The Franciscans are members of a religious order that follows the rule of Saint Francis of Assisi. The first Franciscans, called the Order of Friars Minor, followed an ideal of total poverty; they possessed nothing in common or individually. Forbidden to accept money, they lived from day to day by working and begging. When they began studying and living at universities, however, they had to modify their strict ideal of poverty. By the time Saint Francis died (1226), the order had spread from Italy to England, the Holy Land, and all of Europe. The friars were known as the people's preachers. They wore a gray tunic with a white cord at the waist; hence, their English name Grey Friars.
From the beginning, there were disagreements about the direction the order would take. The Franciscan minister general, Saint Bonaventure, sought a balance between the Conventuals, who wanted to adapt their poverty to the needs of the time, and the Spirituals, who wanted a strict poverty. The quarrel intensified during the 14th century when some of the Spiritual Franciscans, known as the Fraticelli, were condemned (1317 - 18) by Pope John XXII. Disagreements about the ideal of poverty brought a permanent division in the 15th century between the Friars Minor Conventual and the Order of Friars Minor. In the 16th century, the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin established a stricter independent branch of Franciscans.
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The English philosopher and scientist Roger Bacon was a Franciscan, as were the philosopher - theologians Duns Scotus and William of Occam. Other famous Franciscans include Saint Anthony of Padua; two Renaissance popes, Sixtus IV and Sixtus V; and Junipero Serra, the founder of the California missions.
Cyprian Davis
Bibliography
M D Lambert, Franciscan Poverty: The Doctrine
of the Absolute Poverty of Christ and the Apostles in the
Franciscan Order, 1210 - 1323 (1961); J R Moorman,
A History of the Franciscan Order From Its Origins to the Year
1517 (1968); W Short, The Franciscans (1989).
Franciscans or Order of Friars Minor, is a religious order founded, probably in 1208, by Saint Francis of Assisi and approved by Pope Innocent III in 1209. After devoting himself to a life of preaching, service, and poverty, Francis gathered around him a band of 12 disciples. He led them from Assisi to Rome to ask for the blessing of the pope, who expressed doubt about the practicability of the way of life that the group proposed to adopt. Pope Innocent gave them his blessing, however, on condition that they become clerics and elect a superior. Francis was elected superior and the group returned to Assisi, where they obtained from the Benedictine abbey on Mount Subasio the use of the little chapel of Santa Maria degli Angeli, around which they constructed huts of branches. Then, in imitation of Christ, they began a life of itinerant preaching and voluntary poverty.
At this time the brotherhood lacked formal organization and a novitiate, but as the disciples increased and their teaching spread, it became obvious that the example of Francis would not suffice to enforce discipline among the friars. In 1223 Pope Honorius III issued a bull that constituted the Friars Minor a formal order and instituted a one-year novitiate.
Following the death of Francis in 1226, the convent and basilica at Assisi were built. Their magnificence disturbed some, who believed it inconsistent with Francis's ideals of poverty. After much dissension, Pope Gregory IX decreed that moneys could be held by elected trustees of the order and that the building of convents was not contrary to the intentions of the founder.
As time passed, the order grew, the only body of equal power being the Dominicans. The Franciscans, however, became fractionalized, and in 1517 Pope Leo X divided the order into two bodies, the Conventuals, who were allowed corporate property, as were other monastic orders, and the Observants, who sought to follow the precepts of Francis as closely as possible. The Observants have ever since been the larger branch, and early in the 16th century a third body, the Capuchins, was organized out of it and made independent. At the end of the 19th century Leo XIII grouped these three bodies together as the First Order of Friars Minor, designating the nuns known as Poor Clares as the Second Order, and the tertiaries, men and women living in secular society without celibacy, as the Third Order.
In addition to their preaching and charitable work, the Franciscans have been noted for their devotion to learning. Before the Reformation in England they held many positions in the universities, prominent among the professors being John Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, and Roger Bacon. The order has produced four popes - Sixtus IV, Julius II, Sixtus V, and Clement XIV - and one antipope, Alexander V.
On his first voyage to the New World, Christopher Columbus was accompanied by a group of Franciscans. The first convents in America were established by Franciscans, at Santo Domingo and La Vega in what is now the Dominican Republic. The rapid conversion of the Native Americans and the consequent enthusiasm of the missionary-minded in Spain led to the further spread of the order in the West Indies; before 1505, Ferdinand V, king of Castile, found it necessary to issue a decree that new convents should be placed at least five leagues apart. While the Spanish Franciscans gradually spread through the southern part of the New World as far as the Pacific Ocean, the French friars, who had arrived in Canada in 1615, at the behest of the French explorer Samuel de Champlain, set up missions throughout the north. Today the Franciscans conduct a university and five colleges in the U.S., and a seminary, in Allegheny, New York. They also engage in regular parish work, as well as mission work among the Native Americans.
The supreme government of the order is vested in an elective general, resident at the General Motherhouse, in Rome. Subordinate are the provincials, who preside over all the brethren in a province, and the custodes, or guardians (never called abbots, as are their counterparts in other orders), at the head of a single community or convent. These officers are elected for a period of two years.
In the eary 20th century a number of Franciscan communities for both men and women were established by various Anglican churches. The most prominent of these is the Society of Saint Francis in Cerne Abbas, Dorset, England, which maintains several houses in the British Isles and in New Guinea. In 1967 a similar group in the United States was united with these English friars.
Saint Francis of Assisi (1182-1226), was an Italian mystic and preacher, who founded the Franciscans. Born in Assisi, Italy and originally named Giovanni Francesco Bernardone, he appears to have received little formal education, even though his father was a wealthy merchant. As a young man, Francis led a worldly, carefree life. Following a battle between Assisi and Perugia, he was held captive in Perugia for over a year. While imprisoned, he suffered a severe illness during which he resolved to alter his way of life. Back in Assisi in 1205, he performed charities among the lepers and began working on the restoration of dilapidated churches. Francis's change of character and his expenditures for charity angered his father, who legally disinherited him. Francis then discarded his rich garments for a bishop's cloak and devoted the next three years to the care of outcasts and lepers in the woods of Mount Subasio.
For his devotions on Mount Subasio, Francis restored the ruined chapel of Santa Maria degli Angeli. In 1208, one day during Mass, he heard a call telling him to go out into the world and, according to the text of Matthew 10:5-14, to possess nothing, but to do good everywhere. Upon returning to Assisi that same year, Francis began preaching. He gathered round him the 12 disciples who became the original brothers of his order, later called the First Order; they elected Francis superior. In 1212 he received a young, well-born nun of Assisi, Clare, into Franciscan fellowship; through her was established the Order of the Poor Ladies (the Poor Clares), later the Second Order of Franciscans. It was probably later in 1212 that Francis set out for the Holy Land, but a shipwreck forced him to return. Other difficulties prevented him from accomplishing much missionary work when he went to Spain to preach to the Moors. In 1219 he was in Egypt, where he succeeded in preaching to, but not in converting, the sultan. Francis then went on to the Holy Land, staying there until 1220. He wished to be martyred and rejoiced upon hearing that five Franciscan friars had been killed in Morocco while carrying out their duties. On his return home he found dissension in the ranks of the friars and resigned as superior, spending the next few years in planning what became the Third Order of Franciscans, the tertiaries.
In September 1224, after 40 days of fasting, Francis was praying upon Monte Alverno when he felt pain mingled with joy, and the marks of the crucifixion of Christ, the stigmata, appeared on his body. Accounts of the appearance of these marks differ, but it seems probable that they were knobby protuberances of the flesh, resembling the heads of nails. Francis was carried back to Assisi, where his remaining years were marked by physical pain and almost total blindness. He was canonized in 1228. In 1980, Pope John Paul II proclaimed him the patron saint of ecologists. In art, the emblems of St. Francis are the wolf, the lamb, the fish, birds, and the stigmata. His feast day is October 4.
Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh
The Franciscan Order is one of four thirteenth century orders of mendicant (begging) friars (Franciscan, Dominican, Carmelite, Augustinian) established to meet the urgent challenge of spiritual decline, urban growth, and the rapid spread of heresy (especially in southern France and northern Italy). It was founded by Francis of Assisi and formally approved by Innocent III in 1210. Unlike earlier monasticism, the friars lived active lives within the world as preachers and ministers to the needy.
Francis' deep suspicion of formal organization and learning and his extreme view of proverty (even physical contact with money was to be avoided) became the center of bitter conflicts within the Order. Early on, tension arose between the Zealots, who advocated strict observance of the founder's rule, and those factions (the Laxists, the Community) who favored various accommodations to reality. Under papal auspices the Order was fully organized by 1240 as one international body with only clerics eligible for office (another departure from the spirit of Francis, who favored laity), and provision was made for property to be held in trusteeship to get around the prohibition against ownership. During the years 1257-74 tensions abated under the conciliatory minister general Bonaventure, who established a moderate balance between structure and vitality. As an outstanding scholar, he also represented the increasing influx of Franciscans into the world of learning within the urban-based universities.
Following the death of Bonaventure a bitter debate ensued over the nature of apostolic proverty. The extreme view of the Spirituals (formerly the Zealots) was rejected by Pope John XXII, who in 1322 officially approved corporate ownership of property, arguing that Christ and the apostles as leaders of the church had owned property. Spirituals who fled became known as Fraticelli. Even outstanding figures such as the minister general Michael of Cesena and William of Ockham went into exile and denounced the pope.
Difficult conditions of plague, warfare, and papal schism during the century and a half before the Reformation led to a general decline within the Order, but another movement for restoration of the strict rule emerged, the Observants. They were opposed by the more moderate Conventuals, who preferred urban residence to remote hermitages. Failure to unite these factions led Pope Leo X in 1517 to officially separate the Order into two independent branches, the Friars Minor of the Regular Observants (strict) and the Friars Minor Conventuals (moderate). Given their reforming instincts, the Observants soon divided into several factions, Discalced (shoeless), Rocollects, Reformed, and Capuchins (pointed cowl). The latter played a significant role in the Counter-Reformation and by 1619 had gained complete autonomy. Again, internal division and the external challenge of the Enlightenment and revolutionary Europe weakened the Order until mounting pressure led Pope Leo XIII in 1897 to unite all Observant branches (except the Capuchins, who retained their independence).
Alongside the Order of Friars Minor, with the three independent branches of Observants, Conventuals, and Capuchins, there emerged two other Franciscan Orders, the Second Order of nuns (Poor Clares), founded by Francis and his follower Clare in 1212, and the Third Order (Tertiaries) of mainly lay persons.
The Franciscans, along with their rivals the Dominicans, represented a new spiritual force within the thirteenth century church. As advocates of the simpler apostolic life of poverty and preaching, they struck a responsive chord among the growing number of townspeople who had become alienated from the monastic and hierarchical establishment. Nonetheless, instead of becoming rebellious heretics, the friars were obedient servants of the established church. Like the town, the university became a major focus of their activity as they sought to prepare intellectually for their worldwide mission, confronting infidel, heretic, and indifferent alike with the truth of Christianity. Virtually every outstanding scholar of that age was a friar, including Bonaventure, John Duns Scotus, and William of Ockham among the Franciscans. Contrary to the spirit of Francis, however, the Order became aggressively associated with the repressive Inquisition and the anti-Jewish activities of the Western church during its effort to consolidate Christian society.
R K Bishop
(Elwell Evangelical Dictionary)
Bibliography
R. Brooke, The Coming of the Friars; J. Cohen, The
Friars and the Jews; L. Little, Religious Poverty and the Profit
Economy in Medieval Europe; J. Moorman, A History of the Franciscan
Order from Its Origin to the Year 1517.
(1182-1226)
Francis of Assisi was the universally admired founder of the Order of Friars Minor (Franciscans). Born Francesco Bernardone, son of a wealthy cloth merchant from Assisi, he was a popular, high-spirited youth, much inspired by chivalric ideals of the troubador and the knight. In his early twenties he experienced a gradual but profound religious conversion, expressed in a number of dramatic gestures such as the exchanging of clothes with a beggar and kissing the diseased hand of a leper. After he had sold family merchandise in order to rebuild a local church, his enraged father, disgusted by the son's unworldly instincts, brought him to judgment before the bishop's court. Here Francis freely renounced his inheritance and, in a memorable act, stripped off his clothes as well to signify total abandonment to God.
Francis spent the next several years living as a hermit in the vicinity of Assisi, ministering to the needy, repairing churches, and attracting a small band of followers to his simple rule. Pope Innocent III's approval of the fledgling order in 1210 was a major triumph; rather than being rejected as yet another threatening, heretical movement, the "little brothers" were embraced as a powerful current of reform within the established church.
