Few issues have received as much attention and achieved as little consensus among historians of late medieval theology during the past several generations as the debate over the character of “nominalism.” One thrust of the research from this debate has focused on the theological dimensions of this scholastic tradition: building on the work of Erich Hochstetter, Paul Vignaux, and others, Heiko Oberman discussed this development in the North American arena of scholarship by describing theological concerns as “the inner core of nominalism.”¹ Oberman portrayed “Ockhamism” as the “main stream of the [nominalist] tradition,” characterizing it as a “school” of theologians including William of Ockham (d. 1349) and Gabriel Biel (d. 1495) at its boundaries and Jean Gerson (d. 1429) at its midpoint.² Gerson's inclusion in this so-called “Ockham-Biel circle” was significant not only as a chronological convenience but because of his prominence as theologian and churchman in his day and because of the continuing influence of his theology during the century following his death, a period characterized with only slight exaggeration as “le siècle de Gerson.”³

But does Gerson belong to such a “school,” if such a term adequately designates this “loose configuration of theologians,” as William Courtenay has more recently described it?⁴ Since the publication of Oberman's early studies of nominalism, medievalists have generally accepted his designation of Gerson's theology.⁵ And, indeed, sufficient textual evidence for this assessment is readily available. Yet the evidence supporting this characterization—that is, passages from his writings in which he emphasizes such Ockhamist themes as a doctrine of predestination (that is, post praevisa merita) that does not violate human responsibility, the moral autonomy of the human actor, and a covenant of merit by which God rewards deeds accomplished ex puris naturalibus with meritorious status—derives from the chancellor's early writings predating the Council of Constance (1414-1418). In texts written after the council where he addressed similar themes, a theology of a fundamentally different character emerges: in these writings he has departed from the Ockhamist position, reforming the heart of his soteriology in a manner which also reshapes the pastoral logic of his theology.

This revision becomes particularly clear in the major work Gerson wrote immediately after the council, a treatise he entitled On the Consolation of Theology (1418). This text serves as the centerpiece for this study, for in the midst of this comprehensive theological dialogue Gerson addresses a cluster of themes in which his departure from the Ockhamism of his earlier university writings becomes evident. Thus we turn our attention first to survey the theological shift which we find announced in this treatise, paying particular attention to his reformulation of the Ockhamist covenant of merit.

1.

In the immediate wake of Constance Gerson found himself an exile and “sojourner” from his native France, discouraged by civil strife which tore apart his beloved country and frustrated by attempts to bring about reform through the public rhetoric of preaching.⁶ It is at this juncture that he wrote his On the Consolation of Theology, a dialogue offering “wayfarers” (viatores) encouragement on the basis of a “theology of hope.”⁷ In form and substance Gerson crafted this work as a theological sequel to the Consolation of Philosophy, informing his readers at the outset that his own dialogue begins “from that place where Boethius left off.”⁸ Evidence from his correspondence suggests that Gerson may have understood his Consolation, in imitation of Boethius's, as his final literary accomplishment.⁹ Indeed, this treatise above all others articulates the pastoral theme that ensured Gerson's posthumous appellation as doctor consolatorius and thus might well stand as a primary source of his continued influence in the fifteenth century.¹⁰

This is also the text in which he introduces what he calls his via media et regia, “a middle and royal way” between a philosophical position like Cicero's, which “took providence away from God” in order to “establish freedom in human beings,” at one extreme, and one that defined providence as “imposing necessity on human power of choice,” at the other.¹¹ Yet he crafts his via not as a strictly philosophical argument but as a theological guide to the question of providence and free will. As he steers viatores down this mediating path Gerson modulates Ockhamist emphases to be found in his preconciliar theology: gone is any reference to the facere quod in se est doctrine, and absent is any optimism toward the viator's “natural” contribution to salvation.¹² As a comprehensive statement of his theology, therefore, the Consolation of Theology is anything but a summary of themes and convictions expressed in earlier writings. Hence this treatise occupies a privileged position within the broad spectrum of his writings, not only because it stands as a potential source of his continuing influence in the century following his death, but because it represents a shift in Gerson's mature theological position. In order to understand this development we must first consider the theological contours of this via media et regia more carefully.

Gerson insists in this treatise that divine sovereignty and human freedom belong together in a mediating relationship, a paradoxical union binding together both human and divine initiative in the process of salvation. This much Boethius could have affirmed, and did, in the closing book of his philosophical Consolation. But in going beyond Boethius to construct a theological solution to this much discussed question in late scholasticism Gerson maps out an approach of previously uncharted dimensions: he does not resort to a defense of congruous merit, a distinction that he had earlier applied in the tradition of “moderate nominalism” to distinguish meritorious acts done ex puris naturalibus, or “naturally.” Nor does he retreat to an extreme Augustinian position, in the manner of Thomas Bradwardine and Gregory of Rimini, which rejected congruous merits and articulated a doctrine of an utterly undetermined grace.¹³ Rather, Gerson offers a new soteriological model that departs from the Ockhamist emphasis upon moral acts, constructing in its place what might be called a “covenant of seeking.” As we shall see, however, this departure is not an outright rejection of the Ockhamist covenantal logic.

