But all this, St. Francis subjected to the authority of the Pope. The famous Giotto picture in which the greatest pope, Innocent III, and the greatest saint of the Roman church met in 1250, depicts a classical moment in world history.
Nevertheless all this was dangerous for the hierarchical system. And the danger became actual first in the revolution of the Franciscan radicals who tried to unite St.
Francis and Joachim di Fiore, and who became the prototypes of many later anti- ecclesiastical and anti- religious revolutions. It was also dangerous because of the emphasis on the lay principle, because this lay principle could mean the end of the absolute authority of the hierarchy. And it was dangerous because/the new relationship to nature and the vision of the Divine ground in it, which in the long run was able to undermine the Catholic supernaturalism.
Now all this was Francis. Generally speaking, he belongs to the Augustinian- Anselmian-Bernardian tradition of the mystical union of Christianity with the elements of culture and nature.
In contrast to Francis, we have no such original personality in St. Dominic. Instead we have a special task, which was the task of a special person; namely the task of preaching to the people – -in this they did the same thing as the Franciscans – and of defending the faith. This was something new – defending either by mediation or by conversion or by persecution, I. e., either in terms of apologetic or in terms of missions or in terms of Church power. In all three ways they became the order of the Inquisition and of the Counter-Reformation later on, until the Jesuits took over.
Therefore they produced the classical system of mediation, of apologetic theology – namely, Thomas Aquinas – and they produced the greatest preachers, among them Meister Eckhardt. More than any other school, they brought Aristotle to the West.
