Order of Preachers, an order of theological learning, with a life that
was closely linked with the university. ‘Honeste vivere, discere et docere.’
‘To live a godly life, to learn and to teach’, such was to be for Jordan of
Saxony, St Dominic’s successor, the rule of the Preachers. This programme
would already be carried out in the order in St Dominic’s lifetime, thanks to
the links between the convent of St Jacques and the university of Paris.
Since February 1220, Honorius had been stressing the special position of
this convent by designating its religious by the title of Brethren of the Order
of Preachers, studying sacred learning in Paris’.16 The Pope had himself
been working since 1218 to establish this position by asking the university to
welcome and lodge the Preachers. Finally, the person ultimately responsible
for this orientation was indeed Dominic himsell when in 1217, at the
 262 IN MEDIO ECCI.ESIAE

moment when he dispersed his brethren, he had chosen the university of

Paris as the fulcrum of the mighty lever which his Preachers were to provide
to raise the standard of doctrinal preaching in the Church.
In this month of June 121917 when Dominic reached Paris, an additional
circumstance helped to mark the scholastic character of the convent of St
Jacques. Although the brethren had possessed a chapel for nearly a year, up
to this time they had not been able to celebrate Mass or the Divine Office
publicly, or consequently to exercise the ministry of the Word in public.18
The chapter of the cathedral had prevented them from so doing bv a formal
prohibition. A simple glance at the geography of this part of the capital10
enables us to understand, if not to justify, the interference of the canons of
Notre Dame.
The chapel of St Jacques was situated in the territory of the parish of
St Benoit, whose sanctuary stood at the bottom of the Grand’ rue some
two hundred and fifty yards away. Barely a few yards, however, from the
convent door, on the other side of the street, began another parish, St
Etienne des Gres. Now St Etienne and St Benoit, each of which was endowed
with a parish priest and a college of canons, formed part of four ‘daughter
churches’ of Notre Dame, under the jurisdiction of their mother church.20
Hence the indignation of the cathedral. What had these newcomers come
to do in the neighbourhood? To open a new collegiate church at so slight a
distance from the other two! And why not a cemetery to receive the dead
with their legacies?21 Especially since within a radius of some three hundred
yards several other parishes or conventual churches could be numbered,
among them St Cosmas, St Symphorien des Vignes and the ancient abbey
church of Ste Genevieve. There was a danger that indiscreet competition
might harm everybody and, so to speak, make perquisites that were already
too restricted still more meagre.22 Thus, strong in their rights as to parochial
jurisdiction, the canons of the cathedral, to suppress the crisis at its incep¬
tion, prohibited the practice of public worship in the chapel of the Preachers
altogether. What they overlooked, however, was the need of souls and the
non-existence of their own preaching. In other towns where the order
wanted to make foundations they were not to lack imitators.
What was the solution ? Dominic had no means of action against the will
of the powerful Paris chapter. The only superior, the bishop, was not there ;
he had left for the crusade in the East.23 The provisional administrators of
the diocese, archdeacons and chancellor, were members of the chapter;
they were at the same time judges and interested parties. Clearly the key to
the situation was no longer to be found in Paris. The founder went to seek
it at the Curia.
Meanwhile the brethren followed the offices in the parish of St Benoit.
As to their preaching, they were able to exercise this in other churches in
the capital. Letters from the Pope would one day express warm thanks to
 FROM PARIS TO BOLOGNA 263

the Benedictines of St Magloire and Notre Dame des Champs.24 Doubtless

among the good offices which these monks rendered the Preachers must be
reckoned the most valuable of all—the placing at their disposal of a church
in which to preach and hear confessions.
In the city as at the convent Dominic multiplied those familiar instructions
which were called ‘collations’.25 The chapter of Notre Dame could not
prohibit these conferences or private talks which allowed of a tone of
confidence and an intimacy which their private nature made all the more
persuasive. Dominic, moreover, only addressed people who spoke Latin,
fortunately numerous in this university city. One day, in one of these
conversations, he related the extraordinary story of Master Reginald’s cure
and of his vocation to the poverty of the Preachers.26 It moved almost to
tears all those who had known the Master when he was teaching in Paris.
Among those who were present, a recently elected Bachelor in Theology
listened with the deepest attention. He felt his generosity moved to its very
depths. Jordan of Saxony made his confession and opened his inmost heart
to St Dominic.27 The latter was content to wait upon the movement of
divine grace. It seemed to him that the hour was not yet come. He did not
try to win this theologian of good will for the Preachers and merely asked
him to consecrate himself more completely to God by receiving the
diaconate. He perhaps foresaw in this cleric the one who, less than three
years later, in this same convent of St Jacques, was to succeed him as head
of the order.
The impossibility of preaching at St Jacques had not destroyed the
convent’s sphere of influence. The thirty brethren with whom the master
was surrounded were evidence of this, in addition to which Matthew of
France at the beginning of the year found himself in a position to send a
group of brethren to make a foundation at Orleans. ‘Humble seed, which
would nevertheless later be the origin of an abundant posterity’, declared
the Libellus,zS characterizing in two words these ‘young, simple’ brethren.
The recruitment of St Jacques was indeed that. Young, simple brethren,
students recruited by scholastic contacts at the university rather than
through the ministry of pulpit or confessional. For, though Mames or
Matthew of France might be prevented from preaching in their chapel, it
was impossible to shut out the light diffused by this group of poor students,
austere, generous, and guileless as their white habits, persecuted by com¬
fortable canons, whose manner of living the Gospel was so infectious. As
students, it was on their student companions that their influence was
exercised, through the mysterious power of the young over the hearts of
those of their own age, in the mutual contact of work or of life in
common.29
A touching story of conversion, written with a psychological finesse
rather rare at the time, enables us to come into direct contact with this
264 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

mode of conquest among students.30 A few months from this time, when
Jordan of Saxony decided to become a Preacher, he would not rest until he
had also won over his friend in heart and spirit, the future prior of Cologne,
Friar Henry of Germany. Everything went to show that Henry was destined
to become a Friar Preacher—his mortification, his purity, his tender
piety, the extraordinary grace for preaching he had received which would
enable him before long to influence the hearts of the clergy in Paris. Henry,
however, resisted the instances of friendship.
‘His reason convinced him that it was necessary to acquiesce, but his
rebellious and passive will made him feel the contrary.’ He struggled,
nevertheless, almost in despair at feeling his heart so hard. Thus one
night he came to assist at Matins in the church of Notre Dame.

He stayed there until the first hours of the morning, begging and entreating the
mother of God to bend his will to this vocation. His prayer, however, seemed to
bring no progress. . . . Then he began to be sorry for himself and was preparing
to leave, saying, ‘I see now, blessed Virgin, that you disdain me. I shall not have
my share in the college of the poor of Christ. ’ At the very moment when he was
preparing to leave the church, struggling with himself and in deep distress, He
who looks on the humble with mercy,31 completely changed his heart. He
surrendered himself wholly to the Lord, a flood of tears came over him and at
last his spirit found relief.

Then and there he ran to utter the vow to enter the order and returned
to Jordan.

I noticed the traces of tears on his angelic countenance and asked him where he
came from. ‘I have made my vow to the Lord32 [he said] and I shall accomplish it. ’
We put off the beginning of our novitiate until Lent. That enabled us in the
meantime to win Brother Leo, the one of our companions who was later Friar
Henry’s successor in his office of prior.

We know the names of a certain number of the religious whom Dominic

found at St Jacques during the summer of 1219. Together with the early
friars of Toulouse—the group of Friar Matthew, that of Friar Mames,
finally Friar Peter Seila—there was Friar Henry of Marsburg, the first German
to enter the order, and one of the community’s first recruits,33 and Fr^ar
Guerric, the future founder of Metz.3* The presence of other religious who
are usually mentioned, Friar Philip,35 Friar Guillaume,36 Friar Pierre de
Rheims, later Provincial of France,37 and Friar Etienne de Bourbon, to whom
we owe valuable anecdotes on the beginnings of the order,38 is possible but
cannot be proved. Dominic had the joy of giving the habit to a theologian
whom he knew particularly well, Guillaume de Montferrat, whom at the
beginning of 1217 he had won over to the apostolic ideal at Cardinal
Ugolino’s. The two years they had agreed upon had passed. Guillaume had
profited well from his theological study. The time had come for him to
1552 plan of Paris, after Truchet and Hoyau. Porte St Jacques on the right and
immediately to its left the Convent of the Freres Precheurs, the ‘Jacobins .
Opposite the latter, St Etienne-des-Gres; further to the left, beyond the
Sorbonne, the ‘Cloistre de St Benoist’. St Genevieve can be seen at the top,
near the Porte Bordelle.
 FROM PARIS TO BOLOGNA 26^

join St Dominic’s ministry of salvation by becoming one ol his brethren and

even, for nearly a year, his principal travelling companion.39
The motives which brought these novices to St Jacques were varied.
Some of them differed in nothing from the usual reasons for entering
religion—the acute sense of the passing of time, of the vanity of the world
outside the service of God. Guerric heard a voice singing in the street and
at first was moved by the sweetness of the song alone; then he was forcibly
struck by the words
The time goes by
Nought do I
The time goes by
And I do nought.4°

Henry of Cologne had a vision of the same import—‘And you’, said a

terrifying apparition, ‘what have you left for the Lord? 41 Henry of
Marsberg returned from the crusade on which he had set out, in order to
deliver his feudal lord and uncle from the fire of purgatory; a supernatural
intuition led him to the Preachers of Paris to perfect this work by giving
himself to a higher service.42 Beyond these general motives, which were an
indication of the sense of the eternal in these young Christian men and of
their fundamental generosity, more particular attractions could be dis¬
cerned. ‘I have not read’, one of them said, ‘that the Lord Jesus Christ was a
monk, either black or white, but a preacher in poverty.’43 By the majority
among them, in fact, apostolic poverty was put in the forefront. Friar
Guillaume and Friar Jordan thought of the souls to be saved.44 The two
Friars Henry and Friar Jordan laid the emphasis on poverty.43 To enter
among the Preachers was ‘to share in the poverty practised by Christ and
observed by the apostles in imitation of him, it was to despise the world
wholly for love of him’ .46
The poverty of the community of St Jacques was evident. It was no longer
that of the early times, in the hospice near Notre Dame. In the month of
February Friar Matthew had received from Jean de Briard and his wife
Amide de Breteuil, a generous family of noble birth from the lie de France,
the tithes at Villers near Corbeil.4? The gift was important for, the following
year, it was to serve as a basis for the foundation of a convent of Cisteician
nuns.48 It put St Jacques in a similar position to that of St Romain. The
impression produced on the Paris students by the poverty of the convent
showed that Matthew of France, despite certain dispensations, had not
been disloyal to the spirit of St Dominic and that he utilized these tithes
in accordance with the principles of the fundamental charter of Fulk
of Toulouse. That is to say, they enabled the friars to procure the books,
clothes and other objects of necessity, to provide for the sick and for the
brethren who were in need of rest from thier preaching.49 Because of the
rapid development of the community, these different charges absorbed the
 266 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

revenue of the tithes. The remainder of what was needed was asked for from
the charity of Christians.
Dominic was impressed by the generosity of his brethren. He loved them
too much, however, and had formed too lofty an idea of the task which he
was assigning to them in the Church, to allow them to dally or even to
relax. Instead of congratulating them, he called upon them to move forward
to a new stage. The experience acquired in Bologna, Madrid, Segovia, as in
Toulouse, showed that it was possible to go further and imitate the apostles
more closely still. Matthew of France allowed the brethren to travel
on horse-back; some, it is said, carried money on them.so All this must
be given up once and for all. The continual wearing of the surplice which
the Council of Montpellier had made obligatory in the Midi could also
be abandoned. Dominic even envisaged a measure which was heroic in
another way—the making of mendicancy a general practice. He spoke about
this with Friar Matthew and the chapter of the convent. On this latter point,
however, it was desirable that there should be further reflection. The
decision would not be taken until some months later.
In the meantime he busied himself attentively with the correction of the
rules for the life of the brethren. All the witnesses for this period of his
life stress the strictness, even the ‘rigidity’ with which he observed the rule
of the Preachers, and had it observed by the others,si ‘as to garments, food
and drink, the fasts and all the other provisions’.52 If he noticed a brother at
fault, he likewise punished him ‘with rigidity’, in accordance with the
detailed code of the faults and penances of the text of the rule.53 This
may have been a manifestation of the heroic austerity of his temperament,
but in regard to himself, not in regard to his brethren. These same witnesses
as to his life insist on the gentleness and kindness with which he imposed the
hardest penances. ‘If he saw a brother commit some fault, he passed by as if
he had seen nothing; afterwards, however, he would go up to the brother
calmly and say to him gently, “Brother, you have acted wrongly, admit it. ’ ’ ’
The kindliness of his words led them all to confess their faults and do
penance. He punished their transgressions severely, but the humility with
which he spoke to them caused them to go away consoled.54 He could also
be generous in dispensations with anyone other than himself. He wanted
them, however, to reach a higher standard. To be a worthy emulator of the
apostles of Christ, to announce the Gospel by example as much as by words,
it is necessary to be heroic. Above all, it was essential that the first Preachers
should be irreproachable in the practice of their rule.
FI ere we come up against one of the crucial points of the psychology of
St Dominic, at the same time as the explanation of his most astonishing acts
of boldness. Dominic could now visualize in its plenitude the work which
he had to lead to its successful completion. He saw it as the Pope saw it,
in medio Ecclesiae, in a vision which embraced and surpassed the narrow
 FROM PARIS TO BOLOGNA 267

confines of Christianity. He realized both the importance and the urgency

of it. That was why he hastened to bring it to completion. If he almost
short-circuited the various stages, however, it was because he aspired to
take up once more, personally and to the fullest extent, the ministry of
souls.55 It was also perhaps because he was beginning to feel his strength
betray him. Two years later he had gone from this world, prematurely
exhausted. In his boldness, however, he was neither presumptuous nor
imprudent, for his actions were the fruit of reflection and preparation. He
knew men and knew how to discern the spirits. Above all, for the formation
of his Preachers and to cement the community of his order in the fewness
of days left to him, he possessed the form of life which he had laid down
after twelve years of experience and which the rule had inscribed in a clear
and concise text. Hence his strictness in the application of the rule, his
demand for complete fidelity as the mainspring of these early beginnings.
If the brethren in effect strove to carry out to the last detail the letter and
spirit of the rule, he could, without delay, disseminate the communities he
had just gathered together and this dispersion would hinder neither the
unity nor the unanimity of the order, it would only expand both. He could
send brethren across the world only a few months after their taking the
habit ‘to study, preach and found convents’,56 and these brethren would
remain authentic Preachers and be able to produce faithful copies of such
preachers from their own prototype.
This was precisely what he had in mind to do for the second time before
leaving Paris, a few weeks after his arrival. Among the thirty brethren whom
he met there, a few had already pursued their studies to a sufficient degree.
There was no reason why they should remain there, crowded together. He
was going to send them out to preach. Certain historians have spoken of a dis¬
persion from Paris parallel with that of Toulouse. 57 This is not correct. They
have been misled by an error of interpretation which dates back to the foui teenth
century, when Bernard Gui thought he could fix in 1 209, after St Dominic’s
visit to Paris, the creation of the convents of Limoges, Rheims, Metz, Poitiers,
Orleans.58 The real facts are rather different. Before going away, Dominic
decided with Matthew of France and the chapter of St Jacques to send a few
brethren on the mission. Later convents would arise from their activities.59
A group had already left for Orleans.60 Friar Mames was sent to Madrid.61
Peter Seila found himself assigned to Limoges, for which he set out in
January 1220 in order to be there before the beginning of Lent.62 It is
possible that certain brethren went to Rheims.63 The documents tell us
nothing more. St Jacques would certainly find itself weakened by these
departures. That did not matter. God would send other novices, for
generosity attracts generosity.64 To accelerate the work of Providence,
Dominic, moreover, had his plants He would carry it out from Bologna
where he would stay for the future. In mid-July 1219, Dominic left Paris.66
 268 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

The founder took with him at least two companions, Friar John, a lay-
brother whom he had brought from Spain and who was later to die as a
missionary in Morocco,6? and Friar Guillaume de Montfort.68 The travellers
took the ancient road to Italy through the Simplon or the Great St Bernard,
travelling slowly up the valley of the Seine to reach the Jura, then the shores
of Lake Leman.69
Two isolated anecdotes illustrate conditions of life on the road. In
crossing Burgundy, at Chatillon-sur-Seine, the travellers were given hospit¬
ality by the parish priest—simple hospitality which an accident was to
transform into a magnificent reception. The nephew of this priest, a small
boy who was playing on the terrace of the presbytery, toppled over into the
street and was picked up half dead. The prayer of Dominic, however,
restored him alive and well to his mother, whose grief was already beyond
bounds. Accordingly the parish priest gave a great banquet, at which, among
other things, eels were served.70
The crossing of the Alps was particularly trying. In the course of the
ascent, Friar John felt his strength fail. In these poor valleys begging could
not have brought in much. The unfortunate brother, who had sat down to
rest, tried in vain to get up, so much did his legs tremble. To Dominic,
who was uneasy about him, he declared that, quite simply, he was hungry.
This time again Dominic’s prayer brought the remedy in the form of an
appetizing loaf which was found, wrapped in a pure white cloth, a stone’s
throw away. Friar John went there with tottering steps, but a fragment of
this loaf was sufficient to give him the strength to go as far as the hospice
where they found the necessary refreshment.71
A few days later the travellers were in Milan, which the founder had
already visited several times. It was perhaps then that he won to the order
Friar Amizo, the future prior of Padua, who was to give evidence at the
canonization process.72 This friar could not have known the founder long,
for his evidence, as dry as a notary’s document, brought nothing new. The
route then passed through Piacenza, Parma, Modena, where Dominic was
to preach the following year.73 Then they arrived at Bologna. Their welcome
was even more moving than in Paris.
It was no longer a poor, unknown band of men that was waiting for them
in Bologna; it was a fine convent erected in the church of St Nicholas of the
Vines and a vast community of brethren, gathered together and formed by
the care of Master Reginald. There were many students, but also Masters of
the university who had put on the white tunic and black mantle of the
Preachers. All had heard Dominic spoken of. They already knew him in
imagination through Reginald’s affectionate admiration. They welcomed
him with great joy and received him as their father, with deference and
respect. 74
When Reginald had arrived in Bologna on 2 ist December 1218, the band
 FROM PARIS TO BOLOGNA 269

of Preachers was still in the Mascarella largely ignored and unknown. In a

few days there was a complete metamorphosis.
He devoted himself wholly and without delay to preaching. His eloquence was
like a flaming fire and his discourse, like a burning torch, inflamed the hearts of
all his hearers. Very few people were so stony-hearted that they could resist the
effects of this fire. The whole of Bologna was in effervescence. Anyone would
have thought that a new Elias had just risen up. At that time he received a large
number of men of Bologna into the order.75
It was not only the Frenchman’s natural eloquence which conferred a
prophetic inspiration on his words. Two sentiments, equally powerful, con¬
tributed to his intense exaltation. The joy of being freed from a life that was
too human and of which he had finally conceived a horror, and of having
given himself up without reserve to the Gospel, as a fully-fledged priest in
voluntary poverty and the ministry of the Preacher ;76 the joy of the com¬
munion and fraternal devotion he had just experienced. As he confided a
few weeks before his death to Friar Matthew of France: ‘When the latter,
who had known him in the delicate life he had led in the vain and difficult
world, asked him if he did not sometimes experience a certain repugnance
in his new life, he replied bowing his head—“I do not think I have any merit
in living in this order, for I have always found too much joy there”.’77
Thus Reginald’s voice was not only that of a witness of Jesus Christ which
transmitted the appeals and promises of the Master in words which went
straight to one’s heart, it was at the same time the voice of the humble group
of the brethren of Bologna. They had remained in the town for nearly a year,
unknown, despised and perhaps under suspicion. They now spoke in the
presence of all through the marvellous instrumentality of their elder brother.
At the same time that Reginald was kindling the apostolic ideal in the heart
of the clergy of Bologna, he was showing them the way to come closer to it
by taking the habit of his brethren. The witness of the Preaching Friars added
its eloquence to that of the preacher himself, and the latter’s words possessed
all the more force to stir up souls in that he had himself given the example
of leaving all things, in the prime of life and at the height of a brilliant
career, to become a poor man among the poor ot Jesus Christ. A priest, a
master in law, for five years a professor at the university of Paris, he belonged
par excellence to the milieu of his audience. It was the spiritual crisis of the
university men of his time that he had felt in his heart. The gestuie that he
had accomplished, others would be called upon to make. The drama of his
conscience awakened a similar drama in the conscience of each one of
those who were listening to him. An episode which occurred on the feast of
the finding of the body of St Stephen7® among others, must have brought
explicit proof of this.
While he was devoting himself with great fervour to preaching and attracting to
the order a good number of clerics and masters, Master Moneta of Cremona,79
 270 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

then famous in the whole of Lombardy for the way in which he taught in the
Faculty of Arts, began to be afraid at the sight of so many vocations that if he
listened to the words of the religious he would in turn be caught. Thus he
avoided Reginald as much as he could and dissuaded all the students, by word and
example, from going to his sermons. On the day of the feast of St Stephen, his
students tried to get their Master to the sermon. He could not withdraw behind
the excuse of lectures he had to give, nor find any reason for refusing. He could
only ask them to go first of all to St Proclus to hear Mass. They went, and instead
of one Mass they heard three. The students continued their insistence. ‘Let us go
to the sermon, then’ said the Master. When they arrived Reginald was still
preaching and the cathedral80 was so full that they could not get inside. Moneta
had to remain at the door. He listened, however, and from the first words was
won over. ‘Behold,’ said the Preacher, ‘7 see heaven opening.81 Yes, it is clear that
today the heavens are open for us to enter in. Anyone who wishes can penetrate
those wide opened doors. Let those poor negligent men who shut their hearts,
mouths and hands against God think of this and tremble, let them tremble lest
God shut the kingdom of heaven against them and they themselves cannot enter in.
Why do you delay, beloved ? Behold the heavens are opened.’ As soon as the
sermon had ended Master Moneta ran to Reginald, his heart pierced with
contrition by the word of God, and, setting before him his situation and obliga¬
tions, he made profession into his hands. He was, however, held back by all
sorts of obstacles. He obtained permission to continue to wear his secular clothes
for more than a year. This was not without its effect. In compensation for the
large number of people whom he had recently turned away from Reginald’s
preaching, he brought many more, not only to the sermon, but to the order. In
taking them to these sermons, he decided first one and then another to ask for
entrance into the order, and seemed to be renewing his own profession with
each one of them.82

One of die immediate effects of Reginald’s preaching was to win firm

friends for the Preachers. Dominic’s vicar to the group in Bologna,83 the
former dean of St Aignan, had taken the community in hand. His first care
was to take it away from the hospice of the Mascarella. For this he needed a
church.

The brethren had one in view, St Nicholas of the Vines.84 The priest who
served the church there had become their friend and said he was willing to
let them have it. For this, however, it was necessary to obtain the authoriza¬
tion of the bishop, and in particular of the lay patron. Henry of Fratta, bishop
of Bologna, did not seem to trouble much about the Preachers, despite the
Pope’s letters. He allowed them to live and that was all. Reginald, however,
had a great means of action for cases of this kind, the friendship of Ugolino.
The Cardinal of Ostia had been going round northern Italy since 1218,
acquitting himself in a masterly manner of his legation of peace and of the
crusade. Taking advantage of the passage of the Cardinal Legate through
Bologna 01 in its neighbourhood,88 Reginald obtained his insistent interven-
 FROM PARTS TO BOLOGNA 271

tion with the bishop. The latter took the necessary action—he granted the
friars the church of St Nicholas.86
All was going well. The priest who served the church, Rodolfo de Faenza,
was still prepared to give up his claim. He had even decided to ask for the
habit of the order;87 in this way he could hand over his church to the
community without completely abandoning it. He did so without delay.
Later, indeed, he was to be a loyal and devoted Preacher.88 Greatly attached
to Dominic, whose life he followed closely when the saint was staying in
Bologna, he was to supply extremely valuable evidence at the canonization
process. Reginald entrusted the material care of the community to him
forthwith, in particular the adaptation and reconstruction of the buildings
for the brethren’s installation. First, however, the consent of the lay patron,
Pietro di Lovello, of the powerful family of the Carbonesi di Guiterno, was
necessary. 89 This was not an easy matter.
Situated in the neighbourhood of the abbey of St Proclus, in the southern
suburb that the city had recently included within its walls, the church stood
out prominently on the summit of a slight rise in the ground. A large piece
of sloping ground, also belonging to Pietro di Lovello, separated it from the
moat of Bologna which passed to the south. It was parcelled out into a series
of gardens where some houses were erected. This was the suburban domain
known as ‘In the vines’ which gave its epithet to St Nicholas. 90 Now the
dependencies of the sanctuary were insufficient for the installation of a
convent in the church. It was thus necessary to obtain from Pietro di Lovello
not only renunciation of the patronage, but also the sale of the land. At
Master Reginald’s first overtures, the landowner refused point-blank. All,
however, was not lost.
Andalo, the son of Pietro di Lovello, had a daughter named Diana.91
Moved, like so many others, by the preachings of Reginald, Diana soon
detached herself from the vanities of the world and the luxury in which she
was made to live. She had become the familiar friend of the Preachers, with
whom she had frequent spiritual conversations. She took the matter of the
land in hand and used her skill as a woman to obtain it from her grand¬
father. In the end the good man yielded. On 14th March, 1219, for the price
of three Bolognese pounds per plot, he granted the land and undertook to
clear it of all the houses which were built upon it, on condition that the
just price was paid. Finally, for the love of God, he renounced his rights as
patron, with the exception of those which a layman might preserve ovei a
conventual church. His wife Otta on her part renounced her mortgages.92
Friar Rodolfo was able to adapt the buildings. The Preachers took possession
of their new convent around Easter.93
It was time, for the community was increasing rapidly. Before the arrival
of Master Reginald, hardly any religious had joined the small group of the
early brethren of the Mascarella—Friar Richard, Friar Christian and the
272 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

Roman lay-brother—perhaps Friar Tancred, a knight from the imperial

court who was soon to become Prior of Rome.94 After Rodolfo di Faenza,
Frogier of Penna, founder of the friary in Siena, had entered on 20th Feb¬
ruary,^ Paul of Venice on 3rd March; 96 Friar Walter, future founder and
Prior of Brescia,97 Master Clair, professor in arts and canon law and later
Roman provincial, had doubtless preceded them.98 Roland of Cremona
entered about the beginning of May, 99 Buonviso of Piacenza certainly before
St Dominic’s arrival;100 Friars Simon of Sweden and Nicholas of Lund took
the habit on 1 £th August.101 Many other clerics imitated them, among whom
must doubtless be reckoned John of Salerno, the first Prior of Florence,
Friars Giacomo and Robaldo, the founders of Milan. ... A student, whose
name is not known, came to look for the grotto of Bethlehem at the convent
of St Nicholas, ‘with the crib of chastity and the fodder of doctrine, the ass
of simplicity and the ox of discretion, Mary who gives light, Joseph who
makes one grow and Jesus who saves’.102 The climate of Italy clothed the
evangelical themes of the life of the Preachers in brighter colours than in the
north.
All vocations were not equally deep-rooted and, when the first enthusiasm
was over, nature, habit and the demon, it must be said, strove to recover
their rights. More than any other place in the order, the convent of Bologna
would serve as lists for the single combats of the religious with the unclean
spirit with which the chronicles of medieval cloisters overflow. The collec¬
tion of anecdotes of Gerard de Frachet contains narratives on this point
enough to make one’s hair stand on end.I03 It was to one of these episodes
that we owe, after Dominic’s death, the institution of the impressive custom
of the Salve Regina, the Preachers’ greeting to the Blessed Virgin at the close
of the day.IQ4 Reginald however dominated this wrestling of the spirit as he
did the other crises.
A true emulator of Dominic, he drove out the demon by adding hard
penances to the austerities of the rule. It was thus that he won back only
just in time a novice who was seeking to flee in a moment of aberration, bv
imposing a cruel discipline on him at chapter, while the community prayed
aloud. Conquered at last, and freed from temptation, the brother repented
and promised to stand firm.I0s Above all Reginald was pitiless in the matter of
poverty. If the devil took upon himself to punish a brother who had brought
back the money from a sermon,106 Reginald had another brother who had
accepted a piece of cloth without permission humiliated and punished in
chapter, in such a way that those present had tears in their eyes. The cloth
was burnt in the cloister.107 The delinquents, moreover, were not the onlv
ones to receive the discipline. Under Reginald’s impulse, the Preachers
mortified themselves zealously each evening in the convent of St Nicholas.108
Hardness ? Not at all. It was rather the manifestation of an heroic zeal for
living the Gospel and for saving souls, which raised the tone of the whole
 FROM PARIS TO BOLOGNA 273
community, after having inspired the words and mind of Master Reginald.
Thus it showed an ardour of life overflowing on the university and eventually
upon the city. Moreover what happened was that the inspiration thus set in
motion flowed back from the city on to the brethren themselves and, in
certain hours of dangerous depression, such as the medieval Christian,
generous and unstable like an adolescent, experienced all too often, came to
give them fresh heart in a truly providential fashion.
The community, recently installed at St Nicholas of the Vines, was still
fragile. IQ9

An uneasiness [relates Gerard de Frachet] was suddenly manifested among the

brethren like a temptation, an inferiority complex which depressed them to such
an extent that a good number of them began to discuss the order to which they
might transfer. They feared in fact that the foundation, so recent and so insecurely
established, would soon totally collapse. Two of the most important of the
brethren even obtained from the cardinal-legate who was then in the vicinity110
letters which allowed them to pass to a monastery of the order of Citeaux. They
presented these letters to Friar Reginald. . . . The latter summoned the brethren
in chapter, and put the matter before them with great grief. Tears flowed on all
sides and the earlier trouble only increased. Reginald raised his eyes to heaven
and spoke to God in whom lay all his confidence, in his heart, while Friar Clair,
with the great authority of his virtue and his competence . . . began to speak to
the brethren and strengthen them by many powerful arguments. Fie had scarcely
finished speaking when Master Roland of Cremona,111 a Bologna professor then
highly reputed, who was held as eminent in the field of philosophy—he was
afterwards to be the first to teach theology to the brethren in Paris-—arrived all
alone, fleeing from the world in a sort of spiritual intoxication or fire which was
kindled in him by the spirit of God.112 Without exordium or explanation, he
asked to be received into the order. Overcome with joy, Reginald did not wait
for the brethren to go and look for a habit. He took off his own scapular with the
hood and clothed Master Roland with it there and then; the sacristan rang the
bell;113 the brethren sang the Veni Creator in the measure in which the flood of
their tears of joy allowed them to sing. An immense crowd of men, women and
students rushed forward. The whole town was beside itself. The recent devotion
towards the friars was again renewed and the common temptation vanished
completely. The two brethren threw themselves down in the midst of the
chapter, avowed that they had done wrong and, renouncing their letters of
dismissal, promised to persevere in the order. XI4 .

We can imagine Dominic’s enthusiasm when he discovered the community

at the end of August i2i9.IIS Three masters in canon law or in philosophy
among the brethren, a fourth, still a secular, but already professed in the
order, mature and tried clerics, religious full of manly virtue, students full
of zeal—what could he not envisage with such an instrument in his hands ?
The need of northern Italy was precisely to receive in great number new
apostles such as these. It was indeed as much contaminated by the Catharists
2 74 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

as the Midi of France.116 And then, what a reservoir of new strength for the
whole of Christendom was this legion of students of Bologna, whose move¬
ment towards the order was initiated in such an outstanding way. Finally,
what an advantage for an order whose legislation was not yet completed,
was the presence of the university of law and the collaboration of its masters,
of whom several had become brethren. Dominic decided to remain for the
future in Bologna,11? except for indispensable journeys to the Roman Curia
or in the neighbouring dioceses which he could evangelize,118 while waiting
to go away one day with a few disciples to carry Jesus Christ beyond the
frontiers of Christendom.“9 For the moment he devoted himself to the
upbringing of ‘the still tender infancy of his new nursery by his spiritual
instruction as much as by his example’.120
The first step he took was indeed of great spiritual import. It was con¬
cerned with poverty. In view of the experiences in Spain and France, this
gesture was decisive. When Friar Rodolfo, not without a certain satisfaction,
brought him the news that ‘the lord Odoric Galiciani intends to give the
brethren some of his properties which are worth more than five hundred
Bolognese pounds’, and that the charter was already signed before the Lord
bishop of Bologna, the founder refused. Fie gave orders for the charter to be
cancelled.121 After all, he was only respecting the statute of the community
of the brethren in 1216. Tantum reditus—no landed property, nothing but
revenues.122 Now, however, he was going further. He desired that the
brethren should likewise renounce other possessions, whatever be their type.
‘For the future let them live only on alms, and even so let them use them
sparingly. I23 It was only, indeed, a counsel, a desire. In a matter such as
this, only the community of the whole order could take a decision that was
binding; it was, however, a pressing counsel. In view of the kindness which
the population of Bologna showed in regard to the Preachers, in view of the
courage with which the first brethren bore the wretched poverty in the
hospice of the Mascarella, the convent of Bologna might well make trial
of a more clearly marked mendicancy. One circumstance in particular was
to help them.
A few days after his arrival, Dominic made contact with Diana of
Andalo. I24 His special gift for the ministry of women displayed itself once
more. In him Diana found what she wanted. She soon attached herself to the
founder with all her affection, and discussed with him the salvation of her
soul. Dominic had just been admiring at St Nicholas the work of a generous
man. He was now to discover what a woman could do. Or, rather he sensed
this beforehand. He had realized from the beginning of his preaching
the incomparable role of women among the Catharists—a Blanche of Laurac,
a Helis of Mazerole—and had immediately, by the foundation of Prouille,
answered the legitimate religious appeal which was contained in such
devotion. He laid open to Diana the immense field of the interior life
 FROM PARIS TO BOLOGNA *7S
and apostolic action. A short time later, kneeling before the Preacher, her
hands between both of his, she made profession. It was an engagement to
religious life without any convent yet being designated, at the same time as
a vow of obedience to Dominic. Master Reginald, Friar Walter and Friar
Rodolfo were there as witnesses. Indeed a large number of ladies of Bologna
was also present. The matter became public. It stirred up a mighty current
in Bolognese society. Andalo and his sons filled or would soon fill the
most considerable offices in the Italian cities—‘praetor of the mountain’ for
Bologna, podesta of Milan, Piacenza, Genoa, Florence, even senator of
Rome.I2s By their riches, their authority, their ancient lineage, this patrician
family was one of the first in the city. The current of interest and sympathy for
the Preachers was further extended among the ladies of gentle birth and of
the nobility. They frequented the brethren on terms of friendship and
entrusted the care of their salvation to them in spiritual conversations.
Finally, the whole of upper class society, men and women, came to the help
of the convent and surrounded it with veneration. Dominic and his brethren
lived with the poor through their mendicancy, but linked the rich with their
work of evangelization. There is no soul that is not valuable in the eyes of
God.
Evangelization in the city became daily more intense. For preference
Dominic devoted his attention to students. He did not content himself with
waiting for them at St Nicholas but went to pay them friendly visits in their
lodgings.126 He was sometimes unusually outspoken with them when he
discerned the call of God.

When I was studying in Bologna [relates Friar Stephen] Master Dominic came
there. He preached to the students and I confessed my sins to him. It seemed to
me that he loved me. One evening, as I was preparing to have a stolen supper with
my comrades, he sent a message to me by two of the brethren: ‘Friar Dominic asks
that you should come to him immediately. ’ ‘I will come after supper’, I told them.
‘No,’ they said, ‘come immediately.’ I left all, got up and went to him. I found him
with numerous brethren at the convent oi St Nicholas. He said to the brethren,
‘Show him how to make the venia.’ When I had done this, I gave myself over into his
hands by vow. He clothed me with the habit of the Friars Preachers before I went
away. 7 want to give you', he said to me, ‘the weapons with which you must fight all
your life against the devil.' I was greatly astonished and still wonder by what
instinct he called me in this way and clothed me with the habit of the Friars
Preachers. For never before had I spoken with him of my entering religion. I
think it was through an inspiration or revelation from God.127

His vision, however, went further than sanctifying a soul or filling a

convent. As in Paris, he was concerned with extending this sphere of
influence and distributing the energies which were accumulating in Bologna.
He sent some brethren to preach in Bergamo, where the second convent in
Italy would be founded a few months later.128 He also sent some to Florence,
 In medio eccLesiae

where the Preachers seem to have been installed since November 12 19.129
About Easter of the following year, two further houses came into being,
in Verona130 and in Milan;131 these were convents with churches and
their installation presupposed an earlier ministry of at least some duration.
It is clear that Dominic decided upon these various missions and set them on
foot from Bologna. It was also from Bologna that he directed the somewhat
simple Friar Buonviso to Piacenza, who came from that city.
I was still a novice [he would say] without any experience of preaching, for I had
not yet studied the divine Scriptures. To be dispensed from going, I alleged my
little skill. The blessed father, however, with very gentle words, persuaded me
that I ought to go there and said to roe: ‘Go with assurance, for the Lord will be with
you and will put on your lips the words that you should preach.’ I obeyed, went to
Piacenza, preached there, and God attached so many graces to my preaching that,
after having listened to me, three brethren entered the order of Preachers.132

This was only the initial step. Buonviso brought back his three conquests
to Bologna and it was not long before he set off with Dominic for about ten
months.133 The convent would only come into existence after his return. I34
The founder’s vision, however, extended far beyond this. He greeted with
joy the presence in Bologna of two Swedish brethren. He would soon have
the opportunity of sending them off to the Scandinavian lands.
Before leaving for the Curia, where he would be occupied with a Roman
foundation, Dominic finally decided upon one last mission which would
involve a particularly painful separation for the community in Bologna. The
convent was overflowing with vitality. Personalities were not lacking there.
They were all too rare in Paris, where the recruitment was almost exclusively
among students. The time had come to send Friar Reginald there that he
might create among his compatriots and especially his former colleagues and
students of the university, a movement comparable to that of Bologna.
Moreover, there was the possibility that his authority and his juridical skill
might liberate the convent of St Jacques from the obstacles created by the
clergy. When the founder announced the news, there was deep grief in the
convent and in the city. The bonds were already too long-standing and too
deep to be broken without suffering. Each one of those whom this great
religious had ‘engendered in Jesus Christ by the word of the Gospel’ wept
to see himself so soon torn away from him who was nurturing him.133

All this, however [concludes Jordan] was accomplished by a divine instinct. It

was wonderful to see how the servant of God, when he distributed his brethren
hither and thither in the various quarters of the Church of God, did so with
certainty, without hesitation or wavering, although others at this very moment
were of opinion that it should not have been done in that way. All happened as if
he were already certain of the future, or as if the Spirit had given him information
by his revelations. Who, then, would dare to call the matter in question ? At
the beginning he had only a small number of brethren, simple for the most part
 FROM PARIS TO BOLOGNA
277

and not well-instructed, and he divided them, scattering them on the mission
throughout the churches in such a way that this children of the world in their
wisdom thought he seemed to be destroying the embryo work rather than
enlarging it. But he helped his missionaries by the intercession of his prayers,
and the power of the Lord worked for their multiplication. 06

At the end of October, Dominic in turn left Bologna and went to the
Curia again. J37

10-S.D.
 Chapter XV

VITERBO AND ROME

A SM ALL band ol religious travelling on foot climbed slowly across

the Romagna Apennines—Dominic, with his brethren Guillaume de
.Montferrat,1 Buonviso de Piacenza2 and Frogier di Penna.3 They
tramped over the passes and came down into Tuscany. In Florence they
found once more the brethren who had recently been sent from Bologna.
The preachers had not as yet any convent of their own in the city. Each
evening, when their preaching was over, the brethren retired to the hospice
of St Pancras, an asylum for poor folk.4
Dominic stayed there a few days. Doubtless he wanted to visit the
authorities, and to assess the tasks to be undertaken and men’s goodwill. As
usual, he gave himself at the same time to the direct ministry of souls.
An obituary list has preserved the memory of a lay-brother of Florence
named Guy the Little to whom he gave the habit in the hospice of St
Pancras.3 It may have been then, or at his next visit in the following month of
May, that he brought back to penance and fervent life a woman who was
given over to the pleasures of the flesh. This Bene, who was one day to
become Sister Benedict, would in any case continue to be the subject of his
fathei ly care. He saw her on each of his visits and whatever his own anxieties
might be, gave his attention to solving the problems and calming the fears of
his spiritual daughter.6
The stop was only of a few days duration. Before 11 th November, Dominic
and his companions were at the Pontifical court.7 They caught up with it at
Viterbo. In view of the fact that democratic agitation had been rife in Rome
since the death of Innocent III, Honorius had left the hostile city in June.8
He had been installed in Viterbo since the beginning of October;6 Ugolino
was there too, having returned from his embassy.16 Losing no time, the
founder asked for an audience of the Sovereign Pontiff. Thus in the middle of
autumn, alter having finished, so to speak, the sowing of the crops, he came
to ask for a new shower of apostolic letters which would raise up the harvest.
Indeed the account of his round ot visitations across Spain, France and
Italy, could not but impress the Pope. When he set out, Dominic had only
two houses, one of men and the other of women, with about twenty brethren
and sisters scarcely more numerous. Now he had seven or eight houses com¬
pletely formed, several others in the course of formation, and could count
 VITERBO AND ROME 279

more than a hundred brethren.11 Above all he had launched among the more
learned clerics a great movement which was continually expanding and
which, in Paris and Bologna, placed such clergy at the service of the preach¬
ing which the Church was asking for.
Dominic presented two requests in particular which would remedy the
actual difficulties of the brethren and were the considered result of acquired
experience. The first concerned the relations of the Preachers with the
secular clergy. If the brethren really fulfilled the expectation of the Church
and the papacy in the ministry of souls, if they came to remedy a tragic
weakness which the clergy was in general powerless to overcome without
other help, through lack of preparation and all too often of good will, the
Preachers’ ministry of salvation must not remain inextricably linked to the
good will or otherwise of these same clergy. The example of Paris on this
point was typical. As a result of rights acquired, of perquisites or of funeral
dues, the population of Paris was left without sermons, though the urgency
of such preaching had been solemnly recognized. Thus it was for the Church
to intervene and with her mighty hand constrain the diocesan clergy to
receive the brethren, allow them facilities for action, and, even more, to
have recourse to their services while supporting them to the utmost.
Moreover, Dominic had seen for himself how the rule of the Preachers
and, above all, their special inspiration worked under test. He was able to
declare emphatically in the presence of the Pope that the programme of
imitation of the life of the apostles was directly responsible for the attraction
felt for his order both by young clerics and elderly professors, and for the
great fruits of their preaching. They would not have filled the convent of St
Jacques and revolutionized the university of Bologna if they had merely
offered the intellectual world the ideal of just any chaplain or of a traditional
monk. It was only poverty carried to the utmost limits, and intensive work
in the service of the salvation of souls that had been successful in winning, in
a burst of enthusiasm which had never slackened, Reginald, Roland or
Moneta of Cremona—full of joy at this opportunity of becoming whole¬
heartedly faithful to the Gospel which meant so much to them, and faithful
in their capacity as clerics. Thus the time had come to put the finishing
touches to the inscribing of the apostolic rule within the rule of the
Preachers, by the adoption of a clause which would impose mendicancy on
the convents, and by the general organization of the brethren s preaching.
Because on these two points a large part of the Church was liable to be
scandalized on account of the precedent created by the schismatics and the
Catharists, it was necessary that the Pope himself should consent to allow
these statutes to be adopted and to cover them with his authority, not¬
withstanding the 13th canon of the Lateran.
Either at Dominic’s side or in some private conversation, Cardinal Ugolino
gave similar testimony. The close relations which he had just had with St
 2 8o IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

Francis and St Clare of Assisi had finally persuaded him of what he had already
longsuspected.12 For reanimating Catholicism, there was at the time no energy
comparable to apostolic evangelism. It was essential to allow Dominic to effect
in his order what he had made trial of in his personal preaching since i 206.
Honorius was also convinced. It is only necessary to read his letters in
chronological order for the movement of his feelings towards the Preachers
and St Dominic to be understood.
The first bull of all, in December 1216, contained not a single personal
word, being merely a formula from the chancellery. A few days later, how¬
ever, the second bull expressed the Pope’s sentiments in regard to the
Preachers.13 The glorious name of ‘unconquered athletes of Christ’, how¬
ever, which it conferred upon them did not yet sufficiently characterize
their nature; at that time it was likewise used to designate the crusaders who
were fighting against the Albigenses.1^ The first general bull of recom¬
mendation, of 11 th February, 1218, on the other hand, definitely pronounced
in favour of the useful ministry’ of the Preachers and of their religious life
‘pleasing to God, as We believe’.It was not long before the restriction of
We believe disappeared. The ‘useful’ ministry soon appears as ‘neces¬
sary’ ;l6 even ‘more than necessary’.1? Finally, the order, in the eyes of the
Pope, was raised up by the Lord as a solution to the overflow of iniquity and
to the coldness of the charity of the multitude’ ‘set apart in view of the
profit of the universal Church, for the ministry of the Gospel’The
expressions of attachment undergo a parallel crescendo. In 1218 the order was
merely recommended. At the end of 1219, it was recommended ‘with
affection’,2° in February 1220, ‘with sincere affection’.21 In the middle of
the same year it was recommended with a ‘sincere charity which embraces
the brethren in the Lord’.22 At the end of the year the Pope ‘embraces
the whole order in the arms of a sincere charity, attaching himself with
affection to its progress in the Lord’.23
These subtle nuances in official formulae may perhaps surprise us. They
will seem less astonishing when it is realized that on this last visit to the
Curia, perhaps even on one of his previous ones, Dominic became close
friends with a high functionary of the pontifical chancellery. William of
Piedmont, later Bishop of Modena before becoming Cardinal of Sabina,24
was won over by Dominic’s attitude to the point of asking him to receive
him, Carthusian as he was, into the fraternity of the order; this should be
understood on the plane of spiritual union. Dominic, attaching himself for
his part to this great religious, very close to him in outlook, in the future
submitted to him important business affecting the Preachers, as if he were a
counsellor of the order.25 Now between 13th December, 1219 and 24th
February, 1220, William of Piedmont became Vice-Chancellor. As such he
was the leading official in the pontifical administration. He drew up,
revised, or at least cheeked all the writings of the Holy See. His genius con-
 VITERBO AND ROME 28l

sisted precisely in inscribing in chancellery formulae the subtle nuances of

the Pope’s intentions.26
Such expressions must be viewed in their context. These were no ordinary
letters, in which the Pope was allowing himself the expansions of personal
feeling; they were official documents charged with august authority and
destined to be made use of in all sorts of circumstances. At the time they
were read with the same careful attention with which they were drawn up,
and preserved with so much care that they have finally come down to our
own day. Thus the pontifical letters never contained a single word used
without due reflection—a joy for the historian who can give full import to
every one of such expressions. Through these dry parchments he can see
deepening in the mind of the head of the Church, confidence, attachment,
enthusiasm and resolute devotedness in regard to the Friars Preachers and
their founder and master.
Dominic knew this and acted accordingly. He established himself in
Viterbo where he would remain until half-way through December. At that
time he was to leave for Rome on a mission for the Pope. He would stay
there for the first weeks of 1 220, returning to Viterbo about the middle of
February.27 Thus established at the centre of the Church as in a command
post, he took full advantage of the kindness of the Sovereign Pontiff to
intervene through this authority, week after week, at every point of
Christendom where his order was in process of development. On one
occasion he would solve by this powerful aid a difficulty which a letter from
the brethren submitted to him. At another, using his initiative, he would
make them take a step forward, correct some weak point, or decide upon a
new foundation.
Shortly after his arrival, he obtained a new series of recommendations.
The prototype of this letter was registered in the month of April 1 2 18.28 It
was thus sufficient to ask for certified copies of it at the Chancellery. The
bull contained a description of the order—its ministry, which was the office
of preaching, and its religious life under the aspect of poverty. It commanded
all the prelates of the Church to treat the brethren as men recommended by
the Apostolic See, to encourage them in their own vocation, to make use of
them in the office of preaching to which they had been assigned—in short,
to assist them in their needs.
On 1 5th November Dominic had this bull sent to all the prelates of Spain.
The document was eventually to lead to the foundation of the convent of
Zamora, which was perhaps not fully established until after his death.20
Before this they were able to use it for several foundations, among which
those of Palencia and Santarem should possibly be numbered.
A further copy was dispatched on 28th November to the Midi of France.
This led to the foundation of Montpellier.30 It was clearly this that gave rise
to the establishment of this convent, which Bernard Gui, particularly well
282 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

informed as to the origins of the Preachers in Provence, places in 1220, after

an unsuccessful attempt at Narbonne.31. In sending this bull to the brethren
of the Midi, that is, to the brethren of Toulouse, Dominic gave effect to a
project elaborated among them on the occasion of his visit the previous
spring. Montpellier was to be an important centre for the order. It was the
third university of Christendom, where medical teaching did not exclude
other branches of learning, and also a considerable reservoir of clerics
whence the order could draw recruits. Finally, it was the principal centre of
orthodoxy in western Provence.
A third certified copy of the bull left on 1 3th December for St Jacques in
Paris, where Reginald had just arrived. This bull did not arrive as a mere
isolated document. With it came a large packet of letters, dated 1st, 1 ith,
1 2 th and 1 3th December, which resolutely grasped and sought to solve the
main problems of the Preachers.
The letter of 1st December was only a preamble. In a single phrase it
granted the brethren authorization to celebrate divine worship—by this
should be understood publicly and solemnly, as was then the custom—in the
chapel they had received from the masters of the university. Thus the right
was defined—there now remained its application.
By the bull of 11th December,33 Honorius appointed a committee of
important people, the priors of the abbeys of St Denis and St Germain des
Pres, and the Chancellor of the Church of Milan who was then in Paris. Up
to that time the chapter of the cathedral had prevented the Preachers from
celebrating the offices in their chapel, although the latter had received
authorization to do so from the Papacy. The chapter ought, on the contrary,
to have helped and favoured them, in view of the disinterestedness of the
brethren and their religious intention, in both of which things the Pope
placed such strong hopes. Honorius was not unaware of the real cause of the
attitude of the canons. Accordingly he instructed the committee to assess a
reasonable indemnity for the adjacent churches, and at the same time to
constrain the chapter (under threat of the censures of the Church), to
allow public worship in the Preachers’ chapel.
The principle which governed the solution should be noted. In this very
first conflict between secular clergy and mendicants—a conflict which in
the course of the thirteenth century was at times to assume alarming pro¬
portions the attitude taken by the Church and by the order, by Honorius
and by Dominic, was already that which would finally prevail. To give
freedom to the ministry of the Preachers, there was no necessity to deny the
prioi rights of the secular clergy. Nor was it a question of carving out a new
sector for them in the midst of the network of parishes. At that time the
Pope was not in the habit of intervening in matters of parochial boundaries.
Dominic, on his side, did not want to receive the charge of souls; his
attitude on this matter at the time of the preaching in the Midi, when
 VITERBO AND ROME 283

he shunned and refused the episcopate, has been noted. The order was
content to superimpose itself upon the parishes without interfering with
them, claiming only the minimum of liberty in which to exercise its
spiritual activity—the chanting of God’s praises and the sacred mysteries in
the course of which it was to preach the word of God. The Preacher is a
spiritual man, not one of the authorities.
To these three bulls was added another on 1 2th December,34 which it is
proposed to call the Bull of Mendicancy. By its composition as by its contents
it recalled that of 2 1st January, 1217, the first confirmation of the title and
essence of the Preachers.35 The Pope expressed his certainty as to the
manifold fruits which the brethren would produce; he knew the weight of
the fatigues and dangers to which they would be exposing themselves for the
salvation of others through the use of the means of preaching to which they
had given themselves. He enjoined these sufferings upon them in remission
of their sins. Thus the sanctification and remission of sins that monks, trad¬
itionally, expected from the exercises of their penitential state, the Preachers
were to expect above all from their sacrifices for the salvation of souls ; that
is to say—for every one of the words of this letter must be weighed with
care—the sacrifices comprised in the type of preaching they had chosen the
better to save souls. As to what this type was, the letter is explicit—and
it is in this that it is distinguished from that of January 1217 and is indicative
of a step forward in the realization of the idea of the Preachers—it is
preaching in deep-rooted poverty. To ‘prepare themselves to give the
Gospel’ in fullest authenticity, they had thus freed themselves from the
‘burden of the goods of this world’ and had decided to carry out their role as
Preachers ‘in the abjection of a voluntary poverty’. What was to save them
and procure for them the same advantage as the practices of the cloistered
religious was thus not only the labour of the word of God and the fatigues or
dangers of their journeys in quest of souls, but also the poverty to which they
were exposing themselves because they had chosen as their rule whole¬
hearted imitation of Christ and the apostles.
The expression in abiectione voluntarie paupertatis, which appears in the
letters from the Pope to the Preachers between the 8th and 13th December,
1219, and would remain as a permanent feature of such letters, should be
carefully noted ;36 it was absolutely new. Earlier the Pope had only spoken ol
the titulum paupertatis, i.e. of the general poverty of the religious orders. But
if the expression was new for Honorius, it was not so for Dominic. It was
an echo of that which Innocent had employed thirteen years earlier in
the confirmation of the mendicant poverty of the preachers of the Narbonen-
sis: ‘The poverty of Christ in a despised garment’, in despecto habitu. At a
time when the convenient term of mendicant poverty had not yet come into
use, it would seem that it should be sought, in the bulls of the Pope or the
documents of the period, under the expressions just cited. That is why
284 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

it is proposed to give to this bull, a replica of that of 17th January, 1217,

as well as its completion, the name of ‘Bull of Mendicancy’.
These expressions had such importance in Dominic’s eyes that four
days earlier he had them inscribed in a new type of recommendation (II),
intended to replace the original type for the future.37 The triple mandate of
the first bull, encouragement, utilization, assistance, is again almost identical
in the new text. The explanation of motives, however, is considerably
modified. In the description it gives of the religious attitude by which the
brethren prepare and support their preaching, the bull of recommendation
presents the essential terms of the Bull of Mendicancy—‘repudiation of the
riches of this world’, ‘in the abjection of a voluntary poverty’. In the eyes of
the whole of the Church, as in their own eyes, the Preachers would for the
future appear as poor men of the Gospel. A copy of the new formula of
recommendation dated 13 th December was sent with the packet of letters to
St Jacques. Dominic clearly further added a letter from himself, with
explanations and detailed instructions.
Each of these missives soon produced its effect. The entry into the lists of
the committee of three and the personal activity of Master Reginald decided
the chapter of Notre Dame of Paris to relent in some degree. Without yet
granting the right of burial—at this very moment all too moving evidence of
this was to be forthcoming38—it provisionally gave permission for the offices
at the convent of the Preachers. On Ash Wednesday at latest, thus on 20th
February, 1220, the community of St Jacques sang the office publicly. 39 This
definitive ruling was put into practice with discretion. It was to come up in
the following month of December in a lawsuit by Archdeacon Stephen,
assisted by two canons of the cathedral.40 The document brought the proof
that the sole motive for the prohibition was the financial anxieties of the
parish of Saint Benoit in the matter of offerings and of funeral perquisites.
The conditions for the authorization of worship were rigorous. The brethren
must close their doors to the faithful on the occasion of the feasts of Easter,
Pentecost, St Benedict, All Saints, Christmas. If on such a day the faithful
had to be satisfied with the sermon of the parish priest, at least they would
be in no danger of taking their alms to the Preachers. If by chance the latter
nevertheless received something on these feasts, they were to be careful to
return the whole of it to the parish. They must also pay an annual indemnity
to the parish priest and another to the canons, to compensate for the
probable diminution in the perquisites. Finally they undertook to have only
one bell, the weight of which should not exceed 300 pounds. In compensa¬
tion they acquired the liberty to celebrate the sacred offices and even a
limited right of burial. In the meantime Honorius had been able to receive
the representatives of the chapter in Rome, in connection with the entangled
problem of the succession of the bishop of Paris.4i The Pope did not hide
from them what he thought of their attitude.42
 VITERBO AND ROME 285-

At a time when the canons of the cathedral were meditating levying a

tax on the poor, Friar Reginald, Friar Matthew and the community of St
Jacques decided to give themselves up to that mendicant poverty which
Dominic had just recommended to them by the letters of the Pope as much
as by his own. They renounced their claim to the deed of tithes granted by
Jean de Briard and Amicie his wife. The motive which urged them to this was
even inscribed in a charter. ‘We have judged it good,’ they said, ‘not to
preserve any kind of temporal wealth, for we consider that the state of
poverty increases merit, inspires better counsels and gives rise to less anxious
cares. And we abandon the care of our life for the present and the future to
the assistance of divine Providence. ’43 The same act further revealed that the
decision, which handed over to public charity a community of some thirty
religious, was taken with the assent of the conventual chapter as a whole.
What was to be done with these tithes ? Friar Matthew, who had acquired
them through his relations with the former crusaders of the Albigeois,
approached the Cistercian nuns of St Antoine, so closely linked with the de
Montforts.44 One of the almoners of the abbey, Friar Beuve, was given on
31st March the responsibility of disposing of the tithes and of the correspond¬
ing house.43 Two documents throw further light on this gesture. A
confirmation of the archbishop of Sens, dating from May 1220, made public
the fact that Friar Beuve had conferred these tithes on the abbey of Cistercian
nuns that Dame Amicie de Breteuil, now widow of Jean de Briard, was busy
founding at Villiers.46 Further, in 1223-, when the arrival of the nuns
effectively brought the community into being, Friar Matthew reiterated that
since 1220 it had been the will of the brethren to abandon the tithes
altogether.47
Thus Dominic’s action on the occasion of his visit to St Jacques, in favour
of absolute evangelical poverty, had not been in vain. Reginald, Matthew of
France and the early brethren who were still with them at the turn of 1220
made the spirit of apostolic life which obtained in the order at the time of its
beginnings come to full fruition once more among the young friars of St
Jacques. In Paris as in Bologna they were ready to take the decisive step of
the general declaration of mendicancy in the order of Preachers, which had
been directly prepared for, since 8th December, by a series of pontifical
bulls.
At this time, too, Dominic endeavoured to lead the brethren of the Midi
to the same point. The Bull of Mendicancy of 12 th December48 and the
recommendation of the 13th were dispatched to them also.49 The circum¬
stances were perhaps not sufficiently favourable or perhaps it was the lack
of a Reginald or a Matthew of France in those parts. Dominic’s initiative did
not produce so prompt an effect in Toulouse as in Bologna or Paris. It was
not until 17th April 1221 that he was able to have the charter of tithes,
which had formerly been granted by Fulk to his preachers, nullified.30
286 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

The month of December 1219 was truly one of the vital moments in
Dominican history. It was then that Dominic brought to completion three
years of experience and investigation. It was then that he paved the way for
future developments. We have seen that, at the same time that he obtained
the Bull of Mendicancy, he also received a new formula of recommendation.
It was not one, however, but three new formulae of this kind which were
then issued by the Curia. The fact, surprising at first sight, is explained when
the three documents are compared. 51
Type II, the letter Dilectijilii which replaced the original type of 1218, has
already been mentioned. This bull, which made declaration of the mendicant
poverty of the order, was specially suitable for the foundations of convents.
It recommended the Preachers under collective form.
On 11th November, however, i.e. on the occasion of the very first
audience in Viterbo, Dominic had already received another recommenda¬
tion, type III,1 Cum qui recipit. This bull did not yet contain the mendicancy
clause. On the other hand, it put the whole emphasis on the ministry of the
Preachers. Clear allusions in its prologue or its terms of enactment to the
10th canon of the Lateran on preaching, have as their evident aim the
presentation to the bishops in the person of the Preachers of those irreplace¬
able people who will enable them to satisfy the obligations of the canon of the
Council. It mobilized in some sort to the benefit of the Preachers, the full
import of the requirements of the Council that Honorius’ legates were
endeavouring at that moment to have applied in the Christian provinces.
To this was added the special weight of the authority of the Sovereign
Pontiff. A clause altogether new, however, was designed to protect the
poverty of the brethren against temptations and reassure the prelates on the
disinterestedness of these new apostles. If it should happen that the self-
styled Preacher demanded money, the prelate was to arrest him forthwith
and condemn him as a perverter and slanderer of the order. This bull,
which summarized the triple mandate of the original bull, was particularly
apt as a recommendation of the individual activity of the Preachers. It would
in fact serve several times for personal testimonials.
Dominic valued it greatly. In 1221, he often requested its dispatch. The
significance of his preference is obvious. The bull clearly expressed the
liaison between the Order of Preachers and the 10th canon of the Lateran.
It gave as an objective to the brethren a universal, ordinary and positive
evangelization—the spiritual nourishment and moral formation of men,
without restriction of place or person, such as Christ demanded. On 1 ith
November 1219, Dominic obtained the first copy of this bull. It had finally
reached Sweden. The context of this dispatch will soon be clear.
On 13th December following, Dominic received a bull of another,
different type (IV1), Quoniam abundavit. In its terms of enactment this bull
merely contained a pressing mandate of recommendation. This time the
 VITERBO AND ROME 287

accent was placed on the reasons which lay behind the movement. The Order
of Preachers there appeared in the perspective of the interventions of
Providence against the enemies of the Church and the evils from which she
suffered. ‘The Lord, seeing iniquity overflow and the charity of the people
growing cold, has raised up, as we believe, the Order of Friars Preachers
who, seeking not their own profit but the profit of Christ, have given them¬
selves to the evangelization of the word of God, as much to put to flight
heresies as to uproot other mortal contagions, in the abjection of voluntary
poverty. This description was well calculated to attract to the Preachers
the attention of those bishops whose diocese was undergoing a crisis,
attacked by heresies or undermined by grave moral deviations. Dominic,
however, scarcely made use of this formula at all. It presented only one
aspect of the activity of the Preachers, the preaching of controversy, and
not the peaceful and joyous setting forth of the truth of the Gospel. On the
other hand, Gregory IX, who in 1227 had scarcely ascended the pontifical
throne, was to take up this text, which had been forgotten since 1221, once
more. He was to enrich it with the greater part of the clauses of the other
bulls and would in this way set up the formula of recommendation of the
Preachers which would be classic for the future. The activity of the order
would be presented in such a sort that it appeared in the perspective of a
struggle against evil and error. The fact is significant on the part of the
Pontiff who busied himself with organizing the inquisition and with imposing
on the Preachers the largest part of its working.
The first copy known of this bull, delivered on 13th December, 1219,
found a home in Germany. An attempt will be made to assess how it came
to get there.
While Honorius III was contributing with so much effectiveness to the
development and solid establishment of the order of St Dominic, he was
preparing to entrust to the founder a task which he had very much at heart.
One of the cares of Innocent III in Rome had been to install in the city a
certain number of model institutes, for instance the hospital of the Holy
Spirit, an extension of the famous hospital at Montpellier. 52 He had con¬
cerned himself particularly with founding a new monastery of women, where
women from Rome itself and nuns coming from convents that were decadent
or in part disintegrating would be gathered together under a strict rule.53
For this purpose he had chosen the ancient church of St Sixtus to the
restoration of which he gave his attention. His death had brought all this to
a standstill.
Loyal to his predecessor’s general programme, Honorius also wanted to
pursue this intention of Innocent’s. He lacked, however, the indispensable
workers. Innocent had entrusted the wmrk of regrouping to those who were
specialists in dealing with nuns, the canons of Sempringham.54 These
religious had been founded in England, towards the middle of the twelfth
288 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

century, to serve as chaplains to a certain number of abbeys of women. They

formed small colleges of seven canons, whose house adjoined that of the
nuns on the other side of an inviolable enclosure wall, to form a double
monastery. Now the religious of Sempringham, who were insular if they
were anything at all, had never come to take possession of St Sixtus. The
Pope summoned them once more, on 3rd August, 1 2 1 8,55 under penalty of
losing the church and the house reserved for them, to supply before Christ¬
mas of that same year, the religious necessary to establish it in accordance
with the prescriptions of their order. The building work was to be done at
the expense of the Apostolic See.
The period assigned had elapsed. The Pope nevertheless waited a further
year. In November 1219,56 when two canons presented themselves before
him, Honorius still seemed resolved to reserve the mission for them. They
brought with them, however, an avowal of their inability to do what was
asked. The order was not capable of supplying even the four religious
asked for.
On 4th December Honorius withdrew the church of St Sixtus from them57
and immediately turned to Dominic.58 It is possible that the Pope expected
this refusal and had already foreseen a different solution. The swiftness of his
reversal of policy would seem to give proof of this. It is even possible that he
had only waited to counter the failure of the English religious until the year
1219 had fully expired, in order to have Dominic near him. It is more
difficult to decide whether he already had this in mind when he sent his
ultimatum of 1218 to England. It seems, however, that Dominic, when he
left Bologna for the Curia in October 1219, knew that a foundation was
awaiting him in Rome. Otherwise it is difficult to see why he should have
brought with him Friar Buonviso, Friar Guillaume and Friar Frogier.
Thus, thirteen days after the letter to die canons of Sempringham,
Honorius was able to write to the brethren and sisters of Prouille, Fanjeaux
and Fimoux, to announce to them the donation of St Sixtus to St Dominic
and the order. At the same time he gave them command to hold themselves
at the disposal of their General, ready to come at his request to lead their
religious life at St Sixtus, in accordance with their own rule.59
It was not, then, a house of brethren that Honorius asked Dominic to set
up in Rome, but a house of nuns. The appeal to the sisters of Prouille and to
their chaplains is significant. The Pope, however, knew that Dominic had
more than once based the ministry of his brethren on houses of women, at
least during the early days. There was in Prouille an authentic convent
of Friars Preachers annexed to the house of die sisters. What had taken
place there could be renewed at Rome. It seems highly probable that we can
affirm that the Pope was aiming at the installation in Rome of a house of the
brethren at the same time as of a community of sisters on the model of
Prouille. For it is not credible that he who urged the prelates of Christendom
 VITERBO AND ROME 289

with so much vigour to install Dominic’s sons in their respective dioceses,

should not seek first of all to plant them firmly at the centre of the Church,
Confirmation of this is found in the somewhat late chronicle of Benedetto de
Montehascone60 and particularly in a contemporary letter of Conrad de
Sharfeneck, Chancellor of the Empire and Bishop of Metz. When this
witness as to the main intentions of the Papacy and of the institutions of the
eternal city at the close of 1220 proposed to introduce the Friars Preachers
into his episcopal city at the beginning of the following year, he did not
hesitate to declare that he was acting ‘after the example of the Lord Pope,
who has granted them a house in Rome, and of many archbishops and
bishops’.61
The Pope’s last letter is not dated from Viterbo, but from Civita Castel-
lana, a halting-place on the way to Rome. The Pope, in fact, had set out with
the Curia to spend the feast of Christmas at St Peter’s.62 He took Dominic
with him. There was no more than one day’s journey to accomplish.
On the day following this audience, the founder and his companions installed
themselves in the church that had just been given to them.63

At the side of the Appian Way, opposite the baths of Caracalla, a stational
basilica had since the fifth century kept up the cultus of the Pope and martyr
Sixtus II. The site was not an advantageous one. At the foot of the Coelian
Hill and of the Lesser Aventine, it consisted of low ground which the
breaking down of ancient aqueducts had turned into a swamp. Moreover, the
fire, pillage and other destructions which war had multiplied in Rome in the
course of the twelfth century had gradually ruined the noble basilica. Like
all the ancient buildings in Rome, it had progressively sunk into the ground,
whereas the level of the streets had risen by several yards. Innocent Ill’s
architects had completed the interment of the building—destroying the
aisles and walling up the arches between the pillars; they had built on the
top of the central nave a church which measured no more than half of the
width of the earlier sanctuary. The new apse rose in its turn upon the walls
of the buried one. It was thus somewhat out of proportion, but in a way
that lent itself better to the establishment of a choir of religious. Such
was the church that Dominic and his brethren received at the close of 1219.
It was left for them to construct the convent.
It seems very possible that Dominic may actually have lived in St Sixtus on
the occasion of his previous visits to the city. Nothing is known of his
lodgings in Rome in 1 2 1 £, 1216-1217, 1218. The Pope was able to authorize
him to make use of this church ‘for long deprived of the ministers which it
ought to have’64 through the fault of the canons of Sempringham. No docu¬
ment, however, no indication allows us to establish the fact in a positive
manner. It can only be asserted, contrary to the great majority of modern
historians,63 that on his last stay in Rome in 1218, Dominic had still not
290 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

established a community of Preachers in the city, since he systematically

directed to Bologna all the religious he acquired in Rome, whether brethren
already of the order who came to rejoin him, or novices who gave themselves
to him.
On arrival, then, the community was set up in the unsatisfactory buildings
near the church, and the construction of a regular convent at the expense of
the Sovereign Pontiff was begun. It would be interesting to catch a glimpse of
this third convent built by Dominic. This time a real cloister, doubtless
very simple, but devotional, and of regular design, gave superabundant
testimony, if it were necessary, of his intelligence and his taste for the life of
classic observance. Alas, very little remains of the block of buildings.66 The
church, reconstructed throughout in the eighteenth century, has no longer
anything of its thirteenth-century appearance. In the vicissitudes of its history
the convent has been entirely changed. Intelligent restorations, however, in
1 85^ by Fathers Mullooly and Besson, in 1936 by Cardinal Lienart, titulary
of St Sixtus, have restored certain thirteenth-century parts of the church
—a part of the apse with something of the frescoes, and in particular the
chapter-room with its two windows with Roman columns each side of the
door. As to the site, made more healthy but rendered characterless by
urbanization, it has lost all its power of evocation.
Moreover, scarcely any ancient document shows us the life of Dominic and
his brethren in these first months of 1220. None of the reliable sources has a
word to say of it. All that is to be found is Constantino di Orvieto’s account
of two miracles which should be assigned to this
The brethren had not yet been long in Rome. Public opinion still regarded
them with mistrust. Neither their true life nor the solidity of their religious
society were known and people were all too ready to speak evil in their
regard. Now whilst they were working on this ancient soil, where the sub¬
soil conceals enormous masses of old masonry and unsuspected cavities, a
serious landslide occurred, and an architect whom the brethren had engaged
was buried in a cellar. They could not succeed in freeing him from the rubble
which was weighing him down, and when he was finally extricated, he was
dead. The brethren were dumbfounded. They were deeply distressed at one
of their collaborators dying without the sacraments. They also dreaded lest
the superstitious crowd should see in this accident a sign of divine disapproval
of the Preachers and should conceive hatred for them. Dominic’s prayer
assuaged everyone’s fear by obtaining the return to life of the unfortunate
man.
Once erected, however, the convent began to extend its influence. Of
the religious whom Dominic received at this time, a single name has
survived—Friar Giacomo de Bella, a Roman bom and bred and very well
known in the city. Very soon he was made procurator of the community.
For mendicant religious still unknown to the public, this choice was too
 VITERBO AND ROME 291

great an advantage not to give rise to comment. What was their distress, then,
when the brother fell ill. Never had a procurator been the subject of so
much solicitude—all the more so, when the sickness became serious.
Giacomo’s natural strength declined, and he no longer responded to treat¬
ment. In consternation the community gave him extreme unction and
gathered around his pallet to defend his soul, now entering upon the last
struggle, by their prayers.
Dominic’s compassion was moved at this sight of his brethren’s distress.
Renewing the gesture of Eliseus,68 he made them all go out and then
stretched himself out against the body of the dying man. Through the force
of his prayer he held back the spirit which was already leaving the body.
After this, recalling his brethren, he again enjoined his office upon the
procurator. The latter related the miracle himself to a group of brethren at
the provincial chapter of Rome in 1243 or 1244.69 Constantino di Orvieto
who heard it, related it for posterity.
What, after all, does it matter if the number of anecdotes preserved is but
slight? We know clearly what the activity of Dominic and his brethren was.
They practised a deep-rooted poverty. As has already been seen, the founder
inaugurated at St Sixtus from the beginning the conventual mendicancy which
he was striving to inculcate in the older convents. If the Pope was financing
the building work, he had not to feed the brethren. Divine office and prayer
alternated with the ministry. Dominic now added to his sermons in the
city churches his preaching to, and conversations with, the nuns. The
chief group of nuns aimed at by the reform and for which the new convent
was being prepared, the community of Santa Maria in Tempulo, was lodged
quite near to St Sixtus, on the other side, near the Capena gate on the Via
della Mole.70 There were other communities also concerned, and individual
nuns.
While the new monastery was slowly rising, Dominic was in contact
with the nuns, edifying, exhorting, and directing. He held discussions with
the superiors. He consulted. The first thing was to see the possibilities as
they actually were, and the extent of the nuns’ goodwill, before giving
Prouille instructions to send a group of foundresses. It was also essential to
construct the cloister. This year, moreover, Dominic could not stay
sufficiently long in Rome to allow the sisters from the Midi the time to
arrive if he sent for them. It was necessary to wait.
At the end of six weeks, in fact, the founder was able to assess the
situation sufficiently. The convent of the brethren was solidly established and
their ministry sufficiently engaged in the city. Dominic left them to their
responsibilities and set off to the Curia again. In the meantime he had
received news from the majority of his convents. He was going to prepare
a new stage in the organization of his order. Buonviso and Guillaume accom¬
panied him to Viterbo. Frogier de Penna, on the other hand, remained with
 292 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

the new recruits to encourage the ministry of souls and to supervise the
building operations.71
During the course of this journey to the Curia, Dominic, for the second
time, had a serious attack of illness. Guillaume de Montferrat had already
seen him sick when they were on the way to Rome.72 He was ill again at
Viterbo. The brother did not quite know what he was suffering from. On
the journey, it had been an attack of dysentery. This is not the first or the
last time that we hear this disease mentioned, a chronic enteritis with
severe crises and bouts of fever which took away all his strength from him.73
In his ministry at Toulouse, devout women who had had the opportunity of
seeing him at close quarters when he was lodging with them, had noted ‘that
he was very often a prey to great suffering and that his companions had to
put him to bed. He did not remain there long, however, and soon lay
stretched out on the ground’. 74 He was then in the prime of life. Clearly he
was worn out. He was forced to call a halt and take to his bed.
He could scarcely be other than at the end of his strength. After twelve
years of unremitting ministry, for two years now he had been travelling
almost continually, each day covering stretches of from thirty to thirty-five
miles,75 going along the roads bare-footed, with no regularity about meals,
often contenting himself with the bread people gave to beggars.76 At night he
would lodge in hospices crowded with poor tramps. Before going to bed, he
would go to pray in a church, at any rate until Matins time, and when he
finally yielded to sleep, he would throw himself fully dressed ‘on a little
straw and never on a bed’.77 When he arrived at a convent, he did not go to
rest, but summoned the brethren ‘to make them a sermon, explain the word
of God to them and comfort and encourage them’.78 Then he discussed the
business of the community with the superior. Afterwards he prolonged his
vigils interminably, sometimes the whole night through. The accounts of eye¬
witnesses are as definite on this for the later years of his life as for the years
spent in Toulouse.76 He was sometimes so exhausted by these vigils and by
fatigue that he would be found asleep on the church floor or sitting down, or
he would fall asleep at table.80 As soon as morning came, he would begin
his sermons again, his visits both to those in good health and the sick, con¬
fessions, direction, and all with so much intensity that he was unable to
occupy himself with his brethren or the sisters until very late in the evening
when people had already retired. He none the less had the community
assembled. Then he preached and soon went on his way again.81
Despite this superhuman activity, Friar Guillaume gave evidence that ‘he
obsei ved with extreme strictness the rule and observance of the Friars
Preachers. If he made little difficulty about granting dispensations to his
brethren, he never dispensed himself. In health as in sickness he observed all
the fasts prescribed by the rule. During the serious crisis of dysentery from
which he suffered while journeying to Rome, he did not break his fast or
 VITERBO AND ROME 293

eat meat. He contented himself sometimes with having a special dish

prepared of fruit or of root vegetables. He did this, whatever disease he
was suffering from’.82 In this state it often happened to him ‘not to have
suitable food or drink, not to be well looked after, to have an uncom¬
fortable bed’.83 In no convent had he a room for himself or even his own
bed.8+
He could not really recover in such conditions; nor could he continue to
last out. It was not long before the crises began again to become increasingly
more serious.
On 17th February he obtained a new bull.Ss The Pope conferred upon him
the power of dispensing brethren who had been ordained contrary to the'
canonical rules before entering the order. They would be able to use the
powers they had received and proceed to major orders. Doubtless Dominic
had just met some case of this kind which he would be glad to be able to
arrange then and there, without the delay involved in referring it back to
Rome. The bull is interesting not only for the sentiments of the Pope which
it expresses—‘a full confidence in the discretion’ of the Master; it also gives
Dominic a new title in the address—-prior ordinis predicatorum, ‘head of the
Order of Preachers’.86
Dominic had already obtained from the Pope a power over the brethren
as a whole—on 22nd December, 1216, in the privilege of confirmation and
on 7th February, 1217, in a Bull on Apostates. At that time the founder was
prior of a regular convent and the Pope was giving him powers in regard to
his community. The links between a prior and his convent were clear in the
eyes of the Pontifical Chancellery. Today, however, Dominic was no longer
prior of St Romain. It may be asked in the name of what authority, in virtue
of what constitution of his religious society, Dominic could possess a power
over his brethren as a whole.
Outwardly the society of the Preachers was still inorganic at its higher
level. It was materially constituted by a certain number of convents of
canons-Preachers. Inside such convents, the classic organization of the monks
and canons obtained. The rule of St Augustine, the privilege of foundation
and the customs of the Preachers had fixed the rights of the prior. No text,
however, no general institution, had yet laid down in detail the relations of
such convents among themselves and with Dominic, or the relations of
Dominic with each one of his Preachers.
It was true that several important orders of monks and canons possessed a
large number of religious houses. They were grouped into vast federations
which each year held session in general chapters where decrees of govern¬
ment and laws were passed. Clearly the group of the Dominican convents
could not possess a federal constitution on the model of these classic orders,
Cistercians or Victorines, for instance. For if one or the other of these
orders possessed a kind of general head in the Abbot of Citeaux or the Abbot
 294 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

of St Victor, such a person was only head of the order because he was
primarily the superior of the leading monastery. Moreover, he was primus
inter pares; he did not command, he merely represented the common
authority of the federation of the convents met in chapter.
Now Dominic was prior of no community of his order, nor was there any
particular house of Preachers more important than the rest. The link between
Dominic and his brethren was of another nature and moreover stronger in a
different way. It was the personal and immediate link which he formed with
each of the religious of his order on the day of his profession made into his
hands or at least in his name. Each conventual prior, when he received the
profession, was from this point of view Dominic’s vicar, as, for instance,
Reginald in Bologna or Paris. At the beginning of this year of 1 2 20, as in the
first days of 1 2 1 £, the whole order was really in the hands of St Dominic.
Despite the still inorganic appearance of the convents of Preachers, Dominic
held them together by his authority. Pie was no longer prior of St Romain,
he was prior of the order.
The bull of 17th February, in giving him this title for the first time,
showed that the Papacy had become aware of bis special situation and
recognized it. Thus the letter bore evidence of an organization in fact of the
whole of the order, radically different from that of the orders of canons. As
he had just declared by the bull of mendicancy that the usual norms of
poverty in common of the canons had been superseded in favour of the
Preachers, Honorius also declared by the new bull that the traditional federal
constitution had no application among the Preachers. The text thus mani¬
fested Dominic s original position at the head of his religious society. It
paved the way for the early definition of this position, the early constitution
of the order as such.
We have seen this situation arising as far back as 121^, as much through
the wish of St Dominic as through his relations with the Papacy. Because his
order was a society which preached, he could not be satisfied with the usual
organization of federations of convents. He must have a supreme leader in
control, to apply the order to its task in the place where it was needed, as
a general commands his troops. The Preaching in the Narbonensis had
its pi iors and masters , as had that oi Toulouse, masters who were them¬
selves under the command of the legates, i.e. ultimately of the Pope. A head
was especially necessary in the case oi a preaching order, for preaching pre¬
supposed a mission, which in turn presupposed'a hierarchy. The fact that
this preaching, by becoming the order of Preachers, had become universal
did not necessitate changing its constitution—on the contrary. More than
ever it must remain governed by its master so that it might be governed by
the Church. Moreover, this was what had been taking place since the begin¬
ning. The links had not ceased to become stronger. It was now necessary to
define them clearly and give them permanent form in a legal document. In
 VITERBO AND ROME *9S
this month of February 1220 it is clear that Dominic was paving the way
for having the centralized constitution of his order clearly defined.
It is also clear that he was preparing to have the counterpart defined,
the constitution of his order as a community. We have already instanced
in Dominic’s attitude his care constantly to marry the personal responsibility
of the chief with the collective legislation of the community. If he did not
attach deep importance to the intervention of the whole of the brethren
in his decisions, as in the constitution of his order, through his personal
temperament as through his medieval formation, he had a very simple means
of obviating this, namely, to have full powers granted him by the Pope, to
establish legislation in writing and to have it confirmed once more, to send
it to all his brethren and impose it upon them in virtue of the obedience
promised on the day of profession.
Now he did not do this then and in fact never did so. It is true that a few
months later it would be possible to declare that at this time Dominic
possessed the plenitude of powers in regard to his order.87 He had not, how¬
ever, asked for these powers from the Pope. They came to him from the
profession of his brethren. Thus he would make them over, for the whole
duration of the chapter, to the community of the Preachers present in its
representatives.88 The decisions of this chapter would become obligatory for
him as for the other brethren, independently of any intervention or con¬
firmation by the Holy See.
Thus he was head, but under the control and within the limits of the
community. Such was his double position which would become clear forth¬
with and be defined in a text of the constitutions. This position had already
been realized in fact since i2iy. The Curia expressly recognized the exist¬
ence of the first phase of it by giving him the title of prior ordinis. He him¬
self was to make manifest the second by a decisive gesture a few days later.
Towards the end of the month of February, he wrote to his convents in
Spain, Provence, France and Italy, as well as to the isolated brethren, to
instruct them to designate a certain number of representatives—four for
Paris—and to send them to Bologna where on 17th May, 1220, the feast of
Pentecost, he assembled a Constituent Chapter.8$
The letters were scarcely written, perhaps not even sent, when he
received heart-breaking news from Paris—Master Reginald was dead.
He had died there a few weeks after his arrival.9° Dominic’s sensitive
nature experienced a cruel shock. He had so quickly and so completely
attached himself to this brother of his own age, to this apostolic soul so like
his own, to this loving heart capable of so much energy. He had even worn
him out prematurely by treating him as he treated himself; by abusing his
generosity without limit; by tearing him away from his valuable work in
Bologna when it was beginning to bear great fruit, to turn him out on to the
highroad and oblige him to begin all over again in Paris. Reginald, however,
 296 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

had died in complete peace, full of joy at dying poor in the midst of his
brethren.91 As they brought him the last sacraments, he had recalled as a
sweet memory that the Blessed Virgin had already in some sort given him
extreme unction. He had nevertheless received the ecclesiastical rite and
had fallen asleep as one predestined.92
Dominic was given one poignant detail, however. The obstinacy of the
canons of Notre Dame, by forbidding the brethren to have a cemetery, had
not even allowed them to keep the body with them. Fortunately the
Benedictines of Notre Dame des Champs had been more than willing to
receive his mortal remains. 93 It was there they lay at rest while waiting for
eternity.
Dominic then took a step which tells us much, both of his grief and his
sensitive nature. What the brethren of Notre Dame des Champs had
done for the Preachers of St Jacques in receiving Reginald had been done to
himself. He thanked them for it in his name. More than this, since it was a
Preacher that was in question, might not the Curia make some gesture? The
news had deeply grieved Ugolino and many other people who knew Reginald
well. The Pope agreed personally to express his gratitude to the Benedictines
of Notre Dame des Champs, and so a bull was issued from the Chancellery on
27th February. 94
The Pope had just learnt that the prior and convent of Ste Marie des Vignes
(Notre Dame des Champs) had by their affectionate care consoled ‘the
brethren of the Order of Preachers studying holy doctrine in Paris’. ‘So that
you may know then,’ said the Pope, ‘the pure affection that we have for
these brethren . . . we command you all . . . through reverence for the
Apostolic See and for Our Person, to continue to favour them with your
benefits as you have so well begun to do.’
At the same time Dominic requested from the Pope an identical letter for
the university of Parises In the following month this letter was, slightly
modified, three times addressed to the people of Madrid (20th March), to
those of Segovia (23rd March), to the podesta and people of Bologna (24th
March).96 Thus the Papacy showed itself so sensitive to the needs of the
Preachers, so convinced of their providential appearance, that it did not
confine itself to recommending them—it thanked in its personal name those
who showed themselves generous and understanding towards them. With
the Pope, the Catholic Church itself appreciated as a service done to herself
the services rendered to this order and gave deep and sincere thanks for them.
There was however a higher source than the Pope and the Church. Christ
himself had expressed his gratitude towards the benefactors of the brethren
when he pronounced these words, taken up again by the Sovereign Pontiff:
‘He who gives a prophet the welcome due to a prophet shall receive
the reward given to prophets’,97 and especially: ‘When you did it to one of
the least of my brethren here, you did it to me. *98 There is indeed in the
 VITERBO AND ROME 297

Pope’s action when recommending his Preachers, a particularly devoted

care, a specially paternal tone, on account of their humility and their
complete poverty. The Church was now no longer afraid of the mendicancy
of one of these orders of apostolic life which she had recently regarded with
uneasiness. On the contrary, it was because of this lowliness, this ‘abjection
in poverty’ that she engaged herself with Christ and gave thanks for them in a
great movement of hope. Dominic was at the root of this profound change.
In the course of the month of March or April, new perspectives opened
from the direction of Spain. The university of Palencia was to be re-created.
A foundation of the Preaching Friars would certainly be indicated in the
scholastic centre of Castile. It would at the same time establish the Preachers
in the heart of this kingdom. Whether the brethren in Segovia had taken the
initiative of the project, or whether Dominic formed it himself, on 13 th
April he obtained a copy of the recommendation DilectiJUii (II)" which he
intended for this foundation. In Bologna, with the Spanish brethren who had
come for the chapter, the possibilities would be investigated. Dominic’s
wish was that the order should also take root in Aragon. The Archbishop of
Tarragona, Sparago de Barca, a native of Montpellier, was not remaining
inactive in the face of the Albigenses who were filtering into his province.
Yet he lacked suitable preachers, since he was reduced to getting Carthusians,
whose merits he extolled at this time,100 to preach against them. Yet this
was the work of the Preachers. Dominic obtained for him a copy of the bull
Quoniam abundavit (IV1),101 which was specially adapted to fit the case. It was
issued from Viterbo on 6th May. Dominic himself entrusted it to some
brethren who were being sent from Bologna to Aragon. They were not
successful in their mission. Doubtless the archbishop kept up against the
Preachers the ostracism which his predecessor had shown against the Poor
Catholics. Mistrustful of all that resembled the apostolic movements, he
refused the remedy while admitting the disease. The first foundation in
Aragon would be made elsewhere.
Finally, on 12th May, the Pope addressed a very surprising letter to a
number of religious in Italy.102 It was primarily surprising through the
heterogeneous collection of those to whom it was destined—five monks and
a Canon Regular, belonging respectively to Vallombrosa near Florence, to
St Victor near Bologna, and to four abbeys in the south of Italy—Silla, Mensa,
Aquila, Flora.1" Honorius informed all these religious that Friar Dominic,
Prior of the Order of Preachers, had declared to him that the special grace
of preaching that they had each received from God could bear very great
fruit for the salvation of one’s neighbour if they consented to place them¬
selves under his direction. The Pope thus gave them the order to set out to
join him and preach under his direction; each one of them moreover would
retain his own habit.
How had Dominic come to know these religious? What was the mission
298 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

the Pope had reserved for him ? What would be the effect of the summons ?
We shall try to answer these questions later. In any case it is difficult not to
compare this bull of Honorius III with the bull of 29th January, 1204 by
which Innocent III placed at the disposal of the Abbot of Citeaux, and
obliged to comply with his summons, a phalanx of religious or priests coming
from all parts and among whom, one day, Dominic found himself engaged.
The change since then is striking.
But what is more striking in the step which the bull revealed is that it
dates from a time when Dominic’s devotion for the salvation of souls could
most legitimately be submerged in the foundation of his order. So great,
nevertheless, was the Preacher’s fervour of evangelization that it overflowed
on all sides, submerging his activity as a founder. Here we find once more the
continual surpassing of the work by the workman which has already been
stressed. Like St Paul, the measureless charity of Christ constrained him to
such a point that he could not content himself with a limited object. What¬
ever his effort to assemble brethren, form them, cast them even prematurely
into the ministry of salvation, that did not yet sufficiently bring about the
general preaching which he had conceived and wanted to undertake with all
the forces of the Church. It did not matter if he could not bring to the
task under the habit of his order all the collaborators he came across. He
was ready to do so under some other habit. The essential was not the habit
but that they should announce Christ everywhere, bring light, dissipate
error and that the poor should have the Gospel preached to them.
The pagans themselves were the subject of one of his most insistent cares.
In the first place, those of the north, whom he had been longing to work
amongst ever since 1 20^. His desire was still keen. At the Curia he had not
only confided this to Ugolino or to Guillaume de Montferrat. He had also
spoken of it to his friend and counsellor Gulielmo de Piedmont. People,
in fact, attribute to Dominic’s confidences the attraction which Gulielmo
felt for the ministry of the north, of which he would soon receive the charge
as pontifical legate.I04 Before Gulielmo, however, was in a position to
favour the Preachers destined for Scandinavia in all possible ways, Dominic
had found the opportunity of sending them there. In this winter of 1219-
1220 he met in fact in Viterbo or in Rome a Swedish prelate, the provost
of St Peter of Sigtuna, Gaufred,105 who had come to defend in the Curia
the interests of the crown of Sweden against the King of Denmark.106
A mission of the Preachers was quickly decided upon. Precisely on the
previous 1 yth August two Scandinavian brethren had been received at
Bologna. If the prelate would be good enough to accompany Dominic to
Bologna, he would hand over the two brethren.107 He would provide them
with the recommendation he had received on nth November (III1).108
The brethren, setting out with the provost in May 1220, installed them¬
selves that summer in Sigtuna, the former see of the diocese of Uppsala
 VITERBO AND ROME 299

and the metropolitan see of Sweden. A monastery dedicated to the Blessed

Virgin Mary was to he founded, which on 1 ith January, 1221 Honorius III
would recommend to the charity and devotion of the faithful of Sweden.109
It was, however, to experience many vicissitudes and even disappeared after
1 2 24.110 The brethren, however, would be received in another foundation
which St Dominic had begun preparing in 1 2 2 1.111 Thus the founder would
have the joy, before leaving this world, of preaching in the northern lands
at least through his brethren, to the pagans as much as to the Catholics.
Another group of pagans, moreover, had begun to move his generosity for
several years past, the Cumans, in the east of Europe.112 Coming from the
continually turbulent territory of Siberia, these warlike populations carved
out between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries an immense territory
between the Altai and the Danube. In the winter they attacked the southern
regions and in summer transferred their devastating raids towards the west
and north. The disaster of Adrianople suffered in 1 20^ by the Latin Empire
in the East revealed their power and their cruelty. With the Wallachian and
Bulgar elements which they bound up with their lot, they never ceased
attacking the Christians on the frontiers of Hungary. In 1 2 11, King Andrew II
for some time summoned the Teutonic Knights against them. The Church,
however, equally had recourse to her missionaries. Although it was a question
of cruelly hostile pagan populations, the preaching of the Gospel had begun.
In 1217 and 1218, the letters of Honorius III already mentioned a bishop of
the Cumans.113 From this time Dominic sometimes envisaged this new field
for his activity and, perhaps, martyrdom.114 In 1221 he sent some brethren
on a mission to Hungary, with express instructions to reach the Cumans.113
Finally, as has been noted, the first known copy of the bull of recommen¬
dation Quoniam abundavit (IV1), dated 13th December, 1219, eventually
found its way to Germany. How it got there is not known. In May 1221 the
long-standing existence of a community of preachers is known of at Friesach,
in Carinthia, whose prior, and moreover sole priest, had deserted the
order.116 Was it to this apostate brother that Dominic had handed the bull
in sending it from Viterbo or Rome ? Was it to some brother sent in the
direction of Germany in May 1220? One can only form hypotheses. But the
facts which give rise to these suppositions are already significant. The pre¬
paration of the two foundations, in Germany and in Sweden, in the course of
the year 1220 proves that during his visits to the Roman Curia, Dominic
seriously contemplated extending the influence of the order to the eastern and
northern extremities of Europe until it finally reached the pagan territories.
It was thus with projects and very precise plans for the constitution of his
order, with unrestricted support on the part of the Papacy, with a Catholic
horizon even wider if it were possible, that at the beginning of May 1220
Dominic prepared to leave the Curia to rejoin in Bologna, before Pentecost,
his brethren assembled in chapter by his orders.
The Church of St Nicholas oj Bologna in the 13th century was in the heart
of the university district. This plan, after F. Cavazza and A. Flessel, is the
present-day street plan of this section of the city. The Law Schools are shown
edged in denser shading, the Faculties of Art and Medicine edged in black.
1. Church of St Nicholas (now San Domenico). 2. The former main square.
3. Former Church of St Ambrose. 4. Church and Cloister of St Proclus.
5. Former St Proclus Gate and southern boundary of the town after 1208.
6. The C destines. 7. Church and Cloister of St Saviour's. 8. St Paul's.
9. Former ‘University Street', southern town boundary in the 12th century.
10. Spanish College. 11. Course of the River Aposa.
 Chapter XVI

THE FIRST CHAPTER IN BOLOGNA

D OMINIC hastened on his way. He had only about ten days in which
to reach Bologna for the rendezvous he had fixed with the brethren.1
He took the shortest way through Tuscany. Friar Buonviso accom¬
panied him.2 They made a brief halt in Florence, where the brethren were
no longer lodging at St Pancras but in the collegiate church of St Paul. The
Master again saw Dame Bene and freed her from her sins as well as comforting
her in her trials.3 He crossed the Apennines with the delegates from
Florence. On the eve of 17th May, the fast of Pentecost, he arrived at St
Nicholas of Bologna. A large community was there to welcome him, the
numbers of the brethren of the convent being increased by the group of
fathers gathered for the chapter.
It is not difficult to imagine what this reunion was like. The convent
hummed like a bee-hive after the breaking away of a swarm. About thirty
delegates at least arrived—doubtless the majority of the original brethren,
chosen by their convents as representatives.4 If Dominic had met one or
other of them during the past year in the course of his travels, the brethren
had not seen each other for nearly three years. Their attitude had
changed since the dispersal. They had given themselves to the order with
generosity, it is true, but not without some apprehension. Moreover anxiety
had dominated them more than once in view of the uncertain future. The
order now lay before them as a powerful institution, full of conquering
energy, already solidly implanted on the soil of Europe, welcomed and
thrust to the fore by the Church, whose expectation it fulfilled. The young
friars in Bologna pointed out to each other with admiration their brethren
Simon of Sweden and Nicholas of Lund, the first-fruits from Scandinavia;5
the brethren from Madrid and Segovia who had arrived from Castile;
brethren from Provence; the four brethren from Paris.6 Among them was one
religious whose clothing had taken place less than three months earlier, but
of whom each one knew that he was Master Reginald’s finest recruit during
the few weeks of his stay in Paris. A master of arts and bachelor in theology,
already mature in years, for he was only a few years younger than Master
Dominic,7 Jordan of Saxony was, with Matthew of France, the principal
personality of the convent of St Jacques.8 By the side of the masters of arts
and of law who peopled the convent of Bologna, he represented the literature
302 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

and theology of Paris. Friar Ventura of Verona who was only awaiting
Dominic’s arrival to take the habit and make profession in his hands, would
represent the convent of Bologna at the chapter,9 doubtless with the new
prior, the master in decretals, Paul of Hungary,10 his colleague Master
Clair and also probably Master Roland and Master Moneta of Cremona.
The day of Pentecost was devoted exclusively to the Lord. The choir of
the church of St Nicholas of the Vines was too small for such a large number
of brethren. With what fervour did they inaugurate the great session
‘invoking the Holy Spirit by whom the Sons of God are moved’ l11 Dominic
sang the Mass with that supernatural inspiration that carried him beyond
himself each time he celebrated the Catholic mysteries. And to unite these
brethren assembled from the four corners of the horizon whose voices,
accents and customs were not used to blending in harmony, in the chanting
of the canonical office at which he presided ‘he goes from choir to choir to
stimulate his brethren to sing true and clearly and to infuse their psalmody
with devotion’.12
On Whit Monday the founder gathered the community in the chapter-
room of the monastery. The Holy Spirit was again invoked and Dominic
preached to the brethren the word of God. They again prayed for the
dead and every one thought of Master Reginald whose presence was so
palpable in this monastery and at this gathering. Those brethren of Bologna who
were not members of the chapter then withdrew and the session began.13
Dominic’s authority, so sure of itself since 1217—‘I know what I am
doing -—was more firmly established than ever. Events had indeed brought
the approbation of supernatural success, that of Providence, to his earlier
decisions. No John of Navarre would now dare to pit his obstinacy against
him. To do so would be tantamount to obstinacy against the Church, for the
Pope had full confidence in Dominic and regularly protected his initiatives
by significant bulls. All the brethren were aware of this authority which
Ventura of Verona was later to describe in these terms: ‘At this time, the
blessed Brother Dominic had full power, after the Lord Pope, to organize,
order, correct the order of Friars Preachers in its entirety.’*4 Now
Dominic at first tried to divest himself of this power.
The emotion must have been considerable when the founder was seen to
rise, pronouncing the words reported by Friar Rodolfo—‘I deserve to be
deposed for I am useless and lax —and humiliate himself to the utmost.13
It was all too easy to guess what prompted this—not false modesty or
pusillanimity, but his feeling of being completely used up. He had long felt
his strength betraying him, especially during the last few months, and feared
no longer to be able to lead to heroic virtue an order whose function it was
to preach Christian heroism by its life as much as by its words. He would so
much like to hand over his government to others and to consecrate his
remaining strength to direct preaching.
 THE FIRST CHAPTER IN BOLOGNA 3°3
In the face of the refusal and the very emphatic reaction of his brethren,
however, he retracted. He would remain at his post. During this session,
nevertheless, he wanted to be only a chairman and to remit the whole of his
powers and even his person to the community. The assembly was, moreover,
too numerous to assume the legislative charge indiscriminately. ‘He was thus
pleased to set up diffinitors who, for the duration of the chapter, would have
authority over him, over each one among them and over the assembly as a
whole’;16 they were to have ‘full powers to decide, order, legislate and
punish, in regard to the order as a whole, under the single reservation of the
respect due to the superior of the order’.17

How many diffinitors were elected? No direct information gives the

number, but it may be presumed that the classic figure of four was adhered
to.18 Among them in all probability were the two masters in decretals of
the convent of Bologna and, we believe, Jordan of Saxony.16 The other
members of the assembly exercised the function of counsellors and, after
deliberation, prepared the provisions that the diffinitors, under the presi¬
dency of Dominic, elaborated, drew up and imposed. Thus the result of this
work in common had not the impersonal character of the former consuetudines,
of customs for observance. Accordingly the documents were given the new
name of institutiones,20 ‘institutions of the Friars Preachers’, because they
were statutes evolved by the Dominicans collectively. They were soon to be
called ‘constitutions’21 because they organized the order into a society. That
is the name they still bear today.
Before beginning the discussion of the details, the founder had a general
decision taken. It concerned the binding force of the ‘institutions’ them¬
selves. Were they to be absolute to the extent that superiors could not
dispense from them ? In several clauses of the customs of 1216, Dominic had
already inscribed the possibility of dispensation.22 He now had it put on
record as a general rule.23 This was not, however, the traditional dispensa¬
tion which makes room for human weakness. What was envisaged was an
organic dispensation which was to enable a very complex mode of life, the
several elements of which occasionally came into conflict, to attain its
objective more effectively. It was a dispensation in the interests of effective¬
ness. Dominic took this opportunity of reminding them in a preamble of
what the end was to which all else must be subordinate. The Preachers
were fortunate to have the founder’s idea set before them in a definition that
was concise, well thought out, vigorous, and rendered the context
even more pregnant. For if Dominic recalled this purpose, it was not as the
logical principle from which the constitutions of the Preachers had derived,
but as the supreme and always living inspiration to which the brethren must
continually have recourse in order to measure the right to the dispensation
and its mode, so that each of the elements of their life might be set in its
right perspective with regard to their mission as a whole. In 1216, this
 3°4 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

definition could not yet be written down, for the idea of the order had not
yet received confirmation and all innovations had just been proscribed. In
1220, the situation was completely changed. A considerable number of
pontifical bulls had confirmed the fundamental idea.2** The founder had given
it permanence by inscribing it in the prologue of the institutions of his order.
The text had just reminded the brethren:

that no one has permission to change, add or subtract anything whatsoever of his
own will. For if we were to be careless about the smallest details we should have
reason to fear a progressive fall from grace.
On this point, however [he added], let the superior possess, in his own convent,
power to dispense the brethren each time that he shall consider it fitting,
principally in what might form an obstacle to study, preaching or the profit of
souls. For it should be known that our order, from the beginning, has been
instituted for preaching and the salvation of souls, and that our very studies should
tend in principle, when used with fervour and to the full, to make us able to be of
use to our neighbour’s soul.2s

The decision of Dominic and his brethren was not an act of liberalism or
of decreased trust in the traditions of regular life. There was at the time
nothing to prevent them, if they thought it necessary, from attenuating the
rigour of an observance which they had chosen for its exceptional severity
and made more severe still. Now they did not do this. Neither did they give
each religious the responsibility of himself deciding how much he should
assume of the common rule. They maintained the initial severity for all.
They did, however, make an act of faith in the capacity of superiors to direct
their brethren for the best in their mission as Preachers. The law of dispensa¬
tion set the authorities of the order above laws of the community", under the
single controlling principle of the supreme purpose of the order, the work
of the salvation of souls.
We learn from history that a cognate problem was brought up in the
course of the discussion, which Dominic solved in a similar manner.26
Formerly, religious lived under an ancient rule, surrounded with the halo of
the distinguished authority of a St Benedict or some other patriarch. Any
failure in observance of the precepts of such a rule, to which one had bound
oneself by oath, was a grave sin. This was the classic teaching of the monks.
St Bernard had reaffirmed this position in the case of the Cistercians. But
was a failure in observance of the constitutions elaborated year by year by
the community of the Preachers of equal gravity ? Certain members of the
chapter in Bologna thought so. It is possible that they even desired it to be
inscribed at the head of the constitutions that they were binding under pain
of sin, according to Bernard’s ideas. Others of the brethren, however, who
had come from the towns, where numerous common rules for confraterni¬
ties, trades or cities were imposed without any strictly moral perspective,
vigorously protested. Dominic was on their side. The regulations themselves^
 THE FIRST CHAPTER IN BOLOGNA S°S

he affirmed, did not always bind under pain of sin. ‘If he knew that some of
the brethren thought otherwise, he would go round the convents and, with
his own hand, wipe out the regulations by erasing them with his knife.’27
Thus it was not to the institutions emanating from the community, which
were general, and made no attempt to deal with particular cases, that
Dominic gave priority, but to the decisions of the superior. These decisions
alone bound under pain of sin. It was these decisions that applied the
common laws to the circumstances of the moment and, by placing them
in a particular perspective, gave final form to their binding force. Thus such
decisions could dispense from these laws. The two conclusions were
related to and supported each other. Such was, as far back as 1220, the origin
of a provision which would not be inscribed in the Dominican documents
until 1 2 36,28 opening an entirely new channel in the legislation of religious
orders—the purely penal obligation of the constitutions.29 In the Bologna
chapter the solution was not formulated but it was foreshadowed. By
remitting the legislative power into the hands of the community of Preachers,
Dominic in no sense weakened the authority of the superiors of the order.
To them he entrusted the executive power. Thus he reserved for them the
principal authority which binds and looses consciences. At the same time he
set free the pusillanimous from innumerable difficulties and scruples which
might arise in the legislation of their brethren in the general chapters.
In convening his brethren, the founder had himself defined the two great
objectives of the deliberations—the juridical constitution of the society of
the Friars Preachers, and the insertion in full in the documents of the
legislation of the regula apostolica. This presupposed a series of exceptional
rulings on preaching and on mendicant poverty. Thanks to Dominic s efforts
since 1216, above all since his great round of visitations in 1 2 1 8—1 219, the
brethren were ready to adopt these rulings; they were even to be found in
outline in the life of the Preachers. A considerable work of adjustment was
nevertheless imperative. There were all-important details which remained
to be settled.

Two supreme organs were thus to secure the unity of the order and its
existence as a community—the head of the order and the geneial chaptei.
As to the former, the Bologna assembly passed no legislation. 30 It was not
concerned with defining his power or even with fixing his official title.
Documents drawn up at the close of the chapter constantly give him the
abstract title of prelatus maior; 31 the Pope would continue to call him prior
ordinis;32 the brethren and Dominic himself would continue to use the
current expression of magister, magister praedicationis, magister praedicatorum.3i
The profession of obedience remained the basis of the Master s power and
secured his authority. It was the supreme power in the executive order, as
we have defined it earlier, which Dominic enjoyed. No order of monks or
 306 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

canons possessed a head endowed with this power. The abbot of Cluny
himself, to whom all the monks were bound by profession made into his
hands, did not derive from that institution a power similar to that of the
Master of the Preachers. This conferred on the order an unparalleled
dynamism, that of an army fighting for the Church. 34
It will be noted that postulants at this time made promises of two quite
different types. The first was a promise to enter religion, which after 1216
appeared in the customs of the Preachers under the formula seculo abrenun-
ciare.is By this promise the novice made a complete renunciation of secular
life at the time of his clothing, but did not bind himself to the Preachers.
If he were not accepted by the order at the conclusion of his probation, or
if he himself did not wish to remain with them, to keep his promise it was
sufficient for him to seek another order. Such was for some time the case of
Diana of Andalo.36 The other engagement was the profession properlv so-
called. The profession, which in the monastic life of ancient times was given
expression by the taking of the habit, was in the thirteenth century clearly
and distinctly separated from it. In Dominic’s dispensation the profession
usually took place after a certain time of probation. It could also, however,
follow immediately after clothing, as was the case for John of Navarre and
many other brethren in the first years of the order. It might even in certain
cases precede it—such was the case for Reginald, Moneta of Cremona,
Jordan of Saxony and Henry of Cologne.37
Dominic thus handed over to the assembly of 1220, in the person of his
diffinitors, his personal powers. In union as he then was with the brethren
constituting the assembly, he decided to assign such powers to the chapters
general which would for the future be convened each year for the feast of
Pentecost and would be held alternately in Paris and Bologna.38 The
reason for the latter decision was not solely the size of the convents in those
cities, the only houses of the order capable, when they were constructed,
of receiving so vast a gathering ;39 it was much more their position in
the order, near the two universities of Christendom. It was laid down indeed
that the next meeting would be in Bologna in 1221—clearly because the
intention was to continue the work of the formulation of the constitutions
there. It was planned, however, to hold the chapter in Paris the following
year; there were certain points in the scholastic and theological programme
of the order of Preachers which could only be conveniently argued out in all
their implications on the banks of the Seine.
General chapters of orders were no novelty.40 A tradition more than a
century old had elaborated their pattern, the model of which remained the
chapter of Citeaux, governed by the famous ‘charter of charity’. The Council
of the Lateran had just proposed this as an example to all the regular clergy.4i
Composed of all the Cistercian abbots, it revised and perfected from^year
to year the legislation of the order, the order which it also corrected,
 THE FIRST CHAPTER IN BOLOGNA 3*7
controlled and administered at the highest level. Nevertheless, the ancient
abbatial tradition, with the abbot’s preponderant authority and the monk’s
established position, considerably restricted the higher administration of
the general chapter of Citeaux of Premontre. Such restrictions no longer
existed in the case of the general chapter envisaged by the Preachers,
whose powers, coming from the tradition of the thirteenth century, were
singularly strengthened. In fact, the general chapter of the Preachers, com¬
posed of representatives elected by the priories,42 possessed complete
control of government throughout the whole order.
In the first place it possessed the legislative power, and it was alone in
possessing this. On this point, the tradition of capitular assemblies was so
universal that the chapter of 1220 did not trouble to put the fact on record.
It was not until 1228 that the legislative procedure which the order still
preserves today was given fixed form:43 a regulation only becomes a law of
the order after the action of three consecutive chapters, by initiation,
approval, confirmation. The chapter equally undertook to reply to the
questions priories might put in regard to observance and preaching.
United to the superior of the order, the chapter also possessed supreme
executive power. One point in particular formed the subject of careful
definition in 1 2 20. It was a fundamental point. The Friars Preachers entrusted
to their general chapter the recruitment, promotion and canonical mission
of the preachers.44 It was in this way that the unheard-of power that the
Pope had entrusted to Dominic and his order, the free conferring on the
brethren of the officium prcdicationis, the office of preacher in the Church,
was administered. The chapter and the Master exercised their power of
administration in common, correcting and punishing, assigning the brethren
to studies, sending them forth to preach, giving them missions. The chapter
even concerned itself with settling differences relating to material goods.
Among the latter, and the fact is significant, only books were explicitly
mentioned. The matter was not dealt with in chapter, for it was not
sufficiently important, but in a separate session, after the meal.43
Finally the general chapter of the Preachers received judiciary powers in
the matter of regular observance, according to tradition. The Master himself
came under its jurisdiction. This was the founder’s express will, manifested
by his attitude which was later given permanent form in a document.46
To secure this control, at the beginning of the sessions the chapter became
a chapter of faults. It pronounced immediate judgement on those persons
present who accused themselves or allowed themselves to be accused.
It judged on verbal report or on written statements those houses and
individuals who were absent. A series of visitors nominated by the chapter
was charged to make such reports.47

Comment has just been made on the first part of the legislative work
3°8 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

of 1220. Part of this is directly brought to our attention by history,48 and

the whole by the document which the dijfinitors then drew up. Curiously
enough, this document, which scholars of the eighteenth century had in their
hands because a Friar Preacher of the fourteenth century had carefully pre¬
served and transmitted it,49 almost disappeared under the hands of the
historians of the end of the nineteenth century. A fatal error of interpretation
prevented the latter from recognizing what was an authentic survival from
the work of the fathers of the Chapter of Bologna.so During the last twenty
years, however, it has become possible to correct this errors i and to reproduce
the original document with accuracy. 52 It is an admirable piece of work,
wholly contained in the second ‘distinction’ of the original constitutions in
what is known as the Rodez ms., within a framework of later texts. With its
own expressions (prelates, prelates maior, fratres nostri), its alert and sensitive
style, its literary continuity, its spiritual inspiration, it is easily distinguish¬
able from the rest of the ‘distinction’ as soon as the whole is submitted to a
careful analysis. It is introduced in the prologue of the primitive institutions
by the title: ‘Of the chapter general, of the study and of preaching.’53
This text has taken nothing from the customs of Premontre or from those
of any other order. It is original in all its parts, and has avoided the literary-
form of the legislations of observance which served as a model for the
customs of i 216 (first ‘distinction’ of the ms. of Rodez). If in default of a
source a literary precedent must be assigned to it, the charter of charity of
Citeaux should be named, that document at this time exactly a century old
which created a new genre in religious legislation, the first constitutions of
a religious order in the proper meaning of the tenn. Thus the document
elaborated by the Dominican dijfinitors at Pentecost 1220, might be called
the ‘charter of preaching’. It represents in effect the constitutional charter
of the Order of Preachers—that which organized it into a society, provided
it with it? terms of reference, prescribed its end and ruled its spirit_as
much as its fundamental activity, mendicant preaching. The following is the
first part of it, on the general chapter. 54

The General Chapter shall be held one year in Paris and the following year in
Bologna. On Pentecost Monday, when the brethren have entered the chapter-
room, they shall first begin by devoutly invoking the Holy Spirit who moves the
sons of God. The versicle Emitte spiritual tuum, et creabuntur shall be said, with the
prayer to the Holy Spirit. Then, when the brethren are seated and all have their
places, the divine word shall be preached to the community to strengthen them by
the word of the God of heaven. All those who wish for spiritual encouragement
may assist at the sermon. When it is finished, as it is meet and right to go as
quickly as possible to the help of those who are in need, the obit of the brethren
who have died during the year shall be recited in common, a general absolution
given and the psalm De profundis said for them. If there are letters to be presented,
let them be given and received; reply will be made to them in due course, after
 THE FIRST CHAPTER IN BOLOGNA 3°9

reflection. Then all those who do not form part of the chapter shall go out. When

they have left, the brethren whose function it is to present apologies for the

absent may do so. Then begins the hearing of the faults against the rule.

After this the visitors have to render account, by word of mouth if they are

present and in writing if they are absent, of the brethren they have visited. Are

they living in continual peace, diligent in study, fervent in preaching; what is

their reputation, the fruit of their efforts ? Are the observances respected in

accordance with the tenor of the Institutions, as to eating and drinking and on

other points ? If the visitors have found any slackness anywhere, the one who is

concerned must spontaneously rise on hearing himsell accused, ask pardon and

await the corresponding penance with humility. Those who were to make the

visitation in the present year and have not done so as was agreed, shall accuse

themselves and submit to a deserved punishment. Then a penance is sent in

writing to the absent who ought to be there and to those who have committed

some fault and have not made satisfaction.

After this, the brethren who are considered capable of preaching shall be

presented to the chapter and those who have not yet received the licence to

preach from a major superior or chapter, although they may have licence and

mandate for it from their own prior.55 All the brethren are examined in private

by competent persons, appointed for this office and for other questions that may

be raised in the chapter. The brethren who live with them shall be carefully

interrogated, as to the grace God has given them for preaching, their studies,

their religious sentiments, the warmth, resolution and intensity ot their charity.

If favourable testimony is given on their account, by consent and on the advice of

the major superior, the decision considered most fitting is taken whether they

are still to be left at their studies, or allowed to try their hand at preaching with

more experienced brethren, or are considered capable of profitably exercising

the ministry of preaching of themselves.

At this point, the brethren who have questions to submit, whether personal or

general, concerning the observance or preaching, shall set them forth in order,

one after the other, while a brother notes them down carefully, so that those

whose function it is to reply to them may resolve and conclude them definitively

in fitting time and place. When one rises to speak, let no other raise his voice.

And so that due measure may also be observed in the matter of withdrawals, let

no one go out without permission or necessity; when he has gone out, let him

not wander about but return as quickly as possible after having attended to what

was necessary. If some dissension should arise among the brethren of the order

may God preserve us from this!—over books or other material objects, this

shall not be discussed at the chapter; for spiritual affairs must take precedence of

temporal ones. Brethren who are expert in such matters will be chosen and they,

after the meal, in a suitable place outside the chapter room, will settle the

dispute by seeking the truth of the matter and will re-establish peace among the

brethren. The major superior, helped by those who are assigned to this purpose,

shall likewise concern himself with resolving and concluding questions, with

correcting the brethren, with assessing penances, with sending preachers with

their socius to preach and to study, fixing time, place and duration.

I I-S,D.
 310 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

All that is ordained in this way, by the grace of the Holy Spirit, the chapter shall
receive wholeheartedly, unanimously and eagerly. Let no one murmur, no one
protest, no one contradict. At the end there shall be a confession and general
absolution, the blessing of those who persevere, the malediction of the apostates
and deserters branded with anathemas.

