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Marie-Dominique Chenu said of the role of the historian "What
I am looking for in history is not documentation, but inspiration",
this would seem to concur with the title of this symposium
Catching fire from Dominic's vision, which is an unusual brief
for a historian. It tells me that you want more fire and fewer
facts, more Dominic and fewer dates; yet the very fact that
you invited a historian at all, shows that our search for
inspiration in the fire and the vision that marked the beginnings
of our Order needs to be rooted in firm ground. We need to
know if the idea we have of Dominic's vision corresponds to
reality. As Guy Bedouelle has written: "There is a close
relationship between the search for truth that is the ideal
of the Order of Preachers and the study of history. What is
a historian if not someone who, within his or her limitations
seeks to know and to understand what happened"? Indeed
to understand where we come from is an integral part of knowing
who we are and where we are going that is to say our history
is part of our personal and collective identities. Our history
therefore is part of the on-going process of self-knowledge,
a vital ingredient in any religious life.
If there are aspects of Dominic's vision that have become
shrouded in the mists and legends of time, the historian should
be able to help us discover them anew. To come back to Marie-Dominique
Chenu, he seems to have believed that history is basically
a subversive activity, as he wrote: "Recalling the past,
returning to the sources is always a revolutionary phenomenon,
since it is a return to the creative forces. And that calls
into question all of the superstructures that have accumulated
in the course of time. Not that these superstructures are
without value, but they need to be relativised: a return to
the initial intuitions transforms the vision one has of systems."
This transformation of vision, through an understanding of
history is what we are trying to do together right now, during
these days as we try to look closely at what was happening
here at Prouilhe 800 years ago. And that is what I hope to
do - look closely at just a limited period: those first years
between 1206 and 1216.
The title I have chosen for this historical input 'The coming
of the preachers' is also a quotation, this time from the
Cistercian monk Pierre de Vaux de Cernay, the chronicler of
the Albigensian Crusade - and I believe it is important because
this is the term used consistently in this chronicle to refer
to Bishop Diego, Dominic and their companions. On the one
hand, it describes their function in the Church, preachers
ten years before there was any question of founding an Order
of Preachers. And on the other it also serves consistently
to distinguish Diego and his companions from the crusaders,
the military men, whose coming was to be several years later
from 1208 onwards. For Pierre de Cernay, 1206 is indeed the
year to be marked out as 'the coming of the preachers'. It
was at the end of this same year that Prouilhe was to be founded.
A lot was going to happen within the space of six months or
so.
This chronicle of Pierre de Cernay is one of the most detailed
sources for the history of this period. It is a non-Dominican
source, therefore its purpose was not in the least hagiographical,
and it can thus be of great interest to us as a more objective
witness to the beginnings of the Order, than, for example
the Libel/us. This chronicle was composed between 1212 and
1218 and so is closer in time to the events described than
Jordan s work. The Dominican Order was still in swaddling
clothes when the chronicle was completed. and so its author
was not likely to be unduly impressed by the glory that accrued
to St Dominic thereafter. This is not the only chronicle of
its kind; there are also those by Robert d'Auxerre and Guillaume
de Puylaurens to be taken into account.
An important thing to bear in mind at the outset is - forgive
me for saying so - that in 1206 Dominic was a nobody. He was
in the service of his bishop, accompanying Diego of Osma on
a mission, and so his natural place was in the shadow of his
bishop, whom the chronicler describes immediately as 'a great
man greatly to be praised'. And so, the chroniclers tell us,
Diego and his companions, the preachers, came into this region,
known as the Lauragais, in early summer 1206, having travelled
from Rome and stopped near Montpellier, where they met the
papal legates. Dominic can be identified as the 'single companion'
who remained behind in Languedoc with bishop Diego, 'the dedicated
servant of God,' after the latter sent his household retinue
and wagons back to Osma after this Montpellier encounter.
