Order of Preachers

ORDER OF PREACHERS. - Mendicant order founded by St. Dominic (hence: Dominicans) for preaching. Its modern constitutions indicate the means employed to prepare the friars for this mission: 1) public recitation of the Divine Office, 2) regular life, 3) observance of certain ascetic practices, 4) assiduous study of the sacred sciences.

I. FOUNDATION

The Order arose from an apostolic undertaking (Sacra praedicatio) in Languedoc among the Albigensian heretics, directed in 1206 by Diego, bishop of Osma (Spain), then, after his death (6 Feb. 1207), by his companion Dominic, subprior of the Regular Chapter of Osma, who, in Apr. 1215, with the approval of the bishop of Toulouse, transformed this association of preaching clerics into a permanent religious community, and established it near Toulouse, first in a temporary house and then near the church of St. Romanus granted to him by the bishop. As a rule for the house, the community adopted certain customs of the Premonstratensian canons, heavily reworked by Dominic himself to adapt them to the apostolic aims of his Congregation; then, after a journey of St. Dominic to Rome, it chose as its code of spirituality the rule of St. Augustine, generally followed by the regular canons. A few months later, the Holy See approved the new institute (22 Dec. 1216) and its purpose (21 Jan. 1217). On 15 Aug. 1217 the diffusion of the Dominican Order throughout the whole Church began, with the expanded purpose of forming everywhere instructed clerics dedicated to preaching, especially among the inhabitants of the cities, without being bound to a particular parish. For this reason Dominic began by founding convents in the two principal university centers: Paris (1217) and Bologna (1218). The extension of this apostolic mission was notified to the whole Church by Honorius III on 11 Feb. 1218. At the death of the founder (6 Aug. 1221), the Order already had several houses in France, Italy, and Spain; it had established itself in Germany, England, and Hungary, and was about to be introduced into Poland and Scandinavia.

II. THE DOMINICAN CONSTITUTION

Sketched by the founder (for the first part in 1216, for the second in 1220), it assigns the fullness of legislative power to the body of representatives of the whole Order. This periodic assembly, or General Chapter (annual in the 13th century), declares and completes the fundamental statute. Its decrees become an integral part of the constitution if approved by three consecutive Chapters. Executive power is held by the master general for the whole Order, by the provincial prior for each religious province, by the conventual prior in each convent (a house with at least 12 religious, one of whom is a lector, that is, a teacher of sacred sciences). The master general, elected by the General Chapter, needs no further confirmation to take office. Appointed for life (now for 12 years), he is subject to the control of the General Chapter, which is composed alternately of the provincial priors and of the definitors elected in the respective provincial Chapters. In case of most urgent necessity, the master general can convoke provincials and definitors together; and such a Chapter has the power to change or complete the constitution. In any case, a constitutional law must be the fruit of a collaboration between superiors and subjects. The F. P. do not take a vow to observe the Rule and the constitutions, but to obey their superiors according to the Rule and the constitutions. Most of these laws are rather binding directives for the exercise of command and at the same time limitations on the power of superiors. Those that are addressed directly to subjects do not bind them under sin, but to a penitential amendment to be imposed by the superior, who can temporarily dispense this or that subject, never the whole community, from the observance of certain laws, if study, preaching or the salvation of souls require it. In 1220 the Order renounced every benefice with care of souls; therefore its members took the name of friars, abandoning (at the latest in 1240) the title of canons. Of these, however, they retained the recitation of the Divine Office, but breviter et succincte, so as not to hinder study. The constitution, reorganized under the generalate of Raymond of Peñafort (1238-40) and completed by the subsequent General Chapters, was, especially in its institutional part, taken as a model by the other mendicant Orders. Under the generalate of Humbert of Romans (1234-63) the Dominican liturgy received its definitive form.

