In the past forty years, studies of Dominic and of the birth of his Order have been profoundly renewed, especially in France, Great Britain and Italy. To the benefit of research in these areas, the written accounts of the history of the beginnings of the Dominicans were collected in a learned, wide-ranging volume by Nicole Bérieu and Bernard Hodel (Saint Dominique de l’ordre des frères prêcheurs, Cerf, 2019, 1768 pp.). An edition of the Dominican sources has also been published this year in Italy (Domenico di Caleruega. Le fonti del XIII secolo, Agostino Paravicini Bagliani, Gianni Festa e Francesco Santi (eds.), SISMEL, Firenze, 2021). What was still missing, however, was a new account of the origins, a key that was at once historically reliable and easy to use for all those who are interested in Dominican history and who want to discover Dominic and his work.
In the year which marks the eighth centenary of the death of St Dominic (1221), this book offers a life of St Dominic based on the mediaeval sources, but also a presentation of his mission as it was seen in the Middle Ages and as it has never ceased to be renewed down to our own time. A novelty of the book is that it also offers a rich iconography of the Father of the Preachers taken from original sources.
The life, the message and the images of St Dominic show him to the reader in a new light. The text is currently being translated into Spanish and English.
As for Sr Paola, of the Monastery of Crea, in her book Nascosto nella luce (Hidden in Light), in Italian, she shows us the figure of St Dominic through an approach inspired by the memories and the direct experience of two of Dominic’s first disciples: Jordan of Saxony, his first successor as Master of the Order, and Sr Cecilia, one of the first nuns of the monastery in Rome, which subsequently was transferred to Bologna.
Br Julián de Cos Pérez de Camino has also contributed to the Jubilee with his book in Spanish Historia de la espiritualidad dominicana, in which he presents the founder’s life in the form of a summary of the spirituality of Dominic and of his Order and a rich historical overview of the separate branches of the Order, individuals, authors, topics, problems, etc. This 350-page book was published by the author himself, and can be downloaded free of charge, in PDF and ePub form, at https://www.dominicos.org/estudio/recurso/predicadores-historia-de-la-espiritualidad-dominicana/
Gianni Festa and Augustin Laffay, San Domenico. Padre dei Predicatori. La vita, la santità, l’eredità; Introduction by Gerard Francisco Timoner III, Master of the Order etc., Edizioni San Domenico, Bologna, 2021, 20 €.
ISBN 978-88-5545-023-2
Gianni Festa and Augustin Laffay, Saint Dominique et sa mission, preface by Gerard Francisco Timoner III, Éditions du Cerf, Paris, 2021, 20 €.
ISBN 978-2-204-14588-6
Paola Panetta, Nascosto nella luce, by Gerard Francisco Timoner III, Master of the Order, Edizioni Velar, 64 pp, €7, https://www.velar.it/libro/nascosto-nella-luce//
Julián de Cos Pérez de Camino, Historia de la espiritualidad dominicana, https://www.dominicos.org/estudio/recurso/predicadores-historia-de-la-espiritualidad-dominicana/