Dante: Paradiso Canto XII:37-105 Bonaventura speaks of Saint Dominic (A. S. Kline)

 

‘Christ’s army, whose re-arming cost so dear, followed the standard slowly, fearfully and sparsely, when the Emperor, who reigns forever, of his own grace, and not because of that army’s worth, made provision for the soldiers who were in danger, and, as has been said, He came to the aid of his Bride, with two champions, at whose works and words, the scattered ranks re-grouped.

In Spain, towards that region, where sweet Zephyr rises, to unfold the new leaves Europe sees herself re-clothed with, not far from the crash of the waves, behind which because of their vast reaches, the sun sometimes conceals himself from all people, Calahorra, the fortunate, lies, under the protection of the noble shield of Castile, on whose arms, in the left quarters, the lion is below the castle, and on the right above.

There the loving servant of the Christian faith was born, the holy wrestler, kind to his followers and cruel to his enemies: and as soon as he was created his mind was so full of living virtue that in the womb it sent his mother a prophetic dream. When the marriage between him and the faith was completed at the holy font, where they dowered each other with mutual salvation, the lady, who gave the assent for him, saw, in her sleep, the marvelous harvest destined to issue from him and his heirs, and so that this might be known, in his very name, a spirit from above moved them to call him after the Lord, whose he was completely. Dominic, he was named: and I talk of him as I would of a laborer, whom Christ chose to nurture his orchard.

He showed himself truly a companion and messenger of Christ, since the first love he showed was for the first counsel of Christ, that of Poverty. Often his nurse found him, on the floor, silent and wakeful, as if to say: It was for this I came. Truly his father was Felice, favoured, and his mother, Giovanna, graced by the Lord, if the interpretation of their names is valid!

Soon, for love of the true manna, and not of the world, for whose sake men labour after Henry of Susa, Ostia’s bishop, and Taddeo Alderotti’s doctrines, he became a powerful teacher, so that he set himself to a circuit of the vineyard, which soon withers if the vine-dresser is at fault: and from the Apostolic See, that once was more generous to the rightful poor, not because it has altered in itself, but because of the one who holds it, degenerately, he demanded not a profit of a third or a half, not the grant of the next vacancy, not decimas quae sunt pauperum Dei, the tithe that belongs to God’s poor, but leave to fight against the heretical world for that seed from which these twenty-four plants en-leaf you.

Then he went forward, teaching and will as one, with the blessing of the Apostolic Office, like a torrent driven out of a deep fissure, and his force struck the roots of heresy most fiercely where the resistance was most obstinate. Then many streams sprang from his, so that the Catholic garden is watered, and its shrubs achieve a fuller growth.’