Dominicans friars

Based on the statistics from CARA, there are numerous canonical issues facing institutes and societies in the USA.  Similar issues are facing those who live in other countries.  This PowerPoint presentation explores those issues by giving an overview of consecrated life and presenting  the statistics for women and men religious.  Then it looks at the way to address the situation in a wholistic manner.  The PowerPoint is an outline of the presentation given at the Midwest Canon Law Society Conference that was held from Aug. 31 - Sept. 1, 2021.  The conference was sponsored by the Archdiocese of Chicago.

Drawings of the Dominican Library in SS Giovanni e Paolo in Venice demonstrates that can be attributed to Baldassare Longhena, the venetian architect author of the Salute church. Language of project is very  similar to the one of the S. Giorgio Maggiore Library, serene and clear. In the article the author speculates that the library actually realized was the result of the pre-eminence of the the more conservative religious clientele.

There are four stages in the development of an institute of consecrated life or a society of apostolic life:  1) inspiration, 2) association, 3) erection as a diocesan institute/society, and 4) pontifical recognition.  This short paper addresses stage three.  It gives sound reasoning for the items that must be submitted to the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life (CICLSAL) before a bishop can erect a community as a diocesan institute.

Las portadas del convento de Santa Cruz la Real de Segovia son el testimonio iconográfico de las preocupaciones de los dominicos castellanos en las últimas décadas del siglo XV, desde la exaltación de la Orden en la fachada occidental al testimonio inquisitorial de la Santa Cueva, capilla relicario de santo Domingo de Guzmán en Segovia. Este artículo trata sobre patrones iconográficos, ideólogos e interpretación de mensajes.

This article focuses on an early sixteenth century canvas now housed in the church of Santa Maria Annunciata in Visgnola, near Como. The painting features saint Albert the Great, a German Dominican friar who died in 1280, standing on a pulpit below which are sitting four members of the Mendicants order, Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, Egidio Romano and an unknown Carmelite. All these friars are depicted with books, and are calmly arguing. However, Albert is pointing to the upper section of the painting, where an Annunciation can be faintly seen. Four other man are also depicted in the background.
Up until now Visgnola’s canvas has received little scholarly attention, and has always been considered a depiction of Saint Albert preaching. I will argue that the painting’s imagery should be connected to Albert’s fame as a learned man and that it actually shows a scholarly debate on the opic of the Annunciation. Finally, I will argue that the canvas was not painted for Visgnola, but for the most important Dominican church in the area, San Giovanni Pedemonte in Como, and will discuss its possible function.

The study on monastic specificity has gained a well-deserved popularity among historians of art, and in this field of study, which was enriched in the second half of the 20th century
by the accomplishments of cultural anthropology, sociology, and social psychology. It is more and more important to study not individual artefacts but whole processes and events taking place with art as a part. The “pushiness” of images was particularly characteristic for the Dominicans and may be treated as a way of putting the persuasive methods of friars’
formation into practice, which was described, among others, by Humbert de Romans (De institutione noviciorum). Shaping the friars’ awareness involved, first of all, a recollection of their own history. A group of genealogical trees showing particular monastic communities became the subject of a detailed analysis. In the case of the Dominicans, it was Father Angelus Walz who analyzed it in 1964. The main part of the following paper focuses on three pieces from the Cracow monastery, with the oldest large oil painting on canvas (with a later-added date of 1608), which hangs in the so-called great gothic entrance hall. It presents the origins of Saint Dominic as the person whom the tree originates from and was described as: “Don Roderico Nunes Gusman avus B. Dominici”. It belongs
to a small group of identical presentations of the “Guzman genealogy” showing Saint Dominic’s grandfather as the “patriarch” of the family. Walz knew four similar presentations
and he concluded that the oldest is a drawing (described as Austrian, and in many later publications wrongly described as a print), including a detailed description of the composition. Mattthias Habsburg was presented as the Emperor, which determines the terminus post quem of its origin at 1612. On the Cracow painting, the Virgin Mary hands over the Emperor’s crown to Rudolf II (departed in 1612), and his successor Mattthias was described as an archduke of Austria (which he was from 1608). That proves that it is the oldest known composition of this kind. The altar in the chapter house of the Cracow monastery, with a low relief in the center presents the order as a tree giving good fruits. The same subject appeared a bit later on a chasuble made with the technique of “acusculpture”. The threads were sewed on the material filled with oakum, which outline the shape of a person, and a phenomenon is the way adding a face and hands made of painted wood and stuck to the material. These are very rare examples of using the type of iconography described in the text within the liturgical context. It was used mostly in the self-presentation and propaganda of orders and monasteries, thus the Cracow works are incredibly important, taking into consideration Dominican iconography and they should be the subject of research by researchers not only in Poland.

