The Order of Friars Preachers, or Dominicans, also known in England as Blackfriars from the colour of their cloaks, was founded by St Dominic in the first decade of the 13th century. The founder’s original purpose was to form a group of itinerant preachers to combat the heresy of the Albigenses in the south of France. From a loosely associated handful of men was to grow one of the foremost centrally organized orders of the modern world. Approved by Foulques of Toulouse, then by Innocent III, and confirmed by Honorius III, the new Order of Preachers adopted the Rule of St Augustine together with a set of Constitutions proper to itself. Recognized at first as an order of canons regular, the Dominicans later became one of the first Mendicant Orders. As an international preaching body they laid claim to extensive privileges, including exemption from episcopal jurisdiction.
From Southern France the order spread rapidly across Europe. By 1221 it was organized into eight provinces: Spain, Provence, France, Lombardy, Rome, Hungary, Germany and England, to which were added by 1228 Poland, Scandinavia, Greece and the Holy Land. The order now covers most parts of the world. Each province sends representatives to the General Chapter, the supreme legislative authority, one of the functions of which is to elect the Master-General.
The Order of Preachers has always been a spearhead of intellectual activity. It produced St Thomas Aquinas (1224/5–74), the greatest thinker of his age, whose Summa theologica became the standard theological textbook. The Dominicans made a point of establishing themselves in universities, including Paris, Oxford (1221) and Cambridge (1238). They suffered a period of decline after 1290 but this was followed by a vigorous revival in the 16th century.
Up to the Second Vatican Council, the Dominicans possessed their own rite, a 13th-century version of the Roman rite, having much in common with the Use of Paris and partially influenced by the Cistercian liturgy. The adoption of this rite, which probably goes back to St Dominic himself, owes much to the Commission of Four Friars in the mid-13th century and above all to Humbert of Romans, who was elected Master-General in 1254. Humbert’s revision was granted approval by Clement IV in 1267. One characteristic of Dominican Use is the Salve regina procession after Compline, thought to have been inaugurated in 1221, the date of St Dominic’s death.
Dominicans have made important contributions to the liturgy of the Western Church as a whole. The texts of the Mass and Office for Corpus Christi are attributed, on the authority of Ptolemy of Lucca (early 14th century), to Thomas Aquinas. He related that Thomas had been invited to write them by the pope. A Dominican pope, Pius V, was responsible for the revision of the Roman Breviary (1568) and the Roman Missal (1570).
In later centuries the order’s earlier techniques of singing plainchant were totally lost. After 1900, however, a return to the sources resulted in fresh editions of Dominican service books, thanks chiefly to the labours of Vincent Laporte, and this stimulated a return to earlier traditions of performance.
Several passages in the works of St Thomas point to his interest in and knowledge of music, although no extended treatise by him exists on the subject. It was left to the Paris Dominican, Hieronymus de Moravia, to fulfil this task in his Tractatus de musica, written during or after 1272. This treatise became the carefully guarded property of the Sorbonne in 1304. The order ‘incathenabitur in cappela’ was given and it was numbered 64th among the works dealing with the Quadrivium. The special interest of the treatise is its abundance of lively detail and its practical instructions in the art of vocal embellishment in the performance of festal plainchant. Besides adding vocal embellishments on feast days, Dominican choirs, from the later Middle Ages onwards, used the organ for alternatim performance of plainchant. Much legislation on this topic flowed from the pens of the Capitular Fathers at successive General Chapters, but the practice was tolerated, provided that the cantor, or a novice, pronounced the words of the organ verses slowly and distinctly while they were being played. For his part, the organist was strictly forbidden to play worldly vanities on his instrument. Cajetan, commenting on St Thomas (II–II, 91.2), even went so far as to declare it a mortal sin to do so.
Acta capitulorum generalium Ordinis Praedicatorum (Rome, 1900–01)
A. Gastoué: ‘Un dominicain professeur de musique au treizième siècle: Fr. Jérome de Moravie et son oeuvre’, Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum, ii (1932), 235–51
S.M. Cserba, ed.: Hieronymus de Moravia, O.P.: Tractatus de musica (Regensburg, 1935)
W.R. Bonniwell: A History of the Dominican Liturgy (New York, 1944, enlarged 2/1945)
D. Delalande: Le graduel des prêcheurs (Paris, 1949)
S. Bullough: ‘St Thomas and Music’, Dominican Studies, iv (1951), 14–43
W.A. Hinnebusch: The Early English Friars Preachers (Rome, 1951)
R. Creytens: ‘L’ordinaire des frères prêcheurs au Moyen Age’, Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum, xxiv (1954), 108–88
M.-H. Vicaire: Histoire de S. Dominique (Paris, 1957/R; Eng. trans., 1964)
K. Foster: The Life of St Thomas Aquinas: Biographical Documents (London, 1959)
W.A. Hinnebusch: The History of the Dominican Order (London, 1966–73)
P. Gleeson: ‘Dominican Liturgical Manuscripts from before 1254’, Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum, xliv (1972), 81–135
J. Harper: The Forms and Orders of Western Liturgy from the Tenth to the Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 1991)
MARY BERRY