Franciscans

Franciscans or Order of Friars Minor, 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.