11

The Dominicans

Holy Preaching and Pastoral Care

Dominic and the Building of a New Order

Despite many structural similarities between the Minorites and the Order of Preachers, to which we now turn, both the founding and the subsequent history of the latter Order differed greatly from those of the former. The Order of Preachers never lost its unity. That does not necessarily mean that it somehow stood on a higher level but rather that its organization managed to achieve a higher degree of coherence. The Order’s long-standing unity can also be traced back to the fact that it knew no core ideal, like that of the Franciscans, whose radicalism might have compelled its individual adherents to struggle continually over their obligations to it.

Perhaps a paradigmatic divergence can even be found in the orientations of the orders’ respective founders, a divergence that was decisive for the later developments of each order. Thus it was significant that upon the canonization of the cleric Dominic, the founder of the Order of Preachers, Pope Gregory IX summarized his life with the following words: “I knew him as a man who imitated the life of the apostles completely.”¹ Here was a contrast with the layman Francis’s charisma of the sequela Christi, the imitation of Christ.

Born in 1170 of noble lineage in Caleruega (in northern Spain), Dominic de Guzman studied the liberal arts and theology at Palencia and then became a canon at the Cathedral Chapter of Osma, which embraced reform in 1198 and established the observance of common property.² Dominic at first devoted himself to both contemplation and pastoral care.

That commitment changed dramatically in 1203 when Dominic accompanied his bishop Diego on a diplomatic mission to Denmark. Departing from Castile, they headed north, crossed the Pyrenees, and entered the lands of the Cathars, where they were astounded at how strong and widespread that heretical movement had become.³ After a first stop in Denmark, they returned there two years later, having learned of the threat the heathen Cumans posed in the Baltic region. Afterward, in 1206, they traveled to Rome, because Diego wanted to be relieved of his duties by Innocent III and to devote himself, together with Dominic, to the conversion of the Cumans.

The pope refused the request but did send both to southern France to combat heresy. There they encountered the already-mentioned Cistercian abbot Arnold of Cîteaux and other papal delegates. In the face of the obvious failure of Arnold’s effort, Diego and Dominic developed a new strategy for winning converts:⁴ they decided to appear in apostolic poverty themselves, with simple clothing, a modest demeanor, and no pompous retinue. Their intention was thereby to craft for themselves an appearance that was, on the one hand, in sharp contrast to that of the traditional papal delegation yet, on the other, precisely in conformity with that of the Cathar preachers. The assumption was that the best way to disrupt the Cathars’ success was by imitating them in appearance. Having confirmed that assumption among the papal delegation, they went out two by two across the land and found some early success. In 1207 Diego and Dominic founded a monastery for converted Cathar women at Prouille, west of Carcassonne. At the end of that year Diego died, but Dominic continued to advance “holy preaching” (sancta predicatio) as an organized program of conversion.⁵ It was based on learned engagement with the text of the Bible and thus took shape as the kind of dogmatic and instructional preaching that was allowed to him as a cleric. At its core was also an intensive pastoral concern for a particular social class, one that had developed here, as in northern and central Italy, in an emerging urban environment.⁶

Innocent then called a crusade against the heretics.⁷ In 1215 in Toulouse, the most important city in Languedoc (by then taken back from the Cathars), a clerical community of six members took up sancta praedicatio anew, and a new papal delegate immediately approved it. The Fourth Lateran Council began that year, and Dominic traveled immediately to Rome, accompanied by his supporter Bishop Fulco of Toulouse, hoping to win papal protection and recognition for his fledgling community. But the pope disappointed him, refusing to approve a corporation that was independent in terms not only of its organization but also of its norms. Blocking the way was the restriction that the pope himself sponsored at the council prohibiting the foundation of any new orders.⁸ Dominic was advised to adopt an already existing rule for his community. In this respect he stood at a disadvantage to Francis, who had already received a verbal confirmation for his community before the council.⁹

As canons in the community of Saint-Romain in Toulouse (which had been given to them by Fulco), they immediately adopted the Rule of Augustine and chose the stricter form as it had been modeled by the Premonstratensians. The new pope, Honorius III, confirmed this decision in December 1216.¹⁰ But their goal was to realize a distinct combination of ideals: “holy preaching” in word and deed for the fighting of heresy, an apostolic life lived in poverty, and a concern for spiritual progress. Here was a new concept for the Christian life, one whose organizational implementation required the development of a new framework of fundamental norms.¹¹

