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.

Righteous Persecution examines the long-controversial involvement of the Order of Preachers, or Dominicans, with inquisitions into heresy in medieval Europe. From their origin in the thirteenth century, the Dominicans were devoted to a ministry of preaching, teaching, and pastoral care, to "save souls" particularly tempted by the Christian heresies popular in western Europe. Many persons then, and scholars in our own time, have asked how members of a pastoral order modeled on Christ and the apostles could engage themselves so enthusiastically in the repressive persecution that constituted heresy inquisitions: the arrest, interrogation, torture, punishment, and sometimes execution of those who deviated in belief from Roman Christianity. Drawing on an extraordinarily wide base of ecclesiastical documents, Christine Caldwell Ames recounts how Dominican inquisitors and their supporters crafted and promoted explicitly Christian meanings for their inquisitorial persecution. Inquisitors' conviction that the sin of heresy constituted the graver danger to the Christian soul and to the church at large led to the belief that bringing the individual to repentance—even through the harshest means—was indeed a pious way to carry out their pastoral task. However, the resistance and criticism that inquisition generated in medieval communities also prompted Dominicans to consider further how this new marriage of persecution and holiness was compatible with authoritative Christian texts, exemplars, and traditions. Dominican inquisitors persecuted not despite their faith but rather because of it, as they formed a medieval Christianity that permitted—or demanded—persecution. Righteous Persecution deviates from recent scholarship that has deemphasized religious belief as a motive for inquisition and illuminates a powerful instance of the way Christianity was itself vulnerable in a context of persecution, violence, and intolerance.

Argues that Dominican friars sought to maintain interfaith barriers rather than secure religious conversions on the medieval Iberian frontier.

This book explores the life and times of Jón Halldórsson, bishop of Skálholt (1322–39), a Dominican who had studied the liberal arts and canon law in Paris and Bologna, and provides a snapshot with wider implications for understanding of medieval literacy.

This work outlines the predominant, official, and evolving positions of the Dominicans on the teaching authority of the pope. Horst shows the differences within the order on the topic and from other orders such as the Franciscans and the Jesuits.

In this volume, hitherto unused manuscript material brings to light the history of the Dominican Order in one of Scotland's most turbulent periods. Issues of reform and Reformers, literature, and religious practice are set out with a fresh perspective.

Dominican Penitent Women presents a fascinating overview of the spirituality, religious practices, and ways of life of medieval Italian women who belonged to the Dominican Order as lay members or penitents. Through selected texts, readers gain a fresh perspective on the institutional and spiritual foundations of Dominican lay life, but also an understanding of how these women refashioned Dominican ideals into practices that best responded to their individual and social means. Their way of life created an important alternative for women who sought religious perfection in the world. The first section consists of two penitent rules: the Ordinationes of Munio from the late 13th century and the formal penitent rule of the early 15th century, which show how penitents were to organize and live their lives. The second section is dedicated to hagiographic sources. The third section is made up of penitent women's religious writing. The texts translated here present an overview of Dominican women's literary production that complements the writings of Catherine of Siena, already available in English. While Dominican penitent women held an important position in medieval piety, aside from Catherine of Siena, their spirituality has not attracted much scholarly attention. As the first comprehensive introduction to medieval Dominican laywomen and Dominican penitent spirituality in English, this book makes a significant scholarly and spiritual contribution. +