6 - The Deadly Sins and Contemplative Politics: Gerson’s Ordering of the Personal and Political Realms

Summary

Jean Gerson adapted the pastoral and monastic deadly sins traditions in order to create an authoritative voice for himself in his court sermons. He did this by identifying the University of Paris with the Holy Spirit or the embodiment of virtue and the university’s enemies with the seven deadly sins. This strategy reflected his understanding of the university’s role as the fountain of truth for Christian Europe. It also, however, invited his audience to consider the university closely for the purpose of discerning whether it served sin or virtue. The relationship between the evolution of Gerson’s understandings of the deadly sins and the political and intellectual contexts in which he deployed the deadly sins tradition demonstrates how Gerson simultaneously crafted his arguments to fit the needs of particular audiences while constantly revising a seemingly coherent theological understanding of the relationship between intellectual authority and the anatomy of the soul.

Modern scholars have recognized the fifteenth-century theologian and chancellor of the University of Paris, Jean Gerson (1363–1429), as an important contributor to the medieval tradition of the seven deadly sins. Gerson addressed the deadly sins in his handbooks for parish priests, his sermons to the laity and his theological treatises. He also deployed the deadly sins tradition insermons he delivered before the French royal court addressing issues that may be characterized as primarily political rather than pastoral, such as the papal schism and the civil strife among the French nobility. A comparison of Gerson’s various deployments of the seven deadly sins, moreover, suggests that a potent cross-fertilization occurred between his pastoral, political and theological works which encouraged him to reinforce and elaborate upon his previous deployments of the sins in each subsequent deployment. As a result, his treatment of the sins in his pastoral and political works seems to have influenced his understanding of the university-trained theologian’s role as an agent of reform in the Church and realm. This constant elaboration on the sins explains how Gerson, who wrote most of his works to address particular institutional and political issues, can also be understood as a systematic thinker; at the same time, it demonstrates the centrality of the sins to late medieval pastoral, political and intellectual thought.

Gerson’s treatments of the seven deadly sins simultaneously express his theological and political aims.