On January 21, 1217, the papal bull Gratiarum omnium was issued for the now rapidly growing community in Toulouse.¹² It was a decisive step, though one hardly noticeable at first glance because it lay hidden in an opening address to the community whose new formulation spoke only of the prior (Dominic) and the brothers of Saint-Romain as “preachers” (praedicatores), not as those engaged in preaching (praedicantes).¹³ Dominic himself had been present at the Roman Curia just before the bull had been drawn up and had insisted on this formulation after praedicantes had already been written there. The conceptual shift was profound, because it institutionalized preaching as an office, so to speak, and imposed it (with a certain demanding professionalism) onto the members of the community around Dominic, all of whom were now called the Preachers. Thomas of Cantimpré (1201–1270/72), the renowned encyclopedist and hagiographer of the early Dominicans, underscored the meaning of this designation through a precise explanation: “‘Preacher’ is the proper name; it is at once a verbal and a personal designation, one in which the name of the office (nomen officii) is explained most clearly.”¹⁴ He then reflected, in a highly panegyric way, on the aims and character of the community: its members were filled by the fire of Christian love; they were doctors concerned for the welfare of the soul, armed with the sword of faith and the helmet of salvation.

Despite these grand words, the bull was still addressed only to Saint-Romain. But a little later Dominic sent seven brothers to Paris for university study and others to Spain. That move necessitated further papal privileges, and Dominic sought to secure them through direct intervention in Rome.

He was successful. From February 11, 1218, onward, over the course of the next six years, Honorius III issued over forty bulls. In them he turned to all prelates of the church, instructing them to support the Order of Preachers (he already here spoke explicitly of an order) to the best of their ability.¹⁵ The bulls were in a certain sense letters of recommendation that could be given to individual canons and taken along as they now began in ever-greater numbers to move beyond the borders of Toulouse and spread out into all of the lands of Christendom. The anchor points of that movement were the community (presumably founded by Dominic himself) in the Castilian royal city of Segovia as well as those of the university cities of Paris (with its focus on theology) and Bologna (as a center for the study of canon law).¹⁶

In Bologna in May 1220, Dominic was already able to call a first general chapter, whose leadership, despite his presence, he handed over to a team of diffinitors. A second chapter followed in the same city a year later, attended this time by representatives from more than twenty communities. Among them was the important community of Santa Sabina in Rome, which Honorius III had handed over to the Order. The expansion of the new order had in the meantime reached across France, the Iberian Peninsula, Italy, Germany, and Scandinavia, so that at the general chapter of 1221 it was possible to create eight European provinces and also to send brothers to Hungary, Poland, and England. Like the Franciscans, the Dominicans avoided a system of affiliation. They instead organized their Order according to geographical divisions, quickly adding the remaining regions of Europe a short time later. Already by the 1230s, two settlements had been established in the Holy Land, and by the middle of the century individual brothers, in a way parallel to the Franciscans, were sent to explore the Middle East.¹⁷

In only six years, from 1215 to 1221, what had begun as a circle of six clerics around Dominic had become an international order whose members enjoyed the rights to preach anywhere and to provide pastoral care. Analogously to the Franciscans, the Dominican Order cut across traditional diocesan structures, and in doing their work the brothers came into competition with secular clergy regionally and locally. That competition was only sharpened by the fact that the Order of Preachers had been concerned from its beginnings to uphold the highest standards of education for its members. It was thus obvious, as with the Franciscans, that the Order as a whole and each of its members should be obligated to obey the pope as head of the universal church. By the middle of the fourteenth century there were supposedly around 21,000 Dominicans in 630 communities.¹⁸

Already in its first years, however, the Order began to outgrow the normative framework that had been provided by the Rule of Augustine. The model of regular life for canons that had been provided by the Premonstratensians was no longer adequate. It thus seemed to Dominic that the most pressing task was to address the weaknesses arising from the fact that he had been unable in 1215 to give his community its own organizational model. A hundred years earlier that might still have been easy. Dominic used those first general chapters to craft a comprehensive statutory framework, which served as a normative basis tailored to the needs of his community. Thus alongside regulations regarding visitation, the building of communities, the regular holding of general chapters, and the building of a functional hierarchy of offices, something very specific was decided for the Order: that in the future it was to renounce every kind of ownership and to exempt the superiors of each community from liturgical duties whenever doing so would support them in more engaged study or in their preparations for preaching.