For Diego had proposed a strategy that amounted to beating
the heretics at their own game, that is by imitating the apostles
in everything, travelling around on foot, and begging from
door to door. This is a significant point for understanding
the founding and the future of the Order, for Diego's motives
were 100% apostolic; as Simon Tugwell has put it: "poverty
was adopted because it was the most promising missionary strategy
in the circumstances". (1) And on this point an important
contrast with Francis of Assisi can be established, for him
poverty was much more of a personal quest, linked to an inner
struggle or conversion. But in Dominic's case, quite simply,
and it is a key phrase: "his life was shaped by the needs
of others". (2)
It is possible to track fairly accurately the summer preaching
circuit of these preachers for 1206: Servian, Béziers,
Carcassonne, Verfeil, Montréal, and Pamiers. During
these first few months, things were done pretty much on an
ad hoc basis. In September the Cistercian Abbot had returned
to Citeaux for his General Chapter, and so towards the end
of the year, operations on the ground were consolidated into
a more permanent form as a result of the bull of Pope Innocent
III dated 17 November 1206. This was addressed to the legate,
Raoul de Fontfroide and extended the preaching mission until
that point entrusted to the Cistercians, to other collaborators.
Dominic was now one of these tried and tested' men henceforth
included officially in the preaching mission, who were to
'imitate the poverty of Christ, and with an ardent spirit'
convert the heretics by the example of 'word and deed'. He
and Diego settled at Fanjeaux, and thereafter there was to
be less itinerancy as efforts became concentrated on a smaller
area, the villages of Villepinte, Bram, Castelnaudary and
Fanjeaux. They were now opting for a more concentrated campaign
in a geographically restricted area: a surprising development
perhaps in the case of these men these men who had travelled
far and wide. But they were doubtless seeing, on the one hand,
the need for the truths of faith to be regularly repeated,
and on the other the importance of insertion in a local community
for efficacy of preaching.
According to the chronicler Pierre de Cemay, their purpose
in this was to be able to concentrate more vigorously on their
preaching, following the example of the Divine Master in deed
and word'. What apt choice of vocabulary here, for preaching
is indeed an activity that requires 'vigorous concentration';
this is a key word for understanding the preaching campaign
in the Lauragais in 1206-7. The foundation of Prouilhe can
be seen very much as an integral part of this process of putting
down roots and concentrating efforts.
There is much discussion among historians as to the true
date of the great dispute or debate at Montreal as well as
the timing and location of the miracle of the fire that is
traditionally associated with it. Pierre de Cernay's situates
these events in March-April 1207, thus the dispute at Montreal
occurring after the end of the first concentrated' preaching
campaign and the miracle of the fire after the end of the
dispute. He claims to have got his information from 'that
most pious man' Dominic himself, and there are two significant
factors in his account: firstly that the miracle of the fire
is the first occasion on which Dominic is mentioned by name
in this chronicle. He is now presented as 'one of our men.
Dominic, a man of consummate piety', but the label companion
of the bishop of Osma' is still appended. And secondly, the
miracle appears very much as the fruit of the preaching, and
by no means as a substitute for it. The implication being
that God gave Dominic to perform miracles to consolidate the
work of preaching, not to convince people by what they might
otherwise take simply for magical powers. The fact that this
miracle concerns the truth of words that have been written
down is surely significant.
So far so good, but unfortunately for us, neither Pierre
de Cernay nor any of the other early non-Dominican sources
mentions the foundation of Prouilhe. How should we interpret
this silence? One important factor would be that the foundation
of a community of women could be perceived - wrongly as it
turns out - as not impinging directly on the course of the
campaign against the heretics, and this, after all, was the
principal subject of these chroniclers. And also, for those
writing before the establishment of the Order, one could argue
that the true significance of Prouilhe would not have emerged
at that stage. Its status as the first fruits' of Dominic's
work does not become clear until there are other, subsequent
fruits.
Nevertheless, a careful reading of the chronicles does reveal
something important about the nature of the settlement at
Prouilhe. Pierre de Cernay states that Bishop Diego returned
to Spain in September 1207 "to make provision from his
revenues for the material needs of the preachers of the Word
of God in the province of Narbonne." On this point the
chronicle of Robert of Auxerre adds a little more detail,
this work is contemporaneous with the events, having been
written around 1207-8, and is considered to be one of the
most significant historical compositions bequeathed to us
by the Middle Ages. The chronicler describes Diego as a man
of great peace and fluent speech, but naturally enough Dominic
is not mentioned at all at this early date. Robert d'Auxerre
explains that this money from Spain was needed to support
'local centres': "From his own revenues he [Diego] had
purchased reserves of food and had set up a certain number
of depots, which he opened up generously to the preachers
of the Word of God." Now Prouilhe was certainly one of
these local centres - and indeed was to emerge as the principal
and most successful of them, a sort of refuelling station
- in every sense of the word, material and spiritual.
