The Friars of the Penitence of Jesus Christ first appeared in Provence at some time in the 1240s. The year 1248 is often given as a precise foundation date, on the grounds that the fullest narrative, provided by the Franciscan Salimbene of Parma, is in a section of his chronicle describing that year. The phrasing, however, only specifies that in that year Salimbene himself was in Hyères visiting Hugh of Digne, a fellow Franciscan, and does not specify that the order was initiated at that point. Another Franciscan, Thomas of Eccleston (c. 1258), reports instead that the order was founded at the time of the (First) Council of Lyons, held in 1245.

Salimbene records that two laymen were so impressed by the preaching of Hugh of Digne that they tried to enter his order. Although Hugh's high standing meant that, according to Salimbene, he had the authority to admit brothers, he instead told them to ‘go into the woods and learn to eat roots, for tribulations are at hand’. The two men therefore went and had multi-coloured cloaks made (which Salimbene compared to those originally worn by the early servants of the order of St Clare), began begging for bread like the other mendicants and copying his own order: ‘for we and the Friars Preacher taught all men how to beg’. Their numbers immediately expanded and the Friars Minor in Provence ironically and inaccurately called them Boscarioli (men of the woods).