ABSTRACT
Two great orders of Friars sprang up in the early thirteenth century, the Franciscans and the Dominicans. The reason why the Friars are distinguished from the Monks and even from the Augustinian Canons is that, though like these they had vows of (personal) poverty and chastity, they did not live in such stable communities. They were much more mobile in their work of evangelisation; their establishments needed little in the way of endowments; and they were wedded to communal as well as to personal poverty. The very term ‘friar’ was one of humility compared with the oft-used title of ‘dominus’ for a monk. The Dominicans were the Order of Preachers; the Franciscans, even more self-abasing, were known as the Friars Minor. It may seem surprising to the reader that this chapter is largely about the Franciscans, for in the history of the thirteenth-century Western church as a whole, the Dominicans did not make a lesser impact. But although Dominicans had arrived in England earlier than Franciscans – and were of help to their co-friars – the Franciscans were more important than the Dominicans in English learning and politics, and even possibly in the hearing of confessions, in Henry III’s reign.
