Oblates of St. Frances of Rome

[1] The group quickly developed a life in common, without monastic vows, committed to prayer and service to the poor of the city.

Despite being compelled to enter into an arranged marriage with a wealthy and aristocratic member of the papal military forces, she and her husband were happily married.

However, the couple were not spared personal suffering, losing two young children to the various plagues which afflicted the city at that time.

It was a time of famine, war, looting, and epidemics in Rome, due in large part, to the neglect it suffered during the period of the Great Schism within the Church, as three different cardinals established themselves as rival popes, two of them based in France.

On August 15, she and nine companions made monastic oblation at the Olivetan Monastery attached to the Church of Santa Maria Nova.

The women did not take vows, or did they wear any special religious habit, but placed themselves under the spiritual direction of the Olivetan Benedictine monks.

Within a few years some of the women began to desire to live a life in common, so as to be able to practice more easily the spiritual exercises and also have greater freedom to dedicate themselves to the needs of the poor.

This form of community life as adopted by the oblates did not, however, involve binding themselves by monastic vows after the manner of nuns.

The atrium was originally a stable with an old manger, the lid of a large Roman sarcophagus, which Frances used to distribute food and clothing to the poor.