On August 6, 1221, Dominic died in Bologna. He had been a relentless spirit. What was true for Francis was also true for him: without his extraordinarily powerful influence, his Order would never have come into existence. But Dominic’s relationship to his work was radically different from that of Francis. Dominic seemed always to be longing to return to those early days of his missionary work with Bishop Diego among the Cumans, and he once even suggested to his brothers that he wanted to set off on a missionary trip. But in reality he remained constantly engaged as the tireless organizer of his grand idea. Alongside his own intense activity as a preacher, he knew, as did almost no one else, how to move a pope and his Curia’s bureaucracy to focus within a short time on all that was necessary in the way of privileges to build a highly professional order. Moreover, he understood how best to send his community out into the world with a plan and a purpose—and to begin by establishing a structure strong enough to hold together his far-flung community of brothers. While Francis was increasingly estranged in principle from what grew into a gigantic order bearing his name, Dominic drove the growth of his Order forward with all his strength. He transferred his charisma onto its institutional form, thereby already “routinizing” it (to use Max Weber’s word) in his lifetime.

There was thus no lack of clarity after Dominic’s death about what was to be done with his legacy. Little was done at first even to commemorate him.¹⁹ His canonization came relatively late, in 1234, and he received his first biographical treatment from one of his brothers, Petrus Ferrandi, between 1234 and 1242.²⁰ Dominic lived on in a different way: in principle his followers needed only to continue on where he had left off, and they did precisely that.

Rationality and Constitution in the Service of the Salvation of Souls

After further annual chapters held in various places, in 1228 the first master general of the Order, Jordan of Saxony,²¹ called together a special assembly of the Order in Paris. Its participants included leaders of houses and provinces as well as elected representatives from each community.²² The importance of the gathering was registered in its new designation, a shift from Capitulum generale to Capitulum generalissimum—not a “general chapter,” but, as it were, a “most general chapter”—because it was to craft something that would not only shape the entire later history of the Order but also come to stand as a symbol of its identity: the Constitutiones, the Order’s statutes.²³ They were a masterpiece of rational legislation.

A preamble to the text—like that of the Cistercian Carta caritatis²⁴ before it—noted the act of creating law itself as the foundation of the legitimacy of valid statutes. In the 1228th year of the Lord’s incarnation, the provincial priors came together in Paris at the house of Saint James with Master General Jordan (so the difficult, juridical style of the era). Joining them were two diffinitors from each of the provincial chapters, each having been unanimously granted by their brothers the right of voice (votum) as well as the full authority (potestas plenaria) to make decisions. They could thereby establish, without any outside interference, what was to remain in place for all time by stipulating or omitting, changing, adding, or striking, as they wished. Through the guidance of the Holy Spirit and through careful examination they would unanimously and peacefully craft specific constitutions for the use, renown, and preservation of the Order. They would in turn implement these, along with other legislative measures, in their particular locales.²⁵

With that, many years of work toward a comprehensive body of legislation adapted to the circumstance of the Order of Preachers had provisionally come to a close. It had been decisive to underscore that this work rested on the consensus of the whole Order, as expressed through its elected representatives. The Order had thereby been established as a legal entity from within, of its own accord, apart from the founding achievements of Dominic and the approvals of the papacy. A corporation had been created whose head (much more than in any previous order) represented the body as a whole and that laid claim to the potestas plenaria, which drew its legitimacy from itself. The Constitutiones were the symbol that established this corporate identity.²⁶

The Dominicans had ordered their community in such a way as to ensure that it efficiently supported the religious aims of the Order. The best way to discern what was so special about these arrangements is to investigate the rational structure of their laws and their organization.²⁷ The following pages will therefore consider the Constitutiones somewhat more precisely. To do so offers insight into what would stand as the highest degree of organizational achievement that had ever been possible for the vita religiosa in the Middle Ages. In this respect the Dominicans surpassed all other institutions of their era, both secular and spiritual.

