Name: Luke Rohan Tucker

Title: Devotio Moderna: Confrontations with Scholastic, University Culture

Faculty: Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

Institution: The University of Sydney

Year of Award: 2021

A thesis submitted to fulfil requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

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ABSTRACT

The founding stories of the Devotio Moderna began with a book burning and explicit rejections of

scholastic, university culture. Most scholars have either pitted the movement’s dimensions of

pastoral care and teaching against each other as exclusive alternatives or have declined to treat

the New Devout’s status as a culture of learning. However, if we are to take this mythos as

essential to the movement, we must proceed from the outset that confrontations with scholastic,

university culture lay at the heart of the Devotio Moderna. This thesis suggests that either above

approach is inadequate and misreads the movement. Using Charles Taylor’s framework of the

Social Imaginary, this thesis argues that the Devotio Moderna developed based on an Augustinian

Imaginary, a sense deriving from Augustine and his medieval interlocutors. By the time of the

Observant Century, this Augustinian Imaginary, long since sustained by cathedral schools and

monastic education, now stood in competition with the universitas, a competing Social Imaginary

that the New Devout could not reconcile with their Augustinian Imaginary and therefore

rejected. By articulating the Devotio Moderna’s daily habits of reading, writing, and prayer, this

thesis argues that this site of conflict between the Devotio Moderna and scholastic, university

culture loomed large in the movement’s imagination. By relocating the key issues at stake in

analysis of the Devotio Moderna, we also see the difficulty of the historian writing within the

institution that the New Devout opposed, but which ultimately supplanted the movement. This

thesis is therefore significant as a repositioning of analysis of the Devotio Moderna as a movement

in relation fundamentally to scholastic, university culture, and in being an articulation of the

difficulty for the universitas’ distant descendant, the modern discipline of history, to understand a

historical movement animated by an imaginary opposed to that which vivified, and continues to

vivify, university culture.

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This is to certify that to the best of my knowledge the content of this thesis is my own work.

This thesis has not been submitted for any degree or other purposes.

I certify that the intellectual content of this thesis is the product of my own work and that all the

assistance received in preparing this thesis and sources has been acknowledged.

Luke Tucker

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Devotio Moderna Confrontations with Scholastic, University Culture

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Augustinus: Ecce oravi Deum

Ratio: Quid ergo scire vis?

A.: Haec ipsa omnia quae oravi.

R.: Breviter ea collige.

A.: Deum et animam scire cupio.

R.: Nihilne plus?

A.: Nihil omnino.

Augustinus, Soliloquia 1.2.7

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Acknowledgments

I want to thank first my supervisor Dr. John Gagné for his counsel, equanimity, and support

over the course of writing this dissertation. John, thank you for your delightful mix of curiosity,

gentleness, and erudition. Couldn’t have done it without you. Besides my supervisor I would also

like to thank Assoc. Prof. Nick Eckstein, Dr. Hélène Sirantoine, Prof. Stephen Gaukroger, Dr.

James Christie and Dr. Julie Ann Smith for their critique, support, and provoking discussion.

Sydney University’s Medieval and Early Modern Centre (MEMC) also proved a valuable forum

for testing out hunches and benefitting from pointed, clarifying conversation. I am grateful for

the opportunity to present a small part of this thesis in 2018 at the annual conference of the

Society for Renaissance Studies.

In the course of researching and information gathering I am thankful for the various archives

who provided orientation and access to material for my work. In particular, I want to thank the

Stadsarchief en Athenaeumbibliotheek Deventer, the Universiteit van Amsterdam, the

Streeksarchief Midden-Holland in Gouda, and Bibliothèque du Séminaire Episcopal de Liège.

This dissertation has ended up treading over several language barriers. I am grateful for the

Germanic Studies department at Sydney university and my kind and generous teachers Silke,

Tristan, Phillipp, and Sabina for allowing me to take part in their courses as Gasthörer.

Additionally, the German for Humanities reading group run by the late Brian Taylor was an

unexpected joy and invaluable help. I wish Brian were still around to hear me say so.

Various people have provided informal help in reading, critiquing, and editing my work. I want

to thank my mother Cathy Tucker, my wife Em, Matthew Payne, and Dr. Rory Shiner, who first

encouraged me to consider seriously postgraduate study. Thanks guys!

I doubt that would have survived the ordeal of writing a dissertation without the support,

fellowship, and prayers of Matthew Moffit and the community of Christian scholars of EPS.

Matt, it made all the difference that you didn’t ask me to justify my choice of period (the Dark

Ages!) and that you regularly offered a gentle, reflective presence through the ups and downs of

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postgraduate life. Sam, thanks for all the Thai food and fellowship we shared together. Your

support, empathy, and understanding got me through many difficult seasons of research and

writing.

Finally, I want to thank my wife Em. Em, thank you for your patience and forbearance as I

stressed, pondered, and thought out loud over these last four years. I would never have secured

funding, navigated confusing paperwork, or correctly filled in online forms without your help

and administrative wizardry. I don’t think just any wife would be so excited about the lifestyle

that comes along with writing a dissertation, but you never complained about the costs that came

with this project and were quick to affirm its value. Your encouragement and belief in the value

and beauty of what I was doing sustained me over long periods of difficult, trying work. You

helped me stop and rest when research began to creep into parts of my life it shouldn’t have, but

were patient when I just had to dive into a book or knock out a bit more language work. Your

patient witness of faith kept me from losing heart and reminded me time and again where true

wisdom is found. We made it!

Soli Deo gloria.

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A Note on Translations

I am grateful for the help of my supervisor, Dr. John Gagné, in aiding me with accurate

translations of French material. Unless otherwise indicated all other translations are my own.

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CONTENTS

1 Confrontations with Scholastic, University Culture ............................................................... 10

2 Literature Review, Aims, and Objectives, Method................................................................. 32

3 Augustinian Imaginary ................................................................................................................ 64

4 New Options: Universitas ............................................................................................................ 97

5 Exhortations to Reading ........................................................................................................... 132

6 Time, Reading, and Rhythms of Life ..................................................................................... 183

7 Book-copying and Book-production ...................................................................................... 218

8 Pastoral Care and Teaching ...................................................................................................... 245

9 Erasmus and the Universitas ...................................................................................................... 280

10 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 316

11 Epilogue: Writing within the University ................................................................................ 327

12 Bibliography ................................................................................................................................ 331

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1 CONFRONTATIONS WITH SCHOLASTIC, UNIVERSITY

CULTURE

The Devotio Moderna began with a book burning. In 1372, close to death, Geert Grote († 1384)

agreed at the request of his priest to have his books of medicine and astrology burnt in order to

receive what he thought was his last Eucharist. Educated at the University of Paris for over a

decade, Grote treasured these sources of knowledge and he did not give them up to the fire

easily. Having first sent the priest away, Grote had a change of heart. As he looked back later,

this was the beginning of his lifelong conversio, his turning towards God. Faced with the choice

between his precious knowledge and receiving the body of Christ in preparation for death, Grote

chose the latter. Though Geert Grote did not in fact die, this near-death experience proved

portentous. After his recovery, Grote was a changed man. Previously the libertine intellectual

preparing to enter a lucrative clerical career, Grote forsook his possessions, his inheritance rights,

and his status to embark on a tour of preaching around the Netherlands.

His vision was to recapture the intense, lived-out piety of the ecclesia primitiva, a life characterized

by humility, poverty, and the imitation of Christ. This life he modelled became known to

contemporaries by the moniker Devotio Moderna – the New Devout – a recapitulation of the

manner of living of the early Christians.1 Grote’s newfound task was to bring this modern-day

devotion of lived-out apostolic piety to a hard-hearted people in the Netherlands.2 (Despite

multiple options existing to translate Devotio Moderna, I have chosen to refer to the movement as

the New Devout or simply by the Latin. This, I believe, captures the right sense of energy of a

new movement of devotion and piety, while also reminding the reader by the original Latin that

this movement entailed a reaching back to the past and not novel invention.)

After his premature death in 1384 amidst one of the many waves of disease and pestilence that

swamped his hometown of Deventer, a small band of his disciples began to meet in his house.3

1 John H. van Engen, Sisters and Brothers of the Common Life: The Devotio Moderna and the World of the Later Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), 7. 2 John H. van Engen, ‘New Devotion in the Low Countries’, Ons Geestelijk Erf 77, no. 3 (2003): 235–63. 3 Susanne Krauss, Die Devotio Moderna in Deventer: Anatomie eines Zentrums der Reformbewegung, (Berlin; Münster: Lit, 2007).

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These followers spread quickly beyond Grote’s own house in Deventer throughout the Low

Countries.4 This geographic region, the Low Countries, did not form a coherent political entity,

nor was it unified by cultural practice or common vernacular. The patchwork of littoral and

overland trade networks fell first under Burgundian power and, after its collapse in 1477, the

Habsburg Empire. One encounters Frisian dialects in the North; Dutch and Low German in the

Netherlands, Westphalia, and the Rhineland; and French dialects in the South. Latin and its

attendant ecclesiastical culture thus formed one of the few common threads running through the

Low Countries in the long fifteenth century. The New Devout straddled these two worlds, the

unified bloc of Latin culture and the patchwork of vernacular culture, as they established

communities through the Low Countries.

Three main works produced within the milieu of the New Devout have led to a view that the

Devotio Moderna was primarily a Dutch movement. These texts were written in Zwolle, Deventer,

and Windesheim in the mid- and late-fifteenth century. Thomas à Kempis, an Augustinian monk

at Agnietenberg (near Zwolle) personally familiar with Grote’s disciples wrote in his Dialogus

noviciorum in the 1430s a history of the brothers aimed primarily at winning youths to their way of

life. Thirty or so years later in 1458 Rudolph Dier Muden wrote a necrology of the brothers of

the Windesheim congregation. This history, more historical than Thomas’, was supplemented by

another brother of the house, Petrus Hoorn († 1479). Roughly contemporary to this chronicle,

Johann Busch († c.1480) documented the expansion of the New Devout in two separate works:

Liber de origine devotionis modernae and Liber de viris illustribus. Many other brother- and sister-houses

produced Vitae and chronicles of their houses, but the majority of such accounts were composed

from within the diocese of Utrecht. Recently, however, scholars have pointed to the competing

regional accounts and suggested that the genesis of the Devotio Moderna amounts less to an

emanation from a single rough point – Deventer and Utrecht – and more a gradual

conglomeration of multiple movements of observant reform. John van Engen has, in this way,

shown how some the Brabantine New Devout saw themselves as stretching back to Jan van

4 Miri Rubin and Walter Simons, eds., Christianity in Western Europe c. 1100-c. 1500, (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 407.

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Ruusbroec at Groenendaal to identify the origins of his house.5 While this need not discount the

centrality of Grote and his disciples for the formation of the Devotio Moderna, this early stage of

the Devotio Moderna within the diocese of Utrecht being a key focus on this thesis, it must be

remembered that its spread was more complex than an emanation from a single rough point.

The Devotio Moderna spread from the area of modern-day Overijssel through the Netherlands,

northern parts of Belgium and western parts of Germany. After Grote’s death, the first brother-

houses were set up by Florens Radewijns († ca. 1400) and John Cele († 1417), both disciples of

Grote. Houses successively sprang up in the North at Groningen, to the South at Louvain, and

as far into Germany as Cologne and the Rhineland.6 The movement reached its fastest rate of

expansion in the second half of the fifteenth century.7 By the beginning of the sixteenth century,

lay religious houses had spread across the Low Countries from its epicenter in Deventer to

extend to Cambrai and Ghent in the South, Zwolle and Groningen in the North and Kempen

and Cologne in the West – and this during a period, as John van Engen has noted in his seminal

“Multiple Options: the World of the Fifteenth-century,” of increasing regionalism and local

specificity.8

Grote’s followers emulated his ideas and practice of lived devotion: book-copying, devotion to

prayer, asceticism, and a common life without vows.9 While many New Devout were pressured

by established municipal and ecclesiastical forces into joining pre-existing and papally approved

Augustinian and Tertiary Franciscan orders, most notably the Augustinian canons regular at

5 John Van Engen, ‘A Brabantine Perspective on the Origins of the Moderna Devotion: The First Book of Petrus Impens’ Compendium Decursus Temporum Monasterii Christifere Bethleemitice Puerpere’, in Serta Devota: In Memoriam Guillelmi Lourdaux, ed. Werner Verbeke et al., vol. 1 (Louvain: Leuven University Press, 1992), 3–78. 6 Euan Cameron, The European Reformation (Oxford: Oxford; New York: Clarendon Press; Oxford University Press, 1991), 61–62. 7 Guido de Baere, ‘De Middelnederlandse mystieke literatuur en de Moderna Devotie’, Trajecta. Tijdschrift voor de Geschiedenis van het Katholiek Leven in de Nederlanden 6, no. 1 (1997): 4. 8 John Van Engen, ‘Multiple Options: The World of the Fifteenth-Century Church’, Church History 77, no. 2 (2008): 263. 9 Anne Bollmann, ‘The Influence of the Devotio Moderna in Northern Germany’, in A Companion to

Mysticism and Devotion in Northern Germany in the Late Middle Ages : Companion to Mysticism and Devotion in Northern Germany in the Late Middle Ages, vol. 44, (Brill, 2014), 234. Anne Bollman has recently shown how Dutch contemporaries viewed Grote as their founder, while monastic historiography of Brabant often positions Jan van Ruusbroec as providing the vision for the movement that Grote subsequently spread.

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Windesheim, many New Devout continued to live in their lay communities, eschewing vows in

favor of the inward, voluntary intention to live shared lives devoted to Christ.

The brother- and sister-houses of the Devotio Moderna were remarkable for their exploration of a

semi-religious way of life.10 This life was not bound by traditional monastic or laical strictures but

was a voluntary association of Christian sisters and brothers who were unified by their mutual

commitment. 11 This new sort of association comprised three main categories: widows, lay

brothers, and regular clergy. Anton G. Weiler delineates seven further subdivisions:

1. Houses of devout men; clerical houses.

2. Houses of devout women (Note: Beguines and beghards only indirectly

come into discussion).

3. Houses of brothers of the common life.

4. Houses of sisters of the common life.

5. Convents of the third Order of St. Francis (men/women)

6. Convents of regular canons/canonesses, within which the Windesheim

canons/canonesses regular, and the Zion Chapter.

7. For the sake of completeness, the colleges of secular canons of the

common life with communal possessions must also be mentioned. These

do not occur in Holland [i.e. the area today of North and South Holland]

only in Den Bosch and Amersfoort.”12

10 Charles Caspers, Daniela Müller, and Judith Keßler, ‘In the Eyes of Others. The Modern Devotion in Germany and the Netherlands: Influencing and Appropriating’, Church History and Religious Culture 93, no. 4 (2013): 489–503. 11 A.G. Weiler, ‘Recent Historiography on the Modern Devotion: Some Debated Questions’, Archief Voor de Geschiedenis van de Katholieke Kerk in Nederland 27 (1985): 173. 12 A.G. Weiler, ‘De Moderne Devotie in Holland tot circa 1400: verscheidenheid van leefvormen’, Trajecta. Tijdschrift voor de Geschiedenis van het Katholiek Leven in de Nederlanden 17 (2008): 23–24. Globaal kunnen we in de sfeer van de Moderne Devotie de volgende categorieën van samenleven onderscheiden: 1. Huizen van

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Nonetheless, these divisions did not exist in tidy distinction to each other. “The different forms,

moreover, do not stand free from each other,” adds Weiler, “transfers between one or another

life-form was quite easy to make.”13

The women of the New Devout lived in common within existing parishes, they wore no religious

habit, nor did they bind themselves with vows to their life of prayer, constancy, and handiwork.

The sisters began to congregate in Grote’s Deventer house ca. 1374, as a consequence of Grote

having his preaching license revoked. It will come out over the course of this thesis that this

unexpected occurrence indelibly and drastically shaped the inward-focused character of the New

Devout. These widows initially met in Grote’s house in Deventer, the subsequent development

of brother-houses coming thereafter, and finally the institution of ordered religious communities

following Augustine’s Rule or Francis’ Third Rule.14 Opposition to the New Devout was often

fierce, and suspicious of heresy abounded.15 Although Lollardy was already losing its relevance to

the contemporary spiritual scene, puzzled onlookers often identified these sisters and brothers

with the beguines and beghards, of whom they were more familiar. Most famously, Matthias

Grabow, a Dominican of Groningen, laid the charge of heresy at the feet of the New Devout at

the Council of Constance (1414-1418).16

devote mannen; priesterhuizen. 2.Huizen van devote vrouwen. (NB: begijnen en begarden komen slechts zijdelings ter sprake.) 3. Huizen van broeders van het gemene leven. 4. Huizen van zusters van het gemene leven. 5. Conventen van de derde orde van St.-Franciscus (mannen/vrouwen). 6. Kloosters van reguliere kanunniken/kanunnikessen, waaronder de Windesheimse regulieren- en regularissenkloosters, en die van het kapittel van Sion. 7. Volledigheidshalve moeten ook genoemd worden de colleges van seculiere kanunniken van het gemene leven, met gemeenschappelijk bezit. Die komen niet voor in Holland, wel in Den Bosch en Amersfoort. 13 Weiler, 23. Die verschillende vormen staan overigens niet los van elkaar. De overgangen tussen de ene en de andere leefvorm waren redelijk gemakkelijk te maken. 14 A.G. Weiler, Geert Grote und seine Stiftungen (Bonn: Presse- und Kulturabteilung der Kgl. Niederländischen Botschaft, 1984), 34. 15 Michael J. Raley, ‘A Revised Chronology for the Inquisitors of the Brothers and Sisters of the Common Life, ca. 1393-1409’, Ons Geestelijk Erf 83, no. 1 (2012): 57–95; Koen Goudriaan, ‘Beguines and Devotio Moderna at the Turn of the Fifteenth Century’, in Labels and Libels: Naming Beguines in Northern Medieval Europe (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), 187–217; Koen Goudriaan, ‘The Modern Devout and the Inquisition’, Ons Geestelijk Erf 89, no. 1 (2018): 50–91. 16 John Van Engen, ‘Illicit Religion: The Case of Friar Matthew Grabow O.P.’, in Law and the Illicit in Medieval Europe, ed. Joel Kayer, Ruth M. Karras, and Ann Matter (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008).

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A short version of statutes for this sister-house in Deventer dates to 1374 and a longer version to

1379.17 Although less represented in our sources, these sisters, who worked with their hands

primarily spinning and weaving usually under the oversight of a brother as spiritual guide and

confessor, consistently outstripped the brothers in their numbers. “Women devout outnumbered

their male counterparts three to one,” reckons Wybren Scheepsma, adding that “the Modern

Devotion... was carried to an important degree by the enthusiasm of women.”18 In 1400 the

sisters outgrew Grote’s house in Deventer and formed a new congregation in Diepenveen and

subsequently many others across the Ijssel Delta and the Rhineland.19 The sisters wore clothes

like laywomen, typically a shift dress under a grey outer garment with a white head-covering. In

public, the sisters would wear a black cloak with a black hood.20

The brother-houses comprised priests, clerici, and other attendants who helped run the houses.

Later under Florens Radewijns, whose house in Deventer was the first male foundation of the

movement, the brothers included schoolboys in their houses. Initially, students studied at the

renowned municipal school in Deventer, where boys could take propaedeutic studies in

philosophy.21 Three years after Grote’s death, the brothers founded a monastery in Windesheim,

near Zwolle. The new monastery, attracting men from nearby brother-houses, demanded vows

and thereby the obligation to perform certain aspects of communal life.22 As Weiler notes,

Usually their [i.e. members of these monasteries] life and their spiritual

orientation was, for the most part, similar to the [lay] brothers’, admittedly with

the exception of the mentoring of students and pastoral care in parishes. They

copied and illuminated books, as the brothers also did, and applied themselves

to the same virtues of humility, obedience, and interiority, which were so

17 A.G. Weiler, ‘Geert Grote en begijnen in de begintijd van de Moderne Devotie’, Ons Geestelijk Erf 69, no. 2 (1995): 134. 18 Scheepsma, 4. 19 Weiler, Geert Grote und seine Stiftungen, 34–35. 20 Weiler, 36. 21 Weiler, 38. 22 Weiler, 46.

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characteristic of the brother-communities from which this monastic community

originated.23

It was at least five years after Grote’s conversion that his way of life became normative for the

sisters and brothers, mostly likely when Johannes Brinkerinck took over as rector of the house

for poor women in Deventer in 1393.24

The Devotio Moderna’s organized mode of communal living entailed a reaction to felt abuses

dominating their Church and society, the scourge of greed among their fellow countrymen, and

faith turned deathly cold amongst the clergy.25 Part of this creativity and inventiveness drew on

the importance they placed on interiority, ynnicheit in their vernacular. 26 In these voluntary

associations, sisters and brothers aimed at building up an interior devotion.27

Later writers within the New Devout understood Grote to be the initial impetus behind their

new movement. “Out of his preaching, life, and conduct,” wrote Rudolph Dier Muden, living

amongst the brothers two generations after Grote’s death,

much fruit was produced. For many adhered to him, imitating his conversion

(namely, master John Huxaria, master John Brinkerinck and many others who

renounced the world and its desires).28

The received memory of Geert Grote animated the Devotio Moderna, a voluntary community

aimed at mutual encouragement towards love for God. The story of his conversion, the

spectacular repudiation of his university education, and a life turned away from scholastic,

university culture, became paradigmatic of what the movement meant, both to its adherents and

23 Weiler, 46. Im Übrigen war ihr Leben und ihre geistliche Orientierung größtenteils dem der Brüder gleich, freilich mit Ausnahme der Betreuung der Schüler und der Seelsorge in Pfarreien. Sie kopierten und illuminierten Bücher, wie das auch die Fratres taten, und befleißigten derselben Tugenden der Demut, des Gehorsams und der Innerlichkeit, die so charakteristisch für die Brüdergemeinschaften waren, aus denen diese klösterliche Gemeinschaft hervorgegangen war. 24 Weiler, ‘Geert Grote en begijnen in de begintijd van de Moderne Devotie’, 115. 25 Weiler, ‘Recent Historiography on the Modern Devotion: Some Debated Questions’, 173. 26 Rijcklof Hofman et al., eds., Inwardness, Individualization, and Religious Agency in the Late Medieval Low Countries: Studies in The ‘Devotio Moderna’ and Its Contexts, (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols Publishers, 2020). 27 Weiler, 173. 28 Muden, 7. Ex eius predicatione, vite & conversatione fructus multus provenit: nam adheserunt ei multi eius conuersationem imitantes, scilicet dominus Iohannes de Huxaria, dominus Iohannes Brinkerinck & et multii alii abrenunciantes seculo & concupiscentiis eius.

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its detractors. I take this paradigmatic conversion of Geert Grote as the point of departure for

this thesis.

The bulk of recent scholarship has focused on the legal and social aspects of the Devotio Moderna.

The historical literature has made much of the fact that the New Devout existed at a time when

the private sphere was developing, a change reflected in their voluntary communities and legal

treatises defending their modus vivendi. However, the stance of the New Devout towards the

contemplative, devotional life versus a life of learning and erudition is still unresolved. As yet (see

literature review below) there has been no satisfactory explanation of the attitude or worldview

that guided the sisters and brothers to respond to scholastic, university culture with such hostility

and opprobrium, nor have scholars fully accounted for this attitude amongst the New Devout

with their development of a new semi-religious, individualized way of life. This thesis addresses

this lacuna by articulating the seemingly conflicting positions and actions of the Devotio Moderna,

with a particular focus on the developing stages of the movement, and then situating this

problem within the historical development of scholarship on the movement.

From its earliest stages, the Devotio Moderna was hostile to the university and the scholasticism it

housed. However, the movement still retained many aspects of erudition and learning that belie

simple anti-intellectual piety as its driving force. Grote outlined the newfound impetus for his life

in his Conclusa et proposita, non vota (Conclusions and Propositions, not Vows), a document later

formative for the creation of the Fratres et sorores communis vitae, the Brothers and Sisters of the

Common Life. “To the glory and honor and service of God and to the salvation of my soul”

Grote wrote, “I intend to order my life.”29 Central to Grote’s new vision, and the focal point of

this thesis, was his rejection of temporal, worldly learning and knowledge in favor of a life of

devotion. In his Conclusa, Grote counselled strongly against the allure of worldly learning. “You

ought to remove these superstitions and other curiosities from your mind,” Grote wrote.30 “To

29 Conclusa, 371. Ad gloriam et honorem et servitium Dei intendo vitam meam ordinare, et ad salutem animae meae. 30 Conclusa, 372. Omnes has supersitiones et alias curiositates debes a mentibus hominum removere.

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follow every emulation of God, I am certain, is wisdom and prudence.”31 Grote warned his

followers against the meretricious study of the stars in his Conclusa:

You ought not to practice anything of the forbidden sciences for any person in

the world; for these pursuits are evil, suspicious, and suspect, and prohibited in

themselves… For such a choice is prohibited in the Decretals and by St. Paul.

Moreover, whatever I set out to do, in the name of the Lord I shall begin… and

do not let any of your faith depend on fate or on the celestial bodies, but on

things from the hope of God and prayer, and good spirits and their

safekeeping.32

These forms knowledge were common currency during Geert Grote’s education at the

University of Paris. Grote also counselled his followers to reject other forms of knowledge and

learning that had become mainstays of university education.

It is most rare that anyone adhering to the lucrative sciences, or medicine, or

law, or Decretals be of character or fair in their dealings, or just, or quiet, or

living uprightly. Therefore, do not spend any time in geometry, arithmetic,

rhetoric, dialectics, grammar, the lyrical poets, law, or astrology.33

Following Bernard of Clairvaux, Grote took aim specifically at his alma mater, the University of

Paris.

Again, according to Bernard, offer no word by which you may appear very

religious or learned. Indeed, avoid and abhor public disputation either for the

31 Conclusa, 371. Omnem aemulationem Dei sequi, de qua mihi certum est esse scientiam et discretionem. 32 Conclusa, 372. Item, pro nullo homine mundi exercere debes aliquam scientiarum prohibitarum; quia res in multis in se malae, suspiciosae, et suspectae, et prohibitae… Talis enim electio prohibita est in Decretis et a Sanctis Patribus. Item, quicquid incipiam, in nomine Do mini incipiam… Et non dependeat aliqua spes in fato, vel orbibus coelestibus, alia a spe Dei, et oratione, et bonis Spiritibus, et eorum custodia. 33 Conclusa, 373. Unde rarissime est, quod, qui scientiis lucrativis, vel Medicinae, vel Legibus, vel Decretis, inhaeret, rectus sit, vel aequus in ratione, vel justus, vel quietus, vel recte vivens. Item, tu nullum tempus consumes in Geometricis, Arithmeticis, Rhetoricis, Dialecticis, Grammaticis, Lyricis Poetis, Judicialibus, Astrologis.

19

sake of triumphing or appearances, which is litigious. Such are the disputations

of the theologians and philosophers at Paris.34

Geert Grote’s attitude towards knowledge, learning, and education thus seems overwhelmingly

negative: something dangerous that is wont to get in the way of one’s devotion and worship of

God. Florens Radewijns, a disciple of Grote under whose oversight the movement took shape

institutionally, likewise warned off those in his care from pursuing university study.35 The mystic

Henry Mande († 1431), himself a follower of Radewijns, had little interest in pursuing knowledge,

dismissing it as having little value in cultivating a true, introspective knowledge of oneself.36

Particularly loathing scholastic philosophers, and the pagans Galen, Hippocrates, Socrates, and

Aristotle, Mande compared the professors of his time to the Pharisees and scribes whom Christ

subjected to opprobrium.37 “Since there is no limit to the number of books and treatises,” wrote

Henry Mande, echoing the teacher of Ecclesiastes, “and each writes according to his conviction,

let us listen to the wise man, to all the readings necessary for sanctity, that is: fear God with

childlike fear and keep His commandments with love.”38 Thomas à Kempis († 1471) was vocal in

his contempt for scholastic logic, concerning himself with praxis over dogma, lived faith over

formal logic.39 “What does it benefit you,” Thomas à Kempis asked in the famous opening of his

Imitatio Christi,

to hold disputations on the Trinity if you lack humility and thereby displease the

Trinity? Truly, lofty words do not make a person holy or righteous. But a

virtuous life makes a person dear to God. I desire more to know compunction

34 Conclusa, 374. Item, secundem Bernardum, nullum verbum proferas, de quo multum religiosus vel scientificus apareas. Item, omnem disputationem publicam vitare et abhorrere, quae est litigiosa vel ad triumphandum vel ad apparendum; sicut sunt omnes disputationes Theologorum et Artistarum Parisiis. 35 Spoelhof 144-6 in Regnerus Richardus Post, The Modern Devotion: Confrontation with Reformation and Humanism (Leiden: Brill, 1968), 35. 36 Mathilde van Dijk, ‘Henry Mande: The Making of a Male Visionary in Devotio Moderna’, in Saints, Scholars, and Politicians: Gender as a Tool in Medieval Studies: Festschrift in Honour of Anneke Mulder-Bakker on the Occasion of Her Sixty-Fifth Birthday, (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005), 144–47. 37 Spoelhof 176-179 in Post, The Modern Devotion: Confrontation with Reformation and Humanism, 37. 38 G. Wiser, 89 in Post, 43. Ende want der boeken ende schriften geen getal en is, ende want een ygelic scrijft na sinen gevoelen, so laet ons te samen met den wissen man ein eynd horen alre lezinge, die ones noet is tot onser salichheit; dat is gode onsien ende vruchten (vrezen) mit den kijntliken anxte ende van mynnen sijn geboden houden. 39 Post, 46.

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that to know its definition. If you knew the whole Bible outwardly, and the

sayings of all the philosophers, what would it have benefitted you without the

grace and love of God? “Vanity of vanities and all is vanity” besides to love God

and to serve him alone. This is the height of wisdom: through disregard for the

world to stretch out for the heavenly realms… Remember often this saying:

“The eye is never tired of seeing, nor is the ear filled with hearing.”40

In Geert Grote’s final years, most likely the year of his death in 1384, he wrote his Tractatus de

quattuor generibus meditationum sive contemplationum (Tract concerning the Four Kinds of Meditation or rather

Contemplation), also known as his Sermo de nativitate domini (Sermon on the Nativity of the Lord). Grote’s

Tractatus was essentially a reflection on the path to sure and solid knowledge and featured a

stinging excursus on the failings of philosophy, and philosophers, in the present time.

Oh, how misguided are the young people of today by the person of Aristotle or

any other philosopher, who they extol with an amazed mind. Even before they

get to the heart of the matter, they persuade and convince themselves of many

things that they scarcely understand… This in philosophy is a greater and more

common impediment: that all, according to the first way, when they discuss the

essence of things, nature, quiddity, material things, form, genera and species – they

discuss in the mind, not in the actual matter. For the most part they are versed

in the forms of letters. I confess that I was for a long time a philosopher.41

40 TK 2 :6. Quid prodest tibi alta de Trinitate disputare; si careas humilitate unde displiceas Trinitati? Vere alta verba non faciunt sanctum et iustum: sed virtuosa vita efficit Deo carum. Opto magis sentire compunctionem: quam scire eius definitionem. Si scires totam bibliam exterius et omnium philosophorum dicta; quid totum prodesset sine caritate Dei et gratia? Vanitas vanitatum et omnia vanitas: praeter amare Deum et illi soli servire. Ista est summa sapientia: per contemptum mundi tendere ad regna caelestia. Memento illius frequenter proverbii; quia non satiabitur oculus visu: nec auris impletur auditu. 41 Grote in R.R. Post 163. Heu, quam malesuadi ex hodie iuvenculi ex persona Aristotilis vel alterius philosphi, quem mente magnifice extollunt, plurima que vix ymmo antequam medullutus intelligent sibi suadent et persuadent ex sola persona dicentis… Aliud vero hoc in philosophie maius et communius est impedimentum, quia omnes iuxta primum modum cum de rerum essenciis, naturis, quidditatibus, materialis, forma, generibus et speciebus tractant, mente non in re, sed pro maiori parte in formis litterarum versantur. Sic fateor me diu valde philosophatum.

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There are then elements of Geert Grote’s (and his followers’) thought that seem anti-intellectual,

suggesting Geert Grote and his followers had a relatively low view of learning over spending

their energy and time in simple devotion to God and pastoral care.

Yet Geert Grote and his followers, for all their apparent antipathy towards worldly learning and

knowledge, engaged in practices that involved vast amounts of reading, writing, and

argumentation. Many of the New Devout still held the great texts and authors of the past in high

esteem. Although Geert Grote forsook his worldly learning upon his conversion in 1372, it is

worth noting the substance of this learning. The later Vita written by Muden begins by

describing Grote’s adolescence, a time spent in study at the University of Paris.42 According to

the somewhat effusive praise of one of Grote’s contemporaries, Wilhelm Cantor of Paris, Grote

excelled during his time at Paris, such that “he was second to none in all the sciences – liberal,

natural, moral and civil, canon law, and theological.” 43 Struck by a sudden illness, Grote’s

conversion was precipitated by his knowledge that he was near death, a fact gleaned, Muden tells

us, because “Master Geert… was a doctor of medicine.”44 Whatever the efficacy of his medieval

medical training, it is clear enough that Grote was educated to high, perhaps the highest,

contemporary standards.

Upon conversion, Grote rejected his possessions and inheritance. He wore a humble habit and

ate little food. Indeed, Muden remarks, somewhat tongue in cheek, that Grote’s eating habits

were so uninspiring that he kept a supply of sacred readings in order to provide some spiritual

nourishment should the physical nourishment of his food be lacking.45

42 Muden, 1. Contulit se in adolescentia sua in studium Parisiense. 43 Muden, 2. quod in omnibus scientiis, liberalibus, naturalibus, moralibus, ciuilibus, canonicis & theologicis nulli secundus esset in orbe. 44 Muden, 3 Post inspexit Magister Gherardus urinam propriam, quia doctus erat in medicina, & videbatur sibi quod mors erat in propinquo. 45 Muden, 3. Expoliavit se etiam possessionibus sibi derelictis a parentibus fatis amplis. Carthusiensibus iuxta Arnhem tradidit unum fundum seu agros perpetuo possidendos, & ipsi reddiderunt ei quosdam redditus ad vita ipsius. Abiecit secularum habitum & induit humilem habitum & penitencialem desuper; subtus vero cilicium. Cibus eius erat parcus & frugalis, ipse sibimet solebat perparare sive coquere cibos: Et ut liberius posset vacare sacre lectioni seu oratione, frequenter solebat coquere pisa, que non indigent in coctura magna sollicitudine.”

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But what is striking, and a significant contrast to Grote’s asceticism, was his profligacy when it

came to collecting books. Grote recognized that for his new-found preaching mission he needed

resources. Thus Muden tells us that Grote set off for Paris in his penitential habit for the purpose

of buying many books, something Muden could corroborate by the richness of the library of his

own congregation of brothers, the books of which had come from Grote’s own personal

collection, and which Muden informs us cost a copious amount of money.46 After spending five

years after his conversion “working to reform his person to the likeness of God, into which he

had been created,” Grote began to preach through Holland in the vernacular.47 So devoted to his

great collection of books was Geert Grote that he sometimes had them carted around with him

in a barrel, providing ready access to his precious tomes whenever he needed them.48

Grote put his Parisian education to regular use, even after his conversion. In his Conclusa, to

justify his rejection of university learning, Grote called on the writing of Seneca to bolster his

argument. “For all these things are rejected by Seneca, and they must be looked on by a good

man with a reluctant eye.”49 Grote then added a list of caveats to his denunciation of worldly

fields of knowledge. He told his readers that the pagan philosophy in Plutarch’s Moralia was still

worth a read, even if it was not Christian, because it blended philosophical questions with more

moral concerns.50 Plato and Socrates were still useful because, unlike most of philosophy, they

focused on moral matters, and Grote marshalled the work of St. Augustine to justify their

inclusion.51 The apparent antipathy of Grote towards the university did not always extend to its

syllabus, even when it came to pagan authors.

46 Muden, 4. Perrexit Parisos in habitu penitenciali sive abiecto, emens ibidem multos libros, de quibus nostra libraria est ditata, & exposuit pro eis aurum copiosum, quod peterat implere cruselinum ex quo vinum bibitur, ut audivi ab ore illius. 47 Muden, 5. Post conversionem suam latuit magister Gherardus quinque annis, laborans interiorem suam hominem reformare ad similitudinem Dei, ad quam creates fuerat. Deinde ordinatus Dyaconus cepit predicare vulgo uerbum Dei. 48 Muden, 5. Cum pergeret trans mare, tanta tempestas orta est, quod vix libros suos, quos secum habuit inclusos in una tonna, potuit preseruare illesos ab aquis. 49 Conclusa, 373. Haec enim omnia per Senecam reprobantur, et retracto oculo bono viro respicienda sunt. 50 Conclusa, 373. Item, inter omnes scientias Gentilium Moralia minus abhorrenda sunt; que sepe sunt multum utilia et proficua. 51 Conclusa, 373. Unde sapientiores omnem Philosophiam ad mores retorquebantur, sicut Socrates et Plato. Et, si de altis rebus dixerunt, etiam sub levi moralitate ea figurative, secundum beatum Augustinum et experientiam tuam, tradiderunt ut et inviri posset semper mos iuxta cognitione.

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The prevalence of book-copying and excerpting exemplified this embrace of scholarly habits.

The sisters and brothers were encouraged to keep rapiaria, “snatchings” written in journals of

their reflections and meditative insights that became communal property of their house upon

death.52 The Brothers and Sisters of the Common Life also engaged in linguistic work, using their

knowledge and skill to translate liturgical texts into vernacular.53 After Geert Grote was barred

from preaching, the New Devout even translated select portions of the Psalms.54 The New

Devout expressed their piety musically, by creating and circulating song manuscripts that

embodied an affective expression of piety.55 Many of their songs included a melody reference, a

Tongabe. These melody references often harkened to already existing secular songs.56 These sisters

and brothers regularly engaged with the culture around them.57 Although the sisters and brothers

sought to draw the world into their way of life, the Devotio Moderna nonetheless engaged in

transforming the cultural and artistic artefacts of their community into works of theological

significance.58 Particularly in their later phase, the New Devout put the technology of the printing

press to use. The sisters and brothers printed in Latin and the vernacular.59

The activity of the schools run or facilitated by the sisters and brothers also attests to the great

energy they invested in the education of boys, evidenced by the illustrious alumni of their

schools. Thomas à Kempis received his education directly from Grote’s disciples in Deventer.

Martin Luther († 1546) attended a New Devout school in Magdeburg. John Calvin († 1564) spent

four years in Paris in the brethren-run dormitory of Montaigu, as did Erasmus († 1536). The

alumnus of the Universities of Freiburg and Erfurt Jacob Wimpheling († 1528), the Protestant

52 Nikolaus Staubach, ‘Diversa Raptim Undique Collecta: Das Rapiarium im geistlichen Reformprogramm der Devotio Moderna’, in Florilegien, Kompilationen, Kollektionen. Literarische Formen des Mittelalters, ed. Kaspar Elm, (Wiesbaden, 2000), 115–48. 53 Youri Desplenter, ‘The Latin Liturgical Song Subtitled. Middle Dutch Translations of Hymns and Sequences’, Church History and Religious Culture 88, no. 3 (2008): 399. 54 J. G. Heymans, ed., Psalters de Moderne Devotie, (Leiden: Brill, 1978). 55 Christoph Burger, ‘Late Medieval Piety Expressed in Song Manuscripts of the Devotio Moderna’, Church History and Religious Culture 88, no. 3 (2008): 330. 56 Hermina Joldersma, ‘Appropriating Secular Song for Mystical Devotion in the Late Middle Ages: The Tannhäuser Ballad in Brussels MS II, 2631’, Mystics Quarterly 18, no. 1 (1992): 16. 57 Maria Alberta Lücker, Meister Eckhart und Die Devotio Moderna, (Leiden: Brill, 1950), 80. 58 Ulrike Hascher-Burger and Hermina Joldersma, ‘Introduction: Music and the Devotio Moderna’, Church History and Religious Culture 88, no. 3 (2008): 313. 59 Koen Goudriaan, ‘The Devotio Moderna and the Printing Press (ca. 1475-1540)’, Church History and Religious Culture, no. 93 (2013): 605.

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reformer Martin Bucer († 1551), Erasmus’ associates Beatus Rhenanus († 1547) and Rudolphus

Agricola († 1485), the Hebrew scholar Wessel Gansfort († 1489), Pope Adrian VI († 1523), the

director of the Latin school at Sélestat Ludwig Dringenberg († 1477), the Greek textbook writer

Johannes Murmellius († 1517), and Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa († 1464) were all formed to

substantial, if varying, degrees by the education of the New Devout. Alexander Hegius († 1498),

himself an educational pioneer of the fifteenth century, imbibed the educational practices of the

New Devout.

While many aspects of the schools run or facilitated by the New Devout were borrowed from

other schools and movements already in existence, the New Devout were innovative in their

educational practices. The New Devout sought to attend to the whole person, enfolding the

student in the rhythms and habits of the adults’ way of life. Brothers organized their schools into

“grades” through which each boy progressed, a strategy that was adopted by educators like

Johannes Sturm († 1589), John Calvin, John Colet († 1519), and widely throughout the Jesuit

order.60 While the schools of the New Devout sometimes adopted vernacular instruction, the

study of Greek, Latin, and even Hebrew shows the high value the New Devout placed on

philological criticism and accuracy. While Erasmus was critical of his schooling with the New

Devout, he was nonetheless glowing in his praise of the architects of their educational

philosophy, Rudolphus Agricola and Alexander Hegius:

I see a great many most learned men of our own time who make no slight

approach to the ancient eloquence. The first that occurs to me is Rudolphus

Agricola, the preceptor of my schoolmaster, Alexander Hegius… Alexander is

himself no degenerate disciple of such a master, and represents with so much

elegance the style of the Ancients that if his verse were before you without a

title, you might easily mistake the author.61

60 Julia Henkel, ‘An Historical Study of the Educational Contributions of the Brethren of the Common Life’ (ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 1962), 3–4. 61 A. Hyma, The Youth of Erasmus, (Ann Arbor, 1930), 112 in Henkel, 51.

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A similar paradoxical rejection and embrace of learning is the sisters and brothers’ absorption of

the writings of the Desert Fathers, that fourth-century movement of early Christians who fled

secular living to seek a life of asceticism in the Egyptian desert.62 The community at Windesheim,

the first fully-fledged Chapter of the New Devout, and later the community of New Devout

women at Diepenveen, comprised textual communities that imagined themselves as part of a

tradition that stretched back the Desert Fathers and through them to Christ.63

Kasper Elm has shown that the spirituality of the New Devout was not interested in novelty, as

the adjective moderna might suggest to a modern reader. Rather,

it took its place in a long tradition of monastic and ascetic spirituality that, in the

eleventh and the fifteenth centuries as much as in the high Middles Ages, had

long stood in the field of tensions between ecclesiastical office and theological

schooling – and yet never broke beyond the boundaries of orthodoxy.64

John van Engen has explained the Devotio Moderna sobriquet as more freighted with a sense of

“modern-day devotion” rather than a movement animated by a new, unprecedented theological

vision – as Francis Oakley sees the movement.65 As van Engen writes in his Sisters and Brothers of

the Common Life, the account of New Devout most influential in the anglosphere and

determinative for lines of further inquiry in the twenty first century:

For nineteenth-century scholars it leaped off the page, suggesting incipient new

beginnings, a post-medieval future. It projected these fifteenth-century actors

62 John H. van Engen, ‘The Sayings of the Fathers: An Inside Look at the New Devout in Deventer. Appendix: A Working Edition of the “Dicta Patrum”.’, in Continuity and Change. The Harvest of Late Medieval and Reformation History. Essays Presented to Heiko A. Oberman on His 70th Birthday (Leiden, 2000), 279–320. 63 Mathilde van Dijk, ‘Disciples of the Deep Desert: Windesheim Biographers and the Imitation of the Desert Fathers’, Church History and Religious Culture 86, no. 1 (2006): 261. 64 Kaspar Elm and James D. Mixson, ‘The “Devotio Moderna” and the New Piety between the Later Middle Ages and the Early Modern Era’, in Religious Life between Jerusalem, the Desert, and the World: Selected Essays, (Leiden Boston: Brill, 2016), 320–21. 65 Francis Oakley, The Western Church in the Later Middle Ages (Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press, 1979), 102.

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onto a larger stage led by Renaissance humanists or Reformation believers, the

Devout preparing for either or both.66

Leonard Goossens also points out that the concept of the Devotio Moderna was adumbrated in

Henry Suso’s († 1339) Horologium, the idea being that a reinvigorated, faithful devotion is required

as a response to Christ in the present.67

The moniker Devotio Moderna is not fully captured by any one English term, many of which have

been suggested: Modern Devotion, Modern-Day Devout, Present-day Devotion, a Piety-for-

now. One could translate this moniker idiomatically in contemporary language as the New-wave

Faithful or the Neo-Devout. The term devotio stretched back to patristic and classical roots,

suggesting both an interior and exterior devotion. However, this sense broadened in the medieval

period to include more or less explicit reference to liturgical observance.68 Moderna unhelpfully

maps neatly onto its modern English false-friend “modern.” However, the emphasis of this

adjective as concerned the New Devout lay on time of occurrence rather than conceptual

novelty. What was new or modern was not the concept or movement in question but the time in

which such a concept or movement happened. Contrary to a contemporary sense of “modern,”

moderna could apply to ancient truths faithfully retrieved and revivified in the present. This was

the case for the Devotio Moderna. Van Engen summarizes the lexical range of the term Devotio

Moderna.

In Latin the word “moderna” means “present-day” over against a long-ago past

(antiqua). To speak of “devotion in the present-day” (moderna) was, at least

implicitly, to recall an “earlier day” (antiqua), a better day, of apostles and Desert

Fathers, of twelfth-century monks and thirteenth-century friars. The word thus

harbored an agenda: to appropriate in this age (moderna) the piety (devotio) of

those neglected medieval ancients. It also cast glaring light on “present time” as

66 Van Engen, Sisters and Brothers of the Common Life: The Devotio Moderna and the World of the Later Middle Ages, 7. 67 L. A. M. Goossens, De Meditatie in de eerste tijd van de Moderne Devotie (Haarlem: J.H. Gottner, 1952), 23. 68 Richard Joseph Schoeck, Erasmus of Europe: The Making of a Humanist, 1467-1500 (Savage: Barnes & Noble, 1990), 264.

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inadequate, lax in religion or barbarous in learning, counterposed to those

ancients so worthy of emulation.69

With this discussion and nuance in mind, I term this movement the New Devout or, more

simply, the Devotio Moderna. I do so with the above complexity in mind.

Of course, to fashion one’s community as a new wave of oldtime, apostolic Christianity

demanded a premium on reading and learning, without which such literary imagination could not

get off the ground. Where the Desert Fathers fled cities and led lives devoid of technology and

books, the New Devout modelled themselves on Grote and nestled their communities amongst

the many littoral market-towns and city centers of the Low Countries, filling their libraries with

books and exploring new printing technologies. Although the New Devout modelled themselves

on the Desert Fathers, this did not extend to their books. Once more, this complicates our

understanding of the attitude towards learning and knowledge embodied in the Devotio Moderna.

The title of this thesis, Confrontations with Scholastic, University Culture, understands the Devotio

Moderna as counterpoised against the university as it was developing, shaping and, in turn, itself

reflecting the moves towards our modern world. By scholastic, university culture, I describe a

Social Imaginary contemporary to the New Devout that developed primarily out of the

University of Paris and that was pioneered by scholars such as Henry of Ghent, Duns Scotus,

Bonaventure, and William of Ockham in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The phrase –

scholastic, university culture – points both to the educational ideology known as scholasticism

and to the institutional culture of the university that supported it. I set out this imaginary in detail

in Chapter 4, primarily in relation to the development of the profession of theologia and

metaphysical univocity. (Just as the New Devout took aim specifically at the University of Paris

in their indictments of scholastic, university culture, I focus my analysis of this Social Imaginary

on that same university.) The basis for my analysis is that we make little headway until we

untangle and observe the place of the Devotio Moderna in the wider transformations identified with

69 Van Engen, Sisters and Brothers of the Common Life: The Devotio Moderna and the World of the Later Middle Ages, 7.

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our modern world occurring during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries that stood in close

relation to the unfolding development of the universitas, the university. The epicenter of polemic

and confrontation for the New Devout, I argue, lay with the scholastic, university culture that

Grote and later leaders of the movement spurned. My contention is that this confrontation with

scholastic, university culture illuminates the cultural distinctives of the Devotio Moderna because

both their own foundation stories and the practices of learning and reflection they exhorted

emerged in often explicit contradistinction to those of the universitas. This is something seldom

acknowledged by other scholars. In choosing this title I am consciously playing with that of

Regnerus R. Post’s monumental work, The Modern Devotion: Confrontation with Reformation and

Humanism (1968). I include a literature review below, where I set out the scope, aims, and

objectives of this thesis in more detail, but it is worth noting here what I want to highlight by this

allusion. Post styled his work as an intervention into anglosphere scholarship that had taken, in

his view, a too generous view on the causal link between the Devotio Moderna and Renaissance

humanism. Post is at pains to dispel this connection as at best misguided and at worst sectarian.

By calling his title to mind I want to reposition the New Devout and understand them as,

fundamentally, a response to scholastic, university culture. This thesis explains how and why this

is so.

I am conscious of my analytical position, writing about a movement that eschewed the university

within the descendent of the universitas, the modern research university. To an extent, I write

from the vantage point of the New Devout’s opponents, the institution against whom they drew

their impetus but which, ultimately, also carried the moment; the universitas still exists today, but

the Devotio Moderna does not. Such as awareness, however, opens up the opportunity for

reflection on how this positioning might itself have shaped how scholars have viewed the New

Devout, and might therefore require unpicking at the seams. Considering this positioning throws

light on much unsaid and taken for granted in analysis of the New Devout within the institution

of the university

This task of unravelling the historical threads that stretch from the modern university to the

medieval universitas requires a different sort of thinking to avoid becoming bogged down in

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specialist minutiae of cataloguing various aspects of the movement. Of course, I will document

and analyze various aspects of the Devotio Moderna in the coming chapters, but the fact remains

that my argument hinges on a view that sees the time of the New Devout as modernity-in-the-

making, not because of changes to sociality, which recent scholars on the Devotio Moderna have

noted, but because they represented a rear-guard action against a new institution, the universitas,

that the sisters and brothers could sometimes work within, but could ultimately not reconcile

with their received imaginary that drew from the wellspring of Augustine and not Aristotle, and

which was housed within the Church and not the collegium.

The story of the Devotio Moderna comes bundled together with that of secularism and modern

accounts of secularism’s genesis. Some scholars have begun to challenge the intellectual

hegemony of the Social Imaginary of today’s secular university. In a way, these scholars attempt

to retrieve in part the Social Imaginary that led the New Devout to reject scholastic, university

culture. This move has been suggested recently by the Radical Orthodoxy movement. This

movement, led by John Milbank, Catherine Pickstock, and Simon Oliver, argues that the secular

is rooted not in scientific advancements but in novel theological moves made roughly

contemporary to the early stages of the Devotio Moderna. Radical Orthodoxy set itself the task of

unearthing the historical linkages between developments in late medieval metaphysics and the

ostensibly unavoidable and “just so” secularism of the modern West – something akin to Charles

Taylor’s dismantling of the “subtraction story” of secularism or the argument of Alasdair

McIntyre’s After Virtue. Extending the thesis of Radical Orthodoxy, I suggest that the Devotio

Moderna reacted against scholastic, university culture because they observed and felt a decisive

break had occurred, a break which Milbank, Pickstock, and Oliver see illustrated in the difference

between the metaphysics of Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus. 70 In this new metaphysics,

identified by the New Devout with university, scholastic culture, God and creatures participate in

being in a shared, “univocal” sense, thereby rendering ascriptions to God’s being as a mimetic

representation of reality rather than, in the previous Augustinian/Thomistic system, an

70 Simon Oliver and John Milbank, eds., The Radical Orthodoxy Reader, (London; New York: Routledge, 2009), 21; Pickstock, ‘Duns Scotus’, 548.

30

experience of God’s being that implicated the heart.71 This assertion of a decisive, modernity-

making break occurring between Aquinas and Scotus is essential to my argument, the Devotio

Moderna roughly corresponding to the Augustinian/Thomistic system and the Scotian position

represented by the scholastic, university culture of the New Devout’s imagination.

I am also indebted to the work of Bradley Gregory’s The Unintended Reformation (2012) for

demonstrating the possibility of attempting an analysis of such scope and deconstruction. Prior

to the publication of Gregory’s work, it had seemed implausible to identify modern secularism

with the rankle and roil of the Reformation. Yet, where Gregory traces genealogically several

themes in his own work (the development of the exclusion of God from public discourse, moral

relativism, state-regulated churches, late capitalism) I pick up Gregory’s final thread: the

secularization of knowledge. As Gregory argues:

Regardless of the academic discipline, knowledge in the Western world today is

considered secular by definition. Its assumptions, methods, content, and truth

claims are and can only be secular, framed not only by the logical demand of

rational coherence, but also by the methodological postulate of naturalism and

its epistemological correlate, evidentiary empiricism. Knowledge must be based

on evidence, it must make sense, and (aside from purely conceptual

abstractions) it can neither assume nor conclude that anything which putatively

transcends the universe is real, else it ceases to count as knowledge.72

This observation, true enough of the modern research university in the West, depends on a

historical analysis of the university itself, that early on in the development of the universitas a

mutation occurred whereby theological knowledge was siloed off from other knowledges,

drastically altering both.73 This protected theology, but was also its downfall, for by shielding

71 Montag, ‘Revelation: The False Legacy of Suárez’. 72 Brad S. Gregory, The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society (Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2012), 299. 73 For a discussion of Gregory’s thesis, see: Euan Cameron, ‘Living with Unintended Consequences’, Historically Speaking 13, no. 3 (2012): 11–13; Carlos Eire, ‘The Intentional Challenge of The Unintended Reformation’, Historically Speaking 13, no. 3 (2012): 14–16; Brad S. Gregory, ‘Reply to Euan Cameron, Carlos Eire, Bruce Gordon, and Alexandra Walsham’, Historically Speaking 13, no. 3 (2012): 16–21; Bruce

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dogma and divine revelation from critical enquiry, the theologian was gently pulled down from

the soapbox of public discourse.74

Gregory moves quickly through the first centuries of the university’s history. His concern is the

trajectory of this development over the next six hundred years, with the Reformation as the key

transformative watershed. The concern of this thesis, however, is the Devotio Moderna, an analysis

of which spans roughly 150-200 years. There are, however, connections between Gregory’s

account of the unintended Reformation and the confrontations between the Devotio Moderna and

scholastic, university culture. The Devotio Moderna, although not figuring as a key section in his

account, is nonetheless present in the overall movement Gregory traces. As far as concerns the

New Devout, Gregory’s polemic offers purchase on the riddle of the Devotio Moderna, since they

are pitched at just the time when, according the Gregory, the key break occurred in the

university.

Unlike Gregory’s claims about the Reformation, one can make no grand claim that the Devotio

Moderna made the modern world. I will argue over the course of this thesis, however, that we can

explain the Devotio Moderna better than we have hitherto by keeping it in mind that the movement

sits at a time of revolution, the importance of which was not lost on the sisters and brothers who

fought against scholastic, university culture.

Gordon, ‘Response to Brad Gregory’, Historically Speaking 13, no. 3 (2012): 8–10; Alexandra Walsham, ‘A Response to Brad Gregory’s The Unintended Reformation’, Historically Speaking 13, no. 3 (2012): 5–8; Brad S. Gregory, ‘The Intentions of The Unintended Reformation’, Historically Speaking 13, no. 3 (2012): 2–5. 74 Gregory, 305.

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2 LITERATURE REVIEW, AIMS, AND OBJECTIVES, METHOD

Literature Review

Others have previously treated the educational practices of the Devotio Moderna. However, no

analysis has addressed the broader historical process that led the New Devout to understand

education as they did in contradistinction to other contemporary institutions of learning.

Furthermore, no analysis has successfully articulated the imaginary of the Devotio Moderna such

that it might resemble a coherent vision regarding learning, as it clearly was to the original

members of the communities. We have no indication in the sources of any dissonance between

the ideals of the movement and its seemingly contradictory attitude to contemporary scholastic,

university culture.

I do not give an exhaustive bibliography here but draw out the main contours of enquiry and

debate in relation to the Devotio Moderna, taking the polemic between Albert Hyma († 1978) and

Post († 1968) as my point of departure. For extensive bibliographical treatment, see J.W. Alberts

“Zur Historiographie der Devotio Moderna” (1958), Weiler’s “Recent Historiography on the

Modern Devotion: Some Debated Questions” (1985) and his 1999 bibliography in Volgens de norm

van de vroege kerk and the notes to John van Engen’s Sisters and Brothers of the Common Life: the

Devotio Moderna and the World of the Later Middle Ages (2008). Kasper Elm’s 2004 book chapter Die

Devotio Moderna und die neue Frömmigkeit zwischen Spätmittelalter und früher Neuzeit (The “Devotio

Moderna” and the New Piety between the Late Middle Ages and the Early Modern Era) also gives an

excellent historiographical overview.

Terms of Debate: Hyma and Post

What underlying imagination could render coherent such a seemingly paradoxical rejection and

embrace of secular learning? While articulating this rejection and embrace is the aim of this

thesis, it is of course possible simply to conclude that the Devotio Moderna was, ultimately,

incoherent. So argued R.R. Post, whose seminal The Modern Devotion: Confrontation with Reformation

and Humanism (1968) paints a portrait of Grote as a rigid, legalistic mind. For Post, Grote was

first a man of learning, a man intimately familiar with the life of Christ and the canonical

33

Scriptures, the Collationes patrum, the epistles of Paul, the Meditationes and Conscientia of Bernard,

the Horologium of Anselm, the Legenda and Florae sanctorum, Augustine’s Soliloquia and On the Work

of the Blessed Monk, Gregory’s Super Iob and many others. 75 But Post does not reconcile the

conflicted picture we have of Grote, and concludes that the learned Grote lead a double life, a

man torn irreconcilably between his love of learning and the vigor he found late in his life for the

contemptus mundi. Post writes,

His efforts to keep his library well stocked, his sermons and letters with their

many legal arguments, and his juridical advice and other pronouncements are,

however, so many signs that he did not abandon learning altogether, but used it

for the good of others.76

Post concludes that Grote could not harmonize his ideology and his own life. Quite literally, he

did not practice what he preached:

Had Grote applied [his own teaching] he would have been compelled to shut

himself up in a monastery, in order to devote himself increasingly to pondering

on the means of attaining his own salvation and the love of God… In so far,

thus, as he changed his life’s goal, the resolutions formulated here were not

carried out.77

Post describes the movement as drifting further and further from the moorings articulated by

Geert Grote, to the point where the later phases of the movements would have been

unrecognizable and horrified him because of their willingness to include secular sources of

learning like scurrilous Latin poetry in their curriculum.

R.R. Post, in his downbeat assessment of the New Devout, was responding to the scholars

Albert Hyma and Paul Mestwerdt, both of whom had argued strongly for a close, perhaps causal,

linkage between the Devotio Moderna and later Renaissance humanism. Mestwerdt argued first in

75 Post, The Modern Devotion: Confrontation with Reformation and Humanism, 173. 76 Post, 172. 77 Post, 172.

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1917, in his Die Anfänge des Erasmus, that Erasmus was deeply indebted to the Devotio Moderna, and

in doing so implied the character of the movement was intricately connected to later

developments in the sixteenth century. However, it was Albert Hyma who first popularized in

the English-speaking world the supposed causal linkage between the Devotio Moderna and

Renaissance humanism, suggesting that the movement begun by Geert Grote displayed a zeal for

learning that, to a large extent, inspired the Protestant Reformation in the Low Countries. Albert

Hyma’s Renaissance to Reformation (1951) sees Geert Grote and his New Devout as energetic

educators, motivated by a desire to reform the whole world to the love of Christ.78 According to

Hyma, the brothers set up many schools and, even when they weren’t the ones running them,

had close pastoral relationships with schools around them. The brothers housed pupils in

Deventer, Munster, and Zwolle, and so they were involved in communities of scholarship and

education, even without expressly being teachers there.79 Thomas à Kempis’ Imitatio Christi is, in

Hyma’s narrative, directly inspired by Geert Grote and an exemplar for how the New Devout

embraced education and intellectual enquiry.80 Although the embrace of pagan learning and

scurrilous entertainment of the later phase of the Devotio Moderna (towards the end of the

fifteenth century) would have dismayed Grote, Hyma still argues that key Reformation and

Renaissance figures from the Low Countries like Martin Luther, Desiderius Erasmus, John Cele,

Gerard Zerbolt and John Standonck were all indebted to the education provided by the New

Devout. 81 In Hyma’s earlier work, The Christian Renaissance: a History of the "Devotio Moderna.”

(1924) the Devotio Moderna figures as a forerunner for Protestant theology and Renaissance

humanism. Hyma doubled down on his position in a response to a review of the book the

following year.82 The New Devout lived at a nexus of European cultures, where “intellectual as

well as religious and commercial currents met and mingled; and from here they issued forth.”83

The intellectual culture of the New Devout assimilated the culture of the ancients and was the

78 Albert Hyma, Renaissance to Reformation (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1951), 132. 79 Hyma, 133. 80 Hyma, 136. 81 Albert Hyma, The Christian Renaissance: A History of the ‘Devotio Moderna’, 2d ed. (Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1965). 82 A. Hyma, ‘The Influence of the “Devotio Moderna”’, Nederlands Archief Voor Kerkgeschiedenis / Dutch Review of Church History 19 (1926): 277. 83 Hyma, The Christian Renaissance: A History of the ‘Devotio Moderna’, 6.

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wellspring of a “Christian Renaissance.”84 Hyma spends little time dwelling on texts like Grote’s

Conclusa or à Kempis’ opening exposition in the Imitatio Christi, both of which cast serious doubts

over such a straightforward narrative of the Devotio Moderna’s impact on Renaissance humanism

and the Reformation.

In the English-speaking world, the parameters of debate and enquiry were set here in the middle

third of the twentieth century and changed little until towards the turn of the millennium.

Simplifying somewhat for the sake of illustration, we can identify two main approaches to the

New Devout’s relationship to Renaissance humanism and university culture that emerge from

the seminal historiographies of Hyma and Post.

A key piece of scholarship flowing out from the dialectic of Post and Hyma is Julia Henkel’s

dissertation An Historical Study of the Educational Contributions of the Brethren of the Common Life

(1962). In her work Henkel argued strongly that the brothers were innovative and eager

educators who pioneered many aspects of modern educational theory. Henkel suggests the

Devotio Moderna antedated many aspects of the studia humanitatis, that is, Renaissance humanism.

In her dissertation, Julia Henkel catalogued how the New Devout adopted a system of “grades”

to organize their education. Students progressed from elementary Latin grammar to simple Latin

authors, an introduction to Greek, to finally close readings of Aristotle’s Organon, Euclid, Roman

law, and the study of theology and rhetoric.85

Table 1. Henkel's schematization of the brothers' “grade” system.

Grade Content

1 (8th class) Writing and repeating Latin declensions and conjugations

2 (9th class) Basic exercises and sentence structure

3 (10th class) Reading simple Latin authors; grammar, prose, composition, prosody

84 Hyma, 6. 85 Henkel, ‘An Historical Study of the Educational Contributions of the Brethren of the Common Life’, 100–101.

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4 (11th class) Latin syntax completed; reading and imitation of historical Latin

writers; introduction to Greek

5 (12th class) Introduction to logic; principles of rhetoric from Quintilian and Cicero

6 (13th class) Greek composition; close study of Greek grammar and authors; logic

and rhetoric

7 (14th class) Aristotle’s Organon; Euclid, roman law; imitation of Cicero’s orations

8 (15th class) Theology; disputation; rhetoric.

Theodore van Zijl, in 1963, produced another historiographical landmark in his biography of

Geert Grote, Gerard Groote, Ascetic and Reformer (1340-1384). Van Zijl methodically catalogued the

key sources for the life of the founder of the Devotio Moderna, and then moved chronologically

through his life, giving little commentary on the relationship between the New Devout and

university culture or Renaissance humanism aside from observing Grote’s strong classical

formation at the University of Paris. As a biography, it naturally focuses on the key events in

Grote’s life: his adolescence and education at Paris; his sudden conversion and formation at the

hands of Carthusians; his preaching crusades against simony and the large church tower being

built in Utrecht; the revocation of his preaching license in response to the opprobrium he heaped

on lax priests; his zeal for monastic reform; his establishment of the sister-house in his family

home; and, finally, his early death during one of many waves of pestilence.

The either/or framing of discussion relating to the Devotio Moderna has led scholars to play off the

spiritual and intellectual aspects of the movement against each other. However, it is the primary

contention of this thesis that such a view ignores the foundational principles and assumptions the

New Devout held about the world such that their way of life was coherent and meaningful to

them, that is, that intellectual and spiritual formation were inextricably linked – the work of

humility and devotion in fact enabling rather than working in competition to intellection.

We can observe the tendency for modern scholars to follow this polarity in Fanciscus Vanhoof’s

analysis of the Windesheim Congregation. Vanhoof positions the Windesheim Congregation as

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antagonistic towards the new University of Louvain because the brothers prioritized spiritual

progress at the expense of intellectual formation. Since the brothers had no literacy requirements

or knowledge of Latin for admittance into the Chapter’s novitiate, Vanhoof suggests that the

formation of novices at the hands of the brothers at Windesheim was primarily intended towards

the performance of the liturgical round and the tasks that comprised their common life. “In light

of the limits to the novitiate one must not expect that a broad intellectual formation was given…

Devout literature was certainly placed above libros qui intellectum illuminant et de multis dubiis et

quaestionibus informant [books which illuminate the intellect and inform concerning many doubts

and questions].” 86 Vanhoof implies that the brothers had little time for intellectual matters

because “even after their profession no intellectual education was expected and no members of

the cloister were sent to the university, as with other orders.”87 In this view, the brothers prized

physical labor over schooling and favored ad hoc private reading over systematized education.

“Only through self-study could they educate and better themselves.” 88 Although Vanhoof

observes that the brothers possessed a rich library which the brothers spent a lion’s share of their

time copying (with rapiarium at hand!), such activity is merely a sign that that they sought work

“in order to provide their upkeep without giving up their withdrawn way of life.”89 Vanhoof is

not primarily seeking to settle the relationship of the New Devout with scholastic, university

culture, but his analysis of the Canons Regular at Windesheim reveals the assumptions present in

scholarship since Hyma and Post that pits formation and intellectual education against each

other, and for Vanhoof it was spiritual formation that ultimately tipped the scales. “Their

spirituality was primarily directed towards isolation, in order to serve God in silence.”90 In this

view, “there are no traces to be found of an actual theological deepening or a methodically

86 Fanciscus Vanhoof, ‘De reguliere kanunniken van Windes-Heim en de Universiteit van Leuven’, Trajecta. Tijdschrift voor de geschiedenis van het katholiek leven in de Nederlanden 21 (2012): 55. Gezien de beperkte duur van het noviciaat moet men dus niet verwachten dat er een ruime intellectuele vorming werd gegeven. … Devote literatuur werd duidelijk gesteld boven libros qui intellectum illuminant et de multis dubiis et quaestionibus informant. 87 Vanhoof, 56. Ook na hun professie was in de Windesheimse kloosters geen verdere intellectuele opleiding voorzien en werden geen kloosterlingen naar de universiteit gestuurd, zoals in andere orden. 88 Vanhoof, 56. Alleen door zelfstudie konden ze zich verder bekwamen en intellectueel vervolmaken. 89 Vanhoof, 56. Het kopiëren van manuscripten was een ideale manier om in hun levensonderhoud te voorzien zonder hun teruggetrokken leven op te geven. 90 Vanhoof, 56. Hun spiritualiteit was in de eerste plaats gericht op afzondering, om in alle stilte God te dienen.

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performed textual study.”91 Vanhoof’s analysis is one of many that demonstrate the tendency in

modern scholarship to pit the spiritual and educational aspects of the movement against each

other. In this way, Weiler follows this anglosphere trend to pitch the New Devout in relation to

the humanism and scholasticism of the Renaissance, arguing that the movement inhabited a

position caught between the two. “The movement of the Modern Devotion saw itself then also

confronted with the new powers of humanism and the Reformation and would exercise

influence on it and be influenced by it, in a long process of almost two hundred years.”92

Cataloguing Communities

Whereas scholars of the Devotio Moderna in the anglosphere generally followed the well-worn trails

of Hyma and Post, scholarship in Germany and the Low Countries was, and is, less trammeled

by this history. Scholarship emanating from the Low Countries and Germany has spent

considerable time, from approximately the 1970s onwards, cataloguing various houses and

communities within the circle of the Devotio Moderna.

The three volume Monasticon Fratrum Vitae Communis (1977-2004) and the Monasticon Windeshemense

(1977) indexed key male monastic and semi-religious houses of the movement. Similarly,

Heinrich Rüthing argued in his 1985 “Zum Einfluss der Kartäuserstatuten auf die Windesheimer

Konstitutionen” (“Towards the influence of the Carthusian Statutes on the Windesheim

Congregations”) that the social organization of the New Devout owed much the Carthusians, the

order where Geert Grote had spent time as a Donatus, a guest preparing for a new way of life

after his conversion.93 Although smaller, and so requiring broader admission to the electing body

of the community’s leaders, and living less eremetically, Rüthing has shown that “For all

91 Vanhoof, 56. Maar van een eigenlijke theologische uitdieping of een methodisch doorgevoerde tekststudie zijn geen sporen te vinden. 92 A.G. Weiler, ‘De betekenis van de Moderne Devotie voor de europese cultuur’, Trajecta. Tijdschrift voor de Geschiedenis van het Katholiek Leven in de Nederlanden, no. 1 (1992): 34. De beweging van de Moderne Devotie zag zich dan ook geconfronteerd met de nieuwe krachten van het humanisme en de Reformatie, en zou daarop invloed uitoefenen en daarvan de invloed ondergaan, in een lang proces van bijna tweehonderd jaar. 93 Heinrich Rüthing, ‘Zum Einfluss Der Kartäuserstatuten Auf Die Windesheimer Konstitutionen’, Ons Geestelijk Erf 59 (1985): 207.

39

important questions that concerned the social organization of the planned conventual-

association, the Windesheimers modelled themselves on the Carthusians.”94

Sisters of the Common Life

Since the 1980s, more scholars have attended to the life and significance of the female houses

and the contribution of these female writers, prioresses, and sisters to the overall character of the

Devotio Moderna. Gerhard Rehm pioneered research into the sister-houses in their own right in Die

Schwestern vom Gemeinsamen Leben im nordwestlichen Deutschland: Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der Devotio

Moderna und des weiblichen Religiosentums (1985). Rehm observed that though the Sisters of the

Common Life were key to the movement as a whole, exemplifying the charism of the movement

to live together with a common purse without monastic rule, the borders are difficult to draw

between the sisters and other religious communities.95 As a consequence, many sisters and sister-

houses were converted into Franciscan or Augustinian tertiaries. In the course of his analysis,

Rehm began to turn attention to the legal status of the movement as a key site of historical

enquiry.

Consequently, scholarship on female communities has burgeoned. Wybren Scheepsma has

described the way reading, book-production and reflection figured in the patterns of life of the

sisters at Windesheim and Diepenveen. According to Scheepsma the primary goal of reading for

the New Devout was “an inner imitation of God.”96 The education provided by the sisters at

Windesheim were for two main purposes: participation in the daily life of the community

(singing, house discipline etc.) and the "construction of the inner spiritual life."97 This involved a

good deal of training in the language of the Church, often putting young girls through rigorous

educational exercises. Scheepsma recounts via a story from a sisterbook how some sister-houses

required young girls in the care of the sisters to speak only Latin. This was in part because of the

centrality of patristic and later theological works to the sisters' spirituality. "This hunger for

94 Rüthing, 86. Für alle wichtigen Fragen, die die Organisation des geplanten Klosterverbandes betrafen, nahmen sich die Windesheimer die Kartäuser zum Vorbild. 95 Gerhard Rehm, Die Schwestern vom Gemeinsamen Leben im nordwestlichen Deutschland: Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der Devotio moderna und des weiblichen Religiosentums, (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1985), 26. 96 Scheepsma, Medieval Religious Women in the Low Countries, 230. 97 Scheepsma, 42.

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knowledge of the language of the Church may be seen as a sign of the fervor that was current in

Diepenveen at the time."98 Scheepsma stresses that an education in Latin should not be regarded

as exemplifying a single-minded focus on a narrow spirituality nourished by a knowledge of

Latin. "In the medieval world 'being educated' was virtually the same thing as 'knowing Latin'”.99

Scheepsma continues: "taking this as our point of departure when we attempt to assess the

intellectual level with the convents of Windesheim, we may infer that for women it was high

indeed, even though the statutes place no emphasis on it whatsoever." Scheepsma identifies the

key issue: although the sisters achieved unexpectedly high levels of learning and erudition, they

gave no indication in their statutes that this was a goal of their common life. In Scheepsma’s

view:

The devout strove towards an inner imitation of God. To that end it was first

necessary to become familiar with one's sinful nature. Through intensive

meditation the devout would then strive to focus continuously on the divine and

thus keep evil at bay. This interior contemplation was systematically helped by

the reading of edifying literature in which good was given verbal expression in a

variety of ways. In order to remember this material for meditation, the devout

would record important excerpts in his rapiarium. Reading, writing and

meditation are thus inextricably connected in the development of the religious

person.100

This description accurately identifies the goals of these communities of sisters and brothers.

However, what still remains is an articulation of why these particular goals were adopted by the

New Devout, why the goal of love for God led to creating cultures of learning and education,

and why the New Devout believed these goals required the creation of a new sort of semi-

religious sociality in contradistinction to the scholastic, university culture in order to achieve

them.

98 Scheepsma, 45. 99 Scheepsma, 46. 100 Scheepsma, 230.

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The Move to Sociality and Legality as Key Concepts

The polarity between Hyma and Post dominated the terms of engagement for scholars, especially

in the anglosphere, for most of the twentieth century and continued to exert influence over

parameters of enquiry into the Devotio Moderna. A response to this polemic, however, has

emerged that focuses not on the intellectual debts owed to the Devotio Moderna by its Renaissance

and Reformation descendants, but on the semi-religious way of life itself as the key locus of

analysis.101

In his historiographical analysis of 1984, on the 500th anniversary of Geert Grote’s death, Weiler

outlined the topography of analysis on this issue. In light of the work of Paul Mestwerdt in 1917

that saw a shared ethic and intellectual culture between the New Devout and Renaissance

humanism, “Post felt that it was his duty to give the final blow to all kind of ideas, launched in

the past, linking Modern Devotion and Humanism together.”102 The hinge issue for Post’s

analysis was the schools, since both the New Devout and later Renaissance humanism stressed

the importance of schooling and formation to their identity. Albert Hyma, however, revived

Mestwerdt’s take in 1924 and repeated it into the 1960s. As Weiler explains, “In his [Hyma’s]

opinion, the typical biblical and Christian character of Northern European humanism was due to

the Devotio Moderna.”103

Between Hyma and Weiler, however, lay Heiko Oberman. Weiler himself has characterized

Oberman as occupying a middle position between the negative assessment of Post and the

glowing assessment of Hyma of the New Devout’s relation to intellectual culture. According to

Weiler, Oberman saw the New Devout as only coincidentally related to the flowering of so-called

Renaissance humanism. Weiler writes,

But their pedagogical interest was concentrated on an anti-intellectual

promotion of piety, and not on education towards and academic ideal of

101 Kaspar Elm, ‘Die Brüderschaft vom Gemeinsamen Leben: eine geistliche Lebensform zwischen Kloster und Welt, Mittelalter und Neuzeit’’, Ons Geestelijk Erf 59 (1985): 470–96. 102 Weiler, ‘Recent Historiography on the Modern Devotion: Some Debated Questions’, 163. 103 Weiler, 163.

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eloquence. They showed themselves with their monastic humanism the

coalition-partners, not however the promoters of the new forces in education.104

Weiler, himself a student of Post, proposed that a more moderate consensus between Post and

Hyma that locates the spirit of the Devotio Moderna in the changes of mutual association occurring

between the medieval and Early Modern periods. This position has been advocated most

prominently by Weiler himself and John van Engen. Weiler has argued that it can neither be

sustained that the Devotio Moderna acted as pioneers of a Christian Renaissance nor that they acted

as its opponent. Rather, their defining characteristic lay in their blend of piety and pedagogy, that

“the devout and reformation piety mutually influenced each other, especially as far as the praxis

pietatis is concerned.”105 Weiler argues that the peculiarity of the Devotio Moderna lay in their

communities, “which tried to develop a semi-religious form of the common life of free, pious

people between the Middle Ages and modernity.”106 In making this move, Weiler shifted debate

from the intellectual influence of the movement on later centuries towards the issue of their

sociality. Weiler locates the distinctiveness of the Devotio Moderna in their form of sociality, their

common life.

Furthermore, while certain aspects of their common life resembled later forms of Renaissance

humanism, Weiler stresses that this was coincidental to their way of life. Rather than structuring

their way of life around curricula or erudition, the New Devout prioritized their piety.

But this kind of work [i.e. teaching] is not the central operational core of the

Devotio Moderna, as it would become for the Northern Humanists. The Brethren

did concentrate on the praxis pietatis, and did not develop a program of

intellectual culture. Can we really say that the conception of Grote and Cele for

the city school of Zwolle, viz. the eight years curriculum including two

preparatory classes for the university (which then has its impact on the schools

104 Weiler, 164. 105 Weiler, Geert Grote und seine Stiftungen, 51. Dass zwar die devote und die reformatorische Frömmigkeit einander gegenseitig beeinflußt haben, insbesondere was die praxis pietatis betrifft. 106 Weiler, 51. [Stiftungen], die zwischen Mittelalter und Neuzeit eine semi-religiöse Form des Zusammenlebens von freien frommen Menschen zu verwirklichen versuchten.

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of the Brethren at Louvain, and Liège) embodies the principles of the Modern

Devotion?107

Weiler thinks not, and argues instead that the defining characteristic of the Devotio Moderna was

their pioneering of a voluntary, semi-religious community.

Kasper Elm has also catalogued developments in scholarship on the Devotio Moderna in two

seminal articles, one on the Devotio Moderna specifically that serves as a historiographical

overview, and the other on the phenomenon of semi-religious communities in the late Middle

Ages. Synopses of both at this point shall prove helpful. Several of Elm’s key landmarks in this

field have been translated and collated in 2016 in an English edition entitled Religious Life between

Jerusalem, the Desert, and the World: Selected Essays by Kaspar Elm.

Kasper Elm argued in his 1998 book chapter “‘Vita regularis sine regula’: Bedeutung,

Rechtsstellung und Selbstverständnis des mittelalterlichen und frühneuzeitlichen

Semireligiosentums” (“‘Vita regularis sine regula’: the Meaning, Legal Status and Self-

Understanding of Late-Medieval and Early-Modern Semi-Religious Life”) that the Devotio

Moderna formed part of a broader trend towards voluntary societies that in turn reflected an

authentic retrieval of the social organization of the early church.108 According to Elm,

Older definitions of the orders as institutions sharply divided from one another

legally and socially, are now undergoing revision. The notion that religious life

stands alongside the clergy and the laity as one of the independent pillars of the

church has been modified. Scholars now emphasize the ability of the religious

orders to change, to adapt and to reform, and they point to the broad spectrum

of connections between the secular and regular clergy, as well as to connections

between both clerical estates and the world of the laity.109

107 Weiler, ‘Recent Historiography on the Modern Devotion: Some Debated Questions’, 164. 108 Kaspar Elm and James D. Mixson, ‘Vita Regularis Sine Regula. The Meaning, Legal Status and Self-Understanding of Late-Medieval and Early-Modern Semi-Religious Life’, in Religious Life between Jerusalem, the Desert, and the World: Selected Essays, (Leiden Boston: Brill, 2016), 308. 109 Elm and Mixson, 280.

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In this way, the New Devout represent one of the many alternative socialities developing since

the twelfth century.110 In Elm’s view we can only unify these disparate semi-religious movements

by grouping them based on their voluntary sociality.111 Just like Weiler, Elm argues that the

common thread between all these movements was their sociality that stood as a middle point

between world and cloister, medieval and modern. From this vantage point, the New Devout

were bound up in a larger story about the seepage of religion from its institutional silo into

diverse parts of civic life.

Elm describes the tendency in modern scholarship of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to

see new patterns of social organization and resistance to institutions in the Devotio Moderna and

other semi-religious movements in the patterns of social organization that came to fruition in

modern individualism.112 According to Elm, we must admit that this historical tradition saw a real

connection between these earlier socialities and later communities pioneered during the

Reformation and later in the tradition of political Liberalism.113 Elm concedes that the semi-

religious ways of life developed in the late Middle Ages directly shaped the social organization

that emerged from the Reformation. Nonetheless, Elm concludes by arguing that the Devotio

Moderna entailed circumvention of historical monastic developments and an at least partially

successful retrieval of the social organization of the early church. As far as concerned the Devotio

Moderna, Elm resisted the tendency to plot the movement on the course towards the

individualistic, voluntary associations of the Reformation era. Elm makes this move not because

110 Elm and Mixson, 286–87. “There was [in the late Middle Ages] a notable growth of individuals and communities who stood between order and world. The trend reached a high point in the thirteenth century, with the founding of so many penitential confraternities and tertiary orders. And in the later Middle Ages, with the beguines and beghards, the Brothers and Sisters of the Common Life as well as so many other similar communities, semi-religious life reached such a highpoint that the number of its communities caught up with (if they did not in fact overtake) those of formal religious life.” 111 Elm and Mixson, 296. “It is difficult to discern anything that might unite them all… What bound them together, apart from all of their differences across time and place, was their character as something intermediary, something ambivalent and transitory.” 112 Elm and Mixson, 313. 113 Elm and Mixson, 315.

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no such movement occurred, but because such a narrative obscures the true roots of these

voluntary, semi-religious socialities in the ecclesia primitiva.114

Elm also gives a more specific catalogue of recent developments in scholarship on the Devotio

Moderna in his 2004 book chapter (published in an English edition in 2016) “the ‘Devotio

Moderna’ and the New Piety between the Later Middle Ages and the Early Modern Era.” In it,

Elm argued that at the beginning of the twentieth century scholarly consensus has begun to shift

back towards a closer relationship between the New Devout and the humanism and Protestant

theology of the sixteenth century. Elm gives a lengthy assessment which deserves to be quoted in

full:

In keeping with the dynamics of thesis and antithesis, the scholarship is now

approaching a kind of synthesis, perhaps better described as a mediation

between opposing sides. H.A. Oberman, W. Lourdeaux, J. van Engen and N.

Staubach have returned, in a general and less provocative way, to familiar

arguments for the proximity between the Devout and Humanism. Specifically

these scholars have noted the undoubtedly significant pedagogical contributions

of the Devout, their “philological” textual criticism, the presence of “humanist”

writings in their libraries as well as the parallels between their loose

brotherhoods and the academies and learned associations of the humanists.

Theologians like R. Mokrosch and B. Hamm see among the Brothers and the

canons of Windesheim (even though they depart from the core teachings of the

Protestants, especially Luther’s trust in faith alone and Calvin’s emphasis on

predestination) many intersections with the reformers’ concerns—not least their

return to the early church; the emphasis on practice found in their piety; their

distance from the intricate subtleties of university theologians and the truth

114 Elm and Mixson, 318. “Semi-religious life should not be seen in isolation, and it should especially not be seen as only an aspect of the Reformation, of confessionalization, and of the social and intellectual forces of “modernization” that were their consequence. Rather, it should be judged above all as that which a view to its origins reveals it to be: as a way of life for individuals and communities that had its roots in early Christianity.”

46

claims of philosophers; but above all in their manner of self-discipline (rather

more Calvinist than Lutheran in its leanings) and their effort to shape and form

the individual person through spiritual exercises and methodical meditation.115

It is a fair characterization of scholarship on the Devotio Moderna that the relationship between the

movement and later Renaissance humanism is framed in terms of ostensible spiritual and

educational goals counter-balanced against each other. Where Hyma saw a hunger to learn, Post

saw only the desire for devotion. From this thesis and antithesis, intervening scholarship has

attempted to mediate a synthesis by arguing that both elements existed in their communities, but

that we must balance these elements against the fundamental impulse of their movement, which

ultimately tipped in favor of praxis pietatis.

