The Franciscans are a group of related organizations in the Catholic Church, founded by the Italian saint Francis of Assisi. They include three independent religious orders for men (the Order of Friars Minor being the largest contemporary male order), an order for nuns known as the Order of Saint Clare, and the Third Order of Saint Francis, a religious and secular group open to male and female members.
Franciscans adhere to the teachings and spiritual disciplines of the founder and of his main associates and followers, such as Clare of Assisi, Anthony of Padua, and Elizabeth of Hungary. Several smaller Protestant Franciscan orders have been established since the late 19th century as well, particularly in the Lutheran and Anglican traditions. Certain Franciscan communities are ecumenical in nature, having members who belong to several Christian denominations.
Francis began preaching around 1207 and traveled to Rome to seek approval from Pope Innocent III in 1209 to form a religious order. The original Rule of Saint Francis approved by the pope did not allow ownership of property, requiring members of the order to beg for food while preaching. The austerity was meant to emulate the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. Franciscans traveled and preached in the streets, while staying in church properties. Clare, under Francis's guidance, founded the Poor Clares (Order of Saint Clare) of the Franciscans.
The extreme poverty required of members was relaxed in the final revision of the rule in 1223. The degree of observance required of members remained a major source of conflict within the order, resulting in numerous secessions. The Order of Friars Minor, previously known as the "Observant" branch, is one of the three Franciscan First Orders within the Catholic Church, the others being the "Conventuals", formed in 1209, and the "Capuchins", founded in 1520.
The Order of Friars Minor in its current form is the result of an amalgamation of several smaller orders completed in 1897 by Pope Leo XIII. The Capuchins and Conventuals remain distinct religious institutes within the Catholic Church, observing the Rule of Saint Francis with different emphases. Conventual Franciscans are sometimes referred to as minorites or greyfriars because of their habit. In Poland and Lithuania they are known as Bernardines, after Bernardino of Siena, although the term elsewhere refers to Cistercians instead.
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Name and demographics
The name of the original order, Ordo Fratrum Minorum (Friars Minor, literally 'Order of Lesser Brothers') stems from Francis of Assisi's rejection of luxury and wealth. Francis was the son of a rich cloth merchant but gave up his wealth to pursue his faith more fully. He had cut all ties that remained with his family and pursued a life living in solidarity with his fellow brothers in Christ.
In other words, he abandoned his life among the wealthy and aristocratic classes (or majori) to live like the poor and peasants (minori). Francis adopted the simple tunic worn by peasants as the religious habit for his order and had others who wished to join him do the same. Those who joined him became the original Order of Friars Minor.
First Order
The First Order or the Order of Friars Minor, or Seraphic Order are commonly called simply the Franciscans. This order is a mendicant religious order of men, some of whom trace their origin to Francis of Assisi. Their official Latin name is the Ordo Fratrum Minorum. Francis thus referred to his followers as "Fraticelli", meaning "Little Brothers". Franciscan brothers are informally called friars or the Minorites.
The modern organization of the Friars Minor comprises three separate families or groups, each considered a religious order in its own right under its own minister general and particular type of governance. They all live according to a body of regulations known as the Rule of Saint Francis.
The Second Order, most commonly called Poor Clares in English-speaking countries, consists of one branch of religious sisters. The order is called the Order of St. Clare (OSC). Prior to 1263 they were called "The Poor Ladies", "The Poor Enclosed Nuns", and "The Order of San Damiano".
Third Order
The Franciscan third order, known as the Third Order of Saint Francis, has many men and women members, separated into two main branches:
The Secular Franciscan Order, OFS, originally known as the Brothers and Sisters of Penance or Third Order of Penance, try to live the ideals of the movement in their daily lives outside of religious institutes.
Members of the Third Order Regular (TOR) live in religious communities under the traditional religious vows. They grew out of what became the Secular Franciscan Order.
