Servites
the name commonly given to a monastic order, the Religious Servants of the Holy Virgin, founded in 1233 by seven Florentine merchants at Mount Senario, near Florence. St. Philip Benoit, the fifth general, saved the order from suppression in 1276, and in 1487 Pope Innocent VIII. bestowed on the Servites the privileges of the four great mendicant orders. The life is one of austerity and continual prayer; the habit is black, with a leather girdle, a scapular, and a cloak, and the rule is a modification of that of St. Augustine. The strength of the order lay chiefly in Italy and Germany. Since the French Revolution many houses have been founded in different countries. There are several houses of the order in the United States.