Reform Order

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As a reform order some are religious orders referred to in the Middle Ages newly formed and partly even understood as such. This includes the reform groups who linked monastic community life with hermit life, such as the Carthusian and Camaldolese . The religious communities that emerged from the itinerant preaching movement, such as the Premonstratensians and Gilbertines , also fall under this term.

The Cistercian order is also to be understood as a reform order, as it redesigned the organizational structure of the Benedictines . The aim of interpreting the Benedictine Rule “more strictly and more fully” and following it was sought, among other things, by upgrading monastery associations. The independent monasteries thus created a large community that enabled mutual support and control ( filiation system ).

With the beginning of the high Middle Ages , various reform movements in individual monasteries had already led to monastic life being reorganized. The starting points of these movements are called reform monasteries ( Anian reform , Cluniac reform , Hirsauer reform , Gorze monastery reform , Siegburg reform , later Bursfeld reform movement ).

Other, newly founded communities, which are not in the tradition of monastic life, rather had a reform of Christian life in mind. The mendicant orders ( Franciscan orders , Carmelites and Dominicans ) are therefore sometimes also referred to as reform orders , which, however, obscures “their novelty in the history of the order” at that time.

Some theologians also refer to the new orders that emerged in the Catholic Reform of the 16th and 17th centuries (e.g. Jesuits , Capuchins , Theatines , Ursulines , Maurines etc.) as Reform Orders .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Karl Suso Frank : Order II. Historically . In: Walter Kasper (Ed.): Lexicon for Theology and Church . 3. Edition. tape 7 . Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau 1998, Sp. 1091-1094 . , 1091.
  2. ^ Karl Suso Frank: Order II. Historically . In: Walter Kasper (Ed.): Lexicon for Theology and Church . 3. Edition. tape 7 . Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau 1998, Sp. 1091-1094 . , 1092.
  3. ↑ Gottfried Bitter:  Sermon VII . In: Theologische Realenzyklopädie (TRE). Volume 27, de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1997, ISBN 3-11-015435-8 , pp. 262-296., Here pp. 267ff.