Religions Reviewed

In her reader of fourteenth-century writings regarding the Black Death, Rosemary Horrox identifies “scientific explanations” as a principal category among the documents that she classes as “explanations and responses.” In doing so, she explicitly contrasts that “scientific” category with another one that she terms “the religious response.”  While Horrox is careful to point out that “scientific” and “religious” reactions to the problem were not necessarily incompatible, she nevertheless presents them as if they were somehow symmetrical alternatives. In doing so, she is courting a certain amount of anachronism by employing a modern distinction between scientific and religious knowledge. The importance that modern culture tends to attribute to the contest between the explanatory regimes of science and religion could perhaps be found in the medieval competition between philosophy and theology. And indeed, the Philosopher himself—i.e. Aristotle—is a principal authority cited in some of the explanations that Horrox terms “scientific.”  But one must question the extent to which this sort of medieval philosophy of nature corresponds to our reflexive modern conceptions about natural science, and how accurate it would be to follow Horrox in calling the authors of these documents “scientists.” 

While the “positive reversals” characteristic of orientalism are not immediately evident in I Corinthians, they certainly emerge in the larger context of Christian scripture. Both Gundry-Volf and Carroll remark the tension between passages in which children are used as overtly positive models, and alternatively as negative ones.[1] The chief cases of “positive reversal” are found in the gospels, most especially Matthew 18:1-14 and its synoptic parallels.[2] Gundry-Volf and Carroll likewise both suggest the mechanism of eschatological reversal as a possible contributing factor in the ambivalence of ‘childishness’ in the gospels; children are the last who shall be first in the coming divine reordering of society.[3] (Note also in this connection the identification of children with the various categories of the Beatitudes in Matthew 5, and the notion of “status reversal” from Old Testament sources.[4])

Gundry-Volf provides an explicit disclaimer that her “Jesus” is “not ‘the historical Jesus,’” but rather the representation of Jesus in the gospels.[5] Carroll, on the other hand, who is more intent on ministerial and pastoral concerns than scholarly ones, does not bother to make such a distinction.[6] Yet both of them neglect textual history in order to prioritize “Jesus” over “Paul.” Rather than seeing Paul as a flawed evangelist who failed to fully embrace the radical message of Jesus regarding the alterity of childhood, it probably makes more sense to view the gospels as containing a later, more elaborated grammar of childhood tropes than the ones in the Pauline epistles. The more exalted ‘children’ of the gospels would then benefit from the gradual development and application of ideas of eschatological reversal, and could even draw on other Pauline notions, like the orientalizing dialectic of ‘slave and free’ in I Corinthians 7:20-24.

The last of the three terms for children in I Corinthians is paida (paida), which can mean children, pupils, or servants, or even slaves. It appears in I Corinthians 14:20 with an uncompromising tone:

“Brothers and sisters, do not be children in your thinking; rather, be infants in evil, but in thinking be adults.”

There is a clearer orientalizing undercurrent in the middle of this citation; adults are wise in understanding, but children are innocent of malice. Even so, the beginning commands that the believers not be children, and the end again calls for them to be adults. The ‘value’ of childhood is associated with “evil.”

            The implicitly and explicitly negative regard for children (nepioi and paida) in I Corinthians was of a piece with the Hellenistic milieu in which Paul addressed himself to the Corinthian church. As Gundry-Volf points out, “in a Greco-Roman setting, comparison with children was highly insulting.”[7] And well might it have been, when children were often non-persons subject to arbitrary maltreatment. There can still be a strong residue of violence against children in the text, where childhood is a contemptible condition to be abolished through education and maturation. The child and the adult should not coexist in one person. But in 14:20 they do!  In Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, the mixture of different references to children suggest the emergence of grammars and models through which a Christian community’s valuing of children might go beyond the Greco-Roman, or even the ancient Hebrew ideas of children as subordinate extensions of the family, and through that relationship question the received orderings of society.

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[1] Gundry-Volf 2001, 58, 60; Carroll 2001, 127.

