Franciscans


The Franciscans are a group of related organizations in the Catholic Church, founded or inspired by the Italian saint Francis of Assisi. They include three independent religious orders for men, 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 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.

Name and demographics

The name of the original order, Ordo Fratrum Minorum 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 to live like the poor and peasants. 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. 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 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 and his wife Sancha of Majorca 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.
File:Honorius_III_approving_the_Rule_of_St._Francis,_Bartolome_del_Castro,_c._1500_.jpg|thumb|upright|Honorius III Approving the Rule of St. Francis of Assisi, Bartolome del Castro, c. 1500, Philadelphia Museum of Art
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.