Following a preaching mission in the Islamic East (including a remarkable audience with the sultan in Egypt), Francis returned home in 1219 to face a crisis. The movement now numbered some five thousand adherents, and pressure was mounting to establish a more formal organization. Distressed by this drift away from earlier spontaneity and simplicity, Francis increasingly withdrew to live out his mission by personal example. Intense meditation on the suffering of Christ led to the famous experience of the stigmata, signs in his own flesh of the wounds of his Master. And although he was more a preacher than a writer, in 1223 he completed a second rule (adapted as the official Rule of the Order) and about 1224 his most famous piece, "Canticle of the Sun," a paean of praise for God and his creation. Ill and nearly blind, he was finally brought back to Assisi from his remote hermitage and died on October 3, 1226. He was canonized by his friend Gregory IX in 1228, and his body was soon moved to the newly constructed basilica bearing his name.
The key to Francis's life was his uncompromising attempt to imitate Christ of the Gospels through absolute poverty, humility, and simplicity. He loved nature as God's good handiwork and had a deep respect for women (such as his beloved mother and Clare, his follower). At the same time, his willing obedience to the papacy and the priesthood allowed them to embrace this otherwise radical reformer and saint.
R K Bishop
(Elwell Evangelical Dictionary)
Bibliography
M. Bishop, St. Francis of Assisi; L. Cunningham, St.
Francis of Assisi; O. Englebert, Saint Francis of Assisi; A. Fortini,
Francis of Assisi; J. H. Smith, Francis of Assisi.
Founder of the Franciscan Order, born at Assisi in Umbria, in 1181 or 1182 -- the exact year is uncertain; died there, 3 October, 1226. His father, Pietro Bernardone, was a wealthy Assisian cloth merchant. Of his mother, Pica, little is known, but she is said to have belonged to a noble family of Provence. Francis was one of several children. The legend that he was born in a stable dates from the fifteenth century only, and appears to have originated in the desire of certain writers to make his life resemble that of Christ. At baptism the saint received the name of Giovanni, which his father afterwards altered to Francesco, through fondness it would seem for France, whither business had led him at the time of his son's birth. In any case, since the child was renamed in infancy, the change can hardly have had anything to do with his aptitude for learning French, as some have thought.
Francis received some elementary instruction from the priests of St. George's at Assisi, though he learned more perhaps in the school of the Troubadours, who were just then making for refinement in Italy. However this may be, he was not very studious, and his literary education remained incomplete. Although associated with his father in trade, he showed little liking for a merchant's career, and his parents seemed to have indulged his every whim. Thomas of Celano, his first biographer, speaks in very severe terms of Francis's youth. Certain it is that the saint's early life gave no presage of the golden years that were to come. No one loved pleasure more than Francis; he had a ready wit, sang merrily, delighted in fine clothes and showy display. Handsome, gay, gallant, and courteous, he soon became the prime favourite among the young nobles of Assisi, the foremost in every feat of arms, the leader of the civil revels, the very king of frolic. But even at this time Francis showed an instinctive sympathy with the poor, and though he spent money lavishly, it still flowed in such channels as to attest a princely magnanimity of spirit. When about twenty, Francis went out with the townsmen to fight the Perugians in one of the petty skirmishes so frequent at that time between the rival cities. The Assisians were defeated on this occasion, and Francis, being among those taken prisoners, was held captive for more than a year in Perugia. A low fever which he there contracted appears to have turned his thoughts to the things of eternity; at least the emptiness of the life he had been leading came to him during that long illness. With returning health, however, Francis's eagerness after glory reawakened and his fancy wandered in search of victories; at length he resolved to embrace a military career, and circumstances seemed to favour his aspirations. A knight of Assisi was about to join "the gentle count", Walter of Brienne, who was then in arms in the Neapolitan States against the emperor, and Francis arranged to accompany him. His biographers tell us that the night before Francis set forth he had a strange dream, in which he saw a vast hall hung with armour all marked with the Cross. "These", said a voice, "are for you and your soldiers." "I know I shall be a great prince", exclaimed Francis exultingly, as he started for Apulia. But a second illness arrested his course at Spoleto. There, we are told, Francis had another dream in which the same voice bade him turn back to Assisi. He did so at once. This was in 1205.
Although Francis still joined at times in the noisy revels of his former comrades, his changed demeanour plainly showed that his heart was no longer with them; a yearning for the life of the spirit had already possessed it. His companions twitted Francis on his absent-mindedness and asked if he were minded to be married. "Yes", he replied, "I am about to take a wife of surpassing fairness." She was no other than Lady Poverty whom Dante and Giotto have wedded to his name, and whom even now he had begun to love. After a short period of uncertainty he began to seek in prayer and solitude the answer to his call; he had already given up his gay attire and wasteful ways. One day, while crossing the Umbrian plain on horseback, Francis unexpectedly drew near a poor leper. The sudden appearance of this repulsive object filled him with disgust and he instinctively retreated, but presently controlling his natural aversion he dismounted, embraced the unfortunate man, and gave him all the money he had. About the same time Francis made a pilgrimage to Rome. Pained at the miserly offerings he saw at the tomb of St. Peter, he emptied his purse thereon. Then, as if to put his fastidious nature to the test, he exchanged clothes with a tattered mendicant and stood for the rest of the day fasting among the horde of beggars at the door of the basilica.
Not long after his return to Assisi, whilst Francis was praying before an ancient crucifix in the forsaken wayside chapel of St. Damian's below the town, he heard a voice saying: "Go, Francis, and repair my house, which as you see is falling into ruin." Taking this behest literally, as referring to the ruinous church wherein he knelt, Francis went to his father's shop, impulsively bundled together a load of coloured drapery, and mounting his horse hastened to Foligno, then a mart of some importance, and there sold both horse and stuff to procure the money needful for the restoration of St. Damian's. When, however, the poor priest who officiated there refused to receive the gold thus gotten, Francis flung it from him disdainfully. The elder Bernardone, a most niggardly man, was incensed beyond measure at his son's conduct, and Francis, to avert his father's wrath, hid himself in a cave near St. Damian's for a whole month. When he emerged from this place of concealment and returned to the town, emaciated with hunger and squalid with dirt, Francis was followed by a hooting rabble, pelted with mud and stones, and otherwise mocked as a madman. Finally, he was dragged home by his father, beaten, bound, and locked in a dark closet.
Freed by his mother during Bernardone's absence, Francis returned at once to St. Damian's, where he found a shelter with the officiating priest, but he was soon cited before the city consuls by his father. The latter, not content with having recovered the scattered gold from St. Damian's, sought also to force his son to forego his inheritance. This Francis was only too eager to do; he declared, however, that since he had entered the service of God he was no longer under civil jurisdiction. Having therefore been taken before the bishop, Francis stripped himself of the very clothes he wore, and gave them to his father, saying: "Hitherto I have called you my father on earth; henceforth I desire to say only 'Our Father who art in Heaven.'" Then and there, as Dante sings, were solemnized Francis's nuptials with his beloved spouse, the Lady Poverty, under which name, in the mystical language afterwards so familiar to him, he comprehended the total surrender of all worldly goods, honours, and privileges. And now Francis wandered forth into the hills behind Assisi, improvising hymns of praise as he went. "I am the herald of the great King", he declared in answer to some robbers, who thereupon despoiled him of all he had and threw him scornfully in a snow drift. Naked and half frozen, Francis crawled to a neighbouring monastery and there worked for a time as a scullion. At Gubbio, whither he went next, Francis obtained from a friend the cloak, girdle, and staff of a pilgrim as an alms. Returning to Assisi, he traversed the city begging stones for the restoration of St. Damian's. These he carried to the old chapel, set in place himself, and so at length rebuilt it. In the same way Francis afterwards restored two other deserted chapels, St. Peter's, some distance from the city, and St. Mary of the Angels, in the plain below it, at a spot called the Porziuncola. Meantime he redoubled his zeal in works of charity, more especially in nursing the lepers.
On a certain morning in 1208, probably 24 February, Francis was hearing Mass in the chapel of St. Mary of the Angels, near which he had then built himself a hut; the Gospel of the day told how the disciples of Christ were to possess neither gold nor silver, nor scrip for their journey, nor two coats, nor shoes, nor a staff, and that they were to exhort sinners to repentance and announce the Kingdom of God. Francis took these words as if spoken directly to himself, and so soon as Mass was over threw away the poor fragment left him of the world's goods, his shoes, cloak, pilgrim staff, and empty wallet. At last he had found his vocation. Having obtained a coarse woolen tunic of "beast colour", the dress then worn by the poorest Umbrian peasants, and tied it round him with a knotted rope, Francis went forth at once exhorting the people of the country-side to penance, brotherly love, and peace. The Assisians had already ceased to scoff at Francis; they now paused in wonderment; his example even drew others to him. Bernard of Quintavalle, a magnate of the town, was the first to join Francis, and he was soon followed by Peter of Cattaneo, a well-known canon of the cathedral. In true spirit of religious enthusiasm, Francis repaired to the church of St. Nicholas and sought to learn God's will in their regard by thrice opening at random the book of the Gospels on the altar. Each time it opened at passages where Christ told His disciples to leave all things and follow Him. "This shall be our rule of life", exclaimed Francis, and led his companions to the public square, where they forthwith gave away all their belongings to the poor. After this they procured rough habits like that of Francis, and built themselves small huts near his at the Porziuncola. A few days later Giles, afterwards the great ecstatic and sayer of "good words", became the third follower of Francis. The little band divided and went about, two and two, making such an impression by their words and behaviour that before long several other disciples grouped themselves round Francis eager to share his poverty, among them being Sabatinus, vir bonus et justus, Moricus, who had belonged to the Crucigeri, John of Capella, who afterwards fell away, Philip "the Long", and four others of whom we know only the names. When the number of his companions had increased to eleven, Francis found it expedient to draw up a written rule for them. This first rule, as it is called, of the Friars Minor has not come down to us in its original form, but it appears to have been very short and simple, a mere adaptation of the Gospel precepts already selected by Francis for the guidance of his first companions, and which he desired to practice in all their perfection. When this rule was ready the Penitents of Assisi, as Francis and his followers styled themselves, set out for Rome to seek the approval of the Holy See, although as yet no such approbation was obligatory. There are differing accounts of Francis's reception by Innocent III. It seems, however, that Guido, Bishop of Assisi, who was then in Rome, commended Francis to Cardinal John of St. Paul, and that at the instance of the latter, the pope recalled the saint whose first overtures he had, as it appears, somewhat rudely rejected. Moreover, in site of the sinister predictions of others in the Sacred College, who regarded the mode of life proposed by Francis as unsafe and impracticable, Innocent, moved it is said by a dream in which he beheld the Poor Man of Assisi upholding the tottering Lateran, gave a verbal sanction to the rule submitted by Francis and granted the saint and his companions leave to preach repentance everywhere. Before leaving Rome they all received the ecclesiastical tonsure, Francis himself being ordained deacon later on. After their return to Assisi, the Friars Minor -- for thus Francis had named his brethren, either after the minores, or lower classes, as some think, or as others believe, with reference to the Gospel (Matthew 25:40-45), and as a perpetual reminder of their humility -- found shelter in a deserted hut at Rivo Torto in the plain below the city, but were forced to abandon this poor abode by a rough peasant who drove in his ass upon them. About 1211 they obtained a permanent foothold near Assisi, through the generosity of the Benedictines of Monte Subasio, who gave them the little chapel of St. Mary of the Angels or the Porziuncola. Adjoining this humble sanctuary, already dear to Francis, the first Franciscan convent was formed by the erection of a few small huts or cells of wattle, straw, and mud, and enclosed by a hedge. From this settlement, which became the cradle of the Franciscan Order (Caput et Mater Ordinis) and the central spot in the life of St. Francis, the Friars Minor went forth two by two exhorting the people of the surrounding country. Like children "careless of the day", they wandered from place to place singing in their joy, and calling themselves the Lord's minstrels. The wide world was their cloister; sleeping in haylofts, grottos, or church porches, they toiled with the labourers in the fields, and when none gave them work they would beg. In a short while Francis and his companions gained an immense influence, and men of different grades of life and ways of thought flocked to the order. Among the new recruits made about this time by Francis were the famous Three Companions, who afterwards wrote his life, namely: Angelus Tancredi, a noble cavalier; Leo, the saint's secretary and confessor; and Rufinus, a cousin of St. Clare; besides Juniper, "the renowned jester of the Lord".
