Whereas Heynlin aimed his treatise on the mass at the theologically uneducated clergy; at ‘sacerdotes simplices, qui notitiam canonum non habent’, Gabriel Biel's commentary was clearly conceived for an academic audience. But the two works differed not merely in regard to the educational level of their prospective readerships. As attested by Wendelin Steinbach in his introduction to Biel's commentary, Biel hoped particularly to reveal Catholic truth in all its richness. He intended more than a mere quantitatively exhaustive treatment. His central aim was to overcome the conflict between the schools, in the service of catholic doctrine. This attempt to attain a unity in theology was basic to the ‘modernist’ programme and was by no means limited to contemporary theological controversies. The growing importance of an anti-Pelagian Augustinianism thoroughly tested the Tübingen tradition inspired by Biel and demanded the deployment of the most ‘modern’ interpretive tools in order to attain the desired doctrinal unity.

But another factor was of particular importance for circumstances in Tübingen. The first three ‘modernists’ in Tübingen, Gabriel Biel, Wendelin Steinbach and Peter Braun, were also Brethren of the Common Life and thereby at the same time members of both the via moderna and devotio moderna. Originally emanating from petit bourgeois and artisan circles, this devotio with its distinctive blend of devotion and zeal for reform, decisively influenced the theological atmosphere in pre-Reformation Tübingen in a manner unequalled at other universities. And so we devote a portion of the present study to the Modern Devotion.