1. Ozment, Steven E., “Homo viator: Luther and Late Medieval Theology,” Harvard Theological Review 62 (1969): 275–287CrossRefGoogle Scholar, reprinted in The Reformation in Medieval Perspective, ed. Steven E. Ozment (Chicago, 1971), pp. 142–154;Google ScholarOzment, , The Reformation in the Cities: The Appeal of Protestantism to Sixteenth-Century Germany and Switzerland (New Haven, 1975), pp. 11–13Google Scholar; Oberman, Heiko A., Werden und Wertung der Reformation: Vom Wegestreit zum Glaubenskampf (Tübingen, 1977), p. 116Google Scholar, translated by Martin, Dennis D. as Masters of the Reformation: The Emergence of a New Intellectual Climate in Europe (Cambridge, 1981), pp. 89–90;Google ScholarHamm, Berndt, Frömmigkeitstheologie am Anfang des 16. Jahrhunderts, Beiträge zur historishen Theologie 65 (Tübingen, 1982), pp. 5–6, 223–226, 237, 250;Google ScholarSteinmetz, David C., Misericordia Dei: The Theology of Johannes von Staupitz in Its Late Medieval Setting, Studies in Medieval and Reformation Thought 4 (Leiden, 1968), pp. 122–131.Google Scholar See also the sed contra of Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, la.2ae. qu. 112. art. 5.

2. Kolde, Dietrich, Mirror for Christians, trans. Janz, Denis, Three Reformation Catechisms: Catholic, Anabaptist, Lutheran, Texts and Studies in Religion 13 (New York and Toronto, 1982), p. 75.Google Scholar See also the respondeo of Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, la.2ae. qu. 112. art. 5. Kolde was originally an Augustinian Eremite.

3. Arnoldi's treatise was published in Basel before December 1472 and was reprinted by Pez, Bernhard in his Bibliotheca ascetica antiquo-nova, vol. 6 (Regensburg, 1724; reprint ed.Farnborough, 1967), pp. 3–214.Google Scholar The chapters referred to are 5 and 28. Arnoldi's compendium was translated ca. 1477–1478 into German at the Benedictine monastery at Tegernsee in Bavaria under the title Büchlein von der Liebe Gottes. See Martin, Dennis D., “Der “Tractat von der lieb gots und des Nächsten’ in c[odex] g[ermanicus] m[onacensis] 780 und 394,” Zeitschrtft für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur 108 (1979): 258–266.Google Scholar It was translated into French at Paris in 1570. The Latin text has been included frequently under the writings of Dionysius van Ryckel (- Denys the Carthusian, d. 1471).

4. Many of Boyle's articles are now assembled conveniently in Boyle, Leonard E., Pastoral Care, Clerical Education, and Canon Law, 1200–1400 (London, 1981).Google Scholar As background for the present essay one might note particularly “The Oculus Sacerdolis and Some Other Works of William of Pagula,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., 5 (1955): 81–110Google Scholar, reprinted as chapter 4 in the above collection, and “Robert Grosseteste and the Pastoral Care,” Medieval and Renaissance Studies 8 (Durham, 1979): 3–51Google Scholar, reprinted as chapter 1 in the above collection.

5. Ball, R. M., “Thomas Cyrcetur, a Fifteenth-century Theologian and Preacher,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 37 (1956): 205–239.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See the study of a fourteenth-century Vienna university pastoral manual that was popular in the fifteenth century: Lentner, Leopold, “Slella Clericorum: Ein Pastoralbuch des späten Mittelalters, aus den Handschriften und Inkunabeln in der österreichischen Nationalbibliothek,” in Dienst an der Lehre: Studien zur heutzgen Philosophie und Theologie, König, Festschrift Franz Kardinal, Theologie, Wiener Beiträge zur 10, ed. by the Fakultät, Katholisch-Theologischen der Universität Wien (Vienna, 1965), pp. 263–274.Google Scholar

6. For example, Oberman, , Forerunners of the Reformation (New York, 1966; reprint ed.Philadelphia, 1981), esp. pp. 137–140Google Scholar, and Werden und Wertung, pp. 103–118. See also Oberman, , Masters of the Reformation, pp. 79–91;Google ScholarSteinmetz, David C., Luther and Staupitz (Durham, N.C., 1980);Google ScholarBossy, John, Christianity in the West, 1400–1700 (New York, 1985);Google Scholar see also Bossy, , “The Social History of Confession in the Age of the Reformation,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., 25 (1975): 21–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7. Ozment, Reformation in the Cities; Tentler, Thomas N., Sin and Confession on the Eve of the Reformation (Princeton, 1977).Google ScholarNichols, Ann Eljenholm, “The Etiquette of Pre-Reformation Confession in East Anglia,” Sixteenth Century Journal 17 (1986): 145–163CrossRefGoogle Scholar, sheds light on questions of posture and privacy in confession through a study of depictions of confession on baptismal fonts.