So in its beginnings, Prouilhe provided a refuelling centre
for preachers and a home for a community of women. We inevitably
come to the question as to why Diego and Dominic founded a
community for women at this time, just when the preaching
campaign was proving to be no easy matter. To say that the
foundation of Prouilhe is shrouded in a deal of mystery is
not an exaggeration. The founders were obviously too caught
up in the events themselves to keep records, and to make matters
worse, over the centuries, as it became necessary to establish
property rights over various churches and pieces of land,
there were a number of falsified documents concerning the
early years of Prouilhe, so not all of the early deeds can
be taken at face value. Added to this, the ravages of various
fires, notably at the cathedral of Osma in 1505, at Prouilhe
in 1715, and then the French Revolution have destroyed many
documentary sources. So our knowledge is of necessity very
sketchy, and as Simon Tugwell wrote in conclusion to a 66
page scholarly article published recently on the question
'For whom was Prouilhe founded?': 'We are completely in the
dark'. (3) So what hope for lesser historians?
Because of this lack of reliable documentary evidence, it
would seem a reasonable approach to look at the way Dominic
subsequently set about founding his Order of Friars Preachers,
which is much better documented, and see what can be deduced
retrospectively concerning Prouilhe, given that Prouilhe was
incorporated - and clearly intentionally so - into this later
foundation.
It would seem inconceivable that Prouilhe had its origins
in a theoretical plan or an abstract concept. The theoretical
approach is indeed attractive, and the notion that Dominic
founded a monastery of enclosed contemplative nuns first,
so that they would already be in place praying for the friars
preachers when he founded them subsequently has its appeal,
but there is not a shred of historical evidence to suggest
that Dominic actually planned things that way. That it turned
out to be the case can be seen perhaps as an act of divine
Providence - but as such is outside of the scope of the historian.
One might argue that it doesn't matter if we can't prove things
historically, but I would suggest that it does, for it is
important for our own mission to look at just how Dominic
did set about things.
If we find no evidence for a preconceived plan on Dominic's
part, what did happen? If he founded the Order of Preachers
as opposed to an Order of scribes, for example, it was because
he had encountered a pastoral need for sound preaching as
early as 1203. on the occasion of the famous encounter with
the innkeeper at Toulouse, when he was on the way to Denmark
with Bishop Diego. And even more so, on the return journey
from Rome in 1206. And later Dominic's charism as a preacher
attracted disciples who joined him even before there was a
formal Order to join. Thus it was when confronted with a)
a need for preaching and b) the reality of a preaching community
gathered around him, that he determined the time had come
for ecclesiastical recognition of something that already existed,
first of all from the local bishop in 1215 and then from the
Pope in 1216.
Likewise, one can argue, in the case of Prouilhe: it was
not so much the desire to found a monastery as the need to
find a solution to a practical problem on the ground. Otherwise,
and if the problem were not fairly urgent, surely Diego and
Dominic would have waited for a more favourable conjuncture
of circumstances to launch into such a venture. In 1206 they
had barely arrived, whereas in 1214, when Dominic was parish
priest, founding a monastery might have been a more logical
thing to do. But surely here we are dealing with the movings
of the Holy Spirit rather than with logic.
In this case, the urgent pastoral problem would seem to be
on the one hand: what to do with women converted from Catharism,
and hence alienated from their families, and with no means
of financial support, and on the other: how to prevent young
girls from being sucked into Catharism by heretical educational
establishments, to which they might have been sent by impoverished
parents of the local Catholic nobility.
The exact identity of the first sisters of Prouilhe is a
very complex one. but even if the various hypotheses cannot
be proved beyond doubt, it would seem a strange story to invent
that Diego and Dominic set up a community as a safe house
for women converted from heresy. What would be the purpose
of such a fabrication, and who would have gained by it? Although
this version of events does not feature in Jordan of Saxony,
Ferrandus or in the writings of other early Dominican historians,
it did survive into the 17th century in the local tradition
in Fanjeaux, when it was written down by the Dominican historian
Jean de Réchac in 1647 and Pierre Cambefort, vicar
of Fanjeaux in their respective Histories of Saint Dominic.
