1.
Those who belong to a convent (Lat. conventus), i.e. all the full members of a religious community at a specific location.
2.
In the context of a particular monastic way of life, and especially among the mendicant orders, “conventuals” refers to that group or tendency within the order which continues to follow the “old observance” (usually in a previously mitigated form) in the midst of internal disputes over the proper observance of the rule, and which accordingly rejects the rigorous interpretatio…