. The Dominican Order of Friars Preachers, founded by the Castilian canon Dominic of Calaruega (1170–1221), represented the fruit of his long labor of preaching (1206–15) among the heretics of southern France. By 1213, his mission knew its first success, a foundation at Prouille that served simultaneously as a convent for women converted from heresy and a base of operations for Dominic and his disciples. By 1215, he and his band of preachers had settled at Toulouse. They assumed the Rule of St. Augustine and were confirmed as an order by Pope Honorius III on December 22, 1216. The following year, Dominic split up his small community, sending two groups northward to Paris, another to Spain, leaving a remnant at Toulouse and traveling himself to Rome. Dominic thus transformed his local order of regular canons into an international order.
Between 1217 and 1221, papal bulls came to define Dominic’s followers as an order of preachers, whose apostolate concerned “preaching and the salvation of souls,” that is, pastoral care administered through preaching and its corollary, hearing confessions. The last two years of Dominic’s life were given over to outlining the order’s institutional form at its first two General Chapters (1220, 1221).
The pattern of Dominican life and mission was to be formed by a number of legislative sources. In the first place, there was the Rule of St. Augustine. Second, there were the customs of the order, drawn in large measure from the Premonstratensians. Third, there were the constitutions created for the order at its General Chapters. A species within the genus of regular, or Augustinian, canons, the Dominicans combined an internal life of communal prayer, weekly chapters, perpetual fast, and the common life with an external apostolate among the faithful centered upon the acts of preaching and hearing confession. Unlike other Augustinian canons, Dominicans were not bound to a single house or community and embraced communal as well as individual poverty, at least after the General Chapter of 1220. This radical approach to poverty associated them with other new orders of the day, the Franciscans above all, but also the Carmelites, Augustinian Hermits, Order of the Sack, and even smaller groups. Finally, Dominicans did away with manual labor as an integral component of their religious life. Manual labor was given over to lay brothers (conversi) so that the clerical brothers would be free for the two most important of their communal enterprises, prayer and study in preparation for their external apostolate.
The basic unit of the order was the convent. No Dominican convent could have fewer than twelve clerical brothers. Of these, one was required to function as prior and received this post by election. Another was required to function as lector or teacher and was appointed by the provincial prior. Groups of convents were organized into provinces. By 1221, what we now call France was divided into two provinces: France, roughly coterminus with the langue d’oïl, and Provence, roughly coterminus with the langue d’oc. Each was administered by a provincial prior elected by the province’s conventual priors and two delegates from each convent. The provincial prior was charged with confirming the election of conventual priors, appointing lectors, visiting the province to ensure the maintenance of the constitutions and ordinances of the order, and presiding over the annual provincial chapters.
The provinces of the order together constituted the order as such. At its head was a Master General, elected by the provincial priors and two delegates from each province. Until the 14th century, the Master General had no fixed abode; later, he tended to reside at Rome. His responsibility was to visit the order as a whole, maintain its laws, correct abuses, and preside over the General Chapter, the order’s legislative body.
This basic structure applies to the male First Order. A female Second Order was constituted not by convents but by monasteries of strictly enclosed nuns. Living by the same rule and customs, they claimed spiritual direction by their confreres. The constitutions stipulated that a community of at least six brothers should live within and exercise pastoral care of each monastery of Dominican nuns. This heavy pastoral investment in the care of the order’s sisters caused anxiety among male Dominicans from time to time. Anxiety reached a peak during the master-generalship of Conrad of Wildeshausen (1242–52), when there was a concerted effort to dissociate the order from its female wing. In the end, the weight assigned to the antiquity of Prouille and the monastery of St. Sixtus in Rome, Dominic’s clear commitment to the women of these communities, and the strict enclosure they practiced carried the day. By 1285, a Third Order of lay Dominicans was added, who lived as much as possible in terms of the rule and ordinances of the order, placing themselves under the spiritual direction of the Friars Preachers.
In France, as in other parts of Europe, Dominicans showed a marked predilection for large conventual communities. Saint-Jacques at Paris, for example, counted 120 brothers only a few years (1223) after its foundation (1218). This predilection meant that there developed considerably fewer convents than were to be found in the Franciscan order, the Dominicans’ closest analogue. Moreover, it meant that Dominicans preferred large urban centers. A medieval Latin verse had it that:
Bernardus valles, montes Benedictus amabat, Oppida Franciscus, celebres Dominicus urbes.