[2] Gundry-Volf 2001, 41-42.

[3] Gundry-Volf 2001 43; Carroll 2001, 127-8.

[4] Gundry-Volf 2001, 38; Carroll 2001, 124.

[5] Gundry-Volf 2001, 30.

[6] Carroll 2001, 132-4.

[7] Gundry-Volf 2001, 39.

Gillihan’s approach, despite its forbiddingly dense philological scholarship, persuasively argues against the tack taken by Gundry-Volf, and implicates a different grammar of alterity. Gillihan relies on Paul’s familiarity with Jewish legal writings to argue that the formula in I Corinthians 7 requires the distinction of the “sanctification” of the unbelieving parent as a distinct phenomenon, which contributes to the “holy” status of the child. The Greek word for “sanctification” is taken from an ambivalent Hebrew term that also means “betrothal.” As a result, the passage is chiefly concerned with prohibiting the divorce of believers (as signaled in vv. 12-13), and “sanctification” simply means that the marriage is licit, and therefore the children are not subject to the punitive measures against exogamy from the old purity codes.[1] The model of alterity in this case is a grammar of segmentation, in which the context has been shifted in order to include the children of marriages who would formerly have been declared unclean.[2]  In fact, Gillihan provides further evidence for the proposed explanation by pointing to other instances where analogous shifts of context may have been attempted in order to provide relief from the evident condemnation of descendants of forbidden marriages.[3]
            The next term for children is nepioiV (nepiois), a very generic word that does denote immaturity. It occurs in two different passages of I Corinthians: first, as part of the phrase “babes in Christ” (nepioiV en Cristw) in 3:1, and then again in reference to the putting away of “childish things” in 13:11. In each case, the notion of childhood is derogatory, and it serves as an indicator of incapacity or lack of seriousness. Children cannot yet eat solid food, and they must be fed milk instead. As Carroll notes, “Paul does not intend this as a compliment!”[4]  Paul identifies childhood with carnality, and adulthood with spirituality. Children are those who still play with evanescent fancies, rather than working with the durable realities of adults. These passages activate a principal feature of that particular model: the “denial of contemporaneousness.” The ‘other’ is that which is different because it is positioned differently relative to time; in this case, literally younger and less experienced. As Baumann writes, “The distancing from the self-created other is also a distancing from an uncomplicated idea of self.”[5]

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[1] Gillihan 2004, 715, 717-20, 738-9.

[2] Baumann 2004, 21-24.

[3] Gillihan 2004, 724-7.

[4] Carroll 2001, 127.

[5] Baumann 2004, 20; who credits the notion of “denial of contemporaneousness” to Johannes Fabian.

A focus on the references to children and childhood in I Corinthians can bring such traces into view, considering Yonder Moynihan Gillihan’s apt characterization of its authorship: “a former Pharisee writes in Greek to a primarily pagan audience” to establish norms of Christian conduct and belief.[1] There are three different Greek terms for children used in I Corinthians, and each of them represents a relatively distinct engagement with a grammar of alterity. The terms are teknion, nhpioV, and paidion (nepios, teknion, and paidion).

            The first of these stands at the core of the verse with which Gillihan’s article is chiefly concerned: I Corinthians 7:14, where tekna literally means ‘offspring’ or ‘descendants,’ and does not denote immaturity or childhood as such.[2] Nevertheless, in its context it also appears to specify dependents in a household within the community of Corinthian Christians. The enigmatic character of the instruction in that passage has produced some pertinent speculation on the status of children among the early Christians to whom the Pauline letter was addressed. Gillihan and Judith M Gundry-Volf each have made recent attempts to explicate the directive in which “the unbelieving husband is sanctified (hgiastai) in the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband; otherwise your children would be unclean, but now they are holy (agioV).”

