The Dominicans at Florence in 1439

Extract

The part played by the Dominican Order in the General Councils of the Church would make a very interesting study in Ecclesiastical history. The idea of the Order came to fruition in the mind of Saint Dominic when he was attending the Fourth General Council of the Lateran as companion and vicar-general to the bishop of Toulouse. It was then that he opened his mind to the great pontiff Innocent III who eagerly seized on a plan so comformable to the one he himself had already advocated, namely, the creation of groups of preachers to help the bishops in their task of preaching. In the first General Council of Lyons held by Innocent IV in 1245, a leading figure was the renowned theologian and scripture scholar, Hugh of St. Cher, the Order's first cardinal. In the second of Lyons held in 1274 the greatest figure was the venerable ex-Bishop of Ratisbon, Saint Albert the Great. Other prominent Dominicans were Peter of Tarentaise, dean of the sacred college and soon to become the Order's first pope as Blessed Innocent V; Robert Kilwardby, Archbishop of Canterbury and England's foremost scholar; and William of Moerbecke, Archbishop of Corinth, the translator of Aristotle, whose knowledge of Greek was so useful in arranging the re-union with the West and Eastern Churches. It is well known that Saint Thomas Aquinas died on his way to this same Council to which he had been summoned by Pope Gregory X. In the next General Council, that of Vienne in 1311, although no lists are extant of the prelates who attended, we are told by choniclers that the great number of Dominican bishops present caused some embarrassment and no little jealousy.