The Mendicant (or Begging) Orders are religious orders which depend directly on the charity of the people for their livelihood. In principle they do not own property, either individually or collectively, and have taken a vow of poverty, in order that all their time and energy could be expended on preaching the Gospel and serving the poor.
The Second Council of Lyons of 1274 recognized these, bar the Servites, as the four "great" mendicant orders, and suppressed certain others. The Council of Trent loosened the property restrictions on the mendicant orders. Afterwards, except for the Franciscans and their offshoot the Capuchins, members of the orders were permitted to own property collectively as do monks.
The term "mendicant" may also be used to refer to other non-Catholic and non-Christian ascetics, such as Buddhist monks and Hindu holy men.
So, when the friars came and established themselves in the poorest localities of the towns, and brought 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 cope.
But as tile friars soon came nearly all to be priests devoted to spiritual ministrations, and the communities grew larger, it became increasingly difficult for them to support themselves by personal work; and so the begging came to 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 possessionsno lands, no funded property, no fixed sources of income.
MendicantFriars are members of those religious orders which, originally, by vow of poverty renounced all proprietorship not only individually but also (and in this differing from the monks) in common, relying for support on their own work and on the charity of the faithful.
The opposition to the mendicants was particularly strong at the University of Paris, and in France generally, less violent at the University of Oxford and in England.
Boniface VIII revised the legislation regarding the privileges of the mendicants in favour of the clergy.
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