Parents do the darnedest things. Often it is out of the desire to see their children advance in life, and comes from that murky place of mixed motives–love, the need for gratitude, a desire to direct and control, the need to be needed, the wish to make the child’s way easier. This was true even in the 11th century, for a man named Dominic. And he cracked under the pressure, at least as seen through my 21st-century eyes.

Here’s what happened: Dominic wanted desperately to become a priest. It was his fondest dream from early youth. In time, Dominic was judged to be sufficiently qualified to enter into the priesthood! But then he found out that his parents had made a HUGE contribution to the local bishop–with the quid pro quo agreement that their son would, of course, meet no obstacles to becoming a priest.

Damn, Mom & Dad! Actually what the parents did (called “simony”) was considered damnable–a mortal sin, this using money to purchase ecclesiastical favors. Plus it left Dominic forever wondering if he could be worthy to be a priest! In fact, when the matter became publicly known (and revealed to Dominic), he was so distressed that he “could never be induced to approach the altar, or exercise any sacerdotal function.” In short, Dominic fled the priesthood forevermore.

But it didn’t stop for Dominic with leaving the priesthood behind. For the rest of his days (which were many), Dominic felt that he had to atone for his parents’ actions. His life was one long stretch of increasingly severe penances. He began by joining a hermitic order that was rigorously vegan, with fasting every day but Thursdays and Sundays; where the men lived apart from one another in silence, being allowed to speak only for a short time on Sunday evenings; where each hermit engaged in heavy manual labor and enjoyed very little sleep. But these severities were not all! Dominic additionally beat himself severely (as a way of practicing his religious devotion).

Finding that he still couldn’t escape the feelings of unworthiness and sinfulness plaguing him, Dominic subsequently sought out an even more severe order. In a new location, Dominic continued the diet restrictions, silence, manual labor, and whipping himself…but adding to these, “Dominic wore next his skin a rough iron coat of mail . . . which he never put off but to receive the discipline, or voluntary penitential self-flagellation.” Day and night, the rough iron ate into his skin, which he freshly flayed open each time he whipped himself as an act of contrition–contrition for what his parents had done in an attempt to smooth his pathway into the service of God.

When old, ill, and still fasting and punishing his body in these (inhuman) manners, one elder cleric who was visiting him asked Dominic the obvious question of Why!? To this, Dominic collapsed in tears, declaiming himself that he was still too sensual a man. He still had feelings. He still had thoughts. He still had been unable through a lifetime of self-punishment to rid himself of the feeling of “ick” that had been thrown over him by the actions of others and compounded by years of being praised and encouraged for his severity in “penance.”

At least he did not die alone, passing away during community worship one Sunday night.

It’s easy to play armchair psychologist a millennium after Dominic lived his life on this earth. Or to be appalled by all that he felt compelled to put himself through. I have to believe that Dominic did the best he could with the feelings he had, and that the pathway religion held for Dominic sadly failed to bring him comfort or healing. It is tragic. Let’s do better by our youths, ok?