Minims

MINIMS. - A regular mendicant order, with solemn vows, of mixed life, contemplative and apostolic, founded by St. Francis of Paola in 1435.

I. ORIGINS AND DEVELOPMENT

The first followers of the Saint were called Hermits of St. Francis of Assisi; only in 1492 did the Institute receive from Pope Alexander VI the name of Order of the Minims (bull Meritis religiosae vitae of 24 February 1492). It spread rapidly in southern and central Italy and in Sicily. The first written approval known is that of the archbishop of Cosenza (Decet nos, 30 November 1471), which was followed by that of Sixtus IV (Sedes Apostolica, 27 May 1474). The Order spread to France, where the Saint had gone in 1483; and then to Spain and Germany. At the death of St. Francis (1507) it counted 6 monastic provinces in Italy, France, Spain and Germany, with 32 convents. By the end of the 16th century the number of provinces had risen to 20, with 200 convents, and in the two following centuries, once the religious had been introduced into Belgium, Holland, England, Mexico, Peru and the Azores, the provinces grew to 32 (besides a vicariate in Portugal and in the Indies) and the convents to 500, with about 14,000 religious.

In the second half of the 17th century the decline began, because of the well-known political persecutions: almost everywhere the convents were suppressed, very many destroyed, the religious dispersed. In Italy, despite the grave damages of the French Revolution, the Order kept itself in efficiency, especially in the Papal States and in the South, until the suppressions of 1866 and 1873. Everywhere, however, and in almost their totality, the Minims persevered in the faith, and no small number bore witness to it with their blood. At present a general delegation has been established in Spain; in Italy the Order continues on the path of reconstruction, preserving intact the Rule of the holy founder in its 30 convents, with various novitiates, houses of probation and colleges of study for philosophers and theologians, one of which is general, in Rome.

II. THE RULE

St. Francis of Paola should have adopted one of the four ancient Rules according to the Fourth Lateran Council (year 1215, chap. IV); but overcoming no small difficulties, he obtained the approval of a new, original Rule, which would be an effective means of reviving in that paganizing and depraved century the spirit of the Gospel. The Rule that Sixtus IV and Innocent VIII had refused to approve was approved by Alexander VI on 24 February 1492. Three times the Saint amended it, and the Holy See approved it as many times (Alexander VI, Vestris supplicationibus, 8 October 1495, and Ad ea quae, 1 May 1501), and definitively with Julius II (Inter caeteros, 28 July 1506). It consists of four parts: that of the Religious, with a Correctorium, or code of penalties, annexed; that of the Nuns (Second Order); that of the secular Tertiaries of either sex. The whole constitutes a single code of religious life, similar to that of the Mendicants; but the contemplative life has in it the pre-eminence over the active. The superiors are called correctors. The General Chapter holds the legislative power, while the executive power is entrusted to the corrector general for the whole Order, to the provincial corrector for each monastic province, and to the local corrector for each formed convent. All the correctors are temporary; the general holds office for six years, the others for three; and they are assisted in government by three colleagues, that is, assistants, one of whom has the task of handling the affairs of the Order at the Holy See, and bears the name of Zeloso (procurator general). The religious are distinguished into three classes: clerics, to whom alone the Sacred Orders and power are reserved; laymen, that is, brothers, to whom affairs of special importance are entrusted (St. Francis of Paola belonged to this class); oblates, for the minor and humble offices. Poverty is so strict for the clerics and the laymen that they cannot "touch money," a task reserved to the oblates (mitigated in the recent Constitutions). The penance proper to all the Mendicant Orders is made more rigorous by the practice of the Lenten life to be observed daily daily with a solemn vow, by virtue of which the M. are forbidden the use of meat and its derivatives (eggs, milk, butter, cheese) on all days of the year, none excepted, not even the most solemn feasts, e.g., Christmas and Easter, in the convent and outside it. The vow is personal and follows the religious wherever he goes, even if he is promoted bishop. The only exception is illness, when the physician of the community so judges, and the superior gives the dispensation. Then the sick man is transferred to the outer infirmary, separated from the convent's workshops and dormitories. As already the Carthusians, so the M. have obtained from the supreme pontiffs the concession of eating tortoises and coots

(Adrian VI, Universis, 14 Apr. 1524; Pius VII, rescript 22 Febr. 1804). The vow is held to be essential, so that if by hypothesis it were to fail, the Order of the M. would cease. To the daily abstinence the Rule adds numerous fasts: two Lents, every Wednesday and Friday, in total almost two thirds of the year; rigorous silence, use of rough garments, which it is not lawful to lay aside even at night, bare feet, etc. A Liturgical Ceremonial, composed by the Saint himself, which although it does not have the solemn approval of the Church as the Rules do has nevertheless always been held in great veneration, prescribes, besides the choral divine Office with Matins at midnight, the daily recitation of the penitential psalms. As a whole the Rule of the M. is considered the most severe in the Church.

III. SPIRITUAL LIFE OF THE MINIMS

It results from the fusion of the spirit of penance and humility with charity. The emblem that the founder gave to his sons is the word charitas, radiant, which wonderfully embodies the spirituality that must be called the spirituality of love. The spirit of penance, in fact, which characterizes the Order is nothing but a consequence of charity, and mortification has no purpose except as love.

The Rule of St. Francis of Paola was a program that anticipated the grand work of the Church for reform culminating in the laws of the Council of Trent.

