The very sad new is announced of the departure of the Dominicans from their convent at San Marco in Florence, the home of the Fra' Angelicos, as every schoolboy knows. The news is reported HERE by the New York Times.
For many centuries the Dominicans, whose Order is a mere century younger than our own, have maintained two great houses in Florence, San Marco and Santa Maria Novella, the present great church of the latter begin in 1247, and at San Marco since 1436, when Pope Eugenius IV allowed the Dominicans of Fiesole to take over the church of St Mark. A year later Cosimo de Medici began the building of the new church, incorporating much of the structure of the old, designed by Michelozzo. The nave was later adapted by Vasari. Now, unless a solution can be found, the church is to pass to secular care.
Fra' Angelico was, of course, a Dominican, and the museum which is associated principally with his work has been here for centuries. He was part of the Fiesole community who first came here, so many of these works were painted for this church.
To quote Father Sbaffoni, one of the four friars left, in the NYT: 'Mendicant orders — those like the Dominicans and the Franciscans that embrace lives of poverty — “have lost much of their original spirit, which is no longer possible to reactivate, the world has changed too drastically for that.”
In Italy, “we are very few,” he said. “Increasingly fewer, and with fewer young people. There’s the famous point of no return, and for me these historic orders have reached it. There’s no going back.”'
This is an image of the Church of today, feeble and emasculated! If they were to restore the liturgy and reassert their traditional discipline and charism, as the Dominicans in England, at Blackfriars, at Haverstock Hill have done, put their habits back on, then they too would have vocations. How absurd, this cry we hear from so many high up in the Church today "The world has changed too drastically"! "No going back"! Madness.
Pray for them.
The world of course had not changed at all when St Dominic preached the Albigensian Crusade against the Cathars, or he too would have packed up and gone home.
The world of course had not changed at all when St Dominic preached the Albigensian Crusade against the Cathars, or he too would have packed up and gone home.
In the meantime, we post some sketches of San Marco done by a knight of Malta long ago.
Our Lady of the Holy Rosary, pray for us.
Saint Dominic, pray for us.
Saint Mark, pray for us.
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