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 PREACHERS

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PREACHERS

Forschungen zur Geschichte des Dominikanerordens in Deutschland", II, III, Leipzig, 1908-9; Mortier, "Hist, dea Maltres Generaux", III, IV).

(d) Preaching and Teaching. — Independently of their official title of Order of Preacher.?, the Roman Church especially delegated the Preachers to the office of preaching. It is in fact the only order of the Middle Ages which the popes declared to be specially charged with this office (BuU. Ord. Prad., VIII, p. 768). Conformably to its mission, the order displayed an enormous activity. The "Vita? Fratrum" (1260) (Lives of the Brothers) informs us that many of the brothers refused food until they had first announced the Word of God (op. cit., p. 150). In his circu- lar letter (1260), the Master General Humbert of Romans, in view of what had been accomplished by his religious, could well make the statement: "We teach the people, we teach the prelates, we teach the wise and the unwise, religious and seculars, clerics and laymen, nobles and peasants, lowly and great." (Momim. Ord. Prted. Historia, V, p. 53). Rightly, too, it has been said: "Science on one hand, num- bers on the other, placed them [the Preachers] ahead of their competitors in the thirteenth century" (Lecoy de la Marche, "La chaire frangaise au Moyen Age", Paris, 1SS6, p. 31). The order maintained this supremacy during the entire Middle Ages (L. Pfleger, "Zur Geschichte des Predigtwesens in Strasburg", Strasburg, 1907, p. 26; F. Jostes, "Zur Geschichte der Mittelalterlichen Predigt in West- falen", Miin.ster, 1SS5, p. 10). During the thirteenth century, the Preachers in addition to their regular apostolate, worked especially to lead back to the Church heretics and renegade Catholics. An eye- witness of their labours (1233) reckons the number of their converts in Lombardy at more than 100,000 ("Annales Ord. Pra;d.", Rome, 1756, col. 128). This movement grew rapidly, and the witnesses could scarcely believe their ej'es, as Humbert of Romans (1255) informs us (Opera, II, p. 493). At the begin- ning of the fourteenth century, a celebrated pulpit orator, Giordano da Rivalto, declared that, owing to the activity of the order, heresy had almost entirely disappeared from the Church ("Prediche del Beato Fra Giordano da Rivalto", Florence, 1831, I, p. 239).

The Friars Preachers were especially authorized by the Roman Church to preach crusades, against the Saracens in favour of the Holy Land, against Livonia and Prussia, and against Frederick II, and his successors (Bull. O. P., XIII, p. 637). This preaching assumed such importance that Humbert of Romans composed for the purpose a treatise entitled, "Tractatus de praedicatione contra Saracenos infideles et paganos" (Tract on the preaching of the Cross against the Saracens, infidels and pagans). This still exists in its first edition in the Paris Bibli- otheque Mazarine, incunabula, no. 259; Lecoy de la Marche, "La prddication de la Croisade au XIIP eiecle" in "Rev. des questions historiques", 1890, p. 5). In certain provinces, particularly in Germany and Italy, the Dominican preaching took on a peculiar quality, due to the influence of the spiritual direction which the religious of these provinces gave to the numerous convents of women confided to their care. It was a mystical preaching; the specimens which have survived are in the vernacular, and are marked by simplicity and strength (Denifle, "tlberdie Anfiinge der Predigtwciso der deutschen Mystiker" in "Archiv. f. Lift. u. Kirchengesch", II, p. 641; Pfeiffer, "Deutsche Mystiker des vierzehnten Jahr- hundert", Leipzig, 1S45; Wackernagel, "Altdeutsche Predigten und Gebete aus Handschriften", Basle, 1876). Among these preachers may be mentioned: St. Dominic, the founder and model of preachers (d. 1221); Jordan of Saxony (d. 1237) (Lives of the Brothers, pts. II, III) ; Giovanni di Vincenza, whose

