SOME OTHER ORIGINAL DISCIPLES Beginning with Blessed Mannes, we have given sketches of all those who are commonly admitted to have been with Saint Dommic at Prouille and Toulouse before the time of the dispersion from Prouille, August 15, 1217. They are sixteen in number. Father Touron gives outlines of only eight of them, Peter Seila being the last of whom he writes. Pillars of the Order, or props of Saint Dominic, were these Friar-Preacher firstlings. So we felt that none of them should be omitted.
Blessed Jordan of Saxony had written that there were "about sixteen" (circiter sexdecim) of these first brethren; and this number seems to have been taken for granted after Jordan's day. Father Bernard Gui was the first to undertake to make a list of them. He gives the names of fifteen out of the sixteen, whose lives we have outlined, Natalis (or Noel) of Prouille was omitted by him; but, as we have seen, this was through an oversight.(1) However, in recent years, two, if not three, other names have been dug out of musty documents and archives. As no more is known about them than the fact that they were intimately associated with Saint Dominic in the foundation of the Order, it is impossible to write even the briefest sketches of them. Still we can but believe that the public is interested enough in them to wish to learn who they were.
In a document dated simply 1211 we find Fathers AMYRIC, John, and Dominic acting as witnesses in behalf of the Prouille missionaries. Dominic is identified, and we think correctly, by the editors of the Cartulaire de Saint Dominique as Dominic of Segovia. They do not think that the John mentioned in the old paper was John of Navarre. Yet we are confident that he was none other than the selfsame Spanish Friar Preacher. Like the editors, we do not know what to say about Father (or Brother) AMYRIC, whose name appears just this once.(2) Was he a disciple of Dominic? Or was he one of the saint's many Cistercian Friends? We do not know. But of
FATHER VITALIS there seems to be no doubt. We first come across his name, as a witness, in a document which bears the date of March 2, 1215. Thence on to 1227 he acts a number of times in a similar capacity in legal instruments referring to the Prouille house.(3) This certainly proves that he was associated with Dominic at least for some time before the Order was established, that he outlived the saint a number of years, and that he made his home at Prouille. The latest writers make no doubt of this fact.
Here our present knowledge of Father Vitalis ends. It is probable, however, that the holy man spent all his religious life on the missions around Prouille, and that he died in its priory. Our information about
FATHER WILLIAM RAYMOND is still less. His name occurs in the legal conveyance of Peter Seila's property to Dominic and his companions; and it appears in such a way as to leave no doubt but that he was among those who bad cast their spiritual fortune with the saint's undertaking.(4) The document, as the reader knows, is dated April 25, 1215. We find no other mention of a William Raymond. What became of him, or where he was sent at the time of the Prouille dispersion, we know not. Possibly he was left at Toulouse, and ended his days in zealous, fruitful labors in that city and part of southern France.
NOTES 1. JORDAN of Saxony (Berthier ed.), p. 15; MAMACHI, p. 164.
2. BALME-LELAIDIER, Cartulaire de Saint Dominique, I, 267 ff.
3. Ibid., I, 397, and II, 8, 16; GUIRAUD, Cartulaire de Notre Dame de Prouille, II, 45-46, 46-47, 51, 139-140.
4. BALME-LELAIDIER, I, 498 ff.
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