Henry M. Baird · 76 of 379

CHAPTER I · John Gerson.

Nicholas de Clemangis, Rector of the University of Paris, subsequently private secretary of Benedict the Thirteenth at Avignon, and perhaps the most elegant writer of his age, drew a startling picture of the wretched state of the church at the beginning of the fifteenth century. No writer had ever described more vividly the corruption of the convents and monasteries, or denounced more unsparingly the unfaithfulness and impurity of the parish clergy, and the simony pervading alike all grades of the hierarchy. His censure was the more effective because he spoke in sorrow rather than in anger. John Gerson, his contemporary and friend, who reached the eminent position of chancellor of the university, was not less bold in stigmatizing the same evils, while the weight of his authority was even greater. So far, however, was he from grasping the nature and need of a substantial renovation of the existing religious belief, that to his influence in no inconsiderable measure was due the perfidious condemnation and execution of the great Bohemian forerunner of the Reformation, John Huss. The student of mediæval history may be inclined to smile at the subtilties of scholastic distinctions, but he is also compelled to lament the fact that the death of a Realist was greeted with demonstrations of evident satisfaction by a philosopher belonging to the opposite school of the Nominalists.