The suspicion that Gerson is here borrowing the essential shape of the Ockhamist soteriology in order to restructure it is confirmed when we look at two key issues. The first of these, a negative implication of merit as traditionally applied by the Ockhamists, is his emphasis on despair: rather than allowing for congruous merit as the argument for consoling viatores, Gerson argues for a “self-humiliation,” contending that one must advance “through desperation” to hope.¹⁴ Perhaps this is his rejoinder to Boethius's closing admonition that viatores should “lift up [their] minds to a right hope” and “do good” when acting “before the eyes of a judge who sees all things.”¹⁵ But it is clearly more than this, and his theological concerns lie closer to hand: Gerson here abandons the Ockhamist doctrine of merit that he had earlier espoused, arguing that those who “do what lies within them” can only expect desperation. “I wish you to despair,” he now counsels, “but of yourself and in yourself,” adding with the words of the prophet that “cursed is he who confides in himself” (Jer. 17:5).¹⁶ And, going even further and reversing advice he had earlier given, he now exhorts viatores to heighten the accusations they raise against themselves: “God saves those who condemn themselves,” he argues, citing the Proverb that “the just man is first accuser of himself” (Prov. 18:17). Thus each person should act as “prosecutor, witness, and judge against himself, exaggerating [guilt] as much as he is able.”¹⁷ Such advice he interprets in terms of his conviction, rooted in Pauline theology, that “mercy exceeds judgment” (misericordia superexaltat judicium), and that theology leads viatores “through the highest desperation regarding man to the highest hope in God.”¹⁸

Gerson's blanket condemnation of confidence in one's moral accomplishments violates the logic of what has been called a “pastoral theology” grounded in the doctrine of merit. Instead he embraces a “confessional” position which emphasizes more thoroughly the absolute need of grace in the midst of despair and in the absence of good works.¹⁹ With this conviction Gerson has now closed the “loophole,” if one might call it that, by which Ockhamists had argued that natural acts of virtue would not go unrewarded: namely, the meritum de congruo, or “semi-merit,” which disposed God (de potentia ordinata) to infuse grace. In the process he leans toward a more extreme Augustinian position than Ockhamists favored.

How then is this a theology of hope, to return to our earlier description? What is the dialectic by which viatores journey per desperationem ad spem? If Gerson locates hope “in the middle road between despair and presumptuousness,” as it appears he does, is it also the case that he portrays the human condition as “simultaneously driven by hope and fear” and thus tending toward an ultimate anxiety?²⁰ As if anticipating such questions, Gerson has one of the characters in this dialogue (Monicus) wonder aloud whether any hope is possible in this life, since “no one knows his end.” And yet Gerson's use of this biblical text—“One does not know whether he is worthy of hate or love” (“Nescit autem homo an odio vel amore dignus sit” [Eccl. 9:12])—is, in the context of this dialogue, a convenient foil for his own position, articulated by the interlocutor (Volucer): “Your judgment would be correct … if faithful theology did not progress through that fear to things lying beyond,” compelling viatores to “flee to that hope which does not confound us.”²¹ Theology, in other words, does not leave us in ignorance of our fate nor does it condemn us to resignation, but neither does it encourage us to place any confidence in ourselves. In contrast not only to Boethius but to the Ockhamist position as well, Gerson now conceives of the dialectic of desperation and hope not as an unresolved vacillation but as a linear progression ad ulteriora—that is, through fear and desolation toward things lying “beyond.” This theme of progress “to hope” (ad spem) marks the shift in his soteriology, viewed from an anthropological angle; we must now consider the theological rationale Gerson provides for this thesis.

To approach this question we must first consider his view of predestination, that doctrine which traditionally established “a protective wall around the doctrine of justification by grace alone” and which Gerson calls in this treatise “the central and supreme hinge of all Paul's arguments.”²² Here again we find evidence for his abandonment of the Ockhamist position that identified predestination with foreknowledge, thereby interpreting it as a divine judgment rendered “after the act.” He now declares, in contrast to this approach, that we are “predestined and elected from eternity [ab aeterno], out of pure generosity and grace [pura liberalitate et gratia].”²³ His decision not to define the predestination of the elect as foreknowledge but to explain it as an election ab aeterno aligns his soteriology with the Scotist position, interpreting predestination ante praevisa merita, or “before foreseen merits.” This is not to suggest that Gerson became a Scotist; his aversion to theologians of this stripe, whom he disparagingly called formalizantes, did not waver at this juncture.²⁴ But he here steers his soteriology to the “right,” as it were, toward a more radical Augustinian position and thus in proximity to this facet of Scotus's teaching.²⁵

Gerson buttresses this assertion of election ab aeterno by drawing upon the biblical text often applied and diversely interpreted by later medieval theologians to interpret justification: the analogy of the potter and clay (Jer. 18:1-11; Rom. 9:19-24). Yet he does so in order to argue, following Bradwardine's straightforward exegesis of these texts, that justification depends first and last upon God's election: “God, the supreme judge, has predestined some from the sinful mass [ex massa peccatrice], so that from eternity these will participate in eternal happiness, while others are foreknown and condemned to perpetual punishment.”²⁶ Predestination is a divine choice made before any knowledge of human acts, at least in terms of the elect, and hence without reference to merit. “God is debtor to no one,” Gerson argues, adding that “the eternal will of God has no prior cause.”²⁷ Such a soteriology has a more severe Augustinian ring than his earlier Ockhamist insistence that God rewards man's unassisted moral acts (facere quod in se est), though he avoids the presumed excesses of “double predestination” by insisting that salvation is “not without grace” just as reprobation is “not without human cause.”²⁸ The potter alone works the (good) clay.

