RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
G-erok
Grerson
upon theological instruction, but on academic instruction at large; while the ecclesiastical position therewith connected favored his natural inclination to activity in the domain of ecclesiastical practise, preaching, and the cure of souls.
He began his scholastic activity with a notable reform of the theological course on its practical side
(cf. the letter to his teacher D'Ailly, De reformatione theologies, Opera, i. 1, p. 120; and two letters to the scholars of the College of Navarre, p. 106). Only from the closing period of his life are certain tracts preserved which treat of logical
i. His Phi- and metaphysical problems. Gerson losophy. is a nominalist, but he seeks to mediate
Mysticism, between this tendency and realism; our ideas of things first have necessity in the notion of God, and at this point being and thinking coincide. Philosophy, too, is a revelation of God, but knowledge needs to be supplemented through faith, which is not merely an act of cognition, but rather a matter of volition. Accordingly the task of theology is a practical one; and for Gerson the true theology is mysticism. The function of scholasticism is merely to supply the form for the treatment of mysticism. But the latter, in turn, can preserve its wholesomeness, that is to say, its ecclesiastical character, only by such treatment. Radical mysticism, including that of Jan van Ruysbroeck (q.v.), Gerson combated zealously. His prototypes were Hugo and Richard of St. Victor (qq.v.) and Bonaventura; on occasion he reaches back to Bernard, Augustine, and the great Dionysius. His principal mystical writings (Opera, vol. hi., ed. Du Pin) belong in a remarkable degree to the period of his activity in church politics; the Consider ationes de theologia mystica grew out of lectures, and their second part bears evidence of having been written down in the autumn of 1407, during a journey as ambassador to Genoa. The mystical process culminates in love, the fundamental attitude of mind, innate in man. In its highest development — to be sure not an " actual " union with God, but still the closest conceivable moral union — it is also the highest knowledge. But the prepossessions of the theologian here prevent Gerson from drawing the right conclusion from this knowledge. He speaks of a perfected knowledge without love, and of a love without perfected insight. Only the theologian can attain to perfected mysticism. And to restore to the theologian his natural right, to enable him to exercise this right, was the aim of his many-sided literary and practical activity.
The overpowering development of the papal rule in the Church had thrust law before theology, the faculty of the canonists before that of the theologians. And now the schism threat- 2. His Pride ened to destroy utterly the venerable
as a Theo- halo of the Parisian doctors of divinity;
logian. In- with a distinctly French papacy, also
fluence of — after they had prided themselves on Patriotic having pronounced decisions for the Feeling, popes of the entire Church — they saw the danger that they would sink to the level of theological schools like Avignon and Toulouse. With their ambition patriotism worked as
an equally powerful factor, a product of the times, of the political need of France as it then was — the most glowing enthusiasm for the idea of the French kingdom; and yet, the national growth of that same kingdom was, in reality, to strike the death-blow to the university's world-fame. The union of heterogeneous elements the theologian seeks in a single dogma: France the New Jerusalem, and its kingdom, since the baptism of Clovis, consecrated by a universal ecclesiastical eail! The coalescence of the two factors is what stamps the character of a man like Gerson in its comprehensive historical bearings; for that is what dominates the activity in church politics which placed him among the leaders of his age.
Gerson entered the'field of church politics as a follower of his teacher DAilly; and this occasioned him at the outset a serious conflict, since he was pledged to follow the House of Burgundy, whereas D'Ailly had attached himself to the young Prince of Orleans, and from the pontificate of Benedict 3. Gerson's XIII., the political opposition of these Doctrine of two houses had appeared more and the Papacy more sharply in ecclesiastical matters. and Gerson sought to mediate, especially Councils, in his highly finished Trialogus in materia schismatis. Nevertheless he belonged to the Burgundian camp, and in a great state address, in 1405, he dared to lay down the law to the " tyrant " Orleans. In the subsequent evolution of affairs, he became more and more of a partizan down to the Council of Pisa. He did not attend the same in person, but in his De unitate ecclesiastica and De auferibilitate papa ab ecclesia he upheld its legitimacy in the strongest terms; after the decrees of the council itself, his tracts are the most important original sources for " Councilism." Here, too, Gerson is not original, but dependent in the main on Conrad of Gelnhausen and Henry of Langenstein (q.v.); it was his casuistical elaboration of their principles, and, on another side, his diverting them from the danger of an antihierarchical negation, that first made them popular. For Gerson is so little of a " liberal " that he attaches preeminent validity to papacy and hierarchy, as the mode of being immutably ordained by God for the Church. However, he makes a distinction between the office in itself (formaliter) and the office in its personal administration at any given time (mater ialiter); and as every law is interpreted by the purpose of the law, so the hierarchy is subordinate to the more comprehensive idea of the Church Ecumenical. Furthermore, this is not a mere theory, but it has its visible illustration in the general and at least potentially infallible council. The council, to be sure, is composed only of hierarchical authorities, but still every believer must be able to find expression therein. The individual pope is subject to the council, and, if need be, it can assemble without him. Indeed, the motive thought so greatly outweighs, in Gerson's mind, the literal text of the law that he supposes the contingency that a duly elected pope might be executed, if the weal of the Church required it.
At Constance, Gerson experienced the gratification of seeing this doctrine of his erected into an
Gerson G-esenius