The statutory framework of the Order was organized into three registers of validity. A first register concerned principles that were valid for all time, untouchable and unchangeable—so, for example, the prohibition against accepting property and incomes. A second concerned statutes that were unchangeable insofar as they were not changed or abrogated by a Capitulum generalissimum in light of new circumstances; these included prohibitions against the eating of meat, for example, or riding horses. Finally, a third kind of statute could be changed at will after it had been read three times before the general chapter.²⁸

Dominicans accompany the godly members of all social ranks in the Church Militant of this world on their way to the Church Triumphant in the next. Detail from a fresco in the Spanish Chapel of the convent of Santa Maria Novella in Florence.

Following the preamble came a prologue that sought to explain the nature of the subsequent regulations.²⁹ The first passage was taken word for word from the prologue to the statutes of the Premonstratensians, as that text had taken shape by the middle of the twelfth century.³⁰ This built a bridge back to the common ground of the Rule of Augustine, since what followed (so the prologue read) was meant to foster a more proper observance of Augustine’s commands. The insertion of this Premonstratensian section was wise, because doing so suggested with great effect (as the future legal practice of the Dominican Order would make clear) that the Constitutiones had a validity and an authority that was hardly inferior to the Rule itself. The later master general and commentator of both the Constitutiones and the Rule, Humbert of Romans (ca. 1200–1277), emphasized that very point (albeit transposing the actual order of the reflections):³¹ a new order like that of the Preachers required new norms, which it had to craft itself, and for that purpose it was therefore most useful to adopt a rule that contained nothing that would stand in the way of innovation. The Rule of Augustine was that kind of rule. Humbert’s observation would play a key role in the development of other orders as well.

The second section of the prologue, now following its own formulations, established both the goals of the Order and the normative structures that linked pastorally oriented spirituality with organizational pragmatism. It also made clear that all legislative measures were to be subordinate to the Order’s goals. For that reason, of all the norms articulated in this document, the first was that it was possible to be freed from legal norms. The explanation for this approach—astounding at first glance, indeed seemingly self-contradictory—followed immediately. It pointed to the extraordinarily functional, indeed functionalist, understanding that the Order had adopted concerning religious affairs, an understanding discernible not only in this prologue but also in many of the ways it handled organizational matters. It made clear, for example, that a superior had the power to dispense with regulations whenever it seemed advantageous for study, preaching, or pastoral care, “because from the beginning our Order has been established for preaching and the saving of souls; and therefore our effort must direct our study in principle and with passionate effort, so that we can be useful for the souls of our neighbors.”³² The master general Jordan of Saxony added that in the Constitutiones there was hardly anything so serious that it could not be dispensed with.³³ A modern historian has rightly interpreted this model of dispensation as one geared toward “efficiency.”³⁴

The second legal principle followed immediately, and it is no less remarkable: “we wish and declare that our Constitutiones bind [the soul] not with respect to guilt but with respect to penalty”—non ad culpam, sed ad penam. Tradition suggests that this principle had been introduced according to Dominic’s own wishes so as to relieve his brothers from unnecessary scruples of conscience, thereby freeing them to concentrate all the more intently on saving the souls of their neighbors.³⁵ But this peace of individual conscience (pax conscientiarum) was in turn also useful to the Order as a whole, as Humbert of Romans explained,³⁶ because it rendered the Order all the more able to function in the service of its aims.

In the context of an overall legal system, however, this division meant the creation of a purely positive law whose sanctions were inherent in the law itself and that needed no transcendent (i.e., divine) justification for its legitimacy. This legislative act was an astounding innovation for a religious order—one that was at first certainly not uncontested and that reveals the earliest origins of what in the modern era would become a division between morality and law. Already in the Middle Ages the Premonstratensians (1236/38), Cluniacs (1289), Augustinian Hermits (1290), and Cistercians (1289/1316) all followed this same principle.

The Constitutiones of the Order of Preachers represent a milestone in European legal history. Their perfected rationality—which informed both a legitimizing bond between law and the consent of the community as a whole, as well as a functionality of legal principles—shaped the subsequent division of the text into two large sections of more specific legal provisions.

