Dominican Involvement in the Crusader States

Extract

Although the Dominican Order was not in existence when the Crusades began, during the thirteenth century the Dominicans developed a strong presence in the Holy Land and found themselves laying the new network of Church administration, as they took over many of the newly created Latin sees, and establishing links with the Greek and Oriental Churches they encountered. Great travellers and great critics, they bequeathed to the Church a closer understanding of what kind of religion Islam really was, what the Eastern churches were really like, and insights into the whole nature of the Crusades just as the Crusader States were finally collapsing. Their findings and opinions may be found in such works as: Burchard’s “Descriptio Terrae Sanctae”; the “Itinerarium” of Riccoldo de Monte Croce, and the “Opus Tripartitum” of Humbert of Romans.

In 1221 St. Dominic died at Bologna, having seen his Order approved by the Holy See and established in Provence, Paris, Spain, Italy, Poland, Hungary and England. One of the ambitions of his life remained unfulfilled, however: he had always wanted to go to the East to convert the Saracens. Innocent III encouraged him instead to devote his attention to the Albigensian heretics in the South of France and to similar sects in Lombardy. It was left to his spiritual descendants to fulfill his dream of evangelising the East.

The first approach of the Dominicans to the Holy Land came in 1226 when Alice of Champagne, widow of King Hugh I of Cyprus, founded the monastery of St. Dominic at Nicosia in Cyprus, later to become the burial place of the Kings of Cyprus and Jerusalem after the loss of the mainland.