Innocent III. was wise enough to perceive the immediate utility of the new societies based upon claims to extraordinary humility and poverty.  The Mendicant orders were, in themselves, not only a rebuke to the luxurious indolence and shameful laxity of the older orders, but when sanctioned by the church, the existence of the new societies attested Rome’s desire to maintain the highest and the purest standards of monastic life.  Hence, the Preaching Friars were permitted to reproach the clergy and the monks for their vices and corruptions.

“The effect of such a band of missionaries,” says John Stuart Mill, “must have been great in rousing and feeding dormant devotional feelings.  They were not less influential in regulating those feelings, and turning into the established Catholic channels those vagaries of private enthusiasm which might well endanger the church, since they already threatened society itself.”

Two novel monastic features, therefore, now appear for the first time:  1.  The substitution of itineracy for the seclusion of the cloister; and 2.  The abolition of endowments.

1.  The older orders had their traveling missionaries, but the general practice was to remain shut up within the monastic walls.  The Mendicants at the start had no particular abiding place, but were bound to travel everywhere, preaching and teaching.  It was distinctly the mission of these monks to visit the camps, the towns, cities and villages, the market places, the universities, the homes and the churches, to preach and to minister to the sick and the poor.  They neither loved the seclusion of the cell nor sought it.  Theirs to tramp the dusty roads, with their capacious bags, begging and teaching.  Only by this itinerant method could the people be reached and the preachers of heresy be encountered.

2.  One of the chief sources of strength in the heretical sects was the justness of their attack upon the Catholic monastic orders, whose immense riches belied their vows of poverty.  The heretics practiced austerities and adopted a simplicity of life that won the hearts of the people, by reason of its contrast to the loose habits of the monks and clergy.  Since it was impossible to reform the older orders, it became absolutely essential to the success of the Mendicants that they should rigorously respect the neglected discipline.  As the abuse of the vow of poverty was particularly common, the Mendicants naturally emphasized this vow.

While it is true that a begging monk was by no means unknown, yet now, for the first time, was the practice of mendicity formally adopted by entire orders.  Owing to the excessive multiplication of mendicant societies, Pope Gregory X., at a general council held at Lyons in 1272, attempted to check the growing evil.  The number of Mendicant orders was confined to four, viz., the Dominicans, the Franciscans, the Carmelites and the Augustinians or Hermits of Augustine.  The Council of Trent confined mendicity to the Observantines and Capuchins, since the other societies had practically abandoned their original interpretation of their vow of poverty and had acquired permanent property.