Dominic Founds the Order of Preachers

Dominic was subprior of the cathedral canons of Osma in Spain. Travelling with his bishop, Diego, he met in the south of France the abbots whom the pope had sent to preach against the Albigensians, whom the church held to be heretics. Jordan of Saxony, who knew Dominic and wrote some twelve years after his death, reports the bishop’s advice to them: the heretics won people by a show of gospel poverty, and would not be answered by preachers who came with horses and baggage. Diego sent his own retinue home, and the preachers went on foot, without money (Jordan of Saxony, Libellus 19–22).

Diego died, and a crusade was preached against the Albigensians. Dominic stayed and preached, almost alone, for nearly ten years (Jordan of Saxony, Libellus 31–32, 37). As the Lateran council of 1215 drew near, two men of Toulouse joined him. One, Peter Seila, gave houses in the city, and Bishop Fulk assigned the group a sixth of the diocese’s tithes for books and food (Jordan of Saxony, Libellus 38–39).

Dominic went with Fulk to the council to ask Innocent III to confirm an order that would be called, and would be, an order of Preachers. The pope told him to return and choose, with his brothers, a rule already approved (Jordan of Saxony, Libellus 40–42); the council itself forbade new religious orders and required new houses to take an approved rule (Fourth Lateran Council, constitution 13). They chose the Rule of Augustine, with stricter customs added, and resolved to hold no landed property (Jordan of Saxony, Libellus 40–42). In the summer of 1216 they were given the church of Saint Romanus; they were about sixteen. Innocent died, and Dominic went to his successor (Jordan of Saxony, Libellus 44–45).

On 22 December 1216, at Rome, Honorius III addressed a privilege to Dominic, prior of Saint Romanus at Toulouse, and his brothers. It took their church under papal protection and confirmed there the life of canons under the Rule of Augustine (Honorius III, Religiosam vitam (22 December 1216)). A month later he wrote to them as “preachers” and charged them to preach the word of God in season and out of season (Honorius III, Gratiarum omnium largitori (21 January 1217)).

In 1217 Dominic told the brothers, few as they were, that he would scatter them through the world. Some went to Paris, others to Spain and, in 1218, to Bologna (Jordan of Saxony, Libellus 46–47, 49, 51, 55). The first general chapter met at Bologna in 1220, with Jordan present, and ruled that the order would keep neither property nor fixed revenues (Jordan of Saxony, Libellus 86–87). Dominic fell ill and died at Bologna the next year; the bishop of Ostia, the future Gregory IX, conducted the funeral (Jordan of Saxony, Libellus 88, 92–96).

Among the first brothers sent to Paris were two who went to study (Jordan of Saxony, Libellus 46–47, 49, 51, 55). Ten years after Dominic’s death Gregory IX was commissioning Dominican friars to seek out heretics (Gregory IX, Ille humani generis (22 November 1231)); see the Papal Inquisition Is Established.