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"The heretics are to be converted by an example of humility and other virtues far more readily than by any external display or verbal battles. So let us arm ourselves with devout prayers and set off showing signs of genuine humility and barefooted to combat Goliath."

It was just a stopover, really. Just a place to spend the night on his way from Spain to Denmark. But Dominic was already becoming known for his friendliness, and he struck up a conversation with the innkeeper. As it turned out, his host was an Albigensian who believed that two supreme beings, Good and Evil, dominate spirit and matter respectively. Whatever concerned the body, be it eating, possessing worldly goods, or even marriage, is essentially evil, the innkeeper told Dominic.

The young prior was amazed at the age-old heresy and spent the night discussing the man's beliefs with him. By daylight the innkeeper was ready to return to orthodoxy. And Dominic had a new mission: the conversion of the Albigensians.

Dominic, Domingo de Guzman in his native tongue, was from a noble family in Castile, Spain. At 14, as was typical for those who did so, he was sent to the University of Palencia, where he studied arts and theology. He was an excellent scholar, and his books—carefully annotated in his own hand—were his only prized possessions. If there was something he loved more than scholarship, however, it was caring for the needy. He once sold his books to help war refugees.

"I could not bear to prize dead skins when living skins were in starving and want," he said.

In his mid-twenties, Dominic was ordained a priest and served as a canon (a kind of traveling priest for parishes without one) for nine years. In 1199 he was elected subprior of his chapter, then succeeded the prior, Diego d'Azevedo, when he became bishop.

It was on a trip with Diego, to arrange a marriage of the prince of Castile to a Danish noblewoman, that Dominic met the Albigensians of southern France. Though the Albigensians thought of Christ as an angel in a phantom body and believed his redemptive work was only in his teaching true doctrine, they had a profound knowledge of the New Testament and the prophetic parts of the Old Testament. But because they believed everything corporeal was evil, they could be tremendously austere. So Dominic was shocked to meet some papal legates whose job it was to evangelize the Albigensians by trying to impress them with horses, regalia, fancy robes and costumes, great food, and plush living quarters. If you're trying to reach the austere, Dominic reasoned, you have to use other means.

"The heretics are to be converted by an example of humility and other virtues far more readily than by any external display or verbal battles," he said. "So let us arm ourselves with devout prayers and set off showing signs of genuine humility and barefooted to combat Goliath."

The priest from a noble family opted to live a life of poverty. He began by removing his shoes, preaching and traveling barefoot. He refused to sleep on a bed in favor of the ground, and one Lent he lived completely on bread and water; he even went so far as to whip himself. As one biographer noted, "They may have been done for show, but the hard floor was real, the emptiness in his stomach was real, the lashes he received were real."

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