Meanwhile in 1395 the national assembly of France and the French clergy adopted the programme of the university—cession or a general council. The movement gathered strength. In 1398 most of the cardinals and most of the. crowned heads in Europe had given their adhesion to the plan. Dining this period Gerson's literary activity was untiring, and the throb of public expectancy, of hope and fear, is i'cvcalul in his multitude of pamphlets. At tizst there. were hopes of a settlement by way of cession. These come out in Protest. suprr station ccclcsiaz (ii. 1), Traci. do mode lubeuh' sc tempura schismatis, De Schisnmtc, 82c. But soon the conduct of the popes made Europe impatient, and the desire for _a general council grew strong—see Dc Concilio gcrwrali minis obedi- c ‘tii c (ii. 24). The council was resolved upon. I It was to meet at l’isa, and Gerson poured forth tract after tract for its grudance. The most important are—Trilogus in maicria Schisnum's (n. 83), and Do unitalc Ecclcsuc (ii. 113), in which, following D'Ailly (see 'l‘sehackert’s Peter 1'. Ailli, p. 153), Gerson demonstrates that the ideal unity of the church, based upon Christ, destroyed by the popes, can only be restored by a general council, supreme aml legiti- mate, though unsurnmoned by a pope. The council met, deposed both anti-popes, and elected Alexander V. Gerson was chosen to address the new pope on the duties of his office. He did so in his b’crmo comm A Icrtuzdro Papa. in die asconsio-nis in concilio Pisano (ii. 131). All hopes of reformation, however, were qucnched by the conduct of the new pope. He had been a Franciscan, and loved his order above measure. He issued a bull which laid the parish clergy and the univcrsities at the mercy of the mendicants. The great university of Paris rose in revolt, headcd by her chancellor, who wrote a fierce parnphlet—Ccnsum professorum in ilwologia circa bullam Alexamlri V. (ii. 442). The pope died soon after, and One of the most profligate men of that time, Pope John XXIII. (Balthasar Cossa) was elected his sueeessor. The council of Pisa had not brought peace; it had only added a third pope. D'Ailly despaired of general councils (see his De (liflicultatc refomna- tionis in concilio universali), but Gerson struggled on. Another matter too had roused him. The feuds between the houses of Orleans and Burgundy had long distracted France. The duke of Orleans had been foully and treacherously murdered by the followers of the duke of Burgundy, and a theologian, John Petit, had publicly and unambiguously justified the murder. His eight verities, as he called them—his apologics for the murder—had been, mainly through the influence of Gerson, condemned by the university of Paris, and by the archbishop and grand inquisitor, and his book had been publicly burned before the cathedral of Notre Dame. Gerson wished a council to confirm this sentence. IIis literary labours were as untiring as ever. He maintained in a series of tracts that a general council could depose a pope ; he drew up indietments against the reigning pontitl's, reiterated the eharges against John Petit, and exposed the sin of sehism—in short, he did all he could to direct the public mind towards the evils in the church and the way to heal them. His efforts were powerfully seconded by the emperor Sigismund, and the result was the council of Constance. This council, unlike its predecessor at Pisa, was summoned by a pope—Pope John XXIII. Sigismund was present, resolutely determined to unite and reform the church, and guided by Cardinals D'Ailly and Zarabella, and above all by Gerson. Gerson indeed practically ruled the Council up to the election of a new pope. It was he that dictated the form of submission and cession made by John XXIII., and directed the process against Huss. Many of Gerson’s biographers have found it difficult to reconcile his proceedings against Huss with his own opinions upon the supremacy of the pope; but the difficulty has arisen partly from misunderstanding Ger-son’s position, partly from supposing him to be the author of a famous tract—Dc modis unicndi ac nfor- vvwmli ecclesiam in concilio universali. All Gerson’s high-sound- ing phrases about the supremaey of a council were meant to apply to some time of emergency. He was essentially a trimmer, and can scarcely be called a reformer. He never wrote the bold tract of Abbot Andrew 0f Randolf (cf. Schwabe, Johamws Gerson, p. 483—491), and he hated Huss with all the hatred the trimmer has of the reformer. The couneil of Constance, which revealed the eminence of Gerson, became in the end the cause of his downfall. He was the pro- secutor in the case of John Petit, and the council, overawed by the duke of Burgundy, would not affirm the censure of the university and archbishop of Paris. Petit’sjustification of murder was declared to be onlya moral and philosophical opinion, notof faith. Theutmost length the council wor d ro wastocondemn one proposition, and even this censure was annullc by the new pope, Martin V., on a formal pretext. Gerson dared not return to France, where, in the disturbed state of the kingdom, the duke of Burgundy was in power. He lay hid for a time in Germany, and then returned to France, to Lyons, where his brother was prior of the Celestines. It is said that he taught a school of boys and girls in Lyons, and that the only fee he cxacted was to make the children promise to repeat the prayer, “ Lord, have mercy on thy poor servant Gerson." Hislater years were spent in writing books of mystical devotion and hymns. He died at Lyons on July 12, 1429. Tradition declares that during his sojourn there be translated or adapted from the Latin a work upon eternal consolation, which afterwards became very famous under the title of The Imitation of Christ, and was attributed to Thomas a Kempis. llecent researches, however, have proved beyond a doubt that the famous Imitatio Christi was really written by Thomas, and not by John Gerson or the Abbot Gerscn.
