Dominican History

Description 

The aim of this course is to set the history of Dominican women within the context of the Order and the Church.

This first part of Dominican History deals with a period of little more than one year: 1206 -1207. By making a detailed study of a limited period, it is hoped that students will begin to appreciate the value of a careful study of available sources.

For this early ‘prehistory’ of the Order, we have virtually nothing by way of primary sources. (Primary sources are documents written by people directly involved in the events concerned, or official documents concerning them. In this unit, the only primary source we study is the letter of Pope Innocent III of November 1206.)

All of the other sources, even the 13th century ones such as Jordan of Saxony and Pierre de Vaux de Cernay, are contemporary secondary sources.

In this course unit there are extracts from other secondary sources from various centuries. This is to give the student a certain sense of Dominican historiography. If you like, historiography is “the history of history”. Historians present events differently at different periods. It is important to be aware of this, and to get a sense of the development of the Order through the ways in which its beginnings were understood and presented in different centuries.

Table of contents

Section I. Why study Dominican history?

Section II. An Introduction to the principal early sources for the study of the prehistory of the Dominican order

Section III.The preaching campaign. 1206-1207

Section IV. The foundation of Prouilhe