During the Lent of 1212, a new joy, great as it was unexpected, came to Francis. Clare, a young heiress of Assisi, moved by the saint's preaching at the church of St. George, sought him out, and begged to be allowed to embrace the new manner of life he had founded. By his advice, Clare, who was then but eighteen, secretly left her father's house on the night following Palm Sunday, and with two companions went to the Porziuncola, where the friars met her in procession, carrying lighted torches. Then Francis, having cut off her hair, clothed her in the Minorite habit and thus received her to a life of poverty, penance, and seclusion. Clare stayed provisionally with some Benedictine nuns near Assisi, until Francis could provide a suitable retreat for her, and for St. Agnes, her sister, and the other pious maidens who had joined her. He eventually established them at St. Damian's, in a dwelling adjoining the chapel he had rebuilt with his own hands, which was now given to the saint by the Benedictines as domicile for his spiritual daughters, and which thus became the first monastery of the Second Franciscan Order of Poor Ladies, now known as Poor Clares.
In the autumn of the same year (1212) Francis's burning desire for the conversion of the Saracens led him to embark for Syria, but having been shipwrecked on the coast of Slavonia, he had to return to Ancona. The following spring he devoted himself to evangelizing Central Italy. About this time (1213) Francis received from Count Orlando of Chiusi the mountain of La Verna, an isolated peak among the Tuscan Apennines, rising some 4000 feet above the valley of the Casentino, as a retreat, "especially favourable for contemplation", to which he might retire from time to time for prayer and rest. For Francis never altogether separated the contemplative from the active life, as the several hermitages associated with his memory, and the quaint regulations he wrote for those living in them bear witness. At one time, indeed, a strong desire to give himself wholly to a life of contemplation seems to have possessed the saint. During the next year (1214) Francis set out for Morocco, in another attempt to reach the infidels and, if needs be, to shed his blood for the Gospel, but while yet in Spain was overtaken by so severe an illness that he was compelled to turn back to Italy once more.
Authentic details are unfortunately lacking of Francis's journey to Spain and sojourn there. It probably took place in the winter of 1214-1215. After his return to Umbria he received several noble and learned men into his order, including his future biographer Thomas of Celano. The next eighteen months comprise, perhaps, the most obscure period of the saint's life. That he took part in the Lateran Council of 1215 may well be, but it is not certain; we know from Eccleston, however, that Francis was present at the death of Innocent III, which took place at Perugia, in July 1216. Shortly afterwards, i.e. very early in the pontificate of Honorius III, is placed the concession of the famous Porziuncola Indulgence. It is related that once, while Francis was praying at the Porziuncola, Christ appeared to him and offered him whatever favour he might desire. The salvation of souls was ever the burden of Francis's prayers, and wishing moreover, to make his beloved Porziuncola a sanctuary where many might be saved, he begged a plenary Indulgence for all who, having confessed their sins, should visit the little chapel. Our Lord acceded to this request on condition that the pope should ratify the Indulgence. Francis thereupon set out for Perugia, with Brother Masseo, to find Honorius III. The latter, notwithstanding some opposition from the Curia at such an unheard-of favour, granted the Indulgence, restricting it, however, to one day yearly. He subsequently fixed 2 August in perpetuity, as the day for gaining this Porziuncola Indulgence, commonly known in Italy as il perdono d'Assisi. Such is the traditional account. The fact that there is no record of this Indulgence in either the papal or diocesan archives and no allusion to it in the earliest biographies of Francis or other contemporary documents has led some writers to reject the whole story. This argumentum ex silentio has, however, been met by M. Paul Sabatier, who in his critical edition of the "Tractatus de Indulgentia" of Fra Bartholi has adduced all the really credible evidence in its favour. But even those who regard the granting of this Indulgence as traditionally believed to be an established fact of history, admit that its early history is uncertain. (See PORTIUNCULA.)
The first general chapter of the Friars Minor was held in May, 1217, at Porziuncola, the order being divided into provinces, and an apportionment made of the Christian world into so many Franciscan missions. Tuscany, Lombardy, Provence, Spain, and Germany were assigned to five of Francis's principal followers; for himself the saint reserved France, and he actually set out for that kingdom, but on arriving at Florence, was dissuaded from going further by Cardinal Ugolino, who had been made protector of the order in 1216. He therefore sent in his stead Brother Pacificus, who in the world had been renowned as a poet, together with Brother Agnellus, who later on established the Friars Minor in England. Although success came indeed to Francis and his friars, with it came also opposition, and it was with a view to allaying any prejudices the Curia might have imbibed against their methods that Francis, at the instance of Cardinal Ugolino, went to Rome and preached before the pope and cardinals in the Lateran. This visit to the Eternal City, which took place 1217-18, was apparently the occasion of Francis's memorable meeting with St. Dominic. The year 1218 Francis devoted to missionary tours in Italy, which were a continual triumph for him. He usually preached out of doors, in the market-places, from church steps, from the walls of castle court-yards. Allured by the magic spell of his presence, admiring crowds, unused for the rest to anything like popular preaching in the vernacular, followed Francis from place to place hanging on his lips; church bells rang at his approach; processions of clergy and people advanced to meet him with music and singing; they brought the sick to him to bless and heal, and kissed the very ground on which he trod, and even sought to cut away pieces of his tunic. The extraordinary enthusiasm with which the saint was everywhere welcomed was equalled only by the immediate and visible result of his preaching. His exhortations of the people, for sermons they can hardly be called, short, homely, affectionate, and pathetic, touched even the hardest and most frivolous, and Francis became in sooth a very conqueror of souls. Thus it happened, on one occasion, while the saint was preaching at Camara, a small village near Assisi, that the whole congregation were so moved by his "words of spirit and life" that they presented themselves to him in a body and begged to be admitted into his order. It was to accede, so far as might be, to like requests that Francis devised his Third Order, as it is now called, of the Brothers and Sisters of Penance, which he intended as a sort of middle state between the world and the cloister for those who could not leave their home or desert their wonted avocations in order to enter either the First Order of Friars Minor or the Second Order of Poor Ladies. That Francis prescribed particular duties for these tertiaries is beyond question. They were not to carry arms, or take oaths, or engage in lawsuits, etc. It is also said that he drew up a formal rule for them, but it is clear that the rule, confirmed by Nicholas IV in 1289, does not, at least in the form in which it has come down to us, represent the original rule of the Brothers and Sisters of Penance. In any event, it is customary to assign 1221 as the year of the foundation of this third order, but the date is not certain.
At the second general chapter (May, 1219) Francis, bent on realizing his project of evangelizing the infidels, assigned a separate mission to each of his foremost disciples, himself selecting the seat of war between the crusaders and the Saracens. With eleven companions, including Brother Illuminato and Peter of Cattaneo, Francis set sail from Ancona on 21 June, for Saint-Jean d'Acre, and he was present at the siege and taking of Damietta. After preaching there to the assembled Christian forces, Francis fearlessly passed over to the infidel camp, where he was taken prisoner and led before the sultan. According to the testimony of Jacques de Vitry, who was with the crusaders at Damietta, the sultan received Francis with courtesy, but beyond obtaining a promise from this ruler of more indulgent treatment for the Christian captives, the saint's preaching seems to have effected little.
Before returning to Europe, the saint is believed to have visited Palestine and there obtained for the friars the foothold they still retain as guardians of the holy places. What is certain is that Francis was compelled to hasten back to Italy because of various troubles that had arisen there during his absence. News had reached him in the East that Matthew of Narni and Gregory of Naples, the two vicars-general whom he had left in charge of the order, had summoned a chapter which, among other innovations, sought to impose new fasts upon the friars, more severe than the rule required. Moreover, Cardinal Ugolino had conferred on the Poor Ladies a written rule which was practically that of the Benedictine nuns, and Brother Philip, whom Francis had charged with their interests, had accepted it. To make matters worse, John of Capella, one of the saint's first companions, had assembled a large number of lepers, both men and women, with a view to forming them into a new religious order, and had set out for Rome to seek approval for the rule he had drawn up for these unfortunates. Finally a rumour had been spread abroad that Francis was dead, so that when the saint returned to Italy with Brother Elias -- he appeared to have arrived at Venice in July, 1220 -- a general feeling of unrest prevailed among the friars.
Apart from these difficulties, the order was then passing through a period of transition. It had become evident that the simple, familiar, and unceremonious ways which had marked the Franciscan movement at its beginning were gradually disappearing, and that the heroic poverty practiced by Francis and his companions at the outset became less easy as the friars with amazing rapidity increased in number. And this Francis could not help seeing on his return. Cardinal Ugolino had already undertaken the task "of reconciling inspirations so unstudied and so free with an order of things they had outgrown." This remarkable man, who afterwards ascended the papal throne as Gregory IX, was deeply attached to Francis, whom he venerated as a saint and also, some writers tell us, managed as an enthusiast.
That Cardinal Ugolino had no small share in bringing Francis's lofty ideals "within range and compass" seems beyond dispute, and it is not difficult to recognize his hand in the important changes made in the organization of the order in the so-called Chapter of Mats. At this famous assembly, held at Porziuncola at Whitsuntide, 1220 or 1221 (there is seemingly much room for doubt as to the exact date and number of the early chapters), about 5000 friars are said to have been present, besides some 500 applicants for admission to the order. Huts of wattle and mud afforded shelter for this multitude. Francis had purposely made no provision for them, but the charity of the neighbouring towns supplied them with food, while knights and nobles waited upon them gladly. It was on this occasion that Francis, harassed no doubt and disheartened at the tendency betrayed by a large number of the friars to relax the rigours of the rule, according to the promptings of human prudence, and feeling, perhaps unfitted for a place which now called largely for organizing abilities, relinquished his position as general of the order in favour of Peter of Cattaneo. But the latter died in less than a year, being succeeded as vicar-general by the unhappy Brother Elias, who continued in that office until the death of Francis.
The saint, meanwhile, during the few years that remained in him, sought to impress on the friars by the silent teaching of personal example of what sort he would fain have them to be. Already, while passing through Bologna on his return from the East, Francis had refused to enter the convent there because he had heard it called the "House of the Friars" and because a studium had been instituted there. He moreover bade all the friars, even those who were ill, quit it at once, and it was only some time after, when Cardinal Ugolino had publicly declared the house to be his own property, that Francis suffered his brethren to re-enter it. Yet strong and definite as the saint's convictions were, and determinedly as his line was taken, he was never a slave to a theory in regard to the observances of poverty or anything else; about him indeed, there was nothing narrow or fanatical. As for his attitude towards study, Francis desiderated for his friars only such theological knowledge as was conformable to the mission of the order, which was before all else a mission of example. Hence he regarded the accumulation of books as being at variance with the poverty his friars professed, and he resisted the eager desire for mere book-learning, so prevalent in his time, in so far as it struck at the roots of that simplicity which entered so largely into the essence of his life and ideal and threatened to stifle the spirit of prayer, which he accounted preferable to all the rest. In 1221, so some writers tell us, Francis drew up a new rule for the Friars Minor. Others regard this so-called Rule of 1221 not as a new rule, but as the first one which Innocent had orally approved; not, indeed, its original form, which we do not possess, but with such additions and modifications as it has suffered during the course of twelve years. However this may be, the composition called by some the Rule of 1221 is very unlike any conventional rule ever made. It was too lengthy and unprecise to become a formal rule, and two years later Francis retired to Fonte Colombo, a hermitage near Rieti, and rewrote the rule in more compendious form. This revised draft he entrusted to Brother Elias, who not long after declared he had lost it through negligence. Francis thereupon returned to the solitude of Fonte Colombo, and recast the rule on the same lines as before, its twenty-three chapters being reduced to twelve and some of its precepts being modified in certain details at the instance of Cardinal Ugolino. In this form the rule was solemnly approved by Honorius III, 29 November, 1223 (Litt. "Solet annuere"). This Second Rule, as it is usually called or Regula Bullata of the Friars Minor, is the one ever since professed throughout the First Order of St. Francis (see RULE OF SAINT FRANCIS). It is based on the three vows of obedience, poverty, and chastity, special stress however being laid on poverty, which Francis sought to make the special characteristic of his order, and which became the sign to be contradicted. This vow of absolute poverty in the first and second orders and the reconciliation of the religious with the secular state in the Third Order of Penance are the chief novelties introduced by Francis in monastic regulation.
It was during Christmastide of this year (1223) that the saint conceived the idea of celebrating the Nativity "in a new manner", by reproducing in a church at Greccio the praesepio of Bethlehem, and he has thus come to be regarded as having inaugurated the popular devotion of the Crib. Christmas appears indeed to have been the favourite feast of Francis, and he wished to persuade the emperor to make a special law that men should then provide well for the birds and the beasts, as well as for the poor, so that all might have occasion to rejoice in the Lord.