Gundry-Volf collapses the two terms egiastai (sanctified) and hagios (holy).[3] As a result, she (along with the others who have thought along similar lines, discussed by Gillihan) concludes that the children “are holy through the Christian parent.”[4] This apparent solution would employ the encompassment grammar described by Baumann, in which the children are subsumed by the value of the believing parent, and thus rendered similarly “holy.”[5] In support of the idea that this form of alterity for children could be at work in the Pauline corpus, Gundry-Volf’s reading of Colossians and Ephesians notes, “children are subsumed—but hopefully not lost!—under the general category of fellow members of the community….”[6]
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[1] Gillihan 2002, 744.

[2] Gundry-Volf 2001, 48. Tekna is also the term used by Paul to address his readers as “my little children” (thus KJV and RSV) in Galatians 4:19. The “little” is thus of questionable value in the translation; Paul is addressing them as his doctrinal descendants, not as his young innocents.

[3] Gundry-Volf 2001, 51. This position is also taken by the editors of the NRSV Bible, who use “holy” in for both the parents and the child.

[4] Gundry-Volf 2001, 51. Gillihan cites G.R. Beasley-Murray, Conzelmann, O. Larry Yarborough, and Dale Martin as proponents of this view (Gillihan 2004, 733-7).

[5] Baumann 2004, 25-6.

[6] Gundry-Volf 2001, 57; italics in original.

There seems to be no question that the role of children in late antiquity was that of radically subordinate ‘others’ relative to adult society.[1] While Andre Gingrich has argued for “an inherently dialogical relationship between sameness and differing, belonging and othering,identity/alterity,”[2] the present inquiry emphasizes alterity over identity because scholars have no recourse to the actual voices and views of children in the late antique world, whereby we might arrive at some notion of their identity. At the same time, while this important aspect will go unexplored in these pages, the “dialogical” dimension of the ‘othering’ process points to the fact that the same distinctions which serve to define the alterity of children also work to circumscribe the identity of adults. Given the nature of the textual resources in this case, it is probably best to specify adult men. This additional consequence of the character of the alterity of children opens onto a further set of questions and problems beyond the scope of the present reflections.

            Gingrich emphasizes the need to get beyond a pejorative moralization of ‘othering,’ in favor of empirical descriptions that can differentiate and specify the process.[3] But Gerd Baumann’s work toward that end begins even to reverse the moral significance attributed to identity/alterity. By pointing out genocidal violence as the scenario in which the various “grammars” of difference uniformly fail, Baumann indicates their positive moral value in maintaining the legitimacy of the other and the grounds for coexistence, however unequal and contentious.[4] There are features of the ancient Hellenistic view of children that suggest just such a lack of articulated alterity, chiefly the social acceptance of infanticide and exposure of children, leading to their death or enslavement.[5] John Carroll observes, “Jewish and Christian writers vigorously opposed these practices,” and cites Josephus and the Didache to prove his point.[6] Significantly, that sort of opposition does not appear in the canon of Jewish or Christian scripture, but we might still expect to be able to find signs of the “grammars of alterity” which led to such a stance against prevailing norms.
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[1] See, for example Osiek & Balch 1997, 62-64; Gundry-Volff 2001, 31-34; Carroll 2001, 122.

[2] Gingrich 2004, 6.

[3] Gingrich 2004, 15.

[4] Baumann 2004, 42-46.

[5] Osiek & Balch 1997, 67; Gundry-Volf 2001, 33.

[6] Carroll 2001, 122.

A final intra-biblical comparison is the relationship of the sacrificial system of the Priestly tradition as exemplified in Leviticus, to the moral injunctions of the Prophetic tradition epitomized by Isaiah.[1] The literary analyses of Douglas and Eilberg-Schwartz both use interpretive modes based on Leviticus 11, in order to demonstrate a fundamental continuity between the Priestly and Prophetic ethics, where readers commonly perceive an opposition.[2] By making ritual status an abstracted expression of social dynamics, these interpretations can support changes in the ritual agenda that reflect social changes, while the correlative value system remains intact.