In the same vein, John van Engen has recently argued that we must understand the Devotio

Moderna as a fifteenth-century movement pitched between social arrangements of the Middle

Ages and Early Modern periods, and therefore acting as a transition point between the two. Van

Engen’s work on the Devotio Moderna has defined the scope of study of the movement in the 21st

century, publishing key primary documents on the New Devout in Devotio Moderna: Basic Writings.

His Sisters and Brothers of the Common Life stands as the authoritative account of the Devotio Moderna

in the anglosphere. Van Engen has identified the New Devout as sitting at a point of transition

that in some sense amounted to a transformational watershed that birthed our modern world.

Van Engen points to the development of voluntary institutions, of which the Devotio Moderna was

a prime representative, as a key to understanding the late Middle Ages. In his work, van Engen

has sought, in his own words, “to grasp the Devout in their humanity, communities, and religion,

all within the urban societies of the Low Countries and the cultures we call late medieval.”116

“Making sense of the Modern-Day Devout,” writes van Engen, “is of a piece with making sense

of this long fifteenth century, something we have only begun to do in all its complexity… a

115 Elm and Mixson, ‘The “Devotio Moderna” and the New Piety between the Later Middle Ages and the Early Modern Era’, 321. 116 Van Engen, Sisters and Brothers of the Common Life: The Devotio Moderna and the World of the Later Middle Ages, 7.

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layered environment in which multiple and contradictory options competed and coexisted.”117 To

van Engen, the legal fight for their common life “located a place for the Devout legally and

conceptually in the interstices of late medieval society.”118 By the beginning of the twenty-first

century, the key site of research and debate had moved from where it had been established by

Hyma and Post to the sociality and legality of the Devotio Moderna and how the movement

therefore intersected or contributed to the move towards voluntary, individualistic modern

culture. “It was a bond,” writes van Engen, “but voluntary rather than obligatory making

members allies in a joint venture… What the Modern-Day Devout undertook was consonant

with widespread moves in the fifteenth century towards participation and consultation, from

town councils to church councils.” 119 Theo Klausmann’s Die Hausordnungen der Brüder vom

gemeinsamen Leben im Bildungs- und Sozialisationsprogramm der Devotio moderna (2003) also fits this

contemporary trend of describing the New Devout in terms of their sociality and communal

structures.

Focus on Book-production

The field of the Devotio Moderna was enriched by the work of Nikolaus Staubach and his students

into the book and literary culture within the movement. Staubach’s 1991 article “Pragmatische

Schriftlichkeit im Bereich der Devotio Moderna” (“Practical Literality in the Realm of the

Devotio Moderna”) set a new direction in investigations into the New Devout by turning

attention to book-production and book-copying as essential aspects to the movement. After this

article, several works, most notably the book chapter “Der Codex als Ware: Wirtschaftliche

Aspekte der Handschriften- Produktion im Bereich der Devotio Moderna” (“The Codex as

Commodity: Economic Aspects of Manuscript Production in the Realm of the Devotio

Moderna”), appeared, exploring the book as an important source of income for the movement

and its incorporation into their life of spiritual discipline. Thomas Kock, a student of Staubach,

furthered the work of his Doktorvater in his 2002 work Die Buchkultur der Devotio Moderna:

117 Van Engen, 308. 118 Van Engen, 309. 119 Van Engen, 330.

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Handschriftenproduktion (The Book Culture of the Devotio Moderna: Manuscript Production), in which he

drew attention to the financing of the movement by book-production along with such practices’

connections to monastic life. Kock argued that, because the Devotio Moderna rejected the idea that

devotion was pursued best in a monastic context, the brothers tended to locate spiritual growth

in particular practices of reading and book-production. “The use of books and writing, reading

and writing play the role of the most important reform strategy.”120 Although the New Devout

emphasized their withdrawal from the world (“Rückzug”) into their own

“Bibliothekgemeinschaft” it also drew them outwards. The reading and writing practices of the

New Devout, according to Kock, intended to facilitate their devotion towards God, necessitated

their engagement with the “world.”

The Imitatio Christi represents undoubtedly the most popularized contribution of the Devotio

Moderna and has therefore attracted considerable scholarship. Work on the text has often drawn

out its anti-intellectual elements, one such work being Maximilian von Habsburg’s Catholic and

Protestant Translations of the Imitatio Christi, 1425-1650: From Late Medieval Classic to Early Modern

Bestseller (2011). Von Habsburg believes that the devotional works were anti-intellectual, although

not on the grounds that learning was bad per se but because it could easily lead one astray. Von

Habsburg suggests that the Imitatio’s “anti-intellectual strand” was predominantly to do with the

diverse make-up of the Devotio Moderna.121 Although Geert Grote was well educated and was

therefore in a privileged position from which to reject worldly knowledge, this was not the case

for others like Gerard Zerbolt of Zutphen († 1398) who never attended a university.122 Although

the movement was ultimately skeptical of worldly knowledge and secular education, the

devotional writings were able to please a range of positions on the issue by their ambiguity and

compositional heterogeneity. This comes to fore in the eyes of von Habsburg in the Imitatio

Christi. “The apparent ambiguity of the Imitatio’s perspective, in this instance regarding learning,

120 Thomas Kock, Die Buchkultur der Devotio Moderna: Handschriftenproduktion, Literaturversorgung und Bibliotheksaufbau im Zeitalter des Medienwechsels, (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 2002), 12. Dem Gebrauch von Buch und Schrift, dem Lesen und Schreiben kommt die Rolle der wichtigsten Reformtechnik zu. 121 Maximilian Von Habsburg, Catholic and Protestant Translations of the Imitatio Christi, 1425-1650: From Late Medieval Classic to Early Modern Bestseller, (Farnham, Surrey, England; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2011), 14. 122 Von Habsburg, 14–15.

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suited the different components of the movement, as well as the varying capabilities of its

adherents.”123 In this view, learning was not quite evil but was certainly inessential for the New

Devout’s aim of spiritual renewal, reflected in the concern pastoral care the brothers directed

towards the education of boys. “This was largely in keeping with the functions of priests during

the period, which were practical rather than intellectual, and pastoral rather than doctrinal.” 124

Because of this view, the popularity of the devotional writings of the New Devout, specifically

the Imitatio, present a challenge of historical interpretation for von Habsburg. This is particularly

so for Ignatius of Loyola’s love for the Imitatio and the impetus for education and scholarship of

the Society of Jesus. “It is certainly curious that a text allegedly condemning learning should be

used by the religious order most closely associated with the revival of education during the early

modern period.”125 That the Imitatio should provoke such activity may lead us to reconsider its

putative anti-intellectualism.

Contemporary Trends

At the time of writing, then, we can observe the following trends. Firstly (1), in the English-

speaking world scholars have been, for the most part, dominated by the dialectic first established

by Hyma and Post. Later scholars in the anglosphere have tended to lean towards one scholar or

the other when it came to the brothers’ and sisters’ stance towards scholastic, university culture

or found some middle accommodating position that recognizes these two scholars as the key

touchstones. Secondly (2), towards the end of the twentieth century, beginning in the 1980s,

scholars turned their attention towards the sister-houses in their own right, identifying these

female communities as a key to the charism of the movement as a whole and displaying a

spirituality that was unique to themselves and not simply derivative of the male houses. Thirdly

(3), at about this time scholars also began to focus on the literary and book-production of the

sisters and brothers, identifying the distinctiveness of their movement with their usage and

valuation of the pen and book. Fourthly (4), since the turn of the millennium scholars in the

123 Von Habsburg, 15. 124 Von Habsburg, 15. 125 Von Habsburg, 11.

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anglosphere and low countries directed attention to the sociality and legality of the movement

and the significance of their emerging voluntary community for more general analysis of the shift

from medieval to early modern culture.

The solution, therefore, to the polemic between Hyma and Post has generally been to split the

difference or to reorient terms of enquiry, an elegant move that has offered fresh insights into

the function of the everyday members of their communities, particularly concerning women and,

more generally, dealings with book and pen. However, turning attention to other important

aspects of the movement can have the effect of simply retasking enquiry into the Devotio Moderna

so as not to need to deal with a particularly thorny issue. One cannot avoid the shadow cast by

Hyma and Post, and the issue of the brothers’ and sisters’ attitude towards university, scholastic

culture still requires illumination.

Into this opening have stepped scholars not specializing in the Devotio Moderna, but who, for

reasons relating to their own research interests, see the attitude of the New Devout as relevant

and requiring mention. Thus Francis Oakley, in his The Western Church in the Later Middle Ages

(1979), fits the Devotio Moderna into his account of the movement from medieval to Renaissance.

Oakley leans towards the brothers as rejecting higher learning in favor of a totalizing faith and

life of devotion.

It was a rejection of everything that would hinder or distract from a rigorous life

of interior devotion and loving of Christ. That rejection included higher

education, academic theology, and, indeed, the study of “anything which does

not refresh the soul.” The brothers were not given to university educations.126

Knowledge and its gathering (i.e. learning) in this textual community seems either a necessary

evil, a handmaiden to theology insofar as it facilitated new-and-improved devotion, or a harmful,

vain pursuit to be cut out from the lives of the New Devout.

126 Oakley, The Western Church in the Later Middle Ages, 104.

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Attention to the reading and writing practices of the New Devout has helped enormously to

overcome the terms of debate focusing on the New Devout’s ostensible influence on

Renaissance learning. Catrien Santing, in this way, has drawn out this tension in her contribution

“Learning and the Modern Devotion: contradictio in terminis or inextricably bound unity?”

within the larger work Die Devotio Moderna: Sozialer und Kultureller Transfer (1350-1580). This

collection sought to delineate the social and cultural impact of the Devotio Moderna for the transfer

of knowledge and learning in the Rhein-Maas region of the Low Countries. In this work, written

in 2013, Santing shows that there is still much to glean from explorations of the linkages between

the New Devout and flourishing humanist learning. “To explore the extent and level of learning

of the Deventer Brethren and possible expressions of humanism amongst their ranks” writes

Santing, “is revealing to study the life and works of those teachers who published books while

living in the Heer-Florenshuis during the period of the breakthrough of humanism in the

northern Netherlands."127 Santing criticizes Post’s propensity to downplay the impact of the

brothers on schools because, although they had contact with students, the schools were not

officially run by them.128 Santing shows how the New Devout did not hold official posts in many

schools and that in any case it is problematic to attempt to provide historically accurate data for

their involvement. She does show that the New Devout provided lodging, were on good terms

with local schools, and regularly provided tuition and lessons for boys in their care. Ever since

Grote befriended the schoolmaster at Zwolle, John Cele, the New Devout displayed close

relationships with local schools. "Most authors agree to the compromise,” writes Santing, “that

the Brethren ran institutions where lodging and extra supervision were provided. From Florens

Radewijns onwards the Brethren gave additional lessons to pupils living with them and at least

employed an official repetitor."129 In fact, Santing gently critiques John van Engen’s Sisters and

Brothers of the Common Life for not addressing this issue of the educational practices of the New

Devout. Building on the work of Thom Mertens, Mathilde van Dijk and Nikolaus Staubach,

127 Catrien Santing, ‘Learning and the Modern Devotion: Contradictio in Terminis or Inextricably Bound Unity?’, in Die Devotio Moderna: Sozialer Und Kultureller Transfer (1350-1580), vol. 2 (Münster: Aschendorff, 2013), 216. 128 Santing, 211. 129 Santing, 216.

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Santing argues that the piety of the Devotio Moderna was steeped in literature demanding

knowledge of Latin and Greek.130 For Santing, Erasmus is the paradigm example of the way the

brothers formed students who were “learned in both languages.”131

Santing rightly identifies this tension between devotion and learning as a live and significant issue

for our understanding of the New Devout, one that still bears on broader analyses of changes

occurring between the medieval and early modern periods. However, the key concepts of piety

and learning remained largely unexamined. Santing simply states that "it was perfectly possible to

live a devout life as a Brother of the Common Life and at the same time be an active publishing

scholar."132 In drawing on scholars who emphasized the importance of dealing with book and

pen, Santing rightly sees the bookishness of the sisters and brothers as signs that erudition and

learning were indispensable to the movement. What this does not achieve, however, is an

account of why the Devotio Moderna articulated their fusion of piety and learning as they did. Or

rather, we must still examine these concepts of analysis – piety, learning, reading, and erudition –

by integrating them into the sense that animated and guided the New Devout. In a quite recent

paper, Pieter Boonstra has argued that though the New Devout were engaged in the education of

the laity through the genre of the collation, even this was oriented towards devotion over against,

in Boonstra’s construal, learning.

Yet this community of learning was not about learning per se: it was primarily

aimed at bringing about a more religious life. At its core in the Modern Devout

conviction that learning is supposed to be a path towards devotion: learning for

its own sake (learning to become learned) is sinful, as the goal is being praised

and recognized by man.133

130 Santing, 212–13. 131 Santing, 218. 132 Santing, 221. 133 Pieter Boonstra, ‘Causa Spiritualis Instructionis: The Modern Devout Collatio as a Community of Learning’, Ons Geestelijk Erf 88, no. 1 (2017): 46.

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We see here that Post and Hyma polemic is still at work shaping analysis of the Devotio Moderna.

Boonstra describes the New Devout favoring wisdom over learning, concepts which are,

consciously or not, juxtaposed.

Learnedness is clearly differentiated from wisdom: where knowledge will gain

you the respect and praise of man, being wise means living humbly and

devoutly. Who lives like this will be granted wisdom and understanding

inaccessible to the learned, so that a simple farmer may be wiser than the

greatest theologian. Multiple examples and such auctoritates as Augustine, John

Chrysostom, Cassian, and the Apostles... reinforce the divide between pure

knowledge and devout wisdom. The main argument is clear: while learning in

itself is not a bad quality, it needs to be accompanied by devotion. Any

knowledge that is not acquired in service of the love of God will only lead to a

sinful worldly life.134

While there seems to be tension in the sources between the simple faith and erudition within the

movement, the fact remains that this tension is very rarely, if ever, acknowledged in writings

produced within the movement. No analysis of the Devotio Moderna has successfully articulated

what picture of the world made the New Devout’s seemingly tension-laded, even incoherent

worldview, attractive and sensible. In his own view, van Engen saw in his early career an

unearthing of “unpublished or poorly published sources.” 135 At the present time, however,

“enough new sources – whether newly discovered, newly edited, or newly read – raise questions

about our big picture.”136 Part of this big picture is the New Devout’s attitude towards scholastic,

university culture.

134 Boonstra, 46. 135 Van Engen, Sisters and Brothers of the Common Life: The Devotio Moderna and the World of the Later Middle Ages, 6. 136 Van Engen, 6.

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Aim and Objectives

Despite specialist focus on other aspects of the movement, scholars traversing a larger

chronological area have demanded that we fit the Devotio Moderna into a world in which

humanism was indeed beginning to flourish and many other movements in the Observant

Century were opting for crude, anti-intellectual postures towards the university.137 Scholars have

felt tempted to push the New Devout towards one of these two extremes. For all the good that

turning to other aspects of the movement has achieved, we must address the relationship of the

New Devout to scholastic, university culture if we reasonably hope to integrate the movement

into its time and place.

Francis Oakley wrote accurately, if misleadingly, “with this general attitude of reserve towards

higher education, of course, it would have been odd if the brothers had exercised any great

leadership in the introduction of humanist ideas into northern Europe.”138 Surprisingly, however,

this is precisely what the brothers of Devotion Moderna did, and I have set it as my aim in what

follows to explain how and why this could be so. By this I mean not to account for the spread of

humanism in the Low Countries, but to understand the Devotio Moderna such that it is plausible

that such a cultural transfer took place. Geert Grote and his followers engaged in activities

entwined with philosophy, reading, copying, and translation, things that required intimate

knowledge of the Church Fathers and pagan philosophers; technology and practical skill; artistic

inclination and community engagement – endeavors for which they often showed alacrity and

aptitude. To date, there has been no resolution in the literature and scholarship of the sense or

worldview that guided the members and leaders of the Devotio Moderna to reject scholastic,

university culture as they did while also forging a community of learning with seemingly no

qualms about dissonance or inconsistency. A movement that espoused the rejection of worldly

137 By the phrase “Observant Century” I describe a complex of efforts during the fifteenth century, primarily associated with Italian friars such as Bernardino of Siena and Giovanni of Capistrano but encompassing monastic and semi-monastic traditions across Western Europe, to reform and purify institutional religious life. The Devotio Moderna has traditionally been identified as one example of these movements that sought lay engagement in devotional and liturgical practices. I use the term as both a descriptor of this pull back towards a more pure devotion and as a time marker for the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. 138 Oakley, The Western Church in the Later Middle Ages, 104.

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learning, but which seems to have sought it out, the Devotio Moderna presents an apparent paradox

where their attitude and practices of knowledge and learning and concerned. It is this apparent

paradox that is the impetus behind this thesis. What purpose or profit did Geert Grote and his

followers see in the study of books and the exploration of the world around them, and what does

this tell us more broadly about how they understood themselves, both in relation to creation

generally and to others cultures and institutions of learning and education?

An important caveat to any assessment of the Devotio Moderna, however, is the developing and

iterative nature of the movement. While we may certainly identify and articulate key

characteristics and defining features of the movement, we must also be aware that the movement

was constantly developing, undergoing expansions, contractions, alterations and various

theoretical articulations of the features, beliefs and values that made the New Devout distinctive.

A.G. Weiler has noted that any investigation of the Devotio Moderna must judge the movement

with an eye to the localized variations of each brother- and sister-house. “The Modern Devotion

must be judged according to time and place, and be seen with a view to development.”139 Given

that the Devotio Moderna was explicitly decentralized, cohering as a movement based on personal

volition and the charters of individual houses instead of a rule or charter valid across the board, it

is no wonder that Weiler sees the ever-developing character of the movement as what “makes

working with general characteristics so troublesome.”140

Method

There is thus no scholarly consensus as to the attitude of the New Devout towards scholastic,

university culture, and the attitudes of Geert Grote and his disciples seem scarcely coherent to a

modern observer. However, it is the intention of this thesis to make sense of this apparent

dissonance, to understand what conditions of belief led the New Devout to view cultures of

learning and scholarship in the way they did. A.G. Weiler has suggested that a sensible way to

139 Weiler, ‘De betekenis van de Moderne Devotie voor de europese cultuur’, 37. De Moderne Devotie moet naar tijd en plaats onderscheiden en beoordeeld worden, en in een perspectief van ontwikkeling worden gezien. 140 Weiler, 37. Dat maakt het werken met algemene kenmerken zo bezwaarlijk.

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view the Devotio Moderna is in terms of their “wereld-ontwerp,” their sense of the world’s design

and purpose in relation to the physical and spiritual world in which they lived. Weiler elaborates:

That term “wereld-ontwerp” relates to a projection of a spiritual and worldly

milieu, wherein one ascribes themself a reasoned place. It has to do with the

drawing up of lines and circles wherein one will, can, and must move: as an

individual, as a member of a common life, as a living, rational being in an

enchanted cosmos.141

While this category of “wereld-ontwerp” is certainly helpful, I have adopted Canadian

philosopher Charles Taylor’s analytic framework of the Social Imaginary to articulate how the

Brothers and Sisters of the Common Life understood the place of knowledge and learning in

their lives. An analysis of the abstract propositions of the Devotio Moderna on this topic would do

little to articulate how the understanding of the sisters and brothers seemed coherent to them.

Their attitude, as reflected in the divisiveness of scholarship on the issue, seems paradoxical to a

modern frame of mind. And yet there is no suggestion in any writing by the New Devout that

they grappled with the apparent contradiction of their attitude to, and praxes of, knowledge and

learning. The traces left by the Devotio Moderna suggest that, from their perspective, their position

was perfectly coherent and intelligible. Thus, rather than attempting to (re)create a self-aware

intellectual framework by which the New Devout lived, read, and set up schools, this thesis will

focus on the Social Imaginary of the New Devout, that is, in Charles’ Taylor’s framework:

The ways in which they imagine their social existence, how they fit together with

others, how things go on between them and their fellows, the expectations

which are normally met, and the deeper normative notions and images which

underlie these expectations.142

141 Weiler, 33. Dat begrip 'wereld-ontwerp' heeft betrekking op een projectie van een geestelijk en wereldlijk milieu, waarin de mens zichzelf een beredeneerde plaats toekent. Het gaat om het trekken van lijnen en kringen, waarbinnen de mens zich bewegen wil, kan en mag: als individu, als lid van de samenleving, als levend rationeel wezen in een bezielde kosmos. 142 Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007), 171.

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Such a framework goes deeper than attempting to identify a cohesive propositional framework

by which the New Devout understood, theoretically speaking, the nature, value, and purpose of

knowledge and learning. It also differs from a disengaged propositional framework in that a

Social Imaginary need not necessarily be expressed in theoretical terms, it can be carried in

pictures, stories, songs, and shared ritual experience.143 This is an important analytical step where

the underlying picture of the world was assumed, or at least unarticulated, for many of the New

Devout. Such an approach militates against forcing the lived piety of the New Devout into

categories unfamiliar to them or trying to project Reformation theology and educational practices

back onto the New Devout (as Hyma tends towards in his idea of the New Devout as a nascent

“Christian Renaissance”). Further, a Social Imaginary is diffused more widely than a small

minority whose preserve was theoretical knowledge governing practice. That is, the Social

Imaginary gets at the assumed, internalized, often wordless experience of the nature of the

cosmos that shaped the everyday lives of the New Devout. This is particularly crucial in a

community of learning which almost by definition presupposes members of the community who

require enculturation into this theoretical intellectual framework. It is this Social Imaginary, this

shared set of mutual understandings and normative images that mobilizes common, ritualistic

practices and enables a sense of shared community and legitimacy. And importantly, it is a Social

Imaginary that makes it possible to put subsequent theoretical structure and framework to one’s

experience of the world.144 Thus, what this thesis will endeavor to identify in relation to the

Devotio Moderna is,

what contemporary philosophers have described as the “background”… that

largely unstructured and inarticulate understanding of our whole situation,

within which particular features of our world show up for us in the sense they

have. It can never be adequately expressed in the form of explicit doctrines,

because of its very unlimited and indefinite nature.145

143 Taylor, 173. 144 Taylor, 172. 145 Taylor, 173.

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Charles Taylor’s Social Imaginary admits certain qualifications for historical analysis. In

particular, it is helpful to flag here that the use of Taylor’s Social Imaginary does not necessarily

entail acceptance of his larger view of secularization. Jon Butler has argued that Taylor’s analysis

of secularization hinges on the premise that a particular form of Roman Catholicism was

axiomatic in the Western world before the sixteenth century. 146 Butler’s specific critique of

Taylor’s A Secular Age is that analysis of a Social Imaginary requires dense exposition of cultural

practices – social history – which he finds lacking in Taylor’s work. Jonathan Sheehan makes the

similar point that talk of disenchantment requires a referent, which Taylor identifies with a an

axiomatic Christian (Roman Catholic) frame.147 Ian Hunter has suggested in this way that one can

tell the story of Western secularization differently in Germanophone countries by taking the

point of departure towards secularism as confessional Protestantism rather than the

predominantly French and anglophone sources Taylor draws on to tell the story of secularization

in relation to medieval Roman Catholicism.148 Nonetheless, it is still possible to use Taylor’s

Social Imaginary as a way into the world of the New Devout, providing thicker “on the ground”

analysis than some felt was lacking in Taylor’s A Secular Age. I draw on Taylor’s work on

secularization at points, but it will be helpful to bear in mind that in this work I do not treat

Taylor’s analytic framework of the Social Imaginary as of a piece with his application of it in

relation to the last 500 years.

More scholars in the discipline of philosophy than of history have picked up the concept of the

imaginary as a key taxonomy. In keeping with this trend, Charles Taylor’s usage of his concept

has centered on the collective imagination of modern, liberal democracies, exemplified in his

Modern Social Imaginaries (2004). Claude-Pierre Pérez, in a 2014 historiographical article, however,

has catalogued the use of the term imaginary in the historical realm. According to Pérez, the

146 Jon Butler, ‘Disquieted History in a Secular Age’, in Varieties of Secularism in a Secular Age, ed. Michael Warner, Jonathan VanAntwerpen, and Craig J. Calhoun (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2010), 196. 147 Jonathan Sheehan, ‘When Was Disenchantment?’, in Varieties of Secularism in a Secular Age, ed. Michael Warner, Jonathan VanAntwerpen, and Craig J. Calhoun (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2010), 239. 148 Ian Hunter, ‘Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age and Secularization in Early Modern Germany’, Modern Intellectual History 8, no. 3 (2011): 621–46.

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concept, once unpopular in favor of more atomized and concrete terms sensitive to variations in

time and place, has gradually become more accepted since the turn of the millennium.

At universities, the intersection of literature and images – in all senses of the

word “image” – has, especially in the 2000s, become an important field of

research for literary scholars. The “autonomy” and “autonomization” in fashion

in the age of theoria has given way to “intermediality,” purportedly pure

“structures” have given way to composite “dispositives,” arranging

heterogeneities, blending the spoken and the seen.149

In Pérez’s view, the imaginary as a concept allows the historian to articulate the linkages between

specific representations or images within a culture and the meaning of these individual

instantiations to the whole assemblage that makes a particular culture meaningful and coherent to

its constituents. “Now the ambition is less to describe syntaxes or systems exhaustively, to take

stock of a massive totality, than to follow the lines or the outlines binding multi-connected

singularities.” 150 The imaginary offers the historian a tool to assess the assemblage of

representations, images and utterances in the source material as a whole. Pérez glosses Jacques Le

Goff’s own usage of the imaginary in his 1985 L'imaginaire médiéval.

But if the “imaginary” exists, it is so that madness has reason, and illusions have

a system: so that even fantasies are neither normless nor indeterminate; so that

they arrange themselves inside a “structure” a “universe” or a “diagram”: so that

they have – it has been said, and bears repeating – their own “logic” or their

149 Pérez, ‘« L’imaginaire » : Naissance, Diffusion et Métamorphoses d’un Concept Critique’, 112. Dans l’université, le croisement entre littérature et images, dans tous les sens du mot image, est devenu (plus nettement depuis les années 2000) un champ de recherche important pour les littéraires. A l’autonomie et à l’autonomisation en vogue au temps de la theoria, succède « l’intermédialité », aux « structures » réputées pures les « dispositifs » composites, agençant des hétérogénéités, combinant des énoncés et des visibilités. 150 Pérez, 113. L’ambition désormais est moins de décrire exhaustivement des syntaxes ou des systèmes, de cadastrer un grand englobant, que de suivre des traces ou des tracés reliant des singularités multiconnectées.

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“syntax”. “Models of the imaginary fall under the jurisdiction of science,” Le

Goff assures us in the introduction of his L'imaginaire médiéval.151

The concept of the Social Imaginary thus aims less at a comprehensive catalogue of individual

cultural artefacts and more at the overall meaning that renders them powerful and normative for

that culture.

Augustinian Imaginary

In my own usage, the Social Imaginary articulates the often-unspoken meaning or sense that

rendered coherent and sensible the concerns, urgencies, taboos, and aims of the Devotio Moderna.

Just as much as praxes without a concept are unintelligible, so too are concepts denuded of their

reality if they are removed from a wider sense of shared understanding, that is, assumed, lived

knowledge of how the New Devout related to one another, how they thought they arrived to

where there were, and the sense of the existential condition or predicament in which they found

themselves.152 I will give content to this Social Imaginary in the following chapter. Because of its

representational and nontheoretical nature, the Social Imaginary of a particular culture naturally

shows similarities with other sub-cultures in which it is situated. Over the course of this thesis, I

will argue that the New Devout were animated by an Augustinian Imaginary. While this

accurately describes the situation of the New Devout and gives purchase on the New Devout’s

attitude towards scholastic, university culture, it is less dexterous when it comes to providing

sharp boundaries between the Devotio Moderna and other movements of the Observant Century.

Yet while this may seem a weakness of this method, the fact remains that the New Devout

pursued their interests in ways that, although similar, were also significantly and visibly different

from other observant movements in relation to schooling, erudition, and the texts produced

within the movement. On this point, it is enough to observe that, at the very least, the

historiographical problem outlined above is by no means so pronounced or divided for other

151 Pérez, 108. Or s’il existe « l’imaginaire », c’est que la folle a des raisons, et que les chimères font système : que les fantaisies même ne sont ni anomiques, ni indéterminées ; qu’elles s’agencent l’une avec l’autre au sein d’une « structure », d’un « univers » ou d’un « diagramme » : qu’elles ont, comme on le dit et comme on le répète, leur « logique » ou leur « syntaxe ». « Les modèles de l’imaginaire relèvent de la science », assure Le Goff dans l’introduction de son Imaginaire médiéval. 152 Taylor, A Secular Age, 172–73.

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comparable movements of the same time period, and so we have good grounds to apply the

concept of the Social Imaginary to the New Devout with the understanding that apparent

similarities of imagination are mitigated by factual differences in the historical record between the

Devotio Moderna and other developing ways of life of the Observant Century. As concerns my

argument, while Augustine was central to most schools of thought and ways of life, the

Augustinian Imaginary in my account renders the usage and meaning of this view of the world

such that the observable phenomena of schooling, learning, and writing in the realm of the

Devotio Moderna occurred as they did.

By adopting this framework of the Social Imaginary, we head off the tendency to compare the

Devotio Moderna to modern, rationalist cultures of learning, as Post tended to do, or to compare

the New Devout to Christian humanism, a test which according the Hyma they passed with

flying colors. For this reason I will avoid comparisons to modern understandings of education

and natural sciences, not only because such an approach is inherently anachronistic but also

because the belief in disengaged reason, a disenchanted cosmos governed by unbreakable laws,

the supremacy of the scientific method, and the separation (or even the complete removal) of

transcendent reality represents itself another constructed Social Imaginary, a positive, imagined

way by which we come to terms with the world we live in, the nature of the predicament we are

in and who we are within that world. More daringly, I will suggest that this very imagination is a

distant product of the historical process underway at the time of the Devotio Moderna, the

developments to scholastic, university culture against which they understood themselves to be

forming an alternative community.

This enquiry is animated by the inadequacy of an approach that focuses on the final products of

pedagogy and intellectual enquiry while neglecting to examine the picture of the world that

produced it, and inevitably which are only able to understand the Devotio Moderna as a movement

impoverished prior to the light of disengaged reason, a contested forerunner to Renaissance

humanism and the Reformation, or a well-meaning but incoherent effort to infuse education and

learning with devotion. With this in mind, the central investigative concern of this enquiry is to

know what sort of Social Imaginary led Geert Grote to forsake his Parisian education and clerical

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stipends and counsel his followers to spurn learning, and yet to still cart a barrel of books chock

full of great thinkers of pagan and Christian thought wherever he went; to gain a sense how the

Devotio Moderna could live in the memory of such a man and yet spend so much time printing,

copying and reading books, both liturgical and otherwise; and to understand what exactly Grote

and his followers thought they were rejecting when they turned their backs on existing

communities of learning, especially the universitas, to found their own communities that entailed

learning and education but understanding such tasks to be inessential to the imitation of Christ.

Two Competing Imaginaries

My contention here is that the historical developments that allowed for the conceptual separation

of knowledge from devotion/virtue found its impetus at the time of the New Devout, and that

the reaction of the New Devout against “worldly learning”, rather than consisting in antipathy

towards learning as such, was really a reaction to specific developments of the universitas,

furnished by particular forms of late scholastic metaphysics, that allowed for the knowledge of

God and the knowledge of creation to be conceptually separated from the heart. On the

contrary, the sense of the New Devout held that all knowledge, held together in God whose esse

(being) was indistinguishable from his amor (love), inevitably required the cultivation of virtue and

devotion to coincide with intellection. The New Devout therefore created different forms of life,

resourced from the ecclesia primitiva, that worked on the assumption that to understand God or

creation first required humility, love, and devotion to Christ.

This is a difficult trajectory to sketch out, for we are in many ways the inheritance of the very

shifts in practice and imagination I am giving shape to here. Thus, this enquiry will involve not

only plotting the Augustinian Imaginary of the New Devout but also that of modern analyses of

the movement that have been unaware of their own Social Imaginary. Bringing into clearer focus

the seismic intellectual break that sent the New Devout fleeing from worldly knowledge thus also

makes it easier to see the intellectual inheritance of metaphysical categories of analysis so obvious

to us today as to be imperceptible, so “just there” as to be unremarkable, perhaps even

unquestionable, and so often unworthy of analysis. Moral and political philosopher Alasdair

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Macintyre, indicative of a large vein of research into the history of ideas, has argued strongly that,

while the vocabularies of past theological, philosophical and moral imaginations remain, these

vocabularies have long been divorced from the implicit Social Imaginaries that gave them

coherence and unity.153 This thesis contends that such a shift found its beginnings approximately

at the time of the Devotio Moderna, a community animated by a received, Augustinian sense of all

knowledge existing within God’s being qua being: Being itself.

Living the other side of this shift, such an understanding of knowledge that animated the New

Devout seems incomprehensible. But as Charles Taylor has pointed out, to view a time like that

of the Devotio Moderna as an essentially paradoxical imaginary is just as much a testament to

Enlightenment thought as it is a reflection on the sensibility of the Social Imaginary of the Devotio

Moderna.

We are in a different universe from that, say, Aristotelian ethics, where a

concept like “phronesis” doesn’t allow us to separate a knowledge component

from the practice of virtue. This becomes possible with modern science,

construed as knowledge of an objectified domain, as with our contemporary

Western medicine. Even more striking, this recourse to objectified knowledge

begins in modern culture to take over ethics. On the utilitarian viewpoint, for

example, the knowledge/expertise necessary to make calculus which will reveal

the right action is quite unconnected from one’s own motivation to the good. It

is the kind of knowledge which can permit the bad person to do harm, just as

much as the well-disposed agent to do good. This is precisely the kind of

knowledge which Aristotle contrasted to practical wisdom (Phronesis).

Analogously, for many contemporary neo-Kantians, it might seem that what you

need is the sharpness to follow the logic of an argument, another capacity which

seems detachable from moral insight.

153 Alasdair C. MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, (London: Bloomsbury, 2007).

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However, by the fourteenth century, when the demand for learned bureaucrats from imperial

courts and the Roman curia were at unprecedentedly high levels, and when the institution of the

university had, seemingly for the first time to Grote and his followers, severed the crucial nexus

between the cultivation of virtue and holiness from the cultivation of knowledge and learning,

the New Devout gave voice to the preceding imaginary that was being challenged, an imaginary

shaped by Augustinian understandings of knowledge as found in God and made intelligible

through Christ, activated through devotional ynnicheit, by which one experienced fleetingly God’s

being through one’s own being, and which was cultivated in communities, in attendance at

monasteries and cathedral schools, the only reward for which was a holy life and the ekstasis of

experiencing the being, to borrow Augustine’s own phrase, “from whom, through whom and in

whom all things exist.”154

3 AUGUSTINIAN IMAGINARY

I set out in the preceding chapter how the Devotio Moderna comprised a particular Social

Imaginary, a shared, unarticulated, sense that legitimizes action and sets the parameters of a

culture. I proposed that this framework of the Social Imaginary offers us purchase in a way that

traditional analytic categories do not on the peculiar relationship of the Devotio Moderna to

scholastic, university culture. Charles Taylor’s concept is, however, formal and offers little by way

of specific historical analysis of the Observant Century. For this reason, this chapter fills in

Taylor’ analytical category with the content that provided the New Devout with their impetus

and distinctiveness, particularly in the face of scholastic, university culture. I use the term

Augustinian Imaginary to describe this situation of the New Devout. By this, I mean that the

expectations and assessment of the New Devout on their own situation drew principally from

Augustine and his later interlocutors, the most important of these interlocutors for the New

Devout being Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite and Bernard of Clairvaux († 1153). John

154 PL 32:661-2. ex quo omnia, per quem omnia, in quo omnia (Rom. XI, 36).

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Cassian’s De institutis coenobiorum (Institutes of the Coenobia) and the Collationes patrum in scetica eremo

(Conferences of the Desert Fathers) represent another key wellspring for the New Devout’s Social

Imaginary which I include here within their larger Augustinian Imaginary. Importantly, as will

come out over the course of my argument, this Augustinian Imaginary was defined in part by its

antithesis to scholastic, university culture. I name their imaginary as Augustinian to refer to the

dominance of Augustine’s way of describing faith, oneself, and creation within their

communities. Found not only in the specific references to Augustine, as plentiful as they are, this

imaginary was also carried in the rituals, habits, sense of time, and use of space that was

characteristic of the world from which the New Devout emerged. Rather than denoting some

pure, hypostasized sense of Augustine’s oeuvre, by Augustinian Imaginary I mean a far more

diffuse sense that stems from Augustine’s thought-world, and, importantly, one that was

particular to the fourteenth- and fifteenth-century context of Geert Grote and his followers.

What is important for an assessment of the New Devout’s attitude towards scholastic, university

culture is: firstly (1), that in this Augustinian Imaginary God equated with being itself, esse, and

therefore could not be integrated into an ontologically prior systematization. This would be a key

site of their aversion to the systematization of scholastic, university culture. Secondly (2),

descriptions of God could not be univocal, that is, God could not be described with the same

terms in the same way as creation. Further (3), God’s esse amounted to his dilectio, his love,

meaning that enquiry into God or creation implicated the condition of one’s heart. The concept

of theologia, therefore, did not neatly integrate into this Augustinian Imaginary. The office of

theologian, as it emerged in the later Middle Ages, was alien to Augustine’s world and, as I will

demonstrate below, relied on the universitas as its legitimizing principle. Finally (4), reading,

writing, and learning were, in this Augustinian Imaginary, infused with moral, spiritual

significance. The activity of learning remained in this imaginary a labor of love for God, an

ascription I will return to later in discussion of the practices of reading, writing, and copying

within the Devotio Moderna.

Leaders within the movement saw the Aristotelian package of dialectic and analysis as an alluring

chimera liable to seduce and corrupt promising boys within their milieu. They accordingly

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warned the sisters and brothers under their care of the dangers of such a waterless spring for true

devotion and true knowledge. It was certainly possible for the sisters and brothers to attain a

certain level of erudition, but this occurred within a framework of their Augustinian Imaginary, in

which cognition and intellection could only occur properly once the heart’s desires had been

reoriented towards the summum bonum.

Augustine and the World of the New Devout

At the end of his life, Geert Grote sensed his coming death. Thomas à Kempis († 1471) relates

the events surrounding Geert Grote’s death in portentous terms. Turning to his disciples, Grote

spoke some of his last words. Speaking to Florens Radewijns († ca. 1400) Grote exclaimed,

“Look! I am being called back to the Lord and the time of my death is at hand. Augustine and

Bernard are knocking at my door!”155 We see here in miniature how pervasive Augustine’s

influence on the New Devout was. Aside from the works of John Cassian, which provided a

conduit between the New Devout and the Desert Fathers, no extra-biblical personality or body

of work came close to rivalling the person and work of the Bishop of Hippo. In both

exhortations and library registers of the New Devout we find references to many of Augustine’s

works: his commentaries on the book of Genesis, his Enarrationes in psalmos, In Iohannis evangelium

tractatus, as well as his Soliloquia, and Enchiridion. The New Devout consciously modelled their

modus vivendi on the basis of Augustine’s De opere monachorum. The registrum of the Rookloster, a

congregation of the New Devout, also lists several eclectic works either of Augustine or ascribed

to him. In his sermons and letters, Grote also refers to Augustine’s Contra academicos, De baptismo,

De doctrina christiana, Contra Faustum, De vera religione, De diversis quaestionibus octoginta tribus liber unus,

and Contra epistulam manichaei. Sisters and brothers often chose Augustine as the patron Saint of

their houses and drew on his work to defend the legal standing of their vita communis. In

particular, Augustine’s view of human sinfulness shaped the New Devout’s view of the

importance of humility, self-examination, and frequent confession. Further, the interior

155 TK 7:79. En vocor a Domino: et tempus resolutionis meae instat. Augustinus et Bernardus pulsant ad ostium.

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experience of God developed by Augustine in his Confessions guided the New Devout’s own sense

that spiritual perfection was a matter of the inner self (ynnicheit), its intentions and desires.

In the world of the New Devout, it was inconceivable to argue, write, or teach about God or his

creation without enduring reference to Augustine. The sheer bulk of his corpus testified, along

with his orthodoxy and his episcopal office, to the preeminent place the Bishop of Hippo held

very early on in the Church.156 By the twelfth century, it was inconceivable to properly treat sacra

doctrina without persistent recourse to Augustine. To bolster a point or give emphasis with

theological flourish, scholars almost reflexively reached for the refrain Augustinus dicit. His

auctoritas was almost incontrovertible, his influence on the theological landscape of late medieval

Europe so great as to be defining.157 By the middle of the fourteenth century, citing Augustine

had become of such great importance that new systems of codifying and organizing textual

quotations had been developed for scholars to precisely cite Augustine’s vast corpus.158 Where

earlier systems of citation had been crude, and references to Augustine somewhat cursory, by the

time Geert Grote had attended the University of Paris considerable effort had been put to

unearthing the historico-critical Augustine. Thus in 1345, just over a decade before Grote would

move to Paris, Bartholomew of Urbino compiled the Milleloquium Sancti Augustini,

“unquestionably the high point of Augustine scholarship before the Amerbach edition [the 1506

edition of Augustine’s opera omnia published by Johannes Amerbach].”159 Scholars rapaciously

sought the complete oeuvre of Augustine. By the middle of the fourteenth century, scholars were

returning to Augustine afresh, determined, like Bartholomew of Urbino, to look upon the

writings of the sapiens architector ecclesiae with their own eyes.160

156 James Joseph O’Donnell, ‘The Authority of Augustine’, Augustinian Studies 22 (1991): 22. 157 Sean A. Otto, ‘Predestination and the Two Cities: The Authority of Augustine and the Nature of the Church in Giles of Rome and John Wyclif’, in Authorities in the Middle Ages: Influence, Legitimacy, and Power in Medieval Society, ed. Tuija Ainonen, Sini Kangas, and Mia Korpiola, (De Gruyter: De Gruyter, 2013), 145. 158 A. Damasus Trapp, ‘Hitalinger’s Augustinian Quotations’, in Via Augustini: Augustine in the Later Middle Ages, Renaissance, and Reformation: Essays in Honor of Damasus Trapp, O.S.A, ed. A. Damasus Trapp et al., (Leiden; New York: Brill, 1991), 189–220. 159 Eric Leland Saak, ‘The Reception of Augustine in the Later Middle Ages’, in The Reception of the Church Fathers in the West: From the Carolingians to the Maurists, ed. Irena Dorota Backus, vol. 1 (Leiden; New York: Brill, 1997), 381. 160 Saak, 381.

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Although unevenly distributed across the libraries and schools of the late Middle Ages, Augustine

became an almost universally cited authority in the West by the time Geert Grote attended the

University of Paris in the middle of the fourteenth century.161 Not only had each scholar to

return to Augustine’s own corpus afresh, but Augustine’s rule was still practiced, meaning that

textual communities, like the canons at Agnietenberg (of which Thomas à Kempis was a

member), were in a sense still shaped by Augustine himself while also being influenced by his

later interlocutors. Eric Leland Saak writes,

Augustine’s paternity in the later Middle Ages shaped the language of vernacular

religious literature; the philosophical discussions of divine illumination, divine

knowledge, and fruition; and the political doctrines of hierocratic theory, just

war and the dominion of grace. Theologically, no one denied the weight of

Augustine’s authority… The question was not whether one accepted or rejected

Augustine, but how Augustine was to be interpreted. The universal influence

and acclamation of Augustine rendered him, as Abraham, the “father of

multitudes.”162

I argue not that the Augustinian Imaginary that animated the New Devout was in any sense

Augustine’s untouched thought, but that his original corpus was still read and was constantly

interacting both with fresh readers and his own theological interlocutors throughout history.

While readings of Augustine, particularly in relation to education and knowledge, were by no

means homogenous, continuity did exist. Such an assertion is by no means controversial.163 My

analysis here is thus diachronic rather than synchronic. While there is no need to identify a pure,

timeless form of Augustinian imagination, this does not preclude the continuity of his works and

thought as read and re-read over time. 164 I borrow here David Armitage’s framework of

“transtemporal history,” that is, broad history that entails the “reconstruction of a sequence of

161 Robert B. Eno, ‘Doctrinal Authority in Saint Augustine’, Augustinian Studies 12 (1981): 133–72. 162 Saak, ‘The Reception of Augustine in the Later Middle Ages’, 371–72. 163 Lydia Schumacher, Divine Illumination: The History and Future of Augustine’s Theory of Knowledge, (Chichester, West Sussex; Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), 66f. 164 David Armitage, “What’s the Big Idea? Intellectual History and the Longue Durée,” History of European Ideas 38, no. 4 (December 2012): 498.

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distinct contexts in which identifiable agents strategically deployed existing languages to effect

[sic] definable goals such as legitimation and delegitimation, suasion and dissuasion, consensus-

building and radical innovation.”165 Such ideas, in this instance an Augustinian Imaginary, are not

“hypostatized entities, making intermittent entries into the mundane world from idealism’s

heavenly spheres, but rather focal points of arguments shaped and debated spasmodically across

times with a conscious – or at least a provable connection – with both earlier and later instances

of such struggles.”166 Rather than a static, pure Augustinianism, the world of the New Devout

was shaped by the myriad discourses that were anchored to, and shaped by, the person and work

of Augustine.167

No author’s works matched Augustine in the libraries of the New Devout. The only writer

referenced comparably to Augustine by the New Devout is Bernard of Clairvaux, who lived

comfortably within this Augustinian Imaginary I am describing. In fact, Nikolaus Staubach has

argued that Bernard sounded so sweetly to Geert Grote because of Bernard’s ability to digest

Augustine’s sense of things in his own writing. Staubach is unrestrained in his description of

what I name the New Devout’s Augustinian Imaginary. “Not least he [Grote] valued Bernard’s

style, his gravitas and the flores Bernardini; but even more he valued his capacity for appropriating

the thoughts of Augustine and other more ancient Church Fathers by as it were organic

assimilation… Like his personal veneration of Augustine and Bernard, Grote’s program of

spiritual readings and exercises also became standard for his followers and for the whole Devotio

Moderna movement.”168 This Augustinian Imaginary was pervasive, even for scholars immersed in

Aristotelian dialectic. Surprisingly, a plethora of theological works furnished the imaginary of the

ostensibly anti-intellectual Devotio Moderna. Staubach catalogues in the Windesheim congregation

of the New Devout authors such as,

165 Armitage, 498. 166 Ibid., 499. 167 Saak, ‘The Reception of Augustine in the Later Middle Ages’, 373–75. 168 Nikolaus Staubach, ‘Memores Pristinae Perfectionis’, in The Reception of the Church Fathers in the West: From the Carolignians to the Maurists, ed. Irena Dorota Backus, vol. 1 (Leiden; New York: Brill, 1997), 415–16.

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Augustine, Gregory, Ambrose, Jerome, Bernard, Guerricus, Chrysostom,

Origen, Hilary of Poitiers, Prosper of Aquitaine, Cyprian, Leo, Eusebius of

Emesa, Bede, Hugh of St. Victor, Richard of St. Victor, Pseudo-Dionysius,

Isidore, Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, Pseudo-Basil, Petrarch and Grote.169

When writing what would become a foundational document for the New Devout, his Conclusa,

Geert Grote exhorted his followers to live out their devotion in emulation of the apostolic life

narrated in the New Testament. Commenting on the reading of sacred books, Grote gave his

followers a reading-list conducive to their life:

The root of your study and the mirror of life is, firstly, the Gospel of Christ,

since there is the life of Christ, then the lives and writings [collationes] of the

fathers, then the letters of Paul and the canons, then the Acts of the Apostles, then

devout books like the meditations of Bernard and the Horologium of Anselm,

Bernard’s On Conscience… so that you might see the great fruit of the early

church [and] so that you might know what you should avoid.170

Texts within this Augustinian Imaginary explained reading as sustained reflection on the truth

that transformed the inner self.171 In a tract attributed to Hugh of St. Victor († 1141) (De modo

dicendi et meditandi). We read that one meditates, “when they affix free attention to contemplating

truth.”172 Meditatio was slow and methodical reflection on some aspect of truth as heard via

instruction or encountered through reading. By meditating one left no stone unturned. To

meditate meant, “to leave nothing ambiguous, nothing obscure.” 173 To read was to begin

consideration of truth but the full apprehension of truth was only consummated in the sustained

reflection of meditation. “For the beginning of teaching is in reading, it’s consummation in

169 Staubach, 419. 170 Conclusa, 377. Radix studii tui et speculum vitae sint, primo Euangelium Christi, quia ibi est vita Christi; deinde vitae et collationes patrum; deinde epistulae Pauli, et canonicae, et actus apostulorum; deinde libri devoti ut Meditationes Bernardi et Anselm Horologium; de conscientia Bernardus… ut videas grossos Ecclesiae primativae fructus; ut scias at quibus cavere. 171 Nikolaus Staubach, ‘Die Meditation im spirituellen Reformprogramm der Devotio Moderna’, in Meditatio - Refashioning the Self: Theory and Practice in Late Medieval and Early Modern Intellectuel Culture, ed. Karl A.E. Enenkel and Walter S. Melion (Leiden, 2011), 181–207. 172 PL 76:877. ubi liberam contemplandae veritati aciem affigat. 173 PL 76:877. nihil anceps, nihil obscurum relinquere.

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meditation.”174 Meditation thus gave a foretaste of the beatific vision through the untrammeled

interior reflection on truth. “In a way, it gives a foretaste even in this life of the sweetness of

eternal peace.”175 Grote’s Conclusa also advised the reading of the De conscientia, a work attributed

to Bernard of Clairvaux. In this work meditation and contemplation are presented as the

deepening of knowledge that lead to a foretaste of the eternal encounter with the divine when the

soul is reunited with God.

Contemplation of the truth in this life is begun, but it is celebrated in the future

never-ending eternity. Through contemplation of the truth a person is instructed

in justice and is consummated in glory. The grace of contemplation not only

cleanses the heart from every earthly love but also sanctifies and inflames the

mind towards love of heavenly things. The one moved by divine inspiration and

revelation towards the grace of contemplation receives a certain pledge of that

future, when they will cleave to eternal contemplation forever.176

Meditation and contemplation meant simultaneously kenosis of one’s mind of frivolous, earthly

things and sustained reflection on the ineffable mystery of God, who is truth. “It is necessary for

the one who wishes to be open to contemplation of truth to learn to be still, not only from evil

deeds, but also from empty thoughts.”177 This tract cites the commonplace of Psalm 64, “be still

and know that I am God,” as the paradigmatic scriptural exhortation towards this sort of

contemplation. Contemplation and meditation were not simply abstaining from physical work

but required a more fundamental inward rest. “Although they are at rest physically, they roam

every way in their heart and do not merit to see how sweet the Lord is... Their mind is pulled in

174 PL 76:877. Principium ergo doctrinae est in lectione, consummatio in meditatione. 175 PL 76:878. in hac vita etiam aeternae quietis dulcedine, quodammodo praegustare facit. 176 PL 184:551. Veritatis contemplatio in hac vita inchoatur, sed in futura jugi perpetuitate celebratur. Per veritatis contemplationem eruditur homo ad justitiam, consummatur ad gloriam. Gratia contemplationis cor ab omni mundano amore non solum emundat, sed sanctificat, et animum ad coelestium amorem inflammat. Qui divina inspiratione et revelatione ad contemplationis gratiam promovetur, quasdam arrhas futurae illius plenitudinis accipit, ubi sempiternae contemplationi perpetuo inhaerebit. 177 PL 184:551. Qui vero contemplationi veritatis vult vacare, necesse est ut discat requiescere, non solum ab operibus malis, sed etiam a cogitationibus supervacuis.

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many directions – now here, now there – by scurrying with great speed they are born into

contrary things.”178

Gerlach Peters († 1411), disciple of Florens Radewijns at Deventer, exemplifies several key

aspects of this Augustinian Imaginary in his Ignitum cum deo soliloquium (Fiery Soliloquy with God).

The title of the work encapsulates the paradoxical interior move Augustine modelled in the

pursuit and experience of God – a back-and-forth with God in the form of a monologue. Peters

describes the ascent to God as interior in the self, the knowledge of God prior and more

important than all other knowledge, the human self utterly stained by sin and in need of grace,

and that God’s being and his love were essentially the same thing. In Peter’s view each person

was created to participate in God’s divine goodness. “What is it that we ought to know? Is it not

that we were created to the image and likeness of God?”179 According to Peters, God’s being is

immanently present to each person, their interiority connected to God’s Eternal Now, “who

gazes upon all things past, present, and future at one glance.”180 Peters described God, like

Augustine, as summum bonum, “being itself of all things.”181 This immutability of God’s esse is such

that “we use neither memory, nor physical perception, nor are we lead by created things to look

upon and love the summum bonum, but you stand unchangeable with the unchangeable, with and

in the goodness itself of what is good, participating in its essence.”182 Gerlach Peters picks up on

Augustine’s frequent description of God as “from whom, through whom and in whom all things

exist, and where God is all in all.”183 God in this view is eternal, immutable truth that fills and

contains all things. Because of sin the mind is defiled from fully apprehending truth, these

infirmities and vices “cloud the keenness of my mind.”184 The world of the New Devout was

178 PL 184:551. Vacantes siquidem corpore, sed vagantes ubique corde, nequaquam merentur videre quam dulcis est Dominus... Animus eorum in diversa rapitur, et nunc in hanc partem, nunc in illam discurrendo mira agilitate in contraria agitur. 179 Petrus Gerlacus, Alter Thomas A Kempis, Sive Gerlaci Petri (+1411) Ignitum Cum Deo Soliloquium (Heberle, 1849), 38. quid est quod oportet sapere? Nonne quod ad imaginem et similitudinem Dei sumus creati? 180 Petrus Gerlacus, 28–29. qui omnia, praeterita, praesentia et futura uno intuitu conspicit. 181 Petrus Gerlacus, 53. qui ipsum esse omnium est. 182 Petrus Gerlacus, 53. Nec memoria, nec intellectu sensibili utimini, nec ex creatis ducimini ad summum bonum intuendum et amandum, sed statis incommutabiles cum incommutabili, cum ipso bono boni, eius essentiae participes. 183 Petrus Gerlacus, 52. ex quo omnia, per quem omnia, et in quo omnia, et ubi Deus omnis in omnibus. 184 Petrus Gerlacus, 54. [infirmitates vitii] obnubilant aciem mentis meae.

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thus steeped in the thought-world of Augustine and his interpreters. While Augustine’s influence

was not unique to the New Devout, identifying the Devotio Moderna as comprising an Augustinian

Imaginary accounts for the particularities of their movement and denotes the specific trajectory

that Augustine’s influence took over their way of life.

Comparison to Other Movements of Observant Century

Considering his ubiquity, how useful is Augustine for an analysis of the particularities of a

specific movement such as the Devotio Moderna? Saak is cautious about pronouncing the full shape

of Augustine’s influence on late medieval theological discourse precisely because it is so far-

reaching. We still await, moreover, the many critical editions of medieval theologians needed in

order to delineate in detail the full scope of Augustine’s late medieval inheritance.185 To argue the

Devotio Moderna comprised an Augustinian Imaginary is not to discount the deep influence of

Augustine and his interpreters on other movements, particularly those also emerging over the

course of the Observant Century. It is to say, however, that without an Augustinian Imaginary

the Devotio Moderna could not have seemed intelligible or plausible to its members in the way it

was. Augustine loomed large in the libraries and imaginations of the Devotio Moderna, and their

way of life was, therefore, reducible in large part to the imaginary promulgated by the Bishop of

Hippo. While the influence of Augustine was not unique, the consequences of his influence took

a different course for the New Devout in comparison to other contemporary movements. This

Augustinian Imaginary denotes how the brothers’ and sisters’ reading of Augustine and their

interaction with him via later readers was directly responsible for their attitude towards scholastic,

university culture and their own practices of reading, writing, and schooling. While Augustine

was not the only factor, the brothers’ and sisters’ use of him and his later interpreters was directly

responsible for their way of life

Nonetheless, although this Augustinian Imaginary was characteristic of the Devotio Moderna, it was

not without analogue. The work of Augustine manifested itself in the Observant Century

185 Saak, ‘The Reception of Augustine in the Later Middle Ages’, 368–70.

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through the impetus for a godly character in authenticating assertions of truth.186 The emphasis

on the link between virtue and knowledge was heavily stressed by observant groups whose

charism lay not in ecclesiastical magisterium but in their own textual community. Anna Lewis has

shown, in this way, how Lollards understood the perceptive reader as the reader whose godly

character enabled to them to gravitate to what was good and true. “With the reading of Scripture

so central to their doctrine and survival,” writes Lewis, “Lollards took great care to describe the

reading process and the requirements necessary, namely the well-intentioned reader and the

unadulterated and ‘open’ text.”187 Likewise, anyone practicing or aware of the Benedictine Rule

would know how virtue was implicated even in the mere reading of Scripture. Brothers were to

pray before meals that the reader of the Bible would not fall prey to pride. The Rule of St.

Benedict ran thus,

Reading ought not to cease at the tables of the brothers while they eat… Let

him who enters after the mass and communion seek that all the brothers pray

for him as the reader, that God might keep him away from a spirit of pride. And

let this verse be said three times by everyone in the oratory, which begins:

“Lord, open my lips and my mouth with announce your praise”; and with the

blessing so received, he should proceed to read. 188

The rubric of the Augustinian Imaginary offers much fruit when placed in comparison with other

contemporary lay movements taking their impetus from a close relationship to Augustinian

canons. Malcolm Lambert has argued that the Bohemian Reform movement echoed many

aspects of the New Devout’s piety, in “the study of books, notably by Augustine and the

186 Brian Stock, After Augustine: The Meditative Reader and the Text, Material Texts (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001). 187 Anna Lewis, ‘“Þe Lettere Sleeþ”: Lollards, Literalism, and the Definition of Bad Readers’, in Devotional Literature and Practice in Medieval England: Readers, Reading, and Reception, ed. Kathryn R. Vulić, Susan Uselmann, and C. Annette Grisé, (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2016), 59. 188 Benedict, The Rule of Saint Benedict, (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2011), 134. Mensis fratrum edentium lectio deesse non debet… Qui ingrediens post Missas et Commnunionem, petat ab omnibus pro se oratori, ut avertat ab eo Deus spiritum elationis. Et dicatur hic versus in Oratorio tertio ab omnibus, ipso tamen incipiente: “Domine labia mea aperies, et os meum annuntiabit laudem tuam;” et sic accepta benedictione, ingrediatur ad legendum.

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Fathers.” 189 Indeed, the rubric of the Augustinian Imaginary helps to make sense of a lay

movement with much in common with other lay movements (John van Engen identifies key

similarities between the Devotio Moderna and Lollardy) but which unlike other movements still

retained orthodoxy and marks of intellectual rigor.190 However, the term Augustinian Imaginary

primarily denotes the specific influence that Augustine and his later readers exercised over the

way of life of the Devotio Moderna, such that their movement resembled a coherent, unique way of

life in distinction to other similar movements of the Observant Century.

Spiritual progress and growth in virtue thus amount to distinguishing characteristics of the Devotio

Moderna. Krijn Pansters has argued that moral formation and spiritual progress in virtue (profectus,

geestliken voertganck) amount to defining characteristics of the Devotio Moderna. Pansters describes

the progress in virtues as a leitmotif of the New Devout that the movement’s founder, Grote,

propagated, but which found its roots in the writings of David of Augsburg († 1272). “The

emphasis on the ‘progress in virtues’ is a differentiating characteristic of this movement.”191 For

Pansters, the pinnacle of the life that the New Devout aimed for centered on the acquisition of

virtue. “All spiritual exercises (like handiwork, Bible reading, meditation and prayer) were

directed to spiritual progress and purity of heart, which in practice meant the imitation of Christ

and the gaining of virtues.”192 Pansters does not pass judgement on the relationship or linkage

between intellection and virtue, but argues that the New Devout were shaped in large part by the

Franciscan David of Augsburg’s Profectus Virtutum. Conversely, the popularity of the Profectus

Virtutum, according to Pansters, was likewise due to the partiality of the movement for the work.

However, I have argued that if we are to come to a deeper understanding of the movement’s

stance towards scholastic, university culture, we must step back and set down some theoretical

189 Malcolm Lambert, Medieval Heresy: Popular Movements from the Gregorian Reform to the Reformation, 3rd ed (Oxford, UK; Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub, 2002), 310. 190 John H. van Engen, “Anticlericalism and the Lollards,” in Anticlericalism in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Leiden: Brill, 1993), 53–64. 191 Krijn Pansters, ‘Didactiek en dynamiek: “voortgaan in deugden” in de geschriften van de Moderne Devoten’, Trajecta. Tijdschrift voor de Geschiedenis van het Katholiek Leven in de Nederlanden 16 (2007): 311. De nadruk op het ‘voortgaan in deugden’ is een onderscheidend kenmerk van deze beweging. 192 Pansters, 311. Alle geestelijke oefeningen (zoals handenarbeid, Bijbellezing, meditatie en gebed) waren gericht op geestelijke vooruitgang en zuiverheid van hart, wat in de praktijk betekende: Christus navolgen en deugden verwerven.

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parameters by which we can assess how the sisters and brothers understood virtue and

intellection as part of their particular way of life. Similarly, Guido de Baere has emphasized the

inner turn of the New Devout as a characteristic of the movement as a whole. According to de

Baere,

The core inspiration of this movement lay in the interiorization and

personalization of the religious life as a reaction against the exteriorization of it

into a proliferation of rites and practices from which all interior inspiration was

lost. A typical characteristic of the Modern Devotion was the use of methods

and techniques to guard and nurture this interior life.193

Augustine and his later interlocuters loomed large in the imaginary of the Devotio Moderna. The

work of the Bishop of Hippo sat at the center of the textual traditional that animated and

directed their daily practices and theoretical conception of their modus vivendi.

Augustinian Imaginary: Form and Content

What was this Augustinian Imaginary? As noted above, the New Devout’s Augustinian

Imaginary played out along four main lines as relates their attitude towards scholastic, university

culture. Three of these concern the Augustinian Imaginary as guiding principles or senses that

formed the sisters and brothers, and the fourth treats the practices of the brothers as an

outflowing of these principles. Firstly (1), and most importantly, this imaginary identified God as

being qua being, esse. The study of God or utterances about him could not, therefore, be

integrated into any ontologically prior systematization. Secondly (2), because God was esse, God

could not be described univocally, that is, with the same terms used in the same way as used to

describe creation. Thirdly (3), God’s esse amounted to dilectio. Finally, as an outflowing of these

guiding principles or senses in this imaginary (4), reading, writing, and schooling amounted to a

193 Guido de Baere, “De Middelnederlandse mystieke literatuur en de Moderna Devotie,” Trajecta. Tijdschrift voor de Geschiedenis van het Katholiek Leven in de Nederlanden 6, no. 1 (1997): 4. De kerninspiratie van deze beweging lag in de verinnerlijking en verpersoonlijking van het religieuze leven als reactie tegen de veruiterlijking ervan in een woekering van riten en gebruiken waaruit alle innerlijke bezieling geweken was. Een typisch kenmerk van de Moderne Devotie was het aanwenden van methoden en technieken om dit innerlijk leven te behoeden en te ontwikkelen.

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labor of love for God, important, meaningful, and valid for the New Devout for the effect

worked on the heart.

God as esse

In Augustine’s thought, God was being qua being, esse, being itself, and so therefore on a

different plane to all other created things. This meant that for Augustine, knowledge of the

world, knowledge of oneself and knowledge of God were an inextricable unity. Augustine

understood faith as the necessary foundation upon which any intellectual enquiry could take

place. “Before we understand we ought to believe, and [then] to keep watch lest our faith prove

false,” wrote Augustine in De trinitate.194 To know reality, in any sort of way, was to know God,

“from whom, through whom and in whom all things exist.”195 In fact, the act of understanding

itself was an inchoate experience of God himself, who holds all things together and allows the

mind to apprehend things as coherent and rational. “So God is present to every human mind,

albeit often unrecognized, in every act of apprehension and judgment, and present not only as

omnipresent creator but as constituting that act of apprehension and judgment,” writes Alasdair

Macintyre,

And in every such act there is an ineliminable reference to God, albeit often

unintended as well as unacknowledged, insofar as in saying of anything that it is

or what it is, we make at least an indirect reference to its being perfectly or

imperfectly what it is.196

This is a difficult sense for a modern, accustomed to imagining oneself as reasoning towards

faith, of gathering facts before making the plunge of belief. But for Augustine, devotion

specifically to the God made known in Christ was the only path to knowledge, credo ut intelligam

194 PL 42:952. prius autem quam intelligamus credere debemus, vigilandumque nobis est, ne ficta sit fides nostra. 195 PL 32 :661-662. Non ergo essem, deus meus, non omnino essem, nisi esses in me. an potius non essem nisi essem in te, ex quo omnia, per quem omnia, in quo omnia? 196 Alasdair C. Macintyre, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry: Encyclopaedia, Genealogy, and Tradition: Being Gifford Lectures Delivered in the University of Edinburgh in 1988 (Notre Dame, Ind: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990), 95.

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his much-quoted commonplace.197 Rather than imagining the knowledge of things as prior to

one’s knowledge of God, Augustine saw all things as existing within God. To know anything

begins by knowing God in whom all things exist and have their being. Thus, one comes to

understand one’s own experience as in fact an experience of God sharing his own being. So

Augustine wrote in the Confessions,

I would not have existed, my God, I would not have existed at all, had you not

been in me. Or rather I would not have existed had I not been in you, from

whom, through whom and in whom all things exist.198

Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite picked up on this same scriptural commonplace to make the

same point of God as esse. “He [God] is the beginning and end, before all beginnings and before

all ends, for ‘from him, and through him, and in him are all things.’” 199 This Augustinian

Imaginary yoked together a right understanding of the nature of all things with participation in

God.200 In this view, philosophy, or any kind of learning for that matter, could present no threat

to the Christian frame because revealed truth guaranteed the legitimacy of Christianity. The

organizing principle of all knowledges was the truth of the Church. One assessed the

contribution of philosophy, whether it be moral, metaphysical, or natural, in terms of what they

contributed to the whole as regulated by the light of faith.201 In this Augustinian Imaginary,

197 Stephen Gaukroger, The Emergence of a Scientific Culture: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1210-1685 (Oxford: New York: Clarendon Press; Oxford University Press, 2006), 50. “In its later development, especially in the writings of Augustine, the project amounts to nothing short of a total translation of all philosophy into Christian terms. Christianity is conceived of as the final form of philosophy. Using language of the classical philosophers to formulate his theology, Augustine attempts to show that Christianity is able to answer all the questions of classical metaphysics.” 198 PL 32:661-662. Non ergo essem, Deus meus, non omnino essem, nisi esses in me. An potius non essem, nisi essem in te, ex quo omnia, per quem omnia, in quo omnia. 199 PL 122:134. et est omnium principium et finis superprincipale et superfinale, quia ex ipso, et per ipsum, et in ipso et in ipsum omnia. 200 Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1989), 128. “If everything participates in God and everything is in its own way like God, then the key principle underlying everything is that of Participation or Likeness itself. But the archetype of Likeness-to-God can only be God’s Word itself, begotten from him and of one substance with him, i.e., the Second Person of the Trinity, by whom all things were made.” 201 Gaukroger, The Emergence of a Scientific Culture, 55. “philosophy – in which one should primarily include moral philosophy, metaphysics, and natural philosophy – could not threaten theology because philosophy was evaluated with respect to the contribution it made to the whole, a whole that was ultimately governed by revealed religion… there were no irreconcilable truths; there was one truth, one reality, that of Christianity.”

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God’s esse was of a piece with creation. One must understand, therefore, that an apprehension of

God is involved in any intellectual enquiry, a conviction of central importance for the New

Devout’s attitude towards emerging university culture.

The Polyvocality of God and Creation

Because God was esse, being itself, Augustine refused to put God on the same plane as created

things. This move, in turn, meant that Augustine spoke about God with the understanding that

attributes and ascriptions only applied to God cursorily and could not be used with the same

exact definition or meaning as when used to describe created things. This aspect of the

Augustinian Imaginary was significant for the New Devout’s response to late medieval

developments to scholastic theology that saw God as being the object of metaphysics and so

therefore ontologically prior to quiddity.

There could be no sense in the Augustinian Imaginary that the knowledge of God could be

separated from his creation – or that one could gather any sort of knowledge without reference

to the esse that grounded and retained all of reality. This was because God was understood as esse

– “from whom, through whom and in whom all things exist.”202 Given that in Augustine’s

understanding God’s being grounded all being, which existed by participation in him, godly living

was inextricable from the acquisition of knowledge because true knowledge would inevitably

encounter God as the summum bonum. Thus in the Confessions.

By fleeing the soul lives, which dies by seeking. Restrain yourself from the base

savageness of pride, from the sterile desire of greed, and from the false name of

knowledge… the arrogance of pride, the love of lust and the venom of curiosity

are the movements of a dead soul… for by going away from the source of life it

dies and is received by the age that is passing away and is conformed to it.203

202 PL 32:661-662. ex quo omnia, per quem omnia, in quo omnia? 203 PL 32:857-858. Evitando vivit anima, quae appetendo moritur. Continete vos ab immani feritate superbiae, ab inerti voluptate luxuriae, et a fallaci nomine scientiae; ut sint bestiae mansuetae, et pecora edomita, et innoxii serpentes. Motus enim animae sunt isti in allegoria: sed fastus elationis, et delectatio libidinis, et venenum curiositatis motus sunt animae mortuae; quia non ita moritur, ut omni motu careat, quoniam discedendo a fonte vitae, moritur, atque ita suscipitur a praetereunte saeculo, et conformatur ei.

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Any intellectual enquiry involved God’s esse, and so humility, faith, and love were necessary

components of any sort of education. Augustine wonders about how frail, mutable human minds

can conceive of Being itself who creates by offering himself – creation ex nihilo for which humans

have no suitable analogue:

And how will I call upon my God in prayer, my God and Lord, since certainly

when I call upon him, I call upon him who is in me? Where is the place within

me where my God shall come in me? Where shall my God come in me, God

who made Heaven and Earth? Is it not so, my God? Is there anything in me that

can understand you? Or perhaps Heaven and Earth, which you have made and

in which you have made me, comprehend you? Or is it so that because nothing

that exists would have existed without you that anything that exists could fully

grasp you? And since I do exist, what do I seek that you might come in me, I

who would not exist unless you were in me.204

God’s being lacks analogy to any other being, and so Augustine stretches his language to the limit

to describe God’s relationship to creation – no preposition seems adequate to describe God’s

filling, instantiating, self-giving, and upholding of creation:

Where shall I call upon you since I am in you? Or where will you come in me?

Where would I go beyond Heaven and Earth, that there you might come into

me, who said, “I fill Heaven and Earth” [Jer. 23:24]? Do Heaven and Earth then

contain you, since you fill them? Or maybe you fill them with some remainder,

since they do not contain you? And where do you pour forth that reserve of

yourself after Heaven and Earth have been filled? Perhaps you do not have need

that you be contained by anything, you who contain all things, since you fill all

that you fill by containing them? [...] But all that you fill, you fill with your whole

204 PL 32 :661. Et quomodo invocabo Deum meum, Deum et Dominum meum? Quoniam utique in me ipsum eum vocabo, cum invocabo eum. Et quis locus est in me quo veniat in me Deus meus? quo Deus veniat in me, Deus qui fecit coelum et terram? Itane, Domine Deus meus, est quidquam in me quod capiat te? An vero coelum et terra quae fecisti, et in quibus me fecisti, capiunt te? An quia sine te non esset quidquid est, fit ut quidquid est capiat te? Quoniam itaque et ego sum, quid peto ut venias in me, qui non essem, nisi esses in me?

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self. Or perhaps since all things cannot contain you completely, they contain a

part of you and all things same part at the same time? Or perhaps each part

contains individually, the greater parts contain your greater part and the lesser

parts your lesser parts? So then is some part of you greater and some part lesser?

Or are you wholly everywhere and no thing fully contains you?205

As Augustine conceived it, one could not make God subject to any human method of

understanding, as though the method could properly articulate God. Rather, one must think of

God as categorically different to any created thing – not the greatest or the best or most virtuous

in the created order but above and outside. One cannot extrapolate concepts in creation and

articulate God properly. Augustine’s example is the intensity of the sun:

But if you augment in your mind’s eye the light of the sun, inasmuch as you are

able, either from what is greater or what is brighter a thousand times or even to

infinity, this is not God.206

The implications of this insight for education are manifold. We shall see further below how the

universitas created conditions in which it was plausible to articulate God’s being in language

univocal to both God and creature. For now, it will suffice to observe that Augustine could never

make this move – to predicate on God was always done cursorily, with a sense that any language

would always fall short. Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite makes the same point in his De divinis

nominibus, arguing that, “we should not dare to speak in universal terms nor to come to an

understanding of the superessential and hidden divinity except as they are expressed from God

205 PL 32:662-663. Quo te invoco, cum in te sim? aut unde venias in me? Quo enim recedam extra coelum et terram, ut inde in me veniat Deus meus, qui dixit: Coelum et terram ego impleo? (Jerem. XXIII, 24.) Capiunt ergone te coelum et terra, quoniam tu imples ea? An imples, et restat, quoniam non te capiunt? Et quo refundis quidquid impleto coelo et terra restat ex te? An non opus habes, ut quoquam continearis, qui contines omnia; quoniam quae imples, continendo imples? Non enim vasa quae te plena sunt, stabilem te faciunt; quia etsi frangantur, non effunderis. Et cum effunderis super nos, non tu jaces, sed erigis nos; nec tu dissiparis, sed colligis nos. Sed qui imples omnia, te toto imples omnia? An quia non possunt te totum capere omnia, partem tui capiunt, et eamdem partem simul omnia capiunt? An singulas singula, et majores majora, minores minora capiunt? Ergo est aliqua pars tui major, aliqua minor. 206 PL 42:948. Nec si augeas imaginatione cogitationis lucem solis, quantum potes, sive quo sit major, sive quo sit clarior, millies tantum, aut innumerabiliter, neque hoc est Deus.

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to us from Scripture.”207 The knowledge of God is thus God’s condescension to reveal himself

to humanity, “as he passes down himself concerning himself in Scripture.”208 “I say,” argues

Pseudo-Dionysius, “that it is impossible either to say or understand the one, unknown,

superessential, through itself the best thing that exists, three-in-one, ὁμόθεον [of one divinity] and

ὁμάγαθον [of one goodness].”209 A long list of God’s appellations in Scripture provide ample

enough demonstration here that all names fall short of the one whose existence transcends all,

the one who reveals himself by saying, “Ego sum ὢν” – I am who am.210

The notion that any sort of knowledge, even the most apparently “objective”, can be pursued

with solely immanent concerns is in this Augustinian Imaginary nonsensical, morally suspect, and

offensive to the sum of beauty that gives creation its delight and wonder. It is this context of

knowledge as divine participation that Augustine cast his mind back to understand his own

education – a project he devotes several books of his Confessions to understand. While excelling in

his studies of rhetoric and grammar, Augustine could not commend the pursuit of knowledge

outside of a wider context that gives shape and purpose to education – for him this must be a

theological context: divine participation.

But in my boyhood, which was less fearsome to me than my adolescence, I did

not love letters and I hated that I was compelled in them, yet I was compelled

nonetheless and it happened to my benefit. But I was not acting well (for I

would not learn unless I were forced; and no one acts well unless they will to,

even if what they do is good), nor did they act well who were forcing me, but it

turned out well for me from you, my God. For they did not consider where I

might refer what they forced me to learn, except for satisfying the insatiable

desires of plentiful poverty and shameful glory. But you, to whom all our hairs

are numbered, were using for my benefit the error of all of those who were

207 PL 122 :1113. Universaliter itaque non audendum dicere, neque intelligere quid de superessentiali et occulta divinitate, praeter divinitus nobis ex sacris eloquiis expressa. 208 PL 122: 114. sicut ipsum de seipso in sacris eloquiis tradidit. 209 PL 122:116. unum, incognitum, superessentiale, per se optimum, quod quidem est, trinam unitatem

dico, ὁμόθεον, et ὁμάγαθον, neque dicere, neque intelligere possibile est. 210 PL 122:117. Ego sum ὢν [Exod. III, 14].

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urging me to learn, but you were using me for my correction, who was

unworthy of being castigated, who did not want to learn, who was such a little

boy yet such a sinner. So you treated me well with those who did not do well

and you repaid me justly, being such a sinner. For you commanded and so it is,

that every disordered mind should be its own penalty.211

Later writers of the New Devout such as Zerbolt of Zutphen picked up this theme in arguing

that the Fall had marred reason and that the heart must first be attended to for the mind to learn.

Augustine located human reason within the narrative of fall and redemption, and so therefore

understood one’s intellect as marred by the Fall and needing restoration through repentance and

faith, not simply erudition. God in this understanding was nothing else than being itself (esse), in

which was Beauty, Goodness and Truth. To experience beauty was to participate in the ultimate

beauty of God’s being qua being. “There would have been no mutable goods unless the

immutable Good had existed.”212 We see this insight in his Confessions:

And so one must return to you, and you shall cleanse up from the evil that

dwells within, and you deal kindly with the sins of those who confess them, and

you hear the groans of those whose feet are in irons, and you break the chains

which we have made for ourselves, if only we do not raise up against you the

horns of false liberty, the greed of acquiring more, and the hurt of losing it all,

rather by loving our things rather than you, the Good of all that exists.213

211 PL 32 :669-670. in ipsa tamen pueritia, de qua mihi minus quam de adulescentia metuebatur, non amabam litteras et me in eas urgeri oderam, et urgebar tamen et bene mihi fiebat. nec faciebam ego bene (non enim discerem nisi cogerer; nemo autem invitus bene facit, etiamsi bonum est quod facit), nec qui me urgebant bene faciebant, sed bene mihi fiebat abs te, deus meus. illi enim non intuebantur quo referrem quod me discere cogebant, praeterquam ad satiandas insatiabiles cupiditates copiosae inopiae et ignominiosae gloriae. tu vero, cui numerati sunt capilli nostri, errore omnium qui mihi instabant ut discerem utebaris ad utilitatem meam, meo autem, qui discere nolebam, utebaris ad poenam meam, qua plecti non eram indignus, tantillus puer et tantus peccator. ita de non bene facientibus tu bene faciebas mihi et de peccante me ipso iuste retribuebas mihi. iussisti enim et sic est, ut poena sua sibi sit omnis inordinatus animus. 212 PL 42 :951. nulla essent mutabilia bona, nisi esset incommutabile bonum. 213 PL 32:690. Itaque pietate humili reditur in te, et purgas nos a consuetudine mala, et propitius es peccatis confitentium, et exaudis gemitus compeditorum, et solvis a vinculis quae nobis fecimus, si jam non erigamus adversus te cornua falsae libertatis, avaritia plus habendi, et damno totum amittendi; amplius amando proprium nostrum, quam te omnium bonum.

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By understanding God as esse, being itself, Augustine spoke about God equivocally, under the

premise that attributes and ascriptions applied to God in a way only analogical to how they

applied to the creation. To encounter oneself or creation meant, therefore, an encounter with

God himself that was at least implicit, if not explicit.

Esse Equates with Dilectio

Importantly, Augustine identifies God’s esse with his dilectio. Augustine does not distinguish

between saying that God is and saying what he is like. We see this sense in De trinitate: “God is

Trinity, one, alone, great, true, truthful and truth itself.”214 God’s esse (being) is one and the same

as his characteristics, like being great (magnus), just (iustus) or good (bonus). To know God was to

know love: “you see the Trinity if you see love.”215 Augustine begins with love, and this love is

necessarily triune, or else it could not be love as he understood it (love requiring a multiplicity: an

amans and an amatur). The point for Augustine is that one cannot separate God’s esse from his

dilectio. Properly understood, they are one and the same. Consequently, one’s approach towards

Veritas, God, can only begin with love. We approach the knowledge of the essences of things by

cleaving to them: “where then will it cleave to that form unless by loving?”216 If God’s esse is only

known by its love, then it follows that the path towards it begins by forming oneself to that love.

“Now this is love [dilectio], that cleaving to truth we live justly.”217 Properly understood, to say

God is love and God exists is essentially the same thing. And it follows for Augustine that to

know God is to love him, or rather that one cannot know God unless one loves him and one’s

neighbor. This sense proved critical for the New Devout as they looked at scholastic, university

culture and saw theologians speak about God without necessary reference to their own devotion.

There is thus no exterior position to assess the knowledge of God – no place outside where God

can be considered: because for Augustine love and devotion to the God who is love is what

authenticates the discovery of truth. There is no space for bifurcation into secular and sacred

knowledges. Of course, this does not amount to an abdication of the mind’s critical faculties. It is

214 PL 42:948. est Trinitas Deus unus, solus, magnus, verus, verax, veritas. 215 PL 42:958. Imo vero vides Trinitatem, si charitatem vides. 216 PL 42:955. Et unde inhaeretur illi formae, nisi amando? 217 PL 42:956. Haec est autem vera dilectio, ut inhaerentes veritati juste vivamus.

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just that Augustine believed that intellection only functioned properly once it was illuminated by

faith – that faith could be articulated theoretically and critically only once it was entered into.

God must first by known by a faith that does not waver, that he might be able

to be loved. But one must persist in this in love and cleave to him that we might

enjoy him in the present from who we exist and with whom absent we would

not be able to exist. For since “we walk now by faith and not by sight”, we do

not yet see God, as the same says “face to face”, whom unless we love now, we

will never see. But who loves what he does not know? For something cannot be

loved if it is not known. I seek whether what is not known is able to be loved;

for if it is impossible, no one loves God before he knows him. But what is it to

know God, except to look with the mind and perceive with certainty? For there

is no body that might be sought after with physical eyes. But even before we are

able to look upon and perceive God, as he is able to be looked upon and

perceived, it is permitted to the pure in heart: for ‘blessed are the pure in heart,

for they will see God’ [Matt. 5:8]. Unless God is loved through faith, the heart is

not able to be cleansed, by which the heart is apt and proper for the purpose of

seeing God.218

The metaphor Augustine reached for was illumination. For God to be articulated he must be

approached in faith:

218 PL 42:951. Deus prius fide non errante cognoscendus, ut amari possit. Sed dilectione standum est ad illud et inhaerendum illi, ut praesente perfruamur a quo sumus, quo absente nec esse possemus. Cum enim per fidem adhuc ambulamus, non per speciem (II Cor. V, 7), nondum utique videmus Deum, sicut idem ait, facie ad faciem (I Cor. XIII, 12): quem tamen nisi nunc jam diligamus, nunquam videbimus. Sed quis diligit quod ignorat? Sciri enim aliquid et non diligi potest: diligi autem quod nescitur, quaero utrum possit; quia si non potest, nemo diligit Deum antequam sciat. Et quid est Deum scire, nisi eum mente conspicere, firmeque percipere? Non enim corpus est, ut carneis oculis inquiratur. Sed et priusquam valeamus conspicere atque percipere Deum, sicut conspici et percipi potest, quod mundicordibus licet; Beati enim mundicordes, quia ipsi Deum videbunt (Matth. V, 8): nisi per fidem diligatur, non poterit cor mundari, quo ad eum videndum sit aptum et idoneum.

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But if he is not able to be comprehended by the intellect, let him be grasped in

faith, until he illuminates in your hearts, who said through the prophet, “unless

you believe, you will not understand [Isaiah 7:9].”219

Properly understood, to say God is love and God exists is essentially the same thing. Since God’s

esse was particularly the God revealed in Christ, one could not approach him or any other sort of

knowledge without humility. And it follows for Augustine that to know God is to love him, or

rather that one cannot know God unless one loves him and one’s neighbor.

