Jean Gerson and the Last Medieval Reformation (review)

More than forty years ago now, in the distinguished two-volume tome on the later medieval church contributed to Fliche and Martin, Histoire de l'Église, F. Delaruelle chose to devote a whole chapter to Jean Gerson (1363-1429), long-serving Chancellor of the University of Paris, dedicated pastor, gifted preacher, tireless advocate of church reform "in head and members," distinguished theologian, and one of the leading intellectuals of his day. In so doing, and speaking of the first half of the fifteenth century, Delaruelle felt it warranted to portray the great Chancellor as "the mirror of his times" and to entitle the chapter "Le siècle de Gerson."

By the time he did so, scholarly interest in matters Gersonian had long since begun to quicken. That that was the case is evidenced inter alia by the decision of Palémon Glorieux to undertake the first new edition of Gerson's complete works since that of Dupin in 1706, by Max Lieberman's extraordinary (and extraordinarily gritty) series of articles on his life and writings, and by the work of Louis Mourin on his sermons, André Combes on his mystical theology, and J. B. Morrall on his ecclesiology. In the years since then interest in one or other aspect of Gerson's richly varied career has, if anything, intensified. It is reflected, for example, in Gilbert Ouy's fundamental researches on the Gersonian manuscript tradition, in the works of G. H. M. Posthumus Meyjes on his ecclesiology, Louis B. Pascoe on his idea of reform, D. Catherine Brown on his pastoral theology, in Brian Patrick McGuire's translation into English of a whole series of his early writings as well as in his sponsorship and editing of a multi-authored Companion to Jean Gerson scheduled by Brill for publication in 2006.

All of that duly noted, the surprising thing about the currently thriving field of Gersonian studies is the fact that nobody since John Connolly in 1929 has made a full-scale attempt at a new biographical treatment of the man himself. That prominent gap in Gersoniana McGuire himself has now moved boldly to fill. He has done so in this substantial, painstakingly-researched, carefully-balanced, and finely-nuanced study, clearly the outcome of long years of sustained effort. Unlike Connolly, who organized his somewhat anachronistically defensive biography in thematic fashion, McGuire has gone about his task in straightforward chronological fashion, conducive to the charting of a lifetime's maturation and development on the part of his subject, basing himself on an attentive reading of the full corpus of Gerson's writings, French as well as Latin, and quite self-consciously eschewing "any fashionable theoretical approach"(p. xi).

In 1964, noting the sheer volume of Gerson's writing and the self-revelatory nature of much of it, Delaruelle expressed surprise that his complex psychological make-up had not been made the object of any really probing scholarly study. In his own non-theoretical way, McGuire may be said to have remedied that lack. In the course of his book he dwells, often at length, on most of the salient features of Gerson's public career, from his early and surprisingly unrestrained attack on the teaching of the Dominican theologian Juan de Monzon concerning the Immaculate Conception, down to the passionate but ultimately unsuccessful campaign he pursued at the Council of Constance (and in the teeth of Burgundian opposition) to secure a full-blown condemnation of Jean Petit's attempt to vindicate the legitimacy of tyrannicide. Thus he focuses, in the years intervening, on Gerson's unsuccessful attempt as dean to reform the chapter of the collegiate church of Saint Donatien at Bruges, on his leadership of the Parisian faculty of theology in its opposition to the attempt (1409) of the Franciscan Jean Gorel to vindicate the alleged pastoral prerogatives of the mendicant orders, on his ongoing effort via sermon and tract to forward on a...