Franciscan Precedence

It was this lay movement of people who experienced God directly in solitude in the 10th to 12th centuries that provided the backdrop for the eremitism of the first Franciscans. By the 13th century lay hermits had been absorbed into monasticism. The Cistercians worked in the 12th century to absorb them into a lay brotherhood. These were not a part of routine monastic life, living outside the enclosure and the formal acknowledgement of their place in church hierarchy, which of course meant that they were less acceptable to God in the church's structured and strategic world view. These lived on distant farms and granges and crofts. Francis of Assisi, however, stands in direct heritage of these isolated people who were open to God in a natural, unstructured setting.

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Let the brothers wherever they may be in hermitages or other places take heed not to make any place their own and maintain it aginst amybody els. And let whoever may approach them, whether friend or foe or thief or robber, be received kindly.

- First Rule of the Friars Minor