8. Duggan, Lawrence G., “Fear and Confession on the Eve of the Reformation,” Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 75 (1984): 153–175.Google Scholar On monastic spirituality setting the norm for the literate laity, see, for example, Post, R. R., The Modern Devotion (Leiden, 1968)Google Scholar, for a description of how the initial lay communities shifted increasingly toward monasticization. Oakley, Francis, The Western Church in the Later Middle Ages (Ithaca, 1978), pp. 80–130Google Scholar, offers an excellent overview.

9. Oberman, , Forerunners, ch. 3, pp. 123–203Google Scholar, or Ozment, , The Age of Reform, 1250–1550: An Intellectual and Religious History of Late Medieval and Reformation Europe (New Haven, 1980), pp. 22–42.Google Scholar

10. See the excerpts from Holcot and Biel in Oberman, Forerunners, pp. 143–144, 149, 173. Oberman's insistence that Biel's soteriology was, all things considered, essentially Pelagian (The Harvest of Medieval Theology: Gabriel Biel and Late Medieval Nominalism [Cambridge, Mass., 1963; 2d ed. 1965; reprint ed. Durham N.C., 1983], pp. 175–178Google Scholar) has been disputed and defended. See the summary of the controversy in Oberman, , Werden und Wertung, p. 169Google Scholar, n. 20, and the recent book by Janz, Denis, Luther and Late Medieval Thomism (Waterloo, Ont., 1983).Google Scholar

11. On Peter Lombard and Gabriel Biel as strict contritionists and Duns Scotus as an attritionist (or lax contritionist) and Thomas Aquinas and others as somewhere in between, see Oberman, , Harvest, pp. 146–160;Google Scholar see also the more detailed discussion of these problematic labels in Tentler, , Sin and Confession, pp. 18–27, 250–300Google Scholar, esp. 262–263. Siggins, Ian, Luther and His Mother (Philadelphia, 1981), pp. 61–62, 67–70Google Scholar, concludes that most parish preaching stressed the need for true contrition, in contrast to the greater emphasis in confessors' manuals on the power of the sacrament of confession.

12. Again, the question of an Augustinian theological school in the late Middle Ages is much controverted. See Hamm, , Frömmigkeitstheologie, pp. 303–333;Google Scholar Oberman, Werden und Wertung, chap. 6; Steinmetz, , Luther and Staupitz, pp. 13–27;Google Scholar and Schulze, Manfred, “Via Gregorii in Forschung and Quellen” in Gregor von Rimini: Werk und Wirkung bis zur Reformation, ed. Oberman, Heiko A. (Berlin, 1981), pp. 1–126.Google ScholarPelikan, Jaroslav, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, vol. 4: The Reformation of Church and Dogma (Chicago, 1984), pp. 10–38Google Scholar, summarizes the theological issues concisely and expertly.

13. See Oberman, , Werden und Wertung, pp. 106–113;Google Scholar see also Masters, pp. 82–86.

14. Oberman points out that this was a petition for Augustine, not a claiming of a promise, as it was for Staupitz, . Werden und Wertung, p. 114;Google Scholar see also Masters, pp. 87–88.

15. See Hamm, , Frömmigkeitstheologie, pp. 234–246, 264Google Scholar, where Hamm accents Staupitz's introspective theology even more.

16. Hamm, , Frömmigkeitstheologie, 234–246.Google ScholarSchumacher, Jan, “Martin Luther…Monk and Reformer,” Downside Review 101 (1983): 291–305CrossRefGoogle Scholar, is one of the few scholars to have taken account of Hamm's work and its implications for Luther.

17. Hamm's basic exposition of Paltz's pastoral theology is found on pp. 247–303 of Frömmigkeitsiheologie.

18. Hamm, , Frömmzgkeitstheologie, pp. 151–153.Google Scholar

19. Ibid., pp. 279–280, 284–291, 40–44. See Tentler's discussion of Duns Scotus and other “attritionalists” in Sin and Confession, pp. 264–273.

