Editing Mendicant orders (section)

{{Short description|Type of religious lifestyle}}
{{Use Oxford spelling|date=August 2016}}
[[File:Cluny Abbey (7309874510).jpg|thumb|[[Cluny Abbey]], a former [[Order of Saint Benedict|Benedictine]] monastery in [[Saône-et-Loire]], France. It was at one time the center of Western monasticism.]]
{{canon law}}

'''Mendicant orders''' are primarily certain [[Catholic Church|Catholic]] [[religious order]]s that have vowed for their male members a lifestyle of [[vow of poverty|poverty]], traveling, and living in urban areas for purposes of [[preacher|preaching]], [[Evangelism|evangelization]], and [[Christian ministry|ministry]], especially to less wealthy individuals. At their foundation these orders rejected the previously established [[monasticism|monastic]] model, which prescribed living in one stable, isolated community where members worked at a trade and [[common ownership|owned property in common]], including land, buildings and other wealth. By contrast, the [[mendicant]]s avoided owning property, did not work at a trade, and embraced a poor, often [[wiktionary:itinerant|itinerant]] lifestyle. They depended for their survival on the goodwill of the people to whom they preached. The members of these orders are not called [[monk]]s but [[friar]]s. 

The term "[[wikt:mendicant#Adjective|mendicant]]" is also used with reference to some non-Christian religions to denote holy persons committed to an [[asceticism|ascetic]] lifestyle, which may include members of religious orders and individual holy persons.