Tradition and Change in Europe Culture - Essay Example

It is important to comprehend the late medieval mystic and pious revivals as partly a reaction to the late medieval church hierarchy and the disorder of the church. These revivals, as well as the ill-fated movements of doctrinal reform, were characterized by lay mysticism and piety, female piety, the mystics, brethren of the common life, the Lollards, etc. Therefore, the late medieval mystic and pious revivals reflected the widespread dissatisfaction with official teachings in the late 1300s and 1400s.

Mysticism, or the interior sense of the direct presence and love of God, was an important consequence of the late medieval mystic and pious revivals, and it was illustrated by confraternities or the religious guilds founded for laypersons. "The growth of lay piety was, in essence, an effort to give everyone access to forms of faith that hitherto had been restricted to a spiritual elite. Frightened by the disasters of the age, people hungered for emotional reassurance, for evidence of God's love and redeeming grace within themselves.

" (Tradition and Change in Europe Culture, 1300-1500).