II.

Preachers and Upholders of Orthodoxy

The Dominicans insisted on absolute poverty, rejecting the possession of community property and becoming, like the Franciscans, a mendicant order. It was not until 1425 that permission to hold property was granted to certain houses by Pope Martin V; it was extended to the entire order by Pope Sixtus IV in 1477. The first Dominican house was founded at the Church of Saint Romain in Toulouse, from which, in 1217, Dominic sent some of his disciples to spread the movement elsewhere in France as well as to Spain. Within six years the order was also introduced into England, with the founding of a house in Oxford. In England the Dominicans acquired the name of Black Friars from the habit they wore outside the friary when preaching and hearing confessions, a black coat and hood over a white woolen tunic. By the end of the century 50 friaries were functioning in England, and the order had houses in Scotland, Ireland, Italy, Bohemia, Russia, Greece, and Greenland.

In accordance with the declared purpose of their foundation, the Dominicans have always been known as dedicated preachers and as combatants against any departure from the teaching of the Roman Catholic church. In the latter capacity they were entrusted with the supervision of the Inquisition as an ecclesiastical enterprise, and even in Spain, after the Inquisition became virtually a department of civil government, a Dominican was usually at its head. The office of master of the sacred palace, the pope's personal theologian, created for St. Dominic in 1218 and subsequently endowed with great privileges by Pope Leo X, has always been held by a member of the order. After 1620, one of the duties of the position was to allow or forbid the printing of all religious books.