DOMINICANS, an order of religious persons, called in some places Jacobins, and in others Predicants or Preaching Friars.

The Dominicans took their name from their founder Dominic de Guzman, a Spanish gentleman of Calahorra, in Old Castille. He was first canon and archdeacon of Ossuna; and afterwards, as above stated, preached with great zeal and vehemence against the Albigenses in Languedoc, where he laid the first foundation of his order. ∙It was approved of in 1215 by Innocent III., and confirmed in 1216 by a bull of Honorius III. under the title of St Augustin; to which Dominic added several austere precepts and observances, obliging the brethren to take a vow of absolute poverty, to abandon entirely all their revenues and possessions, and to assume the title of Preaching Friars, because public instruction was the main object and end of their institution.

The first convent was founded at Toulouse by the bishop of that place and Simon de Montfort. Two years afterwards another was established at Paris, near the bishop’s house; and some time subsequently a third in the rue St Jacques, whence the denomination of Jacobins.

Immediately before his death Dominic sent Gilbert de Fresney, with twelve of the brethren, into England, where they founded their first monastery at Oxford in the year 1221, and soon afterwards another at London. In the year 1276 the mayor and aldermen of the city of London gave them two whole streets by the river Thames, where they erected a very commodious convent, whence that place is still called Black-Friars, from the name by which the Dominicans were called in England.

St Dominic at first only took the habit of the regular canons, that is, a black cassock and rochet; but this he quitted in 1219 for that which the order afterwards wore, and which, it is pretended, was shown by the blessed Virgin herself to the beatified Renaud d’Orleans.

This order gradually diffused itself throughout the whole known world. It had forty-five provinces under the general, who resided at Rome; and twelve particular congregations or reforms, governed by twelve vicars general.

Out of this order proceeded three popes, above sixty cardinals, several patriarchs, a hundred and fifty archbishops, and about eight hundred bishops; besides masters of the sacred palace, whose office has been constantly discharged by a religious person of this order ever since the time of St Dominic, who held it under Honorius III. in 1218.

Of all the monastic orders, none enjoyed a higher degree of power and authority than the Dominican friars, whose credit was great, and their influence universal. But the measures which they used in order to maintain and extend their authority were so perfidious and cruel, that towards the beginning of the sixteenth century their influence began to decline. The tragic story of Jetzer, at Bern, in 1509, during which there occurred an uninteresting dispute between them and the Franciscans, relating to the immaculate conception, must ever reflect indelible infamy on this order. An account of it will be found in Burnet’s Travels through France, Italy, Germany, and Switzerland (p. 31), and also in Mosheim’s Ecclesiastical History (vol. iii. p. 294, 8vo). They were indeed perpetually employed in stigmatizing with the opprobrious name of heresy numbers of learned and pious men; in encroaching upon the rights and property of others, in order to augment their possessions; and in laying the most iniquitous snares and stratagems for the destruction of their adversaries. They were also the principal counsellors by whose instigation and advice Leo X. determined on the public condemnation of Luther. The papal see never had more active and useful abettors than this order and that of the Jesuits. The dogmas of the Dominicans are usually opposite to those of the Franciscans.