manifest in that experience, continued throughout his life. For the next twelve years, Dominic traveled throughout France, Italy and Spain, preaching the Gospel, converting heretics, hearing confessions, and providing pastoral care to God’s people. He lived a monk’s life, dedicated to prayer and extreme asceticism. Eventually a few men joined Dominic in his wanderings and it was during this time that the idea of a new religious order was born. It is fair to say that Dominic did not set out to become a founder of a religious order, but rather to respond to the urgent need for a new type of evangelization within the existing Church and culture. His response was radical, in that it called for a new model of religious life that moved from monastic enclosure to the urban world that was developing in medieval Europe.

Dominic lived only six years after Pope Honorius granted a bull of appropriation for the founding of the Friar Preachers in 1216. During this last period of his life, he did, indeed, take on the role of founder, albeit, a humble one, satisfied to be a peer to his brothers.  He taught the brothers how to live by the Rule, started and supported the development of women’s congregations, sought vocations, all the while making quick decisions that were radical and creative, as he sent young men to universities around Europe to study in preparation for ministry, and out in pairs to preach the Word of God. His personal resources included one patched tunic, his virtue, strong organizational skills, and a kind of confidence that can only be understood in the context of his deep, abiding, zealous love of God, the Church and humanity.

During these six years, he was so effective that when he died on August 6, 1222 at the age of 51, he had organized a religious order that already had men and women thinking and living as Dominicans, although the term “Dominicans” would not come into use until about two hundred years later. He was buried in Bologna in a humble underground crypt where he remained until the transference of his body to new tomb in 1223. His was canonized by Gregory IX on July 3, 1234, the first of many hundreds of members of the Order of Preachers to be canonized in the eight hundred centuries that would follow his death.