Black Friars

Black Friars

Discover some facts about St Dominic, the founder of the black friars, the rules he devised and where the black friars settled in England. If you want to want to want to find out about the Norwich Blackfriars, click here.

Who was St Dominic?

• St Dominic, or Dominic Guzman, the founder of the black friars, was born at Calaruega, Castile, in about 1170.
• In 1203, while traveling north on a diplomatic mission to Denmark, Dominic first encountered the Cathar heresy in the Languedoc (South of France).
• The leading Cathars lived lives of apparent simplicity and holiness; Dominic became convinced that the way to overcome them was by competing with them on their own terms by abandoning wealth and status in favour of the vita apostolica (apostolic life).
• The apostolic life meant following the pattern set by Christ’s disciples and becoming an itinerant preacher, who renounced personal property and was dependent upon alms for food and clothing.

Important: the Norwich black friars relied on the generosity of local patrons because they were not technically allowed to own their own property.

• Dominic’s main intention, however, was to establish communities that were centres of sacred learning, and whose members would be devoted to study, teaching, preaching and prayer.
• In 1215, Dominic went to Rome to seek Pope Innocent III’s authorisation so that his Order of Preachers could be given official status. Although the Pope welcomed Dominic, he would not permit him to found a new order, with new rules.
• Consequently, Dominic adopted the Rule of St Augustine; the first General Chapter of the Order of Friars Preachers was held in 1220.
• Dominic was to die within the year; one of his last decisions was to send a group of black friars to England, where they arrived in 1221.

What were the rules?

• The Dominicans, or black friars, adopted the Rule of St Augustine.
• Written about the year 400, the Rule of St Augustine is one of the earliest guides for those who wished to follow a religious life. A short document, it is divided into eight chapters.
• The Rule itself offered little practical guidance on how to organise a monastery (or friary), and thus left Dominic free to plan the daily life and observance of his preachers as he thought best. Certainly, one of Dominic’s many talents was a capacity for leadership and administration.
• The earliest comprehensive body of statues governing the life of the black friars was enacted in 1228. It was decreed that fasting was to be observed, and the monastic rule of silence was to be kept everywhere in the community, except in privileged places.
• Manual labour was rejected as too time-consuming, and the daily offices (click here for further information) were to be sung ‘shortly and succinctly so that the brethren be hindered as little as possible in their studies’.
• The short office which normally ended the day (Compline) was converted into a public service; sung at an hour of the day when most peole’s work was finished, it attracted many townspeople to the churches of the friars.
• It was also decreed that the priories of the Order should be modest and humble (just like the life of the friars themselves). The walls of a church could be 30 ft. in height, though vaulting might not be used except in the choir and sacristy. Yet Matthew Paris, writing only twenty-four years after the introduction of the black friars to England grumbled that their houses:

• Paris was a Benedictine monk, and a bitter opponent of the friars; we should, therefore, allow for some exaggeration.

[Print by James Sillett, 1764-1840, of the buildings as they appeared in 1828]

• Indeed, Norwich’s first Dominican church, built from about 1237 onwards, was 265 feet in length, but this was not excessive. Nevertheless, by the fifteenth century, when the friars had rebuilt their church as it survives today, it is clear that the architecture and furnishing had departed far from the austerity advocated by St Dominic.