Membership
The 2013 Annuario Pontificio gave the following figures for the membership of the principal male Franciscan orders:.
OFM: 1,915 communities. 12,476 members, including 8,512 priests.
OFM Conv.: 572 communities. 3,981 members, including 2,777 priests.
OFM Cap.: 1,542 communities. 10,355 members, including 6,796 priests.
TOR: 147 communities. 813 members, including 581 priests.
The coat of arms that is a universal symbol of Franciscan "contains the Tau cross, with two crossed arms: Christ's right hand with the nail wound and Francis' left hand with the stigmata wound."
History
Beginnings
In 1209, a sermon Francis heard on Matthew 10:9 made such an impression on him that he decided to devote himself wholly to a life of apostolic poverty. Clad in a rough garment, barefoot, and, after the evangelical precept, without staff or scrip, he began to preach repentance.
He was soon joined by a prominent fellow townsman, Bernard of Quintavalle, who contributed all that he had to the work. Other companions joined, with Francis having 11 companions within a year. The brothers lived in the deserted leper colony of Rivo Torto near Assisi. They spent much of their time traveling through the mountainous districts of Umbria, always cheerful and full of songs, making a deep impression on their hearers by their earnest exhortations. Their life was extremely ascetic. Probably as early as 1209, Francis gave them a first rule, a collection of Scriptural passages emphasizing the duty of poverty.
In spite of some similarities between this principle and some of the fundamental ideas of the followers of Peter Waldo, the brotherhood of Assisi succeeded in gaining the approval of Pope Innocent III. What seems to have impressed first the Bishop of Assisi, then Cardinal Giovanni di San Paolo and finally Innocent, was their utter loyalty to the Catholic Church and the clergy. Pope Innocent was responsible for helping to construct the church Francis was being called to rebuild. Innocent and the Fourth Lateran Council helped maintain the church in Europe.
Pope Innocent probably saw in them a possible answer to his desire for an orthodox preaching force to counter heresy. Many legends have clustered around the decisive audience of Francis with the pope. The realistic account in Matthew Paris—according to which the pope originally sent the shabby saint off to keep swine and only recognized his real worth by his ready obedience—has, in spite of its improbability, a certain historical interest since it shows the natural antipathy of the older Benedictine monasticism to the plebeian mendicant orders. The group was tonsured, and Francis was ordained as a deacon, allowing him to proclaim Gospel passages and preach in churches during Mass.
Francis's last years
in 1219, after intense apostolic activity in Italy, Francis went to Egypt with the Fifth Crusade to announce the Gospel to the Saracens. He met with the Sultan Malik al-Kamil, initiating a spirit of dialogue and understanding between Christianity and Islam. The Franciscan presence in the Holy Land started in 1217, when the province of Syria was established, with Brother Elias as minister. By 1229, the friars had a small house near the fifth station of the Via Dolorosa. In 1272, Sultan Baibars allowed the Franciscans to settle in the Cenacle on Mount Zion.
In 1309, they also settled in the Holy Sepulchre and in Bethlehem. In 1335, the king of Naples Robert of Anjou (Italian: Roberto d'Angiò) and his wife Sancha of Majorca (Italian: Sancia di Maiorca) bought the Cenacle and gave it to the Franciscans. In 1342, Pope Clement VI by the Bulls Gratias agimus and Nuper charissimae, declared the Franciscans as the official custodians of the Holy Places in the name of the Catholic Church. The Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land is still in force today.
The controversy about how to follow the Gospel life of poverty, which extends through the first three centuries of Franciscan history, began in Francis' lifetime. The ascetic brothers Matthew of Narni and Gregory of Naples, a nephew of Cardinal Ugolino, were the two vicars-general to whom Francis had entrusted the direction of the order during his time in Egypt. They carried through at a chapter which they held certain stricter regulations in regard to fasting and the reception of alms, which departed from the spirit of the original rule. It did not take Francis long, on his return, to suppress this insubordinate tendency.
