The eleven interdisciplinary essays that comprise this book complement and expand upon a significant body of literature on the history of the Franciscan and Dominican orders during the later Middle Ages and early modern period. They elucidate and examine the ways in which mendicant friars established, sustained, and transformed their institutional identities and shaped the devotional experiences of the faithful to whom they ministered via verbal and visual culture. Taking primary texts and images as their point of departure, these essays break new scholarly ground by revising previous assumptions regarding mendicant life and actions and analyzing sites, works of art, and texts that either have been neglected in the existing literature or that have not been examined through the lens of current methodologies such as sermon studies, ritual, gender, and cross-cultural interactions. Buona lettura!