HUMBERT OF ROMANS. - Fifth Master General of the Dominicans (from 1254 to 1263), b. at Romans near Valence (Dauphiné) ca. 1200, d. in the convent of Valence on 14 July 1277.
He studied in Paris from 1215; already a "magister artium," he entered the Dominicans in 1224. Lector of 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 Preachers in 1254, U. directed the Order in the age of the finest flowering of preaching, foreign missions, conventual and university teaching, and 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 produced in 1259. Leaving the office of master general in 1263, U. devoted the rest of his life to piety and to spiritual and literary activity.
A particular glory of his generalate is the drafting 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 in the frontispiece. A portable and incomplete liturgical codex, but of Humbertian workmanship, is preserved in the British Museum in London.
Very notable are U.'s commentaries on the Rule of St. Augustine and on the early Dominican constitutions; the epistle on the three religious vows and the instructions on the offices in the Order (ed. Berthier, Opera, vols. I-II). Ca. 1270 he drafted a work of homiletic theory and of sermons for which he is esteemed the greatest homiletician 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]). Very important is his Opus tripartitum, which is a memorial for the works of the Second Council of Lyon of 1274 with proposals concerning Christendom and the Saracens and concerning ecclesiastical union and reform, founded on observation and responsibility, 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. had great qualities of government and eminent gifts as an organizer; he is also called blessed.