The Hi, I'm Peter Adamson, and you're listening to the History of Philosophy Podcast.

Brought to you with the support of the philosophy department at King's College London and the LMU in Munich online at history of philosophy.net.

Today's episode, The Most Christian Doctor, Jean Gerson.

Our tour through medieval intellectual culture is reaching its final stops as we approach the year 1400,

and thus the date I've somewhat artificially chosen to mark the boundary between

medieval and Renaissance philosophy. To make sure you realize how artificial that boundary is, in these

last few episodes of the current series I'll be looking at

figures and movements that span the divide between the 14th and 15th centuries.

We'll be seeing anticipations of Renaissance humanism and of the religious controversies that ultimately

gave rise to the Protestant Reformation. But around 1400 people were also looking back. They continued

to take inspiration from earlier scholastics like Aquinas,

Scotus, and Occam, and texts that were more than a century old were the late medieval equivalent of

bestsellers. One of them was The Romance of the Rose. Normally when I allude

to topics covered in long previous episodes, I worry that listeners will struggle to remember what

I'm talking about, but I suspect you'll have no trouble,

recalling this ironic, artful, and occasionally obscene production of the late 13th century poet Jean de Moon.

The occasional obscenity was one reason for the so-called

Carol de la Rose, a famous debate over the romance of the rose that was sparked at the close

of the 14th century. It involved about half a dozen members of the French aristocracy with various connections

to the French court and in the person of Jean Gresson, the Chancellor of the University of

Paris. He was scandalized by the poem's enthusiastic embrace of erotic

conquest, its use of naughty language, and even naughtier metaphors to describe the sexual organs.

...