Bernard Gui, in his Legenda Sancti Dominici,²¹  completed between 1324 and 1329, allows us to follow the evolution of the tradition into the early fourteenth century. He specifies that Mary gave the scapular to replace the surplice, "Blessed Dominic and the other brothers, taking off surplices, in their place donned the white scapular as [their] distinguishing habit, retaining the cappas above and the white tunic under it, which they formerly wore as canons regular."²² 

The suggestion that the friars once wore surplices may be found in the testimony of Brother John of Spain for Dominic’s canonization in 1233. John includes the wearing of surplices, along with riding horses and carrying money on journeys, as practices that occurred at an earlier stage of the Order before strict poverty was agreed upon at the Chapter in 1220.²³  It is possible that, initially, Dominic and his first associates may have been bound by the mandate of the provincial council of Montpellier, in 1215, ordering canons to wear surplices. 

The tradition that Mary either gave the entire habit or the scapular has been persistent in the Order. Stephen Salanhac, who died in 1291, describes Mary as the felix huius ordinis vestiaria, "the happy clothier of our Order."²⁴  This association between Mary and the habit also appears in Catherine of Siena’s Dialogue, written between 1377 and 1378. In the Dialogue, God the Father speaks: "He was a light that I offered the world through Mary and sent into the mystic body of holy Church as an uprooter of heresies. Why did I say ‘through Mary’? Because she gave him the habit—a task My goodness entrusted to her."²⁵ 

If recent Dominican historians, such as Hinnebusch,²⁶  Tugwell,²⁷  and Vicaire,²⁸  are correct, Jordan’s account was misinterpreted by later authors, and, in fact, the scapular was part of the original habit. However, even if the attribution of the scapular to Mary is not made by the oldest sources, the development of the tradition illustrates the desire within the members of the Order to see themselves bound to Mary by a particularly strong symbol. While the scapular may not have had a Marian significance originally, for the last seven and a half centuries it has been a physical sign of Mary’s personal protection for the members of the Order.

 ²¹ This work is contained in Gui’s Speculum Sanctorale, which was composed by Gui at the request of Bérenger of Landorre, Master of the Order, who wanted a more accurate book of saints because he found the Legenda Aurea dubious in some parts, according to Gui’s biographer: ". . . cui ordinatio fratris Iacobi de Voragine diminuta et in plerisque dubia videbatur" (quoted by Simon Tugwell, O.P., Bernardi Guidonis Scripta de Sancto Dominico, MOPH, XXVII, 22).

 ²² Bernard Gui, Legenda Sancti Dominici, 39, MOPH, XXVII, 257-258.

²³ Testimony of Brother John of Spain, Acta Canonizationis S. Dominici, XXVI, MOPH, XVI, 144.

²⁴ Stephanus de Salaniaco, Predicatores Gratiosi et Famosi, in De Quatuor in Quibus Deus Praedicatorum Ordinem Insignivit, ed. Thomas Kaeppeli, O.P., MOPH, XXII (Roma: Institutum Historicum Ordinis Fratrum Praedicatorum, 1949), 157.

²⁵ Catherine of Siena, The Dialogue, 158, trans. Suzanne Noffke, O.P. (New York: Paulist, 1980), 337.

²⁶ William Hinnebusch, O.P., asserts that the first friars adopted the habit of the canons of Osma, which included a scapular with an attached hood. William Hinnebusch, O.P., The History of the Dominican Order, vol. I (Staten Island, NY: Alba House, 1965), 343.

²⁷ Simon Tugwell, O.P., in an excursus on the topic, demonstrates that the constitutions, as they existed in 1216, and thus before Reginald’s involvement with the Order, included a description of the scapular, similar to the description of a scapular found in the constitutions of the Premonstratensians. Simon Tugwell, O.P., "Excursus I: Reginald’s vision and the Dominican habit," in Bernardi Guidonis Scripta de Sancto Dominico, MOPH, XXVII, 224-225.

²⁸ M.-H. Vicaire, O.P., treats of the question in a footnote, asserting: "This account . . . progressively distorted, has finally come to signify, in accordance with a hagiographical theme to be met with in other orders, the showing of a new habit of the order (the scapular)." M.-H. Vicaire, O.P., Saint Dominic and His Times, trans. Kathleen Pond (Green Bay: Alt Publishing, 1964), 504, n. 56.