In the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, the Carthusians filled the role played in the tenth and eleventh centuries by the Cluniac network, in the Twelfth century by the Cistercians, and in the thirteenth century by the Franciscans and Dominicans: Western Christendom's most outstanding professional intercessors before God's throne. Founded in the late eleventh century, a few years before the Cistercians, the Carthusians grew very slowly during their first two centuries but were highly respected from the beginning.