The History Of St. Dominic: Founder Of The Friars Preachers By Augusta Theodosia Drane (Part 1 Of 2)

"The Saint who ‘studied only in the book of charity,’ who was ‘the lover of souls,’ because he was ‘the friend of Jesus Christ,’ who is invoked as ‘the most kind Father, Dominic,’ distinguished even among the saints for his ‘matchless serenity,’ and for the tender love that flowed from him as from ‘a well-spring of sweetness,’ hated heresy out of the very fulness of his love for souls; and the word VERITAS, which has become the motto of his Order, was in his eyes but another form of the yet sweeter word CHARITAS. This truth, dimmed though it may have become in our own age and country, is the real key to the character of St. Dominic, and of all other Saints in whom this enmity to that which opposes the truth is an integral portion of their love of God; a Divine instinct, marking their allegiance to His Supreme Sovereignty, and one which can alone explain both their heroic labours in defence of the faith, and the tears they wept over souls perishing in error.”
Saint Dominic, OP (Spanish: Santo Domingo; 8 August 1170 - 6 August 1221), also known as Dominic de Guzmán (Spanish: [ɡuθˈman]), was a Castilian Catholic priest and the founder of the Dominican Order. He is the patron saint of astronomers and natural scientists, and he and his order are traditionally credited with spreading and popularizing the rosary. He is alternatively called Dominic of Osma, Dominic of Caleruega, and Domingo Félix de Guzmán.
Augusta Theodosia Drane (28 December 1823 - 29 April 1894) was an English writer and Roman Catholic nun. She became a religious writer and a poet.
Born at Bromley-by-Bow, then in Essex, now in London, she was the youngest daughter of Thomas Drane, an East Indian mercantile executive, and brought up in the Anglican faith. She was taught initially at home and then for two years at a Kensington school. Her father's extensive library encouraged her reading and studying habits. The family moved to Babbacombe, Devon, when she was 14.
Drane was influenced by Tractarian teachings and joined the Catholic Church in Tiverton around 1850. In 1852, after a six-month stay in Rome, she joined the third order of St Dominic, to which she belonged for over forty years. She was prioress of the convent in Stone, Staffordshire, where she died aged 70.
Drane wrote, and published anonymously, an essay questioning the morality of Tractarianism, which was attributed to John Henry Newman. Her major works in prose and verse are: The History of Saint Dominic (1857; enlarged edition, 1891); The Life of St Catherine of Siena (1880; 2nd ed., 1899); Christian Schools and Scholars (1867); The Knights of St John (1858); Songs in the Night and Other Poems (1876); and the Three Chancellors (1859), a sketch of the lives of William of Wykeham, William of Waynflete and Sir Thomas More.
A complete list of her writings appears in Memoir of Mother Francis Raphael, O.SD., Augusta Theodosia Drane, edited by B. Wilberforce, O.P. (London, 1895).