Editing Mendicant (section)

==Christianity==
<!-- mendicancy within Eastern Orthodoxy needs expansion. Write about yurodstvo and Way of a Pilgrim -->
[[File:The story of our Christianity; an account of the struggles, persecutions, wars, and victories of Christians of all times (1893) (14597327508).jpg|thumb|right|A group of mendicant Christian friars]]

===Catholic Church===

{{See also|Friar}}

In the early [[Latin 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 [[gyrovague]]s, 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]].

Itinerant preachers that belonged to mendicant orders traveled from town to town to preach the [[Gospel]], consciously modeling themselves after [[Jesus]] and the [[Twelve Disciples]]. Professor [[Giacomo Todeschini]] at the [[University of Trieste]] has described these mendicants in the following way:<ref>{{cite web |title='Begging Without Shame': Medieval Mendicant Orders Relied on Contributions |url=https://www.chausa.org/publications/health-progress/article/march-april-2017/'begging-without-shame'-medieval-mendicant-orders-relied-on-contributions |website=Catholic Health Association of the United States |access-date=2019-12-16 |date=2017}}</ref>

{{Quote
|text="The choice to be poor was realized in a series of gestures: abandonment of one's paternal house, a wandering life, ragged appearance and clothes, manual work as scullery-man and mason, and begging without shame."
}}

===Other Christians===
{{unreferenced section|date=August 2023}}
Unlike Western Christians, [[Eastern Christianity|Eastern Christians]] never created a form of monasticism equivalent to mendicant orders. Rather, all Orthodox monks and nuns follow the more traditionally monastic [[Rule of Saint Basil]]. Mendicancy does, however, still find root through lay expressions of [[Foolishness for Christ]].

Despite the abandoning of ascetic practice within [[Protestantism]], mendicant-style preaching has still come about independently of it.{{fact|date=November 2022}} American [[Methodists]] were once known for sending out itinerant preachers known as [[circuit rider (religious)|circuit rider]]s. Another example was [[Johnny Appleseed]], a [[Swedenborgian]] itinerant preacher who would eventually rise to the status of American [[folk hero]].