Introduction: Gendering Gerson

Abstract

Jean Gerson and Gender provides a crucial corrective to current treatments of one of the most influential late medieval intellectuals: the theologian, court preacher, university chancellor, and church reformer, Jean Gerson (d. 1429). Gerson left behind an impressive but somewhat enigmatic legacy that provided foundational contributions to two historical developments: the promotion of rational and just government, and the development of the European concept of the witch. By applying gender as a critical lens for understanding Gerson’s political strategies, this book brings together these two strands of scholarship. I argue that Gerson relied upon gendered language and misogynist polemics as a means of authenticating his interventions into church and royal politics. For this reason, and for the central role that Gerson played in political, religious, and intellectual histories of his period, examining in detail the forces that encouraged him to employ misogynist arguments and shaped the means by which he employed them promises to shed light upon the late medieval and early modern persistent belief that intellectual and political authority were best exercised by men.1