A Unknown Woman in a Blue Cloak

	Dom Dominic Helion was born in Borussia (Poland) in 1384, from parents of very modest circumstances. His father, who died when Dominic was only 11, knew that he and his three other sons would be exposed to moral dangers at school. When his mother was widowed, she hired Dominic out to an elderly preacher who taught him the alphabet and the Pater Noster, and made him copy the Matins of the Blessed Virgin Mary early on so that he could carry them on him and recite the Hours. At that time he made a vow—which later, unfortunately, he kept badly—and diligently prayed the Virgin to help him become learned: “Sancta Maria,” he begged her, “help me to study well enough so that I can become a priest.” A few years later, Dominic went to the University of Cracow, where he fell into debauchery and playing craps. At the age of 21, during a hike with friends, he stayed at the Carthusian monastery of Prague (a stay just as unsuccessful as it was for Pierre de Keriolet, the famous Breton penitent, at the Carthusian monastery of Auray). He came out worse than he had gone in. Initiated into the secrets of necromancy, he used his gains to distribute to the poor... During Lent of 1407, he entered a church to weep over his sins, but was unable to do so. Then he gave his last coin to an unknown lady wearing a “blue cloak” who promised, in exchange for the coin, to deliver him from all his miseries. Later, he understood that he owed that grace to Mary, and that she was the one who had appeared under the features of that charitable beggar. Above all, he realized that he had to leave the world and choose the Carthusian Order over any other. In 1409, at the age of 25, he entered Saint Alban's Charterhouse near Trier. Dom Yves Gourdel The Devotion to the Most Blessed Virgin Mary in the Carthusian Order quoted in Hubert Du Manoir, Maria, Volume II(Paris:Beauchesne, 1952).