Feast day: January 7

St. Raymond of Penyafort

Priest · 1175–1275

Patron of Canon lawyers

A Spanish Dominican who organized the tangled mass of Church law into a single ordered code that stood for centuries, and who lived to be a hundred.

Raymond was born about 1175 near Barcelona, into a noble Catalan family, and became a brilliant scholar of law, teaching canon law with great distinction at Bologna, then the foremost school of law in Europe. Already a respected churchman and famed for his learning and his kindness to the poor, he was drawn in middle age to the new Order of Preachers, receiving the Dominican habit at Barcelona in 1222.

His greatest service to the Church was as a lawyer. The decrees and rulings of the popes and councils had multiplied over the centuries into a tangle of overlapping and sometimes conflicting collections, and Pope Gregory IX set Raymond the immense task of gathering, ordering, and condensing them into a single authoritative code. The result, the 'Decretals,' published in 1234, became the foundation of the Church's law and remained in force for nearly seven hundred years.

He was also a pioneer of the practical care of souls. His 'Summa on Penance,' written to guide confessors, was one of the most influential handbooks of the Middle Ages, helping priests to apply the law of the Church with both justice and mercy in the confessional. Briefly, and against his will, he served as master general of the whole Dominican order, giving it a revised constitution before resigning to return to his beloved work.

Zealous for the conversion of the Muslims and Jews of Spain, he urged the establishment of schools to learn Arabic and Hebrew and encouraged his friend Thomas Aquinas to write a great work of reasoned persuasion for the missions. He lived to be about a hundred years old, dying at Barcelona in 1275, and is honored as the patron saint of canon lawyers.

The pope ordered him to compile all of canon law; his Decretals remained the Church's legal backbone until 1917 — nearly 700 years.

Source: newadvent.org/cathen/12671c.htm