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MENDICANT MOVEMENT AND ORDERS
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MENDICANT See also:MOVEMENT AND ORDERS . The facts concerning the rise of the Orders of Mendicant Friars are related in the articles on the several orders (See also:FRANCISCANS, See also:DOMINICANS, See also:CARMELITES, AUGUSTINIAN HERMITS), and in that on MONASTI-clsM (§ II), where the difference between friars and monks is explained. The purpose of this See also:article is to characterize the movement as a whole, and to indicate the circumstances that produced it. The most striking phenomenon in connexion with the beginnings of the mendicant orders is the rapidity with which the movement spread. Within a See also:generation of the See also:death of the two See also:great founders, See also:Dominic (1221) and See also:Francis (1226), their institutes had spread all over See also:Europe and into See also:Asia, and their friars could be numbered by tens of thousands. In all the great cities of Western Europe friaries were established, and in the See also:universities theological chairs were held by Dominicans and Franciscans. And when at the See also:middle of the See also:century the other great mendicant orders of Carmelites and See also:Austin Friars, and also See also:Servites (q.v.) arose their See also:propagation showed that the possibilities of the mendicant movement had not been exhausted by the Dominicans and Franciscans. Lesser mendicant orders sprang up in all directions—Gasquet mentions See also:half a dozen such that found their way into See also:England (See also:English Monastic See also:Life, p. 241)—in such See also:numbers that the See also:Council ,of See also:Lyons in 12.74 found it necessary to suppress all except the orders already named. Moreover, besides the various orders of friars, there were the See also:lay See also:Tertiaries that arose and spread far and wide in connexion with the Franciscans and other mendicants, and the similar See also:institute of the See also:Humiliati (see TERTIARIES). These facts clearly show that the Mendicant Movement responded to widely spread and deeply See also:felt needs of the See also:time. These needs found expression not only in the Mendicant orders within the See also: There was this in See also:common among the Cathari, Waldenses, Albigenses and other heretical bodies that overran so many parts of Western Europe in the second half of the 12th century and the beginning of the 13th, that they all inveighed against the See also:wealth of the See also:clergy, and preached the practice of austere poverty and a return to the See also:simple life of See also:Christ and the Apostles. Thus the sectaries no less than the Mendicant orders See also:bear See also:witness to the existence of spiritual needs in Western Christendom, which the Mendicant orders went a See also:long way towards satisfying. Probably the most crying need was that of priests to See also:minister to the great See also:city populations, at that time growing up with such rapidity, especially in See also:Italy. During the loth, 11th and 12th centuries the Church had been organized on the lines of the prevailing feudal See also:system—the bishops and abbots were feudal barons, and the effects of the system were felt throughout the ranks of the See also:lower clergy. The social fabric was built up not on the towns, but on the great landlords; and when the centre of gravity began to move, first of all in Italy, to the towns, and crowded populations began to be massed together in them, the parochial systems See also:broke down under the See also:weight of the new conditions, and the See also:people were in a See also:state of spiritual and moral no less than See also:physical destitution. So, when the friars came and established themselves in the poorest localities of the towns, and brought See also:religion to the destitute and the outcasts of society, assimilating themselves to the conditions of life of those among whom they worked, they supplied a need with which the parochial clergy were unable to See also:cope. The friars responded not only to the new needs of the See also:age, but to its new ideas—religious, intellectual, social, See also:artistic. It was a See also:period of religious revival, and of reaction against abuses that followed in the See also:wake of the feudal system; and this religious movement was informed by a new See also:mysticism—a mysticism that fixed its See also:attention mainly on the humanity of Christ and found its See also:practical expression in the See also:imitation of His life. A new intellectual See also:wave was breaking over Western Europe, symbolized by the university and the scholastic movements; and a new spirit of democratic freedom was making itself felt in the growing commercial towns of Italy and See also:Germany. There is no need to labour the point that the Mendicants responded to all these needs and interpreted them within the See also:pale of See also:Catholic See also:Christianity, for the fact lies upon the See also:surface of See also:history. But a few words are necessary on the central See also:idea from which the Mendicants received their name—the idea of poverty. This was St Francis's See also:root idea, and there is no doubt—though it has been disputed—that it was borrowed from him by St Dominic and the other Mendicant founders. St Francis did not intend that begging and See also:alms should be the normal means of sustenance for his friars; on the contrary, he intended them to live by the See also:work of their hands, and only to have recourse to begging when they could not See also:earn their livelihood by work. But as See also:tale friars soon came nearly all to be priests devoted to spiritual ministrations, and the communities See also:grew larger, it became increasingly difficult for them to support themselves by See also:personal work; and so the begging came to See also:play a greater role than had been contemplated by St Francis. But his idea certainly was that his friars should not only practise the utmost personal poverty and simplicity in their life, but that they should have the minimum of possessions—no lands, no funded See also:property, no fixed See also:sources of income. The maintaining of this ideal has proved unworkable in practice. In the Dominican See also:Order and the others that started as mendicant it has been mitigated or even abrogated. Among the Franciscans them-selves it has been the occasion of endless strife, and has been kept alive only by dint of successive reforms and fresh starts, each successful for a time, but doomed always, sooner or later, to yield to the inexorable See also:logic of facts. The See also:Capuchins (q.v.) have made the most permanently successful effort to maintain St Francis's ideal; but even among them mitigations have had to be admitted. In spite, however, of all mitigations the Franciscans have nearly always presented to the • See also:world an See also:object See also:lesson in evangelical poverty by the poorness and simplicity of their lives and surroundings. On the subject-See also:matter of this article the best thing in English is the See also:Introductory See also:Essay by the Capuchin Fr. See also:Cuthbert on " The Spirit and See also:Genius of the Franciscan Friars," in The Friars and how they came to England (1903); see also the earlier chapters of Emil Gebhard's Italie mystique (1899). (E. C. Additional information and CommentsThere are no comments yet for this article.
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