ABSTRACT
The orders of mendicant friars which appeared in the early years of the thirteenth century represented a new departure, a radical breakaway from the monastic tradition of the past. For a period both the Dominican and Franciscan nuns came close to being cast off by their parent orders of friars, and suffering the same fate as Saint Norbert's nuns in the twelfth century. Many of the secular clergy began to regard the friars as a threat to their status and livelihood; and their cause found an articulate voice among the secular masters of the university of Paris. The attack on Brother Elias's regime came from the northern provinces, and it was mobilised by a group of friars who were clerks and university graduates, the most prominent among whom was the English scholar Haymo of Faversham.