It is evident that the new anthropological and rhetorical analyses of Leviticus have managed to contribute new perspectives on the significance of the animal proscriptions in chapter 11. Comparison of that passage to other biblical texts becomes both a further challenge and a further opportunity to understand the purity code of Leviticus in relation to ancient Hebrew religion as a whole. 

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[1] Douglas, “Forbidden Animals,” pp. 1-4.

[2] Douglas, “Forbidden Animals,” p. 23; Eilberg-Schwartz, “Animal Metaphors,” pp. 18-19.

While they each have compelling features, the literary-rhetorical analyses of Eilberg-Schwartz and Douglas both pose further dilemmas regarding the way in which practitioners of the system of animal proscriptions understood that system in the cultural setting where they originated. Eilberg-Schwartz frankly admits that “ancient Israelites would have found implausible the kinds of interpretations” that he develops.[1] The ethical allegory described by Douglas may be an intrinsic feature of the text of Leviticus, codified when “the relation between humans and animals had become a matter for serious philosophical speculation” in the 5th century B.C.E., but on its own it produces no insight regarding the earlier practices that the text must have incorporated.[2] Moshe Weinfeld’s earlier work suggests an additional principle that may help to consolidate the literary explanations with the ancient practices. Weinfeld proposes that the practices described in Leviticus have a magical basis, in which sacrificial rites and customs of avoidance are apotropaic: they serve to dispel malign influences.[3]  Such a belief could combine powerfully with the sorts of correspondences detailed by Eilberg-Schwartz and Douglas, as well as being a good fit with the ontological ideas in Eilberg’s article on “Creation and Classification.”

Weinfeld’s account highlights a supplementary issue that stands as a further complication in the effort to explain the system of Leviticus. Weinfeld compares Leviticus to Deuteronomy, in an effort to elucidate the differences between the texts and how they might have developed. This same question is taken up by Eilberg-Schwartz, with very different results. While Weinfeld considers the Deuteronomic text to be based on the earlier, more ‘animistic’ Levitical one, Eilberg-Schwartz reverses that relationship, judging the Levitical text as a philosophizing priestly revision of the code in Deuteronomy.[4] Although written earlier, and as a minority view, Weinfield’s chronology has the more compelling argument to support it, which is fortunate because his related ideas about magical practice are actually valuable to complement Eilberg-Schwartz’s own literary analyses.[5]

Other questions arise regarding the relationship of Leviticus 11 to Genesis 1. Source-critical analyses typically attribute both of these passages to the Priestly source, but Edwin Firmage suggests that both were products of the Holiness school.[6]  In any case, there is widespread agreement that there is supportive harmony between the two texts. In some cases, this relationship may be exaggerated. For example, Douglas insists that the sequence of the animal prohibitions in Leviticus reflects that of creation in Genesis, but she is able to draw the parallel only by substituting “domestic-animals that are upon the earth” (Leviticus 11:2) for “sprouting-growth, plants that seed forth seeds, fruit trees that yield fruit, after their kind” (Genesis 1:11-12).[7] Another potential difficulty involves the sequence of textual composition. Firmage, Douglas, and Eilberg-Schwartz all seem to assume that Genesis 1 was composed prior to Leviticus 11.[8] But there is no evidence for this assumption, particularly if the Priestly account of Genesis 1 is understood to be a later supplement to the Yahwist creation of Genesis 2. Instead, Genesis 1 could well be an etiological narrative composed to support an existing ritual system. Eilberg-Schwartz nearly entertains this possibility when he observes how the later rabbinical ritual taxonomy would need to identify itself with “a different conception of cosmogony,” without being originally motivated by a choice of creation narrative.[9] The question is instrumental, because if Eilberg-Schwartz and Firmage are correct about the reality of the rapport between Genesis 1 and Leviticus 11, then it becomes a matter of whether a theory of ontological status was derived from experiences of ritual status, or whether practices of ritual status were based on a belief of ontological status.

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[1] Eilberg-Schwartz. “Animal Metaphors,” p. 2.

[2] Douglas, “Forbidden Animals,” p. 4.