The structure of the Constitutiones was revised only once more, this time by the second master general, Raymond of Peñaforte,³⁷ the great scholar of church law and editor of the most important collection of canon law in the thirteenth century, the so-called Liber extra. His systematic approach had a long future and would serve as a fixed grid for arranging legal materials in a specific sequence, both thematically and textually. Flexibility with regard to inherited legal materials, also accomplished in other orders by way of periodical revision or reissue of collected statutes, was here manifest only in the general chapter’s interventions in specific passages in need of revision. An illustration of this quite subtle process (to choose at random only one out of hundreds of similar changes from the thirteenth century alone) is the Dominican initiation in 1240 of a revision and extension of previous provisions for the election of a prior with the following words: “Where it is said in the Constitutiones concerning the election of a conventual prior ‘he will be elected according to the canonical regulations’ should be added ‘namely from the greater part of the electors or through compromise or through general inspiration, as happens analogously with the election of the master general and the provincial prior.’”³⁸ The same example also reveals that such innovations could be undertaken in great number. Already in 1266, and again in 1272, the Dominicans made further changes to the same passage.³⁹

The result as a whole was, so to speak, a fluid text that was anchored in a fixed framework. Alongside the rational composition of the corpus of laws itself, an extraordinarily refined legal procedure aimed at adapting to new needs and conditions contributed in essential ways to the stability of the Order.

At the time of their composition, the Dominican Constitutiones represented the most modern constitutional text anywhere in Europe.⁴⁰ They made possible a way of life guided by sophisticated constitutional structures, innovative forms of representation, and legal processes. One of the hallmarks of the text was a deliberate move to limit institutional power, insofar as a “descending chain of command” was held in balance with an “ascending line of control.”⁴¹ Overlapping guidelines of responsibility were to bind all members of the Order to a common effort continually to realize their common aims.⁴² This effort required, on the one hand, that at every level of authority (the Order as a whole, the province, the community), power from above could be understood only as having been delegated from below, since the most important officeholders in the organization (master general and provincial and conventual priors)—the prelati—were of course elected either with the cooperation of or exclusively by ordinary brothers, and, on the other hand, that constitutional bodies based on the composition of conventual, provincial, and general chapters were to have both higher officeholders and ordinary brothers—the subditi—as their decision makers and supervisors.

This foundational principle became organized concretely in a way that differed from the conventions found in other orders. The Constitutiones declared that for two consecutive years the general chapter would consist of diffinitors chosen anew by the provincial chapters from among the circles of ordinary brothers, the subditi; in the third year, the general chapter would consist of the provincial priors, the prelati. Characteristically, both types of assemblies enjoyed equal rights with respect to their legislative, administrative, and judicial authority. For this reason every revision of the text of the Constitutiones required three consecutive readings, so that both assemblies of the general chapter would thereby be compelled to consider it.

Every group had the right to initiate a revision and to take it up again whenever an initiative failed in the course of the legislative process.⁴³ It was emphasized that such a procedure contributed greatly to careful deliberation, since often the revision process was thereby drawn out over many years.⁴⁴ To avoid the danger of important measures becoming gridlocked, the Dominicans also introduced an additional process, one that anticipated what in the modern era would become a two-tiered legal order.⁴⁵ Every general chapter was required to enact individual measures (admoniciones) that came into force immediately but that could be rescinded by the next general chapter. That happened very rarely, however, and thus there slowly emerged a considerable collection of regulations that extended the Constitutiones with supplemental measures that were quickly adaptable to circumstance.

The Dominicans were keenly aware that the interlocking structures of their general chapter were not only ideal for ensuring the best possible decisions for the Order as a whole, however, but also that those structures held a special symbolism for the Order’s institutional principles. When Humbert of Romans was asked whether the Dominicans were wiser than those whose orders recorded their legislation only during a single sitting of their general chapter, he answered by setting down the following basic observations: among the Cistercians and Premonstratensians all the authority of decision making lay with the highest prelates alone; among the Franciscans it was shared between the prelati and the subditi, but it was put into practice in ways that involved an immense throng of participants. Among the Dominicans, however, both the prelati and the subditi had independent but equally valid pathways to reaching decisions.⁴⁶ Thus the Dominican general chapter was to be understood as the symbolic embodiment of a kind of differentiation specific to the Order. Its cornerstone—as it emphasized—was that both leaders and individual members were bound together harmoniously, in mutual responsibility for the Order as a whole.

