Domenico Ghirlandaio
The Miracle of St. Dominic's Books

1485-90
Fresco
Capella Maggiore, Santa Maria Novella, Florence

This miracle is reported in several of St. Dominic's vitae. Near Fanjeaux, France, he and some associates met with a number of Cathar "heretics." As a test of the two systems of belief, each side put a book of its doctrine into a great fire. The Cathar book burned up, but the book provided by Dominic jumped out of the fire unharmed.

In the fresco we see the book popping up about a meter above the fire. The Cathars are on the right in red. Dominic and his associates are pictured in the black and white Dominican habit, but actually the accounts of this miracle all place it during the time that he was a canon regular and had not yet formed the Dominican order.

Read more about St. Dominic.

• Home Page
• Iconography of St. Dominic
• This Picture

Photographed at the site by Richard Stracke, shared under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.