Raymond of Penyafort was a Catalan Dominican friar in the 13th century, who 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 is honoured as the patron saint of canon lawyers.
He was born in Vilafranca del Penedès, a small town near Barcelona, Principality of Catalonia, around 1175. Descendent of 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. He had 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 that discussed pertinent doctrines and laws of the Church that pertained to the problem or case brought to the confessor and is widely considered an authoritative work on the subject.
In 1229 Raymond was appointed theologian and penitentiary to the Cardinal Archbishop of Sabina, John of Abbeville, and was summoned to Rome in 1230 by Pope Gregory IX, who appointed him chaplain and grand penitentiary.
Knowing Raymond's reputation in the juridical sciences, Gregory IX asked him to help in the rearranging and codifying of canon law. Canon laws, which were previously found scattered in many publications, were to be organized into one set of documents.
He had served as the confessor for King James I of Aragon.
Raymond died at the age of 100 in Barcelona in 1275 and was canonized by Pope Clement VIII in 1601. He was buried in the Cathedral of Santa Eulalia in Barcelona.
Other Saints of the Day
1. Saint Aidric
2. Saint Brannock
3. Saint Clerus
4. Saint Emilian
5. Saint Reinold
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