Religio and Reformation: Johannes Justus Lansperger, O.Cart. (1489/90--1539), and the sixteenth-century religious question

This study contributes to our understanding of the religious upheavals of the early sixteenth century by examining the defense of monasticism offered by a figure who knew the critiques of religious life made by reformers and who chose to remain in the cloister: Johannes Justus Lansperger, O.Cart. (1489-1539) [a.k.a. Landsberg, Lansperge]. Scholars have made much of the flight of monks and nuns from the cloisters during the Reformation, and research has understandably focused on those who functioned as mouthpieces for this radical break with the past. An examination of Lansperger affords the opportunity to explore the other side of the issue.;The present study explores the context within which Lansperger operated---the city of Cologne, the Carthusian order and the charterhouse of St. Barbara's, early modern humanism, vernacular publishing, and the Devotio moderna ---and the course of Lansperger's life and writing career. Then it evaluates the two critiques of monasticism that define the field---those of Erasmus and Luther. After establishing these two poles, this study turns to an analysis of Lansperger's two publications in defense of the religious life: the treatise Eyn schone vnderrichtung was die recht Ewangelisch geystlicheit sy, vnd was man von den Closteren halten soll (1528) and the dialogue Red vnnd antwurdt vom closterlichen Standt, ob der ein anfang vnd fundament hab auss gotlicher geschrifft (1529).;In the process of assessing Lansperger's defense of monasticism, this study identifies in his work a distinctively Carthusian response to attacks on the religious life: one that humbly acknowledges the shortcomings of monks while calling them to reform and defending---on historical and theological grounds---the validity of the way of life to which they have been called. Lansperger provides, then, both an outstanding exemplar of Carthusian reaction to the Reformation and a helpful entry-point into the mindset of those monks and nuns who maintained continuity with the medieval past.