20. Ibid., pp.110–115, 119–128.

21. Ibid., pp. 252–254, 258.

22. Ibid., pp.141–143, 222–247.

23. I, Guigo, Consuetudines, chap. 28, in PL 153: 693–694.Google Scholar The principle can be traced to Cassiodorus.

24. Nicholas Kempf, “Sermo 51 super evangelia: ‘Quomodo pastores spirituales debent se habere si voluerint rethe predicacionis piscium multitudinem trahere,’” in Graz Universitätsbibliothek cod. 559, fol. 206v, col. A, lines 8–16: “Quis ergo bene vivit, eflicacius per bona opera predicat quam qui in populo absque bona vita cum magna facundia clamat. Religiosus eciam devotus, obediens, et humilis tacens plures capit pisces sue bone conversacionis rethe quam qui multum disputat, subtiliter predicat, et loquitur ornate.” See Hamm, , Frömmigkeztstheologze, p. 143Google Scholar, on Paltz and preaching. On Kempf see Martin, Dennis D., “Kempf, Nikolaus, von Straßburg” in Die deutsche Literature des Mittelalters: Verfasserlexikon, vol. 4; rev. ed. by Ruth, Kurt and others (Berlin, 1983)Google Scholar, cols. 1117–1124. I have argued elsewhere that Kempf (like many fifteenth-century Carthusians) can be taken as a typical representative of monastic spirituality, an ideal which, in the Carthusian order, had scarcely changed since the twelfth century. See Martin, Dennis D., “The Carthusian Nicholas Kempf: Monastic and Mystical Theology in the Fifteenth Century” (Ph.D. diss., University of Waterloo, 1981), pp. 345–381.Google Scholar

25. Mertens, Dieter, lacobus Carthusiensis: Utersuchungen zur Rezeption der Werke des KarthusersJakob von Paradies, Veröffentlichungen des Max-Planck-Institut für Geschichte 50, Studien zur Germania Sacra 13 (Göttingen, 1976), pp. 235–242.Google Scholar

26. Jedin, Hubert, Geschichte des Konzils von Trient, vol. 1: Der Kampf um das Konzil (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1949), p. 115Google Scholar, citing Lortz, Joseph. The reference to a “Copernicanturning point” was omitted in the English translation by Ernest Graf (St. Louis, 1957), p. 144.Google Scholar

27. See Wilpert, Paul, “Vita contemplativa und vita activa: Eine Kontroverse des 15. Jahrhunderts,” in Passauer-Studien: Festschrift flr Bischof Dr. Konrad Landersdorfer, O.S.B. zum 50. Jahrestag seiner Priesterweihe, Philosophisch-theologische Hochschule Passau (Passau, 1953), pp. 209–227Google Scholar, and Redlich, Virgil, Tegernsee und die deutsche Geistesgeschichte im fünfzehnten Jahrhundert, Schriftenreihe zur bayerischen Landesgeschichte 9 (Munich, 1931: reprint ed.Aalen, , 1974), pp. 104–108.Google Scholar

28. Bernard, of Clairvaux, , Sermones de diversis, no. 11, in Sancti Bernardi Opera, vol. 6: Sermones de diversis, ed. Leclercq, Jean, Talbot, C. H., and Rochais, H. M. (Rome, 1970), pp. 124–126Google Scholar (PL 183:570–571), and De precepto et dispensatione, chap. 17/para. 54, in ibid., vol. 3: Traclatus et Opuscula (Rome, 1966), pp. 288–289Google Scholar (= PL 182:889–890); Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, 2a. 2ae. qu. 189, art. 3; Malone, Edward E., The Monk and the Martyr: The Monk as the Successor of the Martyr, Catholic University of America Studies in Christian Antiquity 12 (Washington, D.C., 1950).Google Scholar

29. Hamm, , Frömmigkeitstheologie, p. 292Google Scholar, notes this parallel.

30. One of the best summaries is found in Amédée Hallier, The Monastic Theology of Aelred of Rievaulx: An Experiential Theology, trans. Columban Heaney, Cistercian Studies Series 2 (Shannon, Ireland, 1969).Google Scholar See also Ladner, Gerhart B., The Idea of Reform: Its Impact on Christian Thought and Action in the Age of the Fathers (Cambridge, Mass., 1959).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

