Gabriel Biel and the Brethren of the Common Life in Germany

Abstract

Toward the close of the fourteenth century the Dutch mystic and revival preacher Gerhard Groote inaugurated in the Low Countries the religious movement known as the Devotio Moderna or the New Piety. Forced into silence by his enemies among the clergy, the popular preacher was devoting himself to the problems of giving permanent form and organization to his scattered groups of followers when death prematurely ended his career in 1384. But the small circles of pious men and women who under his inspiration had begun to practice the common life in imitation (so they believed) of the Christians of New Testament times, found a capable leader in Florentius Radewyns, the trusted friend and disciple of Groote and the leader of the Deventer circle of Groote's followers. In 1386 some of this group, with Rade-wyn's approval, founded the monastery of Windesheim, near Zwolle. This act constituted a definite division of the Devotio Moderna into two branches. One, with Windesheim as center, became monastic in character and was knolwn after 1395 as the Congregation of the Augustinian Canons Regular of Windesheim, The other, which reflected more nearly the ideals of Groote, continued the non-monastic traditions of the parent house in Deventer and took the name of the Brethren of the Common Life. The Congregation of Windesheim spread rapidly and numbered in the course of the fifteenth century many houses in the Low Countries and in Germany. The Brethren of the Common Life, on the other hand, because of their refusal to take monastic vows and because of their insistence upon manual labor as the chief means of financial support, encountered determined opposition from the regular clergy and therefore could not rival the development of their more acceptable brothers of Windesheim.