The Order of Preachers (Latin: Ordo Praedicatorum ), after the 15th century more commonly known as the Dominican Order or Dominicans , is a Catholic religious order founded by Saint Dominic in 1216 in France. Membership in the Order includes the friars, the nuns, congregations of active Sisters, and lay persons affiliated with the order (formerly known as tertiaries, now Lay or Secular Dominicans).
A number of other names have been used to refer to both the order and its members.
- In England and other countries the Dominicans are referred to as Black Friars on account of the black cappa or cloak they wear over their white habits. Dominicans were Blackfriars, as opposed to Whitefriars (i.e., the Carmelites) or Greyfriars (i.e., Franciscans). They are also distinct from the Augustinian Friars (the Austin friars) who wear a similar habit.
- In France, the Dominicans are also known as Jacobins , because their first convent in Paris bore the name Saint Jacques , and Jacques is Jacobus in Latin.
- Their identification as Dominicans gave rise to the pun that they were the Domini canes , or Hounds of the Lord .
Members of the order generally carry the letters O.P. standing for Ordinis Praedicatorum , meaning of the Order of Preachers , after their names.
Founded to preach the gospel and to combat heresy, the order is famed for its intellectual tradition, having produced many leading theologians and philosophers. The Dominican Order is headed by the Master of the Order, who is currently Father Carlos Azpiroz Costa.
Foundation
Like his contemporary, Francis of Assisi, Dominic saw the need for a new type of organization, and the quick growth of the Dominicans and Franciscans during their first century confirms that the orders of mendicant friars met a need.
He had accompanied as canon Diego de Acebo, Bishop of Osma on a diplomatic mission to Denmark, to arrange the marriage between the son of King Alfonso VIII of Castile and a niece of King Valdemar II of Denmark. At that time the south of France was the stronghold of the Albigensian heresy, named after the town of Albi.
This gnostic doctrine held that matter was evil and only spirit was good, a fundamental challenge to the notion of incarnation, central to Roman Catholic theology. The Albigensians, more commonly known as the Cathars (a heretical gnostic sect), lived very simply and saw themselves as more fervent followers of the poor Christ. Dominic saw the need for a response that would take the good elements in the Albigensian movement to sway them back to mainstream Christian thought. The mendicant preacher emerged from this insight. Unfortunately, Dominic's ideal of winning the Albigensians over was not held by all office bearers and the population of Albi was devastated in the Albigensian crusade.
Dominic became the spiritual father to several Albigensian women he had reconciled to the faith, and he established them in a convent in Prouille. In 1207 Dominic was given authority over the convent by the local bishop. This convent would become the foundation of the Dominican nuns, thus making the Dominican nuns older than the Dominican friars.
Dominic sought to establish a new kind of order, one that would bring the dedication and systematic education of the older monastic orders like the Benedictines to bear on the religious problems of the burgeoning population of cities, but with more organizational flexibility than either monastic orders or the secular clergy. Dominic's new order was to be a preaching order, trained to preach in the vernacular languages but with a sound background in academic theology.Rather than earning their living on vast farms as the monasteries had done, the new friars would survive by begging, "selling" themselves through persuasive preaching.
Saint Dominic established a religious community in Toulouse in 1214, to be governed by the rule of St. Augustine and statutes to govern the life of the friars, including the Primitive Constitution. (The statutes were inspired by the Constitutions of Prémontré.) The founding documents establish that the Order was founded for two purposes: preaching and the salvation of souls. The organization of the Order of Preachers was approved in December 1216 by Pope Honorius III (see also Religiosam vitam ; Nos attendentes ).
The Order's origins in battling heterodoxy influenced its later development and reputation. Many later Dominicans battled heresy as part of their apostolate. Indeed, many years after St. Dominic reacted to the Cathars, the first Grand Inquistor of Spain, Tomás de Torquemada, would be drawn from the Dominican order, and the Dominicans were prominent in all Catholic Inquisitions.
History
The history of the Order may be divided into three periods:
- The Middle Ages (from their foundation to the beginning of the sixteenth century);
- The Modern Period up to the French Revolution;
- The Contemporary Period.
Middle Ages
The Dominican friars quickly spread, including to England, where they appeared in Oxford in 1221. The thirteenth century is the classic age of the Order, the witness to its brilliant development and intense activity. This last is manifested especially in the work of teaching. By preaching it reached all classes of Christian society, fought heresy, schism, and paganism by word and book, and by its missions to the north of Europe, to Africa, and Asia passed beyond the frontiers of Christendom. Its schools spread throughout the entire Church; its doctors wrote monumental works in all branches of knowledge and two among them, Albertus Magnus, and especially Thomas Aquinas, founded a school of philosophy and theology which was to rule the ages to come in the life of the Church. An enormous number of its members held offices in Church and State—as popes, cardinals, bishops, legates, inquisitors, confessors of princes, ambassadors, and paciarii (enforcers of the peace decreed by popes or councils).
The expansion of the Order was not without its problems. The Order of Preachers, which should have remained a select body, developed beyond bounds and absorbed some elements ill-fitted to its form of life. A period of relaxation ensued during the fourteenth century owing to the general decline of Christian society. The weakening of doctrinal activity favoured the development here and there of the ascetic and contemplative life and there sprang up, especially in Germany and Italy, an intense and exuberant mysticism with which the names of Meister Eckhart, Heinrich Suso, Johannes Tauler, and St. Catherine of Siena are associated. (See German mysticism, which has also been called "Dominican mysticism.") This movement was the prelude to the reforms undertaken, at the end of the century, by Raymond of Capua, and continued in the following century. It assumed remarkable proportions in the congregations of Lombardy and the Netherlands, and in the reforms of Savonarola at Florence.
At the same time the Order found itself face to face with the Renaissance. It struggled against pagan tendencies in Renaissance humanism, in Italy through Dominici and Savonarola, in Germany through the theologians of Cologne but it also furnished humanism with such advanced writers as Francesco Colonna (probably the writer of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili ) and Matteo Bandello. Many Dominicans took part in the artistic activity of the age, the most prominent being Fra Angelico and Fra Bartolomeo.
Reformation to French Revolution
Bartolomé de Las Casas, as a settler in the New World, was galvanized by witnessing the brutal torture and genocide of the Native Americans by the Spanish colonists. He became famous for his advocacy of the rights of Native Americans, whose cultures, especially in the Caribbean, he describes with care.
The modern period consists of the three centuries between the religious revolution at the beginning of the sixteenth century (Protestantism) and the French Revolution and its consequences. At the beginning of the sixteenth century the order was on the way to a genuine renaissance when the Revolutionary upheavals occurred. The progress of heresy cost it six or seven provinces and several hundreds of convents, but the discovery of the New World opened up a fresh field of activity. Its gains in America and those which arose as a consequence of the Portuguese conquests in Africa and the Indies far exceeded the losses of the order in Europe, and the seventeenth century saw its highest numerical development. The sixteenth century was a great doctrinal century, and the movement lasted beyond the middle of the eighteenth century. In modern times the order lost much of its influence on the political powers, which had universally fallen into absolutism and had little sympathy for the democratic constitution of the Preachers. The Bourbon courts of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were particularly unfavourable to them until the suppression of the Society of Jesus.
In the eighteenth century, there were numer
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