Dominican Order: Encyclopedia II - Dominican Order - Modern Period

Dominican Order - Modern Period

The modern period consists of the three centuries between the religious revolution at the beginning of the sixteenth century (Protestantism) and the French Revolution with its consequences. The Order of Preachers, like the Church itself, felt the shock of these destructive revolutions but its vitality enabled it to withstand them successfully. At the beginning of the sixteenth century the order was on the way to a genuine renaissance when the Revolutionary upheavals occurred. The progress of heresy cost it six or seven provinces and several hundreds of convents, but the discovery of the New World opened up a fresh field of activity. Its gains in America and those which arose as a consequence of the Portuguese conquests in Africa and the Indies far exceeded the losses of the order in Europe, and the seventeenth century saw its highest numerical development. The sixteenth century was a great doctrinal century, and the movement lasted beyond the middle of the eighteenth. In modern times the order lost much of its influence on the political powers, which had universally fallen into absolutism and had little sympathy for the democratic constitution of the Preachers. The Bourbon Courts of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were particularly unfavourable to them until the suppression of the Society of Jesus. In the eighteenth century there were numerous attempts at reform which created, especially in France, geographical confusion in the administration. During the eighteenth century the tyrannical spirit of the European Powers and, still more, the spirit of the age lessened the number of recruits and the fervour of religious life. The French Revolution ruined the order in France, and the crises which more or less rapidly followed considerably lessened or wholly destroyed numerous provinces.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Modern Period", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki