The Brethren of the Common Life (Latin: Fratres Vitae Communis, FVC) was a Roman Catholicpietist religious community founded in the Netherlands in the 14th century by Gerard Groote, formerly a successful and worldly educator who had had a religious experience and preached a life of simple devotion to Jesus Christ. They believed that Christianity should be practiced not only in formal religious settings, but also in everyday life, and they sought to promote a practical spirituality that emphasized personal piety and devotion.
Without taking up irrevocable vows, the Brethren[1] banded together in communities, giving up their worldly goods to live chaste and strictly regulated lives in common houses, devoting every waking hour to attending divine service, reading and preaching of sermons, labouring productively, and taking meals in common that were accompanied by the reading aloud of Scripture: "judged from the ascetic discipline and intention of this life, it had few features which distinguished it from life in a monastery", observes Hans Baron.[2]
The Brethren of the Common Life were an important religious movement of the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, and their emphasis on education, personal piety, and social justice had a profound influence on the religious and intellectual culture of Europe.[3]
Cornerstones
The four cornerstones of the Brethren were
contempt of the world and of self (Latin: contemptus mundi et sui ipsius),
imitation of the lowly life of Christ (Latin: imitatio humilis vitae Christi),
the grace of devoutness (Latin: gratia devotionis.) [4]:283
The Confraternity of the Common Life were in many ways similar to the Beghard and Beguine communities which had flourished two centuries earlier but were by then declining. Its members took no vows and neither asked nor received alms; their first aim was to cultivate the interior life, and they worked for their daily bread.
The antifraternal insistence on work distinguishes the Brethren from mendicant (begging) friars; they were attacked by mendicant theologians at the Council of Constance for not having mainstream formal vows initially, but were successfully defended by Pierre d'Ailly and Jean Gerson.[4]
The Brethren's confraternity is the best known fruits of the "Devotio Moderna", (the Modern Devotion), a lifestyle and undogmatic form of piety which some historians have argued helped to pave the road for the Protestant Reformation. In the fifteenth century, the movement spread to southern and western Germany. The Protestant Reformers, including Martin Luther and John Calvin, were influenced by the ideas and practices of the Devotio Moderna.[5][6]
Of wealthy burgher stock, Groote was born in Deventer in the Oversticht possession of the Duchy of Guelders in 1340. Having read at Cologne, at the Sorbonne, and at Prague, he took orders and obtained preferment, a canon's stall at Utrecht and another at Aachen. His relations with the German Gottesfreunde and the writings of John of Ruusbroec, who later became his friend, gradually inclined him to mysticism, and on recovering from an illness in 1373, he resigned his prebends, bestowed his goods on the Carthusians of Arnhem and lived in solitude for seven years.[7]
Feeling himself constrained to go forth and preach, Groote went from place to place calling men to repentance, proclaiming the beauty of Divine love, and bewailing the relaxation of ecclesiastical discipline and the degradation of the clergy. The effect of his sermons was marvelous; thousands hung on his words.[7]
A small band of followers attached themselves to Groote and became his fellow workers, thus becoming the first "Brethren of the Common Life" (Dutch: Broeders des gemeenen levens). The reformer was opposed by many, including the clergy, for his preaching on moral decadence, and in 1383 his license to preach was revoked.[8] Nonetheless, his zeal for purifying the Catholic faith and the morality of its followers won many to his cause.[7] Members of the secular clergy even enrolled themselves in his brotherhood, which, in due course, was approved by the Pope.
Groote, however, did not live long enough to finish the work he had begun. He died in 1384 and was succeeded by Florens Radewyns, who two years later refounded the famous monastery of Augustinian canons at Windesheim, near Zwolle, which was now the centre of the new association.
