Uncertain Knowledge: Scepticism, Relativism, and Doubt in the Middle Ages ed. by Dallas G. Denery, II, Kantik Ghosh, and Nicolette Zeeman (review)

This book originated in a research project and workshop examining uncertain knowledge in the Middle Ages. The papers fall broadly into two camps, philosophical and literary. The editors’ Introduction makes clear that this breadth arises from an explicit strategy aimed at exploring both the role played by scepticism in the scholastic production of authorised knowledge and the subversion of that institutional knowledge by vernacular and lay cultural players. The focus is determinedly epistemological and largely ignores the vexed and voluminous subject of religious orthodoxy and heresy. Dallas G. Denery II opens the discussion with John of Salisbury’s meditations on the attitude of the superior man in an environment, namely the court, rendered inherently deceptive by flattery and illusory pleasures. Denery sees in John a continuing humanist tradition masked by the ascendancy of scholasticism until its resurgence in the early modern era. Eileen C. Sweeney looks at the reception of Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics by Grosseteste and Roger Bacon whose move to privilege scientific knowledge, and thereby implicitly problematise other forms, was resisted by the Summa fratris Alexandri and William of Auvergne’s championing of faith as the only possible certainty.

Dominik Perler brings us to medieval considerations of the classical grounds of scepticism through Walter Chatton’s and William Ockham’s responses to Peter Aureol’s attempt to account for sensory illusions by mediated perception. Perler concludes that radical scepticism was impossible within an Aristotelian framework committed to the reliability of our natural capacities. Christophe Grellard continues this theme with John Buridan’s explanation of how it is possible to believe falsely. Buridan sympathetically employed the figure of the ‘little old woman’ to explain how habit, social pressure, and imagination might combine to distort perception and permit false belief. Concluding the more strictly philosophical section, Rita Copeland reveals the difficulty commentators, such as Giles of Rome, Buridan, and even the translator, William of Moerbeke, had in situating Aristotle’s Rhetoric within the Ciceronian rhetorical tradition. Notwithstanding Aristotle’s placing it under logic, the manuscript tradition preferred to group it with ethics and politics. Lesley Smith bridges the shift from the scholastic to the literary by looking at uncertainty in the study of the Bible. Medieval scholars were aware that they were dealing with fallible translations from unreliable texts and not all were content to resolve problems by allegorising. Nicholas of Lyra turned to a rabbi for the cultural background of the Bible. William of Auvergne and Richard and Hugh of St Victor sought rational explanations of biblical stories while accepting that uncertainty would persist.

Karen Sullivan shifts the focus to vernacular literature with Robert de Boron’s Merlin. Rejecting a rationalist denunciation of Merlin as diabolically inspired, Boron draws on a contemplative perspective that employs the prophet’s mysterious nature to valorise intellectual humility and faith. Helen Swift continues this perspective in her chapter on love poetry. The lover’s desire renders him peculiarly incapable of discerning the truth but this inability is itself willed for: the continuance of uncertainty is the precondition for the continuance of desire. Jean de Meun, Chaucer, and Lydgate are the subject of Nicolette Zeeman’s contribution. She sees these authors turning the weapons of the scholastic philosophers against them in a systematic problematising of sanctioned epistemological, moral, social, and gender hierarchies. Next, Mishtooni Bose focuses on the role of opinion in the vernacular philosophical and moral works of Christine de Pizan and Bishop Reginald Pecock.

Notwithstanding the Introduction’s disclaimer, Kantik Ghosh addresses heresy and the policing of intellectual debate in the trials of Richard Fleming, Jerome of Prague, and Jan Hus, all of whom were accused of following Wyclif. Fleming successfully defended himself on the grounds of academic debate, but Hus and Jerome found arguments for academic freedom powerless against the Inquisition and...