After this the assembly concerned itself with inscribing in the legislation
the apostolic rule. A brief phrase, but one of great import, serves as prologue
to the whole paragraph: ‘Neither property nor revenues of any kind shall be
accepted.’56 This is of course the declaration of the preachers’ mendicant
poverty.
In the conciseness of the phrase the art of the medieval jurist will be
recognized. Its words are so well chosen that in 1274, when the second
Council of Lyons wanted to legislate on mendicant religious, it could not
find a better definition for them than to reproduce these terms exactlv—‘the
orders who are forbidden by their rede or constitutions to have property or
revenues’.57 Nothing else remains in fact to those who have forbidden them¬
selves all regular resources and envisage as the sole form of their work study
and preaching, but the daily charity of Christians in the name of Providence.
The practice of conventual mendicity is given more exact definition by
contemporary customs which the brethren themselves were doubtless already
Practising. Since the middle of the twelfth century', for instance, these
usages had been included in the legislation of the Order of Grandmont.58

Each time that in one way or another you have the wherewithal to feed yourselves
for one day without begging, you will not allow yourselves to go out and beg. . . .
But if God tries you, by allowing you to come to such scarcity that you are totally
without food . . . , let two brethren long established in religious life go out on
the quest with humility. Let them beg alms in kind from mills and houses, from
door to door, as other poor men do. When they have received sufficient alms to
feed themselves and the other brethren for a complete day, let them return to
the monastery and share what they have with each, with giving of thanks.59

Dominic and his brethren, in fact, were familiar with the Order and
legislation of Grandmont. The practice of conventual mendicity was not the
only point which interested them in the system of poverty of die eremitical
order founded in the eleventh century by St Etienne de Muret. The brethren
of Giandmont, earlier than the Friars Preachers, had renounced property,
buildings and lands, Hocks and herds, incorporated churches and other
revenues—in short, all regular resources; but, also like the Preachers, they
accepted the ownership of the monastery, its chapel and its garden.60 Like
them too, they desired that their clerics should be solely applied to spiritual
work, which for them was contemplation and divine praise. Thus their
founder had made provision that only the lay-brethren of the order should be
concerned with temporal affairs and that they should have authority over the
clerics themselves in this sphere.61 Dominic had been deeply impressed by
 THE FIRST CHAPTER IN BOLOGNA 31 *

the example of Grandmont, which he had had the opportunity of coming

into contact with not long before in Provence,62 or more recently at the
Curia. He wanted to introduce it into his order as it stood and formally
proposed this to the chapter.63 It would be a great advantage if the preachers
who were clerics could be delivered from temporal involvements to reserve
their whole strength for the ministry of prayer, study and the word.
On this point the brethren resisted him. The rule of St Etienne was not
conspicuous for its sense ol proportion. Five popes, among whom was
Honorius himself barely a year ago, without mentioning the King ot France
and his barons, 6+ had been constrained to intervene to resolve the crises
emerging from its prescriptions, particularly from the preponderance
accorded to the lay-brethren in the government. The brethren were afraid
of undergoing similar crises if they accepted this provision. On this point
Dominic gave way to the judgement of the fathers of the chapter. He con¬
tented himself: with having it defined that no temporal charge or administra¬
tion would be imposed on those who had been assigned to study or preaching,
unless it were perhaps provisionally when there was no one else to assume
such functions.63 After all, it was not a bad thing that a preacher should feel
in passing the weight of the monastery’s daily cares; it is so easy to exhort
others to detachment from material goods, when one is tree oneself from all
preoccupation through someone else’s labour.
The preacher, moreover, would normally escape this danger by himself
begging in the course of his rounds. This practice ot apostolic life which had
been specified in the charter of i 2 i but which it had not been possible
to inscribe in the customs of 1216, in 1220 formed the subject of piecise
prescriptions—primarily, the prohibition to carry any kind of money on
one’s person in the course of the journey; thus the text of the Gospel
required it. Dominican mendicity thus excluded any begging for money as
such.66 One could only beg in kind, for food, necessary clothing, books and
other indispensable objects. To this was added the prohibition to go on
horseback. Finally, it was forbidden to travel alone; they must go to preach
two by two, in accordance with the Gospel.67 The first two prescriptions
gave rise to new faults which were added in the corresponding chapter of the
rule of St Dominic, the chapter of grave faults.68
This was, however, a negative way of putting things. These prohibi¬
tions, indeed, corresponded to a spirit, the spirit of the Gospel itself, but
they only gave the obverse side of it. Dominic accordingly had these provisions
summarized in a positive form in a general document. Thus was cieated
the attractive portrait of the Dominican preacher which will be given
shortly—the man of the Gospel who, his eyes fixed on the pattern of
Christ and the apostles, sets out in quest of the souls to be saved and finds in
the closeness of his life to his model, the ever-flowing source of his con¬
templation as of his preaching, the source that feeds his generosity.
312 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

Back in his priory again, the Preacher should find the tokens of his poverty
there. Dominic had a final paragraph drawn up regarding the humble nature
of the buildings, which should be such as would not only prevent his
brethren from being crushed by expense but also avoid scandalizing secular
priests and layfolk by over-costly buildings.69
The members of the chapter had already legislated for the recruitment and
promotion of the preachers. Designated provisionally by his prior, defini¬
tively by the chapter after a careful examination, the preacher needed a
careful intellectual and moral training. The question of the studies occupied
the Bologna chapter at some length. A new authority in the regular life
was created, the master of students, the counterpart of the master of
novices.70 Special premises, time-tables, programmes and exercises were
established, of which the tradition of regular life hitherto had known
nothing. Discovery was immediately made of new types of virtues or faults,
to which the attention of those responsible was drawn. The document which
the dijfinitors drew up71 was again realistic. It portrayed the student preacher
in his own milieu and activity, in the picturesque scene of the rehearsal of
a theological disputation’, such as could be seen in the schools of that time,
or again it suggested the picture of the brother who succeeded in his studies
and had the enjoyment of a cell to himself with permission to read, write,
pray and even watch there during the night. The horizon of these studies
was not so much learning as contemplation and the salvation of souls.
The chapter again drew up a series of prescriptions on the exercise of
preaching in the Church,72 in which one can see the experience of St
Dominic and his attitude. Mention was made of the respect due to the
authority of the bishops; the visit which must be paid to them on arrival in
a diocese to ensure the effectiveness of the friars’ ministry; the obedience
which must be given to them in everything which does not contradict the
rule; the humble and fraternal spirit which must be shown to the clergy;
the good understanding one must maintain with one’s socius. The elaboration
of the apostolic code of the preacher was thus completed, the second part
of the chaiter of preaching clearly indicated in the title: OJ the studies and
the preaching.73

Since it is essential to surround the students with careful foresight, they are to be
entrusted to one particular brother, without whose permission they cannot copy
the texts,74 or attend lectures. He shall correct everything in their studies which
seems to him to merit correction. If some point exceeds his competence, he shall
submit it to the superior. The students ought not to take as the basis of their
study the books of the pagans and philosophers, even if they consult them in
passing. 75 There shall be no study of secular sciences76 nor even of the arts
known as the liberal arts. The young, like the others, should study only theological
books.
The superior shall grant the students such dispensations that thejr studies cannot
 THE FIRST CHAPTER IN BOLOGNA 313
lightly be interrupted nor can they be disturbed for matters of service or similar
reasons. If the Master of the students esteems it beneficial, special premises shall
be reserved for them in which, after the disputation and the lessons of Vespers,
or even at other free times, they can meet in his presence to set forth their doubts
and their questions. When one of them propounds a question or sets forth an
argument, let the others be silent, in order not to embarrass the one who is
speaking. And if anyone, in propounding a question, objecting, replying, show
himself impolite or unmethodical, or peevish or even abusive, the one who
presides must correct him immediately whoever he may be. A cell shall not be
given to all the students, but only to those among them who can draw profit from
it in the judgement of their master. If someone fails to make progress in his studies,
his cell shall be given to another and he shall be employed on other tasks. In the
cells those who wish may study, write, pray, sleep and even keep vigil during the
night for reason of their studies.
Those who are capable, when they have to leave the monastery to go out preach¬
ing, shall receive from the prior the socius he considers suitable for their habit of
life and their dignity. Having received a blessing, they shall thus go forth and
comport themselves everywhere as men who seek their salvation and that of their
neighbour in all perfection and in a religious spirit. Like men of the Gospel,
following in the footsteps of their Saviour, they shall speak with God or of God,
in themselves or with their neighbour, and avoid the frequentation of company
that is suspicious. When they thus go forth to exercise the ministry of preaching
or travel for other reasons, they shall neither receive nor carry gold, silver,
money or any other present, with the exception of food, clothes, other objects
of necessity and books. None of those who are assigned to the ministry of
preaching and to study shall receive any charge or temporal administration, so
that, in greater liberty, he may be the more capable of fulfilling the spiritual
ministry which has been entrusted to him—unless it so happen that one can find
no other person who can attend to these necessities, for it is not a bad thing that
at times one should be checked by having to attend to day-to-day needs.77 They
shall take no part in pleading and law-suits, unless it is for a matter of the faith.78
When our brethren enter a particular diocese to preach there, they shall first of
all visit the bishop if they can do so, and take inspiration from his counsels to
bring about in the people the spiritual fruit which is their objective; they shall
obey him devotedly in all that is not contrary to the rule so long as they remain
under his episcopal jurisdiction. The brethren must beware of scandalising
religious or clerics in their preaching by their way of ‘speaking against superiors . 79
They must, on the contrary, strive to correct in them the defects which seem to
merit it by exhorting them privately as fathers.
The preachers and itinerant brethren, when they are on the road, shall say their
office in the measure in which they know it and as they can.80 They shall content
themselves with the office which is recited in the churches where they stop on
the way; they can also celebrate the office or hear it said by bishops, prelates and
other persons, according to the customs of those with whom they are living during
this time. The itinerant brethren shall also carry with them testimonial letters
and in the monasteries where they make a stay, shall submit to correction of the
 IN MEDIO FCCLFSIAE
3*4
transgressions they have committed. On the road the superior shall be he who is
the most senior in the order, unless he has been assigned as socius to a preacher or
unless the superior at the moment of departure shall have arranged otherwise.
The socius of a preacher owes him obedience in all things.
Our brethren must have only low, unpretentious houses, so that they are not
crushed by expense and so that the secular clergy and other religious are not
scandalized by the sumptuousness of our buildings.81

Thus ends the remarkable document which we should like to call the
charter of preaching. Who was responsible for drawing it up in this particular
form? It will be noted that it was not the work of a jurist, though it is true
that all the legal niceties are to be found in it. Yet they are not there under
the form of a code, which will always be somewhat dry and abstract. They
are inserted in a series of lively and evocative pictures, swift-moving and
clear. We can see the workings of general chapter under the impulse of the
Holy Spirit, the brethren receiving edification, or praying, the ‘visitors’
getting up to speak, others making the venia and asking pardon. One com¬
mittee sits in private after the meal. We assist at theological exercises where
the excitement rises in crescendo. We follow' the preacher along the road,
with his socius. Sometimes the narrative shows us his very heart, where he is
speaking with the Lord; or again wre are taken into the presence of the
bishop, where the preacher acquires information and adapts himself
to the needs of the situation; or perhaps into the presence of the
crowds, where the preacher’s contemplation overflows into the wrord of
salvation.
Was this the work of Dominic? The witnesses in Bologna in the process
of 1233 in fact attribute to him several of the phrases of this text, which are
indeed among the finest, those most charged with spiritual vitality.82 It is
sufficient, however, to look closely at their testimony to realize that all they
attribute to Dominic is the inspiration of the phrase and not its exact
wrording. Fecit scribi, poni, ‘he had it inscribed in the rule’.88 He had, in
fact, an editor close at hand, an excellent stylist whose letters and the
Libellus happily preserved enable us to make profitable literary comparisons
with the Institutions of the capitulary fathers of Bologna—the former professor
of literature,84 Jordan of Saxony. In both these writings there is the same
skill in painting pictures full of life, in penetrating into the feelings of the
characters,88 in evoking a spiritual attitude by an accumulation of touches
of two or three words each,86 by raising to the supernatural plane at every
moment, by a briel apposition, the most simple actions.8? Finally, when the
text describes the student in theology, carried away by the discussion to the
extent that he soon breaks out into insults, or the preacher who carves out
for himself in public an easy and scandalous success by declaiming against the
clergy> we can recognize in these portraits taken from life and without
malice, the art of gently ironical correction of the second Master of the
 THE FIRST CHAPTER IN BOLOGNA 315

Preachers. Moreover no one was better placed than this bachelor in theology
from Paris to edit a text on the studies of the brethren.

In the course of the foundation chapter in 1216, and of the general chapter
of 1220, Dominic and his brethren endowed the order with a complete body
of legislation. The prologue and the two distinctions of the institutions of
the Preachers present a definition of the order, a law of observance and of
liturgy arranged in paragraphs, a constitutional law written at one sitting.
The literary sources, considerable in the prologue and the first distinction,
non-existent in the second, are limited to the customs of Premontre. The
historical sources, on the other hand, cover the whole tradition of regular
monastic life in the Church. Some fifty years later Etienne de Salagnac
stressed this fact without ambiguity.
Augustine and Benedict, those glorious confessors, adapted [Dominic] to his
ministry of preaching by arming him in each case with the discipline of regular
life. A canon by profession,88 he was none the less a monk by the austerity of his
religious life, in his fasts, abstinences, clothing, sleep, in the discipline of
silence and the chapter and in the other observances contained in the rule of
blessed Benedict. He has taken over into his constitutions almost the whole of
such observances, joining to them more special ones, has followed them out in
fact and made his sons follow them, just as we, like him, make profession of the
rule of the blessed Augustine.8^ Nevertheless, by a further increase of grace, he
drew from the apostolic rule, adding it to this collection of precepts, that we
should not travel on horseback, that, going on foot here and there to evangelize
and work for the salvation of men, we should carry neither gold nor silver,
content to receive our food in accordance with the words of St Luke X—eating
and drinking what they have to giveyou. Now even on this point, seeking something
more, the saint abstained and ordered his sons to abstain completely from meat,
not forgetting that it was said to the innkeeper: ... on my way home I will give
thee whatever else is owing to theejor thy pains.90 Thus whoever passes a judgement
free from envy will see that this saint was a canon by profession, a monk by the
austerity of his life, an apostle by his preaching. 91
This the Preachers carried out in their turn. As a religious of the thirteenth
century, Etienne de Salagnac judged the order from the concrete details of
its observance and marvelled at the accumulation of its austerities. He
suggested, however, in one or other of his phrases that this state of things
was not the result of a mere race to beat the record in the competition of
the religious orders. The accumulation of observances was sought out by
Dominic and his brethren to prepare their life for the ministry of preaching
and the salvation of souls. Today we are impressed above all by this central
inspiration, the principle of unity of a whole so rich that at first sight it
seems an almost disorderly pile.
Indeed, the collection of duties which Dominic and the fathers of the
chapter imposed on the Order of Preachers for the future was of such an
316 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

extent that they seem almost mutually exclusive. Contemplation seemed

opposed to the intense activity demanded by the ministry of souls. The
long liturgical prayer seemed to take up the time that study demanded.
The asperity of vigils, abstinence and fasts might weaken the vital forces
demanded by study and preaching. It is purposeless to hide these contradic¬
tions. The legislator of 1220 was not unaware of them, since he partially
solved them by the power of dispensation placed in the hands of the superior.
He was, however, at the same time convinced of the necessity of each of the
parts, as much as of the whole, because the occasional opposition of the
elements to each other was only one of the aspects of reality, a consequence
of human weakness. On the other hand, and this was the principal point
because it had for him the force of grace, these elements mutually evoke and
support each other. The discipline of the observances, to use Salagnac’s
terms, ‘adapts the religious for preaching’, because it forms him morally,
detaches him spiritually, purifies and enriches him supernaturally with merits
and, making him share in the cross of Christ, prepares the ‘grace of preach¬
ing’, 92 the source of the effectiveness of the ministry by ‘word and example.’
This indeed was the fruit of Dominic’s experience in his years of preaching
in the Albigeois. Theological study, canonical prayer, private prayer, the
successive facets of one and the same contemplative activity, in turn
indispensable (‘Which is better’, Jordan of Saxony was to say, ‘always to drink
or always to eat?’)93 are the only authentic sources of Christian preaching.
What St Thomas would express in the form of a maxim, Contemplata aliis
tradere: to hand on to others the fruit of one’s contemplation’,94 Dominic
expressed in a wholly objective fashion, after the manner of the Gospel, by
giving a portrait of the true Preacher going forth to men ‘speaking only
with God or of God, in himself or with his neighbour’. This time again,
Dominic had begun by putting into practice what he said.
Three powers, three sources of energy coming from the Church of the
thirteenth century, or rather from the whole history of the Church, met in
the Order of Preachers thanks to the genius ot Dominic—a mission from
the Church, a constitution of regular life, a spiritual idea which was also a
force. The mission from the Church was the preaching, which Dominic gave
as end, definition and title to the Order of Preachers, because the Church
had had sufficient confidence to entrust it to him. The form of regular life
was the canonical tradition, with its liturgical prayer, its observances, its
conventual organization, the milieu of life and moral and religious training
in which Dominic had lived before making his brethren live in it. The idea
which was at the same time a force, was the vita apostolica, the imitation of
the apostles. Externally these three currents appear heterogenous and, in
fact, for many years, they had moved apart from each other and diverged,
even being in opposition in very serious crises, of which the Albigensian
crisis was only an outcrop. Dominic and his brethren, however, had dis-
 THE FIRST CHAPTER IN BOLOGNA 317

covered the profound unity of these currents and forces. It was entirely
hound up with one word—the Gospel. For it was from the Gospel that the
mission of the apostles, the community of Jerusalem, mendicant preaching
had derived. As is fitting, it was the third term, the spiritual ideal, which
made the unity of the whole. Dominic kept under his eyes the picture of the
virile fishermen whom Christ had called upon of old to bear witness to the
ends of the earth. In former times he had imitated them in the common life
in Osma, when he had with his brethren ‘one heart and soul . . . everything
was shared in common’.95 As a canon he had imitated them in the prayer in
the temple at the third, sixth and ninth hours, of which they had expressly
reserved the office to themselves by instituting deacons.96 He, an authentic
preacher, had imitated them receiving from Christ through the Church the
mission to preach.97 He, the preacher, again imitated them when he went
forth with his socius, without gold, silver or money, staff in hand and begging
his bread, to announce the kingdom of God.98 It was not mere chance if, in
the institutions of 1220, the most moving phrases taken under his dictation
directly evoke the sacred image of the apostle going to save souls. In this
picture which was for him overwhelming, Dominic inscribed for his
brethren the fundamental experience of his life, the evangelical inspiration
of his order, the unique source of the very rich life of his brethren, the
supernatural mystery of the order of Preachers. ‘Like men of the Gospel,
following in the footsteps of their Saviour.’
The general chapter finished its task. Paris and Bologna had already brought
themselves to accept mendicancy. The case of Madrid would be regulated
by the abandonment of the house to the sisters. A letter was sent to them—
perhaps Friar Mames was a member of the chapter and brought the letter
with him. The case of Toulouse was also regulated in principle; certain
property was restored to the diocese,99 other estates were given to
Prouille,100 other property would form the subject of later negotiations with
the diocese.101
The discussion on the studies of the Preachers had made clearer than ever
the necessity for having the support of the university of Paris. The Preacher
was to be an informed and enlightened theologian. It was not sufficient that
he should have received his training; it was essential that he should keep
up his knowledge and find in his house someone who could provide for this.
A conventual theological school was indispensable, not only to form the
preachers, who could not all be sent to Paris, but to maintain the studies of
those who had been formed there. It was, moreover, the natural com¬
plement to their preaching since it influenced the local clergy by its
teaching. It then established, at the same time as the programme of preaching
of the Council of the Lateran, its scholastic programme.102 A constitution
of the Pope a few months earlier had in point of fact recalled the urgency of
this programme.103 In this way the Preachers collaborated in every aspect of
318 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

the doctrinal mission of the bishop.I04 The letter of Conradin of Metz

already cited several times would soon bring the proof that such ideas had
been as familiar to the Curia since 1220 as they clearly were to the
Preachers.105 It was at the chapter of Bologna that they must have been
published.
Thus it was essential that the Preachers should have their Masters trained
in the one place where the universal licence to teach theology in the Church
was granted, in the university of Paris. The chapter considered plans for
enlarging the convent of St Jacques,106 sending students there from all parts
of the order,10? securing for it an internal teaching,108 in short, strengthening
the bond between the convent and the university of Paris. The first thing to
be done was to obtain the hospice as a permanent gift. This would be an
accomplished fact on 3rd May following. Jean de Barastre and the university,
as has already been said, had now definitely abandoned their claims on the
house.100 In return, the order would allocate founder’s privileges to the
Dean of St Quentin and receive the corporation of the university into its
fraternity; and—an even more remarkable fact—Jean de Barastre at this time
transferred his chair of theology to the house of the Preachers;110 the
brethren, who had not the right to leave their convent to attend the courses
in the faculty,111 thus had them under their own roof; they were permanent¬
ly incorporated in the university. Jean de Barastre had acted at the express
demand of the Pope. These events were thus not the fruit of steps taken
by the Preachers of Paris and their friends alone, but also by Dominic at the
Curia. Courses of theology were also instituted at the convent of St Nicholas
of Bologna.112 The university, which had no faculty of theology, would for
long let this school of the Preachers, and later, those of other mendicant
orders take its place. The university orientation of the Order of St Dominic
which was to produce incomparable fruit in the course of the thirteenth
century, was thus the result of the decisions and conscious efforts of their
founder and his first brethren, particularly in 1 2 2o.u3
Since the confirmation by the Pope of the two houses of Preachers of St
Remain (12 16) and of Prouille (1218), no official act, to our knowledge,
had come to sanction the foundation of a community of Dominicans. Many
houses had however come into being since then, beginning with those of
Paris and Bologna. It does not seem, however, that, in respect of these
houses, they proceeded to that declaration of rights which is known as a
canonical erection. The superior of the brethren in Paris, Friar Matthew of
France, continued to style himself in 1220 ‘Abbot of the Friars Preachers
dwelling in Paris’,u4 which is merely a reduced form of the complete title
‘Abbot of the brethren of St Romain of the Order of Preachers’,115 as if all
the Preachers of France, Spain and Italy continued to belong to the com¬
munity of Toulouse. It would seem that from that time the general chapter
raised into convents those existing communities which fulfilled certain
 THE FIRST CHAPTER IN BOLOGNA 3 l9

conditions. In any case, it fixed the title of their superior. Friar Matthew
would in future be called ‘Prior of the Preachers of St Jacques in Paris’,116
like Friar Paul at St Nicholas of Bologna,117 Friar Giacomo at Milan118 and
Friar Tancred in Rome.n9
The chapter decided moreover on the mission to Scandinavia. Friars
Simon of Sweden and Nicholas of Lund were sent with Provost St Peter of
Sigtuna who was waiting for them. The bull of recommendation of iith
November, 1219 (III)120 was entrusted to them. Flow they very quickly con¬
structed a monastery in Sigtuna, which would only last for a lew years, has
already been told.
The Provost of Sigtuna was not the only one to ask tor Preachers, it an
ancient document ot the convent of Barcelona121 is to be believed. The
bishop of that city, Berenger of Palou, is also said to have met the founder
round about that date and to have obtained a few religious from the chapter
of Bologna for his city, and to have taken them back with him.122 The
document is not wholly trustworthy. It seems that the bishop did obtain the
brethren for the foundation, after the death of Dominic, most probably at
the chapter of 1222. In 1220, the only sign of the interest taken by the
Preachers in Catalonia was the bull of recommendation of 6th May, to the
Archbishop of Tarragona,123 which has already been mentioned; it does not
seem to have produced results. On 7th December, 1221, a more summary
bull to the Bishop of Barcelona doubtless led to the step and the success of
1 222.124 The church of the monastery would not appear until i 223.125
The expansion and influence of Paris was not as rapid as that ol Bologna.
The chapter decided to intensify it. Some brethien were sent to Amiens,
where from the autumn their activity seemed to be on the point ot leading
to a foundation.126 The action of the chapter cannot but have had a hand too
in the foundations soon after of Rheims and Poitiers.127 It is probable too
that the foundations which were to arise in the course of that yeai in Spain,
Provence and Lombardy or in Tuscany were the subject of the delibeiations
of the chapter. We have no direct echo of this.
The chapter was finished. After the prayers, anathemas and final benedic¬
tions, all dispersed. Each one, his heart full of beautiful memories, still
completely radiant with happiness from the fervour ot Dominic and his loyal
companions, set out again for his priory, carrying with him the new
of the brethren.
Institutions
Dominic went off to preach in northern Italy. How free his heart was as
he gave himself to his ministry—he had organized his order.
 Chapter XVII

‘THE PREACHING’ IN LOMBARDY

O N i 2th May, 1220, while Dominic was on his way to Bologna,

letters left Viterbo for the north and south of Italy bearing orders
from Honorius III to five religious to place themselves at the
disposal of the Master of the Preachers.1
It is not without justification that we have compared this recruitment of
preachers from monasteries of different origin—Augustinians, Benedictines,
Cistercians—with that made by Pope Innocent III on 29th January, 1204,
for the Albigeois. In 1204, the Pope had collected preachers under the
direction ol the legates and soon of the Abbot of Citeaux himself. To these
preachers the leader in charge was to add others, whom he would recruit
from the numerous abbeys of his order.2 In 1220 the Pope again collected
together an army of preachers and placed it under the authority of the head
of the Friars Preachers, who was in no need of a special recommendation
from the Pope to associate his brethren with his preaching. This is not,
indeed, the only analogy that can be noted between the two enterprises. The
similarity extended also, as wdll be seen, to the congregations to which both
preaching expeditions were directed.
Dominic took his part in both, but in the interval he had seen his position
considerably changed. Originally he had found himself accredited to the
mission of the Cistercians in the Albigeois as a humble preacher of whom
for long the official documents had taken no account; now he was the head
of the new mission which by that very fact became the mission of the Friars
Preachers. Moreover, among the religious of other orders whom he attached
to his troops was a monk of the abbey of Flora, of the Order ‘of Citeaux and
of Flora’ (to use the same terms as the Papacy^) who not so long before had
been in charge. The roles were thus reversed. It might be said that it was
a sign of the times and that since 1220, as would effectively be the case for
the future, the first of the mendicant orders found itself replacing, for the
great tasks of evangelization, the Order of Citeaux which since the twelfth
century had been ubiquitous. It would, however, be an exaggeration to say
this. In 1220 and for several years to come, the immense army of the
Cistercians would remain, in the eyes of the popes as in actual fact, the
principal source of the missionary forces of the Church which could be
drawn on in all circumstances.4 It was clear, however, that on 12th May,
 1 THE PREACHING * IN LOMBARDY 3 '2I

l 2 2o, for a mission of capital importance, the Order of St Dominic occupied

a place that a few years earlier had been entrusted to the Order of Citeaux—-
a striking testimony to the confidence and wide hopes placed in it by the
Pope and the Curia.
The documents which would provide accurate details of this mission are
lacking. We no longer possess the Bull of Institution addressed to St Dominic.
There remains, however, the letter to the five religious. It contains the
essential phrase. The religious were to leave their monastery and set out in
the train of the head of the Preachers ‘to propound the word of God to any
person to whom [Dominic] shall judge it expedient that this shall be
done. By manifesting the light of truth to these stray sheep, they will
bring them back to the way of truth’. It was thus a question of going to
people who had gone astray in error and of bringing them back to the truth
and to Christian life. These straying souls were not identified either by
name or place. Dominic’s mandate was completely general, and he had no
rule other than his own decision. History, however, tells us how the
Preacher defined it. In 1220, he would journey through the whole of
Lombardy from the last days of May until the end of the year; 5 between 1220
and 1221, he would traverse ‘almost in its entirety the Marches of Treviso’
and ‘the territory of Venice’.6 Lombardy, the Marches and Venetia, in other
words the whole of the north of Italy, he was going to comb through with his
brethren, who were no longer young acolytes but men in full maturity,? and
perhaps one or other of the preachers sent to him by the Pope. The wander¬
ing sheep to whom he would be addressing himself were at last specified.
They were all those who, in northern Italy, were systematically separating
themselves from orthodox Christianity, and principally the Waldenses
and the Catharists. The mission of 1 220-1 221 was really comparable with
that of 1 203. Like the Abbot of Citeaux earlier in the case of the preaching
in the Narbonensis, the Master of the Preachers was charged to organize the

preaching in Lombardy.
Until quite recent years nothing was known of the very wide extension of
heresies and especially of the Catharist heresy in North Italy. It was known,
it is true, that the townsmen of the proud cities of Lombardy which seethed
with activity, perhaps the most brilliant civilization of the Europe of the
time, were manifesting their vitality and their spirit of independence by a
great show of welcome to religious trends and movements coming from
every horizon. Milan provided the example of what might be met with in all
the cities through which the P6 flowed or which enjoyed the protection of the
mighty buttresses of the Alps to the north of the vast plain. Jacques de Vitry
in 1216 depicted it as ‘a den of heretics’8 an expression which does not tail to
recall the terms in which Pierre des Vaux Cernai stigmatized Toulouse.6
The affair dated from far back. The deep stirrings of the Gregorian reform
had begun in Milan, where the religious fervour of a mobile population,
to
 322 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

inflamed by the call to a return to the primitive Church launched by the

reformers, had more than once set against the feudal lords and the main body
of the clergy the ‘patares’ who were allied to the Papacy. To these causes of
general disorder, the revolutionary ardour of the communal movement and
the increasing violence in the course of the twelfth century of the conflict
between the Clergy and the Empire, had added their causes of anarchy.
Lombardy was indeed the classic battlefield between the two powers, and
the Lombard League had been founded to play the decisive part in the war
which they were waging against each other. At the heart of the ceaselessly
renewed politico-religious agitations of which they were often the deciders,
the cities in the plain of the Po had increased each day in importance and in
insubordination. Swayed in turn by the Empire or by the Papacy, according
to what was most profitable for their interests at the time, moreover opposed
to each other by implacable quarrels which were no less violent and whose
intentions were no less sordid than the struggles of the feudal lords among
themselves, finally rent by internal rivalries between townsmen and feudal
lords, and, since the end of the twelfth century, between small and great,
populo grasso and populo minuto, the cities of the north of Italy presented a
perfect ground for the germination of religious sects. They could preserve
with difficulty a sufficiently real sense of the transcendence of the link that
bound them to the Apostolic See when they were each in turn induced to
combat it on the political plane. The anarchy of their daily life could not but
react on their religious life. The tendency was particularly strong in the
case of those who presided over the temporal destinies of the city, collective
authorities and, increasingly often since the beginning of the thirteenth
century, the podesta engaged by the townsmen to govern the city. Should
any one of such authorities be sympathetic towards one or other of the
anticlerical or heretical sects which had been pullulating in the city since
the time of the reform, this was perhaps looked upon as something in
his favour. Lor the political power of the city thereby evaded the loyalties
and scruples which limited the action of an orthodox Catholic. Thus can be
explained the phenomenon, at first sight surprising, of the presence of
heretics among the communal authorities in localities which were in no
sense won over to heresy. Innocent III had had experience of this even in the
patrimony of the Roman Church. Viterbo and Orvieto, so close to
Rome, had presented him with the cruel surprise of electing Catharist
magistrates.10
Catharism, indeed, had obtained a foothold in Italy in the second part of
the twelfth century and bringing to the unorthodox sects and religious
currents which were spreading themselves in all directions the benefit of its
vigorous organization and of its dogma—unmistakably anti-Roman. Cathar¬
ism in turn, however, had not been able to avoid suffering the influence of
this extremely undisciplined area, especially in Lombardy. Whilst in
 ‘ THE PREACHING ’ IN LOMBARDY 323

Southern France it had developed in great unity, beyond the Alps it had
soon broken up into several contrary tendencies, sometimes in violent
opposition to each other.11

It was at Concorezzo, on the outskirts of Monza, about twelve miles or so

to the north of Milan, that the heresy had taken root. In the last third of the
twelfth century, a certain Mark, a grave-digger by trade, had been initiated
into the sect by a travelling notary from France. Mark had become the first
Catharist bishop of the north of the Peninsula. The initial form of Catharism
in Lombardy thus drew its inspiration from a moderate dualism as had been
the case in France. The visit of Papanicetas, however, the emissary of the
Dragovitsian Catharists at the Albigensian Council of Caraman, brought a
similar change in dogma on both sides of the Alps. Italian Catharism turned
towards the radical dualism which was now firmly established in France.
It was not long however before the influence of another moderate form of
Catharism, emanating from Slavonia or Bosnia came into conflict with the
absolute dualism of the Lombards. Disorder was then rife in the com¬
munity—various statements, emanating from these different sources,
sowed in men’s consciences an unbridled trouble that was typical of the
religion of the Catharists. This was not indeed dogmatic doubt, but what for
them was much more decisive, doubt on the authentic angelism of one of
their bishops, or, which amounted to the same thing, of one of their oriental
consecrators. They had been caught by surprise, it was asserted, with
women. The hierarchy issuing from these false angels at once fell to pieces.
The communities split up.

In Dominic’s time there existed in Italy six differing Catharist com¬

munities, four of which were in Lombardy. The bishops who governed them
were not united in some general organization and did not divide up the
territory between them as Catholic bishops would do. On the contrary they
opposed each other in their independence. The two most important of them
mutually excommunicated each other. The churches overlapped and
placed their deacons side by side in the same towns. The bishop, more¬
over, did not have his seat in the important towns which were the centre of
his sphere of influence, but in some village of the outskirts, doubtless from
motives of security. So important was his role in the community that he gave it
his name. At the beginning of the thirteenth qentury, the different branches
of Catharism bore the name of one or other of their early bishops.

Such was the case of the Garatenses (from their bishop Garatto) or
Catharists of Concorezzo (Milan), the most important of these churches.
Particularly active around Milan, it was also found in the whole plain of the
Po In Dominic’s time the bishop was a certain Nazarius, recently the
‘major’ son of the founder Garatto. The church had derived its moderate
form of dualism from Bulgaria. It excommunicated the Dragovitsian church
 324 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

of which mention will be made but it made peace with the Lombard churches
which had emanated from Slavonia.
The church of the Albanenses (from Bishop Aibani ?) established at
Desenzano, on the south bank of Lake Garda, had issued from the reform of
Papanicetas; it was then Dragovitsian, i.e. absolute dualist. Less strong
numerically than the Garatenses, its radicalism gave it a stronger hold.
From time to time it influenced the credo of the neighbouring churches.
Verona, where the bishop of Desenzano would eventually reside, was its
principal centre. The sect, however, was also present in the cities which
border the fringe of the Alps and in those of the middle Po. At the time of
St Dominic, the bishop was called Belesmanza.
The church of Bagnolo (near Mantua) was of the Slavonian type, i.e.
moderate dualist. Its influence extended to Mantua, Brescia and Bergamo and
reached certain individuals in the Milan region and the Romagna. Around
i 220, the bishop was called Andreas. The church of Vicenza extended its
activity throughout the Marches of Treviso. It, too, was of the Slavonian
type and thus moderate, although it was influenced by the increasing con¬
tamination of the church of Desenzano. Its bishop in 1220 was Pierre le
Gaulois. He was later to be converted to Catholicism.
1 hei e was also a Catharist church in Florence, a result of the first reform
of the Lombards. It stood for absolute dualism. Its bishop, Philip at the time
of St Dominic, ruled over a vast territory stretching from Arezzo as far as
Pisa. The Catharist bishop of the Val de Spoleta, the sixth of these churches
at the beginning of the thirteenth century, worked throughout Roman
Tuscany and in the patrimony of St Peter. Absolute dualist in dogma like the
churches of Florence and Desenzano, that of Spoleto had been very active in
Viterbo from the time of Innocent III, who in iio5 had the heresiarch
Tionisi (? Denis) expelled, and in Orvieto. These last two Catharist groups
are less well known than the others.
The six churches appear to have been flourishing in numbers and
vitality, especially in Lombardy. Thirty years after Dominic’s death, when
they had already suffered considerable losses from the fact of the apostolate
of the mendicant orders, they still counted, in addition to their bishops with
major and minor sons, dozens of deacons and some 2,^00 Perfect, i,^oo of
whom belonged to the church of Concorezzo and ^oo to that of Desenzano.
As to the number of believers who accepted their influence, it can he
estimated as more than 100,000.12 At this time the geography of the
Catharist heresy in Lombardy could be presented as follows: four large
centres with bishops whose credos differed, in Milan, Verona, Mantua and
Vicenza. The deacons of the different branches, especially those of
Concorezzo and Desenzano, were installed at hxed posts in the majority of
the large cities, doubtless running hospices and communities of Perfect, as
was the custom. Such deacons were to be found in Alexandria, Pavia, Lodi,
 ‘the PREACHING ’ IN LOMBARDY 32 £

Piacenza, Bergamo, Seprio, Brescia, Cremona, Mantua, Verona, and in ten

or more towns of the Marches of Treviso. At the time of St Dominic, the
diffusion of the six churches must have been wider still, especially in Emilia,
where the apostolate of the Preachers of Bologna had not yet penetrated.13
Fiona this can be measured the importance of the preaching of Lombardy.
ft would be wrong, however, to see only heretics in the stray sheep whom
the Pope was asking Dominic to bring back to the truth. The action of the
Chur ch at this time was a universal tutelary action for good and against the
perils of Christian society. The partiality of our curiosity or our prejudices
of today must not be allowed to falsify the image which we form to ourselves
of them. The abuses of the power of money, which we do not yet know how
to control satisfactorily and which are all included with insufficient discern¬
ment under the name of usury, also constituted major obstacles to
Christianity in this society where the bourgeoisie of the artisans and traders
was now in full expansion. The Lombards, indeed, were the great financiers
of Europe. Dominic, as will be seen, also busied himself with these practical
deviations.14
Primarily, however, he had to concern himself with the most virulent of
the scourges of this land and the times, that abuse of violence in all classes of
society which was manifested by continual brutalities and above all by war.13
Lombardy was given over to the most devastating rivalries. The picture of it
is perhaps worse than that which has been drawn of the anarchy of the Midi
of France, because in northern Italy the towns, more prosperous, had
succeeded better than anywhere else in taking their place by the side of the
feudal lords whose ambitious and warlike customs they adopted; because the
communes were grouped in continually changing leagues, ceaselessly renew¬
ing themselves, until they culminated in the redoubtable Lombard League,
whose role in the highest political affairs of the time, the struggle between
the Clergy and the Empire, has already been recalled. Yet however numerous
might be the occasions of war furnished by the interminable quarrel of the
two leaders of Christendom, it was far from being the case that the Guelf
and Ghibelline cities limited their bloodthirsty encounters to these conflicts.
Each group of cities had its own ambitions. Each city had its covetous desires
and its fierce enmities, the fruits of local ambitions or long and deeply
rooted resentments. Within the towns themselves, the unrest of the populo
minuto was combined with the old struggles of parties or clans. Within the
feudal or patrician classes, pitiless feuds decimated families and sometimes
had their repercussions throughout an entire province. Hatreds were
multiplied even in the bosom of families. The passions of domination and
vengeance rent Italy with that fierce fire and those sudden excesses which
characterized the whole of life in this privileged region of the West. In
Bologna itself, Dominic had all too frequently under his eyes ‘the sanguinary
effusions of blood which the monstrous fury of long-standing enmities
 IN MEDIO FCCLESIAE
326

unleashed among noble families’,16 and which, two years later, a year after
the Preacher’s death, the devastating words of St Francis on the square
before the communal palace would appease only for a few moments.1? In
Lombardy, as in Narbonnaise Provence, Dominic was to show once more
by his efforts in preaching, his ardent love ‘for the faith and peace .l8
Eventually, in Lombardy, as in the Narbonensis, the mission that the Pope
gave him was inscribed in a general pontifical enterprise of which Cardinal
Ugolino was the principal operator in North Italy. The historical circum¬
stances explain the origin and plan of this enterprise. During the last years
of Pope Innocent and the first of Honorius, the war between the Papacy and
the Empire flared up once more. Calm was restored after the defeat and
death of Otto IV in 1218. The Church’s candidate, the youthful King of the
Romans, Frederick II, triumphed. He prepared himself to receive the
imperial crown in Rome at the end of 1220 and undertook to set off on a
crusade to retake Jerusalem. Pope and king concerned themselves in turn
with restoring order in Lombardy which the struggle had thrown into con¬
fusion. Each of them did so according to his own point of view, his own
interests and his own traditions.
In the course of 1217, and then from the spring of 1218 to the spring of
1219, Cardinal Ugolino went into the north of the country as papal legate.20
The object of his mission was the preparation of the crusade. What was
wanted was to obtain the participation of the cities by persuading them to
send a contingent on the great expedition which Honorius was launching in
the East to carry out the decisions ol the Lateran Council. This w'as the
opportunity to restore order in Lombardy in accordance with the standards
of the Church. In particular, it was essential to bring about a lasting peace
between the urban groups, of which Milan and Cremona were the leaders,
and moreover to appease the cities two by two, and finally, to profit by the
great revision of rights and positions so as to induce the cities to respect the
liberties of the clergy, the property of the Roman Church, especially the
heritage of Countess Matilda, and the decrees of the Lateran Council. The
problem of the heresies condemned by the Council clearly formed part of
this programme, as did the struggle against usury and the abuses of violence.
We can judge of the complexity of the affairs among which the cardinal, who
achieved more through his skill as a diplomat than through his power to
impose an interdict, had to move. He obtained only a limited success, a
pacification that was provisional and not even all-embracing.21 The question
of orthodoxy and of anti-Christian practices, remained in 1220 practically
untouched.
In Italy as everywhere else,22 the medieval Church tried to obtain
from the Christian temporal rulers a promise that they would recognize the
Catholic canons as laws of the land and thus give them executive force.
Urban legislation had been established for a century past. It was essential that
 THE PREACHING ’ IN LOMBARDY 327

the cities should remove Irom their statutes the anti-ecclesiastical provisions
which were present in them and should insert in their place the decisions
of the Councils and other canonical rulings which concerned them, at the
same time undertaking to apply them. Now the authorities of the towns,
wilfully anticlerical and moreover indulgent if not positively disposed to
heiesy, weie visibly reluctant to do this. It would be difficult to persuade
them to do this. The feudal lords, frequently siding with the Empire, were
often ill-disposed and, what was more, powerless; the Lombard cities
had settled their relations with the local feudalities in quite a different
manner from that of the cities of France. At the conclusion of very bitter
struggles, the urban authorities dominated the nobles and often even brought
them to a gentler mood. The future emperor might use persuasions. At this
time he was disposed to show goodwill towards the Sovereign Pontiff. If the
legation in Lombardy of the Chancellor of the Empire, the Bishop of Metz
and Spier, Conrad de Scharfeneck, whom Dominic had the opportunity of
meeting in the summer of i 2 20, had as its chief aim the opening of a peaceful
passage for the cortege of the King of the Romans on his way to the corona¬
tion^ the coronation itself would, on the other hand, give the Papacy the
means to cause the new emperor to intervene in Imperial Italy side by side
with the Church. The canons of the Lateran Council, in particular the
provisions against the heretics, at the same time as a series of measures for
the protection of the weak, would be declared laws of the Empire.24 This
means of action, however, was to remain limited, as the emperor’s effective
power in these regions was limited, to say nothing of his goodwill in regard
to the Church.
One other means was left, the most effective and most legitimate of all,
the action of the Catholic populations on the magistrates they gave them¬
selves. The cities were not always in agreement with their magistrates. The
patricians themselves had other adversaries, in addition to the feudal lords.
The unrest of the populari, without being properly speaking democratic
revolts, demonstrated an internal ferment in the city, with which the
magistrates had to reckon. In certain cities—this was the case at Milan after
1 2 2 2—the populari would even seize the power. Now the mass of the
population was faithful to Christianity and the Church in a different way
from the nobles and patricians of the towns. In awakening a Catholic sense
in the urban masses, they could thus be brought to act on their magistrates,
to constrain them to pledge themselves in favour of the Christian life,
ecclesiastical order and orthodoxy. Who could better exert their influence
in this sense than the apostolic preachers ?
It can be affirmed that these ideas were clearly expressed in Dominic’s
presence in Viterbo, in the autumn of 1 219 or spring of 1220 when Cardinal
Ugolino gave an account of the results of his legation in Tuscany and
Lombardy and of the data lie had been able to collect on the situation of
J28 1N MEDIO ecclesiae

Catholicism in those territories. Despite the poverty of the sources, this

policy can in fact be seen to manifest itself shortly afterwards among the
Catholic authorities and missionaries of the region. It made its appearance
in Milan immediately upon the seizure of power by the populari and from
that time continued to develop until it reached its apogee at the time of St
Peter Martyr.2s
It was not a question, it should be noted, ol attributing to Dominic a
mission of religious policy. Ugolino and the other legates of the Holy See,
with the local prelates, were sufficient for that. In confiding to the Preachers
and their collaborators, however, the general evangelization of the country,
it was indeed hoped to elicit a general renewal of Catholic conviction and
practice in the contaminated cities, at the same time as a gradual breaking-up
of the heterodox positions. This movement of evangelization would be a
long-term one. In proportion as it developed, however, its effectiveness
would be doubled by obtaining from the magistrate, through the pressure of
public opinion and of the popular party, an action in conformity with the
decrees of the Church which would achieve the destruction of errors, wars
and abuses. Such was the complete context of the mission entrusted in May
1220 to Dominic and to the assistants who were found for him. It took
its place within a general action against the persons and practices forming an
obstacle to Christianity in Italy, which was the same as with the negotium
fidei et pads of the Albigeois.
As formerly in the Narbonensis, Dominic claimed for himself and his
collaborators a clearly defined and limited role in the centre of the general
enterprise. He did not, of course, want the political role of a legate, not
even that of the spiritual authority which governs, controls and punishes,
after the manner of a bishop. A few months after this time, in the course of
the famous meeting with Francis of Assisi at Cardinal Ugolino’s, Dominic
would once more emphasize his formal will to refuse the episcopal office for
himself and his sons.26 On the other hand, the bull of 1220 clearly expressed
the mission that he claimed—that of the preacher of doctrine who carries to
all the evangelical ‘word of truth’, by setting forth ‘the light of the truth’,2?
by his discourses and even more by the example of his humble life, poor to
the point of mendicancy.
It would be pleasant now to follow Dominic in the various stages of this
ministry. Detailed documents are unfortunately lacking. The effect of the
letter to the five preachers is not known. We do, indeed, know something
of the journey. Friar Buonviso, Friar Ventura, Friar Paul of Venice, who
accompanied him with others, were to leave vivid descriptions of the
behaviour of their master along the road or in the religious houses they
visited.28 These accounts, however, formed part of their evidence at the
canonization process. Thus they retained only the features which emphasised
the sanctity of the patriarch and did not trouble to indicate the setting, the
 ‘ THE PREACHING ’ IN LOMBARDY 329

development and the results ot the preaching in North Italy. A few details,
however, have survived.
Immediately after the chapter of Bologna, still at the end of May, Dominic
went to Milan with Friar Buonviso and Friar Ventura of Verona. There he
fell ill once more. This is the third attack of serious illness that has been
mentioned in less than a year.2^ As soon as he was better, he continued his
ministry. He doubtless also devoted his attention to the permanent installa¬
tion of the brethren at St Eustorga, which the provost and canons of that
church had agreed to hand over to the Preachers. A series of documents gave
legal effect to the cession from the month of August. 30
Dominic went on to Piacenza, then to the neighbouring abbey of
Columba, with Ventura of Verona.31 Columba was a Cistercian abbey,32 the
first one of the order in Italy, near Borgo San Donnino, on the Emilian Way.
On this occasion Buonviso is no longer mentioned. It is in fact known that
Dominic parted from him at latest in July.33 Perhaps he remained in Milan or
in Piacenza, his native city, able to testify to his first apostolic successes.
It is doubtless after the visit to Piacenza and Columba that a ministry of
Dominic in Modena, also on the Emilian Way going towards Bologna,
must be placed. A dean from France, on his way to the Curia, heard Dominic
preach and confided to him his confusion when faced with certain tempta¬
tions of the flesh; Dominic restored his hope and courage and promised him
the help of his prayer, which was to prove effective.34
If credence may be given to an anecdote related by Constantino of Orvieto,
the patriarch returned to Bologna for the feast of the Assumption.35 On the
eve of the solemnity he is shown to us in company of one of his Cistercian
friends, the Abbot of Casamari near Frosinone to the south-west of Rome,
who was later Bishop of Alatri.36 The abbot took advantage of a mission to
Germany where the Pope was sending him, to visit his friend. They spoke of
the spiritual life and of the force of prayer. Dominic allowed himself to make
a confidence: God, he avowed, up to the present had never refused anything
to his prayer. Immediately an idea crossed the monk’s mind. He suggested
to Dominic, as a challenge of chivalry, to ask God in his prayer for the
vocation of Master Conrad the Teuton, a doctor of Bologna whose entrance
among the Preachers he knew that the brethren ardently desired. Dominic,
taken by surprise, took up the challenge, but he also insisted with humility
on the collaboration of the other’s prayer. They prayed at night until Matins,
then began again, after the office. At the hour when the brethren were
singing Prime, as the day broke, it shed its light on Master Conrad, who had
come to beg for the habit of the order. Such is the account of Constantino
of Orvieto. One could wish it were better authenticated. What is unusual in
this story is not the intensity of the prayer of the two religious, still less the
grace of God, but this character of prowess. However this may be and
whatever is said about it, this Master Conrad the Teuton was not the future
 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE
33°
provincial of Germany,37 still less was he Conrad of Marburg, the inquisitor
of sinister memory, who was not a Dominican. 38

After Bologna, it is uncertain whether Dominic returned to Lombardy. It

may have been then that with Paul of Venice and a companion he visited
Dugliolo, near Budrio and not far from Bologna,38 and Legnago on the
Adige, downstream from Verona.39 He would then have inaugurated the
apostolate of the Marches as early as i 2 2o.40 It is difficult to be sure. Hence¬
forward and until the end of the year, no further reliable document about
Dominic will be found. This was the time when Conrad de Scharfeneck
visited the cities of Lombardy in his capacity as legate of the Empire. The
impressive cortege of the King of the Romans crossed the plain of the Po in
September. On 3rd October he was in Bologna where he stopped for a few
days, then, following the Emilian Way, he came down slowly towards Rome
where the coronation took place on 22nd November. Italy was completely
taken up by these great external events. In the brilliance of this halo of
glory, the deeds of the humble team of preachers of the Gospel and of
their master are blurred for a few months to the point of being effaced from
our view. Perhaps Dominic also took the Emilian Way in the month of
October or November to reach Rome, where he certainly was at the end of
December. 42 There is no reason to suppose that he attached himself to the
imperial cortege.

The depositions of Buonviso, Stefano, Ventura of Verona and Paul of

Venice, who knew him well in the course of this ministry, give us a glimpse
of the oratorical zeal and of the eloquence of their master. ‘He gave himself
assiduously and with the greatest diligence to preaching. When he preached
he found tones that were so deeply moving that he moved even himself
to tears and made his hearers weep.’ So much was this so that Friar Stefano,
who gives us information of this kind, ‘has never heard a man whose
words excited the brethren to compunction and tears so eifectively’.4i

It will be noted that the brother primarily refers to Dominic’s sermons to

his religious. This was the case of the majority of the other witnesses at the
process of Bologna.44 Dominic, in effect, preached frequently to his
brethren, ‘almost every day’.45 Whatever his fatigue might be when he
arrived in one of his houses, he immediately called the brethren to chapter
and began to preach.46 He did the same in the case of religious who gave him
hospitality.47 Moreover he did so for the travellers whom he joined along
the road.48 Did he also preach to the crowds in the church? No account
comparable to those which describe the sermons in Segovia has come down
to us from an Italian witness. The anecdotes which mention such sermons
are relatively late.49 This sets a problem. In the mission in Lombardy, was
Dominic content to collect and form his men, to teach the method, to excite
their fervour and to lead his brethren and collaborators to the conflict ? Did
 ‘the PREACHING ’ IN LOMBARDY 33 I

he reserve his eloquence for religious, for clerics, in short for all those
whom he could reach by using Latin ?
His situation as a foreigner in the country might lead us to think so. As a
Castilian, he certainly found many difficulties in adapting himself to the
varied dialects of North Italy—Tuscan, Lombard, Emilian—and in making
himself understood by the simple folk. It would seem likely, however, that
he nevertheless succeeded and that he preached publicly and frequently in
Italy as he had done for twelve years in the south of France. At a time when
the romance idioms had not yet developed and given permanence to the
literary forms of their languages, difficulties would be unlikely to be made
over the forms of expression of a foreigner who preached. Dominic,
in familiarising himself with the tongues of Languedoc and Provence,
had recently made a considerable step towards learning the dialects of
North Italy. Finally it is clear that he did not shrink from any effort to learn
the language of the people with whom he was in touch. He was too much of
a preacher to be satisfied with living in a country without entering into
contact with the natives. His companions of that time were unanimous in
stressing his persistence in joining in conversation with all those he met on
the way, that he might speak to them of God, and the success of his efforts.50
Had he not succeeded by the grace of God, along the road to Orleans, in
speaking even German ?51 Was he not going, in a few months’ time in Rome,
to devote long hours almost every evening, to forming a community of nuns
who certainly did not know Latin and still less Castilian ? Thus the references,
even if long after the event, to his popular preaching in Modena, Bologna or
Rome, should not be rejected a priori.52 Such sermons, however, in an idiom
which was not familiar to him, clearly had not the inspiring eloquence of
those which he could make in Latin to his brethren. It will be understood
that it was this latter type of sermons that the witnesses of Bologna preferred
to recall when they were trying to draw attention to his overwhelming
eloquence.
No text, unfoi-tunately, has preserved the content of his sermons for us.
It is possible at least to surmise. Quite certainly he endeavoured to carry out
in the pulpit the general preaching plan which he had defined as far back as
1 2 1 £ and had inscribed in the formula of pontifical recommendation which
he preferred—the explanation and defence of Christian doctrine and morals,
i.e. the general subject of episcopal preaching.55 This was: ‘To speak of
God or with God’,54 the formula which he loved to repeat and which
he had inscribed even in the Constitutions, indicating clearly enough
that he envisaged a preaching that should be positive, doctrinal, theocentric
to use an over-modern term—an exposition of the Christian revelation.
The tears he shed as he preached,55 as he did in celebrating Mass, are proof
that he spoke for preference of Christ, of the Cross, of salvation, of the
love of one’s neighbour. He also spoke with deep feeling of the great
 332 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

tragedy of sinners. His prayer was also dominated by a penetrating com¬

passion for the guilty and those gone astray. The words ‘compunction’ and
‘tears’56 used by Friar Stefano are significant. At this period they principally
described the neart’s conversion, repentance in the face of sin and the cross
of Christ; more deeply, and in accordance with the best spiritual tradition,
the suffering of the Christian soul faced with its sinful condition, hard
pressed by concupiscence and error, obliged to live in the midst of evil and
widely separated from God. Dominic’s sermon was thus a continual call
to conversion—the ‘Repent and believe the Gospel’ of Christ.57
In view of his special mission among the heterodox of Lombardy, Dominic
clearly had to insist in detail on the errors of the Catharists and Waldenses
and on the authentic dogmas and practices of Christianity that were opposed
to those errors. The great experience acquired in the Albigeois could not
fail to be of use to him and direct his action. He did not fear to tackle
burning problems directly, even in hostile circumstances. This was one of
the marks of his strong character. If he had not to hold public disputations in
Lombardy after the manner of those of the Albigeois-—no trace of any has
come down to us and the situation of the country would not seem to lend
itself to them—he replaced them by the explanations he gave in his
preaching.
After having preached, Dominic visited, exhorted, consoled, heard con¬
fessions. It was there that he succeeded in influencing and converting souls.
We shall speak later of his spiritual direction to religious. His effect on the
students has been noted. It is remarkable that several anecdotes depict him
at the bedside of usurers.58 Dominic only granted absolution if the goods
unjustly gained were restored. And the better to succeed in detaching souls
from avarice, he gave the example, in his own person and in that of his
preachers, of a detachment that was heroic.
He was poor in his garments, in his wretched tunic, which was, moreover,
the only one he had, and which he wore both winter and summer. 59 He wore
a short scapular of very coarse material, and he did not try to hide its poor
quality under his cappa.60 He was poor in his convent, which he wanted
small as in the premises assigned to regular life like the cells, and modest as
in the church;61 ‘no liturgical vestments of silk or purple’, ‘no vessel
of gold or silver with the exception of the chalices’;62 no desk a little
better than the ordinary for the professors.65 He was poor in the matter of
food. ‘You are killing the brethren with these supplements’ he whispered to
good Friar Rodolfo who had had a ‘pittance’ prepared one feast day.64
It sometimes happened that one item of food, the wine, even the bread,
was short at the monastery. The procurator would come to find him to let
him know of their penury. ‘Go and pray,’ said Dominic, ‘and the Lord will
provide.’65 He often joined the brother in the church. He acted in this way
in the face of any distress of which he was informed. ‘And’, continued Friar
 ‘ THE PREACHING ’ IN LOMBARDY

Rodolfo, the hero of these adventures, ‘God did so well that the brethren
always had the necessary food.’66 Sometimes he gave Rodolfo the order ‘to
put the little bread they had on the table, and the Lord will supply what is
wanting’.67 Friar Buonviso, who but lately had seconded Friar Rodolfo in
his office, related that ‘on a certain fast day the bread failed. Friar Dominic
made a sign to put some before the brethren. The brother told him there
was none. Then, his face radiant, the Master raised his hands, praised the
Lord and gave thanks. At that very moment two men entered, bearing two
baskets, the one full of bread, the other of dry figs, so that the brethren
were able to eat their fill.’68 Such is, in its original account, the anecdote
that tradition has named the ‘repast of the angels’. The deposition of the
first-hand and somewhat naive witness is surely more valuable than the
distortions or embellishments of Constantino of Orvieto or of Sister
Cecilia.69
On the road Dominic ate what was given him, except that always he
removed the meat from it. But he was particularly joyful when he was badly
fed.70 ‘From time to time’, said Paul of Venice, ‘he went to beg alms from
door to door and to receive his bread like a poor man. One day, in the
village of Dugliolo where he was begging, a man gave him a whole loaf. The
father received it on his knees, with much humility and devotion.’71 The
practice of mendicancy now led to the multiplication of incidents of this
kind in the order. How one would like to be able here to put on the screen
at some length the pictures coming from the primitive sources. Here are
the two lay-brothers from Viterbo who beg for their convent and bring back
flour; their benefactress finds her sack, which they have left after emptying
it into theirs, full again.72 A group of novices was travelling with Jordan of
Saxony, who told them in the village to go separately to beg their meal;
they found only a little black bread; they said grace nevertheless, and
accepted their discomfiture so joyfully that a good lady heard them and,
touched, procured for them bread, wine and cheese in abundance.73 Two
brethren were returning to Spain after their studies in Paris; the hour was
getting late and they had eaten nothing; they argued about the moment of
beginning the quest; the hungrier wanted to beg in a poor hamlet which
they were just coming to, for Providence was able to find them abundant
alms even among very poor people. ‘I know that Providence can do so,
said the other, who wanted to wait for a big village, ‘but it is not God s
custom’; at this a noblewoman on a journey came up and had them served
by her young boy; the brethren gave thanks on their knees and prayed for
the handsome boy who would one day become a Friar Preacher. 7 4 These
pictures of youthful generosity attract us by their freshness. But how much
more moving is the mature gesture ot the founder a few months before his
death; the counsellor, the friend ot the highest personalities in the Church,
the preacher whose voice and life were worn away in the effort to save
334 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

souls, kneeling with humility on the threshold of a house because an

unknown man gave him a whole loaf.

The work of founding and of extending the houses of the Friars Preachers
was included in the general plan of campaign in Lombardy. There were
now at least four of them—Bologna, Bergamo, Milan, Verona. We have
seen the almost unvaried procedure of their foundation—to obtain from
the bishop an already consecrated church, suitable for public worship.
Thus it was done in Toulouse, Paris, Bologna, Florence, Milan. Sometimes
the bishop took the initiative. At other times it was the clergy of the
particular church who proposed the translation, some chaplain or canon
going away elsewhere, or sometimes, as in Bologna or Florence, becoming
a Friar Preacher. The house was truly the fruit of the preaching; the
brethren, or Dominic, had elicited the gift by their personal attitude or by
the Iruits of their ministry. At the same time, however, the Pope, by verbal
order (Toulouse), by special letter (Paris, later Amiens, Piacenza, Barcelona),
by the action of his legate (Bologna, soon afterwards Brescia, Florence), or
at any rate by the bull of recommendation, had intervened to awaken or
even to call for the goodwill of the bishop and his clergy.
The convents also were born in, and out of, mendicant poverty. The
cession of a church to the Preachers, in fact, presupposed their renouncing
its patrimony which reverted to the diocese or to the community who
owned it. The act of cession sometimes expressly mentioned this condition.
This contributed in no small way to facilitate the contract.7s The procedure
of foundation was thus very different among the Preachers from what it was
in the traditional orders ; it was even practically the reverse. The monks and
canons could not found without the intervention of a powerful donor who
conferred on them the original landed property. The Preachers, by taking
under their charge a church, and stripping it of its patrimony which they
restored to the owners, thus founded their convent rather by giving than by
receiving. Mendicant poverty was not only an imitation of Christ and the
apostles; it was a liberation.76
Thus it made the order more flexible, more mobile, more dynamic. It
enabled it to establish itself without difficulty in the cities where it was
particularly urgent to develop the ministry of souls. It secured for it the
resources which the urban populations could more easily give. The monastic
and canonical orders were remarkably adapted to the agricultural system of
the closed economies of the High Middle Ages. The mendicant Order of the
Preachers on the contrary found itself adapted to the new economic system
of Europe founded on the circulation of wealth. Jordan of Saxony grasped
this fact and gave it clear expression. One day when the Cistercians put
before him the objection of the instability of a religious life which depended
on alms and on a charity which must one day grow cold, he merely pointed
 ‘ THE PREACHING ’ IN LOMBARDY 335
out to them that if charity grew cold among them, men would become
persecutors and it would not be long before they were stealing monastic
lands. The monks when dispersed would perish, whereas the Preachers,
even more like the apostles through persecution, would see their effective¬
ness further increase, while they would continue to practise their rule in
begging in order to live.77
On one of these returns to Bologna, at the time of the Assumption, or
perhaps later, Dominic had to concern himself with two construction 'works
at the same time. The contract made the previous year with Pietro di
Lovello had permitted the enlargement ot the monastery. Thanks to new
gifts Friar Rodolfo had been able to buy back on i ith and 22nd July two of
the houses installed on the territory ‘of the Vines’.78 Building began at once.
On his return from preaching, the founder was greatly upset—Friar Rodolfo
had taken advantage of the building work to raise the ceiling ot the cells,
which the brethren found too low, by a cubit. Dominic was grieved about it
even to tears—‘Then you already want to renounce poverty and construct
great palaces!’ He gave orders to stop the work begun. It would in effect
remain unfinished until his death.79 A few months earlier, St Francis, passing
through Bologna on his return from the East, had experienced the same
despair on seeing the constructions of the convent of his brethren.80
A further reason, however, stopped the building work of the Preachers
they were preparing to undertake another foundation.81 Diana d Andalo had
not forgotten her vow to enter religion. She came to remind Dominic of
this. She understood that this vow, made into his hands, bound her to the
Preachers and saw no other solution than the foundation of a convent.
Dominic assembled his brethren in chapter. What did they think ot the
construction of a ‘house of nuns which would be said to be, and would
effectively be, of the order?’82 Each one gave his opinion and Dominic held
up his reply until the next day, wanting first of all to consult the Lord. The
reply would be categorical as was his habit. The next day there was a new
chapter. They prayed. Dominic seated himself and declared: It is essential
in every way, brethren, to build a house of sisters, even if for that it were
necessary to cease constructing ours.’ This was a generous declaration of the
close link which, in Dominic’s life as in his thought, indissolubly bound the
Dominicans to their sisters. It will be readily imagined that the chroniclei
of St Agnes of Bologna was careful not to forget it.
Dominic was soon to leave Bologna, so he handed over this constiuction
to a committee of four brethren, Master Paul of Hungary, the prior, Friar
Guala and Friar Ventura of Verona, two brethren full of maturity, and the
procurator, Friar Rodolfo. The latter went ahead with the work and soon
found a piece of land which seemed completely suitable. This was not the
opinion of the bishop, who thought it too near to Bologna. Doubtless he
wanted to avoid accumulating convents, whose maintenance would finally
336 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

fall on the charity of the city. It was already much to have authorized in
the city the mendicant convent of the brethren of St Nicholas. The founda¬
tion of the sisters seemed doomed to failure. Diana was in despair. With
her accustomed energy, she was not long in finding another solution which
would at first take a dramatic turn. Dominic was no longer there to advise
or decide. In company with Friar Tancred, he had left again for Rome where
he arrived at the end of December. 83
 Chapter XVIII

SANTA SABINA AND ST SIXTUS OF ROME

T HREE purposes brought Dominic back to Rome: to render an

account of his experiences in Lombardy, precisely at the moment
when, by the proclamation of the law of the coronation, the import¬
ance of the decisions and prescriptions of the Church was to experience a
remarkable increase in North Italy; to settle with the help of the Curia a
good number of affairs concerning the Preachers in Europe; and to realise
the project of the convent of St Sixtus.
The third matter presupposed a long-term work of approach but could
only be concluded with the arrival of the nuns from Prouille; they would not
be in Rome, it seemed, before the month of April. The second would be
dealt with in accordance with the reports received and the circumstances.
The first purpose perhaps necessitated Dominic s return before the detailed
discussion of the future law, about ioth November.1 No indication allows
us to assume Dominic’s presence in Rome between ioth November and
the end of December.2 After that date, however, several of his affairs could
be settled, for the pontifical Curia, despite the work involved over the
coronation, was pursuing its ordinary activity.3 It must then be presumed that
Dominic only arrived in the eternal city in the last days oi 1220. On 27th,
30th and 31st December, in fact, the Chancellery issued a series of letters
which go to prove the founder’s presence.4
In the first place he was concerned with Paris. The decisions of the
General Chapter had increased the importance of the convent of St Jacques
in the scholastic life of the order and in its ministry in France. On this
account it was necessary to enlarge the house, increase its connections with
the university, encourage and multiply protectors; finally, it was necessary
to obtain the permanent concession of the buildings. In December 1220 the
agreement between the canons of the cathedral and the Preachers was
finally concluded.3 At Dominic’s request the Holy See intervened in
the matter. In three letters of the 27th and 30th December and 2nd January,
the Pope thanked the Benedictines of St Magloire of Paris for their good
offices towards the Parisian Preachers; doubtless they had helped out their
poverty with material gifts and placed a church at their disposal.6 He likewise
thanked the university of Paris for its good offices towards the Preachers and
the favourable reception it had always given to the requests of the Pope in
338 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

regard to these religious.7 Finally he recommended himself to the prayers of

Dominic’s brethren ‘sitting with Mary at the Lord’s feet’.8 These letters
were to be carried to those to whom they were addressed by a young
Preacher, Friar Guillaume, a member of the Pope’s household, who was not
allowed to leave without great regrets, ‘so much was the Pope attached to
his dear presence’.9 Thus he recommended him with much affection in
these three letters to these different authorities.
Who was this Friar Guillaume whose friendship brought the presence of
the order ot Preachers under a particularly engaging form even into the
personal life of the Pope? It is impossible not to think of Guillaume de
Montferrat, the friend and familiar of Cardinal Ugolino with whom in 1217
he was living,10 and a close relative, if not the son, of Marquis Guillaume
de Montferrat whom the Emperor sent on an embassy to the kingdom of
Arles. Honorius had just recommended him to the prelates of the same
province as well as to the legate of the Albigeois and would soon entrust him
with the crusade and the highest missions in the East.11 Dominic in point
of fact had left Friar Guillaume with the Pope at Viterbo in the previous
month of May, whereas up to that time he had kept him at his side as his
principal socius.12 Neither Friar Guillaume nor Dominic, however, dreamt
of exploiting, by prolonging it, a situation which caused the Pope’s kindness
towards a member of his household to overflow on the order as a whole.
Friar Guillaume was aspiring to pursue his theological studies in Paris.
Dominic authorized him to go there and leave the Curia, as did the Pope.
The affairs of St Jacques were, moreover, proceeding satisfactorily. In the
month of May the Pope would once more intervene in Paris to protect the
rights of Jean de Barastre, the professor of the Preachers. 13 Shortly after¬
wards Dominic was to learn of the successful issue of all questions pending
in reference to St Jacques;^ this has already been referred to.
The spread of the houses of Preachers in France, envisaged and decided
upon by the chapter of Bologna, seemed on the point of being realized. A
foundation was planned at Amiens, where the clergy had received the
brethren with favour. On 31st December, 1220, the Pope thus invited
Bishop Evrard and his canons to procure them a church in the cityAS
Unfortunately this letter would not produce the expected result and the
Preachers would not establish themselves in Amiens until 1 243.
Whether or not he was urged to do so in the course of his recent legation
in Italy by Dominic, by Cardinal Ugolino or by the Pope himself, the
Chancellor of the Empire and Bishop of Metz and Spire, Conrad de
Scharfeneck, agreed to a foundation of the Friars Preachers in Metz. Passing
through his episcopal city in April, the bishop made his protection a fact, by
drawing up a charter. In very precise terms he described this order ‘which
t e Pope has constituted and confirmed, urged by zeal for souls and under
the inspiration and directives of the Holy Spirit’, If the Preachers, he
 SANTA SABINA AND ST SIXTUS OF ROME 339
declared, ‘had an establishment in the town, their presence would be of
great profit to the laity through their preaching and also to the clergy
through their courses of sacred science’. There, however, the Chancellor
stopped short, and while invoking the example of numerous bishops, arch¬
bishops and the Pope, ‘who had granted them a house in Rome’, abstained
from doing likewise. He ended by exhorting the laity of the town to show
themselves more generous than he was.16 Frederick H’s Chancellor had
recently learnt in too good a school the art of appearing to give much
without engaging oneself.
In Sweden, the Provost of Sigtuna had obtained a protector in his town
for the brethren whom he had taken under his patronage. A monastery,
consecrated to the Most Blessed Virgin, was in process of coming into
being, not without difficulties. The Pope endeavoured to attract the
generosity of the faithful to it by granting on iith January, by a bull, an
indulgence to those who frequented the church on the day of the Assump¬
tion.17 The house was to disappear a few years later in the face of the
opposition of the Archbishop of Uppsala.18
Prelates were decidedly lacking in generosity or in comprehension towards
the Friars Preachers. Without the near presence of the Pope and, above all,
without the pressing action of his legate, Ugolino, the development of the
order in Italy would not have been so rapid. Thus, after 4th February what
Dominic frequently asked the Pope to grant almost to the exclusion of other
bulls was the bull of recommendation ‘Cum qui recipit’ (type III), which pre¬
sented the ministry of the Preachers in the perspective of the 10th canon
of the Lateran.10 This canon imposed on the bishops the pressing obligation
to accept the help of preachers. As a consequence they should surely try to
attract and lodge among them ‘these kind auxiliaries who, without causing
them any expense, will co-operate in the salvation of the people which is
entrusted to them. Thus the Pope addressed the Bishop of Amiens.20
The register of the archives which comprised a copy of this bull provides
certain details.21 Such archives are those of the convents of Toulouse,
Montpellier, Magdeburg (three issues of 4th February, 1221) and the
State archives in Schwerin (issue of 6th May) ; two further issues of £th
April and 22nd May, preserved in the general archives of the order, no
longer bear any indication of their provenance. Toulouse and Montpellier
were already in existence in 1221. The copies of the bulls which have
remained in their archives thus did not serve for their foundation; if they
were destined for some other foundation, this cannot have been made
otherwise the bulls would have remained in the new convents, whose
archives they would have inaugurated. Magdeburg was erected after
Dominic’s death (1 224). It is possible that the bull only reached the archives
there after having been used for another convent which Dominic had in mind
on 4th February, 1221. This was, perhaps, the convent of Friesach, the first
340 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

house in Germany, which Friar Solomon launched in the middle of 1221.

Only the issue of 6th May preserved at Schwerin possesses clear significance.
Its purpose was to render the King of Denmark favourable to a foundation
in the metropolis of Lund.22
In the meantime Dominic extended the order directly from Rome. Friar
Frogier, but recently left at St Sixtus, and a Friar Benedict (Bene) who,
moreover, is not known from any other source, went to Siena. It is impos¬
sible to say whether they went to preach or were sent by Dominic to give
effect to projects which had been planned for some time. All that is certain
is that on 16th February they received ‘in their name, in the name of the
order and of their prior the lord Dominic’,23 the chapel of St Mary
Magdalene at Siena. This chapel was that of a hospice set aside for the poor
and for pilgrims. A pious foundation of the rich citizen of Siena, Raynier
Rustichini, at the beginning of 1 21 224 it was kept by a widow, Sister Emilia,
and by four other sisters. The son of the founder, also named Raynier,
retained the patronage of it. He was present at the signing of the deed and
approved it. The sisters gave the church, its dependencies and its access as
well as an adjoining vineyard. On the other side of the vineyard, however,
they reserved for themselves the hospice which they would continue to
administer. They placed themselves, moreover, under the spiritual and
moral direction of the Preachers, to whom they gave themselves ‘in com-
mendum’ as they did the house. The Preachers were thus more than sub¬
stitutes for the previous incumbents of the hospice chapel—they became the
religious and civil superiors of the house of sisters.
The donors, however, imposed a series of conditions, of which the
principal ones were—the maintenance of the patronage to Raynier
Rustichini, who would control the election of the prior; a prohibition
against alienating the property; the obligation to preserve in that place the
centre of the priorate and ‘school of the Preachers of Siena; concession to
the community of the sisters of a share in the whole of the prayers and
spiritual fruits of the convent and of the order (to our knowledge this was
the second engagement of the order in regard to the communication of
merits; the first concerned the university ot Paris). These conditions were
onerous. In their desire to begin the ministry of preaching and to implant
themselves in Siena as soon as possible, Friars Frogier and Benedict did not
hesitate to accept. They had evidently received power of attorney from
Dominic, in whose name they engaged themselves.2s It was, indeed, a fairly
constant habit of the founder to intervene at the side of his brethren as a
party in private contracts.26 He thus strengthened the unity of his order.
Fairly long negotiations between Siena and Rome must have preceded the
conclusion of the act of 14th March.27
On 10th May, Dominic obtained a further intervention of the Holy See in
favour of the Preachers of Piacenza.28
 SANTA SABINA AND ST SIXTUS OF ROME 341

Five days earlier he had received a very important privilege. Everywhere

where the brethren had a house, they would for the future have the right to
celebrate on a portable altar, i.e. since only stone altars built in as part of
the church were capable of consecration, of celebrating in a non-consecrated
chapel.29 Earlier the Preachers did not think themselves authorized to do
this—which throws significant light for us on their liturgical ideas. To
celebrate the divine offices, when they did not possess a consecrated church
they had to borrow one, sometimes a long way from the priory. Lodged
often enough outside the towns, beyond the ramparts, they must have lost
a good deal of time in getting to and from the church. The new privilege
would considerably simplify their life since it would allow them to open a
provisional chapel inside their house. Above all, it would greatly facilitate
foundations. Up to the present, in order to establish themselves in a town,
the Preachers had endeavoured to obtain the concession of an existing
church. They often met with many difficulties in this and all too often the
foundation failed. It would now be sufficient for them to obtain any kind of
house in which they would then erect a provisional chapel. A new technique
for foundations was thus taking shape. It must have speeded up the spread of
the order, especially in Germany. The bull was dispatched forthwith to
Friesach and to the Midi of France.30
Dominic procured a certain number of bulls of recommendation lor
isolated brethren, designated by name, who thus received from the Pope a
general preaching mandate. These valuable testimonial letters were probably
granted on a wide scale. Of their nature they were intended not to last longer
than our modern identity papers. Carried continually by the beneficiaries on
their travels, these poor pieces of parchment very soon became battered.
Thus only a small number survived, four up to St Dominic s death.31 A copy
of Cum qui recipit, of 31st March, 1221, which reached as far as Valladolid,
concerned a certain Friar Pedro, doubtless Fr Pedro de Madrid. The other
three letters were in the name of Dominic. The fact is significant. It was to
this name that they owed their preservation; people looked upon them as
testimonials of the saint and preserved them as relics. Out of these three
letters one, a copy of Quoniam abundavit of 18th January, 1 2 2 1, was addressed
to ‘Brother Dominic, canon of the order (of Preachers)’. It was found in the
archives of the general headquarters of the order of Rome. The second and
third, examples of Cum qui recipit of 29th March and 28th May, were
addressed to ‘Brother Dominic prior of the order of Preachers and to
‘Brother Dominic of the order of Preachers’. They were found in the
archives of Fiesole and Bologna.32
The habits of the Roman Chancellery do not allow us to think that the
omission of the mention of the title of St Dominic in bulls of recommenda¬
tion which concerned him was an oversight. The first and third bulls were
thus addressed to a Brother, or Brothers, Dominic distinct from the founder.
12-S.D.
 342 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

In the case of the first bull, it is difficult to decide who is meant; the original
destination of this document eludes us. On the other hand, it is possible to
form some idea as to the addresses of the third. A charter of 17th February,
1223 does in fact indicate the appearance in Bologna of a Friar Domingo de
Segovia in the capacity of provincial of Lombardy.33 He is clearly the friar
who had been replacing Jordan of Saxony in this office since May 1222.
There is every reason to suppose that he was already in Bologna at the end of
May of the previous year, either because he had entered the order there, or,
which is more probable, because he had just arrived in the city for the
general chapter. It was at the close of this chapter that the bull must have
reached him.
Perhaps the attribution to the founder of the testimonial letter of 29th
March, 1221, addressed to ‘Friar Dominic, prior of the order of Preachers’
should likewise be called in question. The title of prior was itself
ambiguous since the chapter general, and could designate a conventual prior.
Flowever ‘Prior of the Order of Preachers’ was not so at this date, we
believe, and could only be fittingly applied to St Dominic. Why did the
latter have this testimonial letter given to him on 29th March? It might be
for a purely incidental reason, for instance the loss of an earlier letter. It is
also possible that he had asked for it with a view to some particularly
delicate enterprise, and we are reminded of the imminent foundation of St
Sixtus. This does not go beyond the sphere of hypothesis; it would be good
to have a clearer view of the matter.
Between 23rd January and 10th February, Dominic dispatched a pontifical
letter to a whole series of convents to reiterate the prescriptions of the Holy
See against deserters and apostates. Certified copies of this letter have been
found in the conventual archives of Santa Sabina in Rome, of Barcelona34

and of Brescia.35 It was a general precautionary measure for which it would

be idle to presuppose a movement of disaffection among the brethren or any
particular untoward happening. The order was in full development and the
defeatist psychology of certain people in 1217 or 1218 had no longer any
raison d'etre. Moreover, these legal protections against the weaknesses and
instability of the religious were classic since the twelfth century; they formed
part ot the canonical status oi the orders in question. Dominic had obtained
them in December 1216 in the great privilege of confirmation.36 After 7th
February following,37 he had them renewed under the form of personal
bulls. We have commented on these texts which, it is satisfactory to find,
emphasize the authority ot the master from the very outset.
The issue of 1221, however, included a considerable change, a clear
reason for a new edition after the first general chapter. As formerly, the
religious were prohibited from leaving the order or living outside it without
written leave from the master and community and it was also forbidden to
anyone to retain them; i.e. all religious orders were forbidden to accept
 SANTA SABINA AND ST SIXTUS OF ROME 343
former Preachers in their ranks. It was not so much a matter, in these
documents, of putting; an obstacle in the way of apostates as of preventing
the Preachers from deserting their order to the profit of some other form
of religious life. Now came the point that was new. The privilege of 1216
reserved one traditional exception: ‘unless it were a question of entering
a more austere religious order’, a door open towards the heights.38
The Church who showed herself extremely severe at this period against de¬
serters—she saw in this an act of mercy in order to save them—never¬
theless intended to allow to all the possibility of rising higher. Now in the
letters of January and February 1221, the exception of the more austere
religious order had disappeared. Clearly the order was henceforward con¬
sidered by the Curia as a peak from which one no longer had the right to
descend.
On the other hand, a provision inscribed in the constitutions shortly
afterwards3^ would authorize the superiors of the order to receive into its
ranks religious from other orders. The only exception made for some time
to come would be the Cistercians. A special authorization from the Pope,
however, would enable the Friars Preachers to receive even these religious.
This reservation was finally dropped in 1240.40 By that date the perfection
of the life of the Preachers would have received in the estimation of the
Papacy and of the order itself the supreme consecration, that which the
Order of Citeaux had obtained in the course of the twelfth century vis-a-vis
the whole body of the religious families. One could only fall lower by
abandoning the ideal and the life of the Preachers.
Projects, attempts at or success in foundations at Metz, at Amiens, in
Sweden, in Siena, in Piacenza, the development and equipment of the houses
in Paris and elsewhere, the sending of the brethren to their studies and to
preaching, the protection of their profession, the preparations for the
mission in the north of Italy, such were the manifold affairs that Dominic
was governing from Rome, thanks to the kindness and authority of the Pope
and the collaboration of the Pontifical Chancellery. Each of these questions
had formed the subject of earlier negotiations, of reports received, of
decisions transmitted in writing. A voluminous correspondence was ex¬
changed between Dominic and his brethren. Several times one comes across
a mention of it in the documents, even in the papal bulls.41 Letters on the
studies,42 a convocation for some general assembly,43 a note of direction 01
encouragement addressed to some holy woman,44 a letter of government
written to a convent,43 a missive to a great personage,4<> these are only
exceptional echoes of an exchange that was very extensive indeed. Scarcely
anything of all this has come down to us—-only the solitary letter to the
sisters of Madrid. There is no collection of letters of St Dominic similar
to that which the sisters of St Agnes gathered together with so much love in
connection with Jordan of Saxony.
344 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

Dominic’s decision to make Bologna his headquarters takes on striking

relief in this perspective. A scholastic centre at the same time as a centre of
exchange, linked with the Empire as it was with the Roman Church,
geographically in the best position to extend its influence over the various
regions of the West, because of its merchants and scholars, Bologna had
couriers and mails leaving and arriving daily. This was the case, too, with
the Roman Curia where Dominic stayed when he left Bologna for a time.
Thus he could remain in close contact with the whole of his brethren, and
at the same time that he was conceiving, in contact with the Pope and his
Cardinals, projects of evangelization on what was then a world scale, he was
able to follow the growth of his novella plantatio, his ‘seminary’ of apostles,
down to its last details.
The Pope’s confidence in Dominic and his brethren was more whole¬
hearted than ever. Ele had first admitted to his friendship one of the
Preachers in the person of Guillaume de Montferrat, at whose request he
granted the whole order the free gift of the acts of the Chancellery47—a
thing which was not without importance in view of the extensive use which
the founder made of them. Moreover, Dominic then possessed the friendship
of the head of the Chancellery, Gulielmo di Modena. He had that of Cardinal
Ugolino of Ostia, who was preparing to associate him more closely still with
his high mission in Lombardy, and at whose house, according to the tradition
of the Friars Minor, he then met St Francis.48 This was Dominic’s most
intimate and powerful link with the great personalities in Rome though not
his only one. Conrad of LIrach, Cardinal of Oporto and former Cistercian
abbot of Villers-en-Brabant,49 had known Dominic’s work in the Narbonensis
since 1217.50 He met the founder again at the Curia in 1219—1220. A few
months later, appointed legate for the Albigeois,5i he passed through St
Nicholas of Bologna, wanting to judge the tree by its fruit. Laudare, benedicere
et piaedicare, the formula he found in the Missal just as he was preparing to
preach to the brethren, filled him with enthusiasm. ‘Although I am wearing
the habit of another profession, it is your spirit I bear in my heart. Do not
doubt it, I am wholly yours ; yes, I am of your order’.52
Again there was at the Curia the Cardinal of St Theodore, Gregorio de’
Crescenti. Appointed legate for Denmark that same year, he contributed
upon his arrival to the decision to found the first house of the friars in
Denmark (1 223) at Lund, and their first house in Poland at Cracow (1 2 2 3). 53
There was also Cardinal Rainier Capocci de Santa Maria in Cosmedin,
another Cistercian, perhaps one of the twelve abbots of the Preaching of the
Narbonensis; he would himself found the house of the Friars Preachers in
Viterbo (1227).54 Again mention must be made of the Cardinal of the
Twelve Apostles, Stefano de Fossanova, a Cistercian once more, and of
Cardinal Nicholas di Tusculum who will soon come into this narrative; also
the Cardinal of San Stefano in monte Coelio, Robert de Courson, who inter-
 SANTA SABINA AND ST SIXTUS OF ROME
345

vened in the Albigeois in Dominic’s time. All had had relations with the
founder, either directly or indirectly, and had once helped him with the
beginnings or in the spreading of his order. During his last stay in Rome,
Dominic enjoyed an incomparable prestige and influence at the Curia which
clearly reflected back on his Preachers. One final undertaking, particularly
successful, came to increase this prestige still more.

The origins of the convent of the sisters of St Sixtus, in the spring of 1221,
are well documented. Besides the collections of chartersss of the two
principal monasteries which fused to form the new community, we possess
several letters of the Pope on this subject,s6 other notarial acts, 57 a chronicle
of the beginning of the fourteenth century by the superior of St Sixtus,
Benedict of Montefiascone, who had the ancient archives in his hands;58
finally, a series of picturesque narratives, sometimes moving, detailed down
to the proper names and most insignificant circumstances: the miracles of
St Dominic recounted by Sister Angelica. It so happens that these miracles
have as their local and temporal setting the vicissitudes of the foundation and
as guarantor one of the foundresses, Sister Cecilia, then aged seventeen. 59
Sister Cecilia was quite old, aged from seventy to eighty, when these
miracles were set down in writing from what she remembered of her
experiences at the convent of St Agnes of Bologna by Sister Angelica, who
had of course seen none of the events herself. In the texts as a whole there are
accounts which border on indecency or on childishness.60 Others repeat
anecdotes already reported by direct witnesses, but embellished with
embroideries or exaggerations taken from life.61 Finally a taste for the
marvellous has distorted proved facts. Thus historians today no longer dare
to take as basis, as was usually done in former times, the good sister’s
narrations. On the other hand it would be wrong to ignore them.62 Certainly
the figures should not be taken as reliable and one should be on one’s guard
against false perspectives, the infiltration of the marvellous, perhaps certain
confusions of dates. On the other hand credence can be given to certain of
Sister Cecilia’s narratives, provided certain precautions are taken, for a good
number of her indications as to places, persons, events which can be checked
by reliable documents, have been found to be exact.63 In taking as point of
departure the documents in the archives, a well-established account of
events can be built up, which the narratives ol Sister Cecilia can sometimes
implement. Three clearly marked periods in the history of St Sixtus can be
discerned in the sources.
Primarily, and this must have been immediately upon Dominic’s arrival in
Rome, there was the Preacher’s action in regard to the nuns whom the Pope
desired to reform. The principal community of these religious, the
monastery of Santa Maria in Tempulo, situated, in regard to St Sixtus, on the
other side of the cross-roads of the Appian Way, has already been mentioned.
346 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

Dominic also used his influence over the ancient Benedictine community
of St Bibiana, on the Esquiline, not far from the St Lawrence gate.64 Benedict
of Montehascone states that Dominic visited other nuns too and a number of
devout Christian women.6$
The founder’s objective was not only to restore order to these communities
and to bring them back to their rule. To carry out Pope Innocent’s wishes,
taken up by his successor, he intended to introduce an institution which the
Benedictines of old did not practise—complete enclosure.66 This dis¬
cipline, 6? which feminine monachism had experienced in its full rigour
under the rule of St Cesarius, was progressively revived between the twelfth
and the thirteenth centuries, and at the end of the latter its laws were fixed
and disseminated by a famous decretal of Pope Urban VIII. In the time
of Innocent III and Honorius III it had already gained a good deal of ground.
The Cistercians were anxious to strengthen their own law of enclosure.
Ugolino granted the Poor Clares their total ‘inclusion’. It was not chance
alone if Innocent, earlier, had entrusted to the order of Sempringham
the model convent he wanted to found at St Sixtus; the full and de¬
tailed rule of St Gilbert had been organizing this uncomprising enclosure
in a practical way since the middle of the twelfth centurv.68 Dominic
was going to accomplish it. As soon as he arrived, he set himself to the
task.
It was not easy. Certain nuns included in the Pope’s projects decided to
resist with all their might.66 The previous year had shown Dominic that
this would be the case. No one can tell the limits of feminine obstinacy,
particularly when it can base itself on an undisputed juridical text—the rule
on which they had formerly made their vows, which did not include this
strict enclosure. Moreover, no one could foresee what help this resistance
might find in the Roman entourage. The Pope sent a warning to certain
cardinals whose authority and relationships in the city would perhaps
be indispensable. We are given the names of Ugolino of Ostia, of Nicholas
of Tusculum, of Stefano of Fossanova.7o The name of the third indeed appears
in several of our charters,71 as that of the benefactor, perhaps of the cardinal-
protector of the monastery in Tempulo, in accordance with the recent
formula introduced by Pope Innocent. It is possible that Nicholas of
Tusculum played a similar part in regard to the sisters of St Bibiana.72 As to
Ugolino, a specialist in nuns73 as well as in the Roman milieux, his counsels
were certainly valuable for Dominic. He was to leave Rome, however, about
the middle of March, to rejoin his embassy.74
The founder’s action in regard to the nuns of Santa Maria in Tempulo was
not long in achieving results. His preaching and spiritual direction were
received by nuns, and above all by a superior, of goodwill. The ruinous state
of the temporal affairs and of the buildings of the abbey, 75 which was too
dilapidated to feed and lodge its religious for long, perhaps had some part in
 SANTA SABINA AND ST SIXTUS OF ROME 347
this docility. The old Abbess Eugenia76 had done what she could to defend
her sisters’ property77 and consolidate the ancient buildings;78 she found
herself however in the clutches of a creditor, Cencia Gregorio Rampazoli,
who little by little gained through mortgages the greater part of the nuns’
lands;79 only the Pope or the Pope’s representative could save the com¬
munity.80 It was necessary to strike while the iron was hot. On Ash
Wednesday, 24th February, 1221, at that liturgical time which invites to
penance and inward renewal, Dominic assembled the sisters in the church of
St Sixtus, to which he wanted to attach them.81 All of them, with a single
exception, bound themselves by profession into the hands of the friar to
enter the enclosure when he should judge fit. The abbess likewise renounced
her authority and handed over to the founder the property and rights of the
monastery.
The nuns, however, placed a typical condition on their engagement. In
their sanctuary they possessed a picture of the Blessed Virgin greatly beloved
of the Romans, a focal point of the piety of the community. It was the
celebrated miraculous Virgin of St Sixtus.82 It is said that this picture had
always refused to allow itself to be placed elsewhere. Carried off to the
Lateran in former times by Pope Sergius III, it had come back to Santa Maria,
‘flying through the window like a bird’. The sisters thus specified that if the
icon, which should clearly accompany them to St Sixtus, refused to remain
there and returned to its original church, they should be released from their
vows by this fact. Dominic accepted the condition. Then, in the name of his
new authority, he asked the sisters to return to their own monastery, for
that of St Sixtus was not yet in a condition to receive them. For the future
they would no longer go out to visit their families or do anything at all in the
city as they had done hitherto.
When this news was learnt in the city, there was an explosion of anger.
Roman families were not in the habit of accepting quietly decisions of the
Church or of the Pope which ran directly counter to their customs. The very
recent history of the order in Italy was already full of anecdotes in which
families could be seen intervening by word and in deed against the
monasteries—enclosure violated; novices removed by force and deprived of
their religious habit ;83 neighbours taking up arms to defend the convent ;84
a sister dragged away from her cloister with so much brutality that one of her
ribs was broken ;8^ a brother having to hide to avoid receiving a lettei
obtained from the Pope by fraud, which would release him from his vows ;86
another brother, hastily sent by Dominic outside the city, being pursued by
his family who were only stopped in their chase by a river in spate.87 This
time they were content with subjecting the abbess and her nuns to a siege,
reproaching them with wanting to destroy such a noble convent and giving
themselves up into the hands of an ‘unknown ribald’. Several of the sisters
began to waver. Dominic hastened to intervene.88 On the morning of the
348 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

28th,89 he turned up at Santa Maria, said Mass, preached and completely

disarmed the sisters, whose oath to remain in the enclosure he demanded
then and there. The whole community, including the wavering sisters,
realized what was involved and took the oath. During this time lay-brethren
locked the convent doors. Dominic received the keys and entrusted the lay
brothers with the supervision of the enclosure night and day and the
maintenance of the sisters. The latter would no longer be able even to speak
with their relatives.
This energetic reaction dumbfounded the families who for the future
remained quiet. Doubtless the intervention of the cardinals, who were
Dominic’s support, had something to do with the lulling of this local storm
In the meantime other nuns were secured for the convent of St Sixtus to
join those of St Bibiana.
It was essential not to dally over the foundation, but there was still one
obstacle in the way of the transfer. The buildings were scarcely finished and
the community of the Preachers was in occupation of the existing premises.90
In view of the large number of nuns who were preparing to enter there,
there could be no question of leaving the majority of the brethren, who
were much more numerous than the masculine personnel required for
the care of the sisters at St Sixtus. Another monastery was therefore
necessary. On the Aventine the Pope possessed a vast fortress, the Rocca
Savelli, which he himself had had constructed for his feudal family when he
was only Cardinal Cencius; the greater part of the walls and bastions on the
crest of the hill have lasted down to our own times. A fifth-century church,
the basilica of Santa Sabina, was incorporated in them.91 Dominic had long
wanted this and had already boldly asked the Pope for it. At last he obtained
it, not without difficulty.92 The brethren moved to the Aventine with their
books and furniture and installed themselves in the premises arranged for the
clergy in the porch of the church and the wing of the ruined four-sided
portico which extended on the north-west.93 The construction of a new
monastery, the ownership of which the Pope would give to the order in a
bull of £th June, 1222, would soon be begun.94
Shortly after Easter (nth April), between 1 £th and 25th April,9s the
third and final stage in the foundation was realized. That day Dominic seated
himself at the entrance to the church at St Sixtus and received the nuns of
Santa Maria in Tempulo, to the number of about forty.96 He gave them at
once the white tunic, white scapular and black veil of the sisters of Prouille
and Madrid. Then, going up to the altar again, for the third time he made
them make profession. The engagement of obedience towards his person
remained the same as on the other two occasions. The formula of the oath,
however, had been further enriched, which justified the reiteration. The
sisters undertook to live according to the rule and institutions that Dominic
gave them. The same day, a few isolated persons, either religious or seculars,
 SANTA SABINA AND ST SIXTUS OF ROME 349
also entered the community.97 Finally, another fairly compact group joined
them, the majority of the nuns of the monastery of St Bibiana. At the close
ol this glorious day, sixty-one nuns of Rome found themselves together in
the new monastery.98
During the following night a discreet procession led the icon of the Most
Blessed Virgin to its new residence.99 They did not want to do this in the
full light of day, fearing a rising of the population who would thus be dis¬
turbed at their devotions. Dominic and the two cardinals, Stefano and
Nicholas, accompanied by chosen brethren and members of the faithful,
carried the image on their shoulders, with bare feet, in the light of torches.
The sisters, likewise bare-footed, awaited it in prayer. With great reverence
it was placed in the restored basilica. ‘It is still there today’, declared Sister
Cecilia at the end of her life; and we can guess from her satisfaction the fear
she felt at the time of the translation, of seeing the statue depart again for
its first refuge by supernatural means.
If they had waited so long to effect a migration decided upon from the
beginning of Lent, it was to allow the sisters from Prouille to arrive and
form the fundamental community into which the others would have to be
fused. They came to Rome, in fact, a few days before the translation and
occupied and organized the new monastery forthwith.100 It was the Bishop
of Toulouse who brought them, with the help of a few of the clergy of the
neighbourhood.101 Dominic rejoiced to find among them several of his
former collaborators. It was a happy reunion of brothers in arms and of
spiritual friends. There was Arnaldo di Crampagna, the former friend of the
Waldenses whom Diego and Dominic had formerly brought back to the
Church which he was now serving with all his power. There was another
friend, a direct collaborator of Dominic’s preaching, Aimery of Solignac,
with two other monks from the Cistercian abbey of Grandselve, near
Toulouse. Fulk watched with hope the spirited advance of the order he had
seen born and brought into being, and from whom he expected much for the
Church in the Midi, where the situation seemed to be getting daily worse.
On 17th April, Fulk and Dominic brought to a conclusion by a final act the
questions that were pending between the Friars Preachers and the see of
Toulouse. The order renounced the tithes of the see. Fulk gave the Preachers
the church of Fanjeaux with its tithes,102 a donation which the Pope would
confirm eleven days later. This gift would at first sight appear surprising,
since it would seem to run counter to the prohibition to receive revenues.
The text, however, proves that the foundation of a monastery of Friars
Preachers in the Church was then envisaged. J°4 Moreover, these tithes were
not intended for the brethren; the sisters of Prouille had been in possession
of them practically since 1214; doubtless, an act which has not come down
to us would soon regulate their permanent attribution to the nuns. The
Dominican monastery of Fanjeaux was not to come into being until the
35° IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

fourteenth century. In the meantime, the sisters would receive the gift of
the church in i 2 2 7.1 °5
We know from the chronicle of Benedict of Montefiascone that eight
sisters had come from there.106 Their superior was Sister Blanche, the
native of Toulouse who, entering with the Sisters while her husband became
a Friar Preacher, had given her property to the monastery. Dominic
appointed her prioress immediately. Keeping to the figures we have quoted,
late in date no doubt but apparently drawn from documents in the archives,
about the middle of the month of April the community of St Sixtus thus
counted sixty-nine religious. No more than six Friars Preachers were
left, chaplains or lay-brothers of the convent.107
The good offices and gifts of Cardinal Stefano and other benefactors,
however, had improved the situation of the patrimony of the nuns of Santa
Maria in Tempulo. On 15th April,108 Dominic handed to Master Cencio
Gregorio Rampazoli the sum of ninety Tivres provins’ of the Senate, the
amount of five different debts of the former abbey. In this way the securities
given to Master Cencio on the gardens of the monastery at the Circus
Maximus and on the former endowment of Cassaferrata, near the Porta Santo
Paolo, gift of Pope Sergius in 90^, were recovered. I09
Finally, on 2^th April, 110 the Pope gave the crowning touch to the whole
of the operations by transferring to the prioress and sisters of St Sixtus the
reconstituted property of the abbeys in Tempulo and St Bibiana, of which,
however, he reserved the domain of Anguillara for the use of the sisters of
the second monastery who had not accepted the reform. He would further
grant them on 6th May111 a revenue of fifty pounds sterling assigned on the
church of Bamberg of the chapter of St Oswald, at Nostle in England. On
this occasion the Pope specified once more that St Sixtus belonged directly
to the Holy See.
At the end of April 1221, the monastery of St Sixtus was thus fully
established. Its major superior was Dominic, but he appointed a prior, Friar
Eudes, according to Sister Cecilia.112 The procurator was Friar Roger. ”3
There must have been in addition one more priest and three lay brothers.
The prioress was Sister Blanche, likewise appointed by Dominic. “4 Again
according to Sister Cecilia, the former Benedictine prioress of Santa Maria
in Tempulo, Sister Constance, was in charge of the window or grille, and of
the tower which, after the office of prioress, was the most responsible
charge in the community.ns Sister Cecilia also mentions the names of
Sisters Nubia, Theodora, Thedrana, Nympha, Maximilla, Sabina.116
The rule the founder gave to the community was that of St Augustine,
completed by certain constitutions.117 The latter have fortunately come
down to us in their entirety.118 Their basis was the former rule of Prouille,
of which they kept the law of observance, the customs relating to silence,
in particular, which the sisters of Prouille were specially concerned with
 i: * jL,
f

. m

11

{Photo: Leonard von Matt)

Santa Sabina, Rome

 SANTA SABINA AND ST SIXTUS OF ROME
3£i
inculcating in their new companions, and the various lists of faults with their
penances.119 To this text, directly inspired by the first customs of the Friars
Preachers but making reference to the rule of St Benedict and to the cus¬
toms of Citeaux, was added a series of texts which organized the enclosure,
the work, prayer and offices of the monastery. They were inspired, it
would seem, to sum them up, by the rule of Sempringham, giving effect
as far as possible to the wishes of Innocent III on the subject of St Sixtus.
The best rule, however, is inadequate. Either at the beginning of Lent,
when he visited the nuns then still in their former convents or after the
foundation when he came down the Aventine hill from Santa Sabina to St
Sixtus, Dominic devoted himself to forming his daughters in their religious
life. Time pressed. His business at the Curia and his apostolate among the
people of the city were not the only things to claim his attention. He also
had brethren at Santa Sabina, the community of which was increasing under
the direction of Friar Tancred, the prior.120 Sister Cecilia mentions a good
number of brethren, some of whom, moreover, are known, such as Friar
Tancred, Friar Gaudion,121 and perhaps Friar Lawrence the Englishman.122
Friar Gaudion and Friar Henri I23 were won to the order at the very time of
the foundation of St Sixtus ; others like Friar Giacomo of Rome, had entered
recently and were still novices. I24 Dominic lived in close contact with them
and took several of them with him on his ministry or on his visits to the
sisters. At night he slept at Santa Sabina—which is a manner of speaking,
for he kept to his habit of unending vigils in the church interspersed from
time to time with a doze leaning against the steps of the altar. Sometimes,
however, he retired to the dormitory where his brethren slept, at the end
nearest to the basilica. This corner, later rebuilt in the form of a chapel, is
today venerated under the name of St Dominic’s Toom’.I25 He often came,
as soon as it was morning, to St Sixtus to celebrate Mass and to preach.126
A number of anecdotes, preserved somewhat at random, depict the founder
under an aspect that we have so far insufficiently described, in his role
as spiritual director and educator in the intimacy and attractiveness of the
life of fraternity.

In following St Dominic’s life step by step, from the austerity of his

infancy to the uttermost gift of himself signified in his last years by the
extension of his ministry at the same time as the foundation and development
of his order, one cannot but be struck by its character of heroism, sternness,
tenseness. It was so in very truth. The continuousness of the penance, the
silence, the vigils of prayer, the labours of the ministry left him no respite.
That is why he was soon to succumb to the task. He was equally severe in
regard to his brethren. The continual sursum corda he addressed to them by
his preachings, his direction and also his example, have something inexorable
about them. Accordingly, those of our contemporaries who have formed for
 352 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

themselves a harsh and stern picture of the father of Preachers are numerous.
A hero, no doubt, but devoured by an interior fire like a figure of El Greco,
a fire which he cast upon the world like the flame issuing from the hound
which has been put into his armorial bearings.I2? He is pictured without a
smile, without even a moment of relaxation. That picture is not a true one.
To give such a picture is to forget the almost contradictory resources
which go to make up any real personality, and even more so the true saint.
As Dominic advanced towards maturity, whether because he found it easier
to give himself to others, or because his inner life was reflected more clearly
by an increasingly large human entourage, one can more easily see these rich
qualities. All the witnesses who speak of his rigidity in the application of the
rule with its penances are unanimous in noting that he reproved and
punished with so much ‘gentleness’ and ‘goodness’128 that the brethren at
fault accepted the penance with patience and went away comforted. ‘He was
full of poise,’ said one of them, ‘patient, good and very merciful, very
homely in his approach, and just.’12? Another described him as ‘gay, full of
joy, patient and merciful, full of kindness to the brethren’s consolation. ’130
This was indeed the picture which stood out in their memories.J3i God had
given him an extremely tender heart, prompt to rejoice with those who
were joyful and to weep with the unhappy. 132 A great simplicity which
knew neither calculation nor pretence, ^3 made him immediately responsive
to the feelings of others and his countenance soon reflected these internal
changes.134 They did not break his flight towards high things, nor the
balance of his judgement on men, but made him deeply lovable and at the
same time responsive to others.
All men had access to his affection, but especially those who were brought
nearer to him by the deeper things they had in common, priests, religious
and above all his brethren. J35 He wanted to give to all what he believed to
be his best possession, the knowledge and friendship of Christ. It was in
this hope that he found the courage to be very demanding, but he was so
from the background of a friendship which prevailed over all.
Thus he was especially accessible to the young, to novices, to brethren
who were tried or tempted.

The brethren, and strangers also, [said Friar Stefano] never had a better or greater
consoler in temptation. I know this well, for at the beginning of my religious life,
when I was a novice, temptations of every sort assailed me en masse. And I was
fully comforted by the counsels and preaching of Brother Dominic. And I have
heard many novices say that they also had experienced the same comfort.^

How are we to understand the word comfort of which the witnesses of

his life make such an extensive use in this connection ? Words of gentleness
which speak to the heart ? The expression of a feeling ? A light to unravel
some difficulty of the mind or in action ? Rather, for comfort is often spoken
of in connection with the sermons, the evocation of the presence of the
 SANTA SABINA AND ST SIXTUS OF ROME SS3

great Christian realities; also as the support of his example and of his living
charity. When returning to Santa Sabina one evening, Dominic found the
young Friar Giacomo utterly crushed and determined to flee from the
monastery as soon as the doors should be open after Matins, he tried the
direct approach. His words were powerless. The brother had already cast off
his habit. Then he was silent, prostrated himself and prayed. The brother,
bathed in tears, fell at his feet.I37 To comfort is not to lull to sleep or even
to soothe. For Dominic it meant reconstructing the interior strength of
those who were stumbling and giving them back all their enthusiasm.
That presupposes too a certain training and teaching. He spoke, in
private, or in a group, with his brethren and his sisters. ‘He used’, said
Sister Cecilia, ‘the day for winning souls by preaching and hearing con¬
fessions, or by devoting himself to other works of mercy. But when it was
evening he would go to the sisters and give them an instruction or a sermon
in the presence of the brethren and teach them what the order was; for they
had no other master to train them in the life of the order.’*38 This was what
he did in Rome in i 2 2 i. He had done the same earlier in Bologna, Toulouse,
Prouille, and in many other places. His ‘comforting’ conversations are
generally instanced in connection with the convents of Preachers and even
other religious communities which he came across on his way.139 The daily
chapter, especially the chapter of faults, was particularly suitable for these
moral instructions. It was not unintentionally that Dominic took from the
Premonstratensians, for his brethren as for his sisters, the numerous para¬
graphs wherein are enumerated the culpae, or light, medium,140 grave,
graver, very grave faults. No other order had this. By their richness and
unusual detail, they made provision for fruitful examinations of conscience,
at least as to the faults committed in the presence of others, and thereby a
moral training from which the Preachers would also profit in their ministry
to souls. The best part of this moral education Dominic found, however,
tFig continual activity of the monastery and of the road, in the observances,
prayers and the ministry itself.
In the course of a daily intimacy, nourished by exchanges of eveiy kind,
familiar contact grew into friendship without difficulty. This sentiment
of friendship was already incipient in Dominic’s kindly welcome towards
all those whom he met. The sternness of his moral and spiritual effort
had somewhat isolated him in his adolescence and first youth. In proportion
as he dominated himself and gave himself increasingly, friendship broke
into his life like a gradual dawn. After Osma, he was no longer solitary.
After Prouille he had his family. After Toulouse he had brethren who
were at the same time sons. A halo of friendliness surrounded him. What
he had given of his heart to his brethren and sisters now came back to him
in filial fervour, enriched and multiplied like the order itself. The friendship
vowed to him by Friar Bertrand, Friar Guillaume, Friar Reginald or
 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE
3 54

Friar Stefano, shows through their acts as it does through their words.
It was made up of admiration and respect, of community of ideal and of
efforts shared while pursuing the same path; of tenderness too. Dominic
responded by his eager concern, always ready to be moved and to act. Flow
touching is the story of the young novice of Apulia, that Friar Thomas whom
Dominic loved so much for his innocence and simplicity that he called him
‘his son’. One day he had to tear him away, without any other weapon than
his prayer, from comrades who had carried him off and already, in the
neighbouring vineyards, had deprived him of the Dominican habit.141
Touching too is the scene of frequent occurrence in which, according to an
old canonical custom, Dominic in the course of the night passed through the
midst of his sleeping brethren to cover them up and to bless them.142 One
night when, standing still under the little lamp which lighted the dormitory,
he was looking at them tenderly, he is said to have seen the Blessed Virgin
herself, with St Cecily and St Catherine, carrying out the same office for
them.143 Above all, however, he showed his friendship by leading his sons
to combat. T give you the weapons with which, your whole life long, you
will have to fight the devil’,144 he said to Friar Stefano when he clothed him.
Young and awkward as they still were, he sent Buonviso to preach, Peter
Seila to make a foundation, John of Navarre to beg, concerned before all
else with forcing them to act, to put their principles into practice, and to
adapt themselves as quickly as possible to their mission of salvation.
In the evening, however, when there was a halt, when the struggle was
over for a time and the family assembled, he relaxed and made them relax
too. For the story she has left us we can forgive Sister Cecilia many
deficiencies in her account.

He came one evening later than usual; accordingly the sisters, thinking that he
would not be coming, had left their prayer and gone to the dormitory. All of a
sudden, however, the brethren rang the small bell which served as a signal to call
the sisters together when the blessed father came to visit them. At this call, all
the sisters came quickly to the church, the grille was opened, they found him
aheady seated with the brethren and waiting for them. ... He then gave them a
long instruction and showed himself full of kindness for them. After this interview
he said: ‘It would be good, sons, to taste some refreshment.’ And calling Friar
Roger, the cellarer, he told him to bring wine and a cup. The brother brought
what was asked for and the blessed Dominic ordered him to fill the cup to the
brim. Then he blessed it, drank of it first himself, and after him all the brethren
present. . . . When the brethren had all drunk, the blessed Dominic said: ‘I
want all my sisters to drink too.’ And calling Sister Nubia, he said: ‘Go in your
turn, take the cup and give it to all the sisters to drink. ’ She went with a companion
and took the cup, full to the brim. And although this cup was full to the brim,
not a drop was spilt. Thus all the sisters drank, the prioress first, then the others
as much as they wished; and the blessed father often said to them: ‘Drink as
much as you wish, daughters.’145
 SANTA SABINA AND ST SIXTUS OF ROME 3 55

Towards all he used this direct, refreshing simplicity—with the poor

along the road among whom he slept in the hospice, as with important
personages of the world or the Church, to whom he knew very well how to
speak. J46 Jordan of Saxony truly summed up the sentiment expressed by all
the witnesses of his life when he wrote: ‘He received all men into the
immense heart of his charity, and since he loved everybody, everybody loved
him.’147. .
Thus he could not come across some distress of his neighbour, whether
of body or soul, without trying to remedy it. When he could no longer
accomplish anything by human strength, there remained his intercession.
It seemed that God could refuse him nothing. This was the source of certain
supernatural facts, the memory of which, handed down by the legends,
bears witness to the extent and effectiveness of his compassion towards all.
Only one fact, solidly attested, will be cited, in accordance with the
account that the best accredited witnessI48 made to Jordan of Saxony. It
actually happened in front of St Sixtus, at the time, it would seem, when the
sisters of Santa Maria in Tempulo were preparing to take their first oath.

