Dominican Republic, or San Domingo. See Santo Domingo.
Domin´icans, called also predicants, or
preaching friars (prædicatores), derived their name from their founder, St. Dominic. At their origin (1215, at Toulouse) they were governed by the rule of St. Augustine, perpetual silence, poverty, and fasting being enjoined upon them; and the principal object of their institution was to preach against heretics. Their distinctive dress consists of a white habit and scapular with a large black mantle, and hence they have been commonly known as Black Friars. They were almost from the first a mendicant order. They spread rapidly not only in Europe, but in Asia, Africa, and America. In England, where they founded their first house at Oxford, there were fifty-eight Dominican houses at the dissolution of the monasteries, and the Blackfriars locality in London took its name from one of their establishments. Four Popes, Innocent V, Benedict XI, Pius V, and Benedict XIII, were Dominicans, and the order produced some famous scholars, such as Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas. As fierce opponents and strenuous combatants against any departure from the teaching of the Catholic Church, the Dominicans were entrusted with the conduct of the Inquisition, and became formidable as managers of this ecclesiastical institution, which was committed exclusively to them in Spain, Portugal, and Italy. In 1425 they obtained permission to receive donations, and ceased to belong to the mendicant orders, paying more attention to politics and theological science. With the Franciscans, their great rivals, they divided the honour of ruling in Church and State till the sixteenth century, when the Jesuits gradually superseded them in the schools and courts. They obtained new importance in 1620 by being appointed to the censorship of books for the Church. Amongst notable Dominicans we may mention Savonarola, Las Casas, and Lacordaire, through whose efforts the order was revived in France in the nineteenth century. There are still establishments of the Dominicans both in England and Ireland, twenty-one houses for men and thirteen for women.—Bibliography: Caro, Saint Dominique et les Dominicains; A. T. Drane, The Life of St. Dominic, with a Sketch of the Dominican Order.
Left, Priest wearing domino over surplice, from brass plate at Bury St. Edmunds, 1514. Right, Lady wearing domino.
Dom´ino, formerly a dress worn by priests in the winter, which, reaching no lower than the shoulders, served to protect the face and head from the weather. At present it is a masquerade dress worn by gentlemen and ladies, consisting of a long silk mantle with wide sleeves and a masquing hood. The name is also given to a half-mask formerly worn on the face by ladies when travelling or at masquerades.
Dom´inoes, a game played with small flat rectangular pieces of ivory, about twice as long as they are broad. They are marked with spots varying in number. When one player leads by laying down a domino, the next must follow by placing alongside of it another which has the same number of spots on one of its sides. Thus if the first player lays down 6-4, the second may reply with 4-8, or 6-7, &c.; in the former case
he must turn in the 4, placing it beside the 4 of the first domino, so that the numbers remaining out will be 6-8; in the latter case he must turn in the 6 to the 6 in like manner, leaving 4-7, to which his opponent must now respond. The player who cannot follow suit loses his turn, and the object of the game is to get rid of all the dominoes in hand, or to hold fewer spots than your opponent when the game is exhausted by neither being able to play. The game was introduced into Europe about the middle of the eighteenth century.
