Blessed Hyacinthe-Marie Cormier, Master of the Dominicans

Who was Blessed Hyacinthe-Marie Cormier?

Blessed Hyacinthe-Marie Cormier was a French Dominican friar who led the whole Order of Preachers from 1904 to 1916 and gave the Church the Angelicum, the Dominican university in Rome. He was born Louis Stanislas Henri Cormier in Orléans on December 8, 1832, the feast of the Immaculate Conception. He was a frail man for most of his life, and he was very nearly sent home from the novitiate for it. He outlived nearly everyone who doubted him and died at eighty-four. We keep his feast on May 21.

Pope John Paul II beatified him in Rome on November 20, 1994, on the feast of Christ the King, together with the Dominican nun Blessed Agnes of Jesus, whose holy life had first drawn him toward the Order. "Témoin de la vérité du Christ, le Père Hyacinthe-Marie Cormier l'a été à l'école de saint Dominique," the Pope said that day: he was a witness to the truth of Christ in the school of St. Dominic.

A sick novice

Cormier grew up in a merchant family in Orléans. His father died when he was young. He went to the diocesan seminaries, loved music and played the organ well, and joined the Dominican Third Order while still a seminarian. Bishop Félix Dupanloup ordained him a priest in 1856, and that same year he left the diocese to join the Dominicans, newly restored in France by Henri Lacordaire, taking the habit at Flavigny in Burgundy with the name Hyacinthe-Marie.

Then his health gave way. He suffered from repeated hemorrhages, and his superiors judged him too weak to make vows. The Master of the Order, Alexandre Vincent Jandel, met him on a visitation, saw something in him and took him to Rome as his secretary, to the convent of Santa Sabina on the Aventine. Permission came for him to make his profession if he could go a month without a hemorrhage. He never managed it. On May 23, 1859, when he was thought to be dying, he was allowed to make his vows on his sickbed. He recovered, and lived another fifty-seven years.

Prior, provincial and Master

Once professed, Cormier was given one task after another. He trained novices at Santa Sabina, was prior in Corsica, and became the first provincial of the restored Dominican province of Toulouse in 1865, an office he held again from 1878 to 1888. He built a church and priory in Marseille. Later he went to Rome to serve the Master of the Order as his assistant and procurator.

On May 21, 1904, the general chapter elected him Master of the Order. He was seventy-one. The Order had come through a century of suppressions and was small and scattered, and he spent twelve years rebuilding it: reopening suppressed provinces, founding new ones and calling the friars back to study and preaching.

The charity of truth

Cormier's motto as Master was Caritas Veritatis, the charity of truth. At his beatification John Paul II explained it in his own words: for Cormier, "donner la vérité est « la plus belle charité »," giving the truth is the most beautiful charity. The Pope added that in Father Cormier the Church wished to honor "le mouvement de l'intelligence humaine, éclairée par la foi," the work of the human mind lit by faith.

His great work was the Dominican college in Rome, heir to the old school of the Minerva. In 1908, on his initiative and with the approval of St. Pius X, the Pontifical College of St. Thomas was renamed the Pontifical International College Angelicum, a house of studies for the whole Order meant to renew the teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas. Pope John XXIII raised it to a pontifical university in 1963.

He was a gentle superior and a tireless writer of letters and retreat conferences. When his term ended in 1916 he retired to the Irish Dominican priory at San Clemente in Rome, and he died there on December 17, 1916.

His tomb and beatification

Cormier was first buried in the Dominican tomb at the Campo Verano cemetery. On December 17, 1934, the eighteenth anniversary of his death, his remains were moved to the church of Santi Domenico e Sisto, the church of the Angelicum, where he rests today. His cause was opened in 1945, and he was beatified on November 20, 1994. As for any beatified confessor, the Church accepted a miracle through his intercession; we have not found a published account of it, so we do not describe it here.

Symbols of Blessed Hyacinthe-Marie Cormier in art

Images of him are few and almost all modern, based on photographs taken in his last years. Look for:

• The Dominican habit: a white tunic and scapular with the black cappa, the dress of the Order of Preachers.
• An old, thin face with spectacles: he is shown as he looked when Master, in his seventies and eighties.
• A book: for study, the Angelicum and the "charity of truth."
• A rosary: the Dominican devotion, worn at the belt.

Feast day and prayer

The Dominican Order keeps his feast on May 21, the day of his election as Master, and the Angelicum marks it each year at the close of the academic year. His tomb is in Santi Domenico e Sisto on Largo Angelicum, near the Quirinal. See the feast day calendar for other saints of the season.

We know of no traditional prayer to Blessed Hyacinthe-Marie Cormier. Let us ask him to pray for students and teachers of theology, for all who are too ill to do what they long to do, and for the Order of Preachers. Blessed Hyacinthe-Marie Cormier, pray for us.