This question of women converted from Catharism sets Prouilhe
apart in the history of medieval monastic foundations, and
can perhaps be seen a pertinent reminder of the various gospel
passages in which Jesus proclaims that he has come to call
sinners rather than the virtuous, that he has come to heal
those who are sick, as the healthy have no need of a doctor.
And here lies one of the most original features of the early
Prouilhe, and hence of the beginnings of our Order. It was
essentially a charitable foundation, intended to take in women,
recently reconciled with Catholicism, without family support
or financial resources. These were the kind of aspirants who
might not have been readily accepted in the conventional Catholic
abbeys of the region. This is surely an aspect of Dominic's
vision in the beginnings that we should not lose site of.
And so in a sense the monastery of Prouilhe was an irregular
foundation. As we saw earlier, there was a clear papal mandate
for Dominic and a group of preachers, but not for a monastery.
Normally considerable financial endowments were required prior
to the setting up of a community of nuns, who would then be
affiliated without delay to some religious Order. Prouilhe
had no such endowments in 1206, and as we gather that the
families of most of the sisters were in straightened circumstances,
there would have been no dowry for them. Given that the community
was established at Prouilhe on the feast of St John the Evangelist,
27 December 1206, it is easy to imagine that the needs for
extra funds suddenly became especially pressing, and thus
the motivation becomes clear for Diego's journeys to Spain
in 1207 (there were three of them according to Fr Vicaire).
Indeed in every respect, the foundation of Prouilhe seems
to have been a fairly piece meal affair, just as religious
foundations often are today. Idealised tradition may have
handed down a notion that Dominic enclosed the nuns as early
as 1207, but the reality is that there were no monastic buildings
on the site at that time, that the sisters were living in
two or three private houses, and were split between Prouilhe
and Fanjeaux. It is indeed a rare thing to move a constituted
community into fine buildings already prepared for them, with
the constitutions already written, the habits just waiting
for the sisters to put them on, and the key in the enclosure
door just waiting to be turned and so make everything perfect.
It is tempting to imagine that this is what the foundation
of Prouilhe was like, but the hard facts of history tell us
that it was not. Nevertheless, what the sisters, Dominic and
his preaching companions most certainly had from the beginning
was the use of the church at Prouilhe. So in that very real
sense, the heart of the community was established on the site
from the outset.
The way Simon Tugwell puts it is probably fairly accurate
to my way of thinking: "He (Dominic) also founded a house
at Prouilhe for women rescued from the heretics, which soon
became a monastery of nuns". (4) It's a simple sentence,
but the verbs used here are keys to understanding Dominic's
approach to mission: i) women had been rescued, implying a
dramatic situation where souls were in danger; ii) because
of this, he set up something up to provide for the need: he
founded a house; iii) only after that does the house become
a monastery, and the women become nuns, that is the slotting
into ecclesiastical structures is arranged in due course,
and in any case, after the event, so to speak.
With the arrival in the spring of 1207 of Arnault de Cîteaux
and the twelve Cistercian abbots at Montréal, who came
to reinforce the preaching mission, the depot of Prouilhe/Fanjeaux
took on an even more official status as a mission post subject
to these pontifical legates. This subdivision became an integral
part of the holy preaching and was henceforth entrusted to
Dominic and Diego, but as both Diego and Raoul de Fontfroide
were to die before the year 1207 was out, Dominic found himself
in sole charge of this local mission. The recently founded
community of women at Prouilhe was to form the stable centre
of one of the sectors of the holy preaching.
It is perhaps important to say a few words about the history
of this term 'holy preaching', which was not, in fact, a Dominican
invention. It has its origins in the writings of Gregory the
Great, and was applied to the mission to the Cathars by pope
Innocent III. The term holy preaching applied to Prouilhe
is used in a legal deed of gift as early as August 1207: the
gift in question was made to "the Lord God and Blessed
Mary and to all the Saints of God and to the Holy Preaching
and to Lord Dominic of Osma and to all the brothers and sisters
who are today and will be in the future".
