For a community that draws so heavily on one historical person and on the movement that grew from him, as the Franciscan Order does, it is always important to know its own history. The complex and in some respects difficult situation of the Secular Franciscan Order (OFS) in Western Europe, too, can only be understood if one knows the changes that the Franciscan lay movement has gone through up to the present day, and is still going through. So I have tried to set out the history of the Secular Franciscans (or of the Third Order, the OFS, the tertiary movement, the Franciscan laity …) as briefly as possible. In doing so I rely chiefly on the book “Die Geschichte der franziskanischen Laienbewegung” by Heribert Roggen (Dietrich-Coelde-Verlag 1971), and also on the writings of Saint Francis and the biography by Thomas of Celano.
I have divided the whole history, from Francis onwards, into four periods:
- The Early Period (13th Century)
- Consolidation, Decline and Individualism (14th – 18th Centuries)
- Revival of the Franciscan Ideals (19th Century)
- Rediscovering Lay Spirituality (20th Century)
The Early Period (13th Century)
Looking back on the time when Francis and his first companions founded their community, one makes a surprising discovery: this first community was a lay community! Francis and his friends saw themselves as ordinary Christians who did not belong to the clergy but wanted to live their faith in a new and radical way. There was only one priest in this first community, Peter Catanii, and no special status was derived from his ordination. Francis deliberately set himself apart from the existing clerical orders. He refused to be absorbed into the existing structures, and he did not want to found monasteries either. The brothers were to live in small communities in the midst of the people, and to live, pray and work at the side of the poor.
From the very beginning there were also people who wanted to follow the Franciscan ideals but could not take the step to celibacy and absolute poverty, for instance because they were married and had children or because they had relatives to care for. Francis turned to these people too; they supported him, and he regarded them, so to speak, as an extended space of his community. But even in his lifetime an ever stronger clericalisation set in within the order, and Francis could not prevent it. A legally precise Rule was drawn up to replace the old Rule, which had consisted essentially of quotations from the Gospels. More and more priests joined the order, and because of their higher education they very soon occupied the leading positions. In substance, the emphasis shifted away from service to the poor towards preaching and theology. (This process should not, however, be seen only as a turning away from the original ideals, but also in the light of something that is stressed again and again, especially nowadays: putting these ideals into practice realistically and spreading them as widely as possible. In other words: “Fundis” versus “Realos”, as the fundamentalist and the pragmatic wings of the German Greens are called.)
This development made it necessary to give the continuing movement of Franciscan-minded lay people a structure of its own. In 1289 Pope Nicholas IV gave what was now called the Third Order its first Rule. (The “Second Order” is the Franciscan order for women founded by Saint Clare.) Its members were also called “tertiaries” (from tertium: the third). The claim made in Nicholas IV’s Rule that Francis himself had founded the Third Order is, however, not historically true. The Third Order became necessary because the First Order had in many respects adapted itself to the older monastic communities. The Franciscan movement, which had originally been purely a lay movement, had thus split into a monastic, that is, clerical branch and a lay branch, which was given pastoral care by the First Order.
These Franciscan lay groups of the 13th century met regularly for prayer and for further instruction in matters of faith; they were socially engaged, founding, for example, the first hospitals in Europe; and they refused to bear arms or to swear oaths of loyalty to the territorial princes. It was precisely these last two points that made them an effective force in society, for until then the princes had had the unrestricted right to call up their subjects for military service, even when all that was at stake was a private feud with a neighbouring prince. The popes supported the Third Order because it helped to contain the countless petty wars all over Europe, and because the comparatively good religious education of its members strengthened the spread and deepening of the Catholic faith in Europe.
Consolidation, Decline and Individualism (14th – 18th Centuries)
In the centuries that followed, there was often uncertainty about the place of the Third Order in the Church. No one knew whether its members should be counted among the religious or not. In the end it was agreed to regard them as half lay people and half clerics. This dispute was mainly about the privileged legal status that went with the clerical state, and so it missed the essence of the Franciscan lay vocation entirely. A spiritual decline set in because many groups had lost the drive and enthusiasm of the first decades. The successors of the first generations sometimes did little more than fiercely defend the property and privileges they had acquired over time.
Pope Leo X finally put an end to the quarrels in 1517 by taking all privileges away from the Third Order and declaring its members to be simple lay people. In the age of the Reformation, this step made possible a return to Franciscan spirituality that led to the revival of many groups; it started above all in Spain, but also bore much fruit in Germany and Austria. These renewed groups, however, lacked the social dynamism that had marked the lay groups of the 13th century. What mattered now was above all personal sanctification and the development of a life of prayer. In this the Third Order followed a general trend of the time, which as a whole was directed towards deepening mystical experience and towards an individualistic piety. (In Spain, the mystics John of the Cross and Teresa of Ávila, among others, were active at this time.)
