Conclusion: Spiritual guides in fifteenth-century books: cultural change and continuity

Summary

THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY: AN AGE OF ANXIETY

During the final decades of the fourteenth century, lay spiritual aspirations presented clerical authors with a range of challenges and opportunities. For all of the authors whose guides I have considered, the first challenge was the danger of lay retreat from the world: the prospect that in desiring contemplative experience, readers might withdraw from social and sacramental responsibilities, beyond structures of priestly mediation. The Abbey of the Holy Ghost and Fervor Amoris show this danger to be their primary concern as they translate the cloister into a lay disciplinary structure, attempting to guard against the contemplative elitism that for lay readers might stem from a sense of material entitlement. The Life of Soul, Book to a Mother, and the Mixed Life also encourage their readers to return to the world on newly disciplined terms. But in responding to lay desire for contemplative experience, they tend to look away from the cloister, not denying the importance of contemplation, but stressing the active apostolate of Christ as they carefully extend clerical intellectual, pastoral, and teaching disciplines to lay readers. In doing so, these texts perform hard textual work to mediate controversial theological thought and construct orthodox strategies for devotional practice.