Dominicans of the Polish Province and the Observant Reform of the Order of Preachers in the Fourteenth and Early Fifteenth Centuries

Abstract

The article focuses on the early stage of the observant reform in the Polish Province of the Order of Preachers, up to the mid-15th century. It aims to summarize and systematize the state of the research, adding some results of a new analysis and interpretation of the diplomatic, normative and literary sources. As in the other provinces of the Order we can observe two phases of introducing a reform. First, unsuccessful, at the times of Raymond of Capua (around 1390), and the second, at the times of Bartholomew Texier (second quarter of the 15th century). Interestingly at this early stage of the reform, nearly all attempts to introduce the Observant reform in Polish Province concentrated on Silesia. Not only convent in Wrocław was the first successfully reformed Polish Dominican community (1432), but also all the most important agents of the Polish Observant movement were somehow connected with this provincial division (contrata) -Franciszek Oczko, Henry Bitterfeld of Brzeg, John of Frankenstein. Observant movement in Dominican convents in Silesia was influenced by two centres of the reform of the Church and the Order: Prague and Nuremberg. All the fathers of the Polish reform got their intellectual formation in Prague and belonged to the circle of people deeply involved in the idea of Church reform. On the other hand since the very first attempts of introducing observances in the Polish province of the Dominican Order we can trace connections with Nuremberg. From this strongest centre promoting the Order’s reform Polish friars drew on the ideas and practical solutions (e.g. ordinationes of Bartholomew Texier).