Dominicans

“ I have not attempted to describe the present condition of the republic of Santo Domingo, but from all I can hear it is making progress. The Dominicans have few prejudices of colour, and eagerly welcome foreign capitalists who arrive to develop the resources of their country. ”

“ But in truth they pine for thee. 'Twas in pity of their tears that I, a Dominican, undertook this task; and broke the rule of my order by entering an inn; and broke it again by donning these lay vestments. But all is well done, and quit for a light penance, if thou will let us rescue thy soul from this den of wolves and bring thee back to thy vows."
The nun gazed at him with tears in her eyes. "And thou a Dominican hast done this for a daughter of St. Francis! Why the Franciscans and Dominicans hate one another." ”

“ After his decease the Dominicans became disconsolate and all left the province, some for Santo Domingo, others for Peru, and the rest for Spain. The ornaments and properties donated by the king to the convents were left in charge of lay brothers, but subsequently the Dominicans of San Vicente de Chiapas appropriated them as belonging to the order. ”

“ Thus far the friars had scarcely been heard of in England. The Dominicans--trained men of education, addressing themselves mainly to the educated classes, and sure of being understood wherever Latin, the universal medium of communication among scholars, was in daily and hourly use--the Dominicans could have little or no difficulty in getting an audience such as they were qualified to address. ”

“ Be it remembered that any systematic training of young men to serve as evangelists--any attempt to educate them directly as preachers well furnished with arguments to confute the erring, and carefully taught to practise the graces of oratory--had never been made in England. These Dominicans were already the Sophists of their age, masters of dialectic methods then in vogue, whereby disputation had been raised to the dignity of a science. ”

“ From the first, the Dominicans seem to have had a kind of fore-knowledge of the great combat that would have to be waged in the arena of human reason. From the first, with prudence, forethought, and wise economy, they prepared a system for turning the abilities of their members to the fullest account. ”

“ It is reported over the whole earth, simply that the Dominicans hold that all men have the sufficient graces. What other conclusion can be drawn from this, than that they hold that all men have all the graces necessary for action; especially when they are seen joined in interest and intrigue with the Jesuits, who understand the thing in that sense? Is not the uniformity of your expressions, viewed in connection with this union of party, a manifest indication and confirmation of the uniformity of your sentiments? ”

“ Dominicans began the work by converting Don Luis, Jesuits followed it up by actual possession, by erecting a chapel, by instituting a regular community life, by instructing, baptizing, and hallowing the land by the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.
The flag of Spain and the flag of England have alike passed away, but on the banks of the Potomac Jesuit and Dominican are laboring side by side three hundred years after the martyrdom of Segura, Quiros, and their companions. ”

“ Just before this council terminated its sittings, Dominic, presented to Pope Innocent III., obtained, as a recompense for the services which he had rendered to the Church militant, leave to found the order of Preaching-Brothers, who from him took the name, by which they are more generally known, of Dominicans. ”

“ Thereby was caused much severe comment and scandal, both among the natives and Chinese, and among the Spaniards. The Augustinian friars complain that the bishop, being a Dominican, favors his own order and persecutes them; and that before the coming of the Dominicans to these islands they did not have this persecution, but peace and concord.
There is great need of religious to administer instruction to the natives, since of the few who were here a large number have died, this year and last. ”

“ For it must be said of the Dominicans—and I think it may be said of a good many English public schoolboys besides—that, however foolish they may have been in other respects, however riotous, however jealous of one another, however well satisfied with themselves, a point of honour was a point which they all took seriously to heart. ”

“ The natives are rich in flocks, and they have plenty of provisions. In other parts they have Mitimaes stationed to raise their maize and coca. There are fine churches in these villages founded by the reverend father friar Tomas de San Martin, principal of the Dominicans. The young men, and others who most desire it, assemble to hear the evangelical doctrine preached by the friars and clergymen. Most of the chiefs have turned Christians. ”

“ Edward I. and his Queen Eleanor were great benefactors to the Dominicans. Of the church and the stately buildings of the proud order not a trace remains. In the Guildhall Museum may be seen a drawing of some ruined vaults belonging to the Abbey, which were discovered on enlarging the premises of the Times some years ago. There is nothing above-ground. The Dominicans, however, never succeeded in winning the affections of the people to the same extent as the Franciscans.{119} They were learned; they insisted strongly on doctrine; but they were harder of heart than the Grey Friars. ”

“ Dominicans, not any. And this, and their anxiety for saving their stipends and for making money, proceeds in great measure from the information which they receive concerning the wretched condition of the religious in España, and their fear of falling into the same condition.
In respect to their pride and ambition to govern, all men have that, for this is our most powerful instinct; and the priests of all times and countries have had it. The royal decrees and the articles of which we have spoken demonstrate quite clearly that those of Filipinas have not escaped from falling into this sin. ”

“ Why, the people of Santo Domingo worship this spot! It is the one place of interest to them; it is the one thing they ask the stranger if he has seen; it is the centre of their life and love,—that ancient pile of yellow glory,—for are not the ashes of their great Cristobal Colon guarded there? Would that we Americans had any relic we held as sacredly!
The Cathedral and the Statue of Columbus
Santo Domingo
So I suppose we ought not to quarrel with the Dominicans over the new coat of whitewash, for they meant it well, but we can at least wish they hadn’t cleaned house so thoroughly. ”

