ABSTRACT
In the fourteenth century, many added the mercatores or the artisans to the feudal trilogy of oratores, bellatores, and laboratores. The French Dominican Humbert de Romans made a list of possible audiences and advised that it should not be necessary to preach the same thing to all, but that one should adapt his preaching to the different hearers. The functions were not necessarily three as in the three-estate theory, and could change in time with the addition of new groups. But there was resistance to the admission of new groups both in the social categories and in categories within the church. When a new ordo of churchmen, the mendicants, appeared in the thirteenth century, claiming a new role, discussions began as to their function, and the long dispute on poverty broke out in 1254 at the Sorbonne, the arena of academic rivalry between mendicant and secular cler.