As the capstone of this argument on predestination ante praevisa merita Gerson utilizes an inverted Pauline claim regarding election to argue that salvation has nothing whatsoever to do with “the merits and works of those whom God has predestined from all eternity [ab aeterno], because if it were because of works, [salvation] would not be by grace.”²⁹ With this assertion he now distances himself from the synergism lying at the heart of the Ockhamist soteriology: in stark contrast to the covenantal promise offered to those who “do what lies within them,” Gerson argues that the pursuit of meritorious works never results in divine reward but rather drives viatores to despair. In this shift from his earlier position he still accents the great theme of divine freedom which dominates nominalist theology, in all its varieties, but he does so in this treatise in order to delineate what appears to be a Scotist doctrine of predestination: salvation is not only “by grace”—no nominalist violated this anti-Pelagian safeguard—but “from eternity” and “out of pure generosity and grace.”³⁰

This distinct development in Gerson's thought corresponds as we might well expect to a reformulation of his pastoral strategy. As Auer, Oberman, Douglass, and most recently Brown have argued, Ockhamist theologians applied the facere quod in se est doctrine, which they traditionally anchored upon a sacramental foundation, for the sake of pastoral commitments.³¹ Such nominalists qualified their affirmation that “nothing created must be formally accepted by God” with an important proviso: beneath the “dome” of God's ordained power, a covenant established by God in utter freedom nonetheless ensured that viatores who “did what lay within them” earned a congruous merit and thus an infusion of grace. This functioned as a “missionary” strategy, a pastoral approach interpreting human acts as meritorious not in themselves but in terms of the divine promise (de potentia Dei ordinate). On the basis of such a covenant, which balanced the human contribution of moral initiative and sacramental use on one side of the ledger with the divine contribution of grace on the other, Ockhamists had found a useful pastoral approach, one that provided a rationale for those exercising the cura animarum and assurance for those receiving it. In steering away from this formulation Gerson's theological revision thus demanded a pastoral theology of quite different logic and form. It is to this feature of his thought that we now turn.

Throughout On the Consolation of Theology Gerson avoids any discussion of “created grace” and the sacraments, themes properly characterized as “the natural setting of justification” among late medieval theologians.³² He speaks instead of Christ as the “sufficient” means of salvation and faith as the instrument by which viatores receive grace: “God has not given nor will God give grace to any person except through ‘the mediator between God and humanity’ [see 1 Tim. 2:5]. Christ merited this grace in sufficient measure for all, but it is only efficacious for those incorporated into Christ through faith.”³³ Faith is thus the answer to the despair driving viatores toward “the higher things.” The equation is straightforward: despair in oneself, the self-humiliation by which one rejects any confidence in oneself, leads toward faith which is the entrusting of oneself to God's righteousness.³⁴ Drawing upon the Psalms, Gerson exclaims, “Deliver me in your righteousness” (Ps. 30:2), adding his own gloss, “clearly not in my own.”³⁵ He also cites the text from Isaiah commonly heard in penitential preaching of this period, that is, “all our righteousness [omnes iustitiae nostrae] is as a menstrual rag” (Isa. 64:6), adding his own gloss to ask, “who would show his righteousness to God as if he were exulting any more than a wife would show her husband the rag of her blushing [pannum confusionis]?”³⁶Viatores must look outside themselves, per fidem, to Christ: the effective means of salvation is faith, and the result is not only an appropriation of Christ's benefits but an incorporation into Christ, whom he elsewhere calls sacramentum reconciliationis.³⁷

In this reconstruction of the Ockhamist covenant Gerson rejects any synergism that accented the moral requirements of justification. Human achievement, the “doing” of meritorious works, could only lead to despair or self-deceit. Neither is he willing to relinquish what has been characterized as the “missionary” emphasis of that soteriology, namely, an articulation of the viator's participation in the process of salvation. But with the Consolation of Theology he fashions this emphasis following a different logic, moving away from the nominalist framework of meritorious acts and sacramental grace. Articulating what he calls a soteriological via media et regia, Gerson follows in this treatise “a middle and royal road” between the diverging strains of nominalist theology: the defense of divine freedom which introduced necessity into human acts at one extreme, and an emphasis on human autonomy that mitigated the divine initiative in salvation at the other. In defiance of this dilemma, and building upon the synthesis achieved by Scotus, Gerson attempts to hold in paradoxical unity both divine and human freedom—without sacrificing the doctrine of election ab aeterno (that is, praedestinatio ante praevisa merita).³⁸ In other words, within the spectrum of fifteenth-century nominalist theologies, Gerson stakes out a moderating path: he resists a radical Augustinianism that would ultimately lead to determinism while also opposing the moral synergism latent in the Ockhamist soteriology. Along with Scotus, apparently, he now reckons both options as “a wrongly conceived antithesis,” attempting to hold them together in “an irresolvable dilemma.”³⁹

Yet his reliance on Scotus is limited, as we see when examining the contours of his mediating soteriology. He embraces Scotus's argument for predestination ante praevisa merita, which he calls the “central hinge” of Pauline theology, while rejecting the Subtle Doctor's reliance on the doctrine of merit—a neat of reversal of the logic structuring the Ockhamist covenant.⁴⁰ In fashioning a covenantal model unique among nominalists we now find him articulating a mystical doctrine of justification: alongside his claim that viatores are incorporated per fidem in Christ, he introduces in place of the Ockhamist emphasis upon moral exertion (facere quod in se est) the mystical call to seek God, validated by the biblical promise of Hebrews 11:6 that “inquirentibus se renumerator [Deus] est” (“God is the rewarder of those seeking him”).⁴¹ Without recourse to sacramental habits or a doctrine of created grace, as had been the case with Scotus, Gerson offers a soteriological formula grounded in this Pauline promise, one which is remarkably similar to Ambrosiaster's argument that God's iustitia demands that God receive those “seeking refuge” in him.⁴² The distinction is worth emphasizing: for Gerson as for Ambrosiaster it is not the doing of meritorious works but the seeking after God which matters. But while avoiding a moral synergism, Gerson's covenant of seeking insures that viatores are able to take some initiative coram Deo—if only by seeking God in faith. This theological argument provides him with a “missionary” approach: he counsels “seekers” to “remind” God of his promise, because “God cannot deny himself.”⁴³