A young man, a relative of Cardinal Fossonova, was amusing himself foolishly by

letting himself be carried away by his horse in a wild race. He had a very serious
fall. Weeping they carried him away and he was believed to be nearly, if not quite
dead; he undoubtedly remained unconscious. The distress around him increased.
Master Dominic arrived. Friar Tancred was with him, that good and fervent
friar who was prior of Rome and from whom I have the story. Why evade the
issue’, he said to Dominic ? ‘Why do you not beseech the Lord ? Where is now
your compassion for your neighbour ? Where is your close confidence in God ?
Deeply moved by the brother’s pleadings, and at the same time overcome by a
feeling of burning compassion, he had the boy discreetly moved into a room
which could be locked, and, by the virtue of his prayers, restored to him the
warmth of life and gave him back to all safe and sound. J49

The generosity of Cardinal Stefano of Fossanova towards Dominic’s work

takes on a new light from this event. On leaving the brethren of Santa Sabina
and the sisters of St Sixtus shortly after i oth May, 1221, St Dominic did not
only leave two fervent communities which he had just founded and lovingly
instructed, with numerous friendships. He left in the eternal city two
important’centres for the influence of the Preachers. In particular Santa
Sabina, which would one day become the mother house, occupies a symbolic
position on the Aventine. It was set in the very heart of the Pope’s fortress,
as the order in the heart of the Church. Dominic could withdraw. Perhaps he
surmised that he would never again see either St Sixtus, the Pope or Rome.
 Chapter XIX

THE SECOND BOLOGNA CHAPTER:

DOMINIC’S DEATH

F OR the sixth time Dominic was returning from Rome to northern

Italy. How different his feelings must have been on these various
journeys. This time the travelling was more of an effort to him than
formerly. At the main halting places, however, he had the joy of no longer
being lodged among strangers. In Siena as in Florence, he was received by
the brethren in the convents he had founded. In the hospice of St Mary
Magdalene in Siena, the Preachers were in the very midst of the work of
installation and full of the attendant joyful enthusiasm. In Florence, on the
contrary, where the convent founded by the brethren was entering upon its
third year, Friar John of Salerno and his companions were experiencing
reverses. Certain of the canons who had left them the church of St Paul
because they were more or less constrained by the bishop, or by the
parishioners who wanted the Preachers, could not brook this success of
theirs, which for them meant the frustration of their own ministry. Resent¬
ment of this sort always finds a way of manifesting itself. In a mass as mobile
as the population of Florence, no one could tell what ravages a tenacious
hatred might provoke by calumnies. Dominic gave his brethren and his
friends encouragement. A mendicant has nothing to fear, when he is always
ready to give up his rights, to put a stop to wrangles. In the worst eventuality,
the brethren would abandon the sanctuary to their detractors. God would
see to it that they had a lodging elsewhere. Their adversaries, moreover,
were not beyond conversion. The most relentless of them, Dominic
affiimed, would himselt one day become an edifying Friar Preacher A
A few days before May 30th, Dominic arrived in Bologna. The chapter
general had just assembled. The progress of the order in the world could be
measured by the number of those taking part in the chapter. At this time
about twenty houses of Friars Preachers and four of nuns were established
Three or four others were in progress of formation. This made at least fifty
delegates to the chapter. It is not known whether Dominic recruited them
in the same way as the previous year, by asking the various houses to choose
their own diffinitors, or whether on the other hand he sent for the priors,
accompanied by one or two brethren nominated by the conventual chapters.
The direct history of the chapter is almost non-existent, amounting to
barely two phrases from Jordan of Saxony:
 THE SECOND BOLOGNA CHAPTER: DOMINIC’S DEATH 3^7

In the year of our Lord 1221, at the general chapter in Bologna, it seemed fitting
to the members of the chapter to impose upon me the office which they then
created of prior of the province of Lombardy; so that I was placed at the
head of the others to govern them before I had learnt myself to govern my
imperfection. At this chapter a community of the brethren was sent to England,
with Friar Gilbert as prior.2

These phrases express more than one would think. They reveal that at this
chapter—the only one during Jordan’s lifetime at which he was not present
—the whole order was reorganized the better to spread it further afield.
The chapter of i 220 was the chapter of the constitution of the order; that of
1221 was the chapter of its distribution throughout Christendom. The
former established the centre and unity of the order on a strong basis. The
second created the intermediary organs, moreover without diminishing
either the unity or the movement of expansion; on the contrary, it
accelerated this.
Dominic’s efficiency in the diffusion of his order has something about it
that amazes us. An effort is needed to realize that the mendicant who spent
his nights in prayer, his days in preaching, always journeyed on foot and
slept in any refuge to hand at night, should have been able, in less than four
years, to recruit one by one several hundred apostles of all ages, to form
them, to disperse them, to create twenty-five communities and to govern
them by a legislation so full of prudence and vigour, that all that was
needed in the future was an elaboration of the details. The complete mastery
of ends and means from the first moment, the absence of any merely tentative
efforts, are no less astonishing than the rapidity. The flow of ideas is equally
amazing. Christians are never surprised at seeing the extraordinary find
a place in the life of a man of God. But it has to be realized that here the
extraordinary is on a more imposing and impressive scale than those
miracles of prophecy or healing at which St Dominic’s contemporaries
marvelled. For here the power of God did not show itself by effacing in
some way the personality of the wonder-worker; it was expressed on the
contrary through an enhancement of his personality, through the actions
proper to his genius, through his intuitions and inward generosity. It is
permissible to say that the figure of Dominic appears even finer in his deeds
and in his works than in his miracles.
In x 2 2 1, his vitality, however, seemed to have reached its limits—the
limit of his poor strength, the geographical limit of his influence too, for he
was increasingly linked to Italy and even to Lombardy. He could not now
begin over again his great journey of 1 2 1 8-1 219 in which the seed was sown.
Moreover, hampered by the difference of language and of mentality, his
action in Paris was always somewhat slight. In Germany it was almost nil.
Yet at the general chapter of Bologna, thanks to the counsels and decisions
of his brethren, Dominic was to try to surpass this limit and to succeed.
 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE
3 $8
The fathers of the chapter set up in union with the founder a territorial
subdivision in the order generally—the future province, which they
designated by the term, still insufficiently defined, of provincia vel regnum.3
By this subdivision, they established an intermediate organ of government of
the Preachers. They could not conceive such an organ as of a different type
from the central organ of government. That is to say that, like the latter, it
had a dual aspect, composed as it was of a head and of an assembly representa¬
tive of the community. The head was charged with recruiting and training
the religious, with directing them to their ministry of salvation and with
retraining them; the assembly, united to the head, must legislate, govern,
supervise. Such was the complex organism which directed the order as a
whole. Such would be the organism which, in the territorial subdivisions,
would relay the central authority and, more especially, that of Dominic.
The assembly was given the name of ‘provincial chapter’, the head that oi
‘prior of the province or kingdom’. On this occasion and to avoid all am¬
biguity, they were forced to establish other official titles, and primarily that
of ‘Master of the Order of Preachers’ which was substituted for the title of
‘prior of the order’ which the Curia had been using since 1220 to designate
the supreme head. Only the title of Master, suggested by a Dominican
tradition already of long standing, appears, in fact, alter May 1221 in the
legislation4 and the texts in the archives.5 Perhaps the title of ‘conventual
prior’ was established at the same time and for the same reasons.6 Moreover,
certain prescriptions were adopted which would be inscribed in the
constitutions forthwith. They can still be read in their original context
in the manuscript of Rodez, as a prologue to the charter of preaching.7

We legislate that the priors of the provinces or kingdoms after a careful examina¬
tion be confirmed or removed by the Master of the order and the dffinitors, in
the course of the general chapter.
The prior provincial enjoys the same power in his province or kingdom as the
Master of the order and those belonging to the province shall render him the
same honours as they do to the Master of the order, unless the Master shall
happen to be present.
The prior of a province or kingdom who might have sons suitable for teaching
and capable of becoming Regent Masters within a short time, shall take care to
send them to a centre of studies.8 Those to whom he sends them shall not be
allowed to employ them for any other purpose or to send them back to their
province so long as they are not recalled.
The provincial chapter shall be held on the feast of St Michael at the place agreed
upon in the province or kingdom and chosen by the prior of the province or
kingdom on the advice of the diffinitors. 9

Once more it was by the most recent canon law of the Church, actually
from the 12th canon of the Fourth Council of the Lateran,10 that the
legislators of the second chapter of Bologna were inspired. The notion of
 THE SECOND BOLOGNA CHAPTER: DOMINICKS DEATH 359

territorial subdivision within which they distributed and regrouped their

convents in a region, provincia sive regnum, in fact, had been elaborated by the
Council in 121 11 By province was to be understood the ecclesiastical
province. By adding province or kingdom, they showed clearly the flexibility
with which they intended this distribution and regrouping to be done,
sometimes following the great subdivisions of the Catholic Church and
sometimes those of the nations, as seemed most convenient.
Now the purpose of this 12th canon was, by deciding on the regional
regrouping of a certain number of religious houses according to provinces or
kingdoms, to pave the way for an annual assembling in chapter. Thus it also
supplied the legislation of the Preachers with the idea and model of the
annual provincial chapter.12 The matter was so clearly expressed in the
canon that for some time the Preachers did not even trouble to define the
tasks and organization of this chapter. The twelfth canon of the Lateran
would take the place of legislation. The history of this canon, however,
enables us to grasp more clearly the original characteristics of the institution
of the province among the Preachers.
In the continual work of reform which constituted one of the chief tasks
of the medieval Church, the papacy also concerned itself with extending its
influence on religious by utilizing, or if necessary erecting, intermediate
instruments. The progressive centralization of the orders of monks and
canons, of which general chapters were both the sign and the instrument,
had provided it with an excellent means of doing this; a means, however,
that was only valid for federations of religious houses or universal orders.
How were the very numerous isolated communities throughout the Church
to be effectively covered? The Council of the Lateran then thought of
reducing to a general form the more or less spontaneous attempts dating
from the twelfth century, and of regrouping the autonomous convents
into ‘provinces or kingdoms’ and causing their representatives to assemble
each year in order to procure for them some of the advantages that the
general chapter afforded the centralized orders.13
Clearly, however, there is a great difference between the general chapter
of an universal order and the provincial chapters which the fathers of the
Council had in mind. If the former is particularly desirable for matters of
legislation, the latter has all the advantages when it comes to reform.
Because it is regional, or national, it is much better placed to correct the
religious. It sees, in fact, weaknesses and needs from closer quarters and can
better adapt its decisions to the regional circumstances. Thus the provincial
chapter is something different from a mere replica at a lower stage of the
general chapter or a pure reflection of it. In comparison with the general
chapter, the organ of legislation par excellence, it constitutes the principal
instrument of control and of regular reform. It has kept this character down
to our own times. Thus the Preachers, who took over the general chapter
360 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

from the Cistercians or the Premonstratensians, also adopted the provincial

chapter of the Council of the Late ran.
It was not only, however, to permit the holding of provincial chapters
that the Dominican capitular fathers decided to regroup their convents into
‘provinces or kingdoms’. It was equally, or even more so, their intention to
establish a subdivision of the territory occupied by the Preachers, in order
to place the new areas under the responsibility of regional heads, the priors
of ‘provinces or kingdoms’.l* The phrase of Jordan of Saxony already cited
in regard to the second chapter of Bologna, announcing as it does the creation
of the office of prior provincial, enables us to know precisely what the
institution of the provincial subdivisions was. The most urgent work
to be done and that most easily capable of achievement was the simplification
of Dominic’s task by establishing intermediate authorities. It was essential to
relieve Dominic, or rather to enable his own government, through the
action of his subordinates, to extend its sphere, to act with more vigour and
in a way that was better adapted to the circumstances.
Dominic, at least once, had already provided himself with a lieutenant of
this kind. If Matthew of France had been Dominic’s eventual successor
rather than his vicar, Reginald, on the other hand, really fulfilled that func¬
tion. In Bologna and then in Paris, he widely extended Dominic’s action and
influence, making it more effective precisely because his own activity was
exercised more directly and in a manner better suited to his compatriots.
In proportion as the order extended, the necessity of multiplying such
intermediaries became even more and more important. In the winter of
1 220-1 22 1, Dominic felt the need of allowing others to act in his place, at
the same time attaching them very firmly to himself. This was the reason for
his keenness to intervene as a third party in the charters signed by the local
priors. It is remarkable that at this very time, in his negotiations with the
local authorities of the order, Cardinal Ugolino was carefully insisting that
these authorities should act ‘in the place and room of Brother Dominic,
prior of the order of Preachers’.^ Doubtless it was in the course of
exchanges of views between the founder and the bishop of Ostia that the
desirability of setting up a hierarchy of regional vicars was clearly grasped.
Such would be the priors provincial, set over vast territories at the head of
the Friars Preachers who were there, to multiply the brethren, train them
by study and regular life, to direct them to their ministry according to the
needs of the country and to correct them according to the circumstances.
It will be remarked that, in the legislative texts of 1220-1 221, neither
the powers of the provincial nor those of the chapter are defined. It was
considered sufficient to state that this power was identical, in its scope, with
that of the Master of the order. This definition, however, remained as it
were in suspense, for the power of the Master was not defined in the text of
1220, or even in the later legislation. For the moment Dominic’s practice
 THE SECOND BOLOGNA CHAPTER: DOMINIC’S DEATH 36 I

was sufficient to determine it. It was, in fact, the fulness of executive power.
The first provincial priors, as will be seen, were directly nominated by the
general chapter. No law yet determined their appointment, which would
be thrown open to election in i 2 24.16

Jordan has only preserved for us the name ol one of the provinces erected
in 1 22 1, that of Lombardy of which he became prior.17 With its six houses,
Lombardy was clearly ripe for constitution as a province. From other
sources we know the names of the priors provincial nominated in 1221 in
Provence and in Spain. It can be affirmed that the provincials mentioned
before 1 224 in France and in the Roman province, if not in Teutonia, were
also appointed in 1221. Provence, Spain, France and the Roman province,
each one consisting ol two or three houses, were equally fitted for receiving
the provincial institutions in all their fulness, with prior and chapter. Apart
from these regions the order only existed under the form of isolated houses—
one in Germany, another in Sweden. Did the chapter of 1221 create
provinces of the order in these regions and did it appoint provincials there ?
This is not in itself impossible. A vicar, or lieutenant, of the General
could be effectively appointed for these territories, with the function of
diffusing and organizing the order in a region so far scarcely touched by its
ministry. This would be the case in Poland in 1 22^.18
Bernard Gui, followed by Dominican historiography in general,10 was to
assert at the beginning of the fourteenth century that in 1221 the Bologna
chapter set up eight provinces—‘Spain, Provence, France, Lombardy, the
Roman province, Hungary, Teutonia and England’.20 This assertion is true of
the first five territories, as has been seen. No document existing today
allows of proof in the other three cases. Moreover, as has been said,
Teutonia had only a single convent. England had none. It is precisely in the
case of England, however, that Bernard Gui is emphatic, giving the name of
provincial to the religious whom the chapter sent in 1 2 21.2I
The information given by Bernard Gui cannot be lightly set aside, coming
as it does from a conscientious scholar. He investigated, sought out and
collected documents; when occasion demanded, he was prepared to admit
his ignorance.22 Moreover, it will be noted that the order in which he
enumerates the eight provinces, which is also the order of precedence
among representatives of the provinces in the chapters general at the close
of the thirteenth century,23 is almost the primitive one. It appears, in fact,
as early as 1225- in the text of the institutions.24 Moreover, this order was
not founded upon seniority but upon geography alone.2s This clearly
shows that among the eight provinces there is none older than the others.
Seniority would not have failed to produce among them, as it did among
the various houses, a hierarchy of precedence. Were they then con¬
temporary in their institution, and thus of 1221?
362 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

In spite of everything we hesitate to accept without question this some¬

what late information, for the best sources, when speaking of the missions
that the chapter sent to England and Hungary, do not say that their leaders,
before departing, received the office of prior provincial,26 which they would
not fail to say in this precise context, if that were so. For Teutonia documents
are altogether lacking. Thus only the foundation of the five provinces already
instanced can be beyond question attributed to the second chapter of
Bologna.
It must, however, be added that the chapter directly paved the way for
the foundation of other provinces. It is, in fact, pointed out in the sources
that it sent brethren, missions, sometimes communities organized under the
guidance of a prior, into a large number of territories. Thus is sketched the
geography of the Preachers across Europe in bold outline, the vision that,
in a few weeks’ time, Dominic would see rising in his thought when, on the
point of dying, he prayed for a long time for each of his absent brethren.
In the Spanish group were five kingdoms, Aragon, Castile, Navarra, Leon
and Portugal. Its boundaries were geographical and marked by the two seas
and the Pyrenees. At that time there were two houses there—Segovia, and
Palencia in Castile; it would not be long before Zamora, also in Castile,
came into being, but it did not yet exist.27 The same was the case with
Santarem in Portugal.28 Finally two monasteries of nuns existed in Castile—
Madrid and San Esteban de Gormaz. The prior provincial, who was nomina¬
ted by the chapter in 1221, was a Friar Suero,29 whom tradition has tried to
identify with the Friar Gomez, founder with Friar Pedro de Madrid of the
Dominicans in Spain.
Provence was neithergkingdom, ecclesiastical province nor geographical
entity. With its three houses of Toulouse, Lyons, Montpellier and its
monastery of Prouille, it seemed to be aiming at extending itself to the whole
of that country which would later be called the ‘langue d’oc’, or again, the
country of written law; in short, the southern half of Gaul which, despite its
heterogeneous character, was in opposition through its original culture with
the countries to the north of the Loire. This would be even more marked
when in 1224 the province of Provence abandoned the convent of Lyons to
France, to receive in exchange Limoges.3° Before the end of the year 1 22 1, it
would be enlarged by the convents of Bayonne3i and of Puy.32 Friar Bertrand
of Garrigo was provincial of it from 1221, by appointment of the chapter.33
The province of France only corresponded very roughly to the kingdom
of that name with the important convent of St Jacques in Paris and the
house in Rheims. Limoges and Poitiers, indeed, where its second and fourth
convents were, depended on the English. Metz, where a house would
probably be founded before the end of the year, depended on the Empire.
It would seem that Matthew of France was named provincial in 1 221.34
Lombardy corresponded neither to a kingdom nor to a province of the
 THE SECOND BOLOGNA CHAPTER: DOMINIc’s DEATH
363

Church. It had as its basis a highly characterized and sufficiently homogenous

political and social entity. Situated between the Apennines and the Alps, in
the rich plain of the Po, it possessed clearly defined frontiers. There were in
May 1221 six houses there—Bologna, Bergamo, Milan, Verona, Piacenza,
Brescia. It cannot be proved that Faenza35 and Parma3^ were yet in existence
in 1221. The provincial appointed by the chapter was, as has been said,
Master Jordan, who would be succeeded in the following year by Friar
Domingo de Segovia.37
The Roman province was one of the least homogeneous. It corresponded
to Tuscany and to the patrimony of the Church. Florence, Siena and Santa
Sabina of Rome were its first three houses of friars, St Sixtus its monastery.
It seems that the Bologna chapter appointed as provincial a Friar Giovanni
(or Giacomo) of Piacenza, about whom nothing is otherwise known.3&
Such were the great divisions that the chapter of the Preachers carved out
in the Christian West in 1221. It can be seen to what extent the expression
province or kingdom’ was approximate. Geography, sometimes politics, or
the relationship of the houses to each other, these in turn directed the
legislator in the grouping of them into provinces. In his eyes the essential
was not the principle which allowed the formation of groups, but the
convenience of the grouping for the administration of the order.
With the enumeration of these five territories the static description that
can be made of the geography of the order is in some sort complete. It must
be continued under the form of a narrative, for in the rest of Europe the
installation of the Preachers was in full development.
Giving effect to one of the wishes dearest to the founder’s heart, the
chapter general sent to Hungary the prior of Bologna, Master Paul of
Hungary.39 This professor in canon law, who was still exercising his
functions, had just compiled, at the request of Dominic and for the use of
his brethren, a Summa de penitentia which constituted one of the very first
manuals of confession in the Church. Its only equivalent was the handbooks
that the Preachers of Paris, Barcelona and Germany received from their
brethren about the same time, to prepare them for the ministry of penance
and of spiritual direction demanded by the Lateran Council in regard to the
Easter Confession and Communion.4° Leaving Bologna, his brethren and his
studies, Paul of Hungary set out with four brethren, among whom was
Blessed Sadoc, future prior of Zagreb. They stopped at Raab, on the Danube
-—-where their community was increased by three recruits—at Veszprim,
where they founded a house, and finally at Albe Royale (Szekesfehervar),
where they were received in the convent but recently founded by another
Friar Paul.41 This was to be the basis of a fruitful apostolate among the
schismatics and heretics between the Save and the Drave and, further off
still, among the Cumans and the pagans. After the death of Paul of Hungary
in 1223, the first provincial was to be Friar Theodoric.42
 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAF.
364
The chapter also sent Friar Solomon of Aarhus to Denmark.43 He carried
letters from the Pope to King Waldemar II44 and to Andrew Sunesen, Arch¬
bishop of Lund. To these Dominic added his own letters. Friar Solomon was
given for companions several German brothers, among whom must have been
Friar Christianas one of the founders of the convent of Bologna. The
German brethren remained in Cologne, and Friar Solomon, having no
companion left to accompany him to Scandinavia, joined some brethren who
were going to Paris. There they gave him as socius a lay-brother from
Lombardy, with whom he reached Flanders and embarked for his own
country. A storm cast him ashore in Norway, in the neighbourhood of
Nidaros (Trondhjem). After many perils and sufferings, both on land and
sea, he finally reached Copenhagen and met the archbishop of Lund. Andrew
Sunesen made up to him for all his troubles by his welcome. He read the
letters from the Pope and from Dominic and gave full vent to his satisfaction
and his joy. ‘You are truly welcome. May heaven grant that in each of the
Churches which depend on this court, we possess at least one convent of this
order.’ In the meantime the legate of Dacia, Gregorio de Crescentio,
recently arrived from Rome, took the brother with him and made use of his
education and his talents as a preacher. The following year (1223?) at
Pentecost, they were back in Lund where the archbishop, encouraged by the
legate, made the brother the gift of a piece of land. A convent was soon
erected there. Brother Solomon became its prior, and it was not long before
the Scandinavian brethren who had entered the order in Paris and Bologna
filled it. The brethren of Sigtuna, persecuted by the Archbishop of Uppsala,
abandoned their convent about 1224 and took refuge in that of Lund. It
would seem that the first provincial of Dacia, Friar Ranold, took possession
of his charge in 1 2 2 6,46
The order had made a beginning in Germany about 1220, with the
foundation of the convent of Friesach—a difficult beginning if we are to
believe a Scandinavian chronicle the initial data of which, it is true, are not
well founded.47 The prior of Friesach, led away by Satan, returned to the
world after the foundation, abandoning his brethren as he did his vows.
Now he was their only priest. Master Paul, on his way to Hungary, found
them discouraged. He saved the convent by leaving a priest there—who was
actually Friar Solomon of Aarhus. The latter also shared, after Pentecost
1221, in the foundation of Cologne.4^ A painful episode, the distorted
account of which may be read in the homilies of Cesarius of Heisterbach,
put the existence of the new foundation in danger.4^ The Cistercians, in fact,
demanded back Friar Christian, the founder, who was formerly one of them,
and whose profession the Preachers had at the time no right to receive.so
It is possible that the arrival of Friar Henry ol Cologne, the intimate friend
oi Jordan of Saxony, was providential in saving the convent at the end of
1221. The brother was preaching in Rheims about the same time.si He
The hill of Santa Maria dei Monti at Bologna. The round church where Dominic
died is hidden by the classical villa on top of the hill.
 THE SECOND BOLOGNA CHAPTER: DOMINIc’s DEATH 365

became in effect the first prior of Cologne. A certain Friar Bernard would
shortly afterwards occupy the office of Provincial of Teutonia. 52 Friar Conrad
of Hoxter would replace him between 1 2 24 and 1223-.
The English brother, Gilbert Ash, was sent by the chapter of 1221, with
a community of Preachers, to found the order in England.53 They landed on
English soil at Dover on August 5th of the same year. Conducted by the
Bishop of Winchester, they were at Canterbury on the 10th and Oxford on
the 15th. They at once made a foundation in the university city and con¬
structed an oratory to the Virgin in the parishes of St Edward and St Aldate.
There they met difficulties very similar to those at St Jacques in Paris and
had to change the site of their convent. After 1 224, the brethren also had a
convent in London. It was perhaps at this date that Gilbert Ash received the
title of provincial. 54
It was again the second chapter of Bologna which gave the mission to
Friar Jacek of Opola (St Hyancinth) to go and found in Poland with Friar
Henry of Moravians The life of this holy religious by Stanislaus of Cracow,
written in the middle of the fourteenth century and the source of later
historiography, unfortunately presents so many distortions and glaring errors
that it is difficult to give a true account of the entry into religion and mission
of the saint and his companion. One thing is certain, however. The two
preachers arrived at Cracow in 1222. The bishop, Yves, received them
favourably and lodged them in a dependency of his palace. On 12th March,
1223, in the presence of the Cardinal Legate, Gregorio de Crescenti, he
consecrated the small church of the Holy Trinity, of which the brethren
would take possession on the 25th. In 1223- came the first provincial, Friar
Gerard of Breslau, sent by the general chapter of that year.56 The province
then still possessed only the house in Cracow, but Gerard would found
others without delay.
An anecdote related by Gerard of Frachet allows us to conclude that in
1221 the fathers of the chapter, under the impetus of Dominic, also sent
founders to Greece, that is to say into the Latin empire of the East. 57
Of this journey across Dominican Europe, throughout the years 1221 —
1226, a few general features should be mentioned. In 1221, the second
chapter of Preachers under Dominic’s presidency really constituted five
administrative subdivisions or provinces—Spain, Provence, France, Lom¬
bardy, the Roman province, each one provided with a chapter and a prior
provincial. Moreover it sent missions, with someone in charge and more or
less numerous religious, to Hungary, Germany, England, Dacia (Scandi¬
navia), Poland and Greece. In 1223, Hungary and Germany would already
have their provincials. In 1226, 1227 at latest, all the other territories would
have them in their turn. It can be proved that at this date they had officially
become provinces.
In 1225-, in fact, the order would adopt a remarkable body of legislation
 366 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

which, completing and correcting the earlier provisions concerning the

province, would finish the setting up of the constitutional system of the
order. The province would receive its permanent place in the life of the
Preachers. It would participate in elections, in the confirmation, government
and, above all, correction of individuals and communities. 58 Now the docu¬
ment which was drawn up in that year by the sixth chapter general (or fourth
of Bologna) enumerated eight major provinces equipped with full provincial
rights—Spain, Provence, France, Lombardy, the Roman province, Hungary,
Teutonia, England,59 and perhaps four minor provinces still insufficiently
developed—the provinces of Jerusalem, Greece, Poland and Dacia.60 The
geographical framework of the order with its twelve provinces, was now
fixed for the future. It would not be modified until the outset of the four¬
teenth century. With the exception, perhaps, of the province of Jerusalem,
arising out of the collaboration of the Preachers in the efforts of the Church
for the crusade in the Holy Land, these provinces were all instituted or
directly prepared in 1221. One is thus led to the conclusion that at the
second chapter of Bologna, a little more than four years after the confirma¬
tion of the Preachers by the Pope, in the presence and by the will of St
Dominic, the order had determined the territorial system in which, for the
present, it would live out its first century. The order was founded, con¬
firmed, endowed with its institutions as with its spirit, equipped with a new
and well-balanced legislation, which was given effect to in a geographical
framework which through its subdivisions extended throughout Europe.
It is, perhaps, useful to emphasize in a few words the greatness of the work
accomplished. The three combined forces of St Dominic’s work—the
Church’s mission or preaching, the regular clerical institution, the spiritual¬
ity of apostolic life—have already been mentioned. To these must now be
added legislation as fully adapted to his mission as to the spirit of the Canon
Law of the times. It was not for nothing that this legislation came into being
at Bologna. Its source was the latest findings of the law of the Church. It was
closely inspired by four canons of the Council of the Lateran—canons 1 o to
13, on the preaching, the theological teaching, the provincial and general
chapters, attachment to regular tradition. Behind this lay the all important
ideas on moderate government that emanated from the university and
urban centres. The executive was very strong, since, by the immediate
profession of obedience and formal precept, the Master of the Order
possessed unlimited authority over each religious, and the provincial as
well as the conventual priors were his lieutenants; but the legislation and
control which can go to the extent of deposing all authorities, the Masters
included, were outside it; at all stages they were in the hands of the com¬
munity, under the form of the chapter. The choice of the leaders by election
extended from those of the lowest rank to the Master, but authority came
down from the Master through profession and confirmation, the sources of
 THE SECOND BOLOGNA CHAPTER: DOMINICKS DEATH 367

strict obedience. The order was universal and had as its focal points the two
centres of learning of Western Christendom, Bologna and Paris, not to
mention the Roman Curia which was working with enthusiasm for its
O

extension; but in the provinces it possessed intermediate instruments which

were at the same time subordinate, in the person of the priors, and de¬
centralized in the institution of the chapters. Now all this was contained in a
concise constitutional document, in which legal precision in no sense
excludes its spiritual inspiration.61
In the first days of June 1221, it was not only the chapter which was
drawing to a close, it was Dominic’s work in regard to his order. He had
finished. He could now preach in full independence. It still remained, how¬
ever, for him to devote himself to the affairs of the priory of Bologna. The
departure of Master Paul of Hungary made it necessary to replace the prior.
Ventura of Verona was placed at the head of the community of St Nicholas,
probably by election.62
On 1 3th January previous, Master Paul had finished paying off to Pietro di
Lovello the price of the lands around St Nicholas which had been pur¬
chased. 63 On Monday, 7th June, Dominic made a new purchase from
Pietro.64 The deed was drawn up in the church, near the door, before the
altar of Our Lady. The general chapter which was still complete was present,
as well as the chapter of the convent. What was in question was the purchase
of a fairly considerable piece of land, about one and a half acres, which would
extend the garden of the convent in an easterly direction, along the road
which bordered the communal ditch. Even further purchases would have to
be made—many houses not belonging to the order remained on the lands of
St Nicholas. In the month of October one of the first acts of Master Jordan’s
provincialate would be to buy back one of them.O Others were recovered
later.66
The document drawn up by the notary instanced the generosity of a
friend of the convent. Master Ugolino, Doctor in Law of the university
of Bologna, had given the Preachers a hundred Bolognese pounds, to help
them to pay for this land. This was not the first manifestation of friendship
of this Master who enjoyed great authority among the civil lawyers of
Bologna.67
The end of the document insisted at length on the engagement taken by
the elderly Lovello in the name of his son, Andalo. He must take care, it
said, that his son accepted the contract and undertook to defend the new
property of the brethren in the eight days ot appeal which he would receive
from them. Pietro di Lovello had already had the deed of the previous
January countersigned by Andalo.6^ The brethren took their precautions in
regard to the powerful and violent patrician, their neighbour and their
creditor, who might as easily help as create great difficulties for them.
Dominic had very special reasons for dreading a scene from this noble
 368 IN MEDIO ECCEESIAE

family, for he had in fact accepted the vow of religion of Andalo’s daughter.
By this oath Diana had given effect to a vocation which had been growing
slowly for some time and would in the future form the subject of a violent
disagreement between her will and that of her father, or rather of the whole
family.69 It was a common enough story in the Middle Ages, but in Italy,
however, presented certain special characteristics owing to the scenes of
violence, passionate to the point of sacrilege, to which it might give rise.
The family and the daughter seem to have won the victory in turn. Diana
had been able to reject proposed offers of marriage. The family had been
able to conspire against an attempt at monastic life at San Gregorio in
Bologna. Who would win the third round ? Diana thought she had triumphed
by the installation of the convent of sisters decided upon by St Dominic.
The prohibition by the bishop, however, perhaps through some intervention
by the family, of the plan to build the convent in the place proposed by the
brethren, had ruined Diana’s projects. Had her father won the final victory?
Dressed according to her rank as a patrician lady, covered with priceless
jewels, Diana remained at home, but beneath her attire of silk and purple
she wore a hair-shirt. She prayed for long periods, observing total silence
from the time of rising until Tierce. Moreover she communicated something
of her interior life to her large circle of women friends. Dominic,
immediately upon his return to Bologna, hastened to visit her. Perhaps he
was told the secret of the bold plan she had conceived to give effect to
her vow, despite all the opposition.

The founder was not to see the conclusion of the matter. After 7th June,
happy over the good work accomplished at the chapter, refusing to take
any rest, he left for the Marches with Paul of Venice and a few other
brethren.7o He was going to rejoin the cardinal-legate, Ugolino of Ostia,
who was awaiting him in Venice.
Ugolino had left Rome about the middle of March to carry out his
mission in the north of Italy. 71 He was accredited to the patriarchs of
Aquileia and Grado, the archbishops and bishops of Ravenna, Genoa, Milan
and Pisa, finally to all the prelates of Lombardy, the Marches, the Romagna
and Tuscany. Invested with the double authority of Pope and emperor, he
was to preach and prepare for the crusade, make the rights and liberties of
the Church respected, establish peace between and in the cities, act against
heresy, arrange the promulgation by the civil authorities of the canons of the
Lateran and the law of the coronation, and have these taught by the Masters
ol Bologna.72 Siena, Florence, Piacenza, Milan, Brescia, were visited by
him in turn between 2^th March and 2Sth May. While the Preachers
were holding their chapter, he was at Desenzano on 1st June, in the heart of
Catharist territory. Between 2nd and 4th June, he passed through Verona.
On the 13th he was at Venice,73 it was there that he saw Dominic, who
 THE SECOND BOLOGNA CHAPTER: DOMINIC’S DEATH 369

would in the future not stay with his entourage, arrive.74 Ugolini was expect¬
ing him. The great business of the crusade of peace and faith that he was
pursuing reserved an essential place in its policy for the sermons of the
Friars Preachers. The general evangelization that Dominic and his brethren
had planned the year before, principally in Lombardy, was to begin again
more extensively in the Marches of Treviso and Venice, this time linked with
the action of the legate, and having as its base the Dominican convents whose
number had further increased.
Two documents indicate the important place the Preachers held in the
preoccupations and plans of LTgolino. On 24th May previous, while Dominic
was hurrying towards Bologna, the cardinal-legate invested Friar Guala of
Bergamo, prior of the Preachers of Brescia, with the church of Saints
Faustino and Jovito, martyrs.7s Separating the church, the adjacent premises
and the enclosed land from all the other property and revenues of SS
Faustino and Jovito, he gave the former to the brethren and left the other as
an annuity to the previous clergy, specifying in detailed terms that after the
death of the latter, the bishop should dispose freely of the prebends. The
brethren were to remain twelve years in this church.
Twenty days later, this time at Venice, Ugolino appointed a committee
of three priests and sent them to Florence.76 It was to set up an investigation
in the city on the temporal and spiritual situation of the church of San Pietro
Scherraggio. It was said that it was gravely compromised from both points
of view. The commissioners would use the legate’s authority and be armed
with the counsels of the bishop. Strengthened by the wishes expressed by all
the parishioners, they tried to induce the clergy of this church to abandon it
to the Preachers. The committee, however, did not attain its objective.
Before the end of the year, the cardinal was to change his point of view and
again intervene in Florence.77 Fie eventually obtained for the Preachers, in
conditions similar to those of former times, the sanctuary of Santa Maria
Novella which they still possess today.
The authoritative interventions of the cardinal-legate to procure for
Dominic’s brethren a well-placed establishment, capable ol extending the
effectiveness of their ministry of souls in Brescia as in Florence, are
characteristic. When the first step was taken, Ugolino had not renewed his
contact with Dominic. He was thus giving effect to a plan drawn up earlier
in Rome, with Dominic, in their conversations in the winter. Moreover, the
sending of the commissioners to Florence who would procure precise
information as to the feelings of the parishioners of San Pietro Scheuaggio
in regard to the Preachers and knew the latters difficulties with the clergy
of San Paolo, was an indication of Dominic’s arrival in Venice before the
drawing up of the charter of 1 3th June; a small detail confirms this: one of
the three commissioners designated by Ugolino six days earlier acted as a
witness to Dominic’s charter in Bologna,78 Above all, these two cases of
 37° IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

intervention are an eloquent testimony to the unanimity of the two

Churchmen in their desire to advance the work of the order.
Clearly this unanimity was primarily manifested in religious action
properly so called. Dominic and his brethren preached, while the Cardinal
dealt with the authorities of every kind whom he had summoned before him.
Alas, once more the activity of the preacher altogether eludes us, for want
of documents. Clearly it remained what it had been in the Narbonensis and
in Lombardy—a fervent evangelization in which the example of the
preacher’s prayer and heroic poverty emphasized his love of the Saviour and
of souls; a word which was spoken to all, to good Christians to raise them
up by the spiritual life and generous action, to heretics whom it confronted
directly in order to enlighten them and bring them back to the risen Christ.
It is particularly tantalizing not to be able to catch any echo of this preaching,
at the time when Dominic was attaining the apogee of his sanctity upon
earth, in the last weeks of his preaching. Ugolino was using Venice as his
headquarters.79 He was at Murano on 2 ist June, on ist July again in Venice,
on the 8th in Padua, the 12th in Treviso, returning to Padua on the 14th.
Then, from the 18th to 21st at Mantua, journeying towards Emilia, which
he entered at Reggio on the 24th. Dominic had not to follow the impressive
cortege of the cardinal in its journeys to and fro. Indeed he did not desire
this. He was too faithful to the spirit of Montpellier which was now
that of the order. He preserved contact, however, with the legate from a
distance and gradually moved closer to Bologna. It was near Reggio that he
learnt of the audacious escapade of Diana of Andalo.
For more than a year d’Andalo’s daughter had remained at home,
apparently paralysed by fear of her relatives.^0 Her energetic soul, however,
worthy of her family, did not despair. She reproached herself as for a crime,
for not having yet brought about, with the aid of the brethren, the monastery
promised to Dominic for the order. On 22nd July, the feast of St Mary
Magdalene, she announced her intention of riding to the monastery of
the Augustinian nuns of Ronzano, about a mile and a half to the south-west of
the town. She set out in great state, surrounded with a numerous escort of
patrician ladies of Bologna. On arrival at the monastery, where there was
nothing rigid about the enclosure, she entered the sisters’ dormitory alone
and, without warning, demanded and obtained the habit of the nuns. A
violent dispute broke out among her companions. A messenger promptly
hurried to Bologna. The whole town was in an uproar. The idlers of the city
could not refrain from taking a part in things and relatives, friends, clients,
the inquisitive, men and women of all classes, all rushed off to Ronzano!
The d’Andalo preceded them, invaded the monastery and dragged Diana
away with so much brutality that one of her ribs was broken. She felt the
effect of this until her death, and, meanwhile, lay on a sick-bed in her house
for a year. Dominic was grieved to learn of this catastrophe. Diana was cut
 THE SECOND BOLOGNA CHAPTER: DOMINIc’s DEATH 37 I

off from the world. Andalo mounted guard and did not allow anyone whatso¬
ever to speak to his daughter in private.
Dominic left Ugolino, or rather preceded him to Bologna, continuing his
ministry of the word at each stage of the journey. It was high summer. The
heat was stifling. The alternation of harassing marches and uninterrupted
preachings was all the more tiring in that in his relations with the cardinal,
Dominic had to conform to the rhythm of the legation. Once more he
reached and exceeded the limits of his strength. He was utterly worn
out, and was longing to rest among his brethren. He reached Bologna
shortly before 28th July.81 Paul of Venice was no longer with him.82 He
had doubtless left him as the convent of Verona.
He would not rest. At the end of a day’s march in the stifling and humid
atmosphere of the plain of the Po, when he finally reached St Nicholas it was
to shut himself up with the prior and procurator of the convent, Ventura
and Rodolfo, and treat with them of the business of the order.83 The con¬
ventual buildings, the current ministry, the mission in Lombardy, the
insti tution of the monastery of the sisters and the future of Diana . . . subjects
of conversation were not lacking. The night was advancing and Friar
Rodolfo, who wanted indeed to sleep, in vain begged Dominic to go and lie
down for a little, and above all to dispense himself from getting up for
Matins. The Master would not give way to his invitation and went into the
Church. There he prayed on indefinitely. When the brethren arrived for the
office, Dominic was there and joined them. Then they came to tell Friar
Ventura that Dominic was suffering from a very severe headache. It was the
first symptom of the illness which was going to carry him off.
This time again he would not give up. The bouts of fever and colic
succeeded each other. Evidently the dysentery from which he had already
suffered so much was coming back in a most pernicious form. Dominic
put up resistance and mastered himself once more. With the cardinal-legate
who had just arrived in Bologna, he visited Diana of Andalo in her father s
house.84 They could not close the door to visitors of this sort; but in the
presence of the family who demanded to be present at the whole interview,
the visit remained one of pure formality, and Dominic was reduced to the
expedient of making use of clandestine letters to comfort his daughter. It
was in these last days of July, too, that he went to see some students of
Bologna in their room. He loved these impromptu visits. In the familiality
of conversation he opened his heart to these young men. He felt death
coming and said so simply, taking the opportunity to raise the mind of his
friends towards the life that was true and eternal.83
At the beginning of August, he could no longer remain on his feet and
finally decided to go to bed. In the corner of the dormitory where Friar
Rodolfo at night-time placed a bedstead with rope stretched across it and a
blanket so that the Master might rest on occasion—for he would not have a
372 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

bed—he accepted for the first time that they should give him a wool
mattress. The disease gripped him. When the bouts of fever were severe, he
remained motionless.86 Only the lips which moved gently, or certain
changes in his expression which were usual in him when he was in contem¬
plation, showed those around him that he was pursuing his prayer without
interruption. He never complained. He did not groan. On the contrary,
on his thin face there was a sweet, smiling and even joyful expression,
in accordance with his habit of showing greater joy in adversity than
in prosperity. In the moments of relief from the illness, he spoke of God
to the brother who was nursing him, or asked for a book to be read to
him.
There was no longer any doubt that he was very seriously ill. Nature was
finding it increasingly difficult to defend itself. He was growing weaker.
Several times he called the novices to his bedside, comforted them and
urged them to the pursuit of goodness with very gentle words and an
engaging insistence. This restful conversation, in which he gave his spirit
to the young friars, was his best comfort. The brethren, however, did
not yet wholly despair of curing him. The atmosphere of Bologna in summer
is trying and unhealthy, especially on the St Nicholas side where the waters
of the ditch and of the river Aposa, are more or less stagnant. The poisoned
miasma of such an atmosphere was an obstacle to his recovery. The brethren
moved Dominic to the south of the city, to the small Benedictine priory
of Monte-Mario. On the summit of the hill the air circulated more freely
and seemed more healthy. It was, alas, too late. His weakness increased
from hour to hour.
Dominic was going to die. In the morning of 6th August, he asked the
brethren who were watching by his bedside to call Ventura. The prior came
with a large group of brethren, about twenty at least, who collected round
the founder in their distress. They were there, on their knees, or leaning
over his low couch, representing the brethren of St Nicholas, the Preachers
then distributed throughout the world, the immense army of Dominic’s
sons and daughters from the beginnings until our own day. And for all those
who would hear him from the far ends of that earth, with which he was
already identified, Dominic pronounced in a long monologue words so
profoundly moving that Friar Ventura did not remember ever having heard
anything more edifying. Only a few details have come down to us.8? He
spoke of the sanctity of his brethren, of the perseverance which must be
shown, of the prudence that must be exercised over the people whom one
frequented, specially in the case of young women, for a well-purified heart
was necessary to avoid the risk of a false step. He had discovered in himself,
though God in his mercy had allowed to preserve the virginity of his
flesh until the end, the imperfection of finding more attraction in the con¬
versation of gills than in that of old ladies. He spoke above all of the fervour
 THE SECOND BOLOGNA CHAPTER: DOMINIc’s DEATH 373

with which it was necessary to love the order and promote it; of loving
souls; of poverty.88
Already the solemn liturgy of the agony and death, in accordance with the
moving rite of the canons or of the university of Bologna, was beginning to
enwrap and fraternally to sustain Dominic.89 He now made his general
confession in the presence of the company of priests who then gave him the
sacrament of the sick. The simple clerics went out; there remained only the
dozen chosen priests,90 who, in what they heard, found no mortal sin,
nothing but the mark of a perfectly pure soul. Whilst the other brethren
were coming back, Dominic made a sign to Friar Ventura. He was worried
about his modesty. T have done wrong’, he said, ‘in speaking of my virginity
before the brethren. I ought not to have said that.’91 They gave him extreme
unction. One of the brethren who had just come in again, however, took
Ventura aside. The monk who served the chapel was saying to any who cared
to listen that if Dominic died at the priory, he would not allow the body to
be taken elsewhere and would bury it in the sanctuary. We can judge of the
agitation of the Preachers. Ventura leant over Dominic and confided to him
their keen anxiety. ‘God forbid’, he answered, ‘that I should be buried
elsewhere than under the feet of my brethren. Carry me outside. Let me die
on the roadside and then you will be able to bury me in your church.
A touching procession wound slowly down the hill to reach the city once
more. The passers-by were surprised, stopped and suddenly fell silent. In
the litter which the strong shoulders of his brethren were carrying, Dominic
was scarcely breathing. At every moment they were afraid that he was going.
St Nicholas at last. They carried him into the cell of Master Moneta, since
he had none of his own.92 A slight respite occurred. The brethren, one after
the other, came up to him weeping. Each one recommended himself to him
with his intentions. And he answered, with the same humility which had but
lately made him tender his resignation because he deemed himself truly
insufficient, ‘Do not weep’. ‘I shall be more use to you and bear more fruit
for you after death than I ever did in life.’
At the end of a good hour, he sent for the prior ■ Piepare , he said.
The prior and the brethren vested for the solemn recommendation, then
gathered round him. ‘Wait yet.’ He continued to command, master of
himself and of his brethren in the final combat. The heavy silence and the
waiting weighed upon the religious. Ventura bent over him Father, you
know in what bitter sadness you are leaving us. Be mindful of us and pray to
the Lord for us.’ And the blessed Dominic raised his hands towards heaven.
‘Holy Father, as you know, I have persevered with all my heart in following
your will. And I have guarded and preserved those whom you have given me.
I recommend them to you. Preserve them and keep them.’
Another moment of waiting. Each one tried to stifle his grief in order not
to disturb the agony. Friar Rodolfo was on his knees near the dying man s
13—S.D.
 374 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

head. He supported it with a piece of linen. With a fold of this linen he

wiped the sweat of death from his face. ‘Begin’, murmured Dominic. Then,
softly, the community of his brethren recited the Credo,93 followed by the
soul’s recommendation. Dominic joined in with the prayers—this could be
seen from the slight movement of his lips. The gesture became imperceptible.
At one moment he raised his hands towards heaven. It was his last breath.
Each one had noticed it—he surrendered his soul at the moment when the
brethren were saying—‘Come to his aid, saints of God. Hasten, angels of the
Lord. Receive his soul and offer it before the face of the Most High’. It was
the evening94 of 6th August, 1221. He was not fifty years old.
While the brethren were singing the second part of the ‘commendation’
in the adjoining dormitory, Friar Rodolfo, whose function it was to perform
this office, dressed his master’s body for the funeral; he found on the bare
flesh an iron chain, tightly girt around the loins, which he removed. It would
one day be claimed by Master Jordan. They looked for a decent habit in
which to vest the body. The master had only one tunic and the mud, dust
and sweat of the road had soiled it. Again it was Master Moneta who gave
him his habit.95
The customary life of the great convent of the Preachers was now
suspended. The community had only one occupation—to surround the body
of the dead man with the suffrage of its prayers. In procession it conducted
the body to the church of St Nicholas. The great vigil began. The community"
divided itself into two watches, which would succeed one another in the
choir. Each one must recite the seventy-five psalms which formed half the
psalter. Thus the night would be spent. When the psalter was ended the hour
ol the obsequies would have sounded.
Dominic s body now reposed in the midst of his brethren, in his still open
coffin, enshrined in prayer. Was he not still living among his Preachers?
From time to time one of them cast a furtive glance interrupted by tears, at
the profile of the prostrate form. Disease and death had accentuated the
features, the aquiline nose slightly bent towards the right, the strong-willed
chin, the prominence of the cheek-bones now heightened by the thinness of
the cheeks, the fine brow.96 When the friar then closed his eyes, he could
see him, no longer pale and the features chiselled by death, but in that very
living attitude so well described by Sister Cecilia.

Aveiage height, a thin body, a handsome and slightly fresh-coloured countenance,

hair and beard slightly reddish, fine eyes. From his forehead and his lashes a kind
of splendour radiated which attracted the respect and affection of all. He remained
always smiling and joyful unless he was moved with compassion by some distress
of his neighbour. He had long and beautiful hands; a voice that was deep,
beautiful and resounding. He was never bald and his crown of hair was complete,
shot through with occasional white hairs.97

The door of the church opened to admit the dean of the regular chapter
 THE SECOND BOLOGNA CHAPTER: DOMINIc’s DEATH 37£

of St Mark at Mantua and superior of the two priories at Bologna and

Ronzano, Br. Albert SpinolaN8 He had benefited considerably from the
Master’s friendship in spiritual conversations full of warmth and fruit and
had perhaps played a part in Diana’s recent escapade." He had just learnt of
the death of his friend and came into the church with his heart full of grief.
And yet, before this spectacle of peace and affection, joy gradually took the
place of grief. He knelt by the body. Boldly he embraced it and placed a
kiss on the brow. He stood completely still as if he were listening. Then, his
face radiant, he got up. ‘Good news, Father prior’, he called to Friar
Ventura, ‘Master Dominic has given me the accolade and has told me that
before the end of this year he will lead me with him to Christ.’
In the midst of the stream of visitors, who unceasingly succeeded each
other in the church, arrived the Cardinal of Ostia himself and the numerous
prelates who accompanied him.100 He was not only suffering from losing the
irreplaceable collaborator with whom he had just spent these two months.
The wound touched the inmost centre of his religious feelings. This great
churchman, daily more than fully occupied by the highest politico-religious
business, was, to a greater extent than Innocent III, haunted by nostalgia lor
the interior life, by the appeal of the flight to the desert.101 The meeting
with St Dominic or St Francis overwhelmed him like a contact with the
Gospel each time renewed. Twelve years later, when he had become Pope
and was receiving some Dominicans who spoke to him of their patriarch, he
defined his feelings in a word—‘He is in heaven, joined to the apostles. 102
At the root of the feeling of deep friendship of which Jordan of Saxony
speaks, born of a long familiarity, lay a considerable share of Christian
admiration for a saint, of pure attachment to the Gospel.
Thus the cardinal-legate insisted on celebrating all the ceremonies of the
burial himself. He was assisted at the altar by the patriarch of Aquileia and
numerous bishops and abbots. He sang the Mass, intoned the recommenda¬
tion and, finally, performed the burial. So many high dignitaries celebrating
the obsequies of the mendicant preacher! In the presence of the legate,
which was in some sort that of the Pope, the brethren did not see so much
the honour done to their founder as the magnificent praise by the Roman
Church of the life of a mendicant preacher. The apostolic life ol the
Preachers under the form that Dominic had tenaciously defended received,
in the presence of the highest prelates of North Italy and of a great crowd ol
Bolognese, a striking consecration.
The coffin was placed in the tomb. The pit was dug in the lower part of
the church. I03 Friar Rodolfo had it lined on all sides with the hardest cement
he could find, for the Preachers must not be robbed of their precious relic.
A large slab was firmly cemented over the tomb. And, immediately, a large
number of sick, of possessed, of poor or of simple faithful, began to invoke
the intercession of the saint, around the tomb.104
 Chapter XX

CANONIZATION

T WELVE years went by. So vigorous had been the impetus Dominic
had given that his death had not retarded the forward movement of
the order of Preachers. It was now commensurate with the vast
framework outlined by the founder. There was no slackening either in the
great mission in Lombardy; in other words it continued to move in the
direction anticipated by the Preacher.
Jordan of Saxony, whom the Master had made a member of the chapter in
Bologna two months after his entry into religion and whom the following
year he nominated Provincial of Lombardy, thus entrusting to him the finest
province and highest task in the order, became his successor at the head of
the Preachers. Lriar Stefano, the student of Bologna whom Dominic had
acquired for the order in such an unusual fashion, three years later succeeded
Lriar Jordan at the head of the Province of Lombardy and actively directed
that important mission. Eighteen houses of Preachers north of the Apennines
formed and launched the apostolic troops who were operating in this field
ot the Master.1 Convents of St Lrancis worked side by side with them on
simdar lines, and secular priests also took their part with success. Prom
theii episcopal thrones, bishops inspired by the same spirit lent the collabora¬
tion ot their authority. Some of them were friends, sometimes sons of
Dominic. At Brescia there was Lriar Guala of Bergamo,2 at Modena Gulielmo
of Piedmont, the former Vice-Chancellor of the"Roman Curia;3 and in the
very chair of St Peter reigned, under the name of Gregory IX, the former
legate of Lombardy, the guide, counsellor and friend of St Dominic, formerly
Cardinal of Ostia, Ugolino dei Conti.
Circumstances had for long been adverse. After the close of Cardinal
Ugolino’s legation, Lombardy, left to herself, had begun her fratricidal wars
again. When Prederick II ventured to put order into the situation with over¬
much severity, at one stroke the Lombard League re-formed. In the first two
years of the reign of Gregory IX, from 1227, the situation became more
tense than ever. The sharp struggle between the Church and the Empire
had begun once more. r

Dominicans and Priars Minor, however, had brought a new spirit which
was too deeply longed for not to penetrate the Italian masses, even in these
circumstances. The direct contact with the Gospel which the sons of Francis
 CANONIZATION 377
or Dominic brought with them broke the narrow horizon of immediate
interests, the ground of old resentments, of inveterate greed and passions,
the spirit of sect and of parochialism, and lifted men’s minds to a unanimous
and universal plane. The organizers of the mission of i 220—1 2 2 1 had foreseen
precisely what the evangelical preachers would bring—a response to the
general aspirations of the Christian masses which the mentality of the elite
and the practices of communal life strangely failed to recognize. The ideal of
detachment, of mutual love and peace, which the new apostles proposed,
while first practising it in their communities, did not consist only of negative
precepts—to despise money and luxury, to renounce the conventicles of the
sects, or lay aside the violence of wars. It was rather a positive gift to the
Saviour, an entering upon the interior life and into mystical union with the
poor and crucihed Christ. Thus when, after the conclusion of the treaty of
San Germano on 23rd July, 1230, a great easing of tension took place
throughout Italy, the activities of the apostolic preachers experienced an
unheard of expansion and publicity. Pope and emperor, leaving aside their
reciprocal causes for complaint, preferred peace to war. The hour seemed
to have come to imitate them, abandoning claims and perhaps genuine rights,
in order not to continue ruinous and impious struggles. People were now
going to begin to become Christians, that is, practise the overlooking of
injuries and to forego revenge, to remit debts, to set prisoners free, to
preserve conjugal chastity, to respect their neighbours and to be reconciled
with their enemies, to profess the universal faith.
An extraordinary atmosphere of penance and devotion was established and
in 1233 extended to the whole territory A Men called it the ‘alleluia’, the
‘great devotion’. Sometimes an unknown preacher with not much flesh on
him and clad in rags, arrived in the main square of a town. He would blow
on his horn. To the children and idlers who rushed up, he would cry out:
Alleluia! Alleluia! answered the crowd. Then followed direct preaching,
authoritative in tone, evangelical in form. More often than not, the
mendicant preacher had no need to assemble the people. Scarcely had the
news of his approach reached the town than they flocked to see the messenger
of peace. They carried him along in procession with flags and music. Some¬
times he was brought in triumph on the carroccio of the banner, symbol of
the power of the city. The square was often too small to contain his audience
and they would then erect a huge tribune for him outside the walls, some¬
times half way between two towns. The two populations thus met, swelled
by the inhabitants of the surrounding villages. A supernatural halo surrounded
the new apostle. He was credited with a harvest of miracles, with prophecies,
with raising people from the dead. While he was addressing the crowd,
knights would form a hedge around his tribune. The people cut off pieces
of his garments to have as relics. They gave him for a certain time unheard-of
powers—making him arbitrator, legislator, duke and podesta of the cities.
378 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

The sermon finished, he took immediate action. His Gospel had nothing
Platonic about it and could not remain merely a dead letter. People must
change their lives. Banish luxury. Pray. Do good works. At Reggio the
crowd helped to build the convent of the Preachers. Everywhere impressive
scenes of reconciliation took place between hostile families and between
representatives of enemy cities. The city statutes were revised and those
articles which were against the Church corrected; all provisions calculated
to protect peace, the weak and the faith were inserted. This could not be
done without the active help of the elite. For a time they were subdued,
carried away more or less sincerely by the intensity of the popular move¬
ment. Medieval man was always changeable, even at the height of prosperity
and political excitement. After the preacher’s visit, the town seemed a
different place. Other cities followed the example, for the contagion was
irresistible. In 1233, a number of towns of the Romagna, Lombardy and the
Marches were simultaneously stirred and convulsed by the alleluia. The
spiritual upheaval that that represented can be imagined.
Among these religious preachers there were Friars Minor—a Friar Leo of
Perego who preached at Piacenza; in particular a Friar Gerard of Modena,
who displayed exceptional skill in his correction of the statutes of Modena
and Reggio. There were even seculars like the Brother Benedict who made
his appearance in Parma. The principal preachers, however, were Dominic’s
sons. The movement was called ‘the devotion of the Friars Preachers’.s
There was Peter of Verona in Milan; Master Jacopino de Parma in Reggio
and Parma; Bartolommeo de Vicenza in Padua; above all, John of Vicenza
who, after rousing Bologna in April and May 1233, left for the Marches and
produced upheavals no less considerable in Padua, Treviso, Feltre, Bellune,
Conigliano, Vicenza, and finally and above all in Verona, until that day of
28th August, 1233 when, on the banks of the Adige to the south of Verona,
in Paquara, he assembled the representatives and a part of the population of
the Marches-—400,000 persons, said a contemporary, who was clearly
exaggerating—in a reconciliation scene on a gigantic scale. Here the
fierce tyrant Ezzelino de Romano and his mortal enemy, the Marquis Azzo
d’Este, were seen to meet face to face, to give each other the kiss of peace.
In July 1233, at the moment when the alleluia was nearing its apogee, the
Provincial, Friar Esteban of Spain, in an official declaration, called to mind
‘the graces granted at the present time to the Preachers of Lombardy and the
other provinces’. The effects could be seen, he said, in the Lombard cities,

where moie than a hundred thousand men who did not know whether they
ought to adhere to the Roman Church or to heresy, were sincerely converted to
the Catholic Faith of the Church of Rome, thanks to the sermons of the Friars
Preachers. The sincerity was genuine, for these converts now pursued and held
in abomination the heretics whom before they had defended. Moreover the
majority of the cities of Lombardy and the Marches gave over into the hands of
 CANONIZATION 379

the brethren the management of their affairs and the reform of their statutes,
with the power to suppress, add, retrench or modify, as they thought fit. They
equally had recourse to them to stop wars actually in progress, to make peace
and establish it once more among them, to arrange for the gains of usurers and
ill-gotten wealth to be restored, to receive confessions, and, in short, for a
number of other good offices which it would take too long to enumerate.6

It does not enter into our perspective to analyse the elements of this
popular movement—-the petty side of the impromptu tribunes ; the deceptive
character of the public reconciliations; the permanence, on the other hand,
in the hearts of the people, of a Christian ideal of purity and brotherhood.
On the other hand, it is essential to emphasize the link between this
sensational manifestation and the more purely religious work which had
preceded it since 1220 and which would survive it. Side by side with the
tribune-preacher, whose personality alone appears in the limelight, worked
numerous collaborators who are unknown to history. Their religious or
legislative work had more depth, maturity and theological and canonical
competence than the accounts of the chronicles permit us to envisage.
Before the principal figure came on the scene, in case after case the purely
evangelical action of mendicant preachers, operating from a convent
of Dominicans or Friars Minor in almost every city of the plain of the Po,
paved the way for the general religious fervour of 1233. John of Vicenza
would not have stirred Padua to the extent he did il Guala had not already
pacified it in 1229, and if, until his precious death in 1231, St Antony of
Padua, by his virtues and his sermons, had not caused the Gospel to penetrate
deeply into these people. The Preachers would not have succeeded in
stirring up their ‘general devotion’ if Dominic had not himself given the
impetus to the mission of Lombardy at the side of Cardinal Ugolino.
It was not mere chance, indeed, if the Provincial of the Preachers, in the
declaration which has been cited earlier, expressly attributed to Dominic
the supernatural success of the activity of his sons. Friar Stefano, it is true,
was thinking of the heavenly intercession of the prayers and merits of the
saint, whereas we think primarily of the drive and directives of the first
Master of the Preachers which were at the root of the success. The great
devotion of 1233 effected at least in part the programme assigned by the
founder to his order and, even more precisely, to the mission of Lombardy.
There were naturally divergencies between the action of the founder and
that of the preachers of the alleluia—deviations that were even rather
important ones. In 1221 Dominic had left to the legate and his commissioners
the diplomatic, political and legislative charge, the responsibility of bringing
pressure to bear on the authorities to persuade them to fulfil their task as
Christian magistrates. Dominic had never imagined that there would be
attributed to him, like John of Vicenza, the exorbitant titles of political
arbitrator, podesta and Duke of Verona—he who did not even want an
3 8o IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

administrative charge in the order to be assigned to anyone who was given

the office of preaching. He had no less explicitly refused for his sons as for
himself the episcopal authority that Guala was now exercising at Brescia.
To set forth the truth by preaching, in the quality of a spiritual man without
the authority of rank, to sit in no other tribunal than that of penance, private
or public, such was his clear and resolute programme. To this programme
the order continued to remain fundamentally faithful. It resisted the desire
of the Sovereign Pontiffs to recruit bishops among the Preachers.7 In 1232
and again in 1 234, it confronted the would-be imitators of John of Vicenza
with the legislation of the order, the prohibition against any other law¬
suits than those concerned with the faith,8 above all, the prohibition of
all political activity, even were it that of ‘pacifier’ or arbitrator.9 In the face
of a formal order from a Pope, however, or in the face of the unanimous
wish of a population, it was really necessary to give way in certain particular
instances.10 It is undeniable that, in 1233, the ministry of a certain number
of preachers was clearly orientated towards the politico-religious and
inquisitorial functions desired by Gregory IX,11 with all that thev comprised,
not excluding the stake for heresy.12

This fact, nevertheless, did not preclude a fundamental continuity

between the origins and the outcome of the mission of Lombardv, between
Dominic and the brethren of 1233. It will be understood in these conditions
that the memory of Dominic was strictly present in the great alleluia—so
much present even that the popular movement was to provide the framework
and climate of the founder’s canonization.

The canonization had not yet taken place, in fact, at this date—at which
we have the right to be surprised. St Francis of Assisi had been canonized
less than two years after his death (1228), St Antony of Padua a year after¬
wards (1232). Yet Gregory IX was not unaware of his friend’s holiness.
Nor had the Preachers forgotten their admiration for their Master. When it
is reflected that the head of the order was Jordan of Saxony, the Provincial
Friar Stefano, the prior and procurator of Bologna, Friar Ventura di Verona
and Friar Rodolfo di Faenza, from whom evidence would soon be obtained,
so true and at the same time so moving, on the holiness of their founder, we
know this to be so. The reasons for the delay must be sought elsewhere.

For there to be a canonization, it is essential that the universal Church, or

at least the main body of some particular Church, be interested. There is,
in particular, no canonization without that popular emotion which is stirred
up by the supeinatuial manifestation of miracles and which maintains such
manifestation afterwards. In 1221, Dominic and his brethren had not, so far
as the crowds were concerned, a notoriety similar to that of St Francis in
1226. or of St Antony in 1231. A cultus, however, had begun in Bologna. J3
 CANONIZATION 381

We are told of the numerous faithful who prayed day and night by the tomb,
of sick persons who prayed for their cure and claimed to have received it,
of wax votive gifts hung around the tomb. A donor offered to enclose the
tomb and cover it with silk. Information coming from several sources at once
showed that the brethren, far from encouraging this spontaneous cultus,
considered it a duty to stifle it.14 The trouble introduced into a conventual
chapel already too small for their community seemed to them less dangerous
than the accusation of boasting or love of gain which they feared to incur.
Their humble condition as mendicants demanded that they should surely
avoid all appearances of pious propaganda, from which less scrupulous
religious would draw honour and profit, around their relics.
Gradually a silence about Dominic grew up. The population of a town of
students very quickly changes. The holy man was forgotten. The brethren
thus obtained peace and quietness thereby; each one of them could devote
himself to his studies and his ministry in peace. Certain of them, however,
felt in a vague way that this lofty disinterestedness was not far removed from
negligence, and that there was some ingratitude towards God in keeping
silence about the great example given by his servitor. The reconstruction of
the church and the cloister, which were definitely too small, was undertaken
after 1228 and completed about 12 31.15 After the original sanctuary of St
Nicholas had been pulled down, the tomb, situated it would seem at the
entrance to the now' demolished choir,16 would for the future be outside in
the open. It remained there away from the eyes oi the public, but exposed
to the heat and the rain which streamed down upon it, for it was situated
below the level of the new church.17
This was too much. The brethren who had known Dominic suffered in
every fibre of their being. Was it for this that they had, not so long ago,
carried their dying father back on their shoulders from Santa Maria dei
Monti? It was at least essential to transfer the body to a more decent place.
The Provincial of Lombardy and the authorities of the convent of Bologna
took the matter in hand.18 Master Jordan had been absent from Lombardy
for some time.19 This must have been about the end of 1232 or beginning oi
1233. The idea of canonization then began to take shape. It probably came
directly to the mind of the Preachers, stimulated by a desire to emulate
the Minors which had become rather acute. We can imagine this to be the
case. The lightning canonization of St Antony of Padua, following on that
of St Francis, had recently unduly aroused their esprit de corps.™ Jordan
of Saxony, however, insinuates that the idea came from the Pope himself,
when he was consulted as to the opportuneness of the translation.21 The
two explanations perhaps complete each other. The consultation at Rome
was not necessary—the brethren could very well transfer the body of
their father without authorization. Whoever thought then, not without
shrewdness, of getting the Pope to intervene in order to disarm the final
382 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

scruples of the Preachers, could easily guess what response he was going
to elicit from Pope Gregory—precisely the one he desired.
Gregory IX, the former legate in Lombardy, reproached the brethren’s
representatives sternly for their negligence in the matter of the holiness of
their founder. ‘In him’, he declared, ‘I met a man who carried out in its
fulness the rule of life of the apostles; I do not doubt that he is associated
with their glory in heaven.’22 Then and there, he decided that the trans¬
lation would not be private, but canonical. This was formally to envisage
canonization, the first step towards which he was thus authorizing. The
ceremony had been planned for the general chapter at Pentecost (22nd May,
1233) which would gather round the Master of the order in Bologna all the
provincials and a large number of the brethren. Gregory IX, who had
himself celebrated Dominic’s obsequies, could not leave Rome and the
government of the Church to go in person to Lombardy. He appointed
to replace him at this first great act, the Metropolitan of Bologna, the
Archbishop of Ravenna with one or other of his fifteen suffragans.
The idea of the translation was scarcely broached when the brethren in
Lombardy became enthusiastic. All opposition had vanished. On the
contrary, all the more eagerness was shown, to compensate for the previous
negligence. The needs of an absorbing ministry had up to this time prevented
the Preachers from taking any trouble over their own history. The majority
of them seemed to know nothing at all about the origins of their order. They
turned ‘in great numbers’ to Master Jordan, who had just come back to
North Italy, and begged him to relate to them the providential beginnings of
the order of Preachers and, above all, to speak to them of Master Dominic,
‘their founder and their leader at the same time as their brother’.23 Jordan
was only waiting for this opportunity. He set himself to write. The result of
his work has come down to us—the ‘Account of the origins of the Order of
Preachers’, which is still known as the Libellus, or Tittle book’. The account
is solid, sober, full of discretion and of delicate feeling. It makes the
personality of Dominic stand out in his action as founder, in the midst of his
brethren and of his friends. The marvellous, which so often Riled accounts
of this kind at the time, is, so to speak, absent; but each of the important
stages in the lite and work of Dominic appears there in its rightful place.
Jordan had been caieful to obtain information from the original brethren
whom he met in the course of his unceasing travels. It was time that he
collected these facts together. None of the brethren in Lombardy, or
scarcely any, had known Dominic for more than about twelve months.
Jordan himself had only seen him on two occasions, each time for barely a
few days. Now all the brethren would be able to get to know their Master,
or discover him anew. They began to pray to him again and to get others to
pray to him. Had he not promised to be even more useful to his brethren
after his death that while he was alive ?
 CANONIZATION 383

Lombardy’s great devotion was beginning to be demonstrated. The

Dominican preachers spoke to the crowds of the sanctity of their Master.24
More than them all, Friar John of Vicenza lent his sonorous voice to promote
the cultus of the founder. At Bologna, after a long and painful interdict
(1231-1232) which for some time drove the university from the city, the
result of a sharp conflict between bishop and laity, the easing of tension had
just begun. The religious preacher who was working to establish peace, made
of the cultus of Dominic one of his levers with which to raise the minds of
the mass and obtain complete conversion and reconciliation.^ He related the
life of the founder, his attitude, his miracles. Even better, he mentioned a
revelation he claimed to have received about his Master.26 In the super¬
natural aureole which surrounded the preacher like a halo, while the crowds
listened to him with passionate attention, people thought they could perceive
the mysterious effect of the saint’s intercession. Popular piety was unleashed
with that sudden violence which characterized the time of the alleluia. After
19th April, 1233 and the announcement of the submission to the arbitration
of John of Vicenza of the conflict between the Church and the city, the
population of Bologna not only discovered in the person of the preacher an
envoy of heaven for its salvation and pacification; it began once more to
suspect that it had a treasure in the relics of the father of Preachers. This
increased its devotion. On 14th May an immense penitential procession
gathered the whole city together. On the 16th, while John of Vicenza was
preaching, the crowd saw a cross of light above his brow.
Such was the spiritual atmosphere which reigned in the city at the time
when the solemn translation of the relics was being prepared.27 The
provincials and their companions arrived about 22nd May, the day of
Pentecost, and swelled the community of St Nicholas with their comple¬
ment. They represented the order in its entirety, from England to the Holy
Land, from Spain to Poland and Dacia. The pontifical authorization had long
since' arrived. The sarcophagus of marble, which had been procured not
without difficulty, was already in place.28 Bologna was preparing for the
event with intense excitement. The brethren, however, would have
preferred to proceed with the opening of the original tomb more discreetly.
The excitement of the population made them anxious to an extent we have
difficulty in imagining, for religious ceremonies today no longer arouse
comparable passions in the crowd. It was not that the brethren doubted the
sanctity of their father, but they were uneasy about the state in which they
were going to find the body in the cave which had for so long been exposed
to the rain and the fierce heat. If an unbearable odour were to issue from
this tomb, no more would be needed to produce a complete change of front
in a superstitious crowd and turn the sentiments of the people into contempt,
anger, perhaps into violent hatred even to the point of a riot against the
Preachers. In the extreme tension of the feeling of the multitude, in the
 384 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

paroxysm of the passion for penance to which the crowd was abandoning
itself, no one could measure the danger of such a situation. A disappoint¬
ment, however unjustified for the crowd, might ruin the ministry of the
brethren, perhaps for a long time to come.
It would be no less dangerous to act without the laity knowing. The civil
authorities of Bologna suspected the intentions of the brethren, without
wholly fathoming them. They feared a removal of the relics and firmly
intended to prevent it. Thus they set an armed guard, night and day, around
the tomb. In a situation such as this, there was no help left but from God.
Anxious, pale, the brethren prayed, full of uneasiness.' On the preceding
night, Friai Nicholas de Giovinazzo, Provincial of the Roman Province,
had tossed and turned on his couch, begging the Lord to bring matters
to a satisfactory issue. He need not have been afraid. . . . Friar Ventura
had fixed the opening of the tomb for the night of 23rd—24th May, reserving
the day of the 24th lor the liturgical ceremonies. In this way they would
be able to begin the chapter on 2*th, the Wednesday after Pentecost,
in conformity with the constitutions.29
In the middle of this night, then, a group of men assembled in the light of
torches. The flame, from time to time, flashed on a breastplate or some
weapon. Master Jordan, Friar Guala, Bishop of Bergamo, Stefano, the
Provincial, Prior Ventura, John of Vicenza, Rodolfo, Guillaume de
Montferrat and other brethren represented the Order of Preachers; the
Bishop of Bologna Enrico di Fratta, and some of his clergy, the Church of the
place, the podesta, Hubert Visconti di Milano, twenty-four nobles in arms,
several of whom had been mounting guard at the tomb on the previous
nights, numerous citizens from Bologna and the neighbouring towns,
represented the laity, reconciled for the future with their clerg^.30 Friar
Rodolfo, in his capacity as procurator, broke with the blow of an iron mallet
the hard cement that he had placed there himself twelve years earlier.
Nothing had been displaced since the day when, after having kept unceasing
watch over the coffin, he had nailed it down Avith his own hands and sealed
it in the grave. He exercised pressure on the slabs of stone with a strong
lever. Eventually they moved. The coffin appeared right at the bottom under
a few handfuls ot earth which had been thrown on to it on the occasion of
the burial; there was a small hole in the lid, from which an intense and
marvellous fragrance emerged. It overflowed powerfully from the grave,
and became ol great intensity as soon as the nails were pulled out and the
coffin opened. It overwhelmed those present. The brethren, bewildered for
a moment, trembled in the whole of their being. A miracle! Heaven had
spoken! They laughed and wept at the same time. Clergy and laity threw
themselves on the ground and remained prostrate, crying out in praise and
thanksgiving to God.

Rationalists as we are, we no longer experience either these terrors, these

 CANONIZATION 3

surprises or these delirious joys. One must have measured the anguish of the
religious during those last few days to guess at the extent of their exultation.
There was no longer any question of danger. What they saw now was the
divine and therefore irrefutable proof of the sanctity of their Master. It was
the certainty of his speedy enrolment in the calendar of the saints. The
crowd, already moved, would not fail to react as a body and this voice of the
people which is the voice of God, would make itself heard in Rome forth¬
with. At seven centuries of distance we have to admit that the miracle of the
fragrance was the crucial event which made necessary the move from the
translation—a preparatory and quite hypothetical step—to the canonization.
Without this, neither the goodwill of the Pope, nor the hope of the
‘primitive brethren’ nor the oratorical successes of John of Vicenza would
have been sufficient to bring about the next step. This alone would transfer
to a whole people and then to the Church as a whole, the conviction of a few.
In our eyes, moreover, the fact is solidly established. This perfume,
different in its nature and its intensity from all known scents, would for long
persist in the grave, as on the hands and objects which had touched the relics
of the saint, and would frequently reappear in the church for more than a
year. It seemed truly supernatural. A fraud could not escape the vigilance of
the people of Bologna and of the brethren, especially of anyone like Friar
Rodolfo.31
Inside the wooden coffin, the body of Dominic was now a few bones.
Master Jordan gathered them up with reverence and transferred them to the
coffer which had been prepared. It was locked with a key that was handed
to the Podesta of Bologna. Meanwhile dawn had come. The pontifical legate,
Theodoric, Archbishop of Ravenna, arrived, accompanied by Gulielmo di
Piedmont, Bishop of Modena, and Gauthier of Marvis, Bishop of Tournai.32
A large number of clergy formed the prelates’ suite. The news of the super¬
natural perfume had spread over the city like a spark on a powder train. The
crowd arrived, growing denser every minute. They came out from the
parishes in organized procession, bearing lighted tapers. The trumpets
sounded. Benedicts Jesus Christus was sung with fervour. The new sanctuary
and the cloister quickly filled and the throng overflowed on to the squares
and streets of the neighbourhood.
The archbishop reopened the coffer to identify the bones and inhale the
supernatural perfume in his turn. With the assistance of the other prelates,
he carried the relics in procession to the new church and placed them in the
marble sarcophagus. Then the Mass began with these words which put the
crowning touch to the Preachers’ emotion: ‘Receive the joy of your
, b Meanwhile, a quiver once more ran through the crowd as they
heard the miracles that had just taken place related. Among others, a
paralytic student, Lawrence the Englishman, recovered the use of his limbs
at the invocation of the name of Dominic and leaped across the sanctuary for
 386 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

joy.33 The tide of marvels grew. Popular devotion multiplied the demonstra¬
tions of fervour around the new tomb.
A week later, at the close of the chapter, crowds of brethren who had
come from the convents of Lombardy met at St Nicholas. Master Jordan
asked for the coffin to be opened once more. In the presence of the podesta
who brought the key, and of the citizens of Bologna, the Master of the order
took the head of Dominic in his hands and showed it to all those present.
The provincial at their head, three hundred brothers filed past and kissed
the remains of their father with deep feeling.34

A few days later a delegation consisting of representatives of the bishop

and the clergy, of the podesta and the townsmen, finally of the university of
Bologna, arrived in Rome and demanded from the Sovereign Pontiff the
opening of St Dominic’s cause.33 On 13th July a pontifical mandate nomin¬
ated three commissioners for the inquiry in Bologna and indicated that the
process of canonization had begun.36

The latter proceeded in accordance with the law of the time.3? The
inquiry was made successively in Bologna and in the Midi of France. It
opened on the anniversary day of Dominic’s death. At Bologna, a promoter,
or ‘procurator’ of the cause had been appointed by the prior and the brethren
of St Nicholas, the Preacher Philip of Vercelli.38 From 6th to 13th August,
he presented to the commissioners appointed by Gregor)' IX—Master
Tancred, Archdeacon of Bologna; Friar Thomas, Prior of Santa Maria di
Reno; and Friar Palmerio, Canon of Campagnola3^.—the witnesses he had
chosen. They gave their evidence at length, sometimes taking an entire day.
They are all known to us, for we have often met them at the side of their
Master: the prior of St Nicholas, Ventura of Verona; Guillaume de
Montferrat, the Prior of Padua, Amizo di Milano; Buonviso of Piacenza;
John of Spain or of Navarre; the Procurator of Bologna, Rodolfo; and the
Provincial of Lombardy, Stefano; Paul of Venice and Frogier di Penna.
Directed to some extent by a questionnaire drawn up by the promoter on
the eve of the first hearing, and then added to each day, these depositions
have preserved a frank spontaneity which permeates the reports which the
notaries have left us. Men connected with government or experienced
preachers, the witnesses of Bologna had penetrated deeply into the spirit of
the founder. Their informed and sober depositions are of incomparable
value and history owes much to them.4o
Having finished their task in Bologna by the Assumption, the Pope’s
commissioners, on 19th August, delegated their powers to subcommissioners
in Toulouse.4i The latter, through the intermediary of the prior and of a
brother of Prouille, of the prior and a canon of St Antonin of Panders, in
their turn interrogated a long series of witnesses in the last two centres. The
investigation had been prepared from Bologna by the sending of a list of
 CANONIZATION 387

twenty-five questions, twenty-five virtues or traits which, according to the

results of the Bologna inquiry, characterized Dominic’s sanctity fairly
clearly.42 The witnesses of the Midi, to the number of twenty-five, confined
themselves generally to confirming the terms of this list. This was clearly
the case with the some three hundred supplementary witnesses who con¬
firmed the depositions as a whole by adding their signature. Moreover,
the memories that were evoked after twenty or twenty-five years were
beginning to become blurred. This evidence, however, had its value—that
of a witness like Guillaume II Peyronnet, Abbot of St Paul of Narbonne,
from its grave and personal tone, or, more humble but none the less
valuable, those of Guillaumette the wife of Elie Martin, and of Becede,
the nun of Sainte Croix.43 They are known to us from the report which the
sub-commissioners sent to their superiors in Bologna.
To all these documents, duly authenticated and transmitted to Rome,
there was added a report of the miracles attributed to St Dominic, which
was put together in Bologna in the second part of the year. Certain of these
miracles went back to his lifetime; others dated from the translation.44 The
file thus constituted enabled judgements to be passed on the individual
incidents. The process took place in the first half oi 1234.
In July of that same year, Gregory IX gave his final verdict in a con¬
sistory held at Rieti. The account of the miracles which were considered as
authentic was solemnly read, in the presence of the Pope and of his
cardinals.45 The Pope then proclaimed the sanctity of the founder, notified
his insertion in the calendar of the saints, and fixed on £th August, one day
before the anniversary of his death, the date of celebration of the feast.46
The Chancellery immediately issued an encyclical bull.47 Copies of it were
sent to the principal houses of the order. 48 Friar Raymond of Penafort and
Friar Godefroid, present at the Curia, respectively announced the news to
Jordan of Saxony and to the convent of Strasbourg where Jordan happened
to have just arrived. From St Agnes of Bologna, Diana in her turn let Jordan
know. Clearly the news was circulating speedily on all sides. It arrived at the
right time, for the feast of the new saint could be celebrated from its first
year in the greater part of the order.49 Shortly afterwards Jordan issued an
encyclical to the order, in which he recounted the translation which was the

source of the great event.so

The bull of Gregory IX is disappointing at a first reading. Drawn up in an
oratorical style, with frequent Biblical allegories, it only takes on a personal
and concrete turn in the final paragraphs in which the Pope recalls the deep
intimacy which bound him to the Preacher while he himself was fulfilling a
less exalted charge, the support and edification he had found in the charm
of his friendship. However, when one takes up the text, one can discover in
it under the allegory drawn from Zachary,si a vast historical fresco. The
Head of the Church, turning his eyes towards the vicissitudes of the
 388 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE

evangelization of the world, saw it pass through four stages, under four
successive teams of apostles who restored the Church’s forward march as
soon as it began to go astray or fail. First came the converting kings and
martyrs; then St Benedict with his monks; St Bernard with the order of
Citeaux and of Flora; finally, at the eleventh hour, when the day was
already declining towards evening, the more lightly-armed legions of the
Preachers and the Minors, at the head of whom Dominic walked with St
Francis. We are accustomed to this vision of the gradual growth of Christian
development in which the advent of the mendicant orders constitutes one of
the decisive turning-points. In 1206, in 1214, even in 1221 at the death of
St Dominic,52 no one then had a clear idea of it. The all-important event of
the period still remained, in the eyes of the popes as in those of the simple
faithful, the coming of the Cistercians. In 1234, on the other hand, the
Church had become aware, at the top as also among the people, of the
decisive importance of the apostolic orders, and of the historical dimensions
of the Order of Preachers.
What constituted its importance was the ‘rule of the apostles’, which
Dominic, on the evidence of Gregory IX, had succeeded in inscribing in his
religious society in its entirety, after having written it in the book of his life.
At the beginning of the century, in Osma, he had discovered no more than a
part ol it, that of the community of life and of canonical prayer. In 1 206 he
had conceived it in its entirety and, through it, had soon reached the heights
of sanctity, that is, ol love of God and his neighbour. ‘A man of the Gospel,
following the traces of his Saviour , of whom he spoke to all who were
willing to listen, without interrupting the conversation he was holding with
him in his heart, he truly pursued in the measure of his capacity the preaching
ol Jesus Christ upon earth. In his eyes, however, it was not enough to bring
about this evangelical attitude in himself. He wanted to give it a permanent
place in the institutions of the Church, under the form which it seemed to
him the need of souls demanded at the time. There began the difficulty,
since, for a long time now, this form of apostolic life, compromised by too
many errors or schisms, seemed to be working against the supernatural
community of life of Christians. Dominic needed greater foresight, energy
and sanctity for carrying out the second part of his task. The bull of 3rd
July, 1234 is the proof of his success. By this time the Church was aware of
the privileged place he occupied in the course of her own history and this
fact justified his canonization.

This indeed is the praise that should be freely given to Dominic. His work
in the Church is not only the most extensive document we have on him, it
is his ‘letter of recommendation’, his sanctity, his glory. For Dominic is a
man of the Church and is defined by his work and place in the Church’s
history. It is remarkable that the first lines of his biography evoke the figure
 CANONIZATION

of a prelate Diego, Bishop of Osma, in whose orbit he would reach

tuiity and that his first steps as a scholar, while he was preparing himself
or the clerical state, were made under the tutelage of an archdeacon uncle
in the future everything in him was of the Church: his costume, his
common life, his liturgical prayer, his preoccupations, his joys. He was the
friend of priests and religious, and only completely expanded in their
company. Thus he gave them the best of his heart, loved to preach to them
or to tell them his secrets. If it was necessary to correct their faults
he wanted his brethren to do so with humility, taking good care not to
speak against heaven’, i.e. publicly to belittle the authorities of the Church,
in order not to scandalize the clergy. He was completely at ease in canon law
and knew how to make use of the system of papal bulls at the proper moment.
Thus the first glance he gave at the vast world was the true glance of a
priest, that of a man who believes himself responsible for the salvation of
others at the same time as for his own and feels like a wound in his own
flesh all the blows that he sees falling on the body of the Church. This
suffering made him clearsighted and enlarged his horizon to the utmost
limits. By the time he had reached middle age, he had a complete vision of
the Church, which went beyond the frontiers of Europe, the frontiers of
Christendom. Similarly his gaze embraced in its tender concern the whole
of Christian geography, in its depths it included the entire social edifice of
the Church. In depth as in width he discerned the weaknesses and what was
lacking, and sought the means to apply a remedy. He did this primarily by
the gift of his own person and then by that of an institution which was to
provide a solution for the greatest of these crises, that of the ministry of
souls and preaching, whose position he permanently modified in Christian
society and in the hierarchy.
Was it his evangelism which made him discover what was lacking in the
Church and the remedy for it ? Was it his love of the Church which made
him appreciative of the renewal of life which apostolic evangelism could
bring? It was both at the same time. St Francis looked at the Gospel as a
layman, discovering in it an overwhelming emotion, the appeal that Jesus
Christ addresses to every man who comes into this world. Dominic looked
at it as a priest. In his eyes the programme was one and the same, the inspira¬
tion both clerical and evangelical. He knew that he was united in will with
the apostles, with the primitive community of the Twelve, and sought by
what means he could make response in this present reign of Pope Innocent
or Pope Honorius to the watchword that he felt was addressed to himself
as much as to all the clergy of his time—‘Go, teach all nations. . . .’ We
should be gravely mistaken if in fact we thought that Dominic’s love for the
Church was only that of a man for the institution in which he was born,
which had nourished and fashioned him and invested him with its joy. When
he suffered from the spirit of sect and of schism, from the original
 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE
39°
anti-clericalism of the Waldenses or Catharists on every side, it was not only
because he saw the hierarchic society to which he had given his life despised.
It was because a slur was being cast on the unanimous community which, by
the disposition of Christ, ‘one should have as mother if one wants to have
God as father’, an extension down to his own time of the primitive com¬
munity in which they had only one heart and one soul, and where all was in
common among believers, in the radiance of the preaching and prayer of the
apostles.
Thus the deepest source of his inspiration was not his love of the Church,
or even his evangelism, but, as was the case for the apostles, his love of
Christ Jesus. There are many forms of evangelism as there are many snares
in it. Among his contemporaries many were satisfied with an evangelism in
attitude, on the level of the imagination: bare feet, material mendicancy,
an austere leanness of body, a negative separation which condemned en bloc
the whole world, beginning with the clerical hierarchy. Dominic, passing
over details which depended on an exegesis which is today partiallv out of
date, discovered the permanent values of this evangelism, the abandonment
to Providence, the attachment to revelation and above all the imitation of
love for the Saviour.
This was the root of his sanctity. What did he do in fact along the road
when he remained behind his companions ‘to meditate on his Saviour;’S3
when he spent long nights in adoration, in contemplation, in intercession
before the Crucified to whom he united himself by his cruel penances ; when
he offered with an ardour which he loved to excite also among his brethren
the sacrifice of liturgical praise or the little office of the Blessed Virgin ;54
when, above all, he offered, frequently moved to tears, the sacrifice of the
Redeemer, whose Body he then received as nourishment and whose Blood
as drink ? What did he do if it were not to turn towards God ‘through Jesus
Christ our Lord’ ? When day came and he went in quest of the sinners for
whom he had prayed with such intensity in the night that he cried out,
wounding his bare feet on the stones of the road, begging his bread as he
went, and taking care to carry nothing with him but the Gospel of St
Matthew or the Epistles of St Paul, what did he do in preaching the kingdom
of God, abandonment to Providence, conversion and mutual love, but unite
himself to God in accordance with the ways of the Gospel by identification
with Christ, the first Preacher? Jesus fashioned St Dominic by giving him a
particularly touching aspect of his features to reproduce that of the Master
of Galilee saving men by enlightening them with the light of truth before
redeeming them with his crucifixion.
Because it was divine action, it neither deformed nor limited the one
whom it influenced, but on the contrary raised his personality to its highest
point. The cult of truth sets free and purifies. The first trait of Dominic’s
sanctity is that he is very completely himself. Jordan has emphasized
 CANONIZATION ^

the simplicity of his bearing ‘which made him dear to all’.55 The great
purity of his morals was the basis of this simplicity. He could give him-
self whohy to all, to the ministry of women as to that of men, because
the delicacy of his chastity had set him completely free in such matters. His
mortification, his poverty, his humility had similarly set him free. He could
make himself all things to all men and, when he transmitted the revelation
o the Master, be merely an organ of the Holy Spirit.
He had a natural liking for doctrine. As a priest, he benefited by the
intellectual movement which for a century past had been developing in the
Church. If he had not already been won to theological learning during his
own studies, he would certainly have become so in the course of his
interminable contests with the heterodox. The rigidity of the methods of
interpreting the Bible which theology brought into focus at this time,
seemed to him indispensable. He realized what they had to offer and veij
soon devoted himself to procuring the benefit of them for his sons, under
their most effective form, that which could be acquired at the university of
Paris; then he sought to procure this advantage for others through his sons.
It is in this sense that his institution would renew not merely preaching in
the Church, but the teaching of theology and its diffusion at all the stages of
Christian society.
It is certain that he did not search for the truth solely to direct his life in a
piactical way or to learn to instruct others, but primarily to contemplate
it in itself. The clear descriptions he gave of his interior life are indeed
less eloquent than the extent of his meditation. The truth he learnt and
contemplated was the privileged means of discovering God and uniting
himself to him. His contemplation, however, could not remain shut up
within itself. It had to find expression.
Undeniably, he was born to be a Preacher. He had the temperament for it.
Simple, without inhibitions, generous, heroic, he naturally gave the best of
himself. Moreover he had that liveliness of imagination that enabled him to
see without difficulty the magnitude of what he was describing, whether
deserving of praise or blame, and to give his words a spontaneous lyricism,
a dramatic influence which made him a great orator. If he made his hearers
weep, it was because he also was deeply moved, because he was convinced,
and because he was speaking of that to which he had given his life. Then
again it was because he loved the men to whom he was preaching.
With the love of his neighbour, we come to the deep springs of his
temperament. It was a supernatural love, no doubt, but grafted on a
spontaneous feeling, an inclination of the heart. There are spiritual people
who yet remain self-centred and take others into their embrace only in a
general love, a reflection of the love Christ bears them. Dominic loved them
for themselves through natural impulse. He thought of them before he knew
them, he sought them out, their wretchedness or their failures made him
 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE
3.92
suffer too. His countenance, ordinarily serene, was troubled as soon as he
discovered such wretchedness or imagined it. It was the sign of a sensitivity
all the more easy to move, in that it retained its freshness, being in some
sort kept in reserve by his silence, the austerity of his penance and the
recollection arising from his contemplation.
This love, however, was not sentimental. How magnificent is Dominic’s
character—a man for whom love was primarily a matter of willing. He
willed the salvation of those whom he loved, of all those whom he met.
Their temporal salvation he willed too, independently of all religious
perspective, as at times when he offered himself for sale to buy back a
captive, when he obtained some cure or the removal of some great danger.
But he could not forget that the principal peril of men on earth is that of
their destiny, on the brink of eternity: the peril of error which makes the
heart and practice of life go astray, far from true happiness; the peril of the
will which fails and does not achieve what the spirit desires. To remove
these perils from his neighbour, Dominic was ready for any sacrifice. If he
could not convince by words, he would at least convince by deeds. If he
could not move them by his acts, he would reach souls by the grace of God,
the gift of which he sought by uniting himself to the Cross of Christ in
extreme penance, practising mortification in drinking, eating and lying down
to sleep, the flagellations of the night and the unending vigils of intercession.
The Holy Spirit must surely speak more effectively through his lips when he
had succeeded in purifying, by his reparation, what still formed an obstacle
in him to the divine influence. Dominic, moreover, loved sufficiently to
know how to be exacting. He set forth the truth which calls for and claims
obedience. He gave the counsels which urge obedience. He commanded as
soon as he had authority.
His strong-mindedness on this point was unparalleled. He never, or
scarcely ever, went back on a decision taken after ripe reflection. Perhaps
it was on that account that he took a long time to determine his plans, to
take the decisions which seemed to be the right ones, to proceed to action.
But what vigour, then, in the realization! Whether he was dealing with
individuals or institutions, he drove them to the limits of their possibilities.
No relaxation on this point. His love was too great to be satisfied with
mediocrity. He lifted above themselves those who came to him and confided
in him. This was not attachment to God, to the Church, or to his own ideas,
but primarily a love of those whom he was urging in this way. His gentleness,
which was very real, did not consist in his eyes in the watering down
of an ideal which Christ had placed too high when he said, ‘Be perfect
as the heavenly Father is perfect’; it was no act of mercy to diminish
or obscure that ideal. He demanded of others what he willed for himself, to
go beyond the immediate task at every moment by our aspirations and our
responsiveness, because God is calling us and urging us ever higher than the
 CANONIZATION ^

task of the moment. He manifested his compassion in ‘consoling’, that is,

in renewing the strength of those whom he guided, through his preaching!
his direction and the tender affection with which he infused his gestures and
his words.
Thus he had a keen sense of the government of men. He reserved to
himself the fulness of authority as soon as it was a question of execution: the
right to give commands which claimed a total obedience, to dispense from
a thing as he understood it, to confirm all subordinate authority, to receive
personally the profession of all his religious. The community of life and,
in a certain sense, the democratic inspiration of his order in no wise
diminished the fulness of his authority in the realization of the common task.
But for determining this task, fixing the principles and even its details,
he relied on the community.
This instinctive trust was a complementary aspect of his love of men.
One natuially judges others after one’s own intimate experience. His
fundamental goodwill, his purity, his generosity, were at the root of his
kindliness. Very reserved in childhood and youth, he opened his heart more
freely as his life advanced, to his brethren, to his friends, even to his
adversaries. Detachment, which had become second nature, was no longer
an obstacle to the spontaneity of his abandonment. His brethren preserved
of him the memory of a countenance lighted up with kindness and ‘with a
great joy’, 56 the echo of the serene poise of his interior self and his confident
affection. Neither the overwork of the ministry, nor the weight of govern¬
ment and of disappointments, nor the general cares of the Church which he
shared on his own plane, could efface this expression of joy, ‘which easily
won him the affection of all’. 57 He reserved for the night his tears of penance
over the sinful world, but the day brought him back in the midst of his
brethren, full of joy. Illness itself could not alter his smile.
His generosity, his devotedness, his sensitivity, that persistent joy which
radiated over his face, producing the light over his eyes and brow that Sister
Cecilia noticed, his fraternal gaiety, to use Jordan’s expression, the fruit of
a pure and loving soul, made him loved and greatly loved. He was loved
from Osma days in the cloister; during the twelve years in the Narbonensis,
by those who came in contact with him; then by his brethren, his familiars,
the innumerable people who owed him debts of gratitude, in Rome and in
Bologna. It was an affection mingled with trust, with gratitude, with
tenderness, with veneration, finally with that something undefinably touch¬
ing which the presence of a personality favoured by God, absolutely simple
and sincere and wholly given, excites in the human heart. Of this tender
veneration, the depositions of 1233 are not the only document. A prayer
like the responsory 0 spem miram . . . which the Preachers still continue to
sing is an effort to express this. No one, however, has better expressed it
than the saint’s successor, Jordan of Saxony, well fitted to understand him
 IN MEDIO ECCLESIAE
394
because he was himself a very great Preacher and a holy religious, in the
prayer he composed after writing his Libellus, at the time of the canoniza¬
tion. s8 At the same time this composition recalls one after the other the
great events of his life, which will throw upon his countenance a series of
fleeting lights, and will awaken in our hearts the memory of what St
Dominic was, and attract us to him.

Most holy priest of God, glorious confessor, eminent preacher, blessed Dominic,
chosen man of the Lord, in your lifetime you were among all others the subject
of God’s kindness and chosen favour on account of your life, made
glorious through its miracles and doctrine, and now we rejoice to have you as
our special intercessor with the Lord God. It is to you, whom I venerate above
all the saints, all the elect of God, it is to you that I cry from the depths of this
vale of wretchedness. Come to the help, O best of fathers, come to the help,
I beg of you, O merciful one, of my sinful soul, wholly lacking in graces and
virtues, weighed down with wretchedness, wrapped in the bonds of vice and of
sin. Help it in its distress and its misfortune. . . .
Through the power of your merits and the effectiveness of your good prayers,
deign to give it life and health and to fill it to the brim with abundance of your
blessings. I know, indeed I am certain, that you can do so. I have confidence that
in your great charity you will do so. I hope from the deep familiar friendship
that you have always had with Jesus Christ, your beloved chosen among a
thousand, that he will not refuse you this and that you will obtain from your
Lord and your friend all you please. Loved in such a way,, could he refuse any¬
thing to him whom he loves ?

For it is you who, in the flower of your youth, vowed your virginity to the
beauty of the spouse of virgins.
You who consecrated your soul, clad in the whiteness of holy baptism and
enriched with the Holy Spirit, to the most chaste lover of virgins.
Who offered your body as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God.
Who, fashioned by God’s discipline and guidance, gave yourself wholly to him.
Who, early instructed in regular discipline, formed in your heart paths of ascent
to God.
Who, rising from strength to strength, progressed unremittingly from what was
good to what was better.
Who, once entered on the path of perfection, abandoned all and naked followed
the naked Christ, preferring to amass treasures in heaven.
Who, with even greater effort, renounced yourself, and carrying your cross
bravely, applied yourself to following the traces of the only true guide, our
Redeemer.
You who, inflamed with the zeal of God and with a supernatural ardour, because
of your boundless charity and the fervour of a vehement spirit, consecrated
yourself wholly by the vow of perpetual poverty to apostolic observance and
evangelical preaching and, for this great work, through a high inspiration of
Providence, instituted the order of Friars Preachers.
 CANONIZATION
39 S
You who, throughout the universe, made the glorious light of your merits and
example shine upon God’s holy Church.
Who, delivered from the prison of the flesh, rose up to the court of heaven.
Who, finally, in the vesture of your first garment of innocence, have won a place
near to our Lord, there to be our advocate.
O come then to my help, I beg of you, come to the help of all those who are
dear to me. You who so ardently desired the salvation of the human race, come
to the help of clergy and people, of virgins and devout women. After the Blessed
Virgin, our Queen, you are my dear hope, my comfort, my special refuge. Look
kindly upon me and come to my help. It is with you alone that I take refuge;
before you alone that I still dare to present myself; I prostrate myself at your feet
and, a suppliant, I invoke you, my patron. I implore you, I recommend myself to
you, wholly abandoned as I am. Deign to receive me with kindness, to guard me,
to protect me, to help me, and to make me find again, through your intercession,
that grace of God, the object of my desires. Through you may mercy be shown to
me; may I deserve to obtain the remedy for the ills of the present life and the
salvation of my soul for the life to come.
Yes, best of Masters, let it be thus I beg of you, illustrious guide, our foster-
father, blessed Dominic. I pray you assist us in all our needs—be for us truly a
Dominic, vigilant guardian of the Lord’s flock. Guard us always and do not
cease to govern those who have been entrusted to you. Make us pure and, when
we are purified, recommend us to God. Then, after this exile, present us again
with joy to the Lord of blessing, to your beloved, to the all-powerful Son of God,
Jesus Christ, our Saviour, to whom alone belong honour, praise, glory, in
company with the glorious Virgin Mary and of the whole court of the citizens of
heaven, throughout the centuries to come and for all eternity.
APPENDICES
 Appendix I

EXCAVATIONS, CONSTRUCTIONS AND RESTORATIONS

IN CALERUEGA (1992—1999)

The excavations undertaken in 1992—1999 into the erection of buildings around

four sides of the torreon went down to 4 and £ yards in depth. Not many new
facts were discovered. Doubtless the torreon was always a separate building (cf.
supra ch. 1, n. 34) as was the custom for ‘keeps’ in the tenth and eleventh centuries
(cf. supra, ch. 1, n. 41). It is possible, however, that earlier buildings have dis¬
appeared without leaving any trace because their foundations were shallow, as is
the case for the torreon (Carro, Caleruega II, 47).
The demolitions carried out in 1992, on the other hand, have revealed several
interesting facts about the sisters’ building. The rough plaster on the faqade of the
building known as the vicariate along one side of the village square concealed a
large gothic doorway towards the far left. This doorway is identical in its arched
form and dimensions with the nuns’ choir, a former church built by Alfonso the
Wise in 1266 (Rodrigo, 331). A small gothic double window exists below the
roof, slightly to the left of the gothic doorway. On the wall which terminates the
building to the right of the facade, beneath the gable, two gothic double windows
have been found, of which one has been retained. These windows prove by their
position that the first storey of the vicariate went right up to the top of the house.
There were no internal partition walls. Thus it formed a large room 46 yards long,
covered by the roof itself, on which in 1992 remains of panelling could still be
seen (Carro, Caleruega, I, 7 and also Pelaez, 81). No trace of any other windows
besides the two large ones of the gable and the small one to the left of the door
is left in the fa£ade. It is possible windows might be found on the opposite facade
which looks on to the sisters’ cloister. This does not appear to have been investi¬
gated .
O

At right angles to the vicariate, and erected adjacent to it, the ‘palace likewise
consists of a high gothic room of about 94 yards, lighted on the side which looks
out on the torreon by seven fine gothic windows. An eighth window like the others,
and also like that found at the extremity of the vicariate, provides daylight for the
western end of the room. Some remains of doors between the vicariate and the
palace, and between the vicariate and the sisters’ cloister, have been found. To the
left of the eighth window, a third room goes off at right angles to the palace. It is
known as the novitiate. A large gothic doorway leads from the palace to this room,
extending considerably above the storey which at present cuts the height of the
novitiate into two. The division into two storeys is thus later than this thirteenth-
century doorway. Again, it must have been a very lofty room.
The orientation of the vicariate is south-north; that of the palace, east-west; of
the novitiate north-south. These three buildings form, with the sisters’ choir, i.e.
 400 APPENDIX I

the chapel of Alfonso the Wise, a perfect square. A cloister was built inside this
square in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The part which is continuous with
the sisters’ choir on the fourth side was reconstructed in the seventeenth century,
the date at which a monumental portress’s lodge was erected between the vicariate
and the choir. To what date should any of the three large rooms or part of this
be assigned? In view of the fine workmanship of the doors and gothic windows,
they can only belong to the thirteenth century. As to the particular part or parts
of that century, several dates are possible.
Carro (Caleruega, II, $i) would like to identify the vicariate with the hospice
mentioned in two documents of 1237 and 1248—Martinez, nos. II and CCXVII.
The hospice was explicitly called the hospice of the chapel of St Dominic; it was
situated next to it. Now the chapel was constructed by the people of Caleruega
shortly after the saint’s canonization (July, 1234) on the site occupied by the high
altar of the basilica, i.e. $o yards from the vicariate. Identification of hospice and
vicariate is thus possible from the point of view of site. It does not seem so from
the point of view of the building itself, for the following reason. After 1234 the
numbers of pilgrims necessitated the erection of the hospice, particularly for
providing shelter for the poor and sick. It was obviously built through the generosity
oi the people of the neighbourhood and of the more wealthy pilgrims. The
ownership and administration of the chapel and hospice belonged to the diocese,
i.e. to the bishop and his chapter (Martinez, no. CCXVII). They took care to
consolidate the foundation by purchasing land and property with the alms received.
Thus in 1248 they purchased from Doha Urraca Garcia (d’Aza) one of her
Caleruega estates for the maintenance of the church, the hospice and those who
served it (Martinez, no. CCXVII). It may be questioned whether the gifts made
would have also allowed them to erect such a fine building as that of the vicariate,
particularly if the palace and novitiate are added to the building, as Carro rightly
suggests. The principal argument, however, against identification of the hospice
with the vicariate is the close analogy of the latter’s gothic doorway with that of
the conventual church of 1 266. These two buildings must be contemporary.
The name of ‘palace’ given to the second room suggests a feudal construction
prior to 1266. Is this name, however, really old? It is only in the modern period
that it is seen to appear in an account of the identification of the buildings made in
I73f by a local architect (Carro, Caleruega, II, 44; on this account see Pelaez 73,
n. 1). The medieval documents do not mention it. It is perhaps an anachronism
to imagine the construction ot a ‘palace’ in Caleruega in the thirteenth century, a
fortiori in the twelfth century. Along these lines anything might be imagined—
for instance, that in the middle of the thirteenth century," Don Fernando ^Garcia,
who held the overlordship of Caleruega now become hereditary, had these gothic
buildings constructed before pledging them to the Order of Santiago for 20,000
maravedis, as well as Caleruega and all his estates situated to the north of the
Duero (Martinez, no. CCXIX). Sheer hypothesis. The following facts make such a
supposition impossible.
In the course of the thirteenth century, if one relies on the documents, a single
phase of construction in Caleruega is attested, prepared for by large transfers of
property—the period inaugurated in 1266, when Alfonso the Wise had the sisters’
 APPENDIX I 40 I

convent built. One or other of the rooms was certainly built at this date and, in
particular, the church. Now the relationship between the doors of the vicariate
and the church and between the windows of the palace and those of the vicariate,
the very perfection of the square which the three rooms form with the church,
seem to prove that the whole set of buildings was constructed at the same time by
the King of Castile. The disposition of the rooms itself confirms these indications.
It will be noticed in fact that the room of the first storey of the vicariate, with the
light entering at the end, is very suitable for the installation of a dormitory of
] egular form. A staircase starting from the left end could lead directly into the
choir of the church, according to the customary arrangement of monastic houses
in the West. This staircase would probably disappear in the seventeenth century
when the monumental doorway was constructed. The palace and the room at right
angles are in turn suited for a refectory and a chapter room. It thus seems probable
to us that what are named vicariate, palace and novitiate were built at the same
time as the choir to serve as buildings of regular life for the royal convent of
Caleruega from 1266 onwards.
In conclusion, a few indications collected on the site and completed by the
kindness of P. Carro, are given on the transformations which these venerable
remains have undergone. The torreon has been topped with battlements—an
unfortunate innovation. Battlements are not suitable for a keep of the first feudal
age such as the torreon (cf. supra ch. 1, n. 41). The wooden gallery it possessed
excluded battlements whose place it took. No trace of plaster or of any coat
of paint was there to justify the supposition that the masonry on the inside of the
torreon was hidden in Saint Dominic’s time; it is therefore a pity that the virile and
military character of these interior walls should have been weakened by covering
them with plaster, a process which has been begun. The rather crude gothic
window which stood over the entrance doorway has been removed and replaced by
a semi-circular arch. The base of the torreon, uncovered to the extent of nearly 2
yards in depth by the levelling of the patio, has been surrounded by a flight of
three steep stone steps which consolidates it and protects the foundations against
damp. Finally the facade has been decorated with the arms of the Guzman and the
Aza, though under rather late forms. Although indeed there are in this way some
regrets to express on these transformations from the point of view of history (the
poets for their part will regret the storks of the torreon, permanently dislodged by
the battlements), it must be added that the new keep is impressive and satisfactorily
evokes the origins of Caleruega and of St Dominic.
Five or six yards to the north of the torroen the ‘cave of the ancestress’ was still
in its primitive state in 19^2. It was a subterranean cave 2 yards by 7 yards dug
out of the earth at a depth of p yards. Castilian clay formed the floor, roof, the
walls at either end, the stairway of about thirty steps by which one went down
into it. Two semi-circular arches of stone, 28 inches in width, supported on
small lateral walls, strengthened the roof (a third, median arch seems to have
disappeared). To consolidate the roof which was now to be under the foundations
of one of the new buildings, it has been covered with bricks. The two extremities
have been walled up. The rest of the cave is intact at the moment but the cellar
has been transformed into a chapel, unfortunately by covering the floor, walls,
40 2 APPENDIX I

staircase and altar with marble, and furnishing it pretentiously. Scarcely anything
now remains of this witness to the past, which it is, moreover, impossible to date.
The gothic room on the first floor of the vicariate, where some good cells have
been established, has not been reconstructed. The rediscovered gothic doorway has,
however, been given a place of honour and one of the two windows of the gable.
In 1956 there was still a question of re-establishing the seven gothic windows of
the palace. In this way one of the finest vestiges of the thirteenth century in
Caleruega would be reconstructed.
By constructing three detached buildings, the torreon has been enclosed within
a large courtyard and a convent built of more than a hundred cells. The buildings
are not without distinction. So far they are not very Dominican for they do not
possess a choir, only an oratory; this would be more suitable for Loyola than
for Caleruega. It is possible that it is intended to install the choir in the handsome
restored gothic room of the palace. If that proves to be so, St Dominic will not fail
often to return among his brethren of Caleruega and to be moved to the shedding
of tears, as formerly, on hearing their psalmody. There is no longer any question
of restoring the room of the ‘palace’ with its seven gothic windows, which is,
however, one of the finest survivals of the thirteenth century in Caleruega. A
rectangular choir and three blocks of buildings, however, have been constructed
opposite, enclosing the torreon in the centre of a square courtyard. The whole
provides a convent of about a hundred rooms without any character, except perhaps
a certain austerity.
 Appendix II

THE FAMILY OF ST DOMINIC

The Castilian preacher Rodrigo de Cerrato who visited Caleruega shortly after
1 2 7° gave the following description of St Dominic’s father—vir venerabilis et dives in
populo suo (Rodrigo, no. 2), ‘honourable and rich among the people of his village’.
Taking into account the superlative which seems indicated by the expression ‘among
the people of his village’, should the translation be ‘the rich man of his village’ or
ricohombre of his village ? The characteristic indicated by the first translation, which
is a probable one, does not exclude that expressed by the other; on the contrary it
implies it. At this period the lord of a place was the principal landowner in it. In
any event the question of the rica bombria or nobility of St Dominic’s father and of
his relations with the noble families of Caleruega especially the Aza of Villamayor
and, secondly, the Guzman (cf. supra, p. 111), must be examined.
A Spanish tradition, however, affirms that Felix, St Dominic’s father, was a
Guzman and his mother, Jane, a d’Aza. This tradition is not, as has often been said,
an invention of the sixteenth century, a period of unparalleled greatness in Spain
in which the historiography of the great institutions, churches, orders, royalty and
nobility sought titles everywhere and to this end left no stone unturned without
sufficient precautions. The tradition doubtless spread with printing from the
sixteenth century onwards;1 but it is found in the very middle of the fifteenth
century,2 and even in the first decades of that century, when Pedro de Guzman,
majordomo of Luis de Guzman, Grand Master of the military order of Calatrava
(1407-1414 to 1443), by order of his superior made a pilgrimage to Bologna to the
tomb of St Dominic, a member of their family.3 It is believed to go even further
back still.4 These first traces (first so far as our present information is concerned)
do not give this information as a discovery, but as a fact already known. Nothing,
indeed, justifies the supposition that it sprang from the documents of the archives
of Caleruega, on which modern and contemporary historians base themselves.
For the deeds of foundation of the convent of the Sisters of Caleruega from 1266
to 1272 lend a third notable point of support to the Spanish tradition. The fact that
more than twenty great lords abandoned their rights in honour of St Dominic is not
in itself a proof of any relationship. They did so at the request of the king and under
his obvious pressure.5 The terms which some of them used should, however, be
carefully considered. The majority use a succinct formula, completely stereotyped,
which conceals the personal circumstances. They abandon only a limited advantage
their divisa, sign of the right of behetria or naturaleza. They give this to the king,
for the monastery the king is founding, in conformity with the privilege established
for the sisters.6 Two of them, however, use a different formula, carefully circum¬
stantial. It was doubtless composed by the first to use it in 1266, don Juan Perez,
404 APPENDIX II

son of don Pedro Nunez de Guzman and dona Urraca Garcia de Villamayor;7
shortly afterwards it served Diego Garcia, son of don Garci Fernandez de Villamayor
and dona Mayor Arrias, brother of dona Urraca Garcia.8 The same formula was
perhaps found in one or other of the six charters of donation9, now no longer
extant, of don Juan Garcia de Villamayor, brother of Diego Garcia; then in the
donation of 1271 of don Gil Gomez, lord of Roa, Aza, Iscar, etc., their cousin.10
These four ricos-hombres gave much more than a right of divisa. They enumerate
hereditary property, vassals and all the other rights they possess, in whatever
manner they hold them or can hold them—in Caleruega for the first three, in
Iscar for the fourth. Each one then sets forth the motive of his donation—‘for the
honour of God and of Saint Mary, and for the naturaleza and special devotion they
Caleruega renounce their rights of behetria it is precisely this feudal meaning which
is intended.
In itself the word designates a quality which derives from one’s birth. In modern
Spanish its meanings are manifold.11 In the thirteenth century the most widespread
meaning in legal documents is connected with behetria. Naturaleza is that quality of
birth which gives to all the members of a certain lineage the right to be chosen as
lord of a village. There is no doubt that in the charters by which the diviseros of
Caleruega renounce their rights of behetria it is precisely this feudal meaning
which is intended.
The feudal ‘connaturality’ that the ricos-hombres thus affirm with St Dominic can
come from two sources: he is their ‘co-natural’ feudally either as member of the
village or as member of the lineage of behetria. Several data seem to exclude the
first term of the alternative. The charters do not mention the question of the
village. Don Gil Gomez, lord of Roa, moreover, when he drew up his charter and
spoke of naturaleza had no longer any rights in the village; he had abandoned them
more than a year earlier.12 Don Juan Garcia, finally, drawing attention to his gran
naturaleza,13 could not refer to a quality connected with the village: such a quality
has no potentiality for being either more or less great. Thus the other alternative is
the only one possible. The natural quality which St Dominic shares with the lords
of Caleruega is the community of lineage, the relationship of blood. 14
If that is really the case, the evidence provided by the charters of the thirteenth
century goes hand in hand with the Spanish tradition, the trace of which we have
been able to follow, by working backwards, to the fourteenth century. Even if it
could be established that the two series of documents are not independent and that
the Spanish tradition has issued from a particular interpretation of the naturaleza of
the charters, it would remain that at a time so close to their drawing up, when the
technical terms of the overlordship of behetria were in current use, there was no
hesitation in interpreting the term naturaleza by blood relationship. Nothing,
however, as we have said, justifies us in supposing such an interdependence between
the two series of sources. In these conditions the medieval tradition relative to
St Dominic’s family finds support in the documents of the archives of 1266, as in
the dives of Rodrigo de Cerrato, and on this count is genuinely probable.
It details in turn the information given in the charters. If we had knowledge of
these documents only, it would be impossible to know whether Dominic’s father
were of the lineage of Aza or not and whether the relationship that the Perez de
 APPENDIX II 4° S
Guzman affirmed in regard to him in 1266 did not come to them solely from their
mother, who was an Aza. The tradition, however, is formal: the relationship of
the Guzman was direct and through the paternal line. Thus the different branches
of the Guzman, who in 1266 appeared to be linked with Caleruega, had already
been united about the end of the twelfth century with the Aza family, lords of
behetria of Caleruega, through the marriage of St Dominic’s parents.
Though probable, the Guzman and Aza lineage of St Dominic, established by the
finding of a tradition which cannot be followed beyond the fifteenth century, and
by two words the interpretation of which is not categorical, is not however proved
beyond question. Other explanations, though improbable, remain possible.15 That
put forward here raises certain difficulties. Neither Jane nor Felix appear in the
contemporary Aza or Guzman documents, either under the Christian name or in
the full form. The fact is the more surprising in the case of Felix, for a considerable
number of Guzman signed the charters of Alfonso VIII, as the ricos-hombres of
Castile had to do. Accordingly a certain genealogist would like to correct the name
of Felix (which, he says, ‘is unknown in his family and even in the entire kingdom’l6)
to that of Fernando—a suggestion which is completely arbitrary. Moreover in 1131,
a ‘cousin of St Dominic’ signed a document at Caleruega bearing the quite simple
name of Domingo P^rez.1? People have likewise been astonished that the Spanish
Dominicans of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries should not have explicitly
alluded to the illustrious parentage and relationships of St Dominic. In another
order of ideas, if Felix de Guzman was indeed lord of Caleruega, he must have
lodged in the reconstructed keep, or at least in a residence for the lord adjoining.
Now the saint’s birthplace, quite clearly attested, is situated about a hundred yards
or more away from there, as far as one can judge, at the other end of the little
village of that time.18
This is a fact. The first argument in particular has some weight. At the end of the
twelfth century, however, only the ricos-hombres who followed the king signed the
royal charters.19 If St Dominic’s father had in point of fact agreed to establish
himself on the domain of Caleruega in which he possessed important estates, he
would no longer have any need to sign the royal privileges. It is possible, too, as
will be seen, that he died rather early. Moreover, the fact that the name of Felix
was rather unusual in Castile or at any rate in the Guzman family (and, moreover,
also in that of the Aza),20 gives a singular significance to one of the statements in
the charter of boundaries for Caleruega in 1272. The latter mentions in the
territory, at the boundary of Banos, a ‘land of don Felix’, adjoining the valley of
don Garcia, an Aza.21 This Felix was a rico-hombre since he was styled don. Now he
disappeared from the scene in 1266, for none of the documents of 1266—1272
mentioned him. Was not he the father of St Dominic and an important landowner
in the village? Moreover, the education of Dominic and his two brothers, who as
has been seen were clerics, presupposes for the parents a social standing above the
common.22 The existence of the rural dean uncle points in the same direction—
the dignitaries of the diocese, archdeacons and deans, in contradistinction to simple
parish priests, were still recruited at this time from the ruling feudal class.
Finally, most of St Dominic’s relations found burial, as a noble family, in a chapel
of the neighbouring monastery of San Pedro de Gumiel. The fact is certain for one
14-S.D.
 406 APPENDIX II AND NOTES

of his brothers;25 it seems clear for his father and mother;24 possible for the other
brother.25 Now this monastery chapel was also the necropolis of the Guzman in the
Middle Ages, and the patrimonial tower could be seen on the horizon only a short
distance away.26
This converging of indications is impressive. It strengthens the probability of the
Spanish tradition. The association of the immediate family of St Dominic with the
lineages of Aza and Guzman would provide the best explanation for the generosity
of the members of these two lines, especially of the descendants of don Garci
Fernandez Aza de Villamayor, established in 1248, fourteen years before the inter¬
ventions of King Alfonso X.2? A contemporary historian moreover recalls that the
Guzman, though they were Castilian lords of long standing, were not well known
until the end of the thirteenth century, and particularly the middle of the fourteenth
century, when Enrique de Trastamare, son of Leonor of Guzman, after having killed
his half-brother, Pedro the Cruel,28 mounted the throne of Castile. At the end of
the twelfth century and for a long time afterwards, there could well be relatively
simple people within this lineage, people who made no parade of the name of
Guzman. It is perhaps necessary to see in this fact, no less than in the discretion and
care for impartiality of the first Dominican hagiographer, whom the others have
simply copied, the reason for the relative uncertainty in which the identity of St
Dominic’s family has rested.

NOTES TO APPENDIX II
1. The first serious study of this tradition dates from iy86. It is to be found in Morales, IV, fos.
33 2 ro-351 vo. This valuable dissertation already makes use of the memoranda of Tafur and of the
Caleruega charters. The later literature though extensive has added scarcely anything. After the some¬
what superficial criticisms of the Bollandist Cuperus (ASS, Aug. I, 384-387), Bremond takes up the
arguments of Morales with clarity and in an eirenic spirit; Mamachi, 11-31, summarizes Bremond
before going over the whole ground again in a discourse full of bombast and abuse. Later historians,
down to Getino, Sermo ad Fratres, ASOP, XX (1932)- 79°~79G confine themselves to pruning Mamachi’s
text. Getino has the merit of citing the witnesses for the tradition prior to Morales and of pressing the
evidence of Rodrigo of Cerrato. In the interval the principal documents have been carefully editedfThe
name of Guzman appears for the first time in the Dominican breviary of iyy2. P. Juan de la Cruz is
trying to prove its legitimacy in 1 567 in his Chronica de la Orden de Predicatores.
2. Andanzas e yiajes de Pedro Tafur por diversas puntes del mundo avidos (143^-1439) ed. Madrid, 1874,
Ch. XVH relates the journey that Pedro de Guzman, ambassador of Juan II (1406-14^3), made to the
tomb of St Dominic in Bologna, because, says Tafur, ‘este bienaventurado padre fue natural de Castilla
del hnaje de Guzman de la parte de padre, e de la madre, de los de Aza’. Pedro, acting in the name of
Luis de Guzman, had the chapel decorated with the family arms—Bnbnond, 168; Mamachi 19 and 46
n. 8, after Morales, fo. 333, ro; repeated by Getino, ASOP, XX, 1932, 792. On Luis de Guzman, d.
Rades y Andrada, I, 68, ch. 2.
3. Cf. preceding note.
4- In Italy, at the end of the fourteenth century people believed in St Dominic’s nobility (‘Lascio san
Domenico il contado in Ispagna, dove era conte di Callagora [Calaroga]’; conte is the translation of
ncohombre— ncohombre de Caleruega’—Giovanne Dominici, II libro d'amore di caritd’, ed. A. Ceruti,
Bologna, 1889, 89; (for the date, cf. xxx); similarly in Spain, from the end of the thirteenth century at
least (Getino, Sermo ad Fratres, 792-793)- In the latter case it was a question of Castilian translations
which correct the Utin originals to mention this nobility (for the date of these translations cm 1290,
cf. the study of W. F. Manning, cited supra, ch. 1, n. 66). Getino, Sermo ad Fratres, 79 j, after Bremond,
103 and Mamachi, 13, cites ten lines discovered in the seventeenth century bv the General of the
Premonstratensians, Emanuel Garcias (Chronica Ord. Praem., ch. 6, no. CXII) in a manuscript which may
or may not be of the thirteenth century, where it is stated—‘su padre fue Felix, de los de Guzman’.
I his chronicle of Emanuel Garcias has never been published—Goovaerts, I, 291.
f. Cf. supra, ch. I and n. 47.
6. Martinez, charters CCXXXI, CCXXXIV, CCXXXV, etc.
7. Martinez, 30y (ch. CCXXXII, 22nd July, 1266).
8. Martinez, 304 (ch. CCXXX, without day or month; doubtless later than CCXXXIII of 2cth lulv
1266, which does not mention it). s J

9. Pellicer, fo. 48 vo had seen these charters; from them he gathered the motive for the donations
 APPENDIX II (NOTES) 407
similar To Wat nfrtT t ^ nat,uraIeza e fni,a con bienaventurado santo Domingo. This formula,
30,- ‘ L wo barters, the text of which we have, seems well authenticated. Cf. Martinez,
10. Salazar, Historic1, III, 331 and Pruebas, 663; Martinez, 324.

lenlua Tf ja.“sta’ ? Por,laPatria 0 nacion’—Sebastian de Covarrubias, Tesoro de la

lenaZ rnZ ’ Mad"d- sub. h.v. Cf. J. Corominas Dictionary critico etimologica de la
charters of TTT J’ 7™’ 19*6’. 49°; W'T CuPerus’ ASS> A^9- h 387A explained the naturaleza of the
7 y community of soil, he was asserting what it was necessary to prove
12. Martinez, 320 (ch. CCXLI, 23th July, 1270).
13. Cf. supra, n. 9.
14. Naturaleza thus here only signifies relationship indirectly through the system of behetria of which
- a technical term. Morales, fo. 340 ro had seen this clearly: ‘Naturaleza siempre quiere dezir alii en
v °ezerr° Parentesco, para que tuviessen derecho de poder tomar senor della la behetria entre parientes.
tuera del Bezerro tambien sigmficava parentesco el vocablo naturaleza.’ The Bezerro in question is the
catalogue of the behetria of Castde compiled in the fourteenth century. It is a pity that Bremond, 140,
n. 1 and Mamachi, 16, n 1 should have distorted this quotation by truncating it. They thus asserted,
without proof, that naturaleza here directly signified blood relationship.
, H^e is a sPef‘ous explanation. It is clear that the monastery of San Pedro de Gumiel, depending
both on Citeaux and on Calatrava, was the centre of the tradition relating to the cultus of the family of
St Dominic (cf supra, ch. I, II, III, III and infra, n. 23-26). It is natural that the monastery nearest to
Caleruega should have taken over this cultus, with the burial places. The most ancient document about
it which it has preserved, however, only gives to the parents of St Dominic, with the whole Dominican
tra ition, the names of Jane and Felix (cf. infra, n. 24). The first formal evidence of the Aza and Guzman
ancestries of Jane and of Felix, the only one prior to the sixteenth century, is that of Luis de Guzman,
related by Tafur (cf. supra, n. 2). Now Luis de Guzman was from 1414 onwards, Grand Master of
Caletrava, and thereby closely linked to San Pedro de Gumiel. Was it not probably he who, discovering
in Gumiel the burial places of the parents and brothers of St Dominic, by the side of those of the Guzman,
imagined the relationship ? The close connection which the charters have shown us of the Guzman with
Caleruega coming to the rescue, he no longer doubted the reality of his discovery and sent his majordomo
to decorate the Bologna tomb with the Guzman arms. The tradition was beginning its course.
The weakness of this explanation, however, is that it utilizes to the full the argument of silence and
neglects the probable interpretation of the words naturaleza and dives. Above all it clashes with the fact
that the tradition existed in Italy before the fifteenth century, thus before the intervention of Luis de
Guzman (cf. supra, n. 4).
16. Salazar, Historia, I, 89 and 348; III, 320; Mamachi, 6, no. 3 and 68, n. 3.
17. Martinez, 360 (ch. CCLXXI, 6th June, 1311). Perez, however, was the patronymic of the
Guzman in the fourteenth century.
18. The charter of Alfonso X of 26th August, 1270, speaks of ‘la Eglesia que es alii o santo Domingo
nascio’—Martinez, 16 (ch. XIII) which confirms Rodrigo, 331. A gateway to the village existed quite
close to it—Martinez, p. XIV; Carro, Caleruega, If, 63.
19. Only Alfonso X, after 123-2, established that the charters should be confirmed by the ricos-hombres
absent from the court—Bremond, 68; Mamachi, 68, n. 3.
20. Morales, fo. 341, ro, then Bremond, 67, have however, found a few noble Felixes in the archives
of Spain: fifteen in six centuries! Cf. Mamachi, 7, n, 2. A single further example in the 328 charters of
Caleruega; it is curious, moreover—a ‘Dominicus Felicis’ signs an appeal of the sisters at the convent
on 1 2th September, 1283—Martinez, 348 (ch. CCLVI1I).
21. Martinez, 23 (ch. XIX, 26th May, 1272). ‘La tierra de don Felices.’
22. Children of peasants and artisans in the twelfth century had no easy access to schools and could
not pursue lengthy courses of study; particularly not three children in the same family. Cf. Stelling—
Michaud, Vuniversite de Bologna et la penetration des droits romain et canonique en Suisse, Geneva, 1933, 1 !7
and n. 3.
23. Cf. supra, ch. 1, n. 102.
24. The inquiry of 1643 on the cultus of Jane of Aza (cf. supra, ch. 1, n. 81) mentions among other
documents an inscription, now disappeared, of the former chapel of San Pedro in the monastery of
Gumiel—Hac in sacra capilla sancti Dominici/sanctus uterque parens sistunt./llla Johanna in sancto Paulo
Penafielensi ;/ille Felix hie requiescit adhuc—Bremond, 90. Manrique, III, 283, also publishes this inscription,
which is likewise contained in the book of burials of the abbey, Pelaez, 123. The contradiction of vv. 2
and 3 (which Manrique liquidates by writing: sepulta sunt) would take the first 2 vv. back before the
transfer of the body of Jane to Penafiel (shortly after 1318). Other indications will be found in Pelaez,
122-132,
23. Immemorial tradition of the monks of Gumiel, according to Morales, 340, vo (in 1386).
26. Morales, 340, ro and Bremond, 84-86, who moreover indicate, following various authors, the
burial of some of the Guzman family precisely in the chapel of San Pedro apostol—Fr Palacios. El
Monasterio de Gumiel de Hizan panteon de los Guzmanes, in Boletln Fernan Gonzalez, XXXI (1932).
27. Charter CCXVII of 23rd February, 1248—Martinez, 281. Although there is a sale, the cession is
an act of generosity.
28. Getino, ASOP, XX 1932, 793.
 Appendix III

CASTILE IN THE EUROPEAN POLITICAL SCENE AT

THE BEGINNING OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY

The wider relations between Castile and Europe in the time of Alfonso VI and
Bernard de Sedirac1 had not only brought about fruitful exchanges in the ecclesi¬
astical order. The sovereigns had begun to turn their eyes to affairs beyond the
Pyrenees. The dynasty itself had opened out more and the marriages of Alfonso VI
with Constance de Bourgogne, then of his daughters with Henri de Chalons—whence
came the first stock of the kings of Portugal, Raymond de Bourgogne, brother of
Pope Callixtus II and father of Alfonso VII, the emperor, and Raymond de Saint
Gilles, Count of Toulouse—had brought such preoccupations well within the
orbit of his family interests.2 In the course of the thirteenth century the European
outlook of the Castilian dynasty had not disappeared, whatever was the preponder¬
ance in its preoccupations of the great work of the reconquest. Alfonso VIII, almost
as soon as the disaster of Alarcos was over and he was momentarily at peace through
a truce with the Almohades, was preoccupied with a matter which, if it had
succeeded, would have secured for Castile a vast expansion beyond the Pyrenees,
similar to that which Aragon then enjoyed. It was a matter of recovering the Gascon
inheritance of Eleanor of Aquitaine, his mother-in-law, over which he possessed
rights which his brother-in-law, John Lackland, would not recognize A
The latter s cruel clumsiness since in 1199 he had succeeded his brother on the
throne of Great Britain certainly justified the King of Castile in entertaining
legitimate hopes of succeeding in his designs. He was already embarking on his
enterprises. Around 1200 he obtained a coast and a fleet on the Atlantic, thanks
to the spontaneous rallying of the Cantabrian Basques and the installation of
populations from Castile between Santander and San Sebastian, which he occupied
and fortified. 4 That same year he made a step forward. The betrothal of his daughter
Blanche, niece of John Lackland, to Louis of France, son of Philip Augustus, at
which ceremony, with a sensational gesture, the old Queen Eleanor had wished
to be present despite her eighty years,5 in appearance effected the union of the
houses of Castile, France and Great Britain. In reality it strengthened the common
front of those who coveted the possessions of the English king upon the Continent.
The agreement thus arrived at was to show its effects from 1202 onwards. After
that year Philip meddled in the quarrels of the barons of Poitou and their English
overlord. To give himself an incontestable right to intervene, he had the feudal
deposition of King John proclaimed in respect of all the lands he held from France.
Then, between 1202 and 1206 he secured to himself by conquest, free alliance or
negotiations, Normandy, Maine, Anjou, Touraine and even Brittany.6 Eleanor
having died in the meantime, on 3 1st March, 1 204, Alfonso had moved in his turn.
Little by little he achieved the conquest of Guyenne. When in 1206 he was finally
 APPENDIX III 409

forced to abandon his enterprise, it is said that he had gained possession of practically
the whole of Aquitaine, with the exception of Bayonne, La Reole and Bordeaux.?
Since he was surrounded by enemies in Spain, beginning by his neighbours in
Navarre and Leon, it is understandable that in 1202—1203, before embarking upon
so dangerous an enterprise, Alfonso should have looked round for support from
possible adversaries of John Lackland. There existed one, perhaps, right at the other
end of Christian Europe, the new King of Denmark, Valdemar II (1202-1241).
At the time of Cnut the Great, in 1016, the Danes had conquered England.
1 hough they had been forced to abandon it in 1041, they had none the less preserved
their claims to this part of their kingdom.8 Philip Augustus was well aware of this.
In 1193 deliberately married the sister of Cnut VI of Denmark, Ingeburgh, in
order to acquire rights over Great Britain, whose crown he did not cease to covet
throughout his entire reign.9 In 1200, Blanche, the daughter of Alfonso VIII, thus
became the niece by marriage of the King of Denmark. Denmark, in these particular
years, was at an important turning point in her history. Towards the middle of the
twelfth century she had gone through a rather critical period. It was the time when,
thanks to the emperor Lothair, the enterprises of two powerful feudal lords, the
Guelph, Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony, and the Ascanian, Albert the Bear,
Margrave of Brandenburg, had inaugurated the astonishing adventure of the Drang
nach Osten, that drive eastwards which, in the following century, was to carry
German expansion with Christianity to the furthest limits of Prussia and all along the
Baltic.10 Henry the Lion had proved himself a neighbour particularly venturesome
and, finally, dangerous, so far as Danish independence was concerned. From 11^2
to 1182 Denmark seemed reduced to the status of a Germanic fief. The dynasty,
linked by marriage to that of Henry the Lion,11 seemed to be inextricably bound to
the Guelph policy. However the death of the Bear in 1170 and the defeat of the
Lion in 1180, in the mighty duel which had set him against Frederick Barbarossa,
had loosened the links and restored her liberty to Denmark.12 The Germanic thrust
had stopped for a time. The sons of Valdemar the Great (d. 1182), Cnut VI (d. 1202)
and Valdemar II (d. 1241), brought Denmark to the height of her power and
resumed the expansion towards the east for their own account.12 In 1201 Cnut
seized Holstein; in 1203 Valdemar had himself acclaimed at Lubeck, the city of
Henry the Lion, as ‘King of the Danes and the Slavs, lord of Nordalbingia’.
At this point the danger on the German-Danish frontiers reappeared. Otto of
Brunswick, son of Henry the Lion, had been disputing the imperial crown with
Philip of Suabia son of Barbarossa since 1197. Pope Innocent III, arbiter of the
situation, had for long hesitated between the two competitors. In 1 201, he came to
a decision. He chose Otto of Brunswick. Installed in that part of ancient Saxony
which bordered both on Denmark and on Brandenburg, strong in the new authority
conferred on him both by the imperial crown and the leader of Christendom, it
seemed probable that Otto of Brunswick would one day again take up his father’s
expansion movement, and break the new thrust of the Danes at a single stroke.
Despite the relationship and alliances of the two kings the danger was no fictitious
one.14 Moreover Otto had for long been linked with England, being himself
grandson of Henry Plantagenet and nephew of Richard the Lionheart, *5 who had
recently conferred upon him the title of Duke of Aquitaine, entrusting to him the
 4io APPENDIX III AND NOTES

administration of Poitou.16 In this way the alliance between the Guelph empire and
England, which ten years later was to come to grief in the disaster at Bouvines, was
strengthened. At the same time the advantage of a closer acquaintance between
Castile and France on the one hand and Denmark and Brandenburg,17 the two
Marches in the north commonly opposed by their interests to Brunswick and
England, on the other, became clear. In 1202 Valdemar II had just ascended the
throne. This was the moment to suggest to him a matrimonial alliance similar to
that which Philip Augustus had contracted with Ingeburg, his sister, ten years
earlier. The King of France was well placed for suggesting such a step to the King
of Castile. The latter however was surely capable of thinking of it himself. He was,
through marriage, the uncle of Cnut VI of Denmark, of whom his own daughter,
Blanche, had just become the niece.18

NOTES TO APPENDIX III

1. Cf. supra, ch. Ill, II II.
2. Desfourneaux, 140-141 with the genealogical table, 136-137.
3. Schirrmacher, 271; Cartellieri IV, 1, 234. Alfonso, and still more his wife, were reclaiming
Gascony in the name of a donation of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, and of an enfeoffment by Richard,
which John was said to have confirmed.
4. Schirrmacher, 268-269; Guinard, 338.
3. Schirrmacher, 270; Cartellieri, 37; Labande, 230.
6. Petit-Dutaillis, 139-149.
7. Schirrmacher, 272; Cartellieri, 233-236.
8. A Danish pretender was still trying to get his claim accepted in England in 1 138, Gallen, 207.
9. In 1193 and in 1213, Philip Augustus asserted his rights—Gallen, ibid.
10. Jordan, 121-132 and 136-139; Calmette, 338-364.
11. Cnut VI married in 1177 Gertrude, daughter of Henry the Lion.
12. Jordan, 138.
13. Jordan, 187.
14. Cnut VI, brother of Waldemar, had married Gertrude, sister of Otto. In the year of Canute’s
death (1202) his sister Helena married William of Luneburg, Otto’s half-brother—Gallon, 203-207 and
genealogical table, I. This did not prevent Waldemar’s enterprises on the Nordalbingia in 1203 nor
Otto’s counter attacks in 1209—Fliche, 86, n. 20.
13. His father had married as his second wife Matilda, eldest daughter of Henry II. Otto was of the
first marriage.
16. Petit-Dutaillis, 148.
17. On the closer connection of Denmark with Brandenburg, or at least with the Ascanian dynasty,
cf. supra, ch. IV, n. 21, and Gallen, 207-8.
18. Valdemar I of Denmark and Alfonso VII of Castile were cousins german through their wives
(since 1137). Alfonso VIII was Uncle by marriage to Cnut VI, the wife of the one and the mother-in-law
of the other being both two daughters of Henry II of England. Such liaisons brought with them no
impediment to the eventual marriage between a daughter of the Danish house and the youthful Ferdinand,
for they came from different beds—Gallon 204-203. For later alliances, see Mandonnet-Vicaire, I, 97!
 Appendix IV

ST DOMINIC’S APOSTOLATE IN TOULOUSE IN 1210

In the acts ot St Dominic’s canonization process in Toulouse, the three statements

nos. if, 16 and 17 form a small group. Guillelmine Martini, Noguiere de Toulouse
and Becede, the nun ot Sainte Croix, mention the way in which they gave the saint
hospitality or rendered him service. Noguiere refers to the statement of Guillelmine;
Becede gives evidence in parallel terms similar to those of Guillelmine. Both give a
desciiption of a long ministry of the saint in the locality where they were living.
Where precisely was this ?
It is clear in the first place that these three women gave their evidence before the
Pamiers commissioners. The investigation of the Toulouse process was made in two
centres only, Pamiers and Fanjeaux. The Fanjeaux statements are to be found in the
acts of the process from no. 19 (to no. 26); those of Pamiers go as far as no. 17. In
effect, between 3 and 17, all the witnesses whose place of origin is given except one
(Noguiere de Toulouse) are from the neighbourhood of Pamiers (nos. 3, 4, y, 6, 7,
8, 11, 12, 13, 17). Becede (no. 17) is a nun of Sainte Croix, a place in the Ariege,
near St Girons, where a priory of the Order of Fontevrault is to be found. There is
thus no doubt that Guillelmine Martini and Noguiere de Toulouse (nos. iy and 16)
also made their statements before the Pamiers commission. Where were they,
however, when they came to know Dominic ?
Noguiere was formerly in Toulouse, her native city. The close resemblance
between the three statements thus leads us to think that the two others were there
too. This hypothesis indeed is confirmed by the content of the statements of
Guillelmine and Becede. The latter gave evidence as to the opinion people had of
St Dominic, not only in the diocese of Couserans, where her monastery was, but
also in that of Toulouse. Flad she then known Dominic there earlier? Moreover,
both these women, as we have said, spoke of a prolonged ministry of the saint;
the two of them alone had given him hospitality more than four hundred times.
What place other than the one very large town of the region, Toulouse, could
require so lasting a ministry ? Now we know that Dominic was also given hospitality
in Toulouse by Bishop Fulk himself, in whose house Aimery de Solignac, a Cistercian
of Grandselve, often met him—Salagnac, II, y. This fact further prolongs the
duration of this ministry. At what date did it take place ?
It cannot refer to Dominic’s ministry in Toulouse after 1 21 y. The saint was then
lodging among his brethren in Peter Seila’s house. Before April 1214, however,
date of the reconciliation of the people of Toulouse (Cemai, no. yc>7) or rather,
before February 1 2 1 y, date at which the bishop was able to return to his city,
occupying the castle of Narbonne, any Catholic ministry there was impossible,
because of the interdict and of insecurity. This had been the case since the end of
412 APPENDIX IV

May 1211, date of the solemn departure of the clergy at Fulk’s order (Cemai,
no. 234), or even since 2nd April, 1211, date of Fulk’s voluntary exile (Cemai,
no. 221). It is thus earlier than these latter dates that the greater part of Dominic’s
ministry in the city must be placed. If it is now realized that before March 1210
(Cemai, no. 162) the town was already under an interdict and had been since
October 1209 (Cemai, no. 138 and Tudela, 97), and that, as has been said, the
saint’s apostolate before the crusade had principally been concerned with the region
of Fanjeaux and Carcassonne, we shall be led to the conclusion that Dominic’s
principal apostolate in Toulouse, in the course of which he met Fulk and Aimery de
Solignac, took place between March 121 o and May 1211.
This agrees exactly with what is known of the intensive ministry of Fulk among
his flock during the year 1210 (Tudela, III). He was then turning to advantage the
forced goodwill of Raymond VI and the people of Toulouse. It can thus be under¬
stood how on 15th May, 1211, Dominic was found in Lavaur at the side of Fulk,
who had just abandoned Toulouse (Cemai, no. 221) and then made his principal
donation to Prouille (Laurent, no. 8); how on 2oth June, 1211, he found himself
before Toulouse, near to Aimery de Solignac (Laurent, no. 9); why no sign of the
saint’s presence and activity in Prouille in 1210 and the first part of 1 2 11 is found.
Finally there are certain reasons for identifying one or other of the three female
witnesses at the process of canonization with the hostesses mentioned by Ferrand,
nos. 22-23, whom Dominic converted by the sight of his austerity during one
particular Lent (that of 1211), ‘somewhere near Toulouse’. It was doubtless at this
time that he won over Sister Blanche and her husband, wealthy citizens of Toulouse,
to religious life. Blanche became a nun of Prouille; her name appears in the list of
sisters of i^th May, 1211 (Laurent, no. 9), but was not on the first list. Her
wealth served to build half the great dormitory in dressed stone; she was sent to
St Sixtus in 1221, at the head of seven nuns, and remained there henceforward
(Percin, 22, no. ; Echard I, 83, ch. 2 and Balme, II, 43-5-, n. 1).
 Appendix V

THE CUSTOMS OF 1216

1. In an earlier study, which so far as we are aware has not given rise to any serious
criticism, the substantial identity of the arctiores consuetudines (Jordan, no. 42) taken
over by the community of the Preachers of Toulouse in the summer of 1216, with
the first distinction of the legislative document contained in the Rodez manuscript,
to which must be added the first part of the prologue, the division and the regula
conversorum which closes the document (Mandonnet-Vicaire, II, 211-218), has
recently been established. In point of fact: 1. this collection of texts is expressly
given the title of consuetudines; 2. the customs it contains belong to the category of
arctiores, because they are borrowed textually and in great majority from the
customs of Premontre which shared with Springiersbach the right to this title;
3. lastly, these customs correspond point by point to the fairly detailed description
of the content of the customs of 1216 that can be drawn from the accounts of
Jordan of Saxony and the Bolognese witnesses at the canonization process: written
customs as to liturgy and observance (meals, fasting, sleep, the wearing of wool,
silence), with a detailed code of faults and penances.
It is not in itself impossible that in May 1220 the Bologna chapter abrogated the
first arctiores consuetudines, which until that time Dominic as well as Reginald
had observed with extreme severity, and replaced them by others very similar
(which would be those of Rodez). It is, however, improbable. Such a supposition,
which is not authorized by the findings of history, is guesswork. In particular, none
of the information given by the Bologna witnesses on the legislative work of 1220
gives the slightest indication that such a change took place before their eyes; the
declarations of these religious who, with one exception, all entered the order
between 1217 and 1220, on the contrary suggest the continuity of the customs they
have always known, and which they call ‘the rule of St Dominic’, with the rule they
are observing in 1233 which is contained in the Rodez manuscript. Finally it must
be pointed out that Dominic could not have allowed himself to disperse his brethren
as early as 1217 and to send them to found convents, sometimes a few weeks after
their clothing, if he had not been able to give them at this moment, to ensure their
fidelity, regularity and uniformity, the text of the customs of observance in his
order which after that time it would become useless and difficult to change.
Moreover, it has been possible to note in the prologue and first distinction of
Rodez certain provisions of 1220 which are clearly presented as additions in an
earlier text, i.e. that of 1216 (Mandonnet-Vicaire, II, 224-228). A further and
significant instance of this will be seen in connection with the division and list
which terminates the prologue.
Lastly, it can be noted that what we have called the ‘charter of preaching’ (cf.
414 APPENDIX V

supra, ch. XVI, p. 111), undeniably the work of the chapter of i 22o, is completely
different, in its drawing up, its literary presentation and absence of literary
sources from the customs of the first distinction. It is, in particular, absolutely
independent of the texts of Premontre, of which it could, nevertheless, have taken
advantage, especially for the legislation of the general chapter—as the first distinction
did pre-eminently. This is the proof that the customs of observance of the order
(ist distinction) and the charter of preaching (2nd distinction) were drawn up at
two different periods, one in 1216, the other in 1220.
This having been said, it is certain that the prologue and first distinction of the
Rodez manuscript contain elements which are not original. Is it possible to dis¬
entangle them and get back to the original text ? The following are a few principles
which, we think, enable the original text of the customs of St Dominic to be
re-established with a considerable measure of accuracy.

