Group 4: The Mendicant Orders & Scholasticism

Mendicant Orders

Religious orders whose members took strict vows of poverty and lived among urban populations to preach, rather than staying cloistered in rural monasteries.

St. Francis of Assisi

The founder of the Franciscan order who radically renounced his family's wealth by stripping in the town square to embrace absolute poverty and creation.

St. Dominic

The founder of the Dominican order whose primary mission was to combat heresy through rigorous intellectual education and preaching.

St. Thomas Aquinas

A Dominican friar and brilliant scholastic theologian who wrote the Summa Theologiae to synthesize Greek philosophy with Christian theology.