St. Thomas Aquinas on Mercy and Justice

Reverend Thomas Petri, OP, Vice President and Academic Dean and Instructor of Moral Theology and Pastoral Studies at The Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, DC, spoke at the Midwest Catholic Family Conference here in Wichita, Kansas this weekend. I attended his session titled “St. Thomas Aquinas: Mercy Flows from Being Loved” on Saturday morning.

Hearing the devout theology of St. Thomas Aquinas on any religious subject is always a great pleasure and joy. Father Petri provided the requisite clarity and application throughout this presentation. With St. Thomas Aquinas as our guide, we were reminded of how great and unlike us God is and yet how much He loves us, in spite of the fact that He does not need us or any of our response at all, since He is perfection. He does not owe us either justice or mercy, but He gives them to us--and they must be present and balanced together--simply because He created us, He loves us, and He wants us to be with Him forever. Father Petri demonstrated that this Thomistic precision in thinking about God and our relationship to Him is not esoteric or theoretical; it applies to our life and our relationship with God and with our neighbor.

This article from The Catholic World Report by Professor Thomas Heinrich Stark covers some of same material Father Petri explained:

Thomas adopts Augustine's definition of mercy as compassion in declaring, “Mercy is the compassion of our heart when considering the misery of another person”.

However, mercy is not confined to a mere sense or feeling of compassion. Rather someone is only merciful if he actively strives to avert the misery of others that touches his heart, in the same way that he tries to evert a misery that oppresses him himself. Because it is the distinctive feature of the affective compassion of mercy, that it—as Thomas expresses it—“moves us to do what we can do to help the other.” Only if the affective aspect of compassion is complemented by the effective aspect producing a truly helpful assistance can mercy manifest itself as that act of charity that recognizes the other—again, as Thomas puts it—as “another self”. Therefore only if the feeling of compassion is ordered according to the rules of reason, does it become the virtue of mercy. . . .

Now a specific feature of the ethics of St. Thomas is that it puts compassion and justice into the closest connection possible to each other. “Justice without mercy is cruel”, says Thomas. But, “Mercy without justice is the mother of dissolution"—and, one might add, therefore cruel as well. This close connection between justice and mercy is not sufficiently obvious in human life. The reason for this is not merely the fact that people are often merciless. Rather, it is much more due to the finite character of human existence, which makes all the virtues in the life of the soul appear to be separated from each other and their exercise separate as well. This of course also applies to the virtues of justice and charity, the juxtaposition of which may highlight this fact of separation with particular clarity, so that justice and mercy may sometimes appear to us as as downright opposing intentions.

The situation is different with God. “The work of divine justice always presupposes the work of mercy and it founded in it,” says Thomas. So if God is merciful, then He is not in opposition to justice. That is because in God, unlike in man, justice and mercy are not separated from one another according to their being, although due to our human means of knowing them we must continue to distinguish them by name, and thus speak of them with distinct terms. In short, we are not able to grasp the nature of God in its entirety and in its unity but always only from a certain, finite perspective. So we recognize God as love, as omnipotent, as omniscient, as merciful, and so forth, without being able adequately to imagine that all these attributions form an inseparable unity, because they are identical with each according to their being. That means we have a knowledge of God that overstrains our imagination.

Read the rest there. In the course of his presentation, Father Petri observed that we have to remember that the only way that we receive any grace is through grace; we cannot earn it by pious practices or other means. He brought up terms coined by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI: the Pelagianism of the pious and the Pelagianism of the bourgeois. Tracey Rowland explains these terms:

[Pelagianism is the heresy named for Pelagius, a Roman monk (not an ordained priest) who might have been born in England. He believed that we could save ourselves; that Original Sin had not weakened us so that we need a Savior!]

First: Pelagianism of the bourgeois:

The use of the word "bourgeois" in the first label has nothing to do with being a member of the middle class - at least, not necessarily. Rather, the bourgeois mentality is about fitting in with contemporary social norms and being practical and efficient in one's use of resources. The bourgeois temperament is calculating, pragmatic, focused on efficiency and predictable outcomes. It discourages moral heroism as unreasonable and gives priority to the goods of efficacy over the goods of excellence. . . .

