Donald Prudlo, a historian of ancient and medieval Europe at Jacksonville State University, has done a fine job of editing a distinctive and useful collection of eleven essays in English that focus on the role of mendicancy in the early years of the Franciscans and Dominicans. It is commendable for its adherence to, its focus on, and its breadth in addressing mendicancy. Prudlo's book is, however, largely Italian in geographic scope and lacking in any substantial coverage of other mendicant orders. The work opens with a challenge to pat claims about the two orders and their founders, contextualizing both in contemporary clerical and lay currents. Next come well cast discussions of the origins of Dominican poverty and of St. Clare and her problematic role in founding the Franciscans’ Second Order. Section 2 presents cogent studies of early begging saints of both orders; the relationship of mendicancy to Franciscan service as inquisitors and pastors; the treatment of urban Italian Franciscans and Dominicans in the thirteenth-century Chronicle of Salimbene da Adam; and scholastic and rhetorical defenses of mendicancy at the Paris of Aquinas and Bonaventure. The final four essays push into the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, exploring the interface of Italian communal economics and the charitable support of the orders; the impacts of the Franciscan spirituals on the mendicancy of the broader order; friars’ poverty in the literary works of Hilton, Chaucer, and Langland; and, finally, the changing place of mendicancy in writings of post-Black Death Italian Dominicans. It should attract a broad audience.