Book account

In 1240 returning crusaders brought back with them the first
Carmelite friars, for whom safer quarters had to be found than in their
original abodes in Syria. This society spread widely, and in 1287, to
the disgust of the older monks, it laid aside the party-coloured habit,
forced upon it in derision by the infidels, and adopted the white robe,
which gave them their popular name of White Friars. Hard upon these, in
1244, came also the Crutched Friars, so called from the red cross set
upon their backs or breasts; but these were never deeply rooted in
England. The multiplication of orders of friars became an abuse, so
that, at the Council of Lyons of 1245, Innocent IV abolished all save
four. Besides Dominicans and Franciscans the pope only continued the
Carmelites, and an order first seen in England a few years later, the
Austin friars or the hermits of the order of St. Augustine. These made
up the traditional four orders of friars of later history. Yet even the
decree of a council could not stay the growth of new mendicant types.


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