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Tractatus de Mystica Theologica . 2 Volumes. By Nicholas Kempf. Edited by Karl Jellowschek, Jeanne Barbet and Francois Ruello. Analecta Cartusiana, no. 9 Salzburg: Analecta Cartusiana, 1973. 1: xvi + 574 pp. 64 DM each.

This book was Father Pascoe's doctoral dissertation written under the direction of Gerhart B. Ladner. Its originality appears at two points: application of the Ladner methodology to this major figure of the late medieval church, and concentration on Jean Gerson's ideology of reform rather than upon his practical proposals for reform. The fundamental concepts of this study are simple. Pascoe's outline is clear, his writing is lucid, his documentation is thorough and convincing. If there is a significant break in the argument it is where Gerson insists that the papacy is an essential part of the ecclesiastical hierarchy ordained by Christ, yet views it as having almost no value in the work of reform. That weakness is noted by Pascoe but he fails to pursue its implications. The Paris Chancellor's reform principles were grounded in conservative scholastic orthodoxy. The essential dynamic of his thought was the concept of hierarchy. The proper functions of hierarchy wene purgation, illumination and perfection. These resulted in conditions of charity, union and peace, culminating in the growth and edification of the church as Christ's mystical body. The purpose of healing the Great Schism was to restore the hierarchy, the essence of the church. As his ecclesiology was hierarchic so Gerson's rationale for reform was drawn from the application of the three kinds of law which govern the church: divine, natural and positive. He argued that in the present crisis a general council did not need papal sanction to have legal validity. In fact the council was the place par excellence where hierarchical functions found their most complete expression, because there all elements of the hierarchy were present. Gerson showed how theologians, bishops, clergy and laity were to participate in church reform. There was little for the laity to do as he saw it. They were less a part of the church because they did not possess hierarchical powers. Gerson was confident of the possibilities of changfe within the established system of hierarchy and order. That optimism rested on his conviction that the Holy Spirit was the conservative and reformative semen vivificum et reformativum, which worked through the hierarchy to form and reform the entire church. In sum, Jean Gerson's principles of church reform were triadic in structure, conservative in content and irenic in tone. His work manifested a conscientious, sensitive theologian seeking simultaneously to be loyal to the ecclesiastical tradition and open to the new demands of his historical moment.