Saint Dominic

Dominic de Guzmán was born in Castile on 8 August 1170 and entered religious life as a priest. He founded the Order of Preachers, later known as the Dominicans, centered on the work of preaching in an age when that wasn't the norm for religious orders. The order he built became the vehicle for spreading the rosary, a devotional practice that would outlive him by centuries. He died on 6 August 1221, two days before his fifty-first birthday. The Church later named him patron saint of astronomers and natural scientists, a curious honor for a man whose life was spent in pulpits and cloisters.