It follows that the one who loves God does what God commands and he loves

to the degree that he does this; therefore it follows that he also loves his

neighbor, because God commands this, or rather Scripture relates only the love

of neighbor, as is this: “bear each other’s burdens and thus you will fulfill the

law of Christ... and we find very many others in the Sacred Scriptures, in which

the love for neighbor alone seems to be admonished to perfection and are silent

concerning love for God. “For in both commands the law and the prophets

depend” [Matthew 22:40]. But this also: because also it follows that the one who

loves their neighbor also chiefly loves love itself. “For God is love and the one

who remains in love remains in God” [1 John 4:16]. It follows therefore that he

chiefly love God.220

There is inevitably an affective side to encountering God and knowing him – that is, if one

knows about him one cannot help but know him as love.

219 PL 42:943. Quod si intellectu capi non potest, fide teneatur, donec illucescat in cordibus ille qui ait per prophetam, Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis (Isai. VII, 9). 220 PL 32:956. qui diligit Deum consequens est ut faciat quod praecepit Deus, et in tantum diligit inquantum facit; consequens ergo est ut et proximum diligat, quia hoc praecepit Deus: sive tantum proximi dilectionem Scriptura commemorat, sicut est illud, Invicem onera vestra portate, et sic adimplebitis legem Christi (Galat. VI, 2); et illud, Omnis enim lex in uno sermone impletur, in eo quod scriptum est, Diliges proximum tuum tanquam te ipsum (Id. V, 14)... Et pleraque alia reperimus in Litteris sanctis, in quibus sola dilectio proximi ad perfectionem praecipi videtur, et taceri de dilectione Dei; cum in utroque praecepto Lex pendeat et Prophetae. Sed et hoc ideo, quia et qui proximum diligit, consequens est ut et ipsam praecipue dilectionem diligat. Deus autem dilectio est, et qui manet in dilectione, in Deo manet (I Joan. IV, 16). Consequens ergo est ut praecipue Deum diligat.

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This good thing or that good thing: pick up this or that and see goodness itself,

if you can. So you shall see God, no good in respect to another good thing, but

the goodness of every good thing…. So God ought to be loved, not this or that

good thing, but goodness itself. For that goodness ought to be sought by the

soul, not to whatever it alights upon through discerning, but adhering to it by

loving. But what is this if not God himself?221

As Augustine often wrote, intelligible things could only show up as intelligible by their

participation in divine being.222 Like rays of the sun illuminating our physical vision, concepts and

reasons could only be coherent in our consciousness because of the eternal Truth that upheld

them: “God is light, in whom and from whom and through whom all things shine intelligibly,

which shine intelligibly.”223 This truth was not abstract or purely logical truth, but the first and

ultimate truth that is synonymous with God’s being.224 As Augustine argued in the eighth book

of De trinitate, “That which is true is should be called love; otherwise it is cupidity. As those who

are covetous are said to love abusively, so those who love are said to covet abusively.” 225

Augustine identifies Truth with God, along with “Wisdom, Life, Beatitude, Goodness, Beauty,

Light.”226 One’s own moral standing was implicated in the process of learning and the acquisition

of knowledge, and the reformation of one’s virtues (foremost, humility) were just as important as

mental acuity for learning to take place.

Rowan Williams has recently presented a similar analysis of Augustine’s thought. Williams argues

in On Augustine that Augustine’s teaching on the Trinity, the humbling of God to enter into the

221 PL 42:949. Bonum hoc et bonum illud: tolle hoc et illud, et vide ipsum bonum, si potes; ita Deum videbis, non alio bono bonum, sed bonum omnis boni. Neque enim in his omnibus bonis, vel quae commemoravi, vel quae alia cernuntur sive cogitantur, diceremus aliud alio melius cum vere judicamus, nisi esset nobis impressa notio ipsius boni, secundum quod et probaremus aliquid, et aliud alii praeponeremus. Sic amandus est Deus, non hoc et illud bonum, sed ipsum bonum. Quaerendum enim bonum animae, non cui supervolitet judicando, sed cui haereat amando: et quid hoc, nisi Deus? 222 E. C. Butler, Western Mysticism: The Teaching of Ss Augustine Gregory and Bernard on Contemplation and the Contemplative Life, 2nd ed. (London: Dover Publications, 1927), 53. 223 PL 32:870. Deus intelligibilis lux, in quo et a quo et per quem intelligibiliter lucent, quae intelligibiliter lucent omnia 224 Butler, Western Mysticism, 53–54. 225 PL 32:955. Ea quippe dilectio dicenda est, quae vera est; alioquin cupiditas est: atque ita cupidi abusive dicuntur diligere, quemadmodum cupere abusive dicuntur qui diligunt. 226 Butler, Western Mysticism, 54.

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physicality of human existence, implies a hermeneutic with humility, not erudition, at the center.

Against a purely speculative or intellectual ascent towards the knowledge of God, the necessity of

conversion makes this pursuit a movement “from scientia to sapientia... What conversion rescues

us from is the mindset for which the basic ‘default position’ in human affairs is the struggle for

acquisition and control; sapientia cures us from this illusion.”227 Against this other view, which we

will see the New Devout identified with scholastic, university culture, Williams suggests that

Augustine saw the articulation of divine knowledge as “a skill of holy living as well as holy

thinking.”228

Or as Geert Grote put it in Thomas à Kempis notabilia, “endeavor to please and fear him alone

who knows you and all your things.” 229 Augustine argued that human reason comprised a

physical perception of created things, something shared with all sentient beings like animals, as

well as a perception of higher truth above physical perception. This part was the rational

substance of the mind “by which we cleave to intelligible as well as incommutable truth.”230 In

relation to the Devotio Moderna and its Augustinian Imaginary we must bear in mind that the

contemplation of the truth of God encompassed all the mind’s faculties. “But the Trinity,”

argued Augustine, “must be found in the whole nature of the mind.”231 For Augustine, the

inward turn to discover one’s contemplative reason is tantamount to uncovering the image of

God within oneself. “But the image of God is to be found in the soul of a person, that is the

rational, or rather the intellectual, image of the creator, which is forever located in his

immortality.”232 Any sort of knowledge about God was founded on his self-revelation as the God

of Abraham, incarnated in Christ, requiring one to know not just with the mind but also with the

heart.

227 Rowan Williams, On Augustine (Oxford: Bloomsbury, 2016), 138. 228 Rowan Williams, On Augustine, 139. 229 TK 7:108. Illi studeas solum placere et illum timere: qui te et omnia tua cognoscit. 230 PL 32:999. qua [sc. ex illa rationali nostrae mentis substantia] subhaeremus intelligibili atque incommutabili veritati. 231 PL 32:499. Sed in tota natura mentis ita trinitatem reperiri opus est. 232 PL 32:1040. ea [sc. imago Dei] est invenienda in anima hominis, id est rationali, sive intellectuali, imago Creatoris, quae immortaliter immortalitati ejus est insita.

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Reading, Writing and Schooling as Labour of Love for God

The three principles of God as esse, esse as dilectio and the univocality of God’s being, far from

otiose principles, guided the activities of the Devotio Moderna. These characteristics of the New

Devout’s Augustinian Imaginary pervaded the activities of the movement, particularly, as

concerns their attitude to scholastic, university culture, their practices of reading, writing, and

schooling. We see this, principally, in the exhortations of the brothers that are treated in Chapter

5, however a brief overview here will be helpful in fleshing out the Devotio Moderna’s Augustinian

Imaginary.

If we hold together God’s identification as truth, love, and pure quiddity, knowledge of creation

takes on a moral dimension. One could make no progress towards God without growth in

godliness. “No contemplation without self-denial and self-discipline seriously undertaken; no real

mysticism without asceticism, in its full sense of spiritual training,” summarizes Butler, “after all,

this is only the teaching of the Gospel: the clean of heart shall see God. And so Augustine, like

all genuine mystics, warns us that this destruction of vices must first be secured; only so can

anyone press on the shrine of contemplation.”233 We see the same logic show up when we read

Thomas à Kempis’ account of Florens Radewijns on reading:

Certain men of them noted the words of the man of God on tablets and busied

themselves with great fervor to show them to those who were absent, handling

the divine words more eagerly amongst themselves than the secular monks were

accustomed to repeat scurrilous things. Concerning deep questions and subtle

things and intricate matters he was completely silent, knowing that they offered

little edification to devoted minds and frequently hindered compunction of

heart and subverted the hearts of the innocent.234

233 Butler, Western Mysticism, 32. 234 TK 7:174-175. Quidam ex ipsis verba viri Dei in tabulis signabant, et aliis absentibus indicare cum magno fervore sategabant: multo alacrius divina eloquia inter se tractantes, quam saeculares solent scurilia recitare. De altis quaestionibus et subtilibus rebus et intricates negotiis omnino tacuit; sciens quia parvum aedificationem devotis mentibus praestant; et compuntioni cordis frequenter obsistunt et corda innocentium subvertunt.

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Describing Radewijns, Thomas quotes the same verse from the Sermon on the Mount as

Cuthbert Butler above in describing Augustine. All the aforementioned moral formation was:

In order to ascend, as right to the height of love and the divine vision, to light

through the indwelling grace of the Holy Spirit promised to the clean of heart

according to the Word of the Lord, in which he said, “blessed are the clean in

heart, for they will see God.”235

Rowan Williams has argued that such an ascension towards knowledge should really be seen as a

matter of maturing in love and wisdom. Such a move frees us from “functional and possessive

ways of wisdom” that seek ultimately control and mastery over the created order, something

Augustine identified with cupiditas and Bernard of Clairvaux described it as the sinful sort of

curiositas for divine knowledge that led to the Fall. 236 Such an understanding of knowledge as

something given to the humble, not grasped by force of intellect, is according to Williams “a

paradox to the mind that wants to own and control but a natural and joyful perception for the

mind that through Christ is caught up into God’s life.”237 Augustine’s conversion thus meant

fundamentally the placement of the incarnated Christ at the center of contemplation of the

divine nature, seeing the Incarnation as the only true path to divine knowledge and participation.

Such an attitude led Augustine and his later readers to see the knowledge of God and his creation

as bound together with the heart that need to reorient its love – to convert – from a prideful

straining for knowledge to humble reception of it as an act of grace.

The impetus to learn began with a humble soul yearning for God. The process of understanding

the world was an integral part of devotion to God. Gerard Zerbolt of Zutphen articulated the

centrality of redirecting the intention of the soul in his De reformatione virium animæ (On the

Reformation of the Soul’s Faculties). It is not enough merely to know things about God or his creation.

235 TK 7:170. ac sic demum ad arcem caritatis et divinae speculationis ascendere lucem per inhabitantem Spiritus sancti gratiam mundis cordibus promissam iuxta illam Domini scientiam qua ait. Beati mundo Corde: quoniam ipsi Deum videbunt. 236 Rowan Williams, On Augustine, 139. 237 Rowan Williams, On Augustine, 139–40.

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In fact, such a thought is illusory.238 À Kempis thus recounts Grote shepherding those under his

care away from reading before attaining the humility.

He dissuaded novices, those who were weak and those infected by carnal love

and the worldly arrogance of pride from reading high and subtle things and

obscure and doubtful things, and from ruminating on curiosities. “Let them

then first learn to humble themselves and to know well their own faults, to be

perfectly obedient before others, to prefer themselves over no one, to hold

peace and harmony with all, to always have the peace of God in their mind, and

to lay a firm foundation in humility.”239

Geert Grote advised his followers to read books such as the Meditationes and De conscientia of

Bernard, Anselm’s Horologium, Augustine’s Soliloquia and De opere monachali monachi beati, as well as

other works by Gregory the Great, the legenda and Flores Sanctorum, and, above all, Scripture.240

When Florens Radewijns treats the subject of reading and learning, he reaches for Bernard and

Augustine to give shape to his own thought – all learning, especially from reading Scripture must

have as their final end the love of God.241 One must ruminate, ruminare – a word lifted from

Augustine – upon one’s reading according to Florens Radewijns.242 This same word appears in

the original constitution of the Brethren of the Common Life at Deventer, suggesting that an

Augustinian mode of meditation and reflection was central to the day-to-day life of the New

238 Taylor, Sources of the Self, 128. “The soul must be swiveled around,” writes Charles Taylor, “it has to change the direction of its attention/desire. For the whole moral condition of the soul depends ultimately on what it attends to and loves.” 239 TK 7:178-179. Intellectus sanctarum scripturarum velut quidam caelestis radius in eo luculenter resplenduit tantaque puritatem divinae claritatis illuminatus est, ut sive in veteri sivi in novo Testamento legeret: ab omni parte mysticus ei sensus occurreret, et ubique inveniret quod eum instrueret et ad Deum omnium scientiarum fontem findemque verborum reduceret. Habebat tamen apud se simplices et morales libros et praecipue Speculum monachorum: et quaedam virtutum exercitia contra vitia quibus se suosque comilitiones in Christi militia docuit contra diabolica temptamenta triumphare. Novis tamen et imperfectis, ac saeculari fastu tumidis et carnali amore adhuc infectis dissuavit alta et subtilia: atque obscura et dubiosa legere et curiosa rimari. Discant ergo isti primitus se humiliare et proprios defectus bene cognoscere, superioribus suis perfecte oboedire, nemini se praeferre, cum omnibus pacem et concordiam tenere; timorem Dei in mentem semper habere, et firmum fundamentum in humilitate ponere. 240 Post, The Modern Devotion: Confrontation with Reformation and Humanism, 173. 241 Post, 323. 242 Post, 323.

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Devout.243 The same constitution advocates the reading of Scripture as a means of reforming

one’s affectus, memoria and voluntas – undoubtedly Augustinian categories.244 On the importance of

humility, the constitution quotes Bernard: “On humility, Bernard says: ‘This is the way and there

is no other beside it. Whoever travels otherwise falls rather than ascends, because humility alone

is what raises up, alone what leads to life.’”245 Bernard, in his Tractatus de gradibus humilitatis et

superbiae defines humility as “the virtue by which a person in a most true knowledge of themself

abhors themself.”246 This detestation of oneself leads to a true knowledge of human corruption

and sin, and then subsequently to a fuller apprehension of God, who is truth.247

Gerard Zerbolt, master of the Fraterhuis at Deventer after Florens Radewijns was equally steeped

in this Augustinian Imaginary. Apart from Scripture, Zerbolt was heavily influenced by Bernard

of Clairvaux (whom he cites most often) and then Augustine (whom he cites second most

often).248 We see this same sense at work in Thomas à Kempis’ writing. His conception of God’s

being comes to the fore in Thomas’ De elevatione mentis ad inquirendum summum bonum (On the

Elevation of the Mind to Seek the Greatest Good). Much like Augustine, Thomas begins his meditation

by stating that the Christian God is immutable and invisible.

“Be still and know that I am God.” Behold, I seek you, my God, not though my

bodily senses, nor through comprehensible images, but within myself above all

discernible methods where you shine upon my intellect – truth eternal, immense

goodness, unfathomable splendor, exceeding any comprehension by a creature,

243 Albert Hyma, ‘The Original Constitution of the Brethren of the Common Life at Deventer’, in The Christian Renaissance; a History of the ‘Devotio Moderna.’, 2nd ed. (Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1965), 442. Idcirco expedit quique nostrum indefesse ruminare materias illas que provocant hominem ad timorem Dei. 244 Hyma, 444. Sacra scriptura… movetque affectum et voluntatem ad amorem virtutum et fugam viciorum simul eciam memoriam nostrum, seclusis vanis et nocivis cogtacionibus, occupant fructuosibus et utilibus. 245 Hyma, 466. De humilitate dicit Bernardus: “Hec est via et non est alia preter eam. Qui aliter vadit, cadit pocius quam ascendit, quia sola humilitas est que exaltat, sola que ducit ad vitam. 246 PL 182:942. Humilitatis vero talis potest esse definitio: Humilitas est virtus, qua homo verissima sui agnitione sibi ipsi vilescit. 247 PL 182:942. Ipsis ergo dulcis et rectus Dominus legem dat viam humilitatis, per quam redeant ad cognitionem veritatis. Dat occasionem recuperandae salutis, quia dulcis est; non tamen absque disciplina legis, quia rectus est. Dulcis, quia perire non patitur; rectus, quia punire non obliviscitur. 248 G Gerrits, Inter Timorem et Spem: A Study of the Theological Thought of Gerard Zerbolt of Zutphen (1367-1398) (Leiden: Brill, 1986), 18–19. Named frequently but less often are Jerome, Gregory the Great and Cassian, John Chrysostom, John Climacus, Hugh of St. Victor, Ambrose, Bede, Anselm of Canterbury, Bonaventure, Aristotle, Seneca, Basil the Great, the Vitae Patrum, Benedict of Nursia, Isodor of Seville and Thomas Aquinas.

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repelling all mental acumen, and preserving above all heavenly spirits all things

by your own quiddity without them realizing – and yet still sharing yourself fully

according to the capacity of each blessed soul, and making known the essential

substance of your nature and the infinite glory of your deity to each and every

person.249

Thomas quotes almost word-for-word Augustine’s pithy formulation for God’s being – “from

whom, through whom, and in whom all things exist.”250 In Thomas’ paraphrase, God is “from

whom all things, through whom all things, and in whom all things proceed, consist, and have

their end.”251 This is perhaps no surprise, given that Thomas was a canon at the Augustinian

monastery at Agnietenberg. Thomas describes how creation is held together in participation with

God’s being, using the same word, esse, to describe God’s being, rather than as ens, the more

technical, univocal moniker used in contemporary scholastic discourse. Creation finds its own

being because God upholds creation in esse – the world takes its being quite literally in the eternal

gaze of God, in his eternal, on-going and timeless act of creation.252

When the New Devout were not reading Augustine, they were often meditating on writers who

were themselves indebted to Augustine. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1174), who alone rivals

Augustine in terms of direct textual quotations in the writing of the New Devout, was also

sensitive to the role of virtue in any intellectual enquiry. Bernard channeled Augustine in his total

condemnation of curiosity – “the first stage of pride is curiosity.”253 Bernard’s sense is that

knowledge can never serve as an ultimate end in itself, and to think so is nothing other than

pride. Just as for Augustine, knowledge is oriented towards the love of God. Quoting the Apostle

Paul:

249 TK 2 399. Vacate et videte quoniam ego sum Deus. Ecce inquiro te Deus Meus non per sensus coporeos, neque per sensibiles imagines sed in me super rationes intellectuales; ubi tu luces intellectui meo veritas aeterna bonitas immense incomprehensibilis claritas, omnem creaturae comprehensionem excedens, omnem aciem mentis repercutiens, et super omnes caelestes spiritus secundum quiditatem te incognite servans: et tamen secundum cuiuslibet beati spiritus capacitatem te totum communicans, atque omnibus et singulis infinitam deitatis tuae gloriam et superessentialem naturae tuae substantiam manifestans. 250 PL 32:661-662. ex quo omnia, per quem omnia, in quo omnia? 251 TK 2 :400. Ex quo omnia, per quem omnia in quo omnia, procedunt, consistunt, et terminantur. 252TK 2 :401. Imaginem tuam… quam sine medio intueris et in esse conservas. 253 Bernard, Sancti Bernardi opera, ed. Jean Leclercq, C. H. Talbot, and H. M. Rochais, vol. 3 (Romae: Editiones Cistercienses, 1957), 38.

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All things are lawful to me, but not all things are fitting. Although there is no

guilt, there is nonetheless an indication of guilt. For if your mind did not retain

itself less curiously, your curiosity would have no end.254

Since faith precedes and orients the gathering of all knowledge, it is sometimes appropriate, even

necessary, to forgo knowledge where it does not furnish devotion, counterintuitively in order to

be better progress in one’s ascent towards Truth.

Reading and Learning as Labor of Love for God

In this Augustinian Imaginary, God was esse, and this pure quiddity amounted also to dilectio. One

could not speak about God as though part of the created order, nor could one’s character be

sidelined. For God encompassed all of creation and to encounter him was to enter a relationship

with dilectio itself. These three principles or senses of this Augustinian Imaginary shaped how the

New Devout understood their activities of reading, writing, and copying, particularly in

distinction to scholastic, university culture. This Augustinian Imaginary meant the New Devout

understood reading, and learning as moral activities and the knowledge gained therein as morally

charged. Reading, writing, and copying amounted therefore to a labor of love for God.

Alasdair Macintyre has argued that in this medieval Augustinian sense enculturation was

necessary to gain the qualities and virtues necessary for intellectual understanding. The reader

does not initially place the text under the power of their own subjectivity but is formed via the

text to become a person with the requisite character to reckon with such material. “The reader

was assigned the task of interpreting the text,” writes Macintyre, “but also had to discover, in and

through his or her reading of those texts, that they in turn interpret the reader.”255 Such process

required a community gathered around a text that might form the new reader to enter into

dialogue with the text and the text’s other interlocutors. “What the reader, as thus interpreted by

the texts, has to learn about him or herself is that it is only the self as transformed through and

254 Bernard, 3:39. Omnia licet me, sed non omnia expediunt. Etsi culpa non est, culpae tamen indicium est. Nisi enim mens minus se curiose servaret, tua curiositas tempus vacuum non haberet. 255 Macintyre, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry, 82.

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by the reading of the texts which will be capable of reading the texts aright.”256 The implication

of this sort of textual community is that knowledge or understanding is not gained prior to

enculturation within that community. One must submit to the tradition of formation and

interpretation before one gain the ability to interrogate, question, or transcend. With this

backdrop Bernard of Clairvaux could write in his Tractatus de statu virtutum (Tractate on the Status of

the Virtues),

Any power strengthened without love certainly turns into sin. An expert without

love is a fool. And any idiot, if they have love, is truly learned, as divine

Scripture testifies.257

“Knowledge in this sense,” writes Brian Stock, describing this milieu is “related less to expanding

the corpus of existing information than to influencing the use of constructs within some aspect

of social experience.”258 For Bernard of Clairvaux (about whom Stock is writing) and the New

Devout, the structuring of inner experience that reading provided was a retrieval of Augustine.

For if God existed as being, truth, and love absolutely and indistinguishably, then it followed that

all these things were involved in reading and learning insofar as reading or learning verged onto

matters of truth, knowledge, or love. Consciously distinguishing themselves from scholastic,

university culture, the founding brothers of the Devotio Moderna counselled their followers to read

and meditate first and foremost in order to change their heart, and conversely dissuaded the New

Devout from enterprises or systems that sloughed off the heart from the mind. The brothers saw

it as vital that the process of reading and learning be a labor of love for God.

Conclusion

In this Augustinian Imaginary it was impossible to separate even theoretically knowledge from

devotion, learning from sanctification. Knowledge that was not oriented towards the summum

256 Macintyre, 82. 257 PL 184: 810C. ulla virtus sine charitate roboratur, imo in peccatum vertitur. Peritus enim sine charitate stultus est; et idiota quilibet, si charitatem habet, valde doctus est, divina Scriptura testante. 258 Brian Stock, The Implications of Literacy: Written Language and Models of Interpretation in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987), 405.

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bonum was a distortion both of God and of his creation. The Devotio Moderna was animated by a

received, Augustinian sense of God’s being as being itself, a fundamentally different being who

was unable to be treated with the same terms or senses as immanent phenomena, that is,

univocally. So understood, the study of God involved all fields of knowledge. Theological

questions impinged on any and every sort of knowledge. And so, for the New Devout, an

educational enterprise that bifurcated knowledge from devotion, the immanent from the

transcendent, the contemplative from the vocational, could only offer a chimera of true

education and a pallid, emaciated knowledge.

The novelty of the imaginary cohering to the university lies, in the sense of contrast and

rejection, at the heart of the story of the Devotio Moderna. The impulse that emerged with

university scholarship to schematize knowledge into different branches, with theologia just one

branch among many, could not harmonize with this Augustinian Imaginary. Although still awash

with citations to Augustine, the sense of God’s being that characterized this Augustinian

Imaginary was sloughed off. The nature of God’s being and how this intersected (or failed to

intersect) with other fields of knowledge was the point of contention for the New Devout. This

new imaginary of the university stood pitted against the received, Augustinian Imaginary.

The process of learning was only conceivable to the New Devout as a labor of love for God, that

is, a process of character formation by which one could encounter God intellectually and

spiritually. It was for this reason that the New Devout reacted so strongly against developments

they identified with the university: the separation of knowledge from devotion and godly

character and, theoretically speaking, the priority of metaphysics to theology. It is this

contestation that was at the heart of the Devotio Moderna’s rejection of worldly knowledge and

their paradoxical embrace of knowledge and education put to spiritual ends. The scope of this

imaginary comes into even sharper relief when we consider developments within the universitas,

against which the New Devout consciously understood themselves.

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4 NEW OPTIONS: UNIVERSITAS

The Augustinian Imaginary of the Devotio Moderna stretched back to the Early Church and the

Church Fathers, the wellspring of their apostolic vita communis. Yet their reception of this

inheritance and its textual resources were a conscious reply to developments in their present. As

they saw it, their time as in few others was threatened by a new way of thinking that undermined

the project of the Church. This novelty was the universitas. I use the terms universitas and university

to refer to the system of education and scholarship that emerged as centers of theological, legal,

and medical study, the earliest and most notable examples of which being at Paris and Bologna.

Importantly, this university system had become inextricable, at the least from the perspective of

the New Devout, from certain forms of scholasticism – particularly the scholasticism they

associated with the university of Paris. Not only did this university come represent the epicenter

of such scholasticism but it was also the place of Grote’s education prior to his conversion. Both

these facts converge in the New Devout’s identification of this university with a scholasticism

that had broken away from true Christianity conveyed to them through Augustine and his

faithful readers. Where the New Devout saw learning as a labor of love for God, they saw

something strange and harmful with the new learning of the universitas. In a collection of notable

sayings of Geert Grote and his disciple Florens Radewijns we read an admonition to a scholar

that illustrates this antipathy. “It is most necessary that you take care lest you be affected by

certain scholastic teaching, because worldly knowledge is extremely seductive.” 259 “See to it

then,” the admonition went, “that you not remain in the middle,” that is, undecided. As pervasive

as this Augustinian Imaginary was, the sisters and brothers of the Devotio Moderna felt sharply the

emergence of new thought-systems: the univocal approach to learning applied at universities

primarily by scholastic theologians and philosophers. By mapping this imaginary identified with

the universitas, the response of the New Devout and their Augustinian Imaginary come into

sharper focus.

259 Aliqua Verba Notabilia, 436.

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Just as the communality of the Devotio Moderna mobilized a particular Social Imaginary, so too did

physical surrounds and communal life of the universitas furnish another Social Imaginary. The

institution of the universitas made it possible to understand theology as of a piece with other

branches of knowledge, all of which operated on the same univocal plane. In this chapter I focus

on the University of Paris as paradigmatic of this new Social Imaginary, using the term universitas

to denote developments characteristic of, but not limited to, the University of Paris. This focus

on Paris does not exclude the characteristics I identify with the universitas from appearing in other

similar institutions. I make this move partly because of this university’s exemplarity for the kind

of Social Imaginary I am describing, but also to do justice to the New Devout’s focus on that

university, their stories describing the University of Paris as the nursery of Grote’s godless youth

and the current breeding ground for a theology incompatible with their own. Seemingly for the

first time to Geert Grote and his disciples, it became a viable option to understand the pursuit of

knowledge as extricable from the pursuit of holiness, virtue, and human flourishing. This move

could not have developed as it did apart from the faculties of Arts and Theology.

Of course, the universitas antedated the Devotio Moderna. Yet, while chronologically the Devotio

Moderna could be just as validly viewed as the novel intrusion onto the scene of the late medieval

Europe of the scholar, the New Devout consciously disciplined themselves in a thought-world

that was legitimately far older even if interpolated with novel inflections. While many scholars

still attended universities captured by a vision of caritas, to learn to understand themselves, God,

and human flourishing, the novelty was that this was no longer the only option on the table. The

emergence of universities opened up a new, shared understanding of knowledge and education

that understood education as a process that could lead to nothing more than accreditation and

subsequent fame, honor and a career – and one whose conceptual framework by the time of the

New Devout understood the study of God not as foundational to all knowledge but as one

particular kind of knowledge like any other with its own immanent methodology to which it had

to adhere.

The New Devout could not reconcile the prominence of a career-mindedness in the imagination

of the universitas with their own sense that all learning began and ended with devotion and

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humility. This Augustinian Imaginary critiqued lax or career minded clericalism as well as

university careerism, but unlike what the New Devout perceived was deliberately happening at

contemporary universities, this sort of corrupt clericalism was undoubtedly an aberration to how

the Church was meant to function.260 As regarded the university, movements towards univocal

theological frameworks and the consequent theoretical primacy of metaphysics over theology

were anathema to a God who revealed himself to the humble and resisted the proud, as

Augustine in his writings often reminded them. Thomas à Kempis embodies this sense when he

cautions his readers against the study of philosophy, which is liable to deceive its students into

believing that their own disengaged reason might lead them to God. “Without doubt,” exhorts

Thomas, “it is better to be an uncultured and humble person who serves God than a proud

philosopher who considers the course of the sky but neglects to consider himself.”261 Such a

confidence in the methods and institution of the universitas to arbitrate theological truth was held

by the New Devout under great suspicion. Thomas à Kempis cautioned his readers in the Imitatio

Christi from the ambition to fathom the depths of God. “Sons, beware of disputing about the

high matters and hidden judgments of God: why is one person abandoned, and another raised up

to such grace? Why is one person so afflicted and the other exalted so highly?” Thomas asked,

“Such things exceed every human capacity, nor does any reason or disputation succeed in

investigating divine judgment.”262 Far better to focus on one’s heart than proudly to search for

what was too lofty for human understanding.

In describing the universitas, I distinguish between historical assessments of the institution proper

and characteristics as they showed up from the perspective of the New Devout. That is, for our

purposes here I am more concerned about how the New Devout saw and described the

university than the finesses and complexities of the institution’s historical reality. I argue, in this

260 John H. van Engen, ‘Late Medieval Anticlericalism: The Case of the New Devout’, in Anticlericalism in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, (Leiden: Brill, 1993), 19–52. 261 TK 2:7. Melior est profecto humilis rusticus qui Deo servit: quam superbus philosophus qui se neglegit cursum caeli considerat. scis: tanto gravies inde iudicaberis nisi sanctius vixeris. Noli ergo extolli de ulla arte vel Scientia: sed potius time de data tibi notitia. 262 TK 2:256-257. Filii. Caveas disputare de altis materiis et de occultis Dei iudiciis: cur iste sic relinquitur, et ille ad tantam gratiam assumitur; cur etiam iste tantum affligitur: et ille tam eximie exaltatur. Ista omnem humanam facultatem excedunt: nec ad investigandum iudicium divinum ulla ratio praevalet vel disputatio.

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way, that three concrete characteristics relating to the emergence and character of the university

were irreconcilable to the Augustinian Imaginary of the Devotio Moderna. Firstly (1), the universitas

or collegium generale emerged out of a preexisting model centered on cathedral and monastic

schools. But whereas these earlier sites prepared boys for a life of devotion and saw the process

of learning as a labor of love for God, the new development of the university made it possible at

least from the New Devout’s perspective to sever the link between devotion and learning. A

second related development (2) made this break even starker: the move to univocal theology. By

comparing the career of Duns Scotus, a near contemporary of Grote and alumnus the University

of Paris, we see that it had become possible to envision theology as part of a larger metaphysical

system in which quiddity was prior to God. The consequence of this reorganization meant for

Grote and his followers that one’s character became inessential or at last peripheral to the

methodology of this univocal scholasticism. Such a reorganization was irreconcilable with the

New Devout’s Augustinian Imaginary. The third and final characteristic (3), again a corollary of

the preceding characteristics, was the professionalization of theology emerging with the universitas.

From the viewpoint of the New Devout’s Augustinian Imaginary, the university’s imaginary

made it possible to pursue the study of God as a vocation, further deepening the rift between

one’s character and the accreditation to speak authoritatively on the subject of God. Having laid

out these three characteristics, we can observe our accounts of Geert Grote’s conversion and

note the rejection of these three characteristics of the university as key factors in the established

of the Devotio Moderna.

Universitas: Emergence and Characteristics

Monastic Education and The Emergence of the Universitas

Institutions of learning had certainly existed prior to the advent of the first universities at

Bologna and Paris. Education provided at cathedrals and monasteries had been commonplace,

although generally to prepare boys for priesthood.263 Gestures, albeit mostly aspirational, towards

263 Anders Piltz, The World of Medieval Learning, Rev. ed (Totowa, N.J: Barnes & Noble, 1981), 49.

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the education of the laity had been made in the court of Charlemagne: the “Carolingian

Renaissance.”264 The university emerged out of this preexisting system.265 While superficially the

shift to the corporatized educational package of the university entailed changes to administration,

housing and regulation of the student and academic bodies, the change also involved a shift in

the imagination. Walter Rüegg has shown how the birth of the university resists reductive

explanations based on theories of economic utility, imperial domination or class struggle.266 “No

serious historian disputes that the university neither descends on society from the heavens,”

writes Rüegg, “nor simply emanates from it as a function of the social forces of production.”267

What cannot be contested, though, is that the university opened up new ways of thinking about

the vocation of the scholar and the nature of his craft. The advent of the universitas made possible

new options for conceiving the pursuit for knowledge. The package of university education arose

out of this pre-existing educational paradigm, one that did not award degrees, have a

constitution, or operate out of a complex of buildings, but one that nevertheless valued

education in its own way. The recent consensus of scholarship has judged that the movement

from the cathedral and monastic school to the university amounted to a break in its original

purpose and that, therefore, created new options for viewing the project of learning and

education. This new Social Imaginary reenvisioned the enterprise of education and scholarship;

the new physical architecture created a new conceptual architecture.268 As the new buildings that

housed scholars were built, so too were new schemas of knowledge emerging. Thus, the new

form of social organization, the universitas, made possible new theoretical moves, particularly

when it came to thinking about the very disciplines that the universitas housed. In lockstep with

264 Olaf Pedersen, The First Universities: Studium Generale and the Origins of University Education in Europe (Cambridge, United Kingdom; New York, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 91; Johannes

Fried and Peter Lewis, Charlemagne (Cambridge, Massachusetts ; London, England: Harvard University Press, 2016), 317–72. “The universities rose up on the foundation of twelfth-century schools which followed an even older tradition of learning, and one that was certainly never committed to paper in the form of syllabuses or examination degrees.” 265 Pedersen, The First Universities, 242. 266 Walter Rüegg and Walter Rüegg, ‘Themes’, in A History of the University in Europe, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 10–11. 267 Rüegg and Rüegg, 11. 268 Jacques Verger, ‘Patterns’, in A History of the University in Europe, ed. Walter Rüegg and H. De Ridder Symoens, vol. 1: Universities in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 35–76.

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the new institution a new Social Imaginary emerged. The growth of the university in the twelfth

and thirteenth centuries heralded a profound departure from monastic education.269

The formation of boys in the hands of monastic teachers was geared towards the formation of

Christian character, rather than towards professional vocation: “how to read Latin competently

and to sustain his part in the liturgical round,” writes G.R. Evans.270 A belief that the regular life

was the superior vocation drove figures like Pope Gregory VII and Bernard of Clairvaux to

create a system of education that attracted boys who were destined for a clerical life, and

impressed the values of such a life upon them.271 In a letter to Pope Innocent II Bernard of

Clairvaux railed against the new university learning that he saw emerging in competition with

monastic education:

Virtues and vices are discussed with no moral sense, the sacraments of the

Church without any faith, the mystery of the Holy Trinity with restraint or

humility: all is presented in a distorted form, introduced in a way different from

the one we learned and are used to.272

Bernard tends to use universitas to describe the universe or the complete body of the Church. To

Bernard, it made no sense to discuss morality without considering one’s own morality. To discuss

God without implicating one’s own ascent towards him could not yield precise knowledge of

God and most certainly offered nothing by way of purifying one’s character. The education

provided by a monastery was a schola Dei and a schola Christi; a schola caritatis, a school of divine

love, a paradisus claustralis, a cloistered paradise sheltered from the vain wisdom of the world.

Bernard of Clairvaux thought and wrote within the sphere of Augustine’s oeuvre being one of

the key interlocutors who interpolated Augustine, who alone appeared more often in the New

Devout’s writings, to the New Devout. His response to nascent university culture was, therefore,

269 G. R. Evans, Old Arts and New Theology: The Beginnings of Theology as an Academic Discipline (Oxford: New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), 8. 270 Evans, 8. 271 Pedersen, The First Universities, 99. 272 PL 182:355. De virtutibus et vitiis non moraliter, de Sacramentis Ecclesiae non fideliter, de arcano sanctae Trinitatis non simpliciter nec sobrie disputatur: sed cuncta nobis in perversum, cuncta praeter solitum, et praeterquam accepimus, ministrantur.

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formative for how the New Devout would later respond to that same institution. “Bernard as a

Cistercian followed the Rule of St. Benedict, whose practical theology presupposes what St.

Augustine had affirmed, that it is only through the transformation of the will from a state of

pride to one of humility that the intelligence can be rightly directed,” notes Alasdair Macintyre,

“Will is more fundamental than intelligence and thinking undirected by a will informed by

humility will always be apt to go astray.”273 Bernard of Clairvaux hit on a key issue for the New

Devout when he identified character as the point of contention with this emerging university

imaginary.

The universitas and the monastery thus provided distinct contexts for discourses of knowledge,

Scripture, exegesis, and spiritual formation to develop. The sense is that we can salvage what is

true from the pagan philosophers and poets, but this happens from the vantage point of true

faith. There is no prior system to faith that might give purchase on the competing thought-

worlds and claims of the Church and the classical world. “Therefore,” ran the prologue to the

Benedictine Rule, “we must found a school of service to the Lord.”274 Such an impulse lay at the

heart of monastic education.

The development of medieval scholastic logic to the New Devout went hand in hand with the

specialization of theological faculties at universities, most prominently at Paris, Bologna, and

Louvain. But the use of Aristotelian dialectic as a mode of reasoning does not in itself preclude

an Augustinian sense of God as being itself, that is, beyond the scope of immanent terminology

and full human understanding. Although the New Devout were warned off the universitas, it was

possible to attend such a community with this Augustinian sense. Thus while Bernard lambasted

Peter Abelard († 1142) in the letter above, we can observe that he bore a similar view as Bernard

to the university. Abelard articulated the force behind the challenged Augustinian Imaginary

when writing to Heloise, who had become a cloistered nun and abbess:

273 MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry, 91. 274 Benedict, The Rule of Saint Benedict, 8. Constituenda est ergo nobis dominici scola servitii.

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But soon you turned these studies in a far better direction, when, as the Apostle

says, it pleased the Lord who separated you from your mother’s womb to call

you by His grace. Where there had been logic, now there was the Gospel; where

there had been metaphysics, now there was Saint Paul. Plato you exchanged for

Christ, the Academy for the cloister, now a woman of philosophy in the full and

truest sense.275

This rejection was not simply a rejection of the texts, concerns, or methods found within the

university, Abelard of course being a key proponent of the syllogism. Rather, what was lacking

from his perspective was an overarching, predominating theological frame that organized and

subordinated the new learning of that time. Peter Abelard thus drew on a long-standing

metaphor, one employed by Augustine himself as he reflected on his own pre-Christian

education, the plundering of Egypt during the Exodus, to describe the proper relationship and

priority between Scripture and classical thought. Again to Heloise:

You beat the enemy and robbed him of his spoils. You left the treasure-house

of Egypt behind and embarked on a pilgrimage through the wilderness, building

a precious tabernacle to God in your own heart. You sang a song of praise with

Miriam when Pharaoh was cast down, taking in your hands, as she once did, the

timbrel of blessed mortification, and sending a new melody to the very ears of

God, a skillful and a scholarly musician.276

We are dealing not with the supersession of one Social Imaginary into another, but rather with

the multiplication of possibilities opened up by new structures and concepts. 277 Aristotelian

dialectic predated the institutionalization of the universitas in Christian, Western Europe. But once

it became dominant the development of metaphysical univocity dovetailed with the new

academic institution. In particular, proponents of the theological movement Radical Orthodoxy

275 Peter Abelard and Héloïse, The Letters and Other Writings, trans. William Levitan (Indianapolis: Hackett Pub, 2007), 266. 276 Abelard and Héloïse, 266. 277 Taylor, A Secular Age, 171.

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have mounted this argument, that the spirit of Thomas Aquinas – the sense of God as Being

itself that I have been describing – was quickly distorted by later scholastic theologians and

lost.278

The Paris Condemnation and the Reorganization of Knowledges

The Paris condemnation of 1277 demonstrates how knowledges were by this time in a state of

reorganization in new and often contradictory ways to the received Augustinian Imaginary that

animated the New Devout. The condemnation expressed the threat that some quarters

experienced as Aristotle’s retrieved corpus of works gradually made its way into university

curricula, especially of faculties of arts.

Theologians committed to received understandings of God’s otherness to humanity, the inability

to compare any being with Being itself, had sought to take from Aristotle what agreed with

Scripture and to jettison the rest – one thinks again of Augustine’s Confessions and his analogy of

the Israelites plundering the Egyptians during the Exodus to describe Christian retrieval of pagan

thought.279 Yet, between Aquinas’ death (1274) and when Duns Scotus became a master of

theology, the dilemmas posed by Aristotle’s reception in the academy came to a head. Many

scholars had pitted Aristotle in direct competition with biblical Canon, and, disturbingly, it was

not clear that the biblical Canon was going to carry the day. This led Pope John XXI to intervene

in 1277 directly on the issue, instructing Stephen Tempier, Bishop of Paris via a letter to

investigate any possible heresies that may have begun to sprout at the University of Paris. Writing

to Tempier, John XXI was concerned principally with some scholars of arts and in the faculty of

theology at Paris.280

278 John Montag, ‘Revelation: The False Legacy of Suárez’, in Radical Orthodoxy (New York: Routledge, 1999), 38–63. 279 PL 32:741-742. Et ego ad te veneram ex Gentibus, et intendi in aurum quod ab Aegypto voluisti ut auferret populus tuus (Exod. III, 22; et XI, 2), quoniam tuum erat, ubicumque erat. Et dixisti Atheniensibus per Apostolum tuum, quod in te vivimus et movemur et sumus; sicut et quidam secundum eos dixerunt (Act. XVII, 28): et utique inde erant illi libri. Et non attendi in idola Aegyptiorum, quibus de auro tuo ministrabant, qui transmutaverunt veritatem Dei in mendacium, et coluerunt, et servierunt creaturae potius quam Creatori (Rom. I, 25). 280 Hans Thijssen, ‘Condemnation of 1277’, in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta, Winter 2016 (Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, 2016). nonnulli tam in artibus quam in theologica facultate studentes Parisius

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The condemnation, consisting of 219 articles, took aim at new fields of knowledge emerging out

of the arts and theology faculties at the University of Paris. The condemnation, haphazardly put

together, took aim at many new forms of knowledge, including necromancy and witchcraft.

However, what is important for us here is that a great many of the articles relate to how one may

think about God and the role philosophy played in this process of investigating the divine. It is

difficult to ascertain whether these articles accurately described the positions held by their

opponents, but the urgency with which the Bishop of Paris cobbled them together suggests the

force of the threat they supposedly posed. As stated above, perception of the reorganization of

knowledges within the university based on Aristotle’s retrieval is more important for the New

Devout than its reality. Just as R.I. Moore has shown that that inquisitors often projected their

own fears onto heterodox beliefs, assuming that new heresies were reiterations of heresies of the

early church, we can take criticisms of the university and its Aristotelian retrieval as an indication

that some, including the New Devout, felt threatened by what they perceived as a novel

reorganization of knowledges incompatible with Christian faith.281

The first article condemned the assertion that “there is no more excellent state than philosophy,”

followed by the second, which anathematized the notion that “the only wise men in the world are

philosophers.”282 More specifically, however, the condemnation took aim at new understandings

of knowledge that treated God as a subject of enquiry just like any other created thing.

4. That one should not hold anything unless it is self-evident or can be

manifested from self-evident principles.

5. That man should not be content with authority to have certitude about any

question.

6. That there is no rationally disputable question that the philosopher ought not

to dispute and determine, because reasons are derived from things. It belongs to

philosophy under one or another of its parts to consider all things.

281 R. I Moore makes this point in The War on Heresy: Faith and Power in Medieval Europe, 2014. 282 Gyula Klima, Fritz Allhoff, and Anand Vaidya, eds., Medieval Philosophy: Essential Readings with Commentary, (Malden, MA; Oxford: Blackwell Pub, 2007), 181.

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[...]

8. That our intellect by its own natural power can attain to a knowledge of the

first cause. – This does not sound well and is erroneous if what is meant is

immediate knowledge.

9. That we can know God by His essence in this mortal life.

10. That nothing can be known about God except that He is, or His existence.

[...]

13. That God does not know things other than himself.

14. That God cannot know contingent beings immediately except through their

particular and proximate causes.

15. That the first cause does not have science of future contingents. The first

reason is that future contingents are not beings. The second is that future

contingents are singulars, but God knows by means of an intellectual power,

which cannot know singulars. Hence, if there were no senses, the intellect would

perhaps not distinguish between Socrates and Plato, although it would

distinguish between a man and an ass. The third reason is the relation of cause

to effect; for the divine foreknowledge is a necessary cause of the things

foreknown. The fourth reason is the relation of science to the known; for even

though science is not the cause of the known, it is determined to one of two

contradictories by that which is known; and this is true of divine science much

more than of ours.

16. That the first cause is the most remote cause of all things. – This is

erroneous if so understood as to mean that it is not the most proximate.

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17. That what is impossible absolutely speaking cannot be brought about by

God or by another agent. – This is erroneous if we mean when is impossible

according to nature.

18. That what is self-determined, like God, either always acts or never acts; and

that many things are eternal.283

The opinions that emerge in the photo-negative of the condemnation reveal new ways of

considering God: accessible to human knowledge, perhaps most of all to wise philosophers. The

condemnation described the position that a being can be considered just like any other being, his

eternity can be brought onto the same plane as the eternity of other beings, God’s actions and

knowledge can be conceived using the same logic that limits human action and knowledge, and,

perhaps most importantly, that God could not be known beyond a sense that he exists, a classical

God who created, but whose face is turned away from human eyes.

Even if the actual beliefs held at the University of Paris do not match up perfectly to these

articles, they at least suggest that some quarters felt threatened by developments they observed

there. This perceived shift is imperative in understanding how the New Devout felt threatened

by, and opposed to, scholastic, university culture.

Metaphysical Univocity: Duns Scotus

The universitas made it possible to imagine divisions of knowledge in new ways and to deploy

language to describe God in ways previously thought to be untenable. While institutions may be

understood as the embodiment of particular beliefs and practices, institutions and social

structures can also reflect back on these beliefs and practices, and govern the creation of new

beliefs and practices, to the point that, over time, patterns of thought and practice become

intelligible apart from their institution. Thus, although the institution of the universitas reflected

current attitudes towards knowledge and education (especially for theology), the

283 Klima, Allhoff, and Vaidya, 181–82.

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institutionalization of the universitas also actively shaped the way people were able to conceive of

knowledge and learning (also especially for theology).

By the time of the New Devout the organic organization of the universitas had solidified into quite

rigid methodological and faculty structures. The universitas came not only to embody but also to

shape and define the nature of fields, faculties, and their respective methodologies. This is

especially the case for the faculty of theology. The point of contention for the New Devout

centered on the possibility that the study of God might be compartmentalized away either from

one’s own personal character, or from community nourished by the sacraments, the Church. Key

to this break was the move to univocal ascriptions of God’s attributes. I map this break by

comparing the career of Duns Scotus († 1308) with Geert Grote’s. I do this not because Duns

Scotus himself represents a decisive or novel break necessarily, but because comparison with

such a near contemporary of Grote who also studied at the Sorbonne reveals the new

possibilities for learning opened up by the Social Imaginary of the universitas.

The novelty of Scotus has been argued by Bradley Gregory, but with specific reference to

Secularization in the West. According to Gregory, “Scotus argued that at least one predicate was

and had to be common to and shared in the same sense by God and creatures,” says Gregory, “He

predicated of God something that he thought God had to share with everything else in the same

sense, simply by virtue of existing, namely being.”284 However, whether or not Scotus was the first

to do so is beside the point for us here, which is that the move to univocal theological

description, “predicated in conceptually equivalent terms of everything that exists,” was a new

way of describing God, effectively mapping him with the same schema as creaturely things.285

“By contrast,” writes Gregory, “Christian theologians who continued to hold the inherited view,

before and after Scotus, denied that God belonged to the same order or type of existence as his

284 Gregory, The Unintended Reformation, 36–37. 285 Gregory, 37.

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creation.”286 Given the importance of this break to my argument, it is worth outlining this change

in more detail.

In an Augustinian Imaginary, God could only be approached cursorily – per caliginem, through a

haze – and this meant that sure knowledge and insight were ultimately found not in theoretical

articulation but in a godly life (although this might lead to insightful theoretical knowledge). But

for Scotus there existed a fundamental problem of how to approach God. If God were

immutable and ineffable, how might the creature approach him? There is an apparent problem

for Scotus of how a creature might articulate the infinite characteristics (predicamenta) of God

when there is a fundamental breach between what is finite (creation) and what is infinite (God).

As William Mann puts it:

Scotus’s notion of natural reason, then, does not go beyond the confines of

empiricism… [thus] it is fair to ask how there could be natural knowledge of

God, especially when the natural knowledge is avowed to be knowledge of a

supernatural being. The problem is made more acute for Scotus because he does

not rely on a powerful tradition, one of whose practitioners was Augustine, that

concedes the inadequacy of ordinary knowledge-gathering practices in this area,

claiming instead that knowledge of God is innate in the human soul,

discoverable by a special meditative technique of inward-turning

contemplation.287

Scotus rejected the Augustinian Imaginary that the New Devout consciously retrieved. Because

of this disavowal, the Doctor Subtilis required another means of describing God’s being and of

predicating attributes to that being in a meaningful way. Scotus is, therefore, skeptical that the

human mind can grasp the revelation of God apart from through faith. Thus, from Duns Scotus’

Ordinatio 1.3:

286 Gregory, 37. 287 William E. Mann, ‘Duns Scotus on Natural and Supernatural Knowledge of God’, in The Cambridge

Companion to Duns Scotus, ed. Thomas Williams, Cambridge Companions to Philosophy (Cambridge, U.K. ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 239.

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264 But a doubt can be raised against the first way, for if we do not see these

truths as they are in the divine intellect (for we do not see the divine intellect),

how, then, can we be said to “see in the eternal light,” since we are seeing only

in a qualified kind of eternal light, a light that has its being in the uncreated light

as in a cognizing intellect?288

Augustine’s solution was to see all of creation participating in God’s being. Duns Scotus’ solution

to this problem is to argue that metaphysics, properly understood, is concerned with certain

kinds of characteristics that exist logically prior to both what is infinite and finite.289

Whatever things are common to God and creation are such things which befit

“being” as it is indifferent to the finite and the infinite; for as they befit God

they are infinite, as they befit creation they are finite.290

Scotus believed it was possible to work one’s way into the knowledge of God from the outside –

to establish the existence of God and some of his general characteristics. Mann summarizes,

“God’s existence can be established as an item of natural theology, that part of theological

speculation that can be developed by reason alone, independent of any kind of revelation,” as

William Mann describes it.291 For this reason Duns Scotus reduced the numbers of attributes that

he could use to describe God without revelation or faith. Where Anselm’s fides quaerens intellectum

(faith seeking understanding) is able to articulate many attributes of God (e.g. love, wisdom), for

example, Scotus rejected these in favor of a stripped back view of God: a First Mover, discernible

at a distance but whose face is turned away.292

288 John Duns Scotus, ‘Can We Know a Certain and Genuine Truth by Natural Means without Any Special Illumination?’, in On Being and Cognition, trans. John van den Bercken, Ordinatio 1.3 (Fordham University, 2016), 136. 289 Gaukroger, The Emergence of a Scientific Culture, 81. “If metaphysics was a general theory of being, he reasoned, if it encompassed both finite and infinite being, then it must be a discipline whose subject matter was being-qua-being, as Aristotle had maintained.” 290 John Duns Scotus, Philosophical Writings: A Selection, trans. Allan Bernard Wolter (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987), 2. Quaecumque sunt communia Deo et creaturae, sunt talia quae conveniunt enti ut est indifferens ad finitum et infinitum; ut enim conveniunt Deo sunt infinita, ut creaturae sunt finita. 291 Mann, ‘Duns Scotus on Natural and Supernatural Knowledge of God’, 239. 292 James F. Ross and Todd Bates, ‘Duns Scotus on Natural Theology’, in The Cambridge Companion to Duns Scotus, ed. Thomas Williams, Cambridge Companions to Philosophy (Cambridge, U.K.; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 194.

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Esse and Ens

Before and after Augustine, God’s being had been described as being itself. The commonplace

for this assertion being God’s self-revelation in the book of Exodus to Moses as “ego sum qui

sum,” “I am who I am” (Exodus 3:14). It had been possible to describe God as either ens or esse,

but both were employed up until the twelfth century with the same equivocality. Pseudo-

Dionysius the Areopagite had argued that God was being (ens), but immediately qualified this

“causal being of the existence of everything” by stating that “this being is not an ὂν [a thing], as

though the pinnacle of every essence.”293

Whereas Augustine described God as being itself, esse, Scotus reached for ens as his preferred

term to articulate being in relation to God. In this later scholastic framework, unlike that of

Pseudo-Dionysius, being (ens) signifies a characteristic common in some sense between God and

creation. This takes shape at least partly in Scotus’ grammar. Scotus distinguished between two

modes of predication or description: in quid and in quale. To predicate something in quid is to

predicate a thing (subject) to another thing (predicate) – that is, to predicate a subject on an entity

(species) or some actual part of an entity (genus). Thus, in quid predication simply answers the

question of what something is. However, to predicate in quale is to qualify the subject. Where

describing something in quid grammatically requires a noun, describing in quale requires another

part of speech (adjective, adverb, participle). I might say that X is true, or that X is truth. In the

former I predicate in quale and in the latter, I predicate in quid.294 This becomes particularly

important when Scotus treats “being” as a predicate. Where Augustine described God’s being as

esse (infinitive and so noun, being itself) Scotus described God’s being as ens (a participle, and

hence both a noun and an adjective). Ens can be applicable with either sense, in quid or in quale.

From this vantage point, being (ens) is, grammatically speaking, able to function in common with

both God and creature – both an essence and an attribute, God himself and something shared

between God and creature. This allows Scotus to make the following claim of being (ens): “For all

293 PL 122:113. ens, et causale quidem essendi omnibus: ipsum autem non ὂν, ut omnis essentiae summitas. 294 Allan Wolter provides a helpful explanation of the grammar of predication: Duns Scotus, Philosophical Writings, n. 2.

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genera and species and individuals and all the essential parts of genera and uncreated being include

“being” [ens] in a quidditative sense.” 295 Because of the double duty that ens performs

grammatically (a thing and a quality), “being” can be taken as univocal in all things, that is, as

foundational and prior to all metaphysical divisions. Importantly, this applies to God’s being too.

As Scotus saw it, for any enquiry into God to get off the ground it is necessary to be able to say

something coherent and precise about God. Scotus could not see how this was possible unless it

were possible to describe God’s being in some more or less meaningful and precise sense that

humans can understand. Scotus saw this move as necessary by both psychological and practical

necessity. How else could we think about God if we cannot speak meaningfully about what he is

like? “And so nothing is known,” concluded Scotus, “concerning the essential parts of a

substance, unless “being” is shared, univocal to both those essential parts and accidents.”296 Of

course, the “being” that created things share is not of a piece with the creator’s. “These reasons

do not include the univocation of being in quid to ultimate differences and characteristics.”297 The

quality of being is, naturally, different for infinite and created being. But the important thing is

that by premising some grammatical commonality between God’s being and created being as

both ens, Scotus could move towards saying something precise and meaningful about God.

“Therefore, briefly, ‘being’ [ens] is univocal in all things, for concepts irreducible to simplicity it is

said concerning them univocally in quid; for reducibly simple concepts it is called univocal as

determinable or denominable, but not as though it were said of them in quid, because this

amounts to a contradiction.”298

Being (ens) was the subject and God was the final goal of Scotus’ craft of metaphysics. In terms

of method, of structure of thought, Scotus builds on the premise that a science cannot prove the

existence of its subject. Scotus therefore believed it was possible to articulate certain things about

295 Scotus, 4. Omnia enim genera et species et individua et omnes partes essentiales generum et ens increatum includunt ens quidditative. 296 Scotus, 6. Et ita nihil cognoscetur de partibus essentialibus substantiae, nisi ens sit commune univocum eis et accidentibus. 297 Scotus, 6. Istae rationes non includunt univocationem entis in quid ad differentias ultimas et passiones. 298 Scotus, 7. Unde breviter, ens est univocum in omnibus, sed conceptibus non simpliciter simplicibus est univocus in quid dictus de eis; simpliciter simplicibus est univocus ut determinabilis vel ut denominabilis, non autem ut dictum de eis in quid, quia hoc includit contradictionem.

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God without any reference to faith, revealed truth or mystery – a very Aristotelian move. “Scotus

takes himself to be in agreement with Aristotle,” writes Mannn, “that human sense experience

and natural reason are adequate to provide a demonstration of God’s existence.”299 “For no

science proves its own subject, but metaphysics proves that God exists,” as Duns Scotus takes

it.300 Since metaphysics’ subject is God, it must be predicated on something else: being (ens).

Whether or not Scotus’ thought totals an innovation, heterodoxy, or something else is beside the

point that Scotus sees the approach towards knowledge of God almost entirely opposite to

Augustine or Aquinas. In Scotus’ view Aquinas allowed too prominent a role for human merit

(i.e. caritas) and the sacraments. Stephen Gaukroger summarizes:

God’s relation to anything else must always be absolutely free, contingent and

unconditioned. The core of Scotus’ criticism of Aquinas was that his approach

tied God in too closely with the institutions of priests, sacraments, accidental

forms of grace, etc., losing sight of the gulf between God’s will and the finite

and contingent means by which this will is effected, means that are not any

indication of intrinsic merit. But Scotus’ own approach had the drawback of

separating God and his creation so radically that they not only had properties at

least as fundamentally different as was the case in Aquinas, but infinite being

was hardly accessible at all, and Scotus not only could not find a conclusive

argument for the immortality of the soul, for example, but argued that belief in

the resurrection and eternal life could not be rationally established and were

matters of faith alone. 301

For Scotus there was hardly a place for one’s devotion to God (affectively and confessionally) in

the process of intellection, whereas Augustine’s approach towards God had to begin with

humility and prayer before God could be articulated theoretically – that is, that God’s esse was

299 Mann, ‘Duns Scotus on Natural and Supernatural Knowledge of God’, 238. 300 Scotus, Philosophical Writings, 10. quia nulla scientia probat suum subjectum; metaphysicus autem probat Deum esse. 301 Gaukroger, The Emergence of a Scientific Culture, 81.

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also his dilectio. Richard Cross has argued that Scotus understood the category of being (ens) as a

conceptual necessity, but one that lacked any real existence. “The concept being is a mental

abstraction that is required for abstractive knowledge of aspects of God. It is in no sense ‘more

absolute’ than God; it is in no sense at all.”302 This seems to me to define the problem out of

existence and ignore the implications of Scotus’ moves for the separation of theological

philosophy from pious meditation on scripture. But whatever the reality of being (ens) as a

concept, it is important for us here to note that Scotus at the very least considered it necessary to

abstract a metaphysically prior concept in order to consider God. Perhaps not considering being

literally to exist prior to God, Scotus undoubtedly believed that one must reason towards God

with a prior metaphysical framework given. We could perhaps say that if being were not logically

prior to God, then at the very least Scotus believed his methodology to be prior in a temporal,

pragmatic sense, that is, that the knowledge provided by Scotus’ dialectic could exist before

devotion, prayer or humility. Setting aside her more contested claim regarding the ontic status of

ens, Catherine Pickstock gets the sense right.

With Scotus, the mystical dimension is lost, and Augustinian divine illumination

of the intellect (in all human knowing) is reduced to the divine causal instigation

of the natural light of the agent intellect.303

The significance for this development for the New Devout is obvious. The Devotio Moderna,

committed to their Augustinian Imaginary, envisioned all learning, and thought as a labor of love

for God. At least to their minds, this sense could not be harmonized with the new imaginary

developing out of the universitas, of which Duns Scotus is an apt representative, where the

demand to speak about God in precise, real terms conceivably precluded the relevance of love,

humility or devotion in the movement towards understanding God or creation.

302 Richard Cross, Duns Scotus on God, Ashgate Studies in the History of Philosophical Theology (Aldershot, England; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2005), 258. 303 Catherine Pickstock, ‘Duns Scotus: His Historical and Contemporary Significance’, Modern Theology 21, no. 4 (1 October 2005): 121.

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The Professionalization of Theology

A concomitant development to Scotus’ metaphysical univocity was the decreasing relevance or

need for the theologian or philosopher to engage in pastoral care. For Scotus, speaking of God

demanded clear, real terms and methodology, and, because this effectively boxed out one’s

character from the knowledge of God as a prerequisite, the hitherto obvious necessity for the

theologian to be engaged in pastoral care seemed less of a demand. There is no indication that

Scotus ever engaged activities that resembled pastoral care – activities that were the operational

core of the New Devout. Indeed, the nexus of pastoral care and the study of theology was

effectively severed once scholars could collect the wages of a benefice without ever taking

residence in them.304 However, this new bifurcation of speaking about God and devotion to him

was irreconcilable to the New Devout and their Augustinian Imaginary. As we will see later,

pastoral care was a crucial component of the brothers’ way of life and entailed attention to the

whole person’s moral, spiritual, and intellectual ascent towards God. This key difference in

imaginary accounts in large part for the New Devout’s antipathy towards scholastic, university

culture.

Yet, although this schematization was underway, even by the time of Scotus the nature of

theology was not settled (if in fact the issue has ever been settled). Was theology a kind of

philosophy, or the other way around? Certainly, if one followed Augustine it would lead to the

latter, but this was not the only option on the table. While the Augustinian sense endured, it

could not survive within the universitas with its need for medieval scholars “to subdivide, to look

for differences of method and content.”305 Thus, the exact definition of theology was contested.

What is plain, though, is that “the term theologia was being employed by scholars who wanted to

give it an academically acceptable frame of reference and to make it a more exact technical

304 Verger, ‘Patterns’, 35–36. 305 Evans, Old Arts and New Theology, 36.

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term.”306 This was irreconcilable with the New Devout’s Augustinian Imaginary that saw learning

within the scope of one’s primary purpose of cultivating a heart of devotion, humility, and love.

Schematization of Knowledges

As knowledges became more schematized in the university, theologia began increasingly to

resemble one rubric among many, allotted a sphere of authority or relevance within the larger

organizing principle of the university. Evans has shown how the great innovations of twelfth-

century scholarship lay in the schematization of knowledge into diverse kinds of knowledge,

Hugh of St. Victor’s didascalicon being a prominent example.307 In this understanding different

sorts of knowledge, from woolmaking (lanificium) to mathematics, were separated and approached

with specific theoretical tools fit for each particular field, even if in practice some branches of

knowledge were given more attention than others.308 Hugo of St. Victor divided philosophia in his

Eruditionis didascalicae libri septem (Seven Books of Erudition or Didascalion) into four categories that

“contain all knowledge.” 309 Theology is defined as a subcategory of theorica, alongside

mathematics and physics. This is because “theory is divided into theology, mathematics and

physics. Boethius makes this division in other words: dividing theory into the intellectual,

intelligible and natural, signifying theology as intellectual, mathematics as intelligible and physics

as natural.”310 However still at this time, since this imaginary claimed all truth as fully expressed

in the Church and the revelation of the logos, all disciplines and methods of knowledge fell within

the scope and judgment of theology and the Church.311 Thus in another work ascribed to Hugh

of St Victor, De modo dicendi et meditandi (On the Manner of Speaking and Meditating) we read that, “the

beginning of learning is humility.”312 The overweening desire to know and master from this

306 Evans, 37. 307 Evans, 15. 308 Evans, 15. 309 PL 76:752B Philosophia dividitur in theoricam, practicam, mechanicam, et logicam. Hae quatuor omnem continent scientiam. 310 PL 76:752C Theorica dividitur in theologiam, mathematicam et physicam. Hanc divisionem Boetius facit aliis verbis: Theoricen secans in intellectibilem, et in intelligibilem, et naturalem: per intellectibilem significans theologiam; per intelligibilem mathematicam; per naturalem physicam. 311 Gaukroger, The Emergence of a Scientific Culture, 54–55. “Finally it meant there were no irreconcilable truths: there was one truth, one reality, that of Christianity, as Gaukroger articulates it.” 312 PL 76:887. Principium discendi humilitas est.

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perspective led many astray who, “want to seem wise before it is time.”313 The ideal learner in

this imaginary should first have a humble character. In this tract the humble learner is more

concerned with learning what is true and wise over what aggrandizes. “The good reader ought to

be humble and meek.”314

With the absorption of the corpus of Aristotle it became more feasible to construe a separate

realm of natural knowledge extra to that provided by the Church.315 John Milbank has argued

that this creation of a ‘secular’ space in which autonomous legal and sociological traditions could

develop had its origins in those particular developments of late medieval metaphysics, such that

“no longer is the world participatorily enfolded within the divine expressive logos, but instead a

bare divine unity starkly confronts the other distinct entities he has ordained.”316 Milbank sees

this primarily as a case of successive theological moves, precipitated by the move to the

metaphysical univocity of Duns Scotus that allowed the invention of the secular unfolding

contingently over time. Where in this Augustinian Imaginary truth began with the mediation of

the logos through the Church and its sacraments, in the Aristotelian sense it began with perception

– that is, because truth was understood as abstractive the emphasis was placed on natural

philosophy.317

The innovation lay in where to locate the science of theology in this paradigm of scientiae. For

Thomas à Kempis, indicative of the New Devout more broadly, it was not a method of reading

or ratiocination that authenticated one’s enquiry into God. “But to some I [God] speak

commonly, to others specially; to some I appear sweetly in signs and figures, but to others I

reveal mysteries in much light. There is one voice in books, but it does not inform all equally,

because I am a teacher inwardly, truth, an examiner of the heart, observer of thoughts, mover of

actions, giving to each person as I judge them worthy.”318 For Thomas, it was not a system that

313 PL 76:877. ante tempus sapientes videri volunt. 314 PL 76:887. Bonus lector humilis debet esse et mansuetus. 315 John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason. (Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 2008), 15. 316 Milbank, 15. 317 Gaukroger, The Emergence of a Scientific Culture, 65. 318 TK 2:221-222. Sed aliis loquor communia aliis specialia; aliquibus in signis et figuris dulciter appareo: quibusdam vero in multo lumine revelo mysteria. Una vox librorum sed non omnes aeque informat; quia

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guaranteed one’s correct reading of Scripture or sense of God. Since the Church and its

sacraments illuminated the mind, it was possible to have variant experiences of God and various

senses of what he was like provided that they were precipitated by genuine love for Christ.

This Aristotelian synthesis meant, however, that theology began to be defined as a subset of

other knowledges governed by metaphysics. Evans goes so far as to suggest that this

schematization amounted to an invention of “theology” – that is, although certainly dealing with

truths relevant to everyone, the science of God emerged as its own particular field more or less

separate from other kinds of knowledge.319 Even in contradistinction to Aquinas’ epoch, “the

term theologia only gradually came to have the universality of a title for an academic discipline

which grammatica or rhetorica had enjoyed at least since Roman times.” 320 It is difficult (and

perhaps unhelpful) to pronounce a clean break when one way of thinking transitioned to

another, but I think Evans gets the right sense that even in the decades from Aquinas to Scotus

the conceptual landscape in the faculty of theology had changed drastically. Evans goes on:

The masters of theology of the twelfth century were trying to settle on a name

for two distinct and not easily reconciled existing approaches to the subject-

matter – that of the study of the Bible and that of speculative theology (where

scriptural passages serve principally to pose problems or to furnish proofs for

use in problem-solving.321

The institutionalization forced this conversation. There was no need to reach for such a

schematization where intellectual enquiry only happened in pastoral or ecclesiastical contexts, as

was the case for the New Devout. Thus, a figure like Bernard of Clairvaux, suspicious of what

the new institution of the university might mean for the nature of theology, used theologus

intus sum doctor veritas scrutator cordis cogitationum intellector, actionum promotor: distribuens singulis sicut dignum iudicavero. 319 Evans, Old Arts and New Theology, 28–29. 320 Evans, 29; Monika Asztalos, ‘The Faculty of Theology’, in A History of the University in Europe, ed. Walter Rüegg and H. De Ridder Symoens, vol. 1: Universities in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 423. 321 Evans, Old Arts and New Theology, 30.

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(theologian) as an insulting sobriquet against Peter Abelard, a reference to Abelard’s Theologia

Christiania.322

Literality and Social Abstraction of Theology

The transition into a literate society created new semiotic problems, questions of knowledge, and

the more practical need for literati to record a growing number of things with words – things that

would previously have been held in trust by a community, but which now could only be

authenticated by the written word. By extricating knowledge from social contexts, from ritual,

traditio, communally validated legal contracts, and relocating them in the written word, the locus

of knowledge was moved to outside the subject or community and constituted a new persona to

inhabit the cast of actors of medieval Europe: the cleric. Brian Stock has argued that the turn

towards a literate society removed discussion of God from socially grounded and implicated

discourses and relocated it in a literate genre where the structure of the words on the page

validated utterances more than the nature of the social context in which they were spoken.323 In

such a view the sacraments and the Church seemed less and less essential to the knowledge of

God or creation.

The shift to a literate society opened new ways to consider knowledge, and this newly created

imaginary, which located true knowledge in written texts rather than in the subject, contended

with received ways of imagining knowledge. Now that knowledge was constituted in texts, the

stage was set for an explosion of new literate professions required to draft, authenticate, and

mediate parties in a world in which truth and reality were more and more embodied by words

and the page. It would be the university that filled this need.

Jacques Le Goff has argued that the call to the life of the scholar was increasingly understood as

a profession. Just as soldiers took up their arma to maintain order in society, so too by the time of

Abelard’s Historia Calamitatum did scholars take up their litterae in service of a wider social

322 Evans, 31. 323 Stock, The Implications of Literacy, 328. “As the scholarly audience was reconstituted, the abstract idea of information, that is, of factual knowledge, was gradually separated from the individual understanding. A difference was recognized between the knower as inquiring subject and the knowledge which was the object of his investigations.”

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order.324 This is the opposite to Thomas à Kempis’ view of one’s ascent towards knowledge of

God:

‘I am he [Christ] who raises up the humble person mind in compunction [in

puncto] that they might understand many more eternal causes, than if they had

studied for ten years in the schools. I teach without the raising of voices,

without confusion of opinions: without the awarding of honor, without the

contest of arguments.325

This institutionalization of education by the advent of the university enabled a deeper shift in

how one conceived of knowledge. The institutional development moved in tandem with a

conceptual shift. The pathway from education to profession in medieval Europe had never been

so clearly defined as in the twelfth century with the advent the university. This phenomenon is

what Steven Marrone calls the “emergence of professionalism.”326 As Geert Grote studied at the

University of Paris in the fourteenth century, never before had the link between education and

accreditation been so strong.327

Professionalization

Within the university, it became plausible from the thirteenth to the fourteenth centuries to

pursue knowledge for no other reason than to acquire money or a career.328 And further, it even

became conceivable to relocate virtue not in one’s character, but in the greatness of one’s

learning.329 The danger and inappropriateness of yoking intellectual acumen with praise or riches

had been a regular theme since Bede had warned against the vanity of seeking knowledge for the

324 Jacques Le Goff, Time, Work, & Culture in the Middle Ages, Nachdr. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 125. “Besides differentiating itself from the monastic world, this new social group of scholars more generally asserted that to live in any way other than by its special profession and its own type of labour was impossible and repellent. For the ‘new students and scholars,’ the object of the quest was thus pecunia et laus: a wage, in one form of another, and glory.” 325 TK 2 :221. Ego sum qui humilem in puncto elevo mentem; ut plures aeternae veritatis capiat rationes: quam si quis decem annis studuisset in scholis. Ego doceo sine strepitu verborum, sine confusion opinionrum: sine fastu honoris, sine pugnatione argumentorum. 326 Steven P Marrone, ‘The Rise of Universities’, in The Cambridge History of Medieval Philosophy, ed. Robert Pasnau and Christina van Dyke, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 55. 327 Charles Homer Haskins, The Rise of Universities, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1965), 1. 328 Alexander Murray, Reason and Society in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), 233. 329 Murray, 232. “Scientia inflat, Saint Paul had taught; and observation confirmed it.”

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sake of worldly gain. “What is the desire for human praise,” wrote Bede in his commentary on

John (In S. Joannis evangelium expositio), “other than puffing up a proud mind.”330 Bede’s comment

was picked up by Haymo of Halberstadt († 853) in a homily.331 Alcuin recycled this observation

in his own Commentaria in S. Joannis evangelium, also verbatim. 332 Peter Abelard confessed of

teaching because of “pecunie et laudis cupiditas.333 Similarly Peter of Blois (c. 1180) critiqued the

popularity of jurisprudence as caused by “ambition for dignity and desire for empty glory.”334

It was in this milieu that the word clericus gradually changed meaning to equivocally signify both

clergy (its original meaning) and scholar, such being the power of the universitas to supplant the

original locus of theological knowledge, the Church.335 Gaukroger has shown how the virtue of

humility (humilitas, a Christian virtue) came to be contested after the approval and absorption of

Aristotle and his commentators (Averroës, Avicenna) into the faculty of Arts in 1255. The issue

was whether magnanimity, the supreme virtue advocated by Aristotle, should take precedence

over humility. 336 The Condemnations at Paris specifically identify the belief that the “most

excellent was of life is the philosophical one” (prop. 40) and that the highest human goods are

commensurate to intellectual virtues (prop. 144).337

This conceptual separation between the scholar and the monk played out in disputes between the

traditional monastic custodians of knowledge and new scholars. Le Goff argues that the conflicts

of the thirteenth century between the mendicant orders and members of theological faculties

were, at heart, over the importance of the new identity of the scholar for authenticating

knowledge. “There is no doubt that the secular party attacked the mendicant academics because

it was convinced,” argues Le Goff, “that it was incompatible to belong both to a monastic order

330 PL 92:703D. Quid est humanae laudis cupiditas, nisi superbae mentis elatio? 331 PL 118:244A. Quid est humanae laudis cupiditas, nisi supernae mentis elatio? 332 PL 100:818C. Quae est humanae laudis cupiditas, nisi superbae mentis elatio? 333 Walter Rüegg, ed., Geschichte der Universität in Europa: Mittelalter (München: Beck, 1993), 29. 334 PL 207:416D. Duo sane sunt, quae hominem ad legum scientiam vehementer impellent, ambitio dignitatis, et inanis gloriae appetitus. 335 Murray, Reason and Society in the Middle Ages, 265, 268–70. 336 Gaukroger, The Emergence of a Scientific Culture, 68. “When Aristotelianism was officially accepted by the University of Paris in 1255, the Arts Faculty in effect became a philosophy Faculty, something administratively on a par with the Theology Faculty, and right from the start there was one pressing question on which they were at odds, whether the Christian virtue of humility or the Aristotelian one of magnanimity should take precedence.” 337 Klima, Allhoff, and Vaidya, 181–82.

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and to a university corporation.”338 It was this tension behind the Paris condemnation of 1277,

which rejected the possibility of the philosopher’s unaided acumen to obtain knowledge of first

causes as well as the primacy of Christian humility in ascending to the knowledge of God over

the philosopher’s magnanimitas.339

Of course some scholars, lawyers, and clerics of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries harbored

an intense love of learning integrated into a rich, overriding devotion to God. Nonetheless, the

institution of the universitas emerged for the most part to supply accredited graduates and fill the

job market rather than to foster a sense of holiness, devotion, or theological insight as its primary

purpose. If that were the case, there would have been no need for the institution of the

university. Cathedral schools and monasteries would have sufficed. While Grundmann, among

others, has argued that logistical factors were secondary to scholars’ and teachers’ amor sciendi,

such a view neglects the fact that education was not invented by the university, merely

institutionalized and regularized.340 Opportunities for intellectual enquiry had existed in different

contexts certainly since the court of Charlemagne and the Renaissance of the high Middle Ages.

Principally, the shift was an institutional one. Albrecht Classen is more accurate in his assessment

that the demand for a particular kind of learning from courts and municipalities amounted to the

impetus for the university’s growth.

The schools of the twelfth century and the universities of the thirteenth century

never set themselves the goal of providing the courts and municipalities with

specialized experts. Nevertheless, the new social pattern that took the form in

the university was in part shaped by society, since it was the lively interest of

wider social groups that made it possible for the higher schools to become

enduring and independent institutions. From the very beginning, education was

a subject of tension between the fundamental and primary impulse to seek the

338 Le Goff, Time, Work, & Culture in the Middle Ages, 128. 339 Le Goff, 130. 340 Grundmann, Ursprung (Note 6), 36, 39 in Walter Rüegg and H. De Ridder Symoens, eds., A History of the University in Europe, vol. 1: Universities in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 10.

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truth and the desire of many persons to acquire practical training. Conversely,

without really wanting to do so, the schools formed the new academic stratum

and changed the whole structure of society, enriching it and making it more

complex.341

What was new in this package of university education was thus not education or learning itself,

but the process and orientation of this education. Ferruolo argues that what distinguished

universities from preceding iterations of education and learning was its institutionalization, a

“formal association with self governance” that brought scholars into a multidisciplinary

community where education was a matter of public interest over against personal

development.342 This was particularly the case of the University of Paris, where Geert Grote

attended. The formation of the university was undoubtedly motivated in part by the need to

safeguard the welfare of students and the independence of academics, a move that “fused

[scholars and students] into a corporate body which would be guaranteed its rights and privileges

by public authorities.”343

Geert Grote at the University of Paris

By the time of the New Devout a new imaginary, furnished by the institution of the universitas

had become established, concretized. However, for the New Devout, whose imagination

stretched back to the Desert Fathers and Augustine, this new sense still amounted to a novel and

unwelcome development. Thomas à Kempis cautioned his readers in the Imitatio Christi against

worldly knowledge specifically because in the schools knowledge was separated from devotion

and godly character. “I am he,” wrote Thomas speaking in persona Christi,

who teaches to look down on earthly things, to shrink away from the present, to

seek eternal things, to be wise in eternal things, to suffer scandals, to place every

341 Classen Studium (Note 4), 4 in Rüegg and De Ridder Symoens, 1: Universities in the Middle Ages: 11. 342 Stephen C. Ferruolo, The Origins of the University: The Schools of Paris and Their Critics, 1100-1215 (Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 1985), 4. 343 Rüegg and De Ridder Symoens, A History of the University in Europe, 1: Universities in the Middle Ages:11.

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hope in me, to desire nothing besides me, and to love me ardently above all

things. For by loving me inwardly one learns divine things and speaks marvels.

One progresses more in abandoning all things than in striving after subtle

truths.344

But by the time of Geert Grote’s education at the University of Paris two profoundly different

visions for education had emerged: on one track, this pre-existing monastic vision saw education

as a process of formation towards the likeness of Christ, and on the other track education was a

means to satisfy the demand for specialized professional needs. A disassociation had taken place.

Where one scarcely finds separation of theology, exegesis, and spiritual discipline prior to the

twelfth century, this move became essential to the construction of metaphysica. Where Thomas

Aquinas spoke of Sacred Doctrine and Sacred Scripture interchangeably and Bonaventure had

identified theology as nothing other than “sacred Scripture,” this distinction had been finessed

and bifurcated in the century or so before Geert Grote’s study at Paris.345

It is worth describing more detail the substance of Greet Grote’s education at the university of

Paris. By the time Grote had moved from his birthplace of Deventer, research and teaching at

the University of Paris had been broken into four faculties: arts, theology, law, and medicine.346

Grote is recorded in the Chartularium universitatis Parisiensis as studying the liberal arts at the

university of Paris in the Natio Anglica, which housed students from Scotland, the Netherlands,

Germany, Austria, Hungary, Bohemia, Moravia, and Poland.347 Grote matriculated his bachelor

of arts, studying under a master from his house (probably by statue), in 1357.348 Grote was a well-

to-do student. He enjoyed a bursary of 15 solidi, a healthy living. After taking his Master of Arts

in 1358 (at age eighteen, a slight bending of the rules that required a Master of Arts to be at least

344 TK 2 :221. Ego sum qui doceo terrena despicere praesentia fastidire; aeterna quaerere, aeterna sapere: honores fugere, scandala suffere; omnem spem in me ponere, extra me nil cupere: et super omnia me ardenter amare. Nam quidam amando me intime, didicit divina: et loquebatur mirabilia. Plus profecit in relinquendo omnia: quam in studendo subtilia. 345 Henri de Lubac, Medieval Exegesis. Vol. 1: The Four Senses of Scripture, trans. Mark Sebanc, (Grand Rapids, Mich: Eerdmans, 1998), 27. 346 Hastings Rashdall, The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1895), 323. 347 H. Denifle and E. Chatelain, eds., Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis, vol. 3 (Paris, 1889), 92. 348 H. Denifle and E. Chatelain, eds., Auctarium Chartularii Universitatis Parisiensis (Paris, 1894), 207. Anno Domini MCCLVII [1357], determinaverunt itsi qui sequitur… Item dominus Gerhardus de Daventria sub magistro Johanne de Lovanio, cujus bursa 15 sol.

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20) Grote spent the next decade studying somewhat aimlessly, taking various subjects on offer at

the university but never taking another degree.349 We also know from these records that Grote

was among those whose names were nominated in 1365 for a benefice.350 Although he turned it

down the first time, he applied one year later for an ecclesiastical benefice at the papal chancery

of Avignon.351

Grote’s institution, the University of Paris, boasted faculties of theology, medicine, canon law,

and arts. To become a Doctor of Theology, however, was increasingly difficult. The required

duration of study had gradually increased over time. By 1366 the complete course from bachelor

to doctor took 16 years.352 The minimum age for a doctor of theology was 35.353 Lecturers were

often sourced from Mendicant colleges and taught from the Bible in conjunction with Peter

Lombard’s Sentences – the two books a theology student would theoretically have to be familiar

with to take his degree. The faculty of canon law required 48 months of study, although this

varied over time.354 From early on the ‘Faculty of Decrees’ had garnered a reputation as attracting

students most eager for a lucrative benefice or an attractive job related to canon law.355

Although emphasizing theory over practice (dissections were not practiced), Paris’ school of

medicine had existed from c. 1270 and required 32 months of study for a bachelorship and five

and a half years’ study to be accredited with a license.356 Pearl Kibre has shown that medical

education in the later Middle Ages was generally viewed as a theoretical art, because the physician

was required not just to perform certain functions but also to understand the causes, principles,

and reasons for particular malaises and their remedies – that is, to understand their philosophical

grounding.357

349 Theodore P. van Zijl, Gerard Groote: Ascetic and Reformer (1340-1384), (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1963), 45. 350 Denifle and Chatelain, Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis, 3:132. 351 Van Zijl, Gerard Groote, 46. 352 Rashdall, The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, 464–65. 353 Rashdall, 463. 354 Rashdall, 428. 355 Rashdall, 431. 356 Rashdall, 428. 357 Pearl Kibre, ‘Arts and Medicine in the Later Middle Ages’, in The Universities in the Late Middle Ages (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1978), 213.

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From the second half of the fourteenth century into fifteenth century, the Bachelor of Arts was a

prerequisite for admittance to the Faculty of Medicine.358 The arts curriculum omitted entirely the

poets, historians, and orators of ancient Rome, emphasizing instead Aristotelian dialectic and

grammar. 359 We can assume with relative certainty that this diet comprised Geert Grote’s

education. Logic was the main topic of education, comprised almost entirely of the works of

Aristotle. The whole of the Philosopher’s Organon taken with the Isagoge of Porphyry were taught

– that is, the Old Logic and New Logic (vetus logica et nova logica – Aristotle’s works introduced

respectively before and after 1128).360 A grounding in dialectical method was deemed essential

for an education in the art of medicine.361 Philosophy included Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics and

the subjects of the Quadrivium (mathematics, geometry, astronomy, and music).362 Boethius’ De

musica and Euclidean geometry were thought particularly necessary for the study of mathematica,

natural science.363 Although some of Aristotle’s works were initially prohibited (his Metaphysics

and Natural Philosophy), from 1235 onwards all proscriptions were removed and these texts

entered the curriculum.364 Up until reform in 1366, Arts students were required to study the

classical grammarians Donatus and Priscian, although this was often waived.365

The emphasis on Aristotelian dialectic was clearly central to the formation of students. Students

were required to listen to the books read at least twice ordinarie and at least once lectured on.366

From 1254, the canon of Aristotle was expanded to include: Physica, Metaphysica, De anima, De

animalibus, De caelo et mundo, Metorica, De generatione, De sensu et sensato, De somno et vigilia, De memoria

et reminiscentia, and De morte et vita. During Geert’s time at Paris the importance of Aristotle was

trending upwards. In 1366 (19 years after he had left) papal reform of the university stipulated

that for a License to be awarded, candidates must have specifically studied the Physica, De

358 Kibre, 217. 359 Rashdall, The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, 433. 360 Rashdall, 433. 361 Kibre, ‘Arts and Medicine in the Later Middle Ages’, 221. 362 Rashdall, The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, 433. 363 Kibre, ‘Arts and Medicine in the Later Middle Ages’, 221–22. 364 Rashdall, The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, 434. 365 Kibre, ‘Arts and Medicine in the Later Middle Ages’, 218. 366 Rashdall, The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, 435.

