2 - The Friars of Blessed Mary of Areno, or Pied Friars

Summary

The last of the orders to be considered here is also the smallest and the least well documented. The Friars of Blessed Mary, or Pied Friars (fratres de pica), had their beginnings as a penitential fraternity at some point in mid-thirteenth-century Marseilles. There is no evidence for a particular founder or group of founders and exactly when the order took shape is now a matter of debate. Most recently, Walter Simons has argued that it was created at the point when they acquired a mendicant identity in 1257–8, as first documented in papal and episcopal letters from those years. Richard Emery and Franco dal Pino had previously proposed that the movement originated some time before the first papal letter concerning their rule, issued in 1257. This view should perhaps be preferred on the grounds that it was necessary for any new group of religious to achieve organisational weight before acquiring episcopal or papal approval, but there is now no way of knowing how long this process took.

The parallels with the Sack Friars are worth noting: like them, their precise origins are obscure and in Piis propositis, issued in September 1257, Alexander IV instructed Benoît d'Alignan, the bishop of Marseilles who had been involved with the Sack Friars, to assign them an approved rule. Predictably they adopted the rule of Augustine, approved by Bishop Benoît in January 1258 and by Pope Clement IV in 1266. They were also already distinguished by a particular devotion to Mary.