This substitution on the basis of Hebrews 11:6 of inquirentibus (“for those seeking”) for facientibus (“for those doing”) of the Ockhamist covenant alters his doctrine of salvation as well as his pastoral strategy decisively: salvation begins not with moral achievement but with an utter desperation of human acts on account of which viatores are driven in faith to God. The quest for God becomes the natural “act” rewarded by God with the promise of salvation. Hence, this is still a covenant demanding human initiative, at least de potentia Dei ordinata, but it resists any elevation of moral achievement. This pivotal argument thus becomes the focus of his reconfigured pastoral approach. Viatores act within the “canopy” of a biblical covenant (that is, de potentia Dei ordinata), though here conceived in mystical terms: one requiring not virtuous deeds but rather faithful seeking. This claim compels Gerson to approach the cura animarum in a strikingly different manner than we had found in his earlier writings. By abandoning the exhortation to “act rightly” before God, as Boethius and advocates of the Ockhamist facere quod in se est doctrine had argued, Gerson now urges viatores to “cast themselves upon God,” to seek God, whom he calls in this treatise the “refuge of the human journey” (humanae peregrinationis refugium).⁴⁴ Seeking this refuge becomes the key to his missionary exhortation, a seeking which occurs not on the basis of human righteousness—since human life is wrought with tribulationes and drives us inexorably to desperation—but precisely in its absence. This via media is not a moral synergism, but it is a mystical reconstruction of the Ockhamist covenant that validates the viator's participation in the process of salvation.

2.

In On the Consolation of Theology we have seen that Gerson seeks to blend elements from Scotist theology within a revised formulation of the Ockhamist covenant. He follows, in rough outline at least, Scotus's earlier attempt to mediate the apparent conflict between determinism and synergism, ideas which had been polarized in the diverse nominalist theologies of the fifteenth century. But this appears to be an eccentricity of thought rather than an attempt to embrace a new school loyalty. And, as we have suggested, Gerson's revision of the covenant of merit—a theological shift of significant proportions—corresponds to a distinctively different pastoral strategy from that of Ockhamism. We must now inquire whether his treatise does indeed announce his departure from the Ockhamist “school,” or at least from its doctrine of salvation, as we have argued, and what this development suggests about the influences upon his theology.

One might surmise that Gerson came to recognize at this juncture the potential Pelagianism latent within the Ockhamist position he had earlier embraced. But such a hypothesis is an argument from silence at best, since Gerson nowhere suggests—after the manner of Bradwardine, for example—that such doctrinal concerns initiated this shift. A more compelling explanation is that Gerson's departure from the Okhamist position was prompted by his response to the theological position articulated by John Hus and his followers, a threat that had absorbed Gerson's attention already before Constance and one that continued to occupy his mind after the council.⁴⁵ Indeed, specific arguments offered in this treatise, and the careful structure of the dialogue itself, indicate that Gerson intended his Consolation as a response to Hus's insistence during his trial that he be “instructed by better and more relevant scripture” than he had used in his defense.⁴⁶ Thus, for instance, he answers Hus's theological arguments on a variety of practical questions—the need for severe discipline in the church, simony and clerical salaries, obedience due to ecclesiastical authorities, the legitimacy of the church's secular authority—not merely by anathematizing his deceased opponent's positions but by responding to them with arguments from scripture and the fathers.⁴⁷

Read in terms of this specific background, the shift we have pointed to in Gerson's theology corresponds as if in answer to key Hussite concerns. Gerson's treatment of predestination might well have been occasioned by the centrality of this theme in Hus's preaching: in response to Hus's definition of the church as the “congregation of the predestined” and his emphasis on moral worthiness as the measure of election, Gerson emphasizes a traditional ecclesiology and characterizes predestination following Scotus.⁴⁸ Furthermore, his use of the covenantal promise of Hebrews 11:6 offers a striking refutation of Hus's insistence on the hiddenness of election, since Gerson argued against such a view that the promise of God “to reward those who seek him” is inviolable.⁴⁹ This covenant, rooted in the reliability of God, offers consolation and pastoral assurance to viatores seeking God.⁵⁰ Neither the fear of lapsing into a heterodox Pelagianism nor a new school loyalty but rather his opposition to Hus's ecclesiology and doctrine of election explains the shift in Gerson's later thought.

3.

Gerson's revision of the Ockhamist covenant of merit, prompted as we have suggested by an anti-Hussite polemic, yields a mystical doctrine of justification that is consistent with the broad interests of his earlier theology. Yet he alters the Ockhamist soteriology he had embraced, accentuating after Constance the role of faith rather than meritorious works as the means by which viatores receive grace and are “incorporated” in Christ. This is not to suggest that Gerson applies a sola fide formula in his soteriology, but it is to say that his covenant of seeking avoided the synergism of the Ockhamist facere quod in se est doctrine. Furthermore, we have noted that his “mystical Ockhamism,” if we might call it that, identifies Christ as sacramentum reconciliationis and underscores Christ's role rather than that of the sacraments as the “instrument” of mediation between God and viatores.⁵¹

Gerson's decision to speak of salvation in mystical terms might also explain his emphasis in this treatise on despair, since the tradition of affective mysticism in which he stood borrowed paradoxical language to describe justification, identifying God's iustitia as both outside (extra nos) and within us (in nobis).⁵² Thus his insistence on the efficacy of faith together with his emphasis of Christ as the “sufficient” cause of grace reflect a broader trend of this period: namely, a preference for spiritual rather than sacramental criterion of Christian discipleship.⁵³ In his case, of course, this shift in emphasis derives not from a criticism of the church but from the mystical dimensions of his thought that become more distinctly pronounced during and after the Council of Constance—apparently, as we have argued, in response to the Hussite conflict.

