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The saints

St. Raymond of Penyafort

The canon lawyer who organized the Church’s laws and lived to nearly a hundred.

Feast: 7 January · 1175 to 1275 · The Middle Ages · Barcelona, Spain, and Rome

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Painting of St. Raymond of Penyafort in a Dominican habit, writing at a desk.

Tommaso da Modena, 1352. Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.

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Barcelona, the 13th century

Raymond was teaching philosophy by twenty and held doctorates in church and civil law by his thirties.1

At forty-one he became a Dominican.1

The pope then gave him a huge job: gather and organize all the laws of the Church.

Patron of lawyers1

01St. Raymond of Penyafort

The Decretals

He compiled five books of papal decrees that served as a core of Church law until 1917.1

He also wrote a handbook to help confessors guide people wisely.1

02St. Raymond of Penyafort

A long life

Elected head of the Dominicans, he resigned after two years, and spent his remaining decades in Barcelona preaching and working with Muslims and Jews.1

Live it this week

Get your affairs in order

Raymond spent years bringing order to the laws that guide people. This week, do one piece of the paperwork you’ve been avoiding (a will, a budget, a medical directive) so the people you love won’t have to.

Notes

How we know · 1 source for this page
  1. Franciscan Media, Saint of the Day: “Saint Raymond of Peñafort”. franciscanmedia.org. franciscanmedia.org

The Catholic Encyclopedia (1913) is in the public domain; we quote the New Advent edition. Texts of the Holy See are quoted briefly from vatican.va. Scripture: World English Bible, Catholic edition (public domain); Verse numbers are modern, with Douay-Rheims numbers in brackets where they differ. Photographs: Wikimedia Commons, credited under each image; full list on the photo credits page.

Lines in the narrator’s voice, without a note, are our reflection, not a historical claim. Stone & Incense restates Church teaching in plain words; our wording is not an official Church text. Report an errorCorrections.