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generatione et corruptione, De caelo et mundo, Parva naturalia and the Liber mechanicae.367 Aristotle was not

just present, but at the center of the faculty of Arts at Paris.

Grote was “determined” (determinare) in 1357.368 This meant that he had engaged a disputation

with an opponent – that is, a dialectic back-and-forth between the candidate and another student

(usually junior) on a particular topic.369 It is likely that Geert Grote would have been exposed to

the works of Virgil, Ovid, Fulgentius, Horace, Orosius, Juvenal, Seneca, Terence, Sallust,

Sidonius, Cassiodorus, Martial, Titus Livy, and Valerius Maximus – all of whom are mentioned as

part of a Parisian Arts education at this time.370 It is also likely that in his medical training Grote

would have become familiar with Latinized Greek works like Hippocrates’ Aphorisms, On Acute

Diseases and Prognostics, Galens’ Ars parva along with its introduction by Arabic scholar Hunain ibn

Ishāq. On the curriculum were also Philaretus On Pulse, and Avicenna’s Canon. Given Grote’s

own deathly premonition (“Post inspexit Magister Gherardus urinam propriam, quia doctus erat in

medicina, & videbatur sibi quod mors erat in propinquo”) it also seems likely that he read Theophilus’

On Urines.371 In his own letters, Geert Grote shows familiarity with: Aristotle’s Nichomachean

Ethics, Politica, Posteriora Analytica and Problemata,372 Cicero’s De Officiis and De Oratore,373 Galen’s

De crisi et criticis diebus,374 Hippocrates,375 Ovid’s Remedia amoris376and De ventre,377 Seneca’s Ad

Lucilium, De ira, Epistolae morales, Glosa, Libri, Naturales quaestiones,378 Valerius Maxmius’ Facta et

dicta,379 and Virgil’s Aeneid.380

367 Rashdall, 436–37. 368 Denifle and Chatelain, Auctarium Chartularii Universitatis Parisiensis, 207. Anno Domini MCCLVII (1357), determinaverunt itsi qui sequitur… Item dominus Gerhardus de Daventria sub magistrio Johanne de Lovanio, cujus bursa 15 sol. 369 Rashdall, The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, 444. 370 Kibre, ‘Arts and Medicine in the Later Middle Ages’, 220. 371 Muden, 3 372 GME. Ep., 8, 9, 13, 18, 21, 29, 41, 73. 373 GME, Ep. 9. 374 GME, Ep. 35. 375 GME, Ep. 35, 70. 376 GME, Ep. 29. 377 GME, Ep. 69. 378 GME, Ep. 7, 8, 9, 13, 16, 66, 7. 379 GME, Ep. 9. 380 GME, Ep. 69.

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Conversion: from the Universitas to Preaching the Common Life

After his conversion, Geert Grote spent five years laboring to reform his inner person to the

likeness of Christ.381 After his time spent in reflection, labor and learning, Grote began to preach

throughout the diocese of Utrecht in the Netherlands.382 Beginning in 1380, Grote preached

against clerical abuses – simony, multiple benefices, and focaristi (that is, priests who kept ‘hearth-

mates’, female kitchen maids who were also companions). In 1383 Grote addressed the issue of

focaristi in an inaugural sermon delivered at a diocesan assembly of the Diocese of Utrecht,

leading eventually to the revocation of his preaching license.383 Central to Grote’s newfound

spiritual resurgence was a response to the sort of education he had received at the University of

Paris, taking his Bachelor of Arts in 1357. Grote forsook his previous training at the University

of Paris in law and medicine and encouraged his followers to have nothing to do with worldly

pursuits. He wrote in his Conclusa:

A person is defiled by honors and favors, and by the greed with which all strive.

Through such lucrative forms of knowledge they are darkened, impassioned,

and natural decorum is turned aside. Their desire is enflamed so that they look

rightly neither to the things of God nor of virtue nor bodily good. Whence it is a

most rare thing that someone be upright or balanced in reason or just or

peaceable or judging rightly who is involved in the lucrative knowledges, like

medicine or law or canon law. Spend no time in geometry, arithmetic, rhetoric,

dialectic, grammar, the lyric poets, civil law, or astrology.384

381 Muden, 5. Post conversionem suam latuit magister Gherardus quinque annis, laborans interiorem suam hominem reformare ad similitudinem Dei, ad quam creatus fuerat. 382 John H. van Engen, ‘The Writings of Master Geert Grote of Deventer, Deacon (1340-84)’, Ons Geestelijk Erf 78, no. 3–4 (2004): 345–68. 383 CCCM 235:23. 384 Conclusa, 372-373. per honores et favores, et per avaritiam, quibus omnes student, coinquinatur homo, et per tales lucrativas scientias obscuratur, passionatur, et rectitudo naturalis obliquatur, et inficitur appetitus; ut nec quae sunt Dei, nec virtutis, nec bona corporis recte adspiciant. Unde rarissime est, quod, qui scientiis lucrativis, vel Medicinae, vel Legibus, vel Decretis, inhaeret, rectus sit, vel aequus in ratione, vel justus, vel quietus, vel recte vivens. Item, tu nullum tempus consumes in Geometricis, Arithmeticis, Rhetoricis, Dialecticis, Grammaticis, Lyricis Poetis, Judicialibus, Astrologis.

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We see this dynamic – the new imagination pitted against the old – in Geert Grote’s time at the

University of Paris. His aversion to university learning, once highly prized by him, shows how the

institution of the universitas embodied so much of what had gone wrong with knowledge,

learning, and education in the eyes of the New Devout. Thomas à Kempis relates this episode of

Grote’s life in his Vita, most probably sourced from his schoolmasters at the brother-run school

at Deventer such as his close friend Florens Radewijns.385 Thomas began his work with the life of

Geert Grote, with a description of his time at the university of Paris. Sent by his parents Grote

devoted himself to his studies: “He was by dint of his intellect promoted at age eighteen to

Master of Arts.”386 However, as impressive as such an achievement may have been Thomas does

not tell this aspect of Grote’s adolescence positively. Grote’s conversion, his lifelong conversio

towards God, involved the explicit repudiation of established fields of knowledge, many of which

he encountered during his time at the University of Paris. Writing instructions to his followers in

his Conclusa, Grote concluded his exhortation by reflecting on the limitations of knowledge.

True knowledge is to know that one knows nothing. The more a person knows

that they are far from perfection, so perfection is near. The beginning of

vainglory is to please oneself… You ought always to strive to note something

good and to think about it. The more we desire something inordinately beyond

God, the more we are led astray [fornicamur] from God. Therefore, the prophet

said, “it is always good for me to adhere to God.”387

Grote’s time in Paris was in his own reckoning a time spent chasing after the chimera of fame,

only to see later the vanity of his pursuit of worldly glory and lucre at the University of Paris, in

Thomas’ words “not yet inspired, he still wandered through the wide paths of the age, until by

385 Van Zijl, Gerard Groote, 9. 386 TK 7:35. Ad magisterium intellectu suffragante decimo octavo aetatis suae anno promotes est. 387 Conclusa, 382. Scientia scientiarum est scire, se nihil scire. Quanto plus homo scit se distare a perfection, tam prope est perfectio. Initium vanae gloriae est, sibi ipsi placere. In nullo melius cognoscitur homo, quam in hoc, quod laudatur. Semper debes niti, aliquid boni notare et cogitare de alio. Quoties aliquid inordinate extra Deum concupiscimus, toties a Deo fornicamur. Ideo Propheta ait: ‘Mihi autem Deo adhaerere bonum est’.

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the mercy of God he was changed into a new man.”388 Whatever problems Thomas à Kempis

may pose with his stylized account of Grote’s life, his assessment of Grote’s time at the

University of Paris meshes well with Grote’s own attitude towards it. 389 In his Conclusa, Grote

reiterated his own forsaking of any benefice – any profit gained from the accrual of knowledge:

“The first thing is, to desire no longer any benefice, or to place hope in any temporal profit in the

future.” 390 Grote cautioned his followers against the allure of worldly praise for academic

prowess. Central to Grote and his circle’s counsel was the admonition to a certain kind of slow,

meditative reading.

388 TK 7:35. Verum latas adhuc saeculi vias necdum inspiratus pervagatur: donec deo miserante in virum alium mutaretur. 389 For an outline of the variants of Geert’s Vitae see: van Zijl, Gerard Groote, 8f. 390 Conclusa, 371.

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5 EXHORTATIONS TO READING

The puzzle of the Devotio Moderna is encapsulated in its genesis – that the Devotio Moderna found

its origins in a book burning, Geert Grote’s renunciation of his Parisian education.391 Yet, after

spending time in a Carthusian monastery Grote saw a great need for new books in order to

exercise his newfound vocation.392 Grote purchased a swath of new books to aid his study, so

many that they had to be rolled around in a barrel where he was preaching.393 In fact, the New

Devout’s attitude towards reading was overwhelmingly positive.394 Such practices have become

characteristic of the movement as a whole.395 Of their time the New Devout were “die Schreiber

und Leser par excellence.”396 Nikolaus Staubach writes that,

It is hardly surprising that dealings with book and pen, quill and parchment

became a characteristic feature of the brothers of the common life and the

Windesheim Canons in the awareness of contemporaries as well as of

posterity.397

But of course, the New Devout adopted ways of reading that sprang from their Augustinian

Imaginary. Wybren Scheepsma has argued that reading was a key activity in the milieu of the

Devotio Moderna that the leaders of the movement saw as a means of spiritual growth:

391 Nikolaus Staubach, ‘Pragmatische Schriftlichkeit im Bereich der Devotio Moderna’, Frühmittelalterliche Studien 25 (1991): 418–19. 392 Muden, 5. Post conversionem suam latuit magister Gherardus quinque annis, laborans interiorem suam hominem reformare ad similitudinem Dei, ad quam creates fuerat. Deinde ordinatus Dyaconus cepit predicare vulgo uerbum Dei. 393 Muden, 5. cum pergeret trans mare, tanta tempestas orta est, quod vix libros suos, quos secum habuit inclusos in una tonna, potuit preseruare illos ab aquis. 394 Koen Goudriaan, ‘Empowerment through Reading, Writing and Example: The Devotio Moderna’, in Christianity in Western Europe c. 100-c. 1500, vol. 4, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 407–19. 395 Nikolaus Staubach, ‘Die Devotio Moderna als Textgemeinschaft’, in Schnittpunkte. Deutsch-Niederländische Literaturbeziehungen Im Späten Mittelalter, ed. Angelika Lehmann-Benz, Ulrike Zellman, and Urban Küsters (Münster, 2003), 19–40. 396 Nikolaus Staubach, ‘Der Codex als Ware. Wirtschaftliche Aspekte der Handschriften- Produktion im Bereich der Devotio Moderna’, in Der Codex im Gebrauch (Akten des Internationalen Kolloquiums 11.-13. Juni 1992), ed. Christel Meier, Dagmar Hüpper, and Hagen Keller (München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1996), 145. 397 Staubach, ‘Pragmatische Schriftlichkeit im Bereich der Devotio Moderna’, 420. Es kann daher kaum verwundern, dass der Umgang mit Buch und Schrift, Feder und Pergament in Bewusstsein der Zeitgenossen wie auch der Nachwelt zum charakteristischen Merkmal der Brüder vom gemeinsamen Leben und der Windesheimer Chorherren geworden ist.

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The founders like Geert Grote, Florens Radewijns, and Gerard Zerbolt of

Zutphen point to the great meaning of spiritual reading as a means for the

renewal of the inner life. Their vision for reading can be summarized in six

points:

1. The aim of reading is the attainment of purity of heart.

2. One should read texts holistically.

3. One should read at determined times.

4. One should retain a specific point from reading that can be returned to.

5. Reading must be regularly alternated with prayer.

6. One reads preferably books on devotion and virtues.398

We move towards understanding the Devotio Moderna when we bear in mind that they in large part

crafted practices sourced from their Augustinian Imaginary in conscious contradistinction to

what they identified with the universitas. Formative figures in the founding of the Devotio Moderna

acted in conscious imitation of the Church Fathers who had gone before them both as models

and teachers of how books were to be read, ruminated upon, and culled for edifying material.

However, more than simply making books, followers of Geert Grote’s charism were enjoined to

engage in regular times of reading, meditation, and reflection. “For the Devout the heart of the

matter lay,” as John van Engen puts it, “in the way reading and writing informed their way of

life.”399 I argued in the previous chapter that the Devotio Moderna reacted against the imaginary of

the universitas that was irreconcilable with their own Augustinian Imaginary. Such a claim

398 Wybren Scheepsma, Deemoed en devotie: de koorvrouwen van Windesheim en hun geschriften (Amsterdam: Prometheus, 1997), 77–78. Grondleggers als Geert Grote, Florens Radewijns en Gerard Zerbolt van Zutphen wijzen op de grote betekenis van geestelijke lectuur als middel tot hervorming van het innerlijk leven. Hun visie op de lezing kan in zes punten worden samengevat. 1. doel van de lezing is het bereiken van zuiverheid des harten. 2. men dient de teksten integraal te lezen. 3. men dient op vastgestelde tijden te lezen. 4. men dient een bepaald punt uit de lezing vast te houden, zodat daarop kan worden teruggegrepen. 5. de lezing moet geregeld door gebed worden afgewisseld. 6. men leest bij voorkeur boeken over vroomheid en deugden. 399 John H. van Engen, Sisters and Brothers of the Common Life: The Devotio Moderna and the World of the Later Middle Ages, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), 275.

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demands, however, not only that we outline the antipathy of the New Devout towards

developments within the university sphere and their own heritage stretching back to Augustine

and his interlocutors, but also that we account for the reading and writing practices that were

characteristic of the New Devout. To account for the New Devout’s rejection of scholastic,

university culture we must outline the practices that carried their different Augustinian Imaginary.

This chapter sets out how the leaders within the Devotio Moderna exhorted and modelled the

practice of reading.

As concerns the kind of reading within the New Devout, three characteristics come to the fore.

Firstly (1), thought leaders of the New Devout exhorted reading as an opportunity for self-

reflection and self-understanding that aided the greatest goal of human life, growth in caritas.

Secondly (2), brothers militated against the pride of producing great written works by modelling

the anonymous excerpting of texts, thereby exhorting the brother or sister to cater their reading

towards their spiritual growth. Thirdly (3), true knowledge of God and creation was dependent

ultimately on the heart, humility, and not the intellect. Having laid out these three characteristics,

it becomes clear that such an imaginary was irreconcilable with scholastic, university culture as

understood by the sisters and brothers.

Reading as Cultivating the Heart

Brothers modelled reading as above all aiding one in cultivating a humble heart before God. By

reading appropriate writings, one became wise to the passions and sins that swirled deep in the

heart. The discipline of reading soothed these disordered desires and proud rumblings within, so

that one could think about God and creation with a clear mind and live wisely. This sort of

reading aimed at spiritual growth in the context of each brother or sister’s situation, not simply

expanding knowledge in general.400 This shows up when we consider first a collection of sayings

attributed to Geert Grote and Florens Radewijns and then set out the way the brothers enjoined

400 Scheepsma, Deemoed en Devotie, 78. “De devoten lezen niet met het ijdele doel om kennis te verwerven, maar om een les te leren die op de eigenen situatie kan worden toegepast.” (The devout did not read with the vain goal of acquiring knowledge but in order to learn a lesson that could be applied to their own situation).

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their followers to consider the Desert Fathers as their model. Reading occurred regularly over the

course of the daily lives of the sisters and brothers and was framed by prayer and self-

examination as preparation. In this vision, reading ought to be a slow, reflective activity that

reoriented oneself towards God, and so required careful attention to the murmurings of one’s

heart.

Aliqua Verba Notabilia Domini Florentii et Magistri Gerardi Magni

The early leaders of the New Devout, Geert Grote and Florens Radewijns, exhorted their sisters

and brothers to examine constantly their consciences and to understand their ascent towards the

knowledge of God as of a piece with their own growth in caritas. This meant that reading

possessed great value because of its power to reveal things about oneself. A collection of sayings

attributed to Geert Grote and Florens Radewijns circulated amongst the early brother- and sister-

houses portrays reading as part of a process of self-knowing. L.A.M. Goossens has identified this

text with other similar summary works circulated within the community of the New Devout, and

he has argued that it is likely that they all originated from the hand of Rudolph Dier Muden, a

brother and one of the New Devout’s early chroniclers.401 In making this connection, Goossens

suggests that the content of this cluster of texts derives from Grote’s own Conclusa, and therefore

centers on key communal behaviors characteristic of their way of life from the beginning. Since

the controlling concept behind the Conclusa was concrete behavior, the sayings of the founding

fathers of the New Devout, an ostensibly arbitrary arrangement of teachings, center on specific

behaviors.

One key aspect collected in these verba notabilia is the act of reading. The practice of reading in

this way helped one to understand oneself, one’s disordered passions, sins, and pride. Reading in

the community of the New Devout was envisioned and described by their own members as an

activity in which one’s whole self was implicated, not simply one’s intellect, and so was valuable

for how reading might form the reader more into the love of Christ. This sense is premised on

401 Goossens, De Meditatie in de eerste tijd van de Moderne Devotie, 61.

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the understanding of the human person articulated by the verba notabilia. Just as physical desires

can be deleterious to one’s health, so too can sinful inner passions harm the person.

As a person it drawn to outward things, to seeing, speaking, eating, drinking, so

also is a person drawn invisibly to invisible things, as to anger, hatred, self-love,

and as by desiring these exterior things we are drawn through them as though

involuntarily, (if we should begin to understand such motions and by resisting

understand them) so through outward things we err in the knowledge of hidden

interior motions in ourselves.402

Making the observation that it is easy to become distracted and not attend to one’s inner self and

neglect to pull out the sins and vices rooted there, reading is offered as a way to observe one’s

interiority clearly. In engaging in this practice of contemplative reading, the reader becomes

awake to themselves and can exert agency over the thoughts, impressions, and emotions that can

easily rob a person of their ability to make clear-minded, wise, and godly decisions. Further, once

the reader has observed their interiority, the practice of reading allows them to replace their own

swirling passions and vices with thoughts more conducive to the devout life.

I judge that the motions and the thoughts which fall upon our hearts are not of

our own power, but nonetheless it is within our power to plant something good

in our hearts by reading, praying, ruminating, until those motions, overcome by

others, succumb and through the grace of God cease.403

Just as certain practices could harden the heart and so dull the mind, reading and ruminating had

the capacity to reshape the heart and so offer understanding. The practice of reading was thus of

402 Aliqua Verba Notabilia, 429. Sicut homo trahitur ad res ad extra, ad videndum, loquendum, comedendum, bibendum, sic eciam homo trahitur invisibiliter ad invisibilia, ut ad iram, ad odium, ad amorem suiipsius, et sicut per illa exteriora concupiscendo ea trahimur quasi inviti, (si tales motus inciperemus cognoscere et sentire resistendo eis) sic per exterior deveniemus in noti[tit]am interiorum latencium in nobis motuum. 403 Aliqua Verba Notabilia, 428-429. Estimo motus et cogitaciones que incidunt in corde nostro, non sunt in nostra potestate, sed tamen nostrum est aliquid boni in corde nostro plantare legendo, orando, ruminando, donec alij motus ab hijs victi succumbant et per graciam dei cessant.

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twofold value. The practice of reading afforded the opportunity to see one’s sins clearly, and the

practice of disciplined, regular reading and rumination disciplined and reshaped one’s desires.

The practice of reading as modelled in the verba notabilia reflects the Augustinian Imaginary of the

New Devout outlined earlier. To grasp God and understand creation required love, since God’s

esse was his amor. This meant that the heart had to be disciplined. There was no neutral starting

place to consider either God or the cosmos. Only in love could one’s mind work properly to

comprehend creation and it was to this end that reading as a physical practice was exhorted.

“Often the whole body is moved,” enjoined Radewijns, “according to a passion which reigns in a

person even without them knowing.”404 If a person is understood to be moved by their heart,

and not by their disengaged reason, then one can only grow in knowledge by setting off with a

commensurate character appropriate to one’s enquiry. By failing to attend to one’s character

before approaching God, one easily, perhaps inevitably, fell prey to vain, selfish desires. “Then

the passion of anger or vainglory or greed rules over you when you work outwardly according to

that same passion in word, sign, or deed.”405 In this Augustinian Imaginary a lack of attention to

one’s character short-circuited the approach towards God, and by extension to a knowledge of

creation. “Above all one must,” as Goossens puts it, “get to know oneself and gain

understanding of one’s faults and passions, in order to root them out with great effort.”406 The

danger of enquiry without attention to one’s heart is that it can easily become directed by selfish

or vain motives.

When we do something by reason, we continue nonetheless [to do it] in the

meantime by passion once reason ceases. So whenever we do that same thing

entirely against love (as if we were sometime preaching or eating measuredly

because of sickness) afterwards when we are not in need or when it is not

404 Aliqua Verba Notabilia, 429. Saepe movetur totum corpus secundum passionem quae regnat in homine, ipso tamen non considerante. (Marginalia) 405 Aliqua Verba Notabilia, 431. Tunc passio ire vel vane glorie vel gule dominator in te quando ad extra in verbo vel signo vel facto secundum eamdem passionem operaris. 406 Goossens, De Meditatie in de eerste tijd van de Moderne Devotie, 25. Vóór alles moet men zichzelf leren kennen en eerlijk inzicht weten te verkrijgen in eigen fouten en hartstochten, om die met inspanning van alle krachten uit te roeien.

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necessary, we desire to do the same thing by the rule of our pride or vainglory

or gluttony.407

So important was reading in reforming desires that reading became almost a quasi-ascetic

discipline. “Grow accustomed and compel yourself to remain in your room and in a book until it

is sweet to you – until it is cumbersome to leave your room and you enter it with longing and

joy.”408 Reading allowed the brother or sister to examine their heart and see the sinful passions

that moved them. Often an innocuous action emerged from vainglory or pride, but this was only

discovered on examination afforded by above all reading contemplatively in one’s cell. Reading

occasioned putting new, godly desires in one’s mind and heart, thereby preparing one to

understand God and creation.

Florens Radewijns: Love and Scholasticae Doctrinae

Under Florens Radewijns († 1400) the Devotio Moderna solidified into a coherent movement –

both from the perspective of sisters and brothers within it and from the perspective of those

looking without. 409 As Thomas à Kempis organized his material it was clear to him that

Radewijns was the figure who most embodied the person and work of Geert Grote’s charism. It

was under Radewijns’ leadership that the movement integrated into local communities in which

their houses were situated, and under whose guidance and instigation the legal status of the

brother- and sister-houses was thrashed out (that is, protected from antagonistic priests and

community members by the executio of local bishops).410 As Thomas, himself a member of that

next generation of the New Devout, saw it, this was the point that the Devotio Moderna took on its

institutional quality (as much as the Devotio Moderna could fit into the late medieval social order).

Under Radewijns’ leadership, the sisters and brothers’ houses were connected to the Augustinian

407 Aliqua Verba Notabilia, 431. Aliquando aliquid facimus ex racione, quod tamen postea continuamus ex passione, quando racio cessat; ita quod aliquando mere contra caritatem facimus hoc idem, ut si aliquando predicaremus, vel ex infirmitate delicate comederemus; postea quando non indegemus, vel quando non oportet, volumus idem facere ex dominio superbie nostre, vel vane glorie vel castimargie. 408 Aliqua Verba Notabilia, 432-433. Assuesce et coge te in camera manere et in libro, donec sit tibi dulce, et grave cameram exire, et cum desiderio et gaudio intrare. 409 Peter Dinzelbacher, ed., Wörterbuch der Mystik (Stuttgart: Alfred Kröner Verlag, 1989), 433. 410 Van Engen, Sisters and Brothers of the Common Life: The Devotio Moderna and the World of the Later Middle Ages, 87–88.

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houses at Windesheim and a set of spiritual and physical practices spread. As John van Engen

writes,

Neither cantankerous nor brilliant like Master Geert but firm and effective,

Master Florens Radewijns of Ledderham (ca. 1350–1400) possessed an inbred

sense of how to get things done, how to handle income, how to interact with

authorities – this anchored in his family, his training, and early preferment.411

While Grote may have supplied the impetus, Radewijns articulated the daily practices and social

organization that made the Devotio Moderna a movement that could extend beyond Grote.

Florens Radewijns was an outstanding disciple of Geert Grote at his house in Deventer and

Radewijns’ journey from worldly scholar to become a leader of the New Devout bears strong

resemblance to Grote’s. Both received an education in the liberal arts at university. Both spurned

this worldly knowledge, and Radewijns, just like Grote, advocated practices of reading and

learning that seem to belie this apparent rejection. In the above collection of sayings attributed to

Radewijns and Grote, a scholar is advised to avoid scholasticas doctrinas because this sort of learning

rejects that the end of all study is the love of God.412 Radewijns is akin to Grote in the suspicion

he placed on scholastic, university culture.

Two of Florens Radewijns’ writings have survived to us: his omnes, inquit, artes and his multum valet.

However, his influence is evident also in the person and work of Thomas à Kempis. Thomas’

short, moralizing biography offers insight into the person of Radewijns. Radewijns’ exhortations

to reading pertain mostly to reading as a discipline. Thomas à Kempis presents Radewijns as a

man of ascesis, offering advice to young brothers who had begun to embark on the life of the

New Devout. However, we nonetheless see the same conceptual premises that underpinned

Grote’s attitude towards worldly knowledge. For Radewijns, reading was essential to the

reformation of the soul as part of a three-step process: reading, meditating, and praying – a

411 Van Engen, 88. 412 Aliqua Verba Notabilia, 436.

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scheme he possibly borrowed from Bonaventure’s De triplici via.413 Just like Grote, Radewijns did

not reject knowledge per se. Under his watch sisters and brothers developed the practice of

writing rapiaria, books containing their own personal insights and moral progress, but often also

insightful passages that had been happened upon as the sisters and brothers busied themselves in

the manual labor of book-copying.414

Florens Radewijns: Parum et Simplex Exercitium

Collecting sayings of respected brothers and spiritual leaders was explicitly modelled as a means

to benefit from their spiritual insights, and these collections of sayings themselves reveal how

reading led to writing for the New Devout. A Parum et Simplex Exercitium was passed down not as

the actual work of Florens Radewijns himself, but as a conglomerate of his sayings and others’:

“for the most part collected from the custom of the humble father master Radewijns and other

devout men.”415 Although Radewijns and Grote are quoted directly, the work is by its own

admission an anthology of dicta collected from many brothers. It is both an applied example of

exhortations towards a particular style of reading and an example of how the brothers came to

embody this same method of book-copying in the generations after Grote and Radewijns. The

method of reading modelled in the Exercitium served as a model also for how one was to write,

that is, the spiritual and mental state with which one could read and wisely appropriate a text.

Ann Blair has argued that notetaking often functioned as an aid to transmission and a bulwark

against the corruption of the source text.416 However, the process of copying itself was also

valuable to the New Devout. For the New Devout reading and then excerpting by hand what

one read was part of a process of overall formation in which textual references were built up that

narrated the personal spiritual journey of the compiler. Copying allowed the reader to enter the

textual community of the Church via textual synthesis and creative appropriation. This in turn

413 Van Engen, Sisters and Brothers of the Common Life: The Devotio Moderna and the World of the Later Middle Ages, 276. See n. 51. 414 WM, 433. 415 D.J.M. Wüstenhoff, ed., ‘Parvum et Simplex Exercitium Ex Consuetudine Humilis Patris Domini Florencii et Aliorum Devotorum. Item Excerpta Ex Libello “Beatus Vir”’, Archief Voor Nederlandsche Kerkgeschiedenis 5 (1895): 95. pro magna parte collectum est ex consuetudine humilis patris domini florencii et aliorum deuotorum. 416 Ann Blair, ‘Note Taking as an Art of Transmission’, Critical Inquiry 31 (2004).

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created a textual space in which the dicta of Augustine, Bernard and one’s brothers might

intermingle in a way intelligible only to the writer and their spiritual journey. Finally, copying also

sustained the identity of the Devotio Moderna itself. By copying, excerpting, and adding to the

stories written about their own members, the brothers witnessed to the life of their community

and became a part of it by continuing the story of the Devotio Moderna by adding their own

chapters.

The focus of such reading was not necessarily on the holistic understanding of a writer’s corpus,

although this often happened, but on the capacity of particular texts to reshape one’s heart.

Accordingly, habits of reading are described in the Parum et Simplex Exercitium as part of a broader

collection of practices intended to reorient one’s heart to God. The key move that made this

coherent to the New Devout was that it was in fact one’s love for God that facilitated

understanding. The Exercitium advised how one ought to prepare before beginning to read:

Sitting in your place before you begin, you shall direct your heart humbly

towards God, seeking from him the grace of paying attention and devoutly

rendering praise to him. And you shall have an intention of attending to

everything, whatever you read. And so much as you discover yourself entangled

in phantasms and useless thoughts, so you ought to expel them as much as you

can and resolve to attend to what you read with all your effort.417

While some rapiaria in the milieu of the Devotio Moderna came to serve as spiritual commonplaces

and introductions into Scripture and patristic thought, leaders of the New Devout exhorted

notetaking primarily to iterate each brother or sisters’ spiritual journey. Marietta Horster and

Christiane Reitz have suggested that condensed and synthesized texts originated in Christian

communities out of a desire to attain a wider focus and pass more easily over large swathes of

dense textual material. “Florilegia, breviaria, and encyclopedias, then, were already a well-

417 Wüstenhoff, ‘Parvum et Simplex Exercitium Ex Consuetudine Humilis Patris Domini Florencii et Aliorum Devotorum. Item Excerpta Ex Libello “Beatus Vir”’, 96. Sedens in loco tuo priusquam incipiatur, diriges cor tuum humiliter ad deum, petens ab eo graciam attendendi et devote persolvendi laudem eius. Et habebis propositum attendendi cuncta que legis, et quociens inuenies te fantasiis et cogitationibus inutilibus implicatum, tociens debes eas pro posse tuo expellere et ad attendendum ea que legis toto nisu te disponere.

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established and commonly practiced form for dealing with huge bulks of text and

information.” 418 The practices of the Devotio Moderna, however, display quite the opposite

impulse. Rather than skating over substantial amounts of material, these meditative reading and

copying practices meant the copier could reflect on what they were reading at a granular level.

The ideal reader in the Devotio Moderna would read the texts for themselves – reading the book in

toto – and then excerpting what was powerful, true, and meaningful in light of their specific

circumstances. As such, a quotation in a rapiarium called to mind the overall context from which

it was culled rather than acting as a crib to avoid reading great swathes of material. Ann Moss

judges that medieval florilegia tended to bear a pedagogic function – and as such these bouquets

resembled large thematized collections intended to enculturate the reader with the thoughtforms

and modes of expressions of the Fathers (and later antiquity). “The larger medieval florilegia,

even if they originated as private collections… soon entered the public domain.”419 In becoming

works for a public readership, often corresponding to contemporary textbooks with themes

graded for their difficulty, these florilegia in Moss’ view came to function as a “programme of

initiation into the language and thought patterns of literate culture.”420 We have examples of this

– the sayings of Erasmus or the Exercitium itself. Nonetheless, unremarkable brothers or sisters

were exhorted to do this themselves too. The emphasis on anonymity in authorship and the

presence of the writer’s reading only in traces, resonances, or allusions rather than specific

references all drive towards the conclusion that the work of synthesizing or excerpting was

valuable to the writer in a way that was unavailable to a reader without going through the same

process themselves. That is, while other kinds of rapiaria and excerpting could be repurposed for

wider audiences as a guided introduction in literatures and thoughtworlds, each rapiaria within the

New Devout was an expression of each brother or sister’s irreplicable spiritual journey and so

was therefore less meaningful to other readers. Rapiaria that were widely circulated achieved this

418 Marietta Horster and Christiane Reitz, ‘Handbooks, Epitomes, and Florilegia’, in A Companion to Late Antique Literature, ed. Scott McGill and Edward J. Watts (Hoboken, NJ, USA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2018), 438. 419 Ann Moss, Printed Commonplace-Books and the Structuring of Renaissance Thought (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996), 25. 420 Moss, 26.

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status in order that sisters and brothers could retrace the spiritual journey of these especially

exemplary figures as iterated by in spiritual journaling.

Care was to be taken that excerpting or copying befit each particular brother or sister. That is,

what one read was important because it in turn led to what one wrote. Leaders of the New

Devout took care to ensure that sisters and brothers read what was suitable for them.

Concerning study, “you will exercise yourself in study or with a book assigned to you by the

rector.”421 This reading was intended to implicate the whole person so that the reader spent their

time “soberly and intellectually mingling sighs and prayers while endeavoring to work towards

God and fulfill the task of what you read there.”422 Since the task of reading was framed this way,

the brothers at Zwolle were instructed to pray before they began their study: “when you go to

study with prayer, reading this prayer,

Lord, this servant, most vile and unworthy of any good, desires to enter your

treasuries; let it be pleasing to you to lead him in, that you might give to me to

have understanding in these most holy words, so that I might love you. And

grant me to love you inasmuch as you will give to understand, because I do not

want to know you unless I love you. Bring forth each day something from study

out of the depths of my memory that tastes sweet.423

Every day that the brothers engaged in study they recited a prayer that reinforced to them that

they could not know without loving, and specifically that they had to cleave to God in love in

order to taste the sweetness of knowledge. And given the flow from reading to writing for the

New Devout, to approach reading this way was therefore also to prepare oneself to write.

Harking back to the words of Radewijns, the Exercitium impressed upon the brothers that both

421 D.J.M. Wüstenhoff, ‘„Florentii Parvum et Simplex Exercitium”, Naar Een Berlijnsch Handschrift Medegedeeld Door’, Archief Voor Nederlandsche Kerkgeschiedenis 5, no. 1 (1894): 97. Deinde studebis in studio siue libello tibi per rectorem assignato. 422 Wüstenhoff, 97. Morose et intellectualiter miscens suspiria, et oraciones infra studendum ad deum facere et opere implere, sicut ibidem legis. 423 Wüstenhoff, 97. Et cum oracione vadas ad studendum, legens hanc oracionem: Domine, iste vilissimus seruus et indignus omni bono vult ingredi thezauros tuos; placeat tibi vt introducas eum vt des michi in his sanctissimis verbis te cognoscere, vt te diligam, et tantum da michi diligere, quantum dabis cognoscere, quia nolo te cognoscere nisi vt te diligam. Et omni die quicquid de studio in ventrem memorie quod dulcius sapit proiicias.

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spiritual and intellectual progress required one to cultivate a character commensurate to their

task.

Thus says the humble master Florens: before every activity, a good man ought

to strive to exercise himself in good thoughts, because out of them virtues are

derived, such as love, devotion, compunction, prayer etc. Therefore, exercise

yourself as much as you can in good thoughts, that through the grace of God

you might make a habit for yourself of considering good things.424

This pattern amounted to a virtuous cycle of increased devotion and increased love for God. A

humble intention and the help of God enabled the reader to understand, and this understanding

enriched the reader’s love and knowledge of God, which in turn helped the reader understand

more fully, and so on. The brothers were supposed to spend an hour or so in personal reflection

on their day:

First you will examine yourself diligently as to how you conducted the whole

day, by beginning from the early hour in which you woke up in the morning till

this hour, by considering what work you did in each hour and how you

conducted yourself in this hour, not by dwelling at length but by passing briefly

through each hour on account of the distractions and useless phantasms of your

mind, which are able to occur by dint of prolixity, giving thanks for things done

well, seeking forgiveness for things done badly. Set aside appropriate time

particularly to confess particularly bad acts.425

424 Wüstenhoff, ‘Parvum et Simplex Exercitium Ex Consuetudine Humilis Patris Domini Florencii et Aliorum Devotorum. Item Excerpta Ex Libello “Beatus Vir”’, 100. Unde ait humilis pater dominus Florentius: pre omni exercitio bonus homo debet se exercere quantum potes in bonis cogitationibus, quia ex illis omnes virtutes diriuantur, sicut caritas, deuotio compunctio, oracio, et ceteris. Ideo exercere quantum potes in bonis cogitationibus; vt per graciam dei facias tibi consuetudinem cogitandi bona. 425 Wüstenhoff, ‘„Florentii Parvum et Simplex Exercitium”, Naar Een Berlijnsch Handschrift Medegedeeld Door’, 102. Primo teipsum diligenter examinabis qualiter totum diem transegisti, incipiendo ad hora qua de mane surrexisti vsque ad hanc horam, cogitando quid operis in qualibet hora fecisti et qualiter te in illo opere habuisti, non diu tamen immorando sed per quamlibet horam breuiter transeundo propter distractiones mentis et inutiles fantasias, qua possident incedere ex prolixitate, gratias agens de bene actis, veniam petens pro male actis, et de specialiter male actis propone in speciali confiteri tempore congruo.

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The labor of copying confronted the reader with their frailty and sinfulness, thereby engendering

penitence. At the same time, reading filled one’s mind with the best their Christian tradition had

to offer, thereby transforming the heart in love. The spiritual formation of the brother could

collapse together reading and writing into a single moment of introspection, in which one’s

disordered desires were observed and redirected towards caritas.

Modelling the Desert Fathers

The Exercitium was styled after John Cassian’s Apothegmata Patrum, the sayings of the Desert

Fathers. The ideal vita apostolica the sisters and brothers aimed for was only possible with a sense

of what had come before – even their moniker Devotio Moderna made no sense unless understood

as referring back to a heyday of devotion that could resource an efflorescence in modern times.426

Rebecca Krawiec has shown that Cassian offered a guide for approaching written texts while

simultaneously offering a text to which the reader could immediately apply their new reading

skills – that is, “Cassian’s Conferences itself functions as a sublime replacement for the literature

that was used in a traditional education, by creating a new materiality as the basis of the text-

reader relationship.”427 When writing lives of their founding members, the New Devout explicitly

modelled themselves on the Apothegmata patrum, the sayings of the Desert Fathers, a collection of

texts that had been read and re-read continuously up until the New Devout of the fifteenth

century.428 Johann Busch in his Liber de viris illustribus (Book on Illustrious Men) called to mind both

Jerome’s work of the same name and the tradition of the Desert Fathers.

We judge that into our land new monks have appeared of the devotion of

Palestine, the obedience of Thebes, and the fervor of Egypt, new disciples of

Antony, disciples of Macarius of the deep desert, namely true workers of their

426 Van Engen, Sisters and Brothers of the Common Life: The Devotio Moderna and the World of the Later Middle Ages, 7. 427 Rebecca Krawiec, ‘Monastic Literacy in John Cassian: Toward a New Sublimity’, Church History 81, no. 4 (December 2012): 789. 428 Van Dijk, ‘Disciples of The Deep Desert’, 297.

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mind – flowers of wonderfully fragrant blooms sent from Heaven into our

land.429

Geert Grote often called upon the Desert Fathers to articulate what he was trying to achieve.

Writing a letter to a prioress of a nunnery Grote enjoined,

Let the religious woman listen to the beginning of religion. They are not my

words, but the words of Abbot Paymon. For that same Abbot says, “and so the

discipline of the cenobites began from the time of apostolic preaching. For such

a multitude existed in Jerusalem of those who believed, which is described in the

Acts of the Apostles: the believers were of one heart and mind, nor did any of

them possess anything which he said was his own; but they held all things in

common. They sold their possessions and goods and divided them to all

according to who had need. Then after Paymon had declared how many of the

gentiles and Jews began to possess their own things, he added to the origin of

the religious, saying: Those into whom the apostolic fervor has entered,

remembering that original perfection, descended from their cities… in remote

places and areas outside the city they dwelt together and the things, which they

remembered to have been instituted for all by the Apostles through the whole

body of the Church, they began to exercise themselves privately and with their

own property, and that discipline we attribute to the Apostles was nourished.430

429 De viris illustribus, 27. Novos enim Palestine devocionis Thebaide obediencie Egipciacique fervoris monachos novosque Anthoniorum Machariorumque discipulos interioris heremi, animi videlicet sui veri cultores ac suave olencium germinum flores in terram nostram e celo missos arbitrati sumus apparuisse. 430 GME, Ep. 45. “Audiet religiosa religionis exordium. Non mea verba, sec abbatis Paymon. <Collacione XVIII> inquit enim idem abbas: Itaque cenobitarum disciplina a tempora predicacionis apostolice sumpsit exordium. Nam talis existit in Iherosolimis omnis illa credencium multitude, qua in <Actibus Apostolorum> ita describitur: Multitudinis autem credencium erat cor unum et anima una, nec quisquam eorum qua possidebat, aliquid suum esse dicebat; sed erant illis Omnia communia. Possessiones et substancias vendebant, et dividebant ea omnibus prout cuique opus erat. Deinde postquam declaravit, qualiter multi gentilium et Iudeorum postea propria habere, subiugit de origine religiosorum, dicens: Hii autem quibus adhuc inerat apostolicus fervor, memores illius pristine perfectionis, descendentes a civitatibus suis et ab illorum consorcio… in locis suburbanis et secrecioribus commanere et ea, qua ab Apostolis per universum corpus Ecclesie generaliter meminerant institute, privatim et peculiariter excercere ceperunt, atque ita coaluit ista disciplina, quam diximus discipulorum.”

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The self-styling of the sisters and brothers as a new community retrieving the charism of the

Desert Fathers was taken up in the way that the sisters and brothers wrote about themselves,

becoming essential to their self-consciousness.431

In John Cassian’s Conferences, a text the New Devout frequently cited and referred to, reading is

grouped amongst other physical practices that humbled and aided progress in purity of heart.

The goal of the eremitic life presented by Cassian is “to offer God always a perfect and spotless

heart.”432 Steven Driver has suggested that ascesis lay at the center of Cassian’s view on reading.

Cassian does not limit reading to the immediate engagement of a physical text.

He instead combines the apprehension of the words of the text with

memorization, rumination, and ceaseless meditation upon those words. These

practices help to give stability and peace to a mind that can never truly be at

rest... We can only derive meaning from a sacred text if we are sufficiently pure

to receive that meaning. Otherwise, the text will remain mere words, a beautiful

ornament that is unable to convey true knowledge or transform the reader.

Thus, the first step toward reading is not the mastery of grammar, but rather the

mastery of humility. Secular learning does not help one derive meaning from a

text and can even hinder the act of reading.433

According to Cassian, all things are to be directed towards this goal of purity and intimacy with

God. “For this cause you must seek solitude, fasting, vigils, labors, nudity of body, and

reading.”434 Reading is listed amongst other physical practices that make up the hard ascesis of

the Desert Fathers. “For persistence in reading or affliction in fasts are only exercised for the

431 Van Dijk, ‘Disciples Of The Deep Desert’, 263. “It would be no exaggeration to assert that religious texts, particularly Scripture, the lives of the martyrs, and the lives of the Desert Fathers, defined the lives of the adherents of the Devotio Moderna.” 432 PL 49:488. cor perfectum ac mundissimum Deo semper offerre. 433 Steven D. Driver, John Cassian and the Reading of Egyptian Monastic Culture (London: Taylor & Francis Group, 2002), 228–29. 434 PL 49:489. Omnia igitur hujus gratia gerenda appetendaque sunt nobis; pro hac solitudo sectanda est, pro hac jejunia, vigilias, labores, corporis nuditatem, lectionem.

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cleansing of the heart and castigation of the flesh as the flesh desires against the spirit.”435 The

Conferences makes the point repeatedly that fasts, vigils, solitudes, and constant reading do not

merit or earn the knowledge of God by their own achievement but in fact instill humility. It is

this humility ultimately, and not the discipline of body and mind itself, that leads to knowledge

and insight. Cassian sees reading as akin to the physical hardship of fasting, for both practices

discipline the body and mind, and paradoxically instill humility by the knowledge that these

practices do not achieve anything and merely reveal that human frailty and sinfulness can never

attain the freely given grace of God.

In Cassian’s view it is not, however, industriousness in reading or sharpness of mind that confers

understanding, but God who illumines. “So they desire to grasp knowledge of him not by

industriousness of reading, but in the daily magisterium and illumination of God, saying to him,

‘show me your ways, Lord, and teach me your paths.’ And, ‘open my eyes and I shall consider the

marvels of your law.’ And, ‘Teach me to do your will, for you are my God.’”436 The key point in

the Conferences as regards reading is that neither one’s will nor intellectual ability ultimately

determines understanding. On the contrary, Cassian’s understanding of God precludes a purely

mental ascent towards a knowledge of him and grounds spiritual and intellectual progress in

humility.

For it is not a free will, but the Lord who releases captives. It is not our virtue,

but Lord who raises up the downcast. It is not our industriousness in reading,

but the Lord who enlightens the blind, which in Greek is said: Κύριος σοφοῖ

τύφλους, that is, the Lord makes wise the blind. It is not our caution, but the Lord

who protects the foreigner. It is not our strength, but the Lord who binds up or

rather lifts up all who fall. We say these things not so that we be idle in our

study, labor, or industry, as though considering it vain and superfluous, but so

435 PL 49:494. Nam lectionis instantia vel jejuniorum afflictio, ad emundationem cordis et castigationem carnis, in praesenti tantummodo utiliter exercentur, donec caro concupiscit adversus spiritum (Galat. V). 436 PL 49:576. Legis quoque ipsius scientiam non lectionis industria, sed magisterio et illuminatione Dei quotidie desiderant adipisci, dicentes ad eum: Vias tuas, Domine, demonstra mihi, et semitas tuas edoce me (Psal. XXIV). Et, Revela oculos meos, et considerabo mirabilia de lege tua (Psal. CXVIII). Et, Doce me facere voluntatem tuam, quia Deus meus es tu (Psal. CXLVI).

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that we might know that without God’s help we are neither capable of, nor are

our efforts efficacious for, grasping the prize of purity that is so great, unless it

is bestowed on us by the mercy and help of God.437

Reading was a powerful ascetic practice that kept the mind from being taken captive by both

demonic forces and the sinful desires of the heart. When one reads, Cassian advises, they should

not flit from place to place book to book. This sort of aimless, manic reading leaves nothing

retained in the memory and there is nothing for the mind to meditate on later.

And so the mind is always whirled from Psalm to Psalm, from Gospel text to

the reading of an Apostle skipping through the reading, from which the mind

tumbles on to the sayings of the prophets, and thence it is ferried to certain

spiritual histories, and the mind, unstable and wandering, is cast through the

whole body of Scripture, unable for its will either to cast away or to retain a

single thing, nor to finish anything with examination and full judgment, having

become one who gropes around and who has merely gotten a taste of the

spiritual senses, and not one that produces and possesses them. And so the

mind, always moving and wandering, in the time of collecting is dragged as

though drunk through diverse things.438

In relation to the practices of the New Devout, it is important to note that Cassian saw it as

pernicious to disconnect growing intellectually from growing in virtue.

437 PL 49:576. Non enim liberum arbitrium, sed Dominus solvit compeditos; non nostra virtus, sed Dominus erigit elisos; non lectionis industria, sed Dominus illuminat caecos, quod Graece dicitur, Κύριος

σοφοῖ τύφλους, id est, Dominus sapientes facit caecos; non nostra cautio, sed Dominus custodit advenas (Psal. CXLV); non nostra fortitudo, sed Dominus allevat sive suffulcit omnes qui corruunt (Ps. CXLIV). Haec autem dicimus, non ut studium nostrum vel laborem atque industriam quasi inaniter et superflue impendendo vacuemus; sed ut noverimus nos sine auxilio Dei, nec adniti posse, nec efficaces nostros esse conatus ad capessendum tam immane praemium puritatis, nisi nobis adjutorio Domini ac misericordia fuerit contributum. 438 PL 49:840. et ita animus semper de psalmo rotatus ad psalmum, de Evangelii textu ad Apostoli transiliens lectionem, de hac quoque ad prophetica devolutus eloquia, et exinde ad quasdam spiritales delatus historias, per omne Scripturarum corpus instabilis vagusque jactatur; nihil pro arbitrio suo praevalens vel abjicere vel tenere, nec pleno quidquam judicio et examinatione finiri, palpator tantummodo spiritalium sensuum ac degustator, non generator nec possessor effectus; atque ita mens [Col.0841A] mobilis semper ac vaga in tempore quoque synaxeos velut ebria per diversa distrahitur, nullum officium competenter exsolvens.

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And so, grasping that love of reading that I see you have, hasten with all effort

to comprehend as soon as possible actual, that is, ethical discipline, for without

this, as we have said, theoretical purity is not able to be apprehended except

those who are made perfect not by the words of others who teach, but by the

virtue of their own actions.439

Cassian therefore warns against the pride that can be instilled by reading and learning with false

motives. What is acquired in this case is not true knowledge but pride and ignorance.

For it is impossible that an unclean mind attain the gift of spiritual knowledge.

Therefore, take care with all caution lest through the study of reading not the

light of knowledge or that eternal glory which is promised through the

illumination of doctrine, but instruments of perdition from the arrogance of

vanity are born.440

A great tension existed in the communities of the New Devout between the essential necessity of

retrieving what had been handed down as true faith and the danger of becoming too attached to

reading and learning, and thereby becoming proud, vainglorious, and thereby betraying the very

charism from which they drew they vitality and legitimacy. “The Collationes patrum of John Cassian

were beloved in the circles of the modern devotion, which in the footsteps of Geert Grote and

Florens Radewijns, immersed itself so much in the lives and thoughts of the first Christians.”441

In order to emulate the Desert Fathers the New Devout required books and book learning.

439 PL 49:966. Tenentes itaque illam quam habere vos sentio diligentiam lectionis, omni studio festinate actualem, id est, ethicam, quam primum ad integrum comprehendere disciplinam[.] Absque hac namque illa quam diximus theoretica puritas non potest apprehendi, quam hi tantum, qui non aliorum docentium verbis, sed propriorum actuum virtute perfecti sunt 440 PL 49:970. Impossibile namque est immundam mentem donum scientiae spiritalis adipisci. Et idcirco omni cautione devita ne tibi per studium lectionis, non scientiae lumen, nec illa perpetua quae per illuminationem doctrinae promittitur gloria, sed instrumenta perditionis de arrogantiae vanitate nascantur. 441 De vijfhonderdste verjaring van de boekdrukkunst in de Nederlanden: Catalogus, tentoonstelling in de Koninklijke Bibliotheek Albert I. (Brussels: Bibliothèque royale de Belgique., 1973), 6. De Collationes patrum van Johannes Cassianus waren geliefd in de kringen van moderne devoten die, in het voetspoor van Geert Groote en Florens Radewijns, zich zo graag verdiepeten in de levens en gedachten van de christenen.

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Reading the Past

Modelling their lives on the Desert Fathers meant that sisters and brothers had to be committed

to a certain amount of reading and historicism. Without this commitment to retrieving the past it

would have been impossible for their ecclesia primitiva to get off the ground with any integrity. As

Nikolaus Staubach points out, the only way that the memoria pristinae perfectionis could be retrieved,

vivified, or passed onwards was through the writings that recorded the persons and works of

patristic writers and Desert Fathers.442 We saw above from the verba notabilia that reading for the

New Devout helped purify the heart and then fill it with what was wise and salutary. In relation

to the Desert Fathers, we see also that this involved an explicit historical connection via the

written word to past Christian thinkers and Christian communities. What was important was not

to select a particular period or cluster of writers from which to source their particular charism,

but to have the whole corpus christianum at their disposal, from which they could select, excerpt

and repurpose material as befitted the vita apostolica in their own situation. Staubach has argued

that there was no essential difference in the writings of different periods of the Church to the

minds of the New Devout, “between the church writers of the Patristic period and those of the

Middles Ages and their own day in terms of age and authority,” outlines Staubach, adding that

“they hardly pay any heed to the gap separating the patres from the biblical writers.”443 In this

view the Fathers were for Grote “a great amorphous, collective body representing the authority

and enduring validity of the ancient church” although the quattor doctores and Bernard are given a

privileged position. 444 Another way of describing this textual lineage is what I term the

Augustinian Imaginary of the New Devout.

However, there did exist one epoch of Christian tradition that the sisters and brothers were

unwilling to engage with: the package of scholastic, university culture. In Geert Grote’s De sacris

libris studendis, a personal catalogue made just after his conversion, he fails to mention any writer

442 Nikolaus Staubach, ‘Memores Pristinae Perfectionis’, in The Reception of the Church Fathers in the West: From the Carolingians to the Maurists, ed. Irena Dorota Backus, vol. 1 (Leiden; New York: Brill, 1997), 408. “Consequently, systematic efforts to procure literature and create libraries, together with programs for selected reading and reading techniques were part of the characteristic profile of the ‘Devotio Moderna’ from the start.” 443 Staubach, 410. 444 Staubach, 414–15.

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we might identify with the university culture he rejected. The closest he comes is a reference to

Anselm’s Horologium and Meditationes. In Busch’s description of the library at Windesheim, the

nearest we come is to Aquinas and Bonaventure, both of whom I argued above are contiguous

with the New Devout’s Augustinian Imaginary in a way that later scholastics like Duns Scotus

were not. To further hone Staubach’s insight, we might say then that New Devout were engaged

in a project of rediscovering the thread that linked themselves to their Augustinian Imaginary, for

the texts they privileged and appropriated almost always sit squarely in this tradition. Thus Suso,

Eckhart and Ruusbroec are given a nook in the libraries of the New Devout, but not Scotus,

Ockham, or Henry of Ghent. The premise of retrieving the vita apostolica for modern times

implied that something alien and potentially corrosive had come onto the scene, what the New

Devout identified as scholastic, university culture.

Thomas à Kempis and the Ideal Reader

Having just laid out both the role of reading in creating a humble heart and in staying connected

to the great figures of their Augustinian Imaginary, we can observe the tension between erudition

and simplicity. Reading, if done rightly, led one to walk humbly before God. If not, it puffed up

as knowledge was wont to do. A solution to this tension between the danger of proud learning

and the necessity for reading to help humble the heart lay in the way the brothers modelled

excerpting and repurposing material anonymously. The Imitatio Christi, originally circulated

anonymously and only much later ascribed to Thomas à Kempis, is thus both an exhortation and

model of the kind of reading that the New Devout sought. The structure and composition of the

Imitatio Christi is itself evidence of the practice of rapiaria characteristic of the New Devout. In his

research, Maximilian von Habsburg has emphasized that the obsession of much modern

scholarship with identifying the author of the Imitatio misses the point that the authorless work

intended to make, that in fact the anonymity of the work was indicative of the text’s composition

and message of the work. “The doubts raised about his authorship, indeed the apparent

anonymity of the text, remain pertinent to its message,” writes von Habsburg, “it was common

for works emanating from the Devotio Moderna to be anonymous; claiming authorship was

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tantamount to boasting and would potentially hinder the pursuit of humility.”445 Identifying

oneself as the author would potentially entangle Thomas in pride and vainglory.

The Imitatio was of course originally four separate books, each quite different in style and subject

matter. Earliest editions rarely group the four works together and the title, as is well known, is

simply sourced from the first book. The four books were circulated separately and were styled as

florilegia, categorized, and titled so that the reader could easily navigate to what was edifying and

expedient to them in their present state.446 The Imitatio comprises sayings not only attributable to

Thomas à Kempis, but is likely also sourced from the more systematic De spiritualibus ascensionibus

of Gerard Zerbolt of Zutphen and Geert Grote’s writings, to whom the Imitatio has also been

speculatively attributed.447 It is likely that, as an instance of rapiaria, the Imitatio was used for both

private meditation and rumination and for communal sermocinationes. The short statements were

easy to memorize and were a means for even the illiterate to learn by heart key passages of

Scripture and key articulations of Christian writers. 448 The composition and organization of

material in the Imitatio speaks to the way that the text itself was cobbled together from a variety

of sources, repurposed for how they aided the present reader’s growth in love and humility.

To compose a work like the Imitatio required considerable scholarly ability to comb through a

plethora of works and synthesize them into a coherent whole, but the end product masked this

required learning via the lack of citations, and so denied the possibility that either the author or

reader could glory in their erudition. To read the Imitatio in the milieu of the Devotio Moderna was

therefore a lesson in how one ought to read, culling what was edifying and poignant and humbly

repurposing them for one’s present journey to grow spiritually. In writing anonymously and

eliding his sources, à Kempis modelled the sort of reading that the leaders of the movement

wanted to foster: slow, careful reading with an eye not to one’s own glory or gain but to the

pursuit of humility and growth in godliness. “Every person naturally desires to know,” wrote

445 Maximilian Von Habsburg, Catholic and Protestant Translations of the Imitatio Christi, 1425-1650: From Late Medieval Classic to Early Modern Bestseller, (Farnham, Surrey, England; Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2011), 31. 446 Von Habsburg, 32. 447 Von Habsburg, 32. 448 Von Habsburg, 33–34.

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Thomas, “but to what end is knowledge without the fear of God?”449 Without union with the

summum bonum, secular knowledge lacked a moral impetus and was prone to become distorted

because of the vainglory of the scholar. “Those who are learned desire greatly to be seen as and

called ‘wise.’” 450 It was for this reason that Thomas modelled anonymous authorship and made

no show of his patristic sources. “Without doubt,” therefore Thomas exhorts, “it is better to be

an uncultured and humble person who serves God than a proud philosopher who considers the

course of the sky but neglects to consider himself.”451 The potential danger of pride leading to

false knowledge meant that the right intentions for learning always had to be attended to.

It is in this vein that Thomas picks up on Augustine’s language of “disordered desire,” telling his

readers that the pursuit of knowledge can easily replace the pursuit of God.452 “Rest from a

disordered desire of knowing, for great distraction and deception is found there,” entreated

Thomas.453 Similarly to Grote’s Conclusa, Thomas urged his readers to be aware of their ultimate

ignorance.454 True wisdom and insight is found by first recognizing the limitations imposed by

human finiteness and sinfulness.

Do not be wise in profundity but rather confess your ignorance. Why do you

desire that you be preferred to another when many more learned than you and

well-versed in the law can be found? If you desire to know and learn something

for good use, love being ignorant and being considered as worthless. This is

most profound and useful reading: the knowledge and low regard of oneself.455

449 TK 2:7. Omnis homo naturaliter scire desiderat; sed Scientia sine timore Dei quid importat? 450 TK 2:7. Scientes libeter volunt videri et dici sapientes. 451 TK 2:7. Melior est profecto humilis rusticus qui Deo servit: quam superbus philosophus qui se neglect cursum caeli considerat. scis: tanto gravies inde iudicaberis nisi sanctius vixeris. Noli ergo extolli de ulla arte vel Scientia: sed potius time de data tibi notitia. 452 The two classic places where the notion of sin as disordered desire is articulated are: the first book of Augustine’s De doctrina christiana (1.12.19) and Confessiones (1.12.59). 453 TK 2:7. Quiesce a nimio sciendi desiderio: quia magna ibi invenitur distractio et deceptio. 454 TK 7:108. Scientia scientiarum est scire se nihil scire. Quanto plus homo scit se distare a perfectione tam prope est perfectioni. Initium vanae gloriae est sibi ipsi placer. In nullo melius cognoscitur homo: quam in hoc quod laudatur. Semper debes niti aliquid boni notare et cogitare de alio. Quotiens aliquid inordinate extra Deum concupiscimus totiens a Deo fornicamur. 455 TK 2:8. Nolite altum sapere: sed ignorantiam tuam magis fatere. Quid te vis alicui praeferre; cum plures doctiores te inveniantur, et magis in lege periti? Si vis utiliter aliquid scire et discere: ama nesciri et pro nihilo reputari. Haec est altissima et utilissima lectio: sui ipsius vera cognitio et despectio.

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To Thomas’ mind, to seek to understand the world without recourse to its very foundation

(God) is a form of prideful blindness. As we laid out earlier, in this Augustinian Imaginary in

which Thomas lived, encounter with God implicated one’s interior self and, since God’s esse

equated to amor, one had to grow in humility and love in order to know God and creation. While

practical knowledge may seem useful, without a proper grounding in the ultimate end of

cultivating individuals’ humility before God – without seeking God’s face – the whole project

would become meaningless. Thomas made this move via reflection on Christ as the incarnate

logos (Verbum), by which things cohere rationally and aesthetically as a unity. It is only by locating

the impetus and consummation of mental and physical labor here that they can happen properly,

in truth and goodness.

From the one Word all things speak, and all things speak that one Word: and it

is the beginning which also speaks to us. No one understands without it or

passes judgment fairly. To whom all things are one and all things come together

into one, who sees all things in one – he is able to be stable of heart and to

remain at peace in God. O God who is truth, make me one with you in eternal

love! I tire of reading and hearing many things over and over again. In you is

everything I want and desire. Let all the teachers be silent, let all creatures be still

in your sight: you alone speak to me.456

Counterintuitively, it is only once one has let go of cupidity for knowledge that one can attain

true knowledge of God, self, and creation. “The more someone is made whole and without

pretense inwardly, the more they understand effortlessly many profound things, because they

received the light of understanding from above,” Thomas stated, “a pure, sincere, and stable

spirit is not disturbed in many labors, because it works all things to the honor of God, and it

456 TK 2 :13. Ex uno verbo omnia; et unum loquuntur omnia: et hoc est principium, quod et loquitur nobis. Nemo sine illo intellegit, aut recte iudicat. Cui omnia unum sunt, et omnia ad unum trahit et omnia in uno videt; potest stabilis corde esse: et in Deo pacificus permanere. O veritas Deus: fac me unum tecum in caritate perpetua. Taedet me saepe multa legere et audire: in te est totum quod volo et desidero. Taceant omnes doctors sileant universae creaturae in conspectus tuo: tu mihi loquere solus.

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strives to be at peace in itself from all of its seeking.”457 Thomas articulates a key feature of the

Augustinian Imaginary, that knowledge of God is foundational to a right knowledge of creation.

The two are inseparable.

Thomas saves this view from a crude anti-intellectualism by arguing that intellectual inquiry

without devotion to God is in fact no knowledge at all. Even though humility and devotion are

necessarily prior, reading and intellection are useful, even essential, for gaining the knowledge of

God. “Knowledge should not be condemned as sinful,” wrote Thomas “or a certain simple

knowledge of a matter – knowledge which is good considered in itself and ordered by God.”458

We see again the importance of rightly ordered desire for intellection. For Thomas, there is a

godly curiosity that leads one towards truth: that everything coheres in God’s being and true

insight begins from this premise. But there is also a vain curiosity that seeks knowledge selfishly,

without reference to God, mobilized by disordered desire or self-love. “Our curiosity often

impedes us in the reading of the Scriptures because we try to understand and penetrate what

ought to have been passed over. If you desire to make progress, read humbly, simply, and

faithfully. Never desire to obtain the name of knowledge.”459 Thomas distinguishes between

knowledge, identified as the fruit of rightly ordered desire, and the name of knowledge, that is, the

reputation, fame or worldly success that knowledge may bring. Knowledge is not inherently evil,

but to seek it for its own sake is.460 Reading is not simply permissible; it is necessary in seeing

things as they are, as part of disciplining one’s own affections towards the summum bonum.

The path to sure and salutary knowledge of anything begins by first abandoning the desire to

learn for its own sake or for the sake for earthy lucre. Hence, Thomas advised his readers not to

spurn the reader of hefty books, but to make sure that they are not privileging certain people or

457 TK 2 :9. Quanto aliquis magis sibi unitus et interius simplificatus fuerit; tanto plura et altiora sine labore intellegit: quia desuper lumen intelligentiae accipit. Purus simplex et stabilis spiritus in multis operibus non dissipatur; quia omnia ad Dei honorem operator: et in se otiosus ab omni propria exquisitione esse nititur. 458 TK 2 :10. Non est culpanda Scientia, aut quaelibet simplex rei notitia, quae bona est in se considerata et a Deo ordinata. 459 TK 2 :13. Curiositas nostra saepe nos impedit in lectione scriptarum: cum volumus intellegere et discutere ubi simpliciter esset transeundum. Si vis profectum haurire; lege humiliter, simpliciter et fideliter: nec umquam velis habere nomen scientiae. 460 Von Habsburg, Catholic and Protestant Translations of the Imitatio Christi, 1425-1650, 15.

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authors because of their reputation. “We ought also to read avidly godly and simple books as well

as lofty and profound ones.”461 Again, the Imitatio itself was an object lesson in how this sort of

reading and writing should happen. Just as Augustine argued that the good reader was the

virtuous one, Thomas believed that insight could only be gained from study when the heart was

purged of ulterior motives.462 “Do not let the authority of an author offend you, whether that

author is of great or little erudition. But let the love of pure truth draw you to reading.”463 This

love of truth, of course, was not abstract truth, but a love that brings one deeper into the divine

logos, who is truth, for in this Augustinian Imaginary the esse and amor of God were one: “people

pass away, but the truth of the Lord endures forever.”464 If one had to choose, a knowledge of

God is far more necessary and fundamental than a practical knowledge of the world, for “a good

conscience and virtuous life is always to be preferred.”465 Thomas therefore advised his readers

to take no heed of the fame or reputation of scholars and writers, but to seek humility and

devotion from whatever the brother or sister read.

Desire and reason stand in close, causal connection for Thomas, an insight gleaned from

Augustine. More than any sort of person, Thomas warns his readers away from people who seem

learned and are well credentialed, but who lack a character commensurate to their learning. “O

how quickly the glory of the world passes away. Would that their [sc. domini et magistri] lives had

been in keeping with their knowledge, then they would have studied and read well.”466 It is likely

Thomas had in mind Augustine’s Confessions when discussing disordered desire; in both cases

studying well (bene) in a worldly sense is contrasted with truly learning and reading well in the

461 TK 2:12. Ita libenter devotos et simplices libros legere debemus: sicut altos et profundos. 462 Stock, After Augustine, 24–37. In Augustine’s view, one of the sources of moral freedom is the individual’s realization that people are suspended in a variety of literary webs they have willfully spun for themselves (p. 27). 463 TK 2:12. Non te offendat auctoritas scribentis, utrum parvae vel magnae litteraturae fuerit: sed amor purae veritatis te trahat ad legendum. 464 TK 2:12-13. Homines transeunt: sed veritas Domini manet in aeternum. 465 TK 2:10. Sed praeferenda est semper bona conscientia et virtuosa cita. 466 TK 2:11. O quam cito transit gloria mundi. Utinam vita eorum scientiae ipsorum concordasset: tunc bene studuissent et legissent. Quam multi pereunt per vanam scientiam in saeculo: qui parum curant de Dei servitio. Et quia magis eligunt magni esse quam humiles: ideo evanescent in cogitationibus suis.

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sense of directing their pursuits towards the summum bonum. Augustine recollected learning to

speak ‘well’ but with no sense of to what ultimate good his knowledge ought to be directed.467

In both instances, Thomas and Augustine talk about learning bene with irony, for although it leads

to success and has instrumental value, it lacks the proper frame and end that could give it a

coherent foundation For Thomas it is a virtuous character that is the guarantee of true

knowledge or insight. “A good life makes a person wise before God and knowledgeable about

many things.468 It is important, therefore, to test someone’s character before believing what they

say, Thomas advised.

Do not believe every word or intuition but weigh up the matter cautiously and

for a long time before God. Because of our affliction, people more easily speak

and believe evil about another than good; in this way we are weak. However,

those who are perfect do not easily believe everyone who tells them things,

because they understand that human weakness, unstable in many words, is

disposed towards evil.”469

Thomas à Kempis both modelled and exhorted the characteristics of a godly reader in the milieu

of the Devotio Moderna. A godly reader resisted the temptation to become puffed up by their

learning or knowledge, preferring to mask the depths of their erudition. Instead, reading afforded

self-examination and the carefully selected content of what one read filled the heart, having had

its disordered desires uprooted, with what was salutary and conducive to growth in humility and

467 PL 32 :669-670. in ipsa tamen pueritia, de qua mihi minus quam de adulescentia metuebatur, non amabam litteras et me in eas urgeri oderam, et urgebar tamen et bene mihi fiebat. nec faciebam ego bene (non enim discerem nisi cogerer; nemo autem invitus bene facit, etiamsi bonum est quod facit), nec qui me urgebant bene faciebant, sed bene mihi fiebat abs te, deus meus. illi enim non intuebantur quo referrem quod me discere cogebant, praeterquam ad satiandas insatiabiles cupiditates copiosae inopiae et ignominiosae gloriae. tu vero, cui numerati sunt capilli nostri, errore omnium qui mihi instabant ut discerem utebaris ad utilitatem meam, meo autem, qui discere nolebam, utebaris ad poenam meam, qua plecti non eram indignus, tantillus puer et tantus peccator. ita de non bene facientibus tu bene faciebas mihi et de peccante me ipso iuste retribuebas mihi. iussisti enim et sic est, ut poena sua sibi sit omnis inordinatus animus. 468 TK 2:12. Bona vita facit hominem sapientem secundum Deum: et expertum in multis. 469 TK 2:11. Non est credendum omni verbo nec instinctui: sed caute et longanimiter res est secundum Deum ponderanda. Pro dolor saepe malum facilius quam bonum de alio creditur et dicitur: ita infirmi sumus. Sed perfecti viri non facile credunt omni enarranti; quia sciunt infirmitatem humanam ad malum proclivam: et in verbis satis labilem.

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knowledge of God. All of this was predicated on the characteristics associated with the New

Devout’s Augustinian Imaginary, that a knowledge of God impinged on all questions of

knowledge and, since God’s esse was his amor, the reader or learner had to first reckon with their

character before acquiring knowledge. Thomas explicitly enjoined his readers, therefore, to

prioritize the love of God over worldly knowledge. But paradoxically it was in doing this that

true knowledge was found.

Ruminating, The Eucharist and Learning in New Devout Communities

Reading and eating in the communities of the New Devout stood in close connection. Many

writers within the circles of the Devotio Moderna articulated the process of reading as related to

eating, a form of spiritual food and a process analogous to mastication and digestion. But more

than this, the Eucharist figured prominently in this imagination, both for men and women, as the

controlling image of eating that structured their approach to reading. The Eucharist structured

the Social Imaginary of the Devotio Moderna in relation to reading. It articulated God’s infinite

ineffability, the need for humility in the face of the frailty of human wisdom and the importance

of devotion for the ascent towards insight.

The Eucharist lay at the heart of the communal vision of the Devotio Moderna, the term Devotio

chosen carefully for its meaning as both an interior devotion and as a commitment to the

Eucharist. The centrality of the Eucharist to the community of Brothers is exemplified by

Thomas à Kempis, and in particular his exhortation ad sacram communionem in the Imitatio Christi.

We have already seen that for Thomas elevating oneself to understanding, both of God and

creation, required one to reckon with one’s motives and character. Charles Caspers has suggested

that the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper was the controlling event of the New Devout’s shared

life.470 Members of the Devotio Moderna, particularly those who internalized the fourth book of

Thomas’ Imitatio, saw “the sacramental community” as “the most ideal community.”471

470 Charles Caspers, De Eucharistische Vroomheid En Het Feest van Sacramentsdag in de Nederlanden Tijdens de Late Middeleeuwen, 5 (Leuven: Peeters, 1992), 217. 471 Charles Caspers, De Eucharistische Vroomheid En Het Feest van Sacramentsdag in de Nederlanden Tijdens de Late Middeleeuwen, 5 (Leuven: Peeters, 1992), 217. Ook in sommige Nederlandse vroomheidsgeschriften,

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For Thomas, the event of seeing and receiving the Eucharist is a moment of transcendence that

lifts the mind from darkness to light:

O God, invisible creator of the world, how wonderfully you deal with us. How

sweetly and graciously you direct your chosen ones, with whom you offer

yourself up in the sacrament to be received. For this exceeds all understanding.

This draws the hearts of the devout in a special way and kindles affection.472

Caroline Walker Bynum has articulated how manifold the practice of eating was for late medieval

conceptions of the ascent towards the divine. Eating occasioned meeting with the Church, the

body of Christ. But increasingly consumption of the Eucharist was identified with Christ as the

Man of Sorrows, a participation in, and individual encounter with, God.473 To consume Christ’s

body was also to remember the limitation of human knowledge. For just as God – esse, life itself

– exceeds the limits of what is tangible and perceptible, so does the paradoxical Incarnation of

the ineffable and infinite impress the impossibility of fully grasping the nature of things. The

Eucharist acts for Thomas as a reminder of the abyss between the temporal and the eternal, a

rupture only overcome at the Parousia.

Those blessed in heavenly glory do not lack the medicine of the sacrament. For

they rejoice without end in the presence of God, looking face to face upon his

glory. And transformed from splendor into the splendor of the ineffable deity,

weliswaar bestemd voor een bespiegelend publiek, wordt de sacramentele communie nog altijd beschouwd als de meest ideale communieform. Zo raadt Thomas van Kempen in zijn Navolging op de eerste plaats de sacramentele communie aan. 472 TK 2:95-96. O invisibilis conditor mundi Deus, quam mirabiliter agis nobiscum; qua suaviter et gratiose cum electis tuis dispones: quibus temet ipsum in sacramento sumendum proponis. Hoc namque omnem intellectum superat: hoc specialiter devotorum corda trahit et accendit affectum. 473 Caroline Walker Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 3. “Because Jesus had fed the faithful not merely as a servant and waiter, preparer and multiplier of loaves and fishes, but as the very bread and wine itself to eat was a powerful verb. It meant to consume, to assimilate, to become God. To eat God in the Eucharist was a kind of audacious deification, a becoming of the flesh that, in its agony, fed and saved the world.”

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they taste the Word of God made flesh as it was from the beginning and as it

remains into eternity. 474

The fundamental human need for food and light here are echoes of divine contemplation as the

final need and end of humanity. Thomas identifies physical food with Christ’s body in the

sacrament and light as the Word made flesh – both in fact the same thing. “And so you have

given to me, a weak man, you sacred body to revive mind and body and you have placed your

word as a lamp for my feet. Without these two things I would not have able to live well, for the

Word of God is life to my soul and your sacrament is the bread of life.”475 The Eucharist is

central to Thomas broader sense of insight and learning, the presence at which makes possible

the reformation of one’s character requisite to the task of learning.

Brian Stock has argued that sacramentum in the early Christian Church, particularly in the thought

of Augustine and Tertullian, possessed a broader lexical range than it came to have after the

precise exposition of transubstantiation at Lateran IV (1215). In the context of devotion,

sacramentum acted as symbol whose meaning became coherent because of its performance in a

community. “Sacramenta in the widest sense were all figurae, allegoriae, or aenigmata, whose true

inner sense was veiled to the uninstructed,” writes Stock, “the range of meanings was broad

enough to include symbol, figure, allegory, symbolic virtue or power, a symbolic object or

person, as well as the ordo or dispositio of which the symbols were a part.”476 For Augustine, “the

sacraments were viewed as symbolic actions in which interpretation formed an integral part of

enactment.”477 It was only through this performance that one could become aware of both the

historical event that instantiated it (the Incarnation) and the higher reality to which it pointed

(God). In other words, the activity becomes intelligible and illuminates only by participation in it

– an example of Augustine’s broader definition of faith itself. The sacraments thus fit into

474 TK 2:120. Beati in gloria caelesti, non egent medicamine sacramentali: gaudent enim sin fine in praesentia Dei, facie ad faciem gloriam eius speculantes; et de claritate in claritatem abyssalis Deitatis transformati: gustant verbum Dei caro factum sicut fuit ab initio et manet in aeternum. 475 TK 2:122. Dedisti itaque mihi infirmo sacrum corpus tuum ad refectionem mentis et corporis: et posuisti lucernam pedibus meis verbum tuum. Sine his duobus bene vivere non possem; nam verbum Dei lux animae meae: et sacramentum tuum panis vitae 476 Stock, The Implications of Literacy, 257. 477 Stock, 258.

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Augustine’s sense that created things are signs (signa) that articulate and provide encounter with

the reality that gives them their essential structure.478

We can see such a sense of sacramentality in Thomas’ own description of the Eucharist as critical

to insight. The Eucharistic table signifies at once the final end of ascent to God and the event

whose performance structures that very journey. “Thanks be to you, Lord Jesus, light of eternal

light, for the sake of the meal-table of your eternal teaching [i.e. of the Eucharist].”479 Because

the Eucharist is the structure of thought, it is dangerous to ‘get behind’ the sacrament, and so

Thomas warns his reader not to be a “curious investigator of the sacrament, but a humble

imitator of Christ in subjecting one’s understanding sense to sacred faith.”480 For the Eucharist

to structure one’s imagination, Thomas advocates a “tolerable, pious and humble investigation,

prepared always to be taught to walk through the healthful opinions of the Fathers.”481

Importantly, Thomas spends the entirety of this book of the Imitatio Christi describing the desire

and preparation of the Eucharist. Little to no attention is given to the actual reception or eating

of the Eucharist. Caroline Walker Bynum has shown that the theological articulation of the

Eucharist through Corpus Christi (1224) simultaneously increased fascination with the Eucharist

and the fear and reverence of participating in such a cataclysmic event.482 In turn, the meaning

layered onto the Eucharistic sacrifice became increasingly internalized, allegorized, and

individualized. As Miri Ruben has argued in her Corpus Christi,

Both men and women could use the sacrament as a departure, or see it as a

distraction; they could join in Christ’s suffering identifying with it either as the

sympathetic vulnerability of a weak feminised body exuding tears, blood and

478 Stock, 259. “Sacramenta are both the outward symbols of inner reality and the inner reality itself.” 479 TK 2:122. Gratias tibi Domine Iesu lux lucis aeternae, pro doctrinae sacrae mensa. 480 TK 2:136. Quod homo non sit curiosus scrutator Sacramenti, sed humilis imitator Christi, subdendo sensum suum sacræ fidei. 481 TK 2:136. Tolerabilis est pia et humilis inquisitio veritatis: parata semper doceri, et super sanas Patrum sententias studentis ambulare. 482 Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast, 2000, 58. “Many pious people in the later Middle Ages developed, along with a frenzied hunger for the host, an intense fear of receiving it.”

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milk, or in terms of a submission to trial, as it could have been for the male

recipients of stigmata.483

For the New Devout, the emphasis was located more on the identification with Christ in his

sufferings.484 The sense that God was food could thus function as a metonymy for the Christian’s

entire encounter with God. We can see Thomas draw on this sense when he describes the

Eucharist as articulating God’s reality broadly, that God is his physical nourishment and the light

that illuminates the mind.

Gerard Zerbolt of Zutphen: Reforming the Soul’s Faculties by

Reading Much like à Kempis, Gerard Zerbolt of Zutphen († 1398) exhorted his followers to read both as

an ascetic practice and as a means of filling one’s heart and mind with the knowledge of God,

which in this Augustinian Imaginary was a prerequisite for knowledge of creation. Zerbolt

explains the impairment of the soul’s faculties, memoria, intellectus, and voluntas, as caused by human

sinfulness. That is, the impairment of reason is really an issue of the heart being disordered in its

affections, more directed towards created things rather than the creator. The effect of this

disorder is, among other things, a faulty understanding of creation. Only by reforming the heart,

reordering its desires rightly towards God, do the soul’s faculties, including its intellectus, function

properly. To achieve this reordering, Zerbolt advised a set of exercitia that entailed, like we have

seen earlier in this chapter, slow, meditative reading that touched the heart. Furthermore, Zerbolt

described reading as ruminatio, a form of spiritual eating that, along the same lines as Thomas à

Kempis, nourished the soul by slow, meditative reflection.

Gerard Zerbolt of Zutphen

Born in 1367 to a burgher family, Gerard Zerbolt of Zutphen most likely attended a Latin school

outside his hometown (scholae externae) in the city of Deventer (although it has been suggested

483 Miri Rubin, Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 319. 484 Bynum, 3. “To eat God was to take into one’s self the suffering flesh on the cross.”

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that Zutphen studied abroad at a University, perhaps Prague).485 Arriving in Deventer sometime

between 1383 and 1385, Zerbolt was taken in by Florens Radewijns and became part of the

solidifying movement of the Brothers and Sisters of the Common Life. It is likely that at some

point he entered the priesthood since contemporary biographer Dier Muden calls him

“dominus.”486 For a period of six months Zerbolt was driven out of Deventer by the specter of

plague to Amersfoort, where he spent time composing legal defenses of the New Devout’s

communal way of life.487 On the journey home in December 1398 from Dikninge, after taking

counsel from Benedictine abbot Arnold about mounting a legal defenses of the New Devout,

Zerbolt was stricken with illness, abruptly died, and was buried at Windesheim by the Canons

there.488

Zerbolt spent most of his time in the house set up by Florens Radewijns, the Heer-Florenshuis.

However, Zerbolt wrote far more prolifically than Radewijns, producing writings that became

formative for the sense of spiritualty of the New Devout. Zerbolt’s Super modo vivendi devotorum

hominum (On the Way of Life of Devout Men) comprised a defense of the legal status of the Brothers

and Sisters of the Common Life. John van Engen’s work on the Sisters and Brothers of the

Common Life has centered largely on this particular issue – how the sisters and brothers could or

could not be integrated into the legal and cultural categories of their late medieval society.489

Zerbolt’s letters proliferated the beliefs and practices characteristic of the New Devout, and his

spiritual writings structured the interiority of the New Devout; the influence of this spiritual

influence even touched Martin Luther and Ignatius of Loyola.490

Where under Florens Radewijns the New Devout coalesced into a coherent movement, its

practices and legal status were articulated under Gerard Zerbolt of Zutphen’s guidance. In van

485 Gerrits, Inter Timorem et Spem, 10; Post, The Modern Devotion: Confrontation with Reformation and Humanism, 326; John H. van Engen, ed., Devotio Moderna: Basic Writings, (New York: Paulist Press, 1988), 56. 486 Post, The Modern Devotion: Confrontation with Reformation and Humanism, 326. 487 Gerrits, Inter Timorem et Spem, 12. 488 Gerrits, 12. 489 Van Engen, Sisters and Brothers of the Common Life: The Devotio Moderna and the World of the Later Middle Ages, 107–11, 168–73, 305–9; Albert Hyma, ‘Is Gerard Zerbolt of Zutphen the Author of the “Super Modo Vivendi”?’, NAKG 16 (1921): 107–28. For its authorship, see Hyma. 490 Post, The Modern Devotion: Confrontation with Reformation and Humanism, 326; van Engen, Devotio Moderna, 56. For Ignatius see Post and Luther see van Engen.

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Engen’s estimation, Zerbolt was “after Master Geert himself, the most learned and intellectually

influential figure among the first generation of brothers.”491 R. R. Post saw his as “the most

fertile and the most successful writer the Brothers ever produced, although he had no academic

training and only lived to be 31.”492 Once integrated into the community of brothers at Deventer,

Zerbolt’s daily rhythms were based largely around prayer, reading and meditation. “As a member

of this Brotherhood, Zerbolt settled down to a relatively quiet and uneventful life,” characterizes

Gerrits, “devout, meditative and studious, he could be found in his cell most of the day, devoting

almost all of his time to [spiritual] exercises and study.”493 With an aptitude for canon law and

theological study, Zerbolt quickly came to take charge of the brothers’ library

Zerbolt’s two main spiritual works, De reformatione virium animae (On the Restoration of the Soul’s

Faculties) and De spiritualibus ascensionibus (On Spiritual Ascents), were disseminated widely. Over 100

manuscripts, some in translation, of De ascensionibus remain extant and at least 40 for De

reformatione, some in Middle-High German, Middle-Low German and Middle Dutch.494. Zerbolt’s

writings were heavily influenced in style and composition by John Cassian’s Collationes, the Scalae

paradisi of John Climacus, St. Thierry’s Epistola ad fratres de monte dei, the De exterioris hominis

compositione of David of Augsburg and Bonaventure’s De triplici via.495 To the extent we are seeking

an imaginary carried in practices and rituals that underwrite an inarticulate stance towards the

world, Zerbolt is of immense importance.

