Pauper monastic orders to this day

Hello everyone,

This question kinda popped into my head while I was thinking about punks (slightly unrelated I know).

In the Middle Ages, there were a lot of beggar monks, wandering around with no possession exzcept the gospel of Christ, but those seem to disappear long before more "classic" orders fade away.

My question is two-fold:
  • Why is that? What happened?
  • Is there a way to keep them to this day?

It seems fitting in our day and age where capitalism/materialism is questionned by people (see: punks) that some would be in a similar situation?

Any way, keen to hear your thoughts on this :)
 
1) You seem to be talking about friars more than monks. Monks are the ones who cut themselves off in monasteries and contemplate God by doing coloured-in versions of the New Testament and that sort of thing. Friars are the ones who, like monks, give up all their earthly possessions, and wander around in public places being holy at people.

2) They still exist, especially in Catholic countries (I have met quite a few) but their numbers have declined in pretty much the same way as religiosity has declined in general, so keeping the Catholic Church in vogue would be a necessity to keep them at the same level of popularity.

3) To some extent, Mendicant Orders followed the same trends as Monastic Orders, with an increasing focus on amassing wealth for the Glory of God and all that sort of stuff. The Friar Tuck character in Robin Hood is a prime example of how, in the popular consciousness, it was perceived that friars had lost their way and were only out for a free meal. This has certainly changed back into the original conception of friaring as you describe it, especially in the last 50 years. So maybe cutting out a lot of the corruption in these specific Orders and the Church in general would keep the concept popular.
 
Thanks Uhura for the explanation!

So, indeed I was talking about friars. I never quite understood the English semantic differentiation (it's the same word for all types of monks in my native tongue).
I personally have never met a wandering monk but maybe they're a bit more invisible these days.
 
They don't so much disappear as much as they are subsumed into the structure of the Church. The Franciscans still exist, but they 'no longer act nor speak as the simple do', to paraphrase one of those monks from Umberto Eco's 'The Name of the Rose'. All religious orders seem to follow that trend of starting out as reformers, accumulating wealth and then either getting subsumed into the Church or declared heretics.
 
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