31. This despite Ozment's suggestions to the contrary in “Homo Viator”(note 1 above) and in “Mysticism, Nominalism and Dissent,” in The Pursuit of Holiness in Late Medieval and Renaissance Thought, ed. H. A. Oberman and Charles Trinkaus, Studies in Medieval and Reformation Thought 10 (Leiden, 1974), pp. 67–92Google Scholar, and in Mysticism and Dissent: Religious Ideology and Social Protest in the Sixteenth Century (New Haven, 1973).Google Scholar See the summary in Oakley, , Western Church in Later Middle Ages, pp. 98–100.Google Scholar Note also Richard Kieckhefer's excellent assessment of mystical union in “Meister Eckhart's Conception of Union with God,” Harvard Theological Review 71 (1978): 203–225.Google Scholar

32. Hausherr, Irénée, Penthos: The Doctrine of Compunction in the Christian East, trans. Hufstader, Anselm, Cistercian Studies series 53 (Kalamazoo, 1982).Google Scholar

33. Kempf, Nicholas, De proponentibus religionis ingressum, pt. 1, chap. 6 (Vienna, Schottenstift, cod. 336 [formerly 296], fol. 6r, col. B, lines 6–11)Google Scholar: “For scarcely ever does one persist in the monastic cell until death unless one has been predestined to it.” See also Kempi, De confirmacione et regula approbata ordinis cartusiensis, chap. 9 (Vienna Nationalbibliothek c[odex] v[indobonensis] p[alatinus] 13904, fol. 13v, line 18 to fol. 14r, line 16) and De propentibus, fol. 6r, col. A, line 31 to col. B, line 14: “Beati Bernhardi ad fratres Karthusienses … dicit ‘Cella quidem et celi habitacio cognate sunt, quia sicut celum et cella ad invicem videntur habere aliquam nominis cognacionem, sic et pietatis. A celando enim celum et cella nomen habere videntur, et quod celatur in celis, hoc et in cellis; quod geritur in celis, hoc et in cellis. Quid hoc est vacare deo, frui deo,’ etcetera multa puicra ibidem. Subdit:‘A cella in celum sepe ascenditur; vix aut nunquam a celia in infernum descenditur. Moriens autem quis vix umquam a cella in infernum descendit, quia vix umquam, nisi [celo] predestinatus, in ea [cella] usque ad mortem perstitit.’” The quotations are from William of Thierry, St., The Golden Epistle (Chambarand, 1968)Google Scholar, bk. 1, chap. 4 (= PL 184: 314; section 31–33 in the R. Thomas edition, 1968).

34. Kempf, Dialogus de recto studiorum fine ac ordine, pt. 3, chap. 20 and 15, in Pez, , Bibliotheca ascetica, 4: 486, 472;Google ScholarDe propenentibus, Pt. 1, chap. 17 (Schottenstift cod. 336 [formerly 296], fol. 12r, col. B, lines 19–21).

35. Kempf, De recto fine pt. 3, chap. 17, in Pez, , Bibliotheca ascetica, 4: 478–79.Google Scholar All translations are my own.

36. See Lohse, Bernhard, Mönchtum und Reformation: Luthers Auseznandersetzung mit dem Möhnchsideal des Mittelalters, Forschungen zur Kirchen- und Dogmengeschichte 12 (Göttingen, 1963), p. 375.Google Scholar

37. Kempf, , Tractatus de discretione, chap. 9, in Pez, Bibliotheca ascetica (Regensburg, 1726) 9: 423.Google Scholar See also chap. 6 (Bibliotheca ascetica, 9: 409) where Kempf notes that humanity would never have fallen into sin if Eve had only told Adam about the serpent's words.

38. Kempf, De ostensione regni dei, chap. 15 (Graz Universitätsbibliothek cod. 262, fol. 10v, line 35 to 11 r, line 2).

39. This is the title of chapter 6 of Kempf's De propenentibus, pt. 1 (Vienna Schottenstift cod.336 [formerly 296], fol. 5v, col. A, lines 18–21). The opening lines of the chapter assert that “Convincitur autem deum six vocatos ad religionis ingressum specialius diligere, quia pre ceteris eos vocat ad statum perfectissimum et securissimum, magis quoque meritorium ad eternam vitam attingendam. Quamvis episcoporum status perfectior sit, non tamen insecunor esse dubitatur” (fol. 5v, col. A, lines 22–30). Later Kempf asks why it is that canonists and theologians alike agree that the ultimate form of penitence is to enter religion. He answers that “per nullam aliam [penitenciam] ex cogitabilem possit deus citius placari, atque satisfactio hic impleri. Denique de omni quod agit, duplici premio guadebit, quia sive comedit, sive bibit, sive dormit aut vigilat, aut quecumque alia facit, non quando ipse vult sed quando ordo disponit et ex obediencia perficit” (fol. 6r, col. A, lines 6–13).

