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The Catholic Historical Review 88.1 (2002) 123-125



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Book Review

Nicolas de Clamanges.
Spirituality, Personal Reform, and Pastoral Renewal on the Eve of the Reformations


Nicolas de Clamanges. Spirituality, Personal Reform, and Pastoral Renewal on the Eve of the Reformations. By Christopher M. Bellitto. (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press. 2001. Pp. xiii, 146. $44.95.)

This short study of Nicolas de Clamanges (d. 1437) by Christopher Bellitto opens with a concise biographical account and discussion of his concerns regarding church reform, focusing particularly on his commitment to "personal reform [as] the means to the greater goal of reforming pastoral care within the Church." Rightly noting that this dimension of Clamanges's work has been insufficiently studied, Bellitto devotes chapters to various facets to this theologian's works, focusing on: reformatio personalis as the "foundation" of his reform ideal; his commitment to reform in capite et in membris, emphasizing the pastoral shape of his approach; and his pastoral critique of scholastic education. The monograph concludes with a short chapter which attempts to situate this theologian's "place in the history of reform." Bellitto approaches [End Page 123] Clamanges by positioning him within the interpretive framework set forth by Ladner and Southern--i.e., within the intellectual stream of humanism with its positive emphasis upon human achievement. He contends that Clamanges worked for the renewal of the Church through the personal "reform" of pastors themselves, a commitment that situates Clamanges in line with clerical reforms eventually undertaken at the Council of Trent.

Readers of this monograph will appreciate the general introduction to Clamanges's life and thought and the author's attempt to situate his thought in a wider context. Given the nature of this study, however, the author's tendency to summarize Clamanges's arguments on various themes from relevant treatises and letters is not entirely satisfactory. One would have hoped for a more generous inclusion of citations from Clamanges's writings--either in the original Latin, or in translation. This is a particular shortcoming, given Bellitto's use of textual editions that exist in several yet unpublished dissertations. Furthermore, when he does turn to situate Clamanges in historical context, Bellitto often refers to thematic developments far too broad or vague to be of much specific use in themselves--as, for example, his references to parallels between Clamanges's initiatives and humanist reforms of earlier medieval centuries, his identifying of Clamanges's efforts as part of what he calls the "activist spirituality" of the late Middle Ages, or his suggestion that behind Clamanges's soteriology lies "Paul's emphasis on sanctification as a continual process by a Christian acting with the Holy Spirit's aid." Each of these points merits a much more nuanced discussion than one finds here, pointing to lively and often complex developments and debates in the late-medieval church. At these and other points, students familiar with something beyond the bare outline of the historical record would have welcomed, alongside summaries of texts, a closer contextual reading of both theological arguments and specific reform-minded initiatives in a manner situating Clamanges more clearly within the actual realities and conversations of his day. For example, a closer attention to the later writings of Gerson after the Council of Constance would have revealed an even closer and more substantive affinity to Clamanges than Bellitto suggests: Clamanges's arguments concerning the role of eremitical life in bringing about personal reform necessary for wider institutional reforms (as, for example, in De fructu heremi, 1410) seem to anticipate Gerson's defense of monastic retreat after the council, and the latter's eventual resignation from public life and abandonment of an active role in university affairs that had occupied much of his adult life.

Students of the later medieval church will find much of interest in Bellitto's rendering of Clamanges's theological writings and the contours of his reform initiatives for a "troubled church," as the author calls it. But precisely these readers will be the first to...

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