The New International Encyclopædia/Dominicans

​DOMIN′ICANS. An Order of preaching friars (the Latin name is Ordo Prædicatorum) in the Roman Catholic Church. It was founded by Saint Dominic (q.v.) in 1215, for the purpose of counteracting, by means of preaching, the tendency of the times to break away from the Church. When in Rome seeking confirmation for his Order, which was delayed on account of the opposition of the Fourth Lateran Council, just concluded, to the multiplication of new religious organizations, the founder met Saint Francis of Assisi, who was engaged in a similar work. A cordial friendship sprang up between the two men, different as they were in temperament; to this day its memory is preserved in the custom of the priests of each Order celebrating the feast of the founder of the other in his own church. Both Orders differed from the older ones in emphasizing more strictly the spirit of poverty and rejecting the possession of even community property. Hence they are called mendicant Orders, as they originally depended for their subsistence entirely on the daily charity of their neighbors. The name of monks is often incorrectly applied to them; the proper designation of both Franciscans and Dominicans is friars (Lat. fratres, brothers). The requisite Papal confirmation was obtained from the new Pope, Honorius III., at the end of 1216; with it went special privileges, especially the right to preach and hear confessions everywhere, without local authorization. The first house of the Order was at Toulouse, from which in the summer of 1217 Dominic sent some of his sixteen associates to spread the movement in Spain and France. From the name of their first convent of Saint Jacques in Paris, they were popularly known in the latter country as Jacobins—a name which was to acquire a new and sinister significance in the Revolution. They were introduced into England within six years, and founded a house at Oxford. Here they were known as ‘Black Friars,’ from the habit which they wear outside the convent, in preaching and in hearing confessions—a black cloak and hood over a white woolen undergarment. “The monks,” writes Matthew Paris, himself a Benedictine, “did not in three or four hundred years ascend to such a height of greatness as the friars minor and preachers, within twenty-four years after they began to build their first house in England.” (See Jessopp, The Coming of the Friars, London, 1888.) Their progress was scarcely less rapid in Scotland, where they found a munificent patron in King Alexander II., who is said to have met Saint Dominic in Paris. They soon spread as far as Russia and Greece, and in 1280 even to Greenland.

In accordance with the declared purpose of their foundation, the Dominicans have always been known as diligent preachers and strenuous combatants against any departure from the teaching of their Church. In this capacity they were intrusted with the conduct of the Inquisition as an ecclesiastical institution; and even in Spain, after it became practically a department of civil government, a Dominican was usually at its head. The office of master of the sacred palace, endowed with great privileges by Leo X., has always been held by a member of the Order; and since 1620 the censorship of books has been one of its functions. In 1425 the permission to hold property was granted by the Pope to certain houses, and extended to the entire Order in 1477, since which time they have been less exclusively a mendicant Order. They have furnished four popes (Innocent V., Benedict XI., Pius V., and Benedict XIII.), and more ​than sixty cardinals. Outside of their specific work, they did much for the development of art. Their cloister at Santa Maria Novella, in Florence, was a veritable school of architecture. Painting was also cultivated with great success at San Marco in the same city, and at Santa Caterina in Pisa; and the names of Giovanni da Fiesole, better known as Fra Angelico, Benedetto da Mugello, and Bartolommeo della Porta are worthy of remembrance. (Consult Marchese, Memorie dei più insigni pittori, scultori e architetti domenicani, Bologna, 1878.) Their chief glory in theological learning is Saint Thomas Aquinas (q.v.), whose teaching has been especially commended by Leo XIII. as the standard of dogmatic theology; other distinguished teachers were Albertus Magnus and Raymond of Peñaforte, the third general of the Order. Their great rivals in the later Middle Ages were the Franciscans. These two Orders divided the paramount influence in the Church, and often in the Catholic States, not without frequent hostility on the part of the parochial clergy, who felt their rights invaded by the friars; but the rise of the Jesuits lessened their power both in the schools and in the court. In the eighteenth century they possessed not less than a thousand houses in all parts of the world. The troubles of the latter part of that century, however, decreased their number considerably. In France the Order was revived largely through the efforts of the famous Lacordaire (q.v.), the centenary of whose birth was solemnly celebrated in 1902 as that of ‘the restorer of the Dominican Order in France.’ In England and Ireland they have now 21 houses for men and 13 for women; in the United States, into which they were introduced in 1805, though they had played the leading part in the evangelization of Spanish America, they have only a few friars, but a much larger number of sisters. At the head of the whole Order stands the general (magister generalis), whose term of office since 1862 has been twelve years; since 1273 he has had his residence at Santa Maria Sopra Minerva in Rome. There are fifty-two provinces (each with a provincial at its head), though some of these are now hardly more than nominal.

The female branch of the Order may claim, in a sense, greater antiquity than the male, since Dominic founded his house at Prouille in 1206; but after the friars were established, the members of his community modestly called themselves the second Order. Another house was founded at Rome in 1218, Dominic being commissioned to unite a number of small or private associations in the authorized system of his rule. The cloister of San Sisto, given him by the Pope for this purpose, is thus really the first in which the Dominican habit was worn by women. The Order was originally intended to be contemplative, but in later years, together with some relaxations of the rule, its scope was extended so far as to include the education of girls and other practical works. The nuns are not numerous, since the revolutionary movements of the latter part of the eighteenth century destroyed the greater part of their houses; but a certain number of new convents has sprung up in the nineteenth century, especially in Bavaria. The third Order was organized by Saint Dominic in 1220, to provide a constant supply of defenders of the Church against the assaults of the Albigenses and other turbulent innovators. He gave it the name ‘militia of Jesus Christ,’ and pledged its members to defend the Church with their arms and their possessions. Married men could not be received into the brotherhood without the consent of their wives, who were bidden to pray for the success of the men. The enthusiasm of the Middle Ages soon brought large numbers, to whom the founder gave a few simple rules for holy living. After the necessity of this militant life passed away, the members were unwilling to dissolve their association, and continued it as against spiritual foes, naming themselves ‘brothers and sisters of penance.’ Their numbers increasing rapidly, the seventh general of the Order, Munio de Zamora, reduced the rules given by the founder to a systematic form, in which they were confirmed by Pope Innocent VII. in 1405 and Eugenius IV. in 1439.

Some members have maintained a cloistered life, but the majority have been men and women living a devout life in the world. The third Order has produced numerous saints, including Saint Catharine of Siena, and the first American saint, Rose of Lima. On the history of the Dominicans in general, consult: Caro, Saint Dominique et les Dominicains (Paris, 1853); Danzas, Etude sur les temps primitifs de l’ordre de Saint Dominique (Paris, 1874, et seq.); Drane, The Life of Saint Dominic, with a Sketch of the Dominican Order (3d ed., London, 1891); Proctor (editor), Short Lives of the Dominican Saints (New York, 1901); Monumenta Ordinis Fratrum Prædicatorum Historia (Stuttgart, 1900, et seq.). For further details of both Dominican and Franciscan third Orders, see Tertiary.