“Panser d’or en avant a vous meismez seulement”: le récit du moi comme ressort de l’expression en langue vulgaire chez Jean Gerson

Abstract

This article examines a group of interconnected

texts written in bilingual version (Latin-French) by Jean

Gerson between 1405 and 1408, as an example of the impact

that the exercise of introspection had on late- medieval

doctrinal expression. Although writing both in Latin

and in the vernacular is not unusual during the Middle

French period (1330-1500), Gerson is one of the rare authors

of this period to render a bilingual version of one

and the same work. The letter he addressed to Philippe de

Mézières shortly before the latter’s death along with a

collection of treatises on ars moriendi offer a privileged

framework to examine the way bilingualism operates and

the reasons leading to it. That the use of the vernacular

responds to pastoral preoccupations regarding the laity is

well attested in the Middle Ages; less obvious within a

context of clerical elitism is the hypothesis according to

which the vernacular responds to a penitential approach

freed from all logic of subordination. In this perspective,

the choice of the vernacular would be dictated by a discipline

of introspection seeking moral perfection.