The Third Order of St. Francis in Mediaeval England

Abstract

THE THIRD ORDER OF ST. FRANCIS jIN MEDIAEVAL ENGLAND In a review, written a year or two ago, of David Knowles’s book, The Religious Orders in England, Mr. W. A. Panting expressed his wish, that Professor Knowles could have said more about “ the part played by the friars in the development of the devout layman, who is characteristic of the later middle ages (one has only to think of Margery Kemp or Henry VI. or St. Thomas More); here the Tertiaries .. . must have been important.” 1 And here, too, Professor KnoVles may well have shared Mr. Pantin’s wish, that he could have said more, for no aspect of the history of the mendicant orders is more obscure and enigmatic than the problem of tracing in England the existence of a mediaeval Third Order. The student of the English friars’ history cannot but be struck by the total absence in extant English sourcematerials of any positive allusion before the Reformation to the Third Order. This almost universally adaptable institution, which appears in varying degrees of prominence in ecclesiastical records throughout Europe, and even (as far, at any rate, as the Franciscan Order is con­ cerned) in the provinces of Scotland and Ireland, seems never to have commended itself to the English mind. But a real problem confronts the historian, which it is proposed here to state and to discuss rather than to attempt to solve, for until further evidence is brought to light no solution can be achieved. And until the historian is apprised of the problem, little progress in this direction is likely to be made. It has become customary with the writers of the popular histories of our mendicant orders to refer in vague and ambiguous terms to the Third Order, with the apparent intention of suggesting that it existed, while avoiding the uncomfortable task of proving that it did:2 our historians of the first rank, faced with 1 The Tablet, 22nd Jan. 1949, p. 56. 2 Cf. P. McCaffrey, The White Friars (1926), pp. 62-7; Edward Hutton, The Franciscans in England (1926), pp. 169-70. Fr. Fabian Dix, O. P., writing in The English Dominican Province, 1221-1921 (pp. 303-22), con­ fuses the reception of letters of fraternity with membership of the Third, Order, and even Fr. Bede Jarrett seems to fall into the same error in The English Dominicans (1921): the latter makes an interesting statement, but without giving a reference, that " a later codex” of the Ancren Riwle "certainly refers to Tertiary convents in Oxford, Shrewsbury, and else-. 50 the same uncomfortable task, wisely prefer to ignore the problem entirely. The scope of the present discussion will be limited to the Third Order of St. Francis, of which alone can it be said that there is any contemporary evidence which will justify serious consideration. It is, in fact, not possible simply to dismiss the Franciscan Third Order as non-existent in this country in the later middle ages, for in igr4 the late Walter Seton published a fifteenth century Third Order Rule in English, which he had in the previous year acquired: The Thirde Order of Seynt Franceys For the Brethren and Susters of the Order of Penitentis.” 3 Of the history of this manuscript prior to the eighteenth century, when it was in the possession of the antiquary Thomas Pennant, nothing is known, and any attempt to trace its provenance must be purely conjectural. The realm of conjecture does not, properly speaking, belong to the historian, but when no alternative exists, and it is possible to support conjecture by parallel historical evidence, such a process may be permissible, and the conclusions — though they can only be received with caution — legitimate. Ultimately, the possible explanations concerning the original owner­ ship of this apparently isolated manuscript may be grouped under three heads. Firstly, that it was written for a house of the Third Order Regular in England. Secondly, that it was written for an individual tertiary, who apparently had at his or her command the means to pay for its elaborate execution. And thirdly, that it was written merely for interest’s sake, at the commission of some person or institution interested...