Inventing Secular Devotion: Dirc of Herxen and Dionysius the Carthusian on the Life of Married People

This article investigates how two major authors from the late medieval Low Countries attempted to define a niche for secular laypeople in the economy of salvation, the prominent adherent of the Devotio Moderna Dirc of Herxen and the Carthusian Dionysius of Rijkel. Traditionally, true perfection was seen as reachable only for religious men and women. Dirc and Dionysius responded to the growing spiritual need in the burgeoning cities of the Low Countries. Finding a way to be truly pious as a married lay person was one of major innovations of the Late Middle Ages, on the brink of the Reformation.