A Dictionary of All Religions and Religious Denominations/Dominicans

DOMINICANS, a religious order, in some places called Jacobins, and in others Predicants, or preaching friars. The Dominicans take their name from their founder, Dominic de Guzman, a Spaniard, born in 1170, at Calaroga, in Old Castile. He was first canon and archdeacon of Orsuna; and afterwards preached with great zeal and vehemence against the Albigenses in Languedoc, where he laid the first foundation of his order, which was confirmed in 1216, by a bull of Honorius III. under the title of St. Augustin, to which Dominic added several precepts and observances. He obliged the brethren to take a vow of absolute poverty, and to abandon entirely all their revenues and possessions, and assume the title of Preaching Friars, because public instruction was the main end of their institution. This order long retained a high degree of authority. But their influence began to decline towards the beginning of the sixteenth century, in consequence of their pretended apparitions and miracles, to terminate their dispute with the Franciscans. See Franciscans.