The Dominicans in the British Isles and Beyond: A New History of the English Province of the Friars Preachers

Richard Finn

Mar 2023 · Cambridge University Press

About this ebook

The history of the Dominicans in the British Isles is a rich and fascinating one. Eight centuries have passed since the Friars Preachers landed on England's shores. Yet no book charting the history of the English Province has appeared for close on a hundred years. Richard Finn now sets right this neglect. He guides the reader engagingly and authoritatively through the medieval, early modern and contemporary periods: from the arrival of the first Black Friars – and the Province's 1221 foundation by Gilbert de Fresnay – to Dominican missions to the Caribbean and Southern Africa and seismic changes in church and society after Vatican II. He discusses the Province's medieval resilience and sudden Reformation collapse; attempts in the 1650s to restore it; its Babylonian Exile in the Low Countries; its virtual disappearance in the nineteenth century; and its unlikely modern revival. This is an essential work for medievalists, theologians and historians alike.

About the author

Richard Finn, OP, joined the Dominicans in 1985. He served as Regent of Studies for the English Province from 2008 to 2012, and as Novice Master from 2012 to 2016. Author of Almsgiving in the Later Roman Empire (Oxford University Press, 2006) and Asceticism in the Graeco-Roman World (Cambridge University Press, 2009), he is also the Order's Provincial Archivist in Blackfriars, Oxford.