St. Raymond de Penafort was the third Master of the Order of Preachers and is considered the father of canon law. He was born in Catalonia to a wealthy family in 1175. Educated at Bologna, St. Raymond produced his great work, the Summa Casuum, which is an important work about the sacrament of penance. At the request of Pope Greogry IX, he went on to systematically re-arrange and codify existing Church laws by publishing five books of Decretals which became the foundation of canon law. Elected Master of the Order in 1238, he published a revised version of the Dominican Constitutions. St. Raymond also commissioned St. Thomas Aquinas to write his Summa Contra Gentiles. St. Raymond passed to his heavenly reward on January 6, 1275, and was canonized by Pope Clement VIII in 1601. His traditional feastday is January 23, but this has been revised to January 7 in the current Church calendar.
St. Raymond is the patron of lawyers and canon lawyers. He worked many miracles; among the most celebrated is one of his having, when returning to Barcelona from the island of Majorca, spread his cloak upon the sea, and sailed upon it, in the space of six hours, the distance of a hundred and sixty miles, and having reached his convent, entered it through the closed doors.
St. Raymond de Penafort entry at New Advent Catholic Online Encylopedia
St. Raymond de Penafort article at CatholicCulture.org
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