2. The first investigation to be made is that of textual criticism. The only extant
manuscript of the primitive legislation of the order is the Rodez text, i.e. a defective
imitation of a copy in itself deficient. It so happens, however, that certain parts of
this text, sometimes almost the whole, have been used: 1. in the rule of St Sixtus
(= RS. Cf. Appendix VIII, no. 2, 8-11), in 1216-1218; 2. in the statutes of the
Sisters of St Mary Magdalene (= SM. Ibid., nos. 2 and y) in 1228-1232 ; 3. in the
2nd constitutions of the Friars Preachers, known as the Constitutions of St Raymond,
in 1239-1241 ; 4. in the institutions of the Sack friars (Ms British Museum, Nero
A XII, Fo. 1 jr0-174V0). Moreover, these texts have as their source, often taken
over literally, extensive passages of the customs of Premontre (ed. Martene, Rit.,
III). By comparing these different documents it is possible: 1. to correct the text
of the manuscript of Rodez; 2. to discover the approximate date of certain additions
between 1216, 1216-1218, 1228-1232, 1239-1241. Thus in ch. 17, §2, it is
possible to reconstruct in accordance with RS, a sentence which had disappeared
by 1236 which Denifle considered had been permanently deleted: Prior in mensa
loqui poterit, silenter et modeste, ita quod lector non impediatur.

3. Certain additions or corrections can be discovered in this first distinction, either

because they are indicated in the acts of the general chapters of 1236 or 1240
(6 in all: in ch. 6, 7 §2, 17 §2, 19 for 1236; ch. 21 §§34 and 39, for 1240); or
because they contain terms of relatively recent date, such as those of Master of the
order, prior provincial, prior conventual, etc. (general chapter (1220): prologue §3,
ch. 14 §2, 23 §8 and 10, 24, §2; Master of the order (1221), ch. 16 §1; prior
provincial (1221), ch. 23 §10; prior conventual (1 22 1), ch. 14 §2; provincial chapter
(1221-1225) prologue §3, ch. 14 §2, 23 §8 and 10, 24 §2); or again because they
are introduced by the terms Statuimus and Item which indicate the complementary
legislation of a general chapter (1220 and ff. Only examples to be found in the first
distinction: ch. 15 §§1 and 3).

4. Other additions or modifications are finally indicated by the examination of the

division and list of titles of the chapters which terminate the prologue in the
Rodez manuscript. This division mentions two distinctions, describes them briefly
 APPENDIX V
4 IS
and adds Unicuique autem harum distinctionum propria capitula assignavimus et assignata
scripsimus, ut cum aliquid a lector queritur sine dijjicultate inveniatur. Then follows a
list of chapters, all from the first distinction. There is no list for the second. This
list will be examined later.
The mention of the two distinctions, the description of the first, the phrase that
has just been quoted in extenso, finally the majority of the titles of chapters contained
in the list, are borrowed from the Premontre texts; they are primitive. This
situation recently led Scheeben (QF, XXXVIII, 21) to admit, since the second
distinction was only drawn up in 1220, that the whole Rodez document, prologue,
1st and 2nd distinctions, had been drawn up in 1220. In this case it would even
have to be said, if one wanted to be logical, in 1221-1225-, since the description of
the 2nd distinction which forms part of this collection of texts is thus labelled:
De provinciali capitulo et generali, et studio et predicatione, and the legislation of the
provincial chapter dates from 1221-1225 (cf. supra, ch. XIX p. 111). No one will
accept this conclusion. It must be admitted that in this phrase there is at least one
addition. We believe it is the phrase in its entirety and that this addition was made
in 1220 under the form: De capitulo generali et studio et predicatione, to which
provinciali was added in 1221-1225. Before 1220, the description announced of the
2nd distinction remained blank, as did the 2nd distinction itself. The Premontre
text, which served as a basis for the whole of the document, in fact gave the example
of reserving a blank distinction for later additions. Thus there is nothing to prevent
the whole of these texts dating from 1216. The proof of this is to be found in the
phrase which has been cited in extenso. This announces the list of the chapters of
both distinctions; now the 2nd distinction, when it is drawn up, will not include
any division into chapters, or a fortiori titles (Mandonnet-Vicaire, II, 275-276); that
is why the Rodez text does not contain any other list than that of the chapters of
the 1 st distinction. The unfortunate promise was thus prior to the drawing up of
the 2nd distinction, i.e. to 1220. The division, list of titles of the 1st distinction
and this distinction itself are thus from 1216.

5. The titles of this list, however, do not correspond exactly to the actual titles of
the Rodez document. The following is a parallel list, that of the prologue on the
left, that of the actual chapter titles on the right.

De matutinis De matutinis
De capitulo et prima [De capitulo] (addition by a later hand)
De mulieribus non intromittendis

[De] Missa et horis aliis De horis et de modo dicendi

De refectione et cibo De refectione. De ieiunio. De prandio. De pulmentis
De collatione et completorio De collatione et completorio. De lectis

De infrmis et minutis De infrmis. De minutione

De noviciis et silentio De magistro novitiorum. De recipiendis
De tempore probationis. De modo faciendi professionem
De silencio. De scandalofratrum

De vestitu De vestibus

De rasura De rasura
416 APPENDIX V

De culpis De levioribus culpis. De gravi culpa. De graviori culpa. De

fratre qui apostataverit. De gravissima culpa

The first thing that will be noticed is the addition of three short chapters—De
mulieribus non intromittendis (ch. 3), De lectis (ch. io), De scandalo fratrum (ch. 18).
The 2nd and 3rd, composed of phrases from Premontre (D.I., ch. 14 and ch. 9 at
end; this last source escaped Denifle and later historians), are original. At the
beginning, however, they were not distinguished from ch. 9 (compline) and 17
(silence), which precede them; the phrase about the beds already occupied this
place in the Premontre text; the phrase about the scandal of the brethren was
presented by the Premontre text as ‘What is to be done when one has offended a
brother to whom one has not the right to speak’. Ch. 3 alone must be an addition
to the primitive text (note—loqui de Deo; is this of 1220? Cf. D. II, ch. XXVII).
Ch. 4 about the Hours effectively mentions in its first phrase ‘the Mass and all
the canonical Hours’. It is principally a question, however, of the Hours, or rather
of the manner of saying them. It was doubtless for this reason that the title of the
chapter was subsequently changed.
The De culpis is replaced in the Rodez text by five chapters: De levioribus culpis.
De gravi culpa. De graviori culpa. De fratre qui apostataverit. De gravissima culpa, (ch. 2 1
to 23). It will be noted that these subdivisions are inscribed at the head of each
paragraph: Hee sunt leviores culpe, etc. Thus only a single general title was needed:
De culpis. This was the case originally. It will be shown in Appendix 8, no. 9, that
in the original text there was a special paragraph on faults of medium gravity,
subsequently attached to the chapter on light faults and for the future included in
this.
The De refectione et cibo is represented in the Rodez text by four chapters (3- to 8) :
De rfectione, De ieiunio. De prandio. De pulmentis. These four chapters are based on
Premontre texts. At the end of ch. 6 and 7 are two additions from 1236 (Acta, I, 6,
nos. 7 and 10). It is obvious that the De ieiunio and De prandio are only parts of the
De refectione. Perhaps the original chapter has been cut, rather clumsily, moreover,
(for 6 and 7 both refer to the fasts), after the additions of 1236 (and perhaps others
which have escaped us) which made the chapter unduly long? The De pulmentis
represents the original De cibo, the title of which is more accurate.
Up to this point the changes or additions of titles have not signified any consider¬
able change of content. The division of De noviciis et silencio, on the other hand,
corresponds to considerable additions. This chapter is actually represented by five
chapters : De magistro noviciorum. De recipiendis. De tempore probationis. De modofaciendi
professionem. De silencio (ch. 1 3 to 17). Only the first lines of ch. 13 and 14 go back to
Premontre and are definitely original. Moreover, the formula of profession of ch. 16
§1 is an addition of 1221 which does not coincide with that of ch. 14 §1. The second
phrase of ch. 14 §2 (admission of a religious to another order), which mentions the
provincial and general chapters is from 1220 (1 221) at earliest; the third phrase, on
the reception of the Cistercians, which contradicts a provision of the 1216 privilege,
is from 1220 at earliest and alluding as it does to a provision of Honorius III (cf.
BOP, I, 77, no. 133 and supra p. 111, n. 39), at latest from 1227. The manner of
reception of a novice forms the subject of three divergent provisions, clearly of
 appendix V
417
successive dates—ch. 14 §1, 2, 4; similarly for the fixing of the duration of the
novitiate, ch. 14 §i, §1, 16 §£. In both cases only the first prescription is clearly
original. J

Finally, it will be noted that the lengthy development of ch. 13, humilitatem cordis,
etc. as far as tempore opportune, attributes to the master of novices activities already
mentioned, sometimes in accordance with the Premontre texts, in the beginning
of ch. 13 and end of ch. 16. It is possible that this development, so close in style to
the charter of preaching’, is an addition of 1220. Similarly the code of penalties
lor infractions of the silence, ch. 18, §4 which does not equate with the fault in
ch. 2 2, no. g.
It is thus certain that the original chapter De noviciis et silencio was considerably
enriched between 1216 and 1227. It is for this reason that it has burst its boundaries
and been distributed among five chapters. If the additions instanced are eliminated,
the probable content of the original chapter will be found: ch. 13 §1, 14 §1, 1st
phrase of §2, §3, 15 §2, 16 §2 to 4, 17 §1 and 2 (corrected in accordance with SM,
cf. supra, no. 2), 18.

6. Certain additions, finally, are only revealed by internal analysis. One such can be
discovered in §2 of the prologue which contains a general law of dispensation, thus
making obsolete the particular indications as to dispensation to be read in ch. 1, 4,
6 and 11. This §2 can without difficulty be dated as 1 220. On the grave fault, ch. 22,
no. 1 3, cf. supra, p. hi, n. 69. Fault no. 1 g in this same chapter is presented as an
addition. Other faults interpolated or, at least, corrected, have already been pointed
out in no. 3 of this Appendix.

7. At the close of this analysis it is thus found that the primitive customs of the
Preachers were scarcely modified at all between 1216 and 1 240. The only additions
are ch. 3 and a notable part of ch. 14 to 16. Interpolations of phrases can be seen in
other places. Several titles have been altered or added. The following is how the
primitive document was constituted:
Prologue §1 and 3. De Matutinis (ch. 1). De capitulo et prima (end ch. 1 and ch. 2).
De Missa et horis aliis (ch. 4). De refectione et cibo (ch. r, 6 except last phrase, 7 § 1, 8).
De collatione et completorio (ch. 9 and 10). De infirmis et minutis (ch. 11 and 12). De
noviciis et silencio (ch. 13 §1, 14 §1, 1st phrase of §2, §3, 15- §2, 16 §2 to 4, 17 §1
and 2 corrected, 18). De vestitu (ch. 19). Derasura, ch. 20. Dc culpis (ch. 21 divided
into two paragraphs, 22 to 26). Regula conversorum.
 Appendix VI

THE BULLS OL RECOMMENDATION OF HONORIUS III

1. Between 11 th February, 1218 and 28th May, 1221, thus in little more than three
years, St Dominic obtained from Pope Honorius III a great number of bulls of
recommendation for the brethren of his order. Of these only three were inscribed
in the registers of the Curia. There is, however, a trace and sometimes the original,
of thirty-one of these letters in the files of the various archives of Europe. Others
will certainly be found as research continues among the collections of unpublished
archives, especially among the collections of ancient bulls of the houses of Friars
Preachers. Moreover these were far from being the only letters of Honorius relating
to Dominic’s brethren.
2. This abundance of bulls of recommendation in favour of an order which had
scarcely come into being is all the more impressive since after the middle of 1 2 2 1,
Ie.e. after the death of St Dominic, it ceased altogether until the end of the pontificat
of Honorius (1227), while the number of other letters also diminished considerably,
it began again, however, on the morrow of his death. His successor, Gregory IX,
formerly Cardinal Ugolino, gave his recommendation on 30th April, 1227, making
use of a formula of 1221 which he frequently employed after that time. These two
facts manifest sufficiently clearly the respective roles of the Pope, of St Dominic and
of Cardinal Ugolino in this stream of bulls.
3. The Pope did not hesitate to grant these documents and gave them the weight of
his authority. He himself probably had inserted in the text which he was asked to
sign such and such a significant adverb (ajjectuose, liberaliter) which it would indeed
have been presumptuous on Dominic’s part to put forward in his request. This
emphasizes the Pope’s sentiments in regard to the Preachers. The same sentiments
are to be found in the wording of the bulls : the Pope’s confidence in the providential
character of the order becomes progressively more categorical: 1. quorum utile minis-
terium et religionem credimus Deo g rat am ; 2. quorum et propositum sanctum et ministerium
necessarium arbitramur; 3. Nos eorum sanctum propositum et necessarium ministerium Javore
benevolo prosequentes. ... Can we go further and think that the Pope composed a
considerable part of the text himself? It is certain that the bulls of Honorius are quite
different from those of Innocent III and in particular no longer present us with the
overlong prologues, loaded with scriptural allegories, which his predecessor liked
so much.
The actual wording of the bull, however, which was the work of notaries under
the direction of the vice-chancellor, cannot be attributed to Honorius. The bulls
were first of all prepared by secretaries under the form of minutes, in accordance
with the request of the petitioners. Moreover, the Pope’s decision was put into due
form by the notaries and the vice-chancellor. After the end of 1 2 i9, it was an intimate
 APPENDIX VI 419

friend and adviser of Dominic, Guglielmo di Piemonte, later bishop of Modena and
Cardinal of Sabina, who held the latter office (Donner, 12-1 g). He certainly played
a considerable part in introducing the shades of meaning of the Pope’s sentiments,
which he had perhaps himself suggested, into the clauses emanating from the
Chancellery. Finally, the considerable diminution of the letters of Honorius and the
total disappearance of his bulls of recommendation after Dominic’s death show that
the initiative in the matter was not the Pope’s.
4. This initiative was in the hands of Dominic and Ugolino. The cardinal certainly
intervened in the sense of suggesting that Dominic should ask for the bulls, of helping
to draw them up and favouring the granting of them. He was in point of fact present
at the Curia at the time when these bulls were granted—the first four months of
1218, the close of 1219 and the beginning of 1221 (Potthast, p. 678; Brem, 3 o and
37). As to Dominic, he obtained these documents from the Curia by the steps he
took, determined the essential points of their provisions in accordance with the
needs of his convents or his brethren, directed their distribution in a masterly way
as best suited the interests of the spread of his order. His strategy becomes even more
clearly visible when we look closely at the list of the documents, their form, their
content, their date, the place where they were eventually lodged.
g. These letters are of five different types, which are distinguished by their Arenga,
i.e. by the first words of their prologue: I, Si personas religiosas; II, Dilecti filii;
III, Cum qui recipit; IV, Quoniam abundavit. The fifth type, which is, moreover, quite
secondary, has lost its prologue. It will be indicated by the number: V. Types I and
III exist under two successive forms, type IV under three forms. Thus the sub¬
divisions I1, I2, III1, III2, IV1, IV2, IV3 will be adopted. The following is the general
table of the documents it has been possible to discover, with their date of issue by
the Pontifical Chancellery, the place where their original is at present to be found
or was to be found at the date of issue, the principal reference. A second table
indicates their number in the collections of bulls or registers of Potthast, Pressutti,
BOP, Ligiez, Laurent.

Table 1

No. Date Situation Principal Reference

I1 Si personas religiosa s
I 11 .ii. 1 2 1 8 Vatican Reg. Honorius, II, n° 897
< Poitiers Arch, of Vienna (France) corpus
O. P. de Poitiers, bundle 78

I2 Si personas religiosa s
Reg. Hon. II, n° 1069
2 26.iv. 1218 J Vatican
Toulouse?
3 26.iv. 1218 Salamanca BOP, 7, n® 8
11 .xi. 1218 Piacenza Campi, II, 122 (fragment)
4
i $.xi. 1219 Zamora BOP, 8, n° 9
4
6 28.xi.1219 Montpellier? AFP, V, 1933, 77, n° 142
29.xi. 1219 — AFP, VI, 1936, 231, n° 148
7
13.xii.1219 Paris St. Jacques Arch. Nat. Paris, L.240, n° 61
8
420 APPENDIX VI

Table l—continued

No. Date Situation Principal Reference

II Dilecti filii . . . prior et fratres

9 8.xii. 1219 J Vatican Reg. Hon. IV, n° 647
1 Bologna BOP, 8, n° 10
10 13 .xii. 1219 Paris St Jacques Arch. Nat. Paris L. 240, n° 63
11 13 .xii. 1219 Montpellier? AFP, V, 1935, 61, n° 77
I2 13.xii. 1219 Wurzburg AFP, VI, 1936, 242, n° 76, ADD,
II, 160
>3 13 • iv. 1220 Palencia ASOP, I, 1894, 312, n. 1

III1 Cum qui recipit propb etam

14 11 ,xi. 1219 Sweden Diplomatarium Suecanum, ed. J. G.
Liljegren, I, Stockholm 1829,
198, n° 178. Horoy, ID, 336;
Gallen, 4, n. 6

III2 Cum qui recipit proph etam

iS 4. ii. 1221 Montpellier? AFP, V, 1933, 61, n° 78
16 4.ii. 1221 Toulouse BOP, 12, n° 20
17 4-ii. 1221 Magdebourg ADD, II, 158
18 2 9 .iii. 1221 Fiesole BOP, 13, n° 22
19 3 1 .iii. 1221 Valladolid Balme, ITT, 243-246
20 £.iv. 1221 ? Rome, Arch. gen. O.P., XI, n° 138
21 6.v. 1221 Schwerin Bullarium Danicum, ed. A. Krarup,
Copenhagen 1932, n° 170
22 22.V. I 22 I ? Rome, Arch. gen. O.P., XI, n° 133
23 28.V.1221 Bologna BOP, 14, n° 26 (cf. Balme, III,
367, n. 1)
24 ? Bologna ADD, II, 139
1 Minden ADD, II, 139

IV1 Quoniam abundavi t

26 i 3.xii. 1 219 W urzburg ADDy II, 170
27 6.v. 1 220 Barcelona St Catherina BOP, 10, n° 13

IV2 Quoniam abundavi t

28 1 8 .i. 12 21 Vatican, Chancellery? G. Erler, Liber cancellariae apostoli-
cae, Leipzig 1880, 108
29 1 8.i. 1 22 1 Rome Sta Sabina BOP, 11, n° 18

IV3 Quoniam abundavi t

30.iv. 1227 Olmiitz Rome, Arch. gen. O.P., Lib. E.,
BOP, 18, n. 1 ; Ligier, n° 144.

V
30 10.v. 1221 Piacenza BOP, 14, n° 23
31 7.xii. 1221 Barcelona St Catherina BOP, 14, n° 27
%
 APPENDIX VI

No. Potthast Pressutti BOP Ligiez Laurent

n° n° n° n° n°
I •— 1,082 — 55 84
I ,2SS — 58 87
3 S, 763 — 8
4 6,1 SS 2,250 — 68
s 6,1 60 2,255
6 9 SS, n. 3 97
*- SS, n. 3 —
7
—
8
SS, n. 3 —
9
I
(6,177
2,288
2,288
—
IO
7i 103
7* i°3
IO — — — — 103
II — — _
I2 — — _ _
!3 — — — __
14 6,1 ss 2,250 — 68
*S —
— — _
l6 6,542 3,062 20 68 129
17 — — _
18 6,600 — 22 68 132
19 — — — — 133
20 — — — — 129, n. 1
2I — — — — —

22 — — — — 129, n. 1
23 6,669 — 26 68 146
24 — — — — _
2S — — — — _
26 — — — — _
<N C-

6,246
f"s oc

2,423 15 80 I I2
127
29 6,508 3,009 18 88
3° 6,660 3»37i 25 96 143
3 1 6,730 3,604 27 104 —
1

6. The list is illuminating. Dominic had formula I registered in February (no. i);
he began again in April (no. 2). It will be seen that this second registration cor¬
responded to an important addition in the text (I2). He likewise had formula II
registered (no. 9). He did not do this for the others. The formality, which was
costly, was not obligatory. It was principally necessary for a privilege of permanent
value. The recommendation was only of provisional interest: in the initial period in
which the order was little known. Formulae III, IV, V are thus not to be found in the
registers of Honorius. After the end of 1 2 20, at least, Dominic obtained the issue of
the bulls free of charge—Laurent, no. 122.
7. If Dominic had to ask for an audience to obtain the new formulae, or to have
some addition inserted in the text, it was sufficient for him to approach the chancel¬
lery to obtain the certified copies of the bulls previously granted. The variety of
dates will be noted. They create a slight problem. Did Dominic go to the chancellery
on each occasion? Or was it perhaps that the chancellery made out on different
dates copies asked for en bloc some days earlier? The variety of the places where the
422 APPENDIX VI

originals are to be found will also be noted. If these places are not necessarily those
where Dominic had them sent, they are usually not without some connection with
such places. From these dates and places important information may be drawn as to
the activity of the founder in the spread of his order.
8. Dominic was clearly present at the Curia from 1 ith October to 26th April, 1218;
in November and December, 1219; from 18th January to May, 1221. The almost
complete calm of the year 1220 will be noted. It is true that Dominic obtained
further letters from the Pope in the course of that year—but no recommendation.
In the initial development of the order, the year 1220 represented a time of con¬
solidation and organization. The first months of 1218, the last two of 1219 and the
first part of 1221, on the other hand, were a time of redoubled initiative and
creation—especially the end of 1219.
9. It may, perhaps, be thought surprising to see the pontifical chancellery issue
between November 1 ith and December 13th of that year, almost simultaneously,
the four principal formulae of recommendation (nos. 8, 9, 14, 26). It is true that
the authenticity of no. 14 (formula III1), preserved in a non-authenticated copy of the
thirteenth century (Gallen, 4, n. 6), has been called in question. The argument from
internal criticism which has elicited the doubt, however—the presence in the docu¬
ment of a phrase of formula II, which is no longer to be found in formula III2—is not
conclusive. This phrase, clause no. 3 (cf. infra, §13), is also found again in
formulae IV2 and IV3. Moreover, the complementary clause no. 6, which is present
in formulae II and IV, is also found in letter no. 14. There is thus no reason to
doubt the authenticity of clause no. g in formula III1, nor, consequently, that of the
letter in question. The only argument that can be raised against it, or perhaps
against its date, is its isolation. The second (fragmentary) example mentioned by
Potthast (no. 61^3), after Campi, is in reality of type no. I.
The issuing of deed no. 8 (formula I2) on 13th December, 1219, is anachron¬
istic. Formula I2 had just been replaced on 8th December preceding, as will be seen,
by formula II. This fact, however, can be easily explained. It was necessary to
reconstitute the deed sent to the brethren in Paris on 1 ith February, 1218, which
the founders of the house in Poitiers had taken away with them. It is possible that
Dominic simultaneously claimed from the Chancellery in the middle of the previous
month of November a series of copies of this deed and that he received them on
November 15th, 28th and 29th and finally on 13th December.
10. The other three formulae of recommendation, II, III and IV, on the other hand,
were issued simultaneously because they corresponded to three distinctly different
interpretations. Formula II insisted, in terms that were altogether new, on the
poverty of the Preachers, formula III on the preaching and pastoral activity of the
brethren considered individually. Formula IV emphasized, in a formula that in 1219
was still rudimentary, their effectiveness against heresy. This latter document, how¬
ever, gathering together in 1221 and above all in 1227 the clauses of the other two
formulae, was to become the sole and universal formula of recommendation of the
Preachers. An even moderately detailed analysis of these formulae and their clauses
will give the proof of this.
11. Diplomatically, these letters of recommendation fall into the category of lesser
bulls and in particular of mandates. They have all their characteristics—the mention
 APPENDIX VI ^2^

of the apostolic authority, the four words with spaces between in the last line, the
hempen cord over which one or other of them is still sealed.
12. They are practically all addressed to the whole body of the prelates of the
Church. The only exceptions are those of the two copies of formula V (to the bishop
ot Piacenza and his chapter; to the Bishop of Barcelona), nos. 3 (formula I*, to all
the prelates of Spain) and 27 (formula IV1, to the Archbishop of Tarragona). The
beneficiaries of the recommendation are as a general rule the brethren, taken
collectively, especially for formulae I, II, IV, Yifratres ordinis predicatorum (I and II),
ordo fratrum predicatorum (IY),fratres predicatores (V). Formula III, on the other hand,’
designates the brethren in their personal activities, predicatores, de predicatorum
fratrum ordine. Accordingly it is issued several times to recommend isolated indi¬
viduals (nos. 18, 19, 23). This is also the case for nos. 2 (I2) and 29 (IV2).
13. The preamble to the bulls, or their terms of enactment, contains a description
of the ministry and religious life of the brethren. Formula I (1218-1219) thus
describes their utile ministerium et religionem Deo gratam; Verbum Domini gratis et
fideliter proponentes, intendendo profestibus animarum, ipsum Dominum solum secuti, pauper-
tatis titulum pretulerunt. After 8th December, 1219, however, formula II completely
modified the description of the propositium sanctum et ministerium necessarium of the
brethren (cf. also IV) : 1 0 verbum predicationis . . . quod est pabulum animarum super . .
populos multos seminant incessanter; 2° sarcinis divitiarum mundanarum abiectis, quo
expeditius currant per mundi huius agrum . . . in abiectione voluntarie paupertatis eunt.
This latter insertion is again found in formula IV. Formula III, which does not develop
the programme of poverty of the brethren, sums up their preaching programme in a
striking expression: verbi Dei sunt evangelizationi totaliter deputati, which is again
found in formula IV under the form: se dedicaverunt evangelizationi verbi Dei.
14. The terms of enactment comprises a series of apostolic mandates. Their gradual
elaboration can be seen in the successive formulae:
1. [eos] habeatis commendatos (I; II, IV2 and IV^ add: ajfectuose; III, propensius; IV1,
devotius).
2. in suis eis necessitatibus assistendo (I, II, III, IV add: liberaliter).
3. ad qfficiuni predicationis ad quod deputati sunt curetis benigne recipere (I2, II and IV ;
III: caritative; IV2 adds: [ad quod sunt] ex professione sui ordinis [deputati], but this
exactness of phrase does not occur again in IV3).
4. ac populos vobis commissos, ut ex ore eorum ipsorum verbi Dei semen devote suscipiant,
sedulo admonentes (II, III, IV2 and IV^).
£. cuatinus ad illud suscipiendum vestris exhortationibus preparati, tanquam bona et
fructifera terra, pro vitiorum tribulis, incipiant segetem germinare virtutum (II, IV2 and IV^).
6. et dicti fratres, per cohoperationem vestram suscepti ministerii cursum felicius consum-
mantes, optatum reportent sui laboris Jructum etfnem, salutem videlicet animarum (II, III,
IV).
7. benigne permittentes presbiteris eorumdem, cum expedient, penitentium confessiones
audire et consilium eis inuingere salutera (III, but missing in nos. 18 and 19, taken up
again by IV 3 under an abridged form).
8. Quia vero vitia sepe sub specie virtutum occulte subintrant . . . presentium vobis
auctoritate mandamus, quatinus, si qui de predicatorum fratrum ordine se dicentes in vestris
partihus predicaverint ad questum se pecuniarum convertendo, per quod religionem eorum qui
424 APPENDIX VI

paupertatem professi sunt continqeret infamari, vos tanquam falsarios capiatis et condemnetis

eosdem (III, IV3).

1 r;. At the close of this analysis we are able to bring a more circumstantial judge¬
ment to bear on the bulls of recommendation obtained by St Dominic and on his
policy in the matter. We have seen that it was largely inspired and sustained by
Cardinal Ugolino and the future cardinal of Sabina.
In February 1218, Dominic obtained, and had registered, the first of these bulls. It
recommended the groups of Preachers who were beginning to found their convents
to the prelates of the Church. In two words it described their religious life, their
ministry for souls, their poverty, and it covered them with the apostolic authority.
It asked that support should be given to them in their daily needs.
Two months later, Dominic had a further edition of this bull (I2) registered, in
which, as a result of the addition of a new clause, the first service demanded
of the prelates was to call upon the brethren to exercise the office of preaching, to
which they were assigned. In November 1219, Dominic was engaged in getting the
Chancellery to dispatch a series of copies of the bull thus completed, to recommend
his convents in course of foundation. The same bull was thus able to be used to
recommend the preaching of individual brethren. The final issue of this formula is
dated 13th December, 1219.
A few days earlier, however, the founder obtained from the Pope three different
bulls, numerous copies of which he at once had distributed (nos. 9 to 13 ; 14; 26).
The first of these new bulls (II) in its preamble described the activity of the Preachers
and above all their poverty, the extreme character of which it emphasized. The
terms of enactment took up again the clauses of the previous bull (I2), but stressed
each one of them by the addition of the significant words: affectuose, liberaliter.
Finally, it added new clauses to demand that the prelates should support the ‘neces¬
sary’ ministry of the brethren among their flocks, by their authority. This bull was
destined particularly for those convents that were in process of foundation. In fact
it would seem that it was only used to recommend communities.
The second of the new bulls (III) laid all the emphasis on the ministry of the
Preachers. In the prologue and the terms of enactment, unmistakable allusions to
the 10th canon of the Lateran Council (viros predicatores ecclesie sancte pernecessarios,
pro eo quod ministrant pabulum verbi Dei; cum propter occasiones multiplices partiri expediat
interdum in alios sollicitudinem pastoralem; penitentium confessiones audire et consilium eis
inuingere salutare) had as their obvious aim to present the Preachers to the bishops as
irreplaceable persons who will enable them to comply with the Council’s canon.
It thus mobilized for the benefit of the Preachers both the considerable weight of the
requirements of the Council and also that of the authority of the Pope. A new
clause, however, was to protect the poverty of the mendicant preachers against
temptations and to reassure the prelates of the disinterestedness of these new apostles.
If it should happen that the so-called preacher should beg for money, the prelate was
to have him arrested and condemned as an imposter and slanderer of the order. This
bull, which also summed up the clauses of the first of the bulls of recommendation,
could doubtless be used for recommending a community. It was, however, specially
indicated for use as an individual testimonial. This was precisely the case of copies
nos. 18, 19, 23.
 APPENDIX VI
42 5
The third bull (IVi), in December 1219, contained only a pressing mandate of
recommendation in its terms of enactment. The emphasis was centred on the
pro ogue or rather on the exposition. There the order of Preachers was seen in the
perspective of the interventions of Providence against heretics and other ‘mortal
plagues of the Church. Quoniam abundavit iniquitas et refriguit caritas plurimorum,
ordinem jratrum Predicatoruw, sicut credimus, Dominus suscitavit, qui non que sua sunt sed
que Christi querentes, tain contra profligandas hereses quam contra pestes alias mortiferas
extirpandas se dedicaverunt evangelizationi verbi Dei, in abjectione voluntarie paupertatis.
This description was well calculated to draw to the Preachers the attention and
support of, for example, the Archbishop of Tarragona, to whom this bull was
addressed on May 6th, 1219 (no. 27).

In January 1221, this striking prologue was placed at the head of the terms of
enactment of formula II. Thus formula IV2 of which Dominic made but a limited use
was constituted. He preferred to distribute formula III, which he had reproduced a
considerable number of times during the first half of 1221, i.e. until his final
departure from Rome and his death. The reason for this is clear and charged with
meaning. Formula III presented the ministry of the Preachers along the lines of the
1 oth canon of the Lateran, that is, along the lines of a universal, ordinary and positive
evangelization; formula IV2 in the perspective of the struggle against heresy. We can
understand why, in 1227, it was this latter formula that Gregory IX was to prefer.
By inserting therein the appropriate clauses of the terms of enactment of formula III,
he composed the definitive formula of recommendation of the order. There is room
for regret that this bull contributed by its impressive prologue to placing the activity
of the Preachers in a polemical perspective against the clear preferences of the
founder.
 Appendix VII

GRANT OF HOUSES AT BRIHUEGA (1218)

The deed re-edited below is contained in the first register or Becerro of the cathedral

of Toledo, Fo. 39V., col. 2, preserved in the national historical archives of Madrid,
section relating to the clergy. It was edited for the first time by Juan Catalina Garcia,
director of these Archives, in his book Elfuero de Brihuega, Madrid, 1887, App. pp.
19^-196. Since that time Fr L. Gonzales Alonso Getino has reproduced it, after the
earlier edition, in his Vida de Santo Domingo de Guzman, fundador de la Orden de
Tredicadotes, por el Beato Jordan de Sajonia . . . translated and annotated by Fr Getino,
Vergara, 1916, 351-352 (cf. 179). It is here re-edited from the manuscript. The
text has been seriously damaged by water (was this when the archbishop was
drowned in the Rhone ?). All the lacunae cannot be restored. The damage is particu¬
larly serious for the date. In the critical notes the data are given which enable
the date of 1218 to be reconstructed with fair certainty. J. Gorosterrazu, in his
biography of Don Rodrigo (Pamplona 1923;, 229), led astray bv faulty chronology
which he took over without question from the early historians of Dominic, in¬
correctly assigns this deed to 1219. We here address our thanks to the director of
the Archivo historico nacional, Senor Luis Sanchez Bel da, who procured for us the
indications and texts of which we have made use.
DE DOMIBUS DE BRIOGA1 CONCESSIS
ORDINI PREDICATORUMa
Notum sit omnibus hominibus0 hanc paginam inspecturis quod nos R[udericus]2 dei
gratia Toletane Sedis Archiepiscopus hispaniarum primas nostre spontanee uoluntatis
dispositione ( ?) fratri dominico ministro ordinisfratrum (?) predication^ aliis fratribus
eiusdem ordinis domos ... in brioga que fuerunt de Johanne Caluo quas uobis ( ?)
Emiliamis clericus sancti Michaelis de brioga filius (?) quondam eiusdem Johannis
Calui tituio donationis (?) reuocabilisc donavit. Ipso Emiliano postulante (?) autoriza-
musd et concedimus quiete ac libere (?) possidendas. Tali tamen apposita pactioneh..
quod ( ?) rato Emiliano viam uniuerse carnis si ( ?) forte ( ?) Archiepiscopo Toletano
qui pro tempore fuerit . . . iilas domos non placuerit amplius uos habere . . . detise,
uel detis eas uassallis Archiepiscopi qui . . . facere suum forum, uel Archiepiscopo
Toletano afcrolute et libere sine cuiuslibet contradictionis obstaculo relinquatis. Et
ut predicta concessio quam facimus firma et irreuocabilis ut annotatur supra perseueret
presentem cartam de mandato nostro scriptam et subscriptione manus proprie
roboratam sigilli nostri patrocinio jussimus communiri. Ac turn fuit hoc apud Tala-
mancam. Era. M.CCa . . . f mense nouembris in presentia et sub testificatione
partium5 subscriptorum.
Nos. R. dei gratia Toletane Sedis Archiepiscopus hispaniarum primas. SS. et
confirmo.
 APPENDIX VII
427
Ego. Bertrandus guadalphaiarensis archidiaconus confirmo.
Eg°- J- guterrij canonicus Toletanus ....
Ego. P. sancti Dominici cappellanus Toletanus canonicus . . . SS.
Critical notes

(a) Title, in a different hand and ink, after the deterioration of the text; it com¬
pletes a line where it is possible to read in the hand and ink of our charter: Era Ma.
CC . LVI ( 1218). It is possible that this date forms the end of the preceding
document which is in large part effaced.
(b) Damp has caused the right half of the charter to disappear, allowing a few
letters to be seen. The restitutions are indicated in italics, purely hypothetical cases
being indicated by (?). The length of the lacunae it has not been possible to fill in is
indicated by . . . The punctuation and capitals of the original have been retained.
(c) The word begins a line after a lacuna, perhaps irrevocabilis should be read.
(d) Ms=autoziramus.
(e) Perhaps, eas reddetis, or non possidetis.
(f) There is exactly room for LVI, and no more; this gives, according to the
Christian era, 1218.
Historical notes
(1) Brihuega.
(2) Rodrigo Jimenez de Rada, Bishop of Osma after the death of Diego de Acebo,
from 1208 to 1210, date at which he was transferred to the see of Toledo. 1 247.
(3) This title, the final letters of which are still visible, was used by the order in
1217, at the time of the dispersal of Toulouse, cf. Laurent, nos. 80 and 81 (where
it is necessary to restore, after ms. Toulouse 490 fos. 100-101, fratres predicationis,
wherever the editor has printed predicates); the brethren took it with them to
Spain in 1218-1219, Laurent, no. 95. Fulk of Toulouse was still using it, anachron-
istically, in 1221—Laurent, no. 134.
(4) The house of John the Bald having become Church property, the archbishop
refused to bind his successor. In case of withdrawal, the property was to revert to
Aemilian; if the latter should die, the archbishop would decide to whom it should
g°-
(3-) The presence of the parties confirms the date of 1218, the only month of
November when Dominic was in Spain, Cf, critical notes a and f.
 Appendix Vlfl

THE RULE OF ST SIXTUS

1. On 23rd October, 1232 Pope Gregory IX gave a new legislation to the order of
Penitents of St Mary Magdalene in Germany, founded since 1227 m accordance with
the rule of St Benedict and the Cistercian constitutions (Simon, 202). What was now
promulgated was the rule of St Augustine and the ‘Institutions of the order of nuns
of St Sixtus in Rome’. This concession was not an isolated gesture. Since the Order
of Premontre had abandoned its houses of women, at the beginning of the thirteenth
century, the communities of nuns in the process of formation had scarcely any
choice except among three approved institutions: that of Gregory IX himself, on
which model the Poor Clares had been formed as well as other religious in Tuscany;
that of Citeaux, whose considerable expansion since the beginning of the century had
just been bluntly frustrated by the general chapter; that of St Sixtus of Rome. Since
about 1230, a good number of feminine communities, especially in Germany, took
or received the latter (Grundmann, 220-235). It was from this source that the
mention came of the ‘Order of the nuns of St Sixtus’ which was to be understood in
the same sense as ‘the Order of St Augustine’. This did not mean that there was then
in existence a centralized society ruled by the ‘Institutions of St Sixtus’, but that a
large number of houses in other respects independent followed the ‘order’ or the
observance of these institutions (Grundmann 236-237; Creytens, Montargis, 32).
The Pope inscribed this legislative text in his bull. Unfortunately this bull was
not registered and the original is now lost. On 1st January, 1291, Pope Nicholas IV
renewed and confirmed the concession of his predecessor, in a bull which recopied
in full that of 1232 (Simon, 258 and 142-153). This new bull, inscribed in the
registers of Nicholas IV, is likewise known through a certified copy preserved in
Breslau and by a vidimus of Mecklemberg. In view of the habits of the Pontifical
Chancellery, it cannot be doubted that the text reproduced in 1291 is in every
respect that of 1232. This can, moreover, be verified by comparing this text with
that offered by two modem works which seem to offer a direct edition of the bull of
Gregory IX no longer extant (Simon, 143).
2. Traditionally, however, the order of St Mary Magdalene added certain statutes to
the ‘Institutions of St Sixtus’ (statutes edited in accordance with a manuscript of
Vienna in Raymundi Duellii miscellareorum quae ex codicibus mss. collegit liber /, Augsburg
1723, 182-198 ; German manuscript translation at the convent of Lauban, Romance
translation ed. Discry, 84-145; re-edition Simon, 154-168, cf. 169-170). These
statutes of St Mary Magdalene (=SM) gave to the ‘Institutions’ of St Sixtus, exclu¬
sively and on six different occasions, the name of rule of St Sixtus under which we
shall designate them for the future (=RS). They are in actual fact directly extracted
from the first Dominican constitutions, as these existed between 1228 and 1236.
There in fact are to be found two of the legislative additions of 1228: IC (= first
 APPENDIX VIII 429

constitutions OP), D.II ch. 14 and SM, ch. 19 (on these texts see Mandonnet-Vicaire
II, 282 and Vicaire, Documents, II, 117—118). On the other hand we find none of the
additions or corrections demanded by the chapter of 1236, which should normally
have come at the end of ch. 7 of SM and in the middle of ch. it; where, on the
contrary, we find an insertion which was suppressed at this date (Acta, I, 6, nos. 7
and 1 2). It can even be stated with certainty that these statutes were extracted from
the Dominican constitutions at the latest in 1232. On the one hand, they are
organically linked to the rule of St Sixtus: five chapters of SM are limited to
references to the corresponding chapters of RS: SM, £, 17, 18, 20, 23; RS (we
quote the Simon edition 143—1^3, pointing out that the division of the text into
chapters and the titles of these chapters are the work of the editor), 2, 10, 11 to 15,
24, 2 1 ; another chapter makes explicit, on the contrary, a chapter of RS, which in
some sort anticipates it: SM, 8 and RS, 7; seven chapters are a repetition of the
chapters of RS, which they specify; thirteen chapters complete RS adding certain
liturgical, personal and social data, indispensable to the life of the order. On the
other hand, the whole RS -f- SM was composed, as will be seen, for a convent of
Dominican nuns before it was assigned to the Penitents.
3. The interest of both these documents will be obvious. The statutes enable us to
go back to a text of the Dominican constitutions earlier than 1232. The rule of St
Sixtus can throw light on the history of St Dominic’s foundations for women. The
name of ‘Institutions of the order of nuns of St Sixtus’ given to it by Gregory IX
was a reminder that in 1232 it was not the rule of the Roman community alone; in
fact, before spreading in Germany to communities which had nothing in common
with the Preachers, it had been put into practice in several of the houses founded or
prepared by St Dominic. Among the communities of Prouille, St Agnes of Bologna
and St Sixtus, a genuine similarity of observances is in fact found. After all, the com¬
munity of St Sixtus was founded by the sisters asked for from Prouille at its
inception (Laurent, no. 104) and installed in the convent before the transfer of the
sisters of Sta Maria in Tempulo and St Bibiana, so that they might receive them and
instruct them de oidinis observantiis, and in particular to speak per signum manuum
(Montefiascone, 836). The rule they brought from Prouille had thus at least served
as a basis for that of St Sixtus. It is not impossible that at this time Dominic modified
this first rule, to bring it into line with the times and adapt it to the new house. It is
also possible that the four sisters of St Sixtus from the Midi who returned to Prouille
at the end of a certain time, brought back with them there these few changes
(Montefiascone, 836). They cannot have amounted to much. When Jordan of
Saxony in 1223 wished to inaugurate the monastery of St Agnes of Bologna he first
turned to Prouille to obtain foundresses who would be exemplary. Only when his
request could not be granted did he provide himself with foundresses from the
sisters of St Sixtus. At this period too, then, the tradition of Prouille must have
appeared as the fundamental tradition of the nuns of St Dominic. However this may
be, in 1236, the legislative unity between Prouille and St Sixtus was such that the
sisters from the Midi, in a petition to Gregory IX, did not hesitate to tell him that
at the ‘moment of their conversion’, that is when Prouille was begun as a house of
regular observance, they had all adopted as their rule (this is the meaning of elegerunt
Domino famulari sub regula . . .) ‘the rule of the nuns of St Sixtus of Rome’ (BOP, I, 86,
 430 APPENDIX VIII

no. 149). This was apparently a stylistic formula to designate their own rule by the
name under which the Curia, and Europe, knew and defined it—rule, or ‘Institutions
of the order ofnuns of St Sixtus’ (Gregory IX, 1232—Simon, 202; 1236 ,BOP, I, 86,
no. 149. Cf. InnocentIV, 1248, BOP, I, 183, no. 200).
The external historical data are thus clear and almost categorical. They confirm
an essential continuity between the rule of Prouille, the rule of St Sixtus and the
Institutions of the sisters of St Mary Magdalene in Germany which we still possess
today. The internal investigation of this latter text does not confirm this assertion in
every respect. Without weakening the assertion, it complicates the situation to a
considerable extent (hence the doubts of Creytens—Alontargis, yi).
4. The first statement that must be made is that in the text of the rule of St Sixtus
edited in 1232 numerous technical terms or expressions have been found not
referring to the ‘Institutions’ of Prouille or of St Sixtus but only to those of the
German Penitents. With the terms priorissa and prelata, which fitted the three
categories of sisters, are to be found fifteen times the term prepositus (pr., four times ;
pr. maior twice; pr. ordinis once; pr. generalis eight times). The word prepositus was
frequent in Germany to designate a superior of Augustinian religious, in the sense
in which Italy used prior. Moreover under the form prepositus maior, or ordinis or
generalis, it expressly designated the major superior of the Penitents (Simon, 4^).
The expression existed neither at Prouille nor at St Sixtus; it was not found in any
of the numerous charters of these monasteries. Yet at Prouille since 1 2 1 y, at St
Sixtus in 1221, the authority of the saint was superimposed on that of the local
priors . It is possible that the term prepositus maior or generalis was only substituted
in certain phrases, which would thus be original, for a term which designated St
Dominic or his successors (prelatus maior, as in the ‘Institutions’ of 1220, or magisterl)
in the rule of the nuns after 1213;. The expressions prior provincialis, capitulum generate,
did not in any sense apply to Prouille or to St Sixtus before 1232, or afterwards. It
is true that the saint’s role in regard to St Sixtus was assumed by the provincial of
Tuscany (Zucchi, 272-276; the provision was not clearly established until 1242_
but the situation must have been older). The latter, however, only intervened among
the sisters in the capacity of major superior and there was no point in mentioning his
function in the order of the brethren in the rule; still less to name him at the "side
of the major superior or general provost, as if he were distinct from him (RS, ch.
17, no. 2). The first monasteries of Dominican nuns were not grouped either into
provinces or general chapters. The Penitents, on the other hand, at the time when
t ey received RS, already possessed ten convents which lent themselves, by their
number and their geographical distribution, to the holding of general chapters as
also to regrouping into provinces (Simon, yy; cf. 45).

y. The counter-test can be made by examining the statutes (SM). It will be found in
act that these texts contain no other technical terms than those adapted to an
isolated feminine convent dependent on an order of men religious: priorissa, prelata,
capitulum, ordo noster (for this latter term, cf. SM, ch. 13 and 19).
This condition of things leads to the following conclusions :
1. The statutes, extracted from the Dominican constitutions, were not composed
for the order of Penitents, but for an isolated monastery, clearly of Dominican nuns
between 1228 and 1232.
 APPENDIX VIII
431
2. They were borrowed unchanged by the Penitents (with the exception of the
interpolation of the name of St Mary Magdalene in the formula of profession) at the
time that they adopted the rule.

3. The rule of St Sixtus alone was changed to make it suitable for the order of
Penitents.

We are at first surprised that it was the rule that was changed rather than the
statutes (Creytens, Montargis, 53 should be corrected on this point) ; for it is the
essence of a rule to be unchangeable, whereas the characteristic of statutes is that
they can be periodically revised. The explanation is a simple one. It must be recalled
that the statutes were not given to the Penitents officially by Cardinal Ugolino and
could not be so given. They belonged to the monasteries of Dominican nuns attached
to the order and there was no question of incorporating the German Penitents among
the Preachers. The sisters adopted the statutes without the order’s authorization to
determine certain important points of their life which had been left in suspense.
Moreover, Ugolino did not call the ‘Rule’ of St Sixtus a ‘rule’ when he granted it
to the Penitents, but ‘Institutions’, which emphasized its flexible character. As a rule
for the German sisters he had given them that of St Augustine.
6. The second discovery one makes on examining the rule of St Sixtus is that it
makes considerable use of earlier rules as sources. It refers directly to the rule of
St Benedict (ch. 4, 3 and RSB, ch. 37) and perhaps quotes it twice (ch. 8, 2 and 21,1;
RSB, ch. 48 and 33). It is true that these quotations may come from one or other
of the innumerable customs inspired by the Benedictine rule. RS refers expressly to
the customs of Citeaux for the rule of the ‘collation’ (ch. 3, 1 ; Guignard, 183). It
quotes the rule of St Augustine four times (prologue and ch. 4, 1 ; 8, 1 ; 14, 2) and
moreover assigns this rule to the brethren who look after the nuns (ch. 23, 1). The
conditions under which these quotations are made prove that the nuns to whom RS
was addressed followed the rule of St Aunustine, but had earlier known the rule of
St Benedict and the customs of Citeaux. This could apply to both the Penitents of
St Mary Magdalene and to the sisters of Prouille, but not to those of St Sixtus.
7. No connection can be discovered between RS and the statutes relating to
the sisters in the twelfth century statutes of the order of Premontre (ed. Van
Waefelghem, Analectes de l’ordre de Premontre, IX (1913), 63 to 67). On the other
hand, the second part of the rule, in ch. 16, 17, 18, 19, 22, 23 is clearly related to
the rule of the order of Sempringham (— SS, ed. Holstenius-Brockie, II, 467-336).
The rule dates from the middle of the twelfth century, but the edited text refers to
a decision of Innocent III. However, with the exception of a single passage where
the dependence is in part literal (SS, 476 and RS, ch. 22. It is in error that Creytens,
Montargis, 3-1, n. 3 cites a second literal borrowing), the parallelism is never
complete. If RS like SS provides for a provost general (called by SS prior omnium or
magister ordinis) who alone has the power to receive and send away religious of both
sexes (SS 471 ; RS, ch. 19), three priests per house (SS 333 and RS, ch. 23), the
four procurators (prior, procurator, cellarer and bailiff, SS, 476; RS, ch. 23), the
religious in charge of the fenestra or turn (SS, 480, 318-319; RS, ch. 16),
the entrance into the enclosure of persons of high rank (SS, 490 and RS, ch. 16), the
entrance in case of Extreme Unction (SS, 333; RS, ch. 17), of fire or of theft (SS,
319; RS, ch. 17), it is no longer in agreement with SS on the total number of the
 43 2 APPENDIX VIII

brethren (SS, 482 : seven canons; RS, ch. 25: six brethren, three being priests) or
of the turn sisters (SS, 518: 2; RS, ch. 16: 3), or the holders of office. RS has
nothing to say of the curious system of triple nomination of the preposita and her
collaborators, each one of the three officers exercising her office in turn (SS, 472,
320), by the superior general (SS, 472; SS, 520 seems, however, sometimes to
make provision for an election, like RS, ch. 24), or the prohibition for the sisters
of singing (SS, 5^23), or the entrusting of all the securities of the convent into the
hands of the sisters (SS, 468, 316), or the numerous cases of entering the enclosure
for sermons (SS, 490), for processions (SS, 525) and for elections (SS, 469); nor,
finally, the cases of the sisters going out for election, canonical visitation and
illness (SS, 468, 321). On the other hand, nothing can be found in SS comparable
to RS, ch. 20 and 21 on manual work, reading and mental prayer (on this last
point, however, cf. SS, 326).
It is doubtless possible to think that the necessity of summarizing a very diffuse
rule may have led the editor of RS to deviate from the text of SS, at the same time
taking the essence of its institutions, which he could, moreover, correct simul¬
taneously. If this were the case, it would be possible to allow that this second part
of the rule of St Sixtus was drawn up in Rome by St Dominic in the winter of
12 2 0-1 2 21 in view of the foundation of St Sixtus which he was engaged in preparing.
The Papacy had indeed expressed the wish to regroup certain nuns in Rome under
the rule of Sempringham. None of the parallelisms instanced, however, is really
decisive. There were very considerable analogies between different sorts of feminine
communities in Western Europe at the beginning of the thirteenth century. The
resemblances of SS and RS can perhaps be explained by a common dependence on a
source which is no longer extant. Even the paragraph of RS which corresponds
literally, although partially, to a paragraph of SS, may come from this common
source. Thus no categorical conclusion as to the source of the second part of RS can
be made.

8. The first part, on the other hand, is indicative of an unquestionable source: the
earliest ‘Institutions of the Preachers’ (= IC). Clearly the ‘Rule of St Sixtus’ and
the Institutions of the Preachers’ both present a close connection with the customs
of Prdmontre (= P) which, in these conditions, could be a common source and the
origin of the reciprocal resemblance. This explanation, however, will not stand up
to direct examination. It is sufficient to take one by one the analogous phrases of
RS, IC and P, to note the divergences and resemblances of these elements pair by
pair, as regards the terms and expressions of phrase, both in the words themselves
and in their order, to realize: 1. that P is the primitive source; 2. that RS depends
on P through the intermediary of IC and not vice versa. This analysis can already be
made conclusively in regard to chapters 2, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9 of RS. The most fruitful
conclusions, however, can be drawn from ch. 11 to i£, concerning the faults.
9. The first statement that can be made seems to contradict this assertion. Like P,
RS has a chapter of medium faults which is not found in IC; moreover, the ends of
its ch. 11 and 12, on light and medium faults, are analogous to those of the cor¬
responding chapters of P (D. Ill, ch. 1 and 2), whereas the end of ch. 21 of IC,
which has collected together the same material as ch. 11 and 12 of RS, is original.
This, however, is only apparently so. It can, in effect, be proved that ch. 21 of IC
 APPENDIX VIII
433
was originally divided into two paragraphs, dealing respectively with light and
medium faults, directly inspired by the two corresponding chapters of P, and having
the same final paragraphs. The following is the result of the analysis item by item of
the faults of ch. 21 of IC. We find successively and in their original order: nos. 1
to 17, the series of light faults taken from P, D. Ill, ch. 1 ; no. 18, a fault transferred
from P, D. Ill, ch. 2 (medium fault, reduced to the rank of light fault); no. 19, a
fault transferred from P, D. Ill, ch. 3 (serious fault, reduced to the rank of light
fault); nos. 20 to 25-, a series of original light faults, concerning the preachers and
the students. Then come nos. 26 to 37 (except no. 34, a fault originally serious,
transferred in 1240 to chapter 21 of IC, Acta, I, 13, no. 9), the series of medium
faults taken from P, D. Ill, ch. 2 ; nos. 38 and 40 (no. 39 is a fault originally serious,
transferred in 1240 to ch. 21 of IC, Acta, I, 14, no. 14) two faults proper to the
Preachers.
This description clearly shows the existence, at the beginnings of IC, of two
distinct chapters: one on light faults, nos. 1 to 23, and the other for medium faults,
nos. 26 to 40, composed in the same way: faults taken, in their original order, from
the corresponding chapter of Premontre, faults, the degree of seriousness of which
has been reduced, coming from the later chapters of P, faults proper to the Preachers.
If the two series had been welded together from the beginning, as was the case later,
the faults coming from P and those proper to the Preachers would not have been
arranged in two different series (1 to 17 and 26 to 37, on the one hand; 20 to 2$
and 38 to 40, on the other). In particular, no. 18 would not have been taken from
the P chapter of medium faults and attached to the light faults of P, when the rest
of the P medium faults was to be added further on in the same series. At the end of
each of these two chapters, as at the end of the following chapters, IC fixed the
penalty for both types of fault in accordance with the corresponding final paragraph
of P. When later (before 1 240, cf. Acta, I, 14, no. 14) the two chapters were welded
into one, doubtless because the distinctions of faults were found to be too subtle,
the two final paragraphs were suppressed, to be replaced by a text expressing the
average (IC, ch. 21, no. 41). It was then that the relationship of IC with P and RS
on this point became obscure. It is clear, however, throughout the remainder of
the chapter.
10. If the analysis is now extended to ch. 1 1 and 12 of RS on light and medium
faults, it will be seen that the source, not only of their words, phrases and the order
of the phrases, but sometimes even of their content is the two original chapters we
have just distinguished in the present ch. 21 of IC, and not the corresponding
chapters of P. In the first place we find at the head of RS, ch. 11, ch. 1 8 of IC (cf.
P, D. I, ch. 9, end), transformed into a fault; then in the order of IC, ch. 21, faults
nos. 1 to 9, 14, 16-18, 22, 23, 2£—i.e. the majority of the faults coming from P,
D. Ill, ch. 1 and 2, then several of the completely original faults of IC. The only
omissions are the faults of IC which were not applicable to the sisters, in particular
those concerning the sacred ministry, studies and preaching. It is nevertheless
interesting to see how RS, ch. 11, nos. 14 and 153 has succeeded in modifying for
the use of the sisters faults concerning the life of study or preaching of the Preachers
(IC, ch. 21, nos. 2 2 and 23).
The analyses of ch. 12 and the following chapters, while they do not provide
 APPENDIX VIII
434
equally important elements of comparison, lead to the same conclusions. The first
part of RS and more particularly ch. 2, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 11 to 13- of RS have been taken
from the Dominican customs in their original form and depend through their inter¬
mediary on the customs of Premontre.
11. This conclusion nevertheless requires a corrective. In a small number of cases,
the text of RS is closer to P than to IC. In several of these cases it can be proved that
the divergences of IC in relation to P and RS are not original and come from mistakes
in the Rodez ms. by which we know IC. This can be verified by comparing the
doubtful phrase of IC with the corresponding phrase of the constitutions of St
Raymond, emanating from the authentic text of IC. The following are three
examples: RS, ch. 12, no. 4 has a cum found in P and II Const, but missing in IC;
ch. 1 2, no. 7, as P and II Const, has not the suis or the inversion fuerit repertus found
in IC; RS, ch. 14, no. 2, as P and II Const, has celaverit, like the rule of St Augustine,
against IC—servaverit. In two cases, however, it seems to us undeniable that RS has
taken over elements from P, dropped by IC—at the beginning of RS, ch. 8 (Ne sit
notabilis habitus vester, etc., sujficiat moniali habere duas tunicas, etc.; cf. P, D. IV,
ch. 14. The phrases are quotations from the rules of St Augustine and St Benedict)
and RS, ch. 14, no. 2 (utjvrtum, sacrilegium, vel aliud huiusmodi. Cf. P, D. Ill, ch. 6).
It must then be admitted that in inscribing the texts of the Preachers in the first
chapters of the rule of St Sixtus, the legislator had at hand a text of IC closer to the
customs of Premontre than the Rodez manuscript.
Such are the data for internal criticism. How do they compare with the assertions
of the external history of our documents ?
12. The modifications introduced into RS in 1232 to make it suitable for the
Penitents are revealed in certain terms, and divisions of phrases, or in certain pro¬
visions which are only applicable to these sisters and which were interpolated
without difficulty in the earlier text. RS, ch. 1, must be one of such additions.
From the literary point of view it is presented as a prelude before the beginning of
the norma vivendi. Moreover it contains a formula of religious engagement with four
vows prior to the profession (for the formula of profession is found in SM, ch. 14)
which has never been Dominican; finally it mentions the transfer of a nun from one
convent of ‘the order’ to another, a formula not applicable to the convents of
Dominican nuns before 1232, since they did not form an order in the strict sense
of the term. For the same reason ch. 19 must also be an addition of the same date.
Other corrections, which reserve a right of dispensation or authorization to the
provost, the provincial or the general chapter, presuppose nothing more than the
change or interpolation of two or three words in the earlier text. They will be
found in ch. 14, nos. 14, 19, 21 ; ch. 153 no. 4; ch. 17, nos. 2 and 3 ; ch. 18, nos.
i*’3 ! ch- 20, no. 2 ; ch. 24, nos. 1-4. There is no reason to suppose that the changes
have been much more considerable than these additions or obvious corrections, for
in this case Cardinal Ugolino would not have been able to continue to give to this
text the name of ‘Institutions of St Sixtus’. By suppressing these limited additions,
it is thus possible to reconstruct with sufficient probability the rule of St Sixtus
properly so-called. From when did it date?
1 3. Clearly from a considerably earlier period. It is sufficient to compare the parallel
chapters of the ‘Rule of St Sixtus’ with the Statutes of 1228-1232, to see at once
 APPENDIX VIII
435

the archaic character of the farmer (RS, ch. 3, 4, 7, 8, 16-17, 20 and SM, ch. 7,
1 °> 1 5, 16, 3, 21). It went back at least to the foundation of St Sixtus in 1 2 2 1. Did
it come into being at this date? Clearly in the winter of 1 220-1 221, in Rome,
Dominic could have composed it in full, or reconstructed an earlier text with I
view to the foundation he was preparing to create. He then had at hand the customs
oi the Preachers of 1 2 16, completed in May 1 220. He had moreover to reinforce the
lules ot enclosure in the traditions of his sisters, to correspond with the intentions
of the Pope and with the ideal he wanted to give his Roman nuns. The theory, how¬
ever, of the composition in full of the rule of St Sixtus at this period must be
excluded. Something has already been said, on the other hand, of the probability of
a modification of the rule of Prouille during the winter 1 220-1 221, in the second
part of the text. Finally the hypothesis of a modification of the first part of the rule
of Prouille must be excluded and we must refuse to date from this time the massive
introduction of the customs of the Preachers into this rule. For it is no longer
possible to see how in this case the continuity of observance between Prouille and
St Sixtus, which is affirmed by facts and texts whose evidence we have no right to
ignore, could be maintained.

14- That is why we think finally that the ‘Rule of Prouille-St Sixtus’ was elaborated
in its essentials (especially for chapters 2—13-, 20, 21) by St Dominic for Prouille,
between summer 1216 and winter 1220—1221, in the period following the adoption
by the Preachers of their law of observance inscribed in the first distinction of the
Rodez text. It is possible that this elaboration was made as early as the first date. It
could equally have been made in Rome in the winter of 1218. The project, then
envisaged by Dominic, of establishing an autonomous community of Preachers in
Prouille by granting the masculine part of the convent the privilege of confirmation
Religiosam vitam, the document of which Dominic procured in Rome on 30 th March,
1218, probably led him to elaborate this new rule, to establish it in the feminine
part of the community. In the course of the spring or summer of 1 2 1 8, during those
long months when Dominic’s activity eludes us, between his departure from Rome
and his arrival in New Castile, he was probably busy inaugurating the new legislation
in Prouille. What had the rule of the sisters been up to that time ? Was it a legislation
special to them, already inspired by Premontre, the first draft that Dominic modified
to compose RS ? It is probable. In the condition of the documents, however, it is
very difficult to adopt this conclusion with certainty.
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

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 NOTES TO TEXT

NOTES TO INTRODUCTION
i. I Const. 223 (dist. II, ch. 31); Jordan, no. 104; Constantino d’Orvieto, Matins hymn in the office
of St Dominic, Ordinarium juxta ritum SOFP, Rome, 1921, 97 ; Robert d’Auxerre, 271.

NOTES TO CHAPTER I
1. Nueve meses de inrierno, tres de infiemo. cf. Kirsch, 9.
2. Encyclopedia Universal, 13, 992-995, art. Clunia, and Pelaez, 35-42. The latter work, which was
pulped for want of purchasers, is outstanding both for wealth of information and for its critical sense.
That of Martinez, a valuable collection of texts from archives, is less sure in its judgements. The inter¬
pretation of texts, moreover, is not always reliable. Cf. document CCXV1I and its facsimile, 281-283.
3. D’Aremberg & Saglio, Dictionnaire des antiquites grecques et romaines, V, 804, art. via. The Roman
road of Clunia has been studied between Olbega and Osma by Ed. Saavedra, in Mem. de la Academia de
historia, I, 1877-1879,48.
4. Pelaez, 37. Cf. map in Loperraez, I, 1, for what could still be traced of this Roman road in the
eighteenth century. Serrano, 64, n. 3.
5. ‘Calzada de Quinega’, Martinez, 22-24 (ch. XIX, of 22. V. 1272). A little farther to the south there
was also to be found a Calfadiella, which was perhaps the Roa-Simancas fork.
6. ‘Clunia’ in a bull of Pascal II in 1108, Pelaez, 52. ‘Carrera de Crunna’ (= Cluna) in 1272,
Martinez, 23. The name is again found today in that of the village, Coruna del Conde.
7. Penalba de Castro, Coruna del Conde, Hinojar and Quintanarraya.
8. Pelaez, 28—30.
9. For the history and character of this repopulation, cf. J. Perez de Urbel, ‘Reconquista y repoblacion
de Castilla y Leon durante los siglos IX and X’, in La Reconquista espanola,y la repoblacion del pals, Saragossa
1951, 139—162. The author stresses the importance of Cantabrians and Basques in the east of Castile and
the Douro. Aragonese and men of Navarre, numerous to the south of the Douro, were absent here as
were the French.
10. Conquered by Ferdinand I (1037-1065), Pelaez, 45.
11. For all this, see Ferotin, Silos 21-22; Pelaez, 44-50; Guinard, 301-343, Perez de Urbel, II,
485-486.
12. Florez, XXVI, 215-216; Loperraez, I, 71-72, 88-93, 112-114; Pelaez, 50-53.
13. The archdeaconries of Aranda, Roa and Aza, would thus have remained outside the diocese—
Loperraez, I, 72.
14. Texts: Florez, XXVI, Appendix XI to XIII, 466-469; Pelaez, 52, n. 1.
15. Text: Loperraez, III, 17; Pelaez 61, n. 1.
16. Loperraez, I, 165, 250-256; II, 189-202, 206-207, 2I°i Marques, 75-96; respective articles of
the Enciclopedia Universal.
17. Rades y Andrada, I, fo. 11, ch. 1; Manrique, III, 283-5; Cottineau, I, 1364; Guinard, 339;
Palacios, 881 and 51-53. The earlier abbey dated from 1073 ; Alfonso VI favoured it with a gift as late
as a 10—Loperraez, I, 76 and II, 184-186. Suppressed in the nineteenth century, the abbey has fallen
into ruins; in 1955 the final remains of the belfry were blown up with dynamite and sold (photo in
Pelaez, 139); nothing is left but the great enclosure wall, a mile or so to the south-east of Gumiel,
along the Gromejon.
18. Serrano, 130 and 166.
19. Pelaez, 57.
20. The bull of 1136 and a contemporary document noted by Arguleta, Continuacion, quoted by
Pelaez, 61, n. 1 and 63.
21. ‘El val (de Fande) todo de revielas fastal monte es todo de Caleruega.’ Martinez, 23 (ch. XIX of
the 26.V. 1272).
22. Serrano 130 and 166 (ch. LXIII and LXXXVIII of 10th May, 1062 and 26th February, 1117).
23. Ferotin, Recueil, 121 (ch. LXXIX of 19th March, 1202).
24. Jordan, no. 5, then royal charter of 1237, Martinez, 2 (no. XI).
25. Becerro d’Arlanza’s text, edited by Serrano, has modernized the spelling. The original version
will be found in the copy by P. Saez, given by Serrano, 1 31, n. 23.
26. ‘Caleruega’, Ferotin, Recueil, 121 (ch. LXXIX, 19.III. 1202). ‘Chaleruega’, Jordan, no. 5,
variant of ms. O, first edition of the libellus of 1234. Royal charter of 1237—Martinez, 2 (no. XI). See
also Serrano, 166 (ch. of 1117).
446 NOTES

27. E.g. Martinez, 250, 252, 254 &c. (nos. CXCVII, CXCVIII, CXCIX).
28. Information for which warm thanks are due to Professor Paul Aebischer. The termination
presupposes a diminutive suffix—*ocus, a, for the moment hypothetical. The explanation given by
Palacios, 872, n. 1 (Caleruega = Calor longa) is fanciful.
29. An Arabic origin could equally well have been put forward, with the root cala (castle) as in
Calatanazor, some thirty miles distant from Caleruega. The termination, however, is not Arabic. Prof.
Aebischer therefore excludes this.
30. Martinez, 14 (no. X) and 250-232 (no. CXCVII).
31. Even in 1131 Bishop Bertrand reported in a document on the poverty of the villages which had
difficulty in providing sufficient means for their own churches—Loperraez, I, 105.
32. The following statements have been made as a result of two direct examinations in 1950 and 1956.
They sometimes correct but more often confirm the careful observations of Pelaez. Cf. Kirsch, 13-44.
33. Martinez, 324 (no. CCXLIV, 26.III. 1 272) ; Pelaez, 237-257.
34. The gothic doorway discovered in 1952 is of the same workmanship as that of the nuns’ choir;
the window at the end of the ‘palace’ is similar to that which has been discovered at the end of the
vicariate—Carro, Caleruega, I, 6 and II, 51 ; cf. Appendix I. A direct investigation of the obvious
resemblances was made in 1956.
35. Cf. Appendix I.
36. Pelaez, 257-263.
37. Marques, 70.
38. Cf. Pelaez, 258. This access has since been simplified by a new incision in the solid mass of the
tower.
39. On the occasion of the deep excavations which had to be made in the ground between 1952 and
1955 for the foundations of the buildings around the torreon, all that was found was the slight remains of
two walls, near the north-east and south-east comers of this tower towards which they pointed. The
second fragment of wall is orientated north-south. No trace justifies the supposition that such walls were
originally linked to the torreon. Cf. Carro, Caleruega, II, 46-47, completed by a letter.
40. Document CCXLIV, Martinez, 324, of 26.III.1272, assigns to the sisters houses ‘que son cerca
las vuestras torres’. This may, however, be a plural of majesty.
41. Cf. Pelaez, 71—75.
42. Don Jose Menendez-Pidal, the architect, in 1952 dates this horseshoe arch to the eleventh
century; it is of the same workmanship as those found in the Mozarabic constructions of that period.
Other authorities would assign it to the beginning of the twelfth century. A careful comparative study
would be needed to decide the question. This arch, however, whose yellow stone and careful workman¬
ship form a striking contrast to the rest of the building, would seem to be a later addition. For the
dating of the reconstruction of the tower it is necessary to take as a basis the cradled window recesses
and the rough triangular arch of the door. This mixture of romanesque and primitive gothic elements
found in the belfry takes us back to the middle of the twelfth century.
43* Martinez, xv, points this out. It was verified personally in 1950 before, through the recent
building work, the triangular arch was replaced by a semi-circular one, the joinings of the stones covered
over and the interior of the tower plastered.
44. Below the four openings of the gallery for defence (second storey), only the romanesque window
and two small loop-holes are to be found; level with the ground is the evacuation point of a sewer; near
the north-east corner, on the north front and thus towards the open country, is a curious safety device.
Here the wall was reduced to a thin partition which could easily be pierced from within. The cavity was
filled on the inside with earth or with debris. Thus in a desperate extremity a breach through which to
escape could easily be opened. Carro, Caleruega, 46.
45. One final detail indicates the reconstruction of the tower: the floor-boards have been lowered.
This was almost certainly at the time that the door and window were opened up, for the floor of
the first storey corresponds to the latter. This floor was formerly higher to correspond to the loop¬
hole recesses, which are now about five feet above it. Similarly, the floor of the second storey was
arranged to correspond with the doors of the defence gallery which are now a good six feet above it.
Clearly, the archers did not have to perform an acrobatic feat each time they had "to shoot an arrow or
keep watch over the road.
46. An Arabic origin must be excluded. With its door facing south and its two loop-holes lookin®
north it is true that the construction seems to favour the Moslems. In actual fact it simply overlooks the
entrance to the valley of the Gromejon and is fitted for fighting on all sides because of its defence
gallery. The orientation has thus no significance either Christian or Moorish. On the other hand, the
square keep without a moat, and the gallery of wooden corbels which surmounted it, drew their inspira¬
tion from the traditions of the north in the tenth and eleventh centuries; the Moslem tradition was that
of the rectangular castle of Byzantine type. Cf. H.W.M. von Caboga, Der Orient und sein Einfluss auf Jen
mittelalterlichen Wehrbau des Abendlandes, Madrid, 1953, map, p. 33, and fitude concernant le probleme d’une
typologie, Rapperswil, 1952, 7 and 11. The tower of Caleruega on its spur of rock is of exactly the same
type as the nordic mound shown on p. 11 (before a.d. 1000).
47. Cf. supra, p. 7 and nn. 3 and 4.
48. Martinez, charters XX, XXV, LXX, LXXVI &c.
49 Martinez, 81 (ch. LXX 6.XII.1310). In 1390, the figures are 2,000, 200, 50 and 100, plus 500
goats The diminution is considerable. Ibid., 138. r
S° Martinez, 22-24 (charter XIX).
51 Especially in the domain of Banuelos de la Calzada (the Roman road), Martinez, 24-25, 28, 48
 NOTES
447
(cti. XX, XXII, XLII). The final charter, of 21.IV.1287, especially forbade the cutting of timber in the
nuns woods in the territory of Caleruega.
4 2. Eor the resistance, lasting throughout eight years, of the Order of Santiago, cf. Arguleta, Apologia
74» quoted by Martinez, 328, n. 1. The order yielded only' to force, Alfonso X having taken over its
property after 1 266.
43. For the definition of Behetria (= benefactoria) and the distinction between B. de mar a war and
B. entre parientes, see Morales, fo. 336.
44. On the Behetria, see Enciclopedia Universal, 7, 1467-1469, Guinard, 363-364.
44. Cf. infra 14 and n. 49.
46. On the right of pressura which allowed the occupation of such lands by immigrants who were
fieedmen, cf. J. de la Concha, Consecuencias juridicas, sociales y economicas de la reconquista y
1 epoblacion , in La Keconquista espanolay la repoblacion del pals, Saragossa, 1941, 21 1 — 218.
47- Martinez 9 (ch. VIII), 304-24 (ch. CCXXX-CCXL1I1) and 328-334 (ch. CCXLVII-CCXLIX).
Pedicel-, 46, handled 21 other charters which have not come back to the monastery and of which he has
published only one; cf. Martinez, 304.
48. Martinez 9 (ch. VIII, 4.VI.1266). Register of another recapitulatory charter (24.VII. 1 266) in
Pellicer 49-40; cf. Martinez 307; Pelaez 188, n. 1 and 199, n. 1.
49. On 19.III.1270 the Order of Santiago gave to the king the locality (luegar) of Caleruega, which
it had acquired from don Fernan Garcia on 14.IX.1248: Martinez, 328 and 284 (ch. CCXLVII and
CCXIX). A domain which is sold is no longer purely de behetria.
60. Martinez, 281 (ch.CCXVII, 23.II.1248).
61. Cf. supra, n. 49.
62. Martinez, 286 (ch.CCXX, 1 249). But the order retained its right of overlordship, which it only
surrendered in 1274, cf- supra, n.49.
63. Martinez, 307 (CCXXXIV, 23.X. 1266); 304 (CCXXXI, 22.VII. 1266).
64. Ibid., 307, 320, 322.
64. Enciclopedia Universal, art. ‘Behetria’, 7, 1468, col.2.
66. Salazar, Historia, III, L. XVII, ch. 4 and Arguleta, Apologia 79, referred to by Martinez, 9, n. 1
and 307, n. i, throw into relief the Villamayor ancestry of all the diviseros of Caleruega. Cf. Pelaez, 188.
Don Pedro de Guzman, whose genealogy is not known (cf. Pelaez, 168), dona Ines Perez de Maranon,
who was of Aza stock (cf. Salazar, Historia, I, 24), Ruy Perez de Arauzo de Salce, are outside this
connection.
67. Morales, fo. 336, v°-
68. In this charter of 10th May, 1062, Maria Fortuniz surrenders to the abbey of Arlanza ‘sua divisa
cum sua hereditate’ in Kalerueca as in numerous other places in the vicinity—Serrano, 131,0. 23.
69. Ferrando, no. 4.
70. ‘Honestos et pios’, Frachet, 67. The context indicates that honestus should be taken in the moral
and not in the social sense.
71. ‘Fuit autem pater ejus vir venerabilis et dives in populo suo. Mater vero honesta, pudica, prudens,
miseris et afflictis valde compatiens et inter omnes mulieres terrae illius bonae famae praerogativa
refulgens’. Rodriguez, 314.
72. The Castilian text of the thirteenth century, in which L. Getino thought he had found Ferrando’s
source is, in fact, a Castilian compilation of the legends of Humbert, of James of Voragine and other
Dominican writers of the end of the thirteenth century. Cf. W. F. Manning, An old Spanish life of St
Dominic, Medieval studies in Honor of J. 0. M. Ford, Cambridge, Mass., 1948, 139-148. As to the ten
lines quoted by P. Getino, cf. Appendix I, n. 4.
73. W. F. Manning, TheLifeofSt Dominic in Old French verse, Cambridge, Mass., 1944, 1 3, favours 1 234.
74. He signed a charter there on 26.III.1272, Martinez, 324 (ch. CCXLIV).
74. Cf. the Libel 1 us of Jordan of Saxony, the source of all the legends. The latter have continued the
work of depersonalization and effaced some of the details preserved by Jordan.
76. Martinez, xxi; Getino, S. Domingo, 21, after Mamachi, 24-24.
77. Vir . . . dives is a good rendering of ricohombre. It is clear that Rodriguez’ Latin is modelled upon
his Castilian: populus here has the twofold meaning of pueblo', vicinus that of vecino (inhabitant of the
village); we should rather expect dives homo to express ricohombre. Thus at this time Ptolemy of Lucca
translates: ‘Apud hispanos omnes sub rege principes, divites homines appellantur, et praecipue in
Castella’—De regno III, 22, S. Thomae Opuscula, ed. Perrier, I, Paris 1949, 349. On the other hand, the
expression ‘rico hombre of the village’ is adequate in a village of behetria, rather than lord of the village .
78. Pelaez, 68 and n. 1.
79. Rodriguez, 314.
80. Is it necessary to insist on the fact that the cellar was inside the house ‘intravit illico cellarium’ ?
This presupposes a large stone house: the peasants of Caleruega have their bodegas dug in the hill (cf.
above p. 29). On the cellar of the ancestress, cf. Appendix I.
81. Altaner, 174, supports the dismissal of the matter by the Bollandists, dSS, Aug., I, 384 and 387.
Scheeben, 2 affirms that Felix was a farmer. Mandonnet does not mention the Spanish origins of St
Dominic.
82. Appendix II.
83. The noblest at this period were the Aza, who were in possession of the ricahombna even for the
younger branches of the family (Salazar, Historia, III, 334); originally the Guzman only possessed the
title for one particular individual among them (Morales, fo. 339, v°).
84. In 1206, don Fernan Gonzales de Maranon, a cousin of the Aza family, was Grand Master of the
 448 NOTES

Order of Santiago. From 1212 to 1217 don Rodrigo Garces de Aza was Grand Master of Calatrava; he
would be a first cousin of St Dominic; don Juan Gonzales de Aza, Master a little later, would be of the
generation of his nephews; as would also don Gomez Manrique, Master of the same order in his turn—
Rades y Andrada I, fo. 3, ch. 2 and II, fo. 17. Salazar, Historia, III, 306 and 331.
85. Rodriguez, 3 14.
86. Rodriguez, 314-315. Altaner, 157, would have liked to think that this miracle was simply the
one attributed by Frachet, 93, to a Sicilian lady, plagiarized and attributed to the mother of St Dominic.
But, except for the bare fact of the multiplication of the wine, the two accounts have no connection with
each other. Altaner did not know of the fact of the presence of Rodriguez at Caleruega.
87. Morales, fo. 340; Bremond, 86-92 and 286-289 (Appendix XIII); Mamachi, 29-31. The archives
of the order preserved in the eighteenth century the copy of an informative inquiry made in April and
May 1645, (3rd May in Caleruega), on the life and monuments of Bl. Jane. Pelaez, 122-132 criticizes and
completes these details. However, the figures to be seen on the faqade of the chapel at Caleruega are not
lions, as he thought, but dogs bearing the torch. In 1955 the Passionist fathers who occupy the Penafiel
monastery and look after the tomb of the Beata did away with the monument and placed the relics and
the statue on an altar.
88. Rodriguez, 314 (no. III).
89. ‘Quam tuis Domine obsequiis mancipavi’—Rodriguez 315.
90. dSS, Aug. I, 566B.
9 1. Frachet, 67.
92. Jordan, no. 51.
93. It is true that Frachet, 67 and Rodriguez, 331, say ‘germanus frater’ and ‘germanus ipsius’. But
the unusual word of Jordan’s Libellus must be retained, the manuscripts contain no variant. Moreover,
the word is not called for by necessities of cursus or style. Jordan, who gives Mames his rightful name
(and not the distorted name of Mannes) knew him very well, from 1218 onwards, in Paris. The brother
had just arrived there to found the convent where Jordan was shortly to take the habit. In 1234 when
the Libellus was put together, Mames was still living. If in the thirteenth century the word was sometimes
taken in the broad sense (Frachet, 258, uses uterinus for a twin brother; Guillaume Le Breton, Gesta
Philippi Augusti, I, Paris, 1882, no. 176, refers to three fratres uterini, sons of the late Gauthier,
Chamberlain of France), Jordan has a taste for using words in their correct and even etymological sense.
94. Dominic died in 1221. Mames was still living when his brother was canonized (3.VII. 1234).
since he came to Caleruega when the news of it reached Spain, Rodriguez, 331. The date of 1230, at
which certain authorities place his death without giving their source (cf. Altaner, 16. n. 5), comes from
Manrique, Cisterciencium . . . annalium, IV. Lyons, 1649, 408. Cf. Mamachi, 373, n. s'. Rodriguez’
information, directly derived from Caleruega, should be preferred to that of the modem Cistercian
compiler.
9S- Thierry shows great skill as a compiler. All he adds to his sources, which moreover are known,
is his art of harmonization. That is sufficient indication of the value of the dates he inserts from time to
time in his large biography, dates which are not given by his sources. They are not items of fresh
information, but conclusions proper to Thierry, certain of which are clearly erroneous—Altaner, 187
and n. 1. The hypothesis, however, of a new piece of information, obtained, for instance, in the course
of a general chapter through a conversation with a well-informed Spanish friar, cannot be excluded
a priori.
96. Infra, ch. Ill, note 95—96.
97. Frachet, 67. That this hospice may have been that attached to the chapel of St Dominic in
Caleruega, as Carref Caleruega, I, 6 and II, 52) supposes, is not completely impossible, but is improbable.
The hospice dates from after 1234. At that time, St Dominic’s brother, if he were still living would
have been seventy-four according to Carro, at least more than sixty. In these circumstances all he would
have brought the poor would have been what was left of his goodwill; he would not have been able
to devote himself entirely to their service5, as Frachet says.
98. This statement was then met with in Italy—Leandre Albert, De Viris illustribus O.P., Bologna
1519. A tradition, however, does exist at Silos—Ferotin, Silos, 88. ’
99. Guinard, 338—340.
100. Rades y Andrada, I, fo. 10, c. 4.
101. Cf. supra, n. 17 and Appendix II, n. 2, 15, 23, 24, 25, 26, 28.
102. Affirmed by the best authorities—Jordan, no. 5' ; Rodriguez, 331. Sometimes erroneously
latinized as Mamertus (St Mamert, Archbishop of Vienne).
103. Other saints of the same name exist, however, e.g. at St Flour. There is no guarantee that the
Mames venerated in Castile is the Caesarean one.
104. Frachet, 67.
105. On the occasion of the dispersion in August 1217, he was sent to Paris to make a foundation
there; he must already have been well-versed in the ways of the order_Jordan No c 1
106. Cf. supra, n. 94. J J
107. Erat autem ille frater Mames praedicator fervidus, honestus moribus, mitis humilis, hilaris et
benignus . Rodriguez, 332. ’
108. Mamachi, Appendix 365, n. 5, add. of a manuscript of Bernard Gui; MOPH, XXII in annarat
Cl. Frachet, 67, n. 9. On the recognitions of relics in 1694 and 1827_Pelaez m-in ’
109. Frachet, 67. > ii SJ•
110. Proces. Thol. no. 21.
m. Text quoted by Taeggio, Chronica brevis, ASOP, V, 1901, 62.
 NOTES
449
Vita uJauan^’Ain' 5 pT ^ SeC°,nd edition of the Libellus). Borrowed from the story of St Bernard
Ua auctore Alano, PL, 183, col. 470, or perhaps from that of San Julian de Cuenca (f 1 208) /1SS
Cuenca, fso *, fo 3,’ £"° ^ ^ EsCuder°’ Vida -? miIa3ros del arioso San Julian, obispo de Cuenca,

Chi7sostomtetcemy’ 23°' ^ Same epis°de has already served for St Ambrose, St Isidore, St John
114. Jordan, no. 9.
115. Jordan, no. 3.
1 16. Argent with sable scabbard’. They are already to be found in 1383, on the reliquary of St
ominic by Jacobo Roseto at Bologna. They are an attempt to represent the arms of Innocent V (1 276).
s ai back as the sixteenth century they began to be crowded with unnecessary detail. The arms with
the ornamented fleur-de-lis cross seem to be those of the Spanish Inquisition. Cf. Archives heraldiques
suisses, LX, 1946, 43-44. Bibliography: AFP, XXI, 1951, 89, n. 54.
117. Jordan, no. 9.
118. Cecilia, no. 1 3.
119. Ferrando, no. 6.
.
120 Pelaez, 260-261.
121. Getmo, 30, has collected the pious puns in which the Dominican hagiographers have indulged
on the name of St Dominic, beginning with Jordan, no. 21.
122. Ferrando, no. 3.
123. Proces. Bon. nos. 2o, 28, 31, 37, 42, 46; Proces. Thol. nos. 11, 13-, 17, 18.

NOTES TO CHAPTER II
1. Bruno I of Cologne was separated from his parents and entrusted to an ecclesiastical school at the
age of four, St Anschar and St Leo IX at five. Such a separation, however, usually took place about the
age of six or seven—Lesne, 313, 436. Castillo, II, ch. 2 gives seven years old for St Dominic, which is
at least an indication of the custom at the close of the Middle Ages.
2. Jordan, no. 3.
3. Ibid.
4. Lesne, 326-333 and passim.
3. Jordan, no. 3.
6. Castillo, II, ch. 2 ; Getino, 33. Palacios, 33-38 merely uses Castillo as his source.
7. Kirsch, 43-49; Palacios, 37.
8. Gumiel is not found among the fourteen traditional deaneries of Osma—Loperraez, II, 18. These
divisions of the dioceses in the west were prior to the twelfth century. The large collection of diocesan
charters published by Loperraez does not give the slightest hint of an eventual reorganization o ‘he
diocese after its restoration. On the other hand a charter of 1148 mentions the Dean of Soria, another
of 1132 the archdeacons (corresponding to rural deaneries) of Osma, San Esteban de Gormaz, Aza and
Soria, another in 1270, of the rural deanery of Roa—Loperraez, III, 24, 29, 40. Since the nineteenth
century the diocese has comprised twenty-eight such deaneries, and Gumiel figures amongst them.
Possibly the legend of the saint’s stay in Gumiel also grew up at the monastery of San Pedro de Gumiel.
Cf. Appendix II, no. 13.
9. These three deaneries were lacking in the diocese as reconstituted in 1088—Loperraez, I, 72.
10. Jordan, no. 3.
11. Lesne, 433-8.
i 2. Ferotin, Silos, 87. Based on a tradition that was already very ancient in the sixteenth century.
13. J. E. de Noriega, Dissertatio historica de S. Domingo de Guzman, Ord. Praed. Patriarcha, Canonico
Regulari Praemonstratensi in observatissimo Monasterio de la Vid, Salamanca, 1723. Cf. Martinez, XLI-XLI1.
14. Arguleta, Apologia (1723) and Continuacion (1731).
13. The expression is from Pelaez, 63, n.2, who criticizes it fully and sagaciously.
16. Ferotin, Silos, 87, n. 3.
17. Lesne, 436-437, Delhaye, 229-232. Particularly those monasteries which, like Silos, were under
the influence of Cluny.
18. Constitutions of Premontre, 2nd edition (ca. 1174) D. TV, ch. Ill, ed. Martene, De Antiquis
Ecclesiae Ritibus, III, Venice, 1783, 334; Bassano 1788, 328.
19. Lesne, 373.
20. ‘Ut distincte et aperte sonans, audientium corda possit instruere’, Rabanus Maurus, De clericorum
institutione, PL, 107, 303.
21. Proces. Bon., no. 21, 38, 46.
22. Lesne, 339, after PL 133, 49.
23. Decivitate Dei, L. 21, ch. 14—PL. 41, 728. Cf. Confess., L. 1 ch. 9—PL, 32, 667.
24. ‘Continuo est virga super eos’ PL, 149, 747A, B.
23. De Vita sua, I, 6, PL, 136, 847C.
26. Proces. Bon., no. 23 and Constantin, no. 61.
27. At the beginning of the twelfth century, studies often terminated about the age of fifteen. One
could go to the liberal schools as early as twelve or even ten. As the schools developed, however, the
admission age was put later. John of Salisbury arrived in Paris at fourteen. If it is remembered that the
custom existed at this time of conferring benefices on adolescents who went off to the schools and that
in the three middle decades of the twelfth century Alexander III laid down that one might not receive
 4£° NOTES

such benefices before the age of fourteen, it may be concluded that fourteen became the usual age for
admission to the schools. In the thirteenth century it was at about fifteen that one’s university studies
began—Lesne, 443, £13; Delhaye 231 and n. 33, 261; Thomassin, I, 438, col. 1.
28. Jordan, no. 6.
29. Heredia, 318-319 and nos. 7 and 8, who, however, quotes instances of Castilian clerics for
Compostela and Salamanca studying in France.
30. For Compostela, Heredia, 316-322. On the translators of Toledo see De Wulf, Hist, de la
philosophic medievale, I, 6th ed., Louvain-Paris, 1934, 67-68; J. M. Millas Vallicrosa, ‘La escuela de
traductores de Toledo’ in Homenaje a Avicenna en su milenario, A1 Andalus, XIV (1949), 291—319;
Defourneaux, 43 —4 3.
31. For Toledo, Beltran de Heredia, ‘Los origenes de la Universidad de Salamanca’ in Ciencia Tomista,
(I9S4) 7°; f°r Salamanca, ibid., 80—82; for Osma, cf. infra, ch. Ill, notes 72 to 77.
32. Postmodum autem missus est Palentiam, ut ibi liberalibus informaretur scientiis, quarum
studium ea tempestate vigebat ibidem.’ Jordan, no. 6. Moreover there was also a school of theology,
since Dominic studied that science there too. (Ibid. no. 7). With a text relating to Pedro Gonzalez
Telmo O.P. (Florez, XXIII, 243), Jordan’s text is the only mention we have of these schools prior to
the institution of the university; but the institution itself clearly confirms the fact. Cf. Denifle, Die
Entstehung des Universtiaten des Mittelalters bis 1400, Berlin 1883, 473-474. See Beltran de Heredia’ ‘La
Universidad de Palencia’, ‘Santo Domingo de Guzman en Palencia’, ‘San Pedro Gonzalez Telmo’’, in
Semana pro Ecclesia et Patria, Palencia 1936. J. San Martin, La antgiua Universidad de Palencia, Palencia
I942> 6-12. The out-of-date study of Beltran de Heredia, which he was kind enough to allow us to use,
as J San Martin very kindly allowed the use of his, still contains data of value; he himself has made an
excellent restatement of it in the article cited above, n. 31, 70-77.
33. Denifle, ibid., 474-476.
34. Between 1080 and 1083, at the time of Bishop or Archbishop Bernard—L. Serrano, ‘Concilios
nacionales de Palencia en la primera mitad del siglo XII’, in Semana pro Ecclesia et Patria, Palencia, 1936,
3-6.
33. Serrano, 3-24.
36. Serrano, 20.
. lu' Cf; P^eding note. As to the lists, Beltran de Heredia, art. cited (supra, n. 31) 4-3, has indicated,
at the end of the twelfth century and beginning of the thirteenth, certain names preceded by the title of
master, which means that such persons were engaged in teaching (cf. Lesne, 461-462) Gerard, Lanfranc,
perhaps also Tello, the future bishop.

liberalIrts tW^ “ C6rtified by the text °f Jordan Huoted mPra, n. 32. San Telmo only studied the

j 3g9’2 fr6’ Brunet’ Tremblay, La Renaissance du Xlle siecle, les ecoles et l’enseignement, Paris-Ottawa 1933,

4°. For all that follows, cf. De Wulf, Histoire de la Philosophic medievale, 6th ed., II, Louvain, 1936
63 64. Pare, Brunet, Tremblay 168-169 According to Senor Alonso Alonso, Gondisalvi, collaborator
Juan Avendauth, Bishop of Segovia, later Archbishop of Toledo (f 1166) died in 1181 and not

AiAndMs!miS( "43), -r-188 ^ t0ledan°S D°min§° Gondisal'd J Juan Hispano’ in

41. De Wulf, Hist, de la philosophic medievale, I, 6th ed. Louvain-Paris 1934, 61-2, has shown that the
philosophy (physics, psychology, metaphysics) which progressively developed in the schools of the

betw^rts'LTheology" eXtenSi°n °r °f ^ ^ faculty’ but a fresh -Hect, mid-way

42. Jordan, no. 6.
43- The statement comes from Hugh of St Victor, Didascalicon, III, 3—PL, ,76, j6s who attributes
is custom to Pythagoras (cf. Lesne, 369). Ferrando, no. 7, says that St Dominic abstained from wine
uring ten1 years (decenmum), but that Diego made him give up the custom. The intervention must have
corresponded to Dominic’s entering the Osma chapter. The period often vears a
with the length of his stay in Palencia. If the four years’ theology are deducted, at lefsf sL yearTwould
remain for liberal studies. In view of Jordan’s statement, this is a maximum. *
44. it a clause ot the first constitutions of 1220 is any criterion: ‘In libris Pentilinm u
(fratres studentes) non studeant, etsi ad horam inspiciant*, D. II, ch. 28 (1 Const. 22) P ^ 10rum
43. Cf. as the antithesis of this, the remonstrances of Peter of Blois with twnsrhnl^ r ,
obstinately insisted a, an advanced age, on teaching the libetal” "wM.S „ tetat^TZ
renounce legal studies in order to do theology: ‘Duo sane sunt nuae hominei! I toted t0

PLhe2Tr4T6inHfcanedathbfii0t^8nitatiS ** appetitus’’ he wrote to the second—Ep^T

46. Jordan, no. 6.

•n.t7240n thC Significance of the title of master, given to him from 1216 onwards, cf. infra, ch. VII,
48. Luke XI, 28; Jordan, no. 7.
49. Ibid.
30. Semper gestabat secum Matthei evangelium et epistolas Pauli . , ,
quod fere sciebat eas cordetenus.’ Deposition of Fray Juan de Espaha, Proces. Bon , no!^ “ **
S1, iheLibellus states, gratiam ei deus scientiarum fl Reg. II adauxit nt nnn cl j i
poton, II Cot. „ redderetur idonen, sod e, ,ne,Lu,f,
 NOTES
4£*
penetraret arcanum et solidioris cibi scrutinium sufficient! admodum facilitate glutiret’. Jordan, no. 7.
52. Mention of the Tibros manu sua glossatos’ of St Dominic in Palencia, by Fray Esteban, Proces. Bon.
no. 35.
53. In 1183 the canons of St Antolin tound their private lives made freer by the authorization they
received from their bishop, Raymond II, to make wills as they pleased—Gil Gonzalez Davila, Teatro
eclesiastico de las iglesias de los reinos de las dos Castillos, II, Madrid, 1647, 152.
54. Lesne, 530-532.
55. Jordan, no. 10, mentions the ‘libros, quos sibi oppido necessarios possidebat, cum omni
suppellectili sua’. As to the ‘house of St Dominic’ which was shown in Palencia from the seventeenth
century onwards and even at the beginning of the twentieth century and which has been demolished
since, this could easily be the ‘charity’ he established. The pictures of it which are extant, however,
scarcely give the appearance of a twelfth-century building. Moreover, how could this charity, which had
to be poor and could scarcely be built of stone, have lasted through so many centuries! cf. Kirsch
56—57; Beltran de Heredia, La Unirersidad de Palencia, 230.
56. Fray Esteban in his deposition at the Bologna Inquiry, claims that Dominic belonged to the Osma
chapter even as early as the Palencia period, Proces. Bon., no. 35. In that case he would have been able
to live on his prebend. At the end of the twelfth century, this was the case with numerous scolares
canonici—Lesne, 517-51 8. The Osma chapter, however, was not secularized and had not, it seems, taken
any particular steps in favour of student canons. The maintenance of benefices during one’s period at the
schools was not yet a common rule. Some chapters practised it individually—Compostela, Gerona,
Tortosa, etc., cf. Heredia, 321-324. It is, however, clear that Fray Esteban, who was speaking from
hearsay, has confused the chronology. For instance, he places Dominic’s preaching in Toulouse ‘a few
days’ after the events of Palencia! Jordan, no. 11, on the other hand, situates the events of Palencia
before Dominic’s entry into the Osma chapter. So also does John of Navarre: at Palencia St Dominic
was still ‘in saeculo’, Proces. Bon., no. 29. Dominic was thus still living at the expense of his family.
57. Jordan, no. 7.
58. Ferrando, no. 7.
59. Jordan, no. 8; Bull of Canonization, MOPH, XVI, 192. It is the old theme of puer-senex taken up
again by St Gregory in the first sentence of his well-known life of St Benedict {PL, 66, 1 26A) but which
Jordan seems rather to have borrowed from the twelfth-century poets—E. R. Curtius, ‘Zur literar-
iisthetik des Mittelalters’, II, 2. ‘Puer-Senex’ in Zeitschriftfur romanische Philologie LV1II (1938), 143-1 51.
60. Lesne, 550—551.
61. Cf. his confidences at the moment of death. God has given him the grace to preserve his flesh
uncorrupt, but he has not been able, he admits, to avoid finding more attraction in the conversation of
young girls than in that of old ladies—Jordan, no. 93. Then he has a scruple at having dared to speak of
his virginity, Proces. Bon., no. 5.
62. Guinard, 319-21 and 337-40.
63. Jordan, no. 10—‘Oborta est fames valida fere per universam Hispaniam.’ Cf. Proces. Bon., 100,
and nos. 29 and 35.
64. Cf. infra, ch. Ill, nn. 70-71.
65. TSS, januarii, III (Paris, 1863), 510.
66. Du Cange, sub.h.v. no. 2. The eleemosyna is precisely the establishment depending on an abbey,
a collegiate or other church, where the service of distribution to the poor is installed. For instance,
when Alfonso VI of Castile, some years before these events, caused St Lesma to come to Spain, he gave
him charge of a church near Burgos and of an eleemosyna for pilgrims—Florez, XXVII, 450. On the word,
which became general in the twelfth century for designating the hospitium pauperum, and on the institu¬
tion, cf. E. Lesne, ‘Les Eglises et les monasteres centres d’accueil, d’exploitation et de peuplement’,
Histoire de la propriete ecclesiastique en France, VI, Lille I943> x42—1 31 •
67. ASS, januarii, III, 510. The text runs—‘Antistes elesmum famulum jubet. ... It clearly refers
to the ‘famulus eleemosynarius’. The Latin text of Bollandus is a version of the Spanish text of Juan
Marieta O.P. He summarizes Franciscus Scuderius, SJ, who must have used a Latin original: perhaps
the now lost canonization process.
68. ‘Multi moriebantur.’ Proces. Bon., nos. 29 and 35.
6o Jordan as well as the other witnesses points out that the men magnae auctoritatis only intervened
after Dominic had given them the example. There was, however, a hospice at the St Antolin chapter
which had received a farm in 1162 from the bishop, Raymond II, to entertain the poor there—Loperraez,
I 1 37 • Gil Gonzalez Davila, loc. cit., supra, n. 53- Doubtless it was crowded out with hungry people.
’ ?0 ' Jordan no 10 ‘Instituere eleemosynam’ must be taken in the full sense of setting up an institu¬
tion, a centre’of charity, just as ‘instituere scholam’ can have the meaning of building a school—Lesne
rr6 Juan de Navarra, Proces. Bon., no. 29, for his part says definitely that Dominic sold his books and
furniture ‘pro cibu pauperum’, which points to the daily distributions of food made in the charity
centres.
7 1. Matt. XIX, 21. ruj
72. Fray Esteban, Proces. Bon., no. 35- The Councils of Pans and Rouen, in 1213-1214, forbade
religious to bind themselves by oath or under threat of anathema not to sell the books of the community
for the poor, for to sell in order to give is one of the principal works of mercy, Mansi, XXII, 832 and 900.
72 Ferrando no 21—cf. for a similar gesture made by Dominic in Languedoc, Jordan no. 35. 1 he
date is clearly indicated. It happened in Spain ‘cum adhuc in suis partibus moraretur . He was already
of age. He had not yet joined the chapter of Osma, for he would then no longer have been free to dispose
of himself. In short, he no longer had anything to sell except himsell.
 4£2 NOTES

74. Fray Esteban indeed declared: ‘Cuius exemplo quidam magne auctoritatis similia fecerunt, et
ex tunc cum eo predicare ceperunt. Et sicut intellexi[t], post paucos dies venit idem frater Dominicus
ad partes Tolosanas . . .’, Proces. Bon., no. 3£. Clearly there is something wrong with the chronology
here, but the facts are probably true.
j £. Jordan, no. 4. The bishop in question in this paragraph is not Diego, as Jordan thought, but his
predecessor, Martin Bazan (| 1201). Diego was merely prior of the chapter. Jordan has rather confused
the two figures. We attribute the search for new subjects for the chapter to Diego.
76. Fray Esteban, long before he knew St Dominic, had heard much good related of him and in
particular the story of the charity centre ‘a magnis viris’. Proces. Bon., no. 35.
77. Jordan, no. 11. On the subject of the possibility of Dominic’s later teaching in Palencia, for
which there is no foundation in the sources, nor place in the chronology, cf. infra, ch. VII, n. 124.

NOTES TO CHAPTER III

1. The archives of the church of Osma were partially destroyed by a fire in i£o£—M. H. Vicaire,
‘St Dominque en 1207’ in AFP, XXII (19^3), 343 and n.48. Clearly they must have been reconstructed
at once, for certain documents were of vital importance. Moreover, there were still extant in the
middle of the sixteenth century many old documents of which an inventory has been preserved—
Filiberto Diez Pardo, Santo Domingo de Guzman, Vergara 193J, go, n. 30; cf. infra, n. 83. In 1659
P. Argaiz, in order to compile, on the instructions of Bishop Palafox, the Memorias ilustres de la santa
lglesiaj obispado de Osma, a manuscript preserved in the archives of the cathedral, had himself provided
by the abbeys or churches of the neighbourhood with authentic copies of documents concerning Osma—
Diez Pardo, no. 31. At the close of the eighteenth century, Loperraez-Corvalan used all these docu¬
ments with intelligence and restraint, editing them in the third volume of his work, in order to compose
a detailed history of the diocese of Osma. He did not, however, know the Dominican documents. It is
of his book that use will chiefly be made. The Teatro Eclesiastico de la lglesiay cividad de Osma (Madrid),
1648, a very cursory work, is of little value. Nunez Marques may be considered a guide; his history is a
compilation, but his descriptions are useful. Senor Alamo’s article Burgo de Osma in DHGE, X, 1266-
1271, is excellent.
2. The charter of donation and confirmation of the property of the diocese dated 19th February, 11 J4
(Loperraez, III, 32-33) only mentions, so far as Osma itself is concerned, the property of the former
monastery of San Miguel. That of 24th September, 1174 (Loperraez III, 36—38) adds, in the same phrase—
Burgum sancte Marie, i.e. the locality which in the meantime had grown up around the cathedral of Santa
Maria. Loperraez II, 38, assigns the date 1164 to the populating of this burgh or villa, which must be
distinguished from the castrum, that is, from the reoccupied Roman town with its surrounding wall and
its towers, where, moreover a fortress had been built. In actual fact the charter of 11 70 (cf. following
note) would seem to be the decisive charter dealing with the settlement of the place.
3. Charter of 22nd September, 1170 (Loperraez, III, £62), issued by Alfonso VIII, granted in response
to tantis et lacrimosis petitionibus’ of the bishop and canons. No authority and no council could claim
to reap any advantage whatsoever on these lands which had been made over to the Church. Any man
could establish himself there freely, except the inhabitants of the castrum of Osma.
4• For the renunciation of the right of spoliation, cf. infra, no. 82 ; on its significance see Lacger, 286.
The manor and the fortress were made over to the Church in 1 214 by Alfonso'VlII as he lay dying. It was
only very much later and never permanently that the bishop succeeded in taking possession of these
rights and above all of the castle which was in the hands of lay occupiers—Loperraez, I, 14.4 212 ff*
II, 221 ; III, 49 ff.; Nunez-Marques, £8-£j.
£. Loperraez, I, 143.
6_- For the time of the troubles, under Urraca, particularly in 111 2, see Loperraez, I, 95. On Uxama,
Nunez-Marques, £2—£9, in part based on Loperraez and Bias Taracena, Carta arqueoldgica de Soria; Alamo,
1267.
7. For a description of the place, its cathedral and cloister and the way they were furnished in the
eighteenth Century, see Loperraez, II, 37 ff; for their present condition, kirsch, c8-6r; Nunez-
Marques, 1-43.
8. Ps. LXXX, III, 1 and j.
9. The double windows of the chapter room of the twelfth century can be identified. The columns
and romanesque capitals of this room (today the sacristy of the parish clergy), the vault of which is of
more recent date, come from the former cathedral—Nunez-Marques, 17-18. The cathedral now
contains numerous images or statues of St Dominic, in particular a bas-relief in a stall which is always
u jmpty ,'? at t*jle times the offices. It is not so long since Mass was still celebrated thereon
4th August—Ealme, I £3. The custom has become obsolete. As to the saint’s house which was still shown
in 1920 in the lane behind the cloister (Kirsch, 64), and which is now destroyed, there was nothing
authentic about it. Dominic, as a Canon Regular, certainly lived and slept in’the claustral buildings.
10. The black cloak with the pointed hood of the canons of Osma in the time of St Dominic may be
seen worn by the canon following St Peter of Osma on the latter’s tomb in the cathedral (1258). The
white habit was common to all Canons Regular of the twelfth century, and for this reason they were
classed together under name of ‘White Canons’—Jacques de Vitry, cited in Mandonnet-Vicaire I, 236,
n. 18. The monastic reformers of the time, such as Citeaux, also wore black and white. The origin of these
colours would be the insistence of the new regulars on manual work; their garments, made with their
rwt,Sn0Ud n0t ^ dycd—P,Cre!nC;’ Premontre, 371, n. 3 and 373, n. 2; Echard I, 75a, rightly
thinks that Dominic never altered his habit, J
 NOTES
4£3
in 1086 (Perez de Urbeni^^Tand^S^^)31123 (LoP®”a®z» IU> £63)> San Miguel had a certain renown
the diocese W,Q t| ’ 47. , . 48 2) > by 11 34 it had already been suppressed and incorporated in
deSanded oVeTza" the "7^ ?f de San Martin y sLa Mar”
™ ’ san redro de Aza> the origm of which is unknown—Loperraez, III ,2

. lie, Ste be'add^hS^Sn °f S“ MigUd de QUintana " Pidi°’ giVen t0 Sil0S ta

'3- ^Ihe first three in the diocese, the fourth in the Cistercians.
II themSelV6S Were fr°m Cinny Urban II Pascal II (,o99-. 1,8), Callixtus

!5. Perez de Urbel, II, 426-432 and 483-4; Villey, 63-73 ; Defourneaux, i7-49, who (18 n , and
foreign’ iX ' ^ nari;owly,nationalist judgements of the Spanish historians in the face of this
foreign influence for example, Perez de Urbel, II, 427). Men whose real country was the Church
calleTf0 Were W°5kin® for the good of the countries where their order was established, cannot be
foreigners. On the other hand, m the reactions of their opponents, which were similar to those
the reform elicited elsewhere, a solely national reaction should not be seen.
16.
1 ^ Perez de Urbel, II, 431—432 ; Defourneaux, 3^.
17- Loperraez, I, 76-94.
18. Ibid., I, 93—101.
19- Supra, ch. II, n. 3.
20.
r /D°m o' Serra"<?’ ‘Concilios nacionales de Palencia en la primera mitad del siglo XII’, in Semana
pro tcclesia et Patna, Palencia, 1936, 3-24.
r V-i
E?nlly e?”ec^ed Catalonia and Aragon (1071) this change was carried out with some difficulty in
Castile, through the will of Popes Alexander II and Gregory VII—Defourneaux 28-32
22. Despite what tradition has to say (cf. Perez de Urbel, II, 433), it was n’ot abolished by authority
but gradually replaced—Defourneaux, 32, n. 4. J J
23. Perez de Urbel II, 4S4-322; Defourneaux, 48-38. The intense movement of the Cistercian
toundations was only interrupted during the minority of Alfonso VIII (1138-1168).
24. Supra, ch. I, p. 9.
23. Loperraez, I, 173-187.
26. Ibid., I, 187—194.
27. He attributes to Bishop Diego the reform of the canons and the appointment of Dominic to the
chapter. These, however, were the acts of Diego’s predecessor, Martin Bazan, of whose very name
Jordan seems unaware. Diego doubtless played a decisive role in these two matters, but the bishop alone
had the authority to determine them. r
28. It is remarked that Bishop Martin, like his predecessors very often followed the royal court far
from Osma (from 1193-1193, for instance, he is found in the king’s company in turn at Alarcos,
Zorril, Fuentes, Toledo, Valladolid, Alarcos, Toledo, Palenzuela, Toledo, Valladolid, Alarcos . . . —
Loperraez, I, 173-179), it can be concluded that he chiefly confirmed with his authority the spirit¬
ual initiatives of the prior of his chapter whose high apostolic value he was soon to learn to
recognize.
29- Jordan, n. 4. At the same period St Julian of Cuenca was also looking round everywhere for good
clergy, ASS, januarii III, Paris 1863, 310.
30. In 1223, the bishop of Palencia, whose schools had been flourishing in an exceptional manner for
half a century, stressed the ignorance of the country clergy—Denifle, Die Entstehung der Universi&ten des
Mittelalters bis 1400, Berlin 1883, 476. What must have been the position then in dioceses with an even
poorer teaching tradition ?
3 1. Text in Loperraez III, 47 (bull of 1 1.V.1 199). Immediate action if the misdemeanour was manifest.
No action is possible on public rumour alone if there were no evidence: there must be witnesses. If there
were public scandal, however one, had to apply to the accused the canonical measure of puraatio
Cf. Ibid., I, 181. '
32. Colmenares has discovered, without date or place of issue, the documents of a provincial council
convened by Martin de Toledo (1194-1208), which ordered priests to turn out of their house and
cease all contact with women under suspicion; this canon cannot be later than the bull, for it is highly
improbable that it would have failed to quote it—Loperraez, I, 18 1.
33. Act of 31.V.1270, again confirmed in 1300—Loperraez, III, 201. It was granted, as requested:
‘por si, e por todos los otros clerigos desde Archiprestago’. This does not mean that all the other clerics
had children!
34. Jordan, n. 4.
33. The history of the canonical movement in the eleventh and twelfth centuries has been completely
revised in the last twenty years, thanks in particular to the work of Charles Dereine. In Spain it has
scarcely been studied except for Catalonia and Aragon. In addition to the fundamental studies of Dereine,
Dickinson, Vincke, cf. L. de la Calzada, La Proyeccion del pensamiento de Gregorio VII en los reynos de Castilla
y Leon, Studi Gregoriani III, Rome 1948, 1-87; ch. Dereine, ‘L’elaboration du statut canonique des
chanoines reguliers’, specialement sous Urbain II in RHE, XLVI (1931), 334-363; ‘Coutumiers et
ordinaires de chanoines reguliers’, in Scriptorium V (1931) 107-113; ‘Note sur l’influence de la regie
de Gregoire VII’, in RHE, XLIII (1948), 312-314, ‘Les coutumiers de S. Quentin de Beauvais et de
Springiersbach’, in RHE, XLIII (1948), 411-442.
36. Loperraez, I, 102-116.
37. The buildings, begun by Pierre de Bourges (Loperraez, I, 93), made little progress under his
successor because of the civil disturbances, Bishop Bertrand instituted a confraternity of prayer for the
 NOTES
4-S4-
dead on 4.IV.1130 (text Ibid., ID, 12; cf. I, 104-105) the alms from which helped. In 1136 the king
assigned the church of La Vid to the construction of the canons’ residence (Ibid., I, no).
38 On 4.V.1131, Innocent II referred to the ‘fratres saeculares ejusdem loci’—Loperraez, III, 13-
On 3 .I.1136, on the other hand, Alfonso VII granted the church of Osma the tithes of San Esteban de
Gormaz ‘omnibus in eadem Ecclesia sub regula 5. Augustini servientibus, ad opus vestimentorum
suorum’—Loperraez, III, 15.
39. See reports of the prior and the bishop—Loperraez, II, 77. In 1152 (charter of 1 o.v II Loperraez,
III, 27) the following dignitaries are mentioned—prior, cantor, praepositus, camerarius, operanus (? archi¬
tect). The title praepositus was formerly traditional in Spain. The influence of Cluny substituted for it
the title of prior (Perez de Urbel II, 434). Here it designates the sub-prior. Camerarius is the bursar.
Other lists mention a sacrista, a preceptor (cf. infra, n. 71). I*1 2270, the personae of the chapter were.
prior, tres archidiaconi, sacrista et cantor (charter of 3.II. 1 270—Loperraez, III, 203).
40. Loperraez I, 1305 cf. Vincke, 40. The Bishop of Osma was careful to make secure his authority
over the Premonstratentians of La Vid, which was threatened by their dependence on the rest oi the
order. Any relationship at all between the cathedral chapter and Premontre could not have failed to
leave important traces in the documents because of this dependence, as well as on account of the
observance. The latter made its appearance in the course of the twelfth century under the name ot
ordo novus or arctior consuetudo, as a complete disruption of the observance ol the Canons Regular elaborated
at the end of the eleventh century (ordo antiquius). It interpreted literally the observances oi the ordo
monasterii (cf. infra, n. 4^)1 1*2 particular, on manual labour. It was not made for cathedrals. On
these expressions see Dereine, 386-389.
41. As Alamo does (DHGE, X, 1267), according to the Argaiz manuscript. A letter from the Osma
archivist shows that Argaiz’ opinion is only an hypothesis.
42. The canonical form of life had been considerably developed in the eleventh century in the north
of Spain, in accordance with the Carolingian rule of Aix, to which the important chapters, like that of
Barcelona, had remained persistently faithful. At the turn of the century under the stimulus of the kings
of Aragon-Catalonia, great bishops who had been trained at St Semin in Toulouse and St Rufus in Avignon,
promoted the full regular life and promulgated in particular the observance of St Rufus—for instance, San
Oldegaire, former Abbot of St Rufus, Archbishop of Barcelona and Tarragona (f 1137). 3 50 monasteries
of St Rufus in Spain are mentioned—A. Carrier de B., op. cit., infra, 20-21. The movement tor the
foundation of chapters of regular life in Spain was even more remarkable, from the point of view of
numbers and rapidity, than that of the Cistercian foundations—Dereine, 367, 377, 379, 401-402. For
the customs of St Rufus in Catalonia see A. Carrier de Belleuse, ‘Coutumier du Xle.s.de I'Ordre de S. Ruf, en
usage a la cathedrale de Maguelone, Sherbrooke 1950 (critical edition); Ch. Dereine. ‘S. Ruf et ses
coutumes aux Xle et XIIs’, in Rev. Benedictine LIX (1949), 161-182 (in particular of Las Abadesas, near
Ripoll); Vincke, 38-41.
43. The observance of St Rufus was only one of the various forms, which did not differ greatly among
themselves, of the ordo antiquus. The charter of 26.VII. 1148, a donation to the church of Soria, demon¬
strates the existence of these usual customs: ‘addimus preterea ut Ecclesia B. Petri omnes illes bonas
consuetudines habeat et manuteneat quam habent cetere ecclesie in quibus canonici regulariter vivunt’—
Loperraez, III, 24. The letter to the brethren of Springiersbach also mentions this ‘communis fratrum
regularium consuetudo’—PL, 163, 497 and Mandonnet-Vicaire, II, 1 35 (on the subject of this letter cf.
infra, n. 47). The customs of Soria, like those of Cuenca, must have been those of Osma; otherwise the
Osma chapter would not have tried to obtain the submission of that of Soria in 1132—ibid. 29. They
may possibly have been inspired by those of Jaca and Huesca (cf. infra, n. 66). Such connections will
perhaps eventually enable the Osma statutes to be rediscovered, at least those that Bishop Martin had
confirmed once more by the Pope in 1199: ‘constitutiones . . . quas possemus restitutiones potius
nominare, cum a longis retro temporibus hoc ipsum de oxomensis ecclesia fuerit, sicutarseris, a Romanis
pontificibus ordinatum’—Loperraez III, 46 and Laurent, no. 1.
44. On the problem of the rule of St Augustine, considerable work has been accomplished since the
study published in 1938, Mandonnet-Vicaire, II, 103-192; the prior date of the rule to letter 211,
which we had defended at the instances of Mandonnet, has been more or less generally rejected by the
critics (cf. in particular C. Lambot, Rev. Benedictine UII (1941) 41-38) and, likewise, the Augustinian
authenticity of the rule. On the other hand, what was established as to the reappearance and mis¬
adventures of the text of the rule in the course of the Gregorian canonical reform, has been very
appositely taken up again, confirmed and restated, particularly by Charles Dereine—cf. Dickinson,252-
272; Dereine, Chanoines 387-390, and ‘Vie commune. Regie de S. Augustin et chanoines reguliers’, in
RHE, XLI (1946), 363-406, ‘Enquete sur la regie de S. Augustin’, in Scriptorium, II (1948), 28-36.
43. We are adopting this position, which has the support of very competent patrologists, in con¬
nection with a problem which for us is secondary. For the opposite view see—Merlin, in Analecta
Praemonstratensia, XXIV (1948), 3—19 ; Lope Cilleruelo, El Monacato de S Agustinj? su regia, Madrid, 1949
and Archivo Agustiniano, XLIV (1930), 83-88; W. Humpfner Augustinus Magister, 1933, 241-234,
Schuster, S. Benoit et son temps, translated by J. B. Gai, Paris, 1930, 248, thinks the Ordo monasterii and
the Regula (in the masculine) can he attributed to Eugippa (j" 333).
46. For these texts see PL, 32, 1377-1384 and 1449-1452 (or again PL, 66, 995-998). Critical
edition by De Bruyne, in Revue Benedictine, XLII (1930), 316-342 and by A. C. Vega, ‘El Escorial 1933’
(off-print from Archivo Agustiniano, XXVII, 1933). Cf. Mandonnet-Vicaire, II, 129-130. The title of ordo
monasterii, which has now become general among historians, will be used from now onwards instead of
disciplina monasterii.
47. The letter to the brethren of Springiersbach of 2nd August, 11 i8,*is the most important of these
 NOTES
4££
documents- Mandonnet-Vicairc, II, .52-160. This community had assumed the leadership in Germany

for 32Sll.afS "in' Hence the „r* „„„„ which had been substituted
(1948) 84-9‘Inern l ■' Le Pr.emler orcI° de Premontre’, in Revue Benedictine, LVIII
4i9i-442 For Othet H imierS ^ S‘ 9Uenfm de Beauvais et de Springiersbach’, in RHE, XL1II (1948),
48 For fL h -fi dlC 7 u regtr< fr° the F-Pist0,ae declarantes regulam S. Augustini, see Dereine 390
Snain ‘H °f the ™Ie °f St A^tine, see the texts discovered by Jean Leclercq in
edited fo C“0"iC"' “d 'D'™'«™" « b~,'
49- PL, 32, I377-I379-

I948- 8S2Pafo8ngS,ieHP/" ^ J- Lacrie P-ifate, <*• M. ‘La vie apostolique’, Paris-Turnhout,

c ’ Mandonne V g "''iTT ** ™le °fActes’ IV’ ^ » *e primitive history of the apostolic life.
5 ’ c i 7 dV ° ’ II, 163-192. Dereine, 377 and articles mentioned supra, n. 35.

