THE LITERATURE ON SIN

In every one of his sixty extant vernacular sermons Gerson discusses sin. The same is true of his vernacular treatises. Sin is always in the picture and usually in a fairly central position. This is not, of course, surprising, when one recalls the great importance he attaches to the sacrament of penance – and the need for complete confession within that sacrament – in the life of the viator. He is by no means peculiar in giving sin such strong and central emphasis in his pastoral teaching. Sin and the sacrament of penance loom large in the sermons of many other preachers of the period and, of course, in the Summae confessorum and manuals for parish priests. Basically Gerson's emphasis is typical of what some historians have seen as a sin-ridden, neurosis-creating late medieval religion, one of whose major purposes was social control. But, whatever the result – and this is not easy to assess – in Gerson's case at least the conscious purpose behind his teaching on sin is not to create neurosis or achieve social control, but rather to console and bring about the reconciliation of the sinner with God.

The chancellor's attitude almost certainly influenced a large number of clergy in the later Middle Ages, for his treatise on the subjects of sin and confession had, even more than his other writings, a very wide readership. The Opus tripartitum, for example, a vernacular work chiefly concerned with these subjects, had achieved an almost quasi-official status by the beginning of the sixteenth century. At least sixteen different printings of the'work had been made by 1500.