Organizations
Franciscans (Order of Friars Minor)
Also Known As OFM · Franciscans · Friars Minor · Order of Friars Minor · Greyfriars
Religious Order
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Origin 1209
The first of the mendicant orders, founded by Francis of Assisi (c. 1181-1226), whose short rule of evangelical poverty received oral approval from Innocent III about 1209-1210 and a definitive papal rule (the Regula Bullata) in 1223. Unlike monks bound to a single house, the Friars Minor (Ordo Fratrum Minorum) were mobile preachers who owned nothing individually or in common, living by work and by begging and devoted to preaching and to the care of the poor and the sick. The order divided over the interpretation of poverty into Conventuals and Observants, and later produced the Capuchin reform. Its enclosed womens branch is the Poor Clares.
Facts
Finances
Financial Disclosure RegimeFranciscan finances are managed at the level of individual friaries and provinces rather than through one central published account. The Order's own vow of poverty forbids personal ownership by any friar, with community property held corporately instead. 3 Financial Disclosure RegimeNo single disclosure regime governs the worldwide Order, whose provinces are separately constituted by nation and region. US Franciscan provinces specifically are IRS-recognized churches, exempt from the Form 990 filing that applies to most other tax-exempt nonprofits, which is a citable reason no consolidated financial figure is publicly filed for the US wing or the worldwide Order. 4 Origins
Origin Period FounderFrancis of Assisi (c. 1181 to 1226), whose rule of evangelical poverty received oral approval from Pope Innocent III around 1209 to 1210. 2 FoundedFrancis's rule of radical poverty received a definitive papal rule, the Regula Bullata, from Honorius III in 1223, formally constituting the Order of Friars Minor after over a decade of informal mendicant preaching. 1 Status
Status TodayLiving tradition, practised today 1 Current StatusThe Franciscans remain active today as one of the largest religious families in the Catholic Church, divided since the medieval period into Conventual and Observant branches alongside the later Capuchin reform, together with their enclosed women's branch, the Poor Clares. 2 Organisation
Category of StructureMatches the Community value already carried by the other Catholic religious orders on file. Membership EligibilityAn order of friars Reach of Its AuthorityOne order, school or lineage, wherever it is found 1 A minister general over the whole order Open Questions
Institutional Wealth or FinancesNo aggregate figure found. 3 Individual Franciscan friars own no personal property under the Order's vow of poverty; on solemn profession a friar's possessions pass to the Order, and real property is held corporately by the Order rather than by any friar personally. The Order publishes no single consolidated worldwide financial statement, and no aggregate wealth figure was found in the sources consulted. See the linked open question. Learn More
An Order Founded to Own Nothing, and Split Over Exactly That
The Franciscans were the first of the mendicant orders, and the question that founded them, whether one can own nothing at all, became the crisis that divided them.
Mobile poverty
Unlike monks bound to a single house, the Friars Minor were mobile preachers who owned nothing individually or in common, living by work and by begging and devoted to preaching and to the care of the poor and the sick. The short rule of evangelical poverty written by Francis of Assisi received oral approval around 1209 to 1210 and a definitive papal rule in 1223.
The poverty controversy
Whether an order could truly own nothing became a doctrinal crisis rather than an internal disagreement. The order divided over the interpretation of poverty into Conventuals and Observants, and the dispute reached the point at which John XXII condemned the strict Spiritual position in the 1320s. The later Capuchin reform was a further return to the original austerity. The recurring split over how literally to take the poverty of the founder is the defining feature of Franciscan history, and the enclosed womens branch, the Poor Clares, secured its own radical privilege of owning no property even in common.
A Rule of Poverty That Split Its Own Order Repeatedly
No question divided the Franciscans more persistently than the one their founder had answered most absolutely: what strict poverty actually required in practice once the order had grown too large to survive purely on begging from day to day. Disagreement between friars who wanted a literal, uncompromising poverty and those who accepted communal ownership of buildings and goods as a practical necessity ran through the order for two centuries after Francis's death in 1226, producing repeated tension that the papacy tried and failed to settle more than once.
The split was finally made official in 1517, when Pope Leo X separated the two positions into distinct legal bodies, the Observants, who held to the stricter reading, and the Conventuals, who accepted communal property, ending centuries of internal argument by making the division permanent rather than resolving it. The pattern repeated again within a few years: a further group of friars, seeking an even stricter return to poverty and to the itinerant preaching life of Francis's earliest companions, broke away in the 1520s to form what became the Capuchins, so that the same underlying disagreement produced not one split but a sequence of them, each generation of reformers arguing the previous settlement had already drifted from what Francis himself had asked for.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
This source names Franciscans directly: "Francisco de Zurbaran painted this austere devotional picture around 1635 to 1639, showing Saint Francis of Assisi kneeling alone in fervent prayer, his clasped hands cradling a human skull against..."
Belongs to Tradition
Derived from This
A sixteenth-century reform of the Friars Minor, later a distinct order.
Instance Of
A mendicant order of friars, not a monastic one.
Objects and Practices of This Tradition
Related To
The Second Order of the Franciscan family, enclosed, founded by Clare of Assisi beside Francis.
Sources
1. Medieval Monasticism: Forms of Religious Life in Western Europe in the Middle Ages
C. H. Lawrence, Longman, 2001on the Franciscans and the poverty controversyView the Source 2. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised edition
F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.), Oxford University Press, 2005Franciscan Order; Francis of Assisi, StView the Source 2. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised edition
F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.), Oxford University Press, 2005on Francis of Assisi and the Friars MinorView the Source 3. Order of Friars Minor (Catholic Encyclopedia, New Advent)
4. Filing Requirements for Churches and Religious Organizations (Internal Revenue Service)
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