40. Kempf, Sermo 17 super evangelia (Graz Universitätsbibliothek cod. 559): “Seculares sepe sunt magis devoti, tractabiles, et perfecti quam religiosi, quorum vita confunditur conversacio monastica. … Salvator docet religiosos non solum in statu monastico inveniri electos in humilitate et virtutibus perfectos, sed eciam in omni statu seculari quandocunque inveniunter humiliores et perfecciores religiosis. Quamvis sit religiosis viris soli deo et vile perfeccionem vacantibus magna confusio…” (fol. 143r, col. A, lines 6–9, col. B, line 32 to 143v, col. A, line 1). The context of this sermon on Mt. 8:5–13 (the centurion in Capernaum) makes it clear that Kempf is referring here to lay people (he mentions merchants as one example) not to secular priests.

41. Kempf, De redo stud, orum fine, pt. 2, chap. 17, in Pez, , Bibliotheca ascetica 4: 347–54; see pt.2, chap. 26–27 (pp. 387–394).Google Scholar

42. See van Engen, John, “The Christian Middle Ages as an Historiographical Problem,” American Historical Review 91 (1986): 519–552, esp. 539–545.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

43. See Kempf, De redo studiorum fine, pt. 2, chap. 15, in Pez, , Bibliotheca ascetica 4: 345Google Scholar, and Pt. 2, chap. 26 (p. 384); also De proponentibus, pt. 1, chap. 17 (Vienna Schottenstift cod. 336 [formerly 296], fol. 12r, col. B, lines 15–25).

44. Morrison, Karl F., The Mimetic Tradition of Reform in the West (Princeton, 1982), esp. pp. 222–226, 229–240.Google Scholar

45. On Zerbolt see Gerrits, G. H., Inter Timorem et Spem: A Study of the Theological Thought of Gerard Zerbolt of Zutphen (1367–1398), Studies in Medieval and Reformation Thought 37 (Leiden, 1986).Google Scholar

46. One can see broad parallels between the elitist, narrow way of traditional monasticism and the Anabaptist movements with their stress on total discipleship and imitation of Christ. It is important, however, to recognize that Anabaptists rejected the assumptions of the ordered, mediated, vicarious society and of the sacramental theology that undergirded the traditional monastic pastoral theology described in this essay. See Martin, Dennis D., “Monasticism and Anabaptism: Michael Sattler and the Benedictines Reconsidered,” Mennonite Quarterly Review 60 (1986): 139–164Google Scholar, with references to the work of Kenneth R. Davis, C. Arnold Snyder, and others on this subject. One “prooftext” from Menno Simons (ca. 1496–1536), who frequently denounced auricular confession and penance as inevitably idolatrous, must suffice here: “You rely on, and comfort yourselves with the masses of priests and monks, their confessionals, absolution, water, bread, wine, oil, and vigils … [yet] you have not a firm, joyful, peaceful, and good conscience, but a fearful, condemned, restless, and evil conscience before God. For we see that all those above-named superstitions and the false worship which all regenerate, pious, and good consciences consider mere abominations, are your chief support and comfort, because you neither have nor know Christ.” Menno, , The New Birth in The Complete Writings of Menno Simons, trans. Leonard Verduin (Scottdale, Pa., 1956), p. 98.Google Scholar

On Lutheran piety, see Oberman, Heiko, “Simul gemitus et raptus: Luther und die Mystik” in Kirche, Mystik, Heiligung und das natürliche bei Luther, ed. Asheim, Ivar (Gottingen, 1967), pp. 24–59;Google Scholar original version, English in The Reformation in Medieval Perspective, ed. Steven Ozment (Chicago, 1971), pp. 219–251.Google Scholar See also Oberman's preface to Erb's, Peter C. translation of Arndt, Johann, True Christianity, Classics of Western Spirituality (New York, 1979).Google Scholar