This multidisciplinary collection of essays on the English Dominican Province—which, prior to the creation of independent provinces for Scotland (in 1481) and Ireland (in 1536) encompassed England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland—is a welcome addition to scholarship on the mendicant orders. While the tireless endeavors of Michael Robson and Richard Copsey have greatly enhanced our knowledge of the Franciscans and Carmelites in medieval Britain and Ireland, the Dominicans have received much less attention in recent scholarship. There has been no book-length study of the English black friars since William A. Hinnebusch's 1951 monograph on The Early English Friars Preachers, and no volume addressing the English Dominican Province as a whole for 100 years. Eleanor J. Giraud and J. Cornelia Linde's Companion therefore forms a much-needed counterpoint to the two recent collections of essays on the English province of the Franciscans, orchestrated by Robson [The English Province of the Franciscans (1224–c.1350), ed. Michael Robson (Leiden, Netherlands, 2017); The Franciscan Order in the Medieval English Province and Beyond, ed. Michael Robson and Patrick Zutshi (Amsterdam, 2018)].
This volume provides a wide-ranging overview of existing knowledge and recent research on the Dominicans in Britain and Ireland. Since the English province housed only one nunnery (Dartford Priory) down to 1500, the collection naturally focuses on communities of friars. It contains detailed surveys of the order's houses and personnel in England (Jens Röhrkasten), Ireland (Anne-Julie Lafaye), Scotland (Richard Oram), and Wales (Janet Burton and Karen Stöber); two insightful chapters on the friars’ pastoral work as preachers (Steven Watts, with a focus on the English sermons of the Dominican master-general, Jordan of Saxony) and confessors (Andrew Reeves); studies of the educational (J. Cornelia Linde), intellectual (John T. Slotemaker and Jeffrey C. Witt), and artistic (Alexander Collins) activities of the order; and a further two essays on Dominican music (Eleanor J. Giraud) and liturgy (Nigel J. Morgan). The chapters are, without exception, learned and accessible. The majority address the entire period from the arrival of the Dominicans in the British Isles in the early 1220s down to the sixteenth-century dissolutions, but a cluster of essays on the Dominicans in England (dealing with their relations with the Crown, intellectual life, preaching, and pastoral care) focus solely on the earlier phases of the order's history.
The task of most of the contributors is complicated by scarcity of evidence. The loss of the province's chapter acts obscures many facets of Dominican life in Britain and Ireland, including the friars’ discipline and their educational activities at local and provincial levels. There is, likewise, very limited extant material evidence connected to the houses of the English province. These evidential deficiencies are addressed with frankness and sensitivity throughout the volume, but do also allow for in-depth discussion of the fragments which remain—for instance, with Morgan's survey of the twenty known liturgical manuscripts from the province, Collins's analysis of the handful of major artistic survivals linked with the British and Irish black friars, and Giraud's examination of the single available volume with musical notation. The volume's chapters on Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, moreover, are able to provide a fairly comprehensive survey of the surviving material for medieval Dominican life and practice in those territories.
A number of general conclusions emerge from the collection. The Dominicans of the English Province are shown to have been closely integrated into the wider order, as manifested (for instance) in a high degree of liturgical uniformity and educational, intellectual, and artistic interchange. However, this did not prevent the development of local traditions and traits. National and local saints were included in the calendars of British friaries; distinctive architectural features can be identified (such as the frequent use of chapels projecting from the nave in Irish churches of the order); and it is argued that there was too much diversity in the thought of English black friars to justify the notion of a single “Dominican school.”
The authors consistently emphasise the positive contribution of the black friars to wider society, as preachers, confessors, educators, diplomats, and in service of the dead. The Dominicans attracted generous lay patronage and maintained close and fruitful relations with local populations, aristocrats, and the Scottish and English Crowns. The volume's chapters on Scotland and Ireland illustrate how lay and royal support for the black friars remained strong down to the sixteenth century. The privileging of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in several of the essays on England, however, means that the Dominicans’ evolving position in late medieval English society and culture is not fully addressed in the collection. The English black friars’ pastoral activities in the post–Black Death period receive little attention (for instance, there are just two passing references to the celebrated preacher John Bromyard), and their late medieval role in the universities likewise remains largely unexplored. The theme of antifraternalism also features little.
As a whole, however, this collection provides a very useful introduction to the varied activities of, and sources for, the English Dominican province between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries. It contains a number of helpful tables and maps, and the color illustrations are particularly welcome (and partially justify the high price of the volume). The Companion to the English Dominican Province fills an important niche in the scholarship on the mendicants and will serve as an essential point of reference for the study of the black friars in Britain and Ireland for the foreseeable future.
