GEERT GROOTE, FOUNDER - 20 AUGUST

 

ALL SAINTS CELEBRATED IN AUGUST

Saints celebrated on the 20th of August

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GEERT GROOTE, FOUNDER

The beginning of the
Book of the Hours of Geert Groote

¹Gerardus, (August 20), surnamed Magnus, died on this day at Deventer (Daventriae) in the Netherlands. He founded the Brotherhood of Good Will, whose members lived in community. The Bollandists* list him neither as “blessed” nor as “saint.” 

²Gerard Groote (October 1340 - 20 August 1384), otherwise Gerrit or Gerhard Groet, in Latin Gerardus Magnus, was a Dutch Catholic deacon. Groote and Florence Radewyns, one of his disciples, founded at Zwolle the Brethren of the Common Life. In 1387 a site was secured at Windesheim, north of Deventer, and here was established the monastery that became the cradle of the Windesheim Congregation of canons regular embracing in course of time nearly one hundred houses, and leading the way in the series of reforms undertaken during the 15th century by all the religious orders in Germany. Henceforth his communities, which were spreading rapidly through the Netherlands, Lower Germany, and Westphalia, claimed and received all his attention. He contemplated organising his clerics into a community of canons regular, but it was left to Radewyns, his successor, to realise this plan at Windesheim two years later.

A movement known as the Modern Devotion (Devotio Moderna) was founded by Groote and Florens Radewyns, in the late fourteenth century. For Groote the pivotal point is the search for inner peace, which is attained by denial of one's own self through "ardour" and "silence". This is the heart of the "New Devotion", or the "Devotio moderna". Solitary meditation on Christ’s Passion and redemption, on one’s own death, the Last Judgment, heaven, and hell [Four Last Things] was essential.

In the course of the 15th century, the Modern Devotion found adherents throughout the Netherlands and Germany. Its precepts were further disseminated in texts such as The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis, which reached an increasingly literate public. In this context small works of art such as diptychs that provided a focus for private worship enjoyed wide popularity.

¹Information from Stadler's Complete Encyclopedia of Saints, Volume 2, Augsburg, 1861, p. 401; ²https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geert_Groote

*A hagiography source used by the authors 

Stadler's Complete Encyclopedia of Saints - Sources and Abbreviations

Sources of these articles (in the original German): books.google.co.uk, de-academic.com, zeno.org, openlibrary.org