ABSTRACT
This order, in its own peculiar statutes, and in its regulations for the Inquisition, was notorious for the severity of its discipline. The founder, Dominicus de Guzman, a native of Spain, was a famous flagellator. His mother, before she conceived him, is said to have dreamed that she was with child of a whelp, carrying in his mouth a lighted torch, and that after he was born he put the world in an uproar by his fierce barkings, and set it on fire by the torch which he carried in his mouth. His followers held that this torch presaged the light that his doctrine was to shed on the world; while there were not wanting those who affirmed that it merely foretold an emblem of fire and fagot, by which an infinite multitude of men would be burned to ashes.
