Institutionalization of Disorder: The Franciscan Third Order and Canonical Change in the Sixteenth Century

Traditional Franciscan history holds that Francis of Assisi (†1226) founded an order of lay penitents, which was given both a rule and official approval by Pope Nicholas IV in 1289. In this accepted version of events, the 1289 rule was followed by houses of men and women until the sixteenth century, and only replaced when a desire for greater unity within the Franciscan third order led Leo X to issue a new rule in 1521.² Despite not standing up to historical scrutiny, studies of the third order seldom question this official narrative.³ Moreover, although the 1521 rule is generally mentioned, little attention is given to either its context or significance.⁴ When the historical circumstances of this new rule are considered, it quickly becomes apparent that its immediate effects were minimal. However, close examination and sensitive contextualization of this rule provide a surprisingly clear insight into the sixteenth-century expansion of a process of monasticisation that had affected houses, particularly of female penitents, throughout the later Middle Ages.

In his 1521 bull Inter cetera, Leo explained that a new rule for the third order was essential. His justification for this was quite simple: the rule that he claimed Francis had written for men and women living in the world was not suited to the many communities of virgins who were attracted to its spirit, but desired to live enclosed and contemplative lives.⁵ While Leo was certainly correct that there was considerable diversity among those who followed the so-called rule of the Franciscan third order, he failed to mention that this had not been a recent development. The historical record indicates that those who are generally discussed as belonging to the Franciscan third order were neither a cohesive group nor (necessarily) linked to the friars minor.⁶

The historical development of the so-called Franciscan third order is somewhat complex. While textual evidence confirms that Francis of Assisi was popular among the laity, there is certainly nothing to suggest that he founded a canonical order.⁷ Moreover, as informal penitential life was commonly accepted in the early thirteenth century, there would have been no reason for a canonical and official Franciscan “third order” to be created.⁸ In his aptly named Dossier de l’ordre de la pénitence Giles G. Meersseman includes regulatory documents from penitential groups.⁹ Unlike canonical religious rules, the regulatory material included in these documents did not provide canonical legitimacy. Repeated studies connect one such document, the Memoriale propositi (1221, and confirmed 1228), with the Franciscans, and often refer to it as the “first rule of the third order.”¹⁰ However, the Memoriale was not a rule, but simply a collection of existing penitential statutes issued to provide some form of uniformity to the life of penitents in northern and central Italy.¹¹ Moreover, the Memoriale had no exclusive spiritual or legislative connection to the Franciscan order, but was itself used as a model for later Franciscan and Dominican penitential statutes.¹²

Nevertheless, the relaxed canonical attitude towards penitential groups did not last. From the later thirteenth century onwards, canonists had begun to insist that such groups adopt the outward appearance of religious life. Penitential groups, particularly groups of women, were encouraged to live enclosed lives, adopt a rule and make public profession of vows.¹³ In the fifty or so years that followed the Memoriale, groups of penitents were subjected to recurring local or curial legislation. In 1289, Nicholas IV took the dramatic step of issuing an official rule for the “third order” which he placed under the protection of the Franciscans. Nicholas’s bull, Supra montem, claimed to give canonical legitimacy to the “order of penitents” that Francis had founded.¹⁴ As references to Francis’s founding of the order can be found in in a variety of thirteenth-century hagiographic and liturgical documents, this claim has largely been uncontested.¹⁵

Traditional histories often suggest that the so-called “third order” spread rapidly in the early fourteenth century. While use of the 1289...