The figure of Domenico Paganelli, after his death in 1624, remained almost unknown except in the historiography of the Dominican order to which he belonged. He has recently been rediscovered, reconstructing its relations with the Roman cardinal circles under the pontificate of Clement VIII. Although the catalog of his works is small (palazzo Bonelli ai Ss. Apostoli, nave of S. Salvatore in Lauro, design for the sanctuary of Mondovì and little else), numerous clues suggest to deepen his architectural culture, especially because he was “maestro di architettura” of Bernardino and Virgilio Spada. His culture is documented by
the inventory of his library kept in the convent of Faenza and then dispersed. It consisted of over a hundred books in mathematics, astronomy, military and mechanical art, as well as architectural treatises. Among these we can find out an unusual interest in the French treatise writers, Du Cerceau and Jean Cousin. The analysis of Paganelli’s collection of books therefore raises broader questions on the circulation of ideas and architectural knowledge in Rome and in the Legazioni between the end of the Renaissance and the beginning of the Baroque period.

Resum: Mentre exercia de lector logicae a l'studium sollemne que els dominicans tenien a Lleida, Vicent Ferrer redactà dos textos de lògica: la questió De unitate universalis, probablement el sumari de collationes mantingudes amb els seus alumnes, i el tractat De suppositionibus, una exposició àmplia i rigorosa d'un tema complex de fi losofi a del llenguatge, molt debatut a mitjan segle XIV. No són pas textos redactats per un magister artium experimentat, són el fruit de la seva dedicació juvenil (acabava de fer 22 anys) i esporàdica perquè no escriví cap altra obra escolàstica. Cal con-siderar-los, doncs, l'obra d'un ensenyant precoç, coneixedor tant dels escrits dels pensadors de la seva època-Gualter Burley, Guillem d'Ockham, Joan Buridan-com del pensament d'Aristòtil i de Tomàs d'Aquino. Paraules clau: Vicent Ferrer; frares dominicans; lògica medieval; universals; suposició; individua-ció. Abstract: While working as a lector logicae at the Dominicans' studium sollemne in Lleida, Vincent Ferrer wrote two logical texts: De unitate universalis, probably a summary of conversations he had had with his students, and De supposi tionibus, a lengthy and rigorous discussion of a complex topic in philosophy of language, widely debated in the mid-14 th century. They are not texts written by an experi enced magister artium; they are the result of his sporadic, youthful endeavour (he was 22 years old) and he did not write any other scholastic work. Hence, they must be regarded as the work of a young teacher, who was familiar with both the writings of the thinkers of his time-Walter Burley, William of Ockham, Jean Buridan-and the thought of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas.

Questo lavoro nasce dalla volontà di realizzare uno studio sulla cittadina pugliese di Oria nei secoli del medioevo nella maniera più precisa ed approfondita possibile. L'intento è quello di scrollare dalla storia la visione strettamente localistica, prediligendo una prospettiva di più ampio respiro. Nel presente lavoro, dopo aver inserito Oria in un contesto storico generale, si è cercato di indagare in maniera esaustiva il suo ruolo all'interno delle diverse entità statali che si sono succedute nel dominio nell'area in questione, a partire dall'alternanza tra potere longobardo e bizantino fino al declino della monarchia aragonese. Una sezione è dedicata alla dimensione religiosa della città, sia in relazione al clero secolare sia agli ordini monastici e mendicanti che sono stati, o sono tuttora presenti ad Oria. Viene dato infine spazio alle vicende riguardanti l'antichissima comunità giudaica e alle principali vicende che l'hanno vista protagonista, fino alla sua scomparsa.

The peculiar modes of transmission of the mystical works of Catherine of Siena and Birgitta of Sweden within the Observant reform show that there were a fluid context of exchanges between Birgittine and Catherinian circles. Here I'm focusing on some significant manuscripts from the Italian peninsula and on a few key-figures, both men and women, such as Alfonso Pecha of Jaén, Cristoforo di Gano Guidini, Tommaso da Siena, Chiara Gambacorta, the Birgittine nuns of Paradiso in Florence and Syon in England and others.