Education and activity
The majority of the Brethren were laymen who did not take monastic vows. They devoted themselves to doing charitable work, chaplaining schools, nursing the sick, studying and teaching the Scriptures, and copying religious and inspirational works. They founded or supported a number of schools that became famous for their high standards of learning. Many famous men attended their schools, including Nicholas of Cusa, Thomas à Kempis, and Erasmus, all of whom studied at the Brethren's school at Deventer.[5]
Books and the library were central to the communities of Brethren, whose scrupulous copies of works of piety supported their houses and put the texts in which they found spiritual sustenance in many hands. The houses of the brothers and sisters occupied themselves with literature and education, and their priests also with preaching.
When Groote began, education in the Netherlands was still rare, unlike in Italy and the southern parts of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation; the University of Leme of the schools of Liège was only a vague memory. Apart from some of the clergy who had studied at the universities and cathedral schools in Paris or in Cologne, there were few scholars in the land; even amongst the higher clergy there were many who were ignorant of the scientific study of Latin, and the ordinary burgher of the Dutch cities was quite content if, when his children left school, they were able to read and write the Medieval Low German and Diets.
Groote determined to change all that. The Brethren worked consistently in the scriptorium; afterwards, with the printing press, they were able to publish their spiritual writings widely. Among them are to be found the best works of 15th-century Flemish prose.
The Brethren were specially involved in youth education, running many schools and associated hostels: in the early 1500s Brethren in Zwolle built a large a house which would hold 200 poor schoolboys.[9] The Brethren spared no pains to obtain good masters, if necessary from foreign countries, for their schools, which became centres of spiritual and intellectual life of the Catholic Church; amongst those whom they trained or who were associated with them were men like Thomas à Kempis, Dierick Maertens, Gabriel Biel, the physician Vesalius, Jan Standonck (1454–1504), priest and reformer, Master of the Collège de Montaigu in Paris, and the Dutch Pope Adrian VI.
Another famous student of the Brethren of the Common Life was Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam. His mystical and scholarly efforts produced many works of literature. One of his greatest contributions to the Christian faith was a critical Greek New Testament (1514) which challenged the previous New Testament text translations (specifically the Vulgate). Commonly called Erasmus, he embraced ecclesiastical structure yet challenged the Augustinian view (people do not choose God, but God is the only one who brings people into grace and salvation), the nature of the human will, and the corruption and problems of the late medieval church.
Martin Luther studied under the Brethren of the Common Life at Magdeburg before going on to the University of Erfurt.
Through the trade connections of the Dutch Hanseatic cities Deventer and Zwolle the ideas of the Modern devotion spread over the whole of the Hanseatic trade area. Before the fifteenth century closed, the Brethren of the Common Life had placed in all Germany and the Netherlands schools in which teaching was offered "for the love of God alone."
Gradually the course of study, at first elementary, embraced the humanities, philosophy, and theology. The religious orders were not impressed, as the Brethren were neither monks nor friars, but they were protected by Popes Eugene IV, Pius II, and Sixtus IV. CardinalNicholas of Cusa had been their pupil[10] and so became their staunch protector and benefactor. He was also the patron of Rudolph Agricola (Rudolf de Boer), who in his youth at Zwolle had studied under Thomas à Kempis; and through this connection the Brethren of the Common Life, through Cusa and Agricola, influenced Erasmus and other adepts in the New Learning. More than half of the crowded schools —(in 1500, Deventer had over two thousand students) were swept away in the religious troubles of the sixteenth century. Others languished until the French Revolution, while the rise of universities, the creation of diocesan seminaries, and the competition of new teaching orders gradually extinguished the schools that regarded Deventer and Windesheim as their parent establishments.
