Minim (religious order)

The Minims (also called the Minimi or Order of Minims, abbreviated O.M.) are members of a Roman Catholic religious order of friars founded by Saint Francis of Paola in fifteenth-century Italy. The Order soon spread to France, Germany and Spain, and continues to exist today.

Like the other mendicant Orders, there are three separate components, or Orders, of the movement: the friars, contemplative nuns and a Third Order of laypeople who live in the spirit of the Order in their daily lives. At present there are only two fraternities of the Minim tertiaries, both are in Italy.

The founder of the Order, Saint Francis of Paola, was born in 1416 and named in honor of St. Francis of Assisi. The boy became ill when he was only one month old, and his mother prayed to St. Francis and promised that her son would spend a year in a Franciscan friary if he were healed. Her prayer was granted, and at 13 years of age Francis fulfilled that votive year. After this year he dedicated himself to a life of solitude and penance as a hermit.

In 1435, two followers joined Francis and began the community, which was first called the "Poor Hermits of St. Francis of Assisi." Francis and his followers founded hermitages at Paterno in 1444 and Milazzo, Sicily, in 1469. The Archbishop of Cosenza approved the group and established them as a religious Order on November 30, 1470, and this approval was confirmed by Pope Sixtus IV in his Bull Sedes Apostolica of May 17, 1474. At that time, the Pope also changed their status from that of hermits to mendicant friars.

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