Transferred to the spiritual plane, the problem Pope Benedict identifies with the bourgeois Pelagian is the attitude that God doesn't really expect people to be saints. Benedict diagnoses this mentality as evidence of the spiritual disease of acedia - a kind of anxious vertigo that overcomes people when they are presented with the idea that they have been made in the image of God to grow into the likeness of Christ.

Then: Pelagianism of the pious:

The alternative spiritual pathology is that of the pious Pelagian. This type of person seeks a relationship with God that is modelled on contemporary professional practices - in particular the practice of enhancing one's curriculum vitae. The pious Pelagian performs certain works and says certain prayers and expects to get a return on his spiritual investment. While the bourgeois Pelagian is guilty of the sin of despair, regarding sanctity as an impossible pursuit, the pious Pelagian is guilty of the sin of presumption, assuming that he can have a contractual relationship with God. The bourgeois Pelagian is particularly lacking in the theological virtue of hope, the pious Pelagian is quite anaemic in relation to the theological virtue of love. Both have a warped understanding of faith.

I do agree that, as Father Petri noted, we in the USA, with our can-do, individualistic, self-confident attitude, can easily fall prey to the Pelagianism of the pious-- thinking that we can earn our way to Heaven; God has give us our due. We can be too confident in our own power and lack humility. Citing St. Thomas Aquinas, he said that we have to acknowledge our failures and sins and develop the virtue of humility.

This seems an appropriate reflection on the feast of St. Dominic, the founder of the Dominican Order, which is celebrating its 800th anniversary this year. 

St. Dominic, pray for us!

St. Thomas Aquinas, pray for us!

All the Dominican saints and blesseds, pray for us!

The "Cardinal of Norfolk" Dies

The life of Philip Thomas Howard, O.P., Cardinal of Norfolk, Grand Almoner to Catherine of Braganza, Queen-consort of King Charles II., and restorer of the English province of Friar-Preachers or Dominicans , compiled from original manuscripts, with a sketch of the rise, missions, and influence of the Dominican order, and of its early history in England (as told by Father C.F. Raymond Palmer, OP) ended on June 17, 1694. He was named for his great grandfather St. Philip Howard, the martyr in chains--yet he was raised as an Anglican, becoming a Catholic after meeting his Catholic grandmother, Alethia Talbot, who lived in the Netherlands during and after the English Civil War while he was on his Grand Tour of Europe. His uncle was Blessed William Howard, executed in the hysteria of the Popish Plot.

According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, Philip Cardinal Howard 

. . . was the third son of Henry Frederick Howard, afterwards Earl of Arundel and Surrey and head of the House of Norfolk (the dukedom of Norfolk being forfeited, though restored in 1660). The mother of Philip was Elizabeth, daughter of the Duke of Lennox; he was thus allied to the reigning sovereign of England. At the age of sixteen he joined the Dominican Order in Italy, was professed at Rome, 1646, and took the name of Thomas in religion. Residing at Naples for his studies, he was chosen to deliver a Latin address to the general chapter of his order in Rome. He justified the choice delivering a fervent address on the conversion of England, which led to a decree being passed by the chapter, urging provincials and priors to do all they could to receive English, Irish, and Scotch novices into the order, with a view to its preservation in those countries. He was thenceforth wholly devoted to the conversion of England and to the progress of his order in that country. He was ordained priest in 1652, and with the sanction of his superiors set himself to carry out the ideas he had matured in his mind. He founded the priory of Bornhem in Flanders, with a college for English youths attached to it, and was himself the first prior and novice master. He also founded at Vilvorde a convent of nuns of the Second Order of St. Dominic, now at Carisbrooke.

In the reign of Charles II Father Howard was made grand almoner to Queen Catherine of Braganza. He resided at St. James's Palace, with a salary of 500 pounds a year, and had a position of influence at Court. An outbreak of Puritan violence compelling him to leave England, he resumed his position as prior at Bornhem. He was made cardinal in 1675, by Pope Clement X, being assigned the title of S. Cecilia trans Tiberim, exchanged later for the Dominican church of S. Maria supra Minervam. He now took up his residence at Rome and entered into the service of the Universal Church, especially watching over the interests of the Catholic faith in England. 

