UMBERTO di ROMANS. — Fifth master general of the Dominicans (from 1254 to 1263), born at Romans near Valence (Dauphiné) around 1200, died in the convent of Valence on 14 July 1277.
He studied at Paris from 1215; already a magister artium, he entered the Dominicans in 1224. Lecturer in theology at the conventual school of Lyon (1226), prior of the same convent (1236–39), he became Roman provincial (1238–1242). Elected master general of the Friars Preachers in 1254, U. directed the Order during the period of its finest flowering in preaching, foreign missions, conventual and university teaching, and the Inquisition; he presided over the Chapters of Buda, Milan, Paris, Florence, Toulouse, Valenciennes, Strasbourg, Barcelona, Bologna, and London. After the struggle waged against the Mendicants at the University of Paris (1252–56), a ratio studiorum of the Dominicans was established in 1259. On leaving the office of master general in 1263, U. devoted the remainder of his life to piety and spiritual and literary activity.
A particular glory of his generalate is the compilation of the unified Dominican liturgy, collected in the monumental Ecclesiasticum Officium, written in Paris (1254–61) on 500 sheets of parchment and preserved since 1841 at the Curia of the Order in Rome; the prototype consists of 14 liturgical books, indicated on the title page. A portable and incomplete liturgical codex, but one of Humbertine workmanship, is preserved in the British Museum in London.
U.’s commentaries on the Rule of St. Augustine and on the first Dominican constitutions are particularly noteworthy, as are the epistle on the three religious vows and the instructions on offices in the Order (ed. Berthier, Opera, vols. I–II). Around 1270 he composed a work of homiletic theory and sermons for which he is esteemed the greatest homiletic writer of the 13th century (ed. in Bibl. max., vol. XXV, Lyon 1677, pp. 426–567 [sermons]; Berthier, Opera, vol. II, pp. 373–484 [*De eruditione praedicatorum]). His Opus tripartitum is of the greatest importance: it is a memorandum for the work of the Second Council of Lyon in 1274, containing proposals concerning Christendom and the Saracens and concerning ecclesiastical union and reform, founded on observation and a sense of responsibility, and useful for the general and cultural history of the period (ed. P. Crabbe, Concilia omnia*, vol. II, Cologne 1551, pp. 967–1003).
A learned man, U. possessed great gifts of government and outstanding organizational abilities; he is also called Blessed.