Le siècle d'or de la mystique française: un autre regard. Étude de la littérature spirituelle de Jean Gerson (1363-1429) à Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples (1450?-1537) (review)

Recent years have seen a noticeable rise in publications dedicated to the life and thought of the late-medieval Parisian chancellor, Jean Gerson. These works include studies of his pastoral thought; his work as an educational, social, and ecclesiastical reformer; and especially his conciliar theology, to name only a few. Yelena Mazour-Matusevich's recent monograph (a revised form of her 1998 dissertation) makes an important contribution to this field by undertaking a comparative study of Gerson's mystical spirituality and its influence in the century that followed. After an extensive methodological introduction that is primarily intended to legitimize the study of Christian spirituality in the world of secular French scholarship, Mazour-Matusevich proceeds with seven chapters of varying length and substance, which can be generally divided into four main sections: (1) an historical survey of Christian spirituality and mysticism from the time of the New Testament to Gerson's era, (2) a synchronic comparison of the major themes in Gerson's thought to those of German mysticism and Italian humanism, (3) a thematic analysis of Gerson's spirituality, and (4) the afterlife of Gerson's ideas through the time of Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples.

The primary thesis of the work is that, in reaction to a number of contemporary forces, such as the nationalistic rhetoric of Italian humanism, the sterility of speculative theology, and the various crises in the Church, late-medieval French spirituality took on a unique, nationalistic character. Theologians and humanists such as Pierre d'Ailly, Nicolas de Clamanges, and especially Jean Gerson responded to Petrarch's denigration of the "middle" ages (read,"era dominated by the University of Paris") by fostering a new form of "mystical humanism" that employed the beauty and rhetoric of the classical style but combined it with a distinctly un-Petrarchian content, one that emphasized continuity with the great traditions of medieval French spirituality, especially the affective mysticism of Bernard of Clairvaux. The major themes of this "Gersonian mysticism" then continued to dominate the French spiritual tradition until the time of the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century.

Overall, Mazour-Matusevich's work makes several important contributions to the field of Gerson scholarship. The chapter on Gerson's spirituality—by far the longest chapter and the locus of most of her original research—provides a helpful distinction and classification of the major themes in his sermons and treatises. The thesis that the French humanists of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries developed their identity both in imitation of and in contrast to their perception of Italian humanism is intriguing. Finally, Mazour-Matusevich's broad survey succeeds in demonstrating that there is such a thing as a distinctly French spirituality in this "golden age," one that takes its root in the affective tradition of medieval mysticism. At the same time, the work also suffers from a number of problems. The editing is uneven, marked by a significant number of typographical errors. In several cases, elements of the dissertation did not make a smooth transition to the book, including an outline at the beginning of chapter 5 that matches the former but not the latter. The first few chapters are significantly lacking in footnotes, leaving the basis for many of the author's minor theses unclear. Perhaps most likely to cause controversy is Mazour-Matusevich's frequent use of absolute categories of interpretation: e.g., biblical Christianity versus Hellenized Christianity; inclusive and open medieval thought versus exclusive and closed Protestant thought; meaningful Christian religion versus thoughtless and loveless nominalism. Such an analytic framework is helpful for categorization, but it is rarely an accurate reflection of the actual "messiness" of history. In the...