Page:The Waning of the Middle Ages (1924).djvu/127

 When Pierre Col had refuted one of Gerson's polemical writings, the latter replied by a treatise against the Roman de la Rose, which was more bitter than his former denunciations. He dated it "from my study, on the evening of the 18th of May, 1402."

Following the example of the author of the Roman de la Rose he gave his treatise the form of an allegoric vision. Awakening, one morning, he feels his soul flying far away, "using the feathers and the wings of various thoughts, from one place to another, to the sacred court of Christianity," where he hears the complaints of Chastity addressed to Justice, Conscience and Wisdom about the Fool of love, that is to say, Jean de Meun, who has chased her from the earth, with all her train. The "good guardians" of Chastity are precisely the evil personages of the Rose: Shame, Fear and Danger, "the good porter, who would not dare, who would not deign to sanction even an impure kiss or dissolute look, or attractive smile or light speech." Chastity overwhelms the Fool of love with reproaches. The Fool rails at marriage and monastic life. He teaches "how all young girls should sell their persons early and dearly, without fear and without shame, and that they should make light of deceit and perjury." He directs the fancy exclusively to carnal desire, and, to top all perversity, in the speeches of Venus, of Nature, and of Dame Reason, he blends conceptions of Paradise, and of the mysteries of the Faith, with those of sensual pleasure.

There, in truth, was the peril. This imposing work, with its mixture of sensuality, scoffing cynicism and elegant symbolism, infused a voluptuous mysticism into the mind which, to an austere man, was simply an abyss of sin. Had not Gerson's adversary dared to affirm that only the Fool of love could judge of the value of passion? He who does not know it sees it only as in a glass, to him it remains a riddle. Such was the use he had made for his sacrilegious purposes, of the holy words of Saint Paul! Pierre Col had not scrupled to affirm that the Song of Solomon was composed in honour of the daughter of Pharaoh. Those who have defamed the Roman de la Rose, he declared, have bent their knees before Baal. Nature does not wish that woman should be content with one single man, and the genius of Nature is God. He carried his blasphemy so far as