politics as counsellors and confessors of the princes and the nobles.--Continuation, § 112, 4. § 98.9. To each of the =two mendicant orders= there was at an early date attached a female branch, which was furnished by the saint who founded the original order with a rule adapting his order’s ideal of poverty to the female vocation, and therefore designated and regarded as his “second order.” 1. The female conventual asylum, founded in A.D. 1206 at Prouille, may be considered the first cloister of =Dominican nuns=. The principal cloister and another institution, however, was the convent of _San Sisto_ in Rome, given to St. Dominic for this purpose by Honorius III. In all parts of Christendom where the preaching order settled there now appeared female cloisters under the supervision and jurisdiction of its provincial superior, with seclusion, strict asceticism, passing their time in contemplation, and conforming as closely as possible to the mode of life and style of clothing prescribed for the male cloisters. This institution was presided over by a prioress. 2. The order of the =Nuns of St. Clara=, as “_the second order of St. Francis_,” was founded by =St. Clara of Assisi=. Born of a distinguished family, endowed with great physical beauty, and destined to an early marriage, in her eighteenth year, in A.D. 1212, she was powerfully impressed by the teaching of St. Francis, so that she resolved completely to abandon the world and its vanities. She proved the earnestness of her resolve by obeying the trying requirement of the saint to go through the streets of the city clad in a penitent’s cloak, begging alms for the poor. On Palm Sunday at the Portiuncula chapel she took at the hand of her chosen spiritual father the three vows. Her younger sister Agnes, along with other maidens, followed her example. Francis assigned to this union of “poor women” as a conventual residence the church of St. Damiani restored by him, from which they were sometimes called the _Nuns of St. Damiani_. When in A.D. 1219 St. Francis undertook his journey to the east, he commended them to the care of Cardinal Ugolino, who prescribed for them the rule of the Benedictine nuns; but after the saint’s return they so incessantly entreated him to draw up a rule for themselves, that he at last, in A.D. 1224, prepared one for them and obtained for it the approval of the pope. Clara died in A.D. 1253, and was canonized by Innocent IV. in A.D. 1255. Her order spread very widely in more than 2,000 cloisters, and can boast not only of having received 150 daughters of kings and princes, but also of having enriched heaven with an immense number of beatified and canonized virgins.