Early in August, 1224, Francis retired with three companions to "that rugged rock 'twixt Tiber and Arno", as Dante called La Verna, there to keep a forty days fast in preparation for Michaelmas. During this retreat the sufferings of Christ became more than ever the burden of his meditations; into few souls, perhaps, had the full meaning of the Passion so deeply entered. It was on or about the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross (14 September) while praying on the mountainside, that he beheld the marvellous vision of the seraph, as a sequel of which there appeared on his body the visible marks of the five wounds of the Crucified which, says an early writer, had long since been impressed upon his heart. Brother Leo, who was with St. Francis when he received the stigmata, has left us in his note to the saint's autograph blessing, preserved at Assisi, a clear and simple account of the miracle, which for the rest is better attested than many another historical fact. The saint's right side is described as bearing on open wound which looked as if made by a lance, while through his hands and feet were black nails of flesh, the points of which were bent backward. After the reception of the stigmata, Francis suffered increasing pains throughout his frail body, already broken by continual mortification. For, condescending as the saint always was to the weaknesses of others, he was ever so unsparing towards himself that at the last he felt constrained to ask pardon of "Brother Ass", as he called his body, for having treated it so harshly. Worn out, moreover, as Francis now was by eighteen years of unremitting toil, his strength gave way completely, and at times his eyesight so far failed him that he was almost wholly blind.
During an access of anguish, Francis paid a last visit to St. Clare at St. Damian's, and it was in a little hut of reeds, made for him in the garden there, that the saint composed that "Canticle of the Sun", in which his poetic genius expands itself so gloriously. This was in September, 1225. Not long afterwards Francis, at the urgent instance of Brother Elias, underwent an unsuccessful operation for the eyes, at Rieti. He seems to have passed the winter 1225-26 at Siena, whither he had been taken for further medical treatment. In April, 1226, during an interval of improvement, Francis was moved to Cortona, and it is believed to have been while resting at the hermitage of the Celle there, that the saint dictated his testament, which he describes as a "reminder, a warning, and an exhortation". In this touching document Francis, writing from the fullness of his heart, urges anew with the simple eloquence, the few, but clearly defined, principles that were to guide his followers, implicit obedience to superiors as holding the place of God, literal observance of the rule "without gloss", especially as regards poverty, and the duty of manual labor, being solemnly enjoined on all the friars.
Meanwhile alarming dropsical symptoms had developed, and it was in a dying condition that Francis set out for Assisi. A roundabout route was taken by the little caravan that escorted him, for it was feared to follow the direct road lest the saucy Perugians should attempt to carry Francis off by force so that he might die in their city, which would thus enter into possession of his coveted relics. It was therefore under a strong guard that Francis, in July, 1226, was finally borne in safety to the bishop's palace in his native city amid the enthusiastic rejoicings of the entire populace. In the early autumn Francis, feeling the hand of death upon him, was carried to his beloved Porziuncola, that he might breathe his last sigh where his vocation had been revealed to him and whence his order had struggled into sight. On the way thither he asked to be set down, and with painful effort he invoked a beautiful blessing on Assisi, which, however, his eyes could no longer discern. The saint's last days were passed at the Porziuncola in a tiny hut, near the chapel, that served as an infirmary. The arrival there about this time of the Lady Jacoba of Settesoli, who had come with her two sons and a great retinue to bid Francis farewell, caused some consternation, since women were forbidden to enter the friary. But Francis in his tender gratitude to this Roman noblewoman, made an exception in her favour, and "Brother Jacoba", as Francis had named her on account of her fortitude, remained to the last.
On the eve of his death, the saint, in imitation of his Divine Master, had bread brought to him and broken. This he distributed among those present, blessing Bernard of Quintaville, his first companion, Elias, his vicar, and all the others in order. "I have done my part," he said next, "may Christ teach you to do yours." Then wishing to give a last token of detachment and to show he no longer had anything in common with the world, Francis removed his poor habit and lay down on the bare ground, covered with a borrowed cloth, rejoicing that he was able to keep faith with his Lady Poverty to the end. After a while he asked to have read to him the Passion according to St. John, and then in faltering tones he himself intoned Psalm 141. At the concluding verse, "Bring my soul out of prison", Francis was led away from earth by "Sister Death", in whose praise he had shortly before added a new strophe to his "Canticle of the Sun". It was Saturday evening, 3 October, 1226, Francis being then in the forty-fifth year of his age, and the twentieth from his perfect conversion to Christ.
The saint had, in his humility, it is said, expressed a wish to be buried on the Colle d'Inferno, a despised hill without Assisi, where criminals were executed. However this may be, his body was, on 4 October, borne in triumphant procession to the city, a halt being made at St. Damian's, that St. Clare and her companions might venerate the sacred stigmata now visible to all, and it was placed provisionally in the church of St. George (now within the enclosure of the monastery of St. Clare), where the saint had learned to read and had first preached. Many miracles are recorded to have taken place at his tomb. Francis was canonized at St. George's by Gregory IX, 16 July, 1228. On that day following the pope laid the first stone of the great double church of St. Francis, erected in honour of the new saint, and thither on 25 May, 1230, Francis's remains were secretly transferred by Brother Elias and buried far down under the high altar in the lower church. Here, after lying hidden for six centuries, like that of St. Clare's, Francis's coffin was found, 12 December, 1818, as a result of a toilsome search lasting fifty-two nights. This discovery of the saint's body is commemorated in the order by a special office on 12 December, and that of his translation by another on 25 May. His feast is kept throughout the Church on 4 October, and the impression of the stigmata on his body is celebrated on 17 September.
It has been said with pardonable warmth that Francis entered into glory in his lifetime, and that he is the one saint whom all succeeding generations have agreed in canonizing. Certain it is that those also who care little about the order he founded, and who have but scant sympathy with the Church to which he ever gave his devout allegiance, even those who know that Christianity to be Divine, find themselves, instinctively as it were, looking across the ages for guidance to the wonderful Umbrian Poverello, and invoking his name in grateful remembrance. This unique position Francis doubtless owes in no small measure to his singularly lovable and winsome personality. Few saints ever exhaled "the good odour of Christ" to such a degree as he. There was about Francis, moreover, a chivalry and a poetry which gave to his other-worldliness a quite romantic charm and beauty. Other saints have seemed entirely dead to the world around them, but Francis was ever thoroughly in touch with the spirit of the age. He delighted in the songs of Provence, rejoiced in the new-born freedom of his native city, and cherished what Dante calls the pleasant sound of his dear land. And this exquisite human element in Francis's character was the key to that far-reaching, all-embracing sympathy, which may be almost called his characteristic gift. In his heart, as an old chronicler puts it, the whole world found refuge, the poor, the sick and the fallen being the objects of his solicitude in a more special manner.
Heedless as Francis ever was of the world's judgments in his own regard, it was always his constant care to respect the opinions of all and to wound the feelings of none. Wherefore he admonishes the friars to use only low and mean tables, so that "if a beggar were to come to sit down near them he might believe that he was but with his equals and need not blush on account of his poverty." One night, we are told, the friary was aroused by the cry "I am dying." "Who are you", exclaimed Francis arising, "and why are dying?" "I am dying of hunger", answered the voice of one who had been too prone to fasting. Whereupon Francis had a table laid out and sat down beside the famished friar, and lest the latter might be ashamed to eat alone, ordered all the other brethren to join in the repast. Francis's devotedness in consoling the afflicted made him so condescending that he shrank not from abiding with the lepers in their loathly lazar-houses and from eating with them out of the same platter.
But above all it is his dealings with the erring that reveal the truly Christian spirit of his charity. "Saintlier than any of the saint", writes Celano, "among sinners he was as one of themselves". Writing to a certain minister in the order, Francis says: "Should there be a brother anywhere in the world who has sinned, no matter how great soever his fault may be, let him not go away after he has once seen thy face without showing pity towards him; and if he seek not mercy, ask him if he does not desire it. And by this I will know if you love God and me." Again, to medieval notions of justice the evil-doer was beyond the law and there was no need to keep faith with him. But according to Francis, not only was justice due even to evil-doers, but justice must be preceded by courtesy as by a herald. Courtesy, indeed, in the saint's quaint concept, was the younger sister of charity and one of the qualities of God Himself, Who "of His courtesy", he declares, "gives His sun and His rain to the just and the unjust". This habit of courtesy Francis ever sought to enjoin on his disciples. "Whoever may come to us", he writes, "whether a friend or a foe, a thief or a robber, let him be kindly received", and the feast which he spread for the starving brigands in the forest at Monte Casale sufficed to show that "as he taught so he wrought".
The very animals found in Francis a tender friend and protector; thus we find him pleading with the people of Gubbio to feed the fierce wolf that had ravished their flocks, because through hunger "Brother Wolf" had done this wrong. And the early legends have left us many an idyllic picture of how beasts and birds alike susceptible to the charm of Francis's gentle ways, entered into loving companionship with him; how the hunted leveret sought to attract his notice; how the half-frozen bees crawled towards him in the winter to be fed; how the wild falcon fluttered around him; how the nightingale sang with him in sweetest content in the ilex grove at the Carceri, and how his "little brethren the birds" listened so devoutly to his sermon by the roadside near Bevagna that Francis chided himself for not having thought of preaching to them before. Francis's love of nature also stands out in bold relief in the world he moved in. He delighted to commune with the wild flowers, the crystal spring, and the friendly fire, and to greet the sun as it rose upon the fair Umbrian vale. In this respect, indeed, St. Francis's "gift of sympathy" seems to have been wider even than St. Paul's, for we find no evidence in the great Apostle of a love for nature or for animals.
Hardly less engaging than his boundless sense of fellow-feeling was Francis's downright sincerity and artless simplicity. "Dearly beloved," he once began a sermon following upon a severe illness, "I have to confess to God and you that during this Lent I have eaten cakes made with lard." And when the guardian insisted for the sake of warmth upon Francis having a fox skin sewn under his worn-out tunic, the saint consented only upon condition that another skin of the same size be sewn outside. For it was his singular study never to hide from men that which known to God. "What a man is in the sight of God," he was wont to repeat, "so much he is and no more" -- a saying which passed into the "Imitation", and has been often quoted.
Another winning trait of Francis which inspires the deepest affection was his unswerving directness of purpose and unfaltering following after an ideal. "His dearest desire so long as he lived", Celano tells us, "was ever to seek among wise and simple, perfect and imperfect, the means to walk in the way of truth." To Francis love was the truest of all truths; hence his deep sense of personal responsibility towards his fellows. The love of Christ and Him Crucified permeated the whole life and character of Francis, and he placed the chief hope of redemption and redress for a suffering humanity in the literal imitation of his Divine Master. The saint imitated the example of Christ as literally as it was in him to do so; barefoot, and in absolute poverty, he proclaimed the reign of love. This heroic imitation of Christ's poverty was perhaps the distinctive mark of Francis's vocation, and he was undoubtedly, as Bossuet expresses it, the most ardent, enthusiastic, and desperate lover of poverty the world has yet seen. After money Francis most detested discord and divisions. Peace, therefore, became his watchword, and the pathetic reconciliation he effected in his last days between the Bishop and Potesta of Assisi is bit one instance out of many of his power to quell the storms of passion and restore tranquility to hearts torn asunder by civil strife. The duty of a servant of God, Francis declared, was to lift up the hearts of men and move them to spiritual gladness. Hence it was not "from monastic stalls or with the careful irresponsibility of the enclosed student" that the saint and his followers addressed the people; "they dwelt among them and grappled with the evils of the system under which the people groaned". They worked in return for their fare, doing for the lowest the most menial labour, and speaking to the poorest words of hope such as the world had not heard for many a day. In this wise Francis bridged the chasm between an aristocratic clergy and the common people, and though he taught no new doctrine, he so far repopularized the old one given on the Mount that the Gospel took on a new life and called forth a new love.
