His medieval followers were called Manichees, Cathars or Albigensians from the town of Albi in southern France. Rejecting most of the doctrines of the Medieval Church, the Albigensians taught that salvation was achieved by freeing oneself from everything that was material through a life of asceticism. The teachers of the movement, the Perfect, lived austere moral lives with special emphasis on fasting, chastity, poverty and preaching. The simultaneous emergence of the Waldensians and the Albigensians created the need for forms of Christian life and spirituality that provided patterns of Gospel living that were in accord with the traditional teachings of Christianity.
Francis of Assisi — in Italy and St. Dominic de Guzman in Spain provided charismatic visions that would capture the ideals of the Gospel in new ways and draw many of the reform-minded men and women of the urban lay movements away from the Waldensians and the Albigensians and back into the Medieval Catholic Church.
Dominic de Guzman completed his theological studies at Palencia in , and became a Canon Regular, a member of a community of priests following the Rule of St. Augustine, of the cathedral of Osma in Spain. After the marriage negotiations had failed in , Dominic and Diego stopped at the papal court in Rome on their way back to Spain. Pope Innocent III — enlisted the services of Dominic and Diego and sent them to be part of the preaching mission against the Albigensians in Languedoc, the south of France.
The nine years between and that he spent preaching among the Albigensians taught Dominic a great deal about the impact of the Perfect on their followers. These years also served as the germinating period for the development of a charismatic vision of a way of living the Gospel in accord with the Christian faith that would appeal to the deepest ideals and needs of the men and women of his time.
Dominic was guided by the image of the early Christian community in Jerusalem in the opening chapters of the Acts of the Apostles, which was at the heart of the spirituality he had known as a Canon Regular. He believed that the renewal of Christian society necessitated communities of men and women committed to living the apostolic life.
The major component of that apostolic life was to be the preaching of the Gospel by members of communities that lived in evangelical poverty, who were devoted to contemplative prayer and engaged in constant study of the word of God.
Hence for him, the vows of chastity, poverty and obedience were meant to recreate and transform the preacher into an apostle, a living witness to the crucified and risen Lord, Jesus Christ. During his early years of preaching in Languedoc, Dominic gathered a group of Albigensian women whom he had converted to form the nucleus of the first community of Dominican nuns. Through a life of contemplative prayer lived in a community dedicated to poverty and mutual service, these Dominican women would incarnate the apostolic life and preach the Gospel by their witness to prayer and service.
Although the Order of Preachers did not yet have official status, the first community of Dominican women at Prouille in the south of France, the preaching nuns, initiated an evolutionary development in which countless women in the centuries to come in collaboration with their Dominican brothers would fully participate in and help to develop the life and ministry of the Order of Preachers, the Dominican Family. After the establishment of the Dominican nuns at Prouille, Dominic continued the implementation of his vision of communities of contemplative preachers living the apostolic life.
In the spring of at the invitation of Bishop Fulk of Toulouse in southern France, Dominic brought the men who were his preaching companions in Languedoc to this important city so they could establish a formal religious community there under the direction of the bishop.
Later in when Bishop Fulk set out to attend the Fourth Lateran Council in Rome, Dominic accompanied him, hoping to obtain papal approval for his new community of contemplative preachers. In accord with the legislation of the Council, Pope Innocent III promised Dominic that he would approve the founding of the new Order of Preachers after Dominic had chosen one of the already existing Rules of religious life. He supplemented this rule with legislation and customs borrowed from the Premonstratensians, an order of Canons Regular founded by St.
Norbert at Premontre in , who supported his own vision of the apostolic life by liturgical prayer. The spirituality of the Canons Regular was that of a community of religious priests who dedicated themselves to carrying out the daily liturgy of the Church through the solemn celebration of Mass and the Divine Office and to caring for the sacramental needs of the faithful.
Dominic joined these priestly ideals of the Canons Regular to a ministry of preaching in poverty mendicancy that flowed from a life of contemplation and study. They owned no property except for the land on which their religious houses priories were built and they were to work or beg for their daily needs.
In the final four and a half years of his life, Dominic transformed the sixteen friars living in community at Toulouse into the international Order of Preachers whose lives and ministry would impact history until the present.
