The Seven Holy Founders of the Servite Order
Religious
- Feast Day
- February 17
- Canonized
- 1888
- Order
- Order of Servants of Mary (Servites, OSM)
- Born
- Florence, Republic of Florence
The Seven Holy Founders are the Florentine laymen Buonfiglio Monaldi (Bonfilius), Giovanni Buonagiunta Manetti (Bonajuncta), Manetto dell'Antella (Manettus), Bartolomeo Amidei (Amadeus), Benedetto dell'Antella (Sostegno or Hugh), Gerardino Sostegni (Sostegnus), and Alessio Falconieri (Alexis). All were members of the Confraternity of the Laudesi of Saint Mary at Florence in the early thirteenth century.
According to the early Servite tradition, on the Solemnity of the Assumption, August 15, 1233, while at prayer in the chapel of Cafaggio (later Santissima Annunziata, Florence), they received a vision of the Blessed Virgin Mary that called them to a life of prayer, penance, and meditation on the sufferings of the Mother of God. They withdrew first to La Camarzia outside the city, then in 1234 to Mount Senario, where they organized themselves as a community of hermits.
Bishop Ardingo of Florence gave them ecclesiastical guidance. About 1240 they received from him the new title Servi Sanctae Mariae, Servants of Saint Mary, and adopted the Augustinian rule. Pope Innocent IV approved their constitutions in 1249. Saint Philip Benizi (d. 1285), the fifth prior general, completed the work of organization and is regarded as the propagator of the order.
Six of the founders were ordained to the priesthood; the seventh, Alexis Falconieri, remained a brother and survived the others, dying in 1310 at the reputed age of 110. The Servites were definitively confirmed by Pope Benedict XI in 1304. Pope Clement XI canonized Alexis Falconieri equivalently in 1717, and Pope Leo XIII canonized the seven founders together by an equivalent canonization on January 15, 1888, fixing their joint feast on February 17.
The seven Florentine merchants stand as a witness that lay confraternal piety, given to penance and meditation on the Sorrows of the Virgin, can give rise to a religious order of universal Church scope. The Servite Order's distinctive devotion to the Seven Sorrows of Mary, the rosary of the Seven Sorrows, and the title Mater Dolorosa entered the wider Latin piety from this Florentine origin. Leo XIII's joint canonization of all seven was an unusual gesture in the modern era and underscored the corporate character of their sanctity.
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