Such in briefest outline are some of the salient features which render the figure of Francis one of such supreme attraction that all manner of men feel themselves drawn towards him, with a sense of personal attachment. Few, however, of those who feel the charm of Francis's personality may follow the saint to his lonely height of rapt communion with God. For, however engaging a "minstrel of the Lord", Francis was none the less a profound mystic in the truest sense of the word. The whole world was to him one luminous ladder, mounting upon the rungs of which he approached and beheld God. It is very misleading, however, to portray Francis as living "at a height where dogma ceases to exist", and still further from the truth to represent the trend of his teaching as one in which orthodoxy is made subservient to "humanitarianism". A very cursory inquiry into Francis's religious belief suffices to show that it embraced the entire Catholic dogma, nothing more or less. If then the saint's sermons were on the whole moral rather than doctrinal, it was less because he preached to meet the wants of his day, and those whom he addressed had not strayed from dogmatic truth; they were still "hearers", if not "doers", of the Word. For this reason Francis set aside all questions more theoretical than practical, and returned to the Gospel. Again, to see in Francis only the loving friend of all God's creatures, the joyous singer of nature, is to overlook altogether that aspect of his work which is the explanation of all the rest -- its supernatural side. Few lives have been more wholly imbued with the supernatural, as even Renan admits. Nowhere, perhaps, can there be found a keener insight into the innermost world of spirit, yet so closely were the supernatural and the natural blended in Francis, that his very asceticism was often clothed in the guide of romance, as witness his wooing the Lady Poverty, in a sense that almost ceased to be figurative. For Francis's singularly vivid imagination was impregnate with the imagery of the chanson de geste, and owing to his markedly dramatic tendency, he delighted in suiting his action to his thought. So, too, the saint's native turn for the picturesque led him to unite religion and nature. He found in all created things, however trivial, some reflection of the Divine perfection, and he loved to admire in them the beauty, power, wisdom, and goodness of their Creator. And so it came to pass that he saw sermons even in stones, and good in everything. Moreover, Francis's simple, childlike nature fastened on the thought, that if all are from one Father then all are real kin. Hence his custom of claiming brotherhood with all manner of animate and inanimate objects. The personification, therefore, of the elements in the "Canticle of the Sun" is something more than a mere literary figure. Francis's love of creatures was not simply the offspring of a soft or sentimental disposition; it arose rather from that deep and abiding sense of the presence of God, which underlay all he said and did. Even so, Francis's habitual cheerfulness was not that of a careless nature, or of one untouched by sorrow. None witnessed Francis's hidden struggles, his long agonies of tears, or his secret wrestlings in prayer. And if we meet him making dumb-show of music, by playing a couple of sticks like a violin to give vent to his glee, we also find him heart-sore with foreboding at the dire dissensions in the order which threatened to make shipwreck of his ideal. Nor were temptations or other weakening maladies of the soul wanting to the saint at any time.
Francis's lightsomeness had its source in that entire surrender of everything present and passing, in which he had found the interior liberty of the children of God; it drew its strength from his intimate union with Jesus in the Holy Communion. The mystery of the Holy Eucharist, being an extension of the Passion, held a preponderant place in the life of Francis, and he had nothing more at heart than all that concerned the cultus of the Blessed Sacrament. Hence we not only hear of Francis conjuring the clergy to show befitting respect for everything connected with the Sacrifice of the Mass, but we also see him sweeping out poor churches, questing sacred vessels for them, and providing them with altar-breads made by himself. So great, indeed, was Francis's reverence for the priesthood, because of its relation to the Adorable Sacrament, that in his humility he never dared to aspire to that dignity.
Humility was, no doubt, the saint's ruling virtue. The idol of an enthusiastic popular devotion, he ever truly believed himself less than the least. Equally admirable was Francis's prompt and docile obedience to the voice of grace within him, even in the early days of his ill-defined ambition, when the spirit of interpretation failed him. Later on, the saint, with as clear as a sense of his message as any prophet ever had, yielded ungrudging submission to what constituted ecclesiastical authority. No reformer, moreover, was ever, less aggressive than Francis. His apostolate embodied the very noblest spirit of reform; he strove to correct abuses by holding up an ideal. He stretched out his arms in yearning towards those who longed for the "better gifts". The others he left alone.
And thus, without strife or schism, God's Poor Little Man of Assisi became the means of renewing the youth of the Church and of imitating the most potent and popular religious movement since the beginnings of Christianity. No doubt this movement had its social as well as its religious side. That the Third Order of St. Francis went far towards re-Christianizing medieval society is a matter of history. However, Francis's foremost aim was a religious one. To rekindle the love of God in the world and reanimate the life of the spirit in the hearts of men -- such was his mission. But because St. Francis sought first the Kingdom of God and His justice, many other things were added unto him. And his own exquisite Franciscan spirit, as it is called, passing out into the wide world, became an abiding source of inspiration. Perhaps it savours of exaggeration to say, as has been said, that "all the threads of civilization in the subsequent centuries seem to hark back to Francis", and that since his day "the character of the whole Roman Catholic Church is visibly Umbrian".
It would be difficult, none the less, to overestimate the effect produced by Francis upon the mind of his time, or the quickening power he wielded on the generations which have succeeded him. To mention two aspects only of his all-pervading influence, Francis must surely be reckoned among those to whom the world of art and letters is deeply indebted. Prose, as Arnold observes, could not satisfy the saint's ardent soul, so he made poetry. He was, indeed, too little versed in the laws of composition to advance far in that direction. But his was the first cry of a nascent poetry which found its highest expression in the "Divine Comedy"; wherefore Francis has been styled the precursor of Dante. What the saint did was to teach a people "accustomed to the artificial versification of courtly Latin and Provencal poets, the use of their native tongue in simple spontaneous hymns, which became even more popular with the Laudi and Cantici of his poet-follower Jacopone of Todi". In so far, moreover, as Francis's repraesentatio, as Salimbene calls it, of the stable at Bethlehem is the first mystery-play we hear of in Italy, he is said to have borne a part in the revival of the drama. However this may be, if Francis's love of song called forth the beginnings of Italian verse, his life no less brought about the birth of Italian art. His story, says Ruskin, became a passionate tradition painted everywhere with delight. Full of colour, dramatic possibilities, and human interest, the early Franciscan legend afforded the most popular material for painters since the life of Christ. No sooner, indeed did Francis's figure make an appearance in art than it became at once a favourite subject, especially with the mystical Umbrian School. So true is this that it has been said we might by following his familiar figure "construct a history of Christian art, from the predecessors of Cimabue down to Guido Reni, Rubens, and Van Dyck".
Probably the oldest likeness of Francis that has come down to us is that preserved in the Sacro Speco at Subiaco. It is said that it was painted by a Benedictine monk during the saint's visit there, which may have been in 1218. The absence of the stigmata, halo, and title of saint in this fresco form its chief claim to be considered a contemporary picture; it is not, however, a real portrait in the modern sense of the word, and we are dependent for the traditional presentment of Francis rather on artists' ideals, like the Della Robbia statue at the Porziuncola, which is surely the saint's vera effigies, as no Byzantine so-called portrait can ever be, and the graphic description of Francis given by Celano (Vita Prima, c. lxxxiii). Of less than middle height, we are told, and frail in form, Francis had a long yet cheerful face and soft but strong voice, small brilliant black eyes, dark brown hair, and a sparse beard. His person was in no way imposing, yet there was about the saint a delicacy, grace, and distinction which made him most attractive.
The literary materials for the history of St. Francis are more than usually copious and authentic. There are indeed few if any medieval lives more thoroughly documented. We have in the first place the saint's own writings. These are not voluminous and were never written with a view to setting forth his ideas systematically, yet they bear the stamp of his personality and are marked by the same unvarying features of his preaching. A few leading thoughts taken "from the words of the Lord" seemed to him all sufficing, and these he repeats again and again, adapting them to the needs of the different persons whom he addresses. Short, simple, and informal, Francis's writings breathe the unstudied love of the Gospel and enforce the same practical morality, while they abound in allegories and personification and reveal an intimate interweaving of Biblical phraseology.
Not all the saint's writings have come down to us, and not a few of these formerly attributed to him are now with greater likelihood ascribed to others. The extant and authentic opuscula of Francis comprise, besides the rule of the Friars Minor and some fragments of the other Seraphic legislation, several letters, including one addressed "to all the Christians who dwell in the whole world," a series of spiritual counsels addressed to his disciples, the "Laudes Creaturarum" or "Canticle of the Sun", and some lesser praises, an Office of the Passion compiled for his own use, and few other orisons which show us Francis even as Celano saw him, "not so much a man's praying as prayer itself". In addition to the saint's writings the sources of the history of Francis include a number of early papal bulls and some other diplomatic documents, as they are called, bearing upon his life and work. Then come the biographies properly so called. These include the lives written 1229-1247 by Thomas of Celano, one of Francis's followers; a joint narrative of his life compiled by Leo, Rufinus, and Angelus, intimate companions of the saint, in 1246; and the celebrated legend of St. Bonaventure, which appeared about 1263; besides a somewhat more polemic legend called the "Speculum Perfectionis", attributed to Brother Leo, the state of which is a matter of controversy. There are also several important thirteenth-century chronicles of the order, like those of Jordan, Eccleston, and Bernard of Besse, and not a few later works, such as the "Chronica XXIV. Generalium" and the "Liber de Conformitate", which are in some sort a continuation of them. It is upon these works that all the later biographies of Francis's life are based.
Recent years have witnessed a truly remarkable upgrowth of interest in the life and work of St. Francis, more especially among non-Catholics, and Assisi has become in consequence the goal of a new race of pilgrims. This interest, for the most part literary and academic, is centered mainly in the study of the primitive documents relating to the saint's history and the beginnings of the Franciscan Order. Although inaugurated some years earlier, this movement received its greatest impulse from the publication in 1894 of Paul Sabatier's "Vie de S. François", a work which was almost simultaneously crowned by the French Academy and place upon the Index. In spite of the author's entire lack of sympathy with the saint's religious standpoint, his biography of Francis bespeaks vast erudition, deep research, and rare critical insight, and it has opened up a new era in the study of Franciscan resources. To further this study an International Society of Franciscan Studies was founded at Assisi in 1902, the aim of which is to collect a complete library of works on Franciscan history and to compile a catalogue of scattered Franciscan manuscripts; several periodicals, devoted to Franciscan documents and discussions exclusively, have moreover been established in different countries. Although a large literature has grown up around the figure of the Poverello within a short time, nothing new of essential value has been added to what was already known of the saint. The energetic research work of recent years has resulted in the recovery of several important early texts, and has called forth many really fine critical studies dealing with the sources, but the most welcome feature of the modern interest in Franciscan origins has been the careful re-editing and translating of Francis's own writings and of nearly all the contemporary manuscript authorities bearing on his life. Not a few of the controverted questions connected therewith are of considerable import, even to those not especially students of the Franciscan legend, but they could not be made intelligible within the limits of the present article. It must suffice, moreover, to indicate only some of the chief works on the life of St. Francis.
The writings of St. Francis have been published in "Opuscula S. P. Francisci Assisiensis" (Quaracchi, 1904); Böhmer, "Analekten zur Geschichte des Franciscus von Assisi" (Tübingen, 1904); U. d'Alençon, "Les Opuscules de S. François d' Assise" (Paris, 1905); Robinson, "The Writings of St. Francis of Assisi" (Philadelphia, 1906).
Publication information Written by Paschal Robinson. The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume VI. Published 1909. New York: Robert Appleton Company. Nihil Obstat, September 1, 1909. Remy Lafort, Censor. Imprimatur. +John M. Farley, Archbishop of New York
A term commonly used to designate the members of the various foundations of religious, whether men or women, professing to observe the Rule of St. Francis of Assisi in some one of its several forms. The aim of the present article is to indicate briefly the origin and relationship of these different foundations.
ORIGIN OF THE THREE ORDERS
It is customary to say that St. Francis founded three orders, as we read in the Office for 4 October:
Tres ordines hic ordinat: primumque Fratrum nominat Minorum: pauperumque fit Dominarum medius: sed Poenitentium tertius sexum capit utrumque. (Brev. Rom. Serap., in Solem. S.P. Fran., ant. 3, ad Laudes)
These three orders -- the Friars Minor, the Poor Ladies or Clares, and the Brothers and Sisters of Penance -- are generally referred to as the First, Second, and Third Orders of St. Francis.
First Order
The existence of the Friars Minor or first order properly dates from 1209, in which year St. Francis obtained from Innocent III an unwritten approbation of the simple rule he had composed for the guidance of his first companions. This rule has not come down to us in its original form; it was subsequently rewritten by the saint and solemnly confirmed by Honorius III, 29 Nov., 1223 (Litt. "Solet Annuere"). This second rule, as it is usually called, of the Friars Minor is the one at present professed throughout the whole First Order of St. Francis (see RULE OF SAINT FRANCIS).
Second Order
The foundation of the Poor Ladies or second order may be said to have been laid in 1212. In that year St. Clare who had besought St. Francis to be allowed to embrace the new manner of life he had instituted, was established by him at St. Damian's near Assisi, together with several other pious maidens who had joined her. It is erroneous to suppose that St. Francis ever drew up a formal rule for these Poor ladies and no mention of such a document is found in any of the early authorities. The rule imposed upon the Poor Ladies at St. Damian's about 1219 by Cardinal Ugolino, afterwards Gregory IX, was recast by St. Clare towards the end of her life, with the assistance of Cardinal Rinaldo, afterwards Alexander IV, and in this revised form was approved by Innocent IV, 9 Aug., 1253 (Litt. "Solet Annuere"). (See POOR CLARES).
Third Order
Tradition assigns the year 1221 as the date of the foundation of the Brothers and Sisters of Penance, now known as tertiaries. This third order was devised by St. Francis as a sort of middle state between the cloister and the world for those who, wishing to follow in the saint's footsteps, were debarred by marriage or other ties from entering either the first or second order. There has been some difference of opinion as to how far the saint composed a rule for these tertiaries. It is generally admitted, however, that the rule approved by Nicholas IV, 18 Aug., 1289 (Litt. "Supra Montem") does not represent the original rule of the third order.
