Geert Groote

Gerard Groote (October 1340 – 20 August 1384), otherwise Gerrit or Gerhard Groet, in Latin Gerardus Magnus, was a Dutch Catholic deacon, who was a popular preacher and the founder of the Brethren of the Common Life.

In 1366 his countrymen sent him to Avignon on a secret mission to Pope Urban V. The life of the brilliant young scholar was rapidly becoming luxurious, secular and selfish, when a great spiritual change passed over him which resulted in a final renunciation of every worldly enjoyment.

[2] In 1374 Groote turned his family home in Deventer into a shelter for poor women and lived for several years as a guest of the Carthusian monastery.

The success which followed his labours not only in the city of Utrecht, but also in Zwolle, Deventer, Kampen, Amsterdam, Haarlem, Gouda, Leiden, Delft, Zutphen and elsewhere, was immense; according to Thomas à Kempis the people left their business and their meals to hear his sermons, so that the churches could not hold the crowds that flocked together wherever he came.

[2] The bishop was induced to issue an edict which prohibited from preaching all who were not in priestly orders, and an appeal by Groote to Pope Urban VI was without effect.

At the close of his life he was asked by some of the clerics who attached themselves to him to form them into a religious order and Groote resolved that they should be Canons Regular of St. Augustine.

He contemplated organizing his clerics into a community of canons regular, but it was left to Radewyns, his successor, to realize this plan at Windesheim two years later.

[1] A movement known as the Modern Devotion (Devotio Moderna) was founded in the Netherlands by Groote and Florens Radewyns, in the late fourteenth century.