ABSTRACT
The Dominican moralist Thomas Deman (1899-1955) once noted that the Secunda pars, or moral part, of St Thomas Aquinas's Summa theologiae constituted an 'entirely new plan' for treating of morals, a treatment resulting in the single largest portion of his monumental presentation of sacred doctrine, left unfinished at his death in 1274. In making his profession to the Dominican Order Thomas gave his life over to an apostolate that was explicitly pastoral. In 1221 the Dominicans were further commissioned to be Confessors-in-General, which put into full swing the same Council's constitution Omnis utriusque sexus, which had required annual confession for all Christians. Outside the more rarefied air of the Universities, but often still university-trained, Dominicans also began to produce aids to the hearing of confessions, penitential literature that marks the earliest literary activity of the Order.
