Supplement to the Glossary of the Romance of the Rose

A ij

against the fair Sex; it was to refute it that he composed a work in verse titled the Champion of Ladies, which he dedicated to Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy.

The famous Gerson, Chancellor of the University of Paris (b), believed that reading the Romance of the Rose was dangerous: he fought it with a treatise more solid than that of Martin Franc, under the title Treatise of Master Jean Gerson against the Romance of the Rose, which, by a certain little book, incited men of both stations toward illicit venus and libidinous love. original: Tractatus Magistri Joannis Gerson, contra Romantium de Rosa, qui ad illicitam venerem, & libidinosum amorem, utriusque statûs homines quodam libello excitabat Jean Gerson (1363–1429) was a prominent French scholar and reformer who famously participated in the "Querelle du Roman de la Rose," a literary debate over the poem's morality.

He went further; he passed a judgment against those who were its authors similar to that of Doctor Jean Raulin concerning the Romance of Ogier the Dane (c), Jean Raulin (1443–1514) was a celebrated preacher known for his stern moralizing. Ogier the Dane was a popular heroic epic which Raulin apparently found as morally distracting as Gerson found the Rose. claiming that they are no less damned than Judas, provided they died without having repented for having brought such compositions to light: Gerson’s terms are too remarkable not to be reported.

If I were to possess the Romance of the Rose, and it were the only one in existence, and worth twenty sesterces, or... original: Si mihi sit Romantius Rosa, qui & unicus extet, & viginti sestertiis, sive A sesterce was an ancient Roman coin; here, Gerson uses the term to imply a significant monetary value.

(b) Baillet, Judgment of the Scholars, vol. 4. part. 3.
(c) Naudé, Apology for Great Men Suspected of Magic.