Ethics and Power in Medieval English Reformist Writing (review)

Before there can be reform, there must be blame. Edwin D. Craun’s Ethics and Power in Medieval English Reformist Writing explores the pastoral roots of rebuke and its important role in the history of ecclesiastical and political reform in late medieval England. Under what circumstances, and by what methods, is it appropriate to criticize a family member, a neighbor, a professional associate, or even a superior? What authority licenses a would-be corrector, and what motivations should guide the decision to speak out? How does legitimate rebuke distinguish itself from hypocrisy? How do hierarchies affect systems of censure: Should superiors be subject to criticism by their subordinates?

All of these questions, Craun shows, not only vexed medieval writers concerned with the moral and ethical obligations of living in Christian community but nourished rich and varied responses that recur with surprising frequency across a range of discursive genres. Specifically, Craun’s study uncovers the relatively unexplored discourse of fraternal correction, a practice rooted in the thirteenth-century pastoral reform movement and authorized by biblical injunctions, none so crucial as Matthew 18:15–17: “But, if your brother shall offend against you, go and rebuke him.” Craun’s book reveals that far from a purely clerical practice, fraternal correction constitutes a “fluid cultural resource” for reform-minded writers—lay as well as clerical—through the era of Wyclif and the Lancastrian counteroffensive of the fifteenth century (2). Indeed, Craun suggests, its precepts were so ubiquitous, filtering down even to the laity, that the discourse of correction might be not only cited but “critically redeployed” in the hands of reformists like Margery Kempe (145).

Craun’s first two chapters establish the basis of fraternal correction in pastoral works composed prior to 1375—in compendia like Ranulph Higden’s Speculum curatorum and in Latin and, less frequently, English sermons—laying the groundwork for his analysis of specific fourteenth- and fifteenth-century texts in the book’s later chapters. In tracing fraternal correction to the pastoral movement, Craun challenges the Foucauldian notion of “pastoral power” as a disciplinary tool invented by the clergy to control the lay masses. Shifting from confessional practices—Foucault’s focus—to fraternal correction, Craun complicates the relationship among clerical authority, normative morality, and lay subjugation. The pastoral movement aimed to enlist all Christians in the vital work of correcting sin wherever it was evident, even if this meant rebuking one’s superiors. In theory and in practice, Craun shows, fraternal correction gave laypeople a share in pastoral power. Throughout the book, however, Craun avoids master narratives about the workings of power and its suspension. While fraternal correction “licenses criticism,” it nevertheless continues to regulate the form that criticism might take, reasserting the disciplinary and social hierarchies it threatens to destabilize (12). Yet later chapters in the book describe a shifted balance of power as Wycliffite writers find it possible to disregard the discursive regulations that governed criticism in an earlier period and still governed orthodox writers in their own era.

In chapter 2, Craun unfolds the difficulties of fraternal correction, exposing the methods by which would-be correctors negotiated competing obligations. Writers in the tradition are aware of the harm that can come from reproof, particularly when it is made public, and worry also about the implications of contrary biblical texts like Matthew 5:39, “But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also” (35), and the oft-cited “mote and beam” warning against hypocrisy in Luke 6:47 (40). Given these contrary texts, how does one proceed with correction enjoined elsewhere, as in Matthew 18? The negotiations required by these conflicts lie at the heart of Craun’s argument, serving, as he claims, to foster introspection and finally to craft readers as “ethical agents” who examine their own qualifications as correctors and carefully consider the implications of various types of reproof (2). Craun concludes this section of the book by noting that...