III. DOCTRINAL AND PARENETIC ACTIVITY

Under Jordan of Saxony (1222-37) the Order saw an ever-growing number of students of all nations flock to it, and this allowed it to establish itself in the principal cities of the West. In 1228, to the original 8 provinces 4 more were added (Poland, Scandinavia, Greece and the Holy Land). Subsequently some provinces were divided up, so that there were 18 in all, with 582 convents in 1303. Under the same master general, the Order worked out its own program of philosophical and theological teaching, obtained two chairs of Theology at the University of Paris, and devoted itself to the compilation of scholarly works, soon imitated by the other religious Orders. From the middle of the 13th century it held first place in the scientific and cultural field in the West, with Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas, yet without losing sight of the principal purpose for which it had been founded. Indeed, the intense practice of preaching absorbed the greater part of its energies. The convents, established in the great cities, were the principal centers of their activity. In their church, adapted to this purpose (ad captandum homines in praedicationibus), they preached, both in the morning (sermo) and in the evening (collatio), as many as 250 times a year. They also founded confraternities so as to have occasion to preach at their meetings. They divided the provinces into a certain number of districts (diete), one per convent, and with the establishment of new convents, to each of which its own radius of action (praedicatio) was assigned each time, the districts became narrower. The rural parishes of these districts were periodically visited by the preachers of the respective district, and were the destinations (termini) of its apostolic outreach. In some of these more important termini, the convent later built a hospice for itself, where some preachers resided for a time, if not the whole year, in order to evangelize the neighboring parishes more intensively. In this way the whole conventual district found itself subject to the continuous apostolic activity of the F. P. To promote the practice of preaching, even outside the Order, the F. P. published various manuals, some of which were in use until the 18th century. The majority of the sermons whose text survives come from the academic centers; the others, unfortunately, were rarely written down and, although preached in the vernacular, were almost always recorded in Latin (at least in the 13th century). For Italy, one can turn to the sermons of the bl. Giordano da Rivalto (d. 1311) to gain an idea of the character of such popular preaching. By the end of the 13th century the Order had already achieved the purpose of its foundation, not only by itself practicing preaching intensely and methodically, but also by drawing the other Orders and the secular clergy to this ministry. If in the 13th century northern Italy escaped the Cathar or Waldensian danger, it was largely due to Dominican preaching. From 1220 to 1240, the great Communes came so strongly under its influence as to entrust to the F. P. the revision of their communal statutes. They were also consulted in internal affairs.

IV. MISSIONARY ACTIVITY

As the heir to the missionary aspirations of its founder, the Order entrusted to its provinces, situated on the frontier of Christendom, the task of crossing the border in order to devote themselves to the conversion of pagans and schismatics, and then of founding convents among the evangelized populations in order to ensure a permanent religious instruction. Such was the development of the province of Poland among the Lithuanians, the Russians and the Ruthenians (St. Hyacinth at Kiev before 1233); of that of Hungary among the Cumans (Paul of Hungary: 1221), the Bosnians (John of Wildeshausen, bishop of Diahovar in 1233) and the pagan Hungarians on the middle Volga (Friar Julian in 1232); that of Scandinavia among the Estonians (convent at Reval in 1248) and in Finland (convent at Abo in 1249); that of Spain in Morocco (Dominic, 1st bishop in 1225) and in Tunisia (school of Hebrew and Arabic); of that of the Holy Land (1225) among the schismatics (1244) and the Muslims (1257) of the East. The Order was about to penetrate further into Asia, when political upheavals, particularly the capture of Acre in 1291, forced it to change tactics. Following in the tracks of the Italian merchants at Pera, Caffa and Trebizond, it penetrated into Persia and Mesopotamia, founding convents as bases of operation as in the other provinces, but these were united into a "Congregation of the Friars Pilgrims for Christ". The first vicar of the master general of this Congregation was Franco of Perugia, who set out for the East in 1289. The missionary activity of the Congregation had its greatest development in the first half of the 14th century. The province of Greece was formed with Italian and French friars; like their confreres of the Holy Land and like the Pilgrims, they did not occupy themselves solely with bringing back the dissidents, but also with transmitting to the West the treasures of Eastern philosophy and theology (for example, the Fleming William of Moerbeke, archbishop of Corinth, d. in 1286).

