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The English Dominican Province : (1221-1921)

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The English Dominican Province : (1221-1921) *\i - HE ENGLISH OMINICAN PROVINCE (1221-1921) Library)LIBRARY^ </> (library] CO THE ENGLISH DOMINICAN PROVINCE / The English Dominican Province (1221-1921) (/>! (library LONDON CATHOLIC TRUTH SO 69 SOUTHWARK BRIDGE RO 1921 FOREWORD EVERY age has its own special need and call. For seven hundred years the children of St. Dominic, at their Father's command and helped by his prayers, have sought to meet the needs and answer the call of each succeeding age. The present book seeks to show how they tried in the past to do their duty. Seven hundred years have passed since the first English Dominicans came to their native land to plant the Dominican tree. With many great successes and many great failures, with many great joys yet many deep and terrible trials and sorrows, their work through the centuries has gone on, and it is a great subject of rejoicing to see them to-day still at work in the land that gave them birth. To pursue the simile of the tree (for the tree that St. Dominic planted is still growing in Rome in the garden of St. Sabina) we can always expect and indeed look for many branches to wither and to die. Each year the tree puts off its leaves and each year fresh ones come up. Though the new leaves know little of the ones that went before, save to see them lying dead at the foot of the tree, it is the hidden sap unseen by both that gives life to each and clothes them all with glory year by year—how foolish if the leaves were to boast and to take the glory to themselves ! So when read- ing these pages, if the children of St. Dominic take the glory of the tree's appearance unto themselves and boast, they will do a very foolish thing. The present book is not brought before the public eye in a boasting spirit, but in order that those who read may praise the Providence of God, who through His weak and sinful creatures has, by His life-giving grace, done such great things. St. Dominic, so deeply misunderstood in every age by those who judge superficially, is specially loved by those who know him because to a saint's love and trust of God he added an almost limitless trust and reverence for the good sense and freedom of men. He so loved his children that he gave them in his fatherly love an abiding trust of ; vi Foreword perfect liberty, such as no other saint ever dared to give his children. He wrote no rule, but bade them love God, and, with his love burning in their hearts, govern themselves according to the needs of each time and place. When reading the following pages we cannot help being astonished at the wonderful trusting way of the Saint, and praising him for this wonderful trust of God and men that seven centuries still see at work in our midst. How these poor Dominican friars and nuns lived in the days of their foundation and in the days of Faith we can perhaps readily understand ; but when the dark clouds of religious unbelief came and the dread hand of persecution fell on them and with a far reaching sweep scattered them abroad, we read with astonishment of their survival. At every page we expect to read that the last of them has ex- pired, yet we still find one, two, or three keeping the torch alight. Sometimes the fire is very low—indeed it is only by crouching into the most protected corner that the holder of the torch keeps it from instant extinction. We watch them as we would watch a man walk down a draughty corridor with a naked candle in his hand ; it seems as though they were trying to do an impossibility : yet one after another they do it, and each finds a successor to whom he can hand down the torch. Thus for many weary years of patient striv- ing, from hand to hand the torch of Dominic comes down to us, and we see it with a bright light, burning in our midst. What the future has in store for us, God alone knows, but we do know that as the torch was handed to us we have to hand it down to others. The burning torch of praying, learning, teaching, is the thing that matters ; the bearers only interest us as far as they carry the torch and no further. Whence they came does not interest us much ; and we know that at the end they go to God. May these pages kindle in the heart of those who read them a greater love for God and for the salvation of souls and a deeper trust in that Almighty Providence, who, in spite of the passions and ambitions of men, works out the sanctiflcation and salvation of those who love Him. J* Felix Couturier, O.P. Bishop of Myriophytos. London : Feast of the Commemoration of St. Paul, 1Q21. CONTENTS PAGE Foreword .... V By Bishop Felix Couturier, O.P. I. The Foundation I By F. Bede Jarrett, O.P. II. In Public Life 2 • 5 By F. Walter Gumbley, O.P. III. In Theology .... • 53 By F. Walter Gumbley, O.P. IV. The Bible .... • 77 By F. Hugh Pope, O.P. V. Their Ascetical Teaching • "3 By F. Bede Jarrett, O.P. VI. As Preachers . 141 By F. Walter Gumbley, O.P. VII. In Literature . 165 By F. Edwin Essex, O.P. VIII. At the Reformation • '93 By F. Bede Jarrett, O.P. IX. The Period of Eclipse 221 By F. Robert Bracey, O.P. X. Their Second Spring . 249 By F. Raymund Devas, O.P. XI. The Nuns .... • 273 By Sister Mary Benvenuta, O.P. XII. The Third Order . • 303 By F. Fabian Dix, O.P. THE ENGLISH DOMINICANS I. THE FOUNDATION By BEDE JARRETT, O.P. IT was the white shores of Kent that first in England beheld the whiter wool of St. Dominic. On a summer's day in early August, 122 1, following in the train of Bishop Peter des Roches, who was afterwards to become greatly unpopular as the foreign favourite of Henry III when he came of age, were a band of thirteen friars, headed by Gilbert de Fraxineto, sent by St. Dominic after the second Chapter General of the Order held two months before, in Bologna. Tradi- tion has settled somehow that Gilbert was an English- man, which would mean that he should more properly be called Gilbert Ash. He came, then, with his group, under the patronage of Bishop Peter of Winchester, and straightway after his arrival was introduced to the Primate, Cardinal Stephen Langton, at Canterbury. But it is simpler and better to tell the story of the coming of the friars in the words of an English Domini- can born within a generation from the date of their arrival : "At the second General Chapter of the Order of Friar Preachers which was held at Bologna under the blessed Dominic, there were sent into Eng- land, Friar Preachers to the number of thirteen, having as their Prior, Friar Gilbert Ash. In the company of the venerable Father, Lord Peter des Roches, Bishop of Winchester, they reached Canterbury. After they 2 The English Dominicans had presented themselves to Lord Stephen, the Archbishop, and after he had understood that they were preachers, he straightway ordered Gilbert to preach before him in a certain church where he was himself that day to have preached. The prelate was so edified by the friar's sermon that henceforth during his episcopate he favoured and promoted the Order and its work. Leaving Canterbury, the friars came to London on the Feast of St. Lawrence, and finally reached Oxford on the Feast of the Assumption of the Glorious Virgin, to whose honour they built their Oratory. They held the schools that are now called St. Edward's, and settled in that parish for some time, but finding that they had no room for expand- ing, they removed to another site given them by the King, where, outside the city walls, they now dwell." From this brief account of Nicholas Trivet, 1 we can suppose that the friars arrived at Canterbury on August 6th, the feast of the Transfiguration of our Lord, for it was only on the days of greater feasts that Bishops were accustomed to preach and to assist pontifically at the Mass. This date is further confirmed by the rate of the progress of the friars, who took five days in getting from London to Oxford, a distance of about fifty miles, and who, probably, therefore, would have taken four days to cover the ground between Canterbury and London. If this date of August 6th can be accepted as the day of their arrival, it is interesting to note it as also the day of St. Dominic's death : he died on the Feast of the Transfiguration, 1221. But altogether apart from this question of dates, the main point to be noted in the above quotation, 1 The son of a Justice-in-Eyre of Henry III, he lived from 1258 to 1328 chiefly in London, Oxford, and Paris. He became a Dominican early in life and was familiar with the court and person of Edward II. His most famous book is the Annals of England 1 1 36-1 307. The Foundation 3 is that the true objective of the friars on their arrival was Oxford. They halted at Canterbury and London, but it is clear that they as yet made no foundation in either of these places.
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