A church dictionary

by Walter Farquhar Hook

The order of the Dominicans, after the death of their founder, made a very considerable progress in Europe and elsewhere. They therefore erected four new provinces, namely, those of Greece, Poland, Denmark, and the Holy Land. Afterwards the number of monasteries increased to such a degree, that the order was divided into forty-five provinces, having spread itself into all parts of the world. It has produced a great number of martyrs, confessors, bishops, and holy virgins: there are reckoned of this order 3 popes, 60 cardinals, 150 archbishops, 800 bishops, besides the masters of the sacred palace, who have always been Dominicans.

There are nuns of this order, who owe their foundation to St. Dominic himself, who, whilst he was labouring on the conversion of the Albigenses, was so much concerned to see that some gentlemen of Guienne, not having wherewith to maintain their daughters, either sold or gave them to be brought up by heretics, that, with the assistance of the archbishop of Narbonne, and other charitable persons, he laid the foundation of a monastery at Prouille, where those poor maids might be brought up, and supplied with all necessaries for their subsistence. The habit of these religious was a white robe, a tawny mantle, and a black veil. Their founder obliged them to work at certain hours of the day, and particularly to spin yarn and flax. The nuns of this order had above 130 houses in Italy, 45 in France, 50 in Spain, 15 in Portugal, 40 in Germany, and many in Poland, Russia, and other countries. They never eat flesh, excepting in sickness; they wear no linen, and lie on straw beds; but many monasteries have mitigated this austerity.

In the year 1221, Dominic sent Gilbert du Fresney, with twelve brothers, into England, where they founded their first house at Oxford the same year, and soon after another at London. In the year 1276, the mayor and aldermen of the city of London gave them two streets by the river Thames, where they had a very commodious monastery; whence that place is still called Black Friars. They had monasteries likewise at Warwick, Canterbury, Stamford, Chelmsford, Dunwich, Ipswich, Norwich, Thetford, Exeter, Brecknock, Langley, and Guildford.

The Dominicans, being fortified with an authority from the court of Rome to preach and take confessions, made great encroachments upon the English bishops and the parochial clergy, insisting upon a liberty of preaching wherever they thought fit. And many persons of quality, especially women, deserted from the parochial clergy, and confessed to the Dominicans, insomuch that the character of the secular clergy was greatly sunk thereby. This innovation made way for a dissoluteness of manners; for the people, being under no necessity of confessing to their parish priest, broke through their duty with less reluctancy, in hopes of meeting with a Dominican confessor, those friars being generally in a travelling motion, making no stay where they came, and strangers to their penitents.—Brouqhton.

DONATISTS. Schismatics, originally partisans of Donatus, an African by birth, and bishop of Casæ Nigræ, in Numidia. A secret hatred against Cecilian, elected bishop of Carthage, notwithstanding the opposition of Donatus, excited the latter to form one of the most pernicious schisms that ever disturbed the peace of the Church. He accused Cecilian of having delivered up the sacred books to the Pagans, and pretended that his election was thereby void, and all those who adhered to him heretics. Under this false pretext of zeal for the Church, he set up for the head of a party, and about the year 312, taught that baptism, administered by heretics, was null; that the Church was not infallible; that it had erred in his time; and that he was to be the restorer of it. But a council, held at Arles in 314, acquitted Cecilian, and declared his election valid.

The schismatics, irritated at this sentence, refused to acquiesce in the decisions of the council; and the more firmly to support their cause, they thought it better to subscribe to the opinions of Donatus, and openly to declaim against the Catholics: they gave out, that the Church was become prostituted; they rebaptized the Catholics; they trod under foot the eucharist consecrated by priests of the Catholic communion; they overthrew their altars, burned their churches, and ran up and down decrying the Church. (See Circumcellians.) They had chosen into the place of Cecilian one Majorinus; but he dying soon after, they brought in one Donatus, different from him of Casæ Nigræ.

This new head of the cabal used so much violence against the Catholics, that the schismatics took their name from him. But as they could not prove that they composed a true Church, they sent one of their bishops to Rome, who secretly took upon him the title of bishop of Rome. This bishop being dead, the Donatists appointed him a successor. They attempted likewise to send some bishops into Spain, that they might say, their Church began to spread itself everywhere; but it was only in Africa that it could gain any considerable footing, and this want of diffusion was much insisted on by their opponents as an argument against their pretensions.

After many vain efforts to crush this schism, the emperor Honorius assembled a council of bishops at Carthage, in the year 410; where a disputation was held between seven of each party. Marcellinus, the emperor’s deputy, who presided in that assembly, decided in favour of the Catholics, and ordered them to take possession of all the churches, which the Donatist bishops had seized on by violence, or otherwise. This decree exasperated the Donatists; but the Catholic bishops used so much wisdom and prudence, that they insensibly brought over most of those who had strayed from the bosom of the Church. It appears, however, that the schism was not quite extinct till the 7th century.—Broughton.

DONATIVE. A donative is when the king, or any subject by his licence, founds a church or chapel, and ordains that it shall be merely in the gift or disposal of the patron, and vested absolutely in the clerk by the patron’s deed of donation, without presentation, institution, or induction. This is said to have been anciently the only way of conferring ecclesiastical benefices in England; the method of institution by the bishop not being established more early than the time of Archbishop Becket in the reign of Henry II. And therefore Pope Alexander III., (Decretal, 1. 3, t. 7, c. 3,) in a letter to Becket, severely inveighs against the prava consuetudo, as he calls it, of investiture conferred by the patron only: this however shows what was then the common usage. Others contend, that the claim of the bishops to institution is as old as the first planting of Christianity in this island; and, in proof of it, they allege a letter from the English nobility to the pope in the reign of Henry III., recorded by Matthew Paris, (A. D. 1239,) which speaks of presentation to the bishop as a thing immemorial. The truth seems to be that, where a benefice was to be conferred on a mere layman, he was first presented to the bishop, in order to receive ordination, who was at liberty to examine and refuse him: but where the clerk was already in orders, the living was usually vested in him by the sole donation of the patron; until about the middle of the twelfth century, when the pope endeavoured to introduce a kind of feudal dominion over ecclesiastical benefices, and, in consequence of that, began to claim and exercise the right of institution universally as a species of spiritual investiture.

By the act 14 & 15 Vict. c. 97, sec. 9, the right of perpetual nomination of an incumbent may be acquired by the person or body, their heirs, &c., who shall procure a church to be erected and endowed.