Dominic Loricatus

Dominic Loricatus (Domenico Loricato) was an Italian hermit of Fonte Avellana, known for the severity of his asceticism. He was born between 990 and 995 and reposed in 1060 at the hermitage of San Vicino, near San Severino Marche. He is remembered on 14 October by the Camaldolese order.

His parents destined him for the priesthood and bribed a bishop to ordain him before the canonical age. After a few years as a secular priest, he was struck with contrition for the sin of simony in which he had shared and became a monk, probably at the hermitage of Luceoli, under the direction of John of Monte Feltro. Around 1044, wishing to increase the severity of his penances, he came to Fonte Avellana as a disciple of Saint Peter Damian. He wore day by day rings and chains of iron on his limbs and, loaded with them, made a thousand prostrations a day or recited the whole psalter with arms outstretched in the form of a cross. He wounded his body day and night with scourges.

His life was written by Peter Damian, at the request of Pope Alexander II; Damian admired him and called him his teacher and lord, though some scholars call him Damian's disciple. He wore a mail shirt (lorica) on his body as a kind of hairshirt, whence the name Loricatus. He is said to have given himself a hundred lashes for each psalm; thirty psalms atoned for one year of sin and the whole psalter for five years. Peter Damian likened his wounds to the stigmata of Christ.

He died at the hermitage of San Vicino in 1060, where Peter Damian had appointed him prior the year before, and his relics are venerated there.

He is a saint of the West, honored in the Camaldolese order; no Orthodox synodal canonization is known.