His approach to soteriology in On the Consolation of Theology thus yields an original blend of mysticism and nominalism, drawing upon the elements of Scotus's thought to construct a mystical rather than moral form of Ockhamism. In this sense his soteriology represents not an outright abandonment but a skillful reformulation of an Ockhamist approach to late medieval covenant theology, and as such it represents another complication of the already complex historiography of nominalism. On the basis of this theological realignment we must revise the prevailing characterization of his thought within the “Ockham-Biel circle,” particularly since the convergence of influences from Scotus and Ockham found in his writings after Constance is alien to the “moderate nominalism” of this tradition. In any event at this juncture Gerson abandons the Ockhamism of his earlier university career, revising its covenant theology in order to avoid any emphasis upon moral achievement. In its place he sets forth in his Consolation of Theology a via media et regia, a “mediating and royal way,” that establishes a “mystical Ockhamism.” In a period of political instability and theological conflict and collision, Gerson envisions this via not only as the way of salvation but as the way of peace, the pax Dei, promised to those who seek God in faith and humility.⁵⁴

Notes

1. See his “Some Notes on the Theology of Nominalism with Attention to its Relation to the Renaissance,” Harvard Theological Review 53(1960): 49; see also idem, The Harvest of Medieval Theology: Gabriel Biel and Late Medieval Nominalism (Cambridge, Mass., 1963), p. 4. For a discussion of the historiographical development, see William Courtenay, “Nominalism and Late Medieval Thought: A Bibliographical Essay,” and “Late Medieval Nominalism Revisited: 1972-1982,” both reprinted in Covenant and Causality in Medieval Thought (London, 1984), chaps. 12, 13; see also idem, “Nominalism and Late Medieval Religion,” in The Pursuit of Holiness in Late Medieval and Renaissance Religion, ed. Heiko Oberman and Charles Trinkaus (Leiden, 1974), pp. 26-36.

2. See Oberman, “Some Notes,” pp. 48, 51-56, and Harvest of Medieval Theology, p. 4.

3. Etienne Delauruelle, L'église au temps du Grand Schisme et de la crise conciliare, vol. 14/2, Histoire de l'église depuis les origines jusqu'à nos jours, ed. A. Fliche and V. Martin (Paris, 1964), p. 837.

4. To speak of this group of “moderate nominalist” theologians—that is, William of Ockham, Pierre d'Ailly, Jean Gerson, and Gabriel Biel—as a “school” seems too ambitious a characterization for two reasons: first, because facets of Ockham's thought were used by theologians of widely differing perspectives during the fifteenth century, and second, because these theologians did not owe a primary allegiance to the Venerable Inceptor and were deliberately eclectic in their use of modern auctoritates other than Ockham. On this point Courtenay has persuasively argued that “‘partyism’ or ‘schoolism’ seems to be a child of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries that should not be read back into the fourteenth century,” though he reluctantly concedes that “Ockhamism” is “the least undesirable term to describe this loose configuration of theologians”; see his “Nominalism and Late Medieval Religion,” p. 53. This caveat is particularly appropriate for Gerson, since his opposition to any “school” loyalties that acquired priority over a simple allegiance to “the gospel” is well known; see, for example, Contra vanam curiositatem, in Oevres completes, vol. 3, L'oeuvre magistrale, ed. P. Glorieux (Paris, 1962), pp. 240-242. All further references to Gerson's work are cited from this edition and noted with “G” followed by volume and page number.

5. Taking exception to this view, Michael Shank has recently argued that “given the inevitable ambiguities of these terms in current historiography, it has seemed preferable to describe the positions of individual thinkers rather than to give them labels that only spread confusion”; “Unless You Believe, You Shall Not Understand”: Logic, University, and Society in Late Medieval Vienna (Princeton, 1988), p. xiii.

6. In the opening elegy of this work, Gerson laments: “Hail, sweet land of my birth, O favored France! / Famed Paris, noble guardian of our land. / Alas! What is this that I see [in France]? A goddess, raging / In cruel civil strife, filling all with gore. / In their midst a spirit of upheaval roams; / They slay themselves in turn with their own swords. … / All are strangled like sheep by a maddened mob.” See G 4, L'Oeuvre poétique, p. 135. On the question of Gerson's pessimistic view of the effectiveness of preaching for reform, see my Jean Gerson and ‘De Consolatione Theologiae’ (1418): The Consolation of a Biblical and Reforming Theology for a Disordered Age (Tübingen, 1990), pp. 139-143, 256-263.

7. Gerson begins and ends this treatise with “Quaecumque scripta sunt … ad nostram doctrinam scripta sunt ut per patientiam et consolationem scripturarum spem habeamus,” a stylistic point which suggests that he might have been aware of Johannes of Dambach's earlier and widely circulated piece of the same name since Dambach opened his work with the same biblical reference; see G 9, pp. 185, 245. For further discussion of the placement of Gerson's text within the literary tradition spawned by Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy, see my Jean Gerson and ‘De Consolatione Theologiae’, pp. 41-42, 61-62 nn. 1, 4.

8. See G 9, p. 188.

9. See my Jean Gerson and ‘De Consolatione Theologiae’, pp. 15-19, where I explore this point in closer detail; for his correspondence, see G 2, “L'oeuvre epistolaire,” pp. 216-217.

10. The question of the influence of this treatise remains to be explored. We do know that this treatise exists in at least forty-three manuscripts, according to Glorieux's investigation (see G 9, p. xiii; G 1, p. 41); it was also reprinted, in addition to inclusion in the six incunabula of the Opera omnia, as a freestanding book at least three times before 1500. For details of these publications, see G 1, pp. 71-72, 74-75.

