Greyfriars or Franciscan Friars in Renaissance England.

Fransiscan Monks from a Medieval manuscript at J. Paul Getty Museum.

Fransiscan Friars from a MS at
the J. Paul Getty Museum.

Franciscan or Grey Friars

FRANCISCAN FRIARS or GREYFRIARS — The followers of St. Francis, who was born in 1182, at Assisi, in Umbria, and spent his youth in dissoluteness; but being affected with serious sickness in his twenty-fourth year, and repenting of his sins, devoted himself to a religious and ascetic life.

Hearing accidentally, in 1208, in a church the words of the Saviour (Matt. x. 9, 10), he considered that the essence of the Gospel was absolute poverty, and founded an order on this basis, which ultimately became one of the four, nay, even one of the two, great fraternities of mendicant friars. To manifest his humility he would not allow his followers to be called brethren (in Latin fratres), but only little brothers (Italian fratricelli; in Latin fraterculi or fratres minores), a designation which they still retain.

Pope Innocent III, in 1210, and a council of Lateran, in 1215, approved of his rules for the government of his order, which enjoined poverty, chastity, and obedience, and in 1223 Pope Honorius III issued a bull in his favour. He died, at Assisi, in 1226, and in 1230 was canonized by Pope Gregory IX, the anniversary of his death, October 4, being fixed as his festival. Even while he lived his order had become very powerful, and spread over the whole Western Church. In 1219 it is stated that 5,000 friars were present at a chapter which he held.

In that year, or more probably in 1224, Franciscans came over to England. From 1228 till 1259 they contended with the Dominicans about precedency. When in 1274 Gregory X reduced the mendicants to four orders the Franciscans were one of the four. At the suppression of the monasteries in England under Henry VIII, A.D. 1536 to 1538, the Franciscans had sixty-six abbeys or other religious houses.

Their dress was a loose garment of a grey colour, reaching to their ankles, and a grey cowl, covered when they went into the streets with a cloak. From the prevalence of grey in their dress they were called Greyfriars. The order, in the course of its history, split into various branches.

Source:

Universal Dictionary of the English Language.
New York: Peter Fenelon Collier, 1897. 2196.

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