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  • Holy Scripture and the Quest for Authority at the End of the Middle Ages by Ian Christopher Levy
  • Stephen Pink
Holy Scripture and the Quest for Authority at the End of the Middle Ages. By Ian Christopher Levy. [Reading the Scriptures.] (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. 2012. Pp. xvi, 320. $38.00 paperback. ISBN 978-0-268-03414-6.)

Ian Levy's new book takes a fresh approach to the theological controversies that boiled over during the papal schism in the late Middle Ages. Looking beyond topics such as the Eucharist that were formally disputed by figures from John Wyclif to Jean Gerson, Levy explores how far the dilemma fundamentally regarded what they shared. It was the case that these controversialists ultimately appealed to Holy Scripture and its interpretative tradition, the rock of the medieval Church's authority. But as all sides struggled thereby to authorize definitively their position, so was the Church's own authority threatened.

Levy's rich introduction charts how this crisis exposes an indeterminacy already at the heart of ecclesiastical authority. So deeply did the Church ground its authority in the divinely appointed meaning of scripture that departure from it served to define "heresy," even for the pope. But where did the final authority to determine this meaning lie? In theory, with the Masters of the Page, a body of theologians aided by a vast exegetical legacy, from the writings of Church Fathers to extrascriptural traditions believed handed down from early Christianity. Yet, Levy amply shows, long before Wyclif, this very diffusiveness was complicating, not clarifying, the quest to defend scripture's authority.

Against this backdrop, Levy's most radical rereading of late-medieval controversialists is perhaps that of Wyclif himself. Far from pitting sola scriptura against the Church, Levy argues that Wyclif was an "indignant master" (p. 54), defending scripture's cherished authority, in accordance with interpretative tradition, against the claims of canon law and pope. Levy traces the misrepresentation of Wyclif to opponents like William Woodford and Thomas Netter, concocted largely to mask the problematic grounding of their own exegetical arguments. Turning to the continental controversies, Levy shows that Wyclif's rough treatment anticipates that of his admirer, Jan Hus, condemned at the Council of Constance without proper defense—precisely because, Levy argues, the views of conciliar opponents such as Gerson were, on a range of topics, so similar. Levy then underscores how far Gerson's understanding of scripture's supreme authority, asserted against similar claims for the pope, was aligned with figures such as Wyclif and Hus, underpinning his promotion at Constance of a definitive "final authority," a general council representing the universal Church. Yet although papal power eventually prevailed, the fate of Reginald Pecock—ironically condemned for trying to defeat Wycliffism through reading scripture in the light of human reason, not of the Church Fathers—importantly suggests the ongoing authority of scripture and its interpretative tradition toward the end of the Middle Ages. [End Page 551]

Levy's book has most significantly shown the dilemma surrounding authority and scripture to be a central one. Nonetheless, his foregrounding of this issue ahead of the theological disputes involves another noteworthy claim: that, as with hermeneutic principles, these theological differences also could be, rhetoric aside, insubstantial. Yet, although showing that figures like Wyclif could make traditional theological assertions, this indeterminacy and its contribution to the crisis are never much elucidated. What also emerges from Levy's account is the alarm of Wyclif's opponents that his reading of scripture did argue alterations to the late-medieval Church so drastic as to threaten its existence, all the more dangerously for working through its traditional propositions; equally, their faith that God, speaking through scripture, could never so condemn his Church. Levy's book is, however, a major contribution to the understanding of late-medieval religion, showing its protagonists to be unexpectedly linked in ways that scholars will need to acknowledge.

Stephen Pink
Oxford University
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