He was less successful in regard to another of an opposite nature which soon came up. Elias of Cortona originated a movement for the increase of the worldly consideration of the order and the adaptation of its system to the plans of the hierarchy. This conflicted with the original notions of Francis and helped to bring about the successive changes in the rule already described. Francis was not alone in opposition to this lax and secularizing tendency. On the contrary, the party which clung to his original views and after his death took his "testament" for their guide, known as Observantists or Zelanti, was at least equal in numbers and activity to the followers of Elias.
In 1219, exasperated by the demands of running a growing and fractious order, Francis asked Pope Honorius III for help. He was assigned Cardinal Ugolino as protector of the order by the pope. Francis resigned the day-to-day running of the order. Francis retained the power to shape legislation, writing a rule in 1221 which he revised and had approved in 1223. After about 1221, the day-to-day running of the order was in the hands of Brother Elias of Cortona, who was elected as leader of the friars a few years after Francis's death in 1232 but who aroused much opposition because of his autocratic leadership style. He planned and built the Basilica of San Francesco d'Assisi in which Francis is buried, a building which includes the friary Sacro Convento, still today the spiritual centre of the order.
In the external successes of the brothers, as they were reported at the yearly general chapters, there was much to encourage Francis. Caesar of Speyer, the first German provincial, a zealous advocate of the founder's strict principle of poverty, began in 1221 from Augsburg with 25 companions, to win for the order in the region of the Rhine and the Danube. In 1224, Agnellus of Pisa led a small group of friars to England. The branch arriving in England became known as the "greyfriars". Beginning at Greyfriars at Canterbury, the ecclesiastical capital, they moved on to London, the political capital, and Oxford, the intellectual capital. From these three bases, the Franciscans swiftly expanded, to embrace the principal towns of England.
Development after Francis's death
1232–1239
Elias was a lay friar, and encouraged other laymen to enter the order. This brought opposition from many ordained friars and ministers provincial, who also opposed increased centralization of the Order. Gregory IX declared his intention to build a splendid church to house the body of Francis and the task fell to Elias, who at once began to lay plans for the erection of a great basilica at Assisi, to enshrine the remains of the Poverello. In order to build the basilica, Elias proceeded to collect money in various ways to meet the expenses of the building. Elias thus also alienated the zealots in the order, who felt this was not in keeping with the founder's views upon the question of poverty.
The earliest leader of the strict party was Brother Leo, a close companion of Francis during his last years and the author of the Speculum perfectionis, a strong polemic against the laxer party. Having protested against the collection of money for the erection of the basilica of San Francesco, it was Leo who broke in pieces the marble box which Elias had set up for offertories for the completion of the basilica at Assisi. For this Elias had him scourged, and this outrage on St Francis's dearest disciple consolidated the opposition to Elias. Leo was the leader in the early stages of the struggle in the order for the maintenance of St Francis's ideas on strict poverty. At the chapter held in May 1227, Elias was rejected in spite of his prominence, and Giovanni Parenti, Minister Provincial of Spain, was elected Minister General of the order.
In 1232 Elias succeeded him, and under him the Order significantly developed its ministries and presence in the towns. Many new houses were founded, especially in Italy, and in many of them special attention was paid to education. The somewhat earlier settlements of Franciscan teachers at the universities (in Paris, for example, where Alexander of Hales was teaching) continued to develop. Contributions toward the promotion of the Order's work, and especially the building of the Basilica in Assisi, came in abundantly. Funds could only be accepted on behalf of the friars for determined, imminent, real necessities that could not be provided for from begging. When in 1230, the General Chapter could not agree on a common interpretation of the 1223 Rule it sent a delegation including Anthony of Padua to Pope Gregory IX for an authentic interpretation of this piece of papal legislation. The bull Quo elongati of Gregory IX declared that the Testament of St. Francis was not legally binding and offered an interpretation of poverty that would allow the Order to continue to develop. Gregory IX authorized agents of the Order to have custody of such funds where they could not be spent immediately. Elias pursued with great severity the principal leaders of the opposition, and even Bernardo di Quintavalle, the founder's first disciple, was obliged to conceal himself for years in the forest of Monte Sefro.
