"MAN PROPOSES, BUT GOD DISPOSES."
(Vol. viii., p. 552.; Vol. ix., p. 87.)
1. If your correspondent H. P. will again examine my communication on this subject, he will find that I have not overlooked the view which attributes the De Imitatione to John Gerson, but have expressly referred to it.
2. If Gerson was the author, this will not prove that in quoting the proverb in question, Piers Ploughman quoted from the De Imitatione, as H. P. supposes. The dates which I gave will show this. The Vision was written about A.D. 1362, whereas, according to Du Pin, John Gerson was born December 14, 1363, took a prominent part in the Council of Constance, 1414, and died in 1429. Of the Latin writers of the fifteenth century, Mosheim says:
"At their head we may justly place John Gerson, Chancellor of the University of Paris, the most illustrious ornament that this age can boast of, a man of great influence and authority, whom the Council of Constance looked upon an its oracle, the lovers of liberty as their patron, and whose memory is yet precious to such among the French clergy as are at all zealous for the maintenance of their privileges against papal despotism."—Ecc. Hist., cent. xv. ch. ii. sec. 24.
3. Gerson was not a Benedictine monk, but a Parisian curé, and Canon of Notre Dame:
"He was made curate (curé, parson or rector) of St. John's, in Greve, on the 29th of March, 1408, and continued so to 1413, when in a sedition raised by the partizans of the Duke of Burgundy, his house was plundered by the mob, and he obliged to fly into the church of Notre Dame, where he continued for some time concealed."—Du Pin, History of the Church, cent. xv. ch. viii.
It is said that the treatise in question first appeared—
"Appended to a MS. of Gerson's De Consolatione Theologiæ, dated 1421. This gave rise to the supposition that he was the real author of that celebrated work; and indeed it is a very doubtful point whether this opinion is true or not, there being several high authorities which ascribe to him the authorship of that book."—Knight's Penny Cyclopædia, vol. vi. art. "Gerson."
Was there then another John Gerson, a monk, and Abbot of St. Stephen, between 1200 and 1240, to whom, as well as to the above, the De Imitatione has been ascribed? This, though not impossible, appears extremely improbable. Is H. P. prepared with evidence to prove it?