The Order of Preachers has famously bred some of the leading intellectual lights of the Middle Ages. While Dominican achievements in theology, philosophy, languages, law, and sciences have attracted much scholarly interest, their significant engagement with liturgy, the visual arts, and music remains relatively unexplored. These aspects and their manifold interconnections form the focal point of this interdisciplinary volume. The different chapters examine how early Dominicans positioned themselves and interacted with their local communities, where they drew their influences from, and what impact the new Order had on various aspects of medieval life. The contributors to this volume address issues as diverse as the making and illustrating of books, services for a king, the disposition of liturgical space, the creation of new liturgies, and a Dominican-made music treatise. In doing so, they seek to shed light on the actions and interactions of medieval Dominicans in the first centuries of the Order's existence.

The history of the Dominicans in the British Isles is a rich and fascinating one. Eight centuries have passed since the Friars Preachers landed on England's shores. Yet no book charting the history of the English Province has appeared for close on a hundred years. Richard Finn now sets right this neglect. He guides the reader engagingly and authoritatively through the medieval, early modern and contemporary periods: from the arrival of the first Black Friars – and the Province's 1221 foundation by Gilbert de Fresnay – to Dominican missions to the Caribbean and Southern Africa and seismic changes in church and society after Vatican II. He discusses the Province's medieval resilience and sudden Reformation collapse; attempts in the 1650s to restore it; its Babylonian Exile in the Low Countries; its virtual disappearance in the nineteenth century; and its unlikely modern revival. This is an essential work for medievalists, theologians and historians alike.

The Dominicans in the Americas and the Philippines (c. 1500–c. 1820) is part of a renewal of interest in the global history of the Dominican Order. Many of the essays were carefully selected among some of the papers presented at the III International Conference on the History of the Order of Preachers in the Americas, a gathering that stands in continuity with the conferences of Mexico (2013) and Bogotá (2016). This book, the contributors of which are active researchers specializing in the history of the Order of Preachers in Latin America, is organized in four parts: Women and the Order of Preachers; “Benditos Bienes”: Libraries and Material Patrimony; Missions, Devotional, and Daily Life; and The Order of Preachers and Their Writings. Contributions deal with different subfields including art history, gender studies, history of the book, and intellectual history more broadly. Additionally, it contains a chapter examining the historiography of the Order of Preachers in Latin America. Covering the time range from 1510 to the early nineteenth century, the book fills a gap in the historiography of the Order of Preachers in the Americas, especially in English-language scholarly literature. Students of Latin American history, the history of Christianity, and the history of global Catholicism will surely find the volume to be of great interest.

Ever since St. Dominic de Guzmán founded the Order of Preachers 800 years ago, Dominican men and women have continued to shape Catholic spirituality, challenging the faithful to know God in their minds and to love God in their hearts. Praying with the Dominicans is a wellspring of Dominican prayer from the thirteenth to the twentieth centuries. Dominican spirituality emphasizes the goodness of the created world as the handiwork of a loving God. Author John Vidmar, OP, presents a generous sampling of this rich spiritual tradition in the form prayers, meditations, poems, hymns, devotions, and reflections. Within this book the reader will find an account of St. Dominic's nine ways of prayer, along with the Eucharistic writings of Thomas Aquinas. St. Catherine of Siena is prominently featured, as are contemporary English Dominicans Timothy Radcliffe and Bede Jarrett, Dominican theologian Mary Catherine Hilkert, Dominican inspirational poet Maryanna Childs, and many others. Also included are selections representing the vibrant tradition of Dominican Marian devotion. Illustrations and musical samples accompany the text. No comparable single-volume source offers such a diverse collection of Dominican prayer and thought. This book will guide, enlighten, and inspire anyone who wishes to experience the dynamic charism of the Order of Preachers. +

This book begins with a simple question: why do so many Dominicans deny the African components of their DNA, culture, and history? Seeking answers, Milagros Ricourt uncovers a complex and often contradictory Dominican racial imaginary. Observing how Dominicans have traditionally identified in opposition to their neighbors on the island of Hispaniola—Haitians of African descent—she finds that the Dominican Republic’s social elite has long propagated a national creation myth that conceives of the Dominican as a perfect hybrid of native islanders and Spanish settlers. Yet as she pores through rare historical documents, interviews contemporary Dominicans, and recalls her own childhood memories of life on the island, Ricourt encounters persistent challenges to this myth. Through fieldwork at the Dominican-Haitian border, she gives a firsthand look at how Dominicans are resisting the official account of their national identity and instead embracing the African influence that has always been part of their cultural heritage. Building on the work of theorists ranging from Edward Said to Édouard Glissant, this book expands our understanding of how national and racial imaginaries develop, why they persist, and how they might be subverted. As it confronts Hispaniola’s dark legacies of slavery and colonial oppression, The Dominican Racial Imaginary also delivers an inspiring message on how multicultural communities might cooperate to disrupt the enduring power of white supremacy.

Dominicans have been in sub-Sahara Africa since the fifteenth century. Today the Order has communities in a dozen African countries. The story is recounted here by many voices, the majority from Africa itself while the rest have long associations with that continent. In this book only the Dominican friars are taken into account. The nuns and apostolic sisters are mentioned in passing. No doubt another book will be necessary to tell the full story.

The purpose of this book is to gather in a single narrative the rather disparate stories of Dominican friars in Southern Africa over the past four centuries. Dominicans from Portugal and Portuguese India were present in South-East Africa from 1577 to 1835. Patrick Raymond Griffith, an Irish Dominican, became the first resident bishop in South Africa in 1837. A Dominican mission was established in 1917 with the arrival of a group of English friars. A second group arrived from the Netherlands in 1932. The aim is to provide a social history of the Dominicans in Southern Africa, that is, a history that deals specifically with the social and cultural factors of historical development. The Dominicans ministered in a political, social and cultural context which impacted on their apostolic activities and, in turn, was affected by them. The book's terminus ad quem is 1990, when the National Party opened a process of political negotiation, thus ending more than forty years of apartheid rule.

Yves Congar was a theological advisor to the preparatory commission for Vatican II, and attended all sessions of the Council (1962-1965) as a theological expert. His daily journal provides a window into the Council's workings and into the development of what would become a series of historical documents and declarations. Theologian Yves Congar op, silenced and exiled in 1955, was in 1960 made a theological advisor to the preparatory commission for Vatican II. From then on, and all through the Council (1962-1965), he was an influential day-to-day participant in its work. His diary provides a window into the Council's workings and the development of what would become a series of historical documents and declarations. It also offers Congar's own down-to-earth and candid perspective on many of the remarkable people and events that shaped the Council.

This work examines the distinct political periods in the country's history, such as the Spanish, French, Haitian, and US occupations and the several periods of self-rule. It also covers a socioeconomic history by establishing links between socioeconomic conditions and political developments.