Impact
A 2016 study in the Economic Journal finds that the Brethren of the Common Life "contributed to the high rates of literacy, to the high level of book production and to city growth in the Netherlands."[11]
Lutheran community in Herford
Of the hundred or so men's and women's houses, only a single community adopted Lutheranism at the Reformation.[12]
The community of the Brethren in Herford went over bodily to the Reformation, but the local council nonetheless threatened to close their house. The Brethren wrote to Martin Luther 1532, who defended their community life by writing to the council of the city. To Jacob Montanus and Gerhard Wilskamp he wrote in the end of January 1532: "Your way of life, since you teach and live according to the Gospel, pleases me no end". If only "there had been, and today there were more convents like yours!...Abide by your way of life and use it to spread the Gospel (as you do)!"[13] The house of the Brethren of the Common Life in Herford remained in existence as a Lutheran brotherhood until 1841.[14]
Revived congregation
Entrance of the Waghäusel monastery
Since 1975, there is in Germany a revived Congregation of the Brothers of the Common Life, Canonici Regulares Sancti Augustini Fratrum a Vita Communi. It is a constituent member of the Confederation of Canons Regular of St Augustine, its pronominal being CRVC. The superior general of the congregation, Richard Lehmann-Dronke, resides in the motherhouse in Maria Bronnen. Since 2000, the community has also had pastoral care for the Marian shrine of Waghäusel in Nordbaden.
Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus was a Dutch Christian humanist, Catholic theologian, educationalist, satirist, and philosopher. Through his vast number of translations, books, essays, prayers and letters, he is considered one of the most influential thinkers of the Northern Renaissance and one of the major figures of Dutch and Western culture.
The Reformation, also known as the Protestant Reformation and the European Reformation, was a major theological movement in Western Christianity in 16th-century Europe that posed a religious and political challenge to the papacy and the authority of the Catholic Church. Towards the end of the Renaissance, the Reformation marked the beginning of Protestantism and in turn resulted in a major schism within Western Christianity.
Thomas à Kempis, CRV was a German-Dutch Catholic canon regular of the late medieval period and the author of The Imitation of Christ, published anonymously in Latin in the Netherlands c. 1418–1427, one of the most popular and best known Christian devotional books. His name means "Thomas of Kempen", Kempen being his home town.
Gerard Groote, otherwise Gerrit or Gerhard Groet, in Latin Gerardus Magnus, was a Dutch Catholic deacon, who was a popular preacher and the founder of the Brethren of the Common Life. He was a key figure in the Devotio Moderna movement.
A religious order is a lineage of communities and organizations of people who live in some way set apart from society in accordance with their specific religious devotion, usually characterized by the principles of its founder's religious practice. It is usually composed of laypeople and, in some orders, clergy. Such orders exist in many of the world's religions.
Heinrich Bullinger was a Swiss Reformer and theologian, the successor of Huldrych Zwingli as head of the Church of Zürich and a pastor at the Grossmünster. One of the most important leaders of the Swiss Reformation, Bullinger co-authored the Helvetic Confessions and collaborated with John Calvin to work out a Reformed doctrine of the Lord's Supper.
Pietism, also known as Pietistic Lutheranism, is a movement within Lutheranism that combines its emphasis on biblical doctrine with an emphasis on individual piety and living a holy Christian life.
The Imitation of Christ, by Thomas à Kempis, is a Christian devotional book first composed in Medieval Latin as De Imitatione Christi. The devotional text is divided into four books of detailed spiritual instructions: (i) "Helpful Counsels of the Spiritual Life", (ii) "Directives for the Interior Life", (iii) "On Interior Consolation", and (iv) "On the Blessed Sacrament". The devotional approach of The Imitation of Christ emphasises the interior life and withdrawal from the mundanities of the world, as opposed to the active imitation of Christ practised by other friars. The devotions of the books emphasize devotion to the Eucharist as the key element of spiritual life.
Devotio Moderna was a movement for religious reform, calling for apostolic renewal through the rediscovery of genuine pious practices such as humility, obedience, simplicity of life, and integration into the community. It began in the late 14th century, largely through the work of Gerard Groote, and flourished in the Low Countries and Germany in the 15th century, but came to an end with the Protestant Reformation. It is most known today through its influence on Thomas à Kempis, the author of The Imitation of Christ, a book which has proved highly influential for centuries.
Wessel Harmensz Gansfort was a theologian and early humanist of the northern Low Countries. Many variations of his last name are seen and he is sometimes incorrectly called Johan Wessel.
