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Concept
Mendicant
Summary
A mendicant (from mendicans, "begging") is one who practices mendicancy, relying chiefly or exclusively on alms to survive. In principle, mendicant religious orders own little property, either individually or collectively, and in many instances members have taken a vow of poverty, in order that all their time and energy could be expended on practicing their respective faith, preaching and serving society.
Mendicancy is a form of asceticism, especially in Western Christianity. In Eastern Christianity, some ascetics are referred to as Fools for Christ, whereby they spurn the convention of society in pursuit of living a more wholly Christian life.
Many religious orders adhere to a mendicant way of life, including the Catholic mendicant orders, Hindu ascetics, some Sufi dervishes of Islam, and the monastic orders of Jainism and Buddhism.
While mendicants are the original type of monks in Buddhism and have a long history in Indian Hinduism and the countries which adapted Indian religious traditions, they did not become widespread in Christianity until the High Middle Ages. The Way of a Pilgrim depicts the life of an Eastern Christian mendicant.
Friar
In the early Latin Rite church, mendicants and itinerant preachers were looked down upon, and their preaching was suppressed. In the Rule of Saint Benedict, Benedict of Nursia referred to such traveling monks as gyrovagues, and accused them of dangerously indulging their wills. This behavior was compared negatively with the stationary nature of cenobite or anchorite monasticism.
In the early 13th century, the Catholic Church would see a revival of mendicant activity, as followers of Saint Francis of Assisi and Saint Dominic begged for food while they preached to the villages. These men came to found a Catholic form of monastic life referred to as mendicant orders. These orders were in stark contrast to more powerful, and more conservative, monastic orders such as the Benedictines and Cistercians.
Official source
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