In this historical reconstruction, a jurist, physician, and scholar from the early fifteenth century takes center stage. Through a self-written narrative, Ruud van Erve brings the political, juridical, and religious developments of that period to life. The text is written from the perspective of the main character and forms an extensive interpretation of the life and world of a late medieval scholar.
Hail reader.
Although you do not know me, I wish to write these things to you.
I assume you do not have a good command of the Latin language, so I will continue in lingua franca.
I stand before you now, representatives of the Bishop of Utrecht, close to my birthplace.
Although the city has not changed much, there are few left whom I still know, or who know me.
Perhaps it is good if I tell you what the reason is that I address you and how it came to this.
The Bishop of Utrecht asked me to address you, his jurists and doctors of medicine, to inform you of the most recent developments in the course of justice that are occurring in our world. That this request was made to me in particular is understandable since for some time I have been traveling the known world to study the juridical systems of different countries and regions and to advise the lords and princes.
This study journey was born in Bologna at the Alma Mater where I enjoyed a long-standing appointment as professor of law and medicine, where I have particularly devoted myself to the study of Roman law, which is strongly gaining prominence among the present princes and judiciary.
I received an invitation from the Bishop several years ago during the Council of Konstanz, where the struggle between the Popes was discussed. When the council ended in 1418 with a decision to elect Martinus as pope and to depose both Gregorius and Benedictus and Johannes, and while I was preparing to join John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, in Paris, Bishop Frederik of Blankenheim asked me to also visit Utrecht to examine the political and juridical state of affairs and to assist in resolving the existing disputes within the Diocese and to take a position with regard to the increasingly expanding sect of Geert de Groote, who was born in my native city.
Unfortunately, Bishop Frederik died two years later at the age of 80 years, and since then a struggle has arisen between the lords Rudolf van Diepholt, provost of Osnabrück and Rhabbanus of Speyer, who is supported by the only legitimate Pope Martinus, but whom dean provost Zweder van Kuilenburg appointed as Bishop of Utrecht. Only very recently, in August of the year of our Lord 1425, this Zweder entered the city, had excommunication pronounced over Rudolf and expelled his followers, the Lichtenbergers from the city. An alliance with Philip of Burgundy and Arnold of Gelre is, perhaps you are not yet aware of this, forthcoming. Bishop Zweder values the opinion of the council above the decisions of the Pope alone and has therefore upheld the invitation that Frederik extended to me.
Perhaps the entire course of events makes your head spin and some clarification is in order.
It is important that you realize what my position is in these times and what path I have walked to be permitted to speak in your presence and to advise the Bishop.
On All Saints' Day in the year of our Lord 1364 I was born in Deventer. My father was a merchant who sailed on the North Sea, especially to Norway.
In Deventer, the government was in the hands of the guilds, with the Bergen Traders being the most influential group. I grew up in prosperity and had little or no hindrance from the influence of the Bishop of Utrecht, who indeed possessed a cathedral and had enclosed part of the city, within which ecclesiastical law applied, but the rest of the city paid little attention to ecclesiastical influence.
Geert Groote, who was also born in Deventer, was able to develop his humanistic ideas precisely because of that relatively limited influence of the church in our native city.
For me, the education at the Latin school was of great value. There I learned to read and write.
Only from my 4th year onwards did I first attend the small school, which had been established and managed by the City Authorities, where I began to learn the rudiments of reading and writing, but also the more commercial skills, which my father naturally found very important, arithmetic, accounting, and public speaking.
The Latin school in Deventer, which I attended from my 7th year onwards, was indeed a cathedral school but nevertheless, under the influence of the city government, not only aimed at grammar, rhetoric, and logic, the trivium, but where arithmetic and accounting also held an important place. Because Geert Groote meanwhile involved himself with education, the teaching was permeated with the study of books and less under the influence of scholastics who only allowed themselves to be appointed in order to collect the income from it.
In 1370 Pope Gregorius XI, the successor of Urbanus, decided to return to Rome from Avignon. This ultimately happened in 1376, after which, two years later, Clemens VII was appointed as antipope in Avignon under the protection of King Charles V of France. The Schism was born.
Meanwhile, I had completed my schooling at the Latin school and at my 9th year I had graduated with distinction and decided to depart for the University of Bologna to continue my studies in theology, law, and medicine.
1374, however, was a fearful year. After everyone thought the Black Death had been conquered, we received news that cases were again being established in Italy.
Because Bologna was thus in the danger zone, we decided it was wiser to first travel to Paris to study at the University there.
That University was indeed much more ecclesiastical and stricter in dogmatics, but that had relatively little influence on the medicine and law faculties.
6 years after starting the study of the 7 liberal arts I obtained my baccalaureate and a year later I took the oath as magister of the liberal arts to be able to give the regular lessons.
Therefore, in 1382 I could start as magister artes as a professor of the liberal arts and meanwhile begin my study in jurisprudence and medicine……
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