Death came at the age of fifty-one and found him exhausted with the austerities and labors of his eventful career.  He had reached the convent of St. Nicholas, at Bologna, weary and sick with a fever.  He refused the repose of a bed and bade the monks lay him on some sacking stretched upon the ground.  The brief time that remained to him was spent in exhorting his followers to have charity, to guard their humility, and to make their treasure out of poverty.  Lying in ashes upon the floor he passed away at noon, on the sixth of August, 1221.  He was canonized by Gregory IX., in 1234.

The Dominican Orders

The origin of the Order of the Preaching Friars has already been described.  It is not necessary to dwell upon the constitution of this order, because in all essential respects it was like that of the Franciscans.  The order is ruled by a general and is divided into provinces, governed by provincials.  The head of each house is called a prior.  Dominic adopted the rules laid down by St. Augustine, because the pope ordered him to follow some one of the older monastic codes, but he also added regulations of his own.

Soon after the founding of the order, bands of monks were sent out to Paris, to Rome, to Spain and to England, for the purpose of planting colonies in the chief seats of learning.  The order produced many eminent scholars, some of whom were Thomas Aquinas, Albertus Magnus, Echard, Tauler and Savonarola.

As among the Franciscans, there was also an Order of Nuns, founded in 1206, and a Third Order, called the Militia of Jesus Christ, which was organized in 1218.

The Success of the Mendicant Orders

In 1215, Innocent III. being pope, the Lateran council passed the following law:  “Whereas the excessive diversity of these [monastic] institutions begets confusion, no new foundations of this sort must be formed for the future; but whoever wishes to become a monk must attach himself to some of the already existing rules.”  This same pope approved the two Mendicant orders, urging them, it is true, to unite themselves to one of the older orders; but, nevertheless, they became distinct organizations, eclipsing all previous societies in their achievements.  The reason for this disregard of the Lateran decree is doubtless to be found in the alarming condition of religious affairs at that time, and in the hope held out to Rome by the Mendicants, of reforming the monasteries and crushing the heretics.

The failure of the numerous and varied efforts to reform the monastic institution and the danger to the church arising from the unwonted stress laid upon poverty by different schismatic religious societies, necessitated the adoption of radical measures by the church to preserve its influence.  At this juncture the Mendicant friars appeared.  The conditions demanded a modification of the monastic principle which had hitherto exalted a life of retirement.  Seclusion in the cloister was no longer possible in the view of the remarkable changes in religious thought and practice.