alms, fasted, prayed, accepted the rule of perpetual silence, and refused to accept the
usual kind of endowments that supported female religious houses. Later, other houses
were forced to accept endowments and property for support, but Clare steadfastly refused
what she saw as a compromise with wealth. The first house of Poor Clares in France was
established in Reims in 1220 by a group of nuns sent by Clare. Another group went to
Béziers in 1240, with the support of Louis IX.
Francis also began what became known as the “Third Order,” or Tertiaries, for
individuals who were drawn to a new spirituality but did not wish to join either the male
or female branches of the Franciscans. These people continued to live in the world, might
be married with families, but adopted moderate asceticism and sought to live more
virtuously and simply, to be regular in prayer and the sacraments, to aid others, to refuse
to bear arms or swear oaths, and to promote peace. Tertiaries were formed into local
groups with officers and regulations.
Grover A.Zinn
[See also: ALEXANDER OF HALES; BONAVENTURE; DOMINICAN ORDER;
GREGORY IX; MENDICANT ART AND ARCHITECTURE; MILLENNIALISM;
MYSTICISM; PREACHING; UNIVERSITIES; WILLIAM OF SAINT-AMOUR]
Archivum Franciscanum historicum 1–(1908–).
Armstrong, Regis J., and Ignatius C.Brady, trans. Francis and Clare: The Complete Works. New
York: Paulist, 1982.
Burr, David. The Persecution of Peter Olivi. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1976.
Franciscan Studies 1–(1919–).
Lambert, Malcolm D. Franciscan Poverty: The Doctrine of the Absolute Poverty of Christ and the
Apostles in the Franciscan Order, 1210–1323. London: SPCK, 1961.
Little, Lester K. Religious Poverty and the Profit Economy in Medieval Europe. Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1978.
Moorman, John. A History of the Franciscan Order from Its Origins to the Year 1517. Oxford:
Clarendon, 1968.
FRANCO OF COLOGNE
(fl. 1260–90). No biographical information has come to light that might clarify who
Franco was, why he was involved in music and its notation, or when he wrote the music
treatise entitled Ars cantus mensurabilis, although it would seem certainly to have been in
Paris ca. 1280. This treatise attributed to Franco is one of the most important historical
documents concerning polyphony in the western tradition. It established fixed
relationships among pitch, rhythm, and written symbol comparable to the development of
writing as a means of transmitting language, and the principles of notation that it
proposed lasted through the 16th century. Franco’s achievement was a high degree of
rationalization of the written means for communicating musical ideas by which complex
rhythmic and polyphonic relationships could be realized in a purely intellectual manner,
could be transmitted in a relatively coherent way in writing, and so could be reproduced
with some degree of fidelity distant from their inception. More manuscript copies survive
for the Ars cantus mensurabilis than for any other 13th-century treatise on music, and
Medieval france: an encyclopedia 698