Mu,si, Mxf.fiXliT’ ”"d" NiC°'“ “”Pire<1 tj "•**"* *“» !’“P' G"<W VII;
Canon 120 of the famous Regula canonicorum of the Council of Aix-la-Chapelle, in 816, assigned to
hi?°n: v.ctus, vestitus et pars eleemosynarum’ (cf. canon ,22); it also'allowed them a private
house (canon 142)—Mansi, XIV, 231C, 232A, 243B. 1
, .^;,The Pe 7“ e\ moribus cleric°rum suorum, in which this account is contained, was in fact to be found
with the rule of St Augustine and his biography by Possidius, in the dossier of the Canons Regular at the
end of the eleventh century—Dereine, 388. 6
SS- Sermon No. II (336) De vita et moribus clericorum suorum, PL, XXXIX, 1^74-1573-. Lambot ed.
S. Aureln Augustini, Sermones selecti duodeviginti . . . , Stromata patrist et mediaevalia /, Utrecht-Brussels
1930.
36. Luke X, 1.
37- Acts, IV, 32; cf. Ill, 44.
38. VI, 7-11.
39. Peter Damian, Contra clericos regulares proprietaries, Op. XXIV, PL, 143, 482D-490C. This minor
work was addressed to Alexander II (1061-1073) then newly elected, and contains the clerical ideas
characteristic of this Italian promoter of the Gregorian reform. The same ideas are to be found in other
minor works on letters of St Peter Damian, Mandonnet-Vicaire, II, 168-172; Dereine, 386-390.
60. Vincke, 41.
61. The division of the episcopal and capitular menses had been decided upon for Castile at the
Council of Palencia in 1100 L. Serrano, Semana pro Ecclesia et Patria, Palencia, 1936, II, after P. de
Pulgar, Historic secular_y ecdesidstica de Palencia, II, Madrid 1679, 130 and Silva Palentina, ed. Vielva Ramos,
Palencia 1932, I, 134. It does not seem to have been put into effect in Osma in the twelfth century.
62. Loperraez, I, 110.
63. Ibid., I, 100.
64. Charter of 26.VII. 1 148 ; ibid., Ill, 24; cf. I, 126.
63. Charter of foundation of 10.VII.1 132, ibid., Ill, 27; cf. I, 127.
66. Account of an incident occurring on 1.VIII.1132, ibid., Ill, 29-30; cf. I, 128-130.
67. Jaca, in Aragon, had become an episcopal see in 1063, through the occupation by the Moslems of
the see of Fluesca, which once more assumed its former function in 1096, when Jaca lost its bishop.
Meanwhile a chapter of Augustinian regulars was set up in Jaca (1067). Another was constituted in
Huesca. Despite the return of the bishop to Huesca, the two chapters remained on a footing of equality
under the authority of the bishop—Vincke 37, 38, 42.
68. Charter of the repopulation of Roa, 22.XII.1143—Loperraez, III, 21.
69. Erection of the see, bull of 3.VII. 1183 ; appointment of the bishop from 1182—Gams, 31.
70. j. P. Martyr Rizo, Historia de la Ciudad de Cuenca, Madrid, 1626, 36 and 136; Loperraez, I,
167-168.
71. Loperraez, I, 168.
72. Among the signatures of the canons of Osma, in a charter of 9.IV.1166—Loperraez, III, 338.
For the significance of preceptor, see Lesne, 461—462.
73. Signature of a charter of 28.IV. 1168. Bernier (Barnerius) had already signed the charter of
9.IV. 1166, without the title of master. It is not known whether these two masters actually taught in
the chapter, but the use of this title at least indicates that they had taught—cf. Lesne, 461-462.
74. Canon 18 of the Third Council of the Lateran (1179) did not order that a master should be set up
in each diocese—this was a thing done fairly frequently—but that a benefice was to be reserved for the
master so that he might do so gratuitously and give the poor the opportunity of studying—Hefele-
Leclercq, V, 2, 1101.
73. Quern sacrarum literarum notitia . . . decorabat—Jordan, no. 4.
76. For Rodriguez, see Loperraez I, 195-207. A former student in Paris, he edited numerous works
of history and exegesis, in the course of an extremely active life. For Master Melendo, see Loperraez I,
208-220; Rivera, 337.
77. Edited in Timoteo Rofo Orcajo, Catalogo descriptivo de los los codices que se conservan en la Santa
Iglesia catedral de Burgo de Osma, Madrid, 1929, 9-13. This catalogue, dating from the end of the thirteenth
century, lists very numerous commentaries on the Bible, especially of the New Testament, works of the
Fathers of the Church (Irenaeus, Origen, Prosper, Gregory of Nazianzen, Denis, Isidore); sermons and
homilies, liturgical works and computations; theological works by Honorius of Autun (Elucidarius),
Hugh of St Victor (De Sacramentis, Chronica), a commentator on Peter Lombard (Super IV Sent.) Pierre
4^6 NOTES

le Mangeur (Historia scolastica) and several anonymous summae; canonical works and the Digesta; finally
a book each on physics, music, astrology, rhetoric, Priscian, etc.
78. Loperraez I, 180; Vincke, 42, whose study emphasizes the main responsibility of the sovereigns.
The kings who, a century earlier, had been the great propagators of Augustinian regularity in the chapters
afterwards changed their attitude and frequently urged secularization, which enabled them to dispose of
prebends sometimes of considerable importance in favour of their own supporters. This policy led, at
the close of the Middle Ages, to the universal disappearance of regular life among the canons.
79. Gil Gonzalez Davila, Teatro eclesiastico de las iglesias de los reinos de las dos Castillas, II, Madrid,
1647, 132.
80. Charter of 28.IV.1168, Loperraez, III, 361 ; cf. I, 141-142.
81. This was the case, for instance, of the simonaical archdeacon and canon in 1174 (cf. infra, n. 83)
and of Canon Pedro de Termes (before 1195") about whom the bishop censured the abbey of Arlanza for
having ‘received’ him: ‘ipsi episcopo invito et contradicente . . . cum bonis quae ab Ecclesia sua
habuerat,’ charter of 22.1.1193—Loperraez, III, 44.
82. Loperraez, I, 133 and 164. In 1 180 (charter of 13th June), the king renounced a whole series of
dues or taxes (among them the right of spoliation of the movable and immovable property of the deceased
bishop) concerning the churches, giving them protection for the future against any exaction on the part
of his functionaries, text ibid., Ill, 38.
83. This decree, no longer extant, is mentioned in the bull of Innocent III (cf. infra, n. 83) and in an
ancient inventory of Osma—Loperraez, I, 136.
84. ‘De hoc autem quod rex et principes sui a Bernardo quondam oxomensi episcopo pecuniam
recepisse dicuntur, ut eius electioni praestarent assensum, et quod idem episcopus Oxomensis archidi-
acono beneficia certi reditus et cuidam clerico ante electionem suam prioratum dicitur promisiosse ut
uterque illorum, archidiaconus, videlicet et clericus, consentiret eidem . . .’ Decretal of Alexander III
at the Third Council of the Lateran (1179), L.V, III, ch. XI, Conrictus de simonia, ed. Friedberg, 732—
Loperraez, I, 146.
83. The dignitaries of the chapter who were candidates for some portion of the benefices, had tried
to obtain exemption from Pope Lucius III from the common obligations. Instead, it was the bishop who
obtained papal prohibition against receiving any canon, prebendary or dignitary who did not embrace
regular life. The decree, no longer extant, is mentioned in the ancient inventory of Osma and in the
bull of Innocent III (cf. infra, n. 86).
86. Bull of n.V.1199, text in Loperraez III, 46 ; PL, 214, 604; Laurent, no. 1.
87. In oxomensi ecclesia sint de cetero canonci regulares, nec aliquis in portionarium vel secularem
canonicum recipiatur deinceps in eadem.’ Ibid. Cf. Jordan, no. 4 cited infra, n. 89.
88. Intelliximus . . . quod tu, de communi consensu totius capituli Oxomensis, auctoritate . . .
archiepiscopi, consensu etian et consilio charissimi in Christo filii nostri A(lphonsi) regis illustris
Castelle . . .’—Innocent III, bull quoted supra, n. 86.
89. ‘Hinc accidit, ut daret operam suis id persuadere canonicis, crebris admonitione et exhortatione
pervigili, quatenus sub regula beati Augustini ad observantiam canonice religionis consentirent, tantaque
hoc ipsum egit sollicitudine, ut eorum animos, licet quosdam ex ipsis haberet contradictores, ad suum
desiderium inclinaret’—Jordan, no. 4, who attributes the whole initiative to Diego and seems to be
unaware that the chapter had already been living under the rule of St Augustine.
90. It is not only from Jordan’s words that this conclusion is deduced (‘licet quosdam ex ipsis haberet
contradictores.’ This interpolated clause forms a correction to Jordan’s original text, which emphasizes
its importance) and from Diego’s efforts to procure recruits of value for the chapter. It is a fact that the
lists of the members of the chapter who signed the charters of, respectively, 22.1.1 193 and 13.I.1201
(Loperraez, III, 44 and 41) show only three identical names out of die twelve they comprise from one
source or another: Diego, Juan and Pedro. Nine new canons out of twelve in six years is a large number.
In actual fact, although Loperraez does not question that the signatures which follow that of the prior of
Osma in the charter of 1193 are all those of canons of Osma (cf. Loperraez, I, 173), the fact is by no
means certain. What does, however, make it probable is that the Osma text is only a copy of the charter
of Arlanza. It is normal that the latter should have been specially signed by the canons of Osma. It should
finally be noted that Loperraez reads the second signature on the Osma copy thus: A. sacrista; whereas
A. Nunez de Castro, Cronica de los . . . reyes de Castila, Madrid 1663, 184, copied by7 numerous authors
(among them Martinez, XLIII), has deciphered on the Arlanza original: D. sacrista, which people have
been eager to read as Domingo. Only the discovery of the original document would enable the question
to be solved, as to the D, hut not as to the name it represented. Serrano, 236-237, only knew the text
through Loperraez.
91. Volentes igitur quod a te videbitur pia deliberatione statutum debita firmitate gaudere,
costitutiones ipsas (quas possemus restitutiones potius nominare, cum a longis retro temporibus
hoc ipsum de Oxomensi ecclesia fuerit, sicut asseris, a romanis pontificibus ordinatum) sicut
a te rationabiliter facte sunt, et a tuo recepte capitulo, auctoritate apostolica confirmamus’—
Loperraez III, 46.
92. This is in effect the number of canons who signed the charter of 13.1.1201 in due order—■
Loperraez, III, 41. The bishop, who was really the superior of the chapter was the thirteenth. It is
possible that this number was instituted at the time the chapter was originated and that it was maintained
even in the time of the crisis cf. the lists of signatures in 1166 (taking into consideration only those
who explicitly describe themselves as canons) and 1193—Loperraez, III, 339 and 44. The number twelve
is traditional in the history of the apostolic life. The monks had a liking for it and the Canons Regular of
the Gregorian reform, even more so, for instance, in Spain, at Valencia and Majorca (Balearic Isles),
 NOTES
4^7

as a^iJnl6 C°]mProm;s^ of 22 -1-119f between the communities of Osma and Arlanza, mentions Diego
pL~pof ttg£Z^:ror :ignH G-land i§nrs
chronoToe cal data for rhefiVr
m, 44. tu *, srJs
charter of 13.I.1201, the only absolutely certain
Chronological data for the first part of Dominic’s life, presents him as sub-prior of the chapter (cf. infra,
n' 3n ’ ThlS 1S,the f “ a^equem. It is possible to put it back considerably. Jordan no 12, says that
was still nrioWR iT1 M HlS brefr^n:. ‘suPPriorem eum constituunt canonici sui’. At this date Diego
bv himseE °P A i <hed °n 27'VIL 1 20■> and was in a Position to nominate his sub-prior
by himself alone, as was done in the case of the majority of religious. If he did not do so, it was because

Lope“?r^86ren y PlUt int° T demanded a VOte from the chaPter> at any rate a consultative one.
several rhanl’er S COnSlderS‘hat this provision which was still extant in the eighteenth century in
is tobe found ^ Pam’d ^ at, Cuei?ca’ the sister chaPter to Osma, included the condition, which
to be found set out in detail in the other chapters, that the elected person should have at least four
years seniority in the community. Dominic would thus have entered before January 1197—that is in
1 195. or 1 !96. 1196 is the more likely date, for sufficient time must be left for Diego to become prior
and to search for new recruits. Since the ruling in the name of which Dominic was elected sub-prior
around 1200, had just been put m force again, it would seem that there must necessarily have been
hesitation in departing from the conditions it imposed. If in consideration of Dominic’s remarkable
qualities the regulation was never the less circumvented by dispensation, this cannot have been to any
considerable extent. The dates 1196 or 1197 were finally adopted as probable. The office of sacristan
assigned to him by a charter of 18. VIII. 1 199 (cf. infra, n. 112), according to a statement which is merely
probable, equally presupposes in St Dominic a certain seniority. Among the canons the office of sacristan
was important (those of St Rufus even ranked it immediately after the office of prior) and in a regularly
constituted chapter could not be given to those who had only recently joined.
96 Coming to the Palencia schools at the age of fourteen or fifteen, he left them ten years later—
cl. ch. II, n. 23, 43, 47. If he was thus twenty-four or twenty-five in 1196-1197, he was born between
1171 and 1173. This agrees with the data instanced supra, ch. I, n. 90 to 9.3, but does not throw any
lurther light upon it.
97. II Cor. II, 16.
98. Eccl. L. 8.
99. Jordan, no. 12.
100. Dereine 370 and 394. He emphasizes that in Gregorian as in Carolingian times men did not enter
a chapter of regular canons to exercise the ministry of souls, but primarily to devote themselves to
canonical prayer in poverty. The apostolic ministry was not, however, excluded from the canon’s
horizon, as will be seen later. Manual work had not entirely disappeared either, cf. infra, ch. X, n. 100
and supra, n. 10.
1 o 1 • Jordan, n. 14, applies to the life of St Dominic in Osma the term of ‘embraces of Rachael’—
the object of the jealousy of Lia (Gen. XXIX, XXX), which technically signifies the contemplative life
in the symbolical theology which was then the fashion of the day. Honorius III was to make the same
application in regard to the life of the Preachers in their convent of studies at St Jacques, on 30.XII. 1220
—Laurent, no. 122.
102. Proces. Thol., no. 3.
103. Jordan, no. 13. The work is not mentioned in the thirteenth-century catalogue of the library of
Osma (cf. supra, n. 76). Very much read in the cloisters, it must have deteriorated and could easily be
lost. In the fifteenth century the Bishop of Osma had it recopied for the chapter in whose possession they
still are, the Collations and Institutions of Cassian, cf. Rojo Orcajo, 123 and 233.
104. Acts II, 46.
103. Proces. Bon., no. 7.
[06. Jordan, no. 1 2.
107. ‘While we devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of preaching’—Acts VI, 4.
108. Matt. VI, 6.
109. Jordan, nos. 12 and 13.
110. It was only in 1311 that the Council of Vienna restored the age for entering the priesthood to
twenty-five—Clem., I, tit. VI, ch. 3, Generalem, ed. Friedberg, 1140. As far back as 1179, however, the
3rd canon of the Council of the Lateran had authorized the age of twenty-five in case of necessity—
Hefele—Leclercq, V, 2, 1090. No time was lost in making use of this tolerance, especially for holders
of benefices. The bishop probably did the same in the case of Dominic, constrained by the dearth of
subjects in the diocese. In any case he did not wait until the age of thirty, since St Dominic, arriving at
Osma at the age of twenty-four, in 1193 at the earliest, could not in that case have been ordained before
1201 at the soonest. In such conditions he could not have been appointed sub-prior. Cf. Thomassin, I,
436; Hinschius, I, 18.
111. Before the organization of the seminaries, no ordination for the diocese as such existed. The
Council of Trent made provision for ordination for a particular church.
112. Proces. Bon., no. 27.
113. This was a charter of compromise between the chapter of Osma and the Cistercian abbey of
Veruela. In modern times this charter has been studied by the Abbot of Veruela and the information
 NOTES
4^8
communicated to Fr Tomas Madaleno (Manual de Dominicos. Informe dc los blasones mas gloriosos de la
Religion de los Predicadores, Blason I, cited by Martinez LIII). Despite the indirect character of the
information, it seems reliable, it is certain that Bishop Martin throughout his episcopate took care to
settle by compromises the contesting of rights which set it in opposition to other institutions as so often
happened in the Middle Ages. On a so-called mention of Dominic as sacristan as early as 1195-, cf. supra, n. 90.
114. Charter of 13.1.1201, Loperraez, III, 41; Laurent, no. 2. In 1270 the Bishop of Osma was to
mention this sub-priorship—Martinez, 230 (ch. CXCVII, 13.VII. 1270).
11 3. Cf. supra, n. 59.
116. The author of the De vita vere apostolica which is monastic in tendency, inveighs strongly against
canons whose arguments are specious. ‘Desinant ergo apostolorum vitam in solo baptismo, in sola
praedicatione et miraculo accipere.’ ‘Sequi videretur . . . ut quemlibet immundissimorum clericorum
quern constat utrumque facere, baptisare et praedicare, apostolicam vitam probatetur habere’, PL, 170,
631D-632A. Dereine, 393-394 cites a series of authors who speak in this sense, especially in Germany.
The principal theorists of the canonical life, however, have a more finely balanced thought. The reflec¬
tions of Arno de Reichersberg and of Anselm of Havelberg on the reciprocal relations of action and
contemplation prepare the way for the theory of the mixed life in St Thomas Aquinas.
117. ‘Et sanctorum Patrum inexpugnabili sentencia sancitur, canonicorum ordinem omnibus ecclesie
ordinibus preponendum merito. Nec mirum, cum Christo et apostolis eius succedat, in predicacionis,
baptismatis ac reliquorum ecclesie sacramentorum officium subrogatus’, Coutumier du Xle siecle de l’ordre
de S. Ruf en usage a la Cathedrale de Maguelone, ed. A. Carrier, Sherbrooke, 1930, 97.

NOTES TO CHAPTER IV
1. Jordan, no. 14. On the classic theme of Lia-Rachel the texts of Innocent III, addressed to Cistercians
engaged in the apostolate, should be added to those cited supra, ch. Ill, n. 100—Potthast, 783Q ?L, 214,
673D (Fr Rainier); Potthast, 2391, PL, 213, 323A (Fr Peter of Castelnau). Cf. Altaner, 162 ; Mandonnet-
Vicaire, II, 232 and n. 83.
2. Loperraez, I, 189.
3. Born 29th November, 1189 at Cuenca—Colmenares 1 38 ; Loperraez, 173. From 1 193 onwards he
is found associated with the king in various charters. He died prematurely 14th October, 1211, in
Madrid and was buried in the royal abbey of Las Huelgas—Rades y Andrada, 20, col. 1 ; Schirrmacher,
286.
4. In 1199—Loperraez, 181. On the children of Alfonso VIII, many of whom died in infancy, cf.
appendix no. 1, Schirrmacher, 681—689.
5. Doubtless nuns engaged in works of hospitality—Loperraez I, 189 and III, 47-48. The bishops of
Segovia and Avila also signed, but after the lay signatures; it would seem certain that they were not
present at San Esteban de Gormaz but signed later.
6. Loperraez, I, 189.
7. Loperraez, I, 188.
8. 23rd March at Burgos, 28th April at Palencia—Loperraez I, 1S8, which seems to indicate that at
that time the bishop was following the court.
9. The earlier occasion was 23-th May, 1202.
10. ‘Accidit itaque tunc temporis Alphonsum, regem Castelle, inter filium suum Ferdinandum et
quandam nobilem de Marchiis desiderare connunbium. Quam ob causam adiit prefatum episcopum
exomensem, postulans fieri eum huius procuratorem negotii’—Jordan, no. 19. For the chronology of
Diego’s journeys, cf. study in Mandonnet-Vicaire, I, 83-88. Among the three possible dates—summer
1202, summer 1203, summer 1204, it is impossible to decide categorically. The reasons in favour of the
second are : 1. It would seem that the visit Jordan mentions (adiit) must be identified with the coming of
the king to San Esteban (but the king also went there on 23th May, 1202). 2. The date of 1203 is given
by two chronicles published by Reichert (MOPH, I, 321) and the information given in Chronica la might
well be the original statement (one ms. of this chronicle, however, says 1202). 3. The political data
which are put forward to explain the project of the Danish marriage began with the disinheriting of
John Lackland, 28th April, 1202. They were particularly important in 1203. In 1204, it was no longer
the time for negotiation, but for action.
11. Cf. the study—Une ambassade dans les marches, Mandonnet-Vicaire, I, 89-98.
12. A native of Borgberge, near Dasel, to the east of the Weser H. Chr. Scheeben—Jordan der Sachse,
Vechta 1937, 4.
13. Gallen, 204. Jarl Gallen in excursus I of his work on the Dominican province of Dacia (Voyages de
Saint Dominique au Danemark) has confirmed, deepened and extended the conclusions of the Mandonnet-
Vicaire study—Gallon, 196-216.
14. ‘Multorum tamen laborum dispendio’, ‘laborosum iter rursus aggrediens’_Jordan, no. 16. On
the value to be given to these expressions see Mandonnet-Vicaire, I, 97.
13. Chronica, la. MOPH, I, 321, the author of which might be Gerard de Frachet or even Pedro
Ferrando, drawn up between 1263 and 1266. Cf. Mandonnet-Vicaire I, 96-97 and Gallen, 203-208.
Berthold Altaner, on his side, after at first hesitating to identify the marches with Denmark (Altaner 141)
finally accepted this theory Altaner, Dominikanermissionen, 4.
16. Cf. Appendix 111.
17. Schirrmacher, 192-193.
1 8. One daughter only, Richisse, was not yet married; but she belonged to the previous generation_
Gallen Genealogical Table I.
 NOTES
4£9
19. Gallep, 208 and n. 28.
20. Gallen, 209.

fam/lv kIi1316'? °n/he uaaIe’ °n th,C western frontier of the ancient march of Misnia. The
r V ^ ^ at th? C0Urt of Denmark-Gallen, 2o9) n. 29. Valdemar, moreover,
. '“f Siegfried s son, Albert, who was very loyal to him, the Nordalbingia which he had won by
conquest in 1203 from the inheritance of Henry the Lion—Gallen, 208.
22. Hefele Leclerq, VB, 1091 : L. Ill, tit. XXXIX, ch. 6.
23 There was a charter of confraternity between the chapter of Osma and the abbey of Silos- The
“e"Ce to b!,Slven respectively in case of hospitality was determined—food for the men and fodder
or the horses. Two animals per canon were envisaged, four for a dignitary of the chapter and for the
bishop—Loperraez, III, 203. ' r
24. Ganshof, 124.
2 S- Jordan, nos. 14 and 22, where the books for liturgical prayer are mentioned.
.
26 Jordan, no. 14.
27. Vieillard, plate VII; Ganshof, 132-133.
28. Maisonneuve, 78-82. Cf. infra, p. 73.
29. Cl. infra, ch. V, pp. 73ff.
30.
- 1be bibliography of Catharism is considerable and of unequal value. It has been completely
brought up to date in the last fifteen years since the publications of A. Dondaine and of Hilarin of Milan
1 here is scarcely anything to be gleaned from the works of the Neo-catharists, such as Deodat Roche,
which reconstitute an artificial Catharism in which gnostic apocrypha, neo-platonism and the theosophy
c j u Steitner have a larger share than authentic sources. In the following chapters Runciman and
Soederberg will be used as general studies and above all Borst and the somewhat briefer study of
Foreville, 33°—343- For Languedoc, Dossat’s latest findings have enabled us to correct Guiraud,
Cartulaire and Inquisition, rich but sometimes erroneous.
31. Foreville, 332, 336; Borst, 90; Ch. Thouzellier, Heresie et croisade au Xlle s., in RHE XLIX iara
833-872.
32. Outline statistics in Borst, 203, n. 1 r and 208, n. 20. In 1230 the entire Catharist movement
numbered some 4,000 Perfect, which possibly represents some hundreds of thousands of followers.
The latter probably never reached the half-million. For the south of France, Dossat, Cathares, II, 79-80,
considers that even in the localities where the heresy was most active, it never spread to the majority
of the population. Moreover these Catharist ‘believers’ and ‘listeners’ [‘auditeurs’J were very super¬
ficially attached to the sect.
33. Borst, 96, 121, 231-233.
34. Unlike the Catholics, they authorized loans with interest Dossat, Cathares II, 73 and Borst, 188.
33. Dondaine, Actes.
36. Jordan, no. 1 3.
37. Cernai, no. 33. This was the Cistercian bishop Guy de Carcassonne.
38. On hatred for the sign of the cross, because it recalls the victory of Satan over Christ, see Guiraud,
Inquisition, 163-164, 362—363; Borst 219 and n. 24.
39. This was perhaps one of those deacons who kept Catharist houses of hospitality in the town—
Borst, 2 11.
40. ‘Fortiter et ferventer agens’—Jordan, no. 13. He spent only one night ‘ipsa nocte qua . . .
hospitati sunt’, ibid.
41. S. Pertement, Le dualisme dans Vhistoire de la philosophic et des religions (La montagne Sainte-Ceneviere,
no. 3), Paris 1946.
42. Cf. infra, ch. V, p. 73 and n. 98.
43. From the name of the priest who inspired it. Articles by Bardy, in DHGE and Vernet in DTC;
Runciman 63-93; Borst, 66-71.
44. Article by Janin in DTC; Runciman, 46-62; gnostic background ibid., 3—23.
43. Borst, 173-177, based on numerous texts. He shows, however, that as a result of the influence
of the Catholic milieu the Catharists progressively reintroduced the notions of personal sin, penance,
repentance. For the Albigensian Catharists in the time of Dominic, see Cernai no. 12, p. 13 and n. 3;
Dossat, Cathares II, 71-72.
46. For Catharist docetism see Borst, 164, n. 6; for the Midi, Cernai, no. 11, p. 11 and no. 3;
Dossat, Cathares, II, 71.
47. A Bogomil assertion, taken up again by the Catharists—Borst 163 and 2 19, n. 24; for the Midi,
Cernai, no. 33, p. 47 and n. 3.
48. Jordan no. 13.
49. Jordan, no. 16 distinguishes two events: the reception of the embassy by the authorities (the
king and his counsellors) and the (girl’s) consent: ‘exposita causa sui itineris, habitoque consensu’ and,
in the following phrase: ‘consensus puelle’.
30. The word consensus in this connection signified at the beginning of the thirteenth century the
marriage properly so-called according to the axiom, from then onwards commonly accepted, of Peter
Lombard (Sentent. L. IV, dist. XXVII, ch. 2) ‘consensus facit nuptias’ independently of the consumma¬
tion, copulatio. The proof that Jordan gives this meaning to ‘consensus puelle’ is in the following phrase:
the bishop is to bring back the girl so that the marriage may be consummated ‘copulandam’. Cf. G. Le
Bras, article ‘Marriage’, DTC, IX, ca. 2i3i-2i34and 2139-2162.
31. The consent which makes the marriage, according to Peter Lombard’s teaching, can be given
independently of any form or usual ceremony; it can even be clandestine. It is effected as soon as there
460 NOTES

are verba de praesenti (words constituting a consent to marriage) in contradistinction to verba de futuro
(words constituting a promise of future marriage) which do not make a marriage even if they are
accompanied with an oath. Ibid., 2152-2153.
52. The case of the entry into religion of one of the parties between the exchange of consent by verba
de praesenti and the copulatio. In this case the union is dissolved, which is not possible in a marriage
properly so-called—DTC, IX, 2158-2159. At the end of the twelfth century Urban III still allowed the
exception of the case in which one of the two parties should in the meantime become a leper. (Cf. infra,
n. 69). At the beginning of the thirteenth century, however, Innocent III allowed only the entry into
religion. Ibid., 2159-2161.
53. On marriage by proxy see Decretal., Lib. Ill, tit. XXXII, ch. 14; DTC, IX, 2161. Diego had been
appointed procurator for the matter. Jordan, no. 14.
54. Jordan, no. 16.
55. The bishop’s company would reach Montpellier in 1206 after a long return journey and, doubtless,
a fairly prolonged stay in Citeaux, Rome and Denmark. The departure should probably be assigned to
1205, most likely in summer. Cf. Mandonnet-Vicaire, I, 85-88.
56. Ganshof, 125.
57. Mentioned by Jordan, no. 17.
58. Jordan, no. 16.
59. Gallen, 213-216. Cf. supra, n. 2o.
60. This is clear from a letter published by Loeber, De Burggraviis Orlamundanis Commentatio, Jenae
1741, 72; Von Reitzenstein, Regesten der Grafen von Orlamunde, Bayreuth, 1871, 67 ff. At the same time
the letter mentions Siegfried of Orlamund who died in 1206, and his son Albert, under the title of
Count of Holstein which he received in 1204; this dates the letter. The abbey of Heusdorf is situated
near Apolda, not far from Orlamund. Cf. Gallen, 2 14 and n. 34.
61. Letter of Innocent III of 12th January, 1206, Potthast, no. 2651 ; PL, 215, 773-774; inserted in
Decretal Lib. IV, tit. XXXII, ch. 14, where it is erroneously addressed to the Archbishop of Lyons
(certain mss. however have corrected to Lund).
62. The Pope calls her mulier; Jordan referred to her as puella. Gallen, 214, hesitates. He thinks that
Jordan was mistaken. It is not necessary to take this view—it is sufficient to note that the Pope is using
the correct word, since the events he is speaking of took place after the girl’s marriage. That she was of
high rank is clear from the presence of two abbots at her taking the veil.
63. Mediantibus internunciis.
64. Quidam nobilis. He is not under the jurisdiction of the bishop and treats with his wife only through
envoys, which presupposes that he lives at some distance.
65. Misit ad earn, ut desponsationem jactam carnalis copula sequeretur. The two terms which mark the two
stages—consensus, copula, as in Jordan of Saxony—should be noticed.
66. Diocesana tua. In actual fact neither Orlamund nor Heusdorf are in the archdiocese of Lund; they
belong to the archbishopric of Mayence. Living at the court of Denmark, however, the niece of Valdemar
belonged to the diocese of Lund.
67. The Pope replied on 12th January, 1 206. The report must have been sent at latest at die beginning
of December 1205.
68. The statement, the investigation, the summons and the appearance of the nun-bride before the
Archbishop of Lund, in view of the remoteness of Heusdorf, if it was reallv Siegfried’s daughter who was
in question, must have occupied the first months of autumn.
69. A well-known decretal of Urban III (d. 1187) restored their liberty to a married couple when
one of them became a leper before the consummation of the marriage—Decretal. Lib. IV, tit. VIII, ch. 3.
Cf. supra, n. 52.
70. Innocent III still accepted this traditional exception, but unwillingly. He was to declare in his
reply : nos autem nolentes a praedecessorum nostrorum vestigiis in hoc articulo subito declinare . . . PL, 2 15, 774A.
71. On the brutalities of Philip Augustus towards Ingeburg, see Hefele-Leclercq, V, 2, 1167-1168;
1226-1229; 1305-1308. As to the sentiments of Valdemar II who, after his brother Cnut VI had done
everything possible to defend his sister against Philip Augustus, expressed them once more in a letter to
the Pope in the autumn of 1205—speaking of the adversaries who threatened him, he said—‘qualiter
inter nos et regem Franciae res se habeat, vestrae magnificentiae non convenit revelari’, PL, 215, 770D.
72. The only letter which has come down to us from all this packet of dispatches, a letter from the
king to the Pope, speaks of a nuntius (PL, 2 15, 769C) and ends with these words ‘Caetera nunciis nostris
committimus enarranda’, 771 A.
73. Although the requests are no longer extant. Innocent Ill’s replies were: 1. Request for liberation
and transfer to Rome of the Bishop of Schleswig imprisoned by Valdemar. 2. Extraordinary powers
granted to the archbishop for the visitation of his diocese. 3. Solution of the matrimonial case. 4. Support
given to certain constitutions of the archbishop which the Pope, however, is careful not to confirm.
5. Power granted to the archbishop to appoint a bishop for the pagan lands which he proposes to conquer
and evangelize. 6. Promise of confirmation, after a trial period of four years, of constitutions drawn up
in a general chapter which the archbishop had decided to convene of the isolated houses of black monks.
For these six letters see PL, 215, 771-776.
74. ‘Remisso ad regem nuntio’, Jordan, no. 17.
75. ‘Ipsum cum clericis suis, nacta opportunitate, adire curiam festinavit’, ibid.
76. He doubtless avoided crossing the Alps in mid-winter and stayed some time making his devotions
in Rome. In any case he only crossed over to Provence to return to Spain in May or June 1 206, cf. infra,
ch. VI, beginning.
 NOTES 461
77. He asked him for the ‘gratiam cessionis’ and revealed to him ‘sui cordis esse propositum con-
versioni Comanorum pro viribus operant adhibere’, Jordan, no. 17. The intention to evangelize is
sufficient to explain the desire for resignation (cf. note following). Jordan also insists on seeing in this
the bishop’s feeling of inferiority in the face of his episcopal responsibilities; this would scarcely be
typical of Diego ! For the Cumans, cf. infra.
78. Among others, from Cernai, 20: ‘Anno Verbi incarnati MCCVI, Oxomensis episcopus ... ad
curiam romanam accessit, summo desiderio desiderans episcopatum suum resignare, quo posset liberius
ad paganos causa praedicandi Christi evangelium se transferre.’ According to the text, this occurred
after 25th March, 1206. However, as happens with chroniclers, this date refers to the principal event
which the text relates, that is to say to the Montpellier meeting. The visit to Rome, which is the
preamble to that, could have been just before 25th March.
79. Jordan, no. 17 in two places. Cf. Scheeben’s introduction, ibid., 15-16.
80. Such corrections point to uncertainty. The mention of the Saracens is in conformity with
probability since the Castilians are in question, that of the Cumans is no less so. Between 1219 and 1221
Dominic had hoped himself to evangelize these pagans of the east of Hungary, to whom he then sent
some of his sons—Proces. Bon., no. 43. Earlier, however, even in 1217, it was of the Prussians and other
pagans of the north that he was thinking. He quickly sent his first missionaries to them. Cf. Mandonnet-
Vicaire, I, 149-150; Gallen 3-9, 212 and n. 32.
8 i. Cf. supra, n. 78.
82. ‘In P[ru]cia et aliis terris septentrionis’, are the words of one of the mss. of the Proces. Bon. no. 1 2.
The abbreviation Pcia poses a minor problem of palaeography. The most competent specialists, however,
are categorical that Prussia is meant—Eubel, I, 370, n. 1 ; Altaner, Dominikanermissionen, 4; Von Walter-
Wittenheim, Die Dominikaner in Livland im Mittelalter . . . Rome 1938, 5; Gallen, 202, n. 16, against
Walz, Proces. Bon., 1 34, n. 1 who would read Bruscia, the territory of the Don, which does not moreover
correspond to the second part of the phrase.
83. For what follows, Hauck IV, 579-685; Gallen 209-216; Foreville, 265-269; 278-279; Fliche,
86-88.
84. LTK, sub. h.v.; Gallen, 210-2 11.
85. LTK, sub. h.v.
86. Kept informed of what was being done, Innocent III in the course of the autumn of 1205, thus
characterized the expedition—‘cum, de Christiani nominis injuria vindicanda juste ac pie cogitans, ex
religioso mentis proposito contra paganos decreveris proficisci . . .’—letter to the Archbishop of Lund,
Andrew Sunesen, 13th January, 1206—PL, 215, 775A. The Pope granted the archbishop power to
establish a bishop in one of the cities he might have been able to christianize, after having cleansed it by
expelling the pagans.
87. On the general character of the Drang nacb Osten—Altaner, Dominikanermissionen, 186—188;
Jordan, 121-123. Cf. previous note for the events of 1206.
88. On 10th October, 1204, the Bishop of Riga had obtained from Innocent III permission to make
use for his mission, commuting their vows, of the priests and clergy of the neighbouring lands who had
enlisted as crusaders for Jerusalem—PL, 215, 429 BC.
89. Cf. Honorius Ill’s remarks on 25th January, 1217 (Potthast, no. 5432), Horoy II, 208-209.
90. On the brutality of the Drang nach Osten and the ferocity of the Slav reactions, cf. Jordan, 122 and
n. 3, 124, 127, 129-132. As to St Dominic’s desire for martyrdom and the detailed description he gave
of it in similar terms to those recalled by Jordan, 122, cf. Jordan, no. 34 (length of the torture, limbs
hacked one by one); Proces. Bon., no. 29, but cf. infra, 156, n. [ 1 8 1 ].
91. Cf. supra, n. 73 and 86.
92. Rodriguez Jimenez de Rada, Chronicon de rebus Hispaniae, L. VI, ch. 27 (Hispania illustrata, II),
Frankfort 1603, 107—108. Defourneaux, no. 35. Bernard, like Diego, had gone to find the Pope who
sent him back to his diocese.
93. ‘Nex saltern ei, quamvis petenti, voluit indulgere, vel in remissionem peccatorum iniungere, ut manens
episcopus, fines Comanorum ad praedicandum intraret. Jordan, no. 17. The insertion in remissionem etc.,
which must be of importance since the 2nd edition of the Libellus adds it, signifies an indulgence granted
by Innocent III to all those who favoured the crusade and the apostolic mission, PL, 215, 102 fB, 1470D,
1 545B, 1545D, etc. Honorius HI granted it in 1217 to the apostolic labours of all the Preachers—
Laurent, no. 77.
94. The information this time comes from Cernai, 20: ‘immo precepit ei ut ad sedem propriam
remearet’. Expressed in these terms it almost looks like a reproach, which accords neither with the
circumstances nor with the writer’s intention. It must be understood in the sense that the Pope imposed
his diocese on the bishop anew as a special mission. This does not mean that he forbade him to occupy
himself on occasion with some other secondary apostolate. Thus the apparent contradiction between this
order of the Pope and Diego’s later conduct which formerly preoccupied us is lifted—Mandonnet-
Vicaire, I, 148-149. As to the hypothesis of a previous understanding between Pope and bishop on the
subject of the preaching in the Narbonensis which we had maintained Ibid. 141-156, after Mandonnet
and which H. C. Scheeben severely criticized (Dominikaner oder Innocenzianer, AFP, IX (1939) 245), it is
not impossible but remains hypothetical.
95. PL, 215, 774B. In precise terms: 1. If she wills to remain in her convent the marriage is dissolved,
even against the will of the bridegroom; 2. although she appears to have taken the habit, by receiving
the veil, she can return home there to preserve chastity within the marriage, which must be concluded,
3. if she has pronounced the vow of regular life, she must be constrained to enter religion.
96. Scheeben, 25, n. 15 and 16, displaces without any reason the journey which Jordan mentions in
 46 2 NOTES

no. 18. Such journey of prelates to Citeaux, as formerly to Cluny, are frequent, cf. infra, n. 99, 100,
11 2 and Sakur, 11, 1 o 1—113.
97. Cf. supra, ch. 1, n. 17.
98. Cf. infra, ch. V, 76 and 78 ; ch. VI, 80 and 82 and n. y—6. On the role of the Cistercians in the
apostolic work of Christendom, especially in the missions patronized by the Pope, cf. Ladner, in
Mandonnet-Vicaire, II, 40—42.
99. Letters of the 29th January and 31st May, 1204, Potthast, 2103 and 2226. The journey to
Citeaux of Fulk of Neuilly to find preachers for the crusade there will be recalled—Mandonnet-Vicaire,
II, 40 and n. 140; cf. I, 13-4.
100. Cernai, no. 71.
to 1. Cf. infra, ch. VI, 91 and n. 79 to 81.
102. To become a Cistercian in fact he would have to have resigned first (cf. infra n. 104 and 112).
But the Pope had not allowed him to do this.
103. Jordan, no. 18.

104. In 13 10 the bishop of Morocco, Peter, finding that all his priests were of the Order of Preachers,
obtained from the Pope authorization to enter their Order. The vicar of the Friars Preachers received
rom the Pope power to accept the bishop’s resignation. The latter made profession in the order and the
vicar then gave him back his diocese in the Pope’s name. AFPX (1940), 90.
Joy. Cf. infra, ch. VI, n. 17.
i°6. A Canon Regular of Maguelonne, he had tenaciously defended in Rome for three years (1196-
1199) the office of archdeacon which the dean of the chapter wished to assign to someone else—
Viliemagne, 1 to 29.

, 107' °n 26tlJ January, i2oy, Innocent III, reviving the courage of Peter of Castelnau, spoke of the
otium contemplationis quod elegeras’, Potthast, 2391—PL, 2 ry, y2yB.
108. The following, taken at random from one’s reading, are a few examples of attachment and unitv
°u m reg , to a regions order, which, without being identical with the symbolic reception of
the habit are analogous to it. The Cistercian Cardinal Conrad de Porto was received about 1220 in the
priory of the Preachers of Bologna; he was enthusiastic for the life of the brethren and declared: ‘Ego
quidem, etsi alterius professionis habitum exterius preferam, vestrum tamen interius mentem gero. Nec
ubuim vobis sit quin totus sim vester; vestrique ordinis sum; vobis me tota dilectione committo’—
Ferrando no. 43. At the same time Bishop William of Modena, the future Cardinal of Sabina, apostolic
legate and great propagator in the Nordic countries: ‘mores sancti Dominici explorans, se in fratrem
or mis ab eo petnt recipi. Cui sanctus annuens eidem tanquam patri ordinis negocia recommisit; quod
idem episcopus ferventer observavit usque in hodiemum diem’—Barthelemv, no. 17. Cf. infra, n. 1,2.
109. Cf. infra, ch. VI, 91 and n. 79.
no. Jordan, nos. 18 and 20.

r 11 =» ihC d®ve!°PLment of the order in Castile and the role of Alfonso VIII see Defourneaux, yo-y8.
In 1188 the king had obtained that the Abbess of Las Huelgas should play the same part in regard to the

ie!dSv°rbCl 6Taf ^“nS °f Le0" ;’nd CastiIe as *e Abbot of Citeaux in regard to the order This was
considyaWePexntLf dePal"tUre ** **“ Particularist tendencies which were later to develop in Spain to a

nf n-2' 7,herjrrney °f St Mal?dly to Clairvaux under Innocent III, presented curious analogies with that
he? Xln of rU° thC TnaStcry in the C0UrSC °f a jooruey to the Curia, enthusiasm for what
tfm on h ofmonastlc hfe. a" offer of resignation to the Pope, its refusal, monks brought back with
him on his return to his see—St Bernard, Vita Malachiae, PL, 1 82, io94-io9y.
113. It will be noted that Diego’s successor in Osma, Rodrigo Jimenez de Rada (1208-1210) was
a former Cistercian. Did Diego effectively give his chapter a Cistercian orientation 2 ^ }
1 14. Jordan, no. 16.

NOTES TO CHAPTER V
1. Roger de Hoveden Chronicle, ed. Stubbs, II, London, 1869, 167 and .78-180 sees in this danger

thf^Tco^cil oftheeiCtOUnd- °fthC Lateran in ’ I79‘ The Wh0le °f Canon 27'is taken up with it.
Mansi, XXII 2.0, 232, 986-99o".069-1070.^ °CCUp'eS Can°n 3 a"d is the sub^ect ofa fecial decision.

Narbonne in Griffe 7f n
Mo1,"rJ” •***'*, 1”°'“' *
V l3 f 33 ’ aIs0’ ecclesiastical description of the province of

ongmes a son annelL

oriainesTscn annexion n
a t
la couronne, t°T'
Toulouse 1949. 39'~392 ; Ch‘ Hi§°unet, Le comtc de Comminges
a de ses

‘'it bfSh°priC "'hich was in the first place at Maguelonne, was in the twelfth century at
Substantion; since the fourteenth century it has been at Montpellier. '

and ’ 1 Cons-d7_4W4; Lucbaire,; Gui,raud, Inquisition, 37'9 i Maisonneuve, 78-100, i36-iy4

presented cardesrSin disUS6l t ' A™ ^ °f GuiraUli' AithoT?h his numerous facts are
Lcau"e thrv are directly f " T?ng references). they are irreplacable and valuable
document!) } t ken ^ the archlVes of the '"fiction in Carcassonne and Toulouse (Doat

yyi*I Fro^ ‘he opening of the Sententia de terra albigensi of the Fourth Council of the Lateran—Mansi

rrovence, anu
,’„d',he A]Sr’^“‘“r
the Albigeois—cf. °finstance,
for ,h' — Puylaurens,
“T “ * ch. VI, VII, XVI o
6. Hefele-Leclerq, V, 1.06-1.07; Maisonneuve, 94-9y.
 NOTES 463
7. On the expression negotiumfidei et pacis and the two words pax etfides, see Cernai, nos. 57, 59, 61,
62, 67, 72, 74, etc. (the first four references relate to a letter of Innocent 111), 138 (the legate Milon),
543-545 (Council of Montpellier), 571, 488, 594, 596 (in regard to Raymond VI, Raymond-Roger de
Foix, Raymond VII), etc.; Puylaurens, ch. VII and XVII; Proces. Thol., nos. 3, 7, 13, 18 (in regard to
Dominic). General indications in Cernai, no. 27, n. 1 and III, XXXI, n. 14. As to the underlying reason
for this connection from the point of view of the Church, cf. Council of Beziers, 1246; ‘cum tempore
pacis fides liberius valeat praedicari et inquisitio contra haereticos fieri et sacramenta ecclesiastica
ministrari’—Mansi, XXIII, 691;.
8. It was at Charroux (prov. of Bordeaux) in 989 and at Narbonne in 990 that the first effort of the
bishops to impose peace on the feudal lords was made manifest; in 1031 Bourges inaugurated the system
of diocesan militia; in 1054 it fixed and codified the system of the peace and truce of God; in 1095 h
was spread from Clermont under the authority of the Pope. A. Luchaire, ‘Les premiers capetiens’ in
Histoire de France by E. Lavisse, 2, pt. 2, Paris 1901, 133-138. More recently the peace had again been
sworn at Beziers, in 1 166; Rodez 1170, Albi, 1191, Montpellier, 1195 (cf. infra, n. 19). The high peak
of this effort for peace which was continually growing was the series of oaths which the legate Milon
made the Count of Toulouse, his Provencal barons, the city consuls, and finally, through the intermediary
of the clergy, all the faithful whether nobles or commoners of the territory, take at Saint-Gilles in June
1209—namely, not to use mercenaries, to respect every peace and truce, to protect or restore the
property of the Church, to do justice to all and not to levy new taxes, to turn the Jews aside from public
offices, to punish heretics denounced by the clergy—PL, 216, 89-98. On 6th September following, the
Council of Avignon again took up one by one all the elements of the negotium fidei et pacis beginning by
preaching—Mansi, XXII, 783-794.
9. The question of unjust dues which the Church ordered to be withdrawn, played the principal part
in the inevitable excommunication of Raymond VI in 1211—Villemagne, 249; Cernai no. 137 and n. 1,
13S, 163, 394, n. 3.
10. Deposition of Arnaud de Crampagna, Proc. Thol., no. 7.
11. ‘Ad fidem nullus est cogendus invitus; sed per severitatem, imo et per misericordiam Dei,
tribulationem flagellis soletperfidia castigari’—St Augustine, Contra litter as Petiliani, L. II, ch. 83, PL, 43,
3 if. ‘Heretici propter heresim non sunt occidendi, sed propter characterem christianum quern habent
ad caulam Ecclesie reducendi sunt’—Alain de Lille, Contra hereticos, L. II, ch. 22, PL, 210, 396D.
1 2. On the ‘exposing as a prey’ see Pissard, 37-39 and 61 and Morel, 42-50.
13. Cf. supra, n. 6. For the holy war, see Pissard et Villey, 217-226. The princes of the Midi did not
protest against the principle of the holy war; they discussed the fact and the extent of their responsibility
in the matter of heresy—Pissard, 41.
14. Fliche, Enquete and Lagger, Reforme gregorienne.
15. Molinier in Vaissete XII, 265-276; Luchaire; Dossat, Comte.
1 6. Cf. infra, n. 41.
17. Against the claim made that the troubadours were inspired by the Catharists, cf. Borst 107, n. 37
and particularly D. Zorzi, Valori religiosi nella letteratura provenzale. La spiritualia trinitaria, Milan 1954*

This literature is no more Catharist than it is anticlerical and the repression of the Catharists by the
Church is not responsible for the decadence of this literature—see L. H. Gere, The Troubadours,
Heresy and the Albigensian Crusade’ in Dissert. Abstracts, 16 (1956), 738. As to a superiority of civiliza¬
tion of the Midi over the north at this time, its only existence is in the imagination of a few men of
letters of today, historians do not recognize it; cf. M. Bloch, La societefeodale, Paris, I939> ffi 43-
18. Vaissete, VI, 68, 110-111 ; VII, II, n. 8. The marriage of Raymond VI with the sister of Peter II
finally brought peace in 1200. Ibid., 190-191 and 213—214.
19. Peace of Albi 1191, re-affirmed by the Council of Montpellier in 1195—Vaissete 140 and 172;
Mansi, XXII, 667-672; Lacger, Albigeois, 593-595.
20. Giraud, ‘Les routiers au XUe siecle', in Biblioth. de 1 Ecole des chartes , III (1 841 —1 842), 1 25—14 7,
Maisonneuve, 89-98; Lacger, Albigeois, 587, 588.
21. Mansi, XXII, 231-232 and Hefele-Leclercq, V, 1106.
22. Letter of 29.V. 1207, PL, 216, 1167B; Potthast, 3114; Villemagne, 243.
23. Cernai, 38, n. 3 and 39 n. 1, with the editor’s notes. Both this editor and recent historians have
emphasized the accuracy of Cernai’s statements, despite that writer’s tone of hatred for everything to do
with the Catharists or their abettors.
24. Guiraud, Inquisition, 301—331; Dossat, Clerge 276-278.
25. Vaissete, VI, 172. His predecessor had been made prisoner and ransomed by the people of
Capestang in 1195—Mansi XXII, 671.
26. Cernai, no. 99; Guiraud, Inquisition, 337.
27. Vaissete, 236; Guiraud, Inquisition, 339.
28. Fliche, Enquete, 177—179. For the wealth of the abbeys at the beginning of the thirteenth century,
see Dossat, Clerge, 272-276.
29. R. Aubenas, ‘La famille dans l’ancienne Provence’, in Annales d’hist. icon, et sociale, VIII (1936),
^23—541. This is principally concerned with the east of the Rhone, but the situation to the west of it was
identical. Cf. A. Luchaire, Manuel des institutionsJrangaises. Periode des Capetiens directs, Paris 1893, 163-
164; Fr Olivier Martin, Histoire du droit frangais . . . Paris, 1948, ill—112. On the co-lordship in the
region of Toulouse, see Vaissete, VII, 151-152.
30. Guiraud, Inquisition, 325-327.
31. Ibid., 279-299.
32. Cernai, no. 99.
 464 NOTES

33. Ibid., nos. 99-100; Guiraud, op. cit., 310—314.

34. Raymond-Roger, however, was not himself a Catharist—Tudela, 45-, n. 6.
33. Guiraud, op. cit. 3 10-3 11, which corrects, in accordance with various items of evidence from the
archives of the Inquisition, Cernai’s affirmation, no. 48; Philippa was a Catharist, not one of the
Waldenses.
,36. Vaissete, VI, 227-228 and VIII, 1148—1131, where the text of the deposition of Berenger
d’Avelanet before the inquisitors in 1244 will be found.
37. The remark of Pons Ademar de Roudeille, quoted by Puylaurens, ch. VIII—‘sumus enim nutriti
cum eis (hereticis) et habemus de nostris consanguineis inter ipsos’ is completely proved by the
accounts collected by Guiraud, op. cit., 261-331.
38. On this saying, see Borst, 74, 11. 9.
39. Puylaurens, ch. VI and VII; Guiraud, op. cit., 262-263.
40. See the chapter on the spread of the heresy, Guiraud, op. cit. 261—277. This chapter, with its
accumulation of details, gives the impression that the feudal class, perhaps even the population generally',
was affected by the heresy almost in its entirety. ‘Affected’, however, merely means that they listened
to the discourses of the heretics. That was not tantamount to becoming ‘believers’, still less ‘Perfect’.
On the small number of the latter, cf. infra, n. 63. The ‘believers’ more often than not were influenced
only very superficially. Dossat (Cathares, 79—80) noticing the small number of people made known to the
inquisition as consoled , after a thorough investigation in the localities most affected, came to the very
moderate conclusion—‘the Albigenses were sufficiently numerous for the Church to consider that they
constituted a danger’. 1
41. Gervase of Canterbury, Chronica ed. Stubbs, I, London 1879, 271.
Vaissete s translation, VI, 78, which is usually quoted, is as Dondaine observes (Actes 333), n. ir
considerably defective.
42. Cernai, no. 40
43- Cemai, no. 39 and n. 1.
44- Cernai, no. 44.
4J- Letter of Innocent III, 29.V.1207; Potthast no. 3114; PI, 2154 1167C.
46. Guiraud, op. cit, 109-110; Borst, 1 5-3-, n. 18.
47-
** ' ^Pecia%> as far as respect for the conjugal bond was concerned, in the case of Guillaume VIII of
Montpellier—Vaissete VI, 200-201, and in that of Pedro II of Aragon—Villemagne, 127-130 144-147
149-16^. The Pope’s firmness as to the validity of the marriage of Pedro II with Marie de Montpellier
was a rude awakening for the king and contributed to his revolt in 1213 ; the uneasiness of Innocent when
he communicated the final decision to the commissioners on 19.I.1213 should be noted—Villemagne
I ‘tI-.Hls attltude was the same towards Alfonso IX of Leon, Philip Augustus etc. and was the obverse
ot what political opportunism might have counselled.
48. Cernai, no. 13; Puylaurens, ch. IV; Borst, 103-107.
49. Juratafornicatio, Borst 180.
50. Cernai, no. 12 and 32; Borst 214, n. 6; 213-, n. 8.
-V* Guiraud, 0p‘/c.it'! 333-363 ; Dossat, Clerge. Guiraud’s judgement on the decadence of the clergv
of the Narbonensis ( a dead Church’) is exaggerated, as is his judgement on the success of the Catharists
(cr. supra, n. 40). In both cases Dossat’s opinion is more accurate.
52. Cernai, no. 20 and n. 4 by the editor.
D A3‘ Th^.following prelates were involved. In i 198, Frejus and Carcassone; in 1204-1203, Toulouse
Beziers, Vmers; in 1211-1213, Narbonne, Agde, Beziers, Carcassonne, Elne, Nimes, Lizes; Auch’
Rodez, Valencia. Mandonnet-Vicaire, I, 172, n. 43; Lacger, 628; Maisonneuve, 140-147. On the
renewal of 1212, see Cernai, no. 307. ’ + +/
34. Dossat, Clerge, 268.
33. Puylaurens, ch. VII.
36. Ibid., ch. VI and VII.

ct *•x" *■* ”■41 «•* «• «* h*d ■<Wed

,774, *-! "• ”* *»• «»• *«•

39. Lacger, Albigeois.
60. Vaissete, VI, 81; Lacger, 389.
61. Cernai, no. 42, n. 3 by the editor.

the wi-yeahbef°re his,“inatinon he had been the subject of an attempt at deposition on the part of
PotthTt no iiT'p1;11 the mf‘T/r °f threatS he had refused act agaffist the Beziers heretics-
1 otthast, no. 2129, PL, 213, 272 ; Villemagne, 189—19 1.
tions’nfl■Alhiae°iS’ 291 ,and and Dossat, Clerge, 271, who corrects the unjustified generaliza-
Berenger of zs'v’izh2 pTh Gulraud‘ op-cit-> 34&-349- Elements of information in the letter to
Berenger of 28.V..204 Potthast, no 2224; PL, 2,3, 337; Villemagne, 82-83 ; Puylaurens, ch. V.
64' WUrenS> Prol°gue; Council of Montpellier, canon 4, Mansi, XXII 941
the p^rffict gInT2’rreR apPr0^imate>. arf available‘ The Waldenses were small numerically in relation to
l Sacconi who waj very well informed, estimated at 4,000 the total number
ot the latter in the woild 2,300 in Lombardy, 200 in the Albigeois—Borst, 20c, n 11 • 208 n 20
A1b>eof°rmer P ai?e feyrhad,been hunted but not to° severely for about twenty years’ past • in the
f of 6 VrfV1"f a the rte!TiWe purge the time of the crusade. If note be taken thlt about
1206, 600 Catharists (doubtless of the Perfect’) met at Mirepoix; that in 1208 and the following years
 NOTES 46£

60 of the Perfect were burnt at the chateau of Casses, 140 at Minerva, 300 at Lavaur, a larger number
at Beziers, etc., it will be realized that the number of 2,000 formal Catharists in the Albigeois at the
beginning of the thirteenth century is not exaggerated.
66. The houses of the Catharists, at one and the same time places of worship and hospices or com¬
munities, were very numerous; sometimes ten or more of them could be counted in a locality—Guiraud,
op. cit., 146-15-2.
67. Borst, 6-8. Their first books were borrowed from the Bogomils about 1190, Ibid., 8. First
writings in the thirteenth century, ibid., 11—13. Against a co-called secret teaching see ibid., 8, n. 8
and 204, n. 5.
68. Borst, 205, n. 13 and 242, n. 1 1.
69. Supra, ch. Ill, p. 37 to 39 and nn. 50-60.
70. Cf. Mandonnet-Vicaire, 1!, 183-185. Study and general survey in Grundmann, Eresie 377-389.
71. Ibid., II, 186 and n. 55a (Germany); Meersseman-Adda (Italy). On the popular character of the
theological disputes, see the anecdote recorded by Guiraud, op. cit., 267.
72. Mandonnet-Vicaire, II, 183-192.
73. For instance: rural life (Meersseman-Adda); hospitality (C. Dereine, ‘Aspects de la vie
hospitaliere au Xlle siecle’ in Bull, du cercle pedagogique, Louvain, 1947—1948, 17—23); eremitical life
(A. Ceuneau, L'ermite saint Alleaume et laforet de la grande Charnie, Rennes, 1948) ; pious women (A. Mens,
Oorsprong en betekenis van de Nederlandse begijnen—begarden beweging. Louvain 1947); lay folk of every kind
(M. D. Chenu, Moines, clercs, laics au carrefour de la vie evangelique (Xlle siecle), in RHE, XLIX (1954)
59—89). The variety of the social milieux affected by the movement would itself demonstrate its essentially
religious origin. It is consequently impossible to see in it the religious projection of a social phenomenon.
This remark is particularly important in regard to the Catharists. Cf. A. Dondaine: ‘L’origine de
l’heresie medievale’ in Rivista di Storia della Chiesa in Italia VI (1952) 47—78; Ilarino da Milano, ‘Le
eresie popolari del sec. XI nell’Europa Occ.’, in Studi Gregoriani, II, 43-89.
74. Founded in 111 5 by Robert d’A, Cadouin, in Perigord, handed on its spirit to its foundations at
Candeil and d’Ardorel which would ultimately become Cisterican.
75. Walter, I and II; Grundman, Bewegungen 38-49; Mandonnet-Vicaire-Ladner, II 33-40;
Spaetling, 43—48; Mens, 16-22; R. Niderst, Robert d’Arbrissel et les origines de Fontevrault, P. 1952.
76. Canon 15 of Nicea; inscribed in the Decree, Causa VII, q. 1, c. 19. It was especially re-asserted
at the time of the Gregorian reform.
77. Mandonnet-Vicaire, II, 187 and n. 58.
78. Ibid., 185 and n. 54. On the very rich meaning of the expression pauperes Cbristi which the
Catharists also used, see Mens, 17 and 254; Dereine, RHE, XLIV (1949) 634; Borst, 91 and n. 6,
Alverner, E. On the presence of women see Spaetling, 85 and n. 9.
79. Rom. X, 15.
80. Grundmann, Bewegungen 41-42; Mandonnet-Vicaire-Ladner, II, 33-40.
81. Manselli, 25-43; Borst 83 and n. 7-10. Its success is proved by the refutation, which caused it
to be made known, of the Abbot of Cluny himself, Peter the Venerable, PL 189, 719-850.
82. The date of his death varied, according to historians, between 1124 and 1143. Manselli, 28,
assigns it to 1 13 2-113 3.
83. Walter II, 130-140; Manselli, 45-67; R. de la Ruelle, art. Henri (l’heretique) in Catholicisme,
vol. V, Paris, 1958, 622 ff.
84. Puylaurens, ch. 1.
85. Mens, 38-40; Dondaine, Valdes, 191-235; G. Gonnet, ‘Waldensia’ in Revue d’hist. et de
philosophie religieuse, XXXIII (1953) 202-252; Grundmann, Eresie 371 ff.; Manselli, 69-87.
86. W. Map, De nugis curialium ed. Th. Wright, London, 1850, 64. On the formula Nudus nudum
Christum sequi, cf. Bull, de theol. anc. et med. vol. VII, no. 977.
87. Dondaine, op. cit. 216-218.
88. Ibid., 232 (profession of faith). Cf. Gonnet, n. 45, 47, 48, 61, 88.
89. Puylaurens, prologue; Guiraud, op. cit., 259—260, 264—266, 270, 348; Liber antihaeresis, ed.
Dondaine, Valdes 235 ; Grundmann, Eresie, 371 and n. 2 ; they were also to be found at Laurac, Avignonet,
Carcassonne, Puylaurens, Pamiers-Puylaurens, ch. VIII; Lacger, Albigeois, 631.
90. At the beginning of the thirteenth century in the Narbonensis, they scarcely made profession of
as many as four errors, according to Pierre des Vaux-de-Cernai: the wearing of open sandals after the
manner of the apostles, the absolute prohibition of oaths and of the death penalty, the view that an
imitator of the apostles, even if a lay-man, could consecrate the Eucharist—Cernai, no. 18.
91. Alain, 383.
92. Liber antihaeresis, ed. Dondaine, Valdes, 235.
93. Dondaine, Valdes, 224.
94. Alain, 385 and Cernai, no. 18.
95. Formal texts collected by Grundmann, 18 to 22 (the text of Raoul Ardent, 16, n. 4 antedated by
a century should be added); Spaetling, 48—96; Mens, 23—26; Borst, 91 to 95.
96. Borst 102, n. 14.
97. Borst 66-71.
98. Everwin de Steinfeld, 679 D; Borst 91, n. 9.
99. In default of direct documents, several writers have put forward analogies to try to prove con¬
tinuity. The dualist analogies with Manicheans, Messalians, Paulicians, presuppose nothing beyond the
analogy of the fundamental opinion: radical opposition between the world and good. The analogies in
worship and hierarchy with the primitive Church come up against the fact that the Bogomils in the
 .4.66 NOTES

beginning had a rudimentary worship and no hierarchy. The archaic character of Catharist practices may
come directly irom the New Testament; it may equally come from the Eastern monastic practices on
which Bogomilism gradually drew. Cf. discussions and conclusions of Borst, 68, n. 12-13.
100. Dondaine, Origines, has demonstrated the impossibility of denying the Bogomil origin of the
apostolic character of the Catharist religion, especially in regard to the consolamentum, ibid., 64-74.
With Guiraud, Runciman, Morghen, he believes in the ancient origin of the rite. Borst, 193—194 and
n. 11, thinks that the texts of the New Testament (Acts, VIII, 17) were sufficient to inspire it; let us
add—in the liturgical and monastic atmosphere of the Balkans in the eleventh century. Cf. preceding
note.
io*. Cf- the significant exposition of Borst, 27—58, on the modern interpretations of Catharist
history.
102. Lacger, 293-294.
103. Mandonnet-Vicaire, II, 167-187.
104. Dereine, 379, 381.
105. Fliche, Montpellier, 221.
106. Cf. supra, n. 74.
107. Alain. Two other polemical expositions of value, likewise from the end of the twelfth century,
are the work of southerners: Bernard, a Premonstratensian of Foncaude (near Montpellier), ‘Foncaude
et Ermengaud de Saint-Gilles’, Opusculum contra catharos, PL, 204, 1235—1272. The part relating to the
Waldenses, which was lost, has been rediscovered by Dondaine and edited by Gonnet, Waldensia’ in
Rev. d hist, et de philos. religieuses, XXXIII (1953), 249—254.). This Ermengaud was perhaps a Waldensian
converted in 1208, at the same time as Durando de Huesca, Borst, 9. Cf. J. de Ghellinck, L’essor de la
litter at ure latine au Xlle siecle I, Louvain, 1946, i6oand 168—171 and L. Veeres, in Anal praem., 31 (1955),
S-3S-
108. Borst, 13, 19, 21.
109. Lacger, Albigeois 630—632. Fliche, Montpellier,
no. Vaissete, VI, 216 and 221.
111. Canon 27, Hefele-Leclercq, V, 1106—1107; Maisonneuve, 94—95.
112. Mansi, XXII, 476—478 ; Maisonneuve, 108-114.
113. Potthast, no. 643; PL, 214, 537; Maisonneuve, 114-117 and 10-17. Note also this phrase in
the confirmation of the deposition of the Bishop Guillaume de Beziers (18.II. 1 205): ‘crimen hereseos,
per quod blasphematur divina majestas’—Potthast, no. 2129; PL, 215, 272; Villemagne, 190.
114. On 2 1.IV. 1198. He set out in detail the powers of the legates in his letters of 1 2.VIII. 1 199_
Potthast, 95, 785 and 786, PL, 214, 82 and 675-677.
115. Geoffroi d’Auxerre, 412C.
116. See his letter of 12.IV. 1199 to the legate Rainier. He exhorts him ‘ut in Lia, Rachelis sterili-
tatem tua predicatione foecundes, dum quod in solitudine et claustri silentio didicisti, juxta mandatum
evangelicum predicaveris super tecta, et talenta tibi credita erogaveris ad usuras’. He then gives him,
in the name of him who sent his apostles to preach, the mission to preach and full powers: 1. to correct
clerics and monks; 2. to judge and absolve violators of clerical immunitv; 3. to confute heretics and
bring them back to unity.

NOTES TO CHAPTER VI
1. Cernai, no. 20, placed the Montpellier meeting in 1206, i.e. after 25th March (style of the
Incarnation). It can be dated more exactly. Arnaud left the meeting to make the preparations for the
General Chapter at Citeaux, which was to be held on 13 th September. His departure was certainly
before the Assumption. Moreover the discouragement of the legates, which brought about the
Montpellier meeting, does seem to have been occasioned by Innocent Hi’s letters of 9th and nth May
relating to Berenger de Narbonne (cf. infra, n. 9). Now it is necessary to allow a month for letters to
travel irom Rome to Montpellier. The meeting must therefore be placed after 1 ith June and before 1 rth
Should’beTead) 7 ^ ^ *° ^ date~cf‘ Vicaire« I2o7- 338, n. 2. (p. 345, May-August
2. Fliche, Montpellier.
3. Cernai, no. 20; Jordan, no. 20. The error in an edition by Cernai has led certain scholars to
situate this meeting outside Montpellier contrary to the manuscripts; some even asserted, at Castelnau
whence the erroneous commemorative plaque that can be seen in the church of Castelnau on the out¬
skirts of the town.
,4;, T1!6 se<luel t0 this episode is based on the text of Cernai, nos. 20 to 26, all the details of which are
vaiid. Though not an eye-witness the writer knew several of those who took some part in the scene and
had m his hands, when writing this part of his story, in 1213, the detailed archives of the mission—
ernai III, x to xxi. Jordan, nos. 20-21, whose account is parallel, shows serious inaccuracies. On the
relations ofthe two sources and their value see Mandonnet-Vicaire, I, 141-,50; Vicaire, 1207, 335-33S
5. The Bull of Institution for Peter and Raoul is lost. It must have been issued in October or November
1203. On ,3 th December the two legates had already treated with Berenger at Narbonne and gone to
Toulouse, where they proceeded with perhaps rather lengthy negotiations—Cernai, no. 6; Vaisslte, VI
3°’ y,llemagne, 42-44- The Bull of Institution for Arnaud was dated 31st May, 1204, Potthast
2229, /Ly 2i£, 358—360; Villemagne, 52—57.
6. There are still extant thirty or more letters of Innocent III on the subject of this legation for the
^4~^°p7ra °ne' Cf‘ m Parti™lar the letters of 31st May and 7th December, i 204—Potthast,
-9 337> PL, 215, 358 360 and 472—474; Villemagne, 52-37 and 60—63.
 NOTES 467

7. The legates were commissioned to make investigations about Berenger as early as 1200. Further
investigations in 1203, 1204, 1204, 1206, 1207, 1210 would have led up after many hesitations to his
final deposition in 1211 or 1212 if death had not forestalled this measure—Villemagne, 73-106;
Maisonneuve, 144-146. Berenger, quite apart from his skill in legal procedure, enjoyed exalted protec¬
tion—he was the natural uncle of King Pedro II of Aragon.
8. Potthast, 2224; PL, 21 5, 333-337; Villemagne, 78-84.
9. Potthast, 2774; PL, 213, 883-883; Villemagne, 96-99.
10. For a list of the complaints of the Church against the archbishop, especially as to the nomination
and reform of the clergy, see the Pope’s letters of November 1200 and 28th May, 1204—Potthast, 1177
and 2224; PL, 214, 903—906 and 213, 333-337.
1 1. Jordan, no. 20. A little more than a century earlier, Bernard of Toledo, returning from Rome
where he had received the pallium, came across a council assembled at Toulouse. He was invited to
participate—Defourneaux, 33.
12. Cf. ASS, March, I, 409 ff; E. Cauvet, Etudes sur Fontfroide, Paris 1873, 429-468; Villemagne.
13. Villemagne, 29-40.
14. The cathedral chapter of Maguelonne were of the Order of St Rufus. Peter had been canon there
since 11 82 ; he was elected archdeacon of the diocese in 1 197—Villemagne, 3-4.
13. Letters of 6th August, 1202, 7th December, 1204, iithMay, 1206—Potthast, 1716, 2337, 2778.
PL, 214, 1033B; Luchaire, Registres, 30; PL, 217, 1 39C. The title at this period signified that Peter had
taught, doubtless in the capitular school—Lesne, 461-462. It was in canon law that he must have been
master. Cernai, no. 37; ‘in lege peritus’.
16. For a study of this long quarrel, terminated by Innocent 111 on 27th January, 1 199, see Villemagne,
1-29.
17. On 6th August, 1202 Innocent 111 still gave Peter the title of archdeacon. He thus did not enter
Fontfroide earlier than the end of 1 202 or beginning of 1 203. On 26th January, 1206, Innocent spoke to
Peter of his vocation in these terms: ‘cum igitur, exigente necessitate, te a contemplationis otio, quod
elegeras, ad tempus duximus evocandum, ut in ministerium, missus, pro nobis, imo pro Christo,
legatione fungaris . . .’—Potthast, 2391, PL, 213, 525C; Villemagne, 63.
18. This is also the interpretation of Vaissete, VI, 223 and Guiraud, op. cit. 376.
19. Cernai, no. 33 and n. 1. Villemagne, 302-304, puzzled by the comparatively long time elapsing
between this death and the Pope’s first reaction (10th March), adopted a date which is not based on any
known source. It is not fair to say that Peter de Castelnau had no diplomatic talent (thus Scheeben, 29).
20. Cernai, nos. 24 and 38.
21. This title was given him by the Pope on 16th June, 1203—Potthast, 2340; PL, 213, 667A. It is
specially stressed by Puylaurens, ch. VII and IX—‘Magister Radulfus, persona litterata multum et
honesta’ and by the document of the Toulouse agreement 13th December, 1203—Catel, 236 and
Villemagne, 42.
22. Cf. preceding note.
23. Cf. supra, n. 1 3 and 2 1.
24. Cernai, no. 30 and n. 3; Vicaire, 1207, 345 and n. 38.
23. Cf. Daunou, in Hist. litt. de la France, XVII (1832), 306—334. The article by A. Sabarthes in
DHGE is more than sketchy. Cf. also Cernai, III, xiv—xv.
26. Cernai, no. 1 34.
27. Defourneaux, 182-193. The great majority of the Ultramontanes had gone back before the battle.
Arnaud, however, with all his vigour, played an important personal role in it with a hundred knights
Puylaurens, ch. XIX.
28. Potthast, 2229; PI, 213, 358-360; Villemagne, 52-57; Maisonneuve, 175, 179-191.
29. See Molinier’s note in Vaissete, VI, 289, n. 7 in regard to the expression: Kill them all, God
will recognize his own.’ The saying is completely unauthenticated. It is true, however, that Arnaud, like
the French barons, wanted measures of bloodshed to terrorize the region—cf. Tudela, laisse 18, lines
25-30 and laisse 21, 1-8 ; Borst, 118, n. 32.
30. This was the general opinion—Luchaire, 46—61, 258—259 ; Borst, 119 and n. 34.
31. Maisonneuve, 114—iiyand 154—166.
32. Innocent had borrowed from the canonists of the twelfth century the idea that Christendom
should temper the prosecution which punishes the crime committed, by mercy which moderates or even
suppresses the penalty as soon as the culprit is converted and repents—cf. Maisonneuve, 47, 116. The
legates were of another opinion—ibid., 167.
33. Letter of 12th July, 1199 ; Potthast, 781; PL, 214, 699A.
34. Luchaire, 51-53; Maisonneuve, 123-125.
35. Zanoni; Grundmann, 72—91 ; Mandonnet-Vicaire-Ladner, II, 43-44; Mens, 45—58.
36. Pierron; Grundmann, 91-127; Mandonnet-Vicaire-Ladner, II, 44-45; Mens, 41-45 and 58-60.
37. Letters of 29th January and 3 1st May, 1204; Potthast, 2103 and 2229; PL, 215, 274B and 3 59C,
Villemagne, 75 and 55.
38. Portalie, art. ‘Augustin’ in DTC, I, col. 2277-2280; Maisonneuve, 19-21.
39. In particular, the letters to Everwin de Steinfeld, Ep. 241 and 242, PL, 182, 434-437 and the
three sermons on ‘Capite nobis vulpes parvulas . . .’ Cant. II, 15, sermons 64—66, PL, 183, 1084-1102.
40. PL, 183, 1086D, 1087A, 1101A.
41. For action against the heresies in the twelfth century, see Spaetling, 97-110. hi the procedure ot
the Inquisition, these four stages can be noted: 1J preaching (and proclamation of the month of grace),
2° questioning and examination of the accused; 30 exhortation and instruction; 4 absolution or con-
 468 NOTES

demnation; 3J and 40 constitute the sermo generalis, L. Tanon, Hist, des tribunaux de 1’inquisition en France,
Paris, 1893, 329 and 427; C. Douais, L’inquisition, Paris, 1906, 163 and 239. The exhortation of the
general sermon was moreover reduced to something quite short, the real exhortation having been made
in the course of the trial.
42. On the formation of this power of coercion in regard to defaulting Christian temporal authorities
in the time of Innocent III, see Maisonneuve, 134—196.
43. By trying to get the King of France, suzerain of the Count of Toulouse, to intervene in conformity
with feudal law. To persuade him to undertake this campaign, he promised him the indulgence of
Compostela and Rome, then the indulgence ot the Holy Land—see letters of 31st May, 1204; 7th
February, 1203; 17th November, 1207; 10th March, 1208; Potthast, 2223, 2404, 3223, 3333; PL,
i 1 Si 361» J26, 1246, 1338 ; Villemagne, 172, 177, 1 83, 32 1 ; Maisonneuve, 148—134.
44. Maisonneuve, 140-148.
43. In 1198 and 1 199 the legate, Rainier, had obtained, among other powers, that of correction of
the secular and regular clergy—Potthast, 783; PL, 214, 676A. The first embassy of Peter and Raoul only
comprised powers against the heretics (cf. the complaint of Berenger, Vaissete, VIII, 309). But, when
Arnaud was appointed on 31st May, 1204, the Pope added special powers in regard to violators of
clerical immunity and against those guilty of simony, and, finally, general powers to ‘destroy, disperse,
remove, construct and implant’all that should be necessary—Potthast, 2229;?!, 213, 360A; Villemagne,
36, at the same time he recommended the prelates to make no difficulties about the correction
administered by his legates—Potthast, 2230; PL, 213, 360D; Villemagne, 39.
46. Potthast, 2129, 2224, 2337, 2380, 2441 (PL, 213, 369), 2316, 2340, 2337, 2361.
47* (Legatos quos) in sermone domini duximus destinandos’—Letter to Philip Augustus, 7th Feb.,
I2oS Potthast, 2404; PL, 213, 327A; Villemagne, 178.
48. Letter to Berenger, 28th May, 1204; Potthast, 2103 ; PL, 213, 274B; Villemagne, 76.
49- Letter to Peter of Castelnau, 26th January, 1203, Potthast, 2391 ;PL, 213, 32 3D ; Villemagne, 66.
Same expression to characterize the legates for Philip Augustus, loc. cit. supra, n. 46. After II Tim IV 2
and 3.
S°- Letter of 6th December, 1204, Potthast, 2337; PL, 213, 474B; Villemagne, 63.
S i. Letter of 31st May, 1204, Potthast, 2229; PI, 213, 360B; Villemagne, 37.
Si- For details as to the sending of these letters, see Potthast 2103 and PL, 213, 274D-273A.
S3- Ibid.
S 4- Cf. infra, ch. VII, 107 and nn. 73—79.
SS- Villemagne, 42-44, after Catel, 236.
- 6. According to the letter of Innocent III, to confirm the penalty of suspension of the bishop
S
pronounced by the legates—Potthast, 2129; PL, 213, 272; Villemagne, 189-191. This bull, of 18th
ebruary, gives no indication of its year in the Vatican records, but it is placed among the bulls of
February 1204 (Luchaire, Registres, 48). There is no reason for displacing it to 1203, as "historians do,
ioilowmg Vaissete, VI, 236.
37. Villemagne, 107-109; cf. Cernai, 46, n. 4. Lacger, 631. The text has been brought to light bv
Benoist, Hist, des Albigeois et des Vaudois, Paris 1691, I, 269.
38. It is, howevei, possible that Peter II had invited Raymond-Roger to carry out his own sentence—
iudeJa, 71 and n. 4.
39. Cernai, no. 20.
• tu' IhJd' For,si> Scheeben has read nisi, an unauthenticated variant of certain editions. The meaning
is thus distorted. Cf. Vicaire, 1207, n. 19. 6
61. ‘Ut ceteris omissis, predicationi ardentius insisterent’. Cernai, no. 20.
62. Ut possent ora obstruere malignorum, in humilitate procedentes, exemplo pii magistri facerent et
ocerent, irent pedites absque auro et argento, per omnia formam apostolicam imitantes’—Cernai, no. 20.
3- Legati, hec omnia quasi quamdam novitatem per se arripere non volentes . . .’. Cernai no 21
As to the example of St Malachy, bishop and legate, here is what St Bernard said of him: ‘A die primo
conversioms suae usque ad extremum vitae, sine proprio vixit. . . . Nec enim vel domum propriam
nabuit. fcrat autem pene incessanter circuiens parochias omnes; Evangelic serviens et de Evangelic
vivens sicut constituit ei Dominus: Dignus est, inquiens, operarius mercede sua (Luke X, 7 . . .) Denique
hacm eTinde Praedlcandu'n; ,cu™ Peditibus, pedes et ipse ibat, episcopus et legatus, forma apostolica
ac et inde magis nura in Malachia quo rara nimis in aliis’. Vita Malachiae, PL, 182, 1097-1098. Note
that it was at Clairvaux that Malachy had conceived this ideal. 97 io9a. ivote
64. Letter of 17th November, 1206, Potthast, 2912; PL, 213. 1024D; Villemagne 6q On the
itoo^Pon’hjb^b thepC,lergy Were cf. Innocent III, letter to the Cardinal of St Prisca, November
1200. Potthast, 1177; PL, 214, 903; Puylaurens, prologue.

revVnuf for aCc|5pi"i0Il0fInvn0ue!Jt-himJSelf °n,the mendicity of clerics. He took care to provide some
7th Mav tt cle”Cf^hom he had just deposed: Ne cogatur in cleri opprobrium mendicare’, letter of

213, 682’. ”: ’ 2'4, 602A‘ Cf‘ an°ther CaSe’ ftH J“ly’ I2o*> P°tthast’ PL’

le^Hvern’r10'1 f the Cistercians is sufficiently indicated by the expression found in certain of their
up 1 oT A guarantee the subsistence of their religious ‘absque rubor* mendicandi’, Statuta
capn. gen. O cist., ed. D. J. Camvez, III, Louvain 1933, 133 (1276, no. 13)—Huyghe, 83 From the
beginning of the century the constitutions had forbidden mendicity in the order-lid. I 340T1207
no. 34) and 383 (1211, no. 32). As to the example of St Malachy’s apostolic poverty St Bernard
eliminated mendicity from it in these terms: ‘Evangelic serviens et de Evangelic vfvens 1’ NM quod
requentius, ipsum Evangelium sme sumptu ponens, de laboribus suis suorumque ferebat unde se et cos
 NOTES 469

qui secum laborabant in opere ministerii sustentaret’, PL, 182, io98A. It was similarly by working with
his hands that the bishop, St Julian of Cuenca, Diego’s colleague, supported his apostolic life. Cf. supra,
29 and nn. 64-67.
67. Cernai, no. 2 1.
68. Ibidem and Jordan, nos. 20-21.
69. ‘Cum ordo noster specialiter ob predicationem et animarum salutem ab initio noscatur institutus
fuisse, et studium nostrum ad hoc principaliter ardenterque, summo opere debeat intendere ut proxi-
morum animabus possimus utiles esse’, I Const. 194.
70. Bourbon, no. 83, cf. no. 231.
71. Puylaurens, ch. X.
72. On 29th January and 31st May, 1204, Potthast, 2103 and 2229; PL, 215, 275A and 309B;
Villemagne, 54-55.
73. Cernai, no. 2 1.
74. Jordan, no. 22. St Norbert had acted similarly when he had decided upon apostolic life—‘Juxta
mandatum namque evangelii, neque peram, neque calciamenta, neque duas tunicas portabat, paucis
solummodo libris et indumentis missae contentus . . . imitator apostolorum effectus’, Vita Norberti,
ch. 9 and 12, MG SS, XII, 675.
7 5. ‘Habentes predictum episcopum super se maiorem et quasi caput totius negoti’—Jordan, no. 2 2 ;
confirmed by Cernai, no. 67 ; Diego, Raoul and Peter had been ‘predicationis . . . principes et magistri’.
Cf. no. 51.
76. ‘Nudis plantis et pedibus’—Puylaurens, ch. VIII. In fact Dominic, without imposing this penance
on others, would love to practice it—Proces. Bon., nos. 21 and 27.
77. ‘Salutis monita seminantes, mendica(bant) hostiatim panem suum’. Cernai, no. 47.
78. Jordan, no. 2 1.
79. Luchaire, 91; Mandonnet, I, 39-40. An attempt was made to prove this point—Mandonnet-
Vicaire, I, 141—156 (Etude V). Scheeben, Dcminikaner oder Innocenzianer in AFP, IX (1939), 237—297, has
emphatically rejected this. Certainly the chief sources (Cernai, Jordan) contradict Mandonnet’s idea that
the Pope had sent Diego to preach in the Midi (Tudela, however, laisse 2, V, 17-18 gives Diego the
title of legate). They do not, however, prevent one supposing, with Luchaire, that he had perhaps
charged Diego with a message or some advice for his legates. That is what is being suggested here, merely
as a hypothesis.
80. Cf. supra, ch. IV, 57-60.
81. ‘Mox, itaque, insiliente in eo spiritu Domini . , .’—Jordan, no. 20, after I Kings X, 10.
82. Cf. supra, n. 45.
83. It is worthy of note that the letter speaks of ‘religious’ and points out that they have not yet
preached and dare not do so. All this fits in badly with the Bishop of Osma and quite well with the
Cistercian abbots. If it is noted further that the chapter was held on 13th September and that Innocent’s
reply is dated 1 7th November, there will be no further hesitation in saying that the first occasion for the
letter was a measure taken by the chapter of Citeaux. This letter, however, at the same time regularized
the position of the Castilians.
84. Potthast, 2912; PL, 215, 1024-1025; Villemagne, 68-71 ; Laurent, no. 3. The reply is addressed
to Raoul alone.
85. Vaissete, XII, 310-325. Oath of fidelity of Etienne de Servian to the Viscount of Beziers and his
guardian, 4th August, 1194—Vaissete, VIII, 430-431.
86. Cernai, no. 23. Servian was occupied by the crusaders on 21st July, 1209, Cernai, no. 83, n. 3.
The lord, Etienne de Servian, a notorious heretic, made his abjuration in February 1210, which enabled
him to recover his fief. The formula of his abjuration will be found in Vaissete, VIII, 584—587.
87. Vaissete VIII, 584. This Bernard de Simorre had been the adversary of the legates in February
1204 at Carcassonne, cf. supra, p. 70 and n. 57.
88. Cernai, nos. 24-25 and 46-47; Maisonneuve 126-131.
89. Cernai, no. 22.
90. In presupposing that the Montpellier meeting took place about 15th June, and taking into account
the date of the Beziers dispute, cf. infra, n. 103.
91. Cernai, no. 23.
92. Cernai, no. 52.
93. Cernai, no. 23.
94. According to Luke I, 17, in their eyes St John Baptist was one of the greatest and most wicked
devils—Cernai, nos. 10 and 25. Cf. Borst, 159-160.
95. In 1143 in Cologne; in 1144 at Liege (where the clergy succeeded in wrestling the majority of
the heretics from the crowd), etc. PL, 182, 677C; 179; 938B. Cf. also the treatment inflicted on Pierre
de Bruys at Saint-Gilles a few years earlier—supra, ch. V, 74 and n. 82.
96. Cernai, no. 86; Vaissete, VI, 28-29.
97. Cernai, no. 89, n. 3.
98. Cernai, no. 85.
99. An understanding to the Bishop of Beziers not to introduce Waldenses or heretics (= Catharists)
into the city, and to expel from it as far as possible those who were found there. Text of the oath of
4th August, 1 194—Vaissete, VIII, 429-430.
too. Letter of Innocent III to the Bishop of Agde and to the Abbot of Saint-Pons to confirm the
penalty of suspension pronounced against the bishop by the legates—Potthast, 2129; PL, 215, 272;
Villemagne, 1 89—19 1. For the date, cf. supra, n. 56.
1 6—S.D.
 470 NOTES

101. Vaissete, VI, 236; Gal. Christ., VI, 325A, where is to be found the epitaph, source of the
information—‘servorum deceptus fraude suorum’.
102. Cernai, no. 24.
103. On 17th June, 1 206, the Pope charged his legates Peter and Raoul, with the Bishop of Pamplona,
to examine the marriage of Pedro II de Aragon. The letter must have reached the Narbonensis about the
middle of July. In September he entrusted them with a certain matter at the abbey of Saint-Gilles. In
October Peter collaborated with the re-establishment of peace between the King of Aragon and the city
of Montpellier. He signed the treaty on 27th October at Villeneuve-les-Maguelonne. In November he
had not yet returned to Raoul, since it was to the latter only that the Pope addressed his letter of 17th
November about the preachers—Villemagne, 127, 227, 130, 68; Cernai, no. 24, n. 2.
104. Cernai, no. 24.
10 j. Report of the legates Arnaud and Milon to the Pope after the taking of Carcassonne—PL, 216,
139D. More than one hundred fortified localities were thus emptied; Cernai, no. 92, p. 93 and n. 2.
106. Cernai, no. 94. The fortifications of the city of Carcassonne assumed their present form in the
fifteenth century but on the foundations of those of earlier times.
107. Cernai, no. 92 and n. 3, no. 93.
108. Berenger, I, 1201 —1207.
109. Cernai, no. 99.
no. Cernai, III, pp. xi to xv.
111. Cernai, no. 26.
112. Puylaurens, ch. VIII, said in effect: ‘Fuitque una de primis congressionibus apud Viridefolium.’
Verfeil is on the Girou, about twelve miles from Toulouse. In St Bernard’s time it was the centre
of heresy for Toulouse.
113. ‘Viri apostolici, scilicet predicatores nostri, circuibant per castella, evangelizantes et disputante
ubique’—Cernai, no. 26.
114. Jordan, no. 23.
iiy. Robert of Auxerre, 245-; Vaissete, VI, 94—96; Maisonneuve, 96.
116. Cernai, 215-229.
117. Letter ol Geoffroy d Auxerre, 414B; Puylaurens, ch. 1; the beginning of the chronicle which
relates the episode of 114? was drawn up before 1273, perhaps about 1250.
118. He commented, among other passages, on John III, 13: ‘Nemo ascendit in caelum, nisi qui
descendit de caelo, Filius hominis, qui est in caelo.’ The Text was verv well chosen to combat the
Docetism and subordinationism of the Catharists in the name of the Gospel. Puylaurens, ch. VIII.
119. They took in the material sense Is. LXVI, 1 : ‘Caelum mihi sedes est, terram autem scabellum
pedum meorum’, ibid. Puylaurens, ch. viii, who has given us the name of two of the heresiarchs, tells
us no more about them. The first of the two was to find himself confronted by the legates at Montreal a
few months later—ibid., ch. IX.

NOTES TO CHAPTER VII

1, The slow-flowing Hers.
.
2 The Fresquel and its tributary the Treboul.
3- Vaissete, XII, 200, 263; Guiraud, Canulaire, CCXLI-CCLXII; Inquisition, 221, 266, 286-287.
4- Guiraud, Cartulaire, CCLVI— CCLVIII; Inquisition, 266, 285—286, 290, 324.
5-
„„VTC.e™ai’ no' 110 and n- 2; Guiraud, Cartulaire, CX-CXI, CCXXXII-CCXXXIII and CCXLIII-
ULaLVJI; Inquisition, j48-149, 288-291.
6. Guiraud, Cartulaire, CCXLVII and ^8; Inquisition, 291.
7. Guiraud, Cartulaire, CCXLIII—CCXLVI; Inquisition, 288—291.
8. Balme, I, 139 and n. 2 ; Guiraud, Cartulaire, CCXLVII; Inquisition, 291, which corrects Balme, 1 16,
who thought that Na-Cavaers, the mother, had no connection with heresy. A Cavaers was bayle of the
king at Limoux about 1240, Vaissete, VII, notes 241 and 256.
9. Vaissete, VI, 1149-1151. Unlike the others present, the count did not ‘adore’ the Perfect Cf
supra, ch. V, n. 36.

10. Balme, I, 108, n. 1, Guiraud, Cartulaire, CXXXIV-CXXXVI; Inquisition, 149, 204-205, 288.
11. Horst, 232 and n. 14. Perhaps he was associated with his predecessor while the latter was still

CXXXIX PerhaPS He ^ merdy hU CldeSt S°n' 'bid” 2°8’ "• 23; Guiraud’ Cartulaire, CXXXVIII-
12. Guiraud, Canute. '•re. CX-CXI.
13. Ibid., CCLXX—CCLXXII, and Inquisition, 351—353
14- Guiraud, Cartulaire, CCLXXIII-CCLXXV, and Inquisition, 354-355.
294-2 gernal’ n°' 26’ n‘ 4 and no. no; Guiraud, Cartulaire, CXI and CCLI-CCLII; Inquisition, 269-270,

16. Cernai, no. 135 and n. 3, 148, 167, 215-216, 227; Tudela, laisse 68, 5-15.
for tile rUhroniHnS 7 K 12°7’ ,This should be understood, in the strict sense, after 22nd April,
„I h il JfA °r he ErStfr Style- But h Would suffice for a Part of the episode to have taken
a few daW Tnlf w"! ‘Vn 7 .his ass«?ion. To give the detail—after fifteen days of disputation and
additional rn °a V °u i°IT r* (Gernal’ no- 47), the missionaries were strengthened by an
arrived lifore try If 'f “teaUX in March <Robert of Auxerre. 271) and which certainly
after the f d 0t Apr\ ’ A conJirmatur Proving this exists. Peter of Castelnau, who left Montreal
alter the disputation, arranged a peace in Provence and had it signed also in April (Cernai, no. 27 and
 NOTES
471
11. 1). The disputation thus began at the end of March or beginning of April. It must have been concluded
before 15th April in order to leave Holy Week free for the very heavy liturgical commitments.
18. bolemnior Puylaurens, ch. IX. This disputation was known to us through Cernai, nos. 26-27;
uylaurens, ch IX; Jordan, no. 23. The value of the first mentioned text is incomparable, that of the
second is considerable, the third is merely a brief mention. Several seventeenth-century writers have
brought to light so-called official reports of the disputation which Scheeben, 41-49, utilized for his
account of the events. He even announced, ibid., 431, n. 57, the editing of a report reconstructed in
accordance with these seventeenth-century texts. It has been shown (Vicaire, 120J, 339-343) that these
so-called reports ^are in no sense original and merely add improbable details to the Puylaurens text,
c ' ' c ee°en ® account is, on this head, valueless; in particular, his chronology, woven out of the
artificial combination of elements borrowed from seventeenth-century writers, is not to be trusted_cf
Vicaire, 120J, 342, n. 43.
19. See the expressions applied to them by the sources—athletae, Cernai, no. 55; pugiles nostri,
Puylaurens, ch. IX; pugiles Dei, ibid., ch. X; Christi milites, Innocent III, in accordance with Cernai
no. 59.
20. See the expressions vir apostolicus, Cernai, no. 6 and 26 (cf. a propos of St Malachy, PL, 182,
1098D) of which the meaning, according to Dewailly 150, n. 3 (cf. 148, n. 1) should be interpreted as—
the man who is striving to live the life of the apostles over again; vir evangelicus, Robert of Auxerre 271
and Jordan, no. 105.
2 1. This expression, taken from Ez. XIII, 5, frequently recurs in Innocent’s letters to the legates—
Potthast, 2103, 2229, 2912; Puylaurens, prologue.
22. Alter Matt. X, 27 commented by Innocent III—‘per hoc manifeste denuntians quod evangelica
predicatio non in occultis conventiculis, sicut haeretici faciunt, sed in ecclesiis juxta morem catholicum
est publice proponenda’. Potthast, 780; PL, 214, 696A. Cf. supra, ch. V, n. 116.
23. The use of this expression from I Pet. Ill, 15, to designate the state of mind of the true apostle,
was frequent—cf. Peter the Venerable, PL, 1 89, 726c. Innocent used it to characterize what he expected
from his preachers on 31st May, 1 204—Potthast, 2229, PL, 215, 359B; Cernai no. 47 and 56 and Robert
of Auxerre, 271 apply it to them.
24. Scheeben, 42, affirms this categorically. He is, however, building on insecure foundations: 1. the
fact of the Council of Mirepoix wdiich he dates, without proof, during the summer of 1206 (cf. infra,
n. 26); 2. a page of Perrin, 7. It is difficult to accord any sort of value to this page of Perrin which refers
neither to a fact nor to a document. The author is far too imaginative.
2f. Albigensian council of St Felix of Caraman in 1167—Dondaine, Actes, in particular 332-333.
26. Guiraud, Inquisition, 269; Dondaine, Actes, 332, n. 12. The date is not completely certain. The
account, given in 1246, says: ‘et sunt quadraginta anni, vel circa’.
27. Jordan, no. 22.
28. Cf. supra, 96—97.
29. Balme, I, 107 and 11. 2. Guiraud, Inquisition, 207; Borst, 234.
30. Guiraud, op. cit., 225 and n. 5.
31. Cernai, no. 26.
32. ‘Ft plures alii viri boni’ . . . ‘et multi alii nomina quorum non sunt scripta in libro vitae’—
Puylaurens, ch. IX.
33. ‘Disputaturi unanimiter’, Cernai, no. 26.
34. Puylaurens, ibid.
34a. Cf. p. 140, n. 17.
35. Cernai, no. 26, n. 2.
36. Ch. IX.
37. Manuel de Vinquisiteur, ed. G. Mollat, Paris, 1926, I, 6.
38. Cf. Portalie, art. ‘Augustin’ in DTC, I, 2277-2280.
39. As, for instance, Cologne 1193. Certain Catharists were summoned to appear for judgement
before a conventus of clergy and laymen in the presence of the archbishop and of the notables. The inter¬
rogation became a dispute with an appeal to Scripture. The Catharists, considerably shaken, asked for a
further disputation in which their leaders could defend their belief. After this colloquy three days were
spent in warning them of the penalties they were incurring and publicly beseeching them to be converted.
The crowd eventually dragged them away from the clergy to burn them—Everwin de Steinfeld, 677B.
40. At Albi St Bernard changed his sermon into a dialogue, setting forth one after the other the
Catharist and Catholic doctrines of the Eucharist. After this, he interrogated the crowd who swore as a
body to return to the Catholic faith—Geoffroi d’Auxerre, 414D.
41. In 1165—account, Mansi, XXII 157-168; Lacger, Albigeois, 297.
42. In 1178—Vaissete VI, 82-84, after Roger of Hovenden, Chronica, ed. Stubbs, II, London 1869,
150—166.
43. Under Archbishop Bernard of Narbonne (1 181-1 191). This was the dispute related by Fontcaude,
793-795, the source of his own book—Vaissete, VI, 218-219.
44. Vaissete, VI, 231; Villemagne, 107—109.
45. Geoffroi d’Auxerre, 41 2C.
46. In his letter of 12th June, 1199, Innocent III, gave a remarkable exposition of the traditional
thought of the Church on the public character of Christian preaching and the necessity of the Church’s
mission for it—Potthast, 780; PL, 214, 695-698; cf. supra, n. 22. The two petitions go back to the
earliest Christian times. Abhorrence of the conventicula was shared by the Roman emperors—Maisonneuve
8 and n. 2.
 472 NOTES

47. This was the case at Lombers in 1165 and at Toulouse in 1178. When the heresiarchs solemnly
asserted, in the presence of the crowd, that they had always held the articles of the Catholic faith, they
were contradicted then and there by the Count of Toulouse and numerous witnesses who had heard them
preach in quite another sense—Vaissete, VI, 83.
48. On the Catholic conformism of the Catharist believers, see Lacger, Albigeois, 293-298.
49. Geoffroi d’Auxerre, 41 2C.
30. I Pet. Ill, 13.
gi. For the Catharists, for instance, Vaissete VI, 82. For the Waldenses, Bernard Gui, Manuel de
V inquisiteur, ed. G. Mollat, Paris 1926, I, <34. For the Catholics, supra, n. 23.
32. ‘Fundamentum, a parte hereticorum, disputationis’—Puylaurens, ch. IX.
S3- Ibid.
54. Cernai, no. 29; Puylaurens, ch. IX; Jordan, nos. 24—23.
gg. On reading Puylaurens, it might be thought that the disputation consisted in supplying the
judges with the contradictory Libelli without public discussions. Cernai is correct w'hen he says that the
scripta were drawn up after the oral debate. Puylaurens, too, draws attention to such a debate when he
mentions the 1 go persons who were converted intellectis que dicta erant.
g6. Cernai, Puylaurens, Jordan, ibid.
37. Cernai, no. 34, relates the incident at the close ofhis story of the Preaching, after having mentioned
the death of Diego. He had found no better place to insert it, he says. He thus does not seem to have
thought that the incident occurred in the course of the April dispute. In fact he seems in his account to
presuppose Diego’s departure from the scene—‘unus de nostris . . . qui socius fuerat episcopi
oxomensis . . . .’ Jordan, nos. 24 and 23, relates the same incident, but places it at Fanjeaux. He fails
to distinguish, however, two things which Cernai, nos. 29 and 34, separates—the sheet of paper,
schedula, given by Dominic to his contradictor on the evening of a discussion and the general report,
redactum in scriptis (libellus), transmitted to the judges for sentence. Cemai had the account directly from
St Dominic’s lips five years after the event. What Jordan indicates is in no sense comparable. That is why
we are following Cernai, despite the existence at Fanjeaux of a local tradition no trace of which is
discoverable before the fourteenth century and which was quite possibly elicited by Jordan’s text_
Percin, 3 ; Balme, I, 11 8 and 120, n. 1 ; Guiraud, Cartulaire, CCCXV-CCCXVIand 174; Kirsch, 114-1 17
and the editor of Cernai, no. 34, 48, n. 3.
38. Cf. Michel in DTC, XI, 1139-1132.
39. For the judgement by fire on the person of a repentant Catharist neophyte at Castres, see Cemai,
no. 113.
60. Defourneaux, 29—30. The king would seem to have pushed the book back into the flames intact,
saying: ‘Ad libitum regum flectuntur cornua legum.’ He had earlier caused a duel to be fought bv
champions.
61. No. 24.
62. Cemai, no. 26; Puylaurens, ch. IX.
63. For the report, see: La Popeliniere, N. Vignier, J. Ussher, J. P. Perrin, cf. Vicaire, I20J, 339.
For what St Dominic wrote, Jean Bremer, quoted by Antonianum XI (1936), 44S and 483. The small
pamphlet would be entitled De corpore (or Ad decorem) Christi contra Albigenses. Cf. Balme, I, n. at foot of
P* -1 ~\ ^0<^‘ ^eS* £84 of the Vatican, fo. ) 33, ro and vo contains a schedula b. Dominici proiecta in iqnem
which is merely an extract from Cernai.
64. Cemai, no. 27 and n. 1.
63. ‘Tam per guerras, quas movebant ei nobiles Provinciae, mediante industria viri Dei, quam per
excommunicationem’, ibid.
66. Cemai, no. 47. Dominic, nevertheless, went to Carcassonne on 17th April—Laurent, no. 3.
67. Jordan, no. 26.
68. Infra, ch. VIII.
69. On the principal sources of the account, see Robert of Auxerre, Cernai, Jordan and cf. Vicaire,
1 2°7. 33 W338- The first is contemporary with the events, the second dates from 1213 (to be corrected,’
p. 336, after Cernai, III, xviii), the third from 1233. It the two former provide information of first-hand
value, the same cannot be said of the latter.
70. Cernai, no. 47. On the number 12 in the history of the apostolic life, cf supra, ch. Ill, n. 91.
71. They may even perhaps have been able to continue by water as far as the Aude, through the
lagoons along the coast—Tudela, 39, n. 4.
72. Robert of Auxerre, 271.
73- The Phrase quoted from Robert of Auxerre, composed of rearranged texts from I Pet. Ill, 1 3 and
Jo n V, *3, which are to be found in part in Cernai, no. 47, equally in reference to the twelve abbots,
comes word for word from the pontifical letter of 31st May, 1204—Potthast, 2229; PL, 21 g 3396-
Villemagne, 34 In this letter Innocent recalled the request for preachers he had made to the Abbot of
Citeaux on 29th January—Potthast, 2103.
74. Cernai, nos. 26, 47, 48, 31, 34.
73. Cemai, no. 3.
76. Bourbon, no. 231; Frachet, 8.
77. Cernai, no. 67 ; Puylaurens, ch. IX. Cf. the study, La Sainte Predication de Narbonnaise, in Mandonnet
—Vicaire, I, 115-139.
78. Letter of Innocent III 10th March, 1208—Potthast, 3324; PI., 213, 1336B; Cernai, no. 61.
79. Cf. injra, p. 109 and n. 110.
80. Cernai, III, p. xxxii, n. 21.
 NOTES
473
8 i. Vaissete, VI, 8 I.
82. G. G. Meersseman, Etudes sur les anciennes confreries dominicaines, IV, ‘Les milices de Jesus-Christ’,
in AFP, 23 (1933), 275-308, in particular, 283-293.
83. Letter of Innocent III 18.it.1204, Potthast, 212 9 ; PI, 213, 272B; Villemagne, 190.
84. Cemai, no. 70.
83. Cemai, no. 31.
86. Cemai, no. 300.
87. Cernai, no. 201.
8 8. A monk from Bonnevaux later recounted an incident which happened to one of the twelve abbots.
This was probably his own abbot, or at least his abbot was probably then in the Albigeois. Frachet,
8 ; the Abbot of Bonnevaux was preaching in the Albigeois in 1212—Cernai, no. 298.
89. In the acts of the general chapter of Citeaux in 1212 may be read: ‘De monacho Prulliacensi
nuncupato Petro heremita, praecipitur ut in instanti revocetur a praedicatione albigensium, nec ipse, nec
alius aliquis sine licentia capituli generalis de cetero praedicationis officium audeat usurpare’—Canivez, I,
400, no. 30. This monk had perhaps come to the Albigeois with his abbot in 1207.
90. Balme, I, 471.
91. Westenholz, 24 and 170—171 ; Altaner 66. If Dominic’s friendship for Rainier can be dated from
their meeting in Italy in 1216, that between Rainier and Guy de Montfort is certainly prior to 1216 and
could only have arisen in the Narbonensis.
92. See the description of the ideal preacher which is at the same time that of the Cistercians in the
letter of 31st May, 1204—Potthast, 2229; PL, 213, 339; Villemagne, 34. On the formula, verbo et
exemplo, cf. infra, ch. VIII, n. 216.
93. Cf. supra, ch. VI, n. 31.
94. Twelve apostles, Cernai, no. 47; two by two Robert of A., 271, Frachet 76 and Constantin,
no. 33; on foot Cernai, no. 47 and Robert of A, ibid.; barefoot Puylaurens, ch. VIII, Frachet, 67 and
Proces. Bon. no. 21 ; begging from door to door Cernai, no. 47.
93. Mandonnet-Vicaire-Ladner, II, 14 and 30-39. The ordinary monks do not form part of these
categories—ibid., 24—26 and supra, n. 89.
96. Berenger of Narbonne and, clearly, Berenger of Carcassonne seem to have followed the discussion
from the latter’s palace—cf. supra, 106, n. 68.
97. Cernai, no. 47.
98. Robert of Auxerre, 271.
99. Among the Cistercians termini were distant domains over which the abbot exercised jurisdiction.
The conception was extended to every part of the territory where the jurisdiction of a prelate, in this
instance of a delegated preacher, stretched. The Preachers adopted it to designate the diet or ‘preaching’
of a conventual house—later, even, a portion of this diet. Cf. Mortier, I, 301-302. Meersseman, De
domibus terminariis in antiquo comitatu Flandriae in AFP, VIII (1938) 263-273.
100. Cemai, no. 27 and n. 3.
101. Cemai, no. 201 and n. 1 (correcting no. 47, n. 6).
102. He was to die close to Saint-Gilles just before 9th July, cf. infra, n. 139.
103. Cf. infra, ch. VIII.
104. Laurent, nos. 3 and 6. For William Claret, Ibid., 24, n. 2.
103. P. 106, n. 68.
106. Balme, I, 471.
107. Bernard Gui found the original of this letter at the priory of Toulouse and transcribed it on 31st
October, 1303. He has left a description of the seal—Balme, I, 188-189. He noted an identical seal at
the foot of a second letter. Ibid., 484. Since the first letter must date from 1208, and the second, about
1213, it will be seen that Dominic did not change his seal during this time.
108. J. Roman, Manuel de sigillographie fran^aise, Paris, 19.2, 43 and L'art et la vie au mojen age a
trovers les blasons et les sceaux, Paris 1930, 62.
109. Girou, 36.
110. The various mss. in which the description of the seal by Bernard Gui is found are not identical.
One says the inscription could not be read easily. Another reads it—Jbesu Christi et predicationis (ms.
Barcelone, Bibl. pub. Arm. I, III, 16; in ms. Dole, Bibl. pub. 109, fo. 80 ro). Dondaine, AFP, XVII
(1947), 136 reads S instead of J(hesu), Balme, I, 189. This inscription does not make sense. The et in
particular is incomprehensible. It would seem that the paleographic sign has been confused with the S
( = Sigillum), indispensable on a seal and that it is necessary to read this round inscription beginning by

this S. This would give [Sigillum] predicationis Jbesu Christi Balme I, 189. Cf. Dondaine in AFP, XVII (1 947),
133-136.
111. Laurent, no. 6. The expression Sancta predicatio is traditional—cf. letter from Innocent III of
10th March, 1208—Cemai, no. 61 and canon 10 of the Lateran Hefele-Leclercq, V, 1340. It refers to
an expression of St Gregory, sanctus predicator, and indicates a ministry verbo et exemplo, Ladner, 33 and
n. 204-3.
112. Balme, I, 484.
113. Laurent, no. 80. Loenertz 7, n. 6 has shown that charter 81, which contained an analogous
expression, has been touched up at a later date. Similar ones were still found in 1230—Guiraud,
Cartulaire, II, 4 and 3.
114. Laurent.no. 134.
113. Balme, I, 164, n. 1; cf. Guiraud, Cartulaire, II, 4, 3, 31-32; Percin 16, no. 32; Marteen,
Script. VI, 433.
 474 NOTES

116. Laurent, nos. 93 and 134; cf. infra, II, Appendix VII.
11 7. Cernai, no. 51 and 67.
118. On this title cf. Mandonnet-Vicaire, I, 53, no. 48; 130, n. 89; II, 187, n. 38. For the very
frequent use of this term by Cernai, note in particular nn. 101, 134, 286, £14, 3-25-.
119. Used in the absolute sense, in the twelfth century the term designated a man who was teaching
or had taught—Lesne, 461-3.
120. Mandonnet-Vicaire, I, 130, n. 89.
1 2 1. Catharist leaders—Eckbert de Schoenau, PL, 195, 17; Annales de Morgan, Rerum Britt, m. aevi
Script. London, 1864, XXXVI, I, 13; Cernai, no. 14 etc; Waldes: Bourbon, no. 342.
122. Jacques de Vitry, Ep. VI, ed. Boehmer-Wiegand, Analekten, Tubingen, 1930, 69 and Historia
orientalis, bk. 2, ch. 32, ibid., 71.
123. Mandonnet-Vicaire-Ladner, II, 31—39.
124. Laurent, no. 70. The title of magister was only given to Dominic from 1216—1217 both in the
texts of the archives and in literary documents (Laurent, no. 70; Jordan, no. 49). There are two
exceptions, a charter of 28th March, 1213 (Laurent, no. 41) where the term has the meaning of prior
monasterii monialium from a previous phrase, and a conversation of 1214, related by Constantin, no. 33,
where the title given to Dominic refers to his preaching. Thus there is no reason to give this somewhat
late title its scholastic meaning as V. D. Carro would like to do in his S. Domingo de Guzman, fundador de
la primera orden universitaria, apostolica y misionera, Salamanca, 1946. 13, nn. 13 and 17. Gelabert,
S. Domingo de G. risto por sus contemporaneos, Madrid 1947, 63—4 and n. 13. As to the interpretation:
magister sacri palatii, anachronistic and without any foundation, cf. Altaner, 201—207.
12 3. Laurent, no. 134.
126. Cf. Mandonnet-Vicaire, 1, 13 1.
127. He had even refused them a horse for travelling from Narbonne to Toulouse and onlv decided
to give them one on their indignant protests—letter of Innocent III, 29th January, 1 204, Potthast, 2103;
PL, 213, 274C; Villemagne, 76.
128. P. 27 1.
129. Cernai, no. 48.
130. Jordan, no. 28.
131. The charter of 8th August, 1207 (Laurent, no. 6) mentions at the same time as Sans and
Ermengarde, several other men of Villepinte ‘qui ad sanctam predicationem donaverunt’.
132. Guiraud, Cartulaire, CV—CXIV; Borst, 211 and n. 31 (role of the deacons).
133. Vita Malachiae, PL, 182, 1098.
134. Summa Aurea, Paris 1300, L. II, tr. VII, ch. I, fo. L.1I, C.I. It referred to the Lombardy
Catharists.
135. Potthast, no. 2229; PL, 21 3, 339C; Villemagne 53.
136. Cernai, no. 20.
1 37. Jordan, no. 22.
138. Robert of Auxerre, 271.
139. His depositio is commemorated on 9th July. According to monastic custom, he must have been
buried the day after his death—Henrlquez, Menologium cisterciense, Antwerp 1630, 223.
140. R. of Auxerre, 271, does in fact mention returns three months after the arrival, thus at the end
of July. The editor of Cernai, no. 31, n. 2, rightly notes that what was referred to were isolated returns.
However, the general chapter of Citeaux, 13th September, 1207 had to recall several abbots from mid-
August onwards.
141. Cernai, no. 31 ; cf. no. 67.
142. Laisse II, 1.24-27; cf. laisse III, 1.12. The five years of preaching mentioned by Guillaume
doubtless run from 1203-1208.
143. Cernai, no. 31 ‘post multum temporis’ which indicates that this happened after Arnaud’s
departure for Marseille at the beginning of September, but well before the death of Peter de Castelnau,
14th January, 1208.
144. ‘Animadvertentes etiam quod eadem praedicatio jam peregerit ex parte maxima cursum
suum . . .’—Cernai, no. 67.
143. Cernai, no. 31.
146. Cernai, nos. 134-137 and 324 (preachings in 1210 and 1212).
147. Tudela, laisse XLVI, 1.9 (1210, in Toulouse).
148. Cernai, nos. 439 and 494.
149. Jordan, no. 28.
130. Ibid.