Protestantism originated from the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century. The term Protestant comes from the Protestation at Speyer in 1529, where the nobility protested against enforcement of the Edict of Worms which subjected advocates of Lutheranism to forfeit of all their property. However, the theological underpinnings go back much further, as Protestant theologians of the time cited both Church Fathers and the Apostles to justify their choices and formulations. The earliest origin of Protestantism is controversial; with some Protestants today claiming origin back to people in the early church deemed heretical such as Jovinian and Vigilantius.
Renaissance humanism came much later to Germany and Northern Europe in general than to Italy, and when it did, it encountered some resistance from the scholastic theology which reigned at the universities. Humanism may be dated from the invention of the printing press about 1450. Its flourishing period began at the close of the 15th century and lasted only until about 1520, when it was absorbed by the more popular and powerful religious movement, the Reformation, as Italian humanism was superseded by the papal counter-Reformation.
Floris Radewyns was the co-founder of the Brethren of the Common Life.
The Congregation of Windesheim is a congregation of Augustinian canons regular. It takes its name from its most important monastery, which was located at Windesheim, about four miles south of Zwolle on the IJssel, in the Netherlands.
Gerard Zerbolt of Zutphen was a Dutch mystical writer and one of the first of the Brothers of the Common Life. His name has many variations, including "Gerardus de Zutphania", "Gerardus Zutphaniensis", "Zerbold van Zutphen", "Gerhard Zerbolt von Zutfen", "Gerardus Zerboltus", etc.
Lutheran Mariology or Lutheran Marian theology is derived from Martin Luther's views of Mary, the mother of Jesus and these positions have influenced those taught by the Lutheran Churches. Lutheran Mariology developed out of the deep Christian Marian devotion on which Luther was reared, and it was subsequently clarified as part of his mature Christocentric theology and piety. Lutherans hold Mary in high esteem, universally teaching the dogmas of the Theotokos and the Virgin Birth. Luther dogmatically asserted what he considered firmly established biblical doctrines such as the divine motherhood of Mary while adhering to pious opinions of the Immaculate Conception and the perpetual virginity of Mary, along with the caveat that all doctrine and piety should exalt and not diminish the person and work of Jesus Christ. By the end of Luther's theological development, his emphasis was always placed on Mary as merely a receiver of God's love and favour. His opposition to regarding Mary as a mediatrix of intercession or redemption was part of his greater and more extensive opposition to the belief that the merits of the saints could be added to those of Jesus Christ to save humanity. Lutheran denominations may differ in their teaching with respect to various Marian doctrines and have contributed to producing ecumenical meetings and documents on Mary.
The Bohemian Reformation, preceding the Reformation of the 16th century, was a Christian movement in the late medieval and early modern Kingdom and Crown of Bohemia striving for a reform of the Catholic Church. Lasting for more than 200 years, it had a significant impact on the historical development of Central Europe and is considered one of the most important religious, social, intellectual and political movements of the early modern period. The Bohemian Reformation produced the first national church separate from Roman authority in the history of Western Christianity, the first apocalyptic religious movement of the early modern period, and the first pacifist Protestant church.
Hendrik Mande was a Dutch mystical writer, an early member of the Brethren of the Common Life, and an Augustinian Canon.
Proto-Protestantism, also called pre-Protestantism, refers to individuals and movements that propagated various ideas later associated with Protestantism before 1517, which historians usually regard as the starting year for the Reformation era. The relationship between medieval sects and Protestantism is an issue that has been debated by historians.
Windesheim is a village in the municipality of Zwolle in the province of Overijssel, Netherlands. The Congregation of Windesheim was located in Windesheim from 1387 until 1577.
References
↑ There were a few communities of Sisters as well.
↑ Engen, John Van (March 20, 2014). Sisters and Brothers of the Common Life: The Devotio Moderna and the World of the Later Middle Ages (The Middle Ages Series). ISBN978-0812223071.
↑ Dorothea Wendebourg: Luther on Monasticism, s. 327–355. The Pastoral Luther. Essays on Martin Luther's Practical Theology. Timothy J. Wengert (ed.). Lutheran Quarterly Books. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2009. Published also in Lutheran Quarterly 19 (2005): 125–52
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