or prayer-makers and chanters, as the words may be interpreted, who devoted themselves especially to the education of youth. After a century of benevolent exertions, which won for them the love of the people and the approbation of the authorities, the tendency to decay being inherent in human institutions, the mysticism of the Beghards and Lollards lost sight of the distinction between moral and substantial unity with God, and assumed a pantheistic form almost identical with Vedantic Hinduism; and the notion that all man’s impulses are divinely originated, the corollary of their speculations, countenanced immoralities which brought the fraternities into collision with society and justified their extinction.
The traditionary mysticism, however, survived and received a higher development, being reduced by John Ruysbroeck, prior of an Augustine monastery near Brussels, into a contemplative system, akin to Quietism, which aimed at absorption of the soul into the divine substance, and was distinguished from the pantheism it succeeded by its broad assertion of the divine transcendance. The disposition to religious association and the conditions rendering co-operative benevolence practicable yet existing in the Netherlands—the canon Gerhard Groot and other disciples of Ruysbroeck were actuated by love of letters and religious zeal to form themselves, in 1380, into a community on the apostolic pattern—having their goods in common, living by their own labour, submitting to a rule, but preserving individual freedom—for the purpose of spreading practical Christianity among the people by the transcription and circulation of the Scriptures and religious works, and for the improvement of general education.
Town and conventual schools had long existed in the Netherlands; but education in the first was costly, and in the second superstitious, and, being founded on scholasticism, at variance with enlightenment. The age was erudite, but not wise; for its learning, like that of the Greek sophists, was abstruse, treating of words, not of things, and therefore altogether unprofitable. As of old, it was necessary to recall philosophy from the clouds; from idle or presumptuous speculations to practical wisdom. The estimable Brethren of the Common Lot did this, by boldly casting aside the absurdities of scholasticism, replacing the cumbrous old grammars by simpler and more intelligible ones, and putting the classics themselves into the hands of their pupils; and all their religious teaching, being in the vernacular and founded on the Gospel, was imbued with a new life and spirit. Such acceptance did these labours meet with, that Brother-houses soon arose in various parts of the Netherlands and Germany, that at Deventer, in Overyssel, the birthplace of the society, retaining the pre-eminence. Some female communities and monasteries of regular canons, in connection with the parent society, were also organised, but without any noticeable results.
The good effected by the Brethren was incalculable. They revolutionised the educational system; their teaching and their example caused a revival of spiritual religion in an age of superstitious formalism; their practice of mutual confession spread, and awoke a new moral sense; their use of the vernacular in prayers gave new fervour and depth to devotion; and their dissemintaion of the Scriptures in the common tongue brought truth within the reach of the unlearned. Moreover, their translation of the Scriptures defined the popular language, and gave birth to a national literature; and as nationality is based on language, the acquisition of literature of their own was the first step to the emancipation from Latin Rome of the European nationalities, which were ripe for freedom when religion thus assumed the national garb.
Thus an association, many of whose members were priests entertaining profound reverence for and protected by the hierarchy, by its silent labour in the very bosom of scholasticism and the Roman Church, prepared the way for the emancipation of the people from both. Their reverence, however, was of a negative character; for,—assuming the “De Imitatione” of Thomas A-Kempis, one of the most zealous of the brethren, to be a fair exposition of their religious views—without impugning any of the dogmas of the Church—they considered the dogma only in its moral and spiritual import, employed it merely as the vehicle of an ascetic mysticism, and insisted, above all, on spirituality and Christian freedom. It seems unaccountable that the hierarchy should have been so short-sighted as to sanction doctrines the tendency of which was subversive of its power; and it is greatly to its honour, that so far from opposing, as is a prevalent impression, it favoured the translation of the Scripture into the vulgar tongue. Self-interest rendered the mendicant orders more perspicacious as to the ultimate tendency of the labours of the brethren who had taken education entirely out of their hands, weakened their influence, and sadly diminished their customary revenues; for they were always persistently hostile to the association, and at the Council of Constance made a vigorous but unsuccessful effort to procure its interdiction.
If not the first to substitute block-printing for transcription, the brethren largely employed it for the diffusion of religious knowledge; some of the finest block-books extant having been produced by them,—as the “Biblia Pauperum,” and “Canticum Canticorum,”—illustrated summaries wherein scriptural history was presented pictorially to the imagination of the unlearned, and rhythmically to the memory of the intelligent; meagre substitutes for the Bible, it is true, but invaluable when books were rare. The invention of type in great measure superseded the occupation of the brethren as producers of books, but their estimable labours were continued down to the era of the Reformation, when, their work being accomplished, what was good in their efforts received a higher development, what was narrow and particular decayed of itself. Luther highly commended them as the “first to begin the Gospel,” and opposed the interference with them of those who “knew how to destroy but not how to build,” on account of their wearing the religious habit and observing old and laudable usages not contradictory to the Gospel.
The honour of the invention of type is claimed by both Germany and Holland. The claim of Holland rests chiefly on a statement made by Junius,