popular eloquence stirred Northern Italy during the year 1233 — called the Age of the Alleluia (Sitter, "Johann von Vincenza und die Italiensche Friedens- bewegung", Freiburg, 1891); Giordano da Rivalto, the foremost pulpit orator in Tuscany at the beginning of the fourteenth century [d. 1311 (Galletti, "Fra Giordano da Pisa", Turin, 1899)]; Johann Eckliart of Hochheim (d. 1327), the celebrated theorist of the mystical life (Pfeiffer, "Deutsche Mystiker", II, 1S57; Buttner, "Meister Eckharts Schriften und Predig- ten", Leipzig, 1903); Henri Suso (d. 1366), the poet- ical lover of Divine wisdom (Bihlmeyer, "Heinrich Seuse Deutsche Schriften", Stuttgart, 1907); Johann Tauler (d. 1361), the eloquent moralist ("Johanns Taulers Predigten", ed. T. Harnberger, Frankfort, 1864); Venturino da Bergamo (d. 134.5), the fiery popular agitator (Clementi, "Un Santo Patriota, II B. Venturino da Bergamo", Rome, 1909); Jacopo Passavanti (d. 1357), the noted author of the "Mirror of Penitence" (Carmini di Pierro, "Contribute alia Biografia di Fra Jacopo Passavanti" in "Giornale storico della letteratura ifaliana", XLVII, 1906, p. 1); Giovanni Dominici (d. 1419), the beloved orator of the Florentines (Gallette, "Una Raccolta di Prediche volgari del Cardinale Giovanni Dominici" in "Miscellanea di studi critici publicati in onore di G. Mazzoni", Florence, 1907, I); Alain de la Roche (d. 1475), the Apostle of the Rosary (Script. Ord. Pra;d., I, p. 849); Savonarola (d. 1498), one of the most powerful orators of all times (Luotto, "II vero Savonarola", Florence, p. 68).

(e) Academic Organization. — The first order institu- ted by the Church with an academic mission was the Preachers. The decree of the Fourth Lateran Coun- cil (1215) requiring the appointmentof a masterof the- ology for each cathedral school had not been effectual. The Roman Church and St. Dominic met the needs of the situation by creating a religious order vowed to the teaching of the sacred sciences. To attain their purpose, the Preachers from 1220 laid down as a fundamental principle, that no convent of their order could be founded without a doctor (Const., Dist. II, cog. I). From their first foundation, the bishops, likewise, welcomed them with expressions like those of the Bishop of Metz (22 April, 1221): "Cohabitatio ipsorum non tantum laicis in prsdica- tionibus, sed et clericis in sacris lectionibus esset plurimum profutura, exemplo Domini Papte, qui eis Romse domum contulit, et multorum archiepis- coporum ac episcoporum" etc. (Annales Ord. Pra;d., I, append., col. 71). (Association with them would be of great value not only to laymen by their preaching, but also to the clergy by their lectures on sacred science, as it was to the Lord Pope who gave them their house at Rome, and to many archbishops and bishops.) This is the reason why the second master general, Jordan of Saxony, defined the voca- tion of the order: "honeste vivere, discere et docere", i. e. upright living, learning and teaching (Vitae Fratrum, p. 138); and one of his successors, John the Teuton, declared that he was "ex ordine Pra^dica- torum, quorum proprium esset docendi munus" (Annales, p. 644). (Of the Order of Preachers, whose projier function was to teach.) In pursuit of this aim the Preachers established a very complete and thoroughly organized scholastic system, which has caused a writer of our own times to say that "Dom- inic was the first minister of public instruction in modern Europe" (Larousse, Grand Dictionnaire Universel du XIXe Sifecle", s. v. Dominic).

The general basis of teaching was the conventual school. It was attended by the religious of the convent, and by clerics from the outside; the teach- ing was public. The school was directed by a doctor, called later, though not in all cases, lector. His principal subject was the text of Holy Scripture, which he interpreted, and in connexion with which