Precursors to the Mendicant Reform

Timeline

1. 1161–1165Lyon and northern Italy · LyonIn the early 1160s, the ideal of poverty-stricken preaching modeled on the apostolic life of the Gospels spread among merchant classes in cities such as Lyon and Lombardy. Some lay groups operated through simple living, street preaching, and mutual-aid communities, challenging the clergy's monopoly on the right to preach.
2. 1163–1168Lombardy, Italy · LombardyGroups such as the Humiliati, originating in northern Italy, were noted in the 1160s for textile labor and ascetic living, their organizational model falling between traditional monasteries and street preaching. Church authorities held complex attitudes toward these semi-formalized groups, seeking to bring them under jurisdiction while wary of their tendency to slip from episcopal control.
3. 1166–1170Languedoc · LanguedocBy the late 1160s, heretical currents and lay preaching in Languedoc and elsewhere alarmed bishops and local lords. The Church restricted unauthorized preaching, while monastic traditions such as the Cistercians reflected on the relationship between wealth and piety, providing social and theological soil for the institutionalized reforms of the Franciscan and Dominican mendicant orders in the thirteenth century.