Zerbolt firmly believed that reading was essential to the spiritual ascent towards divine

contemplation. Quite literally one’s salvation hinged on what and how one read. Therefore

Zerbolt invested great energy collecting, copying, and writing books for his brothers.496 More

than any other member of the New Devout, Zerbolt used language common to scholastic

dialectic, discussing formae and species over the course of the narrative of fall and human

491 Van Engen, Devotio Moderna, 56. 492 Post, The Modern Devotion: Confrontation with Reformation and Humanism, 326. Contra both Gerrits and Post, van Engen suggests that Zerbolt studied at university in Prague. By his own concession, van Engen did not have access to Gerrits’ work before its publication (see p. 325, n. 69). I have followed Gerrits here. 493 Gerrits, Inter Timorem et Spem, 12. 494 Gerrits, Inter Timorem et Spem, 27–30. 495 Gerrits, 15–16. 496 Gerrits, 12.

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corruption. However, when it came to redemption and spiritual ascent, Zerbolt discarded this

framework and instead opted for an Augustinian anthropology.497 We shall see that Zerbolt’s

thought was heavily shaped by Augustine’s sense of God’s being as being itself. Zerbolt

understood the renewal of the soul as encompassing one’s affections as well as one’s intellectus

and the intelligible forms of things held together in one’s memoria.498

To show this I lay out the connection of reason and devotion in Zerbolt’s two devotional works

(De reformatione and De ascensionibus) and articulate how the two map onto the narrative arc of

biblical salvation history. In doing so we see how, just like Augustine, Zerbolt saw learning,

knowledge, and devotion as an inextricable unity. It was the Fall that mutilated the powers of the

soul, separating one’s memory, intellect, and will. To attain true devotion meant bringing as best

as possible the three back together – in other words, to reform the powers of the soul: memoria,

intellectus and voluntas. I firstly (1), articulate Zerbolt’s view on the soul’s powers and the nature of

their corruption. Secondly (2), I set out how Zerbolt envisions the renewal of the faculties

relating to intellection. Finally (3), I demonstrate that reading was essential for Zerbolt in

reforming the soul’s powers.

Reforming the Soul’s Faculties and Ascending towards God

Zerbolt articulates a view of the soul that distinguishes the powers of memory, intellect, and

understanding. However, Zerbolt also locates the soul’s faculties within salvation history, that is,

as marred by the Fall. Therefore, the soul’s powers, memory, intellect, and volition are

regenerated through reorienting the heart towards God.499 Zerbolt argued that slow, meditative

497 Gerrits, 67. It is worth noting that Gerrits, the leading writer on Zerbolt, does not distinguish between earlier and later iterations of Thomist/scholastic thought. Gerrits, in his analysis of Zerbolt’s thought, conflates Thomist scholasticism with later scholastic thought – Thomas in fact still inhabiting an Augustinian imaginary while later scholastics like Duns Scotus opting to radically recast the nature of God’s being in a university context. 498 Gerard Zerbolt of Zutphen, ‘De Reformatione Interiori Seu Virium Animae’, in Maxima Bibliotheca Veterum Patrum et Antiquorum Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum, ed. M. de la Bigne, 8th ed., vol. 26 (Lyon), 241. 499 Rudolf van Dijk, ‘Toward Imageless Contemplation: Gerard Zerbolt of Zutphen as Guide for Lectio Divina’, in Spirituality Renewed: Studies on Significant Representatives of the Modern Devotion, ed. Hein Blommestijn, Charles Caspers, and Rijcklof Hofman (Leuven; Paris; Dudley, MA: Peeters, 2003).

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reading provided the ideal context for this regeneration to take place, a regeneration that derived

from Grote’s desire to purify and reform the soul that, in turn, followed Augustine’s Soliloquia.500

In Augustine’s thought, one’s self, or soul (anima), existed in three faculties or powers (vires):

memory, intellect, and the will (memoria, intellectus/mens and voluntas). One’s affections in this

model were involved in the process of cognition. Zerbolt sets out the capacities of the soul as

memory, intellect, and will (memoria, intellectus and voluntas).501

You know then that it is proper that soul has many powers, capacities, and

affections, nonetheless in them there are namely three powers, whereby all

others depend in a certain way. And they are these three: the memory, the

intellect and affect (or, rather, will) and the reforming of each must be

individually attended to.502

For Zerbolt, the beginning of all knowledge was a knowledge of oneself (ex cognitione sui). It was

only from this starting point that the renewal of the mind might occur, when “you have

discovered yourself destitute in the powers of your soul and disordered in all desires.”503 This is

reminiscent of Augustine’s language of disordered desire, the sense that it is by reforming one’s

heart that the mind is made apt for knowing. Rowan Williams has shown how this tripartite view

of the soul derives from Augustine’s psychological reading of the Trinity.504 The ability of the

intellect is closely connected to the inner renewal and the cultivation of virtue.

Zerbolt also places human reason in the context of biblical salvation history. The issue of the

intellect and the soul’s faculties is thus related to the introduction of human sinfulness and God’s

500 Staubach, ‘Pragmatische Schriftlichkeit im Bereich der Devotio Moderna’, 429. angeregt wohl durch die subtile Schreibpsychologie von Augustins Soliloquien-Proömium schuf Groote sich hier ein Mittel der Selbsterkenntnis und Selbstkontrolle, das den Anfang einer methodisch durchzuführenden Lebensreform bilden sollte. (Energized through the subtle literary psychology of Augustine’s Soliloquies, Geert Grote created for himself a means of self-knowledge and self-control, which would constitute the beginning of a methodically carried out form of life). 501 Zerbolt of Zutphen, ‘De Reformatione Interiori Seu Virium Animae’, 241. 502 Zerbolt of Zutphen, 241. Scias igitur quod licet anima multas habeat vires, potentias & affections, tres tamen in ea praecipue sunt vires, unde omnes aliae quodamodo dependent, quibus reformatis caeterae quoque reformati videbuntur. Sunt autem hae tres; Memoria, intellectus & affectus seu voluntas, & de earum reformationibus singillatim agendum est. 503 Zerbolt of Zutphen, 241. Te omnibus viribus animæ tuæ destitutum, omnibus affectibus deordinatum invenisti. 504 Rowan Williams, On Augustine, 135–36.

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action of salvation culminating in Christ, and is not simply a question of human anthropology

(i.e. of a theoretical understanding of the soul’s vires). Thus Zerbolt writes that, “the

understanding and reason of humanity have been deformed and blinded in a certain way by

ignorance.”505 Zerbolt expressed this need of reforming one’s will by prescribing spiritual exercitia

to purify one’s will and thereby become apt to know God and creation. In this view, Staubach

summarizes that, following Augustine, the brothers sought above all to restore the soul’s powers

of intellectus, memoria, and voluntas.506 Far from a disengaged, perhaps objective force, reason was

implicated in the Fall of humanity. As we saw for Grote, Radewijns, and à Kempis, reason

depended on the heart, and so we must first attend to the heart before reason. “You were

illumined by intellectual light… But now you are blinded by the cloud of ignorance, and all your

bones are infused to their marrow with the dregs of concupiscence.”507 Reforming the mind is

connected to the reorientation of the desires of the soul back to God as they were before the

Fall.

To extinguish disordered desires and longings: this is to reform the powers of

the soul. To reform the powers of the soul, is to be drawn near to the station

from whence we have fallen… Therefore, to put it briefly, your goal, to which

every intention of the mind and every endeavor and labor you ought to direct

and order, is that with the help of God, inasmuch as you are able, you may strive

to reform the powers of your soul that have been disordered and disarrayed

from the Fall into their pre-Fall state, to which and according to which and to

505 Zerbolt of Zutphen, 241. Intellectus hominis & ratio deformati sunt & quodammodo cæcati sunt per ignorantiam. 506 Staubach, ‘Pragmatische Schriftlichkeit im Bereich der Devotio Moderna’, 429–30. Danach ist Ziel des devoten Lebens die Wiederherstellung jener durch den Sündenfall depravierten Seelenkräfte, die gemäß der psychologischen Trinitätslehre Augustins die Gottenbildlichkeit des Menschen ausmachen: intellectus memoria und voluntas. (The aim of the devout life is the restoration of these powers of the soul which have been depraved by the Fall, which according to Augustine’s psychological teaching on the Trinity constituted the image of God: intellectus, memoria and voluntas.) 507 Zerbolt of Zutphen, ‘De Reformatione Interiori Seu Virium Animae’, 238. Fuisti intellectuali lumine pene illustratus… Nunc autem es ignorantiae nubilo excæcitatus, omniaque ossa tua concupiscentiarum fæcibus medullitus sunt infusa.

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the extent that those powers had been functionally imbued in you by the Lord

God.508

Zerbolt accounts for the debility of the soul’s powers, memoria, intellectus and voluntas, by showing

that since the Fall human hearts are disordered and tend towards things other than their creator.

The heart must first be turned back to God before the mind can grasp truth.

Beginning with the Heart

Reforming the rational ability of the soul, the mind, began in Zerbolt’s schema with attending to

the heart. Before an ascent towards God might begin, it is necessary to understand how the

ascent might take place. “But before you begin to ascend, you ought to build a ladder in your

heart, and to order a certain manner of progressing by which you might be able to better depart

thence.”509 Zerbolt’s premise for his Ascensions is that ascending to God is primarily a matter of

the heart, a case of properly ordering one’s desires towards the summum bonum. “For you are a

noble and rational creature, and of a certain great mind, and so you desire the height and ascent

[to God] with natural desire,” observed Zerbolt, “and this desire is not to be rejected, as long as

it is properly ordered, if namely you desire to ascend to the height of your original dignity.”510

For Zerbolt this is a matter of reforming one’s heart instead of one’s knowledge. “As much as

you progress in your heart, so also shall you ascend [towards God].”511 This is of a piece with

what we have been observing in the writings of Grote, Radewijns, and à Kempis, and sits well

within the Augustinian Imaginary I use to describe the movement in relation to scholastic,

university culture. According to Zerbolt, to ascend in knowledge first requires one to progress in

508 Zerbolt of Zutphen, 238. Cupiditates & inordinatas concupiscentias extinguere, est vires animae reformare. Vires animae reformare, est statui unde corruimus, propinquare… Igitur breviter finis tuus ad quam omnem mentis intentionem, omnem conatum & laborem debes dirigere & ordinare, est, ut cum Dei adiutorio quantum potestis Vires animae tuae deordinatas & indispositas ex lapsu tuo in protoplasto, ad id & secundum id ad quoad & sicut tibi fuerunt a Domino Deo utiliter inditæ, studeas reformare. 509 Gerard Zerbolt of Zutphen, ‘De Spiritualibus Ascensionibus’, in Maxima Bibliotheca Veterum Patrum et Antiquorum Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum, ed. M. de la Bigne, 8th ed., vol. 26 (Lyon, 1677), 259. Sed antequam incipias ascendere, debes in corde tuo scalam erigere, & modum quondam proficiendi quo illuc melius devenire valeas, ordinare. 510 Zerbolt of Zutphen, 258. Rationalis enim ac nobilis creature es & magni cuiusdam animi, ideoque altitudinem & ascensum naturali appetitis desiderio. Nec vituperandus appetitus, si fuerit ordinatus, si videlicet ad originalis tuæ dignitatis celsitudinem desideras ascendere. 511 Zerbolt of Zutphen, 258. Quantum enim in corde proficis, tantum & ascendis.

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love. Caritas thus mobilizes one’s advance towards the knowledge of God and reforms the

intellectus.

Towards these two things, namely love and purity of heart, you ought to direct

your mind’s eye in all your exercises and to have them always fixed before your

eyes, so that by this you might know the extent to which you progress or regress

in your exercises, because to the extent you progress, to that extent you draw

near, and inasmuch as you regress, to that extent you recede… Concerning

these two ends, Augustine speaks in the third book of De doctrina Christiana: “All

things in sacred Scripture are capable of nurturing and strengthening love, and

conquering cupidity.” And according to the Apostle: “The end of the law is

love, from a pure heart etc. 512

This sense derives primarily from Augustine – as I have argued, Zerbolt’s thought emerged out

of the New Devout’s Augustinian Imaginary. As Augustine argued in De trinitate, God’s esse

equates with his amor. For Zerbolt, the implication of this insight is that to move towards God is

really to immerse oneself in the love that serves as the logos structuring and retaining reality.

Zerbolt directly cites Augustine on this point.

According to Augustine, love is the motion of the mind to enjoy God on

account of himself. And on the contrary: cupidity is the motion of the soul to

enjoy itself, or some other physical body not on account of God, that is, to put

it briefly, some disordered motion or appetite to delight in created things.513

512 Zerbolt of Zutphen, ‘De Reformatione Interiori Seu Virium Animae’, 238. Ad hæc igitur duo, charitatem scilicet, & cordis puritatem, debes in omnibus exercitiis tuiis oculum intentionis dirigere eaque semper fixa præ oculis habere, ut pene hoc cognosceas quantum in tuis exercitiis, proficias vel deficias, quia tantum proficis, quantum his propinquas, & tantum deficis quantum ab illis recedes… De his duobus finibus dicit Augustinus in tertio libro de doctrina Christiana: Omnia in sacra scriptura valent ad charitatem nutriendam & corroborandam, & cupiditatem vincendam. Et secundum Apostolum: Finis præcepti est Charitas, de corde puro, &c. 513 Zerbolt of Zutphen, 238. Secundum Augustinum: Charitas est motus animi ad fruendum Deo propter se. E contrario autem: cupiditas est motus animi ad fruendum se vel quolibet corpore non propter Deum, id est, breviter, quivis appetitus vel motus inordinatus ad delectandum in creaturis.

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Just as Thomas à Kempis warned against a selfish curiosity that inevitably became warped by

pride, Zerbolt locates the power of human reason in the heart, and so exhorts his readers to first

know their hearts and reshape them in love before they can grow in knowledge. Each brother

ought to beware of the danger that “reason entangle itself in curiosities and relinquish what gives

life. Watch out, lest,” warned Zerbolt, “deceived by its own judgment your reason perceives

something concerning itself, to know something or be more holy and so let pride into its

dominion, desiring to be something or holding itself above others.” 514 Because the intellect

depends on the heart to function, the mind does not understand creation unless the heart is

reoriented. That is, one must root out pride and the disordered love of other things more than

the creator.

Reading and Reforming Desires

Zerbolt understood the restoration of memoria, intellectus and voluntas, the soul’s faculties, as

requiring a certain kind of praxis, namely, reading. Reading figures here as key to rejuvenating the

soul’s faculties, for there one observed vices and sins, could root them out, and fill the void with

the love of God, thereby reordering their desires and enabling the right function of the memoria,

intellectus and voluntas. Reading amounted to a physical labor. Rather than drawing the intellect

from its physical surrounds, as often the case with the traditional triad of lectio, meditatio and oratio,

Devotio Moderna saw their work of labor as a way to reorient, understand, and test themselves.515

In Zerbolt’s De reformatione virium animae the practice of slow, meditative reading offered reflection

conducive to redirecting the heart towards the love of God and filled the heart and mind with

truth. The Desert Fathers are exemplary in this respect because they understood that one’s

intellect can be as capricious and misleading as one’s emotions, and so must also be tamed with

514 Zerbolt of Zutphen, 239. Vide utrum se implicet circa curiosa relinquens salubria. Vide utrum ne decepta proprio iudicio magis de se sentiat quam debeat, magis scilicet scire, magis sanctum esse, & ita contra in regnum tuum introducat superbiam, volentem te aliquid esse vel te ferentem super alios. 515 Staubach, ‘Pragmatische Schriftlichkeit im Bereich der Devotio Moderna’, 430. Neben der traditionellen Trias von lectio, meditatio und oratio steigen hier vornehmlich die für die Devotio Moderna charakteristischen Komplexe der auf die Buchherstellung konzentrierten Handarbeit sowie der Lebensorientierung, Selbstanalyse und Gewissensprüfung. (Alongside the traditional trio of lectio, meditatio and oratio stand here primarily the complex of handwork, characteristic of the Devotio Moderna, directed towards book-production as well as orienting one’s life, self-analysis and the testing of one’s conscience.)

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appropriate material and reading practices.516 The perceptive mind is one unencumbered by

ulterior motives – instead of being furnished by pride or locating the end of one’s intellection in

immanent phenomena, Zerbolt directs all intellectual enquiry towards the delight and devotion of

God. “Affected and contrite, come to reading, and direct your whole intention towards purity of

heart.”517 It is for this reason that Zerbolt carefully sets out how should read. What is important

is not only reading what edifies but also reading with the aim of caritas in mind rather than selfish

motives. “For a man frequently receives as much fruit and gain from his reading, when he

approaches reading with as much intention and affection.” 518 Reading both provided the

opportunity for introspection and the eradication of vices and filled the now humbled and

prepared mind with knowledge.

For Zerbolt, reading rejuvenates the soul’s faculties by grafting oneself into the biblical narrative

of redemption and salvation, for only thus could the intellect’s mutilation by the Fall be

overcome. One begins to understand their interiority, passions, and motives by consciously and

repeatedly remembering one’s own moral fallenness, the sinfulness of humanity, the Incarnation

of the logos in Christ, the forgiveness of sins, and the final judgment.

Now there are certain general things concerning which the exercises of devout

people are frequently provoked: namely the memory of sins, by which people

are convicted towards compunction and sadness. The memory of death, by

which people might consider worthless all the objects of delight of this world:

glory, honor, a high position. The memory of last judgment, by which people

are inflamed towards the doing of good works, so that then them might deserve

to receive the reward of their merits with the righteous. The memory of the

punishments of Hell, by which they might reject in the fear of these torments all

516 Zerbolt of Zutphen, 243. Vnde in collationibus patrum dicitur: Necesse est mentem, quo recurrat, cuive principaliter inhæreat non habentem, per singulas horas atque momenta pro incursuum varietate mutari, atque ex his quæ extrinsecus accedunt, in illum status continuo transformari, qui sibi primitus occurrerit. 517 Zerbolt of Zutphen, 242. Ita affectus et compunctus ad stadium venias, & totam intentionem tuam ad cordis puritatem dirigas. 518 Zerbolt of Zutphen, 242. Frequenter enim talen fructum & lucrum de lectione homo recipit, cum quali intentione & affect ad lectionem accredit.

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things that are illicit and the tempting things that are allowed. The memory of

heavenly glory, that they might rest there and exult in hope and that they might

be worthy of that glory and strive to adorn themselves in true virtues. The

memory of the blessings of God, and even more so of the blessing of the

Incarnation, lest they be found ungrateful of the giver of grace.519

Remembering one’s own moral failures and sinfulness humbled and reminded one of the limits

of human knowledge. Further, remembering God’s interventions in human history, primarily

through Christ, made the renewal of intellect possible by reorienting oneself towards the summum

bonum and pressing forward to the Parousia.

In this framework, reading was valuable for the double duty it performed as a physical practice

and an intellectual exercise. It had the power to humble by its ascesis and to reorient the heart

and mind by its content. Zerbolt draws out these two powers of reading by distinguishing in De

reformatione between reform of the intellect through experience (experimentum) and teaching

(doctrina). Zerbolt argues that intellectual understanding must exist in conjunction with a living

out of this knowledge in a godly life. Only this synthesis of knowledge and experience truly

reforms the intellect. “The intellect and reason of man are deformed and, in a sense, blinded

through ignorance. And therefore it is necessary that man be reformed in these things through

the illumination of knowledge,” argued Zerbolt, “for there are two things by which a man is

illuminated to knowledge… namely experience and teaching.”520 By this Zerbolt means that a

true sense of God or godly living can only really be gained through experience in conjunction

with intellectual formation. The intellect is renewed by experience because in the experience of

resisting sinfulness one’s heart is reshaped, and one is made apt for understanding.

519 Zerbolt of Zutphen, ‘De Reformatione Interiori Seu Virium Animae’, 243. Sunt autem qædam generalia circa quæ frequentius exercitia devotorum versantur, videlicet memoria peccatorum, qua compunguntur ad compunctionem & dolorem. Memoria mortis, qua, vt omnia mundi huius oblectamenta, gloriam, honorem, altum statum vilipendant, accenduntur. Memoria extremi iudicij, qua inflammantur ad bona opera peragenda, vt tunc cum iustis mereantur accipere præmium meritorum. Memoria pœnarum infernalium quæ omnia illicit licet dulcia respuant timore tormentorum. Memoria cœlestis gloriæ, vt hic quiescent & exultant in spe, ac vt illa sint gloriæ digni, nitantur se veris virtutibus adornare. Memoria beneficiorum Dei, & maxime beneficij incarnationis, ne gratiæ largitori inveniantur ingrati. 520 Zerbolt of Zutphen, 242. Intellectus hominis & ratio deformati sunt & quodammodo caecati per ignorantiam. Ideoque necesse est hominem in his reformari per scientiae illuminationem. Duo autem sunt quibus homo illuminatur ad scientiam… videlicet experimentum & doctrina.

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One ought not to labor according to the books of commentators, but rather you

ought to direct every effort and intention of heart according to the correction of

sins. When these sins are drive away and with the veil of the passions of the

heart far removed, the mysteries of Scripture will be contemplated in many

things.521

Selection of material was based not on the knowledge they contained, but such that “you might

be able to occupy your memory without more sinful things arising.”522 Zerbolt admonishes his

readers not to avoid philosophers or biblical commentators completely, but states that it is

dangerous to consult them too often, lest one begin to lose sight of the true purpose of why one

is accruing knowledge: the love of God on account of himself, and not for knowledge’s own

sake. “Reading ought to be an admonition, not an occupation,” reasons Zerbolt, “not expending

much time to learn from writings, but rather so that through reading you might be inflamed to

purity of heart.”523 Reading was powerful for Zerbolt because it allowed for a reflection that

reformed the heart and progressed one in the virtues necessary for intellection.

How to Read: Ruminare

In order to reorient one’s desire and thereby restore the soul’s faculties, Zerbolt advised slow,

meditative reading to calm the heart’s passions coupled with the careful selection of texts that

filled the reader’s mind with what was edifying and salutary. The practice of reading was closely

linked in Zerbolt’s mind to meditation in the sense that both were physical practices that had the

power to calm the racing mind and quiet the passions and disordered desires within the heart.

Only by first achieving this state of calm detachment and observation of the heart afforded by

this kind of reading could one begin the work of rooting out sins and reordering the heart’s

desires. A calm mind and perspicuous heart could then be shaped and filled with the text’s

521 Zerbolt of Zutphen, 242. Non tam laborandum est erga libros commentatorum, sed potius omnem industriam & intentionem cordis debes dirigere erga emundationem vitiorum. Quibus expulsis, confestim cordis procul sublato velamine passionum, sacramenta scripturarum in multis naturaliter contemplabuntur. 522 Zerbolt of Zutphen, 243. vt certas materias tibi præfigas, quibus vilioribus non occurentibus memoriam possis occupare. 523 Zerbolt of Zutphen, 242. Lectio debet esse admonitio non occupatio: nec expendens multum temporis ut scripturam addiscas, sed potius ut per lectionem ad puritatem cordis inflammeris.

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content, achieved by careful selection of texts and the sort of slow reading that both Augustine

and Zerbolt described as ruminating.

In Chapter 1 laid out how ruminare structured the reading practiced by the New Devout. The

word appears in the original constitution of the Brethren of the Common Life at Deventer.

“Therefore, it befits each of us to ruminate unceasingly on those materials that provoke a person

to the love of God.”524 An Augustinian mode of meditation and reflection was central to the day-

to-day life of these New Devout.

The practices of reading and meditation Zerbolt advocated amounted to physical, embodied

practices underwritten by this Augustinian Imaginary. Book-copying, manual labor, meditation,

reading, collecting person rapiaria, clothing, common dwelling places – all of these emerge in the

letters, devotional works, legal posturing, and personal influence of Zerbolt. Reading occurred as

part of communal life, and so happened in contexts in which encounter with the text regularly

took place, creating a tangible rhythm. To read in such a way sought to incorporate every sense in

the activity of reading. In addition to the physical experience of one’s eyes slowly moving across

the page, reading as articulated by Zerbolt engaged the ears too, the low murmuring and

mutterings on the lips of fellow brothers also reading meditatively in adjacent rooms. In fact,

Zerbolt’s own devotional works are to a large extent a product of the practices of literacy he

inaugurated: his De reformatione was based on the stockpile of texts he had amassed in his own

rapiaria compiled during personal reading or book-copying.525

Following St Bernard of Clairvaux and Jerome, Zerbolt identifies Matins and Vespers as the key

hours in which to ruminate on Scripture “with spiritual study, namely reading and meditation.”526

The logic behind the these two hours is that reading at the beginning of the day prepares one’s

524 Albert Hyma, ‘The Original Constitution of the Brethren of the Common Life at Deventer’, in The Christian Renaissance; a History of the ‘Devotio Moderna.’, 2nd ed. (Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1965), 442. Idcirco expedit quique nostrum indefesse ruminare materias illas que provocant hominem ad timorem Dei. 525 Van Engen, Devotio Moderna, 56–57. 526 Zerbolt of Zutphen, ‘De Reformatione Interiori Seu Virium Animae’, 243... hora matutina & vespertina. Vnde his duabus horis maiori conamine & singulari preparatione te debes occupare spirituali studio, lectione videlicet & meditatione. Hora enim matutina homo est magis sobrius & magis dispositus ad spiritual exercitium, cum nec dum inuolutus sit mundanis tumultibus… De vespere ante cessant mundani tumultus, vnde quietus potest quis se spiritualibus exercere.

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heart to live for Christ during the day, while at the end of the day worldly affairs have come to a

close and one is free to consider God. However, Zerbolt does not preclude secular literature

from libri devoti morales. He quotes Seneca to remind his readers to “return always and continually

to devout books, according to that saying of Seneca: Always read tested books, and if at a time it

is appropriate to be diverted to others, return to where you were up to.”527 Once again, although

this time with the aid of a pagan author, Zerbolt advocates slow, methodical reading. Gain is to

be had by working slowly through a book, not flitting from book to book, section to section.

Zerbolt envisioned reading as part of a broader, communal way of life intended to orient one’s

desires towards the summum bonum and thereby secure certain knowledge of God, oneself, and

creation. For this reason Zerbolt, following Anselm, pairs reading with discussion (sermocinatio) as

necessary for the renewal of reason and the intellect.528 Since knowledge is secured through love

for God, it is within the Church and communities of believers that sins are properly identified,

the Devil resisted, and conversations had which direct on towards knowledge. Importantly, this

community extends not only to the particular community of sisters and brothers but also to

Christians in earlier eras, such that reading the works of past fathers is tantamount to engaging in

edifying conversation with them.

In his De reformatione intellectus, Gerard Zerbolt of Zutphen drew on Augustine as he advised his

own readers to think of reading as a moral activity. In caput 15 Zerbolt holds together the act of

reading (i.e. information acquisition) with the moral process required to embody the content of

what one read.

You ought always to draw something from reading which befits your purpose,

which admonishes you towards purity of heart, whatever occupies your memory

in a useful way as you ruminate, by returning to this for the reformation and

occupation of your memory if you do not have any other salutary thing. Thus

527 Zerbolt of Zutphen, 242. Semper et continue redire debes ad libros deuotos, iuxta illud Seneca: Probatos ad alios diverti libuerit, ad priores redi. 528 Zerbolt of Zutphen, 242. Sermoncinatione autem ratio & intellectus reformantur, dum aliorum eruditionibus nostra ignorantia illuminatur.

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Augustine: the hearer of the Word ought to be similar to animals, who because

they chew the cud [ruminant] are said to be clean [cf. Leviticus 11:4], that from

these things the reader may not be reluctant to receive them in the cavity of his

heart; that when he first hears he is similar to one struck by fear, but when he

calls those things he heard back into his memory, he is similar to an animal

chewing the cud [ruminanti].529

This reference to Augustine comes in fact from Prosper of Aquitaine († 455), a disciple of

Augustine. Augustine’s disciple compiled together a collection of sententiae of the Bishop of

Hippo, Sententiae ex Augustino delibatae (Propositions culled from Augustine). Proposition 193, entitled

“on ruminating on the Word of God,” ran:

the hearer of the Word ought to be similar to animals, who because they chew

the cud are said to be clean, so that a person not be slow to consider the things

which he has received in the depth of his heart. And when he listens, he is like

one eating. Indeed, when he calls the things he had heard into his memory he is

like an animal chewing the cud.530

Spiritual writers of Western Christianity often used the term ruminare to describe slow, methodical

reflection on a text, digesting the words on the page and absorbing its nutrients. Ruminatio

entailed meditative reflection as well as the low murmur of vocalizing the words on the page

under one’s breath.531 This soft vocalization slowed the reader down, rendering reading not

simply a task of cognition but a physical activity. This terms dates back at least to Augustine and

529 Zerbolt of Zutphen, 242. Semper ex lectione aliquid debes extrahere, quod tuo proposito conveniat, quod te ad puritatem cordis admoneat, quodque ruminans utiliter memoriam occupies, ad hos, si aliud non habueris salubrius, pro reformatione & occupatione memoriæ recurrendo. Unde Augustinus: Auditor verbi similis debet esse animalibus, quæe ob hoc quod ruminant munda esse dicuntur, ut non pogeat cogitare de his quæ in alveo cordis accepit; ut cum audit sit similis terenti, cum vero audita in memoriam revocat, sit similis ruminanti. 530 PL 45:1875. De ruminante verbum Dei. Auditor verbi similis debet esse animalibus, quae ob hoc quia ruminant, munda esse dicuntur: ut non sit piger de his cogitare, quae in alvo cordis accepit: et cum audit, sit similis edenti; cum vero audita in memoriam revocat, sit similis ruminanti. 531 Jacqueline Hamesse, ‘The Scholastic Model of Reading’, in A History of Reading in the West (UK: Polity Press, 1999), 103–19.

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we can trace its influence through the Middle Ages via preachers and writers, often simply

repeating commonplaces involving the term from earlier writers, to the time of the New Devout.

In one anonymous exhortation to read Bernard of Clairvaux’s we hear that St. Bonaventure made

this connection between ruminare and sapere explicit. “You have heard the most beautiful words of

Bernard, who contemplates and tastes the sweetness of prayer. Ruminate on them if, if you will,

that you may savor them.”532 We find the same term in the original constitution of the Brethren

of the Common Life at Deventer.533 The connection between ruminare, to chew the cud, and

spiritual reading was also natural given the similar lexical range existing between sapiens, wise, and

sapere, to taste or savor.

Zerbolt recapitulates Augustine’s own analogy that just as in the Levitical law animals which

chew the cud (ruminare) are clean for the Israelites, so too does reading lead to a clean heart when

it is approached properly in rumination with the end of reforming one’s heart. In his letter

against Faustus the Manichean, Augustine articulated the nature of rumination. “For to recall in

the sweetness of recollection the useful thing that you heard, like from the guts of thought, as

though to the mouth of thought, what else is this than in a certain way to ruminate spiritually?”534

Ambrose similarly described ruminatio in a sermon expositing Psalm 118.

Let us not pass over what we read perfunctorily, such that we seem to go back

into the memory of the things we read only when we read them; But even when

a book is absent from our hands, like animals which are approved and

considered cleaned in the law and are accustomed to chew the cud even when

they are not pastured, bringing forth hidden sustenance from themselves, so

also let us bring forth spiritual fodder for ourselves out within us to ruminate

on. Let hymns, a song, psalms be acts of God’s righteousness for us. Let us sing

a psalm in the spirit; let us sing a psalm also in the mind, lest, if we should

532 PL 185 1346, Audisti verba pulcherrima altissimi contemplantis et orationis dulcedinem degustantis Bernardi. Rumines ea, si vis, ut sapiant tibi. 533 Hyma, ‘The Original Constitution of the Brethren of the Common Life at Deventer’, 442. Idcirco expedit quique nostrum indefesse ruminare materias illas que provocant hominem ad timorem Dei. 534 PL 42:234, Quod enim utile audieris, velut ab intestino memoriae, tanquam ad os cogitationis, recordandi dulcedine revocare, quid est aliud, quam spiritualiter quodam modo ruminare?

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forget, it is said to each of us in the time of need, ‘you have cast away my words

behind you.’535

According to a commentary on Benedict of Nursia’s rule, “novices ought to ruminate in their

reading so often that they know the whole rule by heart like they know by heart the psalter.”536

Jerome warned against those who only “pretend that they truly ruminate and meditate on the law

of God.”537

Reading nourished not just the mind, but every human faculty – in the language of Augustine,

Gregory the Great, and John of Fecamp, it meant to feed on heavenly fodder with the palatum

cordis, in ore cordis.538 “Although you ought to labor at all times for the reformation of memory and

the rest of the soul’s faculties, nonetheless in the council of blessed Jerome,” quoted Zerbolt, “it

aids not a little that you be available alone to yourself at certain and determined hours, and that

you fill your soul with the fodder of the divine Scriptures.” 539 While the whole counsel of

Scripture, and indeed all of creation, is God breathed and useful for edification, one must know

one’s own heart so as to read what is best suited “that you might be struck with fear or enkindled

535 PL 15:1289, Non enim perfunctorie transeamus quae legimus; ut tunc tantum cum legimus ea, in memoriam eorum redire videamur: sed etiam cum abest codex manibus, tamquam animantia quae probantur et munda habentur in Lege, etiam quando non pascuntur ruminare consueverunt, ex semetipsis alimenta sibi recondita proferentia: ita et nos de nostrae memoriae thesauro, de interioribus nostris ruminandum nobis pabulum spiritale promamus. Hymni nobis, canticum nobis, psalmi nobis justificationes Domini sint. Psallamus spiritu, psallamus et mente; ne si obliti fuerimus, in tempore necessitatis dicatur unicuique nostrum: Abjecisti sermones meos post te (Psal. XLIX, 17). Non enim perfunctorie transeamus quae legimus; ut tunc tantum cum legimus ea, in memoriam eorum redire videamur: sed etiam cum abest codex manibus, tamquam animantia quae probantur et munda habentur in Lege, etiam quando non pascuntur ruminare consueverunt, ex semetipsis alimenta sibi recondita proferentia: ita et nos de nostrae memoriae thesauro, de interioribus nostris ruminandum nobis pabulum spiritale promamus. Hymni nobis, canticum nobis, psalmi nobis justificationes Domini sint. Psallamus spiritu, psallamus et mente; ne si obliti fuerimus, in tempore necessitatis dicatur unicuique nostrum: Abjecisti sermones meos post te (Psal. XLIX, 17). 536 PL 66:874, Novitii vero totiens debent ruminare legendo, ut totam ex integro sicut psalterium mente perfecte sciant. Novitii vero totiens debent ruminare legendo, ut totam [sc. Regulam] ex integro sicut psalterium mente perfecte sciant. 537 PL 25:80, et legem Dei meditari, et ruminare se simulant 538 Jean Leclercq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture, trans. Catherine Misrashi, 3rd ed., (New York: Fordham University Press, 1982), 73. 539 Zerbolt of Zutphen, ‘De Reformatione Interiori Seu Virium Animae’, 243. Quamvis etiam pro reformation memoriæ & cæterarum virium omni tempore debeas laborare, attamen consilio beati Hieronymi, non modicum iuuat vt certis & deputatis horis tibi singularius vaces, & repleas animam tuam divinarum pabulo scripturarum.

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with love.”540 One ruminated, naturally, on Scripture most profitably, but this mode of reading

applied to all written texts.

Zerbolt grafted his own readers into this Augustinian tradition, advising his readers to read

slowly and thoughtfully, not flitting from one book to another. “Read thoroughly the whole book

from beginning to end, with appropriate devotion and owed reverence and diligence.”541 There

ought to be a set time for study and reading so that what is read might be thoughtfully digested

and retained in one’s memory in order “that you might occupy your memory in profitable

rumination.”542 “Be therefore a clean animal, chewing and mulling over those things [of salvation

history], and things like them in your heart, so that you might be able to remove useless and vane

things from your memory.”543

Since Zerbolt saw reading as a means towards divine contemplation, the final experience of God

and truth is wordless. In reforming one’s mental faculties (memory), Zerbolt states that the aim

of the reading practices he describes is to become so absorbed in God’s truth and love that He

might be contemplated without vocal noise or explicit mental articulation.

... to be absorbed in God in such a way that namely a person might rest in God

through devout meditations without the clamor of thoughts, images, and

phantasms, sweetly and with delight.544

All knowledge and learning, all practices of reading and reflection, were to prepare for this

moment when one caught a glimpse of the face of God. Reading stood in close relation to eating,

which in turn took on Eucharistic overtones. To read and to eat were earthy, physical processes

that nourished body and soul. They could not be rushed and the brother or sister ought to take

540 Zerbolt of Zutphen, 243. Sed ea debes potius ad meditandum assumere, vnde amplius timore concuteris vel accenderis ad amorem. 541 Zerbolt of Zutphen, ‘De Reformatione Interiori Seu Virium Animae’, 242. Sed integrum librum de principio ad finem, congrua devotione & debita reverentia ac diligentia perlegas. 542 Zerbolt of Zutphen, 242. Quodque ruminans vtiliter memoriam occupies. 543 Zerbolt of Zutphen, 243. Esto igitur animal mundum ruminans & revolvens ea & ipsis similia in corde tuo, vt ita inutilia & vana possis a memoria remouere. 544 Zerbolt of Zutphen, 243. Tertius est, quodammodo in Deo esse absorptum, vt scilicet homo in Deo per deuotas meditationes adusque strepitu cogitationum, imaginationum, & fantasinatum, dulciter & cum delectatione requiescat.

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care what they consumed, lest they ingest something harmful. Because the incarnated Christ was

still present under the species of the bread consumed at the Eucharist, ascending towards a

knowledge of God through reading was, naturally, a physical exercise too. Both required patient

labor to consume and digest the knowledge and experience of God, drawing spiritual fodder

from the belly of the heart to chew.

Conclusion

The formative leaders of the New Devout articulated practices of reading to the sisters and

brothers of the Devotio Moderna through exhortation and by modelling the ideal reader. In their

Augustinian Imaginary, knowledge was rendered coherent in the logos, Christ, and so it was

imperative to cultivate humility and love in order to read and learn well. Reading was therefore

understood as a discipline, an exercise suited to each person and their growth in the love and

knowledge of God. Just as the Imitatio modelled, this could involve wide reading and careful work

synthesizing a swathe of literature but could never devolve into the self-glory this sort of

erudition reading could win. Authors and compilers, remaining anonymous, passed over their

sources or left them uncited. As Radewijns enjoined, it was vital to avoid the scholasticas doctrinas

and instead to view reading as a practice that shaped one’s heart primarily and only subsequently

sharpened one’s mind. Similarly for Gerard Zerbolt of Zutphen reading could only happen with

a sense of salvation history: that the Fall had mutilated reason and that reason, along with the

other faculties of the soul, was only reformed through the discipline of reordering one’s desires.

For Zerbolt, this premise meant that reading was seldom contingent on the reader’s own

subjectivity. One should read and ruminate slowly, like a cow chewing the cud so that the heart

and its desires could be reformed. And so, for Zerbolt as for the other leaders of the New

Devout, it was possible to read a great many things, but only with great care and reflection as to

what would lead each reader towards greater love for God. This could involve both secular and

sacred literature. Zerbolt himself modelled how to use pagan writers like Seneca. What mattered

was that the desire to know never replaced the desire for God, since knowing, properly

understood, was of a piece with love for God.

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These brothers modelled how reading was supposed to figure in the daily lives of the sisters and

brothers, a form of physical labor and a process of spiritual discipline. The low murmur of the

slow, meditative reading they prescribed quieted the heart and emptied the mind so that one

could see sin clearly, uproot it, and then fill one’s heart and mind with Christ. We move closer to

understanding the particular Social Imaginary of the New Devout when we also attend to

instances of reading and writing as they appeared concretely amongst ordinary sisters and

brothers of the Devotio Moderna.

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6 TIME, READING, AND RHYTHMS OF LIFE

I have argued to this point that the sisters and brothers of the Devotio Moderna imagined

themselves primarily in distinction to scholastic, university culture, being animated by an

Augustinian Imaginary. In this imaginary, one’s character was fundamental to the ascent towards

knowledge of God and creation. Key to the foundation narratives of the movement was the

repudiation of the university precisely one the grounds that this linkage between love and

knowledge had been broken and was no longer the controlling principle of the universitas. From

the perspective of the New Devout, their Augustinian Imaginary was incompatible with the

imaginary of the university.

In the previous chapter I set out how reading was exhorted and modelled by male leaders within

the Devotio Moderna. Reading, in keeping with their Augustinian Imaginary, was supposed to be

slow and meditative, a physical discipline that slowed the heart and mind, thereby allowing one to

see one’s inner self and uproot the sins therein. Having stilled raging passions and put to death

hidden sins, the reader then filled the mind with what was salutary and edifying. Where the

previous chapter set out reading as an ideal within the Devotio Moderna, this chapter articulates the

rhythms of reading as a real practice within the New Devout.

In contradistinction to the university, the sisters and brothers developed their own practices of

reading and reflection. When we consider the actual reading practices of the New Devout, as best

as they show up to us in the scant source material, especially the case for the sister-houses, we

can observe the following main characteristics. Firstly (1), reading was integrated into the daily,

weekly, and yearly rhythms of the New Devout, and so was part of their overall experience of

both ordinary and higher time. Secondly (2), both sisters and brothers kept rapiaria and engaged

in reading with the pen. Thirdly (3), communal reading, particularly in women’s communities,

was intimately linked with mealtimes and the Eucharist. This form of enacted reading

imaginatively joined the sisters to the apostolic circle. I demonstrate this connection with

reference to a manuscript gospel harmony used in a sister-house at Diepenveen. Fourthly (4),

there is less emphasis in texts developed with sister communities on reading to reform the mind

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or to understand creation than in brother-houses. Finally (5), both sisters and brothers read to

obtain a new level of understanding or relation to God and their community. Rather than

amounting to the discovery or transmission of (new) information, reading in these communities

provided a new aspect to their social existence and a deeper apprehension of the truths that

founded their way of life. That is, reading provided impetus and opportunity to engage with God

and truth that existed outside of the written text.

Rhythms of Reading

The reading of texts was fully integrated into the daily, weekly, and yearly cycles of time. The

practice was in this sense essential to the New Devout’s identity and determined their experience

of the passing of time. Reading was bound up in a broader sense in which one’s physical labor,

the passing of sacred time, and one’s moral development were all implicated in the ascent to God

and truth. Reading sat alongside other practices the sisters and brothers employed to grow in

humility, love, and godliness.

Matthew Champion has shown how Augustine’s sense of all of creation as participating in God’s

being affected how time and music were experienced in the late medieval Low Countries. Since

all of creation was bound together in God’s being, the times and seasons were imbued with a

sense of God’s presence in the world. For Augustine, time existed as a distentio animi – a measure

of the soul as it experienced God’s Eternal Now in a series of fleeting moments. But time also

existed in the textual and communal activities of everyday life.545 Work, rest, commerce, and

one’s love life were regulated not only by secular time but also by higher time.546 In the world of

the New Devout even civic time constituted a polyphony of different times that were knit

together in the higher time of church bells, fasts, and Sabbaths.

Although he does not use my taxonomy, John Bossy has also shown how in this Augustinian

Imaginary all activities were supposed to happen appropriately in time as an expression of God’s

545 Matthew S. Champion, The Fullness of Time: Temporalities of the Fifteenth-Century Low Countries (Chicago; London: The University of Chicago Press, 2017), 5. “Time’s formation in language and text, for Augustine, is also musical, founded in the harmony, ratio, and numbers of the hymn, or the chanting of a psalm.” 546 Champion, 26–63.

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being as experienced by creation in time. Faithful living thus required both appropriate action

(e.g. prayer, fasting, abstinence, liturgical reading) and demanded that these actions be performed

in the right proportion or rhythm, for to Augustine’s mind such was the nature of the world God

had created. In Bossy’s view, Carnival functioned in late medieval communities as a moment of

upheaval counterbalanced with the penitential season of Lent. 547 Rather than a subversive

presence, Carnival counterpoised with Lent was constitutive, a communal outworking in which

the narrative arc of salvation was made concrete in cultural praxes ostensibly both secular and

sacred, although the sacred in fact ultimately encompassing both.548 To comprehend creation or

society in its entirety was the same experience as to encounter God “deeply ingrained in social

practice.”549 The calendrical reading of the psalms throughout the year could not but impress this

sense of higher time intersecting with the quotidian – particularly for the New Devout, whose

“Psalter, according to the standard text of the Devotio Moderna was the most widespread in the

northern Netherlands in the fifteenth century.”550 As far as concerns the reading practices of the

New Devout, this sense of time’s fullness and rhythmicity expressed itself in the regular patterns

of reading, writing, and reflection within communities of the New Devout. Sisters and brothers

read at set times and these times were regulated in ways akin to the regulation of prayer, singing,

manual labor, and sleep. All these practices of the New Devout formed an inextricable whole and

were rendered coherent within an Augustinian Imaginary in which God’s being encompassed all

the rhythms and routines in the time of the Christian’s life. Reading and understanding were but

a part of this cosmic dance in time of God sharing his Eternal Now with timebound creation.

The Constitutio Domus Fratrum in Deventer

The constitutio of the brother-house in Deventer articulates a similar view of reading as the leaders

of the movement exhorted.551 This suggests that continuity existed between the exhortations of

547 John Bossy, Christianity in the West, 1400-1700 (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), 43. 548 Bossy, 45. 549 Bossy, 45. 550 Heymans, Psalters de Moderne Devotie, XIII. Het psalter volgens de standaard tekst van de Moderne Devotie is in Noord-Nederland gedurende de 15de eeuw de meest verspreide psalmentekst geweest. 551 The MS for this text is MS. no. 73 G 22 of the Royal Library, the Hague. I have worked from Albert Hyma’s transcription in Appendix C to his The Christian Renaissance.

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prominent brothers and the practices of regular members, particularly when such exhortations

are reflected in a document like the constitutio that authoritatively regulated the behavior of the

Deventer brothers in the fifteenth century.

Reading and meditation were mandated in the constitutio for the same reasons the brothers

exhorted it. By reading slowly and meditatively, the brother could see his sins clearly and put

them to death. Additionally, the constitutio included a list of authors so that the brother could then

fill his mind with what was salutary and edifying. The constitutio reveals the imaginary behind the

reading practices it prescribes in the prolegomena, where Augustine, Bernard of Clairvaux, the

Conferences of Cassian, and Hugh of St. Victor († 1141) are cited as key authorities for their way of

life.552

Reading sits alongside work and prayer as the key pillars of life according to this rule. If the

brothers of the house in Deventer turned to Hugh of St. Victor to help interpret their

constitution, they read that “a servant of God ought to read often. Spiritual reading is extremely

useful. For through reading we learn what we ought to avoid, what we ought to do and where we

ought to strive... They increase perfection of sense and intellect. Reading instructs us to prayer

and to work and forms us to the contemplative and active life.”553 In Hugh of St. Victor’s gloss

on Augustine’s rule, meditatio is key to gaining knowledge. “For meditation brings forth

knowledge, and when knowledge is attained it drives out ignorance.”554 Hugh of St. Victor argues

that there are three kinds of meditation – in natural things [in creaturis], in written things [in scriptis]

and in mores [in moribus]. Whether directed towards created phenomena, signs, or the heart,

“meditation is the frequent consideration investigating the manner, cause, and reason of

anything; in respect to manner, what it is, in respect to cause, why it is, and in respect to reason,

552 Torsten K. Edstam, ‘The Reception of the Victorines in the Later Centuries’, in A Companion to the Abbey of Saint Victor in Paris, ed. Fr. Hugh Feiss and Juliet Mousseau, (Brill, 2017), 556–57. 553 PL 176:912. Frequenter debet legere servus Dei. Valde enim est utilis divina lectio. Nam per lectionem discimus quid cavere, quid agere, quo tendere debeamus. Perfectionem sensus et intellectus augentur. Lectio ad orationem nos instruit et ad operationem, et nos informat ad contemplativam vitam et activam 554 PL 176:978. Meditatio namque assidua scientiam parit, scientia vero parta ignorantiam pellit.

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how it is.”555 Concerning reading, meditation entailed reflection on the veracity of what is read,

how the text might inform the reader’s knowledge, and how the text apply to the reader’s action.

Hugh of St. Victor thus articulates a threefold approach to textual interpretation – of history,

allegory, and tropology.556 “In tropology, meditation produces the fruit that written words bring

forth, seeking what they imply should be done or what they teach should be avoided – what the

reading of scripture sets for erudition, exhortation, consolation, terror; what it illuminates for the

understanding of virtue, what nourishes affection, what teaches the form of living for progress in

virtue.”557

Reading and reflection in this community of brothers were regular and habitual. An hour was set

aside for reading each evening after the reading of the Hours. Reading and meditation were

important for the reformation of both the mind and inner person. Each week the brothers were

supposed to read their way through the life Christ. “It is appropriate for each one of us to

ruminate without fail on such matters as provoke a person to the fear of God, that is, matter

concerning sins, concerning death, concerning judgment and concerning Hell.”558 Homilies of

past saints were to be read of feast days, but on ordinary days the Bible was to be read out over

breakfast in Latin, with the brothers’ martyrologium to be read over dinner – the only exception

being the Triduum where there was no reading of the passiones sanctorum.559

Each brother was supposed to be engaged in his own personal reading of edifying literature. The

constitutio mandated not just that he read and ruminate but that an appropriate book was chosen

conducive to his own situation and spiritual growth. “From the advice of our confessor,”

555 PL 176:993. Meditatio est frequens cogitatio modum, et causam et rationem uniuscujusque rei investigans; modum quid sit, causam quare sit; rationem quomodo sit. 556 PL 176:994. Item meditatio in lectione est, quomodo sint quae sciuntur quia sunt, et quomodo facienda sunt. Est enim meditatio excogitatio consilii quomodo implentur quae sciuntur, quia inutiliter sciuntur nisi impleantur. Item, meditatio in lectione est triplicis considerationis. Secundum historiam, allegoriam, tropologiam. 557 PL 176:994. In tropologia meditatio operatur quem fructum dicta afferant, exquirens quid faciendum insinuent, vel quid doceant esse vitandum; quid ad eruditionem, quid ad exhortationem, quid ad consolationem, quid ad terrorem scripturae lectio proponat, quid ad intelligentiam virtutis illuminet, quid nutriat affectionem, quid formam vivendi ad iter virtutis edoceat. 558 Hyma, ‘The Original Constitution of the Brethren of the Common Life at Deventer’, 442. Expedit cuique nostrum indefesse ruminare materias illas que provocant hominem ad timorem Dei, ut est materiale de peccatis, de morte, de iudicio, de inferno. 559 Hyma, 455.

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Brothers at Deventer were supposed to choose a single book, “reading thoroughly in the book

every day for some progress to the purpose of the refreshment of the soul.”560 This resonates

with Hugh of St. Victor’s gloss on Augustine’s rule, that “books for each day should be sought,

frequency of reading should be commended.”561 The writings of the Church Fathers were also

mandated because “they instruct us profitably in how we ought to walk in the way of God, and

they move our affection and will to the love of virtues and to flee from vices while also

occupying our memory, with vain and harmful thoughts set aside, in fruitful and useful things.”562

All the books in possession of the brothers were to be looked after by the armarius, also referred

to as the librarius, whose job it was to keep an accurate record of the library’s books and “to keep

watch diligently, lest a bookworm or some other vermin infect or devour [the books].”563 They

were also charged with helping the other brothers know “when and what they ought to read,” as

well as making sure that “the books not be spoiled by dust or some other muck.”564 Thus the role

of the armarius not only had an administrative but also a pastoral dimension. He was responsible

for overseeing that each brother read what would be formative and edifying.

The constitutio of the brother-house at Deventer prescribed the same role of reading as the leaders

of the New Devout exhorted. The brothers integrated reading among the other practices that

filled their week. The constitutio mandated slow, meditative reading conducive to the formation of

mores and each brother was given material to read under the oversight of a superior brother who

made sure that they read something suitable for their spiritual needs and circumstances. Reading

was integrated into the broader experience of daily, weekly, and yearly rhythms of time, imburing

560 Hyma, 444. De consilio confessoris nostri, perlegentes in eo singulis diebus aliquem passum pro spirituali refectione anime. 561 PL 176:911-912. ut codices singulis diebus petantur, frequentia legendi commendatur. 562 Hyma, ‘The Original Constitution of the Brethren of the Common Life at Deventer’, 444. [Sacra scriptura a sanctis doctroibus conscripta]… salubriter instruit nos, quomodo in via Dei ambulare debemus, movetque affectum et voluntatem ad amorem virtutum et fugam viciorum simul eciam memorial nostrum, seclusis vanis et nocivis cogitationibus, occupant fructuosis et utilibus. The importance of reading for renewing one’s memory, and thereby the ability to reason well, is prominent in Gerard Zerbolt of Zutphen’s De Spiritualibus Ascensionibus. 563 Hyma, 454. Armarius… debet et diligenter prospicere, ne in eis tinea vel alia quelibet corruptela infectum quid vel exesum sit. 564 Hyma, 455. … ne pulvere vel alia qualibet sorde [libri] maculentur. Armarius eciam ostendat legentibus ad mensam quid et quando debeant legere.

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the brothers’ reading with an Augustinian sense in which their patterns and routines took part in

the ratio and number with which God instantiated all of creation in time.

Rapiaria: Reading with the Pen

Hand-copying afforded meditative, reflective labor. Collecting dicta, writing florilegia, and keeping

a rapiarium were characteristic of an interior dynamism of the Devotio. Sisters and brothers set time

aside each day for personal reading and reflection, during which they could jot down edifying or

though-provoking passages in book of ‘snatchings’ (rapiaria) for further reflection. The practice

aided in ruminating on complex or dense texts and in recalling larger slabs of text, the shorter

jotting acting as a prompt. Rapiaria acted primarily as personal records of reflection and spiritual

progress. As such most rapiaria were not intended to be copied for wider circulation. Practices of

rapiaria were prevalent in both sister- and brother-houses, although it is easier to assess the extent

to which brothers kept rapiaria than sisters.

Times of reading were included in broader habits and patterns of communal life intended not to

open the reader up to their own subjectivity but to conform the reader more to truth and love.

We see this in the description of Florens Radewijns from Dier Muden’s chronicle of the brothers

at the Florenshuis. Radewijns understood reading and writing partly as ascetic discipline – he

himself would rise at night to sing matins as well as to read and write.

Lord Florens was accustomed at night to visit the choir to sing matins. Indeed,

his brothers would similarly rise at night to write… One of them wrote so

diligently that in the course of one normal night he copied a quarter of a book

which we have in our library called ‘Augustine on the Gospel of John.’565

References in Muden’s account of the brothers often includes the practice of reading and writing

as a part of the manual labor integral to their way of life. Muden gives the title of the book, a

565 Muden, 13-14. Dominus Florencius consuevit de nocte visitare chorum ad cantandas matutinas, fratres vero sui similiter surgebant in noctibus et scribebant: nec habebant sedes sed asserem ponentes in sinu suo, exemplar collocabant super lectum. Unus eorum ita diligenter scripsit, ut in una die naturali scriberet unum quarternum in libro, quem habemus in libraria nostra, qui dicitur Augustinus super Iohannem.

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large commentary of Augustine on John’s Gospel, notable of course for its length but also for

the heftiness of the content. Such book-reading and copying function to impress upon the reader

the book’s contents through its laborious copying. This practice of Radewijns recorded by

Muden accords with what Mertens, erstwhile general editor of Ons Geestelijk Erf, pioneered in his

usage of the phrase “reading with the pen.”566 That is, that the sisters and brothers “read” not

just with their eyes by with their hands. By slowing down to the speed at which one could write,

the reader ended up slowing down the speed of their thought and quieted the stirrings of their

heart. In turn, it was difficult gloss over the written word when such attention was required in the

slow process of copying, resulting in the reader much more effectively internalizing what they

read.

The process of jotting down ‘snatchings’ from texts sustained the identity of the New Devout,

and the practice embodied the ascetic labor that was required to humble in order to gain wisdom.

Such an approach to the condensed, summarized text put the New Devout in a different

category to many traditional impulses for epitomizing, excerpting, and summarizing set out by

Marietta Horster and Christiane Reitz. In their view, excerpting and synthesizing were

symptomatic of a Christian view of history in which the past had to be both recorded

(considering the historicity of the Church and Scripture) and synchronized with a particular

Christian teleology.567 As historical subjects ostensibly began to drift away from Christ over time,

the content of Scripture, history and the Fathers seemed increasingly precarious. “Readers were

conscious of the vulnerability of transmission processes.”568 This view may be true of copying

whole texts, which the New Devout did do. Book-copying and rapiaria, however, did not aim at

the traditio of patristics and history. Since rapiaria were always intended to be meaningful for the

566 Thomas Mertens, ‘Collatio Und Codex Im Bereich Der Devotio Moderna’, in Der Codex Im Gebrauch: Akten des Internationalen Kolloquiums 11. - 13. Juni 1992, ed. Christel Meier, Dagmar Hüpper, and Hagen Keller, (München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1996), 163–82; Thomas Mertens, ‘“Lezen met de pen. Ontwikkelingen in het laatmiddeleeuws geestelijk proza”’, in De Studie van de Middelnederlandse Letterkunde: Stand En Toekomst; Symposium Antwerpen 22-24 September 1988. Hilversum, 1989., ed. F.P. van Oostrom and F. Willaert, (Hilversum, 1989), 187–200. 567 Horster and Reitz, ‘Handbooks, Epitomes, and Florilegia’, 445. “The Christian worldview leads to dehistoricization. This applies not only to the previous, pagan history but also to the history of the Christian world because of its teleological framework, in which man-made history is secondary and under the authority of God’s will.” 568 Horster and Reitz, 446.

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writer and not a wider readership, little incentive existed to preserve these sources. Reading and

excerpting in the milieu of the Devotio Moderna was relevant primarily, and usually only, for the

writer and their community without reference to posterity. Given this was so it is unsurprising

that most rapiaria were not preserved and have not survived. Far from saving precarious

information for posterity, excerpting and collections of dicta were a way for the writer to

synthesize and absorb texts already contained in their libraries so as to facilitate self-

understanding and to reorient one’s desires towards God.

One thing is common to every kind of technique of rapiaria: the appropriation of texts that have

been read, heard, or written down does not extend over relatively long passages or the whole

context of the work, but lays hold only of individual sentences or short sections which

correspond particularly well to the needs of the devotus or devota. Under these conditions,

reception of Patristic literature meant the collection of moral sententiae, dicta and exempla guided by

subjective spiritual needs and relates to specific personal contexts. It seems likely to me, however,

that such collection of short quotations attests to a far deeper penetration of the texts the New

Devout read than the content of the particular quotations that ended up in rapiaria. Bare

quotations may be a sign of a superficial understanding of a quote’s larger text, but equally this

may be a sign of a deep understanding of a quote’s context, with the result that surrounding

contextual information becomes superfluous. As Stephan Borgehammar points out, the natural,

grammatical meaning of biblical texts was “so obvious and familiar – especially in learned

monastic milieus – that it did not need to be commented upon.”569 The ability of the sisters and

brothers to patch together coherent works from patristic and contemporary sources

demonstrates a familiarity with the patristic corpus and its language. I think it is unlikely, as

Nikolaus Staubach suggests, that the brothers lacked a deep knowledge of the texts that collated

over the more cursory collection of pithy, contextless sayings.570 The labor of notetaking was

highly valued because it afforded the copier detailed immersion in the texts they copied. It

569 Stephan Borgehammar, ‘A Monastic Conception of the Liturgical Year’, in The Liturgy of the Medieval Church, ed. Thomas J. Heffernan and E. Ann Matter (Kalamazoo, Mich: Western Michigan University, 2001), 21. 570 Staubach, ‘Memores Pristinae Perfectionis’, 433.

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dovetailed the importance of humbling manual labor neatly with the benefit of the literature

being copied.

Just as reading afforded an opportunity for spiritual growth, so did hand-copying calm the heart

and mind, leading to humility and caritas. The brothers themselves understood (or were at least

exhorted to understand) book-copying as an activity significant for cultivating one’s caritas.

Inevitable economic arrangements were subsumed into this task, such that copyists were paid as

well as pastored, books were sold, but not at maximum efficiency or profit. In this way,

Goossens has argued that the practical and palpable contemplative ascesis of the Devotio Moderna

amounts to a significant departure from the mystics of the Low Countries like Johannes

Ruusbroec. “The spirituality of the Devotio Moderna,” writes Goossens, “has a more personal,

individual and practical character [than the earlier Dutch mystics]. It is averse to speculation and

elaborate theories.”571 The spirituality of the Devotio Moderna was exemplified, modelled and

experienced at least partly in book-production as a labor of love for God. The hardness of the

work schooled the sisters and brothers in patience and virtue.572

Book-copying as humbling labor and meditative reading figured in both the schools and the

houses overseen by the brothers. This practice was instituted by John Cele at the brother-run

school at Zwolle, with the twin aims of ruminating on edifying material in the present and

providing material for future generations of clerics and students.

And then he [Cele] also dictated in the school to individual brothers writing in

all their own rapiaria certain notable sayings of the saints which would benefit

future clerics. Wherefore, he desired that all have letters and the Gospel reading

for feast days throughout the year and a theological rapiarium, in which they

would gather up in brief words the heart of Sacred Scripture, and so gradually

571 Goossens, De Meditatie in de eerste tijd van de Moderne Devotie, 28. De spiritualiteit der Moderne Devotie heeft een meer p e r s o o n l ij k – I n d i v i d u e e l en p r a c t i s c h k a r a k t e r. Zij is wars van speculatie en ingewikkelde theorieën. 572 Kock, Die Buchkultur der Devotio Moderna, 17. Das Schreiben hatte aber nicht nur einen wirtschaftlichen Aspekt. Das Abschreiben bedeutete zugleich Lektüre, die meditative Verinnerlichung des Geschriebenen. Das Kopieren war darüber hinaus Arbeit, harte Körperliche Arbeit wie im manchem Schreiberkolophonen beklagt wird; es war Teil des asketischen Lebens. (“the copying was moreover work, hard physical work, as it is bemoaned in several scribal colophons; it was a part of the ascetic life”).

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commit more easily to memory for later witnesses the knowledge, fear, and

wisdom of God.573

Material naturally varied such that each brother’s rapiaria reflected his own diet of patristic works,

devotional writings, divine offices, and Scripture.574 Older houses furnished newer houses with

edifying literature, like that from the extensive library in the original house set up by Geert Grote

in Deventer. For the communities of sisters, the situation also depended on which works were

made available to them as part of the brothers’ cura monialum.575

Rapiaria produced by sisters were far less numerous than the quantity produced by the brothers.

Most of the surviving rapiaria have been edited and the material synthesized thematically around

themes like original author or subject-matter.576 The rapiarium belonging to Florens Radewijns,

likely the pioneer and originator of the practice amongst the New Devout, was kept at a sister-

house at Diepenveen.577 For this reason they offer a more synthetic representation of sisters’

rapiaria rather than specific exemplars. The rapiaria that have survived seem to have been

preserved by dint of the exceptional status of their author within communities of the Devotio

Moderna. More organic but less organized material was more likely to have been preserved by

virtue of the compiler, as in the case Radewijns, and this put rapiaria from sister-houses at a

disadvantage.578 Scheepsma suggests that at least in known cases of sisters at Diepenveen perhaps

“the compilation of excerpts in the form of a rapiarium was beyond their means. We must take

into account… [that] sisters [whose rapiaria were edited and circulated] were all high-born and

wealthy and held a status of privilege at Diepenveen.”579 It is also possible that the freedom of

sisters may have been curtailed over the course of the fifteenth century, as suggested by

573 Chronicon Windeshemense, 207. Et tunc etiam notabilia quedam dicta sanctorum in futurum clericis profutura per totam scolam pronuntiavit singulis ad sua rapiaria cuncta scribentibus. Unde epistolas et evangelica in festis per annum occurencia omnes habere voluit et rapiarium, theologicale, quo nucleum scripture sacre brevibus in verbis colligerent, et ita successive dei noticiam timorem et sapienticiam novis testis memorie facilius commendarent. 574 Kock, Die Buchkultur der Devotio Moderna, 19. Einzelne Konventualen haben sich zur Durchführung der ihnen übertragenen Ämter Handbücher angelegt, in denen ihre Aufgaben und für die Ausführung wesentliche Grundtexte vereinigt waren. 575 Kock, 20. 576 Scheepsma, Medieval Religious Women in the Low Countries, 90–91. 577 Scheepsma, 90. 578 Scheepsma, 91. 579 Scheepsma, 95.

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contemporary criticism to the practice by Franciscans like Johannes Brugman’s Speculum

imperfectionis.580 However, Scheepsma identifies instances of rapiarium in lives of the sisters without

the term actually being used. A sister would write down notes from private reading or during

collations that were conducive to her growth in humility, the overcoming of temptation, and love

for God.581 Few of these jottings on loose scraps of paper have been preserved, although brief

mention of notable sayings that were held dear by particular sisters are sometimes included in the

writing of sisters’ lives.582

Sister-houses: Alijt Bake and Personal Reading

Sisters of the Common Life were encouraged to read in both private and communal contexts in a

similar way to the brothers. By considering the writings and life of Alijt Bake (1415–1455), a

member of the sisters of the Windesheim Congregation, we see how reading was a pillar of the

structured life of the sisters of the Devotio Moderna intended to grow one in the virtues necessary

for understanding, insight, and devotion. Sisters read privately as a form of meditation and

communally as unifying practice of their community. In the case of Bake, her preference for

reading by herself over communal life led her into conflict with her superiors. One could

justifiably include Bake in the previous section as one female leader amongst the many male

leaders who wrote exhortatory texts about reading. However, I include her in this section

because of the liminal status that Bake held in her own community. Despite the popularity of her

texts, Bake did not possess the same institutional, formative influence as the brothers writing

within the Devotio Moderna, and we can therefore take her as evidence of reading practices within

the movement and not only as evidence of exhortation.

Alijt Bake stands as perhaps the most well-known of the sisters the Devotio Moderna.583 Born in

Utrecht, Alijt Bake entered the Windesheim Congregation, the convent of Galilea in Ghent that

was founded in 1431 and was brought into the milieu of the Devotio Moderna in 1438, as a novice

580 Scheepsma, 96. 581 Scheepsma, 92. 582 Scheepsma, 92–93. 583 Scheepsma, Deemoed En Devotie, 30.

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at the comparatively late age of 25.584 She made her profession at Christmas the next year. In

January 1445 Bake was elected prioress over the Galilea Convent. She served for a decade before

being dispossessed of her leadership by the General Chapter of Windesheim in 1455. Alijt Bake

died in exile the same year.

Alijt Bake’s charismatic mysticism led her into difficulties with the common form of life at

Galilea in Ghent and was the direct cause of her demotion from prioress.585 Adopting a mystical

attitude towards God’s guidance, Bake intuited God’s will in her times of meditation and reading.

This had the result that she refused to participate in the communal reading of the Divine Office

and instead stayed reading the Boek van de negen velden (Book of the Nine Crags), a direct violation of

her vow of obedience.586 Bake’s lush, charismatic mysticism and pugnacious efforts to lead an

active, apostolic life via her writings led the General Chapter of Windesheim to forbid the writing

of nuns in 1455. It is a witness to the popularity and support of Bake that her writings were

copied and spread as they were.587

Bake placed great importance on the same sort of ruminatio as male leaders of the Devotio Moderna,

that is, reading meditatively and reflectively. To meditative, thoughtful reading Bake also added

the practice of writing notes as she read, the practice of rapiaria modelled by Thomas we noted

earlier. In her autobiography, Mijn beghin ende voortganck (My Beginning and Progress), Bake describes

the practice of reading and writing she developed.

584 Scheepsma, Medieval Religious Women in the Low Countries, 197–202. 585 Scheepsma, Deemoed en Devotie, 30. Vrijwel meteen na haar aankomst in Galilea ontstonden er grote meningsverschillen met priorin Hille Sonderlants († 1445), die enkele jaren eerder uit Diepenveen was overgekomen om het nieuwe Gentse Klooster naar Windesheimse opvattingen in te richten… Uiteindelijk wist Alijt Bake het vertrouwen van de gemeenschap te winnen en in 1445 volgde zij Hille Sonderlants op als priorin. (“Almost immediately after her arrival in Galilea there arose great differences of opinion with the prioress Hille Sonderlants († 1445), who had come some years earlier from Diepenveen to set up a new Ghent cloister according to Windesheim principles…Finally Alijt Bake managed to win the trust of the community and in 1445 she followed Hille Sonderlants as prioress”). 586 Scheepsma, Medieval Religious Women in the Low Countries, 205. 587 Scheepsma, 225. “It is remarkable that writings of Bake have been preserved at all, given that both the inspectors and the prior superior had the right to confiscate any suspect writings.”

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And all that I learned in this way I wrote down, so that I would not forget it.

Thus, I spent my time all the while speaking and contemplating and learning and

writing and erasing and writing again, and in that way, I forgot all other cares.588

In this short passage we can see the key aspects of reading that the male leaders also exhorted.

Reading ought first and foremost to be a physical labor. The sister should read slowly and

meditatively to calm her passions and thoughts and thereby observe the rumblings and stirrings

of her heart. Once “all other cares” were forgotten, she could fill her heart and mind with the

notes that she took. By writing notes repeatedly, we see that Bake modelled the rhythmic

internalization of what one read by repeated jottings and pauses for contemplation. Bake

describes this practice as a physical, embodied experience. The mental exercise of comprehension

is coupled with muttering, reading aloud, stopping to reflect, writing, erasing, and then writing

again. Bake developed her notetaking into a form of exploration of her experience and intuition.

That is, her rapiarium was not simply a repository of information, but the process of curating it

was a meditative, reflective practice by which she considered, digested, and internalized what she

read.

Like the exhortations of the male leaders, Bake enjoined her sisters to spend time regularly in the

exercise of filling the mind with what was salutary and edifying. By stilling her heart and mind in

slow, meditative reading, the sister could then reshape her heart. In her Vier kruiswegen (Four Ways

of the Cross) the will and heart are the faculties most key for understanding and reason. Bake

locates this in the gront, the foundation or core of one’s being. For Bake, the sister made progress

by extricating herself from mental illusions and unhelpful feelings and refocusing herself on God

by spending substantial time in the hard work of slow, meditative reading.

The First Way: that in our hearts we should exercise sweetly the passion of our

dear Lord with good thoughts and try to spend our time usefully in that. This

588 Scheepsma, 207. Ende wat ik aldus leerde dat schreef ick al op, dat ik niet vergheten en soude. Ende aldus al segghende ende al peijsende ende al leerende end al schrijvende ende wederuutplanerende ende nog weder schrijvende brocht ick emmer mijnen tijt over, dat ick die ander sonderlinghe ghepeijsern vergat. (Mijn beghin ende voortganck § 27, lines 7–77).

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works great benefits in those who steadily make an effort to exercise, because

they spend their time usefully and drive away all alien illusions and useless

worries. It makes the heart full and steady and rouses the heart of a person to

the love of God, moved by devotion and interior compassion, and draws a

person away from all idleness and rashness and empty society and idle tale-

telling.589

Like male members, Bake read slowly and meditatively to still her heart and mind and thereby

observe her errant passions and thoughts. Once these passions and phantasms were stilled the

sister could fill her mind with edifying and salutary reading material. To achieve this, the sister

should set regular times for personal reading, but this reading amounted to physical labor as

much as a mental one. Reading for Bake entailed muttering, reading aloud, and stopping often to

reflect and ponder. In this sort of reading the sister kept notes of what she read, and this act of

notation helped to internalize the material within the sister. Having swept the heart clean of

passions, the sister then took up the slow, painstaking task of writing, resetting, and rewriting

again the truth revealed in Scripture and the Church Fathers on her heart.

Collations in Sister-Houses

This sister-house at Diepenveen was overseen by John Brinkerinck (1359–1419), whose

collations demonstrate the way the sisters copied and produced written texts. Although delivered

by their male overseer, these collations are preserved in summary form by the sisters’ own hands

and are therefore evidence of how they read and copied as a practice. To create the collations the

sisters listened to the sermons delivered by John Brinkerinck, summarized, and grouped his

admonitions into thematic categories that the sisters could read, copy, and upon which meditate.

By the middle of the fifteenth century the material was synthesized into a collection of collations

in a project probably overseen by Dier Muden.590 Muden implies that he himself has seen these

589 Rik van Nieuwenhove, Rob Faesen, and H. Rolfson, eds., ‘Alijt Bake, Four Ways of the Cross’, in Late Medieval Mysticism of the Low Countries, (New York: Paulist Press, 2008), 179. 590 Scheepsma, 131.

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writings, and states that he distinguished them into eight artificial collations. “Some sisters

recorded in writings his words, which later a certain one who received them [margin: scilicet autor

noster, i.e. Muden], combining the material into equal sections, he distinguished in eight collations

in which he exhorted the sisters to occupy themselves in good meditations and to turn from vain

and frivolous things.”591 It is quite rare for medieval women to produce texts themselves given

that on the prevailing ecclesiastical model innovation and renewal was supposed to emerge

within the Church and emanate outwards.592

After the death of Geert Grote, Brinkerinck provided perhaps the greatest impetus for the

religious way of life of the Sisters of the Common Life, particularly the monastic branch of the

sisters at Windesheim.593 John Brinkerinck delivered collations to the sisters and Rudolf Dier

Muden, a near contemporary compiler of the Devotio Moderna, has described how sisters took

detailed notes during these collations. According to the congregation’s sister-book some sisters

would carry around multiple books at a time, requiring a book-carrying basket to bear the load of

these books and rapiarium with which to take notes.594 John Brinkerinck urged the sisters under

his pastoral care to keep a diary of their spiritual progress, which they often did.595 Reading was

scheduled into the weekly routine of the sisters – after the office of Prime the sisters would,

according to the constitutiones monalium, borrow a book from the library (armaria) to read.596 Since

each sister was required to read a book at these set times, we can deduce the existence of quite

591 Muden, 18-19. Notaverunt alique sorores in scriptis verba ipsius, que unus postea accipiens [in margin: scilicet autor noster], et materias sibi equales combinans, distinxit in octo collationes: in quibus exhortabatur sorores cooccupare cum bonis meditationibus & avertere a vanis & frivolis. 592 Scheepsma, Medieval Religious Women in the Low Countries, 2. “It is a rather exceptional phenomenon for medieval women themselves to produce texts. Yet the works of the women of the Modern Devotion re relatively unknown.” In understanding women to constitute the vitality and impetus for the Devotio Moderna Scheepsma departs from formative assessments of the movement like that of R.R. Post, who on Scheepsma’s view “regards the women as the passive, receptive part of the movement, because they do not preach or carry out pastoral activities” (p.4). To Scheepsma, religious women set the agenda for the spirituality of the New Devout – after all, “the establishment of a religious women’s community was one of the first tangible results of the conversion of Geert Grote” (p. 5). 593 Scheepsma, Medieval Religious Women in the Low Countries, 6. 594 Scheepsma, 87. 595 Scheepsma, 1. 596 Scheepsma, 84. Scheepsma identifies several aporia with this statute. As the statute reads, it seems that the nuns received a new book each day – something Scheepsma believes to be untenable given the limited time given to the sisters for reading and impossibility of finishing a book each day. It seems to me that it is possible that this statute describes a situation in which books were borrowed for reading and returned each night after the time of reading.

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large libraries at the sister-houses, at least a book per sister. A fairly high level of literacy can be

presumed amongst some of the sisters, evidenced by the presence in their libraries of patristic

writers like Augustine, medieval writers like Bernard of Clairvaux, Henry Suso, Richard of St

Victor and Johannes Tauler, as well as the mandate for such works to be read at meal times.597

Furthermore, writers within the Devotio Moderna circle itself also figure prominently: Jan

Ruusbroec, Gerard Zerbolt of Zutphen, Jan of Schoonhoven and Thomas à Kempis.

In his first collation John Brinkerinck exhorted the sisters regarding the importance of notetaking

for their spiritual progress. Brinkerinck’s premise is that inner discipline leads to outer godliness

and obedience. One’s spiritual progress must begin therefore with “interiority and good

thoughts.”598 This inner discipline – ynnicheit – involved using one’s notebook to write down what

induced growth in Christ’s likeness. “Therefore we ought now to make a great book with

obedience and holy openness and good thoughts, that all the world might become repugnant to

us.”599 The creation of these books of virtues were intended to aid the sisters in their spiritual life.

Key to this strategy, urged Brinkerinck, is to collect material that edifies.

Brinkerinck drew on the metaphor of bees gathering honey for winter – a well-known allegory

for moral purity as well as, importantly, for the treasures amassed by the Church Fathers. John

Brinkerinck picked up on this last aspect, suggesting that spiritual reading and notetaking was

akin to bees storing up food for winter. “We should act like the bees, who gather much honey in

the summer that they might have enough in the winter.” 600 Bees feature in two scriptural

commonplaces: Psalm 117:12 (Circumdederunt me sicut apes) and Samson’s about a honeycomb

hidden in the carcass of a lion (Judges 14). In patristic literature bees were notable firstly for their

lack of concupiscence, secondly for their devotion to their king/queen, and thirdly for their

597 Scheepsma, 8. 598 Johannes Brinkerinck, ‘Acht Colatieen van Johannes Brinkerinck, een bijdrage tot de kennis van den kanselarbeit der Broeders van Het Gemene Leven, uit handschriften der 15de en 16de eeuw’, ed. W. Moll, Kerkhistorisch Archief IV (1866): 112. Ende en pinen wi ons nu niet in onser ioncheit die ons herten te beschriven mit duchden, mit ynnicheit end mit goeden ghedachten, nymmermeer en comen wi daer toe in onser outheit. 599 Brinkerinck, 112. Daerom sellen wi nu een groet boec maken mit duechden end heligher oefeingen ende goeder ghedachten, dat ons alle die werlt te eng worde. 600 Brinkerinck, 112. Wy sellen doen als die byen, die vergarderen alsoe veel honichs in den somer, dat si des wynters ghenoech hebben.

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industriousness in collecting honey to survive the paltry months of winter. Each of these threads

was picked up respectively in relation to sexual purity, devotion to Christ, and commitment to

store up spiritual nourishment from Scripture. Ambrose in his De sancto spiritu glosses Samson’s

riddle of the honeycomb and the lion as referring to Apostles gathering wisdom from the

wounds of Christ, “the bees which store up the honey of wisdom.”601 In writing to a people

withdrawn from attending church, Ambrose exhorted them to adopt an attitude towards hearing

Scripture as bees to gathering honey. One ought to gather Scriptures like bees honey. “For they

gather honey like bees from the delicate flowers of the divine Scriptures. It is right to compare

priests to bees.”602 Augustine described church attendance like a bee storing up food in a hive.

Again and again, I ask that those, who as I have just said run with full devotion

to the hive of the Church as though to the sweetest honeycomb, prepare like

prudent bees little combs amongst themselves from the diverse flowers of the

divine Scriptures where they might receive holy and heavenly honey.603

In another work attributed to Augustine on Psalm 91, bees gathering honey before winter are

used as an analogy for the necessity for the Christian to prepare for the Last Judgment. “Bees

and ants observe that winter is coming; and a monk and Christian do not consider coming

judgment. Bees and ants consider that they are able to fall into the peril of hunger if they do not

labor in summer that they live in winter. We do not consider that without labor we will be

tormented in Gehenna.”604 In a sermon castigating reprobate priests Augustine described the cura

animarum as like bees gathering honey. “What is worse, clerics, monks and nuns are found so

negligent and tepid, not like spiritual bees that gather the sweet honey of souls.”605 In Augustine’s

first sermon on the paschal candle (De cereo paschali) he compared the work of the Christian to

601 PL 16:0744C. apes repertas, quae condunt mella sapientiae. 602 PL 17:0689B. quia sicut apes de divinarum Scripturarum flosculis suavia mella conficiunt... Recte comparantur apibus sacerdotes. 603 PL 39: Iterum atque iterum rogo, ut qui ad ecclesiae alvearium, sicut jam dixi, quasi ad dulcissimum Christi favum, plena devotione concurrunt, velut apes prudentissimae de diversis divinarum Scripturarum floribus intra se cellulas praeparent, ubi sancta et coelestia mella suscipiant 604 PL 26:1102B. Apes et formicae cogitant hyemem esse venturam; et monachus et Christianus non cogitant judicium esse venturum. Illae cogitant quoniam fame periclitari possunt, si non laboraverint in aestate unde vivant in hyeme; nos non cogitamus, quia sine opere torquebimur in gehenna. 605 PL 39:1893. inveniuntur, quod pejus est, clerici, monachi et sanctimoniales ita negligentes et tepidi, ut non velut spirituales apes, dulcia animarum mella conficiant.

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that of bees in the sense that “Bees love their kings, the righteous love their Christ. Bees build

honeycombs, the righteous produce churches. Bees collect their riches from flowers, as all the

righteous gather the beauties of the Scriptures, through which God is understood and

honored.”606 Smaragdus of Saint-Mihiel’s (c.760–c.840) commentary on the Benedictine Rule

describes the low murmur of chanting in the oratory as like bees gathering around honey. “Let

every hand of the brothers stop what it is doing and let his foot hasten immediately with

solemnity into the oratory, his thoughts towards God, so that they may soon reach the first

oration, and the hive of brothers entering the oratory seethe as bees to honey.607 The low

murmur of reading came to be expressed using the visceral image of a buzzing beehive, reading

resembling a palpable, communal, and life-sustaining practice.608

Brinkerinck saw physical labor as a means to humbling and reshaping the heart towards God.

Dier Muden notes that Brinkerinck exhorted the sisters “that they might continue to stand in

contrition of heart and that they might affect the body with hard physical labors.”609 Brinkerinck

identifies desire as the foremost aspect of the person that must be reformed into the likeness of

Christ. To condition desire is the goal of this spiritual discipline, to reform one’s desires from the

world to God himself. In Brinkerinck’s fourth collation it is pride – hoemoedich – which prevents

one from ascending towards God’s blessedness – pride is that which raises a sister’s own wisdom

“above the wisdom of our Lord.” 610 Reading stood in close relation to writing in sister

communities because both were valuable as physical disciplines that stilled the heart and mind,

thereby preparing the sister for spiritual progress.

606 PL 46:820. Amant apes regem suum, amant justi Christum suum. Apes fabricant favos justi operantur Ecclesias. De floribus illae colligunt divitias suas, sic omnes justi pulchritudines Scripturarum, per quas intelligitur et honoratur Deus. 607 PL 102:880A. Omnis fratrum manus deserat quod agebat, festinet statim, mox cum gravitate pes ad oratorium, sensus ad Deum, ut mox ad primam orationem occurrant, et tanquam apes ad mel intrantium in oratorium fratrum examen ebulliat. 608 Leclercq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God, 73. 609 Muden, 19. quod continue starent in contritione cordis, & corpus affligerent duris laboribus externis. 610 Brinkerinck, ‘Acht Colatieen van Johannes Brinkerinck, een bijdrage tot de kennis van den kanselarbeit der Broeders van het Gemene Leven, uit handschriften der 15de en 16de eeuw’, 134. si... ende setten hoer wijsheit boven die wijsheit ons lieven heren.

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A Gospel Harmony in a Female Community of the Devotio Moderna

Reading structured the communal life of sister-houses and stood in close connection to their

mealtimes. Communal reading strengthened the bonds between sisters and imaginatively

associated their community with the apostolic circle. This becomes apparent when we consider

the composition and usage of a gospel harmony, that is, a synthesis of all or part of the story of

Christ’s life told in the four Gospels, at the sister-house at Diepenveen. This gospel harmony was

used within the same community John Brinkerinck oversaw at Diepenveen at almost the same

time. It therefore offers a comparative insight into how public reading could function in this

community of sisters. The Augustinian sense of participating in higher time that I outlined earlier

via Matthew Champion and John Bossy is manifested in the composition and usage of this

harmony. The Diepenveen gospel harmony was read regularly in a communal space, thereby

creating an experience of higher time in which the listeners participated in apostolic piety, their

present-day vita apostolica. This text specified a particular setting, the refectory, in which it should

be read, and this setting coupled with the content, the Last Supper, had the effect that the sisters

vicariously sat in the position of the Apostles in the cenacle during the Last Supper. Reading in

this sense possessed, therefore, a socially disciplining function that founded the common identity

of the sisters.

