A Dominican Friar.
The Franciscans were styled by their founder Fratri Minori—lesser brothers, Friars Minors; they were more usually called Grey Friars, from the colour of their habits, or Cordeliers, from the knotted cord which formed their characteristic girdle. Their habit was originally a grey tunic with long loose sleeves (but not quite so loose as those of the Benedictines), a knotted cord for a girdle, and a black hood; the feet always bare, or only protected by sandals. In the fifteenth century the colour of the habit was altered to a dark brown. The woodcut is from Hollar’s print. A picture of St. Francis, by Felippino Lippi (1460-1505), in the National Gallery shows the costume very clearly. Piers Ploughman describes the irregular indulgences in habit worn by less strict members of the order:—
“In cutting of his cope
Is more cloth y-folden
Than was in Frauncis’ froc,
When he them first made.
And yet under that cope
A coat hath he, furred
With foyns or with fichews
Or fur of beaver,
And that is cut to the knee,
And quaintly y-buttoned
Lest any spiritual man
Espie that guile.
Fraunceys bad his brethren
Barefoot to wenden.
Now have they buckled shoon
For blenying [blistering] of ther heels,
And hosen in harde weather
Y-hamled [tied] by the ancle.”
A beautiful little picture of St. Francis receiving the stigmata may be found in a Book of Offices of the end of the fourteenth century (Harl. 2,897, f. 407 v.). Another fifteenth-century picture of the same subject is in a Book of Hours (Harl. 5,328, f. 123). Some fine sixteenth-century authorities for Franciscan costumes are in the MS. life of St. Francis (Harl. 3,229, f. 26). The principal picture represents St. Bonaventura, a saint of the order, in a gorgeous cope over his brown frock and hood, seated writing in his cell; through the open door is seen a corridor with doors opening off it to other cells. In the corners of the page are other pictures of St. Anthony of Padua, and St. Bernardine, and another saint, and St. Clare, foundress of the female order of Franciscans. A very good illumination of two Franciscans in grey frocks and hoods, girded with rope and barefooted, will be found in the MS. Add. 17,687 of date 1498. The Franciscan nuns, or Minoresses, or Poor Clares, as they were sometimes called, from St. Clare, the patron saint and first nun of the order, wore the same habit as the monks, only with a black veil instead of a hood. For another illustration of minoresses see MS. Royal 1,696, f. 111, v. The Franciscans were first introduced into England, at Canterbury, in the year 1223 A.D., and there were sixty-five houses of the order in England, besides four of minoresses.
A Franciscan Friar.
While the Dominicans retained their unity of organisation to the last, the Franciscans divided into several branches, under the names of Minorites, Capuchins, Minims, Observants, Recollets, &c.
The Carmelite Friars had their origin, as their name indicates, in the East. According to their own traditions, ever since the days of Elijah, whom they claim as their founder, the rocks of Carmel have been inhabited by a succession of hermits, who have lived after the pattern of the great prophet. Their institution as an order of friars, however, dates from the beginning of the thirteenth century, when Albert, Patriarch of Jerusalem, gave them a rule, founded upon, but more severe than, that of St. Basil; and gave them a habit of white and red stripes, which, according to tradition, was the fashion of the wonder-working mantle of their prophet-founder. The order immediately spread into the West, and Pope Honorius III. sanctioned it, and changed the habit to a white frock over a dark brown tunic; and very soon after, the third general of the order, an Englishman, Simon Stock, added the scapulary, of the same colour as the tunic, by which they are to be distinguished from the Premonstratensian canons, whose habit is the same, except that it wants the scapulary. From the colour of the habit the popular English name for the Carmelites was the White Friars. Sir John de Vesci, an English crusader, in the early part of the thirteenth century, made the ascent of Mount Carmel, and found these religious living there, claiming to be the successors of Elijah. The romantic incident seems to have interested him, and he brought back some of them to England, and thus introduced the order here, where it became more popular than elsewhere in Europe, but it was never an influential order. They had ultimately fifty houses in England.