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As we continue our journey through the various Doctors of the Church, we come to the first of three members of the Dominican Order who have been named Doctors of the Church: Saint Albert the Great (c. 1200-1285). Albert was born of a well-to-do family in Lauingen in the diocese of Augsburg. While he was a student in Padua in the 1220s, he joined the Dominicans because he was inspired by the preaching of Blessed Jordan of Saxony, Dominic’s successor as master general of the new order.

Although he is popularly known as Anthony of Padua, he only lived there during the last few years of his life. Furthermore, he isn’t even Italian. He is Portuguese! Anthony (whose given name was Ferdinand) was the son of a Portuguese knight. As a teenager he entered a house of the Canons Regular (who follow the Rule of St. Augustine) not far from Lisbon. After a time to transferred to their house in Coimbra, a renowned cultural center in Portugal. His studies for the priesthood were conducted by teachers who were familiar with the writings of the theologians from the famous School of St. Victor in Paris. His theological education initiated a contact with Victorine thought that later became evident in other Franciscan theologians, notably St. Bonaventure.

Among the thirty-seven Doctors of the Church, four are women. Today we encounter St. Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) who is the first chronologically of the four women proclaimed Doctors of the Church. She was named a Doctor of the Church by Pope Benedict XVI in 2012. Pope Benedict devoted two Wednesday catecheses to St. Hildegard on September, 2010 during which he discussed her life and her writings.

On Easter Sunday in 1112 the porter at a poor monastery in Burgundy had his hands full! A crowd of noblemen had arrived and were waiting outside the monastery door. Why had these noblemen come? Did they want to loot the monastery? Was there another complaint about a land dispute? Imagine the porter’s shock when he found out that they had all come to enter the struggling monastery! Who was responsible for thirty noblemen wanting to enter what was then called the “New Monastery”? The answer: a young nobleman we now know as St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153), a future abbot and Doctor of the Church.