The Founder of the Dominican Order was a Spaniard of the thirteenth century, alive to the needs and conditions of his age and steeped in tradition. His spirit survives in his Order, and the friars of to-day still bear the mark of that Spanish modernity and strength.

St. Dominic was a man of his age, vital and ‘modern.’ The representatives of the Church in his day had been overtaken by time and in many ways left behind in an earlier age. The Church was losing ground because the churchmen of the time were unaware of current problems and consequently unable to find the right means to correct the bias of the spiritual force then working strongly among the people. The Cathari and Albigenses were the Communists of the thirteenth century, appealing to a general fraternity and calling for a purification of society with as much zeal and apparent asceticism as the Nazi, Fascist-or Communist. They drew the people away from the Church. By their works you shall know them—works testify to truth. These men of austere life seemed to have the Spirit; the Church with its easy-going monks and ecclesiastics seemed in comparison to have betrayed its ideal. And for the heretic matter was evil; things of the flesh, things made by man for his use and delight, art and ritual, had come from the evil spirit of lies, and truth was not in them.

Then again the towns and cities of Europe were growing. Commerce had moved from the landlords in their rural stability and passed into the hands of the bourgeois traders of the larger towns, and the centres of culture had also been transferred from the great monasteries dotted over the countrysides of Europe to the nascent universities of the cities.

‘The sum of Thy Words is Truth,’ and for us who have to search for that Truth fidelity or loyalty to it when discovered. Easy in theory, difficult in practice : ‘ascetic practices,’ says St. Jerome, ‘for example continence or mortification of the flesh, are of great value; but nothing is so mortifying as knowledge of the truth ‘(On Nahum ii. i, P.L. xxv, 1244); he seems to be thinking of a man’s reactions on coming up against some wholly unexpected truth, something running counter to his preconceived notions. ‘Nothing,’ says St. Augustine, ‘is easier for a person not merely to say but really to think he has discovered the truth ; but how difficult a thing that is ! ‘(De Utilitate credendi, 1). If the Bishop of Hippo could ever have felt annoyed, he who had made the search after truth the passion of his life must have felt indignant when Secundinus the Manichee told him : ‘the truth makes you as angry as philosophy made Hortensius ‘(Ep. ad Augustinum, 3, P.L.xlii, 574).

Our Dominican history furnishes us with three great examples, among many others, of this unflinching loyalty to the truth as they saw it, a loyalty which was not obstinacy but conviction based on the triple foundation of reason, faith, and their outcome—humility.

The obligation to be perseverant in study is an essential characteristic of the Order of Preachers. It has been so from the beginning. The modern form of the Constitutions shows the importance which the Order attaches to it, not only by the express statement of this obligation in Constitution No. 189, but by the repetition, almost word for word, of that statement in No. 690. In a document generally regarded as reflecting the succinctness of the Code of Canon Law, with which it was brought into conformity in 1932, and as somewhat sharply contrasted with earlier editions in this respect, such a repetition carries enormous force. It provokes an enquiry into the mode of life which it conditions and into the character of those who are dedicated to its fulfilment. The text itself is instructive: ‘Our priests, by reason of their vocation, or of the special purpose of the Order, are all the more (i.e. by comparison with those students not yet ordained to the Priesthood) bound to be perseverant in study throughout their whole life, especially in the study of dogmatic and moral theology, of sacred Scripture, of the Holy Fathers, and of the other sacred sciences, both for the purpose of fostering spiritual life in themselves, and in order to render themselves daily more fit to exercise the apostolic ministry with fruit.’ (Constitutions, 189).

The reference to the special purpose of the Order requires the further quotation of Const. No. 3 : ‘Our Order is known to have been specially instituted from the beginning’ for preaching and the salvation of souls.

These notes are intended to be nothing more than a brief summary of Père Mandonnet’s excellent and exhaustive treatise on the origins of the Rule of Saint Augustine, extending over a hundred pages and forming part of the monumental work entitled Saint Dominique, L’Idée, L’Homme et L’Oeuvre, published in 1938 (two years after his death) by his disciples and assistants Père Humbert Vicaire and Père Reginald Ladner, in two volumes. This work, with the exception of five valuable études critiques, has recently been translated into English by Sister Mary Benedicta Larkin, O.P., of Sinsinawa, Wisconsin, U.S.A. As unfortunately these essays which occupy eighty-two pages of the original book have not been listed by the translator, but only referred to numerically, their titles are here given for the guidance of those who cannot have access to the French edition :—(1) The Chronology of Saint Dominic’s Life between 1205 and 12107, by Vicaire; (2) Cardinal James de Vitry’s account of the Preacher-Canons of Bologna, by Mandonnet; (3) Paul of Hungary’s Summa de Poenitentia, by Mandonnet; (4) The Constitutions of the Order between 1220 and 1227, by Vicaire; (5) The Beginnings of the Order of Penance, by Mandonnet. Admittedly these studies are technical and do not all touch directly on Saint Dominic and his work, but Vicaire’s first study, not a very lengthy one, could have been included in the translation with much profit.

The Rule of Saint Augustine, as universally known to-day, is prefixed to the Book of the Dominican Constitutions, and is incorporated in the Institutions of many other religious Orders.