In 1672 he was nominated by the Holy See as Vicar Apostolic of England with a see in partibus, but the appointment, owing to the opposition of the "English Chapter" to his being a vicar Apostolic, and the insistence that he should be a bishop with ordinary jurisdiction, was not confirmed. He was to have been Bishop of Helenopolis. In 1679 he was made Protector of England and Scotland. At his instance the Feast of St. Edward the Confessor was extended to the whole Church. He rebuilt the English College in Rome, and revised the rules of Douai College.

Cardinal Howard cooperated later with James II in the increase of vicars Apostolic in England from one to four, an arrangement which lasted till 1840, when the number was increased to eight by Gregory XVI. Burnet shows in his "History" that Cardinal Howard regretted the steps which led to the crisis in the reign of James II and which his counsels sought to avert. The cardinal's plans were thwarted and the ill-starred mission of the Earl of Castlemaine to Rome showed the rise of another spirit which he did not share. When the crisis he foresaw came, he had the consolation at least of knowing that his foundation at Bornhem was beyond the grasp of the new persecutors.

Cardinal Howard assisted at three conclaves, for the election of Innocent XI in 1676, Alexander VIII in 1689, and Innocent XII in 1691. He died in the twentieth year of his cardinalate, at the age of 64, and was buried in his titular church of S. Maria supra Minervam at Rome. His foundations in Flanders flourished till the French Revolution, when they were despoiled to a great extent, and were eventually transferred to England. The English Dominican Province looks to him as its father and restorer, and the American Province also regards him to a great extent in the same light. After his death the Master General, Father Antoninus Cloche, addressed a letter to the whole order, lamenting the loss of one who had done so great a work for the English Church and the order.

The Dominican Priory that moved from Vilvorde to Carisbrooke on the Isle of Wight is no longer occupied by Dominican nuns, but still serves a spiritual/religious purpose, according to the Carisbrooke Priory website:

Carisbrooke Priory was orginally the home of Dominican nuns who belonged to the Order of Preachers, founded in southern France by a Spaniard, Dominic of Guzman, at the beginning of the 13th Century.

St Dominic's Priory as it was then called was built in 1865-1866 for the Lady Countess of Clare, a devout convert to the Catholic faith and a tertiary. The Pugin influenced architect Gilbert Blount - who as a civil engineer had previously worked as a superintendent on the Thames Tunnel for Isambard Kingdom Brunel - built the Priory in Gothic style, and a number of interesting architectural features of the main building and its gateway have contributed to its Grade II listing.

The nuns lived at the Priory from December 1866 to October 1989 and were visited by a number of dignitaries including Queen Victoria. Many of the nuns were skilled needlewomen as the permanent exhibition of vestments now at Carisbrooke Castle clearly shows. Others translated books, illuminated scripts and later on set up a printing press for the production of Christmas and greetings cards and stationery. Their quiet life was centered around prayer and the Chapel was the focus of this.

The Priory was purchased by the Carisbrooke Priory Trust in April 1993. Founded as a registered charity it also became a company limited by guarantee in 2008.

More about the history of the Dominican order in England here.

Another Dominican Master: St. Antonino of Florence

From Dom Bede Jarrett, O.P.'s 1914 monograph, S. Antonino and Medieval Economics:

There is another shrine which the devout lover of S. Antonino finds perhaps more appropriate and more touching — his cell in S. Marco. Here within these walls, how much of that character was built up which has made him revered in Florence, as the most blessed of her Bishops for over a thousand years! We look round with affection and love to think how much it meant, when in those far-off days (which somehow here seem not quite so distant) the vigorous Prior wrought out so many plans for the well-being of his brethren and the city. In it are gathered now his vestments, the death-mask, some manuscripts (which it requires a persistent visitor to get hold of) in his execrable hand- writing, and an old portrait. . . . 

