Dominicans // 
Holy Men and Women // Our Holy Father Dominic and Blessed Reginald of Orleans
Holy Men and Women // Our Holy Father Dominic and Blessed Reginald of Orleans
Holy Men and Women // Our Holy Father Dominic and Blessed Reginald of Orleans
It is often remarked how unalike Dominican friars are. There is no mold into which a novice is poured so that he is cast essentially the same as all the others, with the same opinions, same temperament, same interests and so on. There is, though, what we might call a Dominican ‘ideal’ of a friar conforming his life to Jesus Christ through study, contemplation, community life and preaching. This ideal can be lived in as many different ways as there are friars. The best example of the ideal is obviously the life of St Dominic himself, but it is also manifested in the life of Blessed Reginald of Orleans, who was personally recruited by Dominic and had the unique distinction of dying before him.
A talented fish
Reginald was one of the biggest fish Dominic ever caught for the Order. The catch was made in Rome, where Reginald was staying briefly with his bishop before they continued on their pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Reginald was then the dean of the church of St Aignan in Orleans, but had recently finished a five-year stint teaching canon law at the University of Paris. He seems to have been going through some sort of crisis that made him seek advice from his friend Cardinal Ugolino, later to be Pope Gregory IX. This same cardinal just happened to be a good friend of Dominic, and spoke about the Order to Reginald. He then began listening to Dominic when he preached. One day Dominic noticed that his regular listener was not there. Having discovered that Reginald was sick, Dominic visited him. During their conversation Reginald vowed to Dominic that he would enter the Order.
Dominic was so convinced of Reginald’s talents that he immediately appointed him his vicar at Bologna, a position to which Reginald would return after his pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Reginald had not yet even received the habit of the Order. This does not seem to have fazed Dominic. A man like Reginald was badly needed in Bologna, where there was a small group of friars that was struggling to make any sort of headway in this university town.
Preaching
Once in Bologna, Reginald’s impact was immediate and enduring. Blessed Jordan of Saxony recounts his success once he arrived there and devoted himself entirely to preaching:
“His was a burning eloquence and his talks so inflamed the hearts of all his hearers that even the most hardened could not escape his warmth. All Bologna was astir, because a new Elias seemed to have arisen. During these days he received many of its citizens into the Order and the number of disciples began to grow.”
None of Dominic’s biographers claim that Dominic had the same talent as a preacher as Reginald. There is no talk of mass conversions of the kind that we read about with Reginald and later with St Vincent Ferrer. But Dominic can still be looked to as the very model of a preacher. Prior to founding the Order, Dominic spent around ten years preaching in hostile regions of southern France. Often he was ridiculed and maltreated, but like St Paul he kept on courageously preaching. It is this perseverance in preaching, rather than raw talent, that is the mark of a great Dominican preacher.
Administrative efficiency
Why was Reginald such a success in Bologna? It was not simply that he was a gifted preacher. A characteristic of both Dominic and Reginald was that both men had their feet firmly on the ground. They were not amiable but useless friars, well-acquainted with the things of heaven but barely on nodding terms with the things of the world. Dominic in particular had a genius for administration. Unlike St Francis, around whom a religious order sprung to his apparent reluctance, Dominic set out with the express intention of establishing an order. To do so, he made full use of his friendships with popes, cardinals and the nobility, and for a long time based himself in Rome to be close to the Church’s administrative centre of power. Reginald also took advantage of his friendship with Cardinal Ugolino to gain the church of St Nicholas in Bologna and oversaw the reconstruction of the church’s buildings to suit the friars’ needs. They are a valuable lesson to us that without the nuts and bolts work of planning, holding meetings, answering emails and the like, the great collective work of preaching for the salvation of souls simply won’t get done.
“Too much joy”
Reginald is an attractive figure because he had such a good time as a Dominican. He is said to have confided to one of his brethren: “I do not think I have any merit in living in this order, for I have always found too much joy there.” It says something for the Dominican life that it can make someone so happy that it worries him.
In his joy he was very much in line with the spirituality of his founder. By all accounts Dominic was very fun to be around. Jordan in particular emphasized Dominic’s cheerfulness and his “joyful heart”, explaining that this was the reason that Dominic could win everyone’s affection so easily, “for, as soon as they looked at him, they were captivated.”
Shooting stars
What is slightly startling about Dominic and Reginald’s lives in the Order is how short they were. Although Dominic worked to establish the Order for many years prior to its foundation on 16 December 1216, his life as a Friar Preacher lasted less than five years. He died in Bologna on 8 August 1221 at the age of about 51. Reginald was a friar for less than two years. He had been such a success in Bologna that Dominic sent him to Paris to replicate his success there. Reginald made the trip to Paris, but died there in 1220 almost immediately after his arrival. He was about 40 years old. These statistics remind us that what matters as a Dominican is not how many years and homilies are clocked up, but how intensely the life is lived.
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