11. G 9, p. 200: “Sed neque audiendus est Cicero, qui ut libertatem in hominibus statueret, abstulit a Deo providentiam; neque rursus ex adverso recipiendus alter, qui divinam providentiam sic instituere voluit ut arbitrio nostro necessitatem imponeret, proh nefas! etiam in peccatis dicens Deum velle et facere nos peccare in manifestationem gloriae suae. Porro viam mediam et regiam tradit theologia revelata fide subnixa.”

12. That is, “facientibus quod in se est Deus non denegat gratiam.” Oberman argues that this argument reached theologians of the later Middle Ages primarily through the “old Franciscan school”; see Harvest of Medieval Theology, pp. 131-134.

13. Thus, for example, Bradwardine opposed as Pelagian those who argued that “homines ex solis propriis viribus gratiam Dei mereri de congruo, non autem de condigno”; De causa Dei contra Pelagium I, ch. 39. In similar style Gregory argued that “nemo potest mereri primam gratiam de condigno; nec etiam de congruo contra aliquorum sententiam modernorum”; II Sent. d. 28, q. 1, art. 1.

14. For further discussion of this point, see Oberman, Harvest of Medieval Theology, pp. 169-172; see also Bengt Hägglund, The Background of Luther's Doctrine of Justification in Late Medieval Theology (Philadelphia, 1971), pp. 20-21. The logic of this doctrine delineated viatores' responsibility to accomplish at least a “semi-merit” coram Deo, thought the psychological effect this had in the late medieval church was often devastating. In his earlier treatises Gerson often brought these two arguments together, accentuating the facere quod in se est doctrine because of the human propensity toward scrupulosity. On this point, see D. Catherine Brown, Pastor and Laity in the Theology of Jean Gerson (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 69-72; and, for a broader discussion of the problem in late medieval theology, see Wilfred Werbeck, “Voraussetzungen und Wesen der scrupulositas in Spätmittelalter,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 68 (1971): 327-350, and Thomas Tentler, Sin and Confession on the Eve of the Reformation (Princeton, 1977), pp. 68-70, 75-78. On self-humiliation, see E. Jane Dempsey Douglass, Justification in Late Medieval Preaching: A Study of John Geiler of Keisersberg (Leiden, 1966), pp. 166-167, where this facet of Gerson's thought is cited as an influence upon Geiler. Yet, as Douglass later points out, the important question is not whether this theme is present—she argues that this theme is “part of the common medieval tradition and will be found in the writing and preaching of men holding very different theological positions” (ibid., p. 176)—but how this theme is situated in the broader theological context.

15. Boethius, De Consolatione Philosophiae V, pr. 6; CCSL 94, 105.

16. G 9, p. 199.

17. G 9, pp. 232-233. In an earlier treatise, his De remidiis contra pusillanimitatem (1405), he argued against scrupulosity, urging penitents to rely on God's mercy and thus alleviate their anxiety (that is, scrupulosity) about confessing sins; see G 9, pp. 374-386. For a discussion of this point, see Tentler, Sin and Confession, p. 77.

18. G 9, p. 233. Gerson also cites Rom. 5:20 in this passage, insisting with Paul that “where sin increased, grace may abound even more.”

19. This terminology derives from Oberman's analysis; see his explanatory remarks in Forerunners of the Reformation: The Shape of Late Medieval Thought (Philadelphia, 1966), pp. 128-129. Francis Oakley also utilizes this language; see his The Western Church in the Later Middle Ages (Ithaca, 1979), p. 136. This language is not entirely satisfactory, however, since those theologians embracing a more severe Augustinian doctrine of grace, such as Gerson in this treatise, did so with deliberate pastoral intentions in mind, just as Ockhamists intended to safeguard the “confessional” emphasis upon grace; a better formulation might be to speak of a “merit soteriology” in contrast to one emphasizing “radical grace.”

20. Oberman uses both phrases to characterize Gerson's and, later, Gabriel Biel's doctrine of justification, since both, he argues, represent an “oscillation between ‘mercy’ and ‘justice’”; see Harvest of Medieval Theology, pp. 183, 231.

21. G 9, pp. 189-190. This citation is often found in later medieval preaching as a warning against presumption; on this point, see Douglass, Justification in Late Medieval Preaching, pp. 149, 176, and Oberman, Harvest of Medieval Theology, pp. 182-183. See G 9, pp. 189-190; the biblical reference which he applies is Rom. 5:5, “spes autem non confundit.”

22. Thus Oberman, Harvest of Medieval Theology, p. 196. Oberman is certainly also correct in suggesting that this doctrine stands as “a most revealing indicator of the understanding of the doctrine of justification”; ibid., p. 185. G 9, p. 196.

23. Ibid.

24. For a thorough discussion of this point with regard to the technicalities of Gerson's epistemology, and thus in terms of the specific categories of nominalist/realist, see Zénon Kaluza, Les querelles doctrinales à Paris: Nominalistes et realistes aux confins du XIVe et du XVe siècles (Bergamo, 1988), pp. 14-15, 38-39, 50-60, 127-144. Kaluza also notes, however, that Scotus himself represented a special case for Gerson because of the church's earlier approbation of his teaching; ibid., p. 50 and compare Contra vanam curiositatem, G 3, p. 244.

25. Wolfhart Pannenberg—apparently alone among modern interpreters of this period—recognized this, identifying Gerson together with Pierre d'Ailly as proponents of a Scotist doctrine of predestination; see Die Prädestinationslehre des Duns Scotus im Zusammenhang der scholastischen Lehrentwicklungen (Göttingen, 1954), pp. 145-147. Brown also recognized the shift in Gerson's theology on this point, though without any further clarification of the larger context—literary or historical—in which he expressed this theme; see Pastor and Laity, pp. 114-115.

26. G 9, p. 193; see also ibid., p. 198, where he argues that both the elect—in this case, Paul as the “chief” sinner (1 Tim. 1:15)—and damned derive from the same “mass of sin” (ex eadem peccati massa).

