Dominic de Guzmán

Lived

c. 1170–1221

Era

Medieval

Where

Toulouse and Bologna

Tradition

Roman Catholic

Preachers trained to argue

A Castilian canon who, travelling through Languedoc, concluded that the Cathar movement was winning because its preachers lived poorly and the church's arrived on horseback with retinues. He founded an order of preachers who would do the opposite.

Why it matters

The Dominicans were built around study in a way no order had been, and they went to the new universities rather than to the countryside — which is why the order produced Albert the Great and Aquinas within two generations. The same order was later the backbone of the Inquisition, and both facts belong to its history.

All the figures, from the apostolic age to the present, or the timeline they stand in.