The organizational structure of the Dominican Order has received detailed attention here because it reveals, as has already been noted, a very specific Dominican achievement within the broader context of the history of the religious orders: a process shaped by what has been called “system rationality.”⁴⁷ This was understood as the functional alignment of all elements (whether in relation to one another or to the Order as a whole) to a single goal, which was realized, in practice as well as in principle, without contradiction or conflict. The resulting weave of relationships can be seen as a coherent, self-contained system—something that no other order had yet managed to achieve, at least to this degree, and something that rendered the organization of the Dominicans superior to every other order.

With such refined ways of legislating, of supervision, and of administration, the Dominican Order managed not only to create but also to sustain the best possible conditions for realizing its fundamental concern: the salvation of the souls of all humankind. Preaching served this goal, study in turn served preaching, and the business of daily life in turn served study.⁴⁸

Such an emphasis on structure must not lead to a misappraisal of the Dominicans. The rationality of the Order’s “methodical practices”⁴⁹ need not be placed in opposition to religious zeal. Rather, it is best to speak of a “spirituality of pragmatism.” Even the core religious values of an individual pursuit of salvation—poverty, for example, whose realization among the Grandmontines or the Franciscans was seen as the most profound way to imitate Christ—were subordinate to the all-encompassing principle of pastoral care. Humbert of Romans did emphasize, however, that a preacher of his Order who spoke of the poor Christ and the indigent apostles was more trustworthy when he himself remained poor. Moreover, the poor were more likely to gather around a poor preacher (since like things combined freely with like), and even rich folk would approach him out of respect for his voluntary poverty. From this pragmatic stance Humbert then went on even to argue for the superiority of his Order.⁵⁰ In contrast to the others, his was founded not only for the salvation of those who entered it but for the salvation of the whole world.

Through this kind of self-assessment, the Dominicans came early on to an awareness that their Order had a central role in the unfolding of salvation history. In around 1260 the Dominican historian Geraldus de Fracheto (1205–1271/81) wrote about all of the prophecies that pointed to his Order as the moral compass of a church so in need of rescue from its downfall.⁵¹ The Dominicans thus took a leading position in an apocalyptic tradition that Otto of Freising had invoked in the middle of the twelfth century in order to underscore the central role of the religious orders as a whole in the story of salvation, and that James of Vitry had invoked not long afterward to do the same for the Franciscans.⁵² At Mary’s request, so it was said, God now allowed the Order of Preachers to advance the work of the prophets and apostles. The Dominicans were seen as the “messengers of God,” called to their task now because the church’s inherited means of grace was no longer sufficient.

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¹ Ambrosius Esser, “Dominikus,” in Theologische Realenzyklopädie (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1982), 9:126.

² On the following, see Marie Humbert Vicaire, Histoire de Saint Dominique, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1982); Simon Tugwell, “Notes on the Life of St. Dominic,” Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum 65 (1995): 5–169; 66 (1996): 5–200; 67 (1997): 27–59; 68 (1998): 5–116; 73 (2003): 5–141.

³ Arno Borst, Die Katharer (Freiburg im Breisgau: Hiersemann, 1995); Malcolm Lambert, The Cathars (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998); Malcolm Barber, The Cathars (New York: Longmann, 2000). See also the key historiographical essay by Robert More, “The Cathar Middle Ages as an Historiographical Problem,” in Christianity and Culture in the Middle Ages, ed. David C. Mengel and Lisa Wolverton (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2014), 58–86.

⁴ Wolfram Hoyer, “Der dominikanische Ansatz zum Dialog mit den Religionen in der Gründerzeit des Ordens,” in Das Charisma des Ursprungs und die Religionen, ed. Petrus Bsteh and Brigitte Proksch (Vienna and Berlin: LIT, 2011), 242–64.

⁵ Tugwell, “Notes on the Life,” 5–69.

