Talk:Devotio Moderna

Old Modern Devotion Article
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The Catholic Church went through great changes and turmoil in the fourteenth century, not the least of which was the growing conflict over what form of piety was acceptable. The dominant form of piety emerged from the Middle Ages and was based on monastic tradition (Hause and Maltby, p. 351). This form of piety considered priests to be intermediaries between the physical world of man and the spiritual otherworld of God (Hause and Maltby 351). The intermediations occurred primarily through the Eucharist and prayers of intercession (Hause and Maltby 351). The priests held enormous power in this monastic tradition. These powers were often abused. Abuses took place in the payment of indulgences, masses for the dead and pilgrimages. Indulgences and prayers for the dead all cost a price. The more one paid for an indulgence, the less time one would spend in purgatory. Indulgences could also be bought for sins not yet committed. Prayers for the dead also worked in a similar way. The more prayers that were offered, the less time the person prayed for would spend in purgatory. The relationship between the God and his people became one of contractualism (Hause and Maltby 351). In other words, people only dealt with God to make deals with Him for special favors, which the Catholic pietists and the Churchmen in general considered a too pagan approach.

Many in the Catholic Church rejected the traditional, monastic form of piety and wanted one which was based on a close, personal relationship with God. These men and women wanted a relationship with God based on personal spirituality, not contractualism. The first such movement to emphasize a personal relationship with God was (medieval) mysticism (Hause and Maltby, p. 352). Mysticism is the effort to achieve spiritual union with God through ecstatic contemplation (Hause and Maltby, p. 352). Mystics spent years meditating and learning ways to achieve closeness with God. Very few were able to achieve this with any consistency. Mysticism was essentially a very private matter. Only the relationship between God and the devotee mattered. Mysticism inflenced a much more powerful, corporate movement called the Modern Devotion. This movement was founded by Geert Groote, a well educated secular canon and deacon. Groote sought to "teach people, especially lay people, how to find God, not through scholastic arguments - which by this point had became fruitless and perilous through the obscurity of Nominalism - but through trust in God. This simple way to God went through the humanity of Jesus Christ, emphasizing the incarnation and passion of the Son of God."

Groote set out to do this by organizing a community of religious women in Deventer, the Netherlands. The Sisters of the Common Life as they were known were not nuns but laywomen like beguines. Florens Radewijns, a disciple of Groote, organized a comparable group of religious men called the Brethren of the Common Life. Radewijns also founded a monastic order called the Augustinian Canons of the Windesheim Congregation. The orders were based on spiritual practices of "small penances, frequent examinations of conscience and meditation using imagination, will and intellect." They were also highly critical of the established clergy within the Catholic church and "emphasized charitable works, private devotion, and its own form of education." Education played a key role in the modern devotion. The orders were forbidden to beg or ask for charity from others to support themselves, so they started to support themselves by copying books and through education. The emphasis on education resulted in the opening of educational institutions by the orders.

Modern Devotion attracted many members to its principles. The movement spread throughout the Low Countries and western Germany (Hause and Maltby 352). The movement called for living as the Apostles and the first Christians in the early Church did. It emphasized living as Christ did and imitating his acts and deeds. The book The Imitation of Christ, written by Thomas a Kempis, a Brother of the Common Life, outlines the concepts of the Modern Devotion, based on personal connection to God and the active showing of love towards Him, e.g. in the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar or at Mass. The book is still widely read and highly influential. The basic tenets of the followers of the modern devotion can be summarized as the "love of God and neighbor as well as humility, simplicity and devotion."

This movement has been referenced in the name of a Colorado rock band, Modern Devotion.

--Eleazar 14:40, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

A wider context
This is OR, but the facts are certain In the 1380s, the French King's Confessor Pierre d'Ailly had to all intents and purposes exhausted his political influence as Chancellor of the University trying to resolve the Papal Schism, and so retreated to the Bishopric of Cambrai, astraddle France and Burgundy. His successor as Chancellor, Jean Gerson, had just received the post-mortem publication of Jan van Ruusbroec's works, and suggested he read them. This therefore brings d'Ailly up to speed with Groot's sources - Groot had spent a week with van Ruusbroec very shortly before his death, which knocked his thinking into shape. d'Ailly then convenes a Papal Council at Constance and fires the three rival claimants, having to accept a stopgap Roman, Martin V, until is own team can be rolled out. Although he doesn't survive to see it happen, the ball is picked up by Cardinal Nicholas of Kues, and the next Pope, the Venetian Gabriele Condulmer/Eugenius IV, is one of the earliest graduates of Windesheim - he's also from a Marcine background rather than Pauline. His coronation anthem, Ecclesie Militate, is written by one of two very famous adolescents in d'Ailly's retinue at Constance, Guillaume Dufay, and is soon followed by the L'Homme Armé mass, the greatest hit of all time - around 80 variations have followed. Alongside him was Jan van eyck, whose Fountain of Life and Mystic Lamb cover the other facets of a quadrivium case founded on van Ruusbroec's thesis in The Spiritual Tabernacle consolidating the doctrine of the Eucharist and thereby establishing the Papacy as dominant over the 5 secular Kings of the Council. This sparked war, and the technological innovations which followed led to the Renaissance. In other words, this was the planned root of the Devotio Moderna, but then encountered resistance from the Roman traditionalists leaving it slowly diverging into Protestantism. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.218.129.127 (talk • contribs) 13:31, 6 August 2019‎ (UTC)
 * L'homme armé is a song, of uncertain origin. Dufay is only one the composers who used it, and the others are not "variations" of his mass. It seems highly unlikely that Jan van Eyck was "in d'Ailly's retinue at Constance". I wonder if the rest of this is any more accurate. Johnbod (talk) 21:10, 6 August 2019 (UTC)