(“Bernard loved the valleys, Benedict the mountains. Francis the towns, Dominic the great cities.”) In the province of France, the Dominicans had by 1250 established themselves at Paris, Lille, Arras, Valenciennes, Amiens, Saint-Quentin, Rouen, Beauvais, Reims, Verdun, Metz, Toul, Besançon, Langres, Troyes, Caen, Lisieux, Coutances, Nantes, Dinan, Dijon, Le Mans, Angers, Tours, La Rochelle, Poitiers, Clermont, Lyon, Lausanne, and Bourges. In the province of Provence, they established themselves at Bordeaux, Bayonne, Périgueux, Limoges, Cahors, Béziers, Carcassone, Perpignan, Narbonne, Montpellier, Le Puy, Valence, Avignon, Toulouse, Marseille, and Nice. Dominican urban preferences were so pronounced that some have thought to be able to follow the pattern of urbanization in 13th-century France by following the expansion of the order.
The medieval history of the southern province is dominated by struggle with the Cathar and Waldensian sects. Provence was home to an extraordinary number of Dominican preachers throughout the 13th and 14th centuries; and preachers of extraordinary gifts were essential to the task of disputing heretics effectively, since they were not limited to the region assigned their home convent. They could go wherever there were heretics to preach to and dispute. Popes consistently commissioned inquisitors for southern France from the time that Gregory IX (r. 1227–34) established the papal Inquisition (1233). Early on, popes began to favor mendicant friars for the task, especially Dominicans. Southern France thus saw a constant stream of Dominican papal inquisitors; one of the most scholarly Dominicans from the southern French provinces, Bernard Gui, produced not only careful historical research but also one of the most influential inquisitorial manuals.
In the province of France, i.e., the northern province, the Dominican experience was rather different, being dominated by study and the looming specter of its most cel-ebrated convent, Saint-Jacques at Paris. This is not to say that there was any lack of spiritual struggle with heretics. The cities of Flanders, in particular, knew their share of heterodox believers. But it was learning, and especially theological learning, that distinguished the history of the Dominican order in northern France.
The order established studia generalia to serve as the apex of its educational structure. Each studium generale was administered by a regent master assisted by two bachelors; the subject of instruction was theology. Saint-Jacques at Paris housed the first and greatest studium generale of the order. In 1229 and again in 1231, it was granted a chair in the theological faculty of the University of Paris. In 1248, Provence received its own studium in the convent at Montpellier. In 1303, the newly established province of Toulouse received its own studium generale in its convent in Toulouse. After 1260, other types of schools were organized. Studia naturalium provided Dominicans an internal organ for the study of philosophy; other special schools were established for the study of logic and still others for the study of foreign languages, such as Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic.
Saint-Jacques’s close association with the University of Paris created a fertile field in which to recruit novices for the order. Despite the inclusion of Dominican regent masters within the theology faculty of the University of Paris, the Dominican studium generale was imperfectly integrated with the rest of the university. This was particularly clear in the period 1229–31 and again in the 1250s, when the secular masters of the university called strikes that the Dominican masters refused to join. Their lack of solidarity provoked a far-ranging controversy with the secular masters, which came to be fought over mendicant (and by implication papal) claims to a pastoral apostolate and the office of doctor within the church. The controversy lasted intermittently for a century, heating up in the 1250s, again in the 1270s and 1280s, and then again in the years before the Council of Vienne (1311–12). Dominicans and their mendicant allies proved successful in defending themselves and their religious privileges, though their secular opponents created arguments that were more difficult to dispute than is sometimes realized. What is remarkable is the degree to which the French episcopacy either remained neutral in this protracted dispute or supported the Dominicans and their mendicant allies. In general, the French episcopacy looked upon the order with high favor throughout the 13th century.
The list of Dominican masters at Saint-Jacques includes some of the greatest thinkers of the Middle Ages: Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, and Meister Eckhart. Moreover, the Dominicans of Saint-Jacques were also responsible for impressive products of communal effort, including a concordance to the Bible and a complete set of postillae for every biblical book (under the direction of Hugues de Saint-Cher). Some even argue that the pecia system of manuscript production was developed by and for the needs of the studium generale at Saint-Jacques.
In France, as everywhere, the 13th century was a golden age for the Dominican order. The 14th century was less kind, although the order’s numbers did not decline until the Black Death (1348). In 1337, in fact, membership in the order achieved its medieval high-water mark (12,000), in a census taken for Pope Benedict XII (r. 1334–42). Nevertheless, the economy of Europe began to stagnate in the late 13th century, and it became more difficult for the order to beg the resources that it needed to remain viable. The depradations of the Black Death only worsened the situation. Entrance standards loosened and study and the choral office were relatively neglected, as friars assiduously traveled their convent’s begging routes.
The order began to combat the relaxation of its religious regime under the direction of Raymond of Capua late in the 14th century. He initiated a movement of strict observance of the contemplative and monastic side of Dominican life that burgeoned throughout the 15th century. It led in time to the formation of congregations within the order, that is, groups of Observant convents that existed autonomously within and across the provincial structure of the order. Of particular importance to the French provinces were the Congregation of Holland (1464) and the Congregation of France (1497).