The conflict between the two parties lasted many years and the Zelanti won several notable victories in spite of the favor shown to their opponents by the papal administration, until finally the reconciliation of the two points of view was seen to be impossible and the order was actually split into halves.
1239–1274
Elias governed the Order from the center, imposing his authority on the provinces (as had Francis). A reaction to this centralized government was led from the provinces of England and Germany. At the general chapter of 1239, held in Rome under the personal presidency of Gregory IX, Elias was deposed in favor of Albert of Pisa, the former provincial of England, a moderate Observantist. This chapter introduced General Statutes to govern the Order and devolved power from the Minister General to the Ministers Provincial sitting in chapter. The next two Ministers General, Haymo of Faversham (1240–1244) and Crescentius of Jesi (1244–1247), consolidated this greater democracy in the Order but also led the Order towards a greater clericalization. The new Pope Innocent IV supported them in this. In a bull of November 14, 1245, this pope even sanctioned an extension of the system of financial agents, and allowed the funds to be used not simply for those things that were necessary for the friars but also for those that were useful.
The Observantist party took a strong stand in opposition to this ruling and agitated so successfully against the lax General that in 1247, at a chapter held in Lyon, France—where Innocent IV was then residing—he was replaced by the strict Observantist John of Parma (1247–1257) and the Order refused to implement any provisions of Innocent IV that were laxer than those of Gregory IX.
Elias, who had been excommunicated and taken under the protection of Frederick II, was now forced to give up all hope of recovering his power in the Order. He died in 1253, after succeeding by recantation in obtaining the removal of his censures. Under John of Parma, who enjoyed the favor of Innocent IV and Pope Alexander IV, the influence of the Order was notably increased, especially by the provisions of the latter pope in regard to the academic activity of the brothers. He not only sanctioned the theological institutes in Franciscan houses, but did all he could to support the friars in the Mendicant Controversy, when the secular Masters of the University of Paris and the Bishops of France combined to attack the mendicant orders. It was due to the action of Alexander IV's envoys, who were obliged to threaten the university authorities with excommunication, that the degree of doctor of theology was finally conceded to the Dominican Thomas Aquinas and the Franciscan Bonaventure (1257), who had previously been able to lecture only as licentiates.
The Franciscan Gerard of Borgo San Donnino at this time issued a Joachimite tract and John of Parma was seen as favoring the condemned theology of Joachim of Fiore. To protect the Order from its enemies, John was forced to step down and recommended Bonaventure as his successor. Bonaventure saw the need to unify the Order around a common ideology and both wrote a new life of the founder and collected the Order's legislation into the Constitutions of Narbonne, so called because they were ratified by the Order at its chapter held at Narbonne, France, in 1260. In the chapter of Pisa three years later Bonaventure's Legenda maior was approved as the only biography of Francis and all previous biographies were ordered to be destroyed. Bonaventure ruled (1257–1274) in a moderate spirit, which is represented also by various works produced by the order in his time – especially by the Expositio regulae written by David of Augsburg soon after 1260.
