The Catholic Worker, Dorothy Day, and Exemplary Anarchism^23the 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 deeds of spe-
cific 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 qual-
ity. 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 fac-
tum, rather than dictum,” a prioritization of praxis that the saints
shared—or so it was claimed—with Christ. As Larry Scanlon ex-
plains, “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 crea-
tures He was sent to redeem. Undoubtedly, the existence of these
similarities helped to make plausible the suggestion that the char-
acteristics and actions of God and Son stood in an exemplary re-
lation 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