rom the 14th century until the
middle of the 17th the Dominicans had numerous missions in Persia, India
and China, and in the northern parts of Africa. They followed the
Spanish and Portuguese explorers and conquerors both to the East and to
the West, converting, protecting and civilizing the aborigines. On these
missionary enterprises great numbers of Dominicans laid down their life
for the Gospel.

Another conspicuous field of work of the Dominicans lay in the
universities. It had been St Dominic's policy to aim at founding houses
first of all in the great university towns--at Paris, Bologna, Palencia,
Oxford. This policy was adhered to, and the Dominicans soon became a
power in the universities, occupying chairs in those just named and in
Padua, Cologne, Vienna, Prague and Salamanca. The scholastic doctors
Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas were the leaders in this side of
Dominican activity, and the order's influence on the course of medieval
theological development was exercised mainly by these doctors and by the
Dominican school of theology, which to this day has maintained the
principles and methods elaborated by St Thomas.

The Dominican name is in an especial way associated with the
Inquisition, the office of Inquisitor in all countries, including Spain,
having usually been held by Dominicans. The vicissitudes of the order
have been much like those of other orders--periods of relaxation being
followed by periods of revival and reform; but there were not any
reforms of the same historical importance as in most other orders, the
policy having been to keep all such movements strictly within the
organization of the order. In 1425 Martin V. relaxed for some houses the
law of corporate poverty, allowing them to hold property, and to have
fixed sources of income; and fifty years later Sixtus IV. extended this
mitigation to the entire order, which thereby ceased to be mendicant.
This change caused no troubles, as among the Franciscans, for it was
felt that it did not touch St Dominic's fundamental idea.

The Friars Preachers came to England and were established at Oxford in
1221, and by the end of the century fifty friaries were founded all over
England, usually in the towns, and several in Ireland and Scotland. In
London they were first on the site of Lincoln's Inn, but in 1275 they
migrated to that now occupied by Printing-house Square, and their name
survives in Blackfriars Bridge. The only nunnery was at Dartfor