Brothers of the Common Life

The Brethren of the Common Life (Latin: Fratres Vitae Communis) (FVC) was a Roman Catholic pietist religious community founded in the Netherlands in the 14th century by Gerard Groote, formerly a successful and worldly educator who had had a religious experience and preached a life of simple devotion to Jesus Christ. Without taking up irrevocable vows, the Brethren banded together in communities, giving up their worldly goods to live chaste and strictly regulated lives in common houses, devoting every waking hour to attending divine service, reading and preaching of sermons, labouring productively, and taking meals in common that were accompanied by the reading aloud of Scripture: "judged from the ascetic discipline and intention of this life, it had few features which distinguished it from life in a monastery", observes Hans Baron.

Of wealthy burgher stock, Groote was born at Deventer in the Oversticht possession of the bishopric Utrecht in 1340. Having read at Cologne, at the Sorbonne, and at Prague, he took orders and obtained preferment, a canon's stall at Utrecht and another at Aachen. His relations with the German Gottesfreunde and the writings of Ruysbroek, who later became his friend, gradually inclined him to mysticism, and on recovering from an illness in 1373, he resigned his prebends, bestowed his goods on the Carthusians of Arnheim and lived in solitude for seven years.

Feeling himself constrained to go forth and preach, Groote went from place to place calling men to repentance, proclaiming the beauty of Divine love, and bewailing the relaxation of ecclesiastical discipline and the degradation of the clergy. The effect of his sermons was marvellous; thousands hung on his words.

A small band of followers attached themselves to Groote and became his fellow workers, thus becoming the first "Brethren of the Common Life" (Dutch: Broeders des gemeenen levens). The reformer was opposed by the clergy, whose lax lives he denounced in his preaching as decadent and evil, but his zeal for purifying the Catholic faith and the morality of its followers won many to his cause. Members of the secular clergy even enrolled themselves in his brotherhood, which, in due course, was approved by the Pope.

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