10
September 1224 A.D. Franciscans First Arrive in Dover, England
Graves, Dan. “Franciscans 1st Arrived in
England.” Christianity.com. Jul 2007. http://www.christianity.com/church/church-history/timeline/1201-1500/the-franciscans-1st-arrived-in-england-11629825.html. Accessed 20 May 2014.
Vagabonds! Spies! Robbers! That is what the first
gray friars* were taken to be when they arrived in England. The nine arrived at
Dover on this day, September 10, 1224.
Thomas of Eccleston, their historian fixed the place and date. "In the
year of our Lord 1224," he wrote, in the time of the Lord Pope
Honorius...in the eighth year of the Lord King Henry, son of John, on the
Tuesday after the Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin, which that year
was upon Sunday, the Friars Minor first came into England at Dover."
When the Franciscans asked for food, they found
themselves locked up as vagabonds. Word of their arrival spread and by morning
a large crowd had gathered. "If indeed we are spies and robbers, here is a
rope to hang us with!" said one of the friars, removing the rope around
his waist. The mood of the crowd changed and the friars were sent on their way.
They headed for Canterbury.
The first friars were as a breath of fresh air to a
nation where the clergy had largely fallen away from the ideals of their
calling. Robert Grosseteste, the great reforming bishop of his day, declared
that the clergy corrupted the people. Ignorant and idle, they gambled, haunted
taverns, rioted and committed every sort of sexual sin. Those who should have
corrected them either lived far away or held too many different church
positions to take care of any one of them, or were crooked themselves.
Haughtiness marked the higher clergy.
By contrast, these first Franciscans lived simple,
pure lives and embraced poverty. When they offended someone, they were instantly
contrite and begged pardon. They walked barefooted and applied themselves to
caring for the sick, preaching to the poor, singing and praying. The friaries
they built were the simplest. The effect of their example was revolutionary.
The people crowded to hear these new teachers. The
Franciscans made so many conversions that the order spread across England like
a grass fire in a dry summer. By mid-century there were fifty friaries and
1,500 friars. Robert Grosseteste became their lecturer early on. A man of
immense learning as well as holiness, he warned the friars that they must study
the Divine law or they would soon find themselves as degenerate as other
religious leaders.
Grosseteste warned them and taught them, but before
the century closed, the friars had accumulated wealth and were drifting from
the ideals that had made them so strong. In the fourteenth century, another
reformer, John Wycliffe, who looked back to Grosseteste with deep respect, saw
once again an England which was oppressed by many worldy bishops, monks--and
friars.
Nonetheless, the Franciscans made a strong impact
for good on the nation, especially through the University of Oxford. Their most
famous product at Oxford in those early years was Roger Bacon, although John
Duns Scotus and William of Ockham followed. John Peckham, a Franciscan, became
Archbishop of Canterbury around the middle of the thirteenth century. The
friars declined somewhat after the church troubles of following centuries and
Henry VIII knocked the order in the head when he closed their monasteries at
the Reformation.
*The Franciscans later adopted brown robes.
Bibliography:
1. Callus, D. A., et al. Robert
Grosseteste; Scholar and Bishop; Essays in Commemoration of the Seventh
Centenary of His Death. London: Oxford University Press, 1955.
2. "Franciscan Order."
Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, edited by F. L. Cross and E. A.
Livingstone. Oxford, 1997.
3. Hutton, Edward. The Franciscans
in England 1224-1538. London: Constable and co., 1926.
Last updated July, 2007
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