§ 34. GERRIT DE GROOTE. 283
hand, giving directions for their conduct at home and abroad. Religious poems in the vernacular, such as the poem on the wise and foolish virgins, carried biblical truth.
Van viffjtincfrou rven de icis weren Utide van vif dwasen tvilt nu hir leren.
Some of these were translations from Bernard's Jesu dulcis memoria, and some condemned festivities like the Maypole and the dance. i
Eugene I V.,^usII^and Sixtus IV . gave tkeBrotheFs-marJcs of their approval, and the great teachers. Cardinal Cusa,D'Ailly and John Gerson spoke in their praise. There were, however, detractors, such as Grabon, a Saxon Dominican who presented, in the last days of the Council of Constance, 1418, no less than twenty-five charges against them. The substance of the charges was that the highest religious life may not be lived apart from the orders officially sanctioned by the Church. A commission appointed by Martin V., to which Gerson and D'Ailly belonged, reported adversely, and Grabon was obliged to retract. The commission adduced the fact that there was no monastic body in Jerusalem when the primitive Church practised community of goods, and that conventual walls and vows are not essential to the highest religious life. Otherwise the pope, the cardinals and the prelates themselves would not be able to attain to the highest reach of religious experience.^
With the Reformation, the distinct mission of the Brotherhood was at an end, and many of the communities fell in with
1 See Langenberg. The poem he gives on the dance, 68 sqq., begins —
Hyr na volget eyn lere schone Teghen dantzen unde van den meybome. Here follows a nice teaching against dancing and the May tree. One reason given against dancing was that the dancers stretched out their arms, and so showed disrespect to Christ, who stretched out his arms on the cross. One of the documents is a letter in which a monk warns his niece, who had gone astray, against displays of dress and bold gestures, intended to attract the attention of young men, especially on the Cathedral Square. With the letter he sent his niece a book of devotional literature.
2 Van der Hardt, Cone. Const., III. 107-121, gives Grabon's charges, the judgments of D'Ailly and Gerson and the text of Grabon's retraction.
284 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1294-1617.
the new movement. As for the houses which maintained their old rules, Luther felt a warm interest in them. When, in 1532, the Council of Hervord in Westphalia was proposing to abolish the local sister and brother houses, the Reformer wrote strongly against the proposal as follows : " Inasmuch as the Brothers and Sisters, who were the first to start the Gospel among you, lead a creditable life, and have a decent and well-behaved community, and faithfully teach and hold the pure Word, such monasteries and brother-houses please me beyond measure." On two other occasions, he openly showed his interest in the brotherhood of which Groote was the founder. 1
§ 35. The Imitation of Christ. Thomas d Kempis.
. . . mild saint A Kempis overmild.
— Lanier.
The pearl of all the mystical writings of the German-Dutch school is the Imitation of Christ, the work of Thomas a Kempis. With the Confessions of St. Augustine and Bunyan's Pilgrim 8 Progress it occupies a place in the very front rank of manuals of devotion, and, if the influence of books is to be judged by their circulation, this little volume, starting from a convent in the Netherlands, has, next to the Sacred Scriptures, been the most influential of all the religious writings of Christendom. Protestants and Catholics alike have joined in giving it praise. The Jesuits introduced it into their Exercises. Dr. Samuel Johnson, once, when ill, taught himself Dutch by reading it in that language, and said of its author that the world had opened its arms to receive his book.^ It was translated by John Wesley, was partly instrumental in the conversion of John Newton, was edited by Thomas Clialmers, was read by Mr. Gladstone " as a golden book for all times " and was the companion of General Gordon. Dr. Charles
1 De Wette, Luther's Letters, Nos. 1448, 1449, vol. IV., pp. 358 sqq.
2 Art. The IVorhlly Wisdom of Thos. a Kempis, in Dublin Review, 1908, pp. 262-287.