DOMINICANS, an order of religious, called in some places Jacobins; and in others, Predicants, or Preaching Friars.
The Dominicans take their name from their founder Dominic de Guzman, a Spanish gentleman, born in 1170, at Calaroga in Old Castile. He was first canon and archdeacon of Osma; and afterwards 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, and to abandon entirely all their revenues and possessions; and also the title of Preaching Friars, because public instruction was the main end of their institution.
The first convent was founded at Tholouse by the bishop thereof and Simon de Montfort. Two years afterwards they had another at Paris, near the bishop's house; and some time after a third in the rue St Jacques, St James's street, whence the denomination of Jacobins.
Just before his death, Dominic sent Gilbert de Fiefney, with twelve of the brethren, into England, where they founded their first monastery at Oxford in the year 1221, and soon after 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 they now wear, which it is pretended was shown by the blessed Virgin herself to the beatified Renaud d'Orleans.
This order is diffused throughout the whole known world. It has forty-five provinces under the general, who resides at Rome; and twelve particular congregations or reforms, governed by vicars general.
They reckon three popes of this order, above sixty cardinals, several patriarchs, a hundred and fifty archbishops, and about eight hundred bishops; beside masters of the sacred palace, whose office has been constantly discharged by a religious of this order, ever since 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 they used in order to maintain and extend their authority were so perfidious and cruel, that their influence began to decline towards the beginning of the sixteenth century. The tragic story of Jetzer, conducted at Bern in 1509, for determining an uninteresting dispute between them and the Franciscans, relating to the immaculate conception, will reflect indelible infamy on this order. See an account of it in Burnet's Travels through France, Italy, Germany.