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Document Details : Title: Friar Matthew Grabow and the Devotio moderna at the Council of Constance Author(s): RALEY, J. Michael Journal: Ons Geestelijk Erf Volume: 93 Issue: 3-4 Date: 2023 Pages: 228-292 DOI: 10.2143/OGE.93.3.3293332 Abstract : In ca. 1414, the Dominican Matthew Grabow drafted a libellus, or legal complaint, against the tertiaries of the Chapter of Utrecht, whose ranks included several Devotio moderna households of Brothers and Sisters of the Common Life. Heard first at the episcopal court at Utrecht and later adjudicated at the Council of Constance in 1416-1418, with the final verdict coming a year later in 1419 at Florence, the stakes involved in this seemingly minor case ultimately escalated to a point where they threatened to have far graver consequences than Grabow himself or even the Modern Devout envisioned. Clearly the established medieval socio-ecclesiastical hierarchy was very much in play here in the question as to whether or not laypeople living devout lives could observe 'true religion'. In the final analysis, however, the outcome of the case had surprisingly little to do with the Modern Devout. Grabow, of course, never intended to challenge the council’s authority, yet had the right of secular professors to participate in the council’s decisions been challenged through the Grabow case, serious doubt might even have been cast upon the foundational underpinnings and legitimacy of the Council of Constance itself, whose members, following Jean Gerson’s leadership without papal approval after the flight of John XXIII on 20 March 1415, notably had claimed 'power immediately from Christ' without an intermediary. Also burned into the memories of the conciliarists was the recent failure of the Council of Pisa. Hence Pierre d’Ailly and Gerson had determined to defend the Council of Constance at all costs. Meanwhile, Grabow found himself condemned a priori because his positions echoed earlier debates at the University of Paris in ways that threatened to undermine the legitimate participation of secular doctors at the council. Despite the judges’ verdict condemning Grabow and ordering the burning of his libellus, however, the troubles of the Modern Devout were far from over. Contrary to the claims of the Modern Devout in subsequent years, the outcome of the Grabow case did not constitute an indirect approval of the Modern Devout. In 1421, just two years after the Grabow verdict, Pope Martin V mandated that Archbishop Dietrich of Cologne 'investigate the small convents of men and women who still lived under the appearance of religion but without espousing an approved rule'. At the archbishop’s request, the theologians and jurists at the University of Cologne investigated these devout folk once more, but again found no fault in their communal life. Popes Martin V, Eugene IV, Nicholas V, Calixtus III, Pius II, and Paul II would later award papal privileges to the brother and sister houses, but only in return for normalization – the profession of vows, adherence to the approved Rule of St. Augustine, and, ultimately, enclosure. In the end, much as conciliarism soon was to succumb to the rebirth of papal absolutism, the tertiaries’ modus vivendi ultimately succumbed to the cloister. Nevertheless, the idea would not go away easily. Their undermining of the traditional medieval order of society, coupled with the threat that their modus vivendi and their secular supporters posed to the monopoly on spiritual perfection which the mendicants believed that they enjoyed, goes far towards explaining just why the Modern Devout presented such an existential threat to Dominicans such as Matthew Grabow and the papal inquisitors who investigated the brothers and sisters throughout the 1390s and early 1400s. At the same time that Grabow endangered secular masters at the council, his attacks threatened the Modern Devout in an entirely different way. If they comprised an illicit association of people who had established a new religious order without papal approval, then they stood in direct violation of canon law as heretics who might be imprisoned or burned. Thus, in the end, Grabow’s libellus threatened the corporate legitimacy of both the general council and the Modern Devout, and with this, any hope of achieving widespread reform of Church government and Christian spirituality. This explains why the stakes were so high in the Grabow case at Constance and why the Modern Devout were convinced after Grabow’s conviction that their movement had been vindicated and approved. |
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