The question of Diego versus Dominic as founder of Prouilhe
has to be approached in the light of what I said earlier,
about the relationship between a bishop and a canon in his
service. It would be virtually inconceivable in the context
of the preaching campaign in the Lauragais, where Diego was
the focus of attention as well as representative of the Church's
hierarchy, for a member of his retinue, albeit his sub-prior,
independently to found a monastery. It must surely have been
at least a joint venture. This is testified to in the early
tradition of the Order, notably in the Libellus where Diego
is given as the founder of Prouilhe. And as we know, the official
version of the life of St Dominic was changed at the General
Chapter of 1259, replacing the name of Diego with Dominic
as the founder of Prouilhe. No reason is given. What is however
certain is that Dominic very quickly took on sole responsibility
for Prouilhe, from mid- 1207 onwards, when Diego returned
definitively to Spain, for he died there on the 30 December
of the same year.
It would seem that the first monastic buildings here were
completed in 1211, and this enabled the community of sisters
to be gathered together in one place. 1211 is now fairly generally
accepted by historians as the date when Dominic returned to
Fanjeaux/Prouilhe after an absence in Spain to put his affairs
in Osma in order; even if there is no extant documentary evidence
for this journey, it would seem inconceivable that he did
not at some point after Diego's death return to secure permissions
from his superiors for what was now his new venture at Prouilhe.
The monastic community had by now acquired a sufficiently
solid economic base to allow it to expand. The statistics
we have reveal 12 sisters at the outset (of which 9 were probably
Cathar converts) which had grown to 20 in 1211.
It would have been an option for Dominic at this stage to
move his male preaching companions off the site, and house
them, for example, in one of the houses vacated by the sisters
in Fanjeaux. This he did not do, and we must surely take it
as a deliberate choice on his part to keep the two communities
in the one place. Was it a double community? Fr Vicaire argues
that it cannot be considered as such in the way that Fontevraud
or Sempringham were. as there was no common authority linking
the two. For one thing many of the preachers had left Dominic
after the death of Diego, and those who remained were not
religious linked to him by vows. Only the sisters were in
the process of being constituted as a religious community
at this stage, but it is important to note, despite legend
and or tradition, that Dominic was never their prior. The
sisters had their own prioress from the start; she is named
as such in the earliest documents, and Dominic acts only on
her behalf.
The monastery was to remain in a fairly fragile condition
for some ten years, not affiliated to any Order. Indeed the
earliest documents emanating from Bishop Foulque of Toulouse,
the diocese in which Prouilhe was situated at that time, show
clearly that the community was not fully canonically erected,
even if it is an anachronism to talk in such terms. In a document
dated May 1211, Foulque gives rights over the church at Bram
to the Prouilhe community, but not as monialibus. He refers
to them rather as 'dominahus converses religiose viventibus',
that is to say converted ladies living religiously. (There
is an early deed which refers to them as monialibus, but it
does not come from Bishop Foulque, their responsible bishop,
but from Bérenger bishop of Narbonne). To come back
to Foulque, he was obviously reluctant to grant these ladies
property rights in perpetuity. What we find at the beginnings
of Prouilhe is the granting of a life-time interest to certain
named individuals.
This whole state of affairs is fairly surprising, given that
William Claret, a Cistercian monk, is named in some of the
earliest deeds of gift as sharing with Dominic of Osma material
responsibility for the sisters at Prouilhe. It might have
been a convenient solution for Dominic to make the community
over to the Cistercians, as they had been so much involved
with the preaching mission any way. The fact that he did not
take this option would seem to argue in favour of Dominic's
already planning, or at least desiring, to do something new.
And besides, if he had made the monastery over to the Cistercians,
he would almost certainly have lost the refuelling facility
for his preachers. The very fact that the nuns of Prouilhe
were never affiliated to any other Order can be seen as an
argument in favour of the idea that Dominic at this early
stage was already starting to think about a religious entity
that would encompass both brothers and sisters, and that the
presence of two communities, one of nuns and one of preachers,
separate but on the same site appealed to him.
If one looks closely at all the documents concerning Prouilhe
between 1206 and 1216 a wide variety of terms is used to refer
to the buildings on the site: the church, the house, the place,
the holy preaching, then around 1213, the monastery or even
the abbey make an appearance, but then disappear, and the
earlier terms are used again. This all points to a degree
of uncertainty concerning the status of Prouilhe; as Simon
Tugwell has said: 'it was expected to become part of something
larger, and no longer an autonomous monastery with attached
clerics." (5) To use today's jargon, Dominic was already
going for the big picture.
