The Franciscan ancestry of our beginnings in Glasgow can be traced directly back to St. Francis, who in his lifetime founded the Third Order Secular of Brothers and Sisters of Penance for lay men and women whose commitments prevented them from entering into the conventual life of the First and Second Orders. By their Rule, confirmed by Pope Nicholas lV in 1289, the members were bound by vows to practice the Christian virtues in regard to fasting and abstinence, the recital of the Office, confession, communion, works of charity, and assembly for religious instruction. They lived in their own homes, and carried out their ordinary jobs, but observed a particular simplicity in dress. These lay societies became very popular, and in time, as they became free of family ties, a number of the secular tertiaries experienced a desire to withdraw from the world and live in community. Thus the Third Order Regular came into being.


Blessed Angelina, Countess of Civitella, Umbria, was a Franciscan Tertiary, and was born about 1356-7. Married at an early age, Angelina was widowed while only in her twenties. With some Tertiary companions, she transformed part of the castle of Civitella into a monastery, and there they lived together in community.

Subsequently, with the approval of the Church authorities, this little group of seven women moved to a monastery at Foligno in about 1385, and it was here that they asked to live under the solemn vows of poverty, chastity and obedience.


Blessed Angelina, considered the foundress of the Third Order Regular for women, founded 18 monasteries in her lifetime. The habit of the Sisters was similar to that of the followers of St. Clare. They wore a black wool tunic with a belt and without a cape, sandals and a black and white veil. In 1428, Pope Martin V gave them official recognition. The Rule and Constitutions covering all the dependent monasteries was finally approved in 1496.


The ideal of the Third Order Regular spread throughout Europe. Nuns from the Third Order Regular of Penance from Italy founded a convent at Comines in the north of France in 1455 where they were known as Grey Sisters. Nearly two hundred years later, on February 12th 1630, following an invitation from the local civil authorities, four of the Grey Sisters from Comines (Isabeau de Bosquel, Jeanne Geldof, Barbe Berdebouch and Bernardine Meles) arrived in the town of Tourcoing, in Flanders.
At that time, Tourcoing was part of the Spanish Netherlands, so it was the King of Spain who signed the royal patent allowing the Grey Sisters to establish their convent. Here they undertook pastoral and charitable work in the neighbourhood, and took over a ruined hospital with a hospice for poor and infirm old women (which in itself had been founded in 1260). By 1666, there were 26 professed Sisters in the community. During the French Revolution, the Sisters were expelled for ten years, but returned to their apostolate in Tourcoing.

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