Despite all these difficulties, and despite changes shaped by the spirit of the age, throughout all these centuries there was always commitment to the poor and the sick in the Third Order, and the sincere effort of many people to let the spirit of love of neighbour guide them in their work and family life. Prisoners were ransomed from Muslim captivity and hospitals were maintained; many groups devoted themselves to the upbringing and education of young people.
Revival of the Franciscan Ideals (19th Century)
The Third Order gained new momentum in the 19th century, when the Franciscan ideals offered a timely answer to the social problems created by industrialisation. Pope Leo XIII in particular promoted the Franciscan lay movement, and in 1893 he wrote a new Rule which was meant to turn the Third Order into a mass movement.
But while the Pope, in his social encyclical “Rerum Novarum”, took a very decided political stand for the rights of the poor and of workers and encouraged the founding of Catholic trade unions, the new Rule turned the Third Order into an unpolitical pious association. The aim of the Third Order was now private devotion on a modest scale (members were obliged to pray ten Our Fathers a day), loyalty to the Church hierarchy, and respectable, law-abiding conduct. The prohibition on bearing arms, which still applied to members of the Third Order, was lifted so as not to bring them into conflict with compulsory military service in their home countries.
Evidently the Pope saw the Third Order, thus reshaped, as a spiritual complement to his political pronouncements. But he did the Franciscan lay movement no favours. The Third Order did indeed become a mass movement, at times with over three million members worldwide, but its spirituality and community life often remained shallow and depended very heavily on the spiritual assistant, the so-called “Third Order director”. The withdrawal from all political and social questions meant that the community became uninteresting for socially engaged and active people, and took on a fussy, old-fashioned character. And so, despite its size, the Third Order fell into a deep identity crisis in the years after the Second World War.
Rediscovering Lay Spirituality (20th Century)
Prompted by this crisis, a renewed awareness arose in the middle of the 20th century of the quite distinctive and irreplaceable significance that lay people have for the Church. In the course of this rediscovery of the tasks of the laity, the committed members of the Third Order began to reflect on the situation of their community. When the Second Vatican Council called on all religious communities to examine their rules and ways of life and to realign them with the spirituality of their founders, they seized this opportunity and, together with the spiritual assistants from the various branches of the First Order, wrote a new Rule with a fundamentally new orientation. This Rule was approved by Pope Paul VI in 1978. The Third Order was officially renamed “Ordo Franciscanus Saecularis” (OFS – Secular Franciscan Order).
From the 1960s onwards the OFS in Germany called itself “Franziskanische Gemeinschaft” (Franciscan Community), to avoid misunderstandings and to emphasise the lay character of the community. For some years now, however, at the request of the International Council, this name is no longer to be used, so as to stress the worldwide unity of the OFS.
The new Rule is no longer just about saying a certain number of prayers and taking a merely passive role as attentive listeners to the Church’s preaching. Rather, the whole of life, in its spiritual and its worldly aspects, is to be guided by the spirit of Franciscan spirituality. So the Rule speaks not only of the importance of the Gospel, the Eucharist and prayer, but also of active commitment to peace and justice, of fraternal solidarity with the poor and the marginalised, and of a modest and unselfish attitude to money and possessions. As for their relationship with those who hold office in the Church, it says that the members of the Secular Franciscan Order conduct an “open dialogue, sustained by faith” with them, and do not give up their communion with the Church even in difficult situations.
Another important point of the new Rule was that the OFS communities were no longer the sole responsibility of the three branches of the First Order. Until then the Franciscans, the Conventuals (Minorites) and the Capuchins each ran their own Third Orders, which were mostly attached to their respective friaries. With the new Rule, all three branches of the Third Order were brought together. Each group elects its own council, which consists of lay people and is joined by a spiritual assistant. The assistant can now be a Franciscan, a Conventual or a Capuchin, so that the existence of a group is no longer tied to a particular friary. At higher levels, the many fraternities of the OFS all over the world are grouped into provinces and then into nations. At every level there are elected councils which, like the councils of the local fraternities, are made up of lay people and a spiritual assistant. In recent years it has become the practice, where appropriate, to appoint women as assistants as well, from congregations of sisters. At the head of the worldwide OFS is the International Council, which meets every three years.
Inspired by the example of Saint Francis, by communion with all members of the Franciscan family, and by the Rule, Secular Franciscans all over the world try to translate the Gospel into their everyday lives, to live in the spirit of fraternity, readiness to serve and prayer, and to begin a new chapter in the long history of the Franciscan lay movement.