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St Dominic and his first biographer

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 June 2009

C. N. L. Brooke
Affiliation:
The University of Liverpool

Extract

The Order of Preachers was created under the skilled direction of two great men: Dominic of Caleruega and Jordan of Saxony. Whatever else they may have been, both were brilliant organizers; they sketched between them the most sophisticated constitutional organization known to the Middle Ages; for good or ill, they created for us the idea and technique of committee government. Both, it is clear, had tidy and lucid minds. We know that Jordan wrote excellent Latin, was capable of making plain in a few words the nature of the casting vote in general chapter, and equally capable of communicating to his friend Diana Dandalo, and to us, the inwardness of spiritual friendship and the delight of missionary work among the students of Bologna and Paris, many of whom he gathered into the Dominican Order.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1967

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References

page 23 note 1 The magisterial study by Vicaire, M.-H., O.P., Histoire de S. Dominique (2 vols., Paris, 1957), cited here, as Vicaire (1964), from the English transl.Google Scholar by Pond, K. (London, 1964),Google Scholar makes extensive reference to modern literature on St Dominic unnecessary; Professor Vicaire gives a full bibliography on pp. 436-44. The book was accompanied byDominique de Caleruega d'apres les documents du XIIIe siècle (Paris, 1955),Google Scholar French translations of the major sources with a useful introduction, cited as Vicaire (1955); and had as its chief predecessor Mandonnet, P. and Vicaire, M.-H., Saint Dominique, ľidée, ľhomme et ľoeuvre (2 vols., Paris, 1937), cited as Mandonnet-Vicaire. Vicaire (1964) treats exhaustively most aspects of Dominic's life; the majority of the numerous modern lives are of substantially less value. Among EnglishGoogle Scholar studies, the interpretations of Bennett, R. F., The Early Dominicans (Cambridge, 1937)Google Scholar and Knowles, D., Religious Orders in England, 1 (Cambridge 1948), pp. 146 ff.Google Scholar are of particular interest; Professor Knowles has discussed Vicaire (1964) at length in Blackfriars, 39 (1958), pp. 147–55. In preparing this lecture I owe particular help to the guidance and inspiration of Professor David Knowles and of my wife, Dr R. B. Brooke.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 23 note 2 Cf. Southern, R. W., St Anselm and his Biographer (Cambridge, 1963), esp. ch. IX.Google Scholar

page 24 note 1 Cf. Altaner, B., Der hi. Dominikus, Untersuchungen und Texte (Breslau, 1922), pp. 67, 1314;Google ScholarBennett, , Early Dominicans, p. 20 n.Google Scholar For Jordan's entry into the order and later career see esp. Mortier, E., Histoire des maîtres ginéraux de ľOrdre des FrèresPrechêurs, 1 (Paris, 1903), pp. 137253;Google ScholarScheeben, H. C., Beiträge zur Geschichte Jordans von Sachsen (Q[uellen und] F[orschungen zur Geschichte des Dominikanerordens in] D[eutschland], 35, 1938), pp. 36 ff.;Google Scholaridem., Jordan von Sachsen (Vechta, 1937).Google Scholar

page 24 note 2 Cf. Scheeben's, H. C. introduction to his edition of the Libellus (M[onumenta] O[rdinis Fratrum] P[raedicatorum] H[istorica] 16, Rome, 1935), pp. 20-I (cited as Jordan). Vicaire (1955), p. 16, emphasizes the positive qualities of Jordan: ‘Il est maitre de sa plume et sait conter avec agrément, brièveté, précision, bonhomie et humour’. This I do not deny: nor his capacity to give vivid personal impressions. What I find profoundly puzzling is his failure to make Dominic a living figure, a failure (noted by Vicaire, p. 18; and see below) made all the more striking by these qualities.Google Scholar

page 25 note 1 Lea, H. C., History of the Inquisitionin the Middle Ages (2nd edn.), (New York, 1908), 1, p. 256,Google Scholarcited Bennett, Early Dominicans, p. 28.Google Scholar

page 25 note 2 Between Christmas 1231 and May 1233: Scheeben in Jordan, p. 22; Vicaire (1955), p. 17. The account of the translation was added before 1235, probably in 1233-4; possibly as an addition to the Libellus, possibly as an encyclical letter (Vicaire (1955), pp- 16-17).Google Scholar

page 25 note 3 Celano's, two ‘lives’ (cited as 1 Cel., 2 Cel.,) are in Analecta Franciscana, 10 (Quaracchi, 1926-1941);Google Scholar for 1 Cel., see c.I andnote in MS. P, c. 151 {ed. cit., p. 115 n.): I would accept the date, 25 Feb. 1229, in MS. P for the approval of 1 Cel., in spite of the doubts of Moorman, J. R. H., Sources fir the life of S. Francis of Assisi (Manchester, 1940), pp.67–8;Google Scholarcf. Bihl, M. in Archivum Franciscanum Historicum, 39 (1946), pp. 21 ff.Google Scholar

page 26 note 1 Jordan, c. 3. ‘Visum est mihi’ is an echo of Luke i, 3; the opening of Luke may have influenced other passages in Jordan (as Dr T. M. Parker has suggested to me), but it is not easy to establish any precise influence.

