Saint Saint Raymond of Penyafort, Priest

Raymond of Penyafort OP was a Catalan friar with the Dominicans who was a canon lawyer. He compiled the Decretals of Gregory IX, a collection of canonical laws that remained a major part of Church law until the 1917 Code of Canon Law abrogated it. He was canonized by Pope Clement VIII in 1601 and is the patron saint of canon lawyers. He wrote one of the first manuals for user of the inquisitors, the Directorium inquisitoriale (1242). Raymond of Penyafort was born in Santa Margarida i els Monjos, a small town near Barcelona, Principality of Catalonia, c. 1175. Descended from a noble family with ties to the royal house of Aragon, he was educated in Barcelona and at the University of Bologna, where he received doctorates in both civil and canon law. From 1195 to 1210, he taught canon law. In 1210, he moved to Bologna, where he remained until 1222, including three years occupying the Chair of canon law at the university. He came to know the newly founded Dominican Order there. Raymond was attracted to the Dominican Order by the preaching of Blessed Reginald, prior of the Dominicans of Bologna, and received the habit at the age of 47, in the Dominican Convent of Barcelona, to which he had returned from Italy in 1222. Raymond was instrumental in the founding of the Mercedarian friars. When approached by Peter Nolasco, Raymond encouraged and assisted him in obtaining the consent of King James I of Aragon for the foundation of the Order. The need to study Semitic languages was affirmed by the General Chapter of the Dominican Order in Paris in 1236. Raymond established the first school of the Studia Linguarum in Tunis, where it was known as the Studium arabicum. The objective of the schools was to help the Dominicans liberate Christian captives in Islamic lands. Raymond had written for confessors a book of cases, the Summa de casibus poenitentiae.