the population of the Dominican Republic. Total number, 4.3 million (1970 estimate). Anthropologically, the Dominicans are a heterogeneous population, approximately 70 percent of whom are mulattoes (descendants of the settlers from Spain and the Negroes who were imported from Africa from the beginning of the 16th century to the 19th century to work on the plantations). Approximately 15 percent are Negroes, who live primarily in the southern and southeastern parts of the country. The whites, who are mainly the descendants of Spanish colonists who came to the West Indies between the 16th and 18th centuries, as well as of later settlers from North America and European countries, make up about 15 percent of the population.
Most Dominicans speak Spanish colored by features of local dialects. In addition to Spanish, some of the emigrants from Haiti continue to use the Creole language, which is based on French. The overwhelming majority of Dominicans are Catholic.
(Late Latin: Dominicani, or Fratres Praedicatores, “Preaching Friars”), a Catholic “mendicant” monastic order; founded in 1215 by the Spanish monk Dominic (who took an active part in crushing the Albigensian movement) to combat heretics; the order was confirmed by Pope Honorius III in 1216.
In 1227 the Dominicans received the right of universal preaching and confession, and in 1232 the papacy entrusted them with conducting the Inquisition. They became the papacy’s chief support against heresies and in its clashes with imperial authority, with local church hierarchies, with cities, and with universities. The Dominicans attributed particular importance to control by the Catholic Church in the sphere of upbringing and education; they founded their own educational institutions (in Bologna, Cologne, Oxford, etc.) and were in charge of departments of theology in the universities of Paris, Padua, Prague, and elsewhere. Outstanding among the Dominicans were such prominent figures in medieval Catholicism as Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas. In the 13th century the Dominicans began to develop extensive missionary activities and founded many monasteries (for example, near Kiev, in Iran, and in China. In the 16th century (from the time of the founding of the Jesuit Order) the Dominicans gradually began to lose their former importance. In 1971 the Dominican Order numbered more than 9,000 monks and about 6,000 nuns; it is an ideological and political tool of the Vatican.
B. IA. RAMM