Reporting of Federici Studies Center
Today the Church celebrates Saint Thomas Aquinas, glory of the Dominican Order and Catholic theology, defined by mgr. Umberto Benigni in the "Social History of the Church" giant of orthodoxy and the dolomitic Aquinas. Saint Thomas was one of the saints invoked especially by the members of the Sodalitium Pianum, association founded by Msgr. Benigni to apply the anti-modernist program outlined by Saint Pius, including the defense of Thomism opposed by the modernists. In honor of Saint Thomas we publish some paragraphs dedicated to the Dominican Order taken from the "Social History of the Church" (The medieval crisis, vol. V, Vallardi Publishing House, pages. 633 e 634).
The Dominicans
And here is the Dominican Order. Understood by the intuition of need, the Founder wanted his friars to devote themselves to professional preaching, and they were beggars, that is, they were in contact with the common people who would receive the sermon from them, muta, eloquent, of the example, before that of the word.
Generous idea but not permanently implementable. In a big way, what had happened in a short space to the Christian School of Alexandria happened to Dominicanism. It began as a catechetical school, that is, with fixed predication, with Pantheno, he naturally associated himself to a higher degree with Clement of Alexandria and with Origen, and became what in the Middle Ages would have been called Studium or philosophical-theological University. Similarly, Dominicanism arose with preaching, walking catechism (and the same 15 mysteries of the Rosary are an embryo of catechism). But this first stage pointed out the path to ascend, to the professional doctorate, al professorato.
And here the Order becomes that of the great university professors with Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas, down down, despite the decline; since it is Dominican glory to have attempted the Catholic reform before the Protestant pseudo-reformation, with tireless reformers such as the blessed Venturino of Bergamo (1304-46) in Lombardy. The Brotherhoods of the Rosary were a great instrument of reform like the Third Orders. In increasingly "secular" art, you can see the Dominican effort of Blessed Angelico. In the restless and deviant Savonarola the impetus of the reform that was imposed on everyone trembles, from Borgia to the common people.
Once the Reformation of Luther and Calvin broke out, there was the counter-reformist rebirth of Dominican science. Since the preacher friar Tetzel did the trouble of freeing the souls of purgatory with the accounting of the jingling of the money thrown into the alms box, thus giving the frenzied enemies of Medici Rome the opportunity to shout with Hutten: to everything, that you send to Rome, they go not to Christ but to the Florentines", — once the storm broke out, the Dominican Order offered two unsurpassed theologians to the Counter-Reformation, the Spaniards Melchior Cano (1560) and Pietro de Soh (t 1563), faithful masters of the Thomist tradition, that he must have had in another great Spanish scientist, the Jesuit Francesco Suarez, a fundamental divergence starting from the question of essence and existence.
Then the Dominican convent automatically rose to something analogous to the solemn abbey, especially since it was combined with the formidable inquisitorial power. It is difficult to imagine Torquemada walking around with his saddlebag between two auto-da-fés.
But primitive begging, desired and implemented by Domenico himself, it was providential, because he introduced the preacher and next inquisitor among the people, in the friendly popular figure of the beggar friar, which made the fortune of the Franciscan.
On the university chair, in the seat of judge «inquisitor contra haereticam pravitatem» the Dominican is a great figure. Even in Savonarola's excesses one can feel the temper of the fighter for Christian reform.
And in the great historical picture, Francesco and Domenico shine like a radiant diptych, che i loro figli hanno dimenticato qualche volta nella sovreccitazione delle lotte di scuola. Ma resta sempre, vera e luminosa, l’antifona cantata dai due Ordini: «il cherubico Domenico ed il serafico Francesco c’insegnarono la legge tua, Gentleman!».
Per acquistare la ristampa della “Storia Sociale della Chiesa”: http://www.sodalitiumshop.it/epages/106854.sf/it_IT/?ObjectPath=/Shops/106854/Products/099
