a rescript was issued confirming the Servite Order as a separate body with power to elect a general. Four years later a general chapter was convened at which the order was divided into two provinces, Tuscany and Umbria, the former being governed by Manettus and the latter by Sostene. Within five years two new provinces were added, that of Romagna and that of Lombardy. Centuries of growth Philip Benizi was elected general on 5 June 1267, and afterwards became the great propagator of the order. The Second Council of Lyons in 1274 put into execution the ordinance of the 1215 Fourth Lateran Council, forbidding the foundation of new religious orders, and suppressed all mendicant institutions not yet approved by the Holy See. In the year 1276 Pope Innocent V in a letter to Benizi declared the order suppressed. Benizi set off for Rome to appeal the decision, but before his arrival there Innocent V had died. His successor lived only five weeks. Finally Pope John XXI, decided that the Servite Order should continue as before. It was not definitively approved until Pope Benedict XI issued the bull "Dum levamus" on 11 February 1304. Of the seven founders, Alexis alone lived to see their foundation raised to the permanent dignity of an order. He died in 1310. On 30 January 1398 Pope Boniface IX granted the Servites the power to confer theological degrees. It was in harmony with the tradition thus established that many centuries later the order established the Marianum faculty in Rome. The new foundation enjoyed considerable growth in the following decades. Already in the thirteenth century there were houses of the order in Germany, France, and Spain. By the early years of the fourteenth century the order had more than one hundred houses in locations including Hungary, Bohemia, Austria, Poland, and what later became Belgium. In subsequent periods came missions in Crete, the Philippines (St. Peregrine-Philippine Vicariate), and India. European contraction The disturbances which arose during the Protestant Reformation caused the loss of many Servite houses in Germany, but in the south of France the order met with much success. The Convent of San Marcello al Corso was founded in the city of Rome in 1369 and a second house, Santa Maria in Via, was established there in 1513. Beginning in the early part of the eighteenth century the order sustained a series of losses and confiscations from