§ 34. GEliRIT DE GROOTE. 281
chest filled with the best books standing near his dining table, so that, if a course did not please him, he might reach over to them and give his friends a cup for their souls. He carried books about with him on his preaching tours. Objection was here and there made to the possession of so many books, where they might have been sold and the proceeds given to the poor.^ Translations also were made of the books of Scripture and other works. Groote translated the Seven Penitential Psalms, the Office for the Dead and certain Devotions to Mary. The houses were not slow in adopting type, and printing establishments are mentioned in connection with Maryvale, near Geissenheira, Windesheim, Herzogenbusch, Rostock, Louvaine and other houses.
_Thfi schools conducted by the Brothers of the Common^ Life, intended primarily for clerics, have a distinguished place in the history of education. Seldom, if ever before, had so much attention been paid to the intellectual and moral training of youth. Not only did the Brothers have their own schools. They labored also in schools already established. Long lists of the teachers are still extant. Their school at Herzogenbusch had at one time 1200 scholars, and put Greek into its course at its very start, 1424. The school at Liege in 1524 had 1600 scholars. ^ The school at Deventer acquired a place among the notable grammar schools of history, and trained Nicelas-olCusaj^ Thomas a Kempis, John Wessel and Erasmus, who became an inmate of the institution, 1474, and learned Greek from one of its teachers, Synthis. Making the mother-tongue the chief vehicle of education, these schools sent out the men who are the fathers of the modern literature of Northwestern Germany and the Lowlands, and prepared the soil for the coming Reformation.
Scarcely less influential was the public preaching of the Brethren in the vernacular, and the collations, or expositions
1 Uhlhorn, p. 373, gives the case of such an objector, a certain man by the name of Ketel of Deventer. Also Langenberg, p. x.
2 See Schmid, Gesch. d. Erziehung vom Anfang bis auf unsere Zeit, Stuttgart, 1892, IT. 164-167 ; Hirsche in Herzog, II. 759 ; Pastor's high tribute, I. 152 ; and Langenberg, p. ix.
282 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1294-1517.
of Scripture, given to private circles in their own houses. Groote went to the Scriptures, so Thomas a Kempis says, as to a well of life. Of John Celle, d. 1417, the zealous rector of the Zwolle school, the same biographer writes : " He frequently expounded to the pupils the Holy Scriptures, impressing upon them their authority and stirring them up to diligence in writing out the sayings of the saints. He also taught them to sing accurately, and sedulously to attend church, to honor God's ministers and to pray often." ^ Celle himself played on the organ.
The ceniraLtlieme ^f Jtheir study was_tlie^erson ^iid_life of Christ. " Let the root of thy study," said Groote, " and the mirror of thy life be primarily the Gospel, for therein is the life of Christ portrayed." ^ ^ period of each day was set apart for reflection on some special religious subject, — Sunday on heaven, Monday on death, Tuesday on the mercies of God, Wednesday on the last judgment, Thursday on the pains of hell, Friday on the Lord's passion and Saturday on sins. They laid more stress upon inward purity and rectitude than upon outward conformities to ritual,^
The excellent people joined the other mystics of the fourteenth century in loosening the hold of scholasticism and sacerdotalism, those two master forces of the jNIiddle Ages.^ They gave emphasis to the ideas brought out strongly from other quarters, — the heretical sects and such writers as Marsiglius of Padua, — the idea of the dignity of the layman, and that monastic vows are not the condition of pure religious devotion. They were the chief contributors to the vigorous religious current which was flowing through the Lowlands. Popular religious literature was in circulation. Manuals of devotion were current, cordials and precordials for the soul's needs. Written codes of rules for laymen were passed from hand to
U<:ettlewell, I. 111.
2 Thos. k Kempis, Vita Gerard. XVIII. 11 ; Kettlewell, I. 16(3. A life of a cleric he declared to be the people's Gospel — vita clerici evangelium populi. 8 gee Langenberg, p. 61.
* See Ullman, II. 82, 115 sq. Schulze, p. 190, is not so clear on this point. Kettlewell, II. 440, says that tlie Brothers were " the chief agents in pioneering the way for the Keformation."