March 6 Blessed Jordan of Pisa

A Dominican in the 12th century, Blessed Jordan made a bold move as a preacher. He began reading the Gospels out loud in Italian, not Latin. He is said to have memorized the breviary, the missal, most of the Bible and the second half of the Summa Theologica. I am not sure what he had against the first half. He was able to use his memorization and ability to quickly translate to bring the Word of God to the people under his care. He even went so far as to use the modern notion of a scientific study to look at the results of various preaching methods. With all his intellectual power, he believed firmly that “learning alone can never make a preacher; it needed a holiness of life.”