Some recent writers have tried to show that the third order, as we now call it, was really the starting point of the whole Franciscan Order. They assert that the Second and Third Orders of St. Francis were not added to the First, but that the three branches, the Friars Minor, Poor ladies, and Brother and Sisters of Penance, grew out of the lay confraternity of penance which was St. Francis's first and original intention, and were separated from it into different groups by Cardinal Ugolino, the protector of the order, during St. Francis's absence in the East (1219-21). This interesting, if somewhat arbitrary, theory is not without importance for the early history of all three orders, but it is not yet sufficiently proven to preclude the more usual account given above, according to which the Franciscan Order developed into three distinct branches, namely, the first, second, and third orders, by process of addition and not by process of division, and this is still the view generally received.
PRESENT ORGANIZATION OF THE THREE ORDERS
First Order
Coming next to the present organization of the Franciscan Order, the Friars Minor, or first order, now comprises three separate bodies, namely: the Friars Minor properly so called, or parent stem, founded, as has been said in 1209; the Friars Minor Conventuals, and the Friars Minor Capuchins, both of which grew out of the parent stem, and were constituted independent orders in 1517 and 1619 respectively.
All three orders profess the rule of the Friars Minor approved by Honorius III in 1223, but each one has its particular constitutions and its own minister general. The various lesser foundations of Franciscan friars following the rule of the first order, which once enjoyed a separate or quasi-separate existence, are now either extinct, like the Clareni, Coletani, and Celestines, or have become amalgamated with the Friars Minor, as in the case of the Observants, Reformati, Recollects, Alcantarines, etc. (On all these lesser foundations, now extinct, see FRIARS MINOR)
Second Order
As regards the Second Order, of Poor ladies, now commonly called Poor Clares, this order includes all the different monasteries of cloistered nuns professing the Rule of St. Clare approved by Innocent IV in 1253, whether they observe the same in all its original strictness or according to the dispensations granted by Urban IV, 18 Oct., 1263 (Litt. "Beata Clara") or the constitutions drawn up by St. Colette (d. 1447) and approved by Pius II, 18 March, 1458 (Litt. "Etsi"). The Sisters of the Annunciation and the Conceptionists are in some sense offshoots of the second order, but they now follow different rules from that of the Poor Ladies.
Third Order
In connection with the Brothers and Sisters of Penance or Third order of St. Francis, it is necessary to distinguish between the third order secular and the third order regular.
Secular. The third order secular was founded, as we have seen, by St. Francis about 1221 and embraces devout persons of both sexes living in the world and following a rule of life approved by Nicholas IV in 1289, and modified by Leo XIII, 30 May, 1883 (Constit. "Misericors"). It includes not only members who form part of logical fraternities, but also isolated tertiaries, hermits, pilgrims, etc.
Regular. The early history of the third order regular is uncertain and is susceptible of controversy. Some attribute its foundation to St. Elizabeth of Hungary in 1228, others to Blessed Angelina of Marsciano in 1395. The latter is said to have established at Foligno the first Franciscan monastery of enclosed tertiary nuns in Italy. It is certain that early in the fifteenth century tertiary communities of men and women existed in different parts of Europe and that the Italian friars of the third order regular were recognized as a mendicant order by the Holy See. Since about 1458 the latter body has been governed by own minister general and its members take solemn vows.
New Foundations. In addition to this third order regular, properly so called, and quite independently of it, a very large number of Franciscan tertiary congregations -- both of men and women -- have been founded, more especially since the beginning of the ninteenth century. These new foundations have taken as a basis of their institutes a special rule for members of the third order living in community approved by Leo X. 20 Jan., 1521 (Bull "Inter"). Although this rule is a greatly modified by their particular constitution which, for the rest, differ widely according to the end of each foundation. These various congregations of regular tertiaries are either autonomous or under episcopal jurisdiction, and for the most part they are Franciscan in name only, not a few of them having abandoned the habit and even the traditional cord of the order.
Publication information Written by Paschal Robinson. Transcribed by Beth Ste-Marie. The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume VI. Published 1909. New York: Robert Appleton Company. Nihil Obstat, September 1, 1909. Remy Lafort, Censor. Imprimatur. +John M. Farley, Archbishop of New York
Bibliography
For the vexed question of the origin and evolution of the third orders, see MÜLLER, Die Anfange des Minoritenordens und der Bussbruderschaften (Freiburg, 1885), 33 sqq; EHRLE in Zeitschr, j.k. Theol., XI, 743 sqq; MANDONNET, Les regles et le gouvernement de l Ordo de Paeniltentia au XIII siccle in Opuscules de critique historique, vol. l. fasc. IV (Paris, 1902); LEMMENS in Rom. Quartalschrift, XVI, 93 sqq; VAN ORTROY in Analecta Bollandiana, XVIII, 294 sqq. XXIV, 415 sqq; D'ALENCON in Etudes Franciscaines, II, 646 sq; GOETZ in Zeitschrift for Kirchengeschichte, XXIII, 97-107. The rules of the three orders are printed in Seraphicae Legislationis Textus originates (Quaracchi, 1897). A general conspectus of the Franciscan Order and its various branches is given in HOLZ-APPEL, Manuale, Historia, O.F.M. (Freiburg, 1909); HEIM-BUCHER, Die Orden und Kongregationen (Paderborn, 1907); II, 307-533; also PATREM, Tableau synoptique de tout l Ordre Seraphique (Paris, 1879): and CUSACK, St. Francis and the Franciscans (New York, 1867).
(Also known as FRANCISCANS.) This subject may be conveniently considered under the following heads:
I. General History of the Order;
A. First Period (1209-1517);
B. Second Period (1517-1909);
II. The Reform Parties;
A. First Period (1226-1517);
B. Second Period (1517-1897);
(1) The Discalced;
(2) The Reformanti;
(3) The Recollects, including a survey of the history of the Franciscans
in the North, especially in Great Britain and Ireland (America is treated in a separate article);
III. Statistics of the Order (1260-1909);
IV. The Various Names of the Friars Minor;
V. The Habit;
VI. The Constitution of the Order;
VII. General Sphere of the Order's Activity;
VIII. The Preaching Activity of the Order;
IX. Influence of the Order on the Liturgy and Religious Devotions;
X. Franciscan Missions;
XI. Cultivation of the Sciences;
XII. Saints and Beati of the Order.
I. GENERAL HISTORY OF THE ORDER
A. First Period (1209-1517)
Having gathered about twelve disciples around him (1207-08), St. Francis of Assisi appeared before Innocent III, who, after some hesitation, gave verbal sanction to the Franciscan Rule. Thus was legally founded the Order of Friars Minor (Ordo Fratrum Minorum), the precise date being, according to an ancient tradition in the order, 16 April, 1209. His friars having rapidly increased in number and spread over various districts of Italy, St. Francis appointed, in 1217, provincial ministers (ministri provinciales), and sent his disciples farther afield. At the general chapter of 1219 these missions were renewed and other friars dispatched to the East, to Hungary, to France, and to Spain. Francis himself visited Egypt and the East, but the innovations introduced during his absence by some of the friars caused his speedy return in 1220. In the same year he resigned the office of general of the order, which he entrusted first to Peter of Cattaneo, on whose early death (10 March, 1221) he appointed Elias of Cortona. Francis, however, retained a certain supreme direction of the order until his death on 3 October, 1226.
Elias of Cortona, as the vicar of Francis, summoned the regular Pentecost chapter for the following year, and on 29 May, 1227, Giovanni Parenti, a jurist, was chosen as first successor of St. Francis and first minister-general. He has often been regarded as a native of Florence, but probably came from the neighbourhood of Rome. Gregory IX employed the new general on political missions at Florence and Rome, authorized the Minorites to lay out their own cemeteries (26 July, 1227), and charged them with the direction and maintenance of the Poor Clares (1 December, 1227). In 1228 and the succeeding years, Elias of Cortona laboured zealously at the construction of a church to be dedicated to Francis of Assisi, who was canonized by Gregory IX on 16 July, 1228. On the day following the pope himself laid the foundation stone of this church at Assisi destined to receive the body of St. Francis, and he shortly afterwards entrusted to Thomas of Celano the task of writing the biography of the saint, which he confirmed on 25 February, 1229. The translation of the saint's body from the church of San Giorgio to the new basilica took place on 22 May, 1230, three days before the appointed time, and Elias of Cortona, possibly fearing some disturbance, took possession of the body, with the assistance of the civic authorities, and buried it in the church, where it was discovered in 1818. Elias was censured and punished for this action in the Bull of 16 June, 1230. The usual general chapter was held about the same date, and on 28 September, 1230, the Bull "Quo elongati" was issued, dealing with the Testament of St. Francis and certain points in the Rule of 1223. Elias meanwhile devoted all his energy to the completion of the magnificent church (or rather double church) of S. Francesco, which stands on the slope of a hill in the western portion of Assisi, and of the adjacent monastery with its massive pillars and arcades. His election as general in1232 gave him freer scope, and enabled him to realize the successful issue of his plans. As a politicain, Elias certainly possessed genius. His character, however, was too ostentatious and worldly, and, though under his rule the order developed externally and its missions and studies were promoted, still in consequence of his absolutism, exercised now with haughty bearing and again through reckless visitors, there arose in the order an antagonism to his government, in which the Parisian masters of theology and the German and English provinces played the most prominent part. Unable to stem this opposition, Elias was deposed, with Gregory IX's approval, by the Chapter of Rome (1239), and the hitherto undefined rights and almost absolute authority of the general in matters of income and legislation for the order were considerably restricted. Elias threw in his lot with Frederick II (Hohenstaufen), was excommunicated in consequence, and died on 22 April, 1253. Albert of Pisa, who had previously been provincial of Germany and Hungary, was chosen at the chapter of 1239 to succeed Elias, but died shortly afterwards (23 January, 1240). On All Saints' Day, 1240, the chapter again met and elected Haymo of Faversham, a learned and zealous English Franciscan, who had been sent by Gregory IX (1234) to Constantinople to promote the reunion of the Schismatic Greeks with the Apostolic See. Haymo, who, with Alexander of Hales had taken part in the movement against Elias, was zealous in his visitation of the various houses of the order. He held the Provincial Chapter of Saxonia at Aldenburg on 29 September, 1242, and, at the request of Gregory IX, revised the rubrics to the Roman Breviary and the Missal.
After Haymo's death in 1244 the General Chapter of Genoa elected Crescenzio Grizzi of Jesi (1245-47) to succeed him. Crescenzio instituted an investigation of the life and miracles of St. Francis and other Minorites, and authorized Thomas of Celano to write the "Legenda secunda S. Francisci", based on the information (Legenda trium Sociorum) supplied to the general by three companions of the saint (Tres Socii, i.e. Leo, Angelus, and Rufinus). From this period also dates the "Dialogus de vistis Sanctorum Fratrum Minorum." This general also opposed vigorously the separationist and particularistric tendencies of some seventy-two of the brothers. The town of Assisi asked for him as its bishop, but the request was not granted by Innocent IV, who, on 29 April, 1252, appointed him Bishop of jesi, in the John of Parma, who succeeded to the generallship (1247-57), belonged to the more rigorous party in the order. He was most diligent in visiting in person the various houses of the order. it was during this period that Thomas of Celano wrote his "Tractatus de Miraculis". On 11 August, 1253, Clare of Assisi died, and was canonized by Alexander IV on 26 September, 1255. On 25 May, 1253, a month after the death of the excommunicated Elias, Innocent consecrated the upper church of S. Francesco, John of Parma unfortunately shared the apocalyptic views and fancies of the Joachimites, or followers of Jeachim of Floris, who had many votaries in the order, and was consequently not a little compromised when Alexander IV (4 November, 1255) solemnly condemned the "Liber introductorius", a collection of the writings of Joachim of Floris with an extravagant introduction, which had been published at Paris. This work has often been falsely ascribed to the general himself. its real author was Gerardo di Borgo S.-Donnino, who thus furnished a very dangerous weapon against the order to the professors of the secular clergy, jealous of the success of the Minorites at the University of Paris. The chapter convened in the Ara Coeli monastery at Rome forced John of Parma to abdicate his office (1257) and, on his recommendation, chose as his successor St. Bonaventure from Bagnorea. John was then summoned to answer for his Joachimism before a court presided over by the new general and the cardinal-protector, and would have been condemned but for the letter of Cardinal Ottoboni, afterwards Adrian V. He subsequently withdrew to the hermitage of Greccio, left it (1289) at the command of the pope to proceed to Greece, but died an aged broken man at Camerino on 20 March, 1289.
