The Portrait of St Dominic

Extract

A medievalist rarely has the experience of reading for review a book which impresses him at once as being definitive in its field. Père M.-H. Vicaire’s life of St Dominic gives this impression in the first chapter, and continues to give it till the last page is reached, many days later. No historical work as such is immortal; Thucydides and Gibbon live chiefly as great literature; new material will always be appearing and no two ages will seek for exactly the same answer from their sources. But when these reservations have been made, it may be confidently said that this life, like Vacandard’s Life of St Bernard and that of St Philip Neri by Ponnelle and Bordet, will remain standard for fifty years or more, and will influence all that is written about St Dominic far into the future. It will not put an end to writings on the saint; it will probably lead to their multiplication, for St Dominic is a figure that every generation and every nation will seek to understand and to interpret for themselves, but it will be from these volumes that the ore is extracted, to be moulded into this shape or that.

It is frequently remarked, both by historians and devout Catholics, that little is known of the life and personality of St Dominic. Certainly the lessons in the breviary on his feast day are more than usually successful in confirming such a view. One reason for this is undoubtedly the lack of an adequate contemporary biography. Dominic lived when the monastic centuries, with their tradition of literary education and classical models, had ended.