The Order of Friars Minor (Franciscans) was founded in the early thirteenth century by St Francis of Assisi and in accordance with their rule, approved by Pope Honorius III in 1223, friars took vows of obedience, poverty and chastity. The Franciscans established houses in Ireland during the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, mainly in midland and southern towns.
The Observant reform movement, which followed a strict form of the Franciscan rule, led to a new wave of foundations in the fifteenth century, particularly in the south and west. Many friaries were forced to close with the dissolution of monastic houses during the reign of Henry VIII. Despite the dispersal of friars then, there was a revival of activity in the seventeenth century with the establishment of Franciscan continental colleges in Louvain (1607), Rome (1625) and Prague (1631), and the arrival of the Poor Clare nuns in Ireland in the 1640s.
Section 2 consists of medieval and early modern sources which relate to the Franciscans and Poor Clares in Ireland.
