Synopsis
DOMINIC, St., and the
DOMINICANS. Domingo de Guzman, the founder of the Dominican order, was
b. 1170, at Calaruega, in the diocese of Osnia, Old Castile, and d. in the
Monastery of St. Nicholas, at Bologna, Aug. 6, 1221. From his sixth year he was
educated by his uncle, who was arch1)resbyter at Gumyel de Yçan; and
when lie was fourteen years old he entered tile University of Palencia. In 1194
he was made a canon, and afterwards sub-prior of the chapter of Osma, where he
ailed the Bishop Diego de Azevedo in introducing the rules of St. Augustine. He
also labored, and with great success, as a missionary among the
Mohammedans1 and heretics of the neighhorhood. In
1204 he accompanied Diego on a diplomatical errand into Southern France, and
there he caine into contact with time Albigenses.
The task of converting these revolters against the faith amid authority of Rome
had been intrusted to the Cistercians; but they had utterly failed, and were
about to give up the work, when, in an assembly at Montpellier, Diego and
Dominic persuaded them to go on. But the success was slight: only a few were
converted. Diego soon left for his diocese; also the Cistercians withdrew; and
Dominic with a few followers was left alone in the field. From Bishop Fulco of
Toulouse he received some support; but the foundation of an asylum for girls at
Prouille, in the diocese of Toulouse, was nearly the only result of his
activity.
This nunnery of Prouille became the place of
rendezvous for Dominic and his followers until time Cellanis joined the
brotherhood, and presented them with a house in Toulouse. The Roman curia also
showed that it felt obliged to Dominic: it offered him the bishopric of
Beziers. Innocent III. had no confidence in
prayers and preaching as weapons against heretics. The sword and the
battering-ram he considered more effective; and after the assassination of his
legate, Cardinal Castelnau, he preached a crusade against the Albigenses.
Dominic and the brotherhood followed in the wake of the terrible army as a kind
of court of inquiry. All suspicious or
suspected persons were placed before this court; and, haying been convicted of
heresy, they were passed on to the stake. After the end of the war Dominic
determined to transform the brotherhood he had founded into a permanent weapon
of attack against heresy, into an order of
preclicant monks. Bishop Fulco, who liked to see his diocese becoming the seat
of a new monastic order, was charmed at the idea, and accompanied Dominic to
Rome, where the fourth council of the Lateran was
just assembled (1215); but the council determined that no new order should be
founded, and the petition of Dominic was left unheeded. He did not give up his
idea, however; and finally Innocent III. gave
his consent on the condition that the brotherhood should adopt the rules of
some older, already recognized order, and organize itself in the simple form of
colleges of canons. The brotherhood chose the rules of St. Augustine, to which
were added some others from the statutes of the Præmonstratensians, — silence, poverty,
fasts, cornplete abstinence from flesh, linen clothes, etc.; but the prospects
of success were very small. Then Innocent III. died (July 17, 1216) ; and his
successor, Honorius III., held a much more favorable opinion of the efficacy of
a predicant order. Dominic hastened to Rome; and in December (same year)
Honorius confirmed the statutes, and gave the order, as its symbol, a dog with
a lighted torch in his mouth; the order being destined to watch the Church like
a dog, and to illuminate it like a torch. The brotherhood now began to develop
a great activity for time purpose of spreading the order. Some went to Spain,
others to Paris, where a monastery was founded in the house of St. Jacob,
whence the Dominicans in France were afterwards called Jacobins. Dominic
himself founded monasteries in Metz and Venice. During a visit to Itoiite he
began to preach to time lower servants of the papal household, who were
allowed, it seems, to live on without any spiritual care at all; and he was
then appointed Magister Sacri Palatii, or court-preacher to the Pope, an
office which still exists, and still is held by a Dominican. Still the order
would not grow. Something was missing in order to insure success, and it took
time before Dominic discovered what it was.
In 1219 he seems to have been present at the
chapter-general held by the Franciscans at
Assisi. There he saw how an ostentatious display of poverty and
destitution, an almost crack-brained passion for dirt and rags and all the
disgusts of misery, made the monks accepted by the mass of the people as
brethren: consequently, he immediately threw himself upon the track pointed out
by the Franciscans. At the chapter-general which
the Dominicans held in 1220, in the Monastery of St. Nicholas, at Bologna, the
order renounced the possession of property in any form or shape, and declared
for complete poverty, and the daily begging of the means indispensable to the
sustenance of life. When the iiext chapter-general was held in Bologna (1221),
sixty inonasteries were represented, and members were sent to far-off places to
make new foundations. Thus Dominic lived to see his order successful; and
twelve years after his death (1233) he was himself canonized by his friend
Gregory IX.
Many external circumstances were favorable
to the prosperity and rapid growth of the order after it first got started.