V. CRISIS OF MENDICANCY AND POVERTY

The renunciation of the possession of material goods had been willed by St. Dominic in 1220 so that their administration would not distract the friars from study and preaching; they were to live only on quests and the spontaneous alms of the faithful. However, the needs of the convents grew with the number of friars, and the generosity of the faithful did not correspond to them, so that the quest was no longer enough to feed and clothe so many people, and it prevented many friars from devoting themselves completely to preaching. Meanwhile the need grew to dedicate a conspicuous part of the personnel to teaching, and the demands of the life of study became greater. Some convents found themselves forced to secure a minimum of fixed income. To this end, they assigned the immovable property bestowed by benefactors either to a nunnery that always had lay personnel at its disposal for the management of its lands, or to some lay confraternity, for example, that of the Brothers of Penance (as at Florence from 1224), that of the Virgin (Florence after 1308), of St. Dominic (Bologna), of St. Peter Martyr (Milan), with the obligation of regularly procuring for the convent certain products of consumption. The General Chapter of 1228 forbade the possession of immovable property or of other sources of income, without however prohibiting the acceptance of alms coming from goods possessed and administered by some friendly association. But even with this expedient, the convents could not do without quests and alms; the income was not enough for the purchase of books (our arms) from the common fund: the friars thus had to procure them individually with money earned by work or given by friends. In some heavily populated convents of study, the professors and students had to procure even their clothing for themselves. The friars then obtained from their superiors special and even general permission, explicit or also presumed, to procure the things indispensable or useful for the fulfillment of their respective functions; with this the practice of individual poverty depended on obedience, yet it opened the door to individual arbitrariness. And this door became ever wider. Toward the end of the 16th century the exercise of individual poverty was by then a memory, that of common poverty a legal fiction, which did not even have the advantage of effectively relieving the real needs of each one. Absolute mendicancy, as understood by St. Francis and St. Dominic, had provoked in their two Orders a grave crisis, which did not fail to have its repercussion throughout the whole Church.

VI. RETURN TO THE COMMON LIFE

At the beginning of the 14th century a first reaction had arisen against the abuse of the private life, especially in Tuscany. The Dominicans who favored this movement were called, as among the Friars Minor, the "Spirituals," though they avoided the excesses of their Franciscan namesakes. On the other hand, since poverty had never constituted a special objective in the Dominican Order, it was not defended with such passion, nor did it give rise to the same extravagances. The impetus of the first Dominican reformers was broken in 1348 by the plague that depopulated the convents. The friars who remained did not look too closely at the qualities of the new admissions: whence an even greater relaxation, also in the other fields of cloistral discipline. A second attempt at reform, undertaken with the support of the Dominican Spirituals of Tuscany and Lombardy, by Fra Stefano Comba (a native of Languedoc, provincial of Tuscany and vicar of the master general in Italy) on the occasion of a canonical visitation of his in Lombardy (1369-70), failed because of its rigidity. His candidacy for the generalate was nevertheless proposed by St. Catherine Benincasa, who was guided by the Spirituals of Siena: but when, at the beginning of the great schism (1378), the severe reformer, exiled in Languedoc, went over to the Avignon obedience, his Tuscan friends abandoned him and replaced him with the Saint's confessor, Raymond of Capua, who was in fact elected master general for the Roman obedience (1380). Raymond proved more yielding in his reforming work, and since he sided with Urban VI, the latter and his successors supported him with all their might. For the friars desirous of living according to the ideal of poverty, he founded special convents dependent on a vicar of the master general (Congregations of the Observance in Italy, in Germany, etc.). Such convents did not admit the possession of revenues; but a few years after the death of Raymond (d. in 1369), the old difficulties of living on alms alone reappeared. Therefore Bartolomeo Texier (1426-49), the most illustrious representative of the Dominican reform in the 15th century, obtained from Martin V the power to grant fixed revenues to certain convents. Finally, in 1475, Sixtus IV removed the prohibition entirely for the whole Order, and freed it from an unbearable burden, a cause of the ruin of individual poverty. Little by little the Observants abandoned their harshness, so that austerity, having become more bearable, was adopted by the Conventuals (that is, the non-reformed). Under the generalate of Thomas de Vio Cajetan (1508-18), the majority of the "conventualist" provinces merged with the Observant Congregations of their respective territories, introducing the practice of individual poverty, based on the common possession of some revenue, though in fact too limited. This modus vivendi is called by Cajetan the "key to the reform of the Order." However, the unity of the Order had been saved thanks to the wholly Dominican conception of the vow of obedience.