[3] Weinfeld, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School, pp. 216-217 & n.

[4] Weinfeld, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School, pp. 213-214; Eilberg-Schwartz, “Creation and Classification,” p. 360; ibid., “Animal Metaphors,” pp. 15-16.

[5] Weinfeld, Deuteronomy and the Deuteronomic School, p. 214 n. 1 presents the decisive points.

[6] Firmage, “Genesis I and the Priestly Agenda,” pp. 110, 113-114.

[7] Douglas, “Forbidden Animals,” p. 16.

[8] Firmage, “Genesis I and the Priestly Agenda,” pp. 103-104; Douglas, “Forbidden Animals,” p. 16; Eilberg-Schwartz, “Creation and Classification,” pp. 357, 360.

[9] Eilberg-Schwartz, “Creation and Classification,” p. 363.

Eilberg-Schwartz’s article on “Creation and Classification” uses an anthropological line of reasoning in order to conclude that the animal proscriptions of Leviticus exhibit rigid taxonomy and a parallel structure to the creation account of Genesis 1, because the system is integral to a hereditary priesthood, where social status and the classification of animals are equally ‘given’ features of the creaturely world.[1] While this proposal goes some way towards the author’s goal of explaining a discontinuity between priestly and rabbinical models of purity, it is far from a full explanation of the contents of Leviticus 11. Eilberg-Schwartz claims that Genesis 1 provides the underlying rationale for the animals specified in Leviticus 11, but—to take an obvious example—Genesis 1 does not distinguish between doves and vultures; both are “winged fowl after their kind” in Genesis (1:21-22), although Leviticus instructs that vultures are “hold-detestable” (11:13).[2] In this explanation, however, Eilberg-Schwartz not only provides for an analogical connection between ritual status and social status in both the priestly and rabbinical systems, he also suggests that the priestly perspective implicated ontological status as well.[3]
            In a slightly more recent article, Eilberg-Schwartz added a dimension of rhetorical analysis to his method, in order to propose that the rich metaphorical valence of animals was of a piece with their classification in the purity codes of the Torah.[4] This thesis has the potential to trace the full range of distinctions in Leviticus 11, and it also succeeds in relating an animal rule in Leviticus 22:8 to the incest prohibitions in Leviticus 18:17 and 22:8.[5] It thus has the merit of providing a view of the purity code that sees it as an integrated whole, reflecting the ‘unity of the system’ stressed by Countryman.[6] Eilberg-Schwartz provides an excellent illustration tying ritual status to social status, in his passage on “Asses and Neighbors.”[7] Even with the addition of elements from “literary criticism,” this article remains in the anthropological camp, with references to Levi-Strauss and demonstrations from ethnography.[8]

Douglas’s more recent article hinges on the identification of the “ring” compositional structure in Leviticus.[9] The detection of this structure enables her to complement instructions in chapters 11-15 with explanations in the parallel chapters 21-22. Principally, she looks to the explanation of ‘blemish’ (Fox has ‘defect’), in order to determine the underlying rationale. She also invokes the metaphorical correspondence of priest, altar, offering, and food so that the general idea of “(too) long-limbed or stunted” (23:23) can be transferred among them.[10] According to the ring structure outlined by Douglas, the mid-turn chapter 19 and conclusion chapter 26 give the message of the entire book as justice and equity, and so the ideas of corporeal excess and lack become “The unfair loss on one hand, the unfair burden on the other.”[11] She concludes that the forbidden animals include those that signify both perpetrators and victims of predation, and that the proscriptions are in fact a “philosophical exercise” which fosters mercy and justice. While this putative consequence is certainly social, it does not create status boundaries in society. Instead, it seeks to ameliorate their harm to “the oppressed, the fatherless, the widow.” [12] Douglas’s allegorical reading pointedly avoids assigning ontological status to the animals, or to the humans to which she supposes that they correspond.