27. G 9, pp. 190-194. Pesch has rightly argued that Scotus's foundational claim that “nihil creatum formaliter est a Deo acceptandum”—a thesis anticipating Ockham's “Deus nulli debitor est,” which stands directly behind Gerson's argument—elicits the “controlling characteristic” of the late scholastic doctrine of God, that is, the emphasis upon divine freedom. See his Einführung in die Lehre von Gnade und Rechtfertigung (Darmstadt, 1981), p. 113.

28. Pannenberg discusses this theme as developed by Gregory of Rimini; see Prädestinationslehre, pp. 143-149. In contrast to such an extreme formulation of the doctrine of election, Gerson insists that viatores produce their acts “not by necessity but contingently,” a formulation remarkably similar to the balanced position adopted by Thomas Aquinas; on the latter, see Summa theologiae Ia, 22, 2-4, and for the former, G 9, p. 212. Gerson defends this position by arguing that all deserve damnation and those elected are saved “not without grace”: “Nihilominus fatendum est quod nemo sine culpa damnabitur, sicut absque gratia salvabitur nullus”; G 9, p. 194.

29. G 9, p. 194; the biblical allusion is to Rom. 11:6, “If by grace, then not by works.”

30. Oberman clarifies this point, following Paul Vignaux in Nominalisme du XIVe siècle (Paris, 1948), p. 22, in his “Some Notes,” pp. 60-61. See also Pesch, Gnade und Rechtfertigung, p. 113. The question at hand was not whether salvation depended upon grace, but whether it was a matter of grace alone (sola gratia); on this point, see Karlfried Froehlich, “Justification Language in the Middle Ages,” in Justification by Faith: Lutherans and Catholics in Dialogue IV, ed. H. G. Anderson et al. (Minneapolis, 1985), pp. 160-161.

31. Johann Auer, Die Entwicklung der Gnadenlehre in der Hochscholastik, vol. 2, Das Wirken der Gnade (Freiburg i.B., 1951), p. 51: “Es war der religiöse und vielleicht seelsorgliche Bedürfnis, aus der Güte Gottes die Möglichkeit einer wirksamen Vorbereitung auf die Gnade zu erweisen.” The rest follow his lead: see Oberman, “‘Wir sein pettler. Hoc est verum.’ Bund und Gnade in der Theologie des Mittelalters und Reformation,” Zeitschrift für Kirchensgeschichte 78 (1967): 256-257, and idem, “Duns Scotus, Nominalism, and the Council of Trent,” reprinted in The Dawn of the Reformation: Essays in Late Medieval and Early Reformation Thought (Edinburgh, 1986), pp. 212-213; Douglass, Justification in Late Medieval Preaching, pp. 141-147, 160-161; and, finally, Brown, Pastor and Laity, p. 101.

32. Thus Oberman, Harvest of Medieval Theology, p. 189.

33. G 9, p. 196. In the dialogue preceding this citation Gerson does concede that God has ordained “innumerable appropriate means of various kinds” to attain final beatitude; he does not, however, specify these in any more definite manner, and his suggestion that these are sine numero should discourage us from seeing this as a sacramental reference. The contrast of Gerson's view to that of Aquinas is instructive on this point. Aquinas identified God as the “efficient cause,” Christ as the “united instrument,” and the sacraments as the “separate instruments” of grace; he does not, however, speak of faith in a causal manner; see Summa theologiae IIIa, 61, 1 and 5.

34. As he here argues, “ut intelligo Volucer, ita se res habet quod apud vere humilem quanto minus est in se spei, minus in ope aliena fiduciae, minus denique vult constituere iustitiam suam, tanto plus spei, plus fiduciae de Deo concipit, plus quoque iustitiae Dei sit subjectus”; G 9, p. 195.

35. Ibid. Gerson extends his consideration of this theme throughout this and the next prose section (that is, I pr. 4).

36. See G 9, p. 228; and, for a discussion of this text in the hands of German preachers, see Adolar Zumkeller, “Das Ungenügen der menschlichen Werke bei den deutschen Predigern des Spätmittelalters,” Zeitschrift für katholische Theologie 81 (1959): 265-305.

37. G 9, p. 190.

38. Pannenberg discusses nominalist theology after Scotus in terms of this dilemma: “Die Spaltung der nominalistichen Schule des 14. Jahrhunderts über der Prädestinationsfrage muss als ein Zurückfallen hinter den bei Duns Skotus schon erreichten Grad der Klärung dieses Problems angesehen werden. Die von Skotus als falsch erkannte Antithese zwischen Determinismus und Synergismus trat wieder hervor”; Prädestinationslehre, p. 144. Gerson attempts to recover this sense of a “falsely conceived antithesis,” which forced a choice in emphasis between divine and human initiative, perhaps by interpreting the latter within the divine covenant de potentia ordinata.

39. Again, see Pannenberg, Prädestinationslehre, pp. 118-119.: “Erst wenn man das Dilemma zwischen Determinismus und Synergismus als innerhalb der scholastischen Diskussion des Prädestinationsproblems unentrinnbar erkennt, wird man die Grosse der geistigen Leistung Duns Skotus darin würdigen können, dass er diesem Zwang nicht unterworfen hat.”

40. This represents a neat reversal of the position attributed to the members of the “Ockham/Biel circle”; see Oberman, Forerunners of the Reformation, p. 130: “The theologians of the school of William of Ockham … and Gabriel Biel rejected Scotus's doctrine of predestination while retaining his understanding of the merit de congruo.”