VII. THOMISM

It is a fact that the philosophical-theological system built by St. Thomas Aquinas (v.) won first place in ecclesiastical teaching, not only for its intrinsic value, but also for the support shown it by the Holy See after the canonization of the Angelic Doctor (1323) down to our own day. The constant transmission and further development of the system are in large part the work of the successive generations of the Aquinate's confreres. The doctrine of the Aquinate so thoroughly permeated the Dominican generations and their intellectual orientation intellectual orientation as to become an integral element of Dominican spirituality and preaching, even popular preaching, and of the scientific method of the Dominicans, even outside philosophy and theology. All this constitutes for the Order, from the 14th century onward, a factor of cohesion and unity uncommon in the history of the other religious orders. Nevertheless, it would be a great injustice to believe that the scientific activity of the F. P. has consisted and consists solely in transmitting and explaining Thomist doctrine. In the Middle Ages there is Raymond Martin for apologetics, Hugh of St. Cher for Holy Scripture, Raymond of Peñafort for canon law; in more recent times Quétif and Echard for history, Le Quien for Oriental studies; in our own times Lagrange and the school of Jerusalem for biblical sciences, Denifle for the ecclesiastical and literary history of the Middle Ages, Weiss for apologetics: examples that do not exhaust the number of the masters of the Order's scholarship; they suffice, however, to make it clear that the Dominican school and the Thomist school are not synonyms. On the other hand, Thomism is not an esoteric system, since other institutes have likewise adopted it, for example, the Salmanticenses (Carmelites), the school of Salzburg (Benedictines), etc. (v. TOMISMO).

VIII. THE DOMINICAN SECOND ORDER

This is the order of cloistered Dominican nuns and goes back to 1206, when the monastery of Prouille in Provence was founded by Bishop Diego and St. Dominic. Charged by the Holy See in 1219 with reforming the nuns of Rome, St. Dominic gathered a good number of them at St. Sixtus. The Regula v. Sixti de Urbe that the Saint gave them became in 1259 the basis of the definitive constitutions, valid for all monasteries "sub regula s. Augustini et institutione Fratrum Praed.", which, often by the express will of the popes, were subjected to the Order. Thanks to the direction and preaching of the friars, several of them became centers of intense mystical life, which enriched

Italian and German literature with famous pages. At present there exist 313 monasteries of the "Second Order" (38 of them in Italy) with 3033 religious.

