In 1217 the first of the Preaching Friars were seen at Paris. On the 12th of September seven friars, among whom were Laurence the Englishman and a brother of St. Dominic, established themselves in a house near the _parvis_ of Notre Dame. In 1218 the University gave them a home near St. Genevieve, opposite the church of St. Etienne des Grez (St. Stephen of the Greeks), and in the following year, when St. Dominic came to Paris, the brothers had increased to thirty. The saint himself drew up the plans of their monastery in the Rue St. Jacques, and always cherished a particular affection for the Paris house. Their church was opened in 1220, and being dedicated to St. Jacques, the Dominicans were known as Jacobins all over France. St. Louis endowed them with a school; they soon became one of the most powerful and opulent of the religious orders, and their church, a burial-place for kings and princes. The Friars Minor soon followed. St. Francis himself, in his deep affection for France, had determined to go to Paris and found a house of his order, but being dissuaded by his friend, Cardinal Ugolin, sent in 1216 a few of his disciples. These early friars, true _poverelli di Dio_, would accept no endowment of house or money, and supporting themselves by their hands, carried their splendid devotion among the poor, the outcast, and the lepers of Paris. In 1230 the Cordeliers, as they were called,[54] accepted the _loan_ of a house near the walls in the south-western part of the city. St. Louis built them a church, and left them at his death part of his library and a large sum of money.[55] They too became rich and powerful and their church one of the largest and most magnificent in Paris. St. Bonaventure and Duns Scotus taught at their school of theology. Their monastery in the sixteenth century was the finest and most spacious in Paris, with cells for a hundred friars and a vast refectory, which still exists. The king also founded the hospital for 300 blind beggars, known as the Quinze-Vingts (15 × 20) now in the Rue de Charenton, and left them an annual _rente_ of thirty _livres parisis_, that every inmate might have a mess of good pottage at his meals. Until Cardinal de Rohan, of diamond-necklace fame, effected the sale of the buildings in 1779 to a syndicate of speculators, an act of jobbery which brought his eminence a handsome commission, the hospital was situated between the Palais Royal and the Louvre. Originally it was a night shelter, whither the poor blind might repair after their long quest in the streets of Paris. The king subsequently gave them a dress on which Philip le Bel ordered a _fleur-de-lys_ to be embroidered, that they might be known as the "king's poor folk." They were privileged to place collecting-boxes and to beg inside the churches. Since, however, the differences in the relative opulence of churches was great, the right to beg in certain of the richer ones was