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Ethics and Power in Medieval English Reformist Writing (review)

Before there can be reform, there must be blame. Edwin D. Craun’s Ethics and Power in Medieval English Reformist Writing explores the pastoral roots of rebuke and its important role in the history of ecclesiastical and political reform in late medieval England. Under what circumstances, and by what methods, is it appropriate to criticize a family member, a neighbor, a professional associate, or even a superior? What authority licenses a would-be corrector, and what motivations should guide the decision to speak out? How does legitimate rebuke distinguish itself from hypocrisy? How do hierarchies affect systems of censure: Should superiors be subject to criticism by their subordinates? All of these questions, Craun shows, not only vexed medieval writers concerned with the moral and ethical obligations of living in Christian community but nourished rich and varied responses that recur with surprising frequency across a range of discursive genres. Specifically, Craun’s study uncovers the relatively unexplored discourse of fraternal correction, a practice rooted in the thirteenth-century pastoral reform movement and authorized by biblical injunctions, none so crucial as Matthew 18:15–17: “But, if your brother shall offend against you, go and rebuke him.” Craun’s book reveals that far from a purely clerical practice, fraternal correction constitutes a “fluid cultural resource” for reform-minded writers—lay as well as clerical—through the era of Wyclif and the Lancastrian counteroffensive of the fifteenth century (2). Indeed, Craun suggests, its precepts were so ubiquitous, filtering down even to the laity, that the discourse of correction might be not only cited but “critically redeployed” in the hands of reformists like Margery Kempe (145). Craun’s first two chapters establish the basis of fraternal correction in pastoral works composed prior to 1375—in compendia like Ranulph Higden’s Speculum curatorum and in Latin and, less frequently, English sermons—laying the groundwork for his analysis of specific fourteenthand fifteenth-century texts in the book’s later chapters. In tracing fraternal correction to the pastoral movement, Craun challenges the Foucauldian