But in this "narrow cell" that S. Antonino had chosen for himself, Fra Angelico has painted a fresco. Its design was no doubt thought out by the friends in counsel; and the Prior must have stood and watched while the artist-friar in prayer worked out with his bright colouring the mystery that both deemed the most appropriate. It represents the descent of Christ to the departed in Limbo. The figure of the Crucified Saviour, who has not yet burst through the portals of the tomb, stands in soft mellow light at the entrance of a rocky cave. In front and to the right stretch the long line of figures whose eyes gaze in rapt ineffable adoration on the face that lit up for them the gloom alike of life and of death. Thronging together, their hands uplifted in wonder, their knees half-bowed in worship, they stand for thousands and tens of thousands out of many nations and centuries and beliefs. Gathered from Earth's wide-stretching garden, they are the first blossoms that Christ shall offer to His Father; and over them all broods a hushed, yet living, silence. They are the spirits of the just made perfect, the first-fruits of the Lamb, the eldest-born of all the Dead. How they had waited in patience shut up within their prison, while through timeless aeons they looked out for the Messias! Tired were they and weary, expectant of release, yet knowing not day nor hour when the fulness of time should come. In silence and in hope was their only and utter strength. So Christ would have them remain until He should come. 

And S. Antonino, looking on this as he worked and laboured and wrote, learnt the lesson of life as taught by his friend Fra Angelico. Here, brimful of meaning, which yet would never tire or make afraid, was a splendid sermon by the most eloquent of Friar Preachers. 

He looked and learned that patience in weariness, patience in waiting, patience in an incomplete state of being is the most precious virtue to have attained, so that ''through patience we might have hope." 

I went to Eighth Day Books last week in search of a used book by Etienne Gilson titled The Church Speaks to the Modern World: The Social Teachings of Pope Leo XIII (Warren is searching for a copy for me) and instead found a lovely little red book about economics! Dom Bede Jarrett, O.P. wrote a little trilogy on economics in the Middle Ages and I plan to read the other two works: Medieval Socialism and Social Theories of the Middle Ages, which will require another trip to Eighth Day Books!

The volume I purchased is volume 3 in the "Catholic Library" published in both England and the U.S.A.. The book came with the insert from the U.S. publisher, B. Herder of St. Louis, MO., in 1914 asking the receiving Editor to provide "as extensive a notice as possible" and to "favor me [the Publisher] with two marked copies of your paper containing notice."

Although the book refers to the saint and Medieval Economics in the title, Jarrett dedicates one chapter out of ten to "His Social Ideals". Jarrett provides a summary of St. Antonino's Summa Moralis on economic themes: Production, Distribution, and Consumption. The saint, who was Archbishop of Florence when Cosimo de Medici was resident in the Dominican convent of San Marco (which contains the great frescoes of Fra Angelico as referenced and illustrated above), writes about the moral aspects of commerce. He begins with the statement that riches are good and poverty is bad; riches are good because they allow a man to care for his family in relative security and comfort, provide for the common good, and give alms to the poor to alleviate their want. No one in a just state should be destitute of food, shelter, and clothing, but everyone must work according to their ability to support themselves and their families. Wealth also provides for the opportunity for prayer and meditation: riches are a means to good things, not an end. While good may be obtained through voluntary poverty (like that practiced by religious), poverty is not a good in and of itself.

St. Antonino did not expect or even suggest the even distribution of wealth, noting that inequality is part of Nature and while he joined in the universal condemnation of usury and was opposed to monopolies or cartels, he acknowledged that businessmen could and should make a profit, even on their invested capital, as it represents their industry and effort, not as money making money on itself. He condemns extravagance or conspicuous consumption: "For it is a sad thing to see, side by side, extravagance and penury, to see horses and mules gaily caparisoned while the poor perish from hunger; or in a plague-stricken city when the sick lie naked, cold, and foodless to find men and women dressed with vain and gaudy ornaments (II. 4, 4, vi. p. 581; II. 4, 5, ii. p. 591)" (p. 76). St. Antonino discusses the principles of just prices, just reward for labour, and just production and distribution of goods.

Jarrett sums up the saint's work on economics:

These ideals of Florence set out in four volumes of S. Antonino's Summa Moralis, put into complete activity in the Greater and Lesser Guilds, and lined in stone along the graceful facade of Or San Michele are commercial, it is true, but clean and religious and noble. They sum up a chivalrous and knightly aspect of mercantile adventure. They spell out the splendid Chronicles of the Romance of Trade.

In the chapter preceding this review of economic theory, Jarrett details the holy archbishop's efforts to provide for the poor through charitable foundations and almsgiving, stating:

Yet was his charity ever true, rooted in faith and glowing with trustfulness in the inherent goodness of redeemed humanity. It was synonymous with justice for it rested on fellowship and its piers were driven deep down into that human nature whereby all we mortals are akin. Charity for him was love and God was love.

