Church reform from below

"Reform of the Head and Members" was a guiding motif of ecclesiastical renewal efforts in the century before the Reformation. The "Brethren of the Common Life" had a more modest goal: they aimed to personally realize the ideals of the early church as Devotio moderna and to initiate a "reform from the feet up" (reformatio a pedibus) through their lived example. One of their most prominent figures is the learned author and pastor Gerhard Zerbolt of Zutphen (1398). Today almost unjustly forgotten, he not only defined and defended the canonical status of the Brethren movement in his writings but also formulated fundamental insights into the analysis and therapy of the soul's life, which can be considered "modern" in our sense as well.