IX. THE DOMINICAN THIRD ORDER

It is the branch attached to that of the F. P. under the name of the "Order of Penance of St. Dominic," in a manner analogous to the Franciscan Third Order. The ancient Order of Penance was a collective designation for the lay confraternities of Penance, known at the beginning of the 13th century, later united into regional groups more or less uniform and strongly influenced by the two great Mendicant Orders. The primitive rule comes from the confraternity of Cannara near Assisi, drawn up by an unknown author and recommended by St. Francis of Assisi in 1221 to the Penitents of Florence. Its original text is not extant, but only a version reworked around 1224-27 by the F. P. (probably by the blessed Giovanni da Salerno, prior of S. Maria Novella in Florence) and accepted by all the confraternities of Penance. In 1285-85 a double reform, undertaken by the Minors and the F. P. with the support of the Holy See for the purpose of subjecting these confraternities to a stricter control of the Church, had the effect of affiliating the Penitents to these two Mendicant Orders. The group affiliated with the Order of the F. P. received as its rule a radically reworked version of the ancient rule. This statute, published in 1285 by Munio of Zamora, master general of the F. P., intended to intensify the religious life of the Penitents, long absorbed by their social works (hospitals, public assistance, etc.); it demands "a great zeal for the truth of the Catholic faith" and imposes certain practices of piety and penance more specifically set forth. From the Dominican Third Order came a considerable number of mystical souls: the blessed Benvenuta Boiani, Giovanna of Orvieto, Margherita of Castello, Villana de' Botti, Sibilina de' Bisossa, the saints Catherine of Siena and Rose of Lima, etc. From the 16th century priests (for example, St. Louis Grignion de Montfort, the venerable Ollier) and laypeople, desirous of participating in the ideal of apostolic holiness of the F. P., also enrolled in the Dominican Third Order. After Lacordaire it spread especially among lay intellectuals. Toward the end of the 15th century, the blessed Colomba of Rieti (d. 1501) inaugurated in Perugia a new kind of Dominican life, that is, the regular Dominican Tertiaries. Today, Congregations of this kind have multiplied. There are 129 of them (with a total of 40,044 sisters), of which 17 have their mother house in Italy with a number of about 275 houses and 3500 religious. Their activity is carried out in manifold charitable works: teaching, care of the sick, nurseries and missions, etc.

X. DOMINICAN CONFRATERNITIES

The principal lay confraternity erected in the churches of the F. P. was that of the Virgin, founded in Italy by St. Peter Martyr between 1240 and 1252, with the purpose of spreading knowledge of the Marian dogma and Marian devotion, which were threatened by the Cathars, through Marian preaching, the performance of Marian songs in the vernacular (laudi), the recitation of glossed Ave Marias, and public processions. Like all lay confraternities, this one too attended to works of charity. In certain places, as for example Florence, it split around 1260 into two independent confraternities, of which one continued to pursue the original purpose and the other the secondary one, the latter withdrawing from the influence of the Order. Where it remained undivided, its social works imperceptibly gained the upper hand to the detriment of religious and Marian activity (Arezzo). By the middle of the 15th century the need for a reform made itself felt. The Dominicans of the Observance began it from 1468 (Alain de la Roche, Jakob Sprenger, Michel François), propagating the psalter or Rosary of the Virgin as a popular devotion. In all the convents of the Observance the Confraternity of the Rosary was erected for this purpose (in 1480 by John of Erfurt at Venice, then at S. Marco in Florence, at the Minerva in Rome, etc.), with the obligation for members to recite a Rosary of 15 decades every week. The confraternity met with extraordinary favor throughout all Christendom. In the non-reformed convents the ancient confraternity of the Virgin gradually died out along with conventuality, and that of the Rosary replaced it. From the 17th century confraternities were erected in all parish churches, with the F. P. going there regularly to preach the Rosary. The propagation of this prayer, today universal, was the work of the Holy See (innumerable encyclicals) and of the Order itself, to which one of its greatest merits remains.

XI. MODERN ERA

From the 16th century onward the Dominican history is better known. The most salient facts are: the struggle against Luther, the great part it played in the Council of Trent, its often bloody suppression (St. John, martyr of Gorcum) in the countries that had become Protestant, the expansion of its missions in Africa, Asia and America, the erection of new provinces in America and in the Philippines, with their general studies and even universities (at Manila in the Philippines, at Santo Domingo), its doctrinal struggles, its theological, philosophical and historical publications. Under the government of enlightened and prudent masters general the Order developed an extraordinary activity, as is proved by the monuments that Baroque architecture raised in all countries. Then, like all the other Orders, it was fought, even in the Catholic countries (Austria, Bavaria, Naples, Tuscany, Spain), by State absolutism, and suppressed in France, Belgium, Romania, northern Italy, by the French Revolution.

