The original mission of the Dominican Order was preaching the word. It was a direct result of the constitution Inter Cetera of the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 under Pope Innocent III, according to which bishops who were over-worked or who were not up to the demands of preaching should establish groups of preachers in their dioceses as their helpers and coworkers in the pastoral care.

Dominic Guzman, who was at the Council with his diocesan bishop, Fulk of Toulouse, was convinced that in the band of preachers he had set up in Toulouse, he had a means of making sure that this constitution would not remain a dead letter. A little more than a year later, in January 1217, he obtained from the new pope, Honorius III, a mandate that gave general approval to the work of preaching already begun at Toulouse.

This papal confirmation of Dominic’s Toulouse preachers, as preachers in general, was followed over the next three years, 1218 to 1220, by many ‘Letters to Prelates’ urging them to make use of the preachers and to encourage them in the office of preaching to which they have been deputed. Now in these letters of recommendation and in the mandate Gratiarum Omnium (the real foundation charter of the Dominican Order), there is no mention whatsoever of the sacrament of penance, the counselling of souls or the hearing of confessions. This is somewhat strange given that the Constitution Inter Cetera of the Lateran Council had explicitly joined the function of hearing confessions to that of preaching.