St. Antonino of Florence's feast (May 10) is no longer included on the Roman Calendar but EWTN provides this biography of the saint from Rev.Alban Butler.

Dom Bede Jarrett (1881-1934), according to this site, was born as

Cyril Jarrett, who received the name Bede when, at age 17, he entered the Dominican order in England. The Dominicans sent him to study at Oxford and at Louvain, where he received his degree in theology. Ordained in 1904, Fr. Jarrett was stationed at St. Dominic's Priory in London. At 33, he was named Prior there and, just two years later, was elected Provincial — an office he held the rest of his life. While serving as Provincial, Fr. Jarrett wrote numerous scholarly books, as well as a lively, popular biography of St. Dominic.

Fr. Jarrett's demanding schedule of preaching and lecture engagements in England and abroad soon brought him to the attention of Catholics in the pew. He inspired them with his profound grasp of human nature and his eloquent explanations of the wise and loving ways of God. That same eloquence and Catholic understanding permeates the meditations he penned for this book.

In his own life time he held a recognised position as the greatest preacher in Catholic England. The Times of London noted in his obituary that "he has been called the best Roman Catholic preacher in this country, and he was perhaps the most popular English preacher in the United States, his sermons being marked by their intellectual quality, their appositeness to the times and their incisiveness". He is the author of Classic Catholic Meditations, Life of St. Dominic, The abiding presence of the Holy Ghost in the soul, and Mediaeval Socialism.

Friday Chant from The Dominicans

St. Catherine Ricci compiled this canticle of the Lord's Passion. According to this site, she received it during her experiences of the Passion:

Saint Catherine’s experience of the Passion of Our Lord occurred for twelve years, until she and the community prayed for it to stop. The attention and the visitors the convent was gaining due to her ecstasy had become disruptive to the Rules of the Order. During her weekly experience, Catherine’s body was tortured, allowing her sisters to follow the Passion step by step. Catherine would bleed as if being scourged, her forehead would run with blood as if she were being crowned with thorns, a large indentation on her shoulder appeared where Jesus had carried the cross. She further experienced the stigmata and bled from a wound in her side where the lance had been thrust. During these moments, and other moments of deeply penitential prayer, a coral ring would appear on Catherine’s finger, a sign of her marriage to the suffering of Christ. During her first ecstatic experience, she was presented with The Canticle of the Passion (text found below) by Our Blessed Mother—a prayer which Mary urged her to share with others, so that they, too, may contemplate the sufferings of the Lord.

THE CANTICLE OF THE PASSION

My friends and My neighbors
have drawn near and stood against Me.
I was delivered up and came not forth;

My eyes languished through poverty.
And my sweat became as drops of blood,
trickling down and upon the ground.

For many dogs have encompassed Me
the council of the malignant hath besieged Me.

I have given My body to the strikers
and My cheeks to them that plucked them.

I have not turned away My face from them that rebuked Me
and spit upon Me.

For I am ready for scourges,
and My sorrow is continually before Me.
The soldiers, plaiting a crown of thorns, placed it upon My head.

They have dug My hands and feet;
they have numbered all My bones.

And they gave Me gall for My food;
and in My thirst, they gave me vinegar to drink.

All they that saw Me laughed Me to scorn;
they have spoken with lips and wagged their heads.
They have looked and stared upon Me;
they parted My garments among them and upon My vesture they cast lots.

Into Thy hands I commend My spirit;
Thou has redeemed me, O God of truth.
Be mindful, O Lord, of Thy servants,
when Thou shalt come into Thy kingdom.

And Jesus having cried out with a loud voice
gave up the ghost.

The mercies of the Lord
I will sing for all eternity.

Surely He hath borne our infirmities
and carried our sorrows.
He was bruised for our sins.

All we, like sheep, have gone astray;
every one hath turned aside into his own way.

For the Lord hath placed upon him
the iniquities of us all.

Arise, why sleepest Thou, O Lord?
Arise and cast us not off to the end.

Behold, God is my Savior,
I will deal confidently, and will not fear.

We beseech Thee, O Lord, help Thy servants
whom Thou hast redeemed with Thy Precious Blood.

