a. and sb. [f. med.L. Francisc-us Francis + -AN.]
A. adj. Of or belonging to the order of St. Francis; pertaining to the Franciscans.
[1577. Frampton, Joyful News, I. (1596), 26. A Passenger … did aduertise mee that a Frauncis Frier, etc.]
1592. Shaks., Rom. & Jul., V. ii. 1. Iohn. Holy Franciscan Frier, Brother, ho?
1667. Milton, P. L., III. 478.
| And they who to be sure of Paradise | |
| Dying put on the weeds of Dominic, | |
| Or in Franciscan think to pass disguis’d. |
1865. Pusey, Truth Eng. Ch., 36. In the long Franciscan controversy about poverty, Bossuet shows that Nicolas III. praised that, as conformable to the example of Our Lord, which John XXII. subsequently declared it to be erroneous and heretical to ascribe to Him.
B. sb. A friar of the order founded by St. Francis of Assisi in 1209.
1599. E. Sandys, Europæ Speculum (1632), 67. The Franciscans alone in the time of Sixtvs Qvintvs their fellow and Father, are sayd to haue been found by survey to be xxx. thousand.
1677. Plot, Oxfordsh., 216. This Learned Franciscan did so far excel the ancient Magicians.
1856. R. A. Vaughan, Mystics (1860), I. 143. Some of them have fallen into the notions of those enthusiastic Franciscans who think the end of the world at hand, and that we live in, or near, the days of Antichrist.
Hence Franciscanism, the system and practice of St. Francis and the Franciscans.
1855. Milman, Lat. Chr. (1864), VI. IX. x. 42. At length the successor of St. Francis became a counsellor of Frederick II., the mortal enemy of the Pope, especially of the Franciscan Popes, above all of the first patron of Franciscanism, Gregory IX.
