Study as identity among the Order of Preachers in the thirteenth century: the organization of the educational system in light of some juridical documents

Abstract

During the thirteenth century, the Order of Friars Preachers, founded by Dominic de Guzman in 1216, ranged from conquering the status of religious order and have all their pastoral privileges revoked. In large measure, this initial instability was due to disputes between the new mendicant and secular clergy. But we should also consider factors such as the very novelty of the mendicant proposal, and socio-political context marked by complex relations of power, as elements that contributed to the need that the followers of Dominic found to imbue its own identity. In this article we will see how this constructed identity were based primarily on studies. We are based on a number of documents of various kinds, focusing our analysis, however, in the Old Constitutions, or Liber Consuetudinum. This source, which undergoes a series of new re-writings in the first decades of existence of the Order, served as a rule of life for the friars. As shown by the actas of the general chapters, held annually during this period, constitutions are gradually molded to give the order characteristics of a “society of studies".