Publisher's description:
The nature of mendicancy as it developed among various religious orders during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries is the subject of considerable debate. In spite of this, little in the way of a comprehensive review of the phenomenon as a whole has been undertaken. What has been done has either been order-specific (with an emphasis on the Friars Minor) or has focused on points of special conflict regarding the mendicant ideal (University debates, Spiritual Franciscans). Little work exists on the roots of mendicancy, or on the creative ways in which mendicancy was understood (and deprecated) in various quarters. Few studies try to bring together both the theory and practice of religious mendicancy. The effect that events had in molding and changing the mendicant ideal is also often neglected, as are the ways in which it was independently and creatively appropriated by individuals and groups. Needless to say, all of this is strange for a movement that most are content to label “Mendicant.” Perhaps it may even be the case that “mendicancy” is not useful as a descriptive concept. The purpose and intention of this handbook is to offer an analysis of the term and to present an up-to-date and comprehensive introduction to the phenomenon of religious mendicancy in the central and later middle ages. It provides a contextualized guide that will introduce the central issues in contemporary scholarship regarding the mendicant orders. This project approaches the controversies from a multitude of angles and unites in one volume the insights of different disciplines such as social and intellectual history, literary analysis, and theology.
The present work is divided into three main sections, I) The origins and foundations of medieval mendicancy, II) The development and articulation of mendicant ideals, III)The reception and appropriation of mendicancy in the middle ages. The chapters herein serve as a solid point of departure for advanced students and scholars.

Table of contents:
Introduction, Donald Prudlo
Section I
The Origins and Foundation of Mendicancy
Chapter 1 - The Origins of Religious Mendicancy in Medieval Europe, Augustine Thompson
Chapter 2 - From Osma to Bologna, from Canons to Friars, from the Preaching to the Preachers: the Dominican Path Towards Mendicancy, Anthony John Lappin
Chapter 3 - Female Mendicancy, A Failed Experiment? The Case of Saint Clare of Assisi, Joan Mueller
Section II
The development and articulation of mendicant ideals
Chapter 4 - Mendicancy among the Early Saints of the Begging Orders, Donald Prudlo
Chapter 5 - Pastoral Care, Inquisition, and Mendicancy in the Medieval Franciscan Order, Holly Grieco
Chapter 6 - The forging of an intellectual defense of Mendicancy in the Medieval University, Andrew Traver
Chapter 7 - Mendicants and the Italian Communes in Salimbene’s Cronaca, David Foote
Section III – The reception and appropriation of mendicancy in the middle ages
Chapter 8 - Mendicant Orders and the Reality of Economic Life in Italy in the Middle Ages, Antonio Rigon
Chapter 9 - Effects of the Spiritual Franciscan Controversy on the Mendicant Ideal, David Burr
Chapter 10 - The Hidden Life of the Friars: The Mendicant Orders in the Work of Walter Hilton, William Langland, Geoffrey Chaucer, and their Literary World, Pat Bart
Chapter 11 - Mendicancy in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth centuries: “Ubi necessitas non urgeat”: the Preachers Facing the “refrigescens caritas”, Silvia Nocentini
Select bibliography
Index.