St. Bonaventure, learned and zealous religious, devoted all his energy to the government of the order. He strenuously advocated the manifold duties thrust upon the order during its historical development -- the labour in the care of souls, learned pursuits, employment of friars in the service of the popes and temporal rulers, the institution of large monasteries, and the preservation of the privileges of the order -- being convinced that such a direction of the activities of the members would prove most beneficial to the Church and the cause of Christianity. The Spirituals accused Bonaventure of laxity; yet he laboured earnestly to secure the exact observance of the rule, and energetically denounced the abuses which had crept into the order, condemning them repeatedly in his encyclical letters. In accordance with the rule, he held a general chapter every three years: at Narbonne in 1260, at Pisa in 1263, at Paris in 1266, at Assisi in 1269, and at Lyons in 1274, on the occasion of the general council. He made most of the visitations to the different convents in person, and was a zealous preacher. The Chapter of Narbonne (1260) promulgated the statutes of the order known as the "Constitutiones Narbonenses", the letter and spirit of which exercised a deep and enduring influence on the Fransican Order. Although the entire code did not remain long in force, many of the provisions were retained and served as a model for the later constitutions.
Even before the death of Bonaventure, during one of the sessions of the council (15 July, 1274), the Chapter of Lyons had chosen as his successor Jerome of Ascoli, who was expected by the council with the ambassadors of the Greek Church. He arrived, and the reunion of the churches was effected. Jerome was sent back by Innocent V as nuncio to Constantinople In May, 1276, but had only reached Ancona when the pope died (21 July, 1276). John XXI (1276-77) employed Jerome (October, 1276) and John of Vercelli, General of the Dominicans, as mediators in the war between Philip III of France and Alfonso X of Castile. This embassy occupied both genrals till March, 1279, although Jerome was preferred to the cardinalate on 12 march, 1278. When Jerome departed on the embassy to the Greeks, he had appointed Bonagratia of S. Giovanni in Persiceto to represent him at the General Chapter of Padua in 1276. On 20 May, 1279, he convened the General Chapter of Assisi, at which Bonagratia was elected general. Jerome later occupied the Chair of Peter as Nicholas IV (15 February, 1288-4 April, 1292). bonagratia conducted a deputation from the chapter before Nicholas III, who was then staying at Soriano, and petitioned for a cardinal-protector. The pope, who had himself been protector, appointed his nephew Matteo Orsini. The general also asked for a definition of the rule, which the pope, after personal consultation with cardinals and the theologians of the order, issued in the "Exiit qui seminat" of 14 August, 1279. In this the order's complete renunciation of property in communi was again confirmed, and all property given to the brothers was vested in the Holy See, unless the donor wished to retain his title. All moneys were to be held in trust by the nuntii, or spiritual friends, for the friars, who could however raise no claim to them. The purchase of goods could take place only through procurators appointed by the pope, or by the cardinal-protector in his name.
The Bull of Martin IV "Ad fructus uberes" (13 December, 1281) defined the relations of the mendicants to the secular clergy. The mendicant orders had long been exempt from the jurisdiction of the bishop, and enjoyed (as distinguished from the secular clergy) unrestricted freedom to preach and hear confessions in the churches connected with their monasteries. This had led to endless friction and open quarrels between the two divisions of the clergy, and, although Martin IV granted no new privileges to the mendicants, the strife now broke out with increased violence, chiefly in France and in a particular manner at Paris. Boniface VIII adjusted their relations in the Bull "Super cathedram" of 18 February, 1300, granting the mendicants freedom to preach in their own churches and in public places, but not at the time when the prelate of the district was preaching. For the hearing of confessions, the mendicants were to submit suitable candidates to the bishop in office, and obtain his anction. The faithful were left free in regard to funerals, but, should they take place in the church of a cloister, the quarta funerum was to be given to the parish priest. Benedict XI abrogated this Bull, but Clement V reintroduced it (1312). Especially conspicuous among the later contentions over the privileges of the mendicants were those caused by John of Poliaco, a master of theology of Paris (1320) and by Richard Fitzralph, Archbishop of Armagh (1349). In 1516 the Fifth Council of the Lateran dealt with this question, which was definitively settled by the Council of Trent.
In the Bull "Exultantes" of 18 January, 1283, Martin IV instituted the syndici Apostolici. This was the name given to the men appointed by the ministers and custodians to receive in the name of the Holy See the alms given to the Franciscans, and to pay it out again at their request. The syndici consequently replaced the nuntii and procurators. All these regulations were necessary in consequence of the rule of poverty, the literal and unconditional observance of which was rendered impossible by the great expansion of the order, by its pursuit of learning, and the accumulated property of the large cloisters in the towns. The appointment of these trustees, however, was neither subversive of nor an evasion of the rule, but rather the proper observance of its precepts under the altered conditions of the ime. Under Bonagratia (1279-83) and his immediate successors Arlotto da Prato (1285-86), and Matthew of Acquasparta (1287-89), a learned theologian and philosopher who became cardinal in 1288 and rendered notable service to the Church, the Spiritual movement broke out in the Province of Ancona, under the leadership of Pietro Giovanni Olivi, who, after the General Chapter of Strasburg (1282), caused the order considerable trouble. The general, Raimondo Gaufredi (Geoffrey) of Provence (1289-95), favoured the Spirituals and denounced the lax interpretations of the Community, i.e. the majority of the order who opposed the minority, termed Spirituals or Zelanti. Raimondo even ventured to revise the genral constitutions at the General Chapter of Paris in 1292, whereupon, having refused the Bishopric of Padua offered him by Boniface VIII, he was compelled by the pope to resign his office. Giovanni Minio of Muravalle, in the theology, was elected general by the Chapter of Anangi (1294), and although created Cardinal-Bishop of Porto (Portuensis) in 1302, continued to govern the order until Gonzalves of Valleboa (1304-13), Provincial of Santiago, Spain, was elected to succeed him by the Chaper of Assisi.
In his encyclical of 1302, Giovanni Minio had inculcated the rule of poverty, and forbidden both the accumulation of property and vested incomes. Gonzálvez followed the same policy (12 February, 1310), and the Chapter of Padua (1310) made the precept still more rigorous by enoining the "simple use" (usus pauper) and withdrawing the right of voting at the chapter from convents which did not adopt it. The usus pauper had indeed been a source of contention from 1290, especially in Provence, where some denied that it was binding on the order. These dissensions led to the Magna Disputatio at Avignon (1310-12), to which Clement V summoned the leaders of the Spirituals and of the Community or Relaxati. Clement laid the strife by his bull and Decretal "Exivi di Paradiso", issued at the third and last session of the Council of Vienne, 5 May, 1312. The prescriptions contained in the Franciscan Rule were divided into those which bound under pain of mortal, and those which bound under pain of venial sin. those enjoining the renunciation of property and the adoption of poverty were retained: the Franciscans were entitled only to the usus (use) of goods given to them, and wherever the rule prescibed it, only to the usus pauper or arctus (simple use). All matters concerning the Franciscan habit, and all the storehouses and cellars allowed in cases of necessity, were referred to the discretion of the superiors of the order.
The Spirituals of Provence and Tuscany, however, were not yet placated. At the General Chapter of Barcelona (1313), a Parisian master of theology, Alexander of Alessandria (Lombardy), was chosen to succeed Gonzálvez, but died in October, 1314. The General Chapter of Naples (1316) elected Michael of Cesena, a moderate Conventual. The commission appointed by this chapter altered the general statutes of the rule of poverty. The Spirituals immediately afterwards rekindled the property strife, but John XXIII interdicted and suppressed their peculiar notions by the Constitution "Quorumdam exigit" (7 October, 1317), thus completely restoring the official unity of the order. In 1321, however, the so-called theoretical discussion on poverty broke out, the inquisitor, John of Belna, a Dominican, having taked exception to the statement that Christ and the Apostles possessed property neither in communi nor in speciali (i.e. neither in common nor individually). The ensuing strife degenerated into a fierce scholastic disputation between the Franciscans and the Dominicans, and, as the pope favoured the views of the latter, a very dangerous crisis seemed to threated the Minorites. By the Constitution "Ad conditorem canonum" (8 December, 1322) John XXII renounced the title of the Church to all the possessions of the friars Minor, and restored the ownership to ther order. This action, contrary to the practice and expressed sentiments of his predecessors, placed the Minorites on exactly the same footing as the other orders, and was a harsh provision for an order which had laboured so untiringly in the interests of the Church. In many other ways, however, John fostered the order. It will thus be readily understood why the members inclined to laxity joined the diaffected party, leaving but few advocated of John's regulations. To the dissenting party belonged Gerardus Odonis (1329-42), the general, whose election at Paris in 1329 John had secured in the place of his powerful opponent Michael of Cesena. Odonis, however, was supported only by the minority of the order in his efforts to effect the abolition of the rule of poverty. The deposed general and his followers, the Michaelites (cf. FRATICELLI), were disavowed by the General Chapter of Paris, and the order remained faithful to the Holy See. The constitutions prescribed by Benedict XII, John's successor, in his Bull of 28 November, 1336, and the name "Constitutiones Catarcenses" or "Benedictinae"), contained not a single reference tot he rule of poverty. Benedict died in 1342, and on the preferment of Gerardus Odonis to the Patriarchate of Antioch, Fortanerio Vassalli was chosen general (1343-47).
Under Guilllaume Farinier (1348-57) the Chapter of Marseilles resolved to revive the old statues, a purpose which was realized in the general constitutions promulgated by the General Chapter of Assisi in 1354 ("Constitutiones Farineriae or guilemi"). This code was based on the "Constitutioners Narboneses" (1260), and the Bulls "Exiit" and "Exivi", but the edicts of John XXII, being promulgated by the pope over and above the chapter, still continued in force. The great majority of the friars accomodated themselves to these regulations and undertook the care and proprietorship of their goods, which they entrusted to fratres procuratores elected from among themselves. The protracted strife of the deposed general (Michael of Cesna) with the pope, in which the general was supported with conspicuous learning by some of the leading members of the order and encouraged by the German emperor Louis IV (the Bavarian), for reasons of secular and ecclesiastical polity, gave great and irresistible impulse to laxity in the order, and prejudiced the founder's ideal. It was John XXII who had introduced Conventualism is the later sense of the workd, that is, community of goods, income and property as in other religious orders, in contradiction to Observantism or the strict observance of the rule, a movement now strong within the order, acrding to which the members were to hold no property in communi and renounce all vested incomes and accumulation of goods. The Bull "Ad conditorem", so significant in the history of the order, was only withdrawn 1 November, 1428, by Martin V.
Meanwhile the development of Conventualism had been fostered in many ways. In 1348 the Black Death swept devastatingly over Euope, empting town and cloister. The wealth of the order increaded rapidly, and thousands of new brothers were admitted without sufficiently close examination into their eligibility. The liverality of the faithful was also, if not a source of danger for the Minorites, at least a constant incitement ot depart to some extent from the rule of poverty. This liberality showed itself mainly in gifts of real property, for example in endowments for prayers for the dead, which were then usually founded with real estate. In the fourteenth century also began the land wars and feuds (e.g. the Hundred Years War in France), which relaxed every bond of discipline and good order. The current feelings of anarchic irresponsibility were also encouraged by the Great Wester Schism, during which men quarreled not only concerning obedience to the papacy, to which there were three claimants since the Council of Pisa, but also concerning obedience to the generals of the order, whose number tallied with the number of the popes.
Guillaume Farinier was named cardinal in 1356, but continued to govern the order until the election of Jean Bouchier (de Buco) in 1357. John having died in 1358, mark of Viterbo was chosen to succeed him (1359-66), it being deemed desirable to elect an italian, the preceding four generals having been French, Mark was raised to the cardinalate in 1366, and was succeeded by Thomas of Farignano (1367-72), who became Patriarch of Grado in 1372, and cardinal in 1378. Leonardo Rossi of Giffone (1373-78) succeeded Thomas as general, and supported Clemens VII during the schism. This action gave umbrage to Urban VI, who deposed him and named Ludovico Donato his successor. Ludovico was also chosen in 1379 by the General Chapter of Gran in Hungary at which, however, only twelve provinces were represented, was named cardinal in 1381, but was executed in 1385 with some other cardinals for participating in a conspiracy against Urban VI. His third successor, Enrico Alfieri (1387-1405), could only bewail the privileges subversive of discipline, by means of which the claimants to the papacy sought to bind their supporters more closely to themselves. Alfieri's successor, Antonio de Pireto (1405-21), gave his allegiance to the Council of Pisa and Alexander V (1409-15), a man of no great importance. With the election of Martin V (1417-31) by the Council of Constance, unity was restored in the order, which was then in a state of the greatest confusion.