Have mercy on us, O benign Jesus.
Who in Thy clemency didst suffer for us.

Look down, we beseech Thee, O Lord, on this Thy family for which Our Lord Jesus Christ did not hesitate to be delivered into the hands of the wicked, and suffer the torments of the Cross.

This YouTube video is from the Dominicans in Ireland. It is often sung at Friday night devotions during Lent in Dominican houses. I have found it a great devotional addition to attending Stations and Benediction this Lent. The pauses between the stanzas provide moments for reflection and meditation.

The Seventeenth Century Cardinal Protector of England

According to the Catholic Encylopedia, Philip Cardinal Howard was a: 

Dominican and cardinal, commonly called the "Cardinal of Norfolk"; born at Arundel House, London, 21 September, 1629; died at Rome, 17 June, 1694. He was the third son of Henry Frederick Howard, afterwards Earl of Arundel and Surrey and head of the House of Norfolk (the dukedom of Norfolk being forfeited, though restored in 1660). The mother of Philip was Elizabeth, daughter of the Duke of Lennox; he was thus allied to the reigning sovereign of England. At the age of sixteen he joined the Dominican Order in Italy, was professed at Rome, 1646, and took the name of Thomas in religion. Residing at Naples for his studies, he was chosen to deliver a Latin address to the general chapter of his order in Rome. He justified the choice delivering a fervent address on the conversion of England, which led to a decree being passed by the chapter, urging provincials and priors to do all they could to receive English, Irish, and Scotch novices into the order, with a view to its preservation in those countries. He was thenceforth wholly devoted to the conversion of England and to the progress of his order in that country. He was ordained priest in 1652, and with the sanction of his superiors set himself to carry out the ideas he had matured in his mind. He founded the priory of Bornhem in Flanders, with a college for English youths attached to it, and was himself the first prior and novice master. He also founded at Vilvorde a convent of nuns of the Second Order of St. Dominic, now at Carisbrooke.

In the reign of Charles II Father Howard was made grand almoner to Queen Catherine of Braganza. He resided at St. James's Palace, with a salary of 500 pounds a year, and had a position of influence at Court. An outbreak of Puritan violence compelling him to leave England, he resumed his position as prior at Bornhem. He was made cardinal in 1675, by Pope Clement X, being assigned the title of S. Cecilia trans Tiberim, exchanged later for the Dominican church of S. Maria supra Minervam. He now took up his residence at Rome and entered into the service of the Universal Church, especially watching over the interests of the Catholic faith in England.

In 1672 he was nominated by the Holy See as Vicar Apostolic of England with a see in partibus, but the appointment, owing to the opposition of the "English Chapter" to his being a vicar Apostolic, and the insistence that he should be a bishop with ordinary jurisdiction, was not confirmed. He was to have been Bishop of Helenopolis. In 1679 he was made Protector of England and Scotland. At his instance the Feast of St. Edward the Confessor was extended to the whole Church. He rebuilt the English College in Rome, and revised the rules of Douai College.

Cardinal Howard cooperated later with James II in the increase of vicars Apostolic in England from one to four, an arrangement which lasted till 1840, when the number was increased to eight by Gregory XVI. Burnet shows in his "History" that Cardinal Howard regretted the steps which led to the crisis in the reign of James II and which his counsels sought to avert. The cardinal's plans were thwarted and the ill-starred mission of the Earl of Castlemaine to Rome showed the rise of another spirit which he did not share. When the crisis he foresaw came, he had the consolation at least of knowing that his foundation at Bornhem was beyond the grasp of the new persecutors.

Cardinal Howard assisted at three conclaves, for the election of Innocent XI in 1676, Alexander VIII in 1689, and Innocent XII in 1691. He died in the twentieth year of his cardinalate, at the age of 64, and was buried in his titular church of S. Maria supra Minervam at Rome.His foundations in Flanders flourished till the French Revolution, when they were despoiled to a great extent, and were eventually transferred to England. The English Dominican Province looks to him as its father and restorer, and the American Province also regards him to a great extent in the same light. After his death the Master General, Father Antoninus Cloche, addressed a letter to the whole order, lamenting the loss of one who had done so great a work for the English Church and the order.

