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Unless each sister has diligently striven to observe a certain correct rule and discipline for living, she will deviate from righteousness to the degree that she does not observe the guidelines of righteousness. She runs the risk of falling at the point where, in virtue of her free choice, she neglected to set for herself a sure and stable foundation for making progress. Therefore, beloved daughters in Christ, because you have chosen under the inspiration of divine grace to travel the hard and narrow path that leads to life, we, acceding to your pious prayers, grant to you and those who come after you the observance of the Rule of Saint Francis with respect to the three [counsels], namely obedience, the renunciation of property in particular, and perpetual chastity, as well as the Form of Life written in the present document, according to which you have particularly decided to live.a By doing so we establish by our apostolic authority that it be observed for all times in every monastery of your Order. This is as follows:
It is proper, therefore, and a duty that all those women who, after abandoning the vanity of the world, have resolved to embrace and hold to your Order, should observe this law of life and discipline, living in obedience, without anything of one's own, and in chastity. And they must remain enclosed the whole time of their life professing this life.b After they have entered the enclosure of this Order and have been professed, promising to observe this rule, they should never be granted any permission or faculty to leave this enclosure unless perhaps some are transferred to another place by the permission of the general minister of the Order of Lesser Brothers or the provincial of the province of that Order in which the monastery is situated to plant or to build up the Order, or to reform some monastery, or by reason of discipline or correction, or to avoid a great expense of some sort. They can at times be transferred for some even pious and reasonable cause beyond those mentioned above, at
- Pope Innocent thus acknowledges the Rule of St. Francis and the Form of Life as the foundation for the way of life of the Poor Sisters. The Later Rule of St. Francis was solemnly approved by Pope Honorius III in the bull Solet annuere, November 29, 1223, cf. K. Esser, Die Opuscula des Hl. Franziskus von Assisi (Grottaferrata: Collegium S. Bonaventurae, 1976): 363-372. The English translations are found in Francis and Clare, 137-145.
- This addition specifies the context of the vowed life embraced by the Poor Ladies, i.e., the three evangelical counsels, obedience, chastity, and poverty, lived in the context of the enclosure. For background on the enclosure, cf. FLHug 4, p. 77, note a.