SERVITES

This article appears in Volume V24, Page 698 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: SCY-SHA

SERVITES , or "SERVANTS OF MARY," an order under the

Rule

RULE

of St Augustine, founded in 1233. In this year seven merchants of Florence, recently canonized as " the seven holy Founders," gave up their wealth and position, and with the bishop's sanction established themselves as a religious community on Monte Senario near Florence. They lived an austere life of

penance

PENANCE (Old Fr. penance, fr. Lat. poenitentia, penitence)

and prayer, and being joined by others, they were in 1240 formed into an order following the Augustinian

rule

RULE

supplemented by constitutions borrowed from the Dominicans. Soon they were able to establish houses in various parts of Italy, where within twenty-five years four provinces were formed; they also at an early date founded many houses in France, Germany and Spain, but they never came to England before the Reformation. The most illustrious member of the order and its

chief

CHIEF (from Fr. chef, head, Lat. caput)

propagator and organizer was St Filippo Benizi, the fifth general, who died in 1285. The order received papal approbation in 1255; in 1424 it was recognized as a Mendicant order, and in 1567 it was ranked with the four

great

GREAT

orders of Mendicant friars. The Servites undertook missions in Tartary, India and Japan. As in the other orders there were various mitigations and relaxations of the rule, producing a variety of reforms, the

chief

CHIEF (from Fr. chef, head, Lat. caput)

being that of the eremitical Servites. There are at the present day 64 Servites houses, mostly in Italy; there are two or three in England and in America.
There are Servite nuns and also

tertiaries

TERTIARIES (Lat. tertiarii, from tertius, third)

, founded by St Juliana Falconieri, 1305, who are widespread and devote them-selves chiefly to primary education. They have several convents in England. The habit of the Servites is black.
The chief

work

WORK

on the Servites is the Monumenta by Morini and Soulier, 1897, &c. See

Helyot

HELYOT, PIERRE (1660-1716)

, Histoire des ordres religieux (1715), iii. cc. 39-41; Max Heimbucher Orden u. Kongregationen (1907), ii. 73; Wetzer u. Welte, Kirchenlexicon (2nd ed.);

Herzog

HERZOG, HANS (1819–1894)
HERZOG, JOHANN
JAKOB
- JAKOB, LUDWIG HEINRICH VON (1759—1827)
(1805-1882)

-Hauck Realencyklopddie (3rd ed.). The most interesting part of Servite history is told by P. Soulier, Vie de S. Philippe Benizi (1886). (E. C. B.)

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