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[1] Eilberg-Schwartz, “Creation and Classification,” pp. 374-378.[2] Bible translations throughout the present paper are from Fox, Five Books of Moses.

[3] Eilberg-Schwartz, “Creation and Classification,” pp. 362, 364.

[4] Eilberg-Schwartz, “Animal Metaphors,” pp. 3-8.

[5] Eilberg-Schwartz, “Animal Metaphors,” pp. 11-16.

[6] Countryman, Dirt, Greed, and Sex, pp. 42-44.

[7] Eilberg-Schwartz, “Animal Metaphors,” pp. 8-11.

[8] Eilberg-Schwartz, “Animal Metaphors,” pp. 1, 12-13, 20.

[9] Douglas, “Forbidden Animals,” pp. 8-11.

[10] Douglas, “Forbidden Animals,” pp. 18-19.

[11] Douglas, “Forbidden Animals,” pp. 20-21.

[12] Douglas, “Forbidden Animals,” p. 23.

The substance of Leviticus 11 is an inventory of animals that can result in ‘pollution’ (Heb. אמט tamei), either through consumption or through contact.[1] The animal proscriptions, with their distinctions between ‘pure,’ ‘polluted,’ and ‘hold-detestable,’ provide a model case of systematizing ritual status. Without further explanation, however, it is unclear whether they can be brought into relation with any sort of social status or ontological status. Despite the fact that the text clearly expounds a well-articulated system, the full reasoning behind that system is obscure, both to modern commentators, and to earlier participants in the religious traditions that embrace the Torah as a foundational document.[2]

William Countryman surveys the customary, yet inadequate, explanations offered by scholars: arbitrary distinction, moral allegory, hygiene code, and normative inversion of the cults of rival peoples.[3] While Countryman dismisses allegorical readings, these play a role in the later interpretations offered by both Howard Eilberg-Schwartz and Mary Douglas.[4] Contemporary scholars seem unanimous in rejecting the idea of a primitive hygienic rationale as a “deeply inadequate” explanation rooted in modern materialism and alien to the ancient Hebrew worldview.[5] The hypothesis of arbitrary distinction amounts to a simple refusal to deduce an explanation, and while normative inversion is patently part of the picture, it fails to account for all of its details.

            Recent scholarship tends to acknowledge the value of the 1966 monograph by Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger, if not in its full conclusions, at least in its methodological approach of applying principles of structuralist anthropology to the question.[6] The anthropological method is appealing precisely because it offers to weave together threads of ritual, social, and ontological ideation. Yet Douglas herself in 1993 wrote, “the various interpretations offered so far are not agreed,” in an article where she came to new conclusions, using tools drawn from rhetorical analysis.[7] The two methodologies of anthropological and rhetorical study alternate and combine in most of the recent attempts to resolve the issue.

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[1] Fox, Five Books of Moses, 497-498 discusses the valence of the term tamei and his reasons for leaving it untranslated. He also points out (p. 558) that Leviticus 11 is not limited to dietary proscriptions.

[2] Countryman, Dirt, Greed, and Sex, p. 14 (& n. 4) calls the system in Leviticus 11 “reasoned,” but only in the senses of specificity and internal consistency. Eilberg-Schwartz, “Creation and Classification,” pp. 364-370 discusses the extent to which the rabbinical mishna diverged from the patterns of reasoning in Leviticus. Ibid., “Animal Metaphors,” pp. 21-23 proposes a basis for the Pauline rejection of the Levitical animal proscriptions.

[3] Countryman, Dirt, Greed, and Sex, p. 24.

[4] Eilberg-Schwartz, “Animal Metaphors,” pp. 16-20;
Douglas, “Forbidden Animals,” pp. 5, 20-23.

[5] Fox, Five Books of Moses, p. 554.

[6] Countryman, Dirt, Greed, and Sex, pp. 25-27 approvingly summarizes
Douglas’ earlier thesis. See also Fox, Five Books of Moses, p. 555; Eilberg-Schwartz, “Creation and Classification,” pp. 358-359.

