Religions Reviewed

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.