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1 results

  • 29 - Observant reform in religious orders

  • from PART VII - REFORM AND RENEWAL
  • Edited by Miri Rubin, Queen Mary University of London, Walter Simons, Dartmouth College, New Hampshire
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Christianity
    Published online:
    28 March 2010
    Print publication:
    02 July 2009, pp 446-457

  • Summary

    The period of the so-called Observant reforms was far more dynamic than longstanding convictions concerning the decline of religious life in the closing centuries of the Middle Ages. Most impressive was the wave of Observant initiatives in the mendicant orders, and the Franciscan order in particular. Observant reforms among the Augustinian hermits first made headway at the Lecceto hermitage near Siena in 1385, soon leading to the first Augustinian Observant Congregation. Until the 1460s the spread of moderate Dominican Observant reforms was very much a steered and moderately successful phenomenon, without granting much specific autonomy to the Observant houses. The Lateran reform congregation at first had an impact in Italy, but soon influenced many houses of regular canons in middle and eastern Europe, notably in Poland. Significant for late medieval society as a whole was the Observant interference with the religious life of the laity.