NOTES TO CHAPTER VIII

i* For the traditional route of St Dominic*, cf. infra 237, n. 174.
2. Guiraud, Cartulaire, II, 104. In future this work will be referred to in this chapter as G, with an
indication of the page and volume. Similarly, Laurent will be known as L, followed by the page.
3. These routes are vouched for in particular by the charters of delimitation of 1232 and 1316, G, II
3-6 7 and 1 2 1-1 23.
4. Cf. supra, ch. I, II.
3. Proc. Tlwl., no. 3 and no. 18. Cf. Frachet, II, 23.
6. For the early history of the monastery of Prouille, there are available, besides the general sources
 NOTES
47 £

for Ihe life of St Dominic, the notice by Bernard Gui (Martene, VI, 437-436), the monastery charters
k d ’ u° con;ec,;ei:‘ by Loenertz), and finally extracts from an ancient ms. of Prouille which is quoted
y Rechac, Percin, Echard. Examining the extracts in Percin, who makes considerable use of the ms.,
it appears to be a collection containing an ancient breviary (Percin, 4, no. 16), a cartulary (Percin 13,
no. 24) and a chronicle (Percin, 16, no. 30). The breviary contained a legend of the saint, distributed
among the lessons of the feast and its octave. The chronicle was a compilation certainly later than Bernard
ui (Percin 22, no. 54). It has no value in itself, but has perhaps collected some tradition peculiar to the
sisters. The studies of Guiraud, Fondation and Cartulaire retain their value, although they need correction.
See also: La naissance de Sainte-Marie de Prouille’, in Mandonnet-Vicaire, I, 99—113, where will be
found a criticism of Scheeben, ‘Die Anfange des zweiten Ordens des hi. Dominikus’, in AFP, II (1932),
284-3 !4> which none the less has its value.
7. Rechac, 1 19 and Percin, 4. The latter gives the source—the ancient ms. of Fanjeaux. This may be
a lapsus and he may mean to refer to the ancient ms. of Prouille, which he is continually quoting. In any
case, this text lacks authority and Mamachi, 13:9-160 and 163, n. 1, rightly neglects it: it distorts, and
falsifies by combining them, several facts from the thirteenth-century sources as well as adding to them
certain data which cannot be checked.
8. On a similar legend at the monastery of Tors—apparition of lights three nights in succession at the
place where the foundation was to be—and elsewhere, cf. M.C. Daeniker-Gysin-Gesc/i. des Dominikaner-
innenklosters Tors, Winterthur, 1937, 17.
9. Will of the parish priest of Fanjeaux, Jean Sesale, in 1423—Balme, I, 136, n. 1.
10. The cross and chapel (rebuilt in 1338—Percin, 4) and later destroyed, were replaced in i860
and 1869—Balme, I, 136, n. I and Kirsch, 122-123.
u. Vaissete, V, 1033, 1047, 1062; XI, 203 (referring to Isarn and Guillaume de Prouille).
12. Mota: G, II, 44, 47, 33. The mound (mota) was the type of the tenth- and eleventh-century
fortification in the West. In 1063 Rangarde de Carcassonne and his son Count Roger received half the
castle of Prouille—Vaissete, V, 316.
13. Sesonia, Sidonia, from the charters—today Font-Saint-Martin, or stream of the Prouille.
14. Castrum vetus—G, II, 33, 40, 41, 43, 44, 60, 78, 84. The castle referred to is the mound. The
castrum vetus is the locality, the old township.
ij. G, II, 74.
16. G, II, 33, 39, 42, 30, 52. It must have been outside the monastery wall, for in 1294 work had
to be done on it to bring in the water supply—G, I, 263.
17- G, I, 33 ; II, 77, 78 etc.
18. There is evidence for the existence of the cemetery G, 11, 46 and 36. It could only belong to a
conventual, which was not the case here, or parish church. For the authenticity of the charters see G, I,
1 and II, 73 (L. nos. 4 and 11) which mention the title of the parish cf. infra, n. 43.
19. G, II, 39, 62, 63-67, 84, 121-123, 169-171.
20. G, II, 37, 43, 38; Balme, I, 288, n. 1.
21. Cr, II, 63-67; 121—123; 169-171 (demarcation tithe between districts).
22. G, II, 47.
23. Whence the name of Castrum vetus: the locality is no longer fortified. It is possible that the
ancient wall served as a foundation for the enclosure. The latter was only rebuilt in stone after 1294—
G, I, 263.
24. Cf. decrees quoted supra, nn. 12 and 14.
23. There is no mention of a parish priest in the documents. The population has almost completely
disappeared; the charters conferring almost the whole of the old township on the nuns (supra, n. 14)
mention in all three houses. On the word aliquando, applied to the parish in a document, cf. infra, n. 43.
The church had to be rebuilt in 1267—G, I. 28. It was still standing in the seventeenth century—■
Rechac, 197.
26. Because of the heresy or the anticlericalism of the authorities or of the impoverishment of the
tithe district. The neighbouring chapel, St Sernin de la Ilhe, given to the sisters after the re-establishment
of Catholicism, in 1 263, with its tithes and all its dues, did not bring in a revenue of 20 francs of Tours,
i.e. of 20 sous—G, II, 114-113.
27. This is surmised from the intervention of the bishop alone, to whose manse the church of Fanjeaux
belonged (G, I, 6), for the concession of the church of Sainte Marie (infra, n. 43).
28. Quasi destructa in 1246—G, II, 38.
29. Signed various charters of the sisters in 1221, 1226—G, I, 36; II. 31. In 1212 he was given the
title of dominus. He was no longer the lord, however. One property remained to him—G, II, 46. Later,
there was a Bernard of Prouille—Balme, I, 272.
30. Signed or was mentioned in charters of 1226 and 1227—G, II, 31 and 34. He is mentioned in the
former as brother of Isarn, in the latter as miles de Proliano.
3 1. ‘Fuit vir catholicus et fidelis et bonus et non fuit faiditus et decessit in bono statu’—deposition
of Arnaud de Laure on the occasion of the Carcassonne inquiry, ca. 1238—Vaissete, VII, 334; Delisle
in Recueil, XXIV, 338j.
32. Balme, I, 169. Apparently he listened to and ‘adored’ Guilabert de Castres.
33. The information is unfortunately somewhat late, coming from Salagnac, 13 and de Frachet,
63-64. Is it possible to identify this Virgin of Prouille? There are various statues from the Prouille of
ancient times now at Gramazie, Belveze, Castelnaudary (church of St Franpois). None is earlier than the
end of the thirteenth century. Prouille has preserved several ancient statues of the Virgin. The only one
which is of the twelfth century (a Virgin on a throne, in wood) did not originate from Prouille, but
476 NOTES

came from the Dominican priory at Limoux. The Virgin of the basilica is a nineteenth-century reproduc¬
tion after the thirteenth-century seal. There is no reason to think that it is a reproduction of a statue of
the time. The only proof left of an ancient cultus of the Blessed Virgin is thus the title of the church of
Prouille; this is, however, categorical. It should be noted that before 1240, the sisters of Prouille had
deposited a small image of the Virgin at the abbey of St Hilaire—Recueil, XXIV, 299, no. 8.
34. Cf. Balme, I, 130-1334 Guiraud, Fondation, 223-8, and Saint Dominique, Paris, 1899, 33-8.
33. On this movement—Grundmann, 170-438; Roisin, 342-378; Mens, 82-95; 273-322.
36. Supra, p. 99.
37. Guiraud, Cartulaire, CCLI.
38. Guiraud, Cartulaire, CCXLV-XXCLVI.
39. Cf. several instances cited in Balme, I, 1 3 1-1 32 and Guiraud, Saint Dominique, Paris, 1899, 54-55;
infra, ch. IX, p. 111.
40. ‘Femine nobiles, quas parentes earum ratione paupertatis erudiendas et nutriendas tradebant
hereticis’—Jordan, no. 27.
41. Jordan, no. 27, confirmed by the charter of Berenger Laurent, no. 5.
42. Cf. infra, n. 45.
43. Stronski, 3* to 113*.
44. Puylaurens, ch. VII.
45. There are three documents extant relating to the cession of Sainte-Marie de Prouille by Fulk of
Toulouse: one dated 1206 (Gallia Christ., XIII, 247, instr.; Laurent, no. 4), two of 1211 (Rechac,
198-199 and Loenertz, 38; Laurent, no. 11 and Loenertz, 39). The lack of authenticity of Mandonnet-
Vicaire, I, 105, n. 39 had already been pointed out. Loenertz, 40-46, demonstrated that of the two
others. He shows, however, that these spurious documents were established from a literary basis.
‘D. Fulco . . . dedit et concessit ecclesiam beatae Mariae de Prulliano, ad preces domini dominici
oxomensis, pro mulieribus conversis per praedicatores ad praedicandum contra haereticos et ad
repellandam haeresim delegatos . . . absque decimis et primiciis.’ This piece of information is valuable.
It proves that the church of Prouille depended effectively on the bishop and on him alone.
It seems possible also to consider as valid other data of the Laurent document no. 11, under the critical
form established by Leonertz, 39. The mention of the parochial title of Sainte Marie, of its disappearance
(aliquando), and of the attachment of the church of Prouille to that of Fanjeaux; finally the date of 1 2 11
and the literary formula ‘et praecipue quia sibi visum fuit esse pietatis et misericordiae’. The first three
indications are authentic (cf. supra, nn. 18, 25 and 27). As to the date of 12 11 and the formula, a forger
would have no reason for introducing these into his document unless he had found them with the others
in some source of value.
46. G, II, 44 and 47 ; Laurent, no. 63.
47. The only mention extant of his intervention is in the ‘manuscript of Fanjeaux’ cited by Percin 4
(cf. supra, n. 6). It has no authority behind it. This lady had some leaning towards the Catharists, cf.
supra, ch. VII, n. 8.
48. G, II, 47.
49* Iti 1243, she made an important gift to the sisters—G, II, 57 ; in 1246, she abandoned her rights
to Raymond VII and entered at Prouille—G, I, 58 ; for other gifts about this time, see G, II, 7; ca. 1258,
Amaud de Laure said of her; ‘fuit bona et catholica, et fuit monacha Pruliani ubi cum habitu moniaii
decessit ut bona domina’—Vaissete, VII, 379; Delisle in Recueil, XXIV, 592G. Cf. ibid., 670-67:,
declaration of the sisters.
50. Balme, 139 and n. 2 retraces her spiritual itinerary.
51. G, II 2, 35, 41, 42, 45, 46, 119. He had recently given to the Catharists his niece and ward
Arnaude de Fremiac, whom Dominic reconciled, after she had spent six years as a Perfect, about i 2 11_
Balme, I, 271.
52. G, II, 42, 45, 47, 52, 74, 75, 78; cf. Guiraud, Fondation, 244-245. Cf. Balme, I, 291 and n. 1.
L3- G, I, 52; II, 36, 37, 38, 55, 75; for Bernard de Durfort, likewise a landowner at Prouille, see
G, II, 41 and 120; and for Sicard de Durfort and his brother Pierre de la Ilhe, nephews of God Picarella—
G, II, 32, 53, 55. On the Durforts, a powerful family of Fanjeaux allied to that of Foix, deeply involved
in heresy—see Guiraud, Fondation, 244—246.
54. G, II, 44, 55, 57, 59; Balme, I, 542, n. 1.
5f. G, II, 44.
56- The act calls them Papau—G, II, 56, Guiraud, Cartulaire, I, CCCXXIV, thinks that they also
belonged to the Babon family.
57. William is already mentioned, side by side with St Dominic, in the first charter—G, II, 158 and
L, 23. On his origins see Jordan, no. 29. His property belonged to Prouille, G, I, 2 and L, 70; G, I, 3
and L, 1 o 1. That the Raimunda Claret who appears in the list of foundresses was his sister is a likelv
conjecture. 3
5»- Jordan, no. 29; G, II 109, 120, 158, 159, :89 and L, 24, 26, 33, 38, 76, 77, 93- He must not
be confused with another William Claret, who already in 1199 was a monk at Boulbonne—Balme, 263.
59. In 1217, he was a member of the Preaching of Toulouse. Laurent, no. 80. From the end of 1218
he was prior and procurator of Prouille—G, II, 160, .61, 46, 47, 163 (on 21st June, 1221, however, I
charter gives the title of prior of Prouille to Fr Guiraud d’Esparros, who is not again mentioned
elsewhere—L, 152); the last document he issued at Prouille is dated 4th September, 1224—G, II, 48.
Bernard Gui claimed to have seen one dated 1229. The document may have disappeared; it may",
however, be an error on the part of Gui, for no other mention of William is found in the numerous
charters of Prouille after 1224. From then onwards the prior was Raimond Catalan—cf. charter of 9th
 NOTES
477
October, 1225, which enumerates the brethren of the Prouille preaching, without William—
G, II, 51 .
60. This word, derived from ‘faide’, private war, describes those men of the Midi, who, having
refused to submit, took to flight and made war on the army of the Church; they were regarded as defenders
of the heretics. Cf. Tudela, 232, n. 3.
61. Bernard Gui, in Martene, Script., VI, 452 and in MOPH, XXII, 156 and n. 6. The motive given for
his defection (that he could not accept the detachment involved in collective property in the order_
Balme, 159, 526) does not hold water. Prouille, of which he was prior, had preserved all his property.
62. An echo of the 1224 crisis is found in Jordan, Epistulae, XVII and XXVIII. At the end of 1233, the
Prouille sisters were expected at St Agnes of Bologna. In the summer of 1224, Jordan informed Bologna
that they could no longer be expected, for reasons which he could not then explain.
63. Supra, n. 61.
64. Proces. Thol., no. 4. Fr Guillaume, sacristan of Boulbonne. Perhaps he already had a brother in
the monastery—the Fr B. Claret, who gave evidence immediately after him, no. 5. Fie was presented
with a list of twenty-five paragraphs, a resume of the saint’s virtues, and asked if he was in agreement.
He merely added a personal memory, very characteristic of a former procurator—Dominic distributed
the tunics people gave him to the brethren.
65. G, II, 1; L, 25. The date of 8th August, 1207 has been corrected in accordance with the editor
of Cernai, I, 43, n. 1. On the Case and the God, peasants of the place, G, II, 17, 44, 50, 51, 35, 79;
43, 46, 55; cf. Balme, I, 166-7.
66. G, il, 8. They ‘entered the monastery’ and made profession into the hands of St Dominic. The
expression does not necessarily mean that they both became religious: they could quite well have lived
as cultivators and donati. The former solution is, however, probable. In that case this Alazai'ce should be
identified with the one who appears in the first list at Prouille; Arnaud would have become a lay brother.
He signs Prouille documents in 1212—G, II, 40, 76; Balme, I, 329 places his donation about this time.
67. He signed various Prouille charters in 1212, 1227, 1229, 1256—G, II, 39, 34, 56, 138. Cf.
Balme, I, 326-329.
68. About 1227, G, II, £4 and 56.
69. He made a ‘solemn vow’ of obedience to the prior of Prouille, was to wear clerical dress, was to
be ‘lodged’ by the community and would share in its spiritual benefits, but would not incur the obligation
of its observances—G, II, 8-9.
70. G, II, 158; L, 23-24.
71. Supra, ch. VII, p. 106.
72. G, II, 159; L, 26-27.
73. G, II, 159-171. On these debates and the final victory of Prouille, see Guiraud, Fondation,
248-254.
74. This list has been preserved by the Prouille ms. (cf. supra, n. 6) and edited by Rechac, 197;
Percin 6, no. 27 and Echard, I, 6, n. Q, who had a special copy sent to him. It is difficult to go back to
the text of the ms; the three editions mentioned do not agree (that of Rechac is the best). On the other
hand the eleven (or twelve) names of list I are again found in list II of the nineteen nuns of 1211 given
by a charter of Fulk (G, II, 109 and L, 29). It may well be wondered whether I has not been artificially
composed from II. It should be noted that, in this case, the author of the ms. who identified the nine
converted ladies of Fanjeaux with the Prouille foundresses, must have taken the first nine names of II.
Now—firstly, there are 1 1 (or 1 2) names in I, which clearly presents a difficulty for the author of the
ms; secondly, the order of I and II does not agree; thirdly, the form of the names is unmistakeably
different in I and II it is better in II.
75. Canton of Capendu, on the Aude, a little before Carcassonne. The family of this nun was deeply
involved with the party of the heretics—Vaissete, VII, 452 and cols. 339, 346, 347, 362, 365, 396.
76. Are Raimonde and Passerine two different names or a compound name? Since Passerine was a
surname, the compound name is more probable.
77. We identify the Messande of the list (Manenta, Messana), with the Ermessenda of the 1 211 charter.
78. No. 26. There is no reason to give a special meaning to the dominae found with sorores and moniales
in the Prouille charters. It was a current term applied to nuns.
79. G, II, 158 and L, 24. The word conversa can have a meaning strictly concerned with religious life—
e.g. lay-sister. Here in the expression moniales conversae it certainly signifies converted women in the
literal meaning of the word—Mandonnet-Vicaire, I, 100.
80. Proces. Thol., no. 23.
81. Contra haereticos, L, I, ch. 63. PL, 210, 366A—Wei cathari dicuntur a cato, quia, ut dicitur,
osculantur posteria catti, in cujus specie, ut dicunt, apparet eis Lucifer.’ This was a popular belief among
the Catholics. Alain de Lille was too intelligent to draw anything but a comic etymology from it.
82. Constantino, nos. 48-49; Bourbon, no. 27.
83. Prouille ms., cited by Percin 4, no. 17.
84. Constantino, ibid., notes that they took the habit from the sisters of Prouille, who thus existed
before they did.
85. The charter of 14th April, 1207, presupposes a recent, but already constituted monastery. Now
in the preceding weeks, Dominic and his companions had been too much taken up with the Montreal
disputation, to be able to occupy themselves with this. The foundation dates at least from March.
86. G, II, 158; 1. 24. The charter of 19th March, 1209, used the same terms. It is, however, no
longer significant, since this charter, for convenience, adopted the formulary of Berenger’s charter—
G, II, 159; L, 26.
 478 NOTES

Si. Prouille ms., cited by Percin, 4, no. 17.

88. This date, equally recorded by the Prouille ms., is given by Bernard Gui as an oral tradition of
the monastery—Loenertz, 9.
89. In 12 33, G, II, 60. In 1307, Prouille again received a piece ofland situated near the old township—-
G, II,84.
90. G, I, 265.
91. Huyghe, 72, 77, 81-82, 88.
92. Cf. infra, ch. XIII and n. 67; Appendix VIII, no. 3, 13, 14.
93- G, II, 38.
94- 1 8th August, 1248, G, I, 8. In 1236, 1237, 1238—G, I, 14, 16, 19.
95- BOP, I, 13 1, 134, 148, 130, 1 31, 133, 138, 139; Grundmann, 272—273, Bewegungen; Creytens,
Montargis, 33.
96. Huyghe, 74-87.
97. Constitution Periculoso, c. unic., De Scat. Reg., Ill, 16 in VI.
98. G, II, 138; L, 24.
99. Jordan, no. 29.
100. On 2nd March, 1216, Noel is called prior—G, II, 189 and L, 76-77. Cf. L, 76, n. 1 ; similarly
in 1218 (G, II, 44, 136 and L, 97, 99). From 26th November, 1218, however, William Claret bore the
title of prior G, II, 160; L, 106. Meanwhile Fr Noel seems to have been drowned near Limoux—-
Bernard Gui, cited by Balme, I, 248.
101. Cf. preceding note. On 13 th April, 1219 he styles himself prior and procurator—G, II, 161; L, III.
102. According to Gregory IX, who was himself informed by the sisters, in bull of 24th March,
1 236 G, I, 7. Effect was given to this in a charter of 1230, G, II, 4. Before 1219, never more than two
religious were mentioned (G, I, 136 and L, 107). In 1223, charters mention the prior, two or three
canons and a number of brethren (G, II, 43, 46, 47); in 1223, six religious are mentioned, some of them
brethren. The institution must date from 1218, on the occasion of the saint’s last visit to Prouille.
103. Decree of 9th October, 1223—G, II, 31. On their role as advisers in 1238 see G, I, 236.
104. Cf. supra, n. 10 1. About 1223, there were three or four of them. In 1236, one can count n_
G, II, 9. These lay-brothers or sisters formed part of the order from its very institution—Mulhern,
89-93 ; Creytens, ‘Les converses des moniales dominicaines au moyen age’, in AFP, XIX (1949), 7-1 6.
103. A late provision, dating from 1236—G, I, 236. On the lay-sisters of the Cistercian nuns, equally
bound to stability, see Roisin, 367.
106. These lay persons, whom Mulhern, 90-92, incorrectly calls lay-brothers, are distinct from the
lay brothers of the Preaching. Ten acts of donation at Prouille have been preserved, involving about
twenty persons, prior to the final organization of the monastery under Humbert de Romans—G, II,
1, 2, 6, 8, 48, 33, 189. Several are no longer extant.
107. Serfs made a donation of themselves with their families in 1207 and 1224 (G, II, 1 and 48);
clerks in 1241, 1247, 1236 (G, II, 6 and 8). The other donations are concerned with wh'ole'families.
108. In 1238 Humbert de Romans thus defined the donati: ‘Donatos vero vocamus vel [i°] qui
remanentes in seculo, sua dant domui in vita vel etiam post mortem, et domus obligat se eisdem ad
ahquod subsidium temporale, vel [2] qui veniunt ad domum habitaturi in ea, obligant^se ad castitatem
vel ad fidehtatem servandam domui et serviendum eidem secundum quod eis injunctum fuerit, et domus
obligat se ad providendum in necessariis, ita tamen quod si malae vitae fuerint notabiliter, domus eis
amphus non teneatur et possit eos repellere, nec ipsi amplius, ex obligatione predicta, in aliquo
teneantui , G, I, 236. The ten donations mentioned above fall into one or other of these categories.
109. Decrees of 1 2 1 2 and 1 230—G, II, 2 and 3-4. The words hominium, commendare, are used explicitlv.
It is a question ot donati and nothing more, yet of donati who foresee the case in which eventually thev
might become a friar or nun of their convent. 1
no. In 1220, one lay-brother at Prouille, Pierre-Roger, was found to be secretly attending the
Latnarist meetings—Guiraud, Inquisition, 348.
in. The position of the peasants in Languedoc became worse between the eleventh and the thirteenth
centuries Free men in increasing numbers bound themselves to lords or to institutions in servile
homage—Paul Ourliac, Les villages de la region toulousaine au Xlle siecle’, in Annales IV (,949!
268-277, especially 272-273. '
112. Jordan, no. 33.
,, " C[• V; Berliere, Les monasdres doubles aux Xlle et XIlie siecles (Mew. Lettres, Acad. Royale de Belgique,
//, A VIII) Brussels, 1924—St Hilpisch, Die Doppelkloster, Munster, 1928.
1 14‘®' B*ecker> Die Stellung des Predigerordens /u den Dominikanerinnen (1207-1267) OF 21 Vechta
T93^» Grundmann, 208—2^2 and 274—303; Creytens, 41—43.
113. Proponens . . . aliquant inde pecuniam ad consummationem prefati monasterii feminarum
secum assumere et reverti —Jordan, no. 28.
116. Cf. infra, ch. IX, 1 $i and Appendix IV.

ch'ix :ns9FebrUary’ he Came t0 baPtize de M°ntfort’s infant daughter, probably at Montreal. Cf. infra,

23I‘n f’ l’ S2~” andI1’ I09; LaUrent’ n0S' 8 and 9 (Hth May, 1211); Cental, nos. 222-226 and

119. Despite the spurious character of the charter of concession of the sanctuary as such, we give
documentary value to the facts of its narrative. Cf. supra, n. 43. * ’ g 'e
12°. On 23th May, 1214 Fulk renounced the tithes and first-fruits of certain lands of Prouille
situated in the tithe area of Fanjeaux—G, II, 7b; L, 62. If he had not conferred upon the sisters the
 NOTES 479
tithes of the church of Prouille he would have had to multiply deeds of this sort in regard to the many
properties of the sisters situated within the tithe district of Prouille. No trace of any is found.
121. Cl. the insistance of St Dominic, in the course of his negotiations.
12 2. G, I, 53 ; Laurent, no. 8. On this very fine demesne cf. Balme, I, 220-222.
123. G, 11, 109; Laurent, no. 9. Bram had been conquered the previous year with much cruelty—
Cernai, no. 142.
124. Cernai, no. 214.
125. G, II, 109; Laurent, no. 12. The deed seems to have been drawn up at Pamiers. One should
clearly distinguish this person, doubtless originating from Viilasavary (called Vilarium at the time—cf.
Laurent, no. 63. It is useless to instance, as Laurent does, Villar-en-val, near Limoux, or a hypothetical
Villar in the Ariege, as Balme does), from the cleric of Fanjeaux of the same name, later parish priest and
notary, who finally donated himself to Prouille in 1247; he was one of the richest landowners of the
township (Balme, II, 330). Cf. G, II, 6; Guiraud, Fondation, 238.
126. Proces. ThoL, no. 2.
127. G, II, 2—3, 35 and 74; Laurent, nos. 13-16, 19-20, 25.
128. G, II, 119; Laurent, no. 21. The confirmation to be read in G, I, £3 f. and II, 120; L, 24 and
41 are not authentic—e.g. Koudelka, 100 ff. On the two brothers and their lineage, see Vaissete, 83-86.
1 29. G, I, S3 ; L, 48-49. Cf. also L, 65 and Jordan, no. 37.
130. Cf. infra, ch. IX.
131. G, II, 54, 75-6, i54> 110; L, 36-37, 40-43, 49, 57-58, 63-65. On these various persons, see
Guiraud, Fondation, 243-248 and the erudite notes of the editor of Cernai, based on the tables.
132. The charters of these three persons are no longer extant, but their gifts were confirmed by the
Pope on 8th October, 1215—L, 62. On Pierre de Vic, lord of Quercorbes see Laurent, nos. 68 and 86
and Balme, II, 3 2 n. a and 35—36 ; on Guy de Levis, Marechal of Montfort, ancestor of the Levis-Mirepoix,
see St Olive, Archives du chateau de Leran, I, 2 1-42.
133. ‘Cuilibet, sive militi, sive rustico, licitum erit delegare in ellemosinam de hereditate propria
usque ad quintam partem, ad consuetudinem et usum Francie circa Parisius’, Statuts de Pamiers, ch. X—
Mansi, XXII, 857.
134. Loenertz, AFP, 24 (1954), 37-47, has shown the lack of authenticity of Laurent, no. 58, which
would despoil of its tithes, without compensation, the church of Fanjeaux in favour of Prouille. These
tithes were only granted, with the church, in 1 22 1—Laurent, no. 1 34. At the same time, Fulk certainly
gave to Prouille tithes on Fanjeaux in 1 214, for they are confirmed by the Pope in 1 215—Laurent, no. 62 ;
Jordan, no. 37.
135. Cf. supra, n. 128.
136. On 9th October, 1212 and 4th May, 1213—Laurent, nos. 30-33 and 42-45.
137. Laurent, nos. 23, 25, 29, 30, 32, 33, 35, 42, 43, 44, 45.
138. Nos. 8, 27, 28, 47, 48.
139. Nos. 23, 35.
140. Nos. 8, 31, 33, 34, 52, 53, according to the custom which er encloses the house of regular life
within the church; cf. ecclesia = abbatia, no. 33; ecclesia = domus, nos. 52, 69.
141. Charter of Berenger, G, II, 1 58 ; L, 24, Jordan, no. 27.
142. ‘Nunc et in perpetuum’.
143. The rule of St Sixtus, cf. infra, Appendix VIII.
144. Balme, II, 431 ; Simon, 145.
145. Cf. Balme, II, 431, n. 3 and 4.
146. G, II, 109; L, 29.
147. Another Berengere, Blanche, another Guillelmine, Fran^oise, Arnaude, Arsende, Experte. On
Blanche, cf. Appendix IV.
148. Taeggio, Chronica brevis, anno 1206 in ASOP, V (1901 — 1902), 85; Mamachi, 158* no. 3°*
Cf. Rechac, 197.
149. Grundmann, 203-208; Huyghe, 65-67 and 74-87.
150. In 1213, Dominic was vicar-general of the Cistercian bishop, Guy de Carcassonne. At this
period he was seen to preach in the company of Cistercian abbots or lay brothers (Balme, I, 471;
Frachet, 76; Constantin, no. 55). Cf. Mandonnet-Vicaire, I, 107, n. 46.
1 51. The Cistercian nuns had no special rule; they followed the rule and customs of the men’s order,
completed by the statutes of the general chapters. They had their own general chapter at the nuns’
abbey of Tart. .
152. Canives, I, 405; Grundmann, 204; Mandonnet-Vicaire, I, 107, n. 46. The formal interdictions
of 1 228 did not, however, prevent these incorporations from multiplying—Roisin, 342-361.
153. Infra, Appendix VIII, no. 8—11 and 14.
154. Benoit de Montefiascone, quoted by Richard, I, 83.
155. This rule, contained in a bull of Gregory IX of 1232, is edited by Balme, II, 425-453 and Simon,
142-153. It will be studied in Appendix VIII.
156. Appendix VIII, nos. 3 and 13.
157. G, I, 7.
158. Appendix VIII, no. 14.
159. If this rule actually existed, it would not be impossible for Dominic to have used texts of
Premontre to compose it. The consuetudines arctiores of Premontre suited these converted Catharist
ladies. Copied in part, moreover, from the Cisterican customs, they preserved the earlier observance of
the sisters of Prouille. Thus composed, in short, they were later able to be adapted without difficulty,
 480 NOTES

to the customs of the Friars Preachers, in turn composed with the help of the Premontre texts. Cf.
Appendix Vilf, nos. 11 and 14. One would also like to bring in the fact that Premontre from the
beginning had double convents similar to what Prouille would be after the institution of the Preachers.
The feminine communities, however, had been separated since 1140, and then condemned to extinction
in 1 198—Erens, 6-10. Thus the rule of St Sixtus borrowed nothing from the rule of the sisters of the
first statutes of Premontre (ed. Van Waelfelghem, in Analectes de Premontre, Louvain, 1913, 63—67).
160. Balme, II, 430, n. 1. The information refers in its final phrase to a provision of the rule of St
Sixtus, which itself came from St Benedict.
161. G, I, 2; L, 70-71- It will be noted that gifts made by the native inhabitants are not as a rule
mentioned in this document.
162. G, I, 3-3; L, 100-104.
163. G, I, 7.
164. Jordan, no. 27. The test is of 1 234.
163. G, I, 8.
166. G,I, 13.
167. G, I, 8.
168. G, I, 19.
169.
- Creytens, 38-64. Humbert de Romans received the order from the Pope to elaborate these new
constitutions in August 1237. They were brought to completion the following year—ibid 39 n 68
170. No. 27.
171. Humbert, no. 19; but already certain manuscripts of Ferrand, no. 16. It was Humbert who gave
the order in 1237 to substitute the name of Dominic for that of Diego in the legends_Acta, I, 98.
172. ‘Quod a nobis aedificatum fuit et constructum’, December 1230, G, II 78- cf I 6 and i c
173. Jordan, no. 28. ’ ’ ' ’
174. Proces. Thol., no. 3.
173. Jordan, no. 37.
176. Kirsch, 1 23-1 24.
177. Ferrand, nos. 22-23.
178. Proces. Thol., nos. 13, 16, 17.
179. Ferrand, no. 21; Cecilia, ch. I.
180. Laurent, no. 67.
181.
Jordan, no. 92 : ‘quoniam hoc genus illecehrosum est nimis et cjficax illaqueandis animahus . . ’
182. Ibid.
183.
, - Jorclan’ no- 28- Jordan’s chronology is too long. He mentions two full years spent by Diego in
the Narbonensis; it was scarcely more than a year—Cemai, nos. 48-30 enables the dates to be'corrected
184. LI. supra, ch. VII p. 114.
183. That Dominic accompanied Diego is a supposition. The fact that a large number of preachers
Crampagna°<mnfirms°it^^ d‘SpUtati°n makeS his Presence probable. His future friendship for Arnaud de

no’48’ Cemai StatCS Clcarl-V~‘ Dum i«itur recederet, tendens in Hispaniam, venit apud Apamiam’,

187 Jordan, no. 23, mentions frequent disputes, in particular at Panders. It was on the occasion of
one of these encounters that Dominic must have found William Claret.
188. 1200-1212. He had received a mandate, in May 1207, for the correction of Berenger de
Narbonne—Potthast, no. 3113; Villemagne, 103-104. After 1208, associated with Fulk he§ acted

aglln” ,he H° “ "“V K-l fro™ £

189. Cernai, no. 48.
^90. The abbot of the canons on whom Panders depended—Cernai, no. 1.6 and n. 1 ; Vaissete. IV,

191. To whom Panders had been entrusted in April, cf. supra, 108 and n 101
192. Cernai, no. 198 and n. 3.
193- In 1198, Vaissete, V, 1616; Guiraud, Inquisition, 311. On the ‘pareagc’, i.c. association and
^^2 reVenUCS " 3,1 CCC,eSiaStic and a lord - the Toulouse region, see Vaissete Vn? “J
194. Cernai, no. 48 and n. 3 and 4; no. 198.

we refer Cer/ai,’ no “9, W“ m°St pmhAly ** aUth°r of the massacre to which

196. Cernai, no. 48.
197. Cernai, no. 48 mentions only them; Puylaurens, however, ch. VIII, who insists that the
Waldenses were also concerned, likewise mentions ‘the other heretics’, the Catharists
198. Cemai, no. 48. •
199. Puylaurens, ch. VIII.
200. I Cor. XV, 34.
201. On Arnaud de C, cf. Cernai, no, 48 and n. 1 * Puvlaurens ,1, vm • \r ■ ’,
876, 1142 (he figures in several documents relating to Panders from , 209) ’ ’ ^ S78’ 798’
202. Cernai, no. 48.
203. He later acted as a collaborator of the Inquisition—Douais, Documents, I, CXXXVI and CL1I.
 NOTES 481
204. He signed an agreement between Fulk and Dominic on 17th April, 1221—Laurent no. 134.
203- Proces. Thol., no. 7. He was then sacristan of St Antonin.
206. As Cernai notes, no. 4—‘praecipue pauperes’.
207. Puylaurens, ch. VIII.
208. Cf. supra, 84 and n. 33-36.
209. Pierron, 22-117; Grundmann, 100-117.
210. Grundmann, 118—127, correcting Pierron 117—160. It is a question of the poor men of Lyons,
not of Lombardy. The Pope only approved a propositum conversationis, not an order.
211. Bernard Prim held a disputation about 1208 against Isarn de Castres at Laurac-le-Grand—-
Pierron, 172.
212. ‘Fuerunt et alii heretici convicti etiam inimicorum judicio evidenter’—Puylaurens, ch. VIII.
213. Cernai, no. 116, n. 2.
2 14. Puylaurens, ch. VIII who cites this trait as a proof of the weakening of the Catharist believers.
213. Laurent, nos. 3, 7, 24.
216. On the formula in the High Middle Ages, cf. Mandonnet-Vicaire-Ladner, II, 37; as used by
Innocent III, ibid., I, 119— 1 2 1 ; it will be found again on the occasion of the foundation of the Preachers
in Toulouse—Laurent, no. 60 and in the canon of the Lateran on preaching (X)—Hefele-Leclercq, V,
1340; Frachet, 102. Cf. supra, ch. VII, n. 92.
217. The departure from Prouille occurring about August (time of the first Cistercian defections,
cf. supra, 127, n. 140 and 143), the departure from Pamiers must be placed about September 1207—
cf. Cernai, no. 48, n. 2 ; Loperraez, I, 193, places Diego’s arrival in Osma in October.
2 1 8. ‘In senectuta bona’, says Cernai, no. 49.
2 19. ‘Dum redire disponeret’, ibid.
220. Cf. Vicaire, 1207, 343-343, where this date is carefully authenticated. Indications about the
tomb and relics of Diego will also be found there.
221. On 14th January, 1208—Cernai, no. 33, n. 1, based on Cassan’s necrology. Cf. Vaissete, V, 36.
222. ‘Vir mitissimus ac disertus’—Robert d’Auxerre, MG, SS, XXVI, 271. ‘Vir magnus et magnifice
extollendus’; ‘vir Deo plenus’—Cernai, nos. 20, 21. ‘Vir venerabilis vitae . . . quern sacrarum
litterarum notitia et secundum saeculum natalis ingenii, magis autem morum insignis decorabat honestas’
—Jordan, no. 4. ‘Electus pugil’—Puylaurens, ch. VIII.

NOTES TO CHAPTER IX
1. Sources for the history of the Albigensian crusade in Cernai, Tudela and Puylaurens, the first two
of whom have formed the subject of remarkable editions. The history will be found in Vaissete, VI,
261—318 (fundamental), Luchaire (classic, but brief), Villey, 217-226, Belperron (La croisade contre les
Albigeois et Vunion du Languedoc a la France, Paris, 1942) shows a reaction against the errors propagated by
a certain popular literature, Girou (a popular account). The following pages, directly based on the
sources mentioned, recall facts commonly admitted; no critical justification is given except for facts
which are disputed or less well known.
2. Cernai, no. 67.
3. Cernai, no. 72, 103 and 128.
4. Cernai, no. 313 and Vaissete, VI, 285.
3. Tudela, 77 and 83.
6. By water, along the Rhone and the coastal lagoons of the Mediterranean and perhaps of the lower
Aude—Tudela, 39 and n. 4.
7. Cernai, nos. 89-90, Tudela, 33-62 and the official report of the Pope’s legates—PL, 216, 139c,
are in agreement in their explanation of the taking and destruction of the town in this way. (A similar
case was to occur at the siege of Saint Antonin—Cernai, no. 313). The barons, clergy and laity, however,
were clearly determined to make an example by giving no quarter to the towns which resisted them—
Tudela, 37.
8. He had taken the cross in February 1213 and was to set out on 2 1st April, 1213. He was, however,
hindered from so doing and arrived only in April 1213, to return again in June, after having peacefully
journeyed across the country—Cernai, no. 417, 421, 330, 363—363.
9. From the beginning of his reign, Innocent III had prescribed this rule for the temporal authorities
of the Midi: ‘ut . . . bona hereticorum confiscent et de terra sua proscribant’, Letter to the prelates of
the Midi of 2 tst April, 1198—Potthast, no. 93; PL, 214, 82D.
10. The crusaders judged and burnt in accordance with a custom of the north (Brayna = Braine or
Brienne?), Tudela, 97 and n. 3.
11. First stakes at Castres—Cernai, no. 113 ; 140 Perfect burnt at Minerva, no. 136; 300 (Puylaurens,
ch. XVII) at Lavaur, no. 227; 60 at Casses, no. 233, etc.
12. As they did at Moissac, ‘avidissime’—Cernai, no. 333, where 300 had their throats cut—
Tudela, 277.
13. Tudela, 27.
14. Cernai, nos. 77-78. Acts in PL, 216, 89 to 98.
13. Diplomatic documents in Molinier and Rhein; portraits in Cernai, nos. 101-107, 180, 233, 238,
337, etc; Tudela 86 and nn. 1 to 88. Life in Girou.
16. He had heretics burnt, traitors dragged at the tail of a horse and hanged, once he even had
prisoners mutilated (Cernai, nos. 133, 142, 227, 337); but it was a question of customary penalties or
atrocious reprisals (nos. 123-127). These military brutalities had not the sadistic character of the
 482 NOTES

tT-f6 cfS °j adversar'es> Raymond-Roger de Foix, Raymond de Termes, Bernard de Cazenac and his
wife case de Turenne, not to mention the others, nos. 173, 361, 5-30, 582, 606—Puylaurens, ch. XIX.
1 7 . I his word derived from ‘faide’, private war, indicates those men of the Midi who, having refused
to submit, took to flight and made war on the army of the Church; they were considered as defenders of
the heretics. Cf. fudela, 232, n. 3.
18. The Count of Nevers, the Duke of Burgundy and the Count of St Paul . . .—Cernai no 101 •
Tudela, 84. ’ ' ’
19. At the beginning of 1213, he tried to stop the conquest. In 1214, he reserved the attribution of
the conquered territory to the council. In 1 2 1 4 he reserved a part of the inheritance to the descendants
01 Kaymond VI, Cf. Luchaire, 193 to 260.
20. E.g. Cernai, no. 23-3, 270, 430, 462, etc.
21. Cernai, no. 448.
22. Cernai, nos. 226, 341, 426 and Tudela, 2*4, n. 1.
23- Cernai, no. 462.
24. Texts collected in Cernai, III, xxxiii and n. 1 and 2; Tudela, 114, 129, 141, 163, etc.
2£- Alice de Montmorency (appreciation in Cernai, no. 107), Guy de Montfort,’ Matthieu II de
ontmorency, Bouchard de Marly, and the young Amaury de Montfort and Guy de Bigorre, the two
th^cruslde^86 y’ amonS whom was the famous Simon of Leicester, born at^the very beginning of
26. Cf. infra, 149.
27- At Mirepoix. The Montfort established themselves at Castres.
28. Cernai, nos. 124, 264, 303, 488 and nn. 1, 3-44.
29- Jordan, nos. 31 and 34; Cernai, no. 41 ; Puylaurens, ch. X.
3°- Jordan, no. 29.
31-
. , LaUre"t’ 7> Did, hf afterwards remain at Limoux, to administer the property and act as
charter16! (Sd\eeben’ 11 is certain that his name crops up chiefly in connection with the Limoux
?oubk ^rnT • n°’ 7’ 8°’ 89,'.nNre °f the eStateS that Claret administered, however, caused tile
and Prouille Inland ^ ^ 12 ^ 66 Sh°W that he WaS at Pamiers
32. Laurent, no. 4.
33- Raymond VI having demanded a new legate from the Pope, Innocent granted him for his recon

3 6“±i,nnn;Maitre Mil°n’ t0 Wh°m he gaVe ’* Mich. 1209-Poihast,To!

34- Cernai, no. 110 and Tudela, 8*, assert that Fanjeaux was emptied of its knights and inhabitants—
neither grown person nor little child had remained there’. The township belonged

cf “L „ 1? n “ Dr"e C™T- The **r """ “ recover1k,je»S,

ihi-Tb,e i>r"!»Sy ShLJ'SiL'Jt

signed it-
37. The deed i, but ,he donation « conUiodby ,Lt~L' £ bSTrf /th diTh”°' ’°'

S doZf ' T* ST"k"er'y “ «“ »f Petered of h,"b „tLr ^ ‘

toJLf ™,'ho~ dd'aMdZ 5x5 ?,°het‘“d de MFon,for' 80 “d

,-eWcb .0 the Cbnrchi

no!9,'ioAt A1Z°nne (Cf' tHe d°nati0n 3t Pr°Uille)’ Whkh Montfort had occupied the day before-Cernai,

and °the^neighboiiriri^ScastIes •“ there'Ts'^iimhing1 si*6 .?rusaders whom Simon enfeoffed the townships
because he had reserved ^ for himself g “ C0nnectl0n with Fanjeaux. This is clearly

nos,1; X °f CaStreS’ Cabaret’ Mirep0ix and Pamiers. Lumbers and A.bi, Limoux-Cernai,

installedLambert"de^Thury close to^Lhnoux^he^v "S* ^ f° hiS brother G^ *

cousin, Bouchard de Marly; Laurac and CastelnaudTrv '\eP°1X t<* G.Uy de Levis and> later« Saissac to his
de Roucy. He reinstalled the abbot of Saint Antonin in PamforT 6 ^ M°ntrdal and Bram to Alain
43. Cernai, no. 134.
44. Cernai, nos. 135-—136.
4£. Cernai, no. 136.
46. s miles to the north-east—Cernai, no. 142.
47- S miles to the south of Fanjeaux—Cernai, nos. 148-1 ro
48. Cernai, no. 242; Tudela, 209-214.
 NOTES 483

49. Cernai, no. 238.

30. Cernai, nos. 266, 269-270; Tudela, 127; Puylaurens, ch. XVIII.
31. At Saint-Martin-la-lande, between Bram and Castelnaudary, Cernai, nos. 264-276; Tudela, 217-
227.
32. Cernai, no. 284. The people in question were Simon and Geoffroy de Neauphle. The latter was
killed and Simon de Montfort made a foundation at Prouille for his soul on 1st December, 1212—
Laurent, no. 34.
£3. Cernai, no. 423, n. 1; Rhein, nos. 113-114; Laurent, nos. 47 and 49.
54. Cernai, no. 449. No document justifies the supposition that Dominic was then at Muret or
accompanied Montfort, for a text of Bernard Gui, which is merely a text of Cernai in which Dominic’s
name has been interpolated, cannot be called a document. Cf. Meersseman, ‘Les milices de Jesus-Christ’
in AFP, 33 (1953), 306, n. 37.
33. Jordan, no. 37. The ‘nostre car frayre Domenge’ of the Laurent charter, no. 82, is perhaps only
a stylistic formula.
36. Chronica lla, MOPH, I, 322. Cf. Bourbon, no. 288. On Petronille, see infra, n. 38. Other relations
with the Montfort are indicated in Balme, I, 444-447, and II, 42-43 ; Salagnac, I, no. 9.
37. Laurent, nos. 8, 27, 34, 41, 47, 49, 39 (taken from Jordan, no. 37), 69, 82, 144. On the
Casseneuil gift, mentioned by Jordan (no. 37), cf. infra, n. 247.
38. Chronica lla, MOPH, I, 322. It was Petronille the younger, later religious and prioress in the
monastery of the Cistercian nuns of Saint Antoine in Paris, who was born in February 1211—Balme, I,
239-240, and Cernai, 237, n. 4. Her godfather was Guillaume Cat, knight of Montreal—Cernai, no. 266.
This and the fact that three months later she was put out to nurse at Montreal, seems to indicate that she
was baptized there.
39. Chronica lla, MOPH, I, 322; Cernai, no. 311 and n. 1. Fulk was also there—Rhein, no. 122.
It should be noted, however, that at this time Dominic held the place of the Bishop of Carcassonne—
Constantin, no. 33. It was most probably on this occasion that the crusaders Hugues de Lascy, sire of
Laurac and Castelnaudary, and Alain de Roucy, sire of Montreal and Bram, made gifts of importance to
Prouille.
60. Proces. Bon., no. 26.
61. During the Lent of 1213, Dominic discussed with Fr Stephen of Metz and a Cistercian lay-brother,
in the bishop’s palace at Carcassonne, Montfort’s very critical situation. Dominic roused the courage of
the others—Constantin, no. 33.
62. Jordan, no. 46.
63. Ibid.
64. By suppressing, for instance, the egalitarianism of succession which was ruining the feudal power.
The sworn peace of Provence, thanks to him, was continuously kept from 1209 to 1213—Cernai, nos.
27 and 487, and n. 4.
63. Puylaurens, ch. XXVIII.
66. Cf. supra, 144 ff. Puylaurens, however, whose judgement is balanced, does not extend to
Montfort the reproach of cupidity which he makes against the French—ch. XXV and XXVIII.
67. Constantin, no. 31 and Salagnac, II, 3. The first belongs to a series of tales which the author
received from Toulouse before 1247, several of which perceptibly embellish various statements in the
Toulouse process. An historical basis can, however, be found in them—the conversion in 1236, after
twenty-two years, of the Perfect Raymond de Gros. Guillaume Pelisson who relates this in detail in his
chronicon (ed. by C. Molinier, Defratre Guillelmo Pelisso, Annecy, 1880, 42-43) seems curiously unaware
of certain details in Constantin. Altaner, 67, thinks they are embellishments. Scheeben, 93-96, is even
more severe. It was on this anecdote that reliance was placed for classing Dominic as the first inquisitor
until the time of Echard (I, 11, n. Y). In this connection, on the quarrel between Manrique and the
Preachers, see dSS, Aug. I, 414—418. Cf. also Mortier, I, 663—666.
68. This was a summary action against the heretics, such as the crusaders embarked upon when they
installed themselves in conquered localities. This can be seen from the fact that Dominic was able to save
an unrepentant condemned person, which would have been impossible in the course of regular procedure.
Certain laymen did not even want the converted to be spared in extremis (Cernai, nos. 113 and 134).
According to law, a guilty party, even if repentant, must suffer his penalty. The setting free of a repentant
party was a favour (cf. Cernai, no. 136). Dominic here played the role of Guy des Vaux-Cernai after
the taking of Minerva, or of Robert de Courson at Morlhon—Cernai, nos. 133-136 and S1!-
69. There is a great distance between actions such as these and the future Inquisition, for there is in
them neither the systematic seeking out of heretics, which properly constitutes the inquisitio, nor its
continuity. Puylaurens, ch. XXV and XXVIII, reproaches the French for quickly losing their interest
in repression. Finally, Dominic, in addition, had no jurisdiction. Not having, and not wishing to
have, any spiritual authority of his own, as will be seen, he could not be a judge of the faith, except by
delegation from a legate or a bishop, cf. infra, nn. 206 and 219.
70 The two stages, conviction and exhortation to conversion, formed part of the procedure contra
haereticos (cf. supra, ch. VI, 83 ff, nn. 38 to 41). Dominic practised it in 1206-1207. At that time it
lacked the sanction of the secular arm. .
71 He is thought to have joined the Preachers. Perhaps this is an erroneous interpretation ot
Constantin from the fact that Raymond was received at the convent after his conversion; cf. Pelisson,
loc. cit. 43, who would not have failed, it would seem, to mention his entering the order. On the
heretical activity of this personage, cf. Balme, I, 492-496.
72. Salagnac, 11, 3. Cf. Foncaude, 733C: ‘Nec voce predicationis, nec baculo discipline, seu
 484 NOTES

severitatis’. The Castilian proverb (expressed, moreover, in the speech of Languedoc) authenticates the
speech (cf. Altaner, 246), the date of which, on the other hand, is anachronistic. Salignac, in fact,
situates it on 15th August, 1217. It was in 1209, not in 1217, that one could use the future tense of the
coming of the crusaders. Accordingly Scheeben, 439, n. 236, emphatically rejects the anecdote. It is
possibfe, indeed, that Salagnac, who wrote after 1278, attributed to Dominic the speech of Berenger de
Carcassonne in 1206 or 1207; cf. supra, ch. VI, 93—97 and n. 109. This is not the only error in this
text, which states that Simon de Montfort was then dead and Louis de France a crusader, both of which
statements are incorrect.
73. Supra, ch. VI, 93—96 and n. 109.
74. Supra, ch. VI, 91—96 and n. 117.
73. Jordan, no. 33. He had just convicted his Catharist opponents of manifest error. The nobles then
set themselves to defend them in their own fashion. Scheeben, 439, n. 236, places this sermon in
Toulouse, but through a mistaken interpretation of Barthelemy, no. 3.
76. Supra, ch. VI, 83 and n. 38 to 41. Among the finest apostrophes of this kind, may be instanced
the letter of Innocent III to Raymond VI, on 29th May, 1207—‘Your flesh is not of bronze and you are
not of a different nature from those who are suddenly stricken with fever, struck down by leprosy, made
stiff by paralysis, thrown to the ground by demons or scourged by incurable diseases, to say nothing of
the other misfortunes which fall unexpectedly upon men, etc. . . .’, PL, 2 13, 1166C.
77. Account in Cernai, no. 173, n. 3.
78. The archdeacon, Guillaume of Paris, Guy des Vaux-de-Cemai, Fulk of Toulouse, Jacques de
Vitry, the canon, Guy of Premontre, preached the crusade in turn in France and in Teutonia. On their
preaching mission and the way in which they received it, see Cernai, no. 283 and 439. Much preaching
was also done in the army itself—for examples, see Cernai, no. 298, 324, 342; Tudela, 201, etc. In
regard to this last example, the editor, ibid., n. 2, thinks that Dominic was among those preachers who
encouraged detestation of heresy among the crusaders on the occasion of the first siege of Toulouse; it is
true that he was there (Laurent, no. 10), but that is all that can be said.
79. Echard, I, 36B; Scheeben, 96—98 have rightly emphasized this position.
80. Four local witnesses emphasize his indefatigable attachment to the negotium Jidei et pads—Proces.
Thol. no. 3,7, 13, 18.
81. Bull of 10th March, 1208—Potthast, 3323; Cernai, no. 61; PL, 213, 1336B. For Avignon, Mansi
XXII, 783BC.
82. Cf. supra, ch. VI, 91-end; VII, 99 ff; VIII, 113-119.
83. For these three places, Balme, I, 173 and 187.
84. Supra, ch. VI, n. 114; Laurent, nos. 8-9.
83. Supra, ch. VI, n. 118-119.
86. Cf. Appendix IV.
87. Supra, ch. VIII, 132 ff. Laurent, no. 12 and the depositions of the canons of St Antonin de
Pamiers, Proces. Thol., nos. 6-8.
88. Cf. Proces. Thol., nos. 3-3. The abbey of Boulbonne was then on its original site, 2 miles
south of Mazeres (canton of Saverdun, Ariege), Cemai, no. 284, n. 2.
89. Frachet, II, 4.
90. Proces. Thol., no. 17.
9 1. Balme, I, 173.
92. Salagnac, I, 9. Constant, 86-312, has endeavoured to gather together even down to the smallest
details the local traditions of the Midi of France relating to the presence and ministry of Dominic.
There is little for history to retain from this medley.
93. Threads of the woof. Cf. ‘La Curne de Sainte Palaye’, Dictionnaire hist, de l’ancien lanaaae francois
Niort, n.d., Ill, 208, n. 6. J '
94. Balme, I, 171-173, 186-188, 271-272,468-469,470-471.
93. Reconciliations in the Lauragais are instanced forty years later before the Inquisition—Balme I
>70-173; Act of reconciliation at Treville, to the north of Castelnaudary, ibid., i86-I89. It seems that
Dominic continued his 1207 apostolate around Prouille in 1208 and the beginning of 1209 The remark
quoted by Constantin, no. 62, must in fact be referred back before the crusade—that Dominic stayed
for a longer time in the diocese and city of Carcassonne than in the diocese and city of Toulouse because
‘in the diocese of Toulouse he found many people to honour him, whereas at Carcassonne everyone
opposed him After 1 3th August, 1 209, the population of Carcassonne was radically renewed and the
heretics clearly did not return.
96. Cf. Appendix IV.
97. Cernai, no. 162.
98. Tudela, 109, after March.
99. Cf. supra, n. 8 1.
100. Tudela, in and n. 3. The Abbot of CIteaux collaborated:
he even went into Agen and its
surrounding region.
.°' Puylaurens, ch XV and XVIIa and Tudela, .. 2, n. 2 and .. 3. Meersseman,
113. Meersseman, 'Les
‘Les milices
milices de
de
f r VifP’23 (,?,?3)’ 28m3' T!\S cQnfi-aternity had no connection with the Militia of the
taith 01 Jesus Christ, a military order founded at Carcassonne after Simon’s death. No document relates
it in any way with St Dominic.
102. Balme, 171-172. There can well have been a certain time between the two acts in one or other
ot the texts mentioned.
103. Proces. Thol., no. 17.
 NOTES 48£
104. Proces. ThoL, no. 15 and 16.
105. Tudela, 144, n. 3.
106. Cernai, no. 22 1 and n. 3.
107. Cernai.no. 234.
108. Cf. supra, n. 58.
109. Laurent, nos. 8-10. Charters S and 9 do not expressly indicate Dominic’s presence at Lavaur.
The way, however, in which these donations are presented at Prouille leaves no doubt as to the fact.
110. Frachet, II, 3. The episode could doubtless be assigned to the occasion of the second siege of
Toulouse, in October, 1217. Dominic, however, was in the process of preparing to leave the country
and almost certainly Toulouse. We know, on the other hand, that he was present at the first siege in
June, 1211. The chapel of St Antoine was outside the walls near the castle of Narbonne—Balme, I,
2£p, n. 1.
in. He had doubtless realized this on the occasion of the baptism of Petronille de Montfort.
I 12. Laurent, charters 13-54, end of I2ii-2^th May, 1214. Charters 23, 25, 30, 42, 54, indicate
his certain presence in Prouille or in Fanjeaux, the remaining ones a very probable presence, especially
during the whole of the year 1212, the months of April and May 1213 and the first six months of 1 2 14—
with, however, a probable presence at Pamiers (December 1211) in the Agen district (17th July or 5th
July, 1212), Pamiers (1st December, 1212), Carcassonne (first six months of 1213, cf. infra), finally
Toulouse, after 25th March, 1215.
113. Cf. Laurent, nos. 41, 47 and 49 and Constantin, no. 55. The Lent referred to in the latter text,
after that of 1212 (when Guy was not yet bishop) and prior to 12th September, 1213 (date of the death
of Pedro II), can only be that of 1213.
114. In February 1213, Cernai, no. 418. He was in Paris on 3rd March.
II 5. ‘Vices episcopi ... in spiritualibus exercebat’—-Constantin, no. 55. At this time, when the
institution of the vicar-general was still quite recent, the office was that of a temporary and limited
substitution for the bishop, without judiciary power—E. Fournier, Les origines du vicaire general, Paris,
1922. Since Guy only returned in 1214, there is no reason to suppose that he relieved Dominic of his
functions before that date. The text sets out in detail the emphasis on preaching, on Lent, on observance,
lodging in the bishop’s residence. On the site of the bishop’s palace, see Cernai, no. 563, n. 3.
116. Laurent, no. £4. Cf. du Cange, sub. h. v.; Proces. ThoL, no. 19; Laurent, no. 134.
117. ‘Habebat . . . ecclesiam Fani Jovis’—Jordan, no. 37.
118. Percin 4, no. 18; Kirsch, 117-118; Constant, 143-145; Bonhomme, Montreal, Fanjeaux,
Prouille, guide du pelerin, Toulouse 1934, 31—32.
119. Laurent, no. 2.
120. Jordan, no. 2 1. Scheeben, 93 has misread the text otherwise he would not have had to refute it.
121. Laurent, nos. 6, 12, 23, 25, etc. Others omit the Dominus, nos. 22, 29, etc.J
122. Balme, I, 172, 173, 271, 272, 468—statements before the Inquisition of converted persons.
123. Laurent, no. 5, 7, 10, 24.
124. Laurent, no. 10. Whence the complete title he gives himself in the letter of penance of Pons
Roger—frater Dominicus, oxomensis canonicus, predicatorum minimus, Balme, I, 187.
125. Proces. Bon., no. 28 ; Proces. Thol., nos. 3 and 18 ; Constantin, 62. Three witnesses, of whom one
was at the time archdeacon of Toulouse, speak with accuracy and detail of the election to the bishopric
of Couserans. John of Spain speaks of two or three elections and gives details: in Beziers and Comminges.
For the second name, however, it is probable that he confuses Convenarum with Conseranum—cf. also
note following.
126. Proces. Thol., no. 3. It was thus the former bishop of Comminges, a see vacant at this time, who
was offering Couserans. The confusion of Juan de Navarra is not difficult to understand. The exact date
of the death or retirement of Navarre de Couserans, the bishop and legate whom it was a question of
replacing, is not known.
127. After the death of the bishops Pierre d’Aigrefeuille (6th July, 1212), Bertrand de S. Gervais
(13th January, 1215), or Raimond Niger (20th April, 1215). On the occasion of the first vacancy (it is
noted that it lasted six months!), Guillaume, archdeacon of Paris, had been elected; he, too, however,
had obstinately refused—Cernai, no. 366 and n. 3.
128. Proces. Thol., no. 18.
1 29. No. 3.
130. No. 5; Constantin, no. 62.
1 3 1. Cf. supra, ch. VI, 88 and n. 60.
132. Prologue to the 10 canon on the institution of diocesan preachers—‘Cum saepe contigat quod
episcopi propter occupationes multiplices, vel invaletudines corporales, aut hostiles incursus, sen
occasiones alias (ne dicamus defectum scientiae, quod in eis est reprobandum omnino, nec de cetero
tolerandum), per se ipsos non sufficiunt ministrare populo verbum Dei, maxime per amplas dioeceses et
diffusas . . .’—Hefele-Leclercq, V, 1340.
133. ‘Erant autem tunc temporis in exercitu Uticensis et Tolosanus episcopi et etiam episcopus
Carcassonne, Guido, qui nunquam ab exercitu recedebat’.—Cernai, no. 317. This was somewhat the
case with the bishops of Osma, Diego’s predecessors.
134. Vaissete, VI, 458-439 and 477-481; Luchaire, 259-260.
135. Supra, ch. VI, n. 61.
136. Fr Rodolfo, Procurator of the convent of Bologna—Proces. Bon., no. 32.
137. I. Const., II, 31, § 3.
138. This paragraph of the institutions of 1220 is explicitly attributed to the saint. It is possible that
 486 NOTES

the final words were added to the text about 1233, to permit the judicial activity of the inquisitors
which was taking shape at the time. Dominic, however, was not averse to this.
139. It is remarkable that all those who instance Dominic’s zeal in proceeding against heretics
explicitly attribute to him as sole weapons preaching and controversy or disputation—Proces. Bon., no.
27; Thol., nos. 7, 13, 18, to quote only witnesses of his activity in the Midi.
140. Matth. V, 14. Ferrand, nos. 22-23.
141. Proces. Thol., no. 4; Frachet 11, 13. His apostolate with Guy des Vaux-de-Cemai, Fulk the
Abbot of Villelongue, Aimery de Grandselve, all four of them Cistercians, should also be recalled. To
the end of 1207, he continued to be Diego’s socius—Cernai, no. 21.
142. Luke X, 1.
143. Proces. Thol., no. 25, seal of 12153 Balme, II, 115; Frachet, 34, 36, 120—121. The staff which
has been preserved at Bologna as a relic of the saint is of this kind—Balme, III, 455—456. He is seen with
one of this type in a miniature of the pamphlet Quomodo S. Patriarcha Dominicus orabat, Cod. Rossianus,
3, fo. 13, ro. ASOP, XV (1922), 95*. Mark VI, 8 authorizes the staff which Matt. X, 10 forbids.
144. Frachet, II, 25, states that it was a knife of no value (vilis)—a ms. corrects: ‘Quern raro
portavit’. The saint himself, however, spoke of ‘his’ knife—Humbert, Reg., II, 46. The Discalced
Carmelites of the Via Palazzuolo of Florence show pilgrims a knife of St Dominic, with a handle of
yellow boxwood, and a blunted blade.
145. According to John of Spain—Proces. Bon., no. 29, cf. Frachet, IV, 1. Frachet, II, 4. It will be
recalled that the Catharist preachers carried the Gospel about with them in a little bag—supra, p. 11 1.
Frachet’s latter account clearly indicates that Dominic had neither bag nor satchel for his books.
146. Proces. Thol., no. 18; cf. no. 4. Matt. X, 10 and parallels.
147. Proces. Thol., no. 18.
148. Proces. Thol., no. 14. Constantin, no. 32, details of which account are embellished.
[49. Proces. Bon., no. 28.
150. Puylaurens, ch. VIII; Frachet, II, 2.
151. Because of Matt. X, 10; Luke, X, 4; Ex., Ill, 5; after the middle of the century, however.
Acts, XII, 8; Mark, VI, 9 would be brought forward in the opposite sense, in a lasting controversy which
set calced Dominicans against discalced Franciscans, over the real content of the vita apostolica. Cf.
among others, the pamphlet of Thomas Sutton in AFP, III (1933), 74—80, Contra aemulos jratrum O.P.,
with the conclusion: ‘ambulare sine calceamentis est bona penitentia, sed non est de necessitate
perfectionis evangelice sive apostolice’.
152. Cf. supra, ch. VI and n. 85. Council of Montpellier—Mansi, XXII, 945B.
153. Proces. Bon., no. 27; cf. no. 21 and 42, These texts are later than 1215.
154. Ibid., no. 27.
155. Ibid., no. 2 1 (the incident occurred a little later).
156. Frachet, II, 2.
157. Percin, 22, no. 54; Balme, II, 248. On the floods of the Aude at the time—Cernai, no. 122
and n. 1 ; on those of the Hers—Balme, II, 33, n. a; on those of the Garonne—Cernai, no. 356 and n. 4;
605 and n. 2.
158. Proces. Bon., no. 21. Ford on the Hers—Tudela, 189. Ford on the Garonne—Puylaurens, ch.
XVIIa. J
159. Frachet, II, 4.
160. Proces. ThoL.no. 10.
161. The three summers of 1209, 1210, 1212 were particularly oppressive—Cernai, no. 153, 322;
Tudela, 77 and 259.
162. Frachet II, 24.
163. On the road to Carcassonne shortly after leaving Montreal, to the right—Balme, I, 408 ; Kirsch,
108-109; Constantino, 184.
164. Constantino, no. 42.
165. Proces. Thol., no. 17.
166. Ibid., no. 15.
.
167. Ibid., nos. 15-1 7 ; Ferrand, no 22
168. Proces. Bon., no. 31.
169. Ibid., no. 25; Constantino, no. 61.
170. Proces. Thol., nos. 1 5 and 17.
171. Ferrando, no. 22; Constantino 56. There, two different Lents are referred to, which shows
his custom.
172. It was this idea that Jordan put in the mouth of Diego at the Montpellier discussion—durum
clavo retundne. According to Ferrand no. 22, Dominic practised it; he thus converted, through the
edification he gave them, some of the Catharist women believers.
173. Frachet, II, 2.
174. Ferrando, no. 20.
175. Proces. Thol., no. 18.
176. Constantino, no. 62. Cf. supra, n. 94.
177. Ferrando, no. 20.
178. Jordan, no. 34.
179- The present cross replaces one of the seventeenth century which was itself a replacement of a
very ancient cross-Percin, 6, no. 29 ; Balme, I, .99 in the place called Sicari (stabbers). This name is
the only unfavourable element to be found in tradition. It presupposes in fact that the ambushed men
 NOTES 487

sought to assassinate Dominic. Jordan, no. 34, merely says that they were to seize him to hand him over
to their leaders who would clearly have ill-treated him.
180. Proces. Thol., no. 3.
181. Jordan, no. 34; cf. Proces. Bon., no. 29. Dismemberment was one of the favourite tortures of
the lords of the Midi—Cernai, no. 582. Cf. supra, 37, n. 90.
182. Cernai, no. 1 30. At this date, however, the abbot was entrusted with a mission by the Count of
Foix. Guillaume de Roquefort was the brother of the Bishop of Carcassonne. The Cistercians, however,
were hated by the lords of the Midi—Cernai, no. 277, 393 and n. 6.
183. Cernai, no. 361.
184. ‘Negotium Jhesu Christi in partibus istis’, he said, ‘nunquam prosperum sortietur effectum,
donee aliquis de nobis predicatoribus pro defensione fidei moriatur. Et utinam ego prior persecutoris
exciperem gladium !’—Cernai, no. 360.
i8j. On the occasion when, braving the Count of Toulouse who had given him the order to leave
the town forthwith if he wanted to preserve his life, he remained there, expecting death from day to
day—Cernai, no. 22.
186. ‘Nec apostolorum fraudatus est gloria’, Ferrand, no. 20, quoting Acts V, 41.
187. Proces. Bon., no. 3 and 41.
188. Proces. Bon., no. 28.
189. Proces. Thol., no. 10.
190. Proces. Bon., nos. 3, 41, 42. Cf. the provision in the future constitutions, 1 Const. II, XXXIV.
191. Salagnac, I, 9. Cf. Constantin, no. 25; Frachet, 74 and 84.
192. Proces. Bon., no. 3, 42; Constantin, no. 42.
193. Ferrand, no. 22. On the night rising during a journey, see Echard, I, 412; ASOP, I, 325, n. 3.
194. Proces. Thol., no. 3.
195. No. 6.
196. No. 18.
197. No. 17.
198. No. 18.
199. No. 18.
200. Proces. Bon., no. 37.
201. No. 26.
202. Proces. Thol., no. 18.
203. Proces. Bon., no. 27.
204. Jordan, no. 35.
2oy. No. 34.
206. E. Amann, ‘L’epoque carolingienne’ in Histoire de l’Eglise (Fliche et Martin), VI, Paris 1937,
346—3^0.
207. Alain de Lille, Liber penitentialis, PL, 210, 295D. This confessor’s directory, drawn up by a
theologian who became a Cistercian and composed a large treatise against the Albigensians at the end of
the twelfth century, cf. supra p. 77 is particularly interesting here. Cf. also Yves de Chartres, Decret, P.
XV, ch. 76, PL, 161, 880, and ch. 80, c. 881.
208. Yves de Chartres, Decret, ch. 185, PL, 161, 897.
209. This was imposed on Henry II and in the Midi, on Raymond VI, Cernai, no. 77.
210. Alain de Lille, Liber penitentialis, PL, 210, 293D.
2 11. This decretal constitutes practically the only text on the penance of heretics in the vast literature
of the penitentials, a clear sign of the practical non-existence of heresy in the West from the eighth
century to the beginning of the eleventh century. Reginon de Prum makes no mention of the subject at
all. The decretal will be found in the penitential Corrector, Lib. XIX of the Decret of Burchard, ch. 105,
PL, 140, 1004-1005; in the Decret of Yves de Chartres, L. XV, ch. 117, PL, 161, 886-887. Again it is
the only text of this type in the Decretal of Gratian, ch. 41, C. XXIV, q. 1. The lists of penances
elaborated by the Councils of the Midi of the thirteenth century, especially that of Narbonne (1 235"),
are precisely intended to palliate the paucity of the canonical collections.
212. Pseudo-Roman Penitential, L. VI of Halitgaire—PL, 105, 726, 727; Burchard, PL, 140, 980-981 ;
Yves de Chartres, PL, 161, 897-898. Summarized and transformed by Alain de Lille—PL, 210, 297,
where important details will be found on the practice of the Catena ( = quarantine, forty days), identified
with the public penance of lay people—295—296.
213. Alain de Lille, PL, 2 10, 298A.
214. Bahne, I, 186—197. The letter is undated. It clearly indicates a lengthy absence on the part of
Arnaud de Citeaux, from whom Dominic held his powers. It thus cannot be earlier than 1208. After
June, 1209, Arnaud was back. Later Dominic would rather seek his powers from Fulk or from other
legates. Accordingly this document is commonly dated ca. 1208.
2 15. On the crosses of penance, cf. Balme, I, 176, n. 2 ; L. Tanon, Histoire des tribunaux de Tinquisition
en France, Paris, 1893, 490-498.
216. The Council of Beziers had to draw up a canon to demand that those who wore them should not
be derided—C. VI, Mansi, XXIII, 693.-
217. Cf. supra, ch. IV, 50-52 and n. 37, 38 and 47.
218. ‘Qui hoc nobis injunxit officium’—Balme, I, 187.
219. Dispensation from the fast in the case of illness and during the hard outdoor work in the summer.
220. Borst, 180-185-, on continence, the three Lents, abstinence from all that proceeds from animal
semen; 190, 191, on the prayers to be said seven times a day. Dominic prescribed the interruption
 488 NOTES

three times a year of the Catharist abstinences, in order to make plain the complete distinction between
Catholic observances and those of the dualists.
221. Jordan, no. 36; Proces. Thol., nos. 17, 19, 26; Constantin, no. 62.
222. Proces. Thol., no. 17.
223. No. 19.
224. No. 23.
223. No. 19.
226. Nos. 19 and 8.
227. No. 9.
228. No. 24.
229. Salagnac, I, 9.
230. Jordan, no. 101; according to Barthelemy, no. 1 1, it was on the occasion of a journey to Rome.
A tradition, however, places the marvellous occurrence on the road between Carcassonne and
Montreal; first a chapel and then a plinth were erected there, on the right-hand side of the road, about
a mile or so from the township—Balme, I, 431-433 and n. 1; Kirsch, 108; Constant, 182-184. Cf.
Frachet, 162.
231. Frachet II, 4.
232. Constantin, 32. On the greed for gain of ferrymen on the rivers at the foot of the Pyrenees, cf.
J. Vieillard, Le guide du pelerin de Saint Jacques de Compostela, Paris, 1930, 20—‘Cum enim flumina ilia
admodum stricta sint, tamen de unoquoque homine tarn de paupere quam de divite quern ultra navigant,
unum nummum more accipiunt . . . vi etiam indigne capuint’. A tradition sets the incident on the
Tarn—Balme, I, 211, n. 1.
233. Frachet, II, 13. Later, in Rome, a similar prodigy would be recounted—Cecilia, no. 6.
234. Jordan, no. 46; Constantin, no. 33.
234. Jordan, no. 103.
236. Jordan, no. 1 03; Proces. Bon., nos. 3, 2 1, 38.
237. Jordan, no. 107; Proces. Bon., no. 27.
238. It is remarkable that each time that the witnesses mention Dominic’s joy at this period of his
life, it is ahvays joy in trials, ‘overflowing joy’, Proces. Thol., no. 18; Proces. Bon., no. 7, 21, 22, 39, 41,
48; Frachet II, 2; Cecilia, no. 3.
239. In this paragraph a simple paraphrase has been made of the portrait of the preacher which
Dominic had inserted in 1220 in the institutions of the Preachers. We shall return to it later.
240. In medio Ecclesiae: these are the first words of the Introit of the Mass of St Dominic.
241. A play on words falling from the pen of Innocent III, Pierre des Vaux—Cernai, Guillermo of
Tudela, clearly after he had become famous in the crusade—Cernai, no. log and n. 2 ; Tudela, no. 11 8
and n. 1, 139, 161.
242. Constantino, no. 36.
243. Jordan, no. 3 1.
244. Constantino, nos. 33-36. He doubtless arrived in Carcassonne in October 1212, with the
German crusaders—Cernai, no. 334: a local tradition made him one of the founders of the convent of
Metz—Mamachi, 371; Balme, however (II, 333, n. 1) following a text of Pelisson now impossible to
discover, mentions that Stephen was in the Midi, in Toulouse, in 1223. It would seem justified in this
case, to allow that he had remained there since 1212, had been following Dominic since 1214 had
participated in the choice of the rule of St Augustine in 1216 (Salagnac-GuC 133-1 36), and perhaps had
acted as Dominic s socius on his journey to Rome in 1217—Echard, I, 16, n. K. If this were not so
nothing says that he did become a Dominican only after his return to Metz_Altaner, 68.
243. Laurent, nos. 66, 83, 83, 91. According to Bernard Gui, he was at Prouille Is far back as 1214-
Laurent, 76, n. 1.
246. Laurent, no. 66; Balme, 8.
thlV' j0r<lK-wn°' 37
-Jhe charter-Laurent, no. 58 (,2,4) which grants the tithes without imposing
the responsibihties of the church is not authentic; cf. Loenertz. 37-47. The concession of the church
of'StEL:lfrZap r e s p o n s 1 b 1 h 11 e s d a t e s from 1 2 2 1—Laurent, no. , 34. There was, however, a concession
of tithes from Fanjeaux by Fulk before i2i£, for it is mentioned in the bull of 8th October 121 c_
Laurent, no. 62. Moreover, Dominic, who in 1214 was parish priest of Fanjeaux had a personal right to

insianc '<;°"?e^.e 1 *am Montisfortis, qui special! ipsum devotione fovebat cum assensu suorum, castrum
^ssterent’ dIordanrn^^Th^ 1 "T secluacib“s- T'humque ei in officio inchoate salutis
assisterent—Jordan no 37 The date is fixed as 1214 by Dominic’s presence in Prouille and the
possession of the church of Fanjeaux instanced by Jordan, ibid. There is no doubt that what is here
referred to is he famous township of Casseneuil (Cassanolium), conquered in August, ,214 (CernaT
nos_3i9-32 7) by Montfort, who immediately received it as his possession by a deed of the legate Robert
de Courson (Cernai, no. 323, n. 1 and Dickson, 10.), before having it in trust from the Pope on 2nd
Apn!m3 (Cerna!, no. 336). This township does not appear among the property of theaters of
Prouille confirmed in 1213 (Laurent no. 62), but in that of the Preachers, confirmed in .2.6 no 74
ydla de Cassenoho, which, phonetically, cannot be Caussanel as Laurent, ibid., n 2 and Constant 1 ol¬
io? would have it. The word villa, which at the time meant a place without walls (Du Cange)
exactly corresponds to the situation ot Casseneuil at that moment). Dominic had expressly asked the
Pope for confirmation of this gift of de Montfort’s (Jordan, no. 40). Several of the witnesses for these
years instance the presence of castra among the Dominican property in the Midi ip ‘ c T
l-M., On . „h December, , „ 7, D„mto,c obr.toedVm
 NOTES 489
in the Agen region which could only concern Casseneuil (Laurent, no. 82). This township was after¬
wards given to the sisters of Prouille who, we are told, exchanged it for other rights—Percin, 14, no. 18 ;
one is rather led to think that the sisters lost it very soon after the death of Montfort (1218), when the
inhabitants of Toulouse took it back. Jordan, no. 40, characterizes this donation by calling it revenues.
It was a question of the count’s revenues in the locality, the ‘aiberge’ (dues for procuration and lodging),
‘acapte’ (dues payable on the death of a tenant by his heir for the right of investiture) and ‘aides’ (dues
payable on the marriage of the lord’s heir, for his ransom or his crusade)—commercial dues doubtless
to the exclusion of the rights of justice.
249. ‘De ordinis institutione fuerat tractatum’—Jordan, no. 37.
250. ‘Que vero de iisdem redditibus sibi possent substrahere, impartiebantur sororibus monasterii
de Prulano’—Jordan, no. 37. This phrase forms part of the additions to the second edition of the
Libellus, which carried special authorization.

NOTES TO CHAPTER X
1. Cernai, no. 503 and n. 2; 306. On Pietro de Beneventum, see 303, n. 4; Zimmermann, 44-43.
2. Cernai, no. 307, n. 3; Puylaurens, ch. XXIII.
3. Cernai. no. 339.
4. Mansi, XXII, 933-934; Hefele-Leclercq V, 1298-1303; Cernai, nos. 343-349.
3. Mansi, XXII, 783-798; Hefele-Leclercq, V, 1283-1287; Cernai, no. 138.
6. Cardinal Robert de Courson, instructed to prepare the way for the Lateran Council in France.
This legislation (Mansi, XXII, 817—834 and 897—924) seems also to have been promulgated at Bordeaux,
Clermont and perhaps Rheims. The legate wanted to promulgate it at Bourges—Dickson 90, 100, 103,
112. It was in virtue of his office as legate that Robert de Courson legitimately convened the Council of
Montpellier (Mansi, XXII, 930—931) held by Pietro de Beneventum—Dickson, 109-110, against
Luchaire, 236. On this legislation see Dickson, 1 24-127.
7. The guardianship of the castle of Foix entrusted to the abbot of St Thierry—Puylaurens, ch. XXIII,
cf. Cernai, no. 303, n. 1; guardianship of the castle of Narbonne given to Fulk—Cernai, no. 349;
delegation in legal matters conferred on the archbishop of Aix, for Avignon—V. Chevalier, Gallia
Christiana norissima, VII, no. 381.
8. Vaissete, VI, 433.
9. Cernai, no. 349 and Puylaurens, ch. XXIII.
1 o. Laurent, no. 61.
11. There is no trace of him after 2 3th May, 1214 when he was parish priest of Fanjeaux—Laurent,
no. 34. He did, however, receive various properties outside Toulouse in June and September—Laurent,
no. 36, 37; Jordan, no. 37 (cf. Cernai, no. 327).
12. Balme I, 484.
13. Pietro de Beneventum, after a brief stay in Narbonne, moved on to Castelnaudary in April 1214
and then left for Aragon. He only returned to the neighbourhood for the Council of Montpellier on 8th
January, 1213—Cernai nos. 303 and 342. Dominic had clearly received no special mission in April,
1214; a month later, he was still capellanus (parish priest) in Fanjeaux.
14. Cernai, no. 343, mentions innumerable abbots and other superiors with the bishops in Montpellier.
13. Balme, I, 187 and Laurent, no. 10.
16. Constantin, no. 33.
17. Jordan, nos. 31 and 37.
18. Appendix IV.
19. Vaissete, VI, 482; J. de Malafosse, ‘Le chateau Narbonnais’, in Revue dcs Pyrenees, 1896, 343-374
and J. Chalande, ‘Les fortifications romaines et du moyen age dans le quartier Saint Michel, Toulouse’,
in Bulletin de la soc. archeol. du Midi de la France, XVIII (1914), 76-82 and 217-230, particularly, 222-227.
It was defended by at least five towers and separated from the wall by a substantial moat.
20. The usual provision in regard to receptores, again repeated at Montpellier—Mansi, XXII, 932.
2 1. Balme, I, 484.
22. Ibid., n. a.
2 3. The deed is merely dated with the year of the Incarnation 1213 (thus it must have been drawn up
between 23th March, 1213 and the same date in 1216). It bears the mention—comite Montisfortis
principatum Tolose tenente. It was thus earlier than the installation of Simon as count of Toulouse and at
any rate before 7th March, 1216 (Vaissete, VI, 482). Before this date, however, Fulk had not yet
returned to Toulouse (Cernai, no. 373, n. 2) and Dominic, hardly back from Rome, had not had the
time to produce new results from his apostolate. The deed was thus prior to the departure of the two
men for the Lateran Council, in September, 1213. It was after the cession of Toulouse in trust to the
Count de Montfort at the end of May, 1213 (Cernai, no. 363 and 364, n. 1). It must thus date from the
beginning of the summer. Balme II, 9, n. a, followed by Laurent, no. 67, n. 1, allowed himself to be
influenced by the omission of any mention of this possession in the charter of confirmation of the Prouille
properties dated 8th October, 1213 (Laurent, no. 62). He is wrong, however, in thinking that Dominic
received this donation for Prouille. This charter is probably of the same date as Laurent, no. 60, cf.
infra, n. 44.
24. Laurent, no. 67. On this hospice, see Catel, II, 131 and Salvan, Histoire generate de 1 Eglise de
Toulouse ... II, Toulouse 1839, 313; Percin, 13, no. 24 and Balme, II, 10-n and notes.
23. Laurent, no. 78, of 28th January, 1217.
26. Scheeben, 164-163, has the merit of having discovered the true character of this foundation,
 490 NOTES

Koudelka, 99, n. 18 points out that the Pope said ‘become’ and not ‘become again’. The idea of return
to their former voluptuous life, however, is clearly indicated by the regret for the ‘delights of Egypt’.
27. Simon, 1-10.
28. ‘Presentium auctoritate statuimus ut omnibus qui publicas mulieres de lupanari extraxerint et
duxerint in uxores, quod agunt in remissionem proficiat peccatorum’, letter of 29th April, 1198,
Potthast, no. 114—PL, 214, 102.
29. A. Charasson, Un cure plebeien au Xlle.s., Foulques, cure de Neuilly-sur-Alarne, Paris 1 y oy, 49—62.
30. Borst, 85.
3 1. Gallia Christiana, XII, 1 2 1. For other indications on Languedoc, see Simon, 7.
32. Jordan, no. 38.
33. Vicaire, Fondation, 125—127.
34. Jordan, no. 38.
3£- Text rediscovered by Balme in the national archives in Paris and dated by him 1215 in error—-
Balme, I, 504-506. Cf. Koudelka, 100, n. i.
36. Balme, I, 504. On the office of provost, see Vaissete, XII, 320—321.
37. Laurent, no. 61. For the commentary on this deed, see Balme, I, 504-507.
38. Vicaire, Fondation, 127—128. Mid-January, because Dominic had not arrived at Toulouse earlier
than this. The charter granting the community his house, plate and linen can scarcely be later than the
community’s inception.
39. During the restoration of the faqade in 1957 by MM. Fort et Rouquet, it was found that a
restoration was carried out in the sixteenth century. It was then that the Renaissance doorway with the
triangular pediment was erected.
40. No. 38.
41. The inquisitors lodged there until 1585, when they went to install themselves in the convent of
the Jacobins; they held their tribunal there, however—Percin, 14, no. 21.
42. The 1957 restoration has confirmed this hypothesis. The Gallo-Roman wall, the section of which
has now been left uncovered on the left of the fayade rises to about 39 inches above the floor of the first
storey.
43. Balme, II, 54—55; Chalande, Histoire des rues de Toulouse, Toulouse 1927, 33. The present church
was built on the site of the audience chamber of the tribunal in 1648. The chapel of St Dominic’s room
must have been restored at that time, but it already existed earlier. There was on the altar a picture
representing the flagellations of the saint and later a picture of the rosary. There too was to be seen the
crucifix said to be St Dominic's—Balme, I, 423, n. 3 ; Percin, 14, n. 20. See in Balme, I, 505, a picture
representing the chapel in 1893. The frontispiece of the house shown in Balme, II, 55, has also dis¬
appeared. The chapel was still in existence in 1926—Constant, 291-295.
44. Laurent, no. 60. The charter bears the same chronological indications as that of the Amaud-
Bernard hospice. Its date should thus be placed between the end of May and beginning of September 1215.
It was probably drawn up at the moment when Pietro de Beneventum had just left Toulouse, thus in the
middle of June—Cernai, no. 567. For the events—Cernai, nos. 550-567.
4S’ A 1 *e religious decisions of any importance in the affairs of the Albigeois formed the subject of
a council during these years, according to the customs of the Church and of the feudal world. In
de Mo"tfort s decision in 1214 to endow Dominic’s group of preachers—Jordan, no. 37.
J of Navarre tells us that this was equally the case two years later in regard to Dominic’s decision to
tdXrS T °USe P reachers-Pmces. Bon., no. 26. De Montfort, Arnaud de Citeaux, Fulk of Toulouse
foundation,^ 37, °£TZ “ “ indiCati°n ^ ^ ^ ***** * the
whirl, hVlCT’ f°ndati°n’ l29r13°’ w^ere an attempt is made to dissipate the mistakes and anachronisms
which have traditionally obtained on the question of the approval and confirmation of the order.
47- e lgiose proposuerunt incedere. ’ The propositum was the rule of life. The word reliqiose signified
the community life On the expression ‘religiose (viventes)’ used by the charters for religious not of the
classical type, see Dereine, Premontre, 371, n. 4. 8 s 0t tne
48. Matt. X, 10; Luke, X, 7.
49- I Cor. IX, 9, cf. Deut. XXV, 4; I Tim, V, 1 7-i 8.
£°- I Cor. IX, 14.
S *• I Cor. IX, 11.
£2- Supra, ch. IX, 148 and n. 81.
£3- Mansi, XXII, 785.
£4- Supra, ch. VII, H3andn. 138.
££• Ladner, 20-2 1.
£6. Ladner, 26-28.
£7- Cf. the phrase et aliis . . . Laurent, no. 60.
£8- The advantages are granted in perpetuum, a proof that the mission was so also.
£9-
Alii 4 h r? Pm™?C°nteTS 3 decision of 1216> ^'eady put into practice in 1215.
60.
Although Fulk s charter does not sav so that nf t-h#* Rv/^t-V* c •i • .r ,
Otherwise, of what use would the crockery and linen have been? ^ * 3 “ conclusion-
61. Cf. Fulk’s charter.
62. Jordan, no. 28, cf. supra, ch. VII, n. 128-130.
63. Jordan, nos. 40 and 42; cf. no. 37.
64. It marks the revenue as of a provisional rhararie,- h„ , .
adhuc habere complacuit’, no. 42. ’ ' m erpolation (tantum reditus), eis
 NOTES 49i

64. Jordan, no. 37.

66. C. 26-30, Causa, XIII, qu. 2 ed. Friedberg, 696-697. Other indications in Mandonnet-Vicaire,
I, 134, n. 106 and G. Lepointe, art. Dime in Diet, de Droit canonique, Paris, 1949.
67. On the expression, pauperes Christi or Dei applied to religious, cf. Lacger, Albigeois, 611 ; Mens,
17 and 2 44; Borst, 9 1.
68. Letter of Honorius III, 30th October, 1220, no. 2742 of Pressutti, Regesta Honorii papae III, I,
Rome 1888, 444, who read tarrarum for terciarum, cf. Denifle, Die Entstehung der Universitaten des MAs
bis 1400, I, Berlin 18844 474 and n. 1038; Beltran de Heredia, 336.
69. Cf., for instance, Alain de Lille, Distinctiones dicionum theologicalium, art. Bos, PL, 210, 721C—D.
70. Matt. X, 9-10.
71. ‘Must I and Barnabas, alone among them, be forbidden to do as much? Why, what soldier ever
fought at his own expense? Who would plant a vineyard and not live on its Iruits, or tend a flock and
not live on the milk which the flock yields? This is not a plea of man’s invention; the law declares it.
When we read in the law of Moses, Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treads out the corn, must we
suppose that God is making provision for oxen? Is it not clear that he says it for our sakes? For our sakes
it was laid down that the ploughman has a right to plough and the thrasher to thrash, with the expectation
of sharing in the crop. Here are we, who have sown in you a spiritual harvest; is it much to ask, that we
should reap from you a temporal harvest in return? If others claim a share of such rights over you, have
we not a better claim still? And yet we have never availed ourselves of those rights; we bear every
hardship, sooner than hinder the preaching of Christ’s gospel. You know, surely, that those who do the
temple’s work live on the temple’s revenues; that those who preside at the altar share the altar s
offerings. And so it is that the Lord has bidden the heralds of the gospel live by preaching the gospel.
I Cor. IX, 6-14.
72. Both property and tithes appear among the sisters’ possessions in the bull of 8th October, 1214
Laurent, no. 62. Casseneuil, on the other hand is expressly attributed to the Preachers by Jordan, nos.
37 and 40 and Laurent, no. 74. Simon de Montfort, however, who had received the right to dispose of
it from the legate, Robert de Courson (who was exceeding the limits of his competence) in September
1 2 14—Cernai, no. 423, n. 1—had had this right withdrawn from him by a decision of the Pope in April
1214; all he retained was the custody of it—Cernai, no. 444 and Pissard, 48—60.
73. Potthast, no. 4833—PL, 216, 9T9.
74. Matt. X, 10.
74. Pierron, 173, 176, 179-180.
76. For instance, B. Altaner, Der Armutsgedanke beim hi. Dominikus, in Theologie und Claube, 1919, 416.
Cf. Lambermond, io-i^.
7 7. The proposals made by the Poor Catholics which the Pope confirmed were not the rule of an
order; they were proposals for itinerant preachers, not for conventual religious. Only their lay converts
could be formed into communities (as at Elne, for example), who lived by the work of their hands as
the first Franciscans did. Special treatment has been given to this question in Mandonnet-Vicaire, I, 162,
n. 19 and II, 193, n. 73 ; cf. also Grundmann, 106 and n. 70; 117, n. 92; 130, n. 114; 133 and n. 117-
118 ; 140-141.
78. Supra, ch. VI, 89 and n. 63—66.
79. Mansi, XXII, 828 and 908. The word ordo, here, should not be rendered by (religious) order,
but by class, social category—cf. Innocent Ill’s letter of 4th July, 1204 to Raimond de Rabastens—PL,
214,682.
80. Letter of 17th November, 1206—Laurent, no. 3 and letters in favour of the Poor Catholics—
Pierron, 23-29, 33-38, 40-41, 44-46.
81. I Cor. IX, 14.
82. Luke X, 7; cf. Matt. X, 10.
83. Vita Malachiae, PL, 182, 1097-1098.
84. This is the origin of the errors of Scheeben in ch. 2 and 3 of the 3rd part, the least satisfactory of
his fine work. He erects his so-called reconstructions on gaps in the documentation.
84. No. 38.
86. ‘Ceperunt magis ac magis ad humilitatem descendere’; cf. Rule of St Benedict, ch. 7 on the 12
degrees of humility, a veritable Jacob’s ladder.
87. Scheeben, i4I and 148, denies it without proof. His assertions are as peremptory as they are
gratuitous. Cf. Mandonnet-Vicaire, I, 167, n. 27.
8 8. Cf. supra, ch. Ill, 4x Ff.
89. Cf. supra, ch. IX, 147 ff.
90. Acts II, 46 and VI, 4. Thus the Catharists recited their common prayers 7 or 14 times a day—
Borst, 190-191.
91 Until 6th May, 1221, the Preachers, when they had no proper church, were obliged to go to
various churches in the town (discurrere per loca) to hear Mass; now they were often lodged outside
inhabited centres. At this date the Pope granted them the privilege of the portable altar—Laurent no.
142. Cf. Vicaire, Fondation, 131, n. 4, on the subject of the unfortunate correction of the editor of the
text. This clumsy correction, moreover, goes back a long way—Balme, III, 343, n.a. and 344.
92. Cf. preceding note.
93. Laurent—no. 70.
 492 NOTES

94. Proces. Son., no. 27. It was perfectly natural that Dominic and his brethren should have been
permitted to celebrate in this chapel from 1 21 3 onwards. The concession of ownership was not necessary
for that. It became necessary the following year, when the Preachers installed their monastery on the
land where the chapel was. This disposes of one difficulty in the deposition of John of Navarre which has
embarrassed many historians—Vicaire, Fondation, 132, n. 1.
93. Vicaire, Fondation, 126 and n. 2, 127. It is the gesture by which, in 1263, Niccolo-Pisano
represented Reginald’s profession on St Dominic’s tomb in Bologna.
96. Scheeben, 161 and 204, denies it however—gratuitously. At this time not only was it inconceivable
to think of Catholic religious without their habits and proper emblems on which the Councils of
Paris, Rouen and Montpellier had recently legislated, but the apostolic Christians, Catharists, Waldenses
and Poor Catholics too (Pierron, 174 and 181).
97. Cf. supra, ch. Ill, n. 10.
98. Mansi, XXII, 941 and 943.
99. Ibid., 943.
100. Rechac, 203; Echard, I, 83; Mamachi, I, Appendix 3 (frontispiece); Balme, II, 113. Mamachi
reproduces Echard’s design; Balme transforms it freely and modifies the inscription. The design discovered
by Echard in Quetif’s papers was perhaps approximative. Thus we prefer to rely on the direct reading of
the inscription by Rechac—minister predicationis, and not, predicationum (Echard), which has no meaning.
The formula minister predicationis dates from 1213;, supra, p. 3 33 and Balme, I, 484. After 1216, Dominic
bore the title of prior S. Romani, prior or magister predicationis (5. Romani) as Fulk put, not without a
certain archaic flavour, in the charter of 1221, to the base of which is appended the seal (Laurent, no.
134), magister ordinis predicatorum (cf. supra, ch. VII, in). The shuttle shape was classical for seals of
ecclesiastical superiors at this time.
101. Supra, 166.
102. Charter of 21 st April, 1221—Laurent, no. 134.
103. Humbert, no. 40. The information clearly states that the master taught the brethren multo
tempore; since their departure took place in the middle of the year 1217, the beginning of the teaching
must be placed when the community began to exist as such, in 1 2 r 3.
104. This figure cannot be guaranteed; it seems called for by symbolic reasons—cf. note
following.
103. The symbolism of the seven stars is again found in connection with St Edmund of Canterbury
and St Bruno—W. Wallace, Life of St Edmund of Canterbury, London, 1893, £63 ; ASS, Oct. Ill, 602-603.
106. B. Jarrett, TheEnglish Dominicans, London 1921, 2-3; W. A. Hinnebusch, The Early English Friars
Preachers, Rome, 1931, 443—443, who establishes the reliability of this information and gives details on
this master who went on to Bologna, where he found the order once more (Frachet, 20), then in 1224
became Bishop of Coventry, where he specially favoured the Preachers.
107. No. 39.
108. The monastic tradition, taught by the De opere monachorum of St Augustine, also reached the
Canons Regular, through the Ordo Monasterii, cf. Dereine, Chanoines, 389-390, 399 and Springiersbach,
427-430; they saw in it a necessity for imitating the apostles. This was equally the case with San Julian!
Bishop of Cuenca, according to the Martyrologuim romanum: (28th January) ‘opere manuum more
apostolico sibi victum quaerens’. Some of those following an apostolic way of life such as the Humiliati
and the Catharists (Borst, 188), accepted it also. The Waldenses, however, prohibited it strictly on
account of John VI, 27: ‘Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for that which endureth unto
hie everlasting —Gonnet, 219, 223-224, 229-230. Thus the Poor Catholics, to distinguish themselves
Pierron ^ g65’ accePted manual work for those who were not occupied in disputing or exhorting—

109. ‘Totum hoc fuit factum consilio et voluntate domini fratris Dominici et fratris Willelmi
Raimundi—Laurent, no. 61.
110. Laurent, no. 66.
111. No. 38.
112. Laurent, no. 70 and Jordan, no. 44.
I 13. CL supra, ch. IX, 130-131 and 162L
114. No. 28.
II y. No. 39.
1'6. This is the fifteenth-century prose translation of the second part of the Chanson de la Croisade
This translation widely utilized by Vaissete in place of the song which disappeared until the end of the
nineteenth century, is unfaithful to the original and systematically belittles Fulk, showing him as 1
Tee /w Tl tfaRor Istronski, 96^-99*. On the only unfavourable account in the actual song
see 95 . We shall return to this episode later (1216).
117. Stronski, 9S*, 99*-,04* To the narrative and anecdotes collected by the author must be added
the evidence of apostolate drawn from the Inquisition documents by Balme I 171-172 and n 180 and
Douais, Documents, I, LXXV and nn. 1 to 3 ; Cernai, 464; Bourbon, no. ic n. l
118. The letter of convocation of the council published by Mansi, XXII, 930-931 where this phrase
is found is m the name of the legate Robert de Courson. Pietro di Beneventum, however Mmself
convened the council he was to preside over—Cernai, no. 342. ’ nmiselt
119. Balme, I, 187. The delegation to Dominic of the powers of preacher against the heretics bv
Benevenmm? ™ W ^ Suffic,ently permanent—perhaps until the arrival of Pietro di
I 20.
Peter of Castelnau, Raoul de Fontfroide, Arnault de Citeaux, Navarre d’Acqs, Garsie de l’Orte,
 NOTES 493
Pietro di Beneventum. Guy de Carcassonne, the leader and St Dominic s friend, was likewise a vicar of
Arnault the legate.
i 2 i. In the Albigeois, in Constantinople, in East Prussia, Pomerania, Poland, Tuxany Ladner, 40—42.
122. Cf. supra, ch. VI, 84 and n. 30 to 36.
123. Supra, ch. VIII and n. 205 to 210.
124. Luchaire, 104-113; Pierron, 22—51; Ladner, 43-48.
125. PL, 215, 1514B. Cf. Pierron, 29-30.
126. Pierron, 172.
127. It is the word used by Luchaire, 113. It must be corrected by what is said supra, n. 74. An
initial stage of the Preaching, but not of the order.
128. Mandonnet. Cf. Mandonnet-Vicaire, I, 44. On the probability of a liaison between Innocent III,
Pietro di Beneventum and Dominic, see ibid., I, 172—176.
129. Jordan, no. 40. On the formula ‘qui diceret et esset’, taken from Apoc. II, 9, see Mandonnet-
Vicaire, I, 159, n. 10; cf. also MG, SS, V, 351 ; Annales regnifrancorum, ed. Kurze, 1895, ad annum 749.

NOTES TO CHAPTER XI
1. ‘Ordo predicatorum per quem horum temporum novissimorum periculis dispensatio divina
providit’—Jordan, no. 2. These words give a particular zest to the title of Guillaume de St Amour s
pamphlet De periculis novissimorum temporum. The theme had been launched by the Pope himself at the
close of 1 2 19 in the bull of recommendation of the order which would henceforward be classic : ‘Quoniam
abundavit iniquitas et refriguit charitas plurimorum, ordinem fratrum Predicatorum, sicut credimus
Dominus suscitavit’. Type IV1 and IV2—Appendix VI.
2. Cf. L. Oliger: Ein pseudo prophetischer Text aus Spanien uber die heiligcn Franziskus u. Dominikus (XIII
Jahrh), in Kirchen geschichtl. Studien P. Michael Bihl OEM. dargeboten—Colmar, 1941, pp. '3-2 8-
3. The following pages comment on the prophecies or visions collected by Frachet, I ch. i to 3 ;
study by Ladner, 49-64.
4. Ladner, 50-57. . . , .
5. Ladner, 59-60; M. Reeves, ‘Joachimist Expectations in the Order of Augustiman Hermits in
RTAM, XXV (1958) 111-114. . .
6. Ladner, 60-64, after the Expositio magnac prophetae Abbatis Joachim in Apocalypsim, Venice, 1527,
7. Schott, ‘Joachim, der Abt von Floris’, in Zeitschr.f. Kirchengcschichte, XXII (1901), 356-388.
8. Hefele-Leclerc, V, 1329.
9. Ladner, 13-14 and 50-55.
10. Ladner, 50-59 and n. 229.
11. Ladner, 24-26; Dereine, Chanoines, 391-392, 395, 403. nc
12. In primum Regum expositiones, PL, 79, '°oD, i«A, 154A, i*8B; In Ezechiel PL, 76, 1004C Ct.
Ladner 53-54, 67. On the authenticity of the former work, see P. Verbreken, Le commentaire de S.
Gregoire sur le premier b. des Rois’, in Revue Benedictine, LXVI (19j6), 1S9~2l'J-
13. PL, I96, 776C, 778C, 786C, 794B, etc. , /n , ,
14. Ladner, 61-64; Foberti, Gioacchino da Fiore e il Gioacchinismo antico et moderno (Padua 1942; 147,
protests against those who seek to recognise in an order, the ordo or class of men described by Joacum.
The text, however, lent itself to this interpretation since more than one of Joachim s contemporaries
took it in this way.
15. Ladner, 64, n. 254. ,
16 Epist la ed. Boehmer-Wiegandin Analekten zur Geschichte des Franciscus von Assist, lubingen 1930, 65.
’ ‘Hec est vere religio pauperum Crucifix! et ordo predicatorum, quos fratres Minores appellamus
—Historia Occidentalis, bk. II, ch. 32, Douai 1597, 349- Cf. Epist. Ia, ed. cited, 67. Cf. Frachet, 183 or
another example of the use of ordo predicatorum as a common noun. , v.
18. Historia Occidentalis, Douai 1597- 349- On this text and on the date at which Jacques de Vitry
became aware of the Preachers (1222?) see Mandonnet-Vicaire, I, 231-247.
19 Iordan, no. 40. Dominic received a bull from the chancellery on October 8th (Laurent, no. 62).
As a week or two usually elapsed between the Pope’s concession and delivery of the text by the
chancellery, it may be concluded that Dominic was in Rome and visiting the Pope at the end of September
or beginning of October. This places his departure from Toulouse at latest at the beginning of September.
20 For description of the Cottian Alps route, probably used by the travellers, see Balme, I, 30-
2i. The only absentee was the Bishop of Uzes, who was looking after the province in accordance with
Innocent’s prescriptions. Cf. list of participants from the Midi in Cernai, no. 572, n. 2 and Werner,
587-589.
22. Cernai, no. 571 and notes.

24! aamon,n°7 i-79’3n(lineV 3162 to 3 593)- The writer was not present at these debates but he was
informed about them where they took place; his impassioned and dramatic account is open to criticism
but is not without value—cf. A. Meyer’s introduction LXXI-LXXV.

26 lordin^no!' 40.' Already in 12n Dominic for preference used the title of preacher—Laurent
no 1 o The brethren, who received this function from their bishop in 1215, used the title from the time
of the following charter of Fulk, in July, 1216—Laurent, no. 70. They obtained it Irom the Pope six
months later—Laurent, no. 77. This confirms Jordan s statement.
27. For what follows, see Vicaire, Fondation, 132-136.
 494 NOTES

28. Mandonnet-Vicaire, II, 267-268 and n. 62.

29- Ibid., 244, n. 3 and 267, n. 62.
3°- Ibid., II, 244, n. 3.
3i- Not all, however—from 1207 to 1212 Prouille received gifts from the local people exclusively.
32. Scheeben, 146, 148, 161, 172 ; cf. account by A. Lemonnyer in AFP, I (193 1), 472-477.
33- Mandonnet-Vicaire I, 161—164, in particular n. 20.
34- No. 40.
3 5- Bernard Gui does not fail to emphasize this audacity—‘pro eo quod praedi cationis officium
majorum esset Dei in ecclesia praelatorum’—Gui, 400C.
36. Potthast, no. 2912; PL, 2134 1024-1023.
37. The canons of Val-des-Ecoliers near Paris had just taken the decision to accept only revenues and
alms, refusing lands and other property that could bring in money. Cf. letter of approval of the bishop
in September 1213-, in d’Achery, Spicilegium . . . , III, Paris, 1723, 384.
38. Laurent, no. 62.
39. Mandonnet-Vicaire, I, 163 and n. 20 and II, 242—243, n. 3—4.
40. Proces. Bon., no. 12, deposition of Guillaume de Montferrat. Cf. Brem, 102-103.
4r. This remains an hypothesis. If it be noted that the coming of St Francis to the Lateran Council
{ct. mjra, n. 64) and his visits to Ugolino at this date are even more hypothetical (the majority of the
critics do not date the cardinal’s friendship for the saint earlier than 1217—Brem, 111-118; Altaner,
Beziehungen, 9 ; on the other hand Zarncke, 103-106, shows that it was possible as early as 1210), it will
be seen to what extent a meeting of Dominic and Francis at Cardinal Ugolino’s is conjectural in 1 2 1 3
1 his meeting, the only one sufficiently attested by the documents (Thomas of Celano, Legenda secunda,
ch. 109), would take place m the first weeks of 1 22 1 ; a meeting of the two saints in Rome, which could
form the basis of the legend recounted by Frachet, I.P., ch. I §3, is just possible, but no more—Altaner,
Beziehungen, 22.

promulgat SUPP°Sed’ aS ls natural> tbat tbe canons were recorded in the order in which they were

43. Matt. IV, 4.

44. Hefele-Leclercq, V, 1340; c. 13, X, De officio judicis ord., I, tit. 31.
43. Canon 18—Flefele-Leclercq, V, 1101.
46. Flefele-Leclercq, V, 1341 ; c. 4, X, De magistris, V, tit. 3.
e ^nrofe^rlVtb6 P.reSen“ “ the St Etjenne chaPter in JuIY 16 of a certain G, described as capiscol,
e.g. protessor ol theology and sacristan—Laurent, no. 70. F
Fer™ f refleCti,0?/ °,f which it is impossible to say whether it comes from Dominic or from Pedro
BI to the P ' 7ihC deC1S10n* °f St Dominic-Ferrando, no. 3 ,. An identical reflection of Honorius
IB to the Parisian students on 19th January, 1217 will be found in Laurent, no. 76.
49* jje^e|e-Leclercq, V, 1342 ; c. 7, X, De statu monachorum III, tit. 3 r.
30. Hefele-Leclercq, V, 1344; c. 9, X, De religiosis. III, tit. 36.
31- In order to avoid the vague or even inaccurate interpretations of several historians we have
determined the significance of the terms of the 13 th canon by examining its later TdicTtLn^!
andonnet-Vicaire, I, 178 n. 38. The expression ‘canonical statute’ by which we sum up our conclusions
will make it possib e to understand the mandate given by Innocent IV in 1 243 to the hermits of Tuscanv
[mandamusj quantinus vos . . regulam beati Augustini et ordinem astumatis . . salvis obse^n^

t;dem ordinis non obvient institutis’’L-Empoli’

£ Tan? .ir*’ Me“Adda -d Meersseman, Connies.

aIth°Ugh Dereine,

how^th^fomiuia^es^lteh^'attii^^roftih^elevM^r^jhi? to:prev^OT/D6-^l^, ^
tf. llg-lTs-Tvina6%?edmVes!iOPed ^ ”K°£
swechselsim XII Jahrh’in d^uttinianuT//? 9T7X 3^6?*' “ StUdlC GeSchichte des °rden-
his'^efdRidetbetween9ffieUmonksr andT^ * perfect ]ife, the flow of which was in
Dereine, With dous success-cf.

304!'nH26Tirab°SChi’ ^ bumihatorum Monumenta, II, Milan, .767, .34. Cf. Mandonnet-Vicaire, II,

39- Mandonnet-Vicaire, I, 162, n. 19 and II, 193, n. 7,.

60. Ibid., II, 303—306.
6t Grundmann, 139-136 has shown in particular that the PoDe’s nnsitmr, j
modification in regard to the apostolic penitents. Cf. Mandonnet-Vicaire I 170 and n T (Tl °
176, thinks that Innocent had changed and that in canon 1 1 the red ’ r 3,8' Scheeben.
he was giving expression to his new position, for he was not the tvn reSPonsiblllty *°r which was his,
That, however, was what he didin the" Alffigensiam affair"01 ^ ^ t0 >idd t0 the prdates’
62. In 1210 the Pope had allowed Raymond VI to defend himself against the accusation of murder and
 NOTES 495
heresy, but the legates ordered by the Pope to hear his defence in September 12 io at Saint-Gilles would
not allow him to make it, alleging his failure to keep his earlier promises. Having lied as to the details,
why should he not lie as to the substance of the debate? It is true that in the case of a Raymond VI, the
procedure of the oath of liberation scarcely provided a guarantee!—Luchaire, 168-172 ; cf. Pissard, 31,
40 ff.
63. Mansi, XXII, 1069-1070. Cernai, no. 572 and 263, n. 1.
64. This is the opinion of Grundmann, 142-148, after a meticulous investigation. The expression of
Jacques de Vitry, who in regard to the Franciscans in 1216 drew attention to their institutiones sanctas
a domino papa approbatas’ should be added—Epist. Ia, ed. Boehmer-Wigand, Tubingen 193°) •
65. Mandonnet-Vicaire, II, 305; Grundmann, 134.
66. Jordan, no. 41.
67. Mandonnet-Vicaire, I, 166 and n. 25.
68. Proces. Bon., no. 25. ,
69. The documents which show that the sentiments of John of Navarre were those of all the brethren,
although no indication justifies the supposition that there was any sort of disappointment in the order,
either in 1216 or later, on the subject of the Sovereign Pontiff’s reply, will be found in Mandonnet-
Vicaire, I, 181-183 and n. 66, and in Vicaire, Fondation, 137-141. 1 he reply even seemed to them so
favourable that to explain it their thoughts turned to a miraculous intervention of Providence—
Constantino, no. 21.
70. Jordan, no. 45. , . , , ... „
71. Jordan, no. 41. The insertion belongs to the second edition of the Libellus.
7*- Canon 15 of Nicea (324)—Hefele-Leclercq, I, 5-97-601.
The travellers were in Narbonne in the middle of February.
73-
As Raymond VI and his son did—Chanson, V, 3733-3739 I Vaissete, VI, 476-477.
74-
7 5- Vaissete, VI, 477—481. . . „
76.
j6. Laurent no. 66. Cf. the ‘vobis domino Dominico’ which shows that Dominic was present. Un
the other hand, an impersonal reference to him in a charter of Prouille of 21st April, 1216 does not
necessarily signify his presence but merely the superior authority he always had over Prouille Laurent,

n°7768'On 28th February, 1216, Simon was still in Narbonne—Rhein, no. 141 i °n March 5th he was at
Carcassonne—Rhein, no. 142; on March 7th he was already in Toulouse—Vaissete, VI, 482 as also
on 8th when he took the oaths, in the presence of Fulk and other prelates—Rhein, no. 143 and Cernai
no. 573 and n. 2. By March nth Simon was at Rodez. This rapidity of movement is typical of
the man.
78. Vaissete, VI, 482.
79. Jordan, no. 41.
80. Proces. Bon., no. 2, 33 ; Jordan, no. 42, 48, 87, 88. . ,
81. In March 1217, in a charter, William Claret is called ‘brother of the preaching of St Remain —

^^"a kte tradition which is represented only by Etienne de Salagnac (MOPH, XXII, 150, 1.9) and
Bernard Gui (Gui, 400). Jordan, no. 41, seems to indicate Toulouse.
83. This was the opinion of Echard, I, 1 2, n. E, who does not give his reasons.
84. I Const., II, ch. XVII (in regard to the general chapter) and Jordan, no. 109—cf. Bom. Vlll, M-
q r ^udtq ch. Ill, I, 36—37 nn. 43 47* . t 1 »
86. Jordan, no. 42. The meaning of Eligere regulam is ‘adopt a rule in common , not choose one
among a number. In actual fact, there was never a question of choosing anything else. ,
87: Dominican breviary, August 28th, office of St Augustine, jth lesson of Matins and 3rd antiphon

°f8L8aUHumbert R eg., I, 45- Scheeben, 192, is mistaken when he declares that the inspiration of the rule
of St Augustine was ™t ‘apostolic’. The document mentioned by Humbert is nothing more or less than
the ordo monasterii—Mandonnet-Vicaire, II, 129.
89. Salagnac, IV, 2 (MOPH, XXII, 171-172).
90. Humbert, Beg., I, 51.
91. Ibid.
T, I On d* reception the Preacher, me,

SSXZ, canon—Mansi, XIX, Mandonne.-Vidre, II.

Dereine, Statut canonique.
95. Canons 12 to 31—Mansi, XXH, 945-946.
96. Canon XXI; already indicated by canon 14 of Avignon—Mansi, XXU, 792.

97- Canon 25.

98. Canon 27.

99
100-
CCanons3i63T,7 24, 26. The Mansi edition is very defective; the sentences are incomplete, the
I OO.
titles diSnted do not correspond to the content. The ‘districte praecipimus’ refers to the wearing of
£ surplice. As to the motive which dissuaded the canons from wearing the surplice this was
poverty5but relaxation—cf. ch. 20 of Historia Compostellana, referred to by Heredia, 317, «• .
101. Supra, ch. V, I, 7of and n. 64.
1 o2. No. 42.
 496 NOTES

103. ‘Consuetudo est jus scriptum, more statutum’, Evrard de Bethune, cited by Du Cange, sub h.v.
This was already more or less the definition of Gratien, c. 4, Dist. I, ed. Friedberg, 2.
104. Dereine, Chanoines, 386-390; cf. supra, ch. Ill, I, 36 and nn. 40-41.
104. Dereine, Springiersbach.
106. Humbert, Reg., II, 2-3.
107. Vaissete, IV, 380, no. 21; V. Leclercq, Hist, litter, de la France, XXI (1847), 497-398; Balme,
478—479,and n. 2. Salvan, Histoire generate de l’Eglise de Toulouse, II, Toulouse 1849, 410, mentions
Dominic’s close relations with Jean Ier, Premonstratensian abbot of La Capelle, near Toulouse, where,
he says, Dominic liked to rest. He gives no other reference except ‘our chronicles’.
108. Cf. supra, ch. VIII, n. 140 and Appendix VIII, nos. 11 and 14. Among the saint’s relations with
the Premonstratensians should be mentioned the miracle he wrought in the presence of one of them_
Proces. Thol., no. 9.
109. The presence of the regula conversorum (I Const., II, ch. 37, § 1 and 3, 226-227) at the end of the
second distinction would seem to date it from 1220 (Vicaire, Documents, ii4and 183).It must, however,
be noted that it is placed after the end of this distinction, even after the ‘extraordinary’ statutes.
Moreover, it is related to the first distinction which it completes by serving as a substitute for certain
prescriptions of the first text inapplicable to lay brothers or sisters. There is no reason against assigning
to itthedateof 1216—Mandonnet-Vicaire, II, 223 and n. 44. Laurent, no. 70, mentions the lav brothers
together with the canons in i 2 16. J

V 11 °' T,he follo"'ing P‘1ges are based on the critical study—‘La legislation des Precheurs’, in Mandonnet-
Vicaire, II, 203—239 and on Appendix V, The Consuetudines of 1216.
edited'bvR MvanT/ B.a,SSan° I788’ 323-348 ; Antwerp, 1737 (in fo.) 893 ff. The oldest text
edited by R. Van Waefelghem, Les premiers statuts de l’Ordre de Premontre’, in Analectes de FO. de
Pr IX (,913), published separately, does not enter into the question. F. Lefebvre, Les statuts de Premontre
reformes sur les ordres de Cregorie IX-Louvain ,946, X-XIV dates the text with which we are
concerned from about 1174.
^ M2. ‘Sicut scriptum est in regula canonicorum’, in the ‘regula conversorum’, dist. II, ch. 37 (I Const.,

113. Prologue: dist. I ch. 14 and 24; regula conversorum (I Const., 194, 2o2, 211, 226-227) On the
use, and disappearance, of the term canonicus in the legislation of the Preachers, see Mandonnet-Vicaire

iSSSOTs: sssr ’•*

1 14. Ch. 14, / Const., 202.
xv"' <■*•>■ <*-»•» •-«
order.' ^ ^ ^ '9- ^ indicated bF Jordan- *>0. 42, will be recognized, even to their

116 The graded system of penances of Premontre, inherited by the Dominican order was much
more developed thim that of the other canons. It placed at the disposal of the Preachers who were to be
ectors of souls, a remarkable means of formation and of refinement of conscience

3o;h,7;2^r!t" Th COnten^lacVf character °f Dominican life in his bull of December

3otn, 1220 Laurent, no. 122. The reversal of the situation effected by the genius of St Dominic will

^r'T;byrr:^:h;he it r 7th that a innocent m to peter °f ^

1220 it signifi/d that life. <7^an^on7t7icMr7^72^73 37n™i78 4°n * ^ I,fc' >"
m8. The possibility cannot be excluded that this text may have been internolated in
original chapter De noHciis indicated in the original list of the chapter titles of V prologue 7/ Con!

CTr ”rien“"d •'“4 »d the are

cathedrale de Maguelonne, Sherbrooke, 't-fo, 64, ‘ ' ' de 1 0rdre de St en usage d la

For the restitution of the original4t7xThcV%pendLaVltnoa\C°lT^ d°W"^° U"’ was ™odified in 1236.
not primitive. Appendix V, no. 2. It is possible that the list of penalties is

exlstence^of a Chapter on'fauffs*'of medium gravity in'"the or$LVl otZ’l?6 ^ ""

Pr6montr£, see Appendix VIII, no. 9. ' 8 ‘ text of tbe Preachers, as in that of
123. Mandonnet-Vicaire, II, 224—226

124. Ch. 8 (I Const., 199). Cf. Luke X, 7-8.

126. Ch. 22 (I Const., 208). Cf. infra, ch. XVI, n. 69.

habere complacuit;’^This^gives'a'j^ovisioiw?character-6to^ffeTformula!11 ^ reditUS ^ adhuC

conflict between co 1 lectors of thes? ^Ule!l^i,7septfn!tr^nT^ ^7—£^'7 gave.rise in ,2I7 to a

129. Frater Dominicus rigide et perfecte servih-n rp„„i ’ 7 baurent> n°- 81.
precipiebat eis quod regulam plene observarent et Id' 8 am q.uf,ad se et hortabatur fratres, et
Numerous repo’rts of L T’ «'

reports it is primarily the observances of 12 J6 that are in question. 1 Vica,re> n. 214-218. In such
 NOTES 497
130. The Bolognese witnesses of the canonization process mention the saint’s legislation about thirty
times under the terms of ordo, constitutio, regula—this latter term is repeated sixteen times—Proces. Bon.,
no. 6, 12, 22, 25-, 28, 31, 38, 41, 43, 47, 48-
131. Cf. supra, n. 11 2.
132. Ch. 14 (/ Const., 202). This was again the formula used in 1 2 19 in Bologna—Frachet, 133.
133. Mandonnet-Vicaire, II, 226 and n. 63, 66.
134. ‘Ego frater N. offerens trado meipsum Ecclesiae sanctae Genitricis Dei Mariae, sanctique
illius’.
133. ‘Et promitto conversionem morum meorum et stabilitatem in loco, etc.’ On the equivalence:
conversatio (or conversio) morum and communio (or communitas), cf. loc. cit., n. 63.
136. Ibid., n. 67. On the evolution of the idea of stability in the twelfth century (from stability in
loco to stability in ordine)—ibid., 231 and n. 79, 80.
137. De Valous, Le monachisme clunysien des origines an XVe siecle, Paris—Liguge 1 93 V. 76—77> who
quotes the expression of Peter the Venerable, Ep. II, 22—PL, 189, 237 the monk is the serl ol his
abbot’. Cf. Vicaire, Fondation, 126—127.
138. Meersseman, Loi penale, 997.
139. Cernai, no. 48.
140. Mandonnet-Vicaire, II, 244, n. 3.
141. Titles given by Fulk in the charter of July, 1216—Laurent, no. 70.
142. Laurent, no. 6, 23, 23, 66. On the power ol Dominic as a result of these professions made into
his hands, see Vicaire, Fondation, 398-602.
143. Prologue (I Const., 194).
144. Cernai, 373 and n. 2. On April 30th he was in Paris with de Montfort—Cernai 374, n. 1.
143! The first fortnight of July—the deed is dated July; Fulk, moreover, was already in Nimes on
19th July—Vaissete, VIII, 694.
146. ‘Ammoniti et adducti precibus venerabilis patris nostri’—Laurent, no. 70.
147. Was this a pure coincidence? In Toulouse St Dominic thus received the Arnaud-Bernard hospice
and the chapel of St Romain. The two leaders among the burghers of the white confraternity, that is
the orthodox party in Toulouse, were named respectively Amaud Bernard and Pierre de St Romain—
Puylaurens, ch. XV.
148. Laurent, no. 70.
149. In October 1216—Gallia Christiana, XIII, 77, cf. infra, n. 171-172.
130. Cf. supra, ch. X, 176-7 and nn. 93-94-
i£i. ‘Domina Raimunda quae fuit uxor Thoinae de Inter ambabus Aquis , Guiraud, Cartulaire, II, 4.
132. Deeds of 23rd and 28th October, 1216—Laurent, no. 7 1-73 ; Balme, II, 63-63.
133. ‘Edificatum est claustrum cellas habens ad studendum et dormiendum desuper satis aptas .
No. 44.
154. Cf. supra, n. 36.
133. Salagnac, II, 9; MOPH, XXII, 12-13; Jordan, nos. 48 and 31.
1 36. Jordan, no. 31.
137. Jordan, no. 49.
138. Jordan, nos. 49 and 31.
139. Jordan, no. 31. Likewise before the summer of 1217.
160. Ibid. ‘(Menus* corresponds to the name Odier and not Oderic. Likewise before the summer o

161. Already present among the brethren on 23rd October, 1216, when he bore the title of prior of
St Romain—Laurent, no. 71.
162. Gui, 439 and ms. Toulouse 273, First series, f. 112A, cited in Pelisson, 7, n. 2. .
163 No. 44. The word circiter was introduced as a correction in the second edition. Bernard Cui
made every effort to discover the names of 13 brethren of Dominic in 1216; he had no other source
than that at our disposal—Fratres qui cum beato Dominico regulam elegerunt, Salagnac 149 1 S7- c iee en’
, 89 enumerates 14 brethren, but in the all round figure of 20 or 22, without saying on what his statement
is based—perhaps on Echard, I, 16, n. K, which adds to the brethren mentioned by Gui, 3 brethren
from the Midi, who were founders of convents from 1219-1221 : Amaud, Raymond du Fauga, Ponce de
Samatan.
164. Clearly omitting the vow of obedience to a superior.
16c. He had loyally kept it until April 21 st, 1216—Laurent, no. 68.
166. Explicitly affirmed for the clerics from 12 16, as was the white colour, by the regula conversorum,
Dist II ch 37 (/ Const., 227). At this time the scapular included an inseparable hood, came down to
the knees and covered a little of the top part of the arms. Thus the lay-brethren, who wore no cappa,
could have in addition to a grey scapular of the same shape and size as that of the canons, a long, wide
coloured scapular, which formed a real cloak (like a chasuble of ample shape). On the dress of the
brethren, cf. the decisive dissertations of Echard, I, 71-77- The scapular-hood said to be St Dominic s,
formerly preserved at Prouille, was of the type indicated for clerics Percin, 23, no. 6.
167 Canon 26 of the Council of Montpellier-Mansi, XXII, 945- It is attested by John of Navarre,
no 26 The rule, however, made no mention of it. Dominic and the Italian brethren did not wear it.
Thus it was the habit without surplice that Reginald saw in his vision of the Virgin Mary—Jordan
no. 37. Dominic succeeded in eliminating it from the order, which was a considerable economy and
accentuated the poverty of the habit.
j 68. In accordance with the canons of Montpellier.
 498 NOTES

169. Simon had spent only two or three days in Toulouse since he had been awarded the county, in
March, 1216. He came back there, dramatically, in September, to leave again in the middle of the
month—Cernai, f87 and n. 1. He had just imposed a heavy fine on the inhabitants of Toulouse.
It was then that he must have restored the considerable number of churches, that Raymond VI or his
vassals were retaining, to the detriment of the ruined see. The trace of the operation by which de
Montfort restored to Fulk the churches which the latter handed over to Dominic has been preserved_
see Constant, 312. r
170. On December 1st, 1212, statute II; Mansi, XXII, 836.
17 1. Gallia Christiana XIII, 77.
172. See at the same period the identical attitude of Guillaume Peyre of Albi. He incorporated a
large number of his churches in communities of monks and canons, the better to ensure the parochial
ministry, at the risk of greatly enfeebling his authority—Lacger, Albigeois, 600.
173. His letter is known by the Pope’s reply on January 28th, 1 2 1 7—Horoy, Honorii III opera omnia
II, no. 219, p. 179; regesta—Pressutti, no. 287, 31. Since it was not the Pope’s custom to reply
immediately, Fulk s letter must be dated October or November.
174. Jordan, no. 43.
17 3- Canons XXX and XXXI of Montpellier had just fixed this minimum number for the priories of
incorporated churches—Mansi, XXII, 946. F
176. Church of the Holy Trinity of Loubens, which appears in the privilege of confirmation of 22nd
December, 1216—Laurent, 74. The localization of Jordan, no. 43, ‘in villa Apamiensi’ (i.e. in the
town ol Pamiers) is approximative. Loubens is about eight miles south of Pamiers.
177. is church is called by Jordan, no. 43, Ste Marie de Lescure. This name is found in the privilege
of confirmation of 12 16-Laurent, no. 74. No church of this title, however, is known between Sorefe
u> aurens. In the French edition of this book it has been suggested that this may be N.D. de la
reche, a church partial y situated on the territory of Lescure, a pontifical fief, which since 1214 the
Pope had been concerned to bring back to orthodoxy. Lescure d’Albi, however, is 35 miles or so from
Soreze. It may thus be supposed that Dominic in turn received in 1213 a church situated between
n“rf> and Pu.yIaurens: m 1216, N.D. de Lescure, of Albi. Jordan probably mistakenly combined the
two items of information. Canon Becamel, of Albi, in a letter has brought forward the objection that
no document gives to N. Dame de la Dreche the name of N.D. de Lescure; that the nameof Lescure is
moreover, fairly common in the Midi and that there is no reason to think a priori of Lescure of Albi •
that Bernard Cm, who lived at Albi and there collected all the Dominican souvenirs of the early dav 4
makes no comparison of this kind; that Gui copies exactly Jordan’s localization and that there is therefore
no reason for holding it m suspicion. As a hypothesis Canon Becamel indicates a N.D de Lescout between
Soreze and Puylaurens, the only N.D. of that neighbourhood. Balme, II, 47, n. 1 and 77 n 2 had
already thought of this. The convergence of Gui, Jordan and the bull of confirmation as to the wording

NOTES TO CHAPTER XII

™ of Garrigue and ,„h„ of

second (of whom Balme was thinkinu II ij orrnf'r> however, remained in Toulouse; the

Iuc;i/fh! ...
of ajrd and™,,* OetTCOYY, '“j’'“"'j' Thm‘lYdYY'"”’"'' fn"' ,h're thir“rs
appointed a vicar during his absence. 3 ‘ n° electlon- Dominic had simply
4. Cf. supra, n. 1 and 3.
3- Proces. Ron., no. 38.

