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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 February 2016
As has been remarked often enough, Lollardy was the first real English heresy, and its progenitor, John Wyclif, inspired what Anne Hudson has so rightly termed a ‘premature Reformation’, a reformation which had far more immediate impact in Hussite Bohemia, but in England left Wyclif for a century and a half as a voice crying in the wilderness, a prophet without honour in his own country. Since history is usually studied backwards, his name is most commonly associated with the alleged eucharistic heresy condemned at the Blackfriars Council of May 1382. This was more significant for its timing than its substance. The actual charges were not only a distortion of Wyclif’s theory, and Wyclif himself was never specifically named, but any reasonably intelligent scholastic could have worked it out from Wyclif’s philosophical principles at least ten years earlier. But the eucharist had the great advantage of being a theological matter, which no one could contest the right of bishops and masters to deal with, and this made it a far more effective stick with which the papalists could belabour their lay opponents—and by 1382 the times were far more propitious. The Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, an event with which Wyclif’s name was quickly linked, had thrown the regency government of the young Richard II into turmoil: and Lollardy, newly introduced as a term of abuse, could be represented as a recipe for any number of horrors, not least the assassination of bishops. The murder of Archbishop Sudbury in 1381 had opened up the way for his replacement by Wyclif’s leading opponent, the very vigorous bishop of London, William Courtenay. All this was however simply the culmination of a long process against Wyclif which had resulted in two abortive heresy trials in 1377 and 1378. In both cases Wyclif was rescued by royal intervention, by John of Gaunt. Wyclif, as he had proudly proclaimed, was a dericus regis, a king’s clerk, a member of the royal household: and as Christopher Given-Wilson has recently shown, king’s clerks might be few in number (and exceptionally cheap to maintain, since they could—as Wyclif was—be paid out of normal pluralism), but they wielded a degree of influence out of all proportion to their numbers.
1 Hudson, A., The Premature Reformation: Wycliffite Texts and Lollard History (Oxford, 1988)Google Scholar; and see also her ‘Lollardy: the English heresy?’, Lollards and their Books (London and Ronceverte, 1985), pp. 141–63; and now Carto, J. I. in History of the University of Oxford, 2, Late Medieval Oxford, ed. Catto, J. I. and Evans, R. (Oxford, 1992), pp. 175–280Google Scholar.
2 One should not be misled by the tactic adopted by his opponent William Woodford of claiming that Wyclif was for a long time uncertain in his own mind about his theory of the euchar ist. He admitted that he had had to change his view, e.g. De eucharistia (all references to Wyclif Society editions unless noted otherwise), 2, p. 52, ‘Unde licet quondam laboraverim ad describendum transsubstantiationem concorditer ad sensum prioris Ecclesiac, tamen modo videtur michi quod conrrariatur, posteriora Ecclesia aberrantc’; and for other examples see SCH, 5 (1969), pp. 69–98, but he was already aware in his debates with Kenningham in 1371 that the same principles governing philosophy, theology, and politics would have an impact on the eucharist: sec Fasciculi Zizaniorum, ed. W. W. Shirley (RS, 1858), p. 453. This however raises the still unresolved problem of whether the De logica should be dated to the 1360s: see Thomson, W. R., The Latin Writings of John Wyclyf (Toronto, 1983), pp. 6–7Google Scholar.
3 Aston, M., ‘Lollardy and sedition, 1381–1431’, Lollards and Reformers: Images and Literacy in Late Medieval Religion (London, 1984), pp. 1–47Google Scholar.
4 Dahmus, J. H., The Prosecution of John Wyclyf (New Haven, 1952; reprinted Hamden, 1970Google Scholar).
5 Given-Wilson, C., The Royal Household and the King’s Affinity: Service, Politics and Finance in England, 1360–1411 (New Haven and London, 1986), pp. 175–9Google Scholar. Wyclif’s statement ‘Ego autem, cum sim peculiaris regis clericus, … defendendo et suadendo quod rex potest iuste dominari regno Angliae, negando tributum llomano pontifici…’ in the Determinatio against Uthred of Boldon and William Binham, p. 422, may be compared with his arguments of the same period in the De veritatesacraescripturae that to condemn him would be tantamount to an attack on the king, his council, and the law; and that ‘clerici regum et homines simplicis literaturae’ can preach the faith better than doctors of theology: 3, i. 354; 24, ii. 234.
