The lay religious orders and brotherhoods comprised one of the chief sources of renewal in the medieval church. Despite the tendency toward works-righteousness which was present in many of these groups, the radical claims of biblical faith were recovered at least for a time. Even the biblical message of free grace frequently made itself heard among the itinerant evangelists, friars, and monks. Bernard of Clairvaux, the great Cistercian preacher, and Thomas à Kempis, a member of the Brethren of the