⁶ Jörg Oberste, Zwischen Heiligkeit und Häresie. Religiosität und sozialer Aufstieg in der Stadt des hohen Mittelalters, vol. 2, Städtische Eliten in Toulouse (Cologne: Böhlau, 2003).

⁷ Jörg Oberste, Der “Kreuzzug” gegen die Albigenser (Darmstadt: Primus, 2003). See also Mark Pegg, A Most Holy War: The Albigensian Crusade and the Battle for Christendom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).

⁸ See p. 185.

⁹ Herbert Grundmann, Religious Movements in the Middle Ages, trans. Stephen Rowan (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995), 61–64.

¹⁰ Monumenta diplomatica s. Dominici, ed. Vladimir J. Koudelka and Raymond-Joseph Loenertz (Rome: Institutum historicum fratrum praedicatorum, 1966), 71–76 (no. 77).

¹¹ On the following process of the formation of the Order, see Grado G. Merlo, “Gli inizi dell’ordine dei frati Predicatori. Spunti per una riconsiderazione,” Rivista di storia e letteratura religiosa 31 (1995): 415–41; Florent Cygler, “Zur Funktionalität der dominikanischen Verfassung im Mittelalter,” in Die Bettelorden im Aufbau, ed. Gert Melville and Jörg Oberste (Münster: LIT, 1999), 385–428.

¹² Koudelka and Loenertz, Monumenta diplomatica s. Dominici, 78–79 (no. 79).

¹³ Cygler, “Zur Funktionalität,” 392–93.

¹⁴ Thomae Cantipratani . . . Bonum Universale de apibus 1.9.5, ed. Georgius Colvenerius (Douai, 1627), 38.

¹⁵ Cygler, “Zur Funktionalität,” 394.

¹⁶ Marie-Humbert Vicaire, “Dominikaner, Dominikanerinnen. A. Allgemeine Struktur des Ordens. V. Ausbreitung des Ordens in Frankreich und Italien,” in Lexikon des Mittelalters (Munich: Artemis, 1986) 3:1200–1205.

¹⁷ Berthold Altaner, Die Dominikanermissionen des 13. Jahrhunderts (Habelschwerdt: Franke, 1924), 41–141; Anne Müller, “Die dominikanische Mission inter infideles et scismaticos. Konzepte, Leitbilder und Impulse bei Humbert de Romanis,” in Die Bettelorden im Aufbau, 321–82. On the corresponding education, see Anne Müller, Bettelmönche in islamischer Fremde (Münster: LIT, 2002). See also Robin Vose, Dominicans, Muslims, and Jews in the Medieval Crown of Aragon (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009).

¹⁸ For a historical overview, see William A. Hinnebusch, The History of the Dominican Order, vol. 1, Origins and Growth to 1500; vol. 2, Intellectual and Cultural Life to 1500 (New York: Alba House, 1965, 1973).

¹⁹ Achim Wesjohann, “Flüchtigkeit und Bewahrung des Charisma oder: War der heilige Dominikus etwa auch ein Charismatiker?” in Charisma und religiöse Gemeinschaften im Mittelalter, ed. Giancarlo Andenna et al. (Münster: LIT, 2005), 227–60.

²⁰ Simon Tugwell, “Petrus Ferrandi and his legenda of St Dominic,” Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum 77 (2007): 19–100.

²¹ Dieter Berg, “Jordan von Sachsen,” in Verfasserlexikon (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1983), 4:861–64.

²² On the following, see Cygler, “Zur Funktionalität,” 397–400.

²³ Antoninus Hendrik Thomas, ed., De oudste constituties van de dominicanen (Leuven: Universiteitsbibliotheek, 1965), 309–69.

²⁴ See p. 146.

²⁵ Thomas, De oudste constituties, 309.

²⁶ Florent Cygler, “Zur institutionellen Symbolizität der dominikanischen Verfassung. Versuch einer Deutung,” in Institutionalität und Symbolisierung, ed. Gert Melville (Cologne: Böhlau, 2001), 409–24.

²⁷ Gert Melville, “System Rationality and the Dominican Success in the Middle Ages,” in Franciscan Organisation in the Mendicant Context, ed. Michael Robson and Jens Röhrkasten (Berlin: LIT, 2010), 377–88.

