FRANCISCANS (otherwise called Friars Minor, or Minor ites; and in England Grey Friars, from the colour of the habit, which, however, is now brown rather than grey), a religious order founded by St. Francis of Assisi (q.v.). It was in 1206 that St. Francis left his father's house and devoted himself to a life of poverty and to the service of the poor, the sick and the lepers; and in 1209 that he felt the call to add preaching to his other min istrations, and to lead a life in the closest imitation of Christ's. Within a few weeks disciples began to join themselves to him; the condition was that they should dispose of all their possessions. When their number was twelve Francis led the little flock to Rome to obtain the pope's sanction for their undertaking. Inno cent III. received them kindly, but with some misgivings as to the feasibility of the proposed manner of life; these difficulties were overcome, and the pope accorded a provisional approval by word of mouth : they were to become clerics and to elect a superior. Francis was elected and made a promise of obedience to the pope, and the others promised obedience to Francis.
Unorganized Fraternity.—This formal inauguration of the institute was in 1209 or (as seems more probable) 121o. On their return to Assisi they obtained from the Benedictine abbey on Mount Subasio the use of the little chapel of St. Mary of the Angels, called the Portiuncula, in the plain below Assisi, which became the cradle and headquarters of the order. Around the Portiuncula they built themselves huts of branches and twigs, but they had no fixed abode; they wandered in pairs over the country, dressed in the ordinary clothes of the peasants, working in the fields to earn their daily bread, sleeping in barns or in the hedge rows or in the porches of the churches, mixing with the labourers and the poor, with the lepers and the outcasts. The key-note of the movement was the imitation of the public life of Christ, espe cially the poverty of Christ. Francis and his disciples were to aim at possessing nothing, absolutely nothing, so far as was compatible with life ; they were to earn their bread from day to day by the work of their hands, and only when they could not do so were they to beg; they were to make no provision for the mor row, lay by no store, accumulate no capital, possess no land; but no austerities were practised beyond those inseparable from the life they lived.
Thus the institute in its original conception was a confraternity rather than an order, and there was no formal novitiate, no organ ization. But the number of brothers increased with extraordinary rapidity, and the field of work soon extended itself beyond the neighbourhood of Assisi and even beyond Umbria—within three or four years there were settlements in Perugia, Cortona, Pisa, Florence and elsewhere, and missions to the Saracens and Moors were attempted by Francis himself. About 1217 Franciscan mis sions set out for Germany, France, Spain, Hungary and the Holy Land; and in 1219 a number of provinces were formed, each governed by a provincial minister. These developments, whereby the little band of Umbrian apostles had grown into an institute, spread all over Europe and even penetrating to the East, and numbering thousands of members, rendered impossible the con tinuance of the original free organization whereby Francis's word and example were the sufficient practical rule of life for all: it was necessary as a condition of efficiency and even of existence and permanence that some kind of organization should be provided.
Monastic Order.—From an early date yearly meetings or chapters had been held at the Portiuncula, at first attended by the whole body of friars ; but as the institute extended this be came unworkable, and of ter 1219 the chapter consisted only of the officials, provincial ministers and others. During Francis's absence in the East (1219-122o) a deliberate movement was initiated by the two vicars whom he had left in charge of the order, towards assimilating it to the monastic orders. Francis hurried back, bringing with him Elias of Cortona, the provincial minister of Syria, and immediately summoned an extraordinary general chapter (September 1220). Before it met he had an inter view on the situation with Cardinal Hugolino of Ostia (afterwards Gregory IX.), the great friend and supporter of both Francis and Dominic, and he went to Honorius III. at Orvieto and begged that Hugolino should be appointed the official protector of the order. The request was granted, and a bull was issued formally approving the order of Friars Minor, and decreeing that before admission every one must pass a year's novitiate, and that after profession it was not lawful to leave the order. By this bull the Friars Minor were constituted an order in the technical sense of the word. When the chapter assembled, Francis, no doubt from a genuine feeling that he was not able to govern a great world-wide order, practically abdicated the post of minister-general by appointing a vicar, and the policy of turning the Friars Minor into a great religious order was consistently pursued, especially by Elias, who a year later became Francis's vicar (see FRANCIS OF ASSISI;
