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This book presents a lost tradition of inner work, the way of the householder, which was believed by the Brotherhood of Common Life to have been the teaching of the Apostles. It focuses on the emergence, amidst the decay of medieval culture, of the mixed life, this reconciliation of action and contemplation, as the essential link between Catholic spirituality and Protestantism. The transmission of this work to lay persons seeking the interior dimensions of their lives without withdrawing from the world is presented. The hitherto monastic spiritual exercises for strengthening attention are discussed in depth. The traditional and vital Christian knowledge of the human condition, which the Brothers and Sisters verified for themselves, is emphasized, especially the crucial significance of the force of attention in the recollection of oneself and God. The importance of strengthening attentive awareness is everywhere alluded to in the sources, but virtually ignored in current accounts of the Christian heritage. The book traces a transmission of spiritual exercises supported by a strongpsychological base that is strangely familiar to the climate of todays search for meaning.
Beginning in the 1380s in the east-central Netherlands and in the county of Holland, the Devotio Moderna formed households organized as communes and forged lives centred on private devotion. This book places the movement in the context of urban society in the medieval Low Countries.
The Devotio Moderna, or Modern Devout, puzzled their contemporaries. Beginning in the 1380s in market towns along the Ijssel River of the east-central Netherlands and in the county of Holland, they formed households organized as communes and forged lives centered on private devotion. They lived on city streets alongside their neighbors, managed properties and rents in common, and worked in the textile and book trades, all the while refusing to profess vows as members of any religious order or to acquire spouses and personal property as lay citizens. They defended their self-designed style of life as exemplary and sustained it in the face of opposition, their women labeled "beguines" and thei...
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This short book is a reflection on life as an intentional Christian community, written by Bonhoeffer during his time as a head of the Illegal Seminary of the Confessing Church in Finkenwalde (Eastern Prussia). The book has become a spiritual classic in which many Christians of a wide variety of backgrounds and contexts have found meaning and encouragement.