Deventer SAB: 101 E 5 is a collection of anonymous prayers and scriptural excerpts. The script

is littera hybrida, bearing vertical ascenders similar to littera textualis as well as single-looped ‘a’ and

‘g’ as well as ƒ (long ‘f’) and ſ (long ‘s’) lettering from littera cursiva. The lettering suggests that the

manuscript dates sometime after the Council of Constance (1414–1418), in which period the

hybrida script matured and permeated the Low Countries.611 The success of the hybrida in the area

of the Low Countries can be attributed in large part to the work of the New Devout and the

Carthusian house in Deventer in popularizing it. This manuscript dates from the mid to late

1400s and contains a gospel harmony on the Passion with instructions on how and when it was

to be read, most likely in the lead up to Easter and during Pentecost. Saints Augustine and

611 J. P. Gumbert, ‘Iets over laatmiddeleeuwse schrifttypen, over hun onderscheiding en hun benamingen’, Archief- En Bibliotheekwezen in België. 46 (1975): 281.

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Agnes are listed as patrons, which suggests a connection to the convent of St. Agnes at

Diepenveen. Unlike the Brinkerinck’s collations that were written down first by the sisters, this

gospel harmony was written by an anonymous man, identified by documentation in the SAB

records as a “poor sinner” (“arm sunder”). However, this harmony was explicitly written for a

community of women, demonstrated by references to “sundersche, peccatrix, ancilla.” There is

no indication that this harmony appeared elsewhere in brother communities. The later binding,

as the SAB records suggest, is most likely from the house of the Brethren of the Common Life

of SS. Mary, Gregory, and Jerome, also known as the Meester Florenshuis, the house originally

established under Florens Radewijns.

Suzan Folkerts has argued that Dutch translations of portions of Scripture tended towards a

“paraliturgical” use, by which she means a kind of reading that was in step with the liturgical

calendar but was done at home.612 Just like in the gospel harmony for the sisters at Diepenveen, it

was common for these harmonies on the Passion to be rubricated with instructions for how it

was to be read. Typically, “the Passion text is structured with rubrics saying: ‘The first word’

(“Dat ierste woert”),” writes Folkerts, “the second word, the third word, and so forth, up to the

seventh word spoken by Jesus Christ. The text is followed by a text about the nine sufferings of

the Lord, and many prayers and devotionalia.”613 Our manuscript matches this pattern, with a Latin

gospel harmony on the Passion, rubricated prayers on Christ’s wounds, and a subsequent

collection of prayers and meditations in Dutch.

The Diepenveen gospel harmony differs from established definitions of the essential

characteristics by which scholars have generally defined gospel harmonies. Ulrich Schmid has

summarized the key features of a gospel harmony as they have been set out by most scholars.

Some, according to Schmid, have defined a gospel harmony as “concisely unifying summaries of

the life of Jesus on the basis of the four (canonical) Gospels.” 614 Others, however, more

612 Suzan Folkerts, ‘Reading the Bible Lessons at Home: Holy Writ and Lay Readers in the Low Countries’, Church History and Religious Culture 93, no. 2 (2013): 234. 613 Folkerts, 232. 614 Ulrich Schmid, ‘Evangelienharmonien des Mittelalters: Forschungsgeschichte und Systematische Aspekte’, in Evangelienharmonien des Mittelalters, ed. Christoph Burger, A. A. den Hollander, and Ulrich

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cautiously define the genre as “the result of the attempt to form the tetrad of the gospels into a

coherent representation of the history of the Gospel under a close, but not absolute,

commitment to the text of the four Gospels.”615 In this second broader definition, “the material

basis is no longer constrained to the four canonical Gospels.” 616 In other words, gospel

harmonies have been defined as either the attempt to produce a single timeline of the historical

Jesus by sewing together verses from Scripture or something more akin to a strict paraphrase that

captures the essence of the single historical life of Christ as told by the four evangelists. Our

Diepenveen harmony, however, does not match either definition. Unlike the first definition, the

compiler did not harmonize the whole life of Jesus and, in fact, repeats sections of the Last

Supper narrative from the different Gospels even though they are quite obviously accounts of

the single event in the cenacle. And unlike the second definition, the harmonizer has not altered

the text of the harmony at all except for transcribal errors or omissions.

Additionally, the context in which the gospel harmony was read, in refectorio, does not match onto

the two main contexts in which gospel harmonies have been characterized as functioning – that

is, liturgically, or “paraliturgically” at home following the liturgical calendar. Folkerts has plotted

the change from harmonies used liturgically and those that were beginning to be used at home

“paraliturgically,” in step with the liturgical calendar in the low countries at this time.617 However,

her typology does not neatly account for the Diepenveen harmony, which was not used

liturgically but was used communally in way that was formative and constitutive for their way of

life.

Although a gospel harmony, the text of the Diepenveen gospel harmony only covers the events

of the Passion, beginning at the Last Supper in John 11 after the raising of Lazarus from the

Schmid, (Assen: Royal van Gorcum, 2004), 2. … sind Evangelienharmonien kurz und bündig vereinheitlichende Zusammenstellungen des Lebens Jesu auf der Basis der vier (kanonische) Evangelien. 615 Schmid, 2. Die als Ergebnis des Versuchs, die Vierzahl der Evangelien zu einer zusammenhängenden Darstellung der evangelischen Geschichte zu gestalten unter enger, aber nicht absoluter Bindung an den Text der vier Evangelien. 616 Christoph Burger, A. A. den Hollander, and Ulrich Schmid, eds., ‘Lateinische Evangelienharmonien - die Konturen der abendländische Harmonientradition’, in Evangelienharmonien des Mittelalters, (Assen: Royal van Gorcum, 2004), 30. “…in dieser zweiten Definition die stoffliche Basis nicht mehr auf die vier kanonischen Evangelien beschränkt wird.” 617 Folkerts, ‘Reading the Bible Lessons at Home: Holy Writ and Lay Readers in the Low Countries’, 227.

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dead. The contents of this harmony of the Passion amount to a careful synthesis of both the

synoptic and Johannine accounts, drawing on material unique to both textual traditions (e.g.

John’s account of Jesus washing the disciples’ feet and the synoptic account of distributing the

bread and the wine, primarily drawn from Matthew). The language derived from the synoptics

matches closely Vulgate versions of Matthew’s Gospel, suggesting that the compiler worked

principally with the Gospels of John and Matthew in front of him, but consulting the two other

synoptics occasionally. The compiler drew most often from John’s Gospel, the reading for some

days being straight quotation or slight rearrangement exclusively of the Gospel of John.

Nonetheless, the harmony exhibits considerable care to synthesize material organically and

thoroughly. The harmonization reads as a pastiche of verses, lifted more or less unchanged out

of the Gospels, but each day’s reading generally synthesized more than one Gospel tradition.

The compiler broke the Passion into discrete units of a handful of verses, specific events, or

short exhortations of Jesus that were then arranged. Each of these sections is denoted by the

compiler with a pilcrow or rubricated capital. However, this denotes both a change in source

material and a break in narrative within a single text. In some cases, a pilcrow appears within a

verse, splitting one verse into two. The first portion of the verse becomes joined to what

preceded and the second with what followed. In one case, a pilcrow breaks one discrete

statement in John 16:7 into two (“sed ego veritatem dico vobis ¶ expedit vobis ut ego

vadam” (fol. 13b–14a)), a case of editorializing the punctuation and formatting of the biblical

text. In another instance, John 16:23 is broken into two and separated over two days, feria sexta

ends with Christ’s words that “in illo die me non interogabitis quidquam” and the next day,

sabbato, begins with the second half of that same verse: “amen amen dico vobis si quis petieritis in

nomine meo vobis” (fol. 15a.). In some cases, the compiler omitted words, either through error

or because it was not necessary for the narrative synthesis. In the case of the above quotation of

John 16:7, the compiler has, most likely by accident, omitted the patrem of this verse that stands

in other versions of the Vulgate that is necessary to understand who it is who gives what is asked

for. The emphasis of the compiler was not novelty but a synthetic arrangement that gave the

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substance of the Passion greater impact. This is especially the case if we consider the context in

which the Gospel was to be read: in refectorio.

In Refectorio: Communal Reading and the Creation of Common Identity

This gospel harmony came with instructions. Folio 4b. contains information about not only

about the time of day but also the setting in which the gospel harmony should be heard: in

refectorio. This setting, the sisters’ mealtimes, paralleled the setting of the Apostles sitting in the

cenacle during the Last Supper. Christ’s words addressed to this inner circle therefore naturally

sounded as though addressed to the sisters too. By reading this gospel harmony of the Last

Supper narrative at mealtimes, the sisters at Diepenveen both vicariously read themselves into the

role of faithful hearer of the Word of God and adopted the narrative role of the Apostles

listening to Jesus directly addressing them.

The compiler carefully matched the sister’s context in refectorio with the content of his harmony’s

Passion, thereby by aiding the sisters’ engagement with the text and fostering a sense that the

sisters themselves might identify with Jesus’ Apostles. The first rubrication reads: “legetur in

refectorio”. The extant “e” of legetur has been written over a letter obviously scratched out. This

suggests perhaps an erasure of an “i” (i.e. legitur: present indicative) or an “a” (i.e. legatur: present

subjunctive). In either case, care seems to have been made to emphasize the hortatory aspect to

the rubrication – that this text ought to or will be read in the refectory, presumably at

mealtimes. It is unclear whether this rubrication refers to what precedes or follows (it occurs at

the end of the first day’s reading, not the beginning), but most likely it refers to what immediately

came before. A pilcrow after legetur in refectorio suggests that the next section treats new subject

matter and that therefore the rubrication refers to what preceded it. It is likely that this

rubrication described the consistent context in which this gospel harmony of the Passion was to

be read. This reading makes good sense of the material the gospel harmony instructed to be read

in refectorio: the Last Supper. As the sisters distributed food and drink, they heard Jesus’ own

words assembled by the compiler:

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And having received the cup he gave thanks and said: take this and divide it

amongst you. For I say to you, from now on I shall not drink from the shoot of

the vine until the day when I drink of it anew with you in the kingdom of my

father.618

Weight is added to this conjecture when we note that significant portion of the upper room

narrative is Jesus words addressed directly to the disciples. As they ate and drank in their own

quasi-apostolic community, Jesus’ words amen amen dico vobis were a consistent refrain to this these

sisters at Diepenveen, as though Jesus were actually addressing them directly in the cenacle. “If

you had been of this world the world would have loved its own, but truly you are not of this

world but I have chosen you from this world.”619

The compiler repeats events from each Gospel that were clearly different representations of a

single historical event, suggesting that the compiler seized the opportunity afforded by the

context in refectorio to associate the sisters with the Apostles. In each of the four Gospel narratives

Christ, of course, only breaks bread and shares wine once during the Last Supper. However, in

this harmony it happens multiple times. The second day of the harmony (feria secunda, a Monday),

after Jesus has already distributed the cup of wine and washed the disciples’ feet we read:

And with them at table Jesus took the bread, blessed it, gave thanks, and gave it

to his disciples, saying, “Take this and eat. This is my body, which will be given

for you. Do this in my memory"… Receiving the cup he gave thanks and gave it

to them, saying, “Drink from this, all of you. For this is my blood of the new

covenant which will be poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of

sins.”620

618 Deventer SAB: MS 101 E 5, fol. 4b. et accepto calice gratias egit et dixit. Accipite et dividite inter vobis. Dico autem vobis: amodo non bibam de hoc genimine vitis usque in diem illum cum illius bibam nouum vobiscum in regno patris mei. 619 SAB 101 E 5, fol. 12b–13a. Si de mundo fuissetis mundus quod suum erat diligeret. Quia vero de mundo non estis sed ego elegi vos de mundo. 620 SAB 101 E 5, fol. 6b. Cenatibus autem eis accepit Ihesus panem et gratias egit benedixit et fregit deditque disciipulis suis ait. Accipite et comedite. Hoc est corpus meum quod pro vobis tradetur. Hoc facite in meam memoratorem [?]… et calicem… accipiens gratias egit et dedit illis dicens. Bibite ex hoc

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While the starker differences between the synoptic and Johannine Gospel traditions make them

easier to synthesize, because clearly describing different events, the compiler repeats events that

only happened once in the Gospel story by including the accounts of multiple Gospels. He thus

includes in this one harmony the Lucan and Matthean accounts of Jesus breaking bread and

distributing wine as two events on different days broken up by his washing of the disciples’ feet

drawn from John. This most probably does not suggest a confusion of the general synoptic

narrative – that is, the compiler likely did understand that the narrative in Luke and Matthew

referred to the same event. Rather, this recapitulation suggests that the writer took the

opportunity of the context available to him to allow his readers and listeners in refectorio to

imagine themselves vicariously as sharing in Christ’s Last Supper multiple times.

Because of this decision on the part of the compiler, the sisters could more readily read

themselves imaginatively as though the disciples in the cenacle. This was particularly novel given

the strongly asserted correlation between the Apostles and the bishops of the church, not to any

sort of priesthood of all believers – a move made even more daring when we bear in mind that

this work was compiled for a community of women, who in their listening and imaginative

engagement sat with the male Apostles and understood Jesus’ words in the cenacle as also

addressed to their own community. Mundane eating, through its deliberate association with the

Last Supper via communal reading, associated the community of the New Devout with the

apostolic community around Jesus, underscoring the vita apostolica of the Devotio Moderna.

This sort of reading also amounted to a particular temporality. Shaped by an Augustinian sense

of time, such reading could collapse past and present into a single moment that unified the

sisters’ experience to the Apostles and later saints through the reading of such texts in contexts

that mimicked the original narrative settings. Matthew Champion has argued that gospel

harmonies in the Low Countries were an attempt to organize time, creating a sense of double

time, in which the text was experienced “within two-time frames: the historical and the

liturgical.”

omnes. Hic est enim sanguis meus noui testamenti quem pro vobis et pro multis effundetur in remissionem peccatorum.

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These liturgical selves were constantly re-instantiated by, and experienced

through, intricate and detailed organizations of time in turning pages, reading

marginalia, following incipits and explicits…. Liturgical subjects formed time

through writing, reading, and ritual practices, creating and using texts that

themselves ordered time, yet which required the constant oversight of a self

who could see beyond each single moment, ascending to comprehend the whole

of salvation history as it was reperformed in individual liturgies like the mass or

in temporal arcs of liturgy like the hours of each day, the liturgical week, season

and year.621

The significance of listening to this harmony of the Last Supper was to connect the life of the

sister community with the apostolic circle through the event of eating, with clear Eucharistic

allusions. Not only did the context of listening in refectorio match the setting for the Last Supper,

the sisters also ate their meal as Jesus described himself as food to them. Caroline Walker Bynum

has argued that eating (and abstaining from eating) was a predominantly female concern in this

period.622 The mealtimes of the sisters were in this way powerful expressions of female piety,

infused with Eucharistic resonances. This connection of their own mealtimes with the Last

Supper narrative created a powerful connection between their vita apostolica as new disciples of the

desert, and the apostolic circle of the Last Supper, and thus in turn with the Eucharist. “Because

Jesus had fed the faithful not merely as a servant and waiter, preparer and multiplier of loaves

and fishes,” notes Walker Bynum,

but as the very bread and wine itself, to eat was a powerful verb. It meant to

consume, to assimilate, to become God. To eat God in the Eucharist was a kind

621 Champion, The Fullness of Time, 141. 622 Caroline Walker Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 74. “Despite the pervasiveness of food as a symbol, there is clear evidence that it was more important to women than to men.”

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of audacious deification, a becoming of the flesh that, in its agony, fed and

saved the world.623

It would be difficult to avoid the connection between their own community and that of the first

Church as they broke bread together and listened to Jesus’ words describing himself as bread and

wine to be consumed as a testament to the forgiveness of sins. Bynum further notes,

Eating in late medieval Europe was not simply an activity that marked off fine

calibrations of social status and a source of pleasure so intense that the

renunciation of it was the core of religious world-denial. Eating was also an

occasion for union with one’s fellows and one’s God, a commensality given

particular intensity by the prototypical meal, the eucharist, which seemed to

hover in the background of any banquet.624

We can also add to this connection between female eating, the Eucharist and union with God the

close relationship between the activity of eating and reading. In the writings of Thomas à

Kempis, the Eucharist was an expression of God’s ineffable mystery that activated physical

senses but was ultimately elusive and eternal. “Thus you gave to me when I was weak your holy

body for the nourishment of my mind and body,” wrote à Kempis, “and you placed your word as

a lamp for my feed. Without these things I would not be able to live, for the Word of God is the

light of my soul and your sacrament if the bread of life.”625 Similarly, for Gerard Zerbolt of

Zutphen the process of reading was not so much a creative process as it was an event akin to

eating. Readers are to ‘chew’ (‘ruminare’) on what they read. In this sister community eating,

however, was joined with a public form of reading that did not furnish a private mystical ascent

but galvanized a sister community and collapsed the chronological time between themselves and

the early church. That these sisters formed each other through the reading of the Last Supper

Narrative impresses this ambivalence towards experiences of God unanchored to Scripture or

623 Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast, 2000, 3. 624 Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast, 1987, 3. 625 TK 2:121-122. dedisti itaque mihi infirmo sacrum corpus tuum ad refectionem mentis et corporis: et posuisti lucernam pedibus meis verbum tuum. Sine his quibus bene vivere non possem; nam verbum Dei lux animae meae: et sacramentum tuum panis vitae.

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the apostolic tradition and points more to their life being founded on a shared sense of identity

as Christ’s inner circle.626

This collapsing of distance between the sisters-as-hearers and the Apostles-as-narrative-actors

meshes with the role of reading in this period articulated by Brian Stock. “Instead of leading one

to a deeper appreciation of objective reality, texts could be called upon to structure the conduct

of everyday life, either of the individual or of the group,” writes Stock, “knowledge in this sense

would be related less to expanding the corpus of existing information than to influencing some

aspect of social experience.” 627 The reading of this gospel harmony structured the Social

Imaginary of the sisters by mapping their community neatly onto the apostolic circle. That this

section of the gospel harmony was read in refectorio draws attention to this function of the written

text within the milieu of the Devotio Moderna.

Where authority was located in the continuity of community, in the case of the Devotio Moderna in

the vita apostolica, the Church and its sacraments, the text itself was not so much authoritative

(although of course still being so) but more importantly ramifying, anagogically fruitful.628 The

text offered stimulus in their communities that was ramifying, that reformed the interior person,

which was at the last an inexhaustible mystery. This sort of reader “engaged his mind and his

senses, he rehearsed, revivified, and ultimately relived” the conditions of the text’s

composition.629 To read in this sense was to immerse oneself in community, the authority not

derived from the text itself but the community to which it witnessed and whose value was placed

not in the information but in the transformation the text could lead to.

626 Mathilde van Dijk, ‘How to Be a Good Shepherd in “Devotio Moderna”: The Example of John Brinkerinck (1359-1419)’, Nederlands Archief Voor Kerkgeschiedenis / Dutch Review of Church History 83 (2003): 152. “the adherents of the Devotio Moderna were rather suspicious about people claiming to have privileged knowledge of the will of God.” 627 Stock, The Implications of Literacy, 405. 628 Stock, 405. “Instead of leading one to a deeper appreciation of objective reality, texts could be called upon to structure the conduct of everyday life, either of the individual or of the group,” writes Brian Stock, “knowledge in this sense would be related less to expanding the corpus of existing information than to influencing some aspect of social experience.” 629 Stock, 409.

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Comparison to Male Eating in Devotio Moderna

Male and female members of monastic communities had read in refectorio for centuries. However,

this does not mean that such read practices in the Diepenveen sister-house merely mapped neatly

onto pre-existing monastic practices. A comparison of the Diepenveen gospel harmony with

Johan Busch’s Liber de viris illustribus bears this out, demonstrating that male and female New

Devout communities accented different aspects of communal reading at mealtimes. Rather than

vita apostolica, Busch emphasized the ascetic dimension of reading at mealtimes. In his account of

Wilhelm Vornken, a prior of the male congregation at Windesheim, Busch honed in on the

refectory as a time of self-discipline and emphasized the self-denial of Vornken. The setting of

the refectory emerges as a place of physical testing rather than as a time set apart for reflection

on the nature of their community – or rather, Busch’s account of eating and the refectory in the

Windesheim congregation centers on ascesis, whereas the function of the gospel harmony at

Diepenveen brings the collective consciousness of the sisters as new disciples of the desert and

new Apostles at Jesus’ feet to the fore. Busch writes of Vornken:

He was not particular in food, clothing, utensils and the rest of the things, but

going beyond his brothers in fervor in individual matters, he used to eat publicly

quite disgusting food and food of less savor like rancid pork meat and other less

edible meats, sitting until the bell or with guests reclining at the head of the table

cutting pieces off and eating. He often used to do similarly of fish and other

foods. For he in fervor of spirit often preferred little fish to the bodies of big

fish, satisfied to have the larger ones sent back and to be content with little ones

for his mouth and appetite in the love of penitence. And so our cook, advised

by the brothers, would place before himself in common such foods which were

not contrary to nature but well edible once the less edible bits of pork were first

cut from it.630

630 De viris illustribus, 143. In cibis vestibusque ceterisque rebus et utensilibus non fuit exquisitus, sed fratres suos fervor precedens in singulis, vilioribus cibis communiter vescebatur et cibos minus sapidos ut rancidas porcinasque minus comestibiles ipse sedens ad nolam seu cum hospitibus ad caput mense recumbens

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Also of note in this account, Busch records that Vornken was “devoted in the divine service and

was exceeding awe filled around the venerable Eucharist.”631 This is a wholly different setting to

the Diepenveen community, where, as we have seen, eating in refectorio provided a substitute for

the Eucharist as a unifying experience of God’s presence that unified the community. We find

here, then, evidence of similar practices reading practices in male and female houses, but which

bore different accents – the male houses tending to associated the refectory with ascesis and the

sister houses having the possibility of imagining their community as a vita apostolica by reading.

Comparison to Monastic reading

How does this sort of private reading at meals compare to monastic reading happening in

monasteries? In the rule of St. Benedict, brothers ought to conduct their meals in silence so that

everyone can hear the reading. Reading from Scripture accompanied every meal according to this

rule. “Reading ought not to be lacking from the brothers’ tables,” begins the thirty eighth chapter

to the rule.632

D. H. Green has argued that the difference between reading and hearing in the Middle Ages was

minimal. According to Green, over the course of the Middle Ages the meaning of legere (‘read’)

developed via its usage with a dative indirect object to convey the idea of having something read

to someone apart from the reader (i.e. read to/for someone or oneself). This shift in usage

differentiated the reader-as-speaker and the reader-as-hearer-of-speaker.633 To read (‘legere’) did

not distinguish sharply between the reader-as-speaker and the reader-as-hearer, for already with

Augustine the idea existed that to read was essentially synonymous with listening. In fact, Green

argues, the meaning of legere excluded in some sense reading as recitation, where, for example, a

monk might read the Divine Office with precision and clarity but without a clear understanding

abscindens comedebat. Similiter et de piscibus aliisque cibariis frequenter faciebat. Parvos enim pisciculos in fervore spiritus magnis piscium corporibus sepe anteponebat, ori et appetitui amore penitencie maioribus reiectis cum parvis satisfaciens. Cocus itaque noster a fratribus premonitus talia sibi cibaria communiter anteponebat, que non nature contraria sed bene erant manducabilia porciunculis minus comestibilibus inde prius abscissis. 631 De viris illustribus, 143. Pater iste devotus in opera divino et circa eukaristie venerabile sacramentum valde fuit timoratus. 632 Benedict, The Rule of Saint Benedict, 134. Mensis fratrum lectio deesse non debet. 633 D. H. Green, Women Readers in the Middle Ages, (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 19.

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of the meaning of the sounds he made. In actual fact, we can distinguish the hearer and the

reader as subsets of the one larger category of those who read with their ears, the only difference

being that the one reciting the text incorporates the added step of decoding the signs on the page

and converting them to sounds. This creates a space between litteratus and illitteratus: quasi-

litteratus. In this space one has a certain ability to decode signs and convert them to sounds, but

the extent to which this ability involves understanding the active knowledge of Latin is

circumscribed.634 Green makes the point that learning to read and write involved decoding and

replicating the Latin alphabet. But this knowledge might not necessarily lead to knowledge of the

Latin language. One could easily move to vernacular texts, bypassing Latin facundity.

The first stage (often the only stage) in learning to read was to identify the

letters in an elementary Latin text and to pronounce the sounds they stood for,

without necessarily understanding them. Learning this with Latin could be

applied to a vernacular text, with the difference that vocalization now conveyed

understanding. If reading was taught by means of a Latin text it need not lead to

a knowledge of Latin, but could instead bypass this and assist in understanding a

vernacular text.635

Green identifies private, meditative reading as more adaptable to the constraints and needs of

female spirituality in the Middle Ages. Green argues this on the basis that scholastic learning,

aimed at systematic, rational disputation in a male, academic context. This dimension of reading

suited women particularly well. "Without falling victim to the medieval stereotypes of what was

natural to a woman, we may see such emphasis on affecting reading, together with the conviction

that it could replace the learning from which women were largely debarred educationally, as

meaning that this kind of reading was available especially to women, even in the vernacular."636

Women, because excluded from scholastic culture, made the earlier monastic reading advocated

by Bernard and Peter Damian their own. "If we seek, in conclusion,” writes Green,

634 Green, 21. 635 Green, 31. 636 Green, 76.

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to find a place for women in the two ways of reading we have been considering

it will be to say that although men's reading (or more precisely clerics' reading)

changed during the Middle Ages, especially as a result of scholasticism, women

were excluded from this, so that their devotional literature remained largely what

it had been before.637

How much of Green’s assessment can we observe at work in the community at Diepenveen?

Certainly, we observe the liminal status of the female community, whose reading and spiritual

development the brothers from the congregation at Windesheim oversaw. However, the function

of the Diepenveen gospel harmony does not mesh with Green’s view that meditative, often

vernacular reading became essential to specifically female medieval spirituality. In fact, where

Green’s meditative reading sees female communities as carving out a space for reflection,

learning and contemplation in the interstices of religious life, the public reading of the gospel

harmony does the opposite, by instantiating via the sanctioned Latin text a new apostolic

community around the sacred text that the sisters could directly identify with. Undoubtedly

private, meditative reading was indispensable to their way of life. Yet, in the Diepenveen gospel

harmony we see another mode of reading, in which the sisters imagined themselves together, not

privately, as a new sociality akin to the Apostles sitting at Jesus’ feet. Sabrina Corbellini has

argued that new ways of reading and interacting with the text emerged in the late Middle Ages

from new “social and cultural contexts in which the readers lived and participated.”638 With this

in view, the usage of the Diepenveen gospel harmony naturally developed out of the new social

arrangement of the sisters. These sisters still committed themselves to the reading of the

Scriptures in Latin but saw themselves thereby as a new amalgam of the Desert Fathers and the

apostolic circle.

Furthermore, the nature of a gospel harmony cautions us against identifying vernacular with

semi-religious female religious communities in the late Middle Ages. Although vernacular

637 Green, 77. 638 Sabrina Corbellini, ‘Introduction’, in Cultures of Religious Reading in the Late Middle Ages: Instructing the Soul, Feeding the Spirit, and Awakening the Passion, (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), 5.

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sermons, collations, and even Scripture – especially the Psalms – were common, Latinity

flourished in this community of women. Green rightly points out that Latin literacy was a

spectrum from those who could sound letters, to those who could read the Psalms in the

liturgical round, to those who could effortlessly compose Latin prose and poetry. Wybren

Scheepsma has argued that entrance into the sister-house at Diepenveen demanded a high level

of Latin, to the extent that sisters and male spiritual overseers often admitted new women to the

convent on the basis of their ability in Latin.639 While there must naturally be a spectrum of Latin

ability, with women most likely only able to read Latin with little understanding, the Diepenveen

sister-book includes accounts of women who were praiseworthy because they could read the

Latin of Augustine.640

The genre of the gospel harmony prevented the sisters from learning the Latin of the Gospels

without internalizing the grammar and the meaning of the new text. Unlike reading Scripture,

one could not rely on the memory of the narrative or the countless repetitions of liturgical

reading to aid one’s comprehension. That is, it was impossible to read/hear this text in the way

that Green describes monks reciting the Psalms with the aid of repetition and memory, but with

only a hazy sense of what the text meant.

Conclusion

Despite the paucity of source material, we can solidly conclude that the exhortations of the

leaders of the New Devout were heeded by the anonymous members of the movement. These

leaders exhorted their disciples to read as a physical discipline that calmed the heart and mind

and that enabled the sort of introspection that generated humility and caritas, virtues that readied

one to be formed by the salutary material one read. As concerns the actual patterns of behavior

639 Wybren Scheepsma, ‘Writing, Editing and Rearranging: Griet Essingchghes and Her Version of the Sister-Book of Diepenveen’, in Nuns’ Literacies in Medieval Europe: The Hull Dialogue: Conference ... at the University of Hull from 20 to 23 June 2011, ed. Virginia Blanton, (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), 286. 640 Scheepsma, 287. “The Sister-Book of Diepenveen, then, illustrates that in this Windesheim convent a high level of literacy in Latin was required. Whoever could not read or write need not have applied to this convent. A solid knowledge of Latin was the norm there certainly for the choir nuns. But among the lay sisters there will have been some who struggled to comprehend it at all. One of the reasons that the Sister-Book of Diepenveen was written in Middle Dutch was so that these 'conversae', too, could take in the history of their own house.”

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of the New Devout, we see this view on reading manifested in four main ways. Firstly (1),

reading stood amongst the many habits and activities that comprised the New Devout’s way of

life. As I set out in relation to the work of Matthew Champion and John Bossy, the New Devout,

enlivened by their Augustinian Imaginary, sought to perform activities conducive to spiritual

growth, importantly, with the right routine so as best to engage with God, whose eternal present

was experienced by the cosmic dance of time. Secondly (2), the sisters and brothers did “read

with the pen,” further demonstrating the physicality of reading as a humbling discipline. Thirdly

(3), brothers, and even more so the sisters, read in solidarity with each other. For the brothers,

this generally meant reading at the same time and being surrounded by the low murmur of slow,

meditative reading. For the sisters communal reading allowed them to creatively sit at Christ’s

feet as though they were the Apostles. This sort of reading was formative for their sense of vita

apostolica and was infused with Eucharistic undertones. Fourthly (4), we can observe less of an

emphasis in female reading practices of reading to reform the soul’s faculties. While Alijt Bake

exhorted the same sort of slow, reflective reading as Gerard Zerbolt of Zutphen, she makes no

connection between this practice and reforming the soul’s memoria, intellectus and voluntas. This is a

significant difference between the function of reading in male and female communities of the

Devotio Moderna. Finally (5), sisters and brothers both read not necessarily to obtain new

information but rather to obtain a new depth of relation or insight into what was already known.

Their reading offered a new aspect on their community and relationship with God, and a more

profound apprehension of truth.

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7 BOOK-COPYING AND BOOK-PRODUCTION

The leaders of the Devotio Moderna exhorted their sisters and brothers to read slowly and

contemplatively to reform the heart and gain a new depth of insight into the truth revealed

definitively in Christ. In both sister and brother communities, these exhortations were restated in

statutes, modelled in later writings, and put into practice in private and communal practices of

reading. These practices were one facet of the New Devout’s way of life that was animated by

their Augustinian Imaginary, in contradistinction to scholastic, university culture. By outlining the

nature and purpose of the New Devout’s reading practices, it comes into sharper focus how the

imaginary governing the Devotio Moderna was, at least as far as they could see, irreconcilable with

the imaginary of scholastic, university culture. In the preceding chapters I have laid out how

reading was treated in a comparable way to other formative practices of the New Devout like

prayer, eating, and liturgy. In this respect, reading was a physical, rhythmic practice that was

powerful because it disciplined the heart and mind.

Since its advent in the middle of the fifteenth century, book-production also figured as a key

aspect of the practice of reading, particularly in brother-houses. By hand or with the aid of the

press, book-production was from the beginning a pillar of the life of the New Devout, to the

extent that book-production has become for many later observers a defining characteristic of the

Devotio Moderna, particularly in its later iterations in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

Nikolaus Staubach describes the movement as essentially a movement of reading and writing,

unparalleled in a century that “as in no other joined the call for reform in the church and in

society to the belief in the merit of book and literality.”641 Collecting and book-copying was, for

Geert Grote and his disciples, a natural expression of their Augustinian Imaginary. The practice

humbled by its labor and, rather than flitting round in the search to expand the corpus of existing

information, led the soul deeper into the truth handed down from generation to generation of

641 Nikolaus Staubach, “Der Codex als Ware. Wirtschaftliche Aspekte der Handschriften- Produktion im Bereich der Devotio Moderna,” in Der Codex im Gebrauch (Akten des Internationalen Kolloquiums 11.-13. Juni 1992), ed. Christel Meier, Dagmar Hüpper, and Hagen Keller (München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1996), 145. “In einem Jahrhundert, das wie kein anderes den Ruf nach Reformen in Kirche und Gesellschaft mit dem Vertrauen in die Leistung von Buch und Schriftlichkeit verband, waren sie die Schreiber und Leser par excellence.”

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Christ’s followers. The practice of book-copying and book-acquisition was an abiding fixation

and an intrinsic part of Grote’s vision for spiritual reform. After his death, book-production

permeated the rhythms and rules of communities of the Devotio Moderna: from the informal

jottings of specific sisters and brothers, to the production and use of the formative texts made

within the Devotio Moderna, to the texts they produced (both by hand and with the printing press)

as gifts or items of commerce. The New Devout so readily adopted book-copying partly due to

the necessity of income for the upkeep of the brother- and sister-houses, partly due to the

rarefied place of working with one’s hands in their communities, and partly because of great

valued ascribed to books for what they contained.642

We can observe the following main characteristics of book-production within communities of

the Devotio Moderna. Firstly (1), although sisters and brothers copied for many reasons, the

practice fundamentally amounted to a form of humbling labor similar to the exhortations of the

movement’s leaders to reading in general. Nonetheless (2), copying and printing created the ware

of a book that could be sold pro pretio or circulated amongst other houses of the New Devout.

Thirdly (3), the demands of attentive, accurate book-copying expressed the ideal sort of slow,

meditative reading exhorted and modelled by leaders in the New Devout. Sisters and brothers

“read with the pen” and often kept a notebook at their copying station to jot down passages for

later reflection. Fourthly (4), copying by hand held a special place in the Devotio Moderna that was

not dislodged by the advent of the printing press. Although some brother-houses acquired

presses, copying by hand remained a key practice because of what manual copying offered that

printing could not: a humbling physical practice whereby one read slowly and methodically what

642 Thomas Kock Die Buchkultur der Devotio Moderna: Handschriftenproduktion, Literaturversorgung und Bibliotheksaufbau im Zeitalter des Medienwechsels, (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 2002), 12. Kock argues that because the Devotio Moderna rejected the idea that devotion was pursued best in a monastic context this led them to locate spiritual growth in particular practices of reading and book production. “Selbstvollkommnung und individuelle Persönlichkeitsbildung, am Ideal der Vita Apostolica orientiertes Gemeinschaftsleben, Einflussnahme auf die laikale Umwelt verbo et exemplo haben, wie auch immer man ihre relative Bedeutung einschätzen mag, eines gemeinsam. Dem Gebrauch von Buch und Schrift, dem Lesen und Schreiben kommt die Rolle der wichtigsten Reformtechnik zu.” Although the New Devout emphasized their withdrawal from the world (“Rückzug”) into their own “Bibliothekgemeinschaft” it also drew them outwards: “die reproduzende, literarische und pragmatische Schriftlichkeit als auch den Kauf und Verkauf von Büchern und deren Erwerb durch Schenkung, Legat oder Tausch.“ Thus the reading and writing practices of the New Devout, intended to facilitate their devotion towards God, necessitated their engagement with the ‘world.’

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one copied. The printing press was, for this reason, never a defining characteristic of the Devotio

Moderna like copying.

Between Monastic and Clerical Scriptoria

The brothers’ fusion of avid copying and spiritual formation set the Devotio Moderna apart from

similar monastic and secular enterprises. Their communities resembled monastic scriptoria, copy-

houses that produced texts for sale, distribution, or use within the monastery. However, most

copy work at the beginning of the fifteenth century was done in the Low Countries by clerics,

not monks. In this respect, the Devotio Moderna stands between monastic and clerical practices in

relation to book-copying, bearing marks of each context but independent of both.

Although bearing some similarity to monastic scriptoria, the book-production of the New Devout

most resembled that of the clericus. Compared with contemporary monasteries in the Low

Countries, the New Devout copied on a far larger scale and the brothers often produced

liturgical works used in monastic and ecclesiastical contexts. Although the brothers did supply

texts for monasteries and churches, the small number of monastic scriptoria suggests that the New

Devout performed a function more similar to secular clerical work than monastic. That is, in

book-copying, they met a felt need more akin to the activities performed by secular clerics rather

than monks. Jean Leclercq has argued for a distinction between how copying was practiced in

university milieu over against practices originating from monastic culture. “In the schools,”

Leclercq argues, “if they write to each other it is generally after having talked together; they write

down what has been said or heard, and as it was remembered. In the monastery, on the contrary,

they write because they do not talk, they write to avoid speaking.”643 In the monastic model,

Leclercq suggests, book-production was often a way to preach, exhort, and evangelize without

leaving one’s monastery. Yet the practices of the Devotio Moderna do not fit the monastic or

clerical/school models. As J.P. Gumbert has pointed out, even by the close of the fourteenth

643 Leclercq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God, 154.

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century few communities of book-production existed within the diocese of Utrecht. 644 This

absence of monastic scriptoria in the diocese of Utrecht is striking. As Gumbert notes, “if there is

one remarkable fact about Dutch books in the fourteenth century, it is the modest role, in fact,

the virtual absence from book-production, of the monasteries.”645 The production of texts,

regardless of their content tended to be performed by secular clerics or paid scribes.646 The book-

production of the Devotio Moderna therefore performed a function more akin to contemporary

secular textual production rather than a mimesis of monastic scriptorium. In this sense, their labor

of book-copying brought devotion to non-monastic book-production rather the scriptorium out of

the monastery.

Book-copying was primarily a means for quiet reflection and to engage personally with both the

textual community of the Church generally, and specifically to participate in the story of the

Devotio Moderna by reading, copying, and continuing it. The New Devout talked about themselves

as originating from a copy-house. Rather than occasioning an opportunity to reach the world

without entering it, book-copying made it possible for the New Devout to bring secular copyists

into their community. The Devotio Moderna initially grew by drawing clerical scribes into their

communities for the purpose of copying, thereby winning many young men to their way of life.

Reasons for Book-copying

The piecemeal nature of the source material makes it difficult to know the extent to which sisters

and brothers took heed of exhortations to reading. Although the Monasticon Windeshemense and the

Monasticon fratrum vitae communis have proven immensely helpful as general guides, it is impossible

to describe the exact reading practices of sisters and brothers comprehensively. This applies just

as much to articulating the precise economic function of the book and literality within their

individual communities.647 We simply do not have the information necessary to pass judgment on

644 J. P. Gumbert, The Dutch and Their Books in the Manuscript Age, (London: British Library, 1990), 22. 645 Gumbert, 22. 646 Gumbert, 23. 647 Staubach, “Der Codex als Ware. Wirtschaftliche Aspekte der Handschriften- Produktion im Bereich der Devotio Moderna,” 149. “Daß die Überlieferungsbedingungen nicht überall gleich gut und die personellen

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the specific reading practices of the many unnamed sisters and brothers of the Devotio Moderna.

We can, however, deduce several key reasons why the sisters and brothers copied books: the

brothers encouraged an acquisitiveness for books that stemmed from the story of Grote’s

conversion, book-production cemented the communal life of the New Devout, and texts offered

a supplementary income stream for brother- and sister-houses.

Acquisitiveness

The acquisitiveness of books stands at the center of our accounts of the beginning of the Devotio

Moderna. In his biography of Grote, van Zijl characterizes Grote’s zeal for collecting books:

“since [such] a large part of his correspondence deals with buying, borrowing, or copying books,

one gets the impression that he [Grote] kept many people busy enlarging his book collection.”648

Book-acquisition enthused Grote from his conversion until his death. However, a great deal of

books requested by Grote were also destined for the libraries of others too. 649 After his

conversion experience, Grote devoted himself to preaching in 1379, and for this he saw the need

for literary resources. A trip to Paris was required just to secure the necessary books before his

itinerant preaching could begin.

However, after Grote’s retirement from preaching (c. 1374), the necessity of copying and

circulating books became a central preoccupation but was now disconnected from Grote’s earlier

itinerant preaching. Grote’s forced withdrawal from preaching proved portentous for his turn

towards book-production and introspection, to the extent that without this forced retirement the

history of the Devotio Moderna would likely have looked very different. Rather than a movement

of preaching and apostolic poverty, Grote turned his attention to reading, collations, and book-

copying as alternative outlets for his desire to reform the Netherlands to the ecclesia primitiva.

Rather than exhorting his followers to travel and preach, his principal activities immediately after

conversion, Grote instead modelled a life of quiet introspection that was grounded in reading and

und wirtschaftlichen Verhältnisse von Fall zu Fall verschieden sind, stellt methodische Probleme und Schränkt die Generalisierbarkeit der Einzelbeobachtungen ein.” 648 Van Zijl, Gerard Groote, 136. 649 Post, The Modern Devotion: Confrontation with Reformation and Humanism, 103.

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copying. It is thought-provoking that this essential characteristic of the Devotio Moderna was, in

large part, due to the revocation of Grote’s preaching license against his will.

Nonetheless, Grote redirected his apostolic fervor to the spreading of books. If he could not

speak openly, moving from town to town in the Netherlands, then he would rekindle the light of

faith by spreading accurate copies of edifying works of the Church Fathers. In their own writings,

the New Devout saw their beginnings in Geert Grote’s desire to copy and circulate books for the

edification of the Church. Grote was zealous in the acquisition of books, and to do this he

enlisted the help of several close friends, principally Jan Ruusbroec († 1381, a reclusive priest

from Groenendaal), John Cele († 1417, rector of the brother-run municipal school in Zwolle) and

John de Gronde (a priest from the Meesterflorishuis). Grote created chains of book supply by

calling on his friends and contacts across Deventer, Zutphen, Kempen, Zwolle and

Amsterdam.650 “I am, as you know,” wrote Grote to John Ruusbroec, “always prattling and idle,

always greedy and voracious for books.” 651 Grote spoke regularly of his dealings with copyists,

complaining about difficulties in procuring new texts and bemoaning the lack of money that put

a stop to his acquisitiveness. 652 R.R. Post accurately summarizes Grote’s own view on his

relationship to books, observing that “whether failing or virtue, his desire for books was one of

his most characteristic traits.”653 Writing his own biography of Grote, Thomas à Kempis quoted

this same letter cited above when describing Grote’s obsession with acquiring books.

Now, a great love of reading the Holy Scriptures clung to this venerable master,

as well as an unceasing, burning desire for collecting the books of the Doctors,

more than of collecting treasure-troves of money. Wherefore, in a certain letter

650 Post, The Modern Devotion: Confrontation with Reformation and Humanism, 99–104. 651 GME, Ep. 24. Semper sum inutilis, semper garrulus, semperque avarus et peravarus librorum, ut noscitis. 652 GME, Ep. 24. Semper sum inutilis, semper garrulus, semperque avarus et peravarus librorum, ut noscitis; cui deinceps modum cogor et finem imponere, tum, qui pecunie deficient, tum eciam, quia tedio tractandi scriptores et ea, que annexa sunt afficior. 653 Post, The Modern Devotion: Confrontation with Reformation and Humanism, 99.

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he testifies, saying, “always,” he said, “I am idle, always greedy and voracious for

books.654

We see this strategy of gospel proclamation by textual production in Grote’s relationship with

John Cele. Books went back and forth between the pair. Writing to Cele four years before his

death in 1380, Grote explained the rationale behind the exchange of books. “One thing is

necessary for us: we are to run together to build up the Church in the fullness of the era of

Christ. For we seek both knowledge and books for the sake of edification, that we might abound

in riches.”655 Grote goes on to direct Cele in how a more correct version of Henry Suso’s

Horologium might be produced from their own divergent copies pro Ecclesia. Corrected copies of

works would aid the work of the Church by preventing errant versions from spreading.

Increasing the number of edifying books in circulation would aid the spread of the Gospel.

There were, however, limits to Grote’s zeal for acquiring books. An interesting exchange

between Grote and John Cele about a case of perjury reveals the limit of Grote’s acquisitiveness.

Writing to Cele about a jurist accused of perjury, Grote gave specific instructions regarding

certain books owned by the brother-house at Zwolle that had been implicated in the crime. The

details are unclear, neither Grote nor Cele go into details of the crime, but Grote suggests that

the accused, a juror by the name of John, had misappropriated the books. “Concerning the case

of perjury, it is certain that, if he is accused, that he be held to pay the penalty according to the

rule of law and custom,” advised Grote, “but nonetheless let him discreetly return those five

books to the city, either through the hands of his confessor or in some other way.” 656 In

response to Cele’s question as to whether the books reappropriated by the municipal school at

Zwolle could be sold for profit, Grote advised Cele to be above reproach. “I do not dare to

possess them in good conscience, nor am I able to make your conscience fully secure. I do not

654 TK 7 :64-65. Magnus autem huic venerabili Magistro inerat amor legendi scripturas sanctas: et infatigabilis aestus colligendi libros doctorum, plus quam thesauros denariorum. Vnde in epistula quadam testatur dicens. Semper inquit sum inutilis: semperque avarus et praeavarus librorum. 655 GME, Ep. 13. … unum est necessarium, si simul currere debemus in edificacionem Ecclesie in plenitudinem etatis Christi. Ad edificacionem enim querimus et scienciam et libros, ut habundemus. 656 GME, Ep. 34. De casu periurii certum est, si impetitus fuerit, secundum ordinem iuris et consuetudinis, quod tenetur illas penas solvere… Sed tamen illas quinque libras secrete et occulte, vel per manus confessoris, vel in aliqua alia re civitati reddet.

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know if my faintheartedness, my ignorance, or scrupulousness compels me. But I do not believe

that any living thing can persuade me that I might receive them having been sold by money.”657

This correspondence shows how sheer acquisition of books was not an totalizing or limitless

drive, but was tempered by the overarching concern to lead a life in accord with the devotion laid

down by Scripture and in the writings of the Church Fathers.

A further part of Grote’s mission was the circulation of books. Given the lack of monastic

scriptoria in the diocese of Utrecht, the houses of the Devotio Moderna became known to

contemporaries as sources of literary works unavailable elsewhere. In his correspondence with

the aforementioned Wilhelmus Vroede, Grote had been asked in July 1378 for certain books that

might offer theological precision on the difference between venial and mortal sin. “The book

Librum de igne purgatorii [by Augustine] I do not have, nor do I know where I might be able to find

it. Concerning the book De amore which is said to be St. Bernard’s, surely you would know that he

is not the author, nor is the style redolent of St. Bernard; and in certain propositions, some of

which you have written, it is contrary to the conclusions of St. Bernard.”658 That books had been

requested of Grote suggests that he had access and familiarity with a corpus of works unavailable

elsewhere – and that as part of his charism Grote sought to serve others with guidance about the

writings of the Doctors and Fathers of the Church.

Grote’s correspondence reveals how the books belonging to his house were in constant motion –

regularly lent, copied, and returned. Thus, when asked for the letters of Augustine, Grote replies

that “I have just a few letters or books of letters belonging to Augustine. I loaned out one book

of many (but not all) the letters of Augustine, which is being copied by a brother in the house of

John de Gronde in Amsterdam. I do not know if the required letter is therein.”659 In this respect,

657 GME, Ep. 34. ego non audeo cum bona conscientia possidere, non valeo vestram conscienciam plene tutam reddere. Nescio si pusillanimitas mea vel ignorancia vel scrupulus me stimulat. Nec credo quisquam vivens persuadere possit michi, ut eas acciperem emptas ex pecunia. 658 GME, Ep. 8. Librum « De igne purgatorii » non habeo nec scio, ubi valeam eum invenire. De libro, qui dicitur beati Bernardi « De Amore », omnino sciatis, quod suus non est nec stilum beati Bernardi redolet et in quibusdam sentenciis, quarum aliquas vos scripsistis, determinacionibus beati Bernardi est contrarius. 659 GME, Ep. 8. Paucas admodum epistolas sive epistolarios libros Augustini habeo. Mutuavi unum librum epistolarum Augustini multarum, sed non omnium, qui transcribitur per fratrem domini Iohannis de Gronde in Aemsterdam. Nescio, si inibi sit epistola postulata.

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Grote played the role of librarian for his interlocutor. Although lacking the letter asked for,

Grote directs Wilhelmus to other works of Augustine – his sermons – that treat the topic of

venial and mortal sin. By use of their library, Grote serviced his peers with authoritative writings

of the Church. Just as within brother- and sister-houses, this role of librarian entailed pastoral

care, providing works that were accurate and expedient to each person.

Grote was acquisitive for books and wrote to other formative leaders of the Devotio Moderna to

procure more books. Moreover, the copying and acquisition of books was passed down in the

stories and histories of the movement as a key trait of the movement’s founder. Without the

revocation of Grote’s preaching license and his forced withdrawal from public life, we would

likely not see such an emphasis on book-production as humbling labor and form of

contemplative reading. As it stands, however, the acquisitiveness of books lies at the heart of

Grote’s charism that his biographers and chroniclers recorded.

A Common Life of Book-production

However, more than simply a passion of Grote’s for acquiring books, book-production stood at

the center of the growth of the Devotio Moderna even in its earliest stages. In the New Devout’s

own stories and chronicles the movement began and emanated out of copy-houses. No longer

able to travel and preach, Grote oversaw the establishment of copy-houses (scriptoria) which,

although certainly providing a small source of income, attracted young clerics who listened to

Grote’s collations, shared the brothers’ way of life, and who often ended up deciding to join it.

Paid clerics and scribes typically performed this work for Grote and Radewijns during the 1370s

and 1380s.660 These copy-houses were the initial focal point of outreach and pastoral activity for

the way of life Grote created. They provided a source of income, humbling labor, a source of

edifying patristic, liturgical, and scriptural texts, and attracted scribes who heard Grote’s

exhortations.

The New Devout exerted considerable energy compiling histories of their brother- and sister-

houses. Attention was given to the foundation of the houses as well as to members whose lives

660 Gumbert, The Dutch and Their Books in the Manuscript Age, 23.

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might serve as exemplars to the living. This was a function of Thomas à Kempis’ Chronica montis

s. Agnetis and Johannes Busch’s De viris illustribus. As Kock observes, each of these extended

necrologies of exemplary sisters and brothers “was supposed to serve the propagation of the

devout life-ideal beyond one’s own community” – that is, extending to other houses of sisters

and brothers.661

The earliest writers within the Devotio Moderna described the movement as beginning in a copy-

house. The chronicler and brother Johannes Busch relates that the origin of the brother-house at

both Deventer and Zwolle stemmed from Grote’s desire for the writings of Scripture and the

saints to be widely read and understood, “that he might give a norm of living rightly and of

preaching the Word of God in the Holy Catholic Church. Besides Scripture, which ought

lawfully to be embraced by all Christians, he also collected the written sayings of the holy

orthodox Fathers and their works and examples from various monasteries and collegia

everywhere.”662 Deventer was an apt place for this endeavor, such that “through many clerics and

copyists the venerable master Grote in this way had the superior books of the Holy Fathers

collated, and transcribed, worthy of a good price.”663

Book-copying served as an opportunity for evangelism and discipleship by drawing young men

into the houses as copyists. Thomas à Kempis wrote that Grote was active in winning over many

of the copyists he had enlisted. “For he [Grote] greatly moved some of the copyists to make

disciples of Christ.”664 Thomas recorded that after having his preaching license revoked, Grote

withdrew from public life and busied himself in exhorting and educating young people. “He also

had,” wrote Thomas, “many books of sacred theology written by scholars who he had attracted

661 Kock, Die Buchkultur der Devotio Moderna, 23. “... und [der Handschrift] einer Propagierung des devoten Lebensideals über die eigene Gemeinschaft hinaus dienen sollte.” 662 Iohannes Busch, Chronicon Canonicorum Regularium Ordinis S. Augustini Capituli Windeshemensis, ed. H. Rosweyde (Antwerp, 1621), 253. Daret et normam recte vivdendi ac verbum dei in sancta ecclesia catholice predicandi, post canonicam scripturam omnibus christianis iure amplectandam, eciam sanctorum patrum orthodoxorum scripta dicta et opera eorumque exemplaria vera diversis monasteriis et colegiis undercumque recollegit. 663 Busch, 253. Daventrie igitur cum in diebus suis particulare studium plurimorum suppositorum in pleno esset vigore, ubi iuvenes at adolescentes mairores et minores de diversis mundi partibus accumulate confluentes in suis fundamentalibus optime inbuebantur, venerabilis pater magister Gerardus plures huiusmodi clericos scriptores meliores in unum recollectos libros sanctorum patrum in forma meliori salvo precio condigno per eos exscribi fecit et excopiari. 664 TK 7 :50. Multum enim affectavit ex his scriptoribus aliquos facere discipulos Christi.

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with his good colloquies. And he remunerated them with money, often inviting them to come to

his house and to hear the Word of God.”665 Van Zijl argues that even though the chronology is

somewhat opaque at this stage, occurring sometime between 1377 and 1380, Grote had taken

notice of young scholars congregating in Deventer. “He invited students to his home, had them

copy manuscripts he had borrowed, and thus added many items to his library.” 666 Florens

Radewijns was first to put the suggestion to Grote that the weekly duties of the copyists be

brought together with common possession, living-quarters, and treasury.667

The pious and devout father master Florens Radewijns, the vicar of Deventer

who was converted through master Geert, proposed to that same master Geert,

saying, ‘Dear master! What harm would there be, that I and those cleric-copyists

of good will place those things with which we are occupied weekly into one and

live together?’668

After considering silently, Grote gave his approval and, Busch relates, Radewijns and the copyists

began their common life together. Busch describes this developed as in imitation of the Early

Church, a genesis that met the approval of the clerics and copyists entering this common life.

The copy-house became a close approximation of the ecclesia primitiva:

Now, the aforementioned, clerics considered in this way that the way was a life

of common perfection in the ecclesia primitiva under the guidance of the Holy

Spirit and instituted by the Holy Apostles, when all had one heart and mind in

665TK 7:50. Fecit etiam plures sacrae theologiae libros a scholaribus scribi, quos attraxit colloquiis bonis; ac pretio remuneravit invitans eos ad domum suam venire et verbum Dei saepius audire. 666 Van Zijl, Gerard Groote, 138. 667 Van Zijl, 237–38. Van Zijl points out that it is difficult to glean precise information from these biographical sections of Busch, since he was not present at the time of the founding of the house in Deventer: “Busch certainly liked to dramatize events, and, since he wrote his biographical chapters while in Saxony, he was probably not able to check all the details. His emphasis on the copyists nevertheless rings true. The copying of manuscripts was from the very beginning so characteristic of the Brothers of the Common Life that some connection can hardly be denied.” 668 Busch, Chronicon Canonicorum Regularium Ordinis S. Augustini Capituli Windeshemensis, 254. Pius tandem et devotus pater dominus Florencius Radewin Daventriensis vicarius per magistrum Geradrum conversus vice quadam eidem Magistro Gerardo proposuit dicens: „Predilecte magister! Quid noceret, quod ego et clerici isti scriptores bone iam voluntatis ea, que septimanatim habemus expendere, in unum reponentes in communi pariter viveremus?”

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God who concurred in the same Christian faith, nor did anyone say that

anything was his own, but they had all things in common.669

The copy-house is thus described as an imitation of the life of the early Church and a means of

drawing more and more young men into this way of life. The creation of the brother-house in

Deventer tapped into this market but reformed book-copying as a form of spiritual labor and

enmeshed copyists within the shared community of the Devotio Moderna. The effect of Grote and

Radewijns’ enterprise was to create a community, access to which was simply a willingness to

copy and participate in the spiritual formation of their shared way of life. In Thomas à Kempis,

Busch, and Dier Muden’s accounts, the book-copying venture that occasioned the formation of

the brother-house in Deventer under Florens Radewijns was tightly bound to the formation of

the individual in the imitation of Christ. According to their own consciousness, the Brethren of

the Common Life thought that their renewal and recapitulation of the vita apostolica involved

book-copying and the circulation of valuable texts. According to their own self-description, the

house at Deventer began with the intention of training and working copyists, and on the

understanding that this way of life amounted to a recapitulation of the vita apostolica.

Pro Pretio

While book-production pro pretio did contribute to the upkeep of the brother- and sister-houses

of the New Devout, its value was of secondary importance. Although R.R. Post claims that,

given the frequent mention of payment and the designation of the copying as “work” (facere), this

assertion is undercut by how the practice figures in accounts of the Devotio Moderna’s founding.670

Although the New Devout took the economic aspect of book-production into account, this

function was subordinate to book-production as an expression of their devotion. In his survey of

the Buchkultur of the Devotio Moderna, Thomas Kock distinguishes between three different modes

of book-production: writing for one’s personal need, writing for one’s community (pro domo) and

669 Busch, 254. Considerantes autem prefati clerici huiusmodi commune vitam viam esse perfectionis in ecclesia primitiva sub sancti spiritus gubernacione ab apostolis sanctis insitutam, quando cunctis in eandem fidem christianam concurrentibus erat cor unum et anima una in deo nec quisquam aliquid suum esse dicebat, sed erant illis omnia communia. 670 Post, The Modern Devotion: Confrontation with Reformation and Humanism, 106.

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writing for a fee (pro pretio). 671 Such an approach helpfully traces the different purposes or

contexts to which book-copying could be directed. However, such neat lines of demarcation are

not present in the correspondence of the brothers. Although Kock emphasizes the book in terms

of its economic function, he concedes that whatever role this played it was secondary to the role

of book-production as a labor of love. “The writing, however, did not just have an economic

aspect,” writes Thomas Kock, “writing down at the same time signified reading, the meditative

internalization of what had been written.”672 Furthermore, within the writings produced for

oneself were rapiaria, books for particular divine offices, prayer books and breviaries, and writings

for one’s own personal library.673 As outlined above, even the genesis of the brother-house in

Deventer blurred economic and pastoral concerns. Rather, leaders within the Devotio Moderna

regularly exhorted brothers to copy books as a form of humbling labor. Just as reading in general

emptied the heart of vain desires and then filled it with the content being read, so too did the

manual labor of book-copying offer the brother humbling physical labor while providing the

opportunity to shape his mind with slow, meditative reading as he copied.

The copy-house at Deventer met the physical needs of the brothers by producing the ware of

texts. In this respect, their common life would ideally pay for itself; board and regular costs of

living were offset by producing salable texts. Yet this work did not lose its primary function of

instilling humility and caritas. The economic function of book-copying emerges in our sources as

inessential to the primary goal of winning souls. The copy-houses set up by Grote and Radewijns

did not traffic in elaborately crafted or illuminated manuscripts. Thomas à Kempis relates in

detail how Grote shunned the acquisition of splendid looking books. “He was thus studious in

reading but not desirous of having beautiful books,” wrote Thomas, adding Grote had the habit

of “avoiding everything in his personal usage that sparkled or which was not redolent with

671 Kock, Die Buchkultur der Devotio moderna, 18. “1. das Schreiben für den persönlichen Gebrauch, 2. das Schreiben für die eigene Gemeinschaft, 2. das Schreiben gegen Entgelt.” 672 Kock, Die Buchkultur der Devotio Moderna, 17. “Das Schreiben hatte aber nicht nur einen wirtschaftlichen Aspekt. Das Abschreiben bedeutete zugleich Lektüre, die meditative Verinnerlichung des Geschriebenen. Das Kopieren was darüber hinaus Arbeit, harte Körperliche Arbeit wie im Manchem Schreiberkolophonen beklagt wird; es war Teil des asketischen Lebens.” 673 Kock, 18. “1. Rapiarien; 2. Handbücher für bestimmte Ämter; 3. Gebetbücher, Breviere; 4. die persönliche Handbibliothek.”

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simplicity.”674 What was important was not the book as commodity, but the capacity for book-

production to cultivate the hearts and minds of those for whom the practice was a part of their

shared way of life.

We can demonstrate the inessential economic function of pro pretio book-copying by referring to

Grote’s letters. From the outset, Grote was aware of the economic value of book-copying and

was not averse to the revenue it could bring in. While Grote discussed the economic aspects of

book-production the process was enveloped in the larger purpose of reforming the heart and

mind to Christ. Grote requested that the books that he had sent to Cele’s municipal school at

Zwolle be copied for him as soon as possible. “Send back the book before the aforementioned

Pentecost,” Grote asked of Cele, “I will have here good copyists.”675 Indeed, not just copyists,

Grote explains that he wishes for certain books to be returned, at least partly, because “I have a

more favorable and expedient market in Deventer.”676 Grote indicates that the book-market in

Deventer was in higher demand than in Zwolle, and for that reason it makes sense to send the

books to Deventer. Selling these written works partly funded Grote’s house in Deventer. Grote

accordingly requests from Cele, “if possible, send that remaining money from the last two times

and others, for I am poor.”677 In return Grote proposed to send a book on the seven penitential

Psalms, but only on the condition that Cele, given the aforementioned favorable market in

Deventer, “transcribe it quickly, because it shall earn its keep.”678 This incident accords with

Busch’s description of Deventer as a market town. Located on the Ijssel river, the city of

Deventer was well situated for economic activity. Accordingly, Busch notes that “the city of

Deventer was not of small but an abundant substance.”679 It was thus normal for the New

Devout there to take part in the selling of books for profit. However, book-copying pro pretio was

674 TK 7:65-66. Erat igitur studiosus in scripturis legendis sed non curiosus in pulchris libris habendis. Siquidem et breviarium non multum valens habuit, ex quo horas suas legebat: vitans pro usu suo omne quod niteret aut simplicitatem non redoleret. 675 GME, Ep. 33. Circa octavas Pentecostes praedictas remittatis librum. Habebo hic bene scriptores. 676 GME, Ep. 33. Eciam habeo conceniencius forum et expedicius in Daventria. 677 Groote, 141, Ep. 33. Pecunias eciam, si placet, residuas, quas habetis de illis duobus antiquis, et alias mittatis, quia indigeo pecuniis. 678 GME, Ep. 33. Sed cito transcribatis [sc. De septem Psalmis], quia lucratur panem suum. 679 Busch, Chronicon Canonicorum Regularium Ordinis S. Augustini Capituli Windeshemensis, 253. Erat enim civis Daventriensis substancie non mediocris sed pinguioris.

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tempered and limited by spiritual concerns. In the same letter, Grote described the spiritual value

of book-copying and the potential profit thereof, suggesting that he did not see profit as a

hindrance to their spiritual mission per se.

Although books were sold for profit, book-production pro pretio was subordinate to the spiritual

mission of the Devotio Moderna and the primacy of book-copying as a means to humble the heart

and fill the mind with what was salutary and edifying. Grote discussed in another letter to John

Cele how he might be able to sell a certain Summa for 28 Florens. He says to Cele, however, that

he is not interested in selling to the highest bidder,

for I will give it to no one, unless to the one who desires and is able to make

something useful with it for the Church, and unless some benefit for the church

might obtain for me, I would prefer to keep it and that it disappear. I ask, my

dear brother, that you not receive it unless it is of benefit to you and the

Church.680

Grote showed a concern that copied books, both as gifts to be circulated between houses and

works pro pretio, be subordinate to the liturgical cycle of the year. In another instance, Grote

wrote to John Cele in 1382 to discuss the books that were being written for him at Cele’s

municipal school in Zwolle. While Grote does not question the economic aspect of book-

production, he nonetheless advises Cele that such production should be subservient to their life

of devotion. Grote wrote to thank Cele for the latest book he had received and to send

instructions for how the scriptorium at Zwolle was to be run in the lead up to Pentecost (the letter

was sent in May; in 1382 Pentecost was June 1). “I have received the Book of Wisdom,” wrote

Grote, “if any book has been begun, let it be finished if it is able to be finished between now and

Pentecost. Let nothing new be begun.”681 The house in Zwolle should stop book-copying in

order that the brothers might properly observe the liturgical season without distraction, although

680 GME, Ep. 13. nemini enim dabo, nisi optanti et qui potest cum ea commodum Ecclesia facere, et nisi faceret michi utilitas Ecclesie, mallem eam semper retinere et concedere. Rogo, dilecte mi, et eam non accipias, nisi tibi conveniat et Ecclesie. 681 GME, Ep. 33. Teneo librum Sapienti et Providi… Si quis liber est inceptus, finiatur, si infra hinc et octavas finiri poterit. Nullus de novo incipiatur.

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no indication is given that earning money during this time would be morally suspect. In both

reading and book-copying, Grote’s vision accords with what I have designated the Augustinian

Imaginary that animated the Devotio Moderna in response to scholastic, university culture. In this

imaginary the work of reading was supposed to occur according to the rhythms and seasons with

which God created and sustained the cosmos. We can see this connection between work,

devotion, and liturgical rhythm. Not only was reading primarily aimed at the heart rather than

expanding the existing corpus of knowledge per se, but book-copying aimed for that same

purpose of enabling the heart and mind to ascend to a knowledge of God in humility and love.

The Printing Press

The arrival of the printing press altered the place of book-copying in the rhythms of life of the

New Devout, but the technology could not replicate the slow, meditative reading that book-

copying offered the brothers. Given the love of books espoused by the Devotio Moderna during its

genesis, one may expect the brothers to have used the new technology to stuff libraries and

spread texts. However, we find no causal connection between enthusiasm for book-copying and

the adoption of the printing press in our source material. Overall, houses of the New Devout did

not replace copying with printing, preferring to continue in their practices of hand-copying for

the ascetic and formative aspects of the process, which impressed the content of the text deeply

upon the heart of the copier, that could not be achieved with print-production.

The printing press was neither rejected out of hand nor enthusiastically adopted by the Devotio

Moderna. As Elizabeth Eisenstein points out, there is no a priori reason to assume that the press

came onto the scene of fifteenth-century Europe as a nefarious specter, or that the new

technology was immediately heralded as a great success and adopted wherever possible. 682

Eisenstein argues that there is little evidence of monastic “absolute rejection” and that in most

cases monastic scriptoria held a position of cautious interest in the new technology. 683

682 Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, Divine Art, Infernal Machine: The Reception of Printing in the West from First Impressions to the Sense of an Ending, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 6. 683 Eisenstein, 7.

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Notwithstanding initial interest, however, clear differences between the two technologies became

apparent, and opinion on the press did not necessarily remain positive.

Although older words – codex, volumen, liber – were still used to describe the new sort of text

produced, it did not take long for contemporaries to notice how these new texts changed the way

that communication could occur and information flow. The brothers of the Devotio Moderna

observed this change in how printing affected the consumption of texts from the perspective of

the copier. Because of the nature of the technology, the printing press lacked the ascetic and

formative value that copying offered. That is, one did not necessarily read the text the same way,

as closely or thoughtfully, when printing compared to copying.

Adoption of the Printing Press

The printing press meant that more texts were available to the communities of the New Devout,

particularly in the areas of liturgy and education. Some, but not all, houses associated with the

Devotio Moderna acquired presses. At least six presses can be identified with the Devotio Moderna,

with several others associated with the movement – namely, Marienthal, Brussels, Rostock,

Gouda, ‘s Hertogenbosch, and Schoonhoven (run by the Augustinian canons associated with the

Devotio Moderna). The works produced in the latter half of the fifteenth century included both

Latin and vernacular texts, and encompassed liturgy, theological and philosophical works,

humanist literature, sermons, and indulgences. However, the oldest and most famous houses in

Deventer and Zwolle never acquired presses, nor did the brothers generally print texts composed

by members of their own communities.684 The press was useful, nonetheless, for producing

documents that had purposes other than personal formation, such as copies of liturgies, official

documents or textbooks. As concerned devotional texts, these tended to remain the preserve of

hand-copying, where the brother could meditate on, excerpt, and chew over the text.

The founding of presses in monastic contexts was often ad hoc – with plans for

building/acquiring a press sometimes never coming to fruition. This ad hoc nature of printing

press adoption is present also in the development of the Devotio Moderna in the late fifteenth

684 Post, The Modern Devotion: Confrontation with Reformation and Humanism, 553.

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century. Mary Kay Duggan has shown how the Brethren house at Marienthal and its press were

coopted into various printing jobs in the wake of the Council of Basel (1431–1449), which

oversaw the revision and standardization of the liturgy.685 Yet even when presses were acquired,

this was no guarantee that it would be integrated seamlessly into the daily rhythms of life of the

community, although this was possible.686 It took time for brothers to settle on processes, work-

flows, and arrangements that could integrate text-production into the array of habits and patterns

that constituted their communal life. For this reason, Eisermann conjects that many monastic

communities could not totally integrate the new technology, which remained ‘ephemeral’ to their

raison d'être, and in some cases simply folded.687

The book-production of the brother and sisters’ houses brought them, willingly or not, into

contact with a wide variety of literature. The sister-houses of St Ursula at Deventer as well as the

Brandeshuis produced manuscripts of St. Augustine and St. Jerome’s Vitae in both Latin and

Dutch.688 In Thomas Kock’s survey of libraries of the Devotio Moderna (that is, their cumulative

collections of manuscripts and printed books) over 145 authors can be identified.689 Moreover, a

copy of the Contra perfidiam Mahometi and Dialogus disputationis de fide inter Saracenum et Christianum

by Denys the Carthusian was copied by Gerardus de Busco, identified as the librarian of the

Master Florens-house at Deventer.690 This manuscript dates to 1499. Although the presses may

not have been used to their full capacity, to conclude that therefore the Devotio Moderna lacked

any outward interested in the texts their acquired is to selectively ignore the evidence of copied

manuscripts that continued parallel to the printed textual production. Although the sisters and

brothers used reading as a means of personal formation that involved a withdrawal from the

world, there can be no doubt that the world came to them as part of their practice of book-

685 Mary Kay Duggan, ‘Bringing Reformed Liturgy to Print at the New Monastery at Marienthal’, Church History and Religious Culture 88, no. 3 (1 January 2008): 415–36. 686 Falk Eisermann, ‘A Golden Age? Monastic Printing Houses in the Fifteenth Century’, in Print Culture and Peripheries in Early Modern Europe: A Contribution to the History of Printing and the Book Trade in Small European and Spanish Cities, ed. Benito Rial Costas (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 52–54. 687 Eisermann, 54. “Printing was not easily compatible with everyday life in reformed convents of any affiliation, and thus was bound to remain an ephemeral phenomenon in those contexts.” 688 SAB, Deventer, 101 F 15. 689 Kock, Die Buchkultur der Devotio Moderna, 241–42. 690 SAB, Deventer, 111 E 12.

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acquisition, book-copying, and, inevitably in that process, book-reading. We have no indication

that contact with secular literature was curtailed or prohibited, and there is no suggestion that

these texts were excluded from the reading and rapiaria-keeping of the New Devout. As far as the

introduction of printing is concerned, even a cursory survey of library holdings reveals a far

broader collection of works and outlook than an inward looking, withdrawn community.

Function of the Printing Press

Although certainly present from the latter half of the fifteenth century onwards, printing does

not figure prominently in the records that the Devotio Moderna kept of their own communities.

Nonetheless, we can observe several functions that printing performed. Printing enabled the

production of liturgical texts, textbooks, and ecclesiastical documents. However, it is problematic

to assess the function of printing in the milieu of the Devotio Moderna without full data of not just

the printing in the movement, but also of presses in the Low Countries in order to accurately

assess the state of supply and demand. It would make little sense to print humanistic or

theological works, for example, if there were many of these works cheaply available, especially

since, as the fifteenth century waned, the glut of printed works had begun to drive down book

prices.691 Furthermore, the genre or usage of each text must also be factored in if we are to assess

accurately the emphasis the New Devout placed on their printing. Where catechetical or

devotional works suggest private consumption, and thus the number of copies correlating

roughly to the number of readers, educational, humanistic and liturgical texts lent themselves to a

far wider readership if we can assume that these genres of text were read aloud in group contexts.

With the aid of existing surveys of the print production in the Devotio Moderna, we can observe

that the movement focused their printing activity on textbooks, liturgies, and ecclesiastical

administrative documents. Goudriaan has surveyed the six presses that can be definitively

identified with the Devotio Moderna. His quantitative analysis considered the number of texts

produced in both Latin and various vernacular languages, as well as the different genres of those

texts. Latin grammars (‘Donatuses’) were a significant portion of many of the presses of the

691 Eisermann, ‘A Golden Age? Monastic Printing Houses in the Fifteenth Century’, 41.

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Devotio Moderna, accounting for 8% of the 200 titles surveyed by Goudriaan. Furthermore, job-

printing was a key aspect of this new technology, namely indulgence printing (11.5% of texts

surveyed). Goudriaan notes that the number of pages and number of editions of each title

printed are not included in his database, making it difficult to assess the popularity or use of each

text and not allowing smaller, cheaper texts to be differentiated from larger, more expensive

ones.692 According to Goudriaan, the common link between the presses of the Devotio Moderna

was the production of standardized liturgical texts.693 Goudriaan, following R.R. Post, expresses

doubt the possibility that the printing production of texts were intended primarily for educational

purposes.

They were collectors rather than distributors of books. Writing pro pretio

supplied the Brethren with some of their income but was not their financial

mainstay. The attention they paid to the pupils of the Latin Schools was pastoral

rather than educational.694

Goudriaan argues that the Devotio Moderna was essentially inward looking with the press, and

produced texts mainly for ‘in house’ usage in religious and semi-religious communities, their

practices “looking inwardly towards the ecclesiastical and monastic world rather than being a tool

for bridging the distance towards the ‘others,’ especially if by the others lay people are meant.”695

Sabine Pettke, along the lines of Goudriaan, has argued that the printing press of the St

Michaelisbrüder was in large part to provide standardized academic texts. “In the years 1519–

1520 diverse writings appeared for school-use, especially grammatical exercises.”696 Pettke points

out – and Koen Goudriaan agrees – that the printed texts of the brothers in Rostock were often

destined for Danish readers given their geographical proximity and lack of alternative presses in

692 Goudriaan, ‘The Devotio Moderna and the Printing Press (ca. 1475-1540)’, 592. 693 Goudriaan, 588. “The experience of the disciples of the Devotio Moderna in the field of books for liturgical use is the most convincing argument traditionally adduced to explain their involvement with the printing press.” 694 Goudriaan, 605. 695 Goudriaan, 605. 696 Sabine Pettke, “Aus Dem Druckschaffen Der Rostocker Bruder Vom Gemeinsamen Leben,” Mecklenburgische Jahrbücher 13: 178. In den Jahren 1519–1520 erschienen verschiedene Schriften [der Druckerei der Michaelisbrüder] für den Schulgebrauch, besonders zum Üben der lateinischen Sprache.

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the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century.697 Goudriaan and Pettke here perpetuate the belief

that the New Devout entailed a withdrawal from the world. I have shown above that the scriptoria

of the Devotio Moderna drew the world, that is, secular scribes, into their community as a form of

evangelism and discipleship.

The New Devout most likely used printing presses to furnish their communities with texts they

deemed valuable, but in respect to which the process of copying offered little formative value.

Copying a work of Augustine or Bernard had obvious value for the formation of the copier, but

it is hard to imagine much formative value in copying indulgences or Latin grammars. In this

regard their approach to the text is well in line with their earlier attitude towards hand-copying,

even if the practice itself entailed a departure from ascetic practices of reading and copying. This

approach to the printing press meshes with Falk Eisermann’s description of monastic printing.

According to Eisermann, monastic printing practices worked on the basis of a renewal of their

sense of monastic identify through the printing of certain texts that were constitutive of their

community – an Erneuerung durch Erinnerung.698 In other words, their choice of texts to print was

based on a desire or sense of duty to promote texts that they understood to undergird who they

were, and in so doing to lay the foundations for the renewal of their way of life. In this

regard, the catchcry ad fontes referred less to a clearing away of historical detritus and more to the

solidification of received ways of life by harking back to the textual communities that constituted

the present communities – be they monastic, intellectual, or biblical. The idea behind this impulse

was that for a monastic community to go forward and confront present challenges it must first

go back and appropriate the language, texts, and concepts that first gave them vitality. James

Clark makes a similar point when he argues that many monastic communities used presses to

continue with their own agenda of reading, education, and pastoral care. “Many monasteries also

recognized,” Clark suggests, “that printing provided the solution to the perennial problem of

supplying their students with the necessary textbooks when away from the home community at

697 Pettke, 178. 698 Eisermann, ‘A Golden Age? Monastic Printing Houses in the Fifteenth Century’, 45–46.

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university.”699 Although writing about Benedictines in England who were required to send a

portion of their community to university, the point still stands for the quasi-monastic community

of the Devotio Moderna that religious communities were not averse to using presses to provide

texts necessary for education or formation while still retaining scribal practices for other

purposes, namely formation and rumination. This impetus towards ressourcement via copying and

printing sits well with the very name and concept of the Devotio Moderna.

Retainment of Hand-copying

Scribal copying and printing coexisted in communities of the Devotio Moderna between 1450 and

1550. However, there is no indication that printing replaced hand-copying in daily rhythms of the

life of the New Devout. In fact, given the way that book-copying dovetailed with pastoral care

and contact with outsiders, the printing-press was a completely different form of labor. In light

of the fact that many of the larger houses of the New Devout (Deventer, Zwolle, Utrecht) never

owned a press, it is difficult to make the case that the printing press performed any essential

function. Printing precluded reading with the pen, and the cumbersome workshop atmosphere

scarcely resembled the reflective space hand-copying afforded.

Krüger has noted how the technology of printing repositioned the copier/printer to the text –

significantly reducing the opportunity for slow, ascetic labor and absorption of texts.

“Gutenberg’s technology gave rise to a massive change in the area of literality. Hitherto texts

were spread above all as manuscripts, which predominantly were produced in monastic

workhouses in painstaking labor at great cost.”700 However, while Krüger argues that this change

democratized humanist, religious and social reform movements, the speed and efficiency of

production removed much of what made the practice of producing texts valuable to the New

Devout.701 The common labor in a workshop – equipped with trolleys, draws of letters, inks and

presses – undermined the silent, personal aspect of writing as devotion, while the collaboration

699 James G. Clark, ‘Print and Pre-Reformation Religion: The Benedictines and the Press, c. 1470–c.1550’, in The Uses of Script and Print, 1300-1700, ed. Julia C. Crick and Alexandra Walsham (Cambridge, U.K.; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 77. 700 Nilüfer Krüger, 525 Jahre Buchdruck in Rostock: die Druckerei der Brüder vom Gemeinsamen Leben (Universitätsbibliothek Rostock, 2001), 10. 701 Krüger, 9.

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and efficiency of printing a text made it difficult to achieve the same sort of encounter with the

text that might lead to personal formation. Their presses stocked their own libraries (and their

brother– and sister-houses), produced grammars for schoolboys, standardized the liturgy and

produced indulgences. The Devotio Moderna thus falls under Eisenstein’s description of the many

publishers who were “both businessmen and literary dispensers of glory. They served men of

letters not only by providing traditional forms of patronage but also by acting as press agents and

as cultural impresarios of a new kind.”702

Although altering the fiscal mix of the houses to an extent, the press could never replace the

hand as an opus Dei. As Radewijns had advised his disciples, “From whatever haste either in

writing or in other works, devotion is destroyed. Therefore, a person should take great care, that

he do all things with devotion and not habit.”703 In light of the brothers’ exhortations to copy

slowly and reflectively, it is unsurprising that the only texts to be copied on a large scale were

texts that bore little fruit by way of meditation or reflection in the hand-copying process.

The chronicler Busch reveals the attitude of the New Devout towards textual production.

Writing about a certain brother in the library of the Augustinian canons at Windesheim, Busch

reveals the value associated with the act of copying to the ethos of the Devotio Moderna. In this

episode, the industriousness with which this brother copied stands out as praiseworthy and his

discipline in copying and emending books marks him out as a man of great learning. According

to Busch, “he was the lead corrector of all our books of the choir and library, and the principal

compiler of constitutions and the rule.”704 His prowess in copying, emending, and curating the

books for the Windesheim canons was such that

That devout subprior was of such authority and grace before God and men,

especially before the brothers and monastery of our general Chapter, that his

702 Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, 23. 703 Aliqua Verba Notabilia, 434. Ex quacumque festinancia sive in scribendo, sive in alijs operibus, perditur devocio. Igitur deberet homo valde cavere, ut omnia faceret cum devocione et non cum consuetudine. 704 Chronicon Windeshemense, 69. Omnium enim librorum nostrorum liberarie et choralium principalis fuit correptor ordinariique et constitucionum precipuus compilator.

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words and deeds to this very day are preserved everywhere in authority as

though they were a law.705

Busch sees this brother’s copying work positively for two reasons. Firstly, it provided the house

with corrected books, “for our General Chapter at that time did not have so many corrected,

punctuated, and musically scored books.”706 Secondly, it provided an exemplar of how brothers

were expected to conduct themselves. “He was never idle in his cell, but he spent all his time in

correcting books.”707 He did this because “he was a scholar and gifted in music.”708 He was

“strong in mind, having an excellent memory of written persons and historical events as

remembering easily many words and dates.” 709 Busch represents this particular prior as an

example to follow, who was able to unite devotion with learning. “For he was an exemplar in his

life and a form for our modern religion, the splendor and glory of our monastery in Windesheim

and a pillar of truth of our whole General Chapter.” 710 Practices of reading, copying, and

personal, ascetic labor coincide in this account of Busch and for him typify the spirit of the

Devotio Moderna – a synthesis of textual production, absorption of content, induction into the

stories of the movement’s forebears, and form of ascetic labor that could not be recreated in the

process of print.

Printing did not give the copier the opportunity to read what he copied, nor did it offer a context

for reflection, meditation, or rumination. Though it is true that the printing process could require

reading, the checking of a text for typographical errors for example, this reading was far removed

qualitatively from slow, meditative reading. The New Devout saw the utility of the press for

producing some texts on a larger scale, they saw perfectly well that they could not achieve the

705 Chronicon Windeshemense, 69. Tante auctoritate et gracie fuit iste supprior devotus apud deum et homines presertim apud patres et monasteria capituli nostri generalis, ut verba eius et opera ex tunc usque hodie in auctoritate quasi pro lege ubique serventur. 706 Chronicon Windeshemense, 69. Iam nos nostrumque generale capitulum tot bene correctos punctuatos et accentuates libros non haberet. 707 Chronicon Windeshemense, 69. Nunquam in cella fuit ociosus, sed omne tempus sibi vacans a divinis libris corrigendis. 708 Chronicon Windeshemense, 69. Cum esset scolaris et musicus artificialis. 709 Chronicon Windeshemense, 70. Fortis erat in capite optimam habens memoriam scripturarum personarum et rerum gestarum eciam verborum et temporum multorum facillime reminiscens. 710 Chronicon Windeshemense, 69. Ipse enim in vita sua exemplar fuit et forma moderne nostre religionis, decus et gloria monasterii nostri in Windesem et veritatis columna tocius capituli nostri generalis.

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same spiritual and formative benefit from printing as hand-copying. This point often remained

unobserved to scholars assessing the New Devout’s relationship to the printing press.

The fact that the print-shop did not replace the monastic-style scriptorium shows that the two

practices possessed different functions within the Devotio Moderna. Comments like that of R.R.

Post, that in adopting the press the brothers “were, in this, merely continuing their original work

in a new form,” is inaccurate and totally miss the point in this regard.711 Because both practices

coexisted, we can dismiss the suggestion that the press merely made it possible to do the same

things more efficiently, as David d’Avray also proposes, arguing that the printing-press merely

made the production of texts faster and cheaper, but did not significantly alter the kinds of

textual production taking place.712 On the contrary, the New Devout did use presses to enlarge

some of their pre-existing activity (e.g. grammars, theological treatises, Church Fathers), but also

sensed the qualitative difference in the process itself and the way that this different process of

production impacted the way they read texts.

