All four of the orders examined in this volume experienced the trauma of Lyons 1274. Two survived, two died. Parallels between the Sack experience and that of the much less well-documented Pied Friars demonstrate that closure was haphazard but inexorable. The letter of Otto, rector of the Friars of the Sack, shows just how devastating that end could be. Once Curia and council had decided, the friars were unable to reverse the decision. Filippo Benizi, the superior of the Florentine Servites, hurried to the Curia; the Williamites also secured a letter in their support from a cardinal, Jacopo Savelli, and once pope, as Honorius IV, he reconfirmed their status. The leaders of the Pied and Sack Friars seem not to have taken this route. There are various possible explanations for this, ranging from the supposition that the two largest mendicant orders and the secular clergy had decided that the line had to be drawn somewhere and were in a position to enforce their will, to the more pious assumption that these friars were simply too holy and humble to encompass contesting a decree of the Church. Or perhaps the various commentators who emphasised the strain on lay resources were right, at least in part – there really were just too many mendicants, victims of their own success.