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1 results

  • 20 - Religious Life

  • from Clerus
  • Edited by Anders Winroth, Universitetet i Oslo, John C. Wei
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Medieval Canon Law
    Published online:
    13 January 2022
    Print publication:
    27 January 2022, pp 396-403

  • Summary

    The term religio, like many others in the technical vocabulary of the medieval Church, had more than one meaning. Since the early Middle Ages, it had denoted monastic observance, the life lived by the “regular” monk or nun, but it could also be used to refer to a more general dedication of one’s life to God – the latter meaning in no way eclipsing the former. Bishop Jacques de Vitry (d. 1240), for example, employed the term in his defense of beguines: “We do not consider religious only those who renounce the world and go over to a religious life, but we can also call religious all the faithful of Christ who serve the Lord under the one highest and supreme Abbot.” And this usage was not restricted to spiritual directors who saw the merits of a more interiorized form of religious life.