“ The governor, the archbishop, the visitor, and the Dominicans [will figure] tied together by pairs, and Fray Raimundo Verart as the leader [corifeo] of the dance.
When the patache reached the port, and the auditors this city, various mails from his Majesty were opened, and it was found that the remedy was worse than the disease itself; since the Dominicans and the archbishop, like headlong furies, began a fierce tempest of vengeance against all those who were not of their faction and at their disposal, without heeding or fearing any one who might restrain them in whatever they might attempt. ”

“ The Jesuits encouraged learning in Mexico, founded colleges and schools, and inspired even the lowest class with the possibility of raising themselves by developing their mental faculties. The Dominicans, by their furious zeal for the Inquisition, doubtless hastened the end of the Spanish rule, for the soil of the New World has never been favorable for the taking root of this institution. ”

“ The Dominicans themselves do not escape this law, but are imitating the Jesuits, their implacable enemies; they give fiestas in their cloisters, erect little theatres, write poesies, because, as they are not devoid of intelligence in spite of believing in the fifteenth century, they comprehend that the Jesuits are right and will continue yet to play a part in the future of the young peoples that they have educated. ”

“ It is the custom also for well-to-do families to send their children abroad for study and to travel themselves, and the Dominicans are not few who, besides their native Spanish, speak other languages, acquired abroad. Within the country, too, there is a predilection among the upper class for the study of foreign tongues, and many learn English and French in the family circle or by association with persons speaking these languages. ”

“ Instead of devoting themselves to a life of contemplation apart from the world, like the earlier monks, they were accustomed and required to mix with all classes of men. They must be ready to dare and suffer all in the interest of their work of saving not only themselves but their fellow-men. [Pg 231]
Contrast between the Dominicans and the Franciscans.
The Dominicans were called the "Preaching Friars" and were carefully trained in theology in order the better to refute the arguments of the heretics. The pope delegated to them especially the task of conducting the Inquisition. ”

“ In Spain, where popular devotion to the Virgin was especially ardent, it had, in the seventeenth century, become almost universally accepted, except by the Dominicans, whose reverence for their great doctor, St. Thomas Aquinas, bound them to follow him in its denial. ”

“ There had been for some time both Franciscan monks and Dominican fathers on the mainland of South America, working among the natives. Pedro de Cordova, the head of the Dominicans in the Indies, wrote to Las Casas at about this time, asking him to get the King to grant a certain territory on the mainland, where no white men except the Dominicans and Franciscans should be allowed to go ”

“ Unlike most of their neighbors they do not live in concubinage, but are married in their own churches. They are not liked by the Dominicans, who seem to resent their superior education and customs, though all admit that 219they are good citizens and good workers, though not fighters, as Americans on custom border control soon discovered. Bigger men both physically and mentally than the natives, they live in what seem real homes compared with the miserable dirt-floor huts of the Dominicans of the same color. ”

“ The life of the Dominicans is intended for the cultivation of the sciences; and the design, not only of Domenico di Guzman himself, but of the succeeding heads of the Order, appears to have been to form an institution of learned men devoted to the service of the Romish Church. ”

“ He asked only that a certain number of laborers should attend him, invited by a bounty from government, and that he might further be accompanied by fifty Dominicans, who were to be distinguished like himself by a peculiar dress, that should lead the natives to suppose them a different race of men from the Spaniards. ”

“ Dominic, they ravaged the provinces of Languedoc, Narbonne, and Dauphiny, to exterminate the heretics, as they called those true Christians who would not subject themselves to the dominion of the pope.
The Order of the Dominicans can boast of many men of great talent; yet they allowed themselves to be seduced from the primitive mode of worship, and to become in their turn seducers, to perpetuate this absurd system. It is from them125 that every thing most foolish and malignant in the barbarous ages, both in Spain and Italy, has been continued down to our own times. ”

“ This volume carries forward the history of the Dominican order in the Philippines, and, like the other instalments of Dominican history, or, to speak more broadly, of the history of the orders, contains many interesting sidelights. The increasing power of the order is well seen in the new arrivals of missionaries from Spain, and their pushing out into the territory regarded by the Recollects as their own, to the detriment of the latter, which the Dominicans are able to do through the great influence of Felipe Pardo, the archbishop. ”

“ The friars in general, being the local supervisors of education in the provinces, and the Dominicans in particular, by monopolizing in their hands all the studies of the Filipino youth, have assumed the obligation to its eight millions of inhabitants, to Spain, and to humanity, of which we form a part, of steadily bettering the young plant, morally and physically, of training it toward its happiness, of creating a people honest, prosperous, intelligent, virtuous, noble, and loyal. ”

“ Abundance of contentious volumes between the Dominicans, and Jesuits, and many others, are stuffed with bold inquiries, wranglings, or determinations of unsearchable mysteries, utterly unknown to those that voluminously debate them, and never revealed in the word or works of God. ”

“ When the old Dominicans owned the convent they instituted a free school for children, and as the requirements of the city became more pressing they extended their teaching to other and higher branches of learning, among which the study of law, medicine, and philosophy was included. ”

“ France, Brother Martin Billoray, [432] Master of theology, belonged to the order of friars preachers, the members of which exercised the principal functions of the Holy office. In the days of Innocent III, when the Inquisition was exterminating Cathari and Albigenses, the sons of Dominic figured in paintings in monasteries and chapels as great white hounds spotted with black, biting at the throats of the wolves of heresy. [433] In France in the fifteenth century the Dominicans were always the dogs of the Lord; they, jointly with the bishops, drove out the heretic. ”