So here we have as elements of Dominic's newness of vision,
preachers and sisters living on the same site, in a process
of becoming. He was obviously prepared to live with the possible
ambiguities and difficulties inherent in such a situation.
But this isn't all, for almost immediately, that is to say
as early as August 8 1207, there is incontrovertible evidence
for the presence of lay people living and working alongside
the preachers and the converted ladies at Prouilhe. Indeed
such an enterprise as the Holy Preaching was becoming would
clearly need help with the various tasks associated with subsistence
agriculture and housekeeping. Yet these lay people to whom
I am referring were not there simply as hired casual labourers.
No, and to my mind it is one of the most amazing things about
the early history of Prouilhe, that we have legal deeds by
which, in this pre-Order period, several married couples of
fairly humble origin from local villages - Villasavary and
Villepinte, that still exist just down the road - made a gift
of themselves and all their worldly goods. The earliest surviving
such document refers to 'Ermengard Godolina and her man',
and it is indeed even more interesting, given medieval society,
that the deed is in her name. She states that she is of sound
mind, and that of her own free will she gives her house and
all she has "to the Lord God, Blessed Mary, and all the
Saints of God and to the Holy Preaching, to Lord Dominic of
Osma and to all the brothers and sisters present today and
in the future". It reads very much like a form of profession,
but as there was no Order at this stage, there could be no
Third Order either. Notwithstanding, Dominic accepted these
people who gave themselves to the community of the Holy Preaching,
very much in the manner of Benedictine oblates The term 'Holy
Preaching' is frequently used in these early deeds of gift
which refer to "cunctis fratribus aique sororibus in
inonasterio de Prolano".
So, in the first ten years at Prouilhe, there were incontrovertibly
sisters, preachers, women aspiring to be nuns and lay men
and women living within the same enclosed space. We know it
was enclosed and not just houses in different parts of the
same village, as another deed of gift dated 1211 tells us
of one Isarn Bola, who donates to the Holy Preaching a house
within the enclosure of Prouilhe The gifts of these early
years were in fact many and varied: pieces of land, cattle,
and vineyards, one with the specific purpose of providing
income to purchase oil for the sanctuary lamp.
When Dominic moved his centre of activity away from the Lauragais
region to Toulouse in 1215, he left behind him a rapidly expanding
monastery: by 1258 the limit was fixed at 100, in 1269 at
140, and in 1283, 160.
A significant stage in the history of Prouilhe and important
for assessing the place of the nuns in the Order is the bull
of Innocent III, dated October 8, 1215. This is the first
papal document that marks the move towards the setting up
of an Order of Preachers and it concerns both the brothers
and the nuns. This document begins with greetings and apostolic
blessing addressed priori, fratribus et monialibus domus Sanctae
Mariae de Pruliano. And so here is the pope himself calling
the 'converted ladies' nuns and taking them under his protection,
along with the preachers. And yet this was not the standard
document for recognition of religious communities - the bull
Religiosam vitam eligentibus such as would be issued for the
friars later. On the one hand the property rights of Prouilhe
are confirmed, but it is referred to as domus, house, and
not monasterio.
A certain number of questions are still left open in 1215
and 1216. "Dominic was essentially a pragmatist, in no
undue hurry to tie up all the loose ends in some great scheme."
(6) No provision is made for the lay people at this stage.
What used to be known as the Third Order was not to come into
being officially at this stage.
All of this brings us to the question that surfaces from
time to time: given the fairly mixed situation during the
first ten years at Prouilhe, with sisters, preachers and lay
people living on the same site, albeit separately. did Dominic
actually intend to found an enclosed monastery of contemplative
nuns and a religious Order for men, or did he actually aspire
to something different, something that would have been even
more radically new than the Order of Preachers that came down
to us, and that this more radical option was turned down by
the Pope. This idea was first mooted by the German Dominican
Scheeben in the 1920's. Simon Tugwell has tackled it on several
occasions. In 1991 he considered the possibility that the
Holy Preaching could not be recognised by the Church as an
entity, but only in its component parts, i.e., on the one
hand a monastery of enclosed nuns and on the other and Order
of Friars Preachers. But in his most recent article in Archivum
of 2004 he states that there is actually no proof that Dominic
asked the Pope for anything other than what was granted by
Rome. Nonetheless, it is interesting to speculate, and the
very fact that all the questions about the future of the preachers
and the nuns were not all neatly tied up on the spot in 1215,
is at least grounds for thinking that the situation was viewed
as unusual - which indeed it was - and that in any case time
was needed to get things right.
