Authorship and Publicity Before Print: Jean Gerson and the Transformation of Late Medieval Learning (review)

Daniel Hobbins wants us to consider what it meant to write and publish in a manuscript culture, specifically in the late medieval period and solely through the writings of the theologian and chancellor of the University of Paris, Jean Gerson (1363-1429). The author's thesis is that by viewing Gerson above all as a writer, we gain access not only to Gerson's historical significance but also to that of his era, which Hobbins argues was neither an age of declining scholasticism nor of nascent humanism, but participated in both. This is an interesting and original approach—a contribution to the relatively young fields of authorship studies, the history of reading and writing, and studies of medieval manuscript production, as well as to Gerson studies in general. For those who, until now, have turned to Gerson only for his theology, this book has an oddly secular tone. But Hobbins would be the first to acknowledge that the changing trends he identifies in late medieval writing and authorship, as exemplified by Gerson's theories and practices of writing, evolved to fulfill theological responsibilities and pastoral requirements.

Given the constraints Hobbins faces—the loss of early copies of Gerson's works and the disappearance of his personal library (a lone copy of the works of John Cassian survives)—Hobbins's pursuit of late medieval writing culture via the chancellor's writings, which he labels "an act of recovery," is well served by his broad knowledge of the Gersonian corpus. One derives added benefit from Hobbins's book by keeping constantly in mind that the trends he describes were taking place a mere handful of decades before the dawn of printing.

Hobbins examines the emergence of the university master from his natural habitat, the university, to fill a broader role in society. Whereas Aquinas, according to Hobbins, was barely read beyond the walls of the university or monastery, Gerson was acutely aware of a new nonacademic public, able to read and eager for his opinions on issues of moral theology. Initially, Gerson was not easily moved to compose original works. His brother Jean the Celestine once wrote that Gerson found the holy doctors of the past to be "proven" and thus sufficient for the "complete perfection of life." In fact, Gerson often needed to be "pestered" to write, and in some circumstances seemed to care so little about what he wrote that he did not even bother to keep personal copies. After long consideration, Gerson began writing "for the cause of faith" (1).

Gerson largely abandoned the old scholastic genres and decried the scholastic practice of overreliance on written tradition. "Tell us not what others have written, but what you yourself say or believe," he warned fellow clerics, who were in the habit of heaping citation upon citation (63). To express his own opinion on the moral issues of the day, Gerson favored the tract (tractatus)—whose impact is traced in Chapter 5—for its brevity, portability, and ease of distribution. Gerson, perhaps to the detriment of his permanent written legacy, had a "voracious appetite" for examining the leading questions of his day as matters for practical theology. A noteworthy chart in Authorship and Publicity Before Print, which plots the frequency with which late medieval authors treated contemporary controversies in tract format, shows Gerson the obvious frontrunner in his use of this popular genre. Hobbins makes a strong case, especially for the final ten years of Gerson's life, that the chancellor was "long on creativity but short on execution" and that he missed his chance to write "something truly timeless." Ironically, as Hobbins observes, just such a lasting work was attributed to Gerson in the Imitation of Christ, now restored to Thomas à Kempis. But how much the pursuit of reputation, fame, and literary ambitions (all phrases Hobbins used) might actually have characterized Gerson remains to be seen. According to Jacob...