Saint Raymond of Penyafort, priest of the Order of Preachers, who, a man of outstanding knowledge of the canons, wrote rightly and fruitfully on the sacrament of penance and, elected master general, prepared a new redaction of the Constitutions of the Order, and in great old age fell asleep devoutly in the Lord at Barcelona in Spain.
Lifespan: 1175–1275
Canonized: 29 April 1601 by Pope Clement VIII
Memoria liturgica: 7 January
Death came to him at the age of one hundred, and it is said that many miracles occurred at his funeral.
Raymond of Peñafort was born in 1175 in Peñafort, Catalonia, into a wealthy noble family. He studied philosophy and rhetoric in Barcelona, then moved to Bologna, where he took a degree in law and became a professor of canon law.
Some years later, Berenguer IV, Bishop of Barcelona, who was travelling in Italy, invited him to become a professor at the seminary he wished to establish in his diocese. Raymond returned to Catalonia and, four years later, in 1222, he entered the Order of Preachers. A year after that, with the assistance of the future saint Peter Nolasco, he founded the Order of Our Lady of Mercy, whose aim was to ransom Christian slaves, and he composed a practical handbook for confessor-priests.
He might have preferred to be left to himself, but one cannot refuse a Pope. Gregory IX held Raymond’s legal learning in such high regard that he entrusted him with an immense task: to gather together all the acts issued by the Popes on matters of discipline and doctrine — whether as responses to specific queries or as rulings on particular questions.
It meant imposing order on an enormous mass of texts, a centuries-long accumulation of decisions great and small. Raymond accomplished the task, and Gregory IX, by way of reward, offered to make him Archbishop of Tarragona. Raymond declined: he was a Dominican friar and wished to remain a simple friar. Stricken by illness, he returned to his first monastery and to a life of retirement.
In 1238 his Dominican brethren prevailed upon him: they wished him to serve as Master General of the Order, and Raymond had to accept. He was the third Master General of the Dominicans, following Dominic de Guzmán and Jordan of Saxony. In his new role he took to the road and, always on foot, traversed all of Europe visiting convent after convent — a life that wore him out entirely, and now in his seventies he was compelled to relinquish the post and return to what drew him most: prayer and study.
The formation of the Order’s new preachers lay especially close to his heart, as the Order continued to spread across Europe. Raymond was convinced that his brethren, as missionaries, needed to be capable of approaching, engaging, and persuading the people to whom they wished to announce Christ.
The Order therefore had to equip itself with every indispensable intellectual tool. Texts suited for discussion with educated persons of other faiths were needed, and Raymond set himself to preparing them.
It was likewise necessary to know intimately the cultures of those to whom one wished to bring the Gospel. To this end, Raymond established a school of Hebrew in Murcia, Spain, and a school of Arabic in Tunis.
Death came to him, at the age of one hundred, on 6 January 1275 in Barcelona, and it is said that many miracles occurred at his funeral. He was canonized in 1601 by Pope Clement VIII, and his mortal remains are today kept in the cathedral of the capital of Catalonia.