He was born at Calarvega in Spain, about the year 1167. His father was Don Felix de Gusman, his mother Donna Giovanna Deza, both well descended and faithful servants of God. Dominick early distinguished himself by his great ability, diligence, and proficiency in learning. He first studied at the University of Placentia, and from thence he was removed to Salamanca by Frederick the Second, King of Castille. He here obtained a reputation so far above all the other students as to induce Don Diego, Bishop of Osuna, to select him as the most proper person to become a canon in his church. Dominick was soon after appointed by Don Alonzo, King of Castile, to accompany his ambassador to the Court of France. On this journey the saint first encountered some of the Albigenses, and to the extinction of their heresy he chiefly devoted the remainder of his life, by instituting his celebrated order of Dominican Preaching Friars A.D. 1215, in imitation of the Franciscans, established about six years before. St. Dominick did not, however, implicitly rely on his own exertions, or on those of his order, suited as it was to the ignorance and abject slavery of those times; but called loudly to their aid the secular arm, and established the Inquisition, so that after thousands had been converted from their heresy, and tens of thousands massacred, the conquerors enjoyed in the possession of their plundered property the additional conscious satisfaction of having freed the church from heretics so audacious as to deny that wheaten[40] flour was entirely changed into the body of Christ. Dominick departed this life in the odour of sanctity on the 6th of August 1221, having completed his fifty-first year. Having performed various miracles, and even raised people from the dead, he was canonised by Gregory IX. in 1234. Before the close of his short life, a great number of houses were founded throughout Europe for his disciples, and, faithful to the original object of the new order, he bequeathed to their charge the Tribunal of the Inquisition. The Dominicans and Franciscans for a long time supported the power of Rome, according to the dream of Pope Innocent III. in which he saw the Lateran Church in danger of falling down, and St. Dominick sustaining its weight. But finally, the sale of indulgences, through the medium of this order, excited the resentment or the envy of others, and Friar Martin Luther, assisted by the growing genius of the age, crumbled to pieces a spiritual authority, of which it was fondly believed that destiny had said with more truth than of its temporal predecessor, His ego nec metas rerum nec tempora pono; Imperium sine fine dedi.