Peter Clenott

The Spirit of St. Dominic is the fruit of retreat conferences preached by Fr. Clerissac to his Dominican brethren in England in 1908. In these pages, Fr. Clerissac presents the spirit of St. Dominic and his Order of Preachers, illuminating how this spirit is a living treasure for the Church today as it was at its genesis. As Thomistic Institute Director Fr. Thomas Joseph White, O.P. writes in his Introduction, "a great work of theology has a perennial relevance." Such indeed is the case with this collection of retreats given by Fr. Clerissac: perennially relevant, theologically beautiful. "To bring others to understand and love the luminous spirit of the Dominican Order, the eternal youth of its doctrinal tradition, its exquisite large-mindedness, its sublime idealism: would not one willingly die to make that known and loved?" Fr. Humbert Clerissac, O.P. Father Humbert Clerissac, O.P., was born in France in 1864, At the early age of sixteen, he discerned his vocation after reading Lacordaire's Life of Saint Dominic. During the thirty-four years of his Dominican life he showed a never-wavering ardor for the spirit of St. Dominic's life and mission. He had tremendous influence as a preacher and a spiritual director, and he worked tirelessly for conversions, giving retreats to religious men and women of his own and other Orders. Fr. Clerissac died in 1914, just before the outbreak of World War I.