The Order of Dominican Friars is born. Founded by St. Dominic de Guzman, a skilled orator and great theologian, the Order was approved (1216), according to the rule of St. Augustine, by Honorius III (Cencio Savelli, 1216-1227) and combined contemplative life with an intense work of study and preaching (Aliis tradere). The order of the Friars Preachers grew and after only a few years its members, present throughout Europe and in the main universities of the time (Paris and Bologna), had to fight against the opposition of the bishops until Honorius III (1218) with a papal bull ordered all prelates to grant assistance to the Dominicans. In 1220 and the following year he convened two general “chapters” to define the constitutive elements of the order which were reported in the Magna Carta. The spiritual path of the Dominicans included poverty, penance and asceticism. Poverty entailed a cenobitic regime that only permitted the possession of what was necessary for subsistence and preaching and, to differentiate himself from those orders that had maintained communal property, Dominic wanted, in order to free the soul from material worries, a concrete poverty that forced the convents to live by begging. Penance, as a method of personal perfection, required the renunciation of goods and pleasures, not flight from the world. Asceticism was aimed at preparing for the action of helping others and for the service of preaching. Eminent figures emerged both among the Dominicans and the Franciscans, who, in addition to fighting heresies, were used to lead the tribunals of the Inquisition by appointment (1233) of Pope Gregory IX. The order, which had been divided between those who wanted to practice a strict observance and those who wanted a more relaxed rule, returned to the observance of the original institution.
