RAYMOND OF CAPUA, Blessed. - Born at Capua ca. 1330, into a noble family descended from Pier delle Vigne, died at Nuremberg in Sept. 1399. He studied at Bologna, where he entered the Order of Dominicans, and was a lector there and at Rome from 1358 to 1362.
In 1363 he then moved to Montepulciano as spiritual director of the Convent of St. Agnes. In 1367 he was made prior of the Convent of the Minerva in Rome, whence he then went to Tuscany for other assignments entrusted to him by the General Chapter, among which the first was the spiritual direction of the young mantellata Catherine of Siena (1374), whom he guided with the utmost prudence and devotion more as a disciple than as a master. Collaborating with the Saint on the return of the Pope from Avignon to Rome, he accompanied her to the French Court of Gregory XI (1376) and then to Rome, where, happy to be still at her side, he was again entrusted with the priory of the Minerva (1378), during which office Urban VI sent him as his legate to Charles V of France.
Faithful to the virgin of Siena even after her death, he defended with her Pope Prignano even during the Western Schism (1378-1417). After a year as provincial in Lombardy, in 1380 R. da C. was elected general of the Dominican Order, which ten years later he began to reform according to the needs he had come to know in his visitations of the various convents of Italy, Germany and Hungary, appointing as his vicar for Germany Conrad of Prussia and for Italy Giovanni Dominici of Venice. He died at Nuremberg during the visitation of that convent. Of capital importance for Catherine's history is the Legenda which he composed about her in 1393 and which was published for the first time in Florence in 1477 (Italian version, Siena 1934). Leo XIII confirmed his cult on 15 May 1899, with his feast on 5 October.
Of his works the following are published: De reformatione religiosa, Rome 1581; Opuscola et litterae, ibid. 1895; Registrum litterarum, ibid. 1937.