Sisters and Brothers of the Common Life: The Devotio Moderna and the World of the Later Middle Ages. By John Van Engen. The Middle Ages Series. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008. ix + 433 pp. $59.95 cloth

摘要

Those who live during epochs that are later interpreted by historians asn“transitional” usually share a common fate, regardless of their uniqueness:nthey tend to be viewed as representative of whatever preceded them or asnharbingers of things to come, or as an evolutionary link of sorts between thenold and the new. The religious movement commonly known as the DevotionModerna has long been a prime example of this tendency. Dismissed bynJohann Huizinga in his Autumn of the Middle Ages (1919) as dour worlddenyingnrepresentatives of a waning culture, but praised by Albert Hyma asnagents of change and the very embodiment of the essence of a new era innThe Christian Renaissance (1924), the Modern-Day Devout became anRorschach test of sorts for scholars throughout the twentieth century, innwhich all descriptions of the contours of the subject were couched in termsnof polarities and mixtures: old versus new