What roles did monks, nuns, and friars play in medieval society?
MMONKS, NUNS, AND FRIARS played significant roles in medieval society, both as individuals and as members of institutions. Medieval people believed that monks and nuns performed an important social service when they prayed for their prayers and chants secured God’s blessing for society. The friars worked in the cities, teaching and preaching Christian doctrine but also investigating heretics.
Saint Francis Gives up His Worldly PossessionsAfter Francis had given money to a church, his wealthy father ordered Francis to give him back the money. Francis instead took off all his clothes and returned them to his father, signifying his dependence on his father in Heaven rather than his earthly father. The fresco of this event, painted seventy years after Francis’s death for the church erected in his honor in Assisi, captures the consternation of Francis’s father and the confusion of the local bishop (holding the cloth in front of the naked Francis), who had told the young man to obey his earthly father. By the time the church was built, members of the Franciscan order were in violent disagreement over what Francis would have thought about a huge church built in his honor and other issues of clerical wealth. (San Francesco, Upper Church, Assisi/Giraudon/The Bridgeman Art Library)