page 26 note 2 Legenda maior, c. 3 (in Analecta Franciscana, x, p. 558).Google Scholar

page 26 note 3 2 Cel., cc. 1, 223.

page 26 note 4 The convention is not governed by anything like a rigid rule: but Jordan's breach of it is none the less striking.

page 26 note 5 See esp. Exordium Magnum Cisterciensis, ed. Griesser, B. (Rome, 1961); for the controversies on the earlier Cistercian documents,Google Scholarsee Knowles, D., Great Historical Enterprises (London, 1963), pp. 197 ff.Google Scholar

page 27 note 1 Jordan, ed. Scheeben, p. 25, n.a.

page 27 note 2 Cel., c. 1; Jordan, c. 4.

page 28 note 1 See Jordan, , pp. 4 ff.; Vicaire (1955), pp. 16 ff.Google Scholar

page 28 note 2 See above, p. 24, n. 1; Scheeben, H. C., Die Konstitutionen des Predigerordens unter Jordan von Sachsen (QFD, 38, 1939);Google Scholar the early recension of the constitutions is also ed. Denifle, , in Archivfur Literatur- und Kirchengeschichte des Mittelalters, 1(1885), pp. 165227;Google Scholar French transl. in Vicaire (1955), pp. 137 ff.; for their historical development, see Mandonnet-Vicaire, ii, pp. 203 ff., 273 ff.; Vicaire (1955), pp. 113-21; Galbraith, G. R., The Constitution of the Dominican Order, 12161360 (Manchester, 1925).Google Scholar

page 29 note 1 Beati Iordani de Saxonia Epistulae, ed. Walz, A. (MOPH, 23, 1951), no.xli.Google Scholar

page 30 note 1 Cf. esp. Knowles, Religious Orders, i, p. 149 and n. 5.Google Scholar

page 30 note 2 MOPH, 16 (1935), 153–54.Google Scholar

page 30 note 3 2 Cel. cc. 148-50.

page 31 note 1 Die Beziehungen des hi. Dominikus zum hi. Franziskus von Assisi’, Franziskanische Studien, 9 (1922), pp. 1—28. Altaner argued in favour of 1221, though he reckoned a meeting in 1216 (using Gerard of Fracheto— see below) a possibility. His argument for 1221 depended on the assumption that Francis and Hugolino first met in 1218, a view no longer held; but Altaner's date for the meeting of the two saints has survived the removal of its main prop: cf. Vicaire (1964), pp. 494, 515, 521 (Vicaire is even more sceptical than Altaner about Gerard of Fracheto's narrative, and says in general (p. 515): ‘the meeting of the two saints remains hypothetical’). It has sometimes been argued that mendicant hagiographers would naturally have invented meetings of the two saints.Google ScholarThey are, however, remarkably rare in the early legends (apart from the two discussed here, there seems nothing till the much later story in the Actus-Fioretti, and Altaner, p. 8, shrewdly observed that St Bonaventure had succeeded in reproducing the gist of the passage from 2 Cel. while quietly dropping Dominic from it).Google Scholar

page 31 note 2 See Grundmann, H., Die religiose Bewegungen im Mittelalter (2nd edn., Hildesheim, 1961), pp. 145 f.Google Scholar

page 32 note 1 I Cel. cc. 74—5; cf. Callebaut, A. in Archivum Franciscanum Historlcum, 19 (1926), pp. 530–58;Google ScholarBrooke, R. B., Early Franciscan Government (Cambridge, 1959), pp. 286–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar 1218 is much less likely than 1217, since in 1218 Hugolino did not reach Florence until August at the earliest, and possibly October. For the evidence that Hugolino and Francis met before 1217, see Grundmann, op. cit., p. 146 n.Google Scholar

page 32 note 2 For Dominic's visits to Rome, see Vicaire (1964), pp. 191, 202, 216, 240, 277, 330, 336 and notes. In 1218-19 he wintered in Spain, and in 1219-20 St Francis was in the east.

page 32 note 3 Gerard de, Fracheto, Vitae Fratrum, i, 1, 4, ed. Reichert, B. M. MOPH, 1 (Louvain, 1896), pp. 911.Google Scholar

page 33 note 1 Cf. Acts, iv, 32, also quoted by the prologue to the early Dominican Constitutions, from the Rule of St Augustine (QFD, xxxviii (1939), p. 49).

