This chapter considers the early history of the women and men of the medieval Mendicant orders: the Franciscans, Dominicans, Carmelites, Augustinian Hermits, Servites, Sack, and Pied friars. It outlines recent revisionary approaches to continuity with previous religious orders and the multiplicity of forms ‘mendicancy’ might take. In doing so, it considers the essential features of what it meant to be a mendicant, male or female, paying particular attention to the changing significance of poverty and begging, the location of settlements, the slow emergence of a mendicant status, and the considerable role of the papacy. The value of non-normative textual and visual evidence is particularly emphasized, exposing the power of contingency and suggesting one of the creative ways in which research might begin to tackle the many questions that still deserve investigation.