[7]Douglas, “Forbidden Animals,” p. 3.

Gerson’s “Treatise against The Romance of the Rose” also exhibits the trend of experimentation with form and genre evident in earlier works of the fourteenth century, as the author elected to write a “treatise” in a literary mode mimicking the allegorical style of its target.[1] While a certain measure of stylistic and compositional novelty was a natural consequence of new sorts of writings being undertaken in the vernacular, Humanists such as Petrarch had also revived and reinvented genres such as the epistle and the invective on the basis of classical models. Petrarch and other Humanists had also successfully championed the styles of classical authors, so that Gerson himself falls into the Ciceronian mode with the lament “O modern morals!”[2] At one point in another treatise, Gerson even quotes an oft-rehearsed phrase from Virgil, but he attributes the adage to Cicero.[3]
            The turn to the vernacular predates the depopulation of the Black Death and the subsequent uprisings of the Jacquerie in France, the Ciompi in Florence, and the English Peasant’s Revolt of 1381. But this period provided opportunities for social mobility, as well as bringing into relief the political importance of understanding and influencing the dispositions of commoners. While Gerson’s emphasis was on spiritual well-being rather than political integrity, his writings in the vernacular often justify themselves with reference a the need among common people for orthodox instruction.[4] And he was himself a product of quite modest origins who maintained a strong connection to his unprivileged family,[5] although he had risen to a place where he could seek to influence popes.

            Gerson’s involvement in the effort to resolve the Great Schism of the papacy was particular to his immediate period. But the Schism was in some ways a spiritualized, non-military expression of the same sort of partisan strife that was at play in the Florence of Dino and Dante, and in the divided France of the Hundred Years War. The “way of cession” that Gerson advocated, emphasized the possibility that the putative popes would each put the needs of the Church above their own opinions and the inertia of faction. Gerson was no hypocrite in his advocacy of humility as a force to reunite the Church.[6] He even describes his own role as legate to Benedict XIII as one “forced” upon him by duty.[7] In the same letter he consents to provide a copy of his sermon on the controversy: “What am I that I would presume to refuse either this request or anything at all?”[8]

            The sentiment of being “forced” evokes Gerson’s 1400 letter of lament regarding his work as Chancellor of the University, with its anaphora, “I am forced.”[9] The dilemma with which he struggled there had often been framed as a conflict between the aspirations of the active life and those of the contemplative life. Shortly after writing the letter of 1400, Gerson composed The Mountain of Contemplation, in which he theorized about the relative primacy of these two ways of life, and concluded that the active life was often necessary to clerics, despite their appreciation for the virtues of contemplation.[10] In this text, he also used the same Augustinian allegory of the daughters of Laban that had been employed by Dante in the Purgatorio.[11]

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[1] McGuire, p. 54.

[2] Gerson, “Treatise against The Romance of the Rose,” p. 390; McGuire, p. 467, n. 44.

[3] Jean Gerson, “On Mystical Theology: The Second and Practical Treatise,” in McGuire, Jean Gerson, p. 290; McGuire, p. 447 , n. 9.

[4] E.g. Gerson to a Bishop (Paris before March 1404) in McGuire, pp. 222-223.

[5] McGuire, pp. 4-5, 14-16. E.g. Gerson to an Unknown Person (Bruges 1400) in McGuire, p. 165. Gerson, The Mountain of Contemplation, in McGuire, p. 75.

[6] E.g. Gerson to his Colleagues at the College of Navarre (Bruges 1400) in McGuire, pp. 192-193.
[7] Gerson to the Duke of Orléans (Tarascon, 5 January 1404) in McGuire, p. 221.

[8] Ibid., p. 222.

[9] Gerson to an Unknown Person (Bruges 1400) in McGuire, pp. 160-164.

[10] Gerson, The Mountain of Contemplation, in McGuire, p. 77.

[11] Gerson, The Mountain of Contemplation, in McGuire, p. 89; Dante, Purgatorio XXVII.100-108.