dominican saints

Blessed Àlvarez was born of noble parentage in 1350 in Zamora, Spain. In 1368 he joined the Dominican Order, taking the habit in the Convent of St. Paul at Córdoba. He was a professor at St. Paul of Valladolid, where he was a teacher of theology. Recognizing and rewarding his many and laborious years of teaching, Pope Benedict XIII granted him the title of Master in Sacred Theology on December 21, 1416. The investiture ceremony took place at the University of Salamanca.

In addition to his teaching, during the years of 1415 to 1420, he was also charged with educating the young King John II of Castile. Blessed Àlvarez also became the personal confessor, spiritual director, and political guide to the regent Queen Catherine of Castile. He greatly assisted the Queen in the government of the country by his wise counsel.

In 1419, he went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, where he was pierced to the heart with sorrow for Our Lord’s pain. He had a deep encounter with God that completely changed his life, resulting in giving himself radically to holiness. Upon his return to Spain, his devotion to Our Lord’s Passion was reinvigorated.

He preached the Crusades against the Muslims who were fighting Christendom. Traveling to Italy, he learned of the reform of the Order of Preachers carried out by Blessed Raymond of Capua in the spirit of St. Catherine of Siena. He lived at the same time as St. Vincent Ferrer, and his apostolic labors, zeal, and charity were singularly like those of his illustrious contemporary. After having, during several years, evangelized various provinces of Spain, Blessed Àlvarez extended his labors to Italy and afterwards to Palestine.

He very much desired a more secluded life, especially to prepare himself for all God would require of him. He obtained permission to retire from the court. He began the reform of the Order in Spain by founding a Dominican convent of strict observance in the mountains around Córdoba. Amid the pine and olive trees in the Sierra de Córdoba, eight miles from the city, Blessed Àlvarez found the perfect place. The topography shared a great similarity with that of the Holy Land, and he named the location Scala Cœli (“Ladder of Heaven”). At the top of a hillside, past a valley through which the mountain waters ran, he erected a chapel he named the “Cave of Gethsemane.” This chapel became the heart of the Scala Cœli convent.

He received miraculous assistance during the erection of this convent when angels helped provide its building materials. Several times, when he was in want of building materials, invisible hands brought stones and other things during the night and were heard hewing and preparing them. The angels were preparing the way for Blessed Àlvarez to spread devotion to the Passion of Christ, which aided in the reformation of the Order and the Catholic Church in Spain.

This convent became a well-known house of piety and learning. He spent his time during the day preaching, teaching, and begging for alms in the street; at night he was absorbed in prayer at Scala Cœli. Driven by his meditations on the sorrows endured by Our Lady during the Passion, Blessed Àlvarez endeavored to make these sufferings a means of sanctification for himself and his friars. Through word and example, he preached of the graces obtained from imitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, who after the death of Jesus retraced over and over the steps her Son walked in His last hours. Towards the end of her life, the Blessed Virgin moved from Jerusalem to Ephesus. Tradition tells us that, because she could no longer retrace the steps of her Son’s Passion where they actually occurred, she re-created the walk on her property using stones and cross markings.

After his pilgrimage to the holy Land, Blessed Àlvarez had been inspired to imitate this practice of Our Lady. He ordered construction of several outdoor oratories in the convent gardens depicting the different steps of Jesus’s Passion. Each oratory displayed an image of a place where Our Lord suffered along the Via Dolorosa, each one marked by a cross. The farthest of these oratories was dedicated to Our Lady of Compassion. Daily he would pray here, passing whole nights offering acts of penance to Our Lady of Compassion.

He would drag himself along the oratory path on his knees, taking the discipline as he went; and those who secretly watched him often saw angels going before him, clearing away the thorns and sharp stones from the rugged path. Like his Holy Patriarch, Saint Dominic, Blessed Àlvarez was wont to spend a great part of the night in prayer before the Blessed Sacrament in the Chapel of Gethsemane and to take his scanty repose on the altar step. Sometimes in the morning when the time came to pray with the community, the angels helped him to climb the rough slope down to the convent or to cross the torrent. Blessed Álvarez similarly taught the Dominican brethren how to meditate on the sufferings of the Redeemer, often retracing the steps from oratory to oratory in the gardens of Scala Cœli.

By his preaching of and devotion to Our Lord’s Passion, Blessed Àlvarez spread the practice of erecting outdoor memorials of the Passion. These memorials imitated those of St. Francis of Assisi, who devised a list of Stations of the Cross for churches and started the tradition of reciting related prayers as a devotional service. This outdoor Via Crucis was imitated in other convents and gave rise to the devotion throughout Western Europe, obtaining great benefit for souls.

Blessed Àlvarez lived a life of great austerity and begged for alms even though he could easily obtain what he needed from the royal court. The court offered ample revenues for his new foundations, but he was an ardent lover of the poverty enjoined by the Rule. The community was often destitute of the bare necessities of life. On these occasions, their wants were supplied in a miraculous manner. Once, when there was nothing to set before the brethren for dinner but a single head of lettuce from the supper of the previous night, the holy man nevertheless commanded that they should assemble in the refectory as usual. The blessing was given, and then he earnestly besought God to have pity on His servants. As he prayed, the convent bell rang, and the porter found at the door a stranger leading a mule heavily laden with bread, wine, fish, and other provisions for the community. The stranger disappeared before the brothers could discover who their unknown benefactor had been.

