Dominicans

Dominicans (or ‘black’ or ‘preaching’ friars) were a mendicant order founded by a Spanish Augustinian and preacher, St Dominic, to combat the Albigensian heresy in southern France. The order was confirmed by Pope Innocent III in 1215, and its rule codified by 1221. The Dominicans were dedicated to educational activity and quickly established themselves at the forefront of intellectual life with friaries found in virtually every university town in the medieval West. They first settled in England in Oxford and London in 1221 and by their dissolution in 1538-9 there were over 50 English friaries.

Order of Preaching Friars founded by St Dominic in 1215 to combat the Cathar heresy in southern France. It combined an austere way of life with the high standard of education that was judged necessary for missionary work and the refutation of unorthodox opinion. Among its greatest scholars were Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas, whose writings became classics of scholastic philosophy and theology. The order played a major role in the evolution of the Inquisition, and its friars were renowned as preachers and confessors. Its annual general chapters excited admiration as models for representative institutions.

[Jean Dunbabin]

Dominicans, or Order of Preachers, are part of a worldwide Roman Catholic religious community of friars founded in 1216 by Saint Dominic. The Dominicans arrived in America with the Spanish explorers. Although the first two Catholic bishops of New York—Richard L. Concanen (1808) and John Connolly (1815)—were Dominicans, the first community (organized with a democratic constitution) was established at Saint Rose in Springfield, Kentucky, in 1806. Its founder, Edward Dominic Fenwick, also established the first Catholic school for boys west of the Alleghenies (1806) and the first Catholic church in Ohio—at Somerset in 1818. In California, community life was established by José Sadoc Alemany, who was appointed bishop of Monterey (1851) and later the first archbishop of San Francisco (1853). About the same time, the Dominicans established themselves in Washington, D.C. (1852) and New York (1867).

By the 1990s, there were three Dominican provinces in the United States, with more than 1,000 priests, brothers, and sisters engaged chiefly in parochial, educational, and missionary apostates. Dominicans staff Providence College in Rhode Island and teach at many other universities, some high schools, and their own seminaries. In 1909, they organized the Holy Name Society, which, by mid-century, had a membership of over 5 million and joined an expanding list of Dominican lay organizations, including the international Dominican Youth Movement. The Dominicans publish scholarly periodicals (The Thomist and Cross and Crown) and critical editions of the writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas. Significant foreign missionary work has been done by American Dominicans in Pakistan, Peru, Chile, China, Kenya, Bolivia, Nigeria, Ghana, and the Philippines.

Bibliography

Woods, Richard. Mysticism and Prophecy: The Dominican Tradition. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis; London: DLT, 1998.

—Cornelius P. Forster,O. P./A. R.