A Cathedral of Constitutional Law

In 1965, the Belgian Dominican friar Antoninus Hendrik Thomas published a critical reconstruction of the earliest Constitutions of the Dominican Order. Meticulously he pointed out where Saint Dominic and his first brothers had borrowed material from other religious and secular juridical systems, as well as where they had been original, thus uncovering the foundational charism of the Order. Until today, Fr Thomas’s work is considered by researchers in the field as unmissable. Unfortunately, many of his insights are difficult to access by a wider audience, since Fr Thomas wrote his work in his native language, Dutch. To celebrate the eighth centenary of the death of Saint Dominic in 2021, the Belgian Dominican province has therefore decided to publish Fr Thomas’s work in an English translation, as well as to complement this with a selection of essays written by contemporary experts, who – from their particular perspectives – interact with Fr Thomas’s main insights. The essays deal with the historiographical tradition to which Fr Thomas belonged, the Premonstratensian, Cistercian and secular sources of the Constitutions, the manuscript tradition and editing process of the earliest Constitutions, and their reception in the first century of the Order and by the late medieval observant movement.

Introduction, Anton-Marie Milh OP & Mark Butaye OP

Sigla

PART I: Essays

‘Et ut maxima est Historiae necessitas, non minor est utilitas’. Belgian Dominican Historians in the 19^th and 20^th Centuries

Anton-Marie Milh OP

État actuel des recherches sur les statuts de l’Ordre de Prémontré aux 12^e et 13^e siècles

Herman Janssens O.Praem.

Les cisterciens et l’essor de la pratique statutaire, des origines au début du 14^e siècle

Alexis Grélois

Les dominicains, les colleÌges et les universiteìs. Une pauvreteì savante au 13^e sieÌcle

† Laurent Waelkens & Wouter Druwé

A Manuscript and Its Editions. AGOP XIV A4, folios 28^r-47^r

† Wolfram Hoyer OP

Les constitutions dominicaines au Moyen Âge. Histoire et perspectives éditoriales

Florent Cygler

La première législation dominicaine dans les récits fondateurs de la mémoire de l’Ordre

Anne Reltgen-Tallon

Reformatio or deformatio? The First Observant Friars and the Dominican constitutions in the Light of Henry of Bitterfeld’s Treatise on Reform of the Order

Anna Zajchowska-Bołtromiuk

PART II: Antoninus Hendrik Thomas OP, The Earliest Constitutions of the Dominicans. Antecedents, Text, Sources, Origins and Development (1215-1237), With an Edition of the Text. Translated into English by Brian Heffernan