Herbert Grundmann (1902–1970)

Years ago, during my doctoral examinations, the biologist randomly assigned to serve as outside observer was so stirred by my adviser’s questions about Herbert Grundmann’s Religious Movements in the Middle Ages (Religiöse Bewegungen im Mittelalter, 1935) that he surprisingly asked his own. Grundmann, the biologist divined, believed that Beguines living without vows were susceptible to heresy. Was this not simply a tautology? The answer to that good question—how Grundmann conceived of the relationships among individuals and institutions—is one of two dominant themes visible in the book under review. The other is perspective and teleology—how historical meaning is deferred; how an ending encloses something for view, permitting dependable evaluation of its impact, especially from the distance of time. As the editor, Jennifer Kolpacoff Deane, observes in her introduction to this collection, his colleague Arno Borst summarised Grundmann’s career with a ‘temporal theme’ that emphasised finitude and fulfilment, but postponed until some future time (p. 10). To Borst, Grundmann studied figures whose ‘historical role [was] only half-known to themselves’, discernible solely from a future vantage point, living in a Middle Ages that was ‘the beginning of our road ... whose goal we cannot yet see; we will see it only at the end, after it stops’ (p. 227)

Heresy · Literacy · Pedagogy · Sociology · Theology · Classics · History · Philosophy · Religious Education and Schools