The pope approving the Franciscan order

The mendicant or "begging" orders represented a new departure in medieval monasticism. They were forbidden to own property and not required to live in fixed communities. The Franciscans and Dominicans were the first of the mendicant orders, but mendicant privileges were later extended to other orders. Their itinerancy, exemption from episcopal authority, and privileges of preaching and hearing confession extended to the members of these orders all made them subject to the suspicion of the hierarchy in the middle ages. The Dominican theologian Thomas Aquinas and the Franciscan theologian Bonaventure defended the mendicant orders when their existence was challenged in the thirteenth century. In 1245 Pope Alexander IV ruled in favor of the mendicant orders. Strictures against the ownership of property were relaxed very early.