Preface

In order that our Order, like the vineyard of the Most High Son of God, might be more securely maintained in the spiritual observance of the evangelical and seraphic Rule, it seemed fitting to our General Chapter, assembled in our convent of Saint Euphemia in Rome, in the year of our Lord 1536, to establish certain Statutes, to defend it as with a rampart against the attacks of the enemies of the living spirit of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and to preserve it from all forms of laxity contrary to the examples of fervor and zeal left to us by our Father Saint Francis.

The holy Council of Trent and the Sovereign Pontiffs having issued new decrees which needed to be inserted into these Ordinances, the Minister General and the Definitors, with the unanimous consent of the General Chapter held in Rome in the year 1575, in our convent of Saint Bonaventure, judged it appropriate to reprint these Statutes with the additions required by those decrees.

For a similar reason—that is, to include several other new decrees—the General Chapter celebrated in 1608, in the same convent, judged it appropriate to have them reprinted again.

But our Holy Father Pope Urban VIII, in his Brief beginning with the words Sacrosanctum apostolatus officium, having approved and confirmed these same Statutes along with some others made in the General Chapters held in Rome in 1625, 1633, and 1637; since it was necessary to insert them among the others in their respective places, along with certain pontifical decrees, the General Chapter held in Rome in our convent of the Immaculate Conception in the year 1643 ordered that they be reprinted once more.

Many points having been modified and added over time by the General Chapters, and the Sovereign Pontiffs having prescribed new ones, Pope Pius X, of holy memory, judged it fitting to order a review and correction of the Constitutions, and entrusted this task to the General Chapter held in Rome on May 18, 1908, in the convent of the Immaculate Conception. This same Sovereign Pontiff approved the Constitutions thus reviewed and corrected by his Apostolic Letters beginning with the words Vicarium Pastoris aeterni.

Finally, following the promulgation of the Code of Canon Law on the feast of Pentecost in the year 1917, the Sacred Congregation for Religious, on June 26, 1918, ordered that the Constitutions of each religious order be revised in conformity with the prescriptions of that same Code. The General Chapter, assembled in Rome in our convent of Saint Lawrence of Brindisi on May 25, 1920, appointed a commission for this purpose to revise and correct our Constitutions. They were subsequently submitted to the judgment of the Holy See, which approved and confirmed them as they appear hereafter.