XII. REBIRTH

With the 19th century came the recovery, steady on the whole, but often delayed by serious shocks and local reverses, caused by open or underhanded persecutions. The awakening began with the erection of a province (1804) in the United States (today three) and the resumption of regular life in Piedmont (1814), counterbalanced by the removal of the Spanish provinces from the authority of the master general by a royal decree, in force until 1872. Then came the re-establishment in France with Fr. Lacordaire (1839) — erection of three French provinces (Paris in 1850, Lyon in 1862, Toulouse in 1863), one in Belgium (1860) and one in Holland (1862) — but also the complete disappearance in Russia and partial disappearance in Poland, the secularization in Italy (1870), the seizure of the Casanatense Library in Rome (1876), the persecution of the Kulturkampf in Germany (1878), and the repeated expulsions of religious from France (1880-1903). Yet these tribulations contributed to the strengthening of other provinces (Canada, an autonomous province in 1911) and to the erection of the convent of St. Stephen (1883) and of the biblical school (1890) in Jerusalem. In the last quarter of the 18th century and the first half of the 19th, when everywhere, even in ecclesiastical institutions, scholastic philosophy was abandoned, indeed disparaged, the F. P., deprived of their convents and their libraries, dispersed and exiled, sometimes hidden with relatives or friends, continued to study St. Thomas, to apply his doctrines to the problems of the day, to seek from him light to see clearly in the field of the "new ideas": their doctrinal tradition remained alive. When Leo XIII resolved to restore Christian philosophy to honor, they became his best collaborators, prepared as they were for the task assigned by the Pope.

XIII. CURRENT STATE

The Roman convent of S. Sabina is the residence of the master general with the general curia; there are also located the archive of the Order, the Pontifical Leonine Commission for the edition of the works of St. Thomas, the Historical Institute and the Liturgical Institute. Also in Rome, in the convent of SS. Domenico e Sisto: the pontifical faculty of theology, canon law and philosophy (Angelicum). The Order numbers 7,661 members, divided into 33 provinces, 6 of them in Italy (Piedmont, Lombardy, San Marco and Sardinia, Romania, Neapolitan, Sicily). Missionary activity in Scandinavia, Turkey, Syria, India, Tonkin, China, Formosa, Japan, the Philippines, the Antilles, South America, South Africa, the Belgian Congo. Teaching for the members of the Order in each province, public faculties in several of these Studia generalia, a university of its own in Manila, entire faculties or special chairs in several universities, both free and state, entrusted to the Order as such or to its members in particular (Fribourg, Nijmegen, Amsterdam, Washington, Paris, Lille, Louvain, Graz, Tokyo, etc.). About 320 periodicals, among popular bulletins, journals of high culture and strictly scientific periodicals. The oldest Italian Dominican journal, Le memorie domenicane, has been published for 65 years (1884). - See plates CXVII-CXVIII.

NIV. DOMINICAN ARCHITECTURE. - Although the Dominican Order produced highly skilled architects, so much so that many of their churches were built by the friars themselves (S. Maria Novella, begun by Fra Sisto and Fra Ristoro, completed by Jacopo Talenti; S. Maria sopra Minerva in Rome, perhaps by the same Sisto and Ristoro), nevertheless no notable distinctive features can be pointed out in them. The great importance given to preaching made vast and unified spaces necessary, as is also the case in the Franciscan churches (v.), from which these are distinguished by a greater sense of upward striving; in fact, the full development of the Order coincides with the greatest flourishing of Gothic architecture. The first church of the Order, erected in Bologna immediately after the death of the Saint (1221), on the site of a small church dedicated to St. Nicholas, later named after St. Dominic following his canonization, has three naves, like most of the churches of northern Italy (S. Giovanni e Paolo in Venice, 1246; S. Niccolò in Treviso, 1303; S. Corona in Vicenza, 1260; S. Eustorgio in Milan, 13th century), and of the South (Naples, Palermo). In central Italy, on the other hand, with the sole exceptions of Florence (S. Maria Novella), Rome (S. Maria sopra Minerva) and Perugia, the single nave prevails (Siena, Pistoia, Arezzo, Gubbio, Orvieto, Fano, etc.). The two planimetric schemes generally correspond, as regards the covering, to the vault and the trussed roof.

Mario Zocca