St. Dominic
He sold his books to feed people, back when books cost a fortune.
There was a famine in Spain while Dominic was a student. Books at the time were copied out by hand on animal skin and cost roughly what a small house costs now, and Dominic owned some, and he had written notes all through them.
He sold them. All of them. When people asked how he could stand to do it, he said he could not study off dead skins while people were dying.
He spent the rest of his life starting an order built around exactly that instinct: go where the problem is, know what you are talking about, and own almost nothing. The Dominicans have been at it for eight hundred years.
St. Dominic facts for kids
- Founded the Order of Preachers, the Dominicans, in 1216
- Medieval books were so expensive that selling his was like selling a house
- Tradition credits him with spreading the rosary
- He's often shown with a dog carrying a torch, a pun on Domini canes, hounds of the Lord
Feast day: August 8 · Patron of astronomers and the Dominicans
St. Dominic, help me give up something that actually costs me.