HIST-338 Lecture Notes - Lecture 29: The Imitation Of Christ, Gregorian Reform
23 Nov 2020
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Not everyone could attend a parish church with regularity; especially in the countryside where many churches were unstaffed. The mendicants wanted to travel as christ and his apostles had done, preach as they had done, tend to the sick as they had done. They did not seek to challenge or supplant the established clergy but only to assist them. But as is often the case when people receive assistants they have not requested friction often arose between the established clerics and the popular new mendicants. As a sign of his approval of this enthusiasm, god rewarded many of those who led the reform with wave after wave of mystical visions gave the believers a foretaste of the transcendence of paradise. Although always cautious about unchecked popular enthusiasms the church responded to popular demands and desires by endorsing the new emphasis of. God"s mercy to the penitent, advocating (within limits) the imitatio christi, by recognizing and encouraging the mendicants.
