By the thirteenth century, Europe's towns were growing, and with them new questions and new poverty. The older monasteries, often wealthy and rural, were not built to meet a population on the move. Two men answered in different ways: Francis of Assisi, who embraced radical poverty and a simple gospel of love; and Dominic, who founded an order of preachers trained to teach sound doctrine.
Their followers were friars, not monks — the word mendicant means 'begging.' They held no property, lived on alms, and worked in the heart of the towns rather than behind cloister walls. The Franciscans and Dominicans, joined later by other orders, reshaped medieval preaching, teaching, and care for the poor.
The mendicant movement carried the gospel into the medieval marketplace. Its great theologians — Bonaventure among the Franciscans, Thomas Aquinas among the Dominicans — also shaped Christian thought for centuries to come.