Dominic

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Saint Dominic is mentioned in the Divina Commedia on two occasions in the Paradiso. In Canto X, Saint Bonaventure – who is celebrating the Dominican crown of which Saint Dominic is the first spirit – refers to him with the expression «che Domenico mena per cammino» ("whom Dominic leads along the way"), referring to the twelve blessed of the first garland whom he guides in the Heaven of the Sun. In Canto XII, Bonaventure delivers his panegyric, designating him explicitly by the name «Domenico». Bonaventure presents him as a champion of Christ, a faithful servant, and above all as a lover of poverty, the first of the evangelical counsels, which he imposed on his Order, mendicant like the Franciscan one. His birth is traced by Bonaventure to Calaroga, identified by the note with Calaruega, a small town in Old Castile. Dominic is thus, in the poem, the leader of the Dominican school, whose praise is pronounced by the greatest representative of the opposing Franciscan school, as a sign of theological concord in the Heaven of the Sun.