the self-replicating quality of exempla, in which present exempla spawn future exempla by referring back to past exempla (even Christ Himself referred back to the “perfection” of the “heavenly Father”).[14] The proliferation of stories of saints in the Middle Ages attested to the potency of the exemplary idea, particularly among laypeople, for whom the vividness of a saintly example offered a concrete means of engaging with the teachings of the Church. In these stories, Christian principles were not transmitted in a dry, legalistic manner but instead embodied and dramatized in order to produce a visceral impact. It is probable, however, that the concretization of exemplarity in the tangible of specific persons whose humanness was less in question than Christ’s owed its appeal not only to its ability to make Christian doctrine more accessible, but to its vaguely subversive, anti-clerical quality. The exempla presented instances of self-sacrificing religious authenticity—sometimes associated with figures outside of the Church hierarchy—that were often meant to contrast with the privileged and hypocritical lives led by many Church officials. The exempla celebrated individual integrity rather than institutional position, proposing that individual holiness be judged on the basis of the way of life one adopted rather than the external trappings of religious authority. Accordingly, medieval authors like Chaucer and Gower placed emphasis on exemplarity “as doing, as factum, rather than dictum,” a prioritization of praxis that the saints shared—or so it was claimed—with Christ. As Larry Scanlon explains, “If even Christ’s dicta depend on his facta, then the textual authority of the clergy must always be secondary to their actual piety as a group of historical individuals.” By this measure, most clergy did not merit the level of respect bestowed upon them."[15]
As has already been demonstrated, there were always grounds within the Christian tradition for putting stress on the similarities between God and His creation, between God’s son and the creatures He was sent to redeem. Undoubtedly, the existence of these similarities helped to make plausible the suggestion that the characteristics and actions of God and Son stood in an exemplary relation to humanity, providing targets for aspiration and guides for action rather than being prohibitively transcendent. Nevertheless, until the rise of the mendicant orders in the 13th century, there