page 33 note 2 Only MS C (and later sources) attribute it to the Lateran Council; since this is one of the two surviving MSS of Gerard's second recension, it could be, as Reichert seems to have supposed, that this was Gerard's own second thought. But if his apparatus correctly states that C alone (which Reichert knew only at second hand), and not A, the other MS of the second recension, has this change, it seems more likely to be a later gloss. The other MSS read ‘pro ordinis confirmacione’; ‘confirmatio ordinis’ is the phrase used by Jordan, c. 45, for the confirmation by Honorius III in 1216. Grundmann, , Die religiöse Bewegungen, pp. 146 ff., shows that it is on the whole probable that Francis visited Rome in 1215, so that 1215 is a possible date for the meeting of the saints; but the indications seem clearly to favour 1216.Google Scholar

page 34 note 1 See above, p. 31 n. 1.

page 34 note 2 Jordan, cc. 46-8. For the background to these events, see Vicaire (1964) ch. XII, and esp. pp. 229-30 for evidence that Dominic had some special experience in Rome in 1216-17.

page 35 note 1 Vicaire, loc. cit., cites evidence for a mysterious illumination about this period, and observes how little we know of the saint's inner spiritual life. This is very true, and it may be held that the discussion in the text proceeds at a somewhat superficial level. But Dominic was evidently a man profoundly influenced by the world around him. Constantine of OrvietoGoogle Scholar (c. 25, MOPH, 16, p. 304),Google Scholar writing in 1246-7, adds a vision in Rome to Jordan's narrative and makes this the explanation of his démarche; a witness at the canonization {MOPH, 16, p. 185) attributed the dispersal to ‘spiritus propheticus’, which does not, however, suggest any special knowledge of the matter.Google Scholar Another witness noted that Dominic acted against the will of Simon de Montfort, the archbishop of Narbonne, the bishop of Toulouse, ‘et quorumdam aliorum prelatorum’ (MOPH, 16, pp. 143–44).Google Scholar

page 36 note 1 Cf. the wise comment of Professor Knowles in Blackfriars, 39 (1958), pp. 153–4.Google Scholar

page 36 note 2 Cf. Knowles, , Religious Orders in England, 1, p. 149Google Scholar and n. For a judicious statement of the argument for Dominican independence, see Bennett, R. F., Early Dominicans, pp. 33 ff.Google Scholar

page 37 note 1 ‘occasionaliter instruxerunt nos ad futura pericula precavenda’ (Albert of Pisa in Thomas of Eccleston, De adventu Fratrum Minorum in Angliam, ed. Little, A. G., Manchester, 1951, p. 82).Google Scholar

page 37 note 2 Testament, in Opuscula S. Patris Francisci Assisiensis (2nd edn., Quaracchi, 1941), p. 79.Google Scholar

page 37 note 3 Salutado virtutum, Opuscula, p. 21.Google Scholar

page 37 note 4 In the Testament, Francis passes from the first to the last Rule without any indication that there was any difference between them: to him there was none, since both expressed in words God's revelation to him. For Innocent Ill's assent to the Rule, see Grundmann, H., Die religiöse Bewegungen im Mittelalter, 2nd edn., pp. 127 ff.Google Scholar

page 37 note 5 As when he wandered into the woods when his cell was about to catch fire to avoid having to harm ‘brother fire’; this story conies from an excellent source: La ’, ed. Delorme, F. M., La France franciscaine, 2 (Paris, 1926), nos. 4950.Google Scholar

page 38 note 1 Cf. Acta Capitulorum Generalium O.P., 1,Google ScholarMOPH, 3, p. 24;Google Scholar Moorman, Sources for the life of St Francis, pp. 141 ff., 148 and n.Google Scholar

page 38 note 2 For the early constitutions, see above, p. 28 n. 2: I accept the general lines of Prof. Vicaire's reconstruction, though the evidence is not sufficient to make every detail secure, and we cannot tell what early canons were dropped before 1228. But Humbert de Romans specifically states that each individual chapter could make or abolish constitutions before 1228 (cited Mandonnet-Vicaire, ii, p. 207 n.). The first part of the Constitutions, detailing the internal life of the Order, was sometimes referred to, however, as a ‘rule’.

page 39 note 1 See Brooke, R. B., op. cit.Google Scholar

page 40 note 1 Miranda b. Dominici, by Sister, Cecilia, c. 10, ed. A., Walz, Misc. Pio Paschini, 1 (Rome, 1949), pp. 306 ff. (this claims to be an eyewitness account; but the historicity of these Miracula is very doubtful).Google Scholar