The literature on Gerson is very abundant. See anin, GI reuni- amt, including 'ila G'crsoni, prefixed to the edition of (lei-son's works in 5 vols. (‘01., from which quotations have here been made ; Charles Schmidt, Essai sm- Jean Gerson, C/iaacclicr dc l’L'nirrrsit- dc I’aris, Strasbnrg, 1839; Schwabe, Johannes Gerson, Wurzburg. 1859. On the relations between (lerson and D’.\illy, see Paul Tschackert, I’clcr Ton Ailli, Gotha, 1877. On the authorship of the Imitatio Christi, see the editions of Dibdcn, Gcmc, and Kcttlc- well. On Gerson’s public life, see also histories of the councils of Pisa and Constance, especially llerm. v. der IIardt, Con. Con- stanticnsis libriIV., 1695—9.
GERSONIDES, or Ben Gerson, Levi, a distinguished Jewish philosopher and commentator, was born at Bagnolu in Languedoc, towards the close of the 13th century, probably in 1288. As in the case of the other Jewish writers on philosophy during the Middle Ages, extremely little is known of his life. His family had been distinguished for piety and exegetical skill, but though he was known in the Jewish community by commentaries on certain books of the Bible, he never seems to have accepted any Rabbinical post. Possibly the freedom of his opinions, which drew on him the suspicion of infidelity, may have put obstacles in the way of his preferment. He is known to have been at Avignon and Orange during his life, and is believed to have died at Perpiguan in 1370. Part of his writings consist of connnentaries on the portions of Aristotle then known, or rather of commentaries on the commentaries of Averroes. Some of these are printed in the early Latin editions of Aristotle’s works. His most important treatise, that by which he has a place in the history of philosophy, is entitled Jlil/iamoth Adonai (The \Vars of God), and is said to have occupied twelve years in composition. A portion of it, con- taining an elaborate survey of astronomy as known to the Arabs, was translated into Latin in 1342 at the request of Clement VI. The .111 il/iamoth is throughout modelled after the plan of the great work of Jewish philosophy, the Jlo-ré Nebuc/iim of Moses Maimonides, and may be regarded as an elaborate criticism from the more philosophical point of view (mainly Averroistic) of orthodoxy as presented in that work. The six books pass in review the doctrine of the soul, in which Gersonides defends the theory of impersonal reason as mediating between God and man, and explains the formation of the higher reason ( or acquired intellect, as it was called) in humanity,—his view being thoroughly realist and resembling that of Ibn Gebirol (see Avicebron); (2) prophecy; (3) and (4) God’s knowledge of facts and providence, in which is advanced the curious theory that God does not know individual facts, and that, while there is general providence for all, special providence only extends to those whose reason has been enlightened ; (5) celestial substances, treating of the strange spiritual hierarchy which the Jewish philosophers of the Middle Ages accepted from the N eo-Platonists and the Pseudo-Dionysius, and also giving, along with astronomical details, much of astrological theory; (6) creation and miracles, in respect to which Gerson deviates widely from the orthodox position of Maimonides.
A careful analysis of the Millwmolh is given in Rabbi Isidore VVeil’s I’hilosophic Pwll'gieuse do Lévi-Ben-Gcrson, Paris, 1868. See also Mnnk, Mélanges dc Phil. Juice ct Aruba ; and J oel, Religions-philosoph'ic d. L. Ben-06mm, 1862. The fililhamoth was published in 1560 at Riva di 'l‘rcnto, and has been republished at. Leipsic, 1866.
a most extensive popularity as a novelist and a writer of travels both at home and abroad, was born at Hamburg on 10th May 1816. Having lost his father at the age of nine,
he was placed under the guardianship of an uncle at