While the New Devout printed some texts, others still remained the preserve of the copyist,

where they could be read, synthesized, and aid the development the copier. More than any other

work, liturgical texts were intended to be encountered in a specific context, that is, as part of their

liturgical function. To be formed by these texts of to encounter them was never a matter of

personal synthesis or private reading. It makes sense that these texts above all would be products

of the press – their formative value could by nature never be found via any sort of reading with

the pen.

Given the importance of communities in authorizing and constituting the written text, the

collections of dicta copied time and again by the New Devout take on a different light. The vitae

made by the brothers and the dicta of their founding fathers were in this regard not particularly

conducive to being reproduced by the press. Their value was not simply in the information they

711 Post, The Modern Devotion: Confrontation with Reformation and Humanism, 551. 712 David d’Avray, ‘Printing, Mass Communication, and Religious Reformation: The Middle Ages and After’, in The Uses of Script and Print, 1300-1700, ed. Julia C. Crick and Alexandra Walsham (Cambridge, U.K.; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 52.

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recounted, but for how they witnessed to a past community contiguous to the one in the present

– a mode of self-recognition felt not just in relation to earlier phases of their community but also

to the Early Church and the oeuvre of Augustine. This goes a long way to explaining why the

New Devout seldom, if ever, printed editions of texts composed ‘in house’ – a choice that

remained for R.R. Post a “remarkable fact” in light of his conviction that the labors of the

brothers in printing “may be considered as a continuation of their copying work.”713 These sorts

of texts were not important as cold records – and therefore conducive to printing – but were

slowly absorbed as they were copied from one brother or sister to the next. Andrew Butcher has

pointed out that the impact of the press did not simply change how texts were made, but

repositioned the reader, the text, and their community. Not just the information, the copied text

itself was part of the “speech community” – defined by Butcher as “the practices of fellow

speakers engaged discursively and interactively with one another as they use their language

system.”714 Both text and language perform a function of communication within a particular

community, “an interactive system of texts and text users, and maybe even to think of that

significant hybrid, the ‘speech/text community’, presenting the discursive interaction of speech

and text within a single cultural entity.”715

Jacobus de Voecht begins his recount of the establishment of the municipal school in Zwolle

with just this sense, describing the persons who were touched by Geert Grote’s preaching and

who subsequently formed the first school house. Their inclusion provided historical

verisimilitude, but their telling immersed the sisters and brothers as they read into their

community in an almost palpable way. Thus the information copied in the vitae and dicta not only

recorded details of previous sisters and brothers, but also through their copying the brothers

were able to enter and share this community with their forebears. In this respect the copied text

remained a living text in a way that the printed text scarcely could.

713 Post, The Modern Devotion: Confrontation with Reformation and Humanism, 553. 714 Julia C. Crick, Alexandra Walsham, and Andrew Butcher, eds., ‘The Functions of Script in the Speech Community of a Late Medieval Town, c.1300–1550’, in The Uses of Script and Print, 1300-1700 (Cambridge,

U.K. ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 161. 715 Crick, Walsham, and Butcher, 162.

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Printing did not displace hand-copying as a formative practice enmeshed in the weekly rhythms

and habits of the New Devout. The impact of the press and its printed texts positioned the

reader and the text in a new way. It made it possible to understand the information in a text in

whole new light, as information abstracted from cultural milieu (because in the process of

copying/printing the printer was not drawn into the text like a copier was). For the Devotio

Moderna it did made it possible to perform many of their existing functions on a larger scale.

However, the printing press also denied the copier the opportunity for meditative reflection in

the process of textual production. For this reason, the New Devout adopted piecemeal the press,

but retained hand-copying as their principal practice of textual production.

Conclusion

Book-copying formed an integral part of the New Devout’s way of life and was indispensable for

their program of spiritual formation. Unlike printing, copying was simultaneously a form of

reading. While sisters and brothers did copy pro pretio or for circulation, copying was

fundamentally an expression of the Devotio Moderna’s Augustinian Imaginary. Just as the leaders of

the New Devout exhorted reading in general, hand-coping allowed the brother or sister to work

slowly and humbly, affording the opportunity to observe the murmurings of one’s heart and

perspicuously see one’s sin. The printing press could not offer a similarly formative practice. One

could not work as humbly with one’s hand or read as meditatively in the printing process as in

the hand-copying process. Copying by hand, therefore, occupied a central place in the way of life

of the Devotio Moderna that printing did not dislodge, the latter practice remaining an ephemeral

activity in brother- and sister-houses. By practicing the humbling, formative work of hand-

copying, the copier could enter the textual community of both the body of believers throughout

history (via their written works) and their own community, literally by writing the next chapter of

the story of the Devotio Moderna.

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8 PASTORAL CARE AND TEACHING

I have argued thus far that we better understand the Devotio Moderna if we put the movement in

conversation with scholastic, university culture rather than Renaissance humanism. Members of

the New Devout told stories about their founding that reinforced to them that their way of life

was a community in antithesis to the universitas. In rejecting this institution, the New Devout

turned to Augustine and his later interlocuters to resource their modus vivdendi, what I have called

their Augustinian Imaginary. In this Augustinian Imaginary, God was esse, being itself. All enquiry

into the spiritual or natural world required, therefore, a theological frame. Furthermore, God’s

esse was of a piece with his amor. For Augustine, to say that God is love meant the same as to say

that God exists, and vice versa. As this Augustinian Imaginary applied to the Devotio Moderna, we

have seen that the leaders of the movement exhorted their disciples to read slowly and attend

first to the heart. Reading and copying, often occurring at the same time, were two key aspects of

their shared life that were intended to humble the heart by slow, physical labor and to provide a

space for the brother or sister to fill their mind slowly and meditatively with what was salutary or

edifying.

The schools the brothers set up or joined were nestled in urban centers and were popular

amongst the laypeople therein. Where in Italy at this time confraternities were exploring new

options for lay participation and reform, the Devotio Moderna came to exemplify Observant reform

in the Low Countries via their care of schoolboys.716 The initial popularity of the houses set up

by the brothers led to their being invited to set up new municipal schools in nearby towns. R.R.

Post has shown that municipal schools depended in large part on legal rights both to form a new

community and to teach Latin.717 The importance of legal dispensation to teach and house

students in turn led to the differentiation of those who taught and housed the boys, and those

716 Gabriella Zarri, ‘Ecclesiastical Institutions and Religious Life in the Observant Century’, in A Companion to Observant Reform in the Late Middle Ages and Beyond, ed. James Mixson and Bert Roest, (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 44–45. 717 Regnerus Richardus Post, Scholen En Onderwijs in Nederland Gedeurende de Middeleeuwen, (Antwerpen: Spectrum, 1954).

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under whose legal and financial aegis the school operated.718 According to Post, the number of

schools was often curtailed so as to increase the viability of the chosen and sanctioned municipal

school.719 John van Engen has also shown how in the case of the municipal school in Zwolle, the

first educational expansion of the Devotio Moderna, the brothers offered housing to poor

schoolboys for free or at a subsidy in accommodation nestled amongst the central parish church

and the city’s Latin school: “these complexes – the Brothers’ own house and the student hostels

and sometimes an associated women’s house – sat densely packed into the narrow streets and

courtyards of these medieval towns.”720 The sisters and brothers of the Devotio Moderna were

nestled in amongst the panoply of developing and changing options for living and learning in the

fifteenth century.

The New Devout were involved in educating both adults and youths. In the case of adults, the

primary vehicle for instruction was the collation, a gathering where townspeople could come to

the brothers and listen as a topic, most often on virtues and vices or the fear of God, was

explicated. Pieter Boonstra has recently shown that although these collations were aimed

primarily at simple, clear instruction in how to live well they often drew on key authors I have

identified with the New Devout’s Augustinian Imaginary, principally Bernard of Clairvaux and

the Desert Fathers. Importantly, where these authors are cited they are usually quoted in full

rather than merely alluded to, with accompanying explanation about the meaning of the Latin

text in question.721 This education often involved a back-and-forth between the instructors and

the instructed in the course of expounding doctrine and Christian living in the vernacular.722

The focus of this chapter, however, is on the youths in the care of the New Devout. Students of

the New Devout were exposed to contemporary Christian thinkers as well as classical sources.

718 Post, The Modern Devotion: Confrontation with Reformation and Humanism, 556. “One school enjoyed sole rights in teaching Latin, and this privilege was jealously preserved by the municipality, by force of law when necessary. Private schools were sometimes tolerated on condition that the pupils also paid school-fees to the rector of the big school.” 719 Post, 557. 720 Van Engen, Sisters and Brothers of the Common Life: The Devotio Moderna and the World of the Later Middle Ages, 146. 721 Boonstra, ‘Causa Spiritualis Instructionis: The Modern Devout Collatio as a Community of Learning’, 39. 722 Boonstra, 41–42.

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These boys went through their schooling in loosely assigned grades that corresponded to the

study of certain texts or subject matter. We must, of course, account for varying levels of quality

of schools of the New Devout. However, it was not uncommon for boys to be schooled in Latin

grammar and rhetoric, drawing on classical historical writers, Quintilian’s grammar, and the

orations of Cicero. More advanced students were exposed to Greek, Euclid, and Roman Law.

These advanced students could also get a taste of Aristotle’s Organon and engage in theological

study, drawing on texts like Boethius’ Consolatio, and logical disputation.723

The education of boys in municipal towns in the Low Countries was a key activity of the Devotio

Moderna that amounted to an expression of their Augustinian Imaginary. In this regard, we can

make the following observations. Firstly (1), the modern division between pastoral care and

education is anachronistic and defective, for the brothers quite consciously saw any distinction

between reforming the heart and educating the mind as facile. Secondly (2), the belief in the unity

of heart and mind led the brothers to prioritize the moral formation of their students. However,

this was not due to a denigration of intellectual formation. Although this was certainly possible,

the brothers, in keeping with their Augustinian Imaginary, operated on the premise that no true

mental understanding could arise until the student cultivated a heart of humility. Thirdly (3),

because of the necessity of spiritual formation, students often shared their lives with older sisters

and brothers as part of their community, the brothers’ intellectual formation in effect an

induction of students into their larger way of life. Fourthly (4), the New Devout overlapped with

other movements of Observant reform, but their semi-religious communities have no

counterpart in other contemporary movements. Education was a holistic enterprise that began

with the formation of character through the integration of the student in the patterns of work,

reflection, and prayer that characterize the Devotio Moderna as a whole.

This chapter delineates three main tenets of education in the milieu of the New Devout. I

articulate firstly the essential unity the brothers saw between pastoral care and education.

Secondly, the foundational place humility occupied for the brothers in the process of learning.

723 Henkel, ‘An Historical Study of the Educational Contributions of the Brethren of the Common Life’, 100–101.

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Finally, I set out how the brothers believed that reading as a practice of learning required above

all humility.

Historiography: Pastoral Care vs Education?

A brief recapitulation of the development of historiography on the status of education within the

Devotio Moderna is helpful at this point if we are to transcend the current paradigm of the brothers

either as educators or as pastoral/spiritual carers. The relationship between the Devotio Moderna

and movements of education and scholarship are, as I set out in my review of the literature,

unresolved and polemical. For the most part, scholars have tended to follow the pattern

established by Hyma and Post and have therefore explained the brothers’ practices of education

and pastoral care as of necessity pitted against one another. I argue, however, that this distinction

is facile and unhelpful. While the brothers of course rejected the package of university education,

their schools nonetheless retained certain aspects of erudition and scholarship. As Zarri notes,

They dedicated themselves to teaching and created colleges and schools that

provided instruction to several of the most famous humanists of the fifteenth

and sixteenth century: Rudolph Huisman, known by the nickname Agricola

(1444–1485), Wessel Gansfort (1419–1489), whom Luther considered to be one

of his predecessors, and Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466 or 1469–1536), who

lauded the high standard of education in the Low Countries and ascribed this to

the Brethren of the Common Life.724

However, a great strain in modern historiography has concluded that the Devotio Moderna was

ultimately hostile to new learning and saw education as a means to winning souls with little value

in itself. The polemic of the New Devout, particularly concerning their relationship to

Renaissance humanism, traces back to the opposing positions of Hyma and Post. It is difficult to

escape the paradigm that one must choose between the brothers as educators or the brothers as

pastoral carers. Despite van Engen’s work to unpick the polemic between Post and Hyma, he

724 Zarri, ‘Ecclesiastical Institutions and Religious Life in the Observant Century’, 47.

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likewise confirms this assumed binary between educational options – which at the last was

resolved in favor of pastoral care. “For the Brothers, founding hostels (and eventually schools)

aimed finally at winning souls, turning young clerics away from rampant careerism to a more

spiritual life.”725 It has been the argument of this thesis, however, that to frame things this way is

to assume the very posture that the New Devout rejected.

This legacy, at least in the anglosphere, has been repeated even up to the present by scholars

investigating the New Devout. “Hyma and others saw in them a seedbed for Renaissance or

Reformation intellectual life,” notes John van Engen, “while Post found only pastoral care and

austere discipline. Over the last generation a moderating consensus has set in (led by Weiler), but

as yet there has been no focused study of this phenomenon.”726 The main tension, following this

synopsis, for the New Devout was between the subject-matter taught to the students under their

care, pitted against the likely career at university that this sort of education could lead to. The

brothers were wont to see these budding brothers as “teenagers about to lose themselves in a

world of vain ambition and careerism.”727 A.G. Weiler has argued that the critical study of texts

and rigorous levels of erudition was inessential to the aims of the Devotio Moderna. Although the

brothers “were concerned with the emendation and correction of texts” this work “is not the

central operational core of the Devotio Moderna, as it would become for the northern

Humanists.” 728 Weiler’s argument is not that grammar, rhetoric, and logic were not taught

rigorously in communities of the New Devout – they certainly were, as he argues was the case for

the St. Maartenschool in Louvain, which under the oversight of the Windesheim canons “the

‘rudimenta scholastica’, the first principles of grammar, rhetoric and logic were taught, with

authorization of the Faculty of Arts of the University.”729 Weiler’s claim is that despite these

nascent elements, typified later in the Christian Renaissance, and despite the humanist figures

who were to varying degrees begotten by the Devotio Moderna, “we do not need to say… that the

725 Van Engen, Sisters and Brothers of the Common Life: The Devotio Moderna and the World of the Later Middle Ages, 151. 726 Van Engen, 145. 727 Van Engen, 144. 728 Weiler, ‘Recent Historiography on the Modern Devotion: Some Debated Questions’, 165–66. 729 Weiler, 166.

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program of the St. Maartenschool at Louvain was composed according to the principles of the

Modern Devotion.”730 Weiler is sympathetic to the moderate position of Heiko Oberman, who

argued that though the “pedagogical interest” of the New Devout was,

concentrated on an anti-intellectual promotion of piety and not on education

towards an academic ideal of eloquence[, t]hey showed themselves with their

monastic humanism the coalition partners, not however the promoters of the

new forces in education.731

What we should immediately notice is that not even Weiler’s survey of the question of pedagogy

escapes the polemic started by Hyma and Post. Heiko Oberman’s position is “somewhere in the

two extremes” of the brethren as educators and proto-humanists or as anti-intellectual

devotionalists. 732 This either-or or somewhere-in-the-middle choice shows the apparent

inevitably to contemporary scholars of choosing between the brothers either as true educators or

pastoral carers bent on winning souls.

This brief survey demonstrates the dominance of the Post/Hyma polemic over scholarship on

the educational practices of the New Devout, even up to the present. The choice is still framed in

terms of pastoral care or education, with the more or less explicit implication that we can plot

scholars on a spectrum between Post and Hyma respectively. I argue, however, that this legacy

has inadvertently adopted the attitude that the New Devout identified with the university and

that they rejected in favor of an educational enterprise that did not pit intellectual and spiritual

formation against each other but saw them as an indissoluble unity.

Alternatives

The New Devout inhabited an Augustinian Imaginary in which the universe was fundamentally

expressive of God’s being. Part of the difficulty in deconstructing modern accounts pitting

education and piety against each other is that this Augustinian Imaginary has not prevailed in any

730 Weiler, 166. 731 Weiler, 164. 732 Weiler, 164.

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universally accepted form. Charles Taylor has argued that this shift has to do in essence with the

movement from pre-modern to modern. In an Augustinian Imaginary, apprehension of the

world was cast in terms of being and intention, categories that naturally lent themselves to

theological analysis and attainment in a communal setting. “In other words,” summarizes Taylor,

“what we would consider today as the perfections of description or representation, or an order of

perspicuous presentation, were considered perfections of being.”733 Looking back to the New

Devout from a cosmos that seems to us unproblematically drained of its expressivity and

inherent meaning, it seems plausible to ask whether the brothers’ pastoral care or educational

rigor was at the last most important. However, this approach lacks purchase on a movement

whose members saw themselves as members of an expressive cosmic order and so were required

to reckon with their character as of a piece with their mental acumen. To adopt a posture of

neutrality or objectivity to this order was to misunderstand fundamentally the wisdom cohering

to creation – that one’s senses were dulled to the sparkle and hum of the wisdom of God that

was hidden to the proud and revealed to the humble.

In this Augustinian Imaginary, the intellect was enabled or corrupted by the will. Only by

reforming the will could one begin to understand. As Alasdair Macintyre has noted, Augustine’s

understanding of the corruption of the will dominated pedagogical practices.

The will which directs them [the intellect and desires] is initially perverse and

needs a kind of redirection which will enable it to trust obediently in a teacher

who will guide the mind towards the discovery both of its own resources and

of what lies outside the mind, both in nature and in God… hence the

acquisition of that virtue which the will requires to be so guided, humility, is the

necessary first step in education or in self-education.734

Such an insight is derived from the Desert Fathers, a wellspring of the New Devout’s thought.

Steven Driver has argued that this same sort of self-discovery was key to the thought of John

733 Taylor, Sources of the Self, 160. 734 MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry, 84.

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Cassian. The first ten conferences describe the beginning of a journey in which Cassian and his

companions do not fully understand either the path or the goal of monastic life. It is only by

submitting themselves in humility to their community and ascetic reading that they begin to

understand both their goal of monastic life and the hindrances that previously held them back.735

The Devotio Moderna inhabited an Augustinian Imaginary in which certain moral virtues were

required to be made ready for learning. Their communities therefore consistently blurred any

distinction between instruction and formation in their communities. Alasdair Macintyre has

summarized this sort of relationship between learning and communal formation in what I have

named the New Devout’s Augustinian Imaginary:

The intending reader has to have inculcated into him or herself certain attitudes

and dispositions, certain virtues, before he or she can know why these are to be

accounted virtues. So a prerational reordering of the self has to occur before the

reader can have an adequate standard by which to judge what is a good reason

and what is not. And this reordering required obedient trust, not only in the

authority of this particular teacher, but in that of the whole tradition of

interpretative commentary into which that teacher had earlier him or herself to

be initiated through his or her reordering.736

Moreover, such a move – of pitting education against pastoral care as two more or less exclusive

alternatives – runs the risk of attempting to map subsequent historical development onto a

perceived trajectory of what has ostensibly come to pass in the present. This problematic is even

more difficult in respect to an analysis of education and the turn towards philological and

historical realism typically identified with the Low Countries in the late fifteenth century.

Assumptions as simple as the purpose of education and the possibility of separating content and

character are called into question by the fact that the modern university itself is the direct

descendent of the package that the New Devout rejected and sought to expose as chimerical. As

735 Driver, John Cassian and the Reading of Egyptian Monastic Culture, 144–45. 736 MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry, 82–83.

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far as concerns an assessment of the New Devout here, we must be aware that the theoretical

purchase available to the historian involves particular forms of disengaged, linear thought

developing precisely at this time, and which to an extent are the descendants of what the New

Devout rejected. The modern university is of course unthinkably different to its medieval

predecessor. Yet, Trüper, Chakrabarty and Subrahmanyam have noted how the production of

historical knowledge (the discipline of history) faces the quandary of relying on a particular

ontological understanding of itself in order to proceed, and that this self-understanding

problematizes investigations into its own origins, which may or may not coincide with a modern

self-understanding of this discipline. In this respect, “the ontology of history constituted a kind

of reality that was entwined with its being the target of an epistemic pursuit that, confusingly, was

also named ‘history.’”737 In other words, historical analysis, understood to be itself a particular

knowledge, can tend to project its own present self-understanding back onto historical

phenomena also identified with habits of learning and education – and which problematically

also had a hand in its own genesis and even operated out of the same buildings.

To assume that one can separate character, or even religious devotion, from the pursuit of

knowledge, is in other words to beg the question as concerns analysis of the Devotio Moderna, and

to run the risk of assuming the historical trajectory of modern historical enquiry as a fait accompli.

The point for the New Devout was not that pastoral care was more important than a rigorous

education, but that they were one and the same. The contestation of the New Devout with

scholastic, university culture requires an openness to other possible historical trajectories, which

could have opened up new modes of analysis and different admixtures of subject-matter,

communality, and spirituality than what might show up to us.

Pastoral Care and Education: Unity

The New Devout thought that the way to intellectual understanding began with the formation of

the heart. It was, practically speaking, a contradiction in terms for a proud person to attain to a

737 Henning Trüper et al., Historical Teleologies in the Modern World, Europe’s Legacy in the Modern World (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015), 13.

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knowledge of God. As Augustine was at pains to repeat in his writings, the God incarnated in

Christ revealed himself to the humble and hid himself from the proud. To know him or the

creation he contained, filled, and sustained required from the outset a humble heart. Unless this

first stage were attended to, no further progress in forming the mind could occur. Three sources

illustrate how the brothers saw and practiced pastoral care and learning as an essential unity.

Firstly (1), the opening to the Narratio of Jacobus de Voecht, secondly (2), a description of the

educators at the school at Zwolle also recorded by de Voecht, and thirdly (3), a sermon delivered

to the brothers by the Franciscan Johannes Brugman.

A Common Life Between Students and Brothers: the Narratio of Jacobus de Voecht

The Narratio de inchoatione domus clericorum in Zwollis (The Account of the Beginning of the Houses of Clerics

in Zwolle) of Jacobus de Voecht († 1510) recounts the founding of the house of the Devotio

Moderna at Zwolle, including the institution of the education of boys. This house originally began

in 1383 as a small gathering of priests whose building and goods were safeguarded by their status

as a bequest of Geert Grote, who had been appointed the proprietor of the house, to Florens

Radewijns and John de Gronde. 738 This house, which benefitted the support of municipal

burghers converted by Grote, constituted a societas that spurned individual wealth and

possessions, but which was held together by common commitment, in keeping with Grote’s own

preference for personal commitment over vows. The house developed, tucked in the heart of the

city, near the pre-existing Latin school, in a complex of separate dormitories for paying,

subsidized, and non-paying students. The “youths” (iuvenes) who passed through the brothers’

schools, either having finished the curriculum or having decided to leave earlier, could choose to

join the brothers, attend a university, find a clerical job, or join another religious order.739 The

body of brothers at the house at Zwolle over the course of the fifteenth century came to be made

up almost exclusively of those who had passed through the local Latin school next door.

738 Van Engen, Sisters and Brothers of the Common Life: The Devotio Moderna and the World of the Later Middle Ages, 73. 739 Van Engen, 138.

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In de Voecht’s account, the establishment of the house and its school reflected the wider efforts

of the Devotio Moderna to retrieve the modus vivendi of the ecclesia primitiva. De Voecht frames this

expansion, explicitly including the establishment of houses for the education of boys, as part of

the larger project of spreading their whole way of life, of which intellectual formation was only a

part. In light of de Voecht’s account of the establishment of the brother-run school in Zwolle,

we can conclude that their vision for schooling amounted to a holistic formation of the self that

attended to the students heart and, only once the student was appropriately humble, the mind.

De Voecht describes the beginning of the Devotio Moderna as a response to a corruption of earlier

status of Christian life in the Low Countries. In the word status is freighted not only the meaning

of a congregation or society but also the world order to which it belonged and was therefore

intelligible and meaningful. Where earlier epochs of society lived closer to the rhythms, activities,

and social organization of the ecclesia primitiva, new ways of living and organizing society had

developed in the interim that amounted to an aberration. The lack of a communis vita is, in de

Voecht’s account, hardly different from the corruption and chilling of faith.

The common life in the Catholic religion was instituted and observed by Christ

and the Apostles and afterwards imposed by rectors of the church with certain

sure decrees, and was also preached by priests and clerics, and in fact on

account of this was strictly preserved long ago by the Holy Fathers in diverse

places and solitudes with devout zeal. With the world now aging and alas

especially with the love in clergy growing cold through ill-will, this common life

has been observed by few, in fact by barely anyone at all in our land.740

According to de Voecht, the founding of this community of brothers was a manifestation of

their vision of how society ought to function. The founding of the Devotio Moderna and in

740 Jacobus Traiecti alias de Voecht, ‘Narratio de Inchoatione Domus Clericorum in Zwollis, Met Akten En Becheiden Betreffende Dit Fraterhuis’, in Werken Uitgegeven Door Het Historisch Genootschap Te Utrecht, 3 13 (Amsterdam, 1908), 1. Communis vita in catholica religione a Christo et apostlolis instituta et observata, et post ab ecclesie rectoribus cum certis quibusdam decretis imposita, seu eciam precepta sacerdotibus et clericis, et ob hoc olim strennue servata necnon a sanctis patribus in diversis loci et solitudinibus devote emulatio diu frequentata fuit. Hec jam senescente mundo, et proch dolor, per maliciam caritate precipue in clero refrigescente, a paucis, ymmo a nullis pene in nostra regione observabatur.

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particular their house in Zwolle is described as a narratio de inchoatione status nostri. In other words,

Christian renewal began with founding a more apostolic way of life. The key issue for the New

Devout was, in this account, less new theological moves and more new ways of life that did not

reflect a truly Christian status or modus vivendi.

The point for de Voecht is that renewal is associated with a revival of a truly Christian status,

Christian association, signaled by how frequently renewal is described as flowing out of domus

nostra. In the same way the spread of the Gospel and the fire of caritas are articulated in terms of

fraternal relationships and the institution of new houses. The Narratio centers on a particular frater

or the domus founded in a particular place. De Voecht makes no strict distinction between the

houses of the brothers and the schools that they set up – the presence of scolares emerges

gradually in his account with incidental mentions.

Theodericus of Herxe

We learn the priorities and vision of the house of Zwolle by considering what de Voecht praises

and records in his account. De Voecht’s treatment of Theodericus of Herxe, a rector of the

house and school in Zwolle, is paradigmatic for how this community, an organic blend of

voluntary society and school, was intended to function. When narrating the founding of the

community in Zwolle, de Voecht recounts the election of Theodericus of Herxe to become the

rector of the domus Suollensis, who had been taken in as a boy and elected at age 39. De Voecht

describes how Theodericus combined the brothers and students together, thereby inducting the

iuvenes into the brothers’ way of life.

Theodericus is praiseworthy for his blend of retiring humility, bookish erudition, and heartfelt

pastoral care of students. De Voecht holds Herxe up as an exemplar of Christian character,

praising his temperance, humility, and gentleness. “For he was truly like a father of all religious

and a place of refuge for devout people of either sex, counselling, exhorting, and visiting

everyone.”741 Theodericus was said to be “in his words never rash, not deceitful, not given to

741 Traiecti alias de Voecht, 77. Nam vere tanquam omnium religiosorum pater et devotorum utriusque sexus refugium fuit consulens et exhortans et visitans omnes.

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many words, not flippant, neither inconsiderate nor crass.”742 Though welcoming and kind to

guests, we are told that Theodericus was by nature retiring.

As much as he could, he loved privacy and avoided the tumult of business and

worldly people, whence was the original custom of our house – that we were

not accustomed to invite secular people to breakfast or dinner.743

Theodericus was gifted in the study of the Scriptures and spent much time in the study of

history, theology, and canon law. “For he was wise and of deep learning and altogether a man of

counsel. Thus although he was in this way studious in books, he was nonetheless hardworking

and never idle.”744 Theodericus embodied not so much intelligence but a wisdom that combined

knowledge with a godly way of life.

Theodericus’ humble industriousness was made manifest in the works that he did produce.

“How steady and diligent he was in work is attested to by the booklets and tracts which he

composed and wrote, and by the collations which he collected from diverse matter and translated

well into German,” wrote de Voecht, “we have those tracts with us, and he left us many other

devout writings and exercises.”745 The conduct in the house with Theodericus as rector bore

much fruit with the students who resided there. “As long as, therefore, master Theodericus, our

venerable father, was there with his brothers much study flowered there, and they bore much

fruit among the students.”746

A further as aspect of de Voecht’s account of Herxe is the inclusion of the students in the

collations and meals with the brothers. We read that Theodericus had the habit of holding

742 Traiecti alias de Voecht, 53–54. In verbis suis numquam preceps, non mordax, non multiloquus, non levis, non inconsideratus et importunus. 743 Traiecti alias de Voecht, 54. Ipse quantum potuit, amabat secretum et cavebat a tumulte causarum et mundanorum hominum, unde primitivus mos fuit domus nostre, quod non solemus invitare homines seculares ad prandium vel cenam. 744 Traiecti alias de Voecht, 55. Fuit enim prudens et profunde intelligentie et omnino vir consilii. Cum ergo sic studiosus in libris, fuit nichilominus multum laboriosus et nunquam ociosus. 745 Traiecti alias de Voecht, 55–56. Quam continuus et diligens fuit in opere, patet eciam ex libellis et tractatulis, quos composuit et scripsit, et ex collacionibus, quas de diversis materiis collegit et apte in teutonicali lingua transtulit. 746 Traiecti alias de Voecht, 56. Quamdiu ergo ibidem dominus Theodericus, venerabilis pater noster, cum fratribus suis erat, multum florebat ibidem studium, et magnum fructum inter scolares fecerunt.

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collations on feast days in German. “He composed two great books in German in order that the

laity might be attracted to hearing the Word of God.”747 De Voecht describes one instance that

demonstrates the closeness between the brothers of the house and the students who were also

part of their community. The community of adult brothers were accustomed to include students

under their care, both boys and girls, in their mealtimes. However, while Theodericus was rector

of the brother-house, a young woman sang a ribald German song during one of the gatherings of

the house at Zwolle, with both students and brothers present. Theodericus composed another

song on more savory themes that he had sung instead under the supervision of Livinus, the

rector of the connected brother-run school, “who devoutly admonished his students and formed

them to the contempt of the world.”748 While one may doubt the effectives of such an effort

from a schoolmaster to curb the salaciousness of his schoolboys, the song, we are told, was so

beautifully composed that it inflamed the listeners towards the love of continence and “was sung

with devotion by the students and the devout.”749 The first verse of the song ran:

Oh Lord of the heavens, creator

All ends of the earth illuminator

Whenever I look inside myself

So find I naught than peace.750

The lives of the students and brothers mingled together in the brother-house at Zwolle. Separate

rectors worked in tandem in the school and brother-house, as in the case of Theodericus and

Livinus. The school was intended as an extension of the brother-house itself, a nursery from

which students might enter the brothers’ way of life.

Of greatest significance to the brothers was neither the legal institution of the school itself nor

the content that was taught but the role of their community to form students in virtues necessary

747 Traiecti alias de Voecht, 64. Ipse, ut laici quoque attraherentur ad audiendum verbum Dei, composuit duos magnos libros theutonicales. 748 Traiecti alias de Voecht, 88. Magister Livinus… qui eciam discipulos suos devote ammonebat et informabat ad contemptum mundi. 749 Traiecti alias de Voecht, 57. Et cum devotione decantabatur a scolaribus et devotis. 750 Traiecti alias de Voecht, 90. Och heer der hemelen stichter/ ende alle der werlt verlichter/ wanneer ick my binnen scouwe,/ so en vinde ic nyet dan rouwe.

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for learning and devotion. Thus R.R. Post notes that “the Lives (Vitae) often mention the pupils

of the school, but never the school itself, nor the teaching.”751 In the narratives and necrologies

of the Devotio Moderna the role of houses in instilling humility is foregrounded and this and other

theological virtues are often mentioned in connection to the mental acumen of exceptional

brothers.752 Brothers, sisters and students ate, studied, and sang together with the intention that

the school might be an extension of their way of life and thereby draw new members into the

status they saw as essential to reform and renewal. The schools they set up were not schools in

the modern sense, but an opening out of their way of life to include young boys and girls.

Brugman

We learn more about how the Social Imaginary of the New Devout resulted in pedagogical

practices from a sermon delivered in 1460, just after the feast of John the Baptist (24 June) to the

brothers in the house established by Florens Radewijns in Deventer by Johannes Brugman (†

1473).753 A visiting member of the Franciscan Order of Friars Minor, Brugman praised the

brothers’ form of life. Through his affirmations of certain aspects of their form of pedagogy, we

can reconstruct the experience of boys under their care, to the extent that Brugman discerned

them and exhorted them as part of his epideictic address. The record of the sermon notes that

Brugman “was greatly impressed that the brothers of the common life of clerics made great

diligence in correcting, forming, and directing the mores and affections of young clerics.”754 By

clerics, a broad term simply denoting someone proficient in Latin, Brugman included both priests

and other laypeople. Even allowing for some ingratiation in a text produced within the Devotio

Moderna, Brugman was effusive with his praise for the brothers’ way of life.

I love no status more, I sigh after for nothing more than the status of these

brothers. And if the Order of Franciscans Minor should not exist, I would beg

751 Post, The Modern Devotion: Confrontation with Reformation and Humanism, 351. 752 Post, 350–55. 753 Johannes Brugman, Verspreide Sermoenen, ed. A van Dijk (Antwerpen: De Nederlandse Boekhandel, 1948), 166. Hanc collacionem fecit in domo Domini Florencii Daventrie, anno Domini .M.cccc. lx., post festum Johannis Baptiste 754 Brugman, 156. magnam complacenciam habuit quod fratres communis vite clericorum facerent diligenciam in corrigendis, componendis ac dirigendis mori[ri]bus et affectionibus juvenum clericorum.

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on bended knees that they [the brothers] would receive me. Indeed, if it were to

happen that the pope should decide that this order be no more and say to me,

“look, I dispense with you, that you might change your order and habit and

enter into this mode of living and that you preserve it, lest it perish,” I would do

it without hesitation.755

The text that Brugman’s lesson was based on was Mark 10, “Let the little ones come to me, for

of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.”756 Brugman’s sermon explicitly built on the writings of Jean

Gerson. Expanding on what he had heard via Jean Gerson, Brugman noted three main points he

wished to reiterate. Brugman argued that it was paramount to seek the care and conversion of

children and youths. This is so because Christ turned most harshly on those who prevented little

children from coming to him.757

Brugman picked up in his address on the same concept as de Voecht, status. In observing the

efforts of the brothers to create a holistic modus vivendi that formed the whole of the student,

heart, and mind, Brugman praised the brothers’ success at winning young souls for Christ.

Brugman shared the same anxiety as the brothers that their students would use their education as

a platform to leave and begin a lucrative career at a university. Brugman, therefore, “not only

encouraged the little ones towards their progress, but also vehemently prayed that the brothers

never abandon the so pious and useful labor they had begun.”758 This labor was useful because

boys were impressionable and not yet hardened towards devotion to Christ. While it might be

difficult to change the ways of an old man, boys were much more open to change. “The mind of

755 Brugman, 158. nullum statum plus diligo, ad nullum plus anhelo quam ad horum fratrum statum; et si Minorum ordo non esset, postularem flexis genubus, ut me reciperent. Item, si talis casus emergeret quod status iste perire vellet et papa michi diceret: ‘Ecce ego dispenso tecum, ut mutes ordinem tuum et habitum et ingrediaris ad hunc vivendi modum et ne pereat conserves eum, ego sine mora id facerem. 756 Brugman, 156. Sinite parvulos venire ad me: talium enim est regnum celorum.’ Marci.x. 757 Brugman, 156–57. Distinguit autem libellum prefatum in tria: nam collaudat illos qui insistunt parvulorum conversioni; invective terret illos qui avertunt parvulos a Christo, adjungens pro majori terrore quod nusquam in evangelio legitur Dominum tam manifeste indigne aliquid tulisse quam ubi apostoli quamvis zelo bono suo modo prohibebant eos, qui parvulos adducebant ad eum. 758 Brugman, 156. non solum parvulos ad profectum exhortans, verum eciam ne et ipsi fratres a cepto tam pio et utili opere nunquam desisterent, vehementer exorans.

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a young boy is like a blank slate: whatever it inscribed on it retains, whether good or bad.”759

Brugman thought the Devotio Moderna praiseworthy because their work in schooling young boys

attended to the whole person. Rather than skills or the acquisition of content, the brothers in

Brugman’s view, went straight to the heart.

Brugman enjoined the brothers to include the young adults under their care in the collations held

at their house. “So invite, oh beloved brothers, your companions to the collations and

confessions at the house of Lord Florens, inasmuch as they might acquire knowledge with those

brothers and you might take part at such an occasion in their conversion.”760 Brugman joined

together study with the cultivation of a godly soul that yearns for the Kingdom of Heaven. “For

I say to you following Bede that there is no higher and more pleasing life to God than of those

who castigate themselves of vices,” wrote Brugman, “who subject their mind to the studies of

virtues, and moreover who strive to convert others to the grace of his maker and with frequent

conversion strive to abound at all times in the hope of the Kingdom of Heaven.”761 A sound

education began with the formation of character. As I have argued, in this Augustinian Imaginary

one could not approach God or apprehend his creation without first cultivating a heart of

humility. Only this sort of formation was consonant with the way that Augustine and his later

readers understood the relation of God to the world and the relation of the soul and mind to

creation.

Beginning with the Heart: Humility is the Key

Jean Gerson (1363–1429), chancellor of the University of Paris from 1395 until his involvement

with the Council of Constance prevented his return in 1415, articulated the Social Imaginary of

the Devotio Moderna in his plan to establish a hostel for schoolboys in Paris. The education of boys

759 Brugman, 158. Anima parvuli est sicut tabula rasa: quicquid ei inscribitur retinet, sive bonum sive malum. 760 Brugman, 157. Adducite ergo, o dilectissimi filioli, consodales vestros ad collaciones et confessiones ad domum Domini Florencii, quatenus noticiam acquirant cum illis fratribus et tali occasione participes sitis conversionis eorum. 761 Brugman, 157–58. Quia dico vobis secundum Bedam quod sublimior et Deo gracior vita non est quam illorum, qui se castigant a viciis, qui virtutum studiis animum subigunt, et insuper alios ad auctoris sui graciam student convertere et crebra animarum conversione gaudia patrie celestis semper student augere.

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was an abiding concern for Gerson, one that he was eager to articulate, Gerson being a key

influence on Brugman’s sermon to the brothers discussed above. Brugman affirmed Gerson’s

belief in the importance of education as the means to reform the church. Quoting Gerson, “he

did not err but judged wisely, who judged that the reformation of the church, if it should happen,

ought to come to pass through the conversion of the little ones.” 762 Humility occupied a

foundational place in this educational vision. In April 1411 Gerson proposed to implement a

puerorum societas at the cathedral school in Paris (Pro pueris ecclesiae parisiensis). Many aspects of this

plan accord with elements in the adult communities of sisters and brothers. Van Engen

summarizes,

Schoolmasters should act as models of virtue… One should lead them in the

hours of the Virgin (the Psalms that Sisters and Brothers prayed). Further,

beyond teaching the standard grammar and logic, these masters should set aside

time to expound the Gospels and Epistles, this also and thoroughly in the

vernacular to make sure they understood – as Brothers were doing in their

collations. One boy should read at meals.763

Gerson’s vision for the education of boys affords insight into the life of schoolboys in the houses

explicitly run by the Brothers because Gerson’s collation was delivered directly to the brothers as

a reflection on their own way of life as educators.

Notable in Gerson’s vision is the constant presence of teachers in the lives of students. These

masters were supposed to observe and care for the total wellbeing of the student. Certain times

were set aside for instruction in singing, for Gerson encompassing the music but also the

student’s grammatical and semantic understanding of the text.764 Joyce Irwin has demonstrated

that Gerson understood musica in a profoundly spiritual sense, in which the temporal measure of

sounds and silences was analogous to the soul’s fragmented experience in of God’s eternal

762 Brugman, Verspreide Sermoenen, 157. Quocirca dicit [Johannes Gerson]: ‘Non errabat sed prudenter sentiebat, qui judicabat reformacionem Ecclesie, si qua fieri deberet, per conversionem parvulorum fieri debere.’ Hec iste. 763 Van Engen, Sisters and Brothers of the Common Life: The Devotio Moderna and the World of the Later Middle Ages, 152. 764 Jean Gerson, Œuvres Complètes, vol. 9 (Paris: Desclee, 1960), 687.

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present. Music for Gerson thus articulates “the activities of the soul.”765 Gerson stresses that a

certain time should be for this sort of instruction and that the teacher should avoid moralizing in

the vernacular at these times. This description resembles the collations held by the brothers. “For

there is a time more accustomed for such things, from the morning till breakfast, and from the

return from vespers till dinner, or rather according to the quality and necessity of time.”766 The

pattern was for boy to read from a text during mealtimes, which were held in the house of one of

the teachers. Gerson’s model for education thus entails bringing boys into the patterns of life of

the teachers. Ideally the boys and the teachers would live communiter, the teachers “loved rather

than despised.”767 Just like in brother-houses of the New Devout, Gerson desired that thoughtful

attention be given to the sorts of texts available for the students to read. “Furthermore, we do

not want just any authors to be read who may more hinder their morals than benefit their

studies.”768

Gerson: Contra curiositatem studentium

We learn more about the framework underpinning Gerson’s vision – and by extension that of

the New Devout – in a collation given about curiosity and education. In a similar way to Gerhard

Zerbolt of Zutphen, Gerson saw the biblical salvation narrative as paradigmatic for education.

Since pride led to the Fall and had darkened the capacity to understand God and the world,

Gerson praised the brothers for first cultivating a heart of humility in their students. Gerson

paraphrased Augustine’s concept in De doctrina christiana of reordering one’s desires in arguing

that since God could only be approached in love and humility these virtues were indispensable

for any genuinely true and salutary educational enterprise.

Gerson’s sermons reveal that humility was the capstone for the educational program of the

brothers, in particular Gerson’s sermon Contra curiositatem studentium (Against the Curiosity of

Students). We can observe in the case of Gerson that his soteriology, his understanding of God’s

765 Joyce Irwin, ‘The Mystical Music of Jean Gerson’, Early Music History 1, no. 1 (1981): 188. 766 Gerson, 9:687–88. Est autem hora magis solita pro talibus, de mane usque ad prandium, et de reditu vesperarum usque ad coenam, aut amplius secundum qualitatem temporum et necessitas. 767 Gerson, 9:689. ut se magis amari sentiant quam irrideri. 768 Gerson, 9:688. Nolumus autem legi quoscumque auctores, qui magis obsint moribus quam prosint ingeniis.

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salvation at work in history, stood in close relation to his pedagogy. Like Gerard Zerbolt of

Zutphen had argued, Gerson believed that human capacity for reason had been marred by the

Fall. Restoring the power of reason was not simply a case of intellectual formation. Since, as

Augustine taught, the origin of sin was pride, Gerson praised the brothers for beginning with the

cultivation of humility as the beginning of a true education.

In this collation delivered in November 1402, Gerson addressed to his “brothers and fathers” an

argument against curiosity, Contra curiositatem studentium.769 Gerson based his argument on the

Gospel text poenitemini et credite Evangelio (Mark 1:15), a favourite text of his for exposition. The

nexus between repentance and faith serves as the controlling concept for Gerson’s argument

against curiosity as a desirable quality as such. That is, repentance, the confession of sin, and

renewed commitment to godliness resourced Gerson’s argument that growth in repentance and

faith was necessary for intellectual formation. Gerson likens the Gospel preached by Christ, the

call for repentance and faith, to a wise legislator (sapientis legislatoris), an experienced agriculturalist

(solertis agricolae), a shrewd butler (sagacis pincernae) and a wise doctor (prudentis medici).770 Poenitentia

itself is the doorkeeper (ostiaria) of death and life.771 However, the relevance of this is not so

much the importance of repentance and belief in order to save one’s soul, but for how this

soteriological pattern relates to the intellect and its formation to become apt for knowing God

and creation. Or put another way, Gerson sees the Gospel imperative for repentance and faith as

essential to gaining a right understanding of the process of formation and education.

Gerson’s educational paradigm flows out of his soteriology. If sin is primarily construed as

disordered desires, as per Augustine, then the reformation of one’s mental faculties is primarily

achieved through the reordering of one’s desires, here glossed by Gerson as poenitentia.

“Repentance shatters the iron chains of desires, it breaks the bonds of sin which surround the

unhappy soul,” states Gerson, “repentance wipes clean, heals, and illuminates the sickly eyes of

769 Jean Gerson, Œuvres Complètes, vol. 3 (Paris: Desclee, 1960), 229. viri patres et fratres 770 Gerson, 3:225. 771 Gerson, 3:226.

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reason.”772 Given the implication of reason in the Fall, the correction of one’s disordered desires

was necessary to attain reason and insight. This alone had the power to free the mind from the

“clouds of flighty phantasms and from the awful confusion of fleshly desires.” 773 Gerson

advocated, therefore, contritio, confessio, and satisfactio as the remedy for these disordered desires.774

Gerson argued that the primary impairment of reason was not a lack of understanding or

intelligence but pride. “Curiosity to know” abounds in pride, and is directly opposed to humility

and repentance, “because repentance is grounded in humility.” 775 Pride must therefore be

removed by the roots (radicitus).

The problematic of this pride in Gerson’s view is twofold. First, such an overreaching to know

anything and everything wounds God’s majesty. The machinations of rational humanity after the

Fall brings the guilt of wounding divine glory:

Rational man after sin is like a good-for-nothing servant, guilty of the crime of

wounding God’s majesty, thrown into the exile of this wretched valley,

concealed in the dark prison of the fetid, corrupted flesh, where sitting in

darkness he does not see the light of Heaven, unless he be reconciled through

repentance.776

But secondly, this overreaching beyond what humanity is permitted to know (or capable of

comprehending) can wound the soul of the scholar, both through the destructive competition of

worldly ambition and the ultimate futility coming from the desire to know. Human pride in a

fallen world wounded God’s majesty by human overreaching to know like God and mutilated the

human person by their becoming mired in a futile task. The student or scholar overreaches in

respect to “curiosity insofar as one desires to know other things than what is appropriate,

772 Gerson, 3:226. Ipsa [poenitentia] catenas ferreas cupiditatum, ipsa funes peccatorum infelicem animam circumplectentes disrumpit. Ipsa aegros rationis oculos tergit, sanat et illustrat. 773 Gerson, 3:226. nebulis volitantium phantasmatum, et a confusione horrida carnalium desideriorum 774 Gerson, 3:228. 775 Gerson, 3:229. Subinde curiositas sciendi quantum abundet in superbia scire perfacile est quod in primis parentibus liquido consitit. Denique causa ista est praecipua cur vitium quodlibet adversatur poenitentiae salutari, quia poenitentia in humilitate fundata est. 776 Gerson, 3:225. Est itaque rationalis homo post peccatum velut servus nequam, reus criminis laesae majestatis projectus in exilium hujus vallis miseriae, detrusus quoque in carcerem tenebrosum carnis corruptae faetulentae; ubi in tenebris sedens lumen caeli non videt, nisi reconcilietur per poenitentiam.

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singularity insofar as he might become greater than the rest.”777 Gerson glosses Christ’s words in

Matthew 11:25 (“At that time Jesus said, ‘I praise you, Father, Lord of Heaven and Earth,

because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little

children.’”) to mean that knowledge of God is given as a gift (non meritum nostrum).

As Gerson argued, God was love itself, his quiddity inextricable from his caritas. This meant that

education must begin with the heart and prepare the student to know by forming the requisite

character for understanding a God whose being and whose creation demanded not just mental

acumen but also humility and wisdom. Gerson praised the brothers for incorporating this sense

in their school. The pedagogical commitment to cultivating above all humility is a defining

characteristic of the educational vision of the Devotio Moderna.

Gerson against the Scholastici

Like the foundation narratives of the Devotio Moderna, Jean Gerson pits the scholastici of the

university against true education. Gerson characterises the scholastics as driven by an unhealthy

curiosity that has no purpose, and so no terminus except knowledge gathering and ramifying

knowledge as ends in themselves or the glory it could bring the scholar. Gerson praised the New

Devout because they were resisting this temptation to abuse true education from its proper

orientation in the love of God.

In his sermon, Gerson reveals the true target of his censure when he alludes to the scholastici. In

Gerson’s view, these scholastici did not align humility, reason, and the desire to know properly.

According to Gerson, pride of knowing is particularly rife among the scholastics (praesertim apud

scholasticos), specifically for their propensity for curiosity and “singularity,” by which Gerson

means obscurity and abstruseness.778 “Curiosity, not content with its own limits, deceives the

philosophers…. Would that such curiosity not deceive the theologians.”779 Gerson offers the

777 Gerson, 3:230. Curiositas ut sciat alia quam oportet, singularitas ut caeteris emineat. 778 Gerson, 3:230. Superbia scholasticos a poenitentia et fide viva praepediens, duas in eis filias infelices, nisi providerint, gignere solita est, curiositatem et singularitatem…singularitas est vitium quo dimissis utilioribus homo convertit studium suum ad doctrinas peregrinas et insolitas. 779 Gerson, 3:233. Curiositas non contenta suis finibus fefellit philosophos, par similitudo deducere potest esse formidandum ne talis curiositas theologos decipiat.

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metaphor of a blind-man, only able to distinguish vague colors, who hypothesizes an intricate,

abstruse theory of light and coloration based on certain truths he has come to believe but has not

known or tested by experience.780 Such is human knowledge of the logical and spiritual structures

which at bottom make the world: circumscribed and finite. However, the sort of knowledge

offered by the scholastici is, in Gerson’s mind, aimed at just this sort of overreaching ramification

and limitless, encyclopedic scope that it cannot ultimately obtain.

The key move for Gerson is that no clear division between nature and supernature exists that

might bifurcate knowledge of the world from speculative knowledge of the divine. In another

work on the issue of mystical theology, Gerson applies the priority of faith to created

phenomena. Interior passions and experiences cannot be explicated with laws exterior to both

the soul and God. “Interior workings, namely in affection, are not as clearly laid bare, nor can

they be passed on with written words, as they are experienced.”781 Truth about God is therefore

not something that is tested, but that on which all else depends. Gerson follows Augustine’s credo

ut intelligam, that “unless you believe, as Augustine says, you will not understand.”782 So this

framework applies to any and every sort of knowledge, from the speculative age and creation of

the world to the nature of the Incarnation.783 “It is sin to want to know more than is wise, and

not to the measure of sober piety.” 784 Gerson directly challenged the ramification and

encyclopaedism of the scholastici and approved of the New Devout’s commitment to humility

over vainglory in their teaching.

Gerson invokes Augustine in the same way as the New Devout, explicitly pitting the Bishop of

Hippo against late scholastics like Duns Scotus. Gerson, following Augustine, rejects univocal

conceptions of God being that had emerged in scholastic, university culture in the late Middle

Ages, and that had made it possible to bring God into the realm of creation, and so therefore

intelligible and subject to ramifying categories of analysis. Gerson advised that the novelty of

780 Gerson, 3:233. 781 Gerson, 3:255. Operationes interiores, praesertim in affectu, non ita clare proferuntur nec ita possunt scriptis tradi sicut sentiuntur. 782 Gerson, 3:254. Nisi, inquit, credideritis non intellegetis. 783 Gerson, 3:231. 784 Gerson, 3:233–34. et vitium est velle plus quam oportet sapere, et non ad sobriam pietatem.

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naming is to be avoided – that is, the multiplication of technical terms for theoretical analysis.

“To rejoice in the new inventions of terms in speculative matters of theology, namely the mystery

of divinity in trifling matters, is curiosity, harmful and contrary to repentance and belief, and

ought to be done away with.” 785 Gerson followed Augustine and Pseudo-Dionysius the

Aeropagite, arguing that true faith is manifested in a sure and fixed way of speaking about God

(certam regulam loquendi). “Therefore, when we find certain terms in any of the Church Fathers that

are strange we ought not to introduce them into a public school, unless by first agreeing with

pious and reverent decision, saying that ‘this term was understood as such.’”786 To name God

wantonly is an offense against things divine (offensio in divinis). Gerson argues that any ramifying

or encyclopaedic tendency in naming God will ultimately be frustrated by divine unity, which at

the last cannot be named. “If you adduce thousands upon thousands of terms to explicate this

mystery of faith [of the Trinity], you know nothing more, if you do not want go wrong, than that

one truth which is stated with so few words [sc. of the Creed].”787 Thus the difference between

Augustine or John Damascene and Duns Scotus, Gerson states, is in their use of terms. While

the former use terms like causa to make clear the unattainable mystery of God, the latter brings

God down into human categories that allow him to be named. “No term may be admitted in

matters of God,” says Gerson, “which import either distinction or prior time, except alone the

distinction and priority of origin, and that one utter this distinction without the importation or

connotation of any imperfection, dissimilitude, or inequality in its correlative.”788 There can be no

terms of analysis, no causes that are prior or separate from God. That is, God cannot be named

univocally, no category can be applied to him that is not revealed, no negation can be made of

God as a neat opposite of the created order, and no explication can occur that does not work

785 Gerson, 3:244. Gaudere novis adinventionibus terminorum in materiis speculativis theologiae, praesertim divinitatis arcanum tangentibus, curiositas est perniciosa et tollenda, tanquam etiam poenitentiae et credulitati contraria. 786 Gerson, 3:244. Quamobrem dum terminos quosdam apud aliquem ex doctroibus approbatis invenimus non usitatos in schola communi illos introducere non debemus, nisi pria et reverenti resolutione praevia ut dicendo: terminus iste a tali sic accipiebatur. 787 Gerson, 3:244. Si mille millia terminorum adduxeris ad explicandum hoc fidei secretum, nihil amplius, si non vis errare, cognosces quam istam unicam, et paucissimis verbis explicatam veritatem. 788 Gerson, 3:244. Nullus terminus admittendus est in divinis, qui vel distinctionem importet vel primaevitatem, nisi solam distinctionem et prioritatem originis, et quod hanc dicat absque importatione vel connotatione imperfectionis cujuscumque vel dissimilitudinis vel inaequalitatis in suo correlativo.

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backwards from faith. Gerson rejects Plato’s theory of quiddity on the grounds that there cannot

be eternal ideas (ideas rerum aeternas), which are separate from God.

Certain of us, wanting to use such abstractions (of Plato), fall into this error…

For they place eternal quiddities of things, which are outside of the soul

although not God, and are neither produced by God, nor are producible nor

destructible by God.789

To make this move is essentially to bring God to the plane of creation, or to elevate the mind of

the scholar to the eternal.

Gerson reveals much about the pedagogy of the Devotio Moderna by what he praises. In his

sermon, Gerson positions the New Devout as his allies against the scholastici. His depiction of

their educational posture reflects the Augustinian Imaginary of the exhortations of the leaders of

the movement. In this imaginary, univocal conceptions of God’s being were nonsensical and only

a humble heart could approach a godly whose esse was identical to his amor. For this reason,

Gerson praises the work of the brothers to create an educational program that attended to the

heart, in explicit contradistinction to what he saw as the ramifying obscurantism and vainglory of

the scholastici.

Reading with humility

I have drawn on the collations of Brugman and Gerson in arguing that the distinction between

pastoral care and intellectual formation, a key polarity in the analysis of modern scholarship, was

facile from the perspective of the New Devout. Rather, their understanding of the human person

within their Augustinian Imaginary led them to see a humble heart as indispensable for

understanding God or creation. At this point we can draw together the work of Brugman on

Gerson because they draw the same conclusion in terms of educational practice. Both these

writers praised, above all, the brothers’ commitment to slow, meditative reading.

789 Gerson, 3:246. Quidam ex nostris volentestalibus abstractionibus uti, corruunt in hunc errorem… Ponunt itaque quidditates rerum aeternas, extra animam, quae nec sunt Deus, nec productae a Deo, nec producibiles, aut annihilabiles a Deo.

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Gerson and Reading

Gerson identifies reading as a key application of his exhortation to the brothers. Reading the

written word, especially in the case of learning and scholarship, is not an end in itself for Gerson

and does not stand prior to faith. “This is the end of reading: the clear and wise understanding of

those things which are believed by the Gospel, those things which are called ‘mystical theology’

are to be sought through repentance more than through human investigation alone.”790 In answer

to the question of whether human knowledge leads to faith, Gerson answers firmly in the

negative. God is known through faith and that it is in this the content in which human reason

might flourish.

Jacques Le Goff has described Gerson as an intellectual conservative in the face of the

developments within the university. According to Le Goff, Gerson acted as a handbrake to

impulses emerging in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, which “consciously took their vocation

to be that of discoverers.”791 In this view, Gerson supposedly advocates a return to a time when

the academic disciplines were subservient to the contemplative life. This is part of “a persistent

denigration of the intellectual and material aspects of the academic profession, a far cry from the

earlier notion of magnanimity.”792 It is true that Gerson was resistant, even condemnatory, of the

movement within the university to position scholars as aimed essentially at novelty. However,

what is missing from Le Goff’s account is a recognition that for Gerson, as much as for the New

Devout, this return was by their time not conservative in character. The universitas, not the Devotio

Moderna and its Augustinian Imaginary, was the dominant institution and the controlling

architectonic of thought. The New Devout, similarly to other movements of Observant Reform,

saw their impetus in retrieving a way of life and imaginary that had been nearly lost. Emerging

alongside and often within Observant reform, such a call for a redrafting of the boundaries

between contemplation, devotion, and vocation knowledges was a novel challenge to established

university culture.

790 Gerson, 3:249. Es sic est finis lectionis. Intelligentia clara et sapida eorum quae creduntur ex Evangelio, quae vocatur theologia mystica, conquirenda est per poenitentiam magis quam per solam humanam investigationem. 791 Le Goff, Time, Work, & Culture in the Middle Ages, 132. 792 Le Goff, 132.

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Brugman: Reading Slowly and Meditatively

By returning to the collation of the Franciscan Brugman delivered in praise of the brothers’

teaching, we observe how the students at Deventer to set aside time each day for the reading of

Scripture, prayer, and contemplation. Brugman makes no distinction between the brothers as

educators and the brothers as pastoral carers. Such a view is espoused in a sermon of Brugman

that draws on the image in Revelation 21 of the twelve gates of Jerusalem. The gates, as in the

biblical passage, are grouped in threes, corresponding to the cardinal points, each compass point

(North, South, East, and West) having three gates. To each gate is ascribed a virtue that to

Brugman pertained to the education of boys. Within these four virtues are a further subset of

correlative actions, virtues, or character traits that aid, correspond to, or compromise the main

virtue of the compass point.

The first gate facing the East “is faith, or rather the knowledge of truth inasmuch as it is worthy

of belief.”793 Grouped within faith are “charity, or rather a love of goodness, because it does not

suffice to believe [only] but it is also required to love,” and the “doing of virtue.”794 Importantly,

Brugman proof-texts this last gate with the record from the Gospels that “Jesus began to work

and to teach up till the day he was taken up [into Heaven].”795 In making this move Brugman

builds a connection between character and teaching. To teach well is to live well, just as Christ

did, and a student is taught well when their minds are directed to the truth and their hearts are

cultivated in the love of God.

The Western gates are the complement to the gates of the East. These gates constitute the

actions required when the first group of virtues, summarised by Brugman as faith and love, are

lacking. Accordingly, these gates are: “every kind of humbling,” “continence, or rather the

mortification of the flesh,” and “a most weighty poverty.”796

793 Brugman, Verspreide Sermoenen, 159. Prima porta orientis est fides sive cognicio veritatis quoad credibilia. 794 Brugman, Verspreide Sermoenen. Secunda porta est caritas sive amor bonitatis, quia non sufficit credere, sed eciam requiritur diligere… Tercia porta est operacio virtutis. 795 Brugman, 159. Hinc ipse Jhesus ‘cepit facere et docere usque in diem qua assumptus est.’ 796 Brugman, 159. Prima harum est omnimoda humiliacio… secunda porta est castitas sive carnis mortificacio… Tercia porta est altissima paupertatis [sc. paupertas].

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The North represent temptations, “for from the North comes every evil: ‘Lo!’ says Ezekiel, ‘the

gale of the whirlwind comes from the North.’”797 Accordingly, the Northern gates represent the

virtues required to overcome these temptations. “The first of these gates is dependable patience,”

which imitates Christ’s obedience to his father even to his death on the cross. 798 Next is

“courageous confidence” in light of the victory of the Kingdom of God.799 Finally, Brugman

identifies “long-standing perseverance” as a key virtue to cultivate in students, that is, that they

might not doubt and vacillate as per the spirit of their age, but put their hand to the plough till

the peace of God calms their hearts.800

Finally, Brugman arrives at the South gate. In delineating the three final virtues, Brugman

articulates an Augustinian Imaginary in which knowledge, love of God, and an experience of his

goodness collapse into one unitary package. “The first of these gates is contemplation of truth.”

Brugman glosses a contemporary part of the mass to make his point even clearer: “’The Lord has

led the righteous one through straight paths,’ namely of the truth, ‘and he has shown him the

Kingdom of God.”801 Not included in the gloss are the following lines “and he gave to him

knowledge of holy things and honoured him in his labours and completed his labours” (“et dedit

illi scientiam sanctorum honestavit illum in laboribus et complevit labores illius”). These liturgical

lines date from the late fourteenth century and are undoubtedly the implication of Brugman’s

gloss. The connection between a righteous character and an understanding of the truth is made

explicit in this gate. God is known to the humble and loving, for only these have a character that

can prepare the mind for intellection. The second gate of the South is a “tasting of goodness.”802

With reference to Psalm 34, Brugman describes an experience of God and his kingdom in a way

that is accessible to the humble and hidden from the proud. To those who know the savour of

the Kingdom of God its truths are revealed, but not so to the proud. “‘To you is has been given

797 Brugman, 160. Ab aquilone enim panditur omne malum: ‘Ecce,’ ait Ezechiel, ‘ventus turbinis venit ab aquilone.’ 798 Brugman, 160. Prima harum portarum est stabilis paciencia. 799 Brugman, 160. Secunda porta est magnanimis confidencia. 800 Brugman, 160. Tercia porta est finalis seu longanimis perseverancia. 801 Brugman, 160. Prima harum est speculacio veritatis, secundum illud: ‘Justum deduxit Dominus per vias rectas,’ scilicet veritatis, ‘et ostendit illi regnum Dei.’ 802 Brugman, 160. Secunda est degustacio bonitatis.

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to know,’ namely by taste and savour,” explains Brugman, “‘the mystery of the kingdom, to the

rest however,’ namely to the proud of this world, ‘in parables.’”803 Brugman uses the same

scriptural commonplace that Augustine favoured, that “you [God] have hidden these things from

the wise and learned and revealed them to little ones.”804 The final gate of the South is the

“exhortation towards truth itself.” At this point Brugman makes quite clear that there ought to

be no denigration of knowledge or learning per se. By this, Brugman means the teaching of the

truth, which “is placed more highly than the rest by its exceeding merit.”805 Teaching the truth to

little ones, says Brugman, is an act of humility. Although the teacher may be far more advanced

than the level being taught to their students, such a posture is the embodiment of Christ-like

love, who condescended to human frailty and ignorance in the Incarnation. “For this reason Paul

descended from the third Heaven [cf. 2 Cor. 12] ‘having become all things to all people’; here [on

earth] the Lord descended and became flesh and suffered.”806 Such a person who teaches little

ones the truth “will be called great in the Kingdom of Heaven.” 807 Brugman describes a

philosophy of teaching where apprehension of created truth is a facet of the larger project of

knowing God. To know God required humility and a commitment to God above one’s own

academic pursuits.

Corresponding to the twelve gates of the heavenly Jerusalem, Brugman also enumerates the

twelve gates of Hell.

The first gate of the East is the error of unfaithfulness, the second a depraved

will, the third depravity of action. The first gate of the West is pride, the second

excess, the third greed. The first of the North is impatience, the second small-

minded disobedience, the third a lack of perseverance The first of the South

gate is blindness of intellect or rather the contemplation of falsehood, the

803 Brugman, 160. ‘Vobis datum est nosse,’ scilicet sapore et gustu, ‘misterium regni, ceteris autem,’ scilicet hujus mundi sapientibus, ‘in parabolis.’ 804 Brugman, 160. [Domine] abscondisti hec a sapientibus et prudentibus et revelasti ea parvulis.’ 805 Brugman, 161. Et hec porta merito ultimo tanquam ceteris sublimior ponitur. 806 Brugman, 161. Hac de causa Paulus de tercio celo descendit ‘factus omnibus omnia;’ hinc cupiebat ‘anathema esse pro fratribus’ suis; hinc Dominus descendit et incarnatus est et passus. 807 Brugman, 161. hic magnus vocabitur in regno celorum.

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second obtuseness or weakness of love or the tendency to evil, third the

exhortation to evil or away from good, which is proper to the devil.808

Again, Brugman draws together disobedience against God, pride, and blindness of intellect as

part of the same package. After enumerating the twelve gates of Heaven and Hell, Brugman goes

on to give more concrete advice about how students ought to be formed. This involved slow,

meditative writing under the watchful, but loving, guidance of a teacher.

Oblates and students ought to be transparent with all aspects of their lives, including the letters

they exchange with family outside the community. Students, Brugman argues, ought to be quick

to admit fault and grow in humility by willingly submitting to their superiors. In his enthusiasm

to shape the hearts of the students, Brugman advises a level of surveillance shocking to the

modern reader.

Whenever you write a letter to your parents or you receive a letter from them,

show it to you superior before you read it. And if you do this, I promise you

that you will have reward from whatever is written in the letter. If you act

otherwise, the devil numbers the letters, that he may snatch them from you in

punishment. I say to you that even in a short time this sort of secret letters has

led certain ones in our order to apostasy.809

Brugman cautions the brothers, lest other influences on the student deter him from their way of

life and lead him astray. This level of surveillance is certainly strongly directive, perhaps even

coercive (and we should bear in mind that Brugman includes condemnatory stories about those

who wrongly and brutally chastise youths), but this exhortation nonetheless demonstrates that

the brothers as educators sought first of all to attend to the moral formation of the schoolboy.

808 Brugman, 161. prima orientalis sit error infidelitatis, secunda pravitas voluntatis, tercia pravitas perverse actionis; prima occidentalis superbia, secunda luxuria, tercia avaricia; prima aquilonaris impaciencia, secunda pusillanimis diffidencia, tercia imperseverancia; prima australis cecitas intellectus aut speculacio falsitatis, secunda obtusitas sive insipiditas affectionis aut effectus malicie, tercia exhortacio ad malum vel a bono, quod est proprie dyabolicum. 809 Brugman, 161. Si quando literas scribitis ad parentes aut ab ipsis scriptas recipitis, superiori vestro primum legendas ostendatis. Et si hoc facitis, promitto vobis quod de qualibet litera inibi scripta mercedem habebitis. Si aliter facitis, dyabolus numerat literas, ut a vobis in penis extorqueat eas. Dico vobis quod adhuc in brevi hujusmodi furtive litere quosdam ad apostasiam perduxerunt in ordine nostro.

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Brugman also encouraged the brothers and boys to engage in quiet, contemplative reading.

Brugman’s image is that of a house filled with the soft sighs and murmurs of the brothers

engaged in almost constant prayer, reading and meditation. We saw this same picture earlier in

the exhortations of the brothers to slow, meditative reading as a kind of spiritual mastication

(ruminare).

Because it offered the reader an encounter with God and the opportunity to examine and purify

one’s heart, this sort of reading prepared one for intellectual enquiry far better than mere mental

formation. “I entreat you then, my beloved sons, that you take at least one hour in the day in

which you set other others and made yourself wholly available to God,” advised Brugman, “by

praying, by examining your conscience and reading slowly and thoroughly something from

Sacred Scripture.”810 In doing this, Brugman argues that more profit is to be gained by way of

intellectual understanding than with the purely intellectual rigor and training of the scholastics.

“And if you do this faithfully, do not think that you won’t progress as much through this way in

your school-work.”811 For Brugman, the key to a good student is cultivating a humble, Godly

character. Thomas Aquinas is his paradigm example. “Do you not know that Saint Thomas

Aquinas made more progress by praying than by studying? For whenever he came across some

difficult quaestio, which he could not solve, he prayed and without delay he found the solution.”812

Brugman encouraged the brothers to school the boys under their care in the slow, meditative

reading that characterized the Devotio Moderna more generally. This sort of reading humbled,

provided an opportunity for reflection, and then filled the boy’s mind with what was salutary and

edifying.

Gerson and Brugman observe and encourage educational practices that reflect the attitude more

generally of the Devotio Moderna to reading, reforming the soul, and intellection. These educational

practices sit neatly within the Augustinian Imaginary with which I have characterised the New

810 Brugman, 163. Suadeo vobis deinde, filii mei dilectissimi, ut saltem unam horam captetis in die, in qua sepositis aliis soli Deo vacetis, orando, conscienciam vestram examinando et aliquid de sacra scriptura perlegendo. 811 Brugman, 163. Et si hoc fideliter facitis, nolite credere quod in scolasticalibus minus per hoc proficietis. 812 Brugman, 163. An nescitis quod sanctus Thomas de Aquino plus orando profecit quam studendo? Nam cum aliqua difficilis questio ei occurreret, quam dissolvere non posset, oravit et statim solucionem invenit.

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Devout. While it is now impossible to describe the precise planning and materials used in most

of these school communities, general trends are nonetheless observable which confirm the

emphasis our narrative accounts place on formation and education as an inextricable unity. It

must be in this context, with students living often together with adults, that we should locate the

texts studied and taught in these school-communities.

Observant Reform

The schooling of the Devotio Moderna stands in close relation to other examples of education

among Observant Reform movements. I argue, however, that though we can identify

connections, the Devotio Moderna was unique in their application of their Augustinian Imaginary.

In no other movement do we see the same concern for slow, meditative reading to humble, offer

reflection, and then reform the intellectual faculties of the soul to become apt for understanding.

In the sense that the New Devout sought to reclaim a vita apostolica they are akin to other

movements of Observant Reform. James Mixson defines the scope of this broad constellation of

similar movements:

It [Observant Reform] encompassed congregations of Franciscans, Dominicans,

and Augustinian Friars from Tuscany and Lombardy to Saxony, Bohemia to

Aragon; Benedictine communities from Montserrat in Catalonia to Melk in

Austria to Pannonhalma in Hungary; networks of Augustinian canons from

Windesheim in the Netherlands to Raudnitz in Bohemia to the Lateran in

Rome.813

Observant Reform as a category identifies a constellation of alternatives whose very charism lay

in their inventiveness and specificity.814 Mixson also notes that the concept of renewal was linked

to the social and legal strictures that bound society together. Inasmuch as large institutions

813 James D. Mixson, ‘Introduction’, in A Companion to Observant Reform in the Late Middle Ages and Beyond (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 1. 814 James D. Mixson, ‘Observant Reform’s Conceptual Frameworks between Principle and Practice’, in A Companion to Observant Reform in the Late Middle Ages and Beyond (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 62. “Observant reform intersected in different ways with questions of liturgy, and with each household’s place in the local spiritual economy of parishes and chantries, mass stipends and indulgences.”

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sustained an imagination for how society might function and its different constituents fit

together, change to these institutions forced reflection on society as such. Efforts at renewal were

thus in many respects attempts to imagine society in such a way that the status that made society

unified and comprehensible could be maintained in the face of new institutions like the

university.815 Thus according to Mixson, the legal ambiguity of these observant communities was

caused not by their novelty per se, but by the difficulty of reconciling their ways of life with other

developing institutions that offered a different organization of society.816

Just like the New Devout, these movements sought renewal through the recapitulation of the

apostolic way of life, that is, a common life in urban centers that engaged lay people on

contentious moral issues. In this respect their schools were by the fifteenth century a pillar of

civic life in many towns in the Low Countries. As van Engen notes,

Towns would not have invited them in, or benefactors supported them, or

parents sent their sons, or past students remembered them fondly, had not these

hostels/schools fulfilled an important and widely appreciated service. They

emerged as a large presence in Netherlandish towns during the fifteenth century,

a crucial source of learning, moral formation, and reforming religious for two or

three generations – also the key source of recruitment for the Brothers’ own

houses.817

The schools associated with the Devotio Moderna emerged alongside a growing desire for spiritual

renewal, and a sense that the education of boys was vital for this task. The schools the brothers

set up and ran were firmly embedded in the municipal life of their towns and cities.

The Devotio Moderna stands apart from these other Observant Reform movements, however, in

the movement’s relative indifference to preaching and public engagement over bringing the

world into their communities, initially by engaging young men as copyists, but later by stepping

815 Mixson, 64. 816 Mixson, 73–74. 817 Van Engen, Sisters and Brothers of the Common Life: The Devotio Moderna and the World of the Later Middle Ages, 154.

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into the world of education and pastoral care. Indeed, I have argued that the New Devout’s lack

of emphasis on preaching stemmed from the revocation of Grote’s preaching license. Delcorno

has noted how providing resources and teaching to novices was valued highly by Italian

observant reformers in the same period. The power of preaching could not be unleashed without

some sort of training. Delcorno argues that “an education program that would prepare preachers

could not avoid attaching central importance to study, convent libraries, and books.”818 Among

the ranks of Observant friars, calls for renewal were coupled with creative impetus for a more

thorough schooling of the laity.

In the pastoral care of the Observant friars, it is possible to discern first of all an

intensification of inherited pastoral strategies, especially preaching and

confession. Moreover, the embrace of these strategies went hand in hand with

an insistence on both spiritual and intellectual formation.819

The emphasis on education is similar, but we must note that in Delcorno’s analysis it was

directed to a completely different end, namely preaching. The emphasis of the brothers of the

New Devout, however, was not on renewal through preaching, but through the communities

they established. We can note also that the Sisters of the Common Life, who vastly outnumbered

their brothers, never even had the option of preaching and could never have directed their

reading to this end. Moderna Thus Delcorno observes in passing that the Imitatio Christi had the

greatest impact across Europe – one of the “numerous booklets and devotional treatises that

brought forms of mental prayers or contemplation from the convent to the houses of the

laity.”820 Unlike most other Observant Reform movements, the legacy of the Devotio Moderna was

carried in anonymous devotional tracts and networks of schools, not in the office of preaching.

To sisters and brothers of the New Devout, their form of community was inextricable from their

synthesis of learning and character. Knowledge understood as a perfection of being (rather than

818 Pietro Delcorno, ‘“Quomodo Discet Sine Docente?” Observant Efforts towards Education and Pastoral Care’, in A Companion to Observant Reform in the Late Middle Ages and Beyond, (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 154. 819 Delcorno, 183. 820 Delcorno, 180.

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of description or representation) implicated the whole personhood of the learner in relation to

God and creation. Unlike other Observant Reform movements, however, the New Devout did

not educate to preach. The revocation of Geert Grote’s license to preach set the Devotio Moderna

on a different track over the Observant Century, where they sought to educate in order to win

boys to their way of life and saw their role as educators as to inculcate the boys under their care

in the same practices, above all in reading, that characterized the movement as a whole.

Conclusion

The brothers, animated by their Augustinian Imaginary, recognized no division between

education and pastoral care. It is an unhelpful trend in modern scholarship to frame analysis of

the movement as though these were two mutually exclusive options, this move being in fact a

reflection of the world made and sustained by the universitas. The collations of Gerson and

Brugman simultaneously praise and exhort the brothers to reject a scholastic focus on intellectual

acumen and begin with character. By forming the heart, the student would become more able

and willing to understand a God who was love, who revealed himself to the humble and not the

proud. Furthermore, we can observe the same practices of reading that I have outlined in

previous chapters as characteristic of the Devotio Moderna as a whole. The brothers educated by

inducting boys and girls into their own way of life, with special emphasis on slow, meditative

reading as the key transformational process that enabled learning. This emphasis on reading and

common life differentiated the Devotio Moderna from other Observant Reform movements that

educated on the basis of preaching.

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9 ERASMUS AND THE UNIVERSITAS

In the midst of a bitter controversy over Erasmus’ Encomium moriae (Praise of Folly, published in

1509), Maarten Dorp († 1525), a fierce critic of Erasmus and theologian at the University of

Louvain, accused Erasmus of wanting to do away with universities because of the humanist’s

screeds against the established university faculties. “Let the grammarians then sit on the throne

and act as censors of all the other disciplines,” wrote Dorp sarcastically, “let them bring forth our

new theology.” 821 Dorp was frustrated and angry that Erasmus’ project of textual criticism

threatened to ruin the received hierarchy of knowledge, allowing in effect the grammarian or

textual critic to sit as judge over the theologian. Dorp’s sneering jibe at the source of this new

movement is significant. “So we need no universities,” wrote Dorp, “the school at Zwolle or

Deventer will be quite enough.”822 Dorp’s sarcasm struck at the heart of Erasmus’ upbringing

that was so strongly shaped by the brothers of the Devotio Moderna. Maarten Dorp went on in his

invective against foolhardy biblical textual criticism, but the rhetorical flourish hit the mark.

Despite Erasmus’ efforts to distance himself from the brothers by whom he was schooled,

Dorp’s criticism articulated Erasmus’ complex and enduring relationship with the Devotio

Moderna, a movement of bitter adolescent memories that had lasting consequences for how

Erasmus saw and interacted with universities.

Erasmus is by no means paradigmatic for the New Devout. The influences upon him are too

manifold and the concrete evidence of influence on him too labile for us to draw conclusions

from Erasmus’ writings as to the imaginary of the New Devout. Yet a case study of Erasmus –

his formation at the hands of the New Devout and his later career – throws considerable light on

the shifting nature of the influence of the Devotio Moderna as the movement reached its zenith of

cultural influence and then, like a nova, dissipated.

Erasmus dealt with the Devotio Moderna in two settings, firstly as a schoolboy and then as a young

man at studying at the University of Paris. By considering Erasmus’ upbringing at the hands of

821 CWE 3:160 822 CWE 3:160

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the brothers, we can observe the following. Firstly (1), although Erasmus viscerally recollected

the austere conditions of brother-run schools and the incompetence of certain teachers, it was

this time that even according to his own memory he met other competent teachers, his Latinity

began to flower, and he secured key positions that led to his later career. Secondly (2), Erasmus’

recollections demonstrate that later phases of the Devotio Moderna could vary considerably from

earlier iterations in terms of their attitude towards the education of boys. Contrary to the

assessment of Post, I claim in this regard that Grote would likely have agreed with Erasmus’

condemnation of some of the humanist’s teachers. Thirdly (3), by placing Erasmsus’

controversies with the theologians at Louvain and Paris in the context of the Augustinian

Imaginary of the New Devout, we can observe that Erasmus desired, like the brothers, a

synthesis of character and learning, a lack of which he criticized in his scholastic counterparts.

Although Erasmus was not solely shaped by the Devotio Moderna, Erasmus’ calls for a synthesis of

character and mental acumen in relation to university faculties echoes the New Devout’s belief in

the necessity of humility as the gatekeeper to knowledge and understanding.

Moving back into Universities

The Devotio Moderna drew its impetus from their opposition to universities, but by the sixteenth

century they had moved back into them, most notably the university of Paris. A key

development, specifically in relation to Erasmus, and more generally to the Devotio Moderna as a

whole, was the change the movement underwent in terms its influence on wider culture. While

originally the Devotio Moderna, thanks to the revocation of Grote’s preaching license, entailed a

withdrawal from the world and the engagement of young men and women through their

inclusion in the New Devout’s way of life, by the sixteenth century the movement exercised its

influence through the publication of written texts and via a network of educators in schools and

universities in the Low Countries and beyond. The move of the New Devout into a dormitory of

the University of Paris proved portentous for Erasmus.

Over the course of the fifteenth century, we can observe differing and competing responses of

the Devotio Moderna regarding their engagement with university life. In 1447 the Dominican,

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Franciscan, and Augustinian Chapters in Louvain were incorporated into the new university that

had been founded in that city. But the Chapter in Windesheim proved resistant to incorporation

into the university and it was only after the Council of Trent (1545 –1563) that the congregation

finally entered the milieu of the University of Louvain. In this way, Franciscus Vanhoof has

argued that the Windesheim Chapter of the New Devout was resistant to the emphasis on

intellectual formation present at the university. “According to the statutes [of the Windesheim

Congregation] novices attained no further intellectual education or formation. They only needed

to read in order to militate against laziness,” suggests Vanhoof.823 While Vanhoof falls prey to the

facile either/or distinction between spiritual growth and intellectual formation, he is right in

noting that multiple responses with varying levels of warmth and engagement with the university

were possible within the Devotio Moderna. It is important in the case of Erasmus that by the late

fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries multiple responses within the movement towards

universities and the brothers’ engagement with them were possible.

It is a commonplace that although the New Devout represented in germ form many aspects of

later humanism in the Low Countries, the movement itself did not really survive the sixteenth

century. While numbers rose steadily, peaking in the mid to late fifteenth century, membership

fell off from the beginning of the sixteenth century. By van Engen’s estimation the numbers of

New Devout peaked in the 1490s but fell dramatically by 1525, not surviving the rankle and roil

of the Reformation.824 While the movement began by recruiting members from print shops and

inviting potential brothers to collations, the influence of the Devotio Moderna morphed as the

Observant Century waned and the era of the Reformation began. Yet while numbers and direct

face-to-face influence of the brothers declined, the Devotio Moderna’s sphere of influence rapidly

expanded, thanks largely to the new possibilities for printing to spread widely the movement’s

writings.

823 Vanhoof, ‘De reguliere kanunniken van Windes-Heim en de Universiteit van Leuven’, 55. Volgens de statuten kregen de novicen geen verdere intellectuele opleiding of vorming. Ze moesten wel veel lezen om luiheid (otium) tegen te gaan. 824 John H. van Engen, Sisters and Brothers of the Common Life: The Devotio Moderna and the World of the Later Middle Ages, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), 308.

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Withstanding some continued presence of the New Devout’s Augustinian Imaginary, the

brothers who were shaped by the New Devout exported their Augustinian Imaginary more and

more back into university contexts at the close of the fifteenth century. Despite their aversion to

the scholastici and the university, by the beginning of the sixteenth century the brothers had

moved into university dormitories as an institutional presence, most notably with the

appointment of the brother John Standonck as rector of the Collège de Montaigu at the

university of Paris. Brothers shaped by the New Devout, led by the appointment of Standonck,

brought their Augustinian Imaginary of the New Devout into university centers. A dramatic twist

in the story of the Devotio Moderna is that just over a century after Grote’s death, the brothers

were back in universities, working within the institution to form and educate young students. In

effect, this infiltration offered an alternative vision for university education and a competing

sociality to the traditional institution that the New Devout so strongly rejected. As a movement

the influence of the Devotio Moderna at the beginning of the sixteenth century increasingly took

the form of the formation of scholars and the dissemination of texts.

The problem of Erasmus’ Origins

Although Erasmus downplayed his formation by the New Devout, it is difficult to avoid the

conclusion that the Devotio Moderna exercised a significant, if difficult to articulate, influence on

him. Erasmus clouded the matter of his origins by regularly disparaging his time in Deventer and

’s Hertogenbosch in his later writings. This led some scholars to see no connection between the

Devotio Moderna and Erasmus. Edmund College argued that Erasmus’ ideals were poles apart

from the original founders of the Brethren of the Common Life. “Erasmus believed that in his

own manner he was as much an imitator of Christ as were the Brethren,” writes College, “but if

we do not wish to say that he was imitating a different Christ, we must concede that his way led

him far off from them.”825 Yet though obvious to say, disparaging one’s progenitors is not

necessarily the same thing as to be uninfluenced by them. Dorp’s biting censure of Erasmus with

825 Edmund Colledge O.S.A., ‘Erasmus, the Brethren of the Common Life and the Devotio Moderna’, Erasmus in English 7 (1975): 4.

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which I have framed this chapter amply demonstrates that an association with the anti-university

New Devout did not particularly help Erasmus in his controversies against that institution’s

theologians.

The Devotio Moderna, in fact, cast a long shadow over the career of Erasmus, and the movement

shaped his attitude towards the university and its faculties of theology, with whom he fought

bitterly. This influence took shape not so much in Erasmus’ willing acceptance of their way of

life, he notoriously censuring the brothers’ efforts to recruit him in his autobiography, but

through the formation he experienced as a schoolboy and young scholar under their care.

