Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 4.djvu/396

 CONVERSANO

346

CONVERSI

knots; to the large cape, whieli is round in front and pointed behind, a small hood is attached. Unlike the Friars Minor and the Capuchins, the Conventuals wear birettas and shoes.

In 1.517 the Conventuals formed only about a sixth part of the order. After their separation from the Friars Minor, the number of Conventuals diminished considerably. In Spain Cardinal Ximenes was instru- mental in depriving them of their convents, which were given to the Friars Minor. Clement VII, 22 June, 1524, ordered the Provincial of the Friars Minor at Burgos to bring back to the Regular Observance all the Conventuals in the Kingdom of Navarre, and St. Pius V, 16 April, 1567, commanded all the Conventuals in Spain to embrace the Regular Observance. Like measures were adopted, 30 October, 1567, in regard to Portugal, where as in Flanders and in Denmark all the Conventuals gradually passed over to the Friars Minor. In France all their provinces save three joined the main branch of the order. Never- theless the Conventuals continued to prosper in other countries. In Italy and Germany they suffered fewer losses than elsewhere. During the seven- teenth and eighteenth centuries they increased very much, for in 1770 they possessed some 31 provinces with 966 convents. In France alone they had 48 convents and numbered 330 religious. In 1771, 8 convents in France including the great convent in Paris, which had since 1517 been subject to the Min- ister General of the Friars Minor, passed over to the Conventuals, giving them a total of 2620 religious in France alone, but twenty years later their number there had fallen to 1544. Since the revolutionary epoch the order lost more than 1000 houses, principally in France, Italy, Switzerland, and Germany. At pres- ent (1907) it is divided into 26 provinces. Of these 12 are in Italy, the others being those of Malta; Gali- cia; Russia and Lithuania; Strasburg, comprising Bavaria and Switzerland; Liege, comprising Belgium and Holland; Austria and Styria; Bohemia, with Moravia and Silesia; Hungary and Transylvania; Spain; the United States; Rumania, with the mission of Moldavia; and the Orient, with the mission of Con- stantinople. The mission of Moldavia, which is one of the oldest in the Seraphic Order, comprises 10 con- vents with parishes, in which there are 28 missionaries governed by an archbishop belonging to the order. There are also 10 convents and 28 missionaries con- nected with the mission at Constantinople, where the Apostolic delegate is a Conventual. The order has recently made new foundations in England and Den- mark. According to the latest available official sta- tistics (1899), the Conventuals numbered in all some 1500 religious.

At least two Conventual missionaries were labour- ing in the LTnited States in the early forties, but the establishment of the order there may be said to date from 1850. In 1907 there were two flourishingprovinces of the order in the United States, the province of the Immaculate Conception which numbers thirteen con- vents and houses, those at Syracuse, Louisville, Trenton, Camden, Hoboken, Albany, and Terre Haute being the most important; and the province of St. Anthony of Padua, the members of which are Poles, and which has ten convents and houses in the Dioceses of Baltimore, Brooklyn, Buffalo, Detroit, Harrisburg, Hartford, and Springfield.

The Conventuals were not affected by the Apostolic Constitution "Felicitate qu&dam" of Leo XIII (4 Oct., 1897) by which the different special reforms into which the Observants had become divided since 1517 were reunited luider the name of Friars Minor, but like the Capuchins (who were constituted a S(-parate body in 1619) they .still remain an independent order. Leo XIII, however, expressly confirmed the right of precedence accorded to the Friars Minor by Leo X.

Wadding, AnnaUs Min. (Rome, 1736), XVI, 41-60; Sbara-

LEA, BuUarium Franciscanum. (Rome, 1759), I. 538-39; Helyot, Diet, des ordrcs religieux (Paris, 1859) in Migne, EncycL, 1st series, XX, 1104-12; Tossinianensi, Hist. Seraph. Religionis libri tres (Venice, ISSO), II, 149: De GuBERNATia, Orbis Seraphiciis (Lyons, 1685), II, lib. IX; Vax dejj Haute Brevis Hist. Ord. Min. (Rome, 1777), Tr. ii; Patrem, Tableau synoptiqtie de I'hist. de tout i'Ordre S^raphigue (Paris, 1879), en. ii, 48-51; Heimbucher, Die Orden und Kongregationen (Paderborn, 1907), II, 380-87; Palomes, Dei Frali Minori e delle loTO denominazioni (Palermo, 1897), 1-60; De Kerval, S. Franfois d' Assise et I'Ordre Scraphigue (Paris, 1898). Pt. II, cfa. ii; Carmichael, The Franciscan Families in Irish Eccles. Record (March, 1904), 235-254.

P.isCHAi, Robinson.

Conversano, Diocese of (Cupersanensis), suf- fragan to Bari. Conversano, situated in the province of Bari, in Apuha (Southern Italy), is the ancient Cupersanum, a city of the Peucetians. Its history is practically that of Apulia. After the invasion of the Normans, it was for a while the seat of a duchj'; later, however, it became a fief of the dukes of Atri. The first bishop whose date is certain was Hilarius, present at the Roman synod of 501. Local tradition, however, preserves the name of a previous bishop, Simplicius, who died in 492. No other names are recorded up to the episcopate of Leo, mentioned in a document of loss. Other bishops worthy of mention were: the Cistercian Stefano (c. 1266); Giovanni de Gropi (c. 1283); Antonio Guidotti (d. 1433); Paolo de Tor- coli, who died in the odour of sanctity in 1482; Ro- molo de' Valenti (d. 1579); Giuseppe Palermo (who was appointed 1658), Andrea Branoaccia (1681). The diocese has a population of 95,521, with 7 parishes, 130 churches and chapels, 132 secular and 8 regular priests, 2 religious houses of men and 8 of women.

Cappelletti, Le chiese d'ltalia (Venice, 1844), XXI, 40-45; Ann. Feci. (Rome, 1907), 423-24; Morea, H Chartularium di San Benedetto di Conversano (Monte Cassino, 1893), 815— 1266.

U. Benigni.

Conversi, lay brothers in a religious order. The term was originally applied to those who, in adult life, voluntarily renounced the world and entered a reli- gious order to do penance and to lead a life of greater perfection. The renouncing of the world was known as the conversio a stEculo, which had as its object a re- form or change of life, the conversio morum, hence con- versi or the "converted". The conversi were thus distinguished from the oblati or those who, as children, were presented or offered (oblati) by their parents to the religious life and were placed in a monastery to re- ceive ]5roper religious instruction and to be educated in profane knowledge. In the ele\'enth century St. John Gualbert, founder of the Benedictine congrega- tion known as the Vallisumbrosani, introduced for the first time a distinction between the jratres conversi, or lay brothers, and priests, or choir religious. For among the conversi there were not seldom those who were either entirely illiterate, or who in the world had led a life of public scandal, or had been notorious criminals, and while on the one hand it was unjust that such should be debarred from the means of doing-pen- ance in the cloister and from the other benefits of the religious life, they were at the same time hardly to be considered fit subjects for the reception of Sacred orders. They were thus received into the order for the purpose of engaging in manual labour and occa- sionally for directing the temporal affairs of the mon- astery. In modern canonical usage the term conrer- sus is synonymous, or nearly so, with that of lay brother. What has been said of religious orders of men can, in general, be applied equally to those of women, though the tlistinction between conversa;, or lay sisters, and choir religious does not appear to have been introduced before the twelfth century. As a rule, the conversi wear a habit different from that of the choir religious; but the essential obligations of tho vows and of the monastic life in general are alike for all. (See Lay Brother and Obl.\ti.)