Payne believes that teachers can't help their poor students unless they first understand them, and that means understanding the hidden rules of poverty.

He joined the Friars Minor Conventual, a religious order whose members strictly adhered to their rule of poverty and obedience.

Gradual relaxation of the rules of poverty led to great possessions, and thus increased the importance of the lay brothers, who now claimed equality with the choir-monks.

These had been monks, living according to the Augustinian or Benedictine rules of poverty, who had established hospitals in the Holy Land, and on the pilgrim routes, to care for sick pilgrims.

The three traditional monastic rules of poverty, chastity and obedience are accepted by each brother who undergoes and a period of formation lasting several years including a postulancy which is followed by a novitiate.

The statutes, drawn up by Father Antinólez, and later confirmed by Paul V, bound the sisters to the strictest interpretation of the rules of poverty and obedience, and a rigorous penitential discipline.

New constitutions, drawn up by a Jesuit and approved by Pope Urban VIII in 1631, bound the canonesses to the recitation of the Divine Office, rigorous fasts, the use of the discipline, and a strict interpretation of the rule of poverty.

All these regulations were necessary in consequence of the rule of poverty, the literal and unconditional observance of which was rendered impossible by the great expansion of the Order, by its pursuit of learning, and the accumulated property of the large cloisters in the towns.