St Dominic, founder of the Order of Preachers
Dominic Guzman was born in Castile in 1170 and after his college studies entered the Church as a monk. During a diplomatic mission to Denmark in 1203, Dominic encountered Cathar heretics in southern France. The Cathars (the “Pure Ones”) or Albigensians, were a deeply-entrenched sect with Gnostic and dualist theology. Appearing to the casual eye to be ordinary Christians, they held that the God of the Old Testament was evil, that the life of the flesh was to be shunned (they were vegetarians who avoided sex) and followed the teachings of an elite group of perfecti who at life’s end would starve themselves to death. Their moral example and the corruption of the official Church had led to Cathars becoming very popular in parts of France and Italy, with support from some political leaders.
Dominic noticed that few Catholic priests or monks were equipped to intellectually handle the challenge of heresy, so he began in 1215 a new community dedicated to effective exposition of the Catholic message. Within two years he had received sanction for the Order of Preachers, who came to be known as Dominicans. These were itinerant friars with permission to preach in public; they soon came to staff the Inquisition (though Dominic himself had nothing to do with that tribunal) and the new universities that were springing up around Europe. Among the great minds that the Order produced were Thomas Aquinas, Albertus Magnus, Heinrich Suso, Bartolomé de las Casas, Fra Angelico, and Girolamo Savonarola. Among the black sheep of the order were heretic Giordano Bruno and witch-hunter Heinrich Kramer.
Dominic died in 1221. His name gave rise to the Latin pun for his black and white clad followers Domini canes, “hounds of the Lord”.