To my mind, Scheeben was possibly asking the wrong questions:
even if we have no hard evidence that Dominic was trying to
do something revolutionary in terms of canon law or the nature
of female religious life, that does not mean that there was
nothing new or revolutionary about the enterprise. In a recent
television interview a Dominican historian was asked 'And
so was St Dominic a revolutionary?' No', came the answer,
he was a saint, but with that revolutionary quality common
to all saints'. The newness of Dominic's foundation at Prouilhe
is surely to be found in the very identity of the first sisters.
The radicality of Dominic's vision led him to conceive of
a monastery as a work of mercy - misericordia - in action.
If he converted women who belonged to Cathar convents for
'Perfects', some equivalent form of Catholic religious life,
of equal rigour, had to be on offer. And what is more, it
had to be free of charge as there could be no dowry provided
by Cathar families.
And surely another key element in the newness of Dominic's
vision lies in the notion of synergy, of complementarity.
Indeed, considering the foundations made during his lifetime,
it would seem clear that Dominic was keen for there to be
a convent of nuns in fairly close proximity to the convents
of friars. We only have to look at the case of Toulouse, where
as early as 1215 and the acquisition of the house of Pierre
Seilhan, there was at the Porte Arnaud Bernard a hospice intended
to accommodate dominarum conversarum, converted ladies, exactly
the same expression as was used in some early documents concerning
Prouilhe. Unfortunately, this hospice disappeared in 1217
in the uprising of Toulouse. Madrid and Rome had convents
of both friars and nuns before the death of Dominic, and then
there are those unforgettable words of his recorded in the
Chronicles of San Sisto in which he asked the friars what
they thought about building a monastery for nuns in Bologna.
After praying, he gave his own opinion which was: "My
brothers, we really must build a monastery for the ladies,
even if it means delaying the building our own". Unfortunately
this principle of separate but 'neighbouring' communities
of friars and nuns seems to have been lost sight of fairly
rapidly after the death of the founder. Some early monasteries,
even in France (Montargis founded in 1245 and Saint-Pardoux
in 1293, for example) were established in remote locations
far from a convent of friars, and on the contrary, Paris,
an important Dominican centre from the outset, and even Toulouse,
had to wait until the 17th century before seeing a monastery
of nuns of the Order founded within its walls.
As far as Prouilhe is concerned; Simon Tugwell maintains
that Dominic probably was thinking of a classic style of monastic
life. It seems probable that he wrote down the customs of
the sisters of Prouilhe between 1216 and 1218. And indeed
his own letter to the nuns of Madrid written in 1220, not
so many years later, expresses what is really a very traditional
view of female monastic life.
To return to Prouilhe, the community of preachers on the
site was duly erected as a convent of the Order in 1218. That
in itself does not mean Prouilhe become a double community,
as there continued to be two distinct governments: a prior
and a prioress. And yet if there had been no bond, there would
have been no point in erecting a convent of friars on the
site of the monastery. The link was a) historical, as both
were founded by St Dominic, and b) institutional, centred
on the successor of St Dominic, that is, the figure of the
Master of the Order. This is perhaps the key to understanding
the notion of 'doubleness' inherent in our Order. Friars and
sisters are linked not by a common authority locally - their
systems of government being separate and different - but the
link is established via the Master in a form of vow that was
common. I say was, because in the Constitutions of the Nuns
published in 1930 by Master Gillet, their form of profession
was changed from its centuries old version. according to which
the nuns made profession to their prioress as representative
of the Master. In the new version, profession is made to the
prioress and to the master - so unfortunately we now find
ourselves in a filioque kind of situation, which will doubtless
be resolved in due course. That is one of the consolations
of having 800 years of history - it makes all things relative.
