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The Bishop of Osma sent away his retinue to Spain, and kept with him only his companion Dominic; and they, taking with them two of the monks of Citeaux, Peter de Castelnau and Raoul, the most fervent of the delegates from Rome, began that course of austerity and of preaching amongst the people which was ultimately to make of the sub-prior Dominic a saint and the founder of a great religious order, to which has often, but wrongly, been attributed the origin, though it certainly became the principal agent, of the Inquisition.
Don Garcia de Toledo sat in the arm-chair, where he had now sat night and day for more than a fortnight. The good preceptor, Honorato Juan, afterwards Bishop of Osma, wrestled in prayer for the lad the whole night through. His prayer was answered: probably it had been answered already, without his being aware of it.
Upon one occasion the Bishop of Osma, visiting his suffragan church in Soria, had the house in which he was stopping for the night burnt about his ears. He moved off to another house, and on the second night this was also mysteriously set on fire. His lordship did not await the third night, afraid of what might happen, but bolted back to his episcopal palace at Osma.
The order met with astonishing success, cardinals, bishops, emperors, empresses, kings and queens, gladly enrolling themselves among the followers of St. Francis. Dominic de Guzman, 1170-1221 A.D. Half-way between Osma and Aranda in Old Castile, Spain, is a little village known as "the fortunate Calahorra." Here was the castle of the Guzmans, where Dominic was born.
The manner in which he divided his lands was this: he gave to Don Sancho the kingdom of Castille as far as to the river Pisuerga, on the side of Leon, with the border, which included the dioceses of Osma, and Segovia, and Avila, and on the side of Navarre as far as the Ebro, as he had won it from his nephew Don Sancho Garcia, King of Navarre.
In the present day, two cities and two cathedrals are seated on the banks of the Duero within this circle; the one is Soria, the other Osma.
This noble utterance is cherished by his admirers as the first saying from his lips that has passed to posterity. Dominic was educated in the schools of Palencia, afterwards a university, where he devoted six years to the arts and four to theology. In 1194, when twenty-five years of age, Dominic became a canon regular, at Osma, under the rule of St. Augustine.
But these Poor Catholics were the precursors, if not the actual model of the Preaching Friars of St. Dominic. The founder was a Spaniard, who had studied long in the University of Palencia, and had become sub-prior of the cathedral of Osma. He accompanied his bishop to Rome, and thence on a mission among the Albigenses. But amid the clash of arms his activity took a different shape.
And then they turned back to Osma, and great was the multitude whom they found there assembled from all parts to see the Cid, having heard in what manner he was brought, for they held it to be a strange thing: and in truth it was, for in ne history do we find that with the body of a dead man hath there been done a thing so noble and strange as this.
Since then, there has been a continual spirit of rivalry between the two cities, for the former, more important as a town and as the capital of a province, could not bend its head to the ecclesiastical authority of a village like Osma. Throughout the middle ages the jealousy between the two was food for incessant strife.
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