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.

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.

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�).

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.