Cistercian nuns, nefr Ctongel'ubj'ecJ JfTc'idt'.» (MhsfpTember” Cf ‘j'jV' 0,1 ->bbey of

ITT.“ i ** XxfiYYY,'n'd‘n J
8. Jordan, no. 44.

4,Y C"nai' ”• XXV-XXVIlii CWn, ,». ; Vaissete VI,

FolYoo"^^™1;^^
inhabitant, SinWs n.ercg, Puyl.nren,, ch. XXVI, a„ribY,„ t
Thich the song credit,

11. Cernai, no. 3:85-; Chanson, vv. 3334-3631.

12. Puylaurens, ch. XXVII.
13. Epistula, 1, ed. Boehmer—Wiegand, 66.
 NOTES 499
14. The Pope was at the Vatican from 21st November to the end of December—Potthast, no. 3361
to £404.
ij. Tangl, 229, 233, 306. On the establishment of the Dominican privilege on the basis of the
twelfth century privileges, especially those of Citeaux, see Schreiber, II, 367—368.
16. Even though we are in possession of the original and this text has been edited over and over again
(Laurent, no. 74, cf. p. 87), even in facsimile, the only satisfactory edition is that of ASOP, XII (1913-
1916), 262-264; cf- Loenertz, Prouille 489.
17. Vicaire, La bulk de confirmation, 177 to 179. The so-called bull Nos attendentes (Laurent, no. 73),
to which the name of confirmation has often been given since the sixteenth century, is a fanciful
composition of the fourteenth century—cf. Ibid., 1 76-192.
18. Pietro di Beneventum could not have been in Rome at this time but was perhaps in Aragon
Zimmermann, 83, 86.
19. Pressutti, I, no. 33, 60, 70, 72, 130, 143.
20. The formula concerns the newly cleared lands which the brethren cultivated with their own hands
—Schreiber, I, 239 and II, 373 and n. 1. This only applied to the gardens of the Preachers.
21. The privilege granted the right of burial which the donation of St Romain had refused (Laurent,
no. 70).
22. Laurent, no. 86.
23. In February, 1219—Laurent, no. 92.
24. Mandonnet-Vicaire, II, 231-232 and nn. 78 and 84.
2f. Bull of June 16th, 1201—Tiraboschi, Vet. Humiliatorum Monumenta, II, Milan 1767, 141.
26. Bull of April 6th, 1210 (Potthast, no. 3968)—PL, 216, 242.
27. Cf. supra, ch. XI, 193- . 111 r
28. Villa de Cassenolio. Villa at this period signified a town without ramparts, which was the case oi
dismantled Casseneuil.
29. Jordan, no. 40.
30. Ibidem, no. 42.
31. From December 22nd, 1216 to January 21 st, 1217.
32. After January 2nd, 1217—Potthast, no. f4o8.
33. Bulls of January 17th, 19th, 20th—Potthast, nos. 5414, 3417-4419, 54^6, 3427.
34. Bulls of December 3th, 1216, January 23rd and 27th, 1217—Potthast, no. 3380-3381, 3430,

S4-3S-
3S- Bulls of January 1 8th -Potthast, nos. 3421-3423.
36. Cernai, 468 and n. 2.
The letter is known by the Pope’s reply—Horoy, 219; Pressuti, I, no. 287.
37-
38. Potthast, no. 3423; Pressutti, I, no. 263.
Potthast, no. 3424. Denifle, Chartularium, 83-84; Laurent, no. 76.
39-
‘Qui . . . iam diu secus frumenta doctrine sedentes melius amodo fructificare valeant trans-
40
plantati . . .’ cf. supra, 197, n. 48.
41. Potthast, no. 3428 and 3434; Laurent, no. 77 (21.1.1217). YY„
42 Thomas de Cantimpre, Bonum universale de apibus, Douai, 1627, 31. Salagnac, II, 1 (MOPH, ,
13-14) relates the same thing with slightly different details. Neither explicitly refers to the letter of
2 1 st lanuary, 1217 (Salagnac’s words could be interpreted in this sense; according to him the incident
occurred after the Council of 1 2 13—the Pope, concerned with regulating several points of the negotium
fidei of the Albigeois, decided to write to Dominic and his brethren; but Dominic was m Rome, qui e
near him) but it can only be this letter that is in question. The substance of the anecdote is authentic
cf Vicaire, Fondation, 394, n. 1. It can be noted indeed in the original, that in the address of this letter,
the word Predicatoribus has been substituted by the Curia for the word predicant,bus, scratched out—
Koudelka, 94-100. Echard, I, 14, G has clearly grasped the importance of the insertion of the name ot
preacher in the address.
43. I Const. II, ch. XXXII § i.

It'. ‘Officium predicationis ad quod deputati sunt . . .’-bull of April 26th ,2.7; ‘officium
predicationis ad quod sunt ex professione sui ordims deputati . . . —bull of 18th January,
Laurent, no. 87 and 127.
4.6. Phil. IV, 13 ; Acts VIII, 4; II Tim. IV, 2-3.
47 On the significance of the formula in remissi onem peccatoruri iniungens, equally utilized by the bulls
of*; crusade cf. supra, ch. V, n. ,09. Salagnac, I, no. 3, regards this provision as a benefit comparable
to that of confirmation. . T
48. Decretal of Alexander III, c.x.V, tit. 33 (Jaffe), no. 14037. Cf. SchreiberIj 47 S5' ,
Decretal of Innocent IV, c.I.VI, De verborum significatione V, tit. 12 (Potthast, no. 13127).
to Suren no 81 Loenertz, 7, n. 6 has shown that it is in error that the Uurent «hUo» has
Fr Predkatores where the basic copy of the text, in ms. Toulouse 490, everywhere has Ft. Predicates.
Percin, 21, no. is more correct, but not wholly so.
Cf. supra, ch. VII, 107, 109 and 111.
ji-
5 2- Ibid., nn. 111 to 113.
Laurent, no. 93; Appendix VII.
S3-
?4-
BuUofFeW^/'.ith, 121 S-Laurent, no. 84. Charter of the 14th March, 12.9, in Bologna-
SS-
Laurent, no. 93.
 S0° NOTES

56. Horoy, 219; regesta, Pressutti, I, no. 287.

57- Potthast, no. 5436; Laurent, no. 78.
38. Werner, $8$, nos. 65 and 66.
59- Letter of January 21st, 1214—Potthast, no. 4900—PL, 216, 964.
60. Werner, 486, no. 113: De Datia episcopus. This is the only reference to Scandinavia. In these
conditions, it is impossible to doubt, whatever has been said (e.g. Metzler, in LTK, I, 419), that Andrew
of Lund was absent in 1 2 1 5.
61. It would seen that the archbishop eventually recovered himself and came to see Innocent III in
the spring of 1216. In a bull of January 25th, 1217 (Potthast, no. 4432) Honorius referred to a visit of
the Archbishop to Rome and to a favour he received on this occasion, shortly before the Pope’s death_
Horoy II, 209-210; Bullarium Danicum, no. 113. Moreover in 1215 at Riba, Andrew Sunesen confirmed
privileges of the local church which Innocent in turn confirmed on June 3rd, 1216, in Rome. Now
Riba is the port from which the Danes embarked for Rome (passing Bruges or Dunkirk, then across
France), Samling af Adkomster for Kibe Domkapitel, ed. O. Nielsen, Copenhagen, 1869, 35-36. (Here
thanks are due to Dr Jarl Gallen, who has communicated these facts.) If Andrew Sunesen had
really come to Rome in the spring of 1216, he did not return there in person at the beginning of the
following year. Otherwise his presence at this latter date could almost be affirmed, so much does the
number, nature, tone and gradation of the bulls over the lapse of a considerable time seem to manifest it.
First of all, personal privileges; then powers or favours for persons of the kingdom or institutions of the
archbishopric; to crown the whole, general powers as primate and visitor; lastly, a final personal
Pj‘vl.^e Potthast, nos. 5431, 5432. 343^, 5439. 344H 3444. 3443 (Pressutti, no. 312 should be
added), 5455 between January 25th and February nth. The bull of February 28th, rio. 5478, which
orms part of a collection of identical letters, no longer presupposes the presence of Andrew of Lund or
the ambassadors.
62. One of the motives put forward by the archbishop for not coming to the Council was the
excessively small number of horses imposed on him by the letter of convocation—according to the 4th
canon of the Third Council of the Lateran, to which the letter of convocation referred (Hefele-Leclercq
r \l32) VTeuC°U d notJbe1mo,re than from 4° to 50! Doubtless the Pope had limited them still more,’
lor the archbishop demanded at least 30 ‘ad crucis negotium promovendum’ PL, 216, 966 He wanted to
be accompanied by numerous important laymen whom he would engage in the crusade. In 1217 there
was no longer any obstacle to the embassy being accompanied by important people, with the precise
object of preparing the crusade in the East and the expedition to Esthonia (1219)
63. Potthast, nos. 5450 to 5452, 5459, 5460, etc.
64. Nos. 5440, 5456, 5471, 5479.
65. Nos. 5430.
66. See beginning of Honorius’ first bull of January 2yth-‘Ille charitativae dilectionis affectus et
sine era devotio char 1 tat is quam ad personam nostram, dum essemus in minori officio constituti habuisse
ignosceHs, nos mvitant ut te prosequimur praerogativa gratiae specialis et hisquae secundum Deum a
nobis duxens expetenda bemgnum impertiamur assensum’—Horoy, II, 209 (Potthast, no. 5412)
67. rotthast, no. 5431,5432. ''
68. No. 5445 of February 1st, 1217.
69. Nos. 5459 and 5481.
70. Nos. 5459.

rf nlnal,privilege to Ani?,rew of Lund, on February 11 th—Potthast, no. 5455. Cf 4820 and also tai 1

wJwhoiTo& JeiTS**'7°'dl,ed b“' “ r—reoi's.£Jj„

r.tSSS'J" 'nd '5 " ' ’,6' HI. preoccupations „ recrui,,™,,

75. Bourbon, no. 158.

dMnotmeituntU Llr ^ ^ ^ but n0t no‘ 13 (recluse of St Anastasia) whom he

72, 83, 84; Cecilia, no. 9; Bourbon, no 158 ’ J 3<5; P,oe“- Th°1' no' 20 = Frachet-
78. Jordan, no. 46-47, 62.

in ** P-sentation and meeting with St Francis

have kept silence about, and which is supposed inUoL ^ ^ T™ whlch Dominic is ^ to
to an unknown master of the Preachers of whirb Fr an e‘ on by some unknown Friar Minor
Frachet) know nothing, has no historical foundation. AltanerTLTeWr^Ts ^h^iographers (before

Innocent m °f the ^ thf^t^n-c^t^r:

Midi thought that Do,Unit’s mindh^ Uxm ntle up by 'a revSon^pT^'t^I ^ °f

however, was in no need of this prodigy. What he had learnt in Rn IZ !it , ThoL\no; 7o- Dominic,
and on the supernatural plane, was certainly sufficient to prompt his gesturl"^^’'^, n 62” hUma"
 NOTES S° 1
81. Cf. the scruple he felt at the time of his death over what was a very natural confidence—Proces.
Bon., no. 5; Frachet, 75. He hardly ever spoke much of himself—Mandonnet-Vicaire, I, 144, n. 19;
B. Jarrett, St Dominic, London, 1957, p. 176.
82. Constantino, no. 25.
8 3. The Byzantine artists have transmitted to the Latins the staff as symbol of a messenger, in particular
of an angel-messenger; whence Gabriel’s staff in the Annunciation, which soon acquired its cross and
fleur-de-lis and eventually became the stem of a lily. Here the staff signified the mission of the Roman
Church, the well-head of the Dominican preaching. It was a power—whence the interpretation of staff
and book by Salagnac, I, 2 (MOPH, XXII, 8): ‘quasi geminas claves scientie scilicet et potentie’. Cf. the
remarks of Humbert, Reg., I, 48 on the ‘status nuntii’ of the preacher. For further indications see
Vicaire, Fondation, 595, n. 4.
84. Humbert, Reg., II, 38, notes the widening of Dominic’s horizon on the morrow of the confirma¬
tion.
85. Proces. Bon., no. 12. 86. Constantino.no. 26—after John XII, 24.
86a. A letter from the Pope would therefore be needed before any of its provisions could be set
aside. Cf. an example of April or May 1219, Frachet, 25-27.
87. Supra, n. 40. 88. Laurent, no. 79 : Justis petentium.
89. Thus a letter from the Pope was necessary, to be able to deviate from these provisions. For an
example in fact, dating from April or May, 1219, see Frachet, 2 3-27.
90. Laurent, no. 86.
91. Humbert, Reg., II, 39.
92. There was no reason for staying on in Rome after February 7th. He could have been in Toulouse
by the beginning of March, 1217. There he got the chapter of the convent to adopt an agreement which
was afterwards concluded with the monks of St Hilaire in March, 1217—Laurent, no. 80. Balme, II,
119, n.a. would have liked to change the month (May instead of March) because he believed in the
legend of the saint’s teaching in the Curia on the epistles of St Paul during Lent 1217. Altaner, Dominikus,
201-207, has destroyed this legend.
93. The charter of March, 1217 (Laurent, no. 80) mentions this common chapter of the brethren of
Toulouse and Prouille.
94. Laurent, no. 80. The date of the month is not given. It could be the 3rd, 10th, 17th or 31st—
the 24th would create a difficulty, for it was Good Friday. Since, however, the style of the Incarnation
was followed, it could only be the 31st—Koudelka, 113.
95. Ibidem, Cf. Balme’s commentary, II, 123-125.
96. Cemai, no. 587-612; Puylaurens, ch. XXVIII: Chanson, vv. 5653-8491, Vaissete, VI, 497-517.
97. Chanson, v. 5832.
98. Ibid., v. 8455.
99. ‘Et invocato sancto spiritu, convocatisque fratribus . . .’—Jordan, no. 47. There was no more
suitable day for this gesture than this feast. Moreover, it was only at the beginning of May that he was
able to join de Montfort in the course of the latter’s move from Agen (April 18th) to Carcassonne (May
7th), then into eastern Provence (Cemai, no. 591, n. 4 and Rhein, 155). It is known that he actually
consulted Simon.
100. Jordan, no. 47.
101. Cf. supra, n. 106.
102. Proces. Bon., no. 26. Cf. Jordan, no. 62.
103. Proces. Bon.f no. 26.
104. Traditional date, retained by Salagnac, V, 3 (MOPH, XXII, 15) in an anecdote which contains
anachronisms (cf. supra, ch. IX, n. 72). It is confirmed by the chronology of the journey of the brethren
of Paris: one of the groups, travelling fast, arrived in Paris on September 12th, which implies departure
in the middle of August—Jordan, no. 52.
105. Jordan, nos. 47-48, indicates no other chapter of the brethren but that of Toulouse, m which
Dominic made known his plan. This, however, does not exclude the possibility of a supreme assembly
st Prouille.
106. Salagnac, II, 3 (MOPH, XXII, 15). The indication is linked with that of the date of August 15th,
the value of which has been seen (supra, n. 104). Etienne de Salagnac perhaps took this detail, as he did
many others, from Peter Seila; or else from a tradition of Prouille.
107. Jordan, no. 48. , , ,
108. Laurent, no. 9 2 (February 1219); no. 111 (March 31 st, 12 2 o); but no longer in charter no. 121
(December 27th, 1220).
109. Jordan, no. 48.
no. Schreiber, II, 324, n. 4 and 331, n. 3.
in. Laurent, no. 74, p. 86.
112. Ferrando, no. 32. St Dominic probably wanted to be free to go away on a mission.
113. It will be noted that when Dominic in 1219 sent Reginald to Paris to represent him, the latter
found himself higher than Matthew in authority, and gave the habit—Jordan, nos. 61 and 66.
114. Laurent, no. 92.
115. Jordan, nos. 54, 62 ; Frachet, 150; Salagnac, 10; Proces. Bon., nos. 24 and 26.
116. Proces. Bon., no. 26.
117. Salagnac, I, 8 (MOPH, XXII, 11). . . ,
118. Jordan, no. 51. On the earliest brethren as a whole, cf. Bernard Gui—Salagnac, 149-157, with
the learned notes of Kappeli.
17—S.D.
 SO 2 NOTES

119. Jordan, no. 31 ; Proces. Bon., no. 26.

120. Laurent, nos. 92, in, 122, 139, 149; Jordan, nos. 48, 31, 64; Frachet, 248; Salagnac, 12,
1 Jo, 1J1 > Bourbon, nos. 8, 268; MOPH, XVIII, 17, 79-82; Echard I, 92; Chapotin: Histoire des
Dominicains de la province de France, Rouen, 1898, 114s. j after 1223.
1 2 1. Jordan, no. 31.
122. Ibid.; Cecilia, no. 3 (Altaner, 169, too easily excludes the presence ofFr Lawrence the English¬
man in Rome in 1221, asserted by Sister Cecilia). On the other hand, there is nothing to say that the
Fr Lawrence of Frachet, 225, was the Englishman. The Fr Lawrence, master in theology, mentioned by
Pelisson, 37 and 39, was Lawrence of Fougeres—Echard, I, 100.
i23- Jordan, nos. 31-32; Proces. Bon., nos. 23-29; Salagnac, 133. f after 1236—Balme, I, 128,
n. i.
124. Cf. supra, 233 and n. 6, where the references to the sources will be found.
123. Cf. supra, ch. I, 18 ; Balme, III, 80.
126. Jordan, nos. 31-32; Rqymundiana (MOPH, VI), 2nd series, 14, 33, 102; Diago, Historia de la
Provincia de Aragon, Barcelona, 1399, 137B; Echard, I, 16, n.K; other indications in Balme, II, 379 and
n. 1 ; MOPH, XXII, 133, n. 8. f after 1241.
127. Cf. supra, ch. XI, n. 160.
128. Jordan, no. 49.
129. Jordan, no. 49. For some unknown reason (cf. Echard I, 13, n. 1), to Guomicius (or
Gnomicicus, which is translated as Gomez) the name of Suero has been added, which enables us to attribute
to him what is known of Fr Suero (Suggerius), the first provincial of Spain: Rajmundiana (MOPH, VI) 1st
series, 21 ; Getino, ‘capitulos provinciales y priores provinciales de la orden de S. Domingo en Espana’,
in Ciencia Tomista, XIII (1916), 91-96; Martinez, lii. Bernard Gui, however, knows nothing at all of
Fr Guomicius except the name (MOPH, XXII, 136).
130. Jordan, no. 39.
131. Jordan, nos. 31,49, 3o;Frachet, 139 (same account as Jordan no. 30 and Thomas de Cantimpre
Bonurn universale de apibus, Douai 1627, 349-33G with supplementary details); Bourbon, no. 288.
132. Jordan, no. 49. The Ucero is the river that runs through Osma.
133. Jordan nos. 4.9-30; Frachet, 139. The anecdote was not new; it was recounted of other
persons, cf. Cesanus of Fleisterbach, Dial, miraculorum, Dis. 10, ch. 34, Cologne, 1831, 241 ; Humbert
Beg., 1, 282.
134. Bourbon, no. 288. Etienne de Bourbon had himself met Brother Dominic.
133. Jordan, no. 49.
136. It seems clear that the canons of Osma who had informed several witnesses at the process of
canonization about Dommic s life in Spain (Proces. Bon., nos. 14, 29; Proces. Thol., no. 3) had joined the
order. He is thought to be recognizable in the Fr Domingo, perhaps sent by the chapter of Osma to act
(c£°supra°nS\f2)mmlC D,Cg° S death’ and Fr MiSuel de Ucero, a native of the region of Osma

137- The phrase does not come from Peter himself, as has been said following Balme I co6 but
from Gui, 464-465. On Peter Sella, see Laurent, no. 6,; Jordon, 3»: Femndo! no ?6; aSL f”
324, Puylaurens, ch. LXI, Salagnac, II and 131-132; Pelisson, 13, 17, 20, 27 42- Gui a.02 ar6
463-463, 470; Percin, 47 and 36 Of an important family in Toulouse, he was sent in 1219 to make a

“ d°on"„„TSi“ U7 ln he ™ ‘"qU‘!i,0r *” T«*~ “ ■»», Prior h „„

138. Jordan, no. 38. He is said to have died in 1220—Percin, 24, no. 4.
. '39^,Gu1’ 4J9> was moved to exclaim: ‘praefatam ecclesiam patri nostro gratis collatam et confirm-
atam, filn improvidi pemtus deserentes’. The public roads which surrounded the convent prlvented^t
being enlarged. The brethren left it about Christmas 1230 and moved to the ‘garden of the^arrigues’
St Romain reverted to the chapter of St Etienne, became the College de Comminges belonged to
Prouille (fourteenth century), to St Etienne once more, to the Benedictine nuns of the suburb of St
ypnan (fifteenth century) to the Fathers of Christian Doctrine (1604). The church rebuilt bv the
latter, was destroyed at the Revolution. In the middle of the nineteenth rpL.rv A ’ j by the
former library of the Doctrine Father, which had become ,7Sfp,“Tolv?t SSliS
see a gothic window (? fourteenth-centurv') in the tarl- rr»r»™ \ ' Xt 1S Stl possible to
Rome8 All trace of th'e original D “S olter'S d ™ rX^”'. 't ToTnd^'"l ."£
4J8-439; Percin, 42-43 5 Balme, II, 69-70; Constant, 297-300. ? ,J Gm’
140. Proces. Bon., no. 26.
141. Salagnac, 133.
142. Canon 11 (12) of the synods of Paris and Rouen (12 13-, 214)—Mansi XXIT s,s a
Mansi s text is not absolutely reliable; the insertion ‘in onnrohH,,™ nl . Ma"S1’ ^XII(- 82® and 908.
canon becomes at Rouen ‘in opprobrium domus et ordinis’ The text should ,or. jmS .° , . e PJrisian
collections. The Paris text is the right one; the word ‘ordeH indeed should n„t tW°
the case with the Rouen version, in the sense of (religious) but in that of 1 1 ■ i\ e mterP^eted’ as ls
Ill’s letter to Raymond de Rabastens, July 3th, f2?PL 2 682 To feF1Cal> daSS‘ Cf‘ Inno«nt
humiliate the clergy as a whole and to do wrong to theLord. T °W a C CnC t0 beg WaS to
143. Proces. Bon., no. 26 and Laurent, nos. 111 and 114
144. Prologue of 1228, / Const., 193-194. Cf. Mandomiet-Vicaire II 267-26S and n
143. Laurent, no. 81. ’ ’ Zfa7-26S and n. 62.
146. Laurent, no. 82.
147. Puylaurens, ch. XXVffl.
 NOTES 5° 3

NOTES TO CHAPTER XIII

1. Laurent, no. 82.
2. Laurent, no. 84.
3. Galvagno della Fiamma, AFP, X (1940), 344; quoted by Taeggio, Chronicae ampliores, ed. ASOP, V,
1901, 120; on the poor reliability of this author, cf. Vicaire, Bulle de confirmation, 186. Borselli, ASOP,
599-
4. On the city of Bologna at this period, cf. Hessel; for the schools and university—Cavazza and
Sorbelli. A recent bibliography will be found in S. Stelling—Michaud, L’universite de Bologne et la
penetration des droits romain et canonique en Suisse aux Xllle et XlVe siecles, Geneva, 1955.
3. Denifle, Universitdten, I, 38.
6. Balme, II, 185, n. 2 and 3.
7. Frachet, 191, where he is described as senex and as prior fratrum.
8. Laurent, no. 84.
9. For what follows, see Appendix VI, the bulls of recommendation of Honorius III.
10. Brem., 30.
11. Brem., 70—107.
12. Vatican, Honorius III, lib. II, ep. 897, fo. 22 1 ; Pressutti, n° 1082.
1 3. Jordan, no. 49.
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid., no. 33.
16. The critical edition of Jordan by Scheeben which reads, et quidem jrater Bertrandus, has been
followed. The early editions had quidam, which indicated a different Bertrand from the one Jordan had
already mentioned (no. 31). It is surprising that Scheeben’s critical apparatus does not indicate this
important variant, since he makes use of two of these editions (to replace lost mss) to establish his text
(E and O).
17. Jordan, no. 51.
18. Jordan, nos. 31—32.
19. ‘Conduxerunt’, ibidem.
20. This was the name still given to them in 1219.
21. Synod of Paris, P. II, canon II—Mansi, XXII, 823. Cf. 908.
22. On the tremendous throng of students from the twelfth century onwards, see Denifle, Chartu-
larium, I, go; on the crowding together of student lodgings, schools and houses of ill-fame, see Jacques
de Vitry, Histoire Occidentale, Douai 1597, 277-278; on the taxation of lodgings by the University, see
Denifle, Chartularium, I, 79, 98 etc.
23. Cf. infra, ch. XIV for the attitude of the chapter of Notre Dame and of the numerous parishes
dependent on it. On the self-importance of the Parisian clergy, see Cemai, no. 22.
24. Jordan, no. 64. Obviously Matthew of France knew Reginald when the latter was teaching in
Paris.
2g. Gallia Christ., VII, 87-90; final act before his departure in August 1218 ; on 7th December, 1219
the Pope had already received the news of his death in the crusade—Pressutti, no. 2286; he had joined
the Albigensian crusade in Carcassonne in the Lent of 1211—Cernai, nos. 213, 230.
26. Gallia Christ., VII, Instr., 89-91.
27. Laurent, nos. 83 and 83.
28. Vaissete, VI, 511, note by Molinier and VIII, 706 and 736-738.
29. Complaint of Raymond VII after Peter’s return to Toulouse—Pelisson 27-28. The complaint was
very much after the event, but Peter’s attitude was already the same in 1218.
30. Laurent, no. 86.
3 1. There was also the addition of the insertion—salvis statutis concilii generalis (after mentioning the
immunities and customs).
32. Laurent, no. 79, cf. the corresponding clause of no. 74. The word monasterium designated either
the cloister or the community for which the later term of conrentus was not yet fixed.
33. Laurent, no. 80.
34. Name given to the group of the Preachers of Prouille, on 4th March, 1226; Guiraud, Cartulaire,
II, 31. It was a genuine convent of Preachers. If it had no place in the province of Toulouse, it was
because it was abandoned shortly before 1236, when the brethren left Prouille. For a clothing there, see
Cartulaire, II, 4 (1230). Cf. Creytens, ‘Les convers des moniales dominicaines au Moyen Age’, in AFP,
XIX (1949), 8, n. 21. Cf. also the declaration of the General Chapter of 1644, MOPH, XII, 198.
33-. Vatican, Honorius III, lib. II, ep. 1069, fos. 231-232; Pressutti, no. 1233.
36. Appendix VI,
37. These are the initials given by Ligiez, no. 38 and Laurent, no. 87, which are both recorded in the
original register. The early editions which all derive from Rechac, who in turn has used copies of the
register by Bzovius. (Loenertz, 32, n. 34), have sometimes F . . . sometimes I . . . in the place of T . . ..
38. Echard, I, 16, n. K. According to a ms. by Bernard Gui, he was only the second prior of
Montpellier; Gui, however, says elsewhere that he had been a companion of Dominic’s in Languedoc,
thus in 1217 at latest—Balme, III, 8 3 and n. 2.
39. No. 49.
40. BOP, I, 7, no. 8.
41 Where the Pope was from 27th April to 23th June. Potthast 3764-3844.
 S° 4 NOTES

42. Jordan, no. 33; Proces. Bon., no. 26.

43. ‘In the beginning of the year of the Lord 1218’—Jordan, no. 33, i.e. shortly after Easter which
fell on April 1 3th.
44. According to Cesarius of Heisterbach—Homiliae festirae, Cologne, 1613, 23, whose account—
somewhat obscure and contradictory—has formed the subject of a careful criticism by Christianopoulo,
ed. ASOP, I, 1893, 370-372. The name of Peter of Spain sometimes given to the lay-brother is an
invention of Galvagno, AFP, X (1940), 344.
43. Dist. I, ch. 14 (I Const, 202). Cf. infra, ch. XVIII, pp. 342-3.
46. Jordan, no. 33.
47. ‘In hac romana urbe, predicationis insistens officio, iam moratur’—Ferrando, no. 33.
48. Present in Rome at least from March 6th to May 16th, 1218—Pressutti, nos. 1137—1139, 1142,
1157, 1164, 1201, 1239, 1268, 1337. The letter of June 18th, no. 1447, shows that the bishop had
already left Rome at this date.
49. The expressions peregrinatio, transitus used in the documents are equivocal and can equally well
indicate the crusade which was preparing to leave from Genoa for the east or the pilgrimage to Jerusalem.
There is, however, no mention of the Bishop of Orleans in the history of the Fifth Crusade—J. Greven,
‘Frankreich und deu fiinfte Kreuzzug’, in FUstorisches Jahrbuch, 43 (1923), 13-32. For the conditions of
the Jerusalem pilgrimage at the time of the crusade, see Balme, II, 200—202.
30. Jordan, nos. 36-38, 60-66, 69-70; Proces. Bon., nos. 41 and 46; Ferrando, nos. 33-36; Frachet,
23-27, 102, 132—133, 248, 249. Doinel, Notice sur Je decanat du Bx. Reginald d’Orleans, Mem. de la Soc.
archeol. et hist, de l’Orleanais, XVIH, 1884, 47-69. Biographies of Bayonne (1871) and Constant (1897).
Cf. also Echard, I, 89-90 and Altaner, 46-47 and 104.
31. Jordan, no. 64.
32. Cemai, nos. 422—436. Reginald, however, did not accompany him—no. 422, n. 1 (against
Balme, I, 401).
33. He was in Cahors in October 1214, with Simon de Montfort—Cemai, no. 336, n. 1. On
November 7th, he was still with him in Rodez—no. 337, n. 3. There is nothing to indicate whether
Dominic was there too.
34. Ferrando, no. 33. Ferrando’s information, nos. 33-36, sometimes contradicts Jordan, nos. 36-38,
certainly wrongly (in particular F.36 against J.37); it does, however, contain important data not found
elsewhere that can be accepted. Cf. Altaner, 46-47.
33. Ferrando, no. 33; Echard, I, 30; Brem, 104.
36. Jordan, no. 37, who heard the account from St Dominic’s own lips. This account, later repeated
by all the biographers and progressively distorted, has finally come to signify, in accordance with a
hagiographical theme to be met with in other orders, the showing by the Blessed Virgin of a new habit
of the order (the scapular); Barthelemy, 233, was the first witness of this distortion, which Echard
(I, 71-73) has rectified; see Duval, 741, n. 11.
37. Cernai, no. 423.
38. Ferrando, no. 36.
39. Frachet, 23. Not for the whole order, but for Bologna.
60. The last indication of Manasse’s presence in Rome, May 16th, 1218. Cf. supra, no. 48.
61. Pressutti, no. 1380; Balme, II, 200 and n. 3 who incorrectly presumed that the bishop was still
in Rome on June 18th; cf. supra, n. 48. ' r
62. At the beginning of May—Brem, 30.
63. Laurent, no. 88.
64. There is one indication, however. It must have been in Bologna, where he was studying, that
tsteban de hspana made Dominic s acquaintance in 12 18—Proces. Bon., no. 33.
63. ‘Magnam perpessi sunt ibidem paupertatis angustiam’, no. 33.
66. On August 6th, 1218, the former had certainly been in Paris some time—Proces. Bon., no 26 and
Jordan, no. 33. It is to be supposed that Bertrand accompanied him, because they had to be two and a
combination —combinatw—to use the expression of the time, was not usually split up and separated
67. Qui postmodum in Hispania prior extitit de Manino [al. ManionioJ’—Jordan no 11 This
incomprehensible place indication should, we think, read ‘Maiorico’, Madrid, as will be seen later As
,0 the Friar Minor Albert de Mathelic. who also accompanied Dominic aiordtag t a t
century chronicler Peter Calo (Mamachi, Appendix 344-34j), his accounts are neither reliable nor
interesting.
68. Laurent, no. 86 and Appendix VIII, at end.
69. Vaissete, VI, 319.
70. Where he would find him again in 1219, Chron. la, 324.
71. Bourbon, 17; Echard, I, 6 (following Gui) and 161
72. Even if it could be proved that the bas-relief of the north porch of Burgos cathedral represented

ASOP l 74“1 Balme^TmT1, Y H

ASOP, IV, 41 43, Balme, II, 232-233 and n.
\ P ‘° ^ “d Berengaria (Christianopoulo.
1), it would still have to be proved that the sculptor’s
purpose was to represent a contemporary historical scene (which one, moreover?) if it was wRhed to
draw from this an indication of the coming of the Preacher to Burgos. Such a purpose would seem to have
been quite foreign to the sculptors of the first half of the thirteenth century Moreover it is sufficient lo
consider that the whole tympan represents the classic scene of the Last Judgement to realize tha ffiese
personages constitute the cortege of the elect at the right hand of Christ symmetrical wi h the coSge
of the demons and the damned to be seen on his left hand. The sculptor has given to these elect the
characteristics of a king, a queen, a priest and, it would seem, of a Friar Preached and a Fria^ Minor (not
 NOTES 505
of their founders, for the statues have no halo). This merely proves, beyond question, the esteem in
which the two new orders were held in Burgos.
73. For what has been made of them, cf. Getino, 130-152.
74. No. 59.
75. Interrogated through the intermediary of St Raymond of Penafort who instituted an official
inquiry, the sisters declared and proved that they had been received into the order by St Dominic. They
did not claim to have been founded or given the habit by him—Martinez, 291—302. As to an earlier
monastic existence of the sisters under the invocation of Santa Maria de Castro, this is a clear mistake.
The sisters’ first charters show that they belonged to the order of Preachers from the beginning. When
they had permission to construct a chapel, in 1233, they put it under the invocation of Santa Maria. From
that time on, as can be read in their charters they styled themselves: Moniales de Santa Maria de castro
(or castri or in vico) Santi Stephani de Gormaz. Cf. Christianopoulo, ASOP, I, 1894, 514-518.
76. The scene of discouragement in question is not dated. It is usually placed before the gift of
Brihuega, from which may be dated the stable position of the Preachers in Spain, thus before November.
77. Ferrando, no. 40.
78. According to a deed found in 1888 in the National Historical Archives of Madrid—reproduced in
Appendix VII. This text is incomplete and sometimes unreliable. It remains clear, however, that by this
deed the Archbishop of Toledo made authoritative an earlier, revocable concession, which can only be
that of the cleric Aemilian of Brihuega. It was to this priest that the house was to revert in case of
revocation, except in the event of his death, when the house would revert to the archiepiscopal see.
This proves that it was Church property; the archbishop thus possessed at least a third-party right over it;
that is why he completed his authorization by a concession.
79. Appendix VII. The text explicitly says that Dominic was one of the parties present; this enables
us to fix the date of the year, which is illegible, as 1218.
80. Loperraez, I, 195-207. Biography by Gorosterratzu, 1925.
81. Werner, 588 (no. 32); Hefele-Leclercq, V, 1320.
82. Brihuega, Guadalajara, Talamanca, Madrid and Segovia; the latter place was the seat ol a suffragan
diocese.
83. Cf. supra, n. 77.
84. Jordan, no. 49.
85. Instauratis, no. 59.
86. Frachet, 224, who mentions the taking of the habit.
87. Laurent, 95. The place of the deed is not noted, but it is specified by the mention of the lord of
Madrid.
88. Laurent, no. 108.
gcj. The explanation given here agrees in the main with that of Christianopoulo, ed. ASOP, I, 51 2—5 14*
9o! The letter is not dated. It will, however, be noted that: 1. it was prior to the general chapter of
30th May, I22i when the title of magister ordinis was adopted: Dominic here uses the title then not
fixed of magister praedicatorum which he had been using conjointly with that of minister praed. since 1216
(Laurent, no. 70); 2. it was later than the summer of 1219, date at which Mames was assigned to
Madrid. He had already been there a certain time; 3. that two facts refer to the general chapter of 1220:
(a) the general law of dispensation there set down; (b) the brethren’s renunciation of all property which
certainly contributed to the abandonment to the sisters of the monastery of Madrid and its property. It
may be concluded that the letter is slightly later than May 17th, 1220, when the general chapter was
held. Its purpose was in fact to comment on the installation of the sisters in the building that had just
been assigned to them.
91. The letter was written in Latin. The original, still preserved in Madrid in the 16th century is no
longer extant. A fourteenth-century copy was edited by Balme, III, 79-80 (ms. Paris, BN. lat., 4348>
fos. 155 v—156 r); another copy, also no longer extant, has been preserved in an eighteenth-century
copy in the general archives of the Dominican order, ms. LII, fo. 87, I (Rossell collection of 1357)-
Two sixteenth-century Spanish translations exist. Cf. Balme, III, 78, n. a. As to the fact that Dominic
used Latin in writing to nuns, a parallel is given by the numerous Latin letters of Jordan of Saxony to his
spiritual daughters.
92. Balme, III, 80, n. 6.
93. Thus we interpret Jordan, no. 31.
94. He was there, in fact, shortly before Christmas—Frachet, 71.
95. Frachet, 73-74. , _ . f .
96. Colmenares 184. This relic which we were able to examine at close quarters in 1956, is a fragment
of rather fine woollen cloth.
97. Frachet, 71-73.
98. Colmenares, 183 ; Kirsch, 76.
99. Frachet, 71 and 73.
100. Jordan, no. 59.
101. Medrano, no. 426.
102. Castillo, 82; Colmenares, 182; Medrano, no. 414.
103. Nos. 104-105.
104. Ps. XXIX, 6.
105. Ps. XLI, 9.
106. ASS, October VII, 682. , . , , ,
107. ‘The witness has heard certain brethren say that he had himself scourged and scourged himselt
 5 °6 NOTES

with a triple iron chain ... he has heard this related by those who gave him the discipline’. Proces. Bon ,
no. 2 4. ‘Each night with his own hand he gave himself the discipline with an iron chain—once for
himself, once more for the sinners in the world, a third time for those in purgatory.’ Constantino,
no. 61. The report of Constantino di Orvieto, which is the basis of the Segovia tradition, has a systematic
and abstract character, very different from the lively account of John of Navarre. On the iron chain
which Dominic wore round the loins until his death, see Proces. Bon., no. 31. On the hair-shirt—Proces.
Thol., nos. 14, 16, 17; Frachet, 73.
108. Friendship: Jordan, 36, 37, 39, 104, 107; Proces. Bon., nos. 8, 12, 18, 27, 33; Barthelemy, 234.
Gentleness: Jordan, 36; Proces. Bon., nos. 7, 22, 32, 48. Joy: Jordan, 34, 36, 103-104; Proces. Bon.,
nos. 7, 2t, 22, 39, 41, 48; Thol., no. 18; Frachet, 68; Cecilia, no. 3.
109. Jordan, nos. 10, 11, 14, 34, 100, 103, 107; Ferrando, no. 40; Constantino, no. 39; Proces.
Bon., nos. 29 and 34; Thol., nos. 3 and 18.
no. Between 1208 and 1214—San Martin, 31.
in. San Martin, 29-3 1.
112. On October 30th, 1220—Pressutti, no. 2742. Text: San Martin, 77-78.
113. The first document in the archives of Palencia is a bull of recommendation of the order (type II,
Dilectifilii) obtained by Dominic on April 13th, 1220 (ASOP, I, 1894, 411-312). There is no reason to
suppose, as Christianopoulo does (ibid.), that this bull was obtained to cover a foundation already made
and not, as was the case everywhere else, to prepare for one. The recommendation was in fact destined
to facilitate the first initial contact with the bishop. It had no longer any point once the foundation was
made, i.e. authorized by the bishop. In these conditions it is clear that the foundation, envisaged by
Dominic in April, was decided upon at the first chapter of Bologna. The only reason which induced
Christianopoulo to situate it in 1219, against all probability, is that this date was also assigned to the
certainly later chapter of Barcelona. A criticism of this statement will be found infra, ch. XVI, n. 123.
”4- Jordan, no. 49, mentions his departure from Spain in 1219, thus after Easter, 7th April 1219
As he had not travelled during Fent, he could not have reached the Narbonensis before mid-April at
earliest He left Toulouse to go to France (Frachet, 74) before the fresh siege of the town on June 16th
1219 (Vaissete, VI 431). It is thus between April 7th, 1219 and June 6th, 1219 that his stay in the
Narbonensis must be placed, not too close to either date and in the main in May. On his presence in
Prouiile in 1219, cf. ch. VIII, n. 100.
114. Resignation.of Bemard-Raymond of Rochefort in 1211—Potthast, nos. 4223 and 4224. Eubel
does not mention his return to Carcassonne which is referred to in the Prouiile charters
116. On November 26th, 1218—Laurent, no. 89.
H7. April 13th, 1219—Laurent, no. 94.

onlyceas^dTn’if^2.80^282 ^ Pl'°uille did not recover their property until 1224; and the alarm

, II9:^U/’ CltCd ^ Balme> n, 248 and n. 3 ; Percin, 22, no. 44 places this death in 1219. The charters
came from tLTutl^s " “ N°Vember ^ "’S'1"’ ^ the fatal flood no doubt
120. Laurent, nos. 91 and 96.

deed of Pri"' Wl” b"“ P'"d>" “ * *

122. Vaissete, VI, 431.
123. Echard I p n. According to Percin, 22, n® 46, Dominic received into the order at St Romain
m the course of his visit. Fray John de Johannis de Gargas. domain

in fat' tlaChiet’i74;,TuiS C?UW n0t be before APril l6th and was at the latest at the end of May It can
Lrt time’Tnftrs fit d‘
a k r u
’°T
n,°' 67 ^ ^ Weeks that Dominic remained'‘only a
) and that at the end of the journey to Bologna, which did not take
onth, he found himself in the course of the summer’ in this latter town (Proces. Bon nos 41 and 4.6)
Why does Scheeben state that the convent of St Romain was empty or abandoned > *

no. 247 ; cf Tudel™^ !i 4 " ^ PilgHmS * particularly Parisians and Germans, Cemai,
126. Frachet, 74.
127. Ibid.
128. Cf. supra, n. 124.
129. Jordan no. 49 There is no reason to call this figure in question with Scheeben i-m- Tnr,l,n
who was beginning to frequent the Preachers, was in a good position to knovv it. ’ ?

NOTES TO CHAPTER XIV

1. Jordan, no. 43 ; Proces. Bon., no. 26.

I Jordan,’noT,!9* P°ate' P™.. '» = 4.

„„4c'e '• >» W b«„ leaching a, ,ea„

4. Donation of Simon, in 1209, in Echard I, 17, n. L.

weLmeSLettheV!!osPYce; or'todte fac^thTt they^ame from tVeSf^ brethren °Wed their

7. Laurent, no. 139.
8. Balme, II, 243, thought that the University intervened because this territory originally depended
 NOTES SO 7
on it. The donation of Simon de Poissy shows that this was not the case. The seignorial rights which
belonged to Simon had been ceded to Jean de Barastre in 1209—Echard, I, 17, n. L. According to the
Laurent charter, no. 149, the University intervened ‘tanquam domina et patrona’ : evidently then Jean
de Barastre had given it a share in these two titles which belonged to him, clearly so that the Corporation
of the University should succeed him after his death.
9. ‘De mandato nostro’, said the Pope, ‘docet fratres de ordine predicatorum in theologica facultate’,
Bull of May 4th, 1221, Laurent, no. 140. The Pope’s order was later than the constitution of December
1 ith, 1219 to which it refers. Earlier it seems that Michael de Fabra had been his brethren’s professor,
if his epitaph is reliable—Balme, II, 379, n. 1.
10. Laurent, no. 139. Note that he himself was living near to St Jacques—Denifle, Chartularium, I,
420.
11. Clause of the letters of recommendation of types II and IV—cf. Appendix VI.
12. Laurent, no. 139. On the difficulties later caused to St Jacques by the canons of St Quentin, see
Chapotin, France, 23.
1 3. Laurent, no. 149. This was the first grant of the fraternity of the order.
14. E. Bernard, Fes dominicains dans Vuniversite de Paris ou le grand couvent des Jacobins de la rue Saint-
Jacques, Paris, 1883 ; C. Douais, Essai sur Vorganisation des etudes dans 1’Ordre des Freres Precheurs au XHIe et
au XlVe siecles (1216-1342), Paris—Toulouse, 1884; F. Ehrle, ‘San Domenico, le origini del primo
studio generale del suo ordine a Parigi . . .,’ in Miscellanea Dominicana, Rome, 1923, 84-134.
1 4. Frachet, 138.
16. Bull of February 27th, 1220—Laurent, no. 107.
17. Dominic arrived in Bologna during the second half of August (cf. infra, n. 114); if the duration
of the journey (three weeks or a month) and that of his stay in Paris (‘paubulum demoratus’—Jordan,
no. 60) be taken into account, his arrival should be placed in June 1219.
18. On December nth, 1219, the Pope noted that the divine office had never yet been celebrated in
the chapel of St Jacques, on account of the prohibitions mentioned—Laurent, no. 101.
19. Cf. illust. no. 3.
20. Balme, II, 390, n. 4.
21. This was precisely what was in question in the final agreement concluded in December 1220
between Saint Jacques and the canons of Paris: complete handing over of the offerings of the faithful at
St Jacques on certain days, and of the legacies for the dead whose obsequies took place at Saint Jacques,
indemnity for loss of earnings—Laurent, no. 120. Right of burial granted by the Pope on July 29th,
1220—Laurent.no. 117.
22. In the name of this principle: quia non potest esse quin multa proveniant capelle sancti Jacobi que
provenirent ecclesie sancti Benedicti si non essetjundata in eorum parocbia capella sancti Jacobi—Laurent, no. 120.
As if the preaching of the brethren, in renewing the devotion of the faithful, did not multiply their
generosity!
23. Cf. supra, ch. XIII, n. 24.
24. On February 27th and December 27th, 1220—Laurent, nos. 107 bis and 121.
24. On the collatio, a homely conference in contrast to the official sermon, see Cbron. Ila, 329.
26. Jordan, no. 57.
27. Jordan, no. 3.
28. No. 34. On the date of this foundation, cf. infra, n. 49.
29. On the youth of the novices in the early days, see Frachet, 141.
30. Jordan, nos. 66—78. Cf. Frachet, 116, 174.
31. Luke I, 48.
32. Jud. XI, 30.
33. Frachet, 30, 46, 183, 224; Cantimpre, 14, 46, 140-141, 341-342, 434; Echard, I, 148-149.
34. Bourbon, 346; Echard, I, 18, n. Mand ii4> c°b 2-
34. Bourbon, 398—399; Echard, I, 18, n. M. cf. infra, n. 63.
36. First prior of Poitiers—Balme, II, 308. Cf. infra, ch. XVI, n. 128.
37. Echard, I, 21 (n. T), 92, 114-117; Salagnac, 31, 60, 188; MOPH, XVIII, 79-8°, 83; Mamachi,
641; Chapotin, France, 6, 43, 67. For long Provincial of France and Prior of St Jacques, he became
Bishop of Agen in 1244 and died before April 1247.
38. Bourbon, ii to xi.
39. Proces. Bon., nos. 12—13.
40. Bourbon, no. 394 and n. 1.
41. Jordan, no. 73. ,
42. Frachet, 183. For other analogous motives, see Bourbon, nos. 21, 63, 94; 219; 399. rracnet,
168, 174.
43. Bourbon, no. 74.
44. Jordan, no. 69; Proces. Bon., no. 12.
44. Frachet, 183 ; Jordan, nos. 70-73. Cf. the Burgundian friar—Frachet, 194.
46. Jordan, no. 70. Cf. no. 96.
47. Laurent, no. 92. On the donors see Balme, II, 246, n. 2 and 243, n. 3.
48. Laurent, no. 114.
49. Laurent, no. 60.
40. Information of John of Spain—Proces. Bon., no. 26. One of the prescriptions of the new diocesan
statutes of Paris in 1 213-1214, it will be recalled, obliged superiors to allow their religious to travel on
horseback and to carry money for the journey (cf. supra, ch. XII, n. 149). Even if Fulk’s charter still
 S°8 NOTES

imposed the contrary practice on the Paris brethren, Matthew of France had the power to dispense them
from it. In 1229, after the order had adopted the apostolic rule de non equitando and de expensis non
portandis (in 1220) and the obligation had been strengthened (in 1228), Jordan of Saxony expressly
declared his right to dispense from it if he thought fit—Jordan, Epistulae, Ep. XLIX.
Ji. Proces. Bon., nos. y, 6, 12, 22, 28, 31, 48.
J2. Proces. Bon., no. 31. Nos. 4 and 12 detail the regime of fasts observed by the saint, no. 13 the
regime of silence.
£3. Proces. Bon., nos. 2y and 48.
S 4- Proces. Bon., no. 32.
55- Proces. Bon., nos. 1 2, 32, 43, 47; Ferrando, no. 32.
56- Proces. Bon., no. 26.
SI- Chapotin, France, 10. Cf. Echard, I, 18, n. M; Balme II, 290-312.
y8. Having confused the sending of the brethren to Orleans (Jordan, no. 34; he read 1219 instead of
1218) with the foundation of the convent, which was the sixth in order of precedence in the chronological
list, he concluded from this that the oldest convents on the list also dated from 1219, cf. Echard, I, vi.
59. The chronology of the first foundations of convents presents considerable difficulties. The docu¬
ments are missing. The only reliable document is the list in order of precedence at the provincial chapter,
determined by the order of seniority of the houses, edited by Echard, I, iv—xv, in accordance with a
document of 1303 (Bernard Gui). This text, however, gives relative, not absolute dates. The charters
making the grant of the convent church, when they are dated, are sometimes very much later than the
installation of the religious in the sanctuary (five and even 10 years according to Dereine. Statut canonique,
SS7> cf. Loenertz, Prouille, 43), a fortiori than their arrival in the town, and still more so than then-
mission. Moreover, in these early years what was meant by a foundation? There was not yet any general
chapter to erect a convent canonically. No trace has come down to us of an erection of this kind by
St Dominic. Was it then the mission of the founders, their arrival in the town, their provisional or
permanent installation which indicated the foundation? To take an example where all is known in detail:
was the Paris convent founded on iyth August, 1217 (mission), on 12th September, 1217 (provisional
installation in Paris), on 6th August, 1218 (installation at Saint Jacques) or on 3rd May, 1221 (permanent
gift of Saint Jacques to the brethren)? If we are to judge by the case of Orleans, it was not the mission
or the installation in a hospice which counted for the foundation, but the installation of the founding
group in a house of their own. The church was not indispensable—cf. Barcelona, infra, ch. XVI, n. 1 23
and Laurent, no. 142.
60. Jordan, no. £4. He says in ipso etiam anno, thus in the year of our Lord 1218 (no. 33); which
signifies before 7th April, 1219; thus before Dominic’s arrival. Echard, I, 18, n. M, interprets: intro
spatium anni, thus between 6th August, 1218 and the same date in 1219. He bases his statement on Gui
(ed. Echard, I, vi), who gives 1219. The mission would then date back to Dominic and his stay in Paris.
The interpretation seems forced. Perhaps, however, Echard was right in correcting Jordan. Dominic
had just passed through Orleans—did he not pave the way for the foundation there by a visit to his old
acquaintance Bishop Manasse de Seignelay? Cf. also Chronica la, 324.
61. Cf. supra, ch. XIII, n. 90.
62. Gui, 463 (beginning of Lent: nth February, 1220). On the foundation of Limoges, see Jordan,
no. 38; Frachet, 8y, Chronica la, 324; Salagnac, II; Gui, 463-464; Douais, Lesfreres Precheurs de Limoaes,
Toulouse, 1892, 4-6. °
. 63‘ The first prior of Rheims was a Fr Philippe—Bourbon, no. 462. He received a commission from
t^e>ar, ,IS10P “ 1224 Balme* u> 3 °S- The convent was clearly earlier. Did the preaching of Fr Henry'
ol Cologne in Rheims in 1221 indicate the installation—Bourbon, no. 4y3 and Scheeben. 349? Chronica
la, 324, places the mission of the Rheims convent between those of Limoges and Orleans, thus from as
tar back as 1219 The order of precedence at the provincial chapter places Rheims after Lyons (substituted
for Limoges) and before Metz—Echard, I, vi; this dates the foundation at latest in 1221. Nothing more
can be said on the matter. Balme, II, 300-306, makes a few conjectures of unequal value
64. Cf. the entry shortly afterwards of Frs. Jordan, Henry and Leo—Jordan, nos. 74-7 r
65. The sending of Fr Reginald to Paris, perhaps suggested by Matthew of France

half of August131"6'1 m PariS °nly 3 Sh°rt time—J°rdan’ no- 6°- He would be in Bologna in the second
67. Frachet, 72.
68. Proces. Bon., no. 12.
69. Description in Balme, II, 336-338.
70. Frachet, 76; Echard, I, 40, n. K.
71. Frachet, 72.

7P ,GalVaTgn°l Majorf 320 fnd }4S' affifmS this' °n Amizo de Solari°, thc former pontifical notarv
see Echard, I, 48, n. A; Tiraboschi, IT, 24. ; AFP, X (1940) 320, n. 3. Galvagno, whose evidence is of
some value when facts concerning Milan are in question, instances ibid, the acquisition of two other
religious: Guido de Capitaneis and Rogier de Merate.
73. Constantino, no. 59.
74- Jordan, no. 60.
IS- Jordan, no. 38.
76. Jordan, no. 63 and Ferrando, no. 33.
77- Jordan, no. 64.
78. Frachet, 169, dates the anecdotes from a certain feast of St Stephen. Reginald, arriving on 2 ist
December, 1218, and leaving at latest ,n November .219, spent only two feasts of this saint in Bologna-^
 NOTES S°9

26th December, 1218 and 3rd August, 1219 (The Finding of St Stephen). It would seem impossible to
situate the development of the psychological crisis indicated by the beginning of the account between
21 st December and 26th, 1218. There remains the date of 3rd August, 1219. The texts of the two Masses
are identical. This date of course fell in the vacation period.
79. Frachet, 169-170; Salagnac, 33 and 15-8; Echard, I, 122-123; Denifle, ALKMA, II, 232.
80. Major ecclesia. One might perhaps translate: the nave, in contradistinction to the choir or to the
chapels. In this case the church referred to would be St Nicholas, which would explain the fact that
Moneta had heard Mass in St Proclus, a neighbouring church.
81. Acts VII, 56.
82. Frachet, 169-170.
83. Frachet, 25.
84. ‘Chronique de Sainte-Agnes’, ASOP, I, 181, n. to; Frachet, 20. The step the brethren took in
approaching the chaplain was prior to Reginald’s arrival.
& g. Having passed through Bologna on his way from Florence on 9th October, 1218, he was at
Vicenza in January 1219, in February in Venice, on 10th April at Modena, then in Bologna where he
remained at least until 18th—See Levi, Documenti, 8.
86. Proces. Bon., no. 30.
87. Ibid.
88. Proces. Bon., nos. 30—34; Frachet, 27, 275. He died at the same time as Roland of Cremona, ca.
1250.
89. On this family, cf. infra, n. 1 2 g.
90. For this description, cf. Laurent, no. 93; Frachet, 198. The ‘piece of enclosed land’ (clusum)
mentioned by the charter was a surface unit. Cf. Laurent, no. 126. The deeds of acquisition of five of
these houses by the brethren have been preserved: from Petronio Triclo (1 ith July, 1220), from Gilbert
the donkey-driver (22nd July), from Ghibellino of Ferrara (10th October, 1221), from Rainaldo,
university courier (17th February, 1223), from Piccolo Ricardo (8th April, 1224)—Laurent, no. 11 3,
116; Mamachi, Appendix 37^-376; ASOP, IV, 169, n. 1 and 170, n. 3. It was after 1208 that this
suburban district was included within the walls—Hessel, 439.
91. ‘Chronique de Sainte-Agnes’, ASOP, I, 181, n. 10.
92. Laurent, no. 93.
93. The last clothing mentioned at the Mascarella took place in Lent 1219—Proces. Bon., no. 46. The
gift of St Nicholas dated from 14th March. Easter was 7th April. Roland of Cremona took the habit at
the end of April or beginning of May—cf. infra, n. 109.
94. Frachet, 190—191, placed his meeting with Fr Richard the elder, prior of the brethren, and his
entry into the order, at St Nicholas, ubi de novo venerant fratres. Echard, I, 91, insists on the authority
attributed to Richard and thinks that Reginald was not yet there: he thus corrects Frachet and places this
meeting at Santa Maria della Mascarella, as early as 1218. The correction may be considered arbitrary,
with Mamachi, 508, n. 3, for Reginald’s arrival did not take away from Richard his office as prior. The
entry would date from about April 1219. On Fr Tancred, cf. also Jordan, no. 100; Constantino, no. 35
and 6g (cf. Barthelemy, 237; for criticism of this information—Altaner, 71); Echard, I, 90-91.
95. He entered at la Mascarella and was clothed by Reginald in Lent 1219, which we interpret as Ash
Wednesday, February 20th—Proces. Bon., no. 46. On his place of origin (the Penna of the Ancona
Marches rather than that of the Abruzzi) see Echard, I, gg, n. A and Balme, II, 262. A Frogier appeared
again in 12^4 in the acts of the Roman province—Altaner, 3 g, n. 3.
96. Proces. Bon., no. 41 (on the exact date see Echard, I, 54, n. A). In 1233 he was in the Venice
house where he died later. Frachet 40 and 270.
97. According to the 2nd edition of the Vitae Fratrum, Guala was sacristan when Roland of Cremona
took the habit. Frachet, 26, n. 22. He had thus entered before Easter, 1219. He founded Brescia, where
he became bishop in 1229, carried out various missions and died on 3rd September, 1244, at the abbey
of Astino (near Bergamo). Cf. Balme, II, 3S7~364 and Kuczynski, LeBx Guala deBergame . . . Estavayer,
l9i6,
98. Already in the order when Roland took the habit, according to Frachet, 26, who notes his titles
of master and professor in arts and canon law, his competence in civil law, his later titles of prior of the
Roman province and penitentiary and chaplain to the Pope. The mss. of Brussels and St Antonin thus
complete his name: Clarus de Sexto dioecesis Florentine. If, however, this Fr Clare is to be identified with
the one mentioned by Frachet, 21, he was a native of Bologna. Cf. Echard, I, 92—93.
99. Cf. infra, n. 109.
100. Entered under Reginald, before St Dominic’s arrival (August 1219), Proces. Bon., no. 20.
Founder of Piacenza, he gave evidence in 1233 at the canonization process—Proces. Bon., nos. 20-24.
Further details in Echard, I, 49, n. A.
101. Dania, goo. These are the first known Swedish students in the west of Europe—Gallen, 3.
It is not said that they received the habit at Dominic’s hands—this would certainly have been mentioned
if it were the case.
102. Frachet, 19. It was Alexander Stavensby, for long professor of theology in Bologna who told this
story. For Fr Henry, the convent is ‘Bethany’—Jordan, no. 75. On the entry of Fr Giacomo de Ariboldis
de Modoetia and Robaldo de Albinga, see Galvagno, Major, 320, and nn. g and 346, where a few other
names will be found, among them that of Philip Carisi de Vercelli, procurator of the brethren during the
canonization process.
103. 81, igl, IJ3, 166, 194, 196, 198.
104. Jordan, nos. 110-120. Cf. dissertation of Christianopoulo on this institution, ASOP, I, 116-121,
 Sl° NOTES

in which he corrects where necessary the statements of Frachet, no. 58 ; Bourbon, no. 189 ; Cantimpre,
309; Galvagno, etc . . .
105. Frachet, 153.
106. Frachet, 198.
107. Frachet, 152. This was the penance for a grave fault. A similar fault, assigned in 1236 to the
chapter on light faults (I. Const. D. I, ch. 2 1, no. 39 ; Acta, I, 14, no. 14) was previously in point of fact
among the grave faults. Thus Reginald was here applying the rule strictly.
108. Frachet, 169.
109. At the end of April or beginning of May, 1219, if account be taken of the fact that Ugolino was
in Bologna (cf. foil, note) and that Fr Rudolfo was in the community (Frachet, 27).
110. After 10th May when he was in Modena, Ugolino came to Bologna and remained there at least
until 18th May—Levi, Documenti, 8 [244]; Brem, 36.
m. Frachet, 25-27, 168, 275; Salagnac, 32-33 and 124; Pelisson, 8, 10, 11, 12; Echard, I, 125-
127; Glorieux, I, 42; E. Filthaut, Roland von Cremona OP . . . Vechta, 1936; AFP, X (1940), 282—288
and XI (1941), 109—137.
11 2. On the origin of his trouble see Frachet 168.
113. According to two mss., Fr Guala is here referred to. The little bell was not worth 20 imperial
sous.
114. Frachet, 25-27.
11 5. Dominic was already at St Nicholas on September 1st, 1219—Proces. Bon., no. 46. He was not
yet there on 3rd August when Moneta entered—Frachet, 169—170; and probably on 15th August—cf.
supra, no. 101. Cf. Proces. Bon., no. 41.
116. A. Dondaine, ‘La hierarchie cathare en Italie’, in AFP, XIX (1949) 208-312; XX (1950) 234-
324. For catalogue of the Catharist bishops, see pp. 267—306.
117. Jordan, no. 60.
118. Proces. Bon., no. 30.
119. Proces. Bon., nos. 12, 32, 43, 47; Ferrando, no. 32.
1 20. Jordan, no. 60.
121. Proces. Bon., no. 32. Cf. no. 38, 42.
122. Jordan, no. 42.
123. Proces. Bon., no. 32.
124. On Diana, see H. Cormier, La Bse Diane et les Bses Cecile et Aimee, Rome, 1892; M. Aron, Un
animateur de lajeunesse au Xllle s: Jourdain de Saxe, Paris—Bruges 1930, 138-152. For the whole of this
paragraph see ‘Chronique de Sainte-Agnes’, in Cormier, 149-150 and ASOP, I, 181, n. 10.
125. Cf. Melloni, Atti e memorie degli uomini illustri in santita 0 morti in Bologna, I, pt. 2, Bologna 1779,
195—209, Cormier, op. cit., Appendix B (genealogy); ASOP, I, 181. As many as fourteen important
towns were governed at this time by members of the family.
126. Frachet, 82-83; Proces. Bon., nos. 35-36. Pierre Calo, no. 18 ed. Mamachi, Appendix 344.
IJF Proces. Bon., no. 36. The account would seem to date Dominic’s first coming to St Nicholas.
ihe fere per annum’ of no. 37 must thus be understood of the total duration of the saint’s presences in
Bologna after the entry of Fr Stephen.
Bernard Gui as the oldest of all the Lombardy convents (after Bologna)—Echard, I,
XIV; cl. also the list in order of seniority about 1280, given by Christianopoulo (ASOpfl, 187 and n. 3;
J2, n 3)—Bologna, Bergamo, Milan, Verona, Piacenza, Brescia, Faenza, Parma, Genoa. Since Milan
dates from March 1220, Bergamo was earlier.
129 Frogier de Penna had lived with Dominic in the ‘convent’ of Florence at the beginning of
September, 1219 (the decision in favour of this date with Echard, I, 55, n. C against Scheeben 322
is because it is the only one compatible with Frogier’s ‘4 months and more’; Scheeben’s chronology
would presuppose 10 months of contact between Frogier and Dominic), Proces. Bon., no. 46 At this
time the brethren were still living in a hospice (St Pancras—Mamachi, 605, n. 2); it was not yet the
re igious house m the strict sense. The list in order of seniority for the Roman province places Florence
breth Ti ’ ’ 32,I "■ lA)/cWh‘dVlateS fr°m Dumber, 1 2 19. In 1 220, on the other hand, the
whSirecna,^rUlreAa Paui~AS0P’ i89, n. 5), one of the former priests or canoAs of
which caused them difficulties—Constantino, no. 52. After having changed their establishment several
imerventffinTnT ^ Mt f11 eclually reliable’ see Mamachi, 603-606), and after the influential
intervention of Ugolino on 14th June, 1221 (Laurent, no. 151), the prior John of Salerno and the
brethren received the church of Santa Maria Novella on 9th November, . 22,-Mamachi, Appendix 77.

130. A convent was already in existence at Easter, 1220; Fr Solomon, the founder of Lund was
i^?ntKJTi7th..<IIdCr-there at that date7Dania. Soo. Borselli took the date of 1 2 20 from the foundation
inscription ot the Dominican church of Verona—text in Balme, III, 133, n. 1.
,, l3 ‘I, The C1hurch ofobt Eustorga of Milan was given to the Preachers by a charter of 24th November
1220 (Laurent, no. 118), by Ugo Settala, treasurer of the church of Milan and vicar of the archbishop’
Henry Settala then in the East, the canons who served this particular church having surrendered it. The
, PP°r“g ey*dence of 7 old Dominican lectionary of Milan and of Bernard Gui established the fact
that the brethren were already installed by 15th March, 1220 (Echard, I, XIV and 20 n R) There is
nothing surprising in the delay before the charter was issued (cf. supra, n. 59). It presupposed the
intervention of several earlier documents, to one of which, dated 10th August 1220, Tt refers The
prior who was founder was a Fr Giacomo. This gives a certain credit to the statements of Galvagno della
Fiamma, but not to all of them. His short chronicle also gives the date of 15th March, 1220 for the
 NOTES S ii

provisional installation of the brethren at St Eustorga—Minor, 2 3 ; but the longer version has: r jth
February, 1220—Major, 322 (is this a simple lapsus?). He calls the two founders Giacomo de Ariboldis
de Modoetia and Robaldo de Albinga (anecdote on this friar in Frachet, 225—227). Dominic is said to
have received them in Bologna, where they were studying, in 1219. In this case they could not have
arrived in Milan for a foundation in March 1219, as Galvagno says—Minor, 23 and Major, 320 and 346.
The intervention of Cardinal Ugolino in 1220, in Milan, which Galvagno imagines, for the cession of
St Eustorga is in contradiction with the legate’s itinerary—Levi, Documenti, 9 [24?]. Dominic’s visits to
Milan in December 1217, August 1219 and June 1220 certainly contributed to the foundation—Echard,
I, 20, n. R; Balme, III, 115-127.
132. Proces. Bon., no. 24.
133. Proces. Bon., no. 20.
134. After Verona and before Brescia (cf. supra, n. 128). A recommendation from the Pope of the
type I2 (cf. Appendix VI), issued 11th November, 1219, resulted in Piacenza (Potthast, no. 6155).
It was almost certainly brought by Fr Buonviso, who was at the Curia in November 1219. In any event it
signifies the continuation of the ministry in the town. On 20th April, 1221, six Preachers were there
and served as witnesses in the swearing of the oath by the city authorities before the Legate Ugolino—
Laurent, no. 135. On 10th May, the Pope sent a special recommendation of the order, of type V, to the
bishop and chapter of Piacenza—Laurent, no. 143. The foundation came shortly afterwards—Balme, III,
346-348, following Campi, Storia eccl. di Piacenza, II, Piacenza 1651, 120-123, whose date of 1218,
however, for the first arrival of Fr Buonviso in Piacenza cannot be accepted!
135. Jordan, no. 61.
136. Jordan, no. 62.
137. Dominic was in Viterbo before 11th November, 1219—Potthast, no. 6155, but he remained
some time in Florence—Proces. Bon., no. 46 and Constantino, no. 46. Moreover the duration of his stay
in Bologna cannot be reduced—Jordan, no. 60; note the opposition between the expressions: mansionem
_faciens and paululum demoratus.

NOTES TO CHAPTER XV
1. Proces. Bon., no. 12.
2. Proces. Bon., nos. 20—22.
3. Proces. Bon., no. 46. Scheeben, 323 places the journey from Bologna to Rome through Florence,
mentioned by Frogier, in 1221; but the natural sense of the words and the duration of four months and
more mentioned by the brother contradict this interpretation—according to which he would have
remained with Dominic for about ten months at least. The other historians accept the normal interpreta¬
tion.
4. According to an indication of the necrology of Santa Marla Novella—Mamachi, 605, n. 3.
5. Ibidem.
6. Constantino, nos. 46 and 52. Cf. Echard, I, 33, n. A; Altaner, 66 and n. 5. Christianopoulo, in
a careful note, corrects Echard’s chronology and places Bene’s conversion in May 1220. At this period,
in fact, the brethren were already in possession of the church of St Paul, of which Hugh of Sixtus was
canon—ASOP, I, 189, n. 5.
7. He obtained two bulls on 1 ith November—Appendix VI, § 6, nos. 4 and 14 and 5 10.
8. Gregorovius, Geschichte der Stadt Rom in MA, V, Berlin 1908, 120—121.
9. Potthast, no. 6131 ff; on 17th December, he was at Civita Castellana—no. 6184—and again in
Viterbo until 2nd June, 1220; he did not return to Rome until 26th October, for the coronation of
Frederick II.
10. Levi, Documenti, 9; Brem, 36; Potthast, no. 6124.
11. In July 1219, there were about thirty of them in Paris; there must have been about fifty of them
in Bologna, if we note the difference of the terms used by Jordan—nos. 59 and 60. To these two houses
must be added Prouille (the house of Preaching), Toulouse, Lyons, Madrid, Segovia, Limoges.
12. Brem, 74—101 and Zamcke, 56 and 103—106.
13. Laurent, no. 77.
14. Cernai, nos. 393 and 509.
15. Laurent, no. 84. Cf. Appendix VI, § 3, 14, 15.
16. Type II, Dilectijilii, from 8th December, 1219.
17. Type III, Cum qui recipit from 1 ith November, 1219.
18. Type IV, Quoniam abundavit, from 13th December, 1219—cf. Matt. XXIV, 12.
19. Laurent, no. 117—dated 29th July, 1220; cf. Rom. I, 1.
20. Laurent, no. 103.
21. Laurent, nos. 107 and 107 bis.
22. Laurent, no. 117.
23. Laurent, nos. 121 and 124. On 7th March, 1222, he used even stronger terms: ‘Cum nos, quibus
incumbit specialius exaltare ac fovere religionem, in suavi sancti vestre institutionis odore plurimum
delectemur, conceptum devotionis vestre fervorum singulari quodam affectu prosequimur, et aliquid
vobis libenter amplioris dilectionis et grade impertimur’, BOP, I, 15, no. 28.
24. ‘Qui fuit amicissimus ordinis et beati Dominici ab initio, familiaritate cum eo in curia pape
contracta’, Chron. Ila, 334; Donner, 9-17. Koudelka, 98 ff, thinks this friendship dated from 1216.
25. Barthelemy, no. 17- Was it on account of this spiritual fraternity that Chron. Ia, 335, counted
Guillaume among the cardinals of the order? He was buried in the Dominican convent at Lyons.
 512 NOTES

26. Donner, 13. On the functions of the vice-chancellor, see P. Fabre, Le liber censuum de l’Eglise
romaine, II, Paris 1910, 73.
27. He again obtained a bull from the curia on 17th December—Laurent, no. 104; he obtained a
further one on 17th February, no. 105. It is difficult to say whether his stay in Viterbo was then
continuous and if he did not return to Rome in between, for instance at the beginning of March 1220.
Perhaps the redeundo Roman of Buonviso (Proces. Bon., no. 20) is in favour of the second hypothesis.
28. Type l2, Appendix VI, § 6, no. 2.
29. Type I2, Appendix VI, § 6, no. 5.
30. Type I2, Appendix VI, § 6, no. 6. The bullarium which forms the basis of the collection of Rodez
ms. comes from a convent in the south of France which is not that of Toulouse. Only the convent of
Montpellier could have bulls such as nos. 6 and 11 in their archives. That is why we consider as certain
what Planzer, AFP, V (1935) 19, suggests as an hypothesis.
31. Gui, 329. It should be noted that in Narbonne the brethren had made a foundation earlier but it
could not be maintained in the face of the hostility of certain people—cf. Balme, III, 83—85.
32. Laurent, no. 99.
33. Laurent, no. 101.
34. Laurent, no. 102.
35. Laurent, no. 77.
36. Appendix VI, § 14.
37. Appendix VI, § 15 and 16.
38. Cf. infra, the death of Reginald. It was not until 29th July that the Pope could thank the canons
for the grant of the cemetery—Laurent, no. 117.
39. Jordan, no. 75.
40. Laurent, no. 120.
41. Pressutti, nos. 2279, 2410, 2412, 2509, 2518. Balme, III, 109-110 and 144-146.
42. Laurent, no. 117.
43* Charter of confirmation of the surrender of the tithes in Balme, in, 32—33. This document, dated
1225, sets out the reasons for the gesture of 1220. Another trait of generosity—according to Laurent,
no. 120, the brethren continued the hospitality of St Jacques and received strangers.
44* Chron. Ila, 322; Bourbon, no. 288. Numerous links between the benefactors of St Jacques and
the feudal milieu of the south-west of Paris which had fought in the Albigeois can be found—Balme, II,
253, n. 3 and 255 and III, 34-37.
45. Laurent, no. n 1.
46. Laurent, no. 114; the deed is not dated, but it is attached to a deed of May 1220—Balme, III,
37, n. 1. See Koudelka, 114 for the end part of this deed, and date.
47. Cf. supra, n. 43.
48. According to the bullarium of the Rodez ms.—AFP, V (1935), 48, no. 18.
49. Type II, Appendix VI, § 6, no. 11.
50. Laurent, no. 134.
51. Appendix VI, § 10-16.
52. Mandonnet-Vicaire, I, 163, n. 20. Cf. a contemporary document which compares the establish¬
ment of the hospital of the Hply Spirit and the reconstruction of St Sixtus—Zucchi, 333.
53. Benedict of Mon tefiascone, ed. Echard, I, 83.
54. Heimbucher, I, 417.
55. Laurent, no. 88.
56. Bull of 4th December, 1219. Laurent, no. 100, mentions this visit; it took place in November
1219, since on the 12th of that month the religious obtained an important bull—Pressutti no. 2252.
57. Laurent, no. too.
58. Gesture mentioned by Laurent, no. 104.
59. Laurent, no. 104.
60. Prior of St Sixtus from 1311 to 1318, during which time he composed an original chronicle,
based on direct information, of which only extracts are left to us—see Echard, I, 83 (cf. 536). He
places the foundation in 1220 (cf. ‘ab initio erectionis, an. 1220’). He thought that the saint had received
the house for his brethren and only transformed it, as a matter of conscience, into a convent of
sisters when he later learned of its original destination. This latter assertion is contradicted by the
Pope s letters. J
61. Laurent, no. 136.
62. The fact, which Potthast does not mention, is clear in Pressutti, nos. 2303 to 2309
63. For the description which follows, see Zucchi, 222-228 • 222-2 n
64. Laurent, no. 88.
65. Scheeben, 291-292 invokes the Pope’s letters to Sempringham Zucchi, 260, rightly considers
that the argument is not conclusive. A different argument is given here.
66. Zucchi, 337-344.
, 61 ■ Co-tantino.no. 36 and 39. The accounts of Constantino cannot be taken as wholly trustworthy—
he embellishes his information to the extent of distorting it. Cf. Altaner, 58-74. The miracle of the
raising to life of the workman, however, seems also referred to by Jordan no 126
68. IV Kings IV, 34. J
69. Altaner, 63.
onffi'e T°day; Via yal‘e delle Camene. This identification, following Pere Koudelka, who bases himself
on the monastery charters, rejects that of Zucchi, 267.
 NOTES Si 3
71. He brought back to Lombardy Buonviso who at this time seems to have been his accredited
socius—Proces. Bon., no. 22. Guillaume de Montferrat would seem to have remained in Viterbo—ibid.,
no. 12. Frogier was now separated from Dominic after a daily contact of ‘four months and more’. As he
had been with him since ist September, 1219, it was thus some time in January 1220 that Dominic
left him, leaving him behind in Rome—ibid., 46.
72. Proces. Bon., no. 12.
73. Jordan, no. 94; Proces. Bon., nos. 6, 8, 12, 22, 23; Proces. Thol., no. 13.
74. Proces. Thol., no. 1 3.
7J. The calculation is easily made. He took eight days to go from Rocamadour to Orleans—Frachet,
74. The medieval traveller, on foot, normally accomplished stages of 13 to 23 miles.
76. See Proces. Bon., nos. 21 and 42, for this period of his life. This was already his habit in the
Narbonensis.
77. No. 42. On the discomforts of this kind of hospice, its dirt, its overcrowding, see Frachet, 36,
39, 40. On the rising at night even while travelling, for Matins, see ASOP, I, 323, n. 3 and Echard, I,
412.
78. No. 4.
79. Nos. 6, 13, 20, 31, 42, 43.
80. Nos. 6, 31.
81. Cecilia, 6.
82. Proces. Bon., no. 12.
83. Proces. Bon., no. 13.
84. Jordan, no. 106; Proces. Bon., nos. 7, 13, 18, 20, 28, 31, 37, 42, 46, 32.
83. Laurent, no. 103.
86. The expression prior etfratres O.P. which, in the context, should be taken in the conventual sense,
is found in Laurent, nos. 102 and 103—cf. Balme, II, 396, n. a. After 17th February, 1220 (no. 103),
the expression prior OP will be found (no. 119), and prior etfratres OP in the sense of prior of the order
(nos. 128 and 130). On 28th April, 1221, no. 138, the expression is replaced by magister etfr. OP.
87. Proces. Bon., no. 2.
88. Nos. 2 and 33.
89. Jordan, no. 86. The letter must have reached the religious about Easter for the necessary
arrangements to be made and the delegates to be in Bologna on 17th May.
90. Jordan, no. 63.
91. No. 64.
92. Frachet, 248—249.
93. Jordan, no. 64. On the Benedictine convent of Notre Dame des Vignes or des Champs and the
later history of Reginald’s tomb, looked after from the 1 7th century to the time of the Revolution by a
community of Carmelite nuns, see Balme, III, 13—16. The cultus of Blessed Reginald, continuous from
the origin, was recognized in 1873.
94. Laurent, no. 107 bis.
93. No. 107.
96. Nos. 108, 109, no.
97. Math. X, 41 and recommendation III, Appendix VI, § 6, no. 13 ff.
98. Matt. XXV, 40 and bull of 29th July, 1220—Laurent, no. 117.
99. Appendix VI, § 6, no. 13.
100. Villanueva, XIX, 178 and 310 (donation to the Carthusians on 21st December, 1219, to
recognize their merits).
1 o 1. Appendix VI, § 6, no. 2 7. The letter which remained in the hands of the brethren, finally reached
Barcelona,
102. Laurent, no. 113.
103. Names rectified by the critical apparatus of BOP, I, 11, no. 16. The text of the charter, in the
1 8th century edition which is the only one which has come down to us, reads Mansu, Aquilari. Fr Russo,
L’eredita di Giocchino da Fiore. La congregazione Florense, in Archivio storico per la Calabria e la Lucania, XXI
(1932), 139, gives—Sillia, or rather Mesa, the region in Calabria in which the monasteries of St Martin
de Mesa, San Salvatore de Mesa, San Pancracio de Mesa or de Stella, are to be found.
104. Donner, 17, n. 2.
103. Dania, 300.
106. Gallen, 4-3, corrects Dania 300 here.
107. Dania, 300.
108. Appendix VI, § 6, no. 14.
109. Laurent, no. 123.
110. On account of the opposition of the archbishop of Uppsala—Gallen, 3-6.
in. That of the convent of Lund, by Fr Solomon.
112. Altaner, Dominikanermissionen, 141 —142; Rassovsky, Les Comans, Annales de 1 Institut Kondakov a
Prague, X (1938), 133-178.
113. Potthast, nos. 3398, 6863, 6864.
114. Proces. Bon., nos. 32 and 34. Only those indications referring to the end of his life are certain.
Jordan’s mention of the Cumans in 1206 (no. 17) corrected to Saracens in the second edition of the
Libellus, is valueless.
113. Scheeben, 338-361, after Dania 300 and Frachet, 303, thought it even possible to establish the
existence of a convent in Hungary before May 1220, founded at Stuhlweissenburg (Alba Regalis or
 4 NOTES

Szekesfehervar) by a certain Fr Paul. A criticism of this interpretation will be found in ch. XIX, n. 41.
116. Dania, goo—cf. Scheeben, 360; AFP, XIX (1949), 83, n. 9.
117. Scheeben, 360; AFP, XIX (1949), 83, n. 9.

NOTES TO CHAPTER XVI

1. He must also have received at Viterbo the bull of 6th May, 1220 for the Archbishop of Tarragona—
Laurent, no. 112. As he had to be in Bologna on the 16th, he had ten days in which to travel some 2 1 g
miles; this was normal. As to the date of the general chapter, over which there is no hesitation among
historians, cf. Balme, III, g6, n. a.
2. Proces. Bon., nos. 20 and 22.
3. Cf. supra, ch. ig, nn. g and 6.
4. At this time some fifteen foundations had been made—Madrid, Segovia, Toulouse, Montpellier (?),
Lyons, Limoges, Paris, Bologna, Brescia, Verona, Florence, St Sixtus, Friesach, Stuhlweissenburg (?).
Madrid and St Sixtus were still houses for men, Prouille housed the two communities, one of men, one
of women. Paris sent four brethren, the other houses at least two, which made, apart from Bologna, at
least thirty.
g. Dania, goo.
6. Jordan, no. 86.
7. As to his age when he entered the order, Scheeben, Jordan, 8, and QF, XXXV, 3 g give about
thirty-five. With better foundation, Aron, 45-, says—scarcely less than 43.
8. On Jordan, see Aron; Scheeben, Jordan and Beitrage zur Geschichte Jordans ron Sachsen, QF, XXXV,
1938.
9. Proces. Bon., no. 2. We interpret ‘eodem anno’ according to the obvious meaning (in 1220). If we
were to translate: in the year which followed the brother’s clothing, it would be possible to conclude
from this that he had already entered in the autumn of 1 2 19—which would provide a better explanation
of the details of the account.
10. On Paul of Hungary who entered before the 1220 chapter, was prior of Bologna from 1220-1221
and was then sent to Hungary by the second chapter, see ‘Chronique de Sainte-Agnes’, ASOP, I, 181,
n. 10; Laurent, no. 126; Frachet, 301;; Pfeiffer, 18-21 ; Mandonnet-Vicaire, I, 249-269.
11. I Const. 218 (II D, ch. 17).
12. Proces. Bon., no. 43.
13. This description is based on the chapter ceremonial that the Bologna assembly in point of fact
adopted—1 Const., 218-219 (D. II, ch. 17). The reasons which allow us to identify the texts of 1220 in
the primitive constitutions will be given later.
14. Proces. Bon., no. 2.
1 y. Proces. Bon., no. 33. The word inutilis is technical in this case; it designates the superior who can
no longer render service—Guignard, 83 and 84 (charter of charity of Citeaux);/Const., 21c (D.II ch. 9).
Cf. also Luke XVII, io; Jordan, no. i.
16. Proces. Bon., no. 2.
17. Proces. Bon., no. 33.
vvv' E^ch time.that the assembly was too numerous or insufficiently competent—Customs of Citeaux
XXX,—Guignard, 2j8; 12th canon of the Lateran—Hefele-Leclercq, V, 1342 (where the four elected
persons preside and confirm; I Const., 2 12-2 13 (D.II, ch. 1-3, provincial chapter)
19..He declared in fact in 1229 in letter XLIX ‘that he knew fully all the acts, institutions and
intentions of all the general chapters —Jordan, Epistulae, gg. He missed the chapter of 1221, however

ofi7°Ul d n0t haVC been able t0 SF>eak ^ thiS Way had he n0t beCn closel>' concerned in the definitions

, V 9 lw?ch'u-8r' Thi;S Trk Is likewise found in the profession formula—/ Const.,

J Const i t( ; ;n
did the’text nK ;
7 lUh
f2).; T I""
S uU!a <1atCS frT | 22 I): “d in the paragraph on the daily chapter
dealmg u' a,LUer correction. The original text mentioned, as
f Prk6m°ntreA h 18 lts so“ce> the, reading of the regula (of St Augustine) at the chapter:
e order in fact borrowed this custom. The word institutiones which occurs in the Rodez text shows that
the order tried, later and without result, rather to have the constitutions read. For the significance of
the alternation regula, institutiones, constitutiones, cf. Meersseman, Loi penale 97900
21. Preamble of 1228, / Const., 194.
22. Cf. supra, ch. XI, n. 124.
23. 1 Const., 194 (Prologue).
24. Appendix VI, § 14 and 15.
2g. I Const., 194 (Prologue). Cf. Frachet, 1 go.
26. Meersseman, Loi penale.
27. Humbert II, 46. Meersseman, Loi penale, 978.
28. Acta, 8.

1:: ”v™'
XLIx'Vd”' .he head of the order. Jordan', conception ,,,, shonld, however.'beZid Up!
XLIX, Jordan, Epistulae, £6—one who had the power of dispensing from even k- A’ 1 ^
apart from three exceptions. This was indeed the plenitude of executive power bmdlng 3WS’
31. / Const., 220 (D.II, ch. 20 and 21). K
 NOTES
S'S
32. Laurent, nos. 105, 113, 119, 128, 130, 132.
33. Laurent, nos. 134, 138, 145 of the 17th and 28th April and 24th May, 1221. Letter to the
sisters of Madrid—Balme, III, 79. Foundation inscription of Dominican church in Verona, supra, ch.
XIV, n. 130.
34. The picture of the Preacher fighting against the devil, or against the enemies of the Church in the
whole universe, goes back to Dominic—Proces. Bon., no. 36; cf. Vitry, 349 and Mandonnet-Vicaire, I,
236, n. 18; Jordan, no. 114; Frachet, 18, n. 1 ; Bull of Canonization—MOPH, XVI, 192. Honorius III
gave the Preachers the name of ‘lightly-armed soldiers’ expeditus—recommendation type II (Dilectijilii),
Laurent, no. 103; cf. Jacques de Vitry, loc. cit. supra. Cf. St Thomas—‘officium predicatorum et
doctorum est officium militum’, In II ad Tim., ch. 2, lesson 1.
35. I Const., 202 (D.I, ch. 14). This vow disappeared from the constitutions in 1 2 45—Creytens, ‘Les
constitutions des Fr. Pr. dans la redaction de S Raymond de Peiiafort’, in AFP, XVIII (1948), 19 and
n. 40.
36. Seeing no possibility of finding a Dominican monastery, Diana entered the house of the
Benedictines of Ronzano, ASOP, I, 182, n. 10.
37. For examples of these different professions—Jordan, nos. 56, 74, 73-; Proces. Bon., nos. 25, 41,
46; Frachet, 170, 183, 192; Chronica 11a, 327.
38. ASOP, II, 639 (I Const., D. II, ch. 13, a phrase forgotten by Denifle). Jordan, no. 87.
39. This was the explanation given by Bernard Gui, Acta, I; Chapotin, 20. In point of fact Bologna,
then in full process of construction, is sufficiently large. At this time Paris was too small.
40. On the origins and development of this institution at Monte Cassino, then at Citeaux, etc.—•
Schreiber, II, 296, n. 2 and 324—334; J. Hourlier, Le chapitre general jusqu’au moment du Grand Schisme,
origines, developpement, etude juridique, Paris 1936. Citeaux texts—Guignard, 79—84; for Premontre—
Martene, Kit., Ill, 334 (D. Ill, ch. I and II), to which must be added the formulary Pour la celebration du
chapitre general en usage en 1217, ed. PL F. Lefevre—Les Statuts de Premontre . . . Louvain 1946, 144-143
(for the date, 1 2 ’ j and not 1227, cf. xxix).
41. Hefele-Leclercq, V, 1342-1343.
42. It is not known whether in 1220a document had been drawn up on the recruitment of the members
of the chapter. What is to be found on this point in the primitive constitutions dates from after Dominic’s
death. Perhaps the same system was envisaged as in 1220—the election of representatives by the
various houses ?
43. I Const., 214 (D. II, ch. 6); cf. 194 (Preamble of 1228).
44. I Const., 219—220 (D. II, ch. 20). Before the intervention of the chapter, the prior could, however,
give a limited mission.
45. I Const., 220 (D. II, ch. 21).
46. Proces. Bon., no. 33. I Const., 214— 215 (D. II, ch. 8 and 9); cf. for Citeaux, Guignard, 83—84.
For an example of correction of the Master in chapter (Jordan of Saxony), see Frachet, 117.
47. I Const., 219 (D. II, ch. 18 and 19).
48. Jordan, nos. 86-87 > Proces. Bon., nos. 2 and 33 ; Humbert, II, 46.
49. Bernard Gui in what is known as the Rodez ms., ed. ASOP, II, 1895—1896, 621-647. Cf.
Mamachi, 592.
50. Denifle in ALKMA, I (1885), 165.
51. Mandonnet-Vicaire, II, 203—230, where every endeavour was made to treat the question
thoroughly, in 1938. The explanation there given has never been contradicted. In an independent
critical study, indeed—H. Ch. Scheeben, QF, 38 (1939), 20, correcting his earlier position, in turn
recognized the 1220 legislation in the Rodez manuscript. We have summarized our earlier study under a
more synthetic form in Vicaire, Documents 113-121, clearing up certain divergencies between Scheeben
and ourselves.
52. Cf. ‘Les institutions des Precheurs (1220 and 1221-1227)’, in Mandonnet-Vicaire, II, 287-292.
The principles of this restitution will be found ibid., 273-283. Since it is possible that certain elements
of the original text have disappeared or been modified without leaving any trace, the restitution is
doubtless incomplete. It is however trustworthy for the great majority of the texts. Since 1938 no
objection has been put forward against this attempt at restitution. H. Ch. Scheeben, QF, 35 (1939).
25 in his independent study has assigned the date of 1220 to precisely the same texts—cf. Vicaire,
Documents, 114—116.
53. I Const., 195 (prologue), from which we have withdrawn the word ‘provinciali’, which
corresponds to the complementary text (1221-1225), edited in Mandonnet-Vicaire, II, 284-287.
54. Mandonnet-Vicaire, II, 287-289. The procedure of the chapter according to this text is parallel
to that indicated in the ordo of Premontre of 1217 (supra, n. 41). In actual fact, analogous arrangements
were already in existence for the chapters of Citeaux—cf. Guignard, 258, 263, 270, 271. No literary
dependence, however, can be noted between the various texts referring to this.
55. In 1212, the general chapter of Citeaux reserved to itself the right to allow its religious to preach—
Canivez, I, 400, no. 50. It was the same at Premontre, according to the statutes of 1234, ed. Lefevre,
Les St de Premontre . . . Louvain 1942, 90. This, however, was not the canonical mission.
56. I Const., 212 (D. II, ch. 26). Cf. Proces. Bon., nos. 38, 42 and 47.
57. Hefele-Leclercq, VI, 201.
58. Although many historians continue to speak, not without thoughtlessness it must be admitted, of
the supposed influence of the poverty of St Francis on St Dominic, nothing is said of this. The meeting
of the two saints remains hypothetical. The only plausible hypothesis places this meeting after the
Bologna chapter, at the beginning of 12 21, in Rome (cf. supra, ch. XI, n. 4 and ch. XII, n. 87). Moreover,
 NOTES

and this is the most important point, the type of Franciscan mendicancy at this time had nothing to give
Dominic and his brethren. Dominic was seeking a model of conventual mendicity for religious to whom
he forbade all other work but their spiritual labour of prayer, study and preaching. Now at this time
St Francis had no real conventual organization and did not wish to have, but envisaged making his brethren
live primarily by their manual work—Regula bullata, no. 7 and Testament, no. 5—Boehmer-Wiegand,
£ and 2 5.
59. From the so-called ‘Regie de St Etienne’, ch. IX and XIII, ed. Kit., IV, 310 and 311. Actually
the rule is that of the 4th prior of Grandmont, Etienne de Liciac (1139-1163)—Becquet, 134. The text
edited by Martene and that in PL, 204, 1135-1162, is that corrected and published by Clement III in
1188. It is that existing at the time of the Bologna chapter, but with the complementary statutes given
by Honorius III on 1st March, 1219, edited by Martene, Rit., IV, 322-325. For the Dominican mendicant
practices, see Proces. Bon., nos. 32, 42; Frachet, 29, 127; Cecilia, no. 3.
60. Regie, ch. IV-VI, IX, XIII—Martene, Rit., 309-3 11.
61. Regie, ch. LIV-LV, loc. cit., 315-316. Corrected by the institution of a prior taken from among
the clerics, set over the clerics and the lay brethren—statutes of 1219, I and II, loc. cit., 322.
62. The order of Grandmont did not extend beyond the boundaries of France. It had numerous
houses in the Midi.
63. Proces. Bon., no. 26.
64. Several crises, of which two, in 1185-1188 and in 1219, were very serious, had occurred, the
lay brethren using their authority to persecute the priests by half starving them. The order had fallen
‘in derisum et fabulam’—to use the words of Innocent III—PL, 214, 1107. Cf. Martene, Thesaurus, I,
845; Rit., IV, 322 (ch. VI); Vitry, 313-315.
65. I Const., 224 (D. II, ch. 31). Cf. Proces. Bon., no. 32.
66. The beggar for money was looked upon as an imposter and had to be arrested by the authorities
by orders of the Pope—bull type III, cf. Appendix VI, § 15, no. 8. Anecdote referring to Dominic in
Frachet, 153. Later prescription in I Const., 225 (D. II, ch. 34).
67. The bond between a preacher and his usual socius was known as the combinatio; to break it was a
fault—Acta, 251—252.
68. The fault for the use of a horse without grave necessity will be found in I Const., 208 (D. I,
ch. 22). It was not earlier than 1220. 1. It did not come from Premontre. 2. When Dominic in 1219
was concerned with stopping the use of a horse in Paris it would seem that he did not base himself on the
rule, but relied on the brethren’s goodwill—Proces. Bon., no. 26. 3. It is not inserted at precisely the
same place, in the chapter on grave faults, in the Rodez ms. as in the Sack friars’ Constitutions (ms.
British Museum, Nero A XII fo. 16 iv.) which came from I Const., a proof that it was added later in the
margin of the ms. The fault of carrying money is not found in the Rodez ms. Is this an accidental omission
in this ms. which is written with some carelessness (cf. AFP, XVIII (1948), 19, n. 38 and 39; 20, n. 41;
22, n. 55)? It is found in fact in II Const., 43. Moreover the three prohibitions as to the horse, the
carrying of money and meat, always go together—I Const., 194 (Preamble of 1228); Letter XLIX of
Jordan, Epistulae, 55 (1229); II Const., 43. The fact that I Const., 208 sets down faults for the horse and
meat only must be a mistake of the legislator rather than of the ms., for the Sack friars’ constitutions
(loc. cit.) do not give the money fault either. It is true that they do not give the fault for meat.
69. I Const., 225 (D. II, ch. 35).
70. On the canon of Marbach who supervised the studies of the brethren with a view to the priesthood,
see Amort, I, 391; Denifle, ALKMA, I (1885), 185, n. 2.
71. I Const., 2 2 2-22} (D. II, ch. 28-29).
72. I Const., 223-224 (D. II, ch. 31-34).
73. I Const., 195 (Prologue).
74. What are referred to are pieces of parchment folded into four, six or eight divisions on which the
students recopied the scholastic texts which afterwards composed their personal theological
equipment.
75. In this prescription, which, through Gratian’s Decretal, goes back in part to Cesarius of Arles, by
pagans must be understood the poets of ancient times. The philosophers are principally Aristotle and
Avicenna.
76. By ‘secular branches of learning’ must be understood not the liberal arts in the strict sense of the
term—grammar, arithmetic, music, etc., but the subjects which had been added to them in the course
of the 12th century—physics, medicine, natural sciences, etc.; cf. canon 8 of the Council of Tours
(j 163)—Mansi XXI, 1179—reiterated by the constitution of Honorius III, 22nd November, 1219—
Laurent, no. 98. On this point Dickson in AHDLMA, IX (1934), 119 should be corrected. The statutes
of 1213 in Paris forbade the secular sciences to parish priests, allowing them only theology, sacra pagina_
Mansi, XXII, 845.
77. Allusion to Matt. VI, 34. A Preacher should have no care for the morrow.
78. An ancient law of the Church forbade priests to act as lawyers in secular cases, cf. Paris, 1213 ;
Montpellier, 1214—Mansi, XXII, 831 and 944. The Preachers were even more radical.
79. Ponere os in coelum (Ps. LXXII, 9) meant at the time to allow oneself to pass public judgment on
one’s superiors, and to decide things which were within the superior’s province. Cf. Pierre le Chantre_
PL, 205, 133 BC, 139D; Cernai, no. 593, n. 4 (critical apparatus). Van den Eynde—Antonianum, 26
(1951), 244.
80. Cf. Dominic’s attitude—Proces. Bon., no. 41; Frachet, 74.
81. The Rodez text has been corrected here and the earlier version restored, preserved, it seems to
us, in the institutions of St Sixtus—Simon, 166. Cf. Mandonnet-Vicaire, II, 292 and n. 28.’
 NOTES Si 7
82. To carry no money on their journey—Proces. Bon., no. 38; to have no property and to live on
alms, nos. 42, 47; to speak only of God or with God, nos. 37, 41, 47.
83. Proces. Bon., nos. 38, 41, 47.
84. On Jordan’s commentary on Priscian, see M. Grabmann, ‘Der Kommentar des sel. Jordanus von
Sachsen (J 1237) zum Priscianus Minor’, in AFP, X (1940), 3—19. On his literary heritage—Scheeben
in Hist. Jahrbuch des Corres—Gesellschaft, 32 (1932), £6—71. The commentary, clear and succinct, gives
an impression of living simplicity. At that time there was no work in Paris comparable in the matter of
style.
83. Cf. 1 Const., 223 (D. II, ch. 31, 3) and Jordan, nos. 104-103.
86. Cf. / Const., 219-220 (D. II, ch. 18 and 2o); Encyclical in AFP, XXII (1952), 182-183; Jordan,
no. 78.
87. Cf. I Const., 218—219 (D. II, ch. 17) and Jordan, nos. 16, 79, 109.
88. I.e. his vow of religion.
89. I.e. the canonical rule.
90. Luke X, 33.
91. Salagnac, 8.
92. The gift of oratory was considered as supernatural. ‘Non minoris sublimitatis est in clericis
evangelizandi gratia, quam in monachis miraculorum potentia’—Anselm de Havelberg—PL, 188, 1091.
On the current expression gratia predicationis, see Jordan, nos. 38, 39, 69, 77. ‘Propter eorum [Fr Pred.J
gratiam predicationis etalia miranda que faciebant, totus mundus exauditu stupebat’—Luis de Valladolid,
De conventu parisiensi, ed. Martene—Durand, VI, 33 iE.
93. Frachet, 146.
94. This is the special function of bishops, preachers, and doctors, to be able to act through an
overflow of contemplation, ‘ita majus est contemplate aliis tradere, quam solum contemplari’—Summa
theologica, Ila, flae, q. 188, a. 6; cf. q. 182, a. 1 ad mm; III, q. 40, a. 1, ad 2um.
93. Acts, IV, 32.
96. Acts, VI, 4. Cf. Acts, II, 46; III, 1 and 12.
97. Matt. XXVIfl, 18-20.
98. Luke IX, 1—4; X, 1 —11.
99. This must have been the case with the Ste Trinite in Loubens, with the church between Soreze
and Puylaurens and perhaps with other churches which the Dominican documents do not mention,
among them the former chapel of the village of Villenouvelle, St Sernin. This latter church and three
others, restored in point of fact to the chapter of St Etienne, served to found 4 prebends known as the
prebends of St Dominic, lasting till the end of the ancien regime—Constant, 312.
100. This would be the case with Casseneuil—Percin 14, no. 18; but the people of Toulouse must
have quickly recovered the place.
101. The sixth part of the tithes, exchanged for the permanent possession of the church of Fanjeaux,
in turn transmitted to Prouille, on 17th and 28th April, 1221—Laurent, nos. 134 and 138.
102. Canon 11—Hefele-Leclercq, V, 1341.
103. On 22nd November, 1219—Denifle, Chartularium, I, 90-93 ; Laurent, no. 9S.
104. Cf. supra, ch. XI, § 7 ff.
103. ‘Thus knowing that if their order had a dwelling-place in the city of Metz their presence would
greatly profit not only the layfolk by their sermons, but also the clergy by their courses in sacred learning,
after the example of the Lord Pope who had given them a house in Rome and of many archbishops and
bishops . . .’ Conradin advised the inhabitants of Metz to help them to get a convent—Laurent, no. 1 36
(22nd April, 1221).
106. Otherwise he would not have contemplated convening a chapter there in 1222 !
107. The prescriptions of 1220 on the formation of the preachers encourage this. The provisions
found in I Const., 226 (D. II, ch. 36), are later.
108. Jordan of Saxony there commented on St Luke to the brethren.
109. Laurent, nos. 139 and 140.
11 o. Laurent, no. 140.
111. The Paris diocesan statute III, 20, established in 1213 by Robert de Courson, forbade religious
to leave their cloister to go to the schools. Those who had done so had two months in which to return.
They had to study within the confines of the cloister—Mansi, XXII, 838. On becoming a formal
conventual and no longer a simple hospice, St Jacques fell under the prohibition of this statute.
11 2. Vitry, 349. Cf. Mandonnet-Vicaire, I, 233—234 and n. 1 3 and II, 97, n. 43.
113. Mandonnet, ‘La crise scolaire au debut du Xflle siecle et la fondation de l’ordre des Freres
Precheurs’, in RUE, XV (1914), 34-39, summarized in Mandonnet-Vicaire, II, 83-100. The study is
rather too systematic in character. The two parts of the doctrinal inheritance of the bishop, ordo doctorum
and ordo predicatorum, were clearly distinct at the beginning of the thirteenth century, thanks to the
scholastic movement (cf. supra, ch. XI, 111 and 111). In 1 220 the order of Preachers had no consciousness
of being ipso facto an order of theological doctors and, moreover, Honorius III sincerely hoped to obtain
the masters and schools which the Council demanded, from the dioceses. He did not think of asking for
them from the Preachers. The university orientation of the doctrinal ministry of the latter, however,
was inaugurated from this time onwards, and for the future was to be affirmed in the Church in accordance
with the scheme correctly described by Mandonnet.
114. Laurent, nos. 74 and 86.
113. Laurent, no. 111 (30th April, 1220).
116. Laurent, no. 92 (February 1219)
18-S.D.
 P8 NOTES

117. Laurent, nos. 122, 124, 139 (30th December, 1220; 2nd January and 3rd March, 1221).
118. Laurent, no. 126 (13th January, 1221).
119. Laurent, no. 118 (24th October, 1220).
120. Jordan, no. 100.
12x. This is what is related in the first part of a notice of the Liber anniversariorum of the convent of
St Catharine in Barcelona, it would seem from the thirteenth century. The second part of the notice
places the fact in 1219, i.e. before Easter 1220 (19, III). Hence the date of 1219 traditionally assigned
to the foundation—L. Alcade, ‘El Liber Anniversariorum del antiguo convento de Santa Catalina de
Barcelona’ in Homenatge a A. Rubio i Lluch, II, Barcelona 1936, 333; of- ‘Chronique de Jacques Domenech
[1357]’, in AFP, XIV (1944), 9. However, the first part of the notice, which is all that merits attention,
reproduces in large characters an item from the epitaph of Berenger de Palou, with this difference that
the latter does not mention Bologna or St Dominic, but Paris—San Raimundo de Penyafort, Diplomatario,
ed. J. Ruis Serra, Barcelona 1934, 8 (no. IV). Cf. E. Vails Tabemer, San Ramon de Penyafort, Barcelona
'936, if—16.
122. Laurent, no. 112.
123. BOP, I, 14, no. 27.
124. Balme, II, 369—386.
123. On the demand of the brethren the bull of 31st December, 1220 (Laurent, no. 123), sought to
persuade the bishop and canons of Amiens to grant a church to the Preachers, whom they had earlier
welcomed and appreciated in their ministry, thus at latest in the summer. The foundation came to
nothing.
126. Cf. supra, ch. XTV, n. 63.
127. The charter (Balme, II, 308) which granted the brethren the church of St Christopher is dated
1224 (or 1223) shortly after the death of the bishop Guillaume Prevost; but the gift itself was earlier
since it was made with the approval of the deceased bishop. The founders, however, whose prior was
Fr Guillaume (ibid.), brought from Paris the bull of recommendation of nth February, 1218 (Laurent,
no. 84), replaced by several documents in December 1219 (Laurent, no. 99, 103 (n. 1); Ligiez 33 (n. 3)).
This seems to place the mission in 1219, or at the beginning of 1220. Poitiers was founded before
Orleans (Echard, I, vi).

NOTES TO CHAPTER XVII

1. Laurent, no. 113.
2. Cf. supra, ch. VI.
3. Bull of St Dominic s canonization—MOPH, XVI, 191. On the order of Flora which sprang from
Citeaux in 1189 through a reform and which had about 40 monasteries on the death of Gregory IX, see
Fr Russo, ‘L’eredita di Giocchino da Fiore. La congregazione Florense’, in Archivio storico per la Calabria
e la Lucania, XXI (1932), 131—144.
4- On 23th March, 1221, Honorius III, in order to obtain missionaries, demanded from the arch¬
bishops religious ‘of any order, but particularly those of Citeaux’—Potthast, no. 6399. Cf. Altaner,
Dominikanermissionen, 1.
3. Proces. Bon., nos. 2, 6, 20, 30.
6. Proces. Bon., nos. 30, 41, 42.
7. This was the case with Fr Ventura de Verona, who was soon to be prior of Bologna (1 22 1), and
who was called senex even in Dominic’s time—Proces. Bon., no. 7 and Frachet, 27, n. 27.
8. ‘Fovea hereticorum’—Boehmer-Wiegand, 63. Cf. the energetic terms of’lnnocent III—PL 216
711.
9. Cemai, nos. 6, 8, 9, etc.
10. Luchaire, Innocent III, I, 84-91 and 91-97.
ii; The table which follows is taken from the studies of A. Dondaine, ‘La hierarchie cathare en
Itahe I and II, in AFP, XIX (1949), 280-312 and XX (1930), 234-324. Note in particular the table in
II, 306.
12 These figures taken from the Summa of Raynier Sacconi, a former Catharist bishop who became a
Friar Preacher, seem reliable, smce they are in some sense official in the sect—cf. Dondaine Hierarchie
II, 283, n. 14.
13. If Fr Stefano is to be believed, about 1233 they lost more than 100,000 believers, i.e. as many as
remained to them in 1230—Proces. Bon., no. 39. '
14. Cf. infra, no. 36.
13. Winkelmann, 76—93.
16. Thomas de Spalato, Historia pontificum salonitanorum et spalatinorum, MG SS II XXIX 380
17 Ibidem. This portrait of St Francis preaching is very impressive. Did he too receive 1 commission
from Ugohno within the framework of the general enterprise?
18. Proces. Thol., nos. 3, 7, 13, 18.
19. Winkelmann, 76-177; Jordan, 198-213.
20. Winkelmann, 76-84; Brem, 26-38.
21. Levi, Registro, 3-6 and Documenti, 39 (293)—80 (316).
2 2. Cf. supra, ch. V (beginning).
23. Appointed imperial legate on 17th April, 1220, he was in Verona on 22nd July, in Mantua on the
31st, on 18th August at Borgo-San-Donnino, on the 25th at Reggio, on ,st September and 14th in
Bologna, then from Milan he moved into Tuscany—Winkelmann, 90-93.
 NOTES P9
24. Winkelmann, 106 and 112-117.
25. Meersseman, Confreries, II, 33-70; IV 293-293. The writer, who attributes the idea and first
development of this strategy to Dominic, fails to make the necessary distinction between Dominic’s
own practice and that of his sons ten years later. In 1220—1221 Dominic was concerned with preaching
and with that alone; Ugolino directed and reserved to himself the politico-religious action; the later
legates (among whom Preachers will be found) and the bishops (among whom was a single Preacher
after 1230) succeeded him in this action. After 1233 and despite the resistance of the order, partly
through the wish of Gregory IX, partly through the initiatives of certain religious, some Preachers
took over the whole of the operations.
26. II Celano, ch. 109. Cf. Altaner, Beziehungen 4—8, 22.
27. Laurent, no. 113.
28. Proces. Bon., nos. 2-6, 2o-22, 41-42.
29. Proces. Bon., no. 22.
30. The renunciation of the provost and canons was on 10th August, 1220; this deed is recalled by
the grant of the church to the Preachers by the bishop’s vicar-general on 24th October, 1220—Laurent,
n. 118. Cf. supra, ch. XIV, n. 130.
31. Proces. Bon., no. 6.
32. G. F. Rossi, ‘La fondazione della prima abbazia di S. Bernardo in Italia, Chiaravalle della Colomba’,
in Divus Thomas (Piacenza), LVII (1934), 33-89.
3 3. Buonviso remained with Dominic 1 o months which must be calculated at latest from October
1219—Proces. Bon., no. 20. On the Piacenza convent see supra, ch. XIV, n. 133.
34. Constantino, no. 39.
33. Constantino, no. 38. The year is not indicated. Only in 1220, however, could Dominic have
been in Bologna on 13th August.
36. One cannot refrain from connecting this Alatrinus with the Roman subdeacon whom the Pope
sent to Frederick as far back as the summer of 1219 and about whom he wrote numerous letters in the
summer of 1220—Potthast, nos. 6270, 6332, 6393; Zimmermann, 90-92. The categorical statements
of Constantino, however, make this impossible as to person and date. For the various people possible,
see Altaner, 69, n. 2.
37. Scheeben, 322, against Echard, I, 34, n. G; QF, I, 13; for another anecdote on this Master
Conrad, who was a lector, see Frachet, 249; not, however, 211.
38. OTC, IX, 1048-1032.
39. Proces. Bon., no. 42.
40. Ibidem.
41. Paul of Venice, in fact, spreads this ministry over two years, i.e. over 1220 and 1221—Proces.
Bon., no. 41.
42. The careful study of Dominic’s journeys between Rome and Bologna (Proces. Bon., nos. 30 and
46 and Constantino, no. 46 and 32) led Christianopoulo to this conclusion—ASOP, I, 187-192, in
particular, 189, n. 3. It would be unchallengeable if absolute reliance could be placed on the smallest
details of Constantino’s text. After 27th December, 1220 the Pope dispatched a series of letters which
presupposed Dominic’s presence in Rome, at least from Christmas, perhaps from a fairly long
time.
43. Proces. Bon., no. 37. Cf. 6, 33, 47.
44. Nos. 6, 8, 37, 47.
43. No. 6.
46. No. 4.
47. No. 6.
48. Nos. 3, 32, 41, 43, 47; cf. Proces. Thol., no. 18.
49. Modena—Constantino, no. 39; Rome—Cecilia, nos. 1 and 3; Bologna—Peter Calo, no. 18 in
Mamachi, Appendix 343-344, who gives very interesting details on this popular preaching; the tradition
which he relates, after 1330 (Altaner, 116, n. 1) is perhaps sound; that related by Borselli about Faenza
(dSOP, I, 188) is more doubtful.
30. Cf. supra, no. 47 and / Const., 223 (D. II, ch. 31); Jordan, no. 104.
31. Frachet, 74-73; Constantino, no. 44.
32. Cf. supra, no. 48.
33. Laurent, no. 60. Recommendation type III—Appendix VI, § 6 and 16.
34. I Const. 223 (D. II, ch. 31); Proces. Bon., nos. 13, 29, 32, 37, 41, 47.
33. Proces. Bon., no. 6, 37, 47.
36. Cf. prayer to ask for the gift of tears in the Dominican Missal.
37. Mark I, 13; Proces. Bon., no. 43.
38. Bourbon, no. 421; Frachet, 80.
39. Proces. Bon., nos. 17, 27, 32, 38, 42, 47; Jordan, no. 108.
60. No. 38. Cecilia, no. 1, claims that the smallness of his scapular was because people cut it to
obtain relics.
61. Nos. 17, 32, 38, 47.
62. Nos. 17, 32.
63. No. 47.
64. No. 31.
63. Ibidem.
66. Ibidem,
 S 20 NOTES

67. No. 31. According to Fr Reginald, later Archbishop of Armagh (1247) who was present at the
scene, the small pieces of bread were multiplied—Frachet, 80.
68. No. 22; Bourbon, no. 209. This is a different event from those reported by Fr Rudolfo, no. 31.
The two brothers were eye-witnesses.
69. Constantino, no. 28, combines the two events related by Proces. Bon., nos. 22 and 31, and
localizes the whole at St Sixtus; Cecilia, no. 3. Criticism of these texts in Altaner, 63, n. 1.
70. Proces. Bon., no. 4.
71. No. 42.
72. Frachet, 29. For another description of conventual mendicancy, see Constantino, no. 28;
Cecilia, no. 3.
73. Frachet, 127.
74. Frachet, 163.
73. Laurent, nos. 118 and 143-.
76. Cf. the phrase of the first prior of Lyons, Fr Amaud—Bourbon, no. 7: ‘He preaches doctrine
boldly despite certain people, for, thanks to his poverty, he has no fear that they will cut short his
supplies’. Or the phrase of Eudes de Chateauroux, which alludes to the feudal mentality—‘If the first
preachers (i.e. the apostles) had been rich, men would have demanded money of them to believe in them,
as they do today in the case of kings’—Berthier, Testament, 17.
77. Frachet, 139-140.
78. Laurent, nos. 113 and 116.
79. Proces. Bon., no. 38.
80. Cuthbert, 323-323 and Gratian, 128 and n. 1.
81. For what follows see ‘Chronique de Sainte-Agnes’, ASOP, I, note at foot of p. 182.
82. Reminiscent of Jordan, no. 40 which in turn is a biblical reminiscence—Apoc., II, 9 and III, 9.
83. Laurent.no. 121 (27 th December, i22o)andff.

