The Dominicans (Order of Preachers)
The order of friars founded by Dominic and approved by the pope in 1216, chiefly to preach.
The Plague Comes to Messina and Catania
Anonymous of Catania, Sicilian History, printed in Rosario Gregorio’s Bibliotheca scriptorum (1791) · after April 1348 (events of October 1347 to April 1348)
Fratres vero Ordinis minorum & Predicatorum & aliorum ordinum accedere volentes ad domos infirmorum predictorum, & confitentes eisdem de eorum peccatis, & dantes eis penitentiam juxta velle . . . . divinam justitiam, adeo letalis mors ipsos infecit, quod fere in eorum cellulis de eis aliqui remanserunt.
Friars of the Order of Minors, of the Preachers, and of other orders were willing to go to the homes of the sick. They heard their confessions and gave them penance according to divine justice. But death struck them down so hard that hardly any of them were left in their cells.