6 ‘Licet autem Dominus ad tempus dormiat’, Speculum saecularium dominorum, 3, p. 84. See also De officio regis, II, p. 258, ‘et vix paucissimi christiani remanebunt in Ecclesia sub Christo’, but note the use of the future tense.
7 E.g. De ordine christiano, 5, p. 139, ‘Sed quis est qui audet contra praelatos Antichristi doctrinam istam defendere vel papae aut vicariis suis in hoc contradicere, specialiter cum privatio beneficii, excommunicatio cum censuris aliis consequuntur, et breviter quae secuntur ad hanc fidem suppositam pauci vel nulli audeant pro Christo subicere se martirio? Sed rarenter est hodie invenibile quis sit ille’; De demonio meridiano, I, p. 419, ‘Ad quod laborarunt pauperes presbyteri clamando usque ad mortis periculum’; 3, p. 424,’… et omnino pessimum est quod fideles in Domino prohibeantur per incarcerationes, privationes et censuras alias dicere palam populo legem Christi’; Dialogus, 24, pp. 48–9; 27, p. 56.
8 De veritate sacrae scripturae, 23, ii. 232, ‘Quam gloriosa causa forer michi praescntem miseriam finiendo. Haec enim fuir causa martirii Christi…’; De perfectione statuum, 4, pp. 466–7, ‘Sed quia persecutio est horrenda occisio imminer sic dicenti, ideo cum oratione humili disponamus nos ad martirium, memores coelestium praemiorum’; Dialogus, 27, pp. 57–8.
9 Opus evangelicum, iii. 47, pp. 172–3, ‘ex hoc prosequitur istos simplices quod publicanr istam haercsim et patenter reserant fidem suam. Pars autem huius fidei non persequitur haereticos sibi adversarios, sed humiliter scribit et delucidat viva voce evidentias fidei scripturae quae movent ipsam et moverent cunctos catholicos ad istam partem fidei sustindendum.’
10 De ordine christiano, 3, pp. 133–4, Ex hoc enim fingit [papa] se praestare Deo obsequium, occidendo quoscunque huic perfidiae tamquam fidei repugnantes.’
11 De incarcemndis fidelibus, p. 95, ‘Sed praelati caesarei … ad extollendum suum veuenosum dominium incarcerant plus tyrannis. Et idem est indicium de sectis novellis incarccranribus fratres suos; et sic Antichristi discipuli in subtillitate et severitate excedunt scolares Luciferi … ut legitur Johannis, ix.22 …’;also p. 97; De fundatione sectarum, 7, p. 40,’… fratres professions eiusdem propter hoc quod detegunt scelera sui ordinis incarcarcerat et occidit’; 10, p. 51, ‘fratres proprios immisericorditer usque ad mortem cruciant’; De versutiis Antichristi (ed. Stein, I. H., EHR, 47 (1932), pp. 98–103), 3, p. 102Google Scholar, ‘de incarceratione fratrum suorum usque ad mortem’; De quattuor sectis novellis, 12, p. 285; cf. De eucharistia 6, p. 183.
12 De amore (Ep. 5), pp. 9–10, commenting on Ps. 115. 16–17,’Hie dico tamquam mihiprobabile citra fidem quod quilibet martir Dei potest percinenter Deo dkere istos versus.’
13 Expositio Matthaei XXIII, 14, p. 352, part of his commentary on Matt. 23. 34 where Christ predicts that his prophets will be killed; cf. Luke t. 67f. According to medieval tradition Zacharias was slain by Herod in the Temple.
14 De perfectione sutuum, 3, p. 461,’… ad tantum enim |dyabolus| caecavit saeculares dominos per suos discipulos Antichristos quod reputarent fidelem clericum, qui diceret sentenriam evangelicam in hac parte, esse summum haetcticum a praelaris et toto populo occidendum. Ideo, si non fallor, a mundi principio usque nunc lion fuit fidelibus ewangelizantibus mains periculum quam est nunc in isto meridiano demonio sic regnante. Nunc enim tarn clerus quam saeculares domini seducti reputabunt talem esse haerericum, et sic in suo iudicio tarn corpore quam anima condempnabunt.’ Complaints about teachers of truth being subjected to false accusarions of heresy begin as early as the De mandatis divinis, 28, pp. 410–11.
