The term devotio moderna is used strictly to describe a particular school of piety in the Netherlands which looked to Gerard de Groot (†1384) as its founder: ‘totius modernae devotionis origo'; they were Augustinian Canons, with a famous centre at Windesheim near Zwolle, and many abbeys in the area. Gerard de Groot was in touch with his fellow-Augustinian John Ruysbroeck (†1361), and so with the school of the German mystics. The ‘modern’ Augustinian school reached its greatest and most lasting renown with the writings of Thomas à Kempis (†1471), whose Imitation of Christ is the supreme product of the school of the devotio moderna. In the early sixteenth century there was the influence of the current humanism, with for example Erasmus of Rotterdam (†1536), who himself began at Deventer with the Augustinians of de Groot, and then for a time was an Augustinian himself, and the notions of the devotio moderna became modified.