41. This passage occurs at several key points in the opening book; see G 9, pp. 188, 189, 197.

42. See Commentaria in Epistolam ad Romanos, in Ambrose, Opera Omnia, Patrologia Latina, ed. J.-P. Migne, vol. 17, p. 79. Oberman has argued that this text, imbedded within the Glossa ordinaria to Rom. 3:22, lies behind the facere quod in se est doctrine; Harvest of Medieval Theology, p. 132.

43. G 9, p. 199. Gerson defends such a covenant against the apparent contradiction lodged in the nominalist conviction that “God is debtor to no one” and thus “cannot be obligated by rational creatures” (ibid.). This approach confirms Ozment's interpretation of nominalism as “a science of the potentia Dei ordinata,” according to which “man's salvation depends upon God's fidelity to his promises, on the trustworthiness of the word behind the ‘system.’” See “Mysticism, Nominalism, and Dissent,” in Pursuit of Holiness, pp. 68, 80.

44. G 9, p. 196. Elsewhere, he comments that theologia leads us “miraculously, as it were, to our embracing through love the God of all consolation, to whom we also cling as if to a place of sure refuge [velut in locum refugii].”

45. As one measure of this thesis, see Gerson's correspondence with the archbishop of Prague, Conrad de Vechte, in which he confronts this problem with vigorous polemic; G 2, pp. 157-166; I address this in my larger study, Jean Gerson and ‘De Consolatione Theologiae,’ pp. 263-269.

46. For a detailed discussion of this trial, see Hefele, Histoire des conciles, vol. 16 (Paris, 1874), pp. 445-476, 487-531. An eyewitness account also survives in the Relatio de Mag. Joannis Hus Causa of Peter Mladonovice, as included in John Hus at the Council, ed. Matthew Spinka (New York, 1965), pp. 89-234.

47. See also Jean Gerson and ‘De Consolatione Theologiae,’ especially chaps. 2, 5, 6. And see G 9, p. 216-217: “Proinde multos invenimus ex haereticis, etiam hac tempestate, quos fefellit talis zelus,” and so on.

48. Hus emphasized “present righteousness,” following Gratian, as necessary for salvation and follows Augustine's rejection of the claim that any person with “present righteousness” must necessarily be among the elect: “Nam si quis predestinatus est ad vitam eternam consequentur infertur, ergo est predestinatus ad iusticiam. Et si consequitur vitam eternam, ergo consecutus est iusticiam, sed non convertitur, multi enim sunt participes in presenti iusticie, sed propter defectum perseverancie non fiunt participes vite eterne”; Tractatus de ecclesia, ed. S. H. Thomson (Cambridge, 1956), pp. 16-17; see also De penitentia 4.7-12; Friedberg, 1:1229. Peter Chelčický carried this argument to a further extreme, claiming that “in the saints, the righteousness commanded by God and predestination go together, and if a predestinated person keeps the righteousness commanded by God, he is then a member of the holy church”; cited in Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, vol. 4, Reformation of Church and Dogma (1300-1700) (Chicago, 1984), p. 85.

49. On this point, see also above, n. 40. Hus argued that the true church remained hidden from us and thus was finally unknowable in this life: “sancta mater ecclesia sit sibi tantum incognita hic in via, quia super isto stat meritum fidei christiane”; Tractatus de ecclesia, p. 37.

50. Gerson expressed this concern in an earlier letter; see G 2, p. 163. Pelikan confirms this interpretation, suggesting that pastoral concerns underlie Gerson's opposition to Hus; see Reformation of Church and Dogma, p. 92.

51. In this treatise Gerson applies the language of union found among medieval commentaries to the Song of Songs to describe justification: “At last I now seem to understand more of what I read in the writings of the devout. These authors speak of the entrance of the bride into the bridegroom's chambers, of her kiss of his mouth after having kissed his hands and feet, and of the dwelling place in the help of the most high [rather than] in an empty dwelling place of future punishments [or] in the timid, uncertain dwelling of one's own achievements”; G 9, p. 195. Others have described Gerson as an example of a “mystical nominalism”; Oberman, for example, suggested that for Gerson “mysticism and nominalism are ideal partners in a wholesome ‘mystical marriage’” (Harvest of Medieval Theology, p. 360), while Ozment prefers to speak of his thought as “nominalistic mysticism” (see “Mysticism, Nominalism, and Dissent,” pp. 67-77).

    See G 9, p. 190: “constituisset nobis justus judex Deus, per sacramentum reconciliationis unigeniti Filii sui Dei curiam primam et alteram, in quibus gratiam et misericordiam judices collocavit.” Froehlich has pointed out that those late medieval theologians who “followed Scotus in his strong emphasis on predestination as the necessary safeguard of God's sovereignty over the ordained order of salvation … were immediately drawn into a consideration of the place of Christ in this contingent plan and thus in the justification process”; see “Justification Language,” p. 161.

52. As Froehlich has pointed out, “late medieval mystics added [to the scholastic discussion of justification] a strong sense of paradox: mine, yet not mine; it understood the righteousness of God reaching human beings as an utterly divine reality, superior to anything the human virtue of justice may mean”; “Justification Language,” p. 156. Hägglund also addresses this point, noting that mystics spoke of justification as consisting in “man's becoming nothing and God's becoming all in man,” such that “the terminology of justification is … interchanged with the terminology of unity with God”; Luther's Doctrine of Justification, p. 10.

53. Gordon Leff, The Dissolution of the Medieval Outlook: An Essay on the Intellectual and Spiritual Change in the Fourteenth Century (New York, 1976), p. 119.

54. Gerson closes On the Consolation of Theology with this language, merging two Pauline phrases with his own gloss: “Fiat ita precor, et pax Dei quae exsuperat omnem sensum, custodiat corda et intelligentias nostras in caritate Dei, et patientia Christi, ut per patientiam et consolationem scripturarum spem habeamus. Amen”; G 9, p. 245.