Centenary Paper: <i>Humanity Sacra</i> : From <i>Devotio Moderna</i> to <i>Neodevotio</i> in Milieus

Pairing reading with writing, and textuality with text in print for religious, missionary and educational purposes facilitates the understanding of the intangible concept of devotion from a modern lens of humanity sacra. Without overlooking the context of Devotio Moderna , this literary analysis offers the possibility of re-evaluating the configuration of the geodesy of culture and literature through the endowment of textuality originated, specifically, in early modern Europe. As exempla of the trajectory of the notion of devotion as texts, the work of the French bishop Francis de Sales (1567–1622), the Italian priest John Bosco (1815–1888), who brought Sales’s textuality in alignment with emerging missionary enterprise, and the Spanish priest Ricardo de Beobide (1891–1921), who transformed the Salesian devotion towards a new writing style reflecting the textuality of the neo-devotee in the twentieth century is analysed based on Georges Poulet’s premises of ‘Criticism and the Experience of Interiority’ (1980).