²⁸ Thomas, De oudste constituties, 309–10.

²⁹ Thomas, De oudste constituties, 311–12.

³⁰ See pp. 159–60.

³¹ “Expositio regulae b. Augustini secundum b. Humbertum, magistrum ordinis fratrum Praedicatorum,” in B. Humberti de Romanis quinti Praedicatorum magistri generalis opera de vita regulari, ed. Joachim Joseph Berthier (Rome: Befani, 1889), 1:50–51.

³² Thomas, De oudste constituties, 311.

³³ Angelus Maria Walz, ed., Beati Iordani de Saxonia epistulae (Rome: Institutum Historicum Fratrum Praedicatorum, 1951), 56; Cygler, “Zur Funktionalität,” 401.

³⁴ Marie Humbert Vicaire, Histoire de Saint Dominique, 2:203.

³⁵ Cygler, “Zur Funktionalität,” 405–10.

³⁶ “Expositio magistri Humberti super constitutiones fratrum Praedicatorum,” in B. Humberti de Romanis . . . opera de vita regulari, 2:48–49.

³⁷ Raymond Creytens, “Les constitutions des Frères Prêcheurs dans la rédaction de S. Raymond de Penyafort (1241),” Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum 18 (1948): 29–68.

³⁸ Acta capitulorum generalium ordinis Praedicatorum, vol. 1, ab anno 1220 usque ad annum 1303, ed. Andreas Frühwirth, Acta capituli generalis Bononiae celebrati anno domini MCCXL (Rome, 1898), 14.

³⁹ Acta capitulorum generalium ordinis Praedicatorum, Acta capituli generalis apud Treverim celebrati anno domini MCCLXVI, 132; Acta capituli generalis apud Florencie celebrati anno domini MCCLXXII, 161–62.

⁴⁰ Léo Moulin, “Le pluricaméralisme dans l’Ordre des Frères Prêcheurs,” Res publica 2 (1960): 50–66, here 54. For a general introduction to constitutional history, see Hans Vorländer, Die Verfassung. Idee und Geschichte (Munich: Beck, 2009), 29–30.

⁴¹ Hinnebusch, History of the Dominican Order, 1:170–72.

⁴² For an overview of the structures of the constitutions and of the Order, see Georgina R. Galbraith, The Constitution of the Dominican Order, 1216 to 1360 (Manchester: University Press, 1925).

⁴³ Gert Melville, “Fiat secretum scrutinium. Zu einem Konflikt zwischen praelati und subditi bei den Dominikanern des 13. Jahrhunderts,” in Vita Religiosa im Mittelalter, ed. Franz J. Felten and Nikolas Jaspert (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1999), 441–60.

⁴⁴ Gert Melville, “Die Rechtsordnung der Dominikaner in der Spanne von constituciones und admoniciones. Ein Beitrag zum Vergleich mittelalterlicher Ordensverfassungen,” in Grundlagen des Rechts. Festschrift für Peter Landau zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Richard H. Helmholz et al. (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2000), 579–604, here 586.

⁴⁵ Melville, “Die Rechtsordnung der Dominikaner,” 603.

⁴⁶ Melville, “Fiat secretum scrutinium,” 441–60.

⁴⁷ Melville, “System Rationality.”

⁴⁸ Hinnebusch, The History of the Dominican Order, vol. 2, Intellectual and Cultural Life to 1500; Marian Michèle Mulchahey, “First the bow is bent in study . . .”: Dominican Education before 1350 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998).

⁴⁹ See p. 186.

⁵⁰ “Expositio magistri Humberti super constitutiones fratrum Praedicatorum,” in B. Humberti de Romanis . . . opera de vita regulari, 2:38–39.

⁵¹ Gerardus de Fracheto, Vitae Fratrum ordinis Praedicatorum, ed. Benedikt Maria Reichert (Louvain, 1896), 18–30.

⁵² See p. 203; Hans-Joachim Schmidt, “Klosterleben ohne Legitimität. Kritik und Verurteilung im Mittelalter,” in Institutionen und Geschichte, ed. Franz J. Felten et al. (Cologne: LIT, 2009), 377–400.