The Rule of the Friars Minor (Regula bullata)

The rule survives inside the papal letter that confirmed it. Honorius III writes to “Brother Francis and the other brothers of the Order of Friars Minor” that he confirms the rule of their order, approved by his predecessor Innocent, and then gives its text. The letter is dated at the Lateran on the third day before the kalends of December in the eighth year of his pontificate, which is 29 November 1223.

It is a legal text and the final form of a rule that had been growing since the first brothers went to Rome. Robinson prints before it the longer “first Rule”, the shape the brothers’ way of life had taken by about 1221; the short form that Innocent III approved by word of mouth has not survived. What the text of 1223 shows is what the order was bound to from then on. For how Francis himself wished it to be read, see the Testament in Writings.