ABSTRACT
Given the wide familiarity of John Gower’s reputation as a Christian moralist, the title of this chapter may very likely require some measure of clarification at the outset. 1 Nothing in the following pages, certainly, will challenge the overall truth of that identification. Gower believed unquestioningly in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, in the creation and the fall of man and woman as described in the Bible and by the Fathers, in the power of Christ to effect miracles, and in the efficacious empathy of the Virgin Mary. 2 He understood that at its end every earthly human life would be weighed according to the quality both of its faith and of its deeds, and an immortal soul assigned either to timeless joy or eternal sadness based upon that assessment. He considered the Church, its true teachings, and teachers to be indispensable to achieving salvation – and as a loyal Englishman for him that Church was located not in Avignon, but in Rome.
