1181–1226

Founder of the Franciscan Order

The Simple Garb of the Friar.

Francis of Assisi was born in 1181 and early in life experienced a mystical conversion to a life of poverty, itinerant preaching, and aid to the poor and disenfranchised. Like-minded persons soon gathered to him and by 1209 had formed what was to be the Franciscan Order of Friars or Friars Minor. Authorized by Pope Innocent III as a group of public preachers, they came together for their first general chapter in 1217. A Rule, that is, a guide to the organization and behavior of the order's adherents, was created in 1221 and officially approved for the Order of Friars Minor by Pope Honorius III in 1223. The rule stressed qualities that Francis saw in the apostolic form of Christianity illustrated by the lives and deeds of Jesus and his disciples. One element distinguishing the Friars Minor from...