page_title: Third order
section_title: Congregations of Sisters
hierarchical_section_title: Third order / Roman Catholic Third orders / Third Order of Saint Francis / Congregations of Sisters
context_page_description: The term "Third Order" signifies, in general, lay members of religious orders, who do not necessarily live in community and yet can claim to wear the habit and participate in the good works of some great order. Roman Catholicism, Anglicanism, and Lutheranism all recognize Third Orders. They were a twelfth-century adaptation of the medieval monastic confraternities.
  Members of third orders, are known as tertiaries. In some cases, they may belong to a religious institute that is called a "third order regular".
  Roman Catholic canon law states: "Associations whose members share in the spirit of some religious institute while in secular life, lead an apostolic life, and strive for Christian perfection under the higher direction of the same institute are called third orders or some other appropriate name."
context_section_description: Whilst Leo X in the reform of the rule had left it free to the congregations to adopt papal enclosure or not, Pius V (1568) prescribed it to all convents of tertiary sisters with solemn vows. Still this order was not carried out everywhere. In this regard the custom prevailed that the Friars Minor refused to take the direction of those convents which had only episcopal enclosure. Besides those already mentioned above, we may add the different offshoots of the Sisters of St. Elizabeth in Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, and France (there, under the name of Soeurs du Refuge, some of them still exist). The first Ursulines, also, founded by St. Angela Merici (1540), belonged to the Third Order.
  In the nineteenth century many of the new congregations adopted the Rule of the Third Order, but most of them have no further connection with the First Order. Many of them have widely varying names; a good many are of mere local character, others again are of international importance. As to their activities, almost all dedicate themselves to works of charity, either in hospitals, homes, or ateliers; others work in schools, not a few are in foreign missions. We can give here scarcely more than a list of the names, with the dates of the foundation.
caption: The Mystic Marriage of Saint Catherine of Siena by Giovanni di Paolo, ca. 1460 (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York).
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