“Amen, I say to you, as long as you did it to one of these my least brethren, you did it to Me.” Matthew 25:40. One day, as Blessed Àlvarez was returning from preaching in the city, he found a poor man lying in the street, covered with ulcers and at the point of death. Wrapping the poor sufferer in his mantle, he bore him in his arms to the Convent and laid down his burden in the cloister. When the mantle was unfolded in the presence of the friars, instead of the loathsome figure whom they expected to behold, a large crucifix was disclosed to their astonished gaze. This crucifix was placed in the church and is held in great veneration even to this day. Another memorial of the holy man is a little bell, still called “the bell of Blessed Àlvarez,” which rang itself whenever one of the community or any notable member of the Order was about to die.

The greatest service Blessed Àlvarez performed for the Church was the extirpation of the last remains of the great Schism of the West (1378-1417), which destroyed Catholic unity. Some kingdoms recognized the legitimate pope, who should have been in Rome yet resided in Avignon, while others were dedicated to the anti-pope in Rome causing discord throughout Europe. To make matters worse, some cardinals gathered in Pisa on June 7, 1409, and elected a third “pope,” Alexander V. The situation of the Church and, consequently, the situation of the Order of Preachers became more ominous at this point. Blessed Àlvarez intensely felt the effects of the schism in the depths of his soul, as likewise a good religious shares in the Passion of his Lord. Through his reformation of the Dominican Order in Spain, Blessed Àlvarez led a resistance against the anti-popes and brought Spain under the obedience of the lawfully elected pontiff. The Dominican friars urged the two anti-popes to renounce their supposed rights, while the true pope resigned the papacy for the good of the Church. The Council of Constance ended this state of confusion by choosing a single pope, after the resignation of the other three. Pope Martin V was elected on November 11, 1417.

Spain suffered greatly from the Schism due to the general state of decadence that followed it and the repression of religious orders. Earlier in his religious life, when he was preaching in Lombardy, Blessed Àlvarez identified with the Italian reformists and studied their ways. God used Blessed Àlvarez as the agent of reform for the religious Dominicans in Spain. On January 4, 1427, Pope Martin V appointed Blessed Àlvarez to the office of Major Superior and asked him to reform six major Dominican convents in Spain. He then continued to reform every convent and monastery in the country. He required every friar in the convents to live the Rule holily, to make their convents houses of deep prayer, and to preach tirelessly of salvation.

Blessed Àlvarez died at an advanced age on February 19, 1430. A heavenly perfume exhumed from his tomb, and many miracles have been worked through his intercession. Years after his death, in 1530, the Bishop of Córdoba gave the friars a newer church and monastery located in the city of Córdoba and named after the Holy Martyr Acisclo and his sister Victoria, patron saints of Córdoba. The friars were anxious to remove the body of Blessed Àlvarez to their new dwelling; but each time they attempted to do so, they were prevented by a sudden and terrific thunderstorm.

Not all of the Dominicans favored abandoning Scala Cœli, and a handful remained. Eventually the Convent of Scala Cœli fell into disrepair since the friars could not sustain the repairs and it was abandoned. The remaining friars took up residence at the Dominican Convent of St. Paul, where the prior received them kindly. When that same prior was later elected provincial, he assigned the celebrated Fr. Louis of Granada the task of restoring Scala Coeli, in 1535. Fr. Louis of Granada repaired the church and convent physically and spiritually. With affection, he once again established a community there and promoted the cause of Blessed Àlvarez, whose remains rested in the church. Fr. Louis also promoted devotion to the Via Crucis established by Blessed Àlvarez. Scala Coeli was converted into a center for pilgrimages, and quickly the faithful were seen making the Stations of the Cross in the hills of Sierra de Córdoba. As a testament to the holiness of Blessed Àlvarez, Pope Benedict XIV beatified him in 1741.

The confiscation of monasteries and convents in the 19th century once again threatened the Convent of Scala Cœli to ruin; but Blessed Àlvarez watched over his convent. Córdoba devotees restored a confraternity named the Brotherhood of the Holy Cross and Blessed Àlvarez, whose requirements were to repair the church and monastery grounds to spread devotion to the Via Crucis and Blessed Álvarez. The entire royal family were received into the Brotherhood. Another Dominican priest, Fr. Ferrari, O.P., succeeded in having Fernando VI adopt the Convent of Scala Cœli under royal patronage. In 1900, the Dominicans returned, under the auspices of reforming and repairing the Spanish Catholic Church inspired by the work of Blessed Àlvarez.

Today on the hills of Sierra de Córdoba, three crosses in the distance remind the city of its ancient history. These crosses point the way toward the first outdoor Via Crucis in Europe. To this day, pilgrims visit the holy grounds of the Convent of Scala Cœli where the angels once aided Blessed Àlvarez in building this great monument of faith. Throughout the year, especially during the penitential season of Lent, souls climb the ascent to make the Way of the Cross, affirming God’s desire for this to remain a place of pilgrimage through the ages.

Blessed Álvarez responded to the call of God by giving his entire life for the salvation of souls and the restoration of Holy Mother Church. He lived his life daily ever willing to enter more deeply into the Passion of Christ and offered his life as a victim for the sake of Christ’s Body, the Church. As we continue on our path to holiness, may we pray for the grace to respond to God’s call as the holy Dominican, Blessed Álvarez did; and let us fulfill God’s mission with the spirit of charity and penance.

REFERENCES

Procter, Fr. John, O.P. “Blessed Alvaro de Córdoba.” Short Lives of Dominican Saints. Blessed Àlvarez of Cordoba. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1901. Print.

Huera, Alcaro, O.P. Beato Alvaro de Cordoba. Madrid: University Foundation Espanola, 1930. Print.

Dorcy, Sr. Mary Jean. St. Dominic’s Family. Rockford, IL: Tan Publications, 1983. Print.