If Dominic had seen responsibility for sisters as a handicap
to the preaching mission, as later friars did in the famous
cura monialium disputes in the 1230's, he would surely have
organised things differently from the outset, and done everything
possible to incorporate the sisters independently into an
already existing religious Order as soon as possible. As we
have seen, this was an option that he did not take up at the
time. In 1235 the sisters of Prouilhe protested to Pope Gregory
IX about the withdrawal of friars from their monastery. The
pope, obviously reflecting the tradition the nuns had communicated
to him, wrote in a bull of April 1236 that "as previously.
out of respect for the memory of Blessed Dominic... friars
are to take care of the nuns of St Mary of Prouilhe, who were
the first to be drawn into your Order by your holy founder,
after he had caught them in the nets of his doctrine and drawn
them away from the turbulences of the world to the blessed
shores where their souls delight in the suavity of eternal
rest.." This papal bull is interesting in two respects:
the reference to Dominic catching the first sisters in the
nets of his doctrine would seem to speak in favour of the
idea of their being converted from heresy by his preaching.
Secondly, the expression "drawn into your Order"
is unambiguous: the nuns are part of the same Order of Preachers
as the friars, and hence their care can in no way be considered
as an outside activity'.
So what does the early history of Prouilhe tell us of Dominic's
newness of vision of an Order embracing both friars and nuns
in one common mission? As Franz Muller, the provincial of
Switzerland has said: "In realising his project, Dominic
shows himself not only capable of distinguishing between what
is essential and what is accidental. but also of learning
from experience." He was both audacious and prudent.
The status of Prouilhe as a refuelling depot, with its early
practicalities such as hospitality during preaching missions
or financial support of the friars in their mendacity would
seem to be only a partial answer. From what we have seen,
the monastery clearly had an apostolic purpose in its own
right: it became directly implicated in Dominic's work of
salvation by the very fact that it admitted converts from
heresy. And at the same time, the prayers of the sisters were
complementary to the preaching mission in that they were in
themselves efficacious for the salvation of souls. These women
of the Order were part of its mission from the outset, and
by no means just a pious adjunct. This same consideration
can be applied by extension to the laity, who, as we have
seen, was indeed already present at Prouilhe from 1207 onwards,
even if they were not officially recognised in 1215 but in
due course granted a rule by Master Munio de Zamora in 1285.
Thus it is surely not an exaggeration to suggest that Prouilhe
is not just the first fruits of the Order, in so far as it
was the site of its first religious community, but rather
that the Holy Preaching laid the foundations for what has
been called - and indeed called for the centuries - the Dominican
family. The term is used quite unselfconsciously in the 17th
and 19 centuries). These are surely grounds enough for refuting
those sceptics who like to see in the notion of a Dominican
family some invention of the late 20 century.
Perhaps an even more challenging lesson to be learnt from
the history of the early years of Prouilhe is the idea of
accepting to be in a process of becoming, which may go on
for some time. This necessarily means accepting a degree of
fragility, vulnerability. This is how the first sisters of
Prouilhe lived. For what we are to become is rarely fixed
at the outset; we become it, we shape it ourselves day by
day, in the daily activities that confer meaning on our existences.
(7)
I'd like to conclude with a quotation from our brother cardinal
Yves Congar who wrote: "History teaches us not to be
surprised at anything, but rather to expect that anything
might happen, because it already did. Its realism becomes
a healthy relativism. Sometimes we discover that what we took
to be a tradition going back to time immemorial dates from
only the day before yesterday. And we learn through examples
from the past that what is new often gets a bad reception,
simply because it surprises or upsets habits. History is not
edifying, it's a school of virility." (8)
My personal conviction is that what we can learn from the
history of Prouilhe belongs much more to the present than
to the past.
(1) Simon TUGWELL, 'Friars and Canons: the earliest Dominicans
in Monastic Studies, the continuity of tradition, Bangor,
1991. p. 195
(2) Ibid.
(3) Simon TUGWELL, "For Whom was Prouilhe founded?",
APP, 2004, p.
(4) Simon TUGWELL, 'Friars and Canons: the earliest Dominicans
in Monastic Studies, the continuity of tradition, Bangor,
1991. p. 194
(5) Simon TUGWELL, MOPH XXVII, 1998. Bernardi Guidonis, Scripta
de Sancto Dominico, p. 73.
(6) TUGWELL, Friars and Canons: the earliest Dominicans'
in Monastic Studies, the continuity of tradition, Bangor,
1991, p. 205.
(7) Cf Yves BURDELOT, Devenir humain, Cerf, 2003, p.101.
(8) Yves CONGAR, Ce que gagne Ia culture de la foi à
Ia connaissance de l'histoire, dans Cahiers Saint Dominique.
n°, 2005, p. 25-26.
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