Tradition
Mendicant
Overview
A mendicant (from Latin: mendicans, "begging") is one who practices mendicancy, relying chiefly or exclusively on alms to survive. Mendicant orders are primarily certain Catholic religious orders that depend entirely on the goodwill of others to live. They do not possess property either individually or collectively. The members of these orders have chosen radical poverty so as to bear witness to the Gospel. Arising with the development of cities and universities, these orders live in convents established in urban places and differ from monastic orders in that they live both the contemplative life and apostolic life.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
In the original texts
Passages from public-domain books where Mendicant is discussed.
But the magistrates and cities ought to see to it that the vagabonds, pilgrims and mendicants from foreign lands be debarred, or at least allowed only under restrictions and rules, so that knaves be not permitted to run at large under the guise of mendicants, and their knavery, of which there now is much, be prohibited; I have spoken at greater length of this Commandment in the Treatise on Usury.[53] _Thou shall not…
Martin Luther, Works of Martin Luther, with Introductions and Notes
states what it is; names the idea; opens on it
The mendicant orders are like those teachers whose subsistence depends altogether upon their industry. They are obliged, therefore, to use every art which can animate the devotion of the common people. The establishment of the two great mendicant orders of St. Dominic and St. Francis, it is observed by Machiavel, revived, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the languishing faith and devotion of the catholic…
Adam Smith, An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
names the idea
If chivalry represented in some degree a moralizing of the warrior class, the mendicant orders represented an effort to bring religion into secular life. The followers of St. Dominic and St. Francis were indeed ascetic, but instead of maintaining the separate life of the cloister they aimed to awaken a personal experience among the whole people.
John Dewey, Ethics
opens on it; names the idea
If the bad morals of chiefs do not always produce such marked effects, at least they generate slothfulness, of which their effect is to fill society with mendicants; to crowd it with malefactors; whose vicious course neither superstition nor the terror of the laws can arrest; which nothing can induce to remain the unhappy spectators of a welfare they are not permitted to participate. They seek a fleeting happiness…
Paul Henri Thiry Holbach, The System of Nature, or, the Laws of the Moral and Physical World. Volume 1
opens on it; names the idea
The only excuse to be made for all our mendicant diplomacy is the same as in the case of all other mendicancy;--namely, that it has been founded on absolute necessity. This deserves consideration. Necessity, as it has no law, so it has no shame: but moral necessity is not like metaphysical, or even physical.
Edmund Burke, Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke
opens on it; names the idea
Philosophers who discussed Mendicant
Related ideas
- Jesus
- Gospel
- Japan
- Jainism
- Protestantism
- Sanskrit
- Sufism
- Sangha
- Zen
- Theravada
- Buddhism
- The Buddha
- Pali
- Eastern Christianity
- Benedictines
- High Middle Ages
- Islam
- Catholic Church
- Dharma
Place in the tradition
Part of Cynicism (philosophy).