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.
Read more about Brethren Of The Common Life: The Brethren and The Devotio Moderna, Windesheim Congregation, Education and Activity
Famous quotes containing the words brethren, common and/or life:
“Mister Ward, don’t yur blud bile at the thawt that three million and a half of your culled brethren air a clanking their chains in the South?—Sez I, not a bile! Let ‘em clank!”
—Artemus Ward (1834–1867)
“There is something antique, even, in his style of treating his subject, reminding us that Heroes and Demi-gods, Fates and Furies, still exist; the common man is nothing to him, but after death the hero is apotheosized and has a place in heaven, as in the religion of the Greeks.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Death or life or life or death
Death is life and life is death
I gotta use words when I talk to you
But if you understand or if you dont
That’s nothing to me and nothing to you
We all gotta do what we gotta do”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)