Franciscans

FRANCISCANS

FRANCISCANS. In 1209 Saint Francis of Assisi founded the Order of Friars Minor, more commonly known as the Franciscans. Despite the wishes of his wealthy father, Francis abandoned his privileged lifestyle and devoted himself to a life of poverty and preaching in the vernacular to the masses. His mendicant order soon gained the support of powerful patrons, including Pope Innocent III, who approved of the Franciscans' respect for church authority and orthodox doctrine in a time of rampant popular heresy. Soon after, Francis's childhood friend Clare founded a female counterpart to the Franciscans, called the Poor Clares, who also lived in voluntary poverty but remained cloistered rather than wandering and begging as did the Franciscans.

In colonial times, the Franciscans were preeminent in the discovery, exploration, and settlement of Spanish North America. In the Spanish borderlands of the colonies, that is, Florida, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California, they were the only missionaries to spend significant time among the Indians and to cover substantial territory. Many old missions still bear witness to the zeal and success that marked their activity. The work of bishop-elect Juan Juáres, who in 1528 journeyed to Florida with Pánfilo de Narváez's expedition, and Father José Sánchez, who in 1884 died at San Gabriel Mission, California, stand as well-known examples of Franciscan achievement.

In the sections of North America that belonged to France, where they were known as the Recollects, the Franciscans were less active. They cast their lot with Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, in the Illinois country and on the Texas coast between 1675 and 1687. Thereafter, until 1763, when French North America became English territory, the Franciscans labored in upper Louisiana, at Cahokia on the Mississippi River, at Detroit in Michigan, and at the French forts in northern Ohio, Pennsylvania (Duquesne), and New York (Niagara, Crown Point, and Saint Frédéric). In the English colony of Maryland, they joined the Jesuits in 1672 and were active there until 1720, when the last of their group died. It is probable that from Maryland they forayed into Pennsylvania.

During the half-century following the American Revolution, various provinces in Europe sent Franciscans to the United States, usually with immigrant groups. These Franciscans labored chiefly in the "new" West and Northwest. Among them, Father Michael Egan in 1810 became the first bishop of Philadelphia. Unfortunately, scholars have yet to trace and to write the history of these isolated Franciscans.

The present era of Franciscan activity in the United States, which has taken place chiefly in parishes and schools, began in about the 1850s. Since then, regularly organized into juridical entities, Franciscans have advanced steadily in both membership and foundations. At the end of the twentieth century, the Franciscan order boasted almost eighteen thousand members worldwide, with just under twelve thousand of those members serving as priests and the rest as scholastics and lay brothers. Working both in the United States and in foreign areas such as Bolivia, Brazil, Central America, Japan, Peru, and the Philipines, American Franciscans have focused their efforts on friaries, schools, and Indian missions.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Galloway, Patricia K., ed. La Salle and His Legacy: Frenchmen and Indians in the Lower Mississippi Valley. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1982.

Hann, John, and Bonnie G. McEwan. The Apalachee Indians and Mission San Luis. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1998.

Rabasa, Jose. Writing Violence on the Northern Frontier: The Historiography of Sixteenth-Century New Mexico and Florida and the Legacy of Conquest. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2000.

Antonine S. Tibesar / a. e.

See also Colorado River Explorations ; Exploration of America, Early ; French Frontier Forts ; Hennepin, Louis, Narratives of ; Indian Missions .