Despite the cumbersome title, those seeking an introduction to the study of mendicancy and religious poverty would do well to pick up this new volume in Brill's Companions to the Christian Tradition series. Each chapter reviews and some chapters revise the secondary literature on one aspect of mendicancy. Augustine Thompson leads off the collection by questioning the use of the term mendicant at all, arguing that begging was peripheral and that pastoral care unencumbered by parochial or diocesan boundaries was the distinguishing mark of the early friars. Anthony Lappin's article bolsters the long-standing findings of historians within the Dominican order that Dominic's adoption of mendicancy and poverty was a practical one intended to free the brethren for preaching and pastoral care, and Lappin further argues that mendicancy was abandoned once the Dominicans became established in a town. Joan Mueller summarises her corpus on Franciscan women and poverty, concluding that St Clare and St Agnes of Prague lived out mendicancy through biblical mutuality, that is by caring for and ministering to sick and overworked friars, as women in the New Testament did for the Apostles. Thompson, Lappin and Mueller agree, therefore, that begging is not the defining characteristic of the so-called mendicant friars. Donald Prudlo leads off the next section with an investigation of mendicancy in Dominican and Franciscan hagiography. With the exception of Francis, Prudlo does not find any begging in the vitae at all, concluding that obedience, humility and almsgiving, not begging, are most emphasised in the sources. André Vauchez (not cited by Prudlo) noted these same themes in friar-saints’ Lives as well as pastoral care and zeal for souls. Holly Greico's insightful chapter on the inquisition shows how the Franciscans, because of their origins as lay evangelisers, never made inquisition as central to their identity or sanctity as did the Dominicans, for whom inquisition grew naturally out of their mission of preaching to heretics and pastoral care of Christians. Andrew Traver provides the best English-language summary yet written of the complicated controversy over mendicancy that boiled over from the universities into the court of King Louis ix. Focusing on the chronicle of the Franciscan Salimbene, David Foote argues convincingly that Salimbene translated Francis's spirituality for the elites of the Italian communes, not sugar-coating Francis's challenge to worldly success, but applying his charism to new circumstances. Despite the arguments found elsewhere in the book, Antonio Rigon hews to a traditional definition of mendicancy in his consideration of mendicant economic theories and practices in the later Middle Ages. He credits the friars with a number of economic innovations in lending and pawnbroking. In keeping with the volume's introductory nature, David Burr offers a helpful reference guide to his lifetime of work on the spiritual Franciscans, reminding his reader that although spirituals were always a minority, their concerns continually resurfaced, especially in the late medieval observant movement. Patricia Bart shows how anti-fraternal medieval English literature used the friars’ own pastoral and literary works as source material and, referencing especially the work of Lawrence Clopper, she argues that Chaucer and Langland did not believe that the friars were entirely corrupt. In the final chapter, Silvia Nocentini charts the debate over the observant movement within the later medieval Dominican order, noting that even the reformers eventually gave up on the idea of living without property and requested the pope's 1475 bull which gave the right of possession to all convents. I hope that this very brief summary of this excellent collection will encourage scholars and advanced students to turn to the fascinating arguments themselves.