DOMINICANS. The popular name of the Order of Friars Preachers (Ordo Praedicatorum, abbreviated O.P.) was derived from the name of the order's founder, Domingo de Guzmán (1170–1221), generally called Dominic. In France the Dominicans were once known as Jacobins, from their priory of Saint Jacques at the University of Paris, and in England they were known as Black Friars, from the black mantles that they wore over their white habits.

Along with the Franciscans, the Dominicans constitute the heart of the mendicant friar movement of the thirteenth century. After the renaissance of the twelfth century, the presence within medieval society of a growing number of urban-dwelling and literate laypeople, critical of and often alienated from the institutional church, posed a great pastoral problem. The secular and religious clergy at the beginning of the thirteenth century seemed ill equipped to meet the spiritual needs of an urbanized laity...