The most recent and comprehensive study on Erasmus’ origins and influences is Cornelis

Augustijn’s Erasmus: der Humanist als Theologe und Kirchenreformer. Augustijn correctly observed that

the status of Erasmus’ relationship to the Devotio Moderna has been framed in terms of

significance to Erasmus’ later career and the nature of the humanism he has come to represent,

not the status of the Devotio Moderna in the sixteenth century. “Erasmus and the Devotio

Moderna,” writes Augustijn, was “a theme which for a long time belonged to the central

questions that concerned the origin and development of the young Erasmus.”826 In other words,

scholars have turned to the Devotio Moderna in order to cast new light on Erasmus, not with the

relationship between the humanist and the movement itself as the central focus.

Augustijn’s historiographical overview on the connection between Erasmus and the New Devout

will be helpful to set out here. After Paul Mestwerdt’s study, Die Anfänge des Erasmus, in which

Mestwerdt argued Erasmus was strongly influenced by his youth with the New Devout, R.R.

Post set the tone of scholarship for coming decades when he argued for little demonstrable

contact between Erasmus and the brothers. Augustijn summarizes,

Mestwerdt’s observations exercised great influence, an influence which came to

an abrupt end through the study of Regnerus R. Post. Post namely

demonstrated soberly that there could scarcely be a discussion of contact of the

826 C. Augustijn, Erasmus: der Humanist als Theologe und Kirchenreformer, (Leiden; New York: Brill, 1996), 26. Erasmus und die Devotio Moderna – ein Thema, das lange Zeit zu den zentralen Fragen gehörte, wenn es um die Herkunft und Entwicklung des jungen Erasmus ging.

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young Erasmus with the Devotio Moderna until his entry in the cloister [at Steyn]

at the age of twenty.827

It was only recently that Heiko Oberman tempered Post’s negative assessment of Erasmus’

connection to the New Devout. Where Post looked for concrete connections in paltry records

from the schools Erasmus attended, Oberman instead looked to the interactions between the

rectors and leaders of the Devotio Moderna and other nascent, monastic humanist movements that

were also involved in schools. 828 Nonetheless, Augustijn concluded cautiously in his own

assessment that,

Erasmus’ contact with the Devotio Moderna took place in his monastic-time and

during the first year of his life in Paris. The Devotio Moderna, as it had developed

in its later phase, instilled only aversion in Erasmus. He formulated his ideal of a

genuinely Christian life in open rejection of, and contradistinction to, the ideal

as it was developed by the Devotio Moderna. His life’s goal, and way thereto, a

renewal of the Christian world through the amalgamation of bonae and sacrae

litterae, bears witness to a spirituality that cannot be brought into agreement with

the spirituality of the devout.829

Scholarship has generally interested itself in the connection between Erasmus and the Devotio

Moderna in relation to Erasmus’ career or the status of Renaissance humanism. Given the simple

fact that Erasmus looked down on the poor quality of his teachers, particularly regarding their

Latinity and openness to classical literature, scholars including Augustijn have judged for the

827 Augustijn, 26. Mestwerdts Betrachtungen haben großen Einfluss ausgeübt, einen Einfluß, der durch die Studie von Regnerus R. Post zu einem abrupten Ende kam. Post stellte nämlich in aller Nüchternheit fest, daß von einem Kontakt des jungen Erasmus mit der Devotio Moderna bis zu seinem Eintritt ins Kloster als Zwanzigjähriger kaum die Rede sein könnte. 828 Augustijn, 27. 829 Augustijn, 37. Ich kann meine Schlußfolgerungen sehr kurz formulieren: Erasmus’ Kontakte mit der Devotio Moderna haben in seiner Klosterzeit und während der ersten Jahre seines Lebens in Paris stattgefunden. Die Devotio Moderna, wie sie sich in ihrer Spätphase entwickelt hatte, hat Erasmus nur Abneigung eingeflößt. Sein Ideal von einem wahrhaft christlichem [sic] Leben hat er in offenkundiger Abweisung von und Gegenüberstellung zu dem Ideal, wie es durch die Devotio Moderna verwirklicht wurde, formuliert. Sein Lebensziel und der dahinführende Weg, eine Erneuerung der christlichen Welt durch das Verschmelzen der bonae et sacrae litterae, bezeugen eine Spiritualität, die nicht in Einklang zu bringen ist mit der Spiritualität der Devoten.

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most part that Erasmus’ blend of bonae and sacrae litterae amounted to a rejection of the ethos of

the Devotio Moderna. I argue, however, that Erasmus’ ideals are closer to those modelled by the

movements founders than what was embodied by his teachers. Where Post argued stridently that

Grote would have been dismayed at the appropriation of pagan learning by later phases of the

movement, the opposite is in fact true, at least in the case of Erasmus. Erasmus advocated the

dissolution of the divisions of knowledge within the university, as did Grote and his first

followers, while simultaneously engaging with the same texts and issues that enthused the

scholars housed therein. Erasmus, therefore, maps well onto what was modelled by the earliest

phase of the Devotio Moderna, with later phases, in fact, amounting to a devolution away from the

ideals laid down by Grote, Radewijns, and their successors, not because these later phases were

so enthused by pagan texts, but precisely because there weren’t and disciplined Erasmus because

of his passion for them.

It is possible to delimit this argument further by noting that while Erasmus, himself in accord

with Grote’s Augustinian Imaginary, sharply criticized his teachers, this cannot by itself amount

to evidence for the movement as a whole. We can therefore argue that Erasmus, despite dealing

with less than paradigmatic representatives of the movement’s imaginary, still imbibed its ethos.

This accounts satisfactorily both for the harshness with which he remembered his schoolboy

years and for the fact that his Latinity and passion for the studia humanitatis were kindled at this

time. I shall demonstrate this in more detail below.

The Influence of the Devotio Moderna on Erasmus

When Erasmus remembered his time as a schoolboy and as a young scholar at the brother-run

dormitory in Paris, the first thing that came to mind was unbearable austerity. No theme receives

as much emotional charge as this aspect of his upbringing. However, even though Erasmus had

scarcely a word of praise for his former teachers, the brothers’ ideals were nonetheless formative.

While we may take Erasmus’ opprobrium as an indication of lack of concern on the part of the

brothers for what would later captivate him – a love of language, learning, and philology – it is

not a substantial or absolute indictment on the brothers’ schools as a whole that Erasmus’

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particular teachers were incompetent or mean spirited. Rather, I argue, when we consider

Erasmus’ ideals against the Augustinian Imaginary of the New Devout, we see that his specific

negative experience belies the fact that it was at this time that Erasmus’ Latinity began to flower,

his passion for learning and erudition kindled, and he secured his first opportunity to enter the

world of scholarship under the patronage of the Bishop of Cambrai. During his adolescence

Erasmus met teachers who vexed and frustrated his passions as well as teachers who he admired

and emulated, Erasmus’ early writings even showing direct influence on treatises produced

amongst the New Devout.

Erasmus the Schoolboy

Erasmus studied under the Brethren of the Common Life and remained deeply shaped by this

education, becoming a regular Augustinian canon at Steyn in 1487. Erasmus’ recollections on the

activities of the Devotio Moderna, however, echo the tension explored over the preceding chapters

between the New Devout’s communities as anti-intellectual and anti-university in contrast to the

erudition and scholars that some of their schools and communities produced. To Erasmus, they

were austere, monkish, and suspicious of the university. The young Erasmus was pushed towards

religious vocation by brothers who he later recollected in his Compendium vitae erasmi roterdami (A

Summary of the Life of Erasmus of Rotterdam) were “afraid of the university,” an opinion Erasmus

repeated verbatim in a later letter to Conradus Goclenius.830 To Erasmus’ mind, all that the

brothers wanted from him was a commitment to forgo a university career and to join their

community as a monk. He bitterly recollected the pressure that he felt they placed on him to

forgo further learning for the sake a life that was an effective dead end to the promising

beginning of his education.

However, the Devotio Moderna provided the context for Erasmus’ early education and left traces in

his later writings. Schoeck argues that, “the Devotio moderna provided the atmosphere, if not the

specifics of doctrine, of the philosophia Christi, and Erasmus’ commitment to life-long study and to

830 CWE 4:405; 10. Ep. 1437.

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service to Christian learning owes much, it appears, to the emphasis by the Brothers upon

work.”831

Erasmus’ Enchiridion and Colloquia both bear marked resemblances thematically to Thomas à

Kempis. Furthermore, Erasmus’ later scholarly circle were populated by former students of the

Devotio Moderna’s milieu.

Erasmus directed considerable criticism against the austere living conditions and specific

brothers who he believed did not value the learning with which he was beginning to see as his

life’s calling. In his Compendium, composed late in his life, Erasmus remembers that he “wasted

about three years in a house of the brothers.”832 Erasmus took a low view to the efforts of the

brothers, which he judged to be primarily to induce young boys to take monastic vows. “This of

men [sic] now spreads widely through the world,” recollected Erasmus, “though it is disastrous

for gifted minds and a mere nursery for monks.” 833 Erasmus also refers in his De recta

pronunciatione to an unpleasant experience as young child at the brother school. After an outbreak

of plague, Erasmus moved from the brothers’ school at Deventer to ’sHertogenbosch. Not

wanting to settle his vocation without his parents’ consent, Erasmus resisted the exhortations of

his master. But these exhortations became more insistent, manipulative, and aggressive. “It was

assault” said Erasmus via an interlocutor in a dialogue work.834

Erasmus, however, did not describe the philosophy or program of the school with the same

censure he directed at some of its teachers, an important distinction to bear in mind when

assessing the connection between Erasmus and the Devotio Moderna. Erasmus’ scorn in De recta

pronunciatione centers primarily on the conditions of the school and the poor quality of teachers, as

do almost all of Erasmus’ critiques of the brother-schools. Erasmus recollected this same

experience in his Compendium.

831 Richard Joseph Schoeck, Erasmus of Europe: The Making of a Humanist, 1467-1500 (Savage: Barnes & Noble, 1990), 267. 832 CWE 4:406. 833 CWE 4:406. 834 CWE 26:385.

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The poor youth [i.e. Erasmus], who was still weak from the fever which had

held him for more than a year, felt no dislike for religion, but he did dislike a

monastery. They therefore allowed him a day to think it over. All this time the

guardian put up to tempt and threaten him and bring pressure to bear on his

innocent mind.835

By focusing on the poor living conditions and monastery-stuffing aims of the school, Erasmus

was able simultaneously to censure inhumane living conditions and to praise certain exemplary

teachers. Erasmus described his early education in just this way. Having been sent to an

elementary school at age four, but then transferred to the brother school at Deventer at nine,

Erasmus remembered that “the school there was at that time in a state of barbarism.”836 Yet

Erasmus distinguished this barbarism from the efforts of Alexander Hegius and Synthen, who

“had begun to introduce something of a higher standard as literature.”837 Erasmus differentiated

between teachers who he judged of varying quality, competence, and erudition. Hegius succeeded

Romboldus as rector of the school in Deventer from 1483–1498, and it is likely that Johannes

Synthen taught the later grades of the school for a short time. Romboldus was most likely a tutor

in a municipal school in which the brothers worked. Romboldus comes across in Erasmus’

writings as enthused by the potential of the young boy but who ultimately misjudged the

situation by leaning on him too hard to join the brethren. “Romboldus, who was much struck by

the boy’s gifts,” remembered Erasmus, “began to work on him to join his flock.”838 Importantly,

Erasmus directs his opprobrium at this specific teacher, Romboldus, rather than the movement

or school-system in toto. It is not a substantial critique or judgment on the Devotio Moderna that

Erasmus was exposed to during his youth to a particularly bad teacher in Romboldus provided

that Romboldus did not represent the ideals of the movement at large. This warns us against

glossing Erasmus’ reflections on the brother schools in absolute terms, of taking his experiences

835 CWE 4:406. 836 CWE 4:404. 837 CWE 4:405. 838 CWE 10. Ep. 1437.

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as indicative of the ideals of the movement, when in fact they may just as well represent an

aberration to the Devotio Moderna’s ideals.

Erasmus and his Teachers

Although Erasmus deplored the quality of education and lack of erudition of his schooling, he

expressed in the same breath a vision for classicism akin to what the most prominent members

of the Devotio Moderna exhorted and modelled. Erasmus lamented the lack of classical Latin

taught in the schools, believing that “these institutions have no truck with pagan authors.”839 It is

unlikely that Erasmus’ recollections were entirely inaccurate or meanspirited, but this description

of the brothers does not mesh with what was modelled or practiced in earlier phases of the

movement, particularly the letters of Geert Grote, replete with classical allusions and appeals to

classical authorities. “I agree that Martial, Catullus, Tibullus, and suchlike should not be read

before the character had been formed,” advised Erasmus, “nevertheless the teacher ought to be

well versed in them all for the elegance and grace of their language and the language they can give

of antiquity.”840 R.R. Post argued that Gert Grote would have been dismayed that later phases of

the Devotio Moderna gravitated towards pagan learning. But Erasmus’ experiences demonstrate

that the opposite was true in the case of Erasmus, who was far closer to Grote’s ideal of the

common Christian life led with a wise and sensitive exposure to the classics. In the case of

Erasmus, the dissonance is not between the supposedly anti-classical founders of the Devotio

Moderna and the later leaders of the movement that instilled in budding humanists like Erasmus a

love for their classical inheritance. On the contrary, the case of Erasmus shows us merely that

some of the Devotio Moderna’s later teaches failed to live up to the ideals modelled by their

movements’ founders. The most we can conclude is that Grote, already furnished by the

education of his pre-conversion youth, was able to take this learning into the secluded way of the

life of the New Devout in a way that later brothers raised within it – and therefore warded away

from the university – could not.

839 CWE 26:386. 840 CWE 26:386.

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The point that Erasmus was closer to Grote than some of his anti-classical teachers is

strengthened with a view to Erasmus’ opinion of some of his other teachers. We must remember

that Erasmus had mostly positive things to say about Romboldus’ successor, Hegius, and that

Erasmus at this time acquired enough dexterity in Latin to find work under the Bishop of

Cambrai. In Erasmus’ own account of his life, his Latinity began to flower during his time under

the brothers’ tuition. “At this point there was an outbreak of plague [at age nine],” Erasmus

wrote of himself in his autobiography, “he returned to his guardians, having by now also

acquired some fluency of style from a few good authors.”841 Erasmus does not draw out the

significance of this recollection, but the implication is plainly that in spite of certain philistine

authors Erasmus somehow found access to certain classical authors and was supported enough

in his reading to gain a taste for them. Though attributed to the authors he read, not his teachers,

Erasmus still records that it was at this time that he first began develop a considerable

proficiency and facundity with the Latin language. With the help of this Latinity, Erasmus

secured a post with the bishop of Cambrai, in turn the means by which he came to Paris, the

Collège de Montaigu, to study.

The bishop was hoping for a cardinal’s hat, and would have had one, had he

not been short of ready money. For the purpose of this journey he needed a

good Latin scholar. So our man was sent for by him, with authorization from

the bishop of Utrecht.… When the bishop had lost his hope of a hat, and

perceived that the young man’s devotion to them all left something to be

desired, he arranged that he should got to Paris to study.842

Furthermore, Erasmus’ educational ideals are similar to those espoused by the New Devout with

regard to Scripture. Erasmus grew up in the circle of the New Devout, where lay Bibles and

biblical translation were commonplace, in fact encouraged. 843 This culture strongly shaped

841 CWE 4:406. 842 CWE 4:407-408. 843 Nikolaus Staubach, ‘Gerhard Zerbolt von Zutphen und die Apologie der Laienlektüre in der Devotio Moderna’, in Laienlektüre und Buchmarkt in späten Mittelalter, ed. T Kock and R Schlusemnan (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Land, 1997), 221-289; Nikolaus Staubach, ‘Gerhard Zerbolt von Zutphen und die

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Erasmus’ later position on biblical scholarship and philology. Wim François has shown that it is

likely Erasmus’ passion for biblical scholarship and desire to produce vernacular Bibles for the

laity drew their inner-logic and justifications from the Devotio Moderna.844 These reasons comprise

Erasmus’ likely exposure to ideas in the milieu of the Devotio Moderna as a schoolboy as well as the

similarity between the argument of Gerard Zerbolt of Zutphen for the vernacular reading of

Scripture by laici spirituales and Erasmus’ more radical argument that Scripture should be available

for all in the vernacular. Copies of Zerbolt’s De libris teutonicalibus and Supra modum vivendi were in

the library of the school in Deventer that Erasmus attended.845 In arguing in favor of access to

vernacular Scripture for the laity, Erasmus drew on similar biblical and Patristic themes and

motifs as Zerbolt used in his De libris teutonicalibus, and even displays some syntactical

similarities.846 Both refer to Jerome’s advocation of lay women reading Scripture in the first

instance to bolster their argument.847

Erasmus is not alone in underlining the value of pietas above ingenium when it

comes to understanding Scripture. Zerbolt likewise argues that people who

persevere in their spiritual life will ultimately come to a more profound

knowledge of Scripture than these same scholars who are dulled by a life lived

according to the flesh.848

As is the case for many movements, Erasmus as a schoolboy discovered that the average

proponent of the ethos of the Devotio Moderna was less impressive and inspiring than its leaders

and ideals. Erasmus found the day-to-day grind of schoolboy life in a community of the Devotio

Moderna far from amenable, and this way of life paled in comparison to the ideals of the

movement, whether Erasmus recognized this or not. Erasmus’ harsh rendition of his childhood

Laienbibel’, in Lay Bibles in Europe 1450 - 1800, ed. Mathijs Lamberigts and August den Hollander (Louvain, 2006), 3–26. 844 Wim François, ‘Erasmus’ Plea for Bible Reading in the Vernacular. The Legacy of the Devotio Moderna?’, Erasmus of Rotterdam Society Yearbook 28, no. 1 (2008): 91. 845 François, 96. 846 François, 102. 847 François, 106. 848 François, 108.

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experiences demonstrates that, while the ideals of the movement may certainly have shaped and

impacted the young Erasmus, his quotidian experiences did not, in Erasmus’ opinion, match up.

There is no doubting that Erasmus did not remember the living conditions or his teachers

fondly. However, even by his own narration, his time spent with the brothers was key to his

formation as a scholar. It was at this time that his skills and passion for the studia humanitatis

began to emerge, even if this fact is tempered by Erasmus’ opprobrium for some of his

incompetent teachers, the austere conditions of the schools, and the danger an association with

the New Devout had for his later career.

Collège de Montaigu

To illustrate the effect of the New Devout on Erasmus, we need also to adumbrate the brothers’

role at the Collège de Montaigu of the University of Paris, Erasmus’ second significant point of

contact with the New Devout. Erasmus passed through this college, which the brother Jean

Standonck, appointed procurator of the College in 1483, had revitalized. Standonck’s agenda for

the college was set by his attack on corrupt clergy in his preaching and advocacy for poor

students. Through examination of the brothers’ work in the college, we see that the brothers

entered the university space with their own imaginary different to the university’s. The New

Devout’s Augustinian Imaginary led Standonck to prioritize religious, not administrative reform.

In keeping with Erasmus’ opinion of his schoolboy years, Erasmus critiqued above all the living

conditions of the colleges, and he had little to say about the value the brothers placed on the

elements of the emerging studia humanitatis.

Beginnings of the Collège de Montaigu

The originally named Collège des Aycelins was begun in 1314 by Gilles Aycelin, archbishop of

Rouen, with a bequest of money in his will for a fund of rental income used to support students.

After Aycelin’s death in June 1318, the Collège of Aycelin was incorporated into a complex of

buildings along the Rue des Sept-Voies in 1392/3. The incorporation of the earlier Collège des

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Aycelins was made explicit in the charter drawn up for the new Collège de Montaigu in 1402.849

The Collège then came under the control the Cathedral Chapter of Paris in 1409.850 After a series

of procurators appointed by a selection committee of that Chapter, Jean Standonck was

appointed procurator in 1483.851

The second half of the fifteenth century saw a significant rise in students at the University of

Paris. John Standonck took control over the Collège de Montaigu amidst a backdrop of

expansion, with the University of Paris negotiating relations with new universities at, among

other places, Caen and Bourges.852 Furthermore, the university had begun to take on a far more

nationalistic character. From 1471 onwards, Louis XI ordered foreign students who refused to

pledge allegiance to him to be expelled from the university’s colleges. Before the end of the

fifteenth century, the universal and catholic character of the University of Paris was further

eroded when the right to strike was rescinded.853

Standonck stepped in this milieu. The co-managed university increasingly bore a French

character and negotiated its independence by placating royal power. The University of Paris at

the close of the fifteenth century approximated a joint-enterprise, co-managed by the rectors and

masters of the university’s schools and administrative bodies as well as by royal power. This

arrangement, “established a system of co-management of the university shared between the

masters and royal power.”854 Such a negotiation allowed as much as possible for an independent

university identity while still accepting the reality that the institution could not be fully

independent from the French crown.

849 J. J. M. Bakker, ‘The Collège de Montaigu Before Standonck’, in History of Universities. Vol. XXII/2, 2007, (Oxford: University Press, 2008), 62. 850 Bakker, 63. 851 Bakker, 65. 852 Jacques Verger, ‘Landmarks for a History of the University of Paris at the Time of Jean Standonck’, in History of Universities. Vol. XXII/2, 2007, ed. J. J. M. Bakker, (Oxford: University Press, 2008), 5. 853 Verger, 6. “The old Christian ideal of universalism, to which the university claimed to adhere, succumbed to the rise of national constraints and sympathies. In 1471, king Louis XI was able to authorize the expulsion of foreign students, in this particular case the Burgundians, who had refused to swear a special oath of fidelity to him.” 854 Verger, 7.

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Jean Standonck

Jean Standonck was raised at Mechelen, near Antwerp in a poor family and was educated in a

school run by the brothers of the New Devout, although the content of this education is unclear.

Jean Standonck entered the brother school in Gouda as a young boy. He was part of the scholares

pauperes of an already impoverished wing of the Devotio Moderna in comparison to the far more

affluent schools in Zwolle or Deventer. Standonck’s later aims at the college centered on spiritual

renewal similar to the principles he imbibed from the Devotio Moderna. Hyma suggested that

Standonck embodied the values and way of life of the Devotio Moderna at the college. “He no

doubt consciously imitated,” suggests Hyma, “the Brethren of the Common Life at Gouda.855

Paoli Sartori has shown that Standonck’s reform of the College was primarily aimed at religious,

not administrative, reform. 856 After being appointed procurator, Standonck attacked corrupt

clergy in his preaching and began to take in more poor students. From 1496 onwards,

“Standonck started to reform the French religious orders by introducing into their houses the

statutes of the brethren of the Congregation of Windesheim and with those statutes the ideas of

Devotio Moderna.”857 We can observe in Standonck’s procuratorship efforts to introduce aspects

of the communis vita of the Devotio Moderna.

Conditions at the Collège de Montaigu under Standonck

Life at the Collège de Montaigu under Standonck was hard, as Erasmus famously bemoaned in

an autobiographical section of his Colloquia. Sartori summarizes the key features of this life:

Life was hard at Montaigu. Rest and leisure were forbidden. Spare time had to

be filled with pious meditations. Sleep hours were limited and broken by the

night office, in compliance with the Carthusian tradition. It was necessary for

the members to mortify themselves through menial works in the household.

The diet never changed during the year: for the main meal small portions of fish

855 Hyma, Renaissance to Reformation, 340. 856 Paolo Sartori, ‘Frans Titelmans, the Congregation of Montaigu, and Biblical Scholarship’, in A Companion to Biblical Humanism and Scholasticism in the Age of Erasmus, ed. Erika Rummel (Brill, 2008), 215–16. 857 Sartori, 216.

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and vegetables, the cheapest ones possible, one or two eggs, and a little cheese.

The harshest element in the routine was the severe discipline.858

The statutes of the university of Paris, written in 1499, record that Standonck oversaw the

welfare of the whole student, including their physical development, seeking to provide “a

regimen and rule for the whole body.”859 Ideally, masters of the college came from the college

itself in order that they understand the conditions the students experienced. The charter records

that the master should be “more prudent and more suited than the rest both for theory and

practice, namely fearing God and desiring the salvation of souls.”860 The masters, however, were

not supposed to neglect academic support. “Furthermore, in order that the study of philosophy

bear richer fruit, he shall look to appoint to the aforementioned community of poor theologians,

masters and rulers from their own assembly, if they have people suitable, to teach both grammar

and arts in the same college.”861 On the basis of the college’s statues, rector’s such as Standonck

saw pastoral care – the formation of devotion and humility – as the necessary first step towards

intellectual progress, both of which were key aspects of the development of students at the

college.

This way of life in some obvious respects is similar to the houses run by the brothers: a fully

structured way of life as opposed to specialized intellectual formation; cultivation of virtues

through manual work; time of independent self-reflection built into their way of life. The rector

and other teachers in the Collège de Montaigu were supposed to “start from spiritual matters,”

namely the attendance and celebration of mass.862 Just like the narratives of the New Devout in

relation to the founding of houses in Deventer and Windesheim, Montaigu should equip the

poor who, “dead to pleasures and instructed in the Bible, will be able with the aid of the Lord to

858 Sartori, 217. 859 Michel Félibien and Guy-Alexis Lobineau, ‘Articles Approuvez Par Le Chapitre de Paris Pour Le Regime Du College de Montaigu’, in Histoire de La Ville de Paris, vol. 5, 716. stabilimentum & regimen totius corporis. 860 Félibien and Lobineau, 716. Quique inter caeteros prudentior & idoneior visus fuerit, tam ad theoriticam quam ad practicam, praecipue timens Deum, & salute animarum zelans. 861 Félibien and Lobineau, 717. insuper ut ad fructum uberiorem proveniat philosophicum exercitium, spectabit ad praedictam communitatem theologorum pauperum magistros & regents ex suo gremio, si idoneos habeant, eligere, qui & grammaticam & artes in eodem collegio doceant. 862 Félibien and Lobineau, 718. a spiritualibus inchoando.

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greatly honor the church of God in the future.863 The charter labors this point, stating in the next

section that the college should exist to help the poor who lack the means of an education in

order that they might become “great men and the columns of the church that are needed for the

building up and direction of every ecclesiastical status.”864 The way of the life at the college was

thus intended to form the character of the youths there.865 Examples, not just words, vivified this

life and the charter expresses the conviction that this process of formation be

capable of inspiring to holiness and perfection of life by the example and words

of others, when before their eyes they see their friends in the desire of

knowledge and virtue who tread the narrow path, all abstaining from flesh,

some others also abstaining from wine, indulging in very little sleep, and

breaking the attack of lust in discipline and in their leisure.866

Erasmus excoriated the living conditions at the college, not least because some of later bitter

enemies would also originate there, such as Jacobus Latomus and Noel Beda. In his dialogue

Ἰχθυοφαγία (“a diet of fish”), Erasmus’ lambasted the poor material conditions at the college.

Fishmonger: Thirty years ago I lived in Paris in a college named from vinegar…

I carried nothing away from there except a body plagued by the worst humors,

plus a most generous supply of lice… That college was then ruled by John

Standonck, a man whose intentions were beyond reproach but whom you

would have found entirely lacking in judgment. Because he remembered his own

youth, which had been spent in bitter poverty, he took special account of

impoverished students. For that he deserves much credit. And had he relieved

the poverty of young men enough to provide a decent support for honest

863 Félibien and Lobineau, 718. qui sensibus mortificati & in sacris litteris eruditi, poterunt in futurum Domino cooperante ecclesiae Dei magno esse decori. 864 Félibien and Lobineau, 718. in viros magnos & ecclesiae collumnas ad omnium statuum ecclsiasticorum directionem & erectionem necessarias. 865 Félibien and Lobineau, 719. formatur quoque mores iuvenum. 866 Félibien and Lobineau, 719. posse ad vitae sanctimoniam & vitae perfectionem aliorum exemplo & verbis animari, cum ante oculos viderint socios suos scientiae & virtutis desiderio tam districtam incedere semitatem, omnes a carnibus, alios etiam a vino abstinere, somno bravissimo indulgere, disciplinis insuper ac lasciviis impetum lasciviae frangere.

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studies, while making sure they did not have too soft a life, he would have

merited praise. But this he tried to do by mean bedding so hard, diet so harsh

and scanty, by sleepless nights and labor so burdensome, than within a year his

initial effort had caused the death of many very capable, gifted, promising

youths and brought others (some of whom I myself knew) to blindness, nervous

breakdowns or leprosy.867

Erasmus, speaking through the fishmonger, described this obsession with clothing and food as

“pharisaical.” 868 Erasmus believed that John Standonck placed too much emphasis on the

mortification of the flesh and too little emphasis on character formation – that is, too much

corporal discipline and not enough gentleness and compassion. “Youthful spirits should not be

broken to this sort of life, but instead the heart should be trained in godliness,” counseled

Erasmus.869 It is also possible that Erasmus’ shocking description in De pueris instituendis (On the

Education of Boys) of the eager floggings done by a “professor of theology” may refer to

Standonck too. In that work Erasmus views similarly the austere discipline, intended to

“humble” the young wards, as barbaric and counterproductive.870 Surveying his own experiences,

Erasmus identified living conditions and overly austere discipline as his chief complaints against

the brother-schools and the college dormitories they oversaw. Once again, we see that Erasmus’

opprobrium of the brothers’ way of life centered on their austerity, not their value or use of the

stuff of the studia humanitatis.

Devotio Moderna and the Humanist-Scholastic Debate: Erasmus’

Controversies with the Theological Faculties of Paris and Louvain

We have established that Erasmus’ harsh censure of the brother-run schools and dormitories

center on the austere living conditions and lackluster teaching he experienced, not a critique of

the content that he learnt there. It was during this time of his development that Erasmus

867 CWE 40:715. 868 CWE 40:716. 869 CWE 40:716-717. 870 CWE 26:326-327.

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discovered his aptitude for Latinity and secured his first position as a budding scholar. Although

Erasmus thought their way of life too severe, we have little reason to conclude that Erasmus was

at loggerheads with the New Devout’s Augustinian Imaginary. To the contrary, Erasmus’ ideals

were much closer to those of Grote than his teachers were. While Erasmus may have advocated

a gentler form of life, the point remains that like the New Devout Erasmus longed for a synthesis

of devotion and learning. This longing is borne out by consideration between two of Erasmus’

controversies with the theological faculties of Paris and Louvain. Erasmus lived as a liminal

figure to the institution of the university and broke down the barriers between the disciplines of

philology and theology, a commonplace claim, but cast in fresh light when we see the extent of

his debt to the Devotio Moderna and its Augustinian Imaginary. When we consider Erasmus’

controversies with the faculties of theology at Paris and Louvain we see that Erasmus had a view

of scholarship and faith (and the interface of the two) that stemmed from an Augustinian

Imaginary that led him into conflict with the imaginary he and the Devotio Moderna identified with

the universitas.

By the time the aforementioned controversies at Paris and Louvain reached their zenith,

proponents of both scholasticism and the studia humanitatis had moved past open debate and had

resorted to name-calling: the humanists were routinely termed “pagans, heretics, sophists,

dreamers and fools.”871 On the other side, the scholastic theologian Nicolaus Baechem, for

example, called Erasmus and his fellow humanist Lefèvre d'Étaples “cranes, asses, beasts,

blockheads, and Antichrists.”872 Noël Beda, a theologian at Paris, complained before the French

parliament about humanistae theogolizantes, theologizing humanists. Thinkers like Beda considered it

a scandal that Erasmus the graeculus, the “greekling,” should emend and annotate Scripture.

Erasmus was repeatedly in contact with the Universities of Paris and Louvain, clashing over the

opposing imaginaries that vivified their respective endeavors.

871 Erika Rummel, The Humanist-Scholastic Debate in the Renaissance and Reformation (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1995), 5. 872 Rummel, 5.

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It is a well-worn observation that by the end of the fifteenth century fierce divisions had emerged

over the issue of the status theology at the university, pitting theologians against scholars who

were devoted to the new learning of the studia humanitatis, the “humanist-scholastic debate.” In

the case of Erasmus, I argue that his debt to the Augustinian Imaginary of the Devotio Moderna

offers us purchase on what was really at stake for this humanist in the humanist-scholastic

debate. With Erasmus’ formation at the hands of the New Devout in view, the humanist-

scholastic debate, at least in the case of Erasmus, was in effect a clash of imaginaries with a

similar dynamic as the Devotio Moderna had in earlier phases to scholastic, university culture.

Erasmus, in keeping with the New Devout’s Augustinian Imaginary, argued that true theology

ought to pervade and regulate all disciplines, including his beloved philology, which Erasmus saw

ideally in partnership with the work of university theologians. In effect, Erasmus’ controversies

reveal a similar stance to the scholastic, university culture as the New Devout.

A brief recapitulation of the contours of this debate will be helpful here. There is disagreement as

to the nature of the humanist-scholastic debate, whether it constituted a pervasive culture war or

more isolated and esoteric quarrels. James Overfield, in his 1984 book Humanism and Scholasticism

in Late Medieval Germany, cautioned against “simple dualisms” like humanist-scholastic and made a

case for unconnected quarrels: “humanist-scholastic relations were certainly not marked by the

titanic and never-ending struggles imagined by the humanists and repeated in much historical

writing.” 873 Overfield goes on to argue that humanism spread partly because of “a conviction

that the studia humanitatis offered better preparation for princely service than traditional scholastic

fare; the ambition to enhance their personal prestige than that of their university.”874 Since then,

Erika Rummel’s The Humanist-Scholastic Debate in the Renaissance and Reformation (1995) has argued

strongly for two coherent, if loosely defined, “sides” to the debate. However, she notes that the

designations “scholastic” and “humanistic” admit similar qualifications as Overfield makes. “For

purposes of meaningful discussion of the conflict we must adopt a set of criteria,” outlines

Rummel,

873 James H. Overfield, Humanism and Scholasticism in Late Medieval Germany, 1984, 328. 874 Overfield, 328.

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the questions to ask therefore are not whether a scholar was able to cite the

classics, but what value he put to them; not whether he knew Greek or was able

to distinguish between classical and nonclassical usage, but whether he thought

such skills were relevant to the theologian.”875

Additionally, others have argued that this debate centered on the competition between the

conservative scholastic theologians and innovative humanists over intellectual supremacy. Nauert

argues that scholastic theologians gradually began to locate orthodoxy not in ecclesiastical

structure but in their own faculty and, more specifically, in their dialectic method.

One [issue of the debate], of course, was defense of orthodox doctrine; after

the outbreak of the Reformation, this issue produced an increasingly

poisonous atmosphere. The second issue, closely linked to the first and also

to the question of professional qualifications, was the inherent validity of the

opponent's intellectual method, either dialectical or linguistic/philological.

The scholastic conservatives flatly declared that only their own traditional

method, based on dialectical argumentation and closely guided by the writings

of earlier generations of scholastic theologians, could provide sure guarantees

of orthodoxy in doctrine and catholicity in religious practice.876

While having spent time South of the alps over the course of his career, we can identify Erasmus

with a specifically Germanic humanism. Myron Gilmore has tracked Erasmus’ changing

relationship with Italian humanism. Gilmore suggests that though Erasmus had a more open-

hearted attitude towards classical learning in relation to the Christian faith, and this in distinction

to many of his contemporaries above the alps, Erasmus’ relationships soured with his Italian

875 Rummel, The Humanist-Scholastic Debate in the Renaissance and Reformation, 14. 876 Charles G. Nauert, ‘Humanism as Method: Roots of Conflict with the Scholastics’, The Sixteenth Century Journal 29, no. 2 (1998): 431.

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peers over the course of his career – the princeps humanistarum accused by former friends of more

or less deliberately enabling the Lutheran scourge.877

While it is true that the tenor of the studia humanitatis took a particular Italian shape South of the

Alps, and will thus not concern us much here, it has been long observed that Erasmus’

involvement was colored by his formation at the hands of humanists from the Low Countries.

Erasmian humanism was related more closely to Italian humanism than many of his

contemporaries by virtue of its generous place for classical ethics and philosophy within the

Christian tradition.878 Nonetheless, in distinction to Italian humanism, inhabitants of the Low

Countries could not trace any neat pedigree back to the antiquity of the oratores et poetae. While

Italian humanists could genuinely see their vernacular and Latin as two types of the one language,

such a move was of course impossible for Northern humanists. Whereas in Italy humanism

developed through urban networks of magistrates and scholars, in the Netherlands humanism

developed mainly in monasteries, where its welcome depended on the inclination of each

particular abbot or prior.879 While Germanic lands made humanism their own in differentiation,

and even defiance, to that of Italy, intellectual traffic undoubtedly flowed from South to North.

Paul Mestwerdt argued that although the humanism of the Low Countries is more difficult to

delineate that its Italian counterpart the humanism of Erasmus should be identified primarily

with that of the Low Countries. Erasmus himself willingly played up his Germanness (“Germania”

signifying by this time the wider region around the Rhine) in relation to Agricola and Conrad

Celtis, speaking in his 1519 public volume his letters Farrago Epistolarum of “our native

Germany… which is now distinguished everywhere by all these men of eminence in every field

877 Myron P. Gilmore, ‘Italian Reactions to Erasmian Humanism’, in Itinerarium Italicum: The Profile of the Italian Renaissance in the Mirror of Its European Transformations, ed. Paul Oskar Kristeller, Thomas A. Brady, and Heiko Augustinus Oberman, Studies in Medieval and Reformation Thought, 14 (Leiden: Brill, 1975), 61–118. 878 Jozef IJsewijn, ‘The Coming of Humanism to the Low Countries’, in Itinerarium Italicum: The Profile of the Italian Renaissance in the Mirror of Its European Transformations, ed. Paul Oskar Kristeller, Thomas A. Brady, and Heiko Augustinus Oberman, Studies in Medieval and Reformation Thought, v. 14 (Leiden: Brill, 1975), 208. 879 Jozef IJsewijn, ‘The Coming of Humanism to the Low Countries’, in Itinerarium Italicum: The Profile of the Italian Renaissance in the Mirror of Its European Transformations, ed. Paul Oskar Kristeller, Thomas A. Brady, and Heiko Augustinus Oberman, Studies in Medieval and Reformation Thought, v. 14 (Leiden: Brill, 1975), 197.

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of learning, which is the truest and most endearing sort of glory.”880 J.D. Tracy has also shown

how Erasmus identified himself more and more with German lands, locating himself at the

presses of Amerbach and Froben in Basel for large portions of his early career.881

Yet, deeper than an argument simply over method, I have argued in earlier chapters that we

should view the status of the university itself as prior and determinative for polemics against

scholastic theology. Just as certain brothers cautioned against the scholastics at the university

while happily using syllogistic logic, Erasmus’ polemics at Paris and Louvain center on the

validity of the university to authoritatively organize and demarcate knowledges and, most

importantly, whether it could authoritatively integrate theology as one knowledge among many.

This humanist-scholastic debate became so fiery and polemical precisely because it touched not

just on issues of substance, but also on the very way that knowledge was categorized, studied,

and conceptualized. Erasmus rejected the totalizing imaginary of the university and advocated for

a blended sense in which theology was not a faculty nourished by the institution of the university

but was itself the organizing principle, something that had become impossible in the university.

Even if we cannot conclude positively that Erasmus consciously drew on the resources of the

Devotio Moderna in taking this position, we can conclude that his position was congruous with the

brothers’ Augustinian Imaginary, and, further, that this imaginary gives us purchase on the real

point of contention in many of his controversies beyond mere squabbles over methodological

superiority.

It is important to observe here that the New Learning, as Rummel puts it “operated mainly

outside academic institutions and [only] eventually began to exert influence through the new

medium of the printing press.”882 The refusal of many biblical humanists to cede to the faculty

divisions and rigid methodologies of particular fields of knowledge was viewed, quite

understandably, by many scholastic theologians as a threat to the field of theology. The

reabsorption of Aristotle’s corpus had borne the fruit of a two-speed university system where the

880 CWE 3. Ep. 307. 881 James D. Tracy, ‘Erasmus Becomes a German’, Renaissance Quarterly 21, no. 3 (October 1968): 382. 882 Erika Rummel, ‘Introduction’, in Biblical Humanism and Scholasticism in the Age of Erasmus, ed. Erika Rummel (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2008), 1.

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traditional foundations of theological enquiry now began with sense perception and natural

phenomena. As Stephen Gaukroger puts it,

Platonist and Aristotelian systems have very significant consequences for how

philosophy is pursued, and the distinctive thing about following the

Aristotelian route in abstractive epistemology is that you must start from

sense perception, which in terms of Aristotelian division of areas of

philosophical enquiry means you must start from natural philosophy. This

transforms the nature of philosophical enquiry in a number of ways, not least

in that it makes the entry into the philosophical foundations of systemic

theology something that is largely independent of the kinds of areas in which

theologians, and the clergy generally, had taken an interest.883

I argued earlier that this shift simultaneously both rarefied theologia and cut it off from other

university disciplines over which the knowledge of God had previously been, in Augustine’s

thinking, the organizing principle.

The biblical humanism of Erasmus and others threatened this way of thinking not just over

particular points of doctrine or exegesis, but more so over the categories, terminology, and

methodology of scholastic theological faculties. This was the heritage of the Devotio Moderna in

Erasmus’ career. The legacy of the brothers’ formation on Erasmus lay at the heart of his

controversies with establishment theologians at Paris and Louvain: at Paris over the issue of his

Novum Instrumentum and in Louvain over the Collegium Trilingue, the college Erasmus helped

establish for the study of Greek, Latin, and Hebrew. Erasmus studied and taught at the Collège

de Montaigu in Paris in 1499. He studied and taught at Louvain over two main blocks: 1502-4

and 1517-21.

883 Stephen Gaukroger, The Emergence of a Scientific Culture: Science and the Shaping of Modernity, 1210-1685 (Oxford: New York: Clarendon Press; Oxford University Press, 2006), 65.

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Novum Instrumentum and the Determinatio Facultatis Theologiae in

Schola Pariensi

Erasmus’ controversy with the University of Paris centered on the validity of the universitas to be

the organizing principle of theological enquiry. Erasmus’ position on this issue parallels that of

Grote and the exhortations of other leaders of the Devotio Moderna. Erasmus believed that the

universitas could not guarantee or authenticate divine truth, the propensity for scholastic scholars

to separate character from argument being ample enough evidence of this. Jealousy over

expertise or influence was therefore a secondary concern, the primary issue for Erasmus being

the status of the universitas as the self-appointed arbiter of theological truth. My analysis here

centers primarily on Erasmus’ own writings. Rather than assessing each of his opponents’

positions, I focus on Erasmus’ perception of their positions. I do this to demonstrate how

Erasmus represents the New Devout’s Augustinian Imaginary at play in the humanist-scholastic

debate.

By publishing his Novum instrumentum (later: Novum Testamentum) in 1516, Erasmus positioned

himself as a great champion of Christian humanism. To his scholastic critics, however, it was an

act of provocation and criticism. Erasmus’ interlinear Greek and Latin translation of the New

Testament corrected the version of the Vulgate used in current theological schools of Europe,

most notably the University of Paris, that eminent theological school in Europe and a bulwark of

scholastic theology. Although a response was not swift in coming, the reply from Beda and the

faculty of theology at Paris was strong. The Determinatio facultatis theologiae in schola pariensi (The

Determination of the Theological Faculty in the Parisian School) was published in July 1531 and presented

censures of many of Erasmus’ works. Erasmus’ response was hastily to cobble together a riposte

to these accusations: Declarationes ad censuras lutetiae vulgatas sub nomine facultatis theologiae pariensi

(Declarations to the Censures spread at Lutetia under the Name of the Theological Faculty of Paris).

Erasmus had been worried for some time that he might have come under fire from the

theologians at Paris – in particular, Noël Beda, the leader of the faculty of theology from 1520–

1534. As early as 1523, the faculty had unsuccessfully tried to block the publication of any revised

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or updated biblical translations. Up until 1525 Erasmus and his fellow humanists had enjoyed the

protection of Francis I in the French court. However, after the defeat of King Francis I’s army at

Pavia and his subsequent capture and imprisonment in 1525, scholastics at Paris were able more

freely to attack humanist and evangelical works. In that same year Noël Beda led the theological

faculty of Paris to condemn propositions contained in the writings of Erasmus’ close friend

Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples. Sensing impending danger, Erasmus approached Noël Beda

courteously via a letter dated 28 April 1525 to defend himself: “you will find scores of people

everywhere who bear no animus against Erasmus and yet are men of sane and sober

judgment.”884 Beda’s reply, dated 21 May 1525 and written in imitation of elaborate humanist

prose, though with occasional lapses in grammar, was equally unflinching in its insistence on the

corrosiveness of philology and attempts to reform the Church and its doctrine.

I must tell you that I have begun to feel some considerable anxiety for your

soul… you have rejected the sound teaching of the accepted Doctors of the

Catholic church, whose ideas, because they needed clarification in the

interests of consistency and intelligibility, were systematized by Gratian,

Lombard and those of our school whom we call the ‘scholastics,’ men who

were truly needed by the church at a period when it was in decline.885

Beda invited Erasmus to follow the example of the patron of Erasmus’ own order, Augustine,

and to issue his own Retractions, a document that like Augustine’s work composed late in his life

would correct and clarify the statements and positions Erasmus had taken. Erasmus’ replies to

this letter reveal his vision for the union of theology and humanist studies.886 Erasmus was

frustrated that Beda denied Erasmus the title of theologian:

Often in your letter I am you ‘beloved brother,’ but you never acknowledge

me as your colleague: I am your fellow priest, but not your fellow theologian,

although neither [Popes] Leo [X] nor Clement [VII] hesitated to give me that

884 CWE 11. Ep. 1571. 885 CWE 11. Ep. 1579. 886 CWE 11. Ep. 1581 and 1596

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title, nor [Pope] Adrian [VI] either, and he was indisputably a great theologian

himself.887

While it may be tempting to see the way Beda addressed Erasmus as simple name-calling, more is

at play in Beda’s denial of the title of theologian to Erasmus. Erasmus picked up on the main

issue, that Beda did not see Erasmus, a scholar lacking the appropriate sanction of working at the

university, as on a level with the theologian. Where Erasmus understood theology broadly, Beda

understood the discipline narrowly as a discipline within the universitas. It is worth noting that

Beda produced very little written work and most of his academic career was spent proofing other

theological works for error, indicative of a broader shifting of the role that theology was expected

to play. 888 As I argued earlier, even the physical architecture pointed inexorably to this

conclusion.

Erasmus’ correspondence with Beda shows the differing visions the two had for the practice of

theology. Where Erasmus understood theology as operating more freely, implicit in all

scholarship, and hence impossible to tie to a particular method or faculty, Beda believed more or

less the opposite, that theology as a discipline was essentially inextricable from the university

institution of the faculty of theology. Tellingly, Erasmus uses the word partnership to describe

his vision for theology and philology.

Part of my purpose was to give literary studies a Christian voice… Both sides

I believe, have been at fault in this controversy: the devotees of literature

bitterly attack those whose interests are different from their own, while the

other side refuses to accept the humanities into partnership, although they

could profit greatly from them; instead they dismiss them unceremoniously

and condemn and reject what they do not understand.889

887 CWE 11. Ep. 1581. 888 Clare Monagle and Constant Mews, ‘Theological Dispute and the Conciliar Process 1050–1150. From Berengar of Tours to Gilbert of Poitiers’, in Ecclesia Disputans: Die Konfliktpraxis Vormoderner Synoden Zwischen Religion Und Politik, 157. 889 CWE 11. Ep. 1581.

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The Determinatio facultatis theologiae in schola parisiensi of 1531 presented censures of many of

Erasmus’ works. Of 176 matters enumerated by the determination, the word heresy came up a

dozen times, many instances of which being directed at Erasmian tenets. Erasmus, however,

remained defiant. “You suggest in your charity that my writings, unless amended, are dangerous

to Christian faith,” wrote Erasmus to Beda, “but I was equally convinced that it would be

dangerous for the Christian faith if I held back the criticisms I wished to make.”890 Erasmus

envisioned theology as pervading every discipline, for every field of knowledge to be understood

in the light of divine truth. Beda and his colleagues at Paris saw this understandably as

incompatible with theology as an institutionalized field with its own method and taxonomy to

which it had to adhere.

Earlier, I compared Geert Grote’s career to his near contemporary Duns Scotus’ and suggested

that their differing views on the necessity of love to know God and the unity of pastoral care and

theology were indicative of the break in imaginary between the Devotio Moderna and the universitas.

In the previous view, what I call the Augustinian Imaginary, one approached God per caliginem,

cursorily, as though through mist, and with the sense that one could not speak of God

univocally. Augustine’s solution was to see all of creation participating in God’s being. Duns

Scotus’ solution to the problem was to argue that metaphysics, properly understood, is

concerned with certain kinds of characteristics that exist logically prior to both what is infinite

and finite.891 Erasmus replying to Beda saw the writings of certain scholastics, naming Duns

Scotus as an example, as a testament to human folly and pride:

But with regard to these so-called scholastics of yours I find nothing

unpretentious about them except the quality of their style. On every page they

parade their knowledge of the philosophy of Aristotle and Averroes (which

Scotus developed with pretentious additions of his own)… indeed there are

890 CWE 11. Ep. 831. 891 Gaukroger, The Emergence of a Scientific Culture, 81.

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no books which humble and mortify my pride so effectively as those of the

evangelists and the Apostles [i.e. Scripture].892

Erasmus viewed his own scholarly pursuits as of a piece with his longing for salvation. Erasmus

for his part suggested that his own scholarly efforts of translation and philology were tantamount

to his own personal efforts to grow in godliness – that is, that the two were essentially connected.

Beda is a paradigm example of early sixteenth century scholasticism operating not as

conservatism or reactionism but understood as reform by purifying and solidifying theological

studies at universities. Implicit in Beda’s understanding was a sense that the institutions of

theological learning and the Aristotelian dialectical method they applied was guided by God’s

spirit. Divine truth thus existed in essence beyond the “accidental” form of Scripture, and for this

reason the handing down of truth (traditio) took precedence over Scripture.893 However traditio

came to mean not just the magisterium of Rome, but also the licentiate of theological faculties.

Consequently, any effort to amend the institution of the university by yoking philology and

theology seemed suspect and potentially corrosive.894 Beda paired theological truth with not only

a particular method, i.e. scholasticism, but in effect also with the institution of the faculty of

theology. In this way, Beda’s greatest accomplishment was not feats of publishing or scholarship,

but the revival of institutional offices like the syndic, a committee devoted to the vetting of

doctrinal error.895

Beda prevents a view that the scholasticism Erasmus opposed sought conservative ends. Beda

was not simply a reactionary or conservative. He himself imbibed the reforms of the University

of Paris and John Standonck’s reform of the Collège de Montaigu. Beda’s opposition to

humanism ought, therefore, to be viewed as a commitment to the institutions of which he was a

892 CWE 11. Ep. 1581. 893 Marcel Gielis, ‘The Campaign Against Biblical Humanists at the University of Leuven’, in Biblical Humanism and Scholasticism in the Age of Erasmus, ed. Erika Rummel, trans. Paul Arblaster (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2008), 202. 894 James K. Farge, ‘Noël Beda and the Defense of the Tradition’, in Biblical Humanism and Scholasticism in the Age of Erasmus, ed. Erika Rummel (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2008), 148. “Beda held that abandoning scholasticism would impoverish the Church. Fidelity to it and to tradition in its widest sense allowed all Christians, even those with a minimum of education or culture, to inherit a faith that was integral, communal, sure and – above all – salvific.” 895 Farge, 152.

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part rather than simply a resistance to the classics or philology.896 In fact, it was activistic,

committed to strengthening the Social Imaginary of the universitas, in which institution

Aristotelian dialectic mediated divine truth. Parallels to the New Devout in this regard suggest

themselves. Geert Grote explicitly contradicted notion that the university possessed the path to

divine truth.

Again, according to Bernard, offer no word by which you may appear very

religious or learned. Indeed, avoid and abhor public disputation either for the

sake of triumphing or appearances, which is litigious. Such are the disputations

of the theologians and philosophers at Paris.897

With his education and formation at the hands of the brothers in view, Erasmus expressed,

analogously to Geert Grote’s dissuasion from the universities, concern that the university

dominated the intellectual and theological spheres of his age. To Erasmus, the universitas as an

institution could not guarantee theological clarity or authenticate divine truth. Indeed, the pride

he believed pervaded the institution was liable to muddy the waters, not distil truth. Beda, an

activist in the name of the university’s aegis as much as representing the cause of earlier

scholasticism, represented to Erasmus much that offended the Augustinian Imaginary of the

New Devout. The core of this dispute hinged not on knowledge of, or respect, for the classics,

that paradigm and litmus test of the so-called “humanist-scholastic debate,” but on the nature of

the institution of the universitas and what that institution meant for theology. By attending to

Erasmus’ formation by the Devotio Moderna, we see how jealousy over expertise or competition

between faculties was really a secondary issue in this instance for Erasmus, who identified the

role of the institution of the university as the self-appointed arbiter of theological truth as his

primary concern, not simply scholastic theology per se.

896 Farge, 146. 897 Conclusa, 374. Item, secundem Bernardum, nullum verbum proferas, de quo multum religiosus vel scientificus apareas. Item, omnem disputationem publicam vitare et abhorrere, quae est litigiosa vel ad triumphandum vel ad apparendum; sicut sunt omnes disputationes Theologorum et Artistarum Parisiis

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Collegium Trilingue, Jacobus Latomus, and The University of

Louvain

For many of Erasmus’ controversies, the primary issue centered on the status of the university

itself, not simply competition or jockeying between disciplines within it. Without a sense of the

Augustinian Imaginary of the New Devout and how it shaped Erasmus’ career, this finesse does

not come into view. This differing vision of theology and the universitas in shaping the Social

Imaginary of scholars lay at the heart of Erasmus’ controversy with the theologians at Louvain

just as at Paris. These scholars, particularly those from the mendicant orders attached to the

university, held Erasmus’ 1516 Novum Instrumentum in great suspicion.

Erasmus argued that the scholasticism of the faculties of Louvain and Paris had become ossified

in their own intellectual tradition, that they believed their particular mode of reasoning to be the

summit of knowledge, and that theology now therefore totaled the protection and custodianship

of the language and logic of scholastic theology. Jacobus Latomus (Latinization of Jacques

Masson, alumnus of Paris, theologian at Louvain), published De trium linguarum et studii theologici

ratione dialogus (A Dialogue on the method of the theological study of the three languages). Latomus

understood the humanist (the Erasmian) to hold that revelation was contained in Scripture,

rather than in the articulation of divine truth through the dialectic of theological schools.898

Latomus argued that textual criticism could not lead to theological truth unless guided by, and

subordinate to, the scholastic method. 899 The Dialogus censured Erasmus, and Erasmus

responded with his own Apologia contra Latomi dialogum. In it, Erasmus argued,

He [Latomus] makes another point which pleased me by suggesting that if

any faults have found their way into the system of scholastic education they

should be trimmed away as useless to allow room for what is sound. But so

far a few academics have been reacting far too violently against attempts to

carry this plan out, wanting the “useful” and “essential” to be simply what

898 Nauert, ‘Humanism as Method’, 427. “Both as an attack on dialectic and as a movement for textual criticism, humanism constituted a fundamental challenge to medieval intellectual tradition.” 899 Gielis, ‘The Campaign Against Biblical Humanists at the University of Leuven’, 202.

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they have come to know by habit, while refusing to allow promising young

men a better chance than they had themselves.900

Erasmus had heavily involved himself in the creation of the Collegium Trilingue, a new faculty at

Louvain for the study of Greek, Latin, and Hebrew. Erasmus’ relationship began to sour sharply

with the faculty in 1519, when Erasmus argued that it was impossible to perform the task of

theology without having a knowledge of the languages Greek, Latin, and Hebrew. Erasmus set

up a division between the knowledge of the theologians that is handed down, and the knowledge

of his own new Christian humanist enterprise:

He [Latomus] claims, for example, that some rely so heavily on particular

learned disciplines that they despise others whose worth has been tried by

tradition and proved by long experience.901

Erasmus conceded that he “beckoned students of theology towards the sources provided by the

Holy Scriptures, and to the early commentators.”902 Erasmus disagreed with the privileging of

certain kinds of logic or enquiry over others, giving the example of Paul, who said “his message

could not be founded on the persuasive power of human knowledge, lest the cross of Christ be

made vain.”903

In an open letter to the theological faculty of Louvain, as a response to a collective anonymous

work of criticism penned principally by Vincentius Theoderici and the Louvain theology faculty,

Erasmus wrote:

Some people are doing all they can to crush the ancient tongues and the

humanities in general. But time will show them that, when the humanities

collapse, so do those studies which they wish to see acclaimed to the

exclusion of others. How much more sensible would it be to welcome the

liberal arts to your company! Believe me, they would lend an added grace to

900 CWE 71:84. 901 CWE 71:38. 902 CWE 71:39. 903 CWE 71:81.

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the essentials of our discipline and would win many of the princes to your

cause.904

As Erasmus understood it, true theology ought to be the sum of all knowledge, rather than one

specialized and isolated form of knowledge. The study of languages, rather than a threat or an

irrelevance, was necessary and beneficial to the study of theology.

If we think that explaining the sacred texts is important to theology, if we

judge it a sign of holiness to show wisdom in revealing the hidden mysteries

of Scriptures, which often lurk behind the formation of the very letters, then

we must admit that no single subject is more dependent on languages than

theology.905

For Erasmus, theology was ideally diffused throughout all fields of knowledge, particularly so for

the study of languages, on which theology depended.906 Rather than separating theology from

other forms of knowledge, thereby rarefying it and making it sterile and otiose, the knowledge of

God pervaded all human endeavors and inquiries, a pia curiositas in which all fields of knowledge

where, in a sense, a tributary of theology.

Conclusion

Erasmus is an apt conclusion to a study of the Devotio Moderna because his own career reflects the

shift of the brothers from their way of life anchored in houses of reading, writing, and devotion

to a diffuse influence carried in texts, a shift that ultimately meant the Devotio Moderna’s influence

did not last much longer than Erasmus himself. Erasmus embodies this evanescing quality of the

Devotio Moderna in the sixteenth century in that while advocating a similar synthesis character and

learning, the figure of Erasmus was carried not in houses but, just as the fate of later phases of

the Devotio Moderna, in literary production. I have argued that Erasmus’ own educational ideals

904 CWE 11. Ep 1582. 905 CWE 71:47. 906 Georges G. Chantraine S.J., ‘The Ratio Verae Theologiae’, in Essays on the Works of Erasmus, ed. Richard L. DeMolen (New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 1978), 181.

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and literary taste were closer to Grote and his circle than Erasmus’ schoolmasters were. While

Erasmus derided the austere living conditions he experienced with the brothers, it was just at that

time that his Latinity began to flower and his literary career set its decisive course. Of course, the

influences on Erasmus are tangled and any attempt to isolate individual strands is necessarily

facile and inorganic. However, by considering Erasmus’ controversies with the theologians at

Paris and Louvain with the backdrop of the brothers’ Augustinian Imaginary, we can conclude

that what was at stake for Erasmus was more or less what was at stake for Grote and his early

followers – the irreconcilability of the universitas’ Social Imaginary with the New Devout’s

Augustinian Imaginary.

We have grounds to readjust our view of the humanist-scholastic debate. Rummel has already

dispelled the myth that humanists and scholastic fought over the worth, or lack thereof, of

classical languages. But framed with a view to Erasmus’ formation at the hands of the New

Devout, however, the humanist-scholastic debate, at least in the case of Erasmus, was in effect a

clash of imaginaries. This clash warned Erasmus away from accepting the absolute authority of

the universitas to define the scope of theology as part of a larger system of knowledges contained

within an institution external to the Church. Erasmus, therefore, found a liminal existence

between court and academy, trafficking in the texts and questions enthusing theologians at the

university but continually undermining the secluded, rarefied position of theology within it.

Erasmus, in keeping with the New Devout’s Augustinian Imaginary, argued that true theology

ought to pervade and regulate all disciplines, including his beloved philology, which Erasmus saw

ideally in partnership with the work of university theologians. By considering Erasmus’ education

and formation under the care of the brothers, it comes into sharper focus that Erasmus’

controversies with the theologians at Paris and Louvain centered on the same issues that led the

Grote and his first followers to eschew scholastic, university culture.

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10 CONCLUSION

The problem of the Devotio Moderna’s relation to scholastic, university culture has proven

enduring and is to this point unresolved by modern scholarship. The question has been badly

asked, pitting education and pastoral care against each other as competing candidates for the

more dominant characteristic of the Devotio Moderna. I have argued that the positioning of

scholars writing within the university led earlier writers to describe the New Devout using

categories unfamiliar to their own Augustinian Imaginary. Taking their cues from the polemic

established in the anglosphere by Hyma and Post, the question of the New Devout has tended to

be framed in terms of the movement either as a blossoming nascent humanism or as a movement

more interested in pastoral care, with subsequent scholars siding with one or the other, or

choosing a space consciously somewhere between the two. I have argued that this distinction

arose from an imaginary vitalized by the university and that it was the facileness of this

distinction that the sisters and brothers rejected in favor of a unified Augustinian Imaginary.

Restating the Problem

I noted in the introduction of this thesis the irony of Francis Oakley’s observation that “with the

New Devout’s general attitude of reserve towards higher education it would have been odd if the

brothers had exercised any great leadership in the introduction of humanist ideas into northern

Europe.”907 The fact that this was, in fact, the state of affairs for the New Devout occasioned the

writing of this thesis. I set it as my aim to explain why this was so. Up till now, we have no

resolution amongst scholars as to the sense or worldview that led the leaders and members of the

New Devout to reject scholastic, university culture as they did while at the same time forming a

community engaged in serious book-production and learning. With much fruit, contemporary

scholars have turned their attention to other aspects of the movement, producing detailed studies

on catalogues of specific houses, the status of the New Devout as a nascent voluntary institution,

the legal status and novelty of their sociality, sister-houses, and the book-production of the

movement. However, the founding stories of the Devotio Moderna began with a book burning and

907 Oakley, The Western Church in the Later Middle Ages, 104.

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explicit rejections of scholastic, university culture and almost all it stood for. If we are to take this

mythos as seriously expressing something essential about the movement, we must proceed from

the outset on the basis that confrontations with scholastic, university culture lay at the heart of

what the Devotio Moderna was all about.

At this point, it is helpful to take a step back from the coal face of the Devotio Moderna and the

Observant Century to consider some more theoretical questions which a study of this movement

poses to us.

Secularism

I claim in this thesis that members of the Devotio Moderna defined themselves in distinction to the

same developments that many scholars have identified as the beginnings of secular modernity.

The New Devout, without fully realizing it, saw themselves as in a pitched battle over the right

way of ascending towards God and articulating his being.

The transition from Christian truth as the guiding principle of all truth to one part of the division

of knowledges touches on the move towards what many have described as secularism. By

secularism I mean the development in the West by which Christian truth has become one of

many options that the individual may choose or not choose. In this situation, even devout faith

amounts to a conscious choice from a plethora of competing options for belief and unbelief. The

creation of this secular space, however, does not simply entail the sloughing off of religious

hegemony to reveal a more essential kernel of reality, that is, the creation of a society in which

public, political spaces are free from transcendental claims that the individual is free to hold in

private. Rather, the secular involved an active and positive creation of a new set of

understandings – a new Social Imaginary – in which one might plausibly feel that the world was

drained of the spiritual and transcendent. Contemporary theorist and theologian John Milbank

and the Radical Orthodoxy movement strongly contend for this view of secularization. Milbank

argues that “the secular as a domain had to be instituted or imagined, both in theory and in

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practice. This institution is not correctly grasped in merely negative terms as a desacralization.”908

Charles Taylor has described such a narrative of the putative loss of the transcendent as a

“subtraction story”,

stories of modernity in general and secularity in particular, which explain them

by human beings having lost, or sloughed off, or liberated themselves from

certain earlier, confining horizons, or illusions, or limitations of knowledge.

What emerges from this process – modernity or secularity – is to be understood

in terms of underlying features of human nature which were there all along, but

had been impeded by what is now set aside.909

In Taylor’s view, the move to secular modernity means the transfer of a culture’s highest

aspirations being found in God, and making no sense apart from God, to existing in some aspect

of immanent existence. This shift from the pre-modern to the modern has to do with the

mutation of Augustinian participation to late-scholastic representation as the locus of knowledge.

In an Augustinian Imaginary, apprehension of God and his world was understood primarily in

terms of being and intention. This grates against our modern conception in which we often

consider the world around us, even ourselves, in terms of descriptions and representations of

varying veracity or authenticity. “In other words,” summarizes Taylor, “what we would consider

today as the perfections of description or representation, or an order of perspicuous presentation,

were considered perfection of being.”910 It makes little sense to consider objectively a created

order that is at bottom expressive, embodying the wisdom of God.

However, the move towards the secular finds its roots not in scientific advancements but in

creative theological moves of the late Middle Ages. These theological moves made it possible to

construe the aspiration for reason and fulfillment as outside of divine participation. Simon

Oliver, a pioneer of the Radical Orthodoxy movement, points to the period between Aquinas

and Scotus as the decisive break where an analogical understanding of God’s being began to

908 Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, 9. 909 Taylor, A Secular Age, 22. 910 Taylor, 160.

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compete with univocal understandings. In the former view, what Oliver calls the “Neo-platonic-

Aristotelian consensus,” one finds no abstract being differentiated or separate from God. God

means being itself: “In God, being and existence wholly coincide and hence God is known as

one and therefore simple.”911 Catherine Pickstock has described naming God in this Augustinian

synthesis as implicating one’s character and experience in the ascent towards God.

For within the prevailing theological metaphysical discourse of participated-in

perfections, there was a ready continuity between reason and revelation: reason

itself was drawn upwards by divine light, while inversely, revelation involved the

conjunction of radiant being and further illuminated mind.912

Against this analogical view, it became possible by the time of Duns Scotus to describe God

univocally, using the same language in the same way as when describing creation. As a

consequence, God is drawn into the created order, now the greatest being among all creatures

who participate in metaphysically prior “being.”

Yet, the effect of bringing God into the world by means of univocal ascriptions is, paradoxically,

to remove the possibility for human participation in God. Where in the previous imaginary one

could intimately commune with God by discovering that all being participated in God’s being –

Augustine’s great discovery of God as esse narrated in his Confessions – for God to exist as the

greatest in the created order renders his being of the same order but now infinitely greater.913

Pickstock has suggested that a further corollary of univocal theology is the shift from the

Augustinian system, (knowledge of God as an experience of, and in participation in, his being) to

a new Scotian model (a mimetic representation of reality). Pickstock argues that by the time of

Scotus the task of ascribing to God had lost, or could be plausibly construed without, personal

experience and existential transformation through the encounter of the one naming and God.

Amos Funkenstein has argued along similar lines that this new view dismissed Thomas’ analogia

911 Simon Oliver and John Milbank, eds., The Radical Orthodoxy Reader, (London; New York: Routledge, 2009), 21. 912 Pickstock, ‘Duns Scotus’, 548. 913 Oliver and Milbank, The Radical Orthodoxy Reader, 22.

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entis, replacing it with the belief one could know either very little about God or predicate

characteristics univocally on God’s being that were common to creation.914 This new mode of

speaking of God was antithetical to the view proposed by Augustine that still prevailed in the

time of Aquinas.915 A shift occurred between Aquinas and Scotus in which the analogical aspect

of God’s being was lost. In the previous viewpoint according to Funkenstein,

Each thing, inasmuch as it is, can be thus said to be in God’s image; and all

things as a unity within a multiplicity represent God in an additional sense. The

whole world is an imago Dei. Our concepts of God are, so to say, pictures of

pictures, representations of representations. Our self-knowledge is, therefore,

the image of God closest to us, because it is the least mediated.

Members of the Devotio Moderna reacted strongly to this shift, exploring alternative ways of yoking

together devotion and knowledge on the basis of participating in God’s being/love and

dissuading others from falling prey to the chimera of separating loving God from knowing about

him and creation. The world of the New Devout was expressive and inherently meaningful in the

sense that every part of it was encompassed and shot through with God’s loving presence. Where

it becomes later plausible to think of the cosmos as drained of any cohering moral or theological

expressivity, apprehension of the created order implicated the New Devout as themselves

members of this expressive cosmic order and so required them to reckon with their heart as of a

piece with their mental acumen. To adopt a posture of neutrality or objectivity to this order was

to fundamentally misunderstand the wisdom infusing and upholding creation. To apprehend

God and creation for the New Devout was therefore a matter of rightly reordering one’s desires

towards the summum bonum and thereby becoming aware of the love imbued in creation that was

hidden from the proud and revealed to the humble.

914 Amos Funkenstein, Theology and the Scientific Imagination: From the Middle Ages to the Seventeenth Century, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), 26–27. 915 Montag, ‘Revelation: The False Legacy of Suárez’.

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Augustinian Imaginary

We understand the imaginary of the Devotio Moderna best when we put the movement in

conversation with scholastic, university culture, an imaginary that had moved on from the much

earlier imaginary that found its wellspring in Augustine and his interlocutors and which had

brought the thought-world of the Bishop of Hippo into the world of the Devotio Moderna in the

fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries.

The dominance of Augustine’s writing and the great cloud of his later interlocutors dominated

the intellectual world of the Devotio Moderna and shaped their daily practices. Sisters and brothers

read, studied, annotated, recommended, and meditated on the writings of Augustine. Their

response to scholastic, university culture was defined by the imaginary created by this immersion

in Augustine and Augustinianism. To argue the New Devout comprised an Augustinian

Imaginary is not to discount the deep influence of Augustine and his interpreters on other

movements, particularly those also emerging over the course of the Observant Century. It is to

say, however, that without an Augustinian Imaginary, the way of life of the Devotio Moderna could

not have seemed intelligible or plausible to its members in the way it was. Augustine loomed

large in the libraries and imaginations of the Devotio Moderna, and their way of life was, therefore,

reducible in large part to the imaginary promulgated by the Bishop of Hippo.

We can draw out three key characteristics of this Augustinian Imaginary that animated the Devotio

Moderna. Firstly, following Augustine the New Devout understood God as esse, being itself. This

had the effect that for Augustine knowledge of the world, oneself, and God were inextricably

entwined as part of the same process of ascent towards God. All branches of knowledge,

learning, and practice were subordinated to the light of faith, and whatever was true was

necessarily compatible, and able to be subsumed within, Christian truth. Secondly, this

Augustinian Imaginary rejected univocal descriptions of God. The transcendence of God made

the New Devout, therefore, suspicious of attempts to define and describe God using the same

language in the same way as applied to created things. The tendency by the fourteenth century to

understand quiddity as metaphysically prior to God did violence to the sheer transcendence of

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God that was beyond human understanding and which, for this reason, demanded humility and

awe rather than overweening, encyclopedic curiosity. Finally, Augustine equates God’s esse with

love itself, the two coinciding perfectly. In this Augustinian Imaginary, God, understood as love

itself, could only be met in love. Otherwise any supposed encounter with him would be a pale

imitation of divine encounter that did not grasp the full nature of God’s esse, his dilectio.

Reforming the soul’s faculties, including it’s intellectus, began with a humble soul yearning for

God. It is clear how different this imaginary is to that of the university, whether contemporary to

the New Devout or to us. The concept of the New Devout’s Augustinian Imaginary gives us

purchase on the movement by adopting, as much as possible, the often unexpressed

assumptions, pictures, and habits that rendered the existence of the sisters and brothers of the

Devotio Moderna intelligible to themselves.

Reading, Writing, Learning, and Teaching as Labor of Love for God

The Devotio Moderna narrated their own genesis as beginning with a book burning and yet

unfolding in copy-houses. Their impetus was, both in storytelling and practice, in explicit

contradistinction to scholastic, university culture. The schools the brothers ran, nestled amongst

the tight urban life along the delta of the Ijssel, were an expression of this Augustinian Imaginary

that rejected the sloughing off of love from knowledge. It is this feature of the New Devout’s

imaginary, and hence their schooling, that has eluded many scholars seeking, along the lines of

Hyma and Post, to determine whether the brothers were more interested in education or pastoral

care. The key point for the brothers was that this distinction was facile, and so leaders of the

New Devout created settings where male and female students took part in the movement’s way

of life with the goal of first humbling and forming the student’s heart.

Leaders in the milieu of the Devotio Moderna exhorted slow, meditative reading early and often.

This sort of reading emerged from their Augustinian Imaginary, beginning with the supposition

that all knowledge was held together within a God who was love, and who must also be

approached in love. Reading amounted, therefore, to a discipline of the heart and mind that

humbled by its laboriousness. In this imaginary, reading helped to still one’s raging and

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disordered desires and allowed the time and space to refill the now emptied mind and stilled

heart with what was salutary and edifying.

Leaders of the New Devout exhorted their sisters and brothers to attend first to the heart,

believing that reforming the heart in humility and love was the indispensable first step on the

path towards knowledge of God and his creation. Reading was baked into the daily, weekly, and

yearly rhythms of the sisters and brothers, the practice standing alongside other humbling labors

and devotions. Reading in brother- and sister-houses could be intensely private, tailored to the

individual and their growth, or communal and socially disciplining. In either case, reading related

less to the discovering or transmission of new information, and rather afforded a new aspect or

dimension on their social existence as a true vita apostolica. The aim was not to expand

indeterminately the body of what was known or categorized, nor was it to increase the

technological control over the changes and chances of mortal life. On the contrary, the goal of

life, inclusive of their habits of reading, writing, learning, and teaching, was to reorient the heart

towards the love of God.

It was considering this imaginary articulated above that the New Devout tended to maintain

copying even when printing became increasingly possible. Printing could not offer the brother or

sister the same space for humbling labor that emptied the mind, stilled the heart, and instilled

reflection on God’s word and the Doctors of the Church. Reading with the pen was in most

cases, with the exceptions of textbooks, liturgical texts, and indulgences, preferable to the New

Devout. The printing press did not become a defining feature of life amongst the New Devout

like copying by hand had been.

However, the case of Erasmus demonstrates that seeking to identify continuity and unifying

features of the Devotio Moderna, by the sixteenth century, founders on the plurality of the

movement – the great irony of Erasmus’ formation at the brothers’ hands being that Erasmus,

frustrated with the lack of erudition of some of his teachers, was actually closer to the ideals and

example of Grote and his circle than Erasmus’ teachers were. As Erasmus’ career and love for

the classics was beginning to take off as a young man, he experienced the frustrating, though

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common, realization that on-the-ground representatives of a movement are often poor simulacra

of the ideals and fathers of the movement’s ethos. Erasmus, just like Grote and his circle,

operated outside the university, insisting on the synthesis of disciplines and the centrality of

Christian character as the gatekeeper to knowledge and understanding.

Reformation

Neither Erasmus’ moderate irenicism nor the semi-religious life of the Devotio Moderna survived

the rankle and roil of the Reformation. As the sixteenth century began, the influence of the New

Devout shifted. No longer did the movement spread from house to house, drawing in sisters and

brothers to take part in their common life without vows. From the beginning of the sixteenth

century, the Augustinian Imaginary of the Devotio Moderna spread most readily through the works

of the movement rather than through encounters with their communal life and its houses. This

new means of encounter opened up the possibility that this imaginary would be taken and altered

in unforeseen and often seemingly contradictory ways.

Insofar as a Social Imaginary comprises inarticulate, normative expectations for communal

organization and practice, the individual inhabiting a Social Imaginary possesses a repertory of

actions and responses to violations of these expectations. Social Imaginaries thus provide the

parameters for their changing over time. In this situation, violations of the hopes, assumptions,

and rites contained in a Social Imaginary create interstices from which new or altered imaginaries

can issue forth. Since a Social Imaginary provides the “background” to theoretical articulation, a

Social Imaginary creates a fructifying dialectic between social practice and theory – or rather, a

Social Imaginary creates the conditions for institutions and theories that in turn can reflect back

to shape these same normative expectations and practices, thereby producing change over time

to both social practice and theory.916 This sort of change moves from the world of theory or

theology to shape practice, thereby becoming part of the untheorized fabric of communal life

and normative expectations. In turn, these social practices open up the possibility for new

916 Taylor, 173.

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theories, organizations, or institutions to emerge. In effect, this is what happened with Augustine,

and then what happened when this Augustinian Imaginary was displaced from its normative

position by the Social Imaginary that vitalized scholastic, university culture.

By the sixteenth century, the Devotio Moderna had changed from a community carrying a particular

Social Imaginary via their communal life into a textual community whose influence came from

their most popular writers. While their Augustinian Imaginary was not necessarily lost, by this

time the movement had created the conditions for its own change. Evidence of this is the fact

that by the turn of the 1500s the movement was primarily encountered via the books that they

wrote and circulated, not their vita communis. This separation of community from texts allowed for

multiple, seemingly incompatible transformations, interpretations, and admixtures of the

Augustinian Imaginary of the Devotio Moderna. Once their own movement had ceased to be

carried and encountered in social practices and communities and had shifted to the theological

works they produced, the New Devout’s influence left their control and could be taken in

unexpected directions independent of their common life without vows by diverse figures and

communities of the Reformation.

It is for this reason that we can find traces of the imaginary of the Devotio Moderna not just in a

humanist like Erasmus, but in Ignatius of Loyola, so enthused with Thomas’ Imitatio, in Luther,

so impressed with the new form of the life the brother- and sister-houses forged, and in Calvin,

touched by the New Devout like Erasmus at Paris and who began his Institutio with the

understanding that all things were encompassed by the knowledge of God and ourselves,

although the knowledge of God in fact encompassing even self-knowledge.917 “Almost the whole

sum of our wisdom, which ought to be considered true and solid wisdom, comprises two parts,

the knowledge of God and ourselves,” wrote Calvin, “yet not even that which we are is anything

other than life in the one God.”918 Calvin, just like Luther and Loyola, is one example among

917 Patrick J. Hornbeck, ‘Reforming Authority, Reforming Obedience.’, Reformation & Renaissance Review: Journal of the Society for Reformation Studies 16, no. 2 (July 2014): 138–62. 918 Jean Calvin, Joannis Calvini Opera Selecta, vol. 3 (Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2010), 31. TOTA fere sapientiae nostrae summa, quae vera demum ac solida sapientia censeri debeat, duabus partibus constat,

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many who could take the New Devout’s Augustinian Imaginary and filter it back into new

spiritualities, theologies, and ways of living. In keeping with the spirit of Grote and his followers,

these people operated outside the university, pioneering thought and sociality that was vivified

outside of the university context. As some theologians like those of Radical Orthodoxy and

historians such as Bradley Gregory demonstrate, it is possible for the New Devout’s Augustinian

Imaginary to reflect back and shape our Social Imaginary even today. I have argued that seeking

and realizing true and wise community outside of the university lay at the heart of the Devotio

Moderna, and that a study of their common life confronts the scholar of today’s university with

the possibility of how the division of scholarship and devotion could have been drawn otherwise.

Dei cognitione et nostri… imo ne id quidem ipsum quod sumus, aliud esse quam in uno Deo subsistentiam.

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11 EPILOGUE: WRITING WITHIN THE UNIVERSITY

I have suggested that to a large extent the difficulty for scholars in understanding the Devotio

Moderna lies in the fact that almost all scholars on this subject write from inside the institution

that the New Devout rejected. The sisters and brothers were captivated by an imaginary that, as

far as they could see, could not be synthesized with the institution of the university and its

imaginary. Yet this institution carried the day. Today there is a university, but there is no Devotio

Moderna. Scholars, therefore, are confronted in the case of the Devotio Moderna with an alternative

imaginary which, allowing for changes and development over time, animates their own discipline.

The case of the Devotio Moderna brings to light the historian’s institutional positioning and

problematizes the historian’s ability to ply their craft in relation to a movement that rejected the

historical foundations of modern university’s disciplines and methods. Or rather, the Devotio

Moderna and its rejection of scholastic, university culture calls into question the teleological

assumptions of the modern research university, particularly in analysis of historical movements

existing in contradistinction to it. In their discussion of teleology and history, Trüper,

Chakrabarty, and Subrahmanyam argue that the invention of teleology as a historical concept

furnished the academic discipline of history with certain parameters that limited its analysis of the

past. This was because, “the very term [of teleology] expressed a conviction about what

philosophy so far failed to achieve but would, soon, amend. Even if the future course of the

development of thought was not known in detail, the sense of direction was clear.”919 These

scholars make the point that the development of telos as a concept, originally a bridge between

mathematics and physics used to explain motion in Ancient Greek philosophy, came to resemble

a connection of efficient natural linkages that inexorably drove all observable phenomena.

In subsequent decades [of the late eighteenth century], cognate programs of re-

conceptualizing substance spread through European metaphysics, engendering –

across emerging disciplinary fields such as chemistry and biology – a cascade of

919 Trüper et al., Historical Teleologies in the Modern World, 3.

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different conceptions of matter as imbued with a variety of natural forces and

immanent directions.920

This reapplication of the concept of telos is analogous to the move towards metaphysical

univocity discussed earlier in this thesis. Just as the New Devout observed theological questions

being sidelined from biblical exegesis and personal devotion, later iterations of the university

drew the concept of telos from discussion of final causes to inexorable mechanical linkages within

an immanent frame. That is, the development of the university meant a sense of history in which

the institution generally, and the discipline of history specifically, were part of a positive dialectic

of improving historical knowledge, of which the advent of the discipline of history as part of the

university was a foundational premise for progress towards the telos of this improvement – and in

which the drive for positive changes was embedded in natural phenomena rather than in the will

of God, his essential being, or in the final Eschaton.

For the study of history, the study of the past became joined with a particular reading of the

genesis of history and particular moves in metaphysics that ran from the inchoate natural

sciences into the social sciences, thereby altering them.

In the distant field of historical studies, the traditional ars historica, the moral-

educational paradigm of history as life’s magistra, was collapsing [in the

eighteenth century]. An opening emerged for new notions and approaches of

historical writing. Into this opening intruded the new idiom of that metaphysics

and natural philosophy produced for the purpose of analyzing natural reality.

Still, this intrusion was not obvious and direct. Rather, it occurred by way of a

bastardization that transported the ontological vocabulary of physics into the

transforming field of history by way of political philosophy.921

According to Trüper, Chakrabarty, and Subrahmanyam, the genesis of history as a modern,

professional discipline can be found in the scattered and ad hoc migration of the vocabulary of

920 Trüper et al., 5. 921 Trüper et al., 5-6.

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physics into the study of the past that occurred from the 1800s onwards up till the present.922

One can see how this imaginary makes it problematic to imagine the existence of communities

vivified by a conviction that such an institution and its imaginary – that is, scholastic, university

culture – were an aberration.

I have argued that this process Trüper, Chakrabarty, and Subrahmanyam identify is observable in

its beginnings approximately at the time of the New Devout and was intimately connected to the

development of the university. By comparing the careers of Grote and Duns Scotus (regardless

of whether Scotus was the first or among the first), I argued that a decisive break had occurred

within scholastic, university culture that drew the study of God into the realm of natural

phenomena and opened up the plausible possibility of describing God’s activity and will in terms

univocal to created or natural phenomena.

I have suggested that the New Devout reacted so strongly to scholastic, university culture

because of the move towards univocal theological language developing roughly at the same time

as their movement. By this I mean not an explicit rejection of the position of metaphysical

univocity, but rather of the imaginary that enabled this shift. The critical point for the New

Devout in relation to this imaginary was that an analogical description of God implicated one’s

character. This stance was because God, in his essence love itself, could only be apprehended in

love. Yet where, in the previous view, interiorized humility was the sine qua non of the mental and

spiritual ascent towards God, by drawing God into the realm of created things, mental acumen,

vitalized by the institution of the university, became the gatekeeper to the knowledge of God.

After this break, in other words, it became plausible to believe that one could speak truly of God

on the basis of method and mental acumen rather than a heart whose desires, as in Augustine’s

schema, were rightly ordered towards God in humility and love.

The thematic threads that converge in the study of the Devotio Moderna are the same threads that,

in different ways, came together to form the modern university and, more specifically, the

modern discipline of history. A study of the New Devout confronts us with this realization and,

922 Trüper et al., 11.

330

in turn, this realization helps to explain why scholars on the New Devout have fallen prey to the

erudition/pastoral care polarity that the New Devout regarded as facile, but which was

becoming, and in the modern research university has become, the dominant paradigm. The

Devotio Moderna forces us to interrogate our own normative assumptions about the past and its

research – our Social Imaginary – and imagine whether things could have unfolded otherwise.

331

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