Juan de Segovia and the Fight for Peace: Christians and Muslims in the Fifteenth Century by Anne Marie Wolf (review)

The fifteenth-century Spanish theologian, Juan de Segovia, is well known to everyone who is interested in the conciliar movement, especially at the Council of Basel. In the Anglophone world, this is due to the work of Antony Black and his classic Council and Commune (Burns & Oates, 1979), which first systematically highlighted Juan’s contributions to Basel conciliarism. Although Jesse D. Mann produced a series of important articles in the 1990s, it is clear that there has been a lull in the research on the Spanish conciliarist for the last couple of decades.

Anne Marie Wolf’s new book is a much-needed study that approaches Juan from a fresh perspective. As the subtitle suggests, the book’s main focus is Juan’s discussion of the relationship between Christians and Muslims. The main aim of the book is to demonstrate how Juan’s approach to the question of Christian – Muslim relations ‘intersects both with his other endeavours, especially church reform and the Council of Basel’s discussions with the Hussites, and with cultural and intellectual movements at play in the fifteenth century’. Wolf’s contribution does not merely shed light on a hitherto underexplored aspect of Juan’s thought; it also reveals the connections between his discussions of Christian – Muslim relations and his ecclesiological views. She accomplishes this successfully.

Wolf narrates various stages of Juan’s life and thought by delineating the wide range of communications and conversations that took place between Juan and his contemporaries. Packed with rich biographical details excavated from various manuscript sources, the book at times reads like an intellectual biography. Emphasis is given to demonstrate that Juan ‘was remarkably consistent in his pattern of thought and the positions he argued’ (p. 10). Thus, early chapters argue with considerable success that seminal ideas, which he developed in later years, were found in his early works. Chapter 1 discusses Juan’s scholarly and administrative activities at the University of Salamanca during and shortly after the time of the Council of Constance. One of the problems Wolf tackles is the authorial intention of Repetitio de superioritate (1426). The work has long puzzled modern historians because Juan, who is known for his later adherence to conciliarism, presents a pro-papal claim in that work. Wolf’s careful contextualisation reveals that Repetitio’s pro-papal stance was intended to defend the autonomy of the University of Salamanca from the powerful influence of the Archbishop of Santiago, Lope de Mendoza. Despite its ostensible ‘papalist’ claim, Wolf argues that Juan’s defence of the corporate autonomy of the university shows greater affinity with his future conciliar principles.

Likewise, Chapter 2 examines Juan’s early encounters with Muslims in Castile in the 1420s, in which Wolf traces the origin of Juan’s future commitment to conversion of Muslims through dialogue. Juan’s actual conversations with Muslims made him aware of their prevalent misunderstanding of Christianity. Juan’s conviction with dialogical engagement with the religious ‘other’ is also at the root of his successful negotiations with the Hussites, which is the focus of Chapter 3: conversion of heretics through dialogue provided a model for his later negotiations with Muslims. Thus, Juan’s peace plan for the conflict with Islam, Wolf shows in the remainder of the book, derives not only from his learning but also from his life experience.

Wolf insists that Juan de Segovia deserves to be known much better. While his thought, which remains to be discovered more fully, may be ‘bold and provocative’ (p. 231), one might wonder why such an original thinker fell into oblivion for centuries immediately after his lifetime. Wolf’s close focus on Juan’s contemporary contexts beautifully shows Juan’s originality, putting in sharp relief the contrast between him...