The nascent Protestant heresy in fact found these religious well prepared for battle, for they were among the first to confront it resolutely with the example of a holy life and with apostolic zeal. Some merited the name of "hammers and scourges of heretics, columns and glory of the Church": not a few perished at the hands of heretics. In Bohemia a locality near the convent of Bistritz took the name of Munchschacht ("Massacre of the monks"), because there, around the year 1526, more than a hundred Minim religious were killed. In France many were held to be martyrs of the heretics, among them the fathers Fr. Humblot, Simone and Rolando Guichard, F. Bellemere, A. Finet, E. Apuril, J. Dehem, J. Ropitel, N. Fiquet, R. Breval, J. Masselin, J. Binans, E. Camart (remembered in the Gallican Martyrology as a vanquisher of heretics "verbo, scriptis et opere"). Later the Minims had valiant athletes of the faith in France against the Jansenist heresy.

By the will of the founder the Minim priests must acquire in the sacred and profane sciences such competence as to be able to preach and hear confessions with edification (Reg., IX, 42). But in protection of humility the Saint forbids them to obtain degrees and academic ranks (ibid.). However, when the colleges of studies in the Order began to be frequented also by outside scholars (in Paris, Genoa, Marseilles, Barcelona, Messina, Florence, Naples, Rome, etc.) and not a few religious were requested for teaching in the public universities, Clement XII granted the obtaining of degrees, "provided that this carried with it no prerogative, insignia or precedence in the Order." The schools of the Minims constantly followed the doctrine of the Angelic Doctor, in accordance with the General Chapters; in 1728 the establishment of a special chair for the teaching of the Summa in its text was ordered (anticipating by two centuries the provision of Pius X, Doctoris Angelici, of 29 June 1914). The Order, in the course of nearly five centuries, has had worthy and illustrious cultivators of studies not only sacred but profane: excellent theologians, philosophers, men of letters, jurists, polyglots, mathematicians, physicists, musicians and cultivators of the fine arts. The Order has also given to the Church more than forty archbishops and bishops and a great number of religious who rendered delicate services to the Holy See.

In five centuries of life the ardor of faith and charity, the spirit of sacrifice and the palm of martyrdom have never failed in the Order. Thus came the martyrs of Protestantism in Germany, in France and in England, of the Moors in Spain, later of the French Revolution, and lastly of the Spanish one of 1936. Nor were there lacking martyrs of charity who perished in assisting cholera victims during pestilences, for example, in 1628 at Lyons and in 1720 at Marseilles and throughout Provence. Two confessors, Gaspare Bono and Nicola Saggio, were beatified by Pius VI in 1786. Two martyrs, Carlo Hurtrel in Paris and Thomas Felton under Elizabeth of England, were both beatified by Pius XI in 1926 and 1929. For other servants of God the cause of beatification is in progress before the Sacred Congregation of Rites.

IV. THE SECOND ORDER

The Rule of the nuns is similar in almost everything to that of the friars, except for a few differences required by the difference of sex. They are bound by papal enclosure. The first monastery was founded at Andújar in Spain in 1495, and soon others arose also in Italy and in France, where the Order boasts a most noble history of faith and sacrifice. To be particularly remembered in Spain: Sister Maria di Montenero (16th century), Agnes of Quesada (d. 1593), Sister Maria of the Most Holy Trinity (d. 1642), the ven. Sister Filomena of St. Coloma (d. 1868); recently a group of nine nuns in the persecution of 1936; in Italy Sister Ninfa Solaro (d. 1540); Sister Dorotea Lagrotta (d. 1574); Sister Maria Maddalena of the Crucifix, foundress of the monastery of Todi (d. 1735); Sister Diomira of St. Joseph, foundress of the Roman monastery (d. 1791); Sister Agnes of the Incarnate Word and Sister Virginia of St. Louis, both of the Roman monastery, who died respectively in 1810 and 1907; in France Sister Gabrielle of Jesus (d. 1639) and the blessed Marina of St. George, foundresses of the monastery of Abbeville.

The Second Order followed the fortunes of the First, and if from the flourishing state reached at the beginning of the eighteenth century the number declined, the regular observance did not diminish, which even today is maintained efficiently in the ten monasteries of Spain and in the two of Italy, one of which is in Rome.

V. THE THIRD ORDER

This too is a true Order, whose members of either sex, though living in the world, complete a novitiate and make a profession, without vows, but with simple promises, directed by a specific Rule, written in its entirety by the Saint and approved by the Holy See. The obligations consist in wearing a blessed cord, observing the Rule, which is summed up in the practice of the commandments of God and of the Church, in relation to the duties of one's own state. There is an obligation of certain practices of piety, of several fasts and abstinences, with the counsel to observe also the daily Lenten life. Its origins go back to the very earliest times of the apostolate of St. Francis of Paola, but the juridical approval is from 1501, confirmed later by Julius II (1506). The Third Order forms a single family, which is headed by the corrector general of the Order.

The Third Order also contributed to the reform of the morals of the Christian people. In the long list of members from its origins to the present day there appear personages illustrious for lineage, learning and holiness.

1902-1909-22; G. Moretti, Acta Capitulorum generalium Ord. Min., 2 vols., ibid. 1916; id., Manuale del Terz'ordine del M., ibid. 1933; S. Mortola, Martiri minimi, Genoa 1926; anonymous, L'Ordine dei M. nella luce dei santi, Rome 1927; E. Sanz y Portegas, El espíritu de s. Fr. d. Paola y de son Orden, Barcelona 1935; F. De Longny, A l'ombre des grands Ordres, Paris 1936, pp. 350-98; G. Moretti, in Ordini e Congregazioni Religione, I, M., Turin 1951.

Gennaro Moretti