Faced with a decline in vocations, the mendicant orders began to accept oblates.
[6] Contributing factors in the disruption of the religious orders were the Black Death (1346–1353) and the Great Western Schism (1378–1417).
The observant movement is distinguished from earlier reforms by its general appeal across most religious orders and its lack of singular leadership.
It was not imposed on the orders, as, for example, the reforms legislated by Pope Benedict XII in 1335–1339.
[8] The chief concerns of the observants were the elimination of dispensations, which had proliferated, and a return to communal, cloistered living; religious should not hold offices that required dispensations and should not have independent sources of revenue.