While these traits affected the women of the order, the nuns especially absorbed the latter characteristics and made those characteristics their own. The brethren of the Dominican Order were urban and learned, as well as contemplative and mystical in their spirituality. They were both active in preaching, and contemplative in study, prayer and meditation. At the same time, Dominic inspired the members of his order to develop a 'mixed' spirituality. Dominic's new order was to be trained to preach in the vernacular languages.ĭominic inspired his followers with loyalty to learning and virtue, a deep recognition of the spiritual power of worldly deprivation and the religious state, and a highly developed governmental structure. The Order of Preachers was founded in response to a then perceived need for informed preaching. ĭominic sought to establish a new kind of order, one that would bring the dedication and systematic education of the older monastic orders like the Benedictines to bear on the religious problems of the burgeoning population of cities, but with more organizational flexibility than either monastic orders or the secular clergy. The Dominicans and other mendicant orders may have been an adaptation to the rise of the profit economy in medieval Europe. Like his contemporary, Francis, Dominic saw the need for a new type of organization, and the quick growth of the Dominicans and Franciscans during their first century of existence confirms that conditions were favorable for the growth of the orders of mendicant friars. Out of this ideal emerged two orders of mendicant friars: one, the Friars Minor, was led by Francis of Assisi the other, the Friars Preachers, by Dominic of Guzman. Instead, they travelled among the people, taking as their examples the apostles of the primitive Church. The Dominican Order came into being in the Middle Ages at a time when men of God were no longer expected to stay behind the walls of a cloister.

Mary Magdalene and Catherine of Siena are the co-patronesses of the Order.įoundation Saint Dominic on the front cover of Doctrina Christiana catechism in Spanish and Tagalog with an eight-pointed star (a symbol of the Blessed Virgin Mary) over his head.

The order is headed by the master of the order who, as of 2022, is Gerard Timoner. In 2018, there were 5,747 Dominican friars, including 4,299 priests. The order is famed for its intellectual tradition by having produced many leading theologians and philosophers. More recently there has been a growing number of associates of the religious sisters who are unrelated to the tertiaries.įounded to preach the gospel and to oppose heresy, the teaching activity of the order and its scholastic organisation placed it in the forefront of the intellectual life of the Middle Ages. Membership in the order includes friars, nuns, active sisters, and lay or secular Dominicans (formerly known as tertiaries). Members of the order, who are referred to as Dominicans, generally carry the letters OP after their names, standing for Ordinis Praedicatorum, meaning of the Order of Preachers. It was approved by Pope Honorius III via the papal bull Religiosam vitam on 22 December 1216.

The Order of Preachers ( Latin: Ordo Praedicatorum) abbreviated OP, also known as the Dominicans, is a Catholic mendicant order of pontifical right founded in France, by a Spanish priest, saint and mystic, Dominic. ' hounds of the lord') since the Inquisition in the 13th century, on a corner of a former Dominican monastery (before the Reformation), Old University, Marburg, Germany A figure depicting the term domini canes (lat. Saint Dominic (1170–1221), portrayed in the Perugia Altarpiece by Fra Angelico.

Dominican nun habit