. Compare the Franciscan and Dominican orders, explaining their origins, their philosophies, and their church architecture

Question

Please provide the best answer for the statement.

Answer 1

1. he Dominicans, founded by the Spanish monk Dominic de Guzman, whose most famous theologian was Thomas Aquinas, and the Franciscans, founded by Francis of Assisi, were reformist orders dedicated to active service in the cities.
2. Their growing popularity reflected the crisis facing the mainstream Church. The mainstream Church held property and engaged in business—sources, many felt, of the Church’s corruption. The Dominicans and Franciscans were both mendicant orders —that is, they neither held property nor engaged in business, relying for their support on contributions.
3. The Dominicans and the Franciscans were rivals, and they often established themselves on opposite sides of a city.
4. The Dominicans’ priority was preaching. The Franciscans committed themselves to a severe regimen of prayer, meditation, fasting, and mortification of the flesh.
5. Compared to Gothic churches of the period, the mendicant churches are austere in their decoration. The Franciscans’ Santa Croce was on the eastern side of the city, and the Dominican church of Santa Maria Novella was built on the western side, underscoring the rivalry between the two orders.
6. Families supported the construction of both mendicant churches by donating chapels built on either side of the nave. Private family masses could be celebrated in these chapels, and, as opposed to the public spaces in the churches, they were often richly decorated and their walls painted with frescoes. Thus, a rich family expected to guarantee its salvation by contributing to the church, and the order could accept the church and its chapels as a form of alms, consistent with its vow of poverty.