SERVITES OF MARY. - From the Marian movement that spread almost everywhere from the early 13th century, sometimes also under the name of the S. di M., in the year 1233 seven Florentine merchants (v. SETTE SANTI FONDATORI) broke away to withdraw to an eremitical and contemplative life near Florence and then on Monte Senario, about 18 km. from the city.
These seven principal devotees of Mary, as the contemporary author of the Legenda de origine Servorum Virginis Mariae puts it, did not believe that by this personal fact, frequent in their times, they were giving rise to a new religious Order. Their example, however, had been greatly admired: the people had immediately called them the S. di M. (a name which after 1245, first in Florence and then elsewhere, remained theirs by antonomasia), and so there was no lack of those who wished to become part of their association; this induced them to go to Florence to Bishop Ardingo, in order to lay the first organizational foundations of the nascent religious institution. In obedience to the Fourth Lateran Council, can. 13, they chose the Rule of St. Augustine and the corresponding Constitutions, which are the Premonstratensian ones, through the more recent Dominican redaction (1239-41), to which they prefixed the reverences to be paid to the holy Virgin.
From 1250 onward the new religious organization gradually attenuated its eremitical character and accentuated the cenobitic and apostolic one, and in this respect it obtained its first true pontifical recognition from Urban IV, in 1263, renewed by Clement IV in 1265. Under Gregory X, at the Council of Lyon (1274) the decretal Religionum diversitatem was issued, which limited the number of mendicant Orders; and it could be thought that the Order of the S. di M. was among those suppressed (cf. M.-H. Laurent, Le b. Innocent V, Città del Vaticano 1947, p. 349 ff.); but St. Philip Benizi, then general of the Order, immediately began (Feb. 1277) an effective defense of it which, through the Consilia Sapientum (opinions of the leading jurists of the time), concluded in 1290 with a new pontifical recognition. The definitive approval is that of Benedict XI with the bull Dum levamus of 11 Feb. 1304. In the course of the centuries the Order of the S. di M. also had a congregation called of the Observance (1411-1570) and the eremitical one of Montesenario (1592-1778); it spread into various nations outside Italy, was present at all the principal manifestations of the life of the Church and in the struggle against the Lutheran heresy.
It has 10 canonized saints: St. Philip Benizi, St. Pellegrino Laziosi, St. Giuliana Falconieri, the Seven Holy Founders; many blesseds, and numerous servants of God in its three branches (first, second and third Order), for whom the cause of beatification is in progress. In the Marian field it has frequently brought its effective contribution, in particular with regard to the development and diffusion of devotion to Our Lady of Sorrows. Notable figures among its cardinals were: Laurerio (d. 1542), Stefano Borucci (d. 1589), Pieri (d. 1743), Caselli (d. 1828), Lépicier (d. 1936). It had theologians of fame, especially in the field of moral theology and ascetics, controversialists and well-known sacred orators, philosophers, men of letters, artists, musicians and numerous professors at the principal universities, particularly Italian ones.
Today it numbers 12 major provinces, with a general rectorship, in Europe and in North and South America; besides a provincial rectorship (Belgium) and five provincial commissariats (in Spain, Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico); it has missions in South Africa, Brazil and Chile.
Monasteries of cloistered Servite nuns (Mantellate) are in Italy, Germany, Spain and England; twenty-two Congregations of sisters of the regular Third Order are scattered in every part of the world, plus various autonomous monasteries: all these sisters venerate as their principal foundress St. Giuliana dei Falconieri.
The secular Third Order too, which in former times was called the Society of the Habit, goes back, under various forms, to the earliest times of the Order; the rule of the Third Order in particular was approved by Martin IV in 1424 and modified by the popes Leo XIII and Pius XI.
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Alessio M. Rossi