The Order of Preachers was created for a single purpose, trained preaching against heresy, and it turned study into a religious discipline in a way that shaped the medieval church.
Preaching and its requirements
Founded by the Castilian canon Dominic de Guzman and confirmed in 1216, the order was established expressly to combat heresy in the Languedoc by trained preaching rather than by force alone. Adopting the Rule of Augustine and mendicant poverty, the Dominicans made study central because effective preaching against learned heresy required learning, and they became the leading intellectual order of the medieval church, staffing university chairs and producing Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas.
Learning and its uses
The same emphasis had a darker application: the order supplied many of the inquisitors of the medieval and early modern church, so the discipline built for preaching also served prosecution. The government of the order is notably representative, with superiors elected and chapters legislating, and its nuns and lay Third Order accompany the friars. The Dominican combination, poverty, preaching and rigorous study under an electoral constitution, is the model the later teaching orders drew on.