Mendicant and predicant monks cannet live in a desert. The large city is their
natural "environment;" and city-life entered just at this time upon a period of
brilliant development. Other orders, for instance the
Cistercians, saw their opportunity, and moved
into the city; but none found it so easy to strike root there as the
Dominicans. The most miserable hut was good enough for them: the next day they
began begging and preaching. Their poverty, however, soon became a mere
simulation. In 1425 Martin V. recalled the prohibition to possess real estate
or other property. Donations and bequests poured in upon the order. It built
monasteries and churches; and art is indebted to it for some of the finest
specimens of Gothic architecture. Still greater was the influence which it
exercised on science. In 1228 the teachers of the University of Paris left the
city an account of some squabbles with Queen Blanca, and retired with their
pupils, partly to Rheims, partly to Angers. A chair was then established for a
Dominican monk, and in 1230 another was added. Thus the
mendicant orders got a foot-bold in the
universities (for the Franciscans soon followed); and not only did they
vindicate their place in the teeth of a most vehement opposition, but they
finally usurped the whole space, and became the means by which the Church
succeeded in crushing all free science. Scholasticism is not simply a
scientific form which the Dominicans found ready-niacle, and were compelled to
adopt: in its latest, most elaborate, but also narrowest and most unnatural
phase, it is a production of the Dominicans themselves; and during its reign
the history of theology, philosophy, science, was hardly more than a rivalry
between the Dominicans and the Franciscans. The controversy between
Thomists and Scotists - the
controversy concerning the exemption of Mary from hereditary sin - began and
ended in this rivalry. The Dominicans were victorious; and many great and good
men they produced, -Albertus Magnus, ThomasAquinas, Meister Eckart, Johann Tauler, Heinrich Suso,
Savonarola, Las Casas, Vincent Ferrier, and Vincent of Beauvais. They have
given the Church more than eight hundred bishops, a hundred and fifty
archbishops, sixty cardinals, and four popes. But they gradually degenerated.
At the beginning of the Reformation they held supreme sway over theological
science; but they were shockingly ignorant, and by their activity as dealers in
indulgences they actually prostituted the Church. Still worse: they lacked the
power of regeneration, such as the Franciscans proved themselves possessed of,
by the formation of reformed congregations; and the end of their long labors
through six centuries was a severe rebuke by the head of the Church, when, on
Dec. 8, 1854, Pius IX. promulgated the dogma of the immaculate conception of
the Virgin, - a dogma they had always opposed.
1 An
inaccurate, offensive and obsolete name for Muslims. It should not be used by
modern writers.
Albrecht Vogel "Dominic, St."
Philip Schaff, ed., A Religious Encyclopaedia or Dictionary of Biblical,
Historical, Doctrinal, and Practical Theology, 3rd edn, Vol. 1. Toronto,
New York & London: Funk & Wagnalls Company, 1894. pp. 657-658. Footnote
mine
 |
Jordan
of Saxony, OP. On the Beginnings of the Order of Preachers, S.C.
Tugwell, OP. ed. & trans. Dominican Series, 1. Dominican Sources, 1982.
Pbk. ISBN: 0951120204. pp.35. {Amazon.com} |
|
Francis C.
Lehner, OP., ed. Saint Dominic: Biographical Documents. Washington, DC:
Thomist Press, 1964. pp. vii + 258. |
|
 Simon C. Tugwell, OP. Early
Dominicans: Selected Writings. Classics of Western Spirituality. New York:
Paulist Press, 1999. Pbk. ISBN: 0809124149. pp.51-119. {Amazon.com} |
|
Simon C.
Tugwell, OP. "The Nine Ways of Prayer of St. Dominic," Medieaval Studies
47 (1985): 1-124. |
|
 Catherine Beebe, St. Dominic
and the Rosary. Ignatius Press, 1996. Pbk. ISBN: 0898705185. pp.161.
{Amazon.com} |
|
A.T. Drane,
The History of St. Dominic, Founder of the Friars Preachers. London,
1891. |
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Bede Jarrett,
Life of St. Dominic (1170-1221). Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1968. |
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Vladimir
Koudelka, Dominic, Simon Tugwell, translator. London: Darton, Longman
& Todd Ltd., 1997. Pbk. ISBN: 0232520682. pp.208. {Amazon.com} |
|
Pierre
Félix Mandonnet, St. Dominic and His Work. St. Louis, MO /
London: B. Herder, 1944. pp. xviii + 487. |
 |
S.C. Tugwell,
OP. "Notes on the Life of St. Dominic," Archivum Fratum Praedicatorum,
66 (1996): 5-200; 68 (1998): 5-116. |
|
M.H. Vicaire,
Saint Dominic and His Times. London, 1964. |
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