As the website for the Dominican order in England notes, his efforts were crucial to re-establish community life for those English men and women following their call to vocation in the religious life. Cardinal Howard was the third son of Henry Howard, the 22nd Earl of Arundel, son of Thomas Howard, the 21st Earl of Arundell and the son of St. Philip Howard, the 20th Earl of Arundel. His eldest brother, Thomas Howard, although he did succeed as the 5th Duke of Norfolk, was mentally deficient, and the middle brother, Henry Howard, fulfilled the elder's duties at Earl Marshall, succeeding him as the 6th Duke of Norfolk in 1677. It's sad to note that Henry Howard voted in the House of Lords for the conviction of his uncle William Howard, the 1st Viscount Stafford (along with almost all of the other Howards) in the charge of treason brought upon him by the Popish Plot--especially when Henry Howard had been forced into exile by the Test Acts and been charged with recusancy himself. Only his son, also named Henry, voted for the Viscount's innocence.

The Dominicans in England, Before and After

The English Reformation, of course. In honor of the feast of St. Dominic of Guzman, founder of the Order of Preachers, the Dominicans, some background on this order of friars in England. According to the Blackfriars site, the order settled first in Canterbury, but then in Oxford, establishing themselves in the intellectual center:

When a dozen Dominican friars, led by Gilbert of Fresney, their first provincial, arrived in England on 5 August 1221, they first visited Canterbury, the ecclesiastical capital of England, then London, the political capital. They finally established their first community inside the city walls of Oxford, England’s intellectual capital, on 15 August. These friars of the Order of Preachers quickly settled into the life and teaching of the early University, which proved a good place to find new recruits. Land for a new priory just outside the city walls was provided by the generosity of the Countess of Oxford, Isabel de Bolebec.

Like the first foundation at Oxford, every house in the province was to be a centre of learning, and each formed and educated novices for the mission of preaching. Priories were soon founded in other major towns and cities, where the friars could find alms on which they had to live. As mendicants they were forbidden to own and rent properties until 1475. The friars and their houses and large churches for prayer and preaching often became known as ‘Black Friars’, because of the black cape (cappa) the brothers wear over their white habits. ‘Blackfriars Bridge’, where the medieval London Blackfriars stood on the north bank of the River Thames from 1224, and where the English parliament met more than once during the Middle Ages, is only one example. A gift of shoes in 1233 indicates that about 100 brothers lived in the London Blackfriars, the largest of the medieval communities.

The friars exercised their mission at all levels of society. Not only did they work among the most unfortunate, but they were also confessors to royalty and acted as ambassadors or diplomats. When a new priory was founded, it was normally with the help of a royal or noble benefaction. By 1275 the Province of England contained at least 76 houses, not only 39 in England, but also 23 in Ireland, 9 in Scotland, and 5 in Wales. There was also a monastery of nuns at Dartford. Before the Black Death in the fourteenth century, the Province could boast of being the largest in the Order, with a membership of around 3,000 friars. Scotland became an independent province in 1481, and Ireland in 1484.

Of course, all this was destroyed by the Dissolution of the Monasteries, when Cromwell turned his attention to the friars:

At the Reformation, there were 55 houses in England and Wales. Their visitation began in 1538, and by March 1539 all were dissolved. Those friars who did not accept appointments in the Established Church were left without a pension and had to seek a Dominican life in the priories of Europe. In disguise and using aliases, they would return to England one by one as missionaries. Some were captured, imprisoned and tortured. Community life was restored in the Province by the foundation of a priory at Bornhem, Flanders, in what is today Belgium, in 1658, by Philip (later Cardinal) Howard. He also refounded the nuns, and began a school, to which English Catholics could send their sons, and where potential friars could be formed. So many men wanted to join the Order that a second priory was required, and a house was founded first in Rome and then in Louvain.

The great restoration of the Dominican Order in England came through the efforts of Father Bede Jarrett, Provincial from 1916 to 1932. This site provides more detail. You might recall that it was at the Blackfriars in London that Queen Katherine of Aragon defended her virtue as Henry VIII's true and validly married wife. The English Heritage site notes that the Gloucester Blackfriars "is one of the most complete Dominican priories to survive from the Middle Ages in England." Dartford Priory was the only Dominican house of nuns in England, also dissolved n 1539.