From now on, I am going to be very serious about becoming a saint. Perform all your duties exactly, and above all be cheerful. The Lord loves a cheerful giver. At first Dominic did not really understand what Don Bosco meant. In his eagerness to become holy, Dominic began to do what he understood to be penance. He had heard about saints of the Middle Ages who would go on severe fasts and punish themselves with painful physical penances.
Dominic actually put pieces of wood or small stones in his bed so that he could "suffer for Christ. Keep in mind that the Lord, Jesus is always with you and wants your happiness. The educational method Don Bosco and his Salesians was guiding Dominic and the other youngsters of the Oratory, helping them to develop and grow into maturity.
In a short booklet entitled, The Preventive System, he described his approach to youth ministry as based on reason, religion and loving-kindness. Don Bosco developed youth to youth ministry a hundred years before the term came to be used in education. Don Bosco began his ministry with very little help and no expertise except his own experience as a child and his keen insights into the nature of young people.
He had to train a taskforce of people who would become experts in caring for these at-risk children. He gathered a hand full of generous adults willing to follow his lead and a large number of youth whom he could train to minister to their peers.
Dominic became one of these young apostles. He was already very pious, but now he became a person of prayer. Dominic realized that part of becoming a saint was sharing his knowledge and awareness of God with his companions.
Dominic was well liked by his classmates at the Oratory. He did well in school and enjoyed the games the other youngsters played. In Italy at the middle of the nineteenth century children did not play sports as we do today.
Instead they enjoyed any number of games, races and field games. Dominic was always in the middle of the activities. He was always aware of what the others were doing and he became the mentor of his companions. The other kids respected him and appreciated his leadership, but when things went wrong he was not afraid to step in a bring order to difficult situations. On one occasion two boys had gotten into an argument and challenged each other to a rock duel. This was a common way young thugs and street gangs settled arguments.
These duels usually ended with someone getting hurt and sometimes seriously. It seems that one boy had insulted the family of the other. The two boys became so enraged that the only way they could think of settling the affair was to fight with stones.
They were to meet in the lot about ten minutes' walk from the Oratory. Dominic Savio learned about the fight. He caught up with the boys and tried to talk them out of it. They would not hear of it. Dominic followed them to a field where the fight was to take place. They asked. By now they had arrived at the field set up the duel. Each boy stood facing the other with a distance of about twenty feet between him.
Each had a pile of stones arranged at his feet. On the signal they would began to throw the stones at each other until one gave up or was seriously injured. Taking out a small crucifix, which he used to wear around his neck, Dominic held it up. He strode before the angrier boy, and kneeling down said, "You start!
Throw the first stone at me! Taken by surprise, the boy began to tremble. I have no argument with you, Dominic. Dominic ran over to the other boy. He too was astonished and assured Dominic he was his friend and meant him no harm.
Then Dominic stood up. Looking at them, he said with great emotion: "Neither of you is ready to hurt me because I am your friend, yet you want commit this sin over a stupid remark made at school. Christ, who was innocent, died for us rather then seek revenge from those who hated him. Both boys dropped their stones, ashamed before his courageous stand. I hated myself for having forced a good friend like Dominic to go to such lengths to keep us from sin.
To show my regret, I forgave the boy who had insulted me and asked Dominic to tell me of some good priest who would hear my confession. Dominic had a special love for the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Let me die rather than commit a single sin against chastity. Every Friday he found a few minutes during recreation to go to the chapel with some friends and recite the Seven Sorrows of Mary or the Litany of the Sorrowful Virgin.
One Saturday, for example, he invited a companion to recite Our Lady's Vespers with him, but the lad tried to get out of it by pleading that his hands were cold.
Dominic took off his own gloves and gave them to him. Another time he lent his coat to a boy to have him go to church with him for a few moments. Apparently, in the winter the Church was colder inside than it was outside. Dominic drew up an interesting set of stories about Mary, the mother of Jesus, to tell his schoolmates. Now and then he would drop a good hint to get someone to go to confession and Communion in honor or the Blessed Mother.
He was the first to set the example. He saw the Sacrament of Penance as a good place to get advise from the priest. A pleasant episode bears out his tender love for Mary. The boys of his dormitory had decided to set up a little shrine to Our Lady at their own expense so as to keep the month of May. Dominic was very excited about it, but when he found out how much it would cost, he exclaimed, "What can I do? I haven't a cent!
