Causa spiritualis instructionis: The Modern Devout Collatio as a Community of Learning

Abstract

On Sundays and holidays, the Brothers of the Common Life would invite laypeople to their House and offer them some spiritual instructions by reading vernacular religious texts to them. This practice of collatio has received little attention in recent scholarship. By invoking the paradigm of the ‘community of learning’ this article hopes to offer a tentative exploration of the collatio and the possibilities for further research it offers. Proposing a general reconstruction of the overall nature of the discussion, the interaction and the close distance between the urban laypeople and the Brothers of the Common Life will be stressed. Two books of collations will allow for an examination of the topics to be discussed during the collatio and the way in which they were to be treated. The collatio provided laypeople with applicable religious thought: religious instructions they could fruitfully apply to their daily lives. Moreover, the collatio communicated the message that select religious knowledge should be available to laypeople, and that laypeople should actively seek out opportunities to acquire such learning. As laypeople were active participants in the urban religious landscape – for instance visiting sermons, reading vernacular religious texts, or forming personal relations with the local clergy – the collatio simultaneously responded to a lay demand for religious knowledge and offered the Brothers of the Common Life a chance to reach out to an urban audience.