15 McNiveu, P., Heresy and Politics in the Reign of Henry IV: The Burning of John Badhy (Woodbridge and Wolfeboro, NH, 1987)Google Scholar.
16 See my ‘Predestination, property and power: Wyclif’s theory of dominion and grace’, SCH, 2 (1965), pp. 220–36.
17 There is a convenient translation of the three bulls in Sudbury’s register in Dahmus, Prosecution, pp. 39–45.
18 Ibid., p. 42; Workman, H. B., John Wyclif (Oxford, 1926), I, p. 294Google Scholar.
19 SCH.S, 5 (1987), p. 163, referring to De Ecclesia, 13, p. 278.
20 Although according to Bale (Scriptorum Catalogus, i. 495) it was Nicholas Radeliffe and Peter Stokes who were denounced by Wyclif as ‘the black and white dogs’. But dogs was a favourite term of abuse with Wyclif—e.g. cardinals as the dogs of the Roman church: De demonio meridiano, 2, p. 421—and looks back to Hildegard’s ‘fiery dog of unrighteousness’. See also Pantin, W. A., ‘The Defensoritum of Adam Easton’, EHR, 51 (1936), pp. 675–80. esp. p. 680Google Scholar.
21 The description is Clement VI’s, on whom see now Wood, D. P.. Clement VI: The Pontificate and Ideas of an Avignon Pope (Cambridge, 1989)Google Scholar.
22 Reeves, M., Joachim of Fiore and the Prophetic Future (London, 1976), pp. 45–53Google Scholar.
23 See now The Apocalypse in the Middle Ages, ed. Emmerson, R. K. and McGinn, B. (Ithaca and London, 1992),Google Scholar especially the contribution of P. Szittya at pp. 383–4 and 391–6, and here further literature; also Emmerson, R. K. and Herzman, R. B., The Apocalyptic Imagination in Medieval Literature (Philadelphia, 1992)Google Scholar, although one may question the comment that this English apocalpyticism was ‘thoroughly orthodox’, p. 148.
24 SCH.S, 5 (1987), pp. 148–52. For Walter Brut’s argument that the Apocalypse applied particularly to England because it was the new Israel see Szittya, in Emmerson and McGinn, eds, Apocalypse, pp. 396–7.
25 Hughes, J.. Pastors and Visionaries: Religion and Secular Life in Lute Medieval Yorkshire (Woodbridgeand Wolfeboro, NH, 1988), csp. pp. 127–66Google Scholar. But it should be noted that Wyclif was ordained, and may have gone to Oxford, under the previous archbishop, William de la Zouche, who was not a royalist appointment. This probably explains Wyclif’s well-known change of views after the period of his ‘youthfulness’.
26 James, M. R., ‘The Catalogue of the library of the Augusrinian Friars at York’, Fasciculus J. W. Clark dicatus (Cambridge, 1909), pp. 2–96Google Scholar; Cross, Claire, ‘Monastic learning and libraries in sixteenth-century Yorkshire’, SCH.S, 8 (1991), pp. 255–69Google Scholar at p. 265. For this catalogue see now The Friars’ Libraries, ed. K. W. Humphreys (London, 1991).
27 For John see Bignami-Odier, J., £tudes sur Jean de Roquetaillade (Johannes de Rupescissa) (Paris, 1952Google Scholar).
28 Bloomfield, M. W. and Reeves, M., ‘The penetration of Joachism into Northern Europe’, Speculum, 29 (1954), pp. 772–93Google Scholar.
29 Southern, R. W., Robert Grosseteste: The Growth of an English Mind in Medieval Europe (Oxford, 1986), pp. 296–305Google Scholar.
30 Ibid., pp. 296, 307, 317–18; Perry, R. C., ‘The reforming critiques of Robert Grosseteste, Roger Bacon and Ramon Lull, and their related impact upon medieval society’, The Impact of the Church upon its Culture, ed. Brauer, J. C. (Chicago and London, 1968), pp. 95—120 at p. 111Google Scholar.
31 Southern, Grosseteste, pp