The Observance (Regularis Observantia) had meanwhile prepard the ground for a regeneration of the order. At first no uniform movements, but varying in different lands, it was given a definite character by St. Bernardine of Siena and St. John Capistran. In Italy as early as 1334 Giovanni de Valle had begun at San Bartolomeo de Brugliano, near Forligno, to live in exact accordance with the rule but without that exemption from the order, which was later forbidden by Clement VI in 1343. It is worthy of notice that Clement, in 1350, granted this exemption to the lay brother Gentile da Spoleto, a companion of Giovanni, but Gentile gathered together such a disorderly rabble, including some of the heretical Fraticelli, that the privilege was withdrawn (1354), he was expelled from the order (1355), and cast into prison. Amongst his faithful adherents was Paoluccio Vagnozzi of Trinci, who was allowed by the general to return to Brugliano in 1368. As a protection against the snakes so numerous in the district, wooden slippers (calepodia, zoccoli) were worn by the brothers, and, as their use continued in the order the Observants were long known as the Zoccolanti or lignipedes. In 1373 Paoluccio's followers occcupied ten small houses in ubria, to which was soon added San Damiano at Assisi. They were supported by Gregory XI, and also, after some hesitation, by the superiors of the order. In 1388, Enrico Alfineri, the general appointed Paoluccio commissary general of his followers, whom he allowed to be sent into all the districts of italy as an incentive to the rest of the order. Paoluccio died on 17 September, 1390, and was succeeded by John of Stroncone (d. 1418). In 1414, this reform possessed thirty-four houses, to which the Porziuncola was added in 1514. In the fourteenth centry there were three Spanish provinces: that of Portugal (also called Santiago), that of Castile, and that of Aragon. Although houses of the reformers in which the rule was rididly observed existed in each of these provinces about 1400, there does not appear to have been any connection between the reforms of each province -- much less between these reforms and the Italian Observance -- and consquently the part played by Peter of Villacreces in Silos and Aguilera has been greatly exaggerated.
Independent also was the Reform or Observance in France, which had its inception in 1358 (or more accuratley in 1388) in the cloister at Mirabeau in the province of Touraine, and thence spread through Burgundy, Touraine, and Franconia. In 1407 Benedict XIII exempted them from all jurisdiction of the provincials, and on 13 May, 1408, gave them a vicar-general in the person of Thomas de Curte. In 1414 about two hundred of their number addressed a petition to the Council fo Constance, which thereupon granted to the friars of the stricta observantia regularis a special provincial vicar in every province, and a vicar-general over all, Nicholas Rodolphe being the first to fill the last-mentioned office. Angelo Salvetti, general of the order (1421-24), viewed these changes with marked disfavour, but Martin V's protection prevented him from taking any steps to defeat their aim. Far more opposed was Salvetti's successor, Antonio de Masso (1424-30). The ranks of the Observants increased rapidly in France and Spain in consequence of the exemption. The Italian branch, however, refused to avail themselves of any exemption from the usual superiors, the provincial and the general.
In Germany the Observance appeared about 1420 in the province of Cologne at the monastery of Gouda (1418), in the province of Saxony in the Mark of Brandenburg (1425); in the upper German province first at the Heidelberg monastery (1426). Cloisters of the Observants already existed in Bosnia, Russia, Hungary, and even in Tatary. In 1430 Martin V (1417-31) summoned the whole order, Observants and Conventuals, to the general Chapter of Assisi (1430), "in order that our desire for a general reform of the order may be fulfilled." William of Casale (1430-42) was elected general, but the intellectual leader of Assisi was St. John Capistran. The statues promulgated by this chapter are called the "Constitutiones Martinianae" from the name of the pope. They cancelled the offices of general and provincial vicars of the Observants and introduced a scheme for the general reform of the order. All present at the chapter had bound themselves on oath to carry out its decisions, but six weeks later (27 July, 1430) the general was released from his oath and obtained from Martin V the Brief "Ad statum" (23 August, 1430), which allowed the Conventuals to hold property like all other orders. This Brief constituted the Magna Charta of the Conventuals, and henceforth any reform of the order on the lines of the rule was out of the question.
The strife between the Observants and the Conventuals now broke out with such increased fury that even St. John Capistran laboured for a division of the order which was however still longer opposed by St. Bernadine of Siena. Additional bitterness was lent to the strife when in many instance princes and towns forcibly withdrew the ancient Fraciscan monasteries from the Conventuals and turned them over to the Observants. In 1438 the general of the order named St. Bernardine of Siena, first Vicar-General of the Italian Observants, an office in which Bernardine was succeeded by St. John Capistran in 1441. At the General Chapter of Padua (1443), Albert Berdini of Sarteano, an Observant, would have been chosen general in accordance with the papa; wish had not his election been opposed by St. Bernardine. Antonio de Rusconibus (1443-50) was accordingly elected, and, until the separation in 1517, no Observant held the office of general. In 1443 Antonio appointed two vicars-general to direct the Observants -- for the cismontane family (i.e. for Italy, the East, Austria-Hungary, and Poland) St. John Capistran, and for the ultramontane (all other countries, including afterwards America) jean Perioche of Maubert. By the so-called Separation bull of Eugene IV, "Ut sacra ordinis minorum" (11 January, 1446), outlined by St. John Capistran, the office of the vicar-general of the Observants was declared permanent, and made practically independent of the minister general of the order, but the Observants might not hold a general chapter seperate from the rest of the order. After the canonization in 1450 of Bernardine of Siena (d. 1444), the first saint of the Observants, John Capistran with the assistance of the zealous cardinal Nicholas of Cusa (d. 1464), extended the Observance so greatly in Germany, that he could henceforth disregard the attacks of the lax and time-serving sections of the order. At the Chapter of Barcelona, in 1451, the so-called "Statuta Barchnionensia" were promulgated. Though somewhat modifies these continued in force for centuries in the ultramontane family.
The compromise essayed by St. James of the March in 1455 was inherently hopeless, although it granted to the vicars of the Observants active voting power at the general chapters. On this compromise was based the "Bulla concordiae" of Callistus III (2 February, 1456), which Pius II withdrew (11 October, 1458). The Chapter of Perugia (1464) elected as general Francesco della rovere (1464-69), who was elevated to the cardinalate in 1468, and later elected pope under the title of Sixtus IV (1471-84). Sixtus granted various privileges to the Fransicans in his Bull "Mare magnum" (1474) and his "Bulla aurea" (1479), but was rather more kindly disposed towards the Conventuals, to whome he had belonged. The generals Francesco Nanni (1475-99), to whom Sixtus gave the sobriquet of Samson to signalize his victory in a disputation on the Immaculate Conception, and Egidio Delfini (1500-06) displayed a strong bias in favour of the reform of the Conventuals, Edigio using as his pleas the so-called "Constitutiones Alexandrinae" sanctioned by Alexander VI in 1501. His zeal was far surpassed in Spain by that of the powerful Minorite, Francisco Ximenes de los Cisneros, who expelled from the cloisters all Conventuals opposed to the reform. At Paris, Delfini won the large house of studies to the side of the reformers. The Capitulum generalissimum at Rome in 1506 was expected to bring about the union of the various branches, but the proposed plan did not find acceptance, and the statutes, drawn up by the chapter and published in 1508 under the title "Statuta Iulii II", could not bridge the chasm separating the parties. After long deliberations had taken place under generals Rainaldo Graziani (1506-09), Philip of Bagnacavallo (1509-11), and Bernardino Prato da Chieri (1513-17), the last general of the united order, Leo X summoned on 11 July, 1516, a capitulum generalissimum to meet at rone onf the feast of Pentecost (31 May), 1517. This chapter first suppressed all the reformed congregations and annexed them to the Observants; declared the Observants an independent order, the true Order of St. Francis, and separated them completely from the Conventuals. The General of the Observants received the title of Minister Generalis totius ordinis Fratrum Minorum, with or without the addition regularis Observantiae, and was entrusted with the ancient seal of the order. His period of office was limited to six years, and he was to be chosen alternately from the familia cismontana and the familia ultramontana -- a regulation which has not not been observed. For the other family a Commissarius generalis is always elected. In processions, etc., the Observants take precedence of the Conventuals.
B. Second period (1517-1909)
Christoforo Numai of Friuli was elected first General of the Reformed Order of Franciscans (Ordo Fratrum Minorum), but was raised a month later to the cardinalate. Francesco Lichetto (1518-20) was chosen as his successor by the Chapter of Lyons (1518), where the deliberations centered around the necessary rearrangement of the order in provinces and the promulgation of new general constitutions, which were based on the statutes of Barcelona (1451, cf. supra). Lichetto and his successors -- Paul of Soncino (1520-23), who died in 1523, and Francisco de Angelis Quiñones (1523-28), a Spaniards, diligently devoted themselves to establishing the Observance on a firm basis. Quinones was named cardinal in 1528, and the new general, Paolo Pisotti (1529-33), unfortunately disregarding the ideal of his predecessors and failing entirely to grasp the significance of the reforms afoot at the time (for example that of the Capuchins), was deposed in 1533. In 1547 the Chapter of Assisi prescribed gray as the colour of the Franciscan habit, in accordance with the custom of the Observants and forbade the wearing in beards. At the General Chapter of Salamanca (1554), Clemente Dolera of Moneglia, the general in office promulgated new statutes for the cismontane family. On the preferment of clemente to the cardinalate in 1557, Francesco Zamora, his successor (1559-65), defended at the Council of Trent the order's rule of poverty, which was then sanctioned by the council for the Observants and Capuchins. Under Luigi Pozzo (Puteus), the next general (1565-71), the Spanish Conventuals were united with the Observants by command of the pope, and a general reunion of the separated branches of the order seemed imminent. The two succeeding generals, Christophe de Cheffontaines, a Frenchman (1571-79), and Francisco Gonzaga (1579-87), laboured industriously for the rigorous observance and the rule of poverty, which was rather loosely interpreted, especially in France. Gonzaga reformed the great convent of studies at Paris and, in 1581, was appointed, in opposition to his wishes, Bishop of Cefalù (Sicily) and afterwards of Mantua, where he died in the odour of sanctity, in 1620. The process for his beatification is pending at Rome. Francis of Toulouse (1587-93) and Bonaventura Secusi of Caltagirone (Sicily, 1593-1600) were employed frequently on embassies by the popes, and revised the constitutions of the order, in which however, the alterations were too frequent. Finally at the Chapter of Segovia in 1621, the minister general, Benignus of Genoa (1618-25), approved the "Statuta Segoviensia" for the ultramontane family, with suitable additions both for the French and for the German-Belgian nation. Thereafter the latter nation adhered most perseveringly to the principles of these statutes; that their consistency in this respect has proved a source of prosperity, vigour, and inner strength is universally known.
About this period the so-called Counter-Reformation was bursting into vigorous life in the North and the order entered on a new period of strenuous vitality. The Reformation had dealt a terrible blow to the Franciscans in these parts, annihilating in many instances entire provinces. Supported now by the emperor and the Catholic princes, they advance to regain their old position and to found new cloisters, from which they could minister to their flocks. To bring into subjection the four rather lax French provinces which were known as the Provinciae confaederatae and were thenceforward always too much inclined to shelter themselves behind the government, the general, Bernardine of Sena (Portugal, 1625-33), obtained from Urban VIII the Bull of 1 October, 1625. The French, indeed, justly complained that the general of the order was always chosen from Italy or from Spain. The privilege unsurped by the Spanish kings, of exerting a certain influence in the election and indeed securing that the general should be alternately a Spaniards and an Italian (but one from the Crown lands of Spain), was in contradiciton to all Fraciscan statutes and laws. The Spanish generals, furthermore resided usually at Madrid, instead of at Rome, and most of the higher offices were occupied by Spaniards -- an anomalous situation which aroused great resentment amongst the friars of other nations, especially France and in Italy, and continued until 1834. This introduction of national politics into the government of the oder proved as noxious to the interests of the Friars Minor as the established churches of the eighteenth century did to the cause of Christianity.
Generals Juan Merinero of Madrid (1639-45), Giovanni Mazzara of Naples (1645-48), and Pedro Mancro (1651-55) tried without success to give definite statutes to the cismontane family, while the "Constitutiones Sambucanae", drawn up by General Michele Buongiorno of Sambuca (1658-64) at the order of the general chapter, did not remain long in force. Ildefonso Salizanes (1664-70) and Francesco Maria Rhini (1670-74) were both raised to the espiscopate. José Ximenes Samaniego (1676-82) zealously eradicated abuses which had crept into the order especially in Spain and France, and died as Bishop of Placencia in Spain (1692). Ildefonso Biezma (1702-16) and José García (1717-23) were appointed by papal Briefs. The next general was the f