14th century
1274–1300
The successor to Bonaventure, Jerome of Ascoli or Girolamo Masci (1274–1279), (the future Pope Nicholas IV), and his successor, Bonagratia of Bologna (1279–1285), also followed a middle course. Severe measures were taken against certain extreme Spirituals who, on the strength of the rumor that Pope Gregory X was intending at the Council of Lyon (1274–1275) to force the mendicant orders to tolerate the possession of property, threatened both pope and council with the renunciation of allegiance. Attempts were made, however, to satisfy the reasonable demands of the Spiritual party, as in the bull Exiit qui seminat of Pope Nicholas III (1279), which pronounced the principle of complete poverty to be meritorious and holy, but interpreted it in the way of a somewhat sophistical distinction between possession and usufruct. The bull was received respectfully by Bonagratia and the next two generals, Arlotto of Prato (1285–1287) and Matthew of Aqua Sparta (1287–1289); but the Spiritual party under the leadership of the Bonaventuran pupil and apocalyptic Pierre Jean Olivi regarded its provisions for the dependence of the friars upon the pope and the division between brothers occupied in manual labor and those employed on spiritual missions as a corruption of the fundamental principles of the Order. They were not won over by the conciliatory attitude of the next general, Raymond Gaufredi (1289–1296), and of the Franciscan Pope Nicholas IV (1288–1292). The attempt made by the next pope, Celestine V, an old friend of the order, to end the strife by uniting the Observantist party with his own order of hermits (see Celestines) was scarcely more successful. Only a part of the Spirituals joined the new order, and the secession scarcely lasted beyond the reign of the hermit-pope. Pope Boniface VIII annulled Celestine's bull of foundation with his other acts, deposed the general Raymond Gaufredi, and appointed a man of laxer tendency, John de Murro, in his place. The Benedictine section of the Celestines was separated from the Franciscan section, and the latter was formally suppressed by Pope Boniface VIII in 1302. The leader of the Observantists, Olivi, who spent his last years in the Franciscan house at Tarnius and died there in 1298, had pronounced against the more extreme "Spiritual" attitude, and given an exposition of the theory of poverty which was approved by the more moderate Observantists, and for a long time constituted their principle.
Persecution
Under Pope Clement V (1305–1314) this party succeeded in exercising some influence on papal decisions. In 1309, Clement had a commission sit at Avignon for the purpose of reconciling the conflicting parties. Ubertino of Casale, the leader, after Olivi's death, of the stricter party, who was a member of the commission, induced the Council of Vienne to arrive at a decision in the main favoring his views. The 1313 papal constitution Exivi de paradiso was on the whole conceived in the same sense.
Clement's successor, Pope John XXII (1316–1334), favored the laxer or conventual party. By the bull Quorundam exigit he modified several provisions of the constitution Exivi, and required the formal submission of the Spirituals. Some of them, encouraged by the strongly Observantist general Michael of Cesena, ventured to dispute the pope's right so to deal with the provisions of his predecessor. Sixty-four of them were summoned to Avignon and the most obstinate delivered over to the Inquisition, four of them being burned in 1318. Shortly before this, all the separate houses of the Observantists had been suppressed.
Renewed controversy on the question of poverty
A few years later a new controversy, this time theoretical, broke out on the question of poverty. In his 14 August 1279 bull Exiit qui seminat, Pope Nicholas III had confirmed the arrangement already established by Pope Innocent IV, by which all property given to the Franciscans was vested in the Holy See, which granted the friars the mere use of it. The bull declared that renunciation of ownership of all things "both individually but also in common, for God's sake, is meritorious and holy; Christ, also, showing the way of perfection, taught it by word and confirmed it by example, and the first founders of the church militant, as they had drawn it from the fountainhead itself, distributed it through the channels of their teaching and life to those wishing to live perfectly."
Although Exiit qui seminat banned the disputation of its contents, the decades that followed saw increasingly bitter disputes about the form of poverty to be observed by Franciscans, with the Spirituals (so called because associated with the Age of the Spirit that Joachim of Fiore had said would begin in 1260) pitched against the Conventual Franciscans. Pope Clement V's bull Exivi de Paradiso of 20 November 1312 failed to effect a compromise between the two factions. Clement V's successor, Pope John XXII was determined to suppress what he considered to be the excesses of the Spirituals, who contended eagerly for the view that Christ and his apostles had possessed absolutely nothing, either separately or jointly, and who were citing Exiit qui seminat in support of their view.
