Medieval East Central Europe in a Comparative Perspective by Gerhard Jaritz Katalin Szende

Author:Gerhard Jaritz, Katalin Szende [Gerhard Jaritz, Katalin Szende]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781138923461
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2016-05-24T00:00:00+00:00

Pastoral care

Eventually, once the smoke of crusading conquests and the steam of missionary baptisms dissipated, Dominican life in the frontier provinces was probably identical to that of their fellow brethren in Western and Southern Europe. Nevertheless, long after Christianity had been firmly planted, Friars Preachers working in the convents closest to the border of the Western Church still seem to have taken on several pastoral tasks that were not an official part of their job. An ordinary Dominican friar in Europe had to engage with three types of pastoral services: saying mass, giving sermons and hearing confessions. But for those convents whose termini (adjacent rural districts in which fratres terminarii were sent out on a regular basis from the convent on a combined campaign of preaching and collecting alms) were sparsely populated with huge distances between parish churches, visiting Dominican friars often acted as substitute parish priests for the inhabitants. In Scandinavia, this was often the case in fishing communities living on remote islands off the northern coasts of Norway and Sweden with a resident Dominican friar serving as their community priest.31 From Sweden, Finland and Estonia we have several indications of Friars Preachers involved in baptism, a sacramental task otherwise strictly allocated to the secular clergy. However, as stated in a defensive reply from the convent in Tallinn to the complaints of secular clergy in the early sixteenth century, the Dominican fratres terminarii and the remote-living laypeople had no other choice: without them, new-born infants would have to be carried long distances to the nearest manned parish church in a harsh climate and would risk dying before being baptized.32 Although I have not found similar examples of such extended pastoral care performed by Friars Preachers in Polonia, Bohemia or Hungary, I would not be surprised to find evidence proving that it was exercised there as well.

Even within the urban districts, frontier Dominicans sometimes had to step in as pastoral curators due to a lack of secular clergy. The immense royal support for a new Dominican convent in Buda after the Mongol attacks on the city in 1241–42, which is said to have diminished the number of secular priests significantly, may therefore be linked to an acute need for Dominican help with overall pastoral care.33

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.