Geert Groote

Thomas à Kempis, who wrote his Life, calls him Gerard “the Great” and tells of a rich citizen of Deventer, master of arts at Paris at eighteen and holder of a canonry at Aix, who was turned from a worldly life by a Carthusian prior (Thomas à Kempis, Life of Gerard Groote, chs. 1–5 (Arthur, pp. 5–11)). The chronicle of Thomas’s monastery names his parents, Werner Groote, a magistrate of the city, and Heylwige, and says that he resigned his benefices, left his house to a community of poor women and took deacon’s orders in order to preach (Chronicle of Mount St Agnes, part 2, ch. 3 (Arthur, pp. 160–161)).

He preached in the towns of the diocese of Utrecht and in Holland until he was forbidden by an edict, which he obeyed (Thomas à Kempis, Life of Gerard Groote, ch. 9 (Arthur, pp. 20–21)) (Thomas à Kempis, Life of Gerard Groote, ch. 15 (Arthur, pp. 43–46)). He set those who wished to live together to earn their bread by their own work, and he wanted a monastery of canons regular for some of them (Thomas à Kempis, Life of Gerard Groote, ch. 15 (Arthur, pp. 43–46)). He died at Deventer on the feast of Saint Bernard, 20 August, in 1384, in his forty-fourth year, and was buried in the church of Saint Mary there (Thomas à Kempis, Life of Gerard Groote, ch. 16 (Arthur, pp. 46–49)) (Chronicle of Mount St Agnes, part 2, ch. 3 (Arthur, pp. 160–161)). See the Devotio Moderna and the Imitation of Christ.