Speerspitze der Reform? Orden und Ordensleute auf dem Konstanzer Konzil, Annales Historiae Conciliorum, 50/2 (2020) 339-394 Ebook PDF

For a long time it was considered that the Council of Constance had not achieved much in
the field of reform. It had hardly given initiatives, especially for internal reform (reformatio
membrorum). Even if this judgment is outdated, the role of religious orders in the reform
process needs to be clarified. Have they provided impulses that have advanced a reform of
the Church and that have also started with themselves?
The merit of the religious orders is not so much that they essentially determined the reform
debates of the Council. Their success was rather shown by the fact that they more or less
took up the reform impulses of the Council and reformed their orders and monasteries together
with sovereigns and the ecclesiastical hierarchy.