Rise of Devotio Moderna

The Devotio Moderna, or Modern Devotion, was a movement of religious renewal that began in the Low Countries around the end of the fourteenth century. It was founded by Geert Groote of Deventer, a preacher who encouraged ordinary people to seek an inward, practical piety based on prayer, reading and meditation rather than on theological debate. His followers formed the Brethren and Sisters of the Common Life, communities of lay people who lived simply together, and the Augustinian canons of the Windesheim Congregation. The movement produced the widely read spiritual book The Imitation of Christ, attributed to Thomas a Kempis. Its schools influenced later humanists, among them Erasmus, and it helped prepare the ground for the religious reforms of the sixteenth century.

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