Poverty movement is the name for medieval movements that pursued the preaching and perception of poverty. The poverty movements arose at a time when the church wanted to break away from the state and at a time when a social revolution was taking place due to the rise of the cities. But the poverty movement came into conflict with the church authorities because its adherents demanded the right to preach even though they were laypeople.
Unauthorized preaching by poverty movement in the Middle Ages
In addition to preaching by lay people, it was also found strange that women supported the movement. A compromise was that the supporters of the poverty movement would from now on live separately as men and women in monasteries. If they did not do this they were considered heretics. Those who, against the ordinance of 1184 of Pope Lucius III, in which the bishops were ordered to persecute heretics, were also judged as such.
Heretics, stake or sword
Heretics were those who deliberately deviated from what was part of the fundamental doctrine of faith in a particular religious community. Heresy was initially punishable by confiscation of property or imprisonment. But ultimately many heretics were burned at the stake or beheaded by sword after Emperor Frederick II decreed that heresy was punishable by death in the early thirteenth century. Pope Gregory IX, however, believed that it was up to the Church to determine whether heresy actually existed.
Reconciliation under Pope Innocent III
Ultimately, it was Pope Innocent III who succeeded in steering the poverty movement in the right direction and allowing its followers to practice and preach apostolic poverty. He therefore succeeded in reconciling a number of groups of the poverty movement with the Church at the beginning of the thirteenth century.
Eremites, deeper spiritual life
Half a century later, a large new, somewhat similar movement based on poverty emerged, the so-called mendicant orders. Mendicant orders lived solely on gifts. These orders were preceded by the hermits. Eremites were monks from the eleventh and twelfth centuries who lived in closed settlements and sometimes even in caves throughout Europe. These usually remote living places are the so-called honorary stages. The eremite groups arose from a need for a deeper spiritual life.
Connection of hermit groups
But in the thirteenth century, that lifestyle no longer fit in with the new spirit of the times, which had changed significantly due to the development of the cities. Eremite groups joined together around the mid-thirteenth century and were recognized by Pope Alexander IV. This is how the Order of the Eremites of Saint Augustine was founded in 1256. The status of a mendicant order was granted to this new community. The Pope wanted the apostolate of the mendicant order to be exercised mainly in the cities. The Augustinian hermits, partly due to the connection of other monasteries, spread so quickly across all European countries that around 1500 there were approximately 2,000 monasteries with around 30,000 members.
Augustinian hermits in the Low Countries
In the Low Countries, Augustinian heremites settled in Bruges, Hasselt, Leuven, Maastricht and Mechelen, among others. They also founded monasteries in Antwerp (1513), Appingedam (1393), Dordrecht (1293), Tournai (1319), Enkhuizen (1490), Ghent (1295), Haarlem (1489), Liège (1493) and Middelburg (1292).
Back to original hermit life
But in the meantime a split had occurred because in the fourteenth century many mendicants began to desire a stricter lifestyle. After the separation, some of the monks returned to their original hermit life. They founded a number of congregations, especially in Italy.
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