"The Modern Devotion was recognized from the outset as a movement of spiritual renewal [in the 14th century in Northern Europe]. Over the years historians have reached broad consensus on several of the most characteristic features of its spirituality.
"The person of Jesus Christ stood central to this New Devotion. Here the brothers and sisters inherited a tradition derived ultimately from the Cistercians and Franciscans, which by the Late Middle Ages had spread across nearly ail orders and levels of Western Christendom. The works most read by the New Devout included the sermons of Bernard, the life of Christ by Bonaventure, the meditations of Ps-Anselm, the Book on divine Wisdom of the Dominican mystic Henri of Suso, and versions of the life of Christ by the Carthusian Ludolf of Saxony."
In the Fall of 2001, as a Visiting Scholar at the Medieval Institute of the University of Notre Dame, Indiana, USA, one of our sisters was invited to organize an informal seminar on Devocio moderna as read from the inside. Each week was read selections from the tradition beginning with Bonaventure, who strongly influenced the first writers among the Devout, trying to underscore their special gift to the Church of their time.
We know through the texts and the iconography of the 14th century that the passion of the Lord Jesus took a greater importance in piety, under the influence of the mystic women of the preceding century such as Gertrud of Hefta, Angele of Foligno, Mechtilde of Magdeburg.
Saint Bonaventure († 1274), after Francis of Assisi, focused a part of his reflection on the subject. His treatise on The tree of life became a model for many after him and influenced the first Brothers of Common Life. The theme of the Passion is very prescrit also in the Imitation of Christ of Thomas a Kempis, a Canon regular of Windesheim († 1471).