DEVOTIO MODERNA. - A movement of religious renewal which, having arisen in the Netherlands in the second half of the 14th century, developed especially in that region and in western Germany down to the 16th century, and thence in the various Catholic countries through the book De Imitatione Christi, which is its most enduring and most intimate manifestation. D. m. is also often the name given to the ensemble of the three religious institutions that propagated this movement and, in the narrower and most widespread sense, to the spiritual doctrine that is its characteristic.
These three religious institutions generally trace back to the direct or indirect influence of Gerard Groote (v.), the great Dutch reformer who died at Deventer in 1384. As early as 1374 he had gathered in his father's house certain poor women who wished to serve God, and in 1379 he had set down in definitive statutes the "rules" they were to follow. Then, while remaining a deacon, he devoted himself to preaching, with such zeal and ardor that, although it brought about many conversions, it earned him considerable hostility. The bishop of Utrecht, who for a long time had been favorable to him, ended by withdrawing the exceptional powers he had at first granted him. Groote withdrew to his house at Deventer, where he devoted himself to prayer and study, surrounded by disciples and faithful friends who shared his ideas on religious reform, in particular Florent Radewijns. The rule he had given to the "sisters of the common life" and the institutions connected with it differed greatly from those followed until then. Those sisters had no special habit, no vows, no enclosure. This was to allow them to exercise new forms of apostolate, in particular for the instruction of girls. Groote, as he was dying, commended them to the care of his friends. These themselves thought of embracing a similar kind of life. But Groote directed them toward a more traditional path, inviting them to embrace the Rule of St. Augustine, which Radewijns and his friends did by founding, in 1387, the convent of Windesheim, which became the mother-house of a flourishing congregation of canons, inspired by the work of Ruusbroec at Groenendael. After the death of Radewijns, in 1400, the "brothers of the common life" in their turn organized themselves; they soon spread through the Netherlands, Germany and France, arousing everywhere a profound religious rebirth, and living a life of prayer and work, in close union with Windesheim and the "sisters of the common life," equally animated by the ideal that derived from G. Groote. They were exposed to many contradictions, but they never set themselves up as innovators and intended only to deepen the Christian life through prayer, through study, especially of Sacred Scripture, of which they multiplied copies, through work, in a word through the example of a fervent Christian life, without attacking or censuring the traditions, or Scholasticism, or the other forms of religious life then in use.
These three institutions lived on, with varying fortunes, until the French Revolution. The last two disappeared at the beginning of the 19th century; the first is still represented by the "English ladies" of Bruges.
Often D. m. denotes a form of spirituality very close to this new form of religious life, in opposition to the forms used until then. As Father E. De Schaepdrijver notes, this spirituality, as it appears in the disciples of Groote, is by no means uniform and simple. In fact it derives from the various complex movements of piety already in existence, but it adds a very characteristic part of its own. St. Augustine, St. Bernard, St. Bonaventure, Pseudo-Dionysius and Ruysbroeck exercise their influence simultaneously; in this form of spirituality neither pure contemplation nor speculation is excluded.
Nevertheless, in the opuscules and treatises published by the representatives of D. m. — Gerard of Zutphen, Gerlac Peters, Henry of Mende, John Vos of Huesden, and above all Thomas à Kempis — a spirituality thus characterized manifests itself: prevailing importance given to practice, with methodical exercises concerning the different faculties of the soul, and habitual recourse to more or less ingenious means to facilitate the exercise of prayer; abandonment of lofty speculative problems for the direct struggle against the passions and sin; continuous surveillance of oneself and of one's own inner life; ardent devotion toward Jesus Christ, whom one seeks to imitate and to unite as much as possible to one's own life; intense interior work, united with Grace, to direct all the faculties to the service of God. Such are the characteristics of the most representative work of D. m., the "Imitation of Christ." In short, without claiming to revolutionize piety, D. m. strives to vivify all traditional observances with a personal and conscious interior life, demanding of the individual the maximum effort.
This explains why D. m. proved so effective for religious renewal wherever it took root, especially from the day when it was adopted by the powerful personality of St. Ignatius and transmitted by him to his disciples, in the form of the "Spiritual Exercises (v.)" and of the Constitutions of the Society of Jesus. D. m. thus left its mark on the whole of religious life from the 16th century onward, and contributed very effectively to ensuring the triumph of Catholicism over heresy.
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Ferdinando Cavallera