Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/Trinitarians

TRINITARIANS (Ordo Sanctx Trinitatis et Captorum), a religious order instituted about the year 1197 by Inno cent III., at the instance of John de Matha (1160-1213) and Felix de Valois (ob. 1212), for the ransom of captives among the Moors and Saracens. The rule was the Augustinian, the dress white with a red and blue cross. De Matha was the first general and De Valois the first abbot of the mother house at Cerffroid near Meaux, where the idea of the institution had originated in a miraculous ap parition. By 1200 as many as 200 Christians had been redeemed out of slavery in Morocco by the order, which accordingly spread rapidly not only in France but also in Italy and Spain. Further favoured by Honorius III. and Clement IV., the Trinitarians spread into Portugal, the United Kingdom, Bohemia, Saxony, Poland, and Hungary, and even into America. In the 18th century they had in all about 300 houses; but the order is now almost extinct. About the middle of the 17th century it was stated that in France the " redemptions " up to that time had numbered 246, the number of prisoners bought off being 30,720; for Castile and Leon the corresponding figures were 362 and 11,809. The order is sometimes spoken of as the " ordo asinorum " from the circumstance that originally its members were not permitted to use any other beast of burden. In France they were known as Mathurins from the chapel of St Mathurin or Mathelin in Paris, which belonged to them.