He got a book he once received as a prize and, giving it to the boys, said, "Now I can do my share for Mary! Take this book and sell it! After they bought the decorations they began setting up the shrine, but by the eve of Mary's feast they had not yet finished.
But his friends knew that he was still recovering from a recent illness and made him go to bed. I want to be among the first to see our shrine to Mary! I want to share my love for the Blessed Mother with my companions. What can I do? He drew up a few rules and guidelines for the group, which he called Sodality of the Immaculate Conception. On June 8, , nine months before his death, Dominic had the rules approved by Don Bosco, and the first members were enrolled. Today the function of the sodality remains in the Campus Ministry Teams in Salesian Schools and the Youth Ministry Teams in youth centers and parishes.
If we put the founding of the Immaculate Conception Sodality by Dominic Savio together with the apostolic direction that he received from Don Bosco, it becomes clear that for Don Bosco Salesian Spirituality is always a forward movement of prayer motivating ministry and ministry motivating prayer.
Before going to Don Bosco's Oratory, Dominic would to go to confession and Communion once a month, as was the practice of the day. Dominic heard Don Bosco tell the boys that to keep on the path to heaven, they should do three things: "Go to Confession regularly choosing a steady confessor to whom you can unburden the heart, receive Communion often, and promote goodness among your friends. He had a great love for the Eucharist.
At first he went to Confession and Communion every two weeks, then every week. Observing his spiritual progress, his confessor Don Bosco advised him to go to Communion three times a week and by the end of the year every day.
Dominic placed unlimited confidence in Don Bosco, sometimes speaking to him of his spiritual problems even outside of Confession. To spend time in adoration before the Blessed Sacrament was his delight, and he made at least one visit to church a day, taking other boys with him. We should remember that Dominic lived at a time when Northern Italy was still influenced by Jansenism, which had a very negative understanding of confession and the Eucharist.
In simple terms it regarded humanity as basically evil. The Holy Communion Eucharist was to be received only rarely and only by those who were worthy. Don Bosco was among those who were trying to combat this heresy. His Salesians do so daily and offer their students the opportunity for daily Eucharist. Don Bosco knew well that we all need spiritual advise through a spiritual director and through regular celebration of the Sacrament of Reconciliation Confession. Don Bosco himself was an eyewitness to extraordinary events concerning Dominic Savio.
Don Bosco wrote, "I am recording things I have seen with my own eyes. I assure you I am adhering strictly to truth …". When Dominic received Communion or when he made a visit to Church he became completely absorbed in prayer.
One day Dominic was missing from breakfast, from class, and from lunch. No one knew where he was. On being informed, Don Bosco guessed that he was in church as he had been at other times. His guess was right. He went into the sanctuary behind the main altar. There was Dominic, standing as immovable as a rock.
One foot was over the other; one hand rested on a bookstand, the other was pressed against his heart. His face was fixed toward the tabernacle. Don Bosco called to him, "Dominic. Dominic apologized. Don Bosco then sent him for something to eat, adding, "If anyone asks where you were, say you were doing something for me.
He found Dominic alone but speaking as if in a conversation with some invisible person. If you see that I am about to commit a sin, make me die first! Yes, death first, but not sin! Don Bosco asked Dominic what was happening. One night after all had gone to bed Dominic rushed into Don Bosco's room, waking him, "Don Bosco come with me! With Dominic's insistence, Don Bosco dressed quickly and followed him. They left the Oratory, hurried down one street, into another, and up a third, without saying a word, and then into another street.
They walked quickly along a line of tenements, and finally Dominic stopped before one. He ran up the stairs to the third floor with Don Bosco following. Dominic stopped at one door, knocking on the door and told Don Bosco, "Here! The door of the apartment opened, and a woman stood before Don Bosco. My husband is dying. He left the Church, but now he wants to die a good Catholic! Don Bosco heard his confession and blessed him. From a jurisdictional point of view, the Order was guided by the following principles:.
The Dominicans were not monks but friars. This means they were not so isolated and played a more active role in the secular community such as through charity work, helping the poor, preaching and evangelism. For this reason, it is also called the Order of Preachers. Its survival depended on the donations and generosity of others, since it had renounced all worldly goods, owing to its vow of poverty. Its members lived in communities whose day-to-day was defined by celebrating the liturgy, following the canonical hours and the resolute dedication to study, while living a life of chastity and obedience.
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