Dominicans
DOMINICANS. The popular name of the Order of Friars Preachers (Ordo Praedicatorum, abbreviated O.P.) was derived from the name of the order's founder, Domingo de Guzmán (1170–1221), generally called Dominic. In France the Dominicans were once known as Jacobins, from their priory of Saint Jacques at the University of Paris, and in England they were known as Black Friars, from the black mantles that they wore over their white habits.
Along with the Franciscans, the Dominicans constitute the heart of the mendicant friar movement of the thirteenth century. After the renaissance of the twelfth century, the presence within medieval society of a growing number of urban-dwelling and literate laypeople, critical of and often alienated from the institutional church, posed a great pastoral problem. The secular and religious clergy at the beginning of the thirteenth century seemed ill equipped to meet the spiritual needs of an urbanized laity and unable to cope with the rapid spread of the Albigensian and Waldensian heresies in the cities of southern France and northern Italy.
Between 1215 and 1221, Dominic with papal approval founded a religious order whose members would not be bound by monastic stability but would be itinerant doctrinal preachers, living a life of poverty in community and educated to minister to the spiritual needs of a literate urban laity. The presence of the Dominicans at the burgeoning universities of Europe established a mutual relationship that would have profound consequences for the history of European thought. From the local priory, which was seen as an ongoing theological school for preachers, to the great centers of study at Paris, Oxford, Bologna, and Cologne, the houses of the order constituted a vast educational network. Albertus Magnus (1193–1280) and Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), with their monumental achievements of utilizing the insights of Aristotelian thought in the formulation of a new Christian philosophical and theological synthesis, represent the best of the Dominican tradition of study at the service of preaching the gospel in ever new and challenging milieus.
The same creative élan that marked the Dominican presence at the great university centers of Europe was also manifest in missionary activity. Within the first hundred years of their existence, the Dominicans had established missions in Scandinavia, the Baltic area, eastern Europe, Greece, Persia, the Holy Land, and North Africa.
Dominican emphasis on doctrinal preaching led popes and bishops to use the order in the work of the Inquisition. This darker aspect of Dominican history is somewhat counterbalanced by the positive impact that the order's model of government by elected representatives had upon the emerging parliamentary system of Europe.
From its earliest days the Order of Preachers embraced not only priests, student brothers, novices, and lay brothers, all of whom constituted what came to be called the first order, but also contemplative nuns (the second order) and women religious and laypeople living in the world (the third order). The first order grew rapidly in the first hundred years of the order's existence. In 1277 there were 12 provinces and 404 priories with about thirteen thousand friars whereas in 1303 there were 18 provinces and 590 priories with about twenty thousand friars. Because the Black Death took a great toll in the middle of the fourteenth century, the number of Dominican friars probably never exceeded thirty thousand at any one time during the Middle Ages.
The monasteries of Dominican second-order nuns, which numbered 4 during the last years of Dominic's life, increased to 58 in 1277, 141 in 1303, and 157 in 1358. Munio of Zamora, seventh master of the order (1285–1291), drew up a rule in 1285 for lay men and women who wished to be Dominicans while continuing to live in the world. It is impossible to estimate how many men and women shared the Dominican life and mission as members of the third order, but Catherine of Siena (1347–1380), mystic and doctor of the church, stands as an eloquent witness to the third order's profound influence upon medieval society.
The German Dominicans Meister Eckhart (1260–1327), Johannes Tauler (1300–1361), and Heinrich Suso (c. 1295–1366) were leaders in the fourteenth-century mystical movement, but like all other religious orders the Dominicans experienced a considerable loss of members and a marked decline in observance and morale as a result of the Black Death. Raymond of Capua, twenty-third master of the order (1380–1400), inaugurated a reform movement in the last decades of the fourteenth century that resulted in the renewed life of the order in the fifteenth century, exemplified by Antoninus of Florence (1389–1459), Fra Angelico (1387–1455), and Girolamo Savonarola (1452–1498).
The Dominicans Johann Tetzel (1465–1519) and Thomas de Vio Cajetan (1469–1534) played key roles in the events that inaugurated the Reformation, and Dominicans were to be found both joining the ranks of the Reformation preachers and defending the old faith before and after the Council of Trent (1545–1563). Although religious changes in Europe caused the disappearance or decline of the Dominican provinces in northern Europe, seven new provinces were founded in Central and South America. Dominican missionary activity in the New World was rendered illustrious by the preaching of Louis Bertrand (1526–1581), by the charitable work of Martín de Porres (1579–1639) and Juan Macias (1585–1645), and by the struggles of Bartolomé de Las Casas (1474–1566) to protect the Indians from the exploitation of Spanish colonial officials.
Although the order numbered between thirty and forty thousand friars and nuns in forty-five provinces in the seventeenth century, and Thomism flourished under such distinguished commentators as John of Saint Thomas (1589–1644), much of the outward structure of the order was swept away during the difficult period from 1789 to 1848. Under the impulse of the French Dominican preacher Jean-Baptiste-Henri Lacordaire (1802–1861) and the outstanding leadership of Vincent Jandel, seventy-third master of the order (1855–1872), the Dominicans entered upon a new spring in the mid-nineteenth century that ultimately produced in the early decades of the twentieth century the biblical scholar Marie-Joseph Lagrange (1855–1938) and the Thomistic theologians Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange (1877–1964) and Juan Arintero (1860–1928).
Dominican theologians Yves Congar, Dominic Chenu, and Edward Schillebeeckx were leaders in the new theological movement that flourished after World War II in Europe and culminated in Vatican II. The renewal of the order in accordance with the norms of the council began with the publication of the new constitutions written at the general chapter held at River Forest, Illinois, in 1968. The four subsequent general chapters have continued the renewal process and given special emphasis to new forms of preaching and to the modern media of communication, the ministry of social justice, and the development of the order in South America, Africa, and Asia. In 1974 the concept of the first, second, and third orders was replaced by that of the Dominican family. New emphasis was given to the common mission of the men and women of the order to preach the gospel, while recognizing the diverse ways in which the ministry of preaching is carried out by the clerical, religious, and lay members of the order.
Over the past seven centuries 18 Dominican men and women have been canonized, and 334 members of the Dominican family have been beatified. Furthermore, 4 popes, 69 cardinals, and several thousand bishops have been drawn from the Dominican order to the service of the universal church. In 2000, the Dominican family throughout the world included 5,171 brothers in solemn vows, 4,672 priests, and 477 lay brothers. In 1983 there were 4,775 nuns in 225 cloistered monasteries, 40,816 women religious in 140 congregations, and 70,431 laity or secular Dominicans.
Albertus Magnus; Catherine of Siena; Dominic; Eckhart, Johannes; Las Casas, Bartolomé De; Savonarola, Girolamo; Tauler, Johannes; Thomas Aquinas.
Bibliography
The most scholarly history of the Dominican order from its beginnings to the Reformation is The History of the Dominican Order, 2 vols., by William A. Hinnebusch, O.P. Volume 1 is titled Origins and Growth to 1500 (New York, 1966); volume 2, Intellectual and Cultural Life to 1500 (New York, 1973). Hinnebusch's untimely death in 1981 prevented his completing two further volumes that would have taken the history of the order from the Reformation to the present. However, a concise summary of the material planned for the two final volumes can be found in his work The Dominicans: A Short History (New York, 1975).
The publication of two works edited and translated by Simon Tugwell, O.P.—Early Dominicans (New York, 1982) and On the Beginnings of the Order of Preachers by Jordan of Saxony (Oak Park, Ill., 1982)—have provided excellent selections of primary documents necessary for an understanding of the early history of the Dominican family. Both works also contain superb introductions to the sources of Dominican spirituality.
New Sources
Borgman, Eric. Dominican Spirituality. New York, 2001.
Conrad, Richard. The Catholic Faith: A Dominican's Vision. New York, 1994.
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