Was John the victim of his cousin’s treachery, or had he at length been taken in his own net? In a word, was he slain by the Dauphin in self-defence? Such the latter averred to be the case, and there is this much in favour of his assertion—Juvenal des Ursins, the most reliable and impartial historian of his century, gives credence to it. So too Olivier of Dixmude, who relates the following anecdote:—
One night, towards the hour of matins, about a month after Philippe’s murder, whilst the Duke of Burgundy was staying at Ypres, a strange and lurid light appeared in the air over the cloister of St. Martin, where he was lodged. Thither ran a host of citizens from all quarters of the town, thinking that the place was on fire, but they soon perceived the true cause thereof—a dragon hovering over the Duke’s chamber, which suddenly turned his flaming dart on himself and so disappeared, and, Olivier adds, even thus did John the Fearless die—in a plot of his own hatching.
When in the year 1408 Duke John the Fearless, glorying in the crime he had committed, and vaunting it as an act of virtue, was heaping wealth and favours on the shameless friar who, as he cynically avowed, for gold and the hope of more gold had made himself his apologist, there was one man who ventured to lift up his voice in protest; this man was Jean de Gerson, erst chaplain to Philip the Hardy, and since 1394 Dean of the great Collegiate Church of St. Donatian’s at Bruges.
Burning with indignation at the bloody deed and at the sophistry of the priest who had dared to defend it, he publicly proclaimed Petit’s doctrine anent tyrannicide to be false, scandalous and heretical, and never rested until he had prevailed on the Bishop of Paris to condemn it as such. The Duke of Burgundy was furious, and gave orders for Gerson’s arrest, but the Dean had received timely warning, and when the pursuivants came to seize him they found their quarry flown. He had eluded pursuit by concealing himself among the rafters between the vault and the roof of Notre Dame. Presently he succeeded in leaving Paris, and in due course, after many hairbreadth adventures, reached German soil. Whereupon John declared him legitimately dispossessed of his deanery (May 27, 1411), and appealed to Pope John XXIII., one of the three claimants to the Papal throne, who, after having appointed a commission to examine the case, quashed the Paris decision. But the intrepid Dean of Bruges would not suffer the matter to rest here; he, in his turn, appealed to the Council of Constance, and with such good effect that ‘Master’ Petit’s theories were unanimously condemned, and though the Duke of Burgundy had sufficient credit with the assembled fathers to prevent the name of his favourite from appearing in the condemnation, all those who obstinately maintained his opinions were declared to be heretics, and ordered to be dealt with as such in accordance with Canon law.
As long as John lived, Gerson remained in Germany, but when at length his enemy was called to his account, he took up his abode at Lyons, where the chief delight of his declining years was to teach little children. He died in 1429, and the men of Lyons called him a saint. Be this as it may, he feared not to withstand, for justice sake, the fiercest tyrant in Christendom. It was chiefly owing to his efforts that the schism which for so many years had rent Christ’s seamless garment was at length healed; he was a brilliant scholar, a kindly, gentle, God-fearing man, perhaps the author of The Imitation, and unquestionably the greatest divine of the age in which he lived. The life of John de Gerson was not then spent in vain, and Flemings may well be proud of the Frenchman whom Philip the Hardy set over the time-honoured church of Bruges.
