Jean Gerson

Jean Charlier de Gerson (13 December 1363 – 12 July 1429) was a French scholar, educator, reformer, and poet, Chancellor of the University of Paris, a guiding light of the conciliar movement and one of the most prominent theologians at the Council of Constance. He was one of the first thinkers to develop what would later come to be called natural rights theory, and was also one of the first individuals to defend Joan of Arc and proclaim her supernatural vocation as authentic.

Aged fourteen, he left Gerson-lès-Barby to study at the college of Navarre in Paris under Gilles Deschamps, (Aegidius Campensis) and Pierre d'Ailly (Petrus de Alliaco), who became his life-long friend.