NOTES TO CHAPTER XVIII

1. Winkelmann 104, 106; Potthast, no. 6393.
2. The bull of 8th December, edited by Laurent, no. 119, under the date 1220, in actual fact is
dated 1221. This is a plain copy of Laurent, no. 103, which it reproduces anachronistically after Dominic’s

3. As can be seen from Potthast.

4. Before writing the bull of 31st December, the Pope had direct information from Dominic (Prior
ordinis predicatorum); before writing the bulls of 27th December and 30th and 2nd January, 1221, to
recommend Fr Guillaume who was going away to continue his studies in Paris, the Pope obviously made
certain of the consent of the head of the order—Laurent, no. 123 and 121, 122, 124.
3. Laurent.no. 120.
r> f' I21‘ convent was situated in the rue St Denis; remains of it may be seen at no. 166—-
Balme, III, 133, n. 1.
7. No. 124.
8. No. 122.
9. No. 124; cf. preces per dilectum fratrem Wuillelmum, familiarem nostrum eiusdem ordinis, eo
attectuosius et fiducialius iterantes, quo placida et placita conversatione sua nobis meruit complacere’_
nos. 1 22 and 1 24. r
10. Proces. Bon., no. 12. Balme, III, 131-132 and Altaner, 26, n. 3 accept this identity which Laurent,
p. 142, n 1, questions without giving his reason. Perhaps because in 1219 Guillaume hid completed the
years of theology envisaged by Dominic. This was a fact. Thus it was not Dominic who took the initiative
IrSS ri n t0 iS’ but GIUillaUme himself’ by ailing upon the Pope to intervene. The
he was somei°1r ^1', ’^1“’ ^ 12’-clearly shows that the Pope was aware that
he was somewhat forcing the hand of the authorities of the order.
11. Winkelmann, 119, n. 1 and 131 —132; Zimmermann 76, 96.
12. Proces. Bon., no. 13.
13. Laurent.no. 140.
14. No. 139.
13. No. 123.
16. No 136 (22nd April, 1221). Perhaps the brethren were already in the town This is all that can
bei-eprinl° t"fnS °f tHe MetZ hoUSe- The traditional data (cf- Balme, II, 307 and m 289-291) lack
reliability. On the first prior, Fr Guerric, cf. supra, ch. XIV, n. 34. 3 7 ’ 9 9 } Ck
17. No. 123 (1 ith January, 1221).
18. Gallon, 3—6.
19. Appendix VI, § 16.
20. Laurent, no. 123.
21. Appendix VI, § 6.
22. Bullarium Danicum, no. 170; Gallen, 7-8.
23. Laurent, no. 131.
24. Balme, III, 231.
23 Scheeben, 337 sees in the prior Dominic mentioned in the charter, a friar distinct from the
founder and the beneficiary of the testimonial Cum qui recipit of 18th January 1221 (cf infra D r ill
Perhaps he is basing himself on the phrase to be read at the end of the charter: ‘nostro nomine et nostii
 NOTES S 21

prioris et conventus totius’ (Laurent, no. 131). There, however, it is a question of the community of
the entire order and of its prior, which the two brethren are effectively engaging. Cf. following note.
26. As can be seen in the majority of the Prouille charters and, elsewhere, in Laurent, nos. 71, 72,
•45. 148 (cf. AFP, XX (19^0), 328-329), 130, 1 31.
27. On 28th December, 1227, the order gave up the church, which reverted to the hospice—cf.
Mamachi, Appendix 93.
2 8. Laurent, no. 143.
29. No. 142. The copy edited dates from 6th May; others however, date from the 3th—cf. following
note.
30. Examples of this bull of 3th May, 1221, will be found in Montpellier (AFP, V (1933), 32, no. 39),
in Friesach, Wurzburg, Petau, Treves (AFP, VI (1936), 234, nos. 27, 28, 29, 200; ADD, II, 169). The
copy of the archives of the order edited in Laurent, no. 142, bears no indication of which archives
it comes from.
31. Appendix VI, § 6, nos. 18, 19, 23, 29, to which can be added no. 2, apersonal, but not individual
testimonial (fr. P.T.R.).
32. This latter, preserved by the Roman sisters of Sts Dominic and Sixtus (today Monte-Mario) came
from Bologna—Balme, III, 367, n. 1.
33. ASOP, III, 169, n. 1 and Frachet, 304. It is not impossible that this Dominic of Segovia should be
identified with the Dominic of Spain mentioned by Jordan, nos. 31, 49, go and Bourbon, no. 288.
Jordan, no. 49, says that he remained at Bologna after he was sent there at the beginning of 1218; but
how are we to interpret the incomprehensible Manino, Manionio of no. 31, of which he was prior in
Spain, otherwise than by—Maiorico? The principal reason against the identification is not this, in our
opinion, but the obvious mediocrity of Fr Dominic of Spain and the disappointments he caused the
founder.
34. Laurent, no. 128. Cf. BOP, I, 12, no. 19 which mentions these two archive depositories.
33. No. 130. Cf. BOP, I, 12, no. 21. In relation to the preceding deed, only the prologue is different.
36. Laurent, no. 74.
37. No. 79.
38. The vel arctioris vitae obtentu clause instituted by Urban II at the end of the nth century to defend
the profession of the canons against the monks, was changed after Alexander III into nisi arctioris vitae
obtentu, to the advantage of the Cistercians. Cf. Dereine, Statut canonique, 348-337 ; article ‘Chamousey’,
in DFIGE, XII, 399. In allowing this restriction to lapse in 1221 in regard to the Preachers, the Papacy
attacked the privilege of the Cistercians and soon turned it to the benefit of the Preachers—see following
note.
39. Dist. I, ch. 14, I Const., 202. This prescription, which mentions the provincial chapter must have
been slightly later than 1221. It follows from a bull of Gregory IX of 21st June, 1233 (BOP, I, 77, no.
13^) that Pope Honorius had forbidden both Preachers and Cistercians to receive religious of each
other’s order, without authorization from the Pope and from the head of the order of the religious in
question.
40. Acts I, 14.
41. e.g. Laurent, no. 123.
42. Proces. Bon., no. 29.
43. Jordan, no. 86.
44. ‘Chronique de Sainte-Agnes’, ASOP, I (1893), note p. 182.
43. Balme, III, 79-80.
46. Dania, goo.
47. Laurent, no. 122.
48. In January 1221, according to Celano—Vita secunda, ch. 109. According to the very searching
investigation by Altaner, Beziehungen 22, this is the only information based on a reliable foundation.
49. On Conrad see Revue Bened., XXL! (1903), 232—243; XXIH (1906), 62-81; 373 391; D. Willi,
Papste, Kardinale u. Bishofe aus dem Cistercienserorden, Bregenz 1912, 21-22.
go. He was present on 3rd November, 1217 at the 2nd siege of Toulouse (document quoted, Cemai,
vol. II, no. 602, n. 1). Cf. Cemai, vol. Ill, p. xciii.
gi. Zimmermann 46, n. 1, 73 and n. 2, 76.
gl. Ferrando, 4.3.
£3. Gallen, 9-10; Loenertz, AFP, XXI (1931), 14.
34. Westenholz, 32-36. On his burial and the Preachers see Chronica Ha, 333.
gg. Mamachi, Appendix published a certain number of charters of Santa Maria in Tempulo (no. I,
V-VIII, X, XII, XV, XXVIt, XXX, XUI, XLV) re-edited in Bartolini. Certain charters of St Bibiana are
edited in G. Ferri, ‘Le carte dell’Archivio Liberiano dal secolo X al XV’, in Archivio della r. societa rom.
di storia patria, XXVII (1904), 147-202. On the subject of the two monasteries, cf. Zucchi, 261-269
and 316.
g6. Laurent, no. 137, 141, 147.
gj. AFP, XX (1950), 328-329 (replacing the defective edition of Laurent, no. 148, document of
1 3th May, 1221).
^8. Partial version of thisno longer extant text in Echard, I, 83. On Benedict of M., ibidem, 336-337.
39. Ed. Walz, cited under the reference Cecilia.
60. Cecilia, no. 4, 10, 12.
61. Cf. Cecilia, no. 2 and 3 with Jordan, no. 100 and Proces. Bon., no. 22 already transformed by
Constantino, no. 28.
 £22 NOTES

62. As Zucchi, 2£^-2g6.

63. E.g. what is said about Cardinal Stefano de Fossanova, Friar Tancred, the canals of St Sixtus, the
Nomentana bridge, etc. Sister Cecilia is not responsible for the gross errors in dates of the modem
historical tradition. Her accounts easily lend themselves to arrangement in chronological order (nos. 3.
4, 11, 12, 13, 1, 2, g, 14, 8, 9, 10, 6, 7, 1 g—cf. Vicaire, Documents, 199) over a period of time which
does not exceed a Lent and Paschaltime. The most questionable accounts seem those in which the
things remembered by Sister Cecilia, or even more so in the case of Sister Angelica alone, are interspersed
with a written legendary tradition (the repast of the angels, the resurrection of the boy Napoleon).
This written tradition, because of its enormous bulk, seriously distorted in the Middle Ages the account
of eye-witnesses—when it was not substituted entirely for personal memories. This is particularly the
case when an account comes across an episode similar to something in the Gospel—cf. M. Fr Lanzoni,
‘II miracolo di Napoleone Orsini . . .’, Miscellanea Dominicana, Rome 1923, 10—20.
64. Laurent, no. 137; Montefiascone, 83b.
6g. Ibidem. Cecilia, 2 and 14, speaks of all the nuns in the city whom the Pope wished to gather into
one community, which is a clear exaggeration.
66. Montefiascone, 83a (sub arcta clausura et diligenti custodia).
67. For what follows, see Huyghe, in particular 24-30, 74-87, 89, 91— 9g. Cf. supra, ch. VIII, n. 96.
68. Holstenius-Brockie, Codex regularum, II, Augsburg 17^9, 467-^36. The rule was approved by
Eugenius III (114;-1153) Huyghe, 89.
69. Cecilia, no. 2.
70. Ibidem. Scheeben, 329 and Zucchi, 263, n. 1, firmly reject this information—the cardinals could
not serve as mere supernumeraries. There was no question of that. The affairs of the Roman convents
were family affairs for the Pope and the cardinals (Laurent, no. 137). Their personal influence on nuns
and their families was indispensable at certain times for the success of the enterprise. In 1223 when
there was a question of persuading four sisters from St Sixtus to go back to St Agnes of Bologna, Honorius
himself went to St Sixtus, accompanied by Cardinal Ugolino, the Provincial of Tuscany and several other
of the Preachers. The Pope addressed them himself—‘Chronique de Sainte-Agnes’, ASOP, I, 182, n.
71. Laurent, no. 137, 141, 147; AFP, XX (i9Jo), 328-329; Jordan, no. 100; Cecilia, nos. 2 and 14.
72. He only appears in two accounts by Cecilia—nos. 2 and 14.
73. Simon, 21—33 and Zarncke, 26—77.
74. He was still in Rome on 3rd March, 1221, when he signed a major privilege—Potthast, no. 6576
and p. 678. He was in Siena on 25th March—Winkelmann, 168, n. 1. It will be noted that Cecilia,
no. 2, mentions his presence on 24th February, but not at the procession for their final entry into St
Sixtus, which was in April—-Cecilia, no. 14.
yg. Laurent, no. 137.
76. Already a nun in 1194 and abbess since the end of 1204 or beginning of 1205—Bartoloni, 18,
27. 3H 33-47-
77. On 26th November, 1219, the whole proceeds of one property were devoted to sending a
procurator to the Pope for the affairs of the convent—Mamachi, Appendix gy.
78. On 2jth November, 1220, she set aside 6 pounds [livres provins] from the Senate to restore the
convent premises—Mamachi, Appendix 6g. At this date she was still at the head of the abbey and
striving to preserve the ancient installation.
79. He appears in the sisters’ affairs after 26th November, 1206—Bartoloni, 354 39, 42, 46, 3-4. In
1221, he possessed a part of the abbey property as security for five large debts outstanding—AFP, XX
(i9£°), 328.
80. Cf. charter of 26th November, 1219 and the sending of a messenger to the Pope—Mamachi,
Appendix 59 and bulls of 4th and 17th December, 1219, 2jth April, 1221, and the Pope’s replies
(Laurent, nos. 100, 104 and 137).
81. Cecilia, no. 2. The account is not very clear. It is supposed that the nuns and the abbess
had made profession and given the property of the monastery to Dominic in a preparatory ceremony at
Santa Marla. Later, the ceding of rights to St Sixtus by the abbess is again mentioned. Perhaps this is
merely an imperfection in the account. It would seem normal that the essential gesture, the profession,
should have been made at St Sixtus, for according to the mentality of the time, such an act bound not
only to the person but to the place. The three cardinals, it is said, agreed to take part in the ceremony.
This was by no means pointless—to prevent any failure to take the step on the part of the sisters or any
violent intervention on that of their families. Despite modem historiography which places the event in
1220 (with the exception of Scheeben and N. Maurice Denis—R. Boulet, Romee, 2nd ed. Rome, 1948,
ji6, n. I), the date of 1221 is firmly fixed, not only by the secondary synchronisms but also by the
charters of 2 jth November, 1220 and 1 £th April, 1221—Mamachi, Appendix 64-66 and AFP, XX
(I9i'°)i 328. In November 1220, abbess Eugenia was still in enjoyment of her full rights. In April, 1221,
she was described as ‘formerly abbess’ and Dominic alone completed the deed.
82. Lectionary of St Sixtus (thirteenth century)—Mamachi, Appendix, 9-14; Cecilia, no. 14, which
served as a basis for Thierry whose account was repeated by Martinelli, Imago B. Mariae V. quae apud .
SS. Sixti et Dominici moniales . . . asserratar, Rome, 1635. This was translated and used by Fr M. Torrigio
in his Historia della veneranda Immagine . . . ’ Rome, 1641; G. G. Meersseman, Der Hymnos akathistos im
Abendland, I, Fribourg, 19^8, £3 ff. and n. 4. The Virgin is the type of the Hagiosotitissa.
83. Frachet, 7J-76.
84. Frachet, 81; cf. 111, 134.
8g. ‘Chronique de Sainte-Agnes’, ASOP, I (1893), 182, n.
86. Frachet, 178.
 NOTES S 23

87. Cecilia, no. 11.

88. No. 14.
89. Cecilia, no. 14 (cf. no. 3), places this second stage between 24th and 28th February, 1221 (1st
and 3rd stages). This is not impossible but is unlikely. If as early as the 28th St Sixtus was ready to
receive the sisters on a permanent basis, why these three stages? They are inevitable, on the other hand
if, as the text, moreover, suggests, the gift of Santa Sabina and the removal of the brethren had occupied
a certain time. It is thought that the sister has confused the dates of the 2nd and 3rd stages.
90. Cecilia, no. 14; cf. nos. 3 and 4.
91. Article ‘Sabine (Sainte—)’ by M. D. Darsy in Diet, d’archeol. et de liturgie, XV, 218—238, where
plans and a bibliography will be found.
92. Cum multa sollicitudine multo que labore—Montefiascone, 836.
93. Darsy, Diet, d’archeol. et de liturgie, XV, 232; cf. 222. Also ‘La chambre de saint Dominique’,
in Vie dominicaine, V (1939), 43—44.
94. BOP, I, 1 3, no. 2. Numerous cases have already been met in which the gift of the church was
considerably later than its occupation.
93. On 15th April Dominic was called in a charter prior of the venerable monastery of St Sixtus—
AFP, XX (1930); 328; this can only refer to the convent of sisters. The same document, however,
mentions the existence even at this date of the monastery in Tempulo with its servants in whose name
Dominic liquidated a debt of the said monastery. Thus the translation had not yet taken place. It was an
accomplished fact by the 23th-—Laurent, no. 137; it doubtless took place several days earlier, since the
pontifical chancellery had had time to deliver the charter. If account be taken of Cecilia, no. 14, it
could have taken place on a Sunday, the first Sunday after Lent, 1 8th April, 1221.
96. Montefiascone, 836.
97. After the arrival of these isolated persons, there would have been 44 religious, according to
Cecilia, no. 14. It will be noted that the figure is not exaggerated. This gives a certain weight to the
figure of 104 given by Cecilia, no. 6. Was this the maximum attained shortly before the saint’s departure?
The nuns of Santa Marla, Santa Bibiana and Prouille formed a community of 60 according to Montefiascone.
He again mentions, however, isolated persons ‘multas et alias dominas saeculares’, afterwards received
by Dominic, who also joined the sisters.
98. According to Montefiascone, the nuns of Santa Bibiana and other convents numbered 2 1. Honorius
indicates the same proportions, without giving any figure—Laurent, no. 137.
99. Cecilia, no. 14.
100. The charter of 13th April shows that St Sixtus already had its community before the transfer of
the Roman sisters; this cannot be other than the community of the sisters of Prouille. The latter had
not been there long for the transfer had certainly been made without delay. The post haec of Montefiascone,
836, should be ignored.
101. He was in fact in Rome with his clergy on 17th April—Laurent, no. 134.
102. Laurent, no. 134.
J03. Laurent, no. 138.
104. He speaks of the parish priest who had to be instituted by the master (of the order), vel prior
in dicta ecclesia a dieto magistre instituto.
103. Guiraud, Cartulaire, II, no. 332.
106. Montefiascone, 836; Percin, 22, no. 36.
107. The minimum, according to the rule which will be discussed shortly.
108. AFP, XX (1930), 328-329.
109. Mamachi, Appendix 3-9.
no. Laurent, no. 137.
hi. No. 141. Cf. no. 147.
112. No. 1, 3, 6.
113. Nos. 3, 6. She also makes him appear as procurator of the brethren of St Sixtus before the
transfer, which does not agree with Constantino, nos. 28 and 39.
114. Montefiascone, 836.
113. Mentioned in the charters of Santa Maria at least after 1214, conventual prioress after 1213
(Mamachi, Appendix 42, 44), she was in charge of the turn at St Sixtus—Cecilia, no. 9.
116. Cecilia, nos. 6, 9, 10.
117. Montefiascone, 836.
118. Critical edition in Simon, 142-133. Cf. on these texts, infra, Appendix VIII.
119. Montefiascone, 836.
120. Jordan, no. 100; Frachet, 190; Cecilia, no. 1, 2, 3, 6, 12. According to Cecilia, no. 3, from the
time of Lent the brethren were about a hundred in number. This information, however, intended to
stress the importance of a miracle, has no sure foundation and no great probability.
121. Cecilia, nos. 3 and 6. The reference in no. 3 is a mistake on the sister’s part if it is true that he
entered the order after the foundation of the monastery of St Sixtus—no. 6. He was at Siena in 1227—
Mamachi, Appendix 93.
122. Jordan, no. 31.
123. Cecilia, nos. 1, 3, 11.
124. No. 6.
123. M. D. Darsy, ‘La chambre de saint Dominique’, in Vie dominicaine, V (1939), 43~44-
126. Cecilia, nos. 3, 6 (end), 8.
127. This comes, moreover from an anecdote without authority, cf. supra, I, 19L
 NOTES
S 24

i 28. Cum maxima mansuetudine et rerborum dulcedine—Proces. Bon., no. 48.

129. No. 5.
1 30. No. 32.
131. Nos. 4, s,
6, 17, 22, 32, 37. 43. 4»-
132. Jordan, no. 107; Cecilia, no. 15.
133. No. 107.
134. No. 103.
135-. Nos. 6, 17, 22, 37.
136. Proces. Bon., no. 37.
137. Cecilia, no. 6 adfinem.
138. Cecilia, no. 6.
139. Proces. Bon., nos. 4, 6, 37, 43, 48.
140. Cf. Appendix VIII, no. 9.
141. Frachet, 75-76.
142. Frachet, 79. Cf. 35-, 53.
143. Cecilia, no. 7.
144. Proces. Bon., no. 36; cf. 2ii,n. 35.
145. Cecilia, no. 6. The linking together of the potus and the collatio or spiritual conference is a
custom peculiar to the Preachers (I Const., 199-200, D. I, ch. 9) who to gain time have fused two
distinct practices of the Cistercians, the bibere and the collatio (Us de Citeaux, ch. 80 and 81—Guignard,
185-186). The rule of St Sixtus expressly preserved the Cistercian use (ch. 5, ed. Simon, 145).
146. Jordan, no. 104.
147. Jordan, no. 107.
148. The prior of the brethren, Fr Tancred, witness to and actor in the scene. Thus Jordan is very
well informed. He does not expressly say it was a resurrection, he even rather excludes this. Later
biographers, however—Constantino, no. 35; Barthelemy, no. 1 5; Cecilia, no. 2—do so. On this
development see Altaner, 63-64.
149. Jordan, no. 100. For a criticism of the legendary tradition, cf. Lanzoni, cited supra, no. 63.

NOTES TO CHAPTER XIX

1. Constantino, no. 52 ; Mamachi, 605, n. 3 and 6353 n. 2.
2. Jordan, no. 88.
3. 1 Const., 217—218 (D. II, ch. 153 § 1, and 16, 1 and 3). This expression, which we meet with five
times in these texts, does not come up again in the later legislation. It belongs to the first provincial
legislation. The latter is prior to 1224, date when the election of the provincial by his chapter was
decided upon (cf. infra, n, 16). In view of the fact that all the elements of this legislation (provincial
territorial limits, chapter and prior) are contemporary (infra, n. 14), there is no reason for not dating
this legislation from 1221, date at which the prior provincial certainly made his appearance—Jordan,
no. 88.
4. In the new profession formula—I Const., 202-203 (D. I, ch. 16). On the earlier formula, supra
ch. XI, 11—11. In 1220, the head of the order was still called prelatus maior—I Const., 220 (D. II, ch.
20 and 21).
5. Cf. in particular the change of title in the two acts of Ugolino—Laurent, no. 145 and 151. On
24th May, 1221, magister Dominicus, prior ipsius ordinis is spoken of; on 13th June, f rater Dominicus,
magister totius ordinis.
6. I Const., 221-222 (D. II, ch. 24 and 25).
7- J Const., 217-218 (D. II, ch. 16, § 1 ; 17, § 1, 3, 4). The second sentence of ch. 16, § 1 is a later
addition: in 1221 the provincials were appointed by the general chapter, not elected. This § 1 in 1221
merely signified the control of the provincials by the general chapter. § 2 is a later addition, as is clear
from the statuimus and is, moreover, divergent from § 1. § 3 forms part of the ‘provincial bloc’
Mandonnet-Vicaire, II, 276-277 and 280-281). § 4 and 5 date from 1236 (Acta, I, 7 and 8). Ch. 17,
§ 2 also dates from 1236 (Acta, I, 6). It is not impossible for § 5 to date from 1221, though we are
inclined to think that it is from 1228. § 6 dates from 1225, and serves as a transition between the
legislation of 1220 and that of 1225. The other phrases in these two chapters, between which there is a
literary connection, are the only ones which refer to the province under the original name of provincia
vel regnum. For their date of 1221, cf. supra, n. 3 and infra, n. 14.
8. Paris, Bologna, Montpellier, Palencia or Oxford.
9. This provision is clearly prior to that in D. II, ch. 4, § 2, which dates from 1225.
10. Hefele-Leclercq, V, 1342—1343.
11. The anomaly of the expression in the Dominican constitutions proves its dependence. One fact
emphasizes this. The expression does correspond to reality in the case of the chapters for which provision
was made by the councils: in point of fact the houses of canons were organized into ecclesiastical
provinces. In the thirteenth century none of the Dominican provinces, as will be seen, corresponded to
an ecclesiastical province, or to a kingdom.
12. This canon inspired the Dominican provisions concerning: 1. the cutting up into sub-divisions,
in accordance with the ruling idea provincia vel regnum; 2. the designation of the four presidents- 3 the
nomination of visitors; 4. the choice of the place for the next chapter.
13. The idea of the assembly by provinces of the isolated Benedictine abbeys goes back to 1131, to
the Council of Rheims. After that a provincial chapter was held in each metropolis. From 1135 onwards,
 NOTES S*S

the customs of Springiersbach made provision for provincial chapters for its houses of canons. In 1202
Innocent III extended this institution to the isolated houses in Italy and then in Denmark, England,
Normandy, certain provinces of France, etc. In 1215 it was made general for canons as for monks—cf.
Ph. Schmitz, Histoire de l’ordre de Saint Benoit, III, 42—30 ; G. G. Meersseman, 'Die Reform der Salzburger
Augustinerstifte (1218), eine Folge des IV Laterankonzils (12 1 3)’,in Zeitschr.J. Schweizer Kirchengeschichte,
XLVIII (1954), 81-93.
14. It could be thought that the institution of the provincial prior was earlier than that of the
provincial chapter. This was Scheeben’s idea—QF, XXXIX (1939), 32. One has only, however, to note
his original title—prior provinciarum vel regnorum—to see at once the dependence of the institution of the
prior in relation to Canon XII and thus in relation to the institution of the provincial chapter.
13. Laurent, nos. 143 and 131.
16. This prescription will be found in D. II, ch. 13, and of § 1. It was prior to the provincial bloc
which will be referred to later. We assign it to 1224. In that year, in fact, a second wave of provincials
was seen to emerge, succeeding the provincials nominated by the general chapter, in France (Pierre de
Reims)—Chapotin, 67, n. 1; Lombardy (Fr Stefano), AFP, X (194°). 372-373 ; Roman province (Fr
Clair), AFP, IV (1934), 126; Teutonia (Conrad de Hoxter), QF, XX, 88, n. 3 and XXXV, 134-156-
17. No. 88.
18. Cf. infra, n. 35.
19. ExceptScheeben, 370-373.
20. Acta, I, 2. Gui, 403. He does not indicate his sources.
2 1. ‘Cum fratre Giliberto priore scilicet provinciali’—Acta, I, 2. The phrase is that of Jordan, no. 88,
with the exception of the gloss—scilicet provinciali, Gui, 403B.
22. ‘De Theutonica, Hungarica et Romana provincia, nondum potui certitudinem invenire’—Gui,
403D.
23. Echard, I, 1.
24. 1 Const., 212 (D. II, ch. 1).
23. For detailed study of the question by Christianopoulo, see 4SOP, I (1893), 49-53-
26. Jordan, no. 88 and Frachet, 305.
27. The recommendation bull of 13th November, 1219—Laurent, no. 97 has remained in the
Zamora archives. The house was not founded until after Barcelona (1222) and Santaren—ASOP, I, 511.
28. ASOP, I, p 18—521 for a critical study by Christianopoulo.
29 Nominated by the chapter of 1221, since as early as 18th January, 1222, he received a letter from
the King of Castile, St Ferdinand—Castillo, I.P., L. II, ch. 1, 157- Cf. P. L. G. Alonso-Getino ‘Capitulos
provinciales y priores prov. de la Orden de Sto Domingo en Espana , in La Ciencia Tomista, 13 (1916),

91-94-
30. Chapotin, 61 and n. 2.
31. Echard I, ii; Gui, 469. It was earlier than the following one (Puy), which was again in 1221.
32! Charter of donation of the church of St Laurent to the provincial Bertrand de Garrigues by the
elected bishop Stephen of Chalancon, in October 1221— Percin, 23, no. 68; Gallia Christiana,

II, 7 1 1. . . ,
33. Cf. preceding note and Chronica la, 338, which states positus a beato Domimco .
34] Gui 403 affirms this; Echard I, 21, 92, 1 16, queries it on account of the silence of Salagnac and
Bourbon in their information on Matthew of France. Gui’s testimony, however, is formal. Cf.
Meersseman in MOPH, XVIII, 82.
3£. All that is known is that it was earlier than the convent of Parma ASOP, I, 187.
36. Taeggio, cited by Mamachi, 650, n. 3, dates the foundation from 1221.
37. Charter of Bologna of 17th February, 1223—ASOP, III, 169 ; MOPH, I, 304.
38. Scheeben in AFP, IV (1934), 125.
39. Frachet, 303-, from a report of 1239; Pfeiffer, 13 to 26.
40. Mandonnet-Vicaire, I, 249-269. . _ . cuurz\
41 Altaner, Dominikanermissionen, 142 ft. Basing himself on the date m Dania, 300, Scheeben (361)
whom we followed in the French edition of this story admits the foundation of a convent at Alba Royale
(Szekesfehervir) before May 1220, by a Fr Paul, prior in Hungary, distinct from the Master Paul who
was at this time prior of Bologna. Bela Ivanyi, however, in Melanges Mandonnet, II, Pans 1930, 439-440,
and above all Loenertz, S. Hyacinthe, 22-23, have shown the improbability of this duality of persons and
the incompatibility of the Hungarian data in Dania with those of the rehable report ol 1239—Frachet,

3°S-
42. Pfeiffer, 183. . ,
43 According to Dania, 300, the Fr Solomon who entered at Verona at Easter 1220 was left as
priest at Friesach by Fr Paul, on his way to Hungary after Pentecost 1220. The latter detail is incorrect
and how much can be retained of the anecdote is now clear—the first mention of the convent of Friesach
and of the presence of Dominicans in Germany.
44. Bullarium Danicum, no. 170.
43. Iordan, no. 35. Cf. Scheeben, 362. , ,, , , . r , , ,
46. Rano or Ranoldus, according to Dania, 301, dean of Roskilde, bishop elect of that diocese, had
entered the order in Paris in the course of the journey which he was making to Rome for confirmation
of his bishopric. He is said to have become provincial the following year. This could only have taken place
when the see was vacant in May, 1223—Gallen, 1 3 and n. 7.
47. Dania, 500, cf. supra, n. 41 and 43.
48. Dania, 300; Scheeben, 361-363.
5 26 NOTES

49. Homiliaefestivae, ed. Coppenstein, Cologne, 1614, 14-—ASOP, I, 370-372.

50. Except with authorization from the Pope—I Const., 202 (D. I, ch. 14); Fr Christian, however,
must have kept silence about his Cistercian origin.
51. For preaching at Rheims see Bourbon, 391. He undoubtedly bore the title of first prior of Cologne
-—ibidem and Jordan, no. 66, 70, 79, 82.
52. Scheeben, in QF, XXXV, 15-4-1 56.
53. Jordan, no. 88 ; Chronica Ila, 325; Acta, I, 2 ; Gui, 403 ; Nicholas Trivet, Annales sex regum Angliae,
ed. T. Hog. London, 1845, 2o9- Despite Trivet, it is difficult to attribute 12 religious to the founding
community. This detail, which Jordan does not give, seems a conclusion drawn from D. II, ch. 23 of the
institutions (/ Const., 222). This prescription indeed, which presupposes that the order was highly
developed, is probably later than 1221. In fact only four brethren were sent at this date with Paul of
Hungary—Frachet, 305.
54. Cf. supra, 361 and n. 21 as to why it is not possible to give him this title from 1221, despite
Bernard Gui.
55. R. J. Loenertz, Une ancienne chronique des provinciaux dominicains de Pologne in AFP, XXI (1951), 13
and n. 1; 14, n. 1. On St Hyacinth and his biographer, see Altaner, Dominikanermissionen, 196—214;
O. J. Woroniecki, Sw. Jacek Odrowaz, Katowice, 1947.
56. Loenertz, AFP, XXI (1951), 14-15.
57. Frachet, 194-195. On the beginnings of this province see Altaner, Dominikanermissionen, 9—15;
R. Loenertz, ‘Documents pour servir 4 l’histoire de la province dominicaine de Grece’, AFP, XIV
(i944). 72-i if-
58. It is this collection of prescriptions that is called ‘provincial document’-—Mandonnet-
Vicaire II, 276-277 and 279-282; Vicaire, Documents, 120—121. This collection includes the following
paragraphs: D. H, ch. I, § 1; 2; 3; 4 § ia and 2; 5, § 1; 7; 8 § 1; 9 § 1 and 2; 10, § 1 ; 11, § 2; 13;
1 5, § 3; 16 § 6 (list in Vicaire, Documents, 120, slightly amended). This collection, later than 1221,
cannot be later in date than 1227, since the provinces which it organized prepared the meeting of the
chapter of 1228—I Const., 193. It is possible to be more definite than this. It was later than 1224 since
in that year the first provincial legislation as given in ch. 15 and 16 of the Rodez ms. was being completed
(cf. supra, n. 16). Moreover, the alteration which it established in the composition of the general
chapters created numerous difficulties before 1228, since that year it was necessary to convene a special
general chapter to remedy them—I Const., 193 and 214 (Preamble of 1228 and D. II, ch. 6); Humbert,
Peg., II, 58. This presupposes that the alternation provided for by the provincial text had come into use
at least twice—thus 1226 and 1227. The provincial document is at latest of 1225. It will be noted that
that year the chapter was held in Bologna, among the lawyers. It is indeed in that year that the date of
composition, which in 1938 we could not take the risk of determining, must be set. The bringing into
being of elective provincial chapters in 1224 (first definite mention for France—Chapotin 48 and 67)
supplied the general chapter of 1225 with the first elected provincials.
59. D. II, ch. I, I Const., 2 12.
60. D. II, ch. 5 and 10, I Const., 213 and 215. In the edition of the text of Rodez, the institution of
the minor provinces appears as contemporary with that of the major. Actually the first provincial of
Poland was nominated in 1225 (cf. supra, n. 55). The juridical provisions relating to the minor provinces,
however, may very well have been interpolated, with slight alterations in the provincial document in
1226 or at latest 1227. The name given to them of provinciae superadditae, the additional character of the
paragraph in which they are mentioned, with a significant statuimus, make it essential to posit this
question. The date of the first provincial of Dacia would seem to be 1226 (cf. supra, n. 46). The order of
enumeration of the minor provinces, which has varied, provides a confrmatur of this. We have taken the
historical order of the foundations to be that of the order of precedence (Echard, I, 1)—Poland, Dacia,
Greece and the Holy Land (already the Acts of the chapters of 1239-1240—1241 mention—Poland,
Dacia, Syria, Holy Land, Greece—Acta, I, n, 13, 18), which seems to prove—1. that Greece and the
Holy Land were contemporary; 2. that they came into being after Dacia, thus in 1227. In this case the
addition relating to the four minor provinces would date from 1227. These particulars are welcome. Up
to this date no document had revealed the date of creation of the minor provinces and one had to be
satisfied with the date of 1228, clearly erroneous, given by Bernard Gui.
6x. On the spirit of this legislation, see the celebrated commentary by Denifle—I Const., 165-193;
G. R. Galbraith, The Constitution of the Dominican Order, 1216 to 1360, Manchester, 1925; Mandonnet-
Vicaire, II, 230—239; David Knowles, The Religious Orders in England, Cambridge, 1948, 146—162;
L. Moulin in Rev. intern, des sciences administratives, 1951, 42-67 and 1955, 1-104 (all relevant).
b2. Proces. Bon., no. 7. The text does not say he was elected. The election of the prior by the
community, however, was legislated from 1216—Laurent, no. 74, I Const., 221 (D. II, ch. 24). Only
founders were nominated by the chapter.
63. Laurent, no. 126.
64. No. 150.
65. Mamachi—Appendix 375-376.
66. On 17th February, 1223 and 8th April, 1224—ASOP, IV, 169, n. 1 and 170 n a
67. ASOP, IV, 165, n. 3.
68. Laurent, no. 126.
69. ASOP, I, 181-182 and ‘Chronique de Sainte-Agnes’, ibidem, no. 10.
7°* Fere per totam Marchiam trevisinam’—Proces. Bon., no. 41 • On his companions see no. 42.
71. Bull to the prelates for the purpose of accrediting Ugolino—14th March, 1221—Potthast, no.
6589; Horoy, 740-741; complementary mandate of 25th March—Potthast, no. 6598, Horoy III, 752.
 NOTES 527

72. Winkelmann, I, 167-177; Brem, 42-52; Chr. Touzellier, 'La legation en Lombardie du cardinal
Ugolino (1221). Un episode de la je croisade’, in RHE, XLV (1950), 508-542.
73. For the cardinal’s itinerary, see Winkelmann, 1, 168, n. 1.
74. Proces. Bon., nos. 7, 30, 41.
75. Laurent, no. 145.
76. Laurent, no. 151.
77. Mamachi, Appendix 76—79, acts of 8th, 9th and 12th November, 1221.
78. This was Maitre G[uillaume] Gasco—Laurent, nos. 150 and 151 ■
79. Winkelmann, I, 168, n. 1.
80. ‘Chronique de Sainte-Agnes’, ASOP, I, 182, n.
81. ‘Circa finem mensis iulii’, Proces. Bon., no. 7. He preceded Ugolino who was m Bologna
on 28th.
82. He was not present at Dominic’s death.
83. What follows reproduces almost word for word the account of Prior Ventura of Verona and the
Procurator Rodolfo, both witnesses of first importance—Proces. Bon., nos. 7-10, 31, 33, 34- To thls
have been added some details related by Guillaume de Montferrat, Buonviso, Fr Stephen-ibidem, nos.
12, ic, 20. 22, 37; Jordan, nos. 92-98; Frachet, 84, 85, 88; Salagnac, III, 2, no. $ (MOPH, XXII, 33).
84. This double visit, mentioned by the ‘Chronique de Sainte-Agnes’, ASOP, I, 182, n., can only be
placed at this particular time.

86. According to Buonviso, in connection with an illness of Dommic m Milan in 1220 Proces. Bon.,

no. 22.
87 Bv Jordan, no. 93, who was not a direct witness. , t
88! Ferrando, no. 50, adds: ‘Have charity, keep humility, possess voluntary poverty It is surprising
that neither Ventura, Rodolfo nor Jordan cite this phrase presented by Ferrando as a solemn testament,
accompanied by a malediction against those in the order who should be defaulters m respect of posessions.
Does not the expression come rather from Jordan of Saxony who gives it and comments on it to Diana
in Letter XVII in 1223?_J. J. Berthier, Le testament de saint Dominique, avec les commentaires du card.
Eudes de Chdteiauroux et du Bx. Jourdain de Saxe, Fribourg, 1892. , ,
89 Description of the primitive liturgy of the dead among the preachers by Philippeau after the
prototype of 1254. It is this again that will be found, almost intact, distributed among the present
Dominican processional and breviary. The account we are going to read a ready agrees with this as to
the essential points—viaticum, extreme unction (here according to the collegiate rite see Philippeau,
ZD prayers at the agony, great commendation, funeral toilet, vigil. There is nothing unexpected.
Philippeau points out the preponderant influence of the university customs of Pans and Bologna on the
Dominican rite, which he thus characterizes—a canonical version of the post-Carolmgian recensions of
the Roman sacramentary, 40-41.
qq Proces. Bon., no. c <md Jordan, nos. 9^ «ind ^ 25. . . 1 . v
91! Ventura, no. 5, links this up with the confession; but it is clear that that is connected with the

preceding allocution.
92. Salagnac, 33.

04 ?rske; fiathetourse of which Fr Guala had the vision of Dominic at the very time when the
latter' was dying-Jordan, no. 95, could be the siesta. This, however, is not certain for we are told that
at that time^Guala was ill. The numerous events, however, which took place since the morning, oblige
us to fix this death in the course or at the end of the afternoon.

9l' Thpfhas been based on the anatomical reconstitution made in 1945, on the occasion of the
scientific'analysis of the relics, by Prof. C. Pini of Bologna (why has a^ettd attfitnde,, so httle worthy
of the saint been given to this otherwise satisfactory reconstitution?), Amato, etc. Le reliquie di d

D.1, “ “ lir*: > —»»*/•« • • • ***+ ' >*• T1“ of f’cL

f-iTce“r„^rS pcrSwhShine might have W would be somewhat conventional ha,
1 ’ j Li„ rrmfirmafion from the learned study of the relics (cf. prec. note) especially the
received remar a . f of red) the teeth (which, with the palate and partially calcified
study of the haar(white sonorL votee), and skeleton (5 feet 5 inches),

slendernes^of the body, long, fine hands). He must have been agile and quick of movement; the skin
slende Z itr freckles. The type is Mediterranean, ibero-insular. The absence of
bTd^ is Pc“ed^e7-eSe of6hairs am^g the relics, which invalidates the contrary evidence

of Frachet, 12!. 4. where details will be found on this religious, founder of St Mark

f m' n and of its daughte^houtes, St Catherine of Bologna and the Holy Trinity of Ronzano
0 corn.“of the Auguscinian nun, of Ronaano, which Diana tried to ccape to, al,„ depended

“too.'Sn’SSe^7^.»tii distinguished prelate, see Scheehen, J9o.

101. Brem, 99-102.

; 03! pToce'hon.: nl!: 9 and 15. In the choir of the religious, before the altar which is at the entrance,

it would seem—Berthier, Tombeau, 12. n.o.orss

104. Proces. Bon., no. 9; Jordan, nos. 97, 98; Frachet, 84, 85, 88.
 S 28 NOTES

NOTES TO CHAPTER XX
1. Bologna, Bergamo, Verona, Milan, Brescia, Piacenza, Faenza, Parma, Asti, Genoa, Venice, Padua,
Pavia, Treviso, Cremona, Jesi, Cuma, Reggio.
2. After 1230—Kuczynski, 79-128.
3. Donner, 18-72.
4. Suiter; Winkelmann, II, 433-484; Kuczynski, 38-60 and 121-128; Meersseman, Confreries, II,
S7~S9 and IV, 293-296 and Th. Kaeppeli, Melanges Auguste Pelzer, Louvain 1947, 276—277.
3. Winkelmann, II, 347, n. 2.
6. Proces. Bon., no. 39. On the subject of heretics at the stake which Fr Stefano also mentions, cf.
infra, n. 1 2.
7. Cf. the formal precept given by Jordan to the chapter general of 1 233 against any attempts among
the brethren to obtain a bishopric—Acta, 1, 4; Frachet, 141-142 and 209-210. If we accept two
missionary bishops, Fr Guala was the first Friar Preacher to be promoted to the episcopate.
8. I Const., 224 (D. II, ch. 31).
9. For ordinance of a provincial chapter in Lombardy instanced against a ‘pacificatory’ friar in 1232,
see G. Caro in Neues Archir., XXII (1897), 429 and 433- For admonition of the general chapter of 1234,
see Acta, I, 4.
10. There is no justification for thinking that John of Vicenza was called to Bologna by Jordan—
Scheeben in QF, XXXV, 71—72; on 20th June, however, John of Vicenza gave his judgement as
arbitrator—de mandato et licentia magistri ordinis—Suiter, 107.
n. It was not until 1233 in Provence, 1234 in Lombardy and France, 1233 in Tuscany that the
Dominican provincials received from Gregory IX the power to appoint permanent pontifical inquisitors,
whose function the Pope had instituted in 1233—Meersseman, Confreries, II, 33-60 and n. 16.
12. The proscriptions against the heretics inscribed in the urban statutes under the influence of
Ugolino in 1221 comprised only the penalty of banishment. The penalty of death by burning was decreed
and imposed in Lombardy by the constitution of Frederick II in 1224. It did not spread at that time but
only in 1231 through the action of Gregory IX. In fact, Fr Etienne, in the deposition we have quoted,
also mentions that in 1233 a number of heretics were burnt in the Lombard cities. Cf. Kuczynski,
94-108, who corrects the serious errors of Ficker on the history of the penalty of burning in northern
Italy.
13. For the history of the translation, see Suiter, 77-79; Winkelmann, II, 430-431 ; Altaner, 210-
228; Scheeben, 389-407. The latter study, a careful work, corrects the others in considerable degree.
14. Jordan, nos. 97-98 and 122-124; Proces. Bon., no. 9 (Ventura). Against Altaner (227—228), who
practically taxes Jordan and Ventura with officious lies, Scheeben, 392, reacts very successfully.
' ' ■ On 6th November, 1228, Guiffred, Cardinal-Legate of Lombard, granted an indulgence to anyone
helping in the building of the new church—ASOP, IV, 174, n. 2 ; in 1230, people spoke of the church of
St Nicholas nor iter facta—I Supino, V arte nelle chiese di Bologna nei secoli VIII-XIV, Bologna 1932, 164; on
8 th August, 12 31, the Preachers again purchased a portion of land from the Lovello, clearlv in order to
complete the constructions—Balme, III, 409, n. 2.
16. Berthier, Tombeau, 11 and n. 2.
17. Proces. Bon., no. 13.
18. Scheeben, QF, XXXV, 70, justly remarks against Altaner, 2 14, that the project of translation was
still attributed to Fr Stefano and the brethren in Lombardy, never to Jordan—Proces. Bon., nos. 39 and
40; Jordan, nos. 124 and 123.
19. In autumn and winter 1232-1233, Jordan seems to have been in Germany, then in the neighbour¬
hood of Rome and Naples—Scheeben, QF, XXXV, 67.
20. Salimbene, MG SS, XXXII, 72, maliciously insinuates this. The Bishop of Modena was, however,
too much attached to the order and to Dominic, for the expression attributed to him by Salimbene to
have any probability.
2 1. Jordan, no. 123.
.
22 Jordan, no. 123; Salagnac, 18-19.
23- Jordan, no. 1. Cf. Altaner, 11 and 213; Vicaire, Documents, 17-18.
24. Proces. Bon., no. 39.
.
25 Altaner, 212-218, supposes that Jordan himself had called John of Vicenza to Bologna: 1. to
preach the peace there; 2. to elicit in the population a fervour capable of forcing the canonization. This
is to credit him with much calculation! Neither point is established or even probable. Against the first
see Scheeben, QF, XXXV, 71. Against the second, cf. supra, n. 18. Moreover, although the contempor¬
aries beginning with Fr Stefano (Proces. Bon., no. 39) have stressed the role played by John of Vicenza,
which is easily understandable, it is clear that the friar’s preaching came after the idea of translation’
Jordan, nos. 1 24-123 not only mentions slow-moving negotiations, but indicates quite different reasons
tor the intention to transfer the relics. John of Vicenza did not take the initiative in promoting the cultus
orch °stotion ^ ^ ^ ^ theme ^ the right moment and provide it with powerful

. 26‘ Pr°cesA B°n-' n0; ,39- This perhaps refers to the vision related by Thierry, no. 302 (Dominic
presents the deceased brethren to the Lord as St Francis does for his). Setting the founders in parallel
is typical of the emulation of the two orders. John may have participated in "the previous year in the
canonization of St Antony of Padua ?—Suiter, 36. As to the authenticity of his visions, the mockeries of
Salimbene—MG, SS, XXXII, 76, 79, 83, throw a rather disturbing light on them.
 NOTES S29

27. According to the evidence this follows Jordan, nos. 127-129; Proces. Bon., nos. 10, 11, 15, 34.
40, 44; Constantino, no. 67. ,
28. In front of the choir of the religious, in the nave, near the altar of the faithful, on the women s
side, as far as can be judged in view of the transformations which the church has undergone. As to the
sarcophagus, it was raised, in marble, without historiated carvings—Berthier, Tombeau, 13 to 19
29. I Const., 218 (D. II, ch. 17). . fI , ,
30. On 19th April, 1233, city and bishop came to an agreement to deter to the arbitration oi John ot
Vicenza. This was given on 31st May, then corrected on 20th June—Sutter, 71, 92, 107-108.
31. According to all the witnesses. This fragrance had already been manifest in the church after the
saint’s burial—Proces. Bon., no. 9; already during his lifetime—Frachet, 82-83; for a similar fragrance
near the bodies or on the tomb of ff. Jordan, Conrad, Pelagius, see Frachet, 130, 250, 293 (id., Peter
of Castelnau, see Cernai, no. 79); during Jordan’s lifetime, under the form of diabolical temptation—
Jordan, nos. 11 5-119. On this odour of sanctity, see E. Lohmeyer, ‘Vom gottlichen Wohlgeruch , m
Sitzungsber der Heiielberger Akad. philos. hist. Klasse, 1919, 49, n. 2 and other quotations—Altaner, 220,
n. 2. Scheeben, 399-400, particularly insists on its historical character.
' 32. A great friend of the order, founder and protector of the convent of Lille, legate in the Albigeois
from 1232 to the beginning of 1233, when he received the mission, on 22nd January, to look after the
bishop of Saint-Paul Trois-Chateaux, who was retiring to the Dominican convent of Puy Chapotin,
67 and 70; ASOP, IV, 54; Zimmermann, 137; Meersseman, AFP, XVII (1947), 7~i° and 18-19.
33. Jordan, no. 126; Ferrando, no. 52. For other miracles on this day see Ferrando, nos. 54, 56.
34! A further translation would take place in 1267, to the present tomb carved by Nicolo Pisano-
Berthier, Tombeau, 20-25. In 1943 yet another was carried out in order to put the relics in safety and the
cenotaph in security. It was then that the radiography and mensuration published in Amato were carried
out. The cenotaph was put back in position and the body brought back on the occasion of the important
celebrations from 8th to 15th September, 1946- . . r„ ,
35. According to the letter from the commissioners of Bologna to the sub-commissioners oi Toulouse

—MOPH, XVI, 1%.

36. MOPH, XVI, 115—117. . _
37 For the history of the canonization see Walz, MOPH, XVI, 92-113 ; Vicaire, Documents 195-193.
38’ On Philip Carisi of Vercelli, see ASOP, III, 696; he was three times provincial of Lombardy
(Galv'agno, Minor, 94; 9^975 99) and died after 1266 (ibidem, 99). There is no reason to identify him as
Echard does (I, 103-106), with the provincial of the Holy Land in 1237, who must have been the first

prior of Rheims—Balme, II, 3°^> n* _ . . i

39 On these three personages see Altaner, 221. The first was known as a master in canon law. The
second soon afterwards became Bishop of Imola. All three received at this time several commissions

from the Pope.

40. Ed. Walz, MOPH, XVI, 123-167 (= Proces. Bon.).

42! For list of the 25 articles see Vicaire, Documents, 197. Scheeben, 402 and Walz, MOPH, XVI, 109,
thought—it is not known why—the reconstitution of this list impossible.
4.3 Ed. Walz, MOPH, XVI, 176—187 (= Proces. Thol.).
44 When he composed his Libellus, Jordan was only acquainted with in writing and only related a
small number (six) of the saint’s miracles—Jordan, nos. 99-i°M cf- Altaner, 21-23. !" r^^IW
the translation, on the other hand, he was acquainted with a catalogue of miracles read before the Pope
and cardinals on the canonization day, and he summarizes this—Jordan, no 1^1Ji^XTe
all these miracles will be found in the collection terminating the ms. of the Libellus transmitted by the
Bollandists (dSS Augusti, I, nos. 89-95) and Ferrando, nos. 52-62 (miracles contemporary with the
translation or later) fnd in the later collections of legends—Frachet, 7VJ Constantino, nos. 36, £4, 65,
Barthelemy, no. 15 and Thierry, no. 230. On the value of this collection, see Altaner, 2123, Scheeben,

40^ and MOPH, XVI, 14 an<^ 16—18.

It Kids time'6th August was occupied by the feast of St Sixtus, Pope and Martyr—Proces. Bon
no s’ The introduction of the feast of Our Lady of the Snow on 5th August by St Pius V necessitated the
transfer of the feast of St Dominic to 4th August—Altaner, 226.

11' ROpTts T^sh^ws knowledge of certified copies of the bull in the archives of the convents of
r»?i IV, mentions. . eemin -umber of others-Bordeaux,

Montpellier Spalato . XXXV, 78), where we see also that the provincial of

Lombardy had invited^ordan to the celebrations in Bologna. For those in Toulouse, see Salagnac, 16-18 ;
PeSson^-lrFor the history of the liturgical text of the feast of St Dominic, see Scheeben, AFP, II

t’^nslation’is"!- 'the forrrfof anTn^chca'h asuch)extsr'have existed! Moreover,’’the

s JkoTtids piece, so different from that of the Libellus, is indeed that of an encyclical. Cf. Vicaire,
Documents, 16-17; against Scheeben, MOPH, XVI, 16-18.
51. VI, 1-8.
£2. Altaner, Dominikanermissionen, i.

£ Or)die'unquestionabl'eIdarian devotion of Dominic and hi, fit* brethren, of. Duval,

£3° NOTES

This devotion assumed very varied forms, among which were those recitations of the Ave Maria in series
which form the basis of the rosary. In Dominic’s particular case, the best focal points in the sources
remain the legislative attitude he took up as to the office of the Blessed Virgin and over the profession
formula (/ Const., 193 and 2o2, D. I, ch. i and 16)—Duval, nos. 8, u, 20.
33. Jordan, no. 107.
36. Jordan, no. 103.
37. Jordan, nos. 103 and 104.
38. On this prayer, cf. Vicaire, Documents, 200—201. It will be remarked that this prayer: 1. sums up
Dominic s life such as Jordan of Saxony could see it after the drawing up of the Libellus; 2. dates at the
earliest from the time of the canonization since it invokes Dominic as special intercessor for the order;
3. seems to make allusion to the vision of John of Vicenza (Dominic ‘presents’ all his brethren to God]
supra, n. 26) which had so much influence on the cultus of the saint in Bologna in 1233-1234. The
Prayer, which dates from 1234-1237, could well have been composed by Jordan at the time of the
canonization celebrations, as in the case of the encyclical on the translation.
 INDEX

OF THE PRINCIPAL REFERENCES TO PERSONS AND PLACES

Names of persons, places, collectives in small Roman type. Names of writers forming the
subject of critical remarks in capitals. Technical terms or titles of institutions explained in
the text, in italics. Where a reference occurs in the text as well as in the notes, the page
number is followed by a -j- sign and the note number in italics, which is in turn followed
by the note page number in brackets. Where the reference only occurs in the notes, the
relevant chapter number is given in Roman numerals, followed by the note number in
italics and the note page in brackets. a. = abbey; arch, (or abp)=archbishop; bp=bishop;
C.—count; c.=convent; Cal= cardinal; ch. = chapter; d. = diocese; fam.=family,
fr=friar; m.=monastery; pr.—province; St=saint; sr=sister; r.=river; t.=town,
w, = wife.

Abbot of St Romain 234 Alexander III II 27(449), 41, 61, 193,

Abd er Rahman III 7 XI 56(494), 224
Alexander Stavensby 178, 197, XIV 202
Adam, fr 251
Adrianople 299 (909)
Agde d. 61, 77, 93, 107 Alexandria 324
Agde, t. V 53(464), VI 200(469) Alfarabi 2 6
Agen 61, 64, 71, XII 96(501), XIV Alfonso the Catholic 7
Alfonso VI II 66(451), 33, 47, io9> 4°8
37(5°7)
Aigues-Vives 75 Alfonso VII 8, 9, 34f, III 3#(454), 4°8
Aimery de Montreal 99, 100, 102, 106 Alfonso VIII 29f, III 3(452)> 34, 4^,
42 + 99(456), 46, 48, IV 222(462),
Aimery de Solignac IX 242(486), 349, 411
146, 257, 405, 408f.
Aix 61
Alain de Lille 77, 122 Alfonso IX of Leon V 47(464)
Alain de la Roche viii Alfonso X, the Wise, 11, 15, 39, 399, 4°6
Alice de Montmorency IX 25(482)
Alain de Roucy 126
Alarcos 29, 30, III 29(453), 408 Alleluia 3 7 7 f, 379f, 383
A1 Mansour 7
Alatri 329
Alazaice, w. Ortiguers 12if Almohades 29
Altaner ix, XX 24, 18, 25(528), 436
Alazaice, w. Papua, 120
Alzonne IX 39(482)
Albanenses 324
Albe Royale 363
Amaury de Montfort IX25(482), *44—145>

Albert the Bear 56 233, 250

Albert of Holstein IV 22(459) Ambrose, St I 223(449)
Albert of Mathelica XIII 67(504) Amicie de Breteuil 265
Amicie de Joigny 145
Albert, bp of Riga 56
Amiel Cerdana 126
Albert Spinola 375 -j- 99(527)
Albi, d. 49, 61, 70, 77, 216, 216 + Amiens, c. 319
Amizo de Milan, fr 268, 386
277(498)
Andald 271, 274, 367, 370
Albi, t. V *(463), VII 40(471), H3f
Andreas 324
Alboin 232
Andrew II of Hungary 299
Alcuin 18 8
Andrew Sunesen, arch, of Lund 53, 54 -j-
Ales XII 6(498)
69(46o), 55, 56-57, 226f, 364
Alexander II III 59(499)
 £3 2 INDEX

Angelica, sr 34^f Athletae VII 29(471)

Anguillara 350 Atienza 46
Anscar, St 23 Auch 61, V 53(464)
Anselm of Canterbury, St 188 Aude de Tonneins 100
Anselm of Laon 188 Aude, r. 95, 98, 99
Anselm of St Hilaire 232 Augustine St. 36, 38f, 85, 102, 188, 204,
Antony 2o
3i5
Antony of Padua, St 379, 380, 381, 383 Avicenna 26
26(528) Avignon 61, 64, 164 -f 7(489), 232
Apolda 34. Avignonet V 59(465)
Aposa, r. 372 Avila IV 5(458)
Apostolic Movement 73—76 Avion, r. 32
Approbation 192 Aza, archdeanery I 73(445), 23
Apocalypse 188, 190 Aza, fam. 15!?, 401, 402-407
Aquila, a. 297 Aza, m. 9
Aquileia 368, 374 Aza, t. 7, 13, 15
Aranda del Duero 3, 5, 7, 1 73(445), 23 Azzo d’Este 378
Arandilla, r. 9
Arctior consuetudo 36, 2o6f, 413 B. Claret 120 -j- 64(472)
Arctior religio 199, 215 Babons, fam. 120
Arderico 46 Bagnolo 324
Ardorel 73, 77 Balme ix
Arezzo 324 Bamburg 350
Argaiz 31 Banos 10, 14, 405
Arlanza, a. Ill 11 (453), III 57(456), Banuelos, r. 3, 13
III 90, 95(4f6, 7) Banuelos, t. 14
Arlanza (Arlanzon), r. 7
Barcelona, c. XIII 773(506), XIV 59(508),
Arles 61, 107, 232, 338
XV 702(513), 319 -)_ 222(518), 334,
Armes dominicaines 21
342, 363
Arnaud, fr XI 16(493) Barcelona, t. 250, 319
Arnaud (Master) 100 Barthelemy de la Cluse 227
Arnaud Babon 1 2o
Bartolommeo de Vicenza 378
Arnaud Baudriga 148 Baudouin (Catharist) 94
Arnaud-Bernard (hospice) 167, X 44(490) Baudouin (Baldwin) of Toulouse 142
Arnaud Amaury de Citeaux, arch, of Bayonne 409
Narbonne 80-j- 1(466), 83^ VI Bayonne, C. 258, 362
45(468), 87, 9if, 92, VI 205(470), 96, Bazade 233
io6f, 108, no, mf, 113, 128, 136, Beard 227 -j- 72(500)
I37> i39f, 143, 147, 152, 159 4- 218 Beatrice 145
(487), 165, 170, 181, 192, 200, 222, Beaucaire 80, 107, 217, 232
234, 257 Becede 149,387,411
Arnaud de Comminges 19 2
Behetria 14, 15, 16, 177(447), 4°3f
Arnaud de Crampagna (Arnaldo) V 10 (463), Belesmanza 323
VIII 2^5(480), 133, 212, 349 Bellegarde 144
Arnaud de Laure VIII 32(475) Belleperche 77
Arnaud Ortiguers 1 21 Bellune 378
Arnaud Othon 101, 103
Belveze VIII 53(475)
Arnaud Riviere 102 Bene, fr 34of
Arnaude de Fremiac 148
Bene, sr 278 -f 6(511)
Arnaude (Prouille) VIII 247(479)
Benedetto de Montejiascone 289-1-53, 60
Arre Arrufat 97
(5i2)
Arsende VIII 247(479)
Benedict, St VIII 260(480), 177, 207,
Assalit, fam. 100
304, 388
Assisi 3
Benedict of Aniagne, St 63
Asti, c. XX 2 (528)
Benedict of Parma 378
Astorga 7
Benoit, fr see: Bene
 INDEX
533
Benoit de Termes ioi Beziers, d. 61, 71, 93, 93, 1 32
Benoite, sr see Bene Beziers, t. V 5(463), 64, 66, 67, V 53
Beranger d’Avalanet V 36(464) (464), 7i + 62, 65(464), 87, VI 90
Beranger of Palou, bp of Barcelona 319 (469), 95, 96, 122, 138, 143, 148,
Beranger, bp of Carcassonne 78, 146 158, 222
Beranger arch, of Narbonne 7of, V 63 Bibere 354 + 245(524)
(464), VI 1(466), 80-81, 83, VI Blanche, sr 350
45(4-68), 95, 106, 11 if, VIII 41(476), Blanche of Castile 47f, 410
121, VIII 56(477), I24> VIII 188 (480), Blanche de Laurac 99, 118, 133, 274
i43 Blanche (Prouille) 128, 412
Berengere 122, 160 Blau 155, 257
Berengere of Castile XIII 72(304) Boethius 26
Berengere (Prouille) 122, VIII 147(479) Bogomils 51, V 67(465)
Bergamo, c. 273, 334, 363, 376 + 1(328) Bologna, c. vii, IV 108(462), 131, IX 236
Bergamo, t. 273, 324 (485), IX 243(486), X 206(492), 187,
Berlanga 46 191, 247, 266, 285, 294, 301 + 4(514)
Bernard St I 122(449), 30, 74, 77, 79, 83, 334, 363, 376, 381, 403
89, VI 66(468), 96, 97, 103 +40(471), Bologna (University) 230, 279, XIX 8
112, 146, 176, 304, 388 (524), 373, 386
Bernard, fr 363 Bologna, t. 24of, 243, 247, 248-249, 252,
Bernard d’Arzens 102 XIII 224(506), XIV 27(507), 267-277,
Bernard d’Ayros 100 + 23(470) 278 + 3(5n), 279, 288, 290, 295-
Bernard de Cazenac IX 26(481) 297, 3°i-3i9, 325, XVII 23(518),
Bernard de Durfort VIII 53(476) 329-330, 334ff, 341, 344, 353, 356-
Bernard Gui vii, 267, 361 3 95
Bernard Hugues 126 Bona B1. 187
Bernard, arch, of Narbonne 103+43 Boniface VIII 123
(47i) Bonnevaux 1o 7
Bernard-Othon 99 Bordeaux 61, X 6(489)
Bernard, bp of Palencia II 34(430) Borgberge IV 22(458)
Bernard Prim 134, 182, 193, 200, 212 Borgo San Donnino XVII 23(518), 329
Bernard of Prouille VIII 29(473) Bouchard de Marly IX 25, 42(482)
Bernard de Rochefort, bp of Carcassonne 2 37 Boulbonne 77, 120 + 62, 63(477), 148,
Bernard de Sedirac, arch, of Toledo 8, 47, 157
38, VI 22(467), 408 Bourges 61, X 6(489)
Bernard Seila, jun. i68f Bouvines 41 o
Bernard Seila, sen. i68f Braga 54
Bernard de Simorre 87, 93 Bram 115, 125, 126, 128, IX 42(482),
Bernard de Thiron 11 o 144, ix 59(483)
Bernard de Villeneuve 102, 106 Bremen 56
Bernier (Master) 40 Bremond viii

Berthier viii Brescia, c. 272, XIV 128(510), XIV 234

Bertrand, fr 243 + 26(303) (511), XVI 4(514), 334, 342, 363,
Bertrand of Garrigo, fr 213, 217, 233-236, 368, 376 + 2(528)
243, 247, 249, 238, 333, 362 Brescia, t. 324, 368, 376, 380
Bertrand of SS John and Paul, Cal 222, 232 Brice, bp of Plasencia 46
Bertrand, bp of Osma 10 + 32(446), 36, Brihueja 251, 252, 426-427
Bruniquel 214
41
Bertrand de St Gervais, bp of Beziers IX 2 27 Bruno, St X 205(492)
Bruno I of Cologne II 2 (449)
(485)
Bertrand de Saissac 66f, 93, 99, 123 Budrio 330
Besanqon, d. 107 Burgos 3, 7, 8f, II 66(451), 46 + 5(458),
Besson 290 48, 250 + 72(504)
Bethany XIV 202(309) Bzovius viii
Bethlehem 43, 272
Beuve 283 Cabaret 67, 101, IX 42(482)
 INDEX
S 34

Cadouin 7 3 Caesarea I 203(448)

Cahors 144, XII 137(502), XIII 53(504), 1 st Chapter of Bologna 252, XIII 223(506),
. 258
301-319, 329, 338, 413
Calatanazor I 29(446) 2nd Chapter of Bologna 356—367
Calatrava 9 4th Chapter of Bologna 366
Calers 77 Charite-sur-Loire 93
Caleruega 3, 4-22, 23, 116, 117, 161, Charter of Charity 308
208, 250, 39#, 4°3ff Charter of preaching 308, 314, 413
Callixtus II 408 Chartres 26, 197, 258
Camino franees 2 5, 49 Chatillon-sur-Seine 268
Candeil 73, 77 Christian, fr 247, 250, 271, 364
Canonicus 2 21 Christianopoulo viii
Canterbury 192, 365 Citeaux IV 55(460), 58-60 -(- 222(462),
Capestang V 25(463) 80, 91, 92, VII 27(470), 11 iff, IX 200
Cappellanus 150 (484), 320, 321
Carcassonne, d. 61, V 53(464), 71, 100, Civita Castellana XV9(5ii), 289
hi, 148, 152, 163, 216 Clair, fr XIX 26(525)
Carcassonne (viscounty) 64, 100, i4of Clair (Master) 272, 302
Carcassonne, t. 64, 66—67, V £9(465), 77, Clairvaux IV 222(462), VI 63(468), 96
87f, 9£f,
98) i°3, 106 + 66(472), 108, Clamores 2 54
115, 122, 138, 143-145, 148, 149-f- Clare of Assissi, St 280
95(484), 150, IX 263(486), 156, 158, Clement III XVI 59(516)
IX 230(488), 162, XI 77(495), 222, Clermont X 6(489)
XII 99(501), XIII 25(503), 247, 412 Clunia 7ff, 13, 32, 40
Carrion 2 6 Clusum XIV 90(5 09)
Casaferrata 350 -J- 109(523) Cnut the Great 409
Casamari 329 Cnut VI 47f, IV 72(460), 409
Cassan VIII 222(481) Coimbra 34
Casseneuil 141, 145, 162 -(- 248(488), Collatio 263 4- 25(507), XVIII 145(524)
i75, 193, i95, 221, XVI 202(517) Cologne 75, VI 95(469), VII 39(47i)>
Cassian, John 43 247, 364-365
Castelnau 80 Colloquies ioof
Castelnaudary 75, 98, ii5f, VIII 33(475), Co-lordship 66 29(463)
ix 42(482), 144, ix 59(483), 148, Columba, a. 329
IX 95(484), X 23(489), 239 Combelongue 208
Castelverdun IX 34(482) Combinatio XIII 66(504), XVI 67(516)
Castillo viii Comminges IX 225, 226(485), 164
Castres 67, IX 2 2 (481), IX 27, 42,42(482) Communitas XI 2 35(497)
148, 157, 160, 215, 235 Concorezzo 323, 324
Catharism 49-53, V 27(463), V 65(464), 99, Confirmation 192, 193, 205, 219, 220-22 1
118, X 205(492), 322-325 Confraternity 2 61
Catherine (St) 3 54 Confraternity (White) 142, 149
Casseneuil 162 —|— 248 (488) Confraternity (Black) 149
Cavaers (bayle) VII £(470) Conigliano 378
Cavaers, dame of Fanjeaux 99, 100 -)- Conrad, Cal of Oporto IV 108(462)
£(470), 120, 143 Conrad of Hoxter, fr XIX 16(525), 365
Cavaers the Younger 1X34(482) Conrad of Marburg 330
Cecilia, St 354 Conrad the Teuton, fr 329, XX 32(529)
Cecilia, sr 345FF Conrad [in] of Scharfeneck, bp of Metz
Cecilia 345 -J- 63(522), XVIII £2, £9 289, 318, 327, 330, 338
(522, 523) Conrad of Urach, Cal 344
Cencio, Gregorio Rampazoli 347, 350 Consensus IV 50, 52(459)
Cencio Savelli, Cal—see Honorius III Consolamentum 68f, 100
219, 348 Constance, sr 350
Cernai V 23(463), VI 209(470), VII 5 Constance of Bourgogne 408
(47°) Constantino of Orvieto IX 67(483), 291
 INDEX SiS
Constitutiones XI 52(494), 207, XI 130 Cuenca, t. 17, 29, 46 -f 3(458)
(497), 3°3 Cumans 55, 299
Consuetudines 2o6ff, 250, 303, 41 3-417 Cumes XX 2(528)
Conveniencia 69 2 86, 341
Cum qui recipit
Conventicula 2oi Curtolane 122
Conversatio XI 13$(497) Cuyper viii
Copulatio IV 50, 52(439, 460)
Corbeil 265 Dacia 47, 364, 365
Cordoba 9 Damietta 244
Corunna 7 Danzas viii
Coruna del Conde I 7(445) Del Bosquet, m. XII 6(498)
Council of Avignon (1 209) V 5(463), 147, Denifle viii

164, 172, i8of Denis (pseudo) III 77(455)

Beziers (1246) IX 226(487) Denmark 47f, 53-55
Bourges (1031) V 5(463) Dereine III 35, 44(453, 454)
Charroux (989) V 5(463) Desenzano 324, 368
Clermont (1095) V 5(463) Diano d’Andalo 271, 335, 368, 370, 371
Husillo (1088) 8 Diego, bp of Osma (Acebo) 30, 35, 36,
Lateran III 41, III 120(457), 48, 62, 65, 41, 42 + 95(457), 46f, 48, 5°, 55,
78, 195, 196, XII 62(500) 57ff, 80, 81, 82, 88, VI 66(468),
Lateran IV 61, 152, 164, X 23(489), 90-95, 101, 104, 106, 110, 111—114,
170, 181, 183, 191-202, 205, 213, 115, 117, 119, 123, 124, 128, 130 -f-
218, 221, 225, 228, 252, 257, 279, 272(480), 132, 135, 136, 142, 146,
286, 317, 326, 339, 35363, 366, 147, 152, 154 242(486), 173, 179, 226,
368, 425 251, 389
Lyons II 310 Diego Garcia 404
Mirepoix (Catharist, 1206) V 65(464) Diego Velasquez 9
Montpellier (1195) V 29(463) Dijjinitors 303
Montpellier (1215) V 64(464), 154, Dilectifilii 286, 297
164, 176F, 180— 1 81, 206, XI 267, 2 65, Dispensation 210, 303, 304
175 (497, 498), 266 Divina Vagina 27
Narbonne (990) V 5(463) Divinus 27
Narbonne (1054) V 5(463) Divisa 15, 16, 404
Narbonne (1 235) 1X222(487) Divisero 15, 16, 404
Palencia (1100) 34, III 61 (455) Domina VIII 75(477)
Paris (1 2 13—1 2 14) 164, 176, X 96(492), Domingo Perez 405
XII 239(502), 244 Dominic (name) 22
Pisa (1135) 74 Dominic Gondisalvi 26
Rheims (1131) XIX 23(524) Dominic of Segovia, fr 342 -)- 33(521),
Rome (1059) III 52(455) 363 + 37(525)
Rouen (1213-1214) 164, 176, X 96 Dominic of Silos, St 8, 22
(492), XII 239(5°2) Dominic of Spain, fr 162, 179, 215, 236,
St Felix of Caraman (Catharist, 1167) 243, 249, 251, 254, XVIII 33(521)
50, VII 25(471) Donatists 85, 102
Trent III ill (457) Donatus 1 23
Verona 78 Dragovitsians (Catharists) 51, 324
Vienne III 220(457) Drang nach Osten 56, 409
Counsel 81, X 45(490) Dugliolo 330, 333
Couserans 61, 148, 152, 160, 411 Dun 67
Coventry 103, 178 Durando of Huesca 134, 175, 181, 200,
Cracow 344, 365 202, 212
Credentes V 40(464), 68f, 73 Durfort, fam. 100, 120
Cremona, t 324, 326
Cremona, c XX 2(528) Eaunes 77, 157
Cross ojPenance 1 59 -|~ 225(487) Ecclesia 127
Cuenca, ch. Ill 43(454), 40, III 42(454) Echard viii
£36 INDEX

Edmund of Canterbury, St X 105(492) Fiesole 341

Eleanor of Aquitaine 46, 47, 65, 409 Fire (penalty of) 138
Eleemosyna 29 Fitero 9, 58
Eligere regulam XI 56(495) Flora, a. 297
Elise de Turenne IX 16(481) Florence 131, IX 244(486), XIV 55(509),
Elne 61, 77(176), V 53(464), X 77(49 0 272, 275, XIV 229(510), XIV 237(511),
Embrun, 61 278, 297, 301 + 4(5i4), 324, 334,
Emilia, sr 340 356, 363, 368
Emiliano 251, 252, 426 Foix, fam. 100, VIII 53(476)
Enclosure 346 Foix, t. 132, 165
Enfeoffment 132, 193 Fontfroide 59, 77, 80, 82, 90
England 47, 361, 362, 365 Font-Saint-Martin VIII 23(475)
Enguerrand de Boves 1 26 France, pr. 361, 362, 365f
Eresma, r. 255 Francis, St 3, 58, no, 191, 193, XI 42
Ermengarde, fr Boers 148 (494), 2oof, 212, XII 79(500), 242,
Ermengarde Godoline 112, 120 XIII 72(504), 280, XVI 59(5!5), 3 25,
Ermessande 1 22 328, 335, 344, 376f, 38°, 381, 388,
Esclarmonde 67, 100, 133 389
Esgueva, r. 9, 13 Fran^oise 128
Espinosa 10, 14 Franquevaux 77, 113
Estonia 56, 59, 191, 225, 226 Frederick Barbarossa 56, 409
Eudes (Master) 40 Frederick II 326, 376, XX 22(528)
Eudes, fr 350 Frejus V 53(464)
Eudes de Chateauroux XVII 76(520) Fremis le Francais 126
Eugenia, sr 346 Fresquel VII 2(470)
Eugenuis III XVIII 65(522) Friesach 299, XVI 4(514), 340, 364
Evangelism 51, 388 Frogier de Penna, fr 272, XIV 229(510),
Evrard, bp of Amiens 338 278, 288, 291, 34of, 386
Evrard de Chateauneuf 93 Frosinone 329
Exhortation morale loo Fruhwirth viii
Expeditus 39, XVI 35(S15) Fuencaliente 9
Experte VIII 147(479) Fulcrand 70
Ezzelino de Romano 378 Fulk of Neuilly IV 99(462), 167
Fulk, bp of Toulouse 70, 113, 119, VIII
Fabrissia de Mazeroles 11 8 74(477), 125 -f 220(479), 126 -f 234
Faenza, c. XIV 128(1; 10), 363, XX 2(528) (479), 130, 132, 134, i37,IX 59(483),
Faenza, t. 363 IX 75(484), 149, 152, IX 242(486),
Faiditus 140 157,1X247(488), 165, 167, X 45(490),
Fai's de Durfort 133 i7G i73, J75, 276, X 200(492), 180,
Fanjau a Largentiere IX 35(482) 192, 194, 295, 297, 202, XI 242(497),
Fanjeaux 66, 98—100, 106, 108, 115, 116, 2i4f, 216 4- 273(498), 221-222,
117 + 27(475), 120, 122, 125, 131, 225I, 234, 239, 265, XIV 50(507),
i34, i43, i45, H8, 15°, 156, 160, 285, 349, 412
163, X 23(489), 169, 174, 179, 180,
411, 288, 349, 247, 248, XVI 202(517) Gallen IV 23(458)
Felix 16, 18, 19, 403, 405 Galvagno della Fiamma viii, 21
Feltre 378 Garatenses 3 24
Fenouilledes, fam. 126 Garci Fernandez 404
Fenouillet 126 Garrigues XII 6(498)
Ferdinand St XIII 72(504), XIX 29(525) Garsie de l’Orte, abp of Auch 78, 152,
Ferdinand (Infanta) 46, 48, 54 X 220(492)
Fernand del Castillo 250 Gaston de Foix 192
Fernando Garcia 400 Gaudion, fr 351
Fernando, bp elect, of Burgos 46 Gaufred 298
Feste, fam. 100 Gauthier de Marvis, bp of Tournai 385
Feuillans 77 General Chapter 249, 250, 275, 368
 INDEX £37
Genoa 21, 202, XIII 49(504), 274 -{- 128 Guillaume-Peyre, bp of Albi 70
(510), XX 2(528) Guillaume-Peyre, of Narbonne 152, 157
Gentiana 122 Guillaume-Peyre, of Prouille 118, 119
Geoffrey, bp of Beziers 78 Guillaume-Raymond d’Hauterive 101, 178
Geoffrey of Neauphle IX 52(483) Guillaumette 387
George, St 11 Guillem, fam. 80, 93
Gerard of Breslau, fr 365 Guiraud ix, V 4(462), V 40, 52(464)
Gerard of Modena 378 Guiraud d’Esparros VIII 59(476)
Gerona II 56(451) Gumiel de Izan 5, 8, 9, 23
Gilbert the donkey-driver XIV 90(509) Guy of Bigorre IX 25(482)
Gilbert, St 346 Guy de Levis 126, 142, 143, 144
Gilbert of Fresney, fr 357, 365 Guy the Little 278
Gilbert de la Porree 26 Guy de Montfort VII 92 (473), IX 25(482),
Gil Gomez 404f i45, 192, 233
Giraude, Dame of Lavaurs 99, 100 Guy de Premontre IX 75(484)
Girou VI 222(470) Guy des Vaux-de-Cernai, bp of Carcassonne
Gloss 187 IV 37(459), i°7, i°8, 113, VIII 250
Gnosticism 5 if (479), i37, i4°, IX 65(483), IX 78
God Picarella 120 (484), 150, 152, IX 242(486), 165,
Godfrey, fr 387 170, X 220(493), 257
Gomez, fr 215, 236, 243, 246, 252, 362 Guzman, fam. 15, 18, 22, 401, 404-405,
Gonzalo Fernandez, c. of Castile 7, 13, 15 406
Gormaz 7 Guzman, t. 15
Grado 368
Gramazie VIII 33(475) Habit III 20(452), 177, 206, 216, XIII 56
Grande 214 (504), 266, 332
Grand-St-Bernard 58, 268 Hamburg 56
Grandselve 77, 83, 349, 411 Helis de Mazerole 274
Gratia predicationis 316 Henry, fr 351
Greece, pr. 365 Henry II (Plantagenet) IX 209(487), 409
Gregory, St i8 8f, 189, 235 Henry of Chalons 408
Gregory VII 1022(453), 37, III 52(455), 72 Henry of Cologne 264^ XIV 63, 64(508),
Gregory IX VIII 202(478), VIII 255(479), XIV 202(509), 306, 364
130, 131, 242, 287, XVII 25(519), Henry of Fratta, bp of Bologna 270, 274,
XVIII 39(521), 376, 380 -f 22, 22 384
(528) 382, 386, 387f, 418, 425, 428, Henry the Lion (Enrico) IV 22(459), 56,
429 4°9
Gregory of Crescenti Cal 344, 364, 365 Henry of Marsburg, fr 2 64f
Gregory of Nazianzen, St III 77(455) Henry the Monk (Lausanne) 49, 74, 103,
Gromejon 4, 13 -f- 46(446) 167
Grundmann x Henry of Mont-Ste-Marie 107, 132
Guadalajara 251, 252 -f- £2(505) Henry of Moravia, fr 365
Guerric, fr 2 64f Henry of Settala, arch, of Milan XIV 232
Gui vii (5io)
Guibellin of Ferrara XIV 90(509) Henry of Trastamara 406
Guibert of Nogent 25 Hers, r. VII 2(470), IX 255(486), 165
Guiffred, Cal XX 25(528) Heusdorf 54 -}- 66, 65(460)
Guilabert of Castres 100, 101, VIII 32 Hildegarde Ste. 187
(475) Hinojar 17(445)
Guilhelme of Tonneins 100, 118 Hippo 38, 41
Guilhelmine of Belpeth 121 Floly Land VI 43(468)
Guilhelmine of Fanjeaux 12 1 Holy Trinity of Cracow, c. 365
Guilhelmine Martine 148 Honorius III IV 59(461), 166, 193, XI 227
Guilhelmine Martini 411 (496), 220, 222, 224, 225, 226 -f 59
Guilhelmine, sr of Prouille VIII 247(479) (500), 228, 230, 241, 242, 249, 252,
Guillaume-Amaud Picarella 120 260, 278, 280, 282, 283, 287, 288,
 INDEX
£3^
Honorius III—contd. Inutilis XVI 25(514)
293, 297,
298, 299, XVI 59(516), Irenaeus, St III 77(455)
XVI 113(517), 320 + 4(518), 326, Isaac Israeli 26
XVIII 39(s2 i)> 346 + 70(42 2), 418- Isarn, fam. 100
424 Isarn Bola 120, 126, 148
Honorius of Autun III 77(444) Isam de Castres 99
Horse 311 -f- 65(516) Isarn de Prouille 117, 118 4- -29(475),
Hospice Amaud-Bemard XI 247(497), 119
221, 223-, 23-8 Isidore, St I 2 23(449), 26, III 77(455)
Hubert Visconti 384
Huesca III 43(434), 38 Jaca III 43(454), 36
Hugh of Cluny 3 3 Jacek d’Opole, St (Hyacinth) 365
Hugh of Lascy 126, IX 42(482), IX 59 Jacobin 231
(483) Jacopino de Parme 378
Hugh of Nantes 126 Jacques de Mella, fr [Jaime Melles] 290
Hugh of Rieux 126 Jacques de Modoetia, fr [Giacomo] 272 -]-
Hugh, bp of Riez 78, 172 102(509), XIV 131(510), 319
Hugh Settala XIV 131(510) Jacques de Rome, fr 351, 355
Hugh of Sexte, fr 278 Jacques de Vitry IX 75(484), 191 4“ 2^
Hugh of St Victor III 77(444) (493)
Humbert of Romans 130 Jaime I 236
Humiliati 84, 134, X 204(492) Jaime Mames 252
Hungary 361, 363, 364f Jaime of Aragon 164
Husillo 26 James the Greater, St 260
Hyacinth—see Jacek Jane d’Aza i4ff, 403
Jarrett 9
Iesi XX 2(428) Jerome 188
Imola XX 39(429) Jerusalem 73, 161, XIII 49(504), 326,
/ngeberg 34, 409 366
Inigo, bp of Coria 26 Joachim of Flora 75, 187^ igof
In medio Ecclesiae x, 162, 266 John, fr 268
Innocent II III 34(434) John II Appendix II, 2(406)
Innocent III 33, III 83, 45(436), IV 62, 70 John Avendauth, bp of Segovia 26
(46°), 44, 47ff, 61-62, 66, 69 -f 47 John of Barastre 26of, 3 1 8f, 338
(464), 70, 77ff, 80-81, VI 26(467), John of Briard 265, 285
84f, 86f, VI 56(468), VI 64, 65(468), John the Bald (Juan el Calvo) 251
9if, 93, VI 200(469), VII 21, 22, 25 John de Johannis, fr XIII 223(506)
(471), VII 46(471), 107, no, 134, John, bp of Calahorra 46
IX 9(481), 14if, 147 -f- 76(484), John of Caleruega 21
IX 242(488), 164, 167, 172, 175, John de la Capelle XI 207(496)
X 76(491), 179, 18iff + 225(493), John Chrysostom, St I 223(449)
188, 190, 191, 193-196, XI 62(494), John Lackland IV 20(458), 164, 4o8ff
201, 202, 212, 218, 220, 222, 225, John of Navarre, fr—of Spain IX 225, 226
XII 59(50o), XII 77(500), 242, 278, (485), IX 245(486), 177, 179, 202,
287, 289, 298, XVI 65(516), 320, 215, XI 267(497), XII 2(498), 235-236,
322, 324, 326, 346, 351, XIX 14(525), 238-239, 243, 247, 249, XIV 50(507),
375,409 302, 354, 386
Innocent IV 130, XI 52(494), XII 49(499) John, bp of Osma 41
Innocent V I 226(449) John (? James) of Plasencia, fr [Giovanni ?
Inquisition V 35, 40(464), 86, VIII 203 Giacomo] 363
(480), 146, 153, 169 John of Salerno 272, XIV 129(510), 356
In remissionem iniungere peccatorum IV 93 (461) John of Salisbury II 27(449)
2 24f, 283 John Sesale VIII 9(475)
Institutio XI 52(494), 221 John of Vicenza 378, 379—380, 383-385,
Institutiones 207, 303 XX 58(530)
Institutions de Pamiers 126, 145 John Yanes, bp of Cuenca 40
 INDEX £39
Jordan of Saxony vii, VI 4(466), XIII 91, 103 Lienart 290
<5°5), 263ff, XIV 50, 64 (Soy, 508), Lille XX 32(529)
276, 301, 303, 306, 314, XVI 109 Limoges 168, XII 237(502), 267 -j- 62, 63
(S'7), 333, 343, 395, 356f, 361, 363, (508), XV 22(511), XVI 4(5H), 362
365, 367, XIX 99(527), 374, 37s, 376, Limoux 108, 115, VIII 33(475), 1 21, 125,
380 + 10(528), 381, 382, XX 25(528), i26, 143 + 31, 41, 42(482), 144,
384, XX 31(529), 386, 387, 393, 232, 257, 288
XX £8(s3°), 429 Livonia 56, 59, 225
Jourdaine 122 Lodeve 61, 66, 71
Juan Garcia 404 Lodi 324
Juan Manuel 19 Loenertz VIII 45(476)
Juan Perez 403 Lombardy, pr. 36if, 363, 365
Julian I 159 Lombers 50, 66, 103 -J- 47(472), IX
Julian, bp of Cuenca I 112(449), 29, III 29 42(482)
(453), 46, VI 66(468), X 108(491), Lope (Master) 40
Justis petentium 231 Loperraez-Corvalan III 2 (452)
Lothair II 409
‘Kill them all’ VI 29(467) Loubens 216
Louis VIII 48, IX 72(483), 170, 203
La Aguilera 8 Louis IX, St 67
Lacordaire vii, viii Lubeck 409
Lambert de Thury 126, IX 42(482) Lucius III 41, III 95(456), 188
Laon 197 Luis de Guzman Appendix II 2(406)
Lara, fam. 15, 64 Lund, abp 53ff, 2 2 5f
Lara, t. 13 Lund, c. XIV 230(510), XV 222(513), 340,
La Reole 409 344, 364
Las Bordes 148 Lyons, c. 250, 258, XIV 63(508), XV 2 2
Las Huelgas IV 3(458), IV 111(461), 254 (50), XVI 4(514), 362
Las Navas de Toledo 83 Lyons 137
Lateran 192, 221, XII 79(500), 347
Lauban 428 Mabilia 99
Laudare, benedicere et praedicare 344 Macon 227
Laurac V 99(465), 99?, 115, 118, IX 42, 59 Madrid, c. XIII 67(504), 250, 251, 252,
(482, 483) 253, 254f, 266, 267, XV 22(511),
Laurent de Fougeres, fr XII 122(sol) 3°i + 4(514), 3i7, 343, 348, 362
Lavaur 67, V 65(464), 96, 100, 125, 138, Madrid, t. 131, XIII 79(505), 2 52f -J- 9°,
141 > r44, i48, !5°, 412 91 (S°S)> 296
Lavelanet 149 Magdeburg 339
Lawrence the Englishman, fr 215, 235-236 Magister 1147(450), no + 118, 224(474)
+ Ji9(5°2), 237 Magistei ordinis 234, XIII 90(505), 358
Lawrence the Englishman (student) 385 Magister ord.J. praed 111
Legnago 330 Magister praedicationis no, 305
Lelaidier ix Magister praedicatorum no, XIII 90(305),
Le Mans 74 3°5
Leon de Perego 378 Magister sacri palatii VII 224(474)
Leo IX, St II 1(449), 3 3, 37f Maguelohne 59, 61, 82, 93
Leo, fr XIV 64(508) Majorca III 92(456), 236
Leonor de Guzman 406 Malachy, St IV 222(462), VI 63, 64(468),
Le Puy 36, XX 32(529) 112, 176
Lesma St Mamachi viii
Les Casses V 65(464), 138 Mamas of Caesarea, St 2o
Le Taich 121 Mames (Manes), fr 193(448), 20, 215, 236,
Le Tart VIII 151(479) XIII 90(505), 254, 263f, 267, 317
Lia-Rachel 46, V 116(466) Manasse de Seignelay, bp of Orleans 247^
Libellus vii, 382 XIV 60(508)
Li&ge VI 95(469), i97 Mandonnet ix, XVI 224(517)
 INDEX
£4°

Manino, Maniono XIII 67(504) Montbajou 145

Mantua 324^ XVII 23(518), 370 Monte Cassino, a. XVI 42(515)
Marbach 21 o Montelimar 138
Marches 47-48 Monte-Mario, m. XVIII 32(521)
Marie of Montpellier 78 Montfort, fam. 232-233, 285
Marie d’Oignies 187 Montpellier, c. 281, XVI 4(514), 339,
Mark 323 XVIII 30(521), 362
Marquise 149 Montpellier, t. IV 55, 75(460, 461),
Marseilles VII 743(474), 119, 202, 232 V 5(463), 62, 68, 78—91, 111, 122,
Martin of Leon 188 142, 147, 151, 152, IX 272(486), 176,
Martin Bazan, bp of Osma 3 3f, III 43(454), 246, 258, 287, XIX 5(524), 370
4° + 95(4*7), HI 173(458) Montreal 98f, 100-101, 103—107, 108,
Martin abp of Toledo 33 -|~ -33(453), 46 115, 118, 121, VIII 227(478), 134,
Matthew of France, fr 215, XII 773(501), IX 42(482), 144-145, 148, 155, 158,
235> 239, 243-245, 259, 263f, 265^ IX 230(488)
267 -f 65(508), 285, 301, 318, 360, Mont-Ste-Marie 107, 108
363 Montsegur 6 7
Maurin Picarella 120 Monza 323
Maurin de St Antonin 1 57 Morales Appendix II 2 (406)
Maximilla, sr 3 50 Morlhon IX 65(483)
Mayor Arrias 404 Morimont 9
Mazeres IX 55(484) Morlaas 49
Mazeroles, fam. too Morocco 268
Meaux 107 Mortier, fam. 100
Mecklemberg 387 Mullooly 290
Melendo bp of Osma 41 Murano 370
Mendicancy 238, 266, 274, 283^ 285^ 305, Muret i4of, 144 -)- 54(483), 164, 222
3io + 66(516), 333, 334, 375
Mensa, a. 297 Napoleon XVIII 63(522)
Mercenaries 6 3 Narbonne, duchy 1 53
Messabens 51 Narbonne, pr. 61, 70, 132, 182
Metz, t. 84, 87, 134 Narbonne, t. 77, 98, 103, 142, X 33(489),
Metz, c. 264, 267, 338, 343, 362 202, 282 -f 32(512)
Metz, d. 1 94 Naturaleza 15, 403b -)- 24(407)
Miguel, bp of Osma 42 Navarre d’Acqs., bp of Couserans 78, 132,
Miguel de Fabra, fr (Espana) 215, 236, 137, IX 726(485), 208
XIV 9(507) Nazarius 323
Michel d’Ucero, fr 215, 236, 243 o, 62-63, IX 50(484),
Negotiumfidei et pads
Milan, c. 272, 276 -j- 128, 732(510), 319, 162, 222, 326, 328
334, 363, XIX 56(527), XX 7(528), Nicetas of Constantinople 50, 51
Milan, t. 240, 268, 275, 282, 321, 324, Nicholas II III 52(455)
326, XVII 23(518), 328, 329, 368, 378 Nicholas IV 429
Militia of the faith of Jesus Christ IX 207(484) Nicholas of Lund 272,319
Milites Christi VII 79(471) Nicolas de Giovinazzo, fr 384
Milon (Master) 59, V 7(463), VI 705(470), Nicolas de Tusculum, Cal 344, 346, 349
139, IX 33(482),172 Nidaros 225, 364
Minerva V 65(464), 83, 138, IX 65(483) Nimes, d. 61, V 55(464), 77
Mirepoix 66f, 101, 11 5, 132, IX 27, 41, 42 Nimes, t. 64, 80, XI 245(497)
(482) Niort, fam. 99
Mobrejon 13 Nisi arctioris vitae obtentu XI 56(494), XVIII
Modena 268, XIV 55(509), XIV 770(510), 35(52i)
329, XVII 49(519), 330 376, 378 Noel, fr 257 -f- 322(506)
Moissac 1X22(481), 141 Noel, prior of Prouille 123, 155, 162,
Moneta of Cremona, fr 269, 279, 302, 179, 202, 203, 215, 216, 234, 257 +
306, 373f 323(506)
Montauban 144 Noguiere 411
 INDEX 1141
Nomentana (bridge) XVIII 63(522) Order of St James of the Sword (Santiago)
Norbert, St 74, VI 74(469), no 1 52(447), 17, 18, 20, 24, 95, XI 54
Nos XII 17(518)
attendentes (494), 212, 400
N. Dame des Champs (Vignes) 263, 296 Order of St Rufus 3 6 —]— 43 (454), III 95
93(S13) (457), 45, 77, VI 14(467), 207, 210
N. Dame de Paris 244 -)- 23(503), 258, Order of St Victor 210, 293
262f, 264, 265, 284, 294 Order of Sta Maria de Porto 21o
Nubia, sr 350, 354 Order of Sempringham 287^ XV 65(512)
Nudus nudum Christum sequi 75 Order of Springiersbach 207^ XIX 13
Nuestra Senora de Castro 7 (524), 40
Nuestra Senora de la Vid 5, 9, 24, III 37, Order of Trinitarians 193
40(4-53, 434), 208 Order of Val-des-Ecoliers XI 37(494)
Numantia 7, 40 Ordo XI 130(497), 220, 254
Nympha, sr 350 Ordo antiquus 36 —j— 43(454), 207
Ordo doctorum 189, XVI 114(517)
Obligation, penal 305 Ordo episcoporum 189
Observances 207—209, 2 10, 266f, 3 1 ^fF Ordo monasterii III 40(454), 37, X 108(492),
Odier, fr 2 1 5, 236 204 4- 33(495), 207
Odoric Galiciani 274 Ordo novus 36, 207
Oesel 57 Ordo predicationis 225
Office, canonical XI 124(496), 302, 313, Ordo predicatorum 189-191, XI 17(493), 225,
316f, XIX 59(527) XVI 113(517)
Offcium praedicationis XII 45(499), 307, Origen III 77(455)
313, 423> 427
Orlamund 48 -|- 21(459), IV 60(460)
Olbega 7 Orleans, c. 263, 26j(Jr59, 63(508),
Oldegaire, St III 42(454) XVI 127(518)
Olivier de Termes 66f Orleans, t. 258, 260, XV 75(5I3)> 331
Oloron 49 Orvieto 322, 324
Orange 61, XII 6(498), 232 Osma (archdeaneries) II 3 (449)
Orb 94 Osma, ch. II 43, 56(45°-45I)> 25^, 3°f,
Order of Alcantara 20 36-42, 45 + 1 13(457), 132> O2,
Order of St Augustine 130, 428 157, 162, 207, 215, 353
Order of Calatrava 9, 18, 20, 403 Osma, d. 8-10, 31, 33, 35, 55, 57, 251
Order of Cistercians (Citeaux) 9, 34, 56, Osma, t. 7f, 31-45, 0 5, 2 *5, XII 132(502),
64, 77, 82, 83, 108, 120, I28f, 25°, 388
VIII 159(479), 134, 137, 187, 190, Otto 2 71
197, XII 77(500), 247, 293, 298, 306, Otto of Brunswick 47, 4o9f
320, 343, 351, 360, 428, 431 Otto IV 326
Order of St Clare 428 Our Lady 187, XI 167(497), XII 79(500),
Order of Cluny II 17(449), 33-34, 64, 248, XIII 75(505), 258, 264, 272,
V 3/(465), 212 296, 339, 354, 365, 39° + 54(529)
Order of Fontevrault 411 Our Lady of the Snow XX 46(529)
Order of Grandmont 3 10-311 Oxford, c. 365
Order of Hermits of St Augustine 134 Oxford (university) XIX 3(524)
Order of Hermits of Tuscany XI 51(494)
Order of the Holy Spirit 77, 193
Order of Humiliati 191, 193
Order of Friars Minor 191, XII 79(500), P. Covinens 148
XIII 72(504), 376, 388 P. Jaule de Saissac 148
Order of Penitents of St Mary Magdalen 42 8f P. de Martel 148
Order of Premonstratensians (Premontre) Padua, c. XX 2(528)
9, 36, III 47(433), 36, 77, VIII 159 Padua, v. 370, 378, 379
(479), 160, 2o7f, 209, XII 122(496), Paix de Dieu 62
211, 213, XVI 20(514), 307, XVI Palencia, c. 257 -J- H3(5°6), 281, 362

54(515), 315, 353, 40-415, 43i Palencia, d. 25f, 34, III 30(453), 41, 4° +
Order of the Sack Friars XVI 68(516), 415 96(457), 131
 £42 INDEX

Palencia, t. 7, 25-30, 36, IV £(458), 161, Peter of Bourges, bpofOsma, St III 20(452),
178, 250, 257, 297, XIX 8(524.) 34, 36, 48
Palmerio de Campagnola 386 Peter of Bruys 49, 74
Pamiers vii, V £9(463-), io8f, 115, 122, Peter of Castelnau IV 7(458), 59, 71, 8o,
VIII 225(479), 13 2f + 1*7(480), 8 2f, 86 + 49(468), 91, 95f, 1 o 1 -f
VIII 201(480), VIII 217(481), IX 77(470), 106, io8f, no, hi, 112,
31, 41 (482), 144, 148, IX 112(485), 113, i35ff, 142, 157, X 220(492)
160, I 8 1, 2 I 2, 216, 41 I Peter of Castillon 202
Pamplona VI 703(470) Peter the Cruel 406
Papanicetas 3 2 3f Peter Damian, St 38, 188, 189
Paquara 378 Peter Ferrando 27
Paris, c. I 705(448), 276, XVI 4(514), 317, Peter Gonzales Telmo, St II 32(450)
319 + 722(518), 334, 363, 364- Peter of Guzman 403
see also St Jacques Peter the Gaulois 324
Paris (university) 27, 53, 191, 197, 259, Peter de la Ihle VIII 53(476), VIII 795(480)
26off, 296, 315, 318f, 337, 340, Peter Lombard III 77(455)
XIX £(524), XIX £9(527) Peter of Madrid, fr 215, 236, 243, 246,
Paris, t. 167, 187, 222, 227, 228, 230, 25G 252, 341
232, 234 + 273(501), 235f, 242, 243, Peter the Mangeur III 77(455)
245, 246, 247f, 249f, XIII 224(506), Peter Martyr, St 328, 378
260-268, 275, 279, 282, 284-285, Peter of Morocco, bp IV 204(462)
294, 3°i, 306, XVI 68(516), 317, Peter of Nemours, bp of Paris 244
XVI 227(518), 357, 360 Peter of Rheims, fr 264, XIX 16(525)
Parma, c. XIV 22£(5io), 363 -f 35, 36 Peter Seila i68f, 170, 177, 179, 202, 203,
(525), XX 7(528) 2i2f, 214, XII 106(501), 215, 235,
Parma, t. 268, 378 237, 245f, 250, 264, 267, 354, 411
Paschal II I 6(445), 8 Peter of Spain XIII 44(504)
Patares 322 Peter of St Romain XI 247(497)
Paul, St 230, 298 Peter of Termes III £7 (456)
Paul, fr 363 Peter des Vaux-Cemai 107, 108
Paulicians 51 Peter the Venerable 33, V £2(465)
Paul of Hungary, fr 335, 363f, 367 Peter of Vic 126
Paul of Venice, fr 272, 328, 330, 333, 368, Peter Vital 214
37i, 386 Peter-Roger de Cabaret 67
Pauperes Christi 73, X 67(491) Peter-Roger de Mirepoix 67
Pavia, c. XX 1(528) Peter-Roger Picarella 120
Pavia, t. 324 Petronia Triclo XIV 90(509)
Pedro Hunez de Guzman 15, 404 Petronilla de Montfort 145 -(- 5^483),
Pelaez I 2(445) IX 222(485), 236
Pelagius, fr XX 32(529) Philip 324
Peregrinatio XIII 49(504) Philip, fr 264, XIV 63(508)
Perfect (community) 68, 100 Philip Augustus 47, 54, V 47(464), VI
Penafiel 3, i9+£7(448), Appendix II 47(468), 137, 170, 171, 214, 258,
24(407) 260, 408, 409 -J- 9
Penalba de Castro I 7(445) Philip of Suabia 409
Percin VIII 6(474) Philip of Vercelli, fr XIV 202(509), 386
Petau, c. XVIII 30(521) Philippa 67
Peter, St 230 Piacenza XIV 100, 128(509, 510), 334,
Peter of Aigrefeuille, bp of Beziers IX 727 34i, 343, 363, XX 2(528)
(485) Piacenza 268, 275, 276 + 134, 324, 329,
Peter II of Aragon 65, V 47(464), 78, XX 2(528)
VI 7(467), 85, VI 203(470), 140, Pietro di Albano, Cal 96
144, IX 223(485), 164, 233 Pietro di Beneventi, Cal 164, X 23(489),
Peter the Aragonese 126, 141
2 7°+ 44(49°), 181 + 229(492), 182,
Peter Babon 120 XII 2 £(499)
Peter of Blois II 45(450) Pietro di Lovello 271, 335, 367
 INDEX 5 43
Pisa 324, 368 Prouille, m.—contd.
Pius V, St XX 46(529) 257, 274, 288, 291, 317, 318, 337,
Poblet 8 3 XVIII 26(521), 348f, 350, 353, 362,
Poitiers 26, 242, 267, 319 + 227(518), 362 386, 412, 429, 430
Poland, pr. 361, 363b Prouille (sanctuary) 117, 118 -|- 33(475),
Pomerania 37, 39 119, i22f, 125, 146
Ponce de Samatan, fr XI 163(497) Prouille (statue) 11 8 -f- 33(475)
Pons Adhemar de Roudeille V 37(464), 134 Prouille, t. 109, 112, 114, 116-118
Pons d’Arsac, abp of Narbonne 49 Provence, pr. 36if, 365!
Pons Esteva 169 Province 358—361, 365f
Pons Jourdain 97, 101 Provinces (minor) XIX 60(526)
Pons Roger de Treville 148, IX 124(483), 1 39 Province (Roman) 36if, 363
Pont-Saint-Esprit 232 Provincia vel regnum 358-359, 363, 365
Poor Catholics 134, 173^ X77, 96(491-492), Provincial chapter3 58f
182, 190, 193, 198, 200, 201, 297 Prussia IV 80 52(461), 227, 409
Poor Men oj Lyons (cf. Waldenses) Puer-senex II 45, 59(450, 451)
Populari 327 Pugiles VII 19(4-71)
Portable altar341 PUYLAURENS 106

Potus XVIII 145(324) Puylaurens, t. V 59(465), 216, XVI 99(517)

Poverty (cf. mendicancy) 37-39, 41-42,
32, 73, 89, 91, 111—112, 134, 168- Quintanarraya I 7(445)
169, 173-176, 194f, 21 of, XI 167 Quoniam abundavit 286, 297, 299, 341
(497), 237f, 248, 312
Praeceptor III 39(434), 40 Raab 363
Praepositus 36, 41 Rabanus Maurus 188
Preachers 2 3 3f Rabasteins 66
Preaching 189—190, 2oo, 201—2o2, 223, Radegunde, St 20
254f, 3°9, 312, 313, 33° Rainaldo XIV 90(509)
Preaching of Jesus Christ 107—114, 18 if, 194 Rainier (legate) IV 2(458), V 226(466), 80,
Preaching of the Narbonensis 107 VI 45(468)
Preaching of Prouille no, 123-124, 223, Rainier Capocci, Cal 108, 344
246, 233, XV 11(311) Rainier Sacconi V 65(464)
Preaching of St Romain 203, 223 Rangarde de Carcassonne VIII 2 2 (47 5)
Preaching of Toulouse no, 168—179, 181, Ranold, fr 364
i92, 193,
195, 198, 214, 216, 223 Raoul Ardent 75
189
Predicatores sancti Raoul de Fontfroide 80, 82, VI 45(468), 91,
Prelaws maior 303, 308 92-93, 95, 1o1, 106, 108, 110-114,
Pressure I 56(447) 117, VIII 255(480), 136, X 220(492)
Preuilly 107 Raoul de Narbonne 87, 107
Prevostin (Maitre) 73, 11 2 Ravenna 368, 382
Prior III 39(454) Raymond IV de St Gilles 63, 74, 408
Prior conventualis 358 Raymond V 64^ 67
Prior ordinis 293^ 305, 341, 358 Raymond VI V 7, 9(463). 64, 65^ 68—69,
Prior provinciae vel regni 358 71, 82f, 100, 125, 137, 138-139, 140,
Priscian III 77(456), XVI 54(517) IX 55(482), i44, IX 76(484), i49f,
Procuratio 48, in IX 209(487), i64f, 170, 195, 200,
Profession 2iif, 216, XVI 20(514), 306 202, XI 269(498), 233, 245, 412
Propositum VIII 210(481), X 47(49°) Raymond VII VIII 49(476), 145, 192, 200,
Prosper, St III 77(355) 2i7f, 232, XIII 29(503)
Prostitution Raymond d’Autier 148
Prouille, m. vii, 119-131, 143, i44~I45> Raymond Bernard 99
148, 150, 152, 155, 157, i62f, 165, Raymond de Bourgogne 408
166, 169, 174, 177, 279, 183, !93, Raymond Catalan VIII 59(476)
195, 202, 203, 208, 214, 216, 220- Raymond du Fauga, fr XI 263(497)
221, 232, 234 -j- 105(501), 237 + Raymond Gasc 120
139(502), 239, 245f, 250, 252, 254, Raymond Got 102
 INDEX
544
Raymond de Gros IX 67, 71(483) Riga 36
Raymond Niger, bp of Beziers IX 127(483-) Roa, archdeanery I 23(443), 23, 3 5
Raymond de Niort 66, 99 Roa, ch. 9, 40
Raymond II, bp of Palencia II 53, 59(431) Roa, fam. 13
Raymond of Penafort, St 387 Roa, t. 7f, 13
Raymond de Rabasteins XIII 75(303), XII Robaldo d’Albinga, fr 272 —)— 202(309),
142(502) XIV 232(310)
Raymond de Sauvetat, abp of Toledo 23, 26, Robert d’Arbrissel 73f, no
34> 36 Robert de Courson, Cal 114, IX 65(483),
Raymond de Termes 67, IX 16(482) IX 245(488), X 6(489), X 72(491),
Raymond de Trencavel 94 176, X 225(492), 219, XVI 222(317),
Raymond, bp of Uzes 78 344
Raymond Vital 214 Robert Mauvoisin 1 26
Raymond de Villar (of Fanjeaux) 126 Robert de Sahagun 33
Raymond de Villar (Villasavary) VIII 125 Rocamadour 238
(479) Rocca Savelli 348
Raymond-Guillaume d’Hauterive 166 Rodez, d. 61
Raymond-Roger, c. de Foix 66f, 99f, 133, Rodez, t. V 5(463), 64, V 53(464), 71,
IX 26(482), IX 34(482), 144 XI 77(495), XIII 53(5°4)
Raymond-Roger Trencavel 67, 88, 100, Rodolfo, fr IX 236(483)
13 8f, 142 Rodolfo of Faenza, fr 217, 27if, XIV 209
Raymonde Claret 120 -j- 57(476), 121 (510) , 274f, 302, 332, 333, 3 7 if,
Raymonde, w. Gasc 148 373 + 88(527), 373, 380, 384, 386
Raymonde Passerive 122 Rodrigo [Rodriguez] 16, 403
Raynes 126 Rodrigo, bp of Siguenza 46
Raynier Rustichini, sen. 340 Rodrigo Jimenes de Rada, abp of Toledo
Raynier Rustichini, jun. 340 41, 42, IV 223(462), 231 f, 426, 427
Reggio, c. XX 2(328) Roger II, Viscount of Beziers 63—66
Reggio, t. XVII 23(318), 370, 378 Roger, Count of Carcassonne VIII 22(473)
Reginald, bp of Armagh, fr XVII 67(320) Roger, fr 3 30
Reginald of Orleans, fr XI 267(497), XII Roland of Cremona XIV 55, 93(509), 272,
223(301), XIII 24(303), 247-249, 279, 3°2
263, XIV 65(308), 268-273, 275, 276, Rome viii, 33, 34, 37, IV 55(460), 53 +75
279, 282, 284f, 294, 293^ 301, 306, (461), VI 2(466), 80-82, VI 43(468),
353, 360 92, 121, 129, 131, 134, 137, IX
Regula XI 230(497) 230, 233 (488), IX 244(488), 165,
Regula apostolica 38, 173, 176, 204, 21 of, X 23(489), 168, 170, 187, 191, 193,
3°5, 315, 382, 388 216, 2i7-[- 2(498), 218, XII 42(499),
Regula canonicorum XI 222(496) 225, 226, XII 62(500), 227, XII 79
Regula conversorum XI 209(496), 413 (500), 229-232, 238, 239, 240, 243,
Relics IX 243, 244(486) 247-249, 252, 260, 272, 275, XV 3
Religiosam vitam 219—221, 231, 433 (511) ,281, 284, 288-292, 298, 299,
Religiose X 47(490) XVI 58(515), 322, 326, 330 -I- 49
Rheims, c. 267, 362, 363, XX 35(329) (519), 33G 336-355, 356, XIX 46
Rheims, t. 26, 197, 267, 363 (525), 368, 435
Riba XII 62(300) Roncevalles 240
Ricahombria 18 -j- 53(447) Ronzano, a. XVI 36(515), 370, 375

Richard the elder, fr 241, 271, XIV 94(309) Rosary viii

Richard Coeur de Lion 409, Appendix III Roskilde XIX 46(515)
3(4io) Rouge 12 o
Richard the Little XIV 90(309) Riigen 57
Richard of St Victor 188, 190 Rule of Aix la Chapelle III 53(455)
Richarde de Barbara 1 21 Rule of St Augustine x, 36, 37-39, 40, 41-42,
Richisse IV 25(438) 72, IX 244(488), XI 51(494), 201,
Rieohombre 13, I 77(447), 403-406 204-208, 218, XVI 20(514), 350,
Rieti 387 428, 431
 INDEX S4-S
Rule ofSt Benedict 198, 204, 391 St Jean Pied-de-Port 236
Rule of St Dominic 2 11, 41 3f St Julian 292
Rule of St Francis 193 St Laurent du Puy XIX 32(929)
Rule of Grandmont 204, 310 St Lawrence of Rome 346
Rule of the Floly Spirit 204 St Magloire, a. 263, 337
Rule of Prouille 250, 350, 43 £ St Mark 194
Rule of Sempringham 351, 431—432 St Mark of Mantua 374
Rule
414. 428,
of St Sixtus 129 -j- 159, 160 (480), 359,

Rule of the Templars

439

204
St Martin de Limoux
St Martin de Prouille
121, 297
ii7f, 123
St Martin la Lande IX 52(483)
St Michel, fam. 100
Sabina, sr 390 St Michel de la Cluse 232
Sadoc, Bl. 363 San Miguel de Brihuega 25if, 426f
Sagunto 34 San Miguel de Osma 33
Sahagun 8, 33 San Miguel de Quintana III 22(453)
St Aignan 247, 270 St Nazaire de Carcassonne 150
St Aldate 369 St Nicholas, c. 269-273, 274, 30if, 318,
St Antoine of Paris 149, 167, 236 335, 367, 371-373, 374, 3g6f
St Antoine of Toulouse 190 St Oswald 350
San Antolin of Palencia 28, II 69(491) St Pancras 278, 301
St Antonin of Pamiers 67, 126, 132f, St Paul de Florence XV 6(511), 301, 356,
IX 7(481), 141, IX 42(482), 149, 369
IX 57(484), 197, 386 St Paul de Narbonne 152, 387
St Benoit 260, 262f, 284 St Paul Trois-Chateaux XX 32(529)
St Bertrand de Comminges 61 San Pedro de Aza 35
St Christophe, c. XVI 127(918) San Pedro de Gumiel 9, 19, 20, II 3(449),
St Cosmas 262 33, 58, 60, 405 -f 25(407)
St Denis, a. 282 San Pedro de Soria 40
St Dominic of Silos 3, 8, 9, 10, 13, 22, St Peter’s, Rome 219, 230, 289
IV 23(499) St Peter of Sigtuna 298
St Edward 369 St Pierre de Rebenti 117
San Esteban (Sebastian) de Caleruega 1 if, 21 St Pierre Scheraggio 369
San Esteban de Gormaz 13, 33, III 33(494), St Pierre de la Terre Caplade 11 7
46f, 290, 362 St Pons VI 200(469)
St Etienne (Stephen) des Gres 261, 262 St Proclus 270
St Etienne de Tonneins 117 St Quentin 260, XIV 22(507), 318
St Etienne de Toulouse 166, XI 47(494), St Romain of Toulouse 177, 210, 214-216,
2i4f, 216, XII 139(902), XVI 99(917) 217, 218, 220, 221, 223-224, 231,
St Eustorga, c. XIV 131(910), 329 234f, 237 + 139(5°2), 239, 244-246,
St Flour I 103(448) 250, 258 + 223, 224(506), 260, 265,
St Germain des Pres 282 XV 22(511), 293f, 318f
St Gregory 368 St Rufus of Avignon III 42(454)
St Gilles, a. V 3(463), VI 203(47°), 113, St Salitor 232
139, 140, XI 62(499) St Sernin, cf. Pont St Esprit
St Gilles, fam. 69, 96, i4if, 169 St Sernin de la Ihle 117 + 26(475)
St Gilles, t. 74, VI 95(469), 108 St Sernin de Toulouse, ch. Ill 42(454), 166,
St Girons 411 167
St Guillem, a. 82 St Sernin de Ville nouvelle XVI 99(517)
St Hilaire, a. VIII 33(475), l2I> 23G 297 St Semin, m. 166, 167
St Jacques, c. 231, 298-299, 260-267, St Sixtus, c. 129, 131, 249, 288-290,
276, 279 + 2/(911), 282, 284f, 289 XVI 4(514), 337, 34°, 342, 345-35G
+ 43(912), 30I> 3i8 + 222(917), 363, 412, 428f
St Symphorien des Vignes 262
329, 338, 362, 365
Santiago de Compostela, ch. II 56(491) St Thierry X 7(489)
Santiago de Compostela, t. 7, 9, 29, 34, St Victor, a. 297
VI 43(+68), 190, 298, 260 San Zoile de Palencia 26
 £4b INDEX

St Agnes of Bologna, m. VIII 62(477), 335, Servian 94, 93, 113, 134, 144, 148
343, 345, XVIII 70(322), 387, 429 Sesoine 108, 117 -f- 23(473), 123
St Anastasia XII 76(300) Sicard de Durfort VIII 55(476), VIII 295
St Bibiana, a. XVIII 55(321), 343^ 348, 349, (480)
3 Siena, c. 340, 343, 356, 363
St Catherine, c. XVI 122(318) Siena, t. 272, 340, XVIII 74(322), 368
Ste Croix 149, 233, 411 Siegfried of Orlamund 48, 33, IV 65(460)
Ste Genevieve, a. 262 Sigtuna, c. 298, 299, 319, 339, 364
Ste Marie de Lescure XI 277(498), 221 Silla, a. 297
St Mary Magdalene 340 Silos, cf. St Dominic of Silos
Sta Maria dei Monti 372,381 Simancas 7
Sta Maria di Mascarella 240, 243, 249, Simon of Leicester IX 25(482)
270, 271, XIV 94, 95(309), 274 Simon de Montfort 123, i26f, 139—144,
Sta Maria Novella XIV 229(310), XV 4(311) I45-*47, 150, 152, 156, 162, 164-
369 163, 17of, 171, 174, 179, 193, 2oof,
Ste Marie-St Gothard de Heusdorf 34 202-203, 214, 213, 216, 2I7f, 22 2,
Sta Maria-San Martin de Gormaz 3 3 229, 232-234, 239, XIII 55(504), 25°,
Sta Maria in Tempulo 291, XVIII 55(321), 257
346f, XVIII 52(322), 348f, 330, 333 Simon de Neauphle IX 52(483)
Sta Sabina, c. 342, XVIII 59(323), 348, Simon de Poissy 260 5(506)
351 > 353, 355, 363 Simon of Sweden, fr 272, 319
Ste Trinite de Loubens XI 276(498), 221, Simplon 268
xvi 99(517) Sixtus II, St 289
SS Dominic & Sixtus XVIII 32(321) Solomon d’Aarhus, fr XV 222(513), 340,
SS Faustus & Jovitus 369 364f
Saissac, 144 -|- 42(482), 148 Somport 49
Salamanca II 29(430), 23, 34, 246 Soreze 216
Salve Regina 272 Soria, ch. 9, III 43(454), 4°
Sancta Praedicatio 107, VII 2 2 2 (47 3) Soria, t. II 5(449), 40, 46, 49
Sancho III 9 Spain, pr. 36if, 365f
Sancho, Count of Castile 7 Sparago de Barca, abp de Tarragona 297
Sancho, Infanta 46 Specialesfilios 224
Sans Gasc 11 2 Spiritual soldiers 354, XVI 34(515)
Santarem, c. 281 Springiersbach III 47(454)
Saragossa 7, 32, 49, 132, 231 Stability 208, 2 11 f, 231
Sarmiento, fam. 13 Staff 230 + 83 (501)
Saracens 33, 38, XV 224(313) Stanislaus of Cracow 365
Saura 148 Statuta 207
Sauzenc 123, 126, 145 Statute, canonical 198-J-52 (494), 205, 221,
Sa verdun 134
342
Scheeben ix, VI 79(469), VII 25(471), Stephen, St 269
X 26(489), X 54(491), XI 62(494), Stefano, fr [Esteban] XIII 64(504), 275 +
XI 55(493), XIV 229(310), XVI 52 127(sIO)> XVII 23(518), 330, 331,
(515), XVIII 25(320), XVIII 70(322), 354, XIX 26(525), XIX 53(527), 376,
XIX 24(323), XX 24, 2 5, 25(328) 378, 380, 384, 386
Scolares canonici n 5^(45*) Stephen, archdeacon 284
Seculo abrenuntiare 306 Stephen of Bourbon, fr 264
Segovia, c. 230, 233^ 266, 297, XVI 4 Stephen of Chalancon XIX 32(525)
(5*4), 362 (Cf. Sta Cruz) [Ste Croix] Stephen of Fossanova, Cal 344, XVII 63
Segovia, t. 34, IV 5(438), XIII 52(303), (522), 346, 349, 350, 355
254, 296, 301 Stephen of Liciac XVI 60(516)
Segura (Na) 148 Stephen of Metz, fr IX 62(483), 162, 215
Seignadou (le) 116, 144, 131 Stephen of Mercy 270
Sens 283 Stephen of Muret St 310
Seprio 324 Stephen, bp of Osma 10
Sergius III 347,35° Stephen of Portes, Bl. 187
 INDEX £47
Stephen of Salagnac, fr 238 Toulouse, d. 61, 77, 111, 119, 148,
Stephen of Salagnac XII 106(501) IX 95(484), 152, 156, 160, 163, 170,
Stephen of Servian 93f 197, 216 -f 177(498), 228, 238, 246,
Strasburg, c. 387 349, 411
Studies260, 261, 312 +75, 76(516), 317, Toulouse, t. II 56(451). 49, 5°, 63-64, 67,
XVI 113(517), 337 V 53(464), 74, VI 5(466), VI 11(467),
Szekesfehervar (Albe Royale) 301, 363 82, 87, 90, 96, 98, 99, 103, 115,
Substantion, d. cf. Maguelonne VIII 59(476), 125, i43f, 145, 148,
Sudan 11o 149-15°, 156, IX 244(488), 163-182,
Suero, fr 362 X 29(489), 2o2f, XI 247(497), 217,
218, 225, 226, 227f, XII 80(500), 230,
232, 233f, 237 -f 237(502), 239,
240, 243, 245, 246, 247, 249f, 252,
Tagus, r. 8 254, XIII 224(506), 267, 285, 321,
Talamanca 252 XVIII 50(521), 349, 353, 4i°
Tancred, fr 272, 319, 336, XVIII 63(522), Toumai 197
351, XVIII 148(524) Treboul, r. VII 2(470)
Tancred (Maitre) 386 Trencavel, fam. 64b, 96, 99, i4of, 142
Tarascon 232 Treves XVIII 30(521)
Tarn IX 232(488) Treviso, c. XX 2(528)
Tarragona 7, 40, 182, 297, XVI 1(514), Treviso, t. 321, 324, 369, 378
319 Treville 148
Tello, bp of Palencia 257 Trois Fontaines 108
Telme, St, cf. Pedro Gonzalez Trondjhem (cf. Nidaros) 225, 364
Teresa of Avila, St 256 Troubadours V 27(463)
Termes 67 Twelve (Apostles) 42, 106
Termini 108
Teutonia 361, 365-366
Ucero, r. 84, 236 -f- 136(502)
Thedise (Maitre) 59
Ucles 15
Thedise, bp of Agde 232
Ugolino, Master 367
Thedrana, sr 350
Ugolino 195 + 42(494), 198, 219, 221,
Theodora, sr 350
227, 24if, 247, 248, 264, 270,
Thierry, fr [Theodoric] 364
XIV 109-110, 129-131(510), 278, 296,
Thierry vii, 19^
326f, 338f, 344, 346 -j- 70(522), 360,
Thierry, bp of Livonia 175
368f, 375, 376, 379, XX 22(528),
Thierry of Nevers 93f
418ff cf. Gregory IX
Thierry, abp of Ravenna [Theodoric] 385
Uppsala 225, 299, 339, 364
Thomas, fr 168, 179
Urban II 8, 33, XI 57(494)
Thomas of Siena viii
Urban III IV 69(460)
Thomas of Apulia, fr 354
Urban VIII 346
Thomas of Sta Maria di Reno 386
Urraca Garcia 15, 400, 404
Thomas of Sutton IX 151(486)
Urraca of Castile 8, III 6(452)
Thomas of Tramesaygues 214
Usury IV 34(459), 69, 325, 332
Thomas of Toulouse, fr 212, 215, 237, 246
Usalger, fr 126
Thoronet 119
Uterinus 19 -j- 93(448)
Tionisi 324
Uxama 3 2
Tithes 174
Uzes 61, V 53(464), XI 22(493)
Toledo (see) 25^ 33f, 35, 192, 254, 257
Toledo, t. 8, 17, III 25(453), 251, 252
Tonneins, fam. 100 Vaison 71
Torreon n-12, 399, 401, 402 Vaissete X 226(492)
Tortosa II 56(451) Valdeande 10, 14
Toulouse, county 61, 63-69 [W] Valdemar I, the Great 48
Toulouse, c. 193, 194, 201, 211, 215, 219, [W] Valdemar II 48, 54 72(460), 364,
22of, 244, 282, XVI 4(514), 317, 334, 409f
362, Cf. St Romain Valdes 49, 75
5-48 INDEX

Valencia 34, III 92(456), V 53(464), IX 38 Waldenses 75, 84, 133, X 108(4.92)
(482), 236 Walter, br (Guala) 272, XIV 113(510),
Val de Spoleta 324 275, 3 3 9, 369, 376, 380 + 7(928),
Valladolid 3, 5, 7, III 29(453), 254, 341 384
Vallombrosa, a. 297 William, fr 2 64f
Valmagne 77, 87, 107 William of Auxerre 11 2
Vatican 219, 221, 246 William, Cal 144, IX 58(483)
Vaux-de-Cemai, a. 235 William Claret, fr 109, 120, 123, VIII
Vel arctioris vitae obtentu XI 56(494), 297(480), 143, 161, 162, 179, 202,
XVIII 38(521) 203, 215, 216, 232, 237, 257
Veni Creator 273 William Claret the elder VIII 64(477)
Venice, c. XX 1(528) William of Durfort 120
Venice, t. XIV 85,96(509), 321, 368-370 William de l’Essart 126
Ventura of Verona, fr 302, XVII 7(518), William Gasco XIX 79(527)
33°, 33S, 367, 372, 375, 38°, 384, 386 William Helie 187
Verba de praesenti, defuturo 53, 54 William of Montferrat (fr) XI 40(494), 227,
Verbo et exemplo VII 111(473), 135, 162, 228, 230, 265, 268, 278, 288, 292f,
1 89, 2 1 o 298, 338, 344, 393, XIX 83(527), 384,
Verfeil 74, 96f, 101, 148 386
Verona, c. 276 -f- 134(511), XVI 4(514), William of Minerva 67
334, 363, 37i, XX 1(528) William, bp of Modena IV 108(4.62)
Verona, t. 324,368,378,379 William VIII of Montpellier V 47(464), 77,
Veruela III 213(457) 119
Veszprim, c. 363 William of Nevers (cf. Thierry) 9 3f
Vicenza XIV 85(509), 324^ 384 William of Niort 99
Vienne 61, 107 William Papau VIII 57(476)
Villa XII 25(499) William of Paris 147 -j- 79(484), IX 227
Villanueva 10 (485)
Villar 160 William Peyre, bp of Albi XI 272(498)
Villar-en-Val VIII 225(479) William Peyronnet 387
Villarzens 145 William of Piedmont, bp of Modena 280,
Villasavary 115 120, 126 298, 344, 376, 381, 385, 419
Villelongue 77, 108, IX 242(486) William Pierre 257
Villeneuve-la-Comtal 148 William de la Plaine 169
Villeneuve-les-Maguelonne VI 203(470) William Prevost, bp of Poitiers XVI 2 27
Villenouette 126 (5i8)
Villenouvelle XVI 99(517) William of Prouille 117
Villepinte VII 232(474), 115, 148 William Raymond, fr 215, 237
Villers-en-Brabant 344 William of Roquefort 1 57
Villesiscle 126 William of Roquessel 95
Villiers, a. 265 Winchester 365
Vincent, St 157 Work, Manual III 20(452), III 200(457), 1 29,
Vir apostolicus VII 20(471) 131, 178
Vir evangelicus x, VII 20(471), 107 Wurzburg XVIII 30(521)
Virgin of St Sixtus 347
Visitation, canonical 197
Vital, fr 162, 179, 214
Yves, bp of Cracow 365
Vital Autard 214
Vital, fam. 2 14
Vital de St Antonin 132
Viterbo, c. 333, 344 Zacheus 258
Viterbo, t. 278, 281, 286, 289, 292, 297, Zagreb 363
298, 299, XVI 2(514), 320, 322, 324, Zamora 7, 281, 362
327, 338 Zara 140
Viviers 61, 64, V 53(464), 232 Zucchi XVIII 70(522)
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& CAT. NO ?3 233 PRINTED IN

 BX 4700 .D7 V513
Vicaire, Marie Humbert, 1 010101 000
Saint Dominic(and his tomes

0 63 0214844 4
TRENT UNIVERSITY

BX4700 .D7V513

Vicaire, Marie Humbert

Saint Dominic and his times

DATE I SS A47887

147887