Vicaire, Histoire de saint Dominique.

"Few Frenchmen have any notion of what the founder of the Preachers was really like... Most are ignorant of everything about him, except, that he invented the Inquisition and led the Albigensian War, both of which are so perfectly untrue, that a curious question in human history is how they were believed..." This image of Saint Dominic (c. 1170 - 1221), so deplored by Lacordaire, restorer of the Dominicans in France in the 19th century, has remained attached to him to this day. Father Vicaire deploys all his erudition as a historian to dust off this neglected face of Dominic. He makes us discover a man full of gentleness and compassion for sinners, the unfortunate and the afflicted. He shows us a man who, inflamed by the love of God and of mankind, had decided to return to the Gospel alone, to bear witness to it by his word and above all by his life. The first part recounts Dominic's Castilian origins, his travels throughout Europe and, above all, his preaching, with moments of solitude and abandonment to God, in the South of France divided by political quarrels and religious dissensions. The encounter with Christ in the community of apostolic life in Osma led Dominic to a concern for the salvation of all. The encounter with religious dissidents leads him to adopt a new way of following Christ which, in 1215, is transformed into a community in Toulouse, the starting point of the Order of Preachers. The second part relates Dominic's work during the early years of the Order. This evangelical man is in solidarity with the community of brothers and more than ever with the Church. Endowed with an astonishing religious sense and genius, and a democrat before his time, he created in six years a universal, centralised order, endowed with legislation, a system of study and training of preachers, an evangelical mysticism and organs of government. He succeeded in synthesising the two evangelical ideas of mendicant preaching and unanimous community, enriching them with each other. Father Vicar's work is based on first-hand documents. Throughout his life, the author reworked it, clarified it and completed it. This classic strikes a balance between a constant erudition and a more personal tone, sometimes tinged with emotion that translates into literary lyricism. The inimitable value of the book lies in this combination of science and its understanding from within, this alliance of mind and heart.