Today, December 20, is the memorial of Saint Dominic of Silos.
Dominic was born in the year 1000 in Spain. He was a shepherd before becoming a Benedictine monk at the monastery of San Millán de Cogolla. There Dominic became novice master and then prior before being driven out with two of his fellow monks by the King Garcia Sanchez III of Navarre, who wished to annex the monastery’s lands.
Under the protection of Ferdinand I of León, they found refuge at the defective Abbey of St. Sebastian. The abbey would be later named after Dominic.
He was known for building Romanesque-style cloisters and turning the monastery into a center of book design, studies, and works of charity.
About 100 years after his death, a young woman made a pilgrimage to his tomb and prayed that she would conceive a child. There St. Dominic of Silos appeared to her and reassured her that she would bear another son.
The woman was Blessed Joan de Aza de Guzmán, and the son she bore grew up to be St. Dominic de Guzmán (whom she named after St. Dominic of Silos), the founder of the Dominican order.
Dominic of Silos died of natural causes in 1073.