Raymond of Peñafort

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Saint Raymond of Peñafort

Born	c. 1175 AD, Vilafranca del Penedès, Catalonia
Died	1275 AD, Barcelona
Venerated in	Roman Catholic Church
Canonized	1601 by Clement VIII
Major shrine	Cathedral of Barcelona
Feast	January 7 (Roman Catholic calendar of saints January 23 (General Roman Calendar of 1962)
Patronage	canon lawyers; all types of lawyers (Spain)
Saints Portal

Saint Raymond of Peñafort, O.P. (c. 1175 – 1275) (Catalan: Sant Ramon de Penyafort, Spanish: San Raimundo de Peñafort) was born in Vilafranca del Penedès, a small town near Barcelona, Catalonia, around 1175. He was educated in Barcelona and also at the University of Bologna in Italy, where he received doctorates in civil law 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 was chaplain to Pope Alexander IV, and confessor of James I of Aragon.

He was instrumental in the founding of the Order of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mercy. ^[1] When approached by Peter Nolasco, Raymond encouraged and assisted him in obtaining the consent of James I for the foundation of the Order. Returning to Barcelona in 1222, he entered the Dominican Order.

Knowing Raymond's reputation in the juridical sciences, Gregory IX summoned him to Rome in 1230, to help in the re-arranging and codifying of Canon law. Canon laws, which were previously found scattered in many publications, were organized into one set of documents. In particular papal decretal letters had been changing the law over the course of the previous 100 years since the publication of the Decretum of Gratian. Being pleased with Raymond's efforts, the pope announced the new publication in a Bull directed to the doctors and students of Paris and Bologna in 1231, commanding that the work of St. Raymond alone should be considered authoritative, and should alone be used in the schools. His collection of canon law, known as the Liber extra or Gregorian Decre6tals, became a standard for almost 700 years. When Raymond completed his work the pope appointed him Archbishop of Tarragona, but he declined the honour. Raymond followed this with the publication of a work on penitential discipline, Summa casuum, which is widely considered an authoritative work on the subject. Canon law was finally fully codified by 1917.

Raymond returned to the Iberian Peninsula in 1236. Not long able to remain in seclusion, however, he was made General of the Dominican order in 1238, but resigned in 1240. It was during his tenure that he revised the Dominican Constitutions and asked St. Thomas Aquinas to publish one of his famous works. Having reached his sixtieth year, Raymond retired in Barcelona.

There, his principal aim became to convert Jews and Muslims to Christianity, and for the furtherance of this aim he caused both Arabic and Hebrew to be studied and taught in the higher schools conducted by Dominicans. He also encouraged one of his Dominican colleagues, Thomas Aquinas, to write his work Summa contra Gentiles.

He exercised great influence over King James, and succeeded in persuading him to order a public debate, concerning Judaism and Christianity, between Moshe ben Nahman, called also El Rab de España or Bonastruc de Porta, a rabbi in Gerona, and Fra Pablo, or Pablo Christiani, a baptized Jew of Montpellier who belonged to the Dominican order. In this debate, which took place in the royal palace at Barcelona (July 20-24, 1263), in the presence of the king and of many of the higher clergy, Raymond took an important part. He was at the head of the theologians present, and in agreement with the king gave the rabbi perfect freedom of speech. Raymond simply observed to Moses ben Nachman that he must not allow himself to blaspheme Christianity, to which Moses replied that he knew what the laws of propriety demanded. According to the Jewish Encyclopedia, on the Jewish Sabbath following the close of the debate, the king, together with many preaching friars and other clergy, visited the synagogue. There, Raymond allegedly delivered an address on the Trinity, which Moses ben Nachman denied.

Tomb of Saint Raymond. Cathedral of Barcelona.

Raymond obtained from the king not only permission for his protégé Pablo Christiani to continue his missionary journeys, but also the command that the Jews in all parts of his land, including children, old men, and women, should be compelled^{[citation needed]} to listen to the sermons of Pablo and of all other Dominicans, and, within three months, to strike out from their books all that was contained in them against the Christian religion. The censory commission appointed thereafter consisted of Arnoldo de Guerbo (Bishop of Barcelona), Raymond himself, and the Dominicans Arnoldo de Legarra, Raymund Martin (author of Pugio Fidei), and Pedro de Genoa.

Raymond died in 1275 and was canonised by Clement VIII in 1601 as St. Raymond of Peñafort. He is buried in the cathedral of Barcelona. He is the patron saint of canon lawyers. In Spain, he is the patron saint of all lawyers. His feast day is celebrated on 7 January, the first free day after the day of his death^[2] (see Roman Catholic calendar of saints. In the General Roman Calendar as in 1954 it appears on 23 January.

[edit] References

^ Attwater, Donald and Catherine Rachel John. The Penguin Dictionary of Saints. 3rd edition. New York: Penguin Books, 1993. ISBN 0-140-51312-4.
^ Calendarium Romanum (Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1969), p. 114

[edit] References

Nachmanidis Disputatio, ed. Steinschneider, Berlin. 1860
Cecil Roth, "The Disputation of Barcelona (1263)," Harvard Theological Review, Vol. 43, No. 2 (Apr., 1950), pp. 117-144
Francisco Diago, Anales del Reyno de Valencia (1613), p. 373;
José Amador de los Ríos, Historia social, política y religiosa de los judíos en España y Portugal, i.433 et seq.;
Attwater, Donald and Catherine Rachel John. The Penguin Dictionary of Saints. 3rd edition. New York: Penguin Books, 1993. ISBN 0-140-51312-4.
R.E.J. xv.6 et seq.
"St. Raymond of Peñafort". Catholic Encyclopedia. (1913). New York: Robert Appleton Company.
This article incorporates text from the 1901–1906 Jewish Encyclopedia, a publication now in the public domain.
Raymond of Peñafort, Summa on marriage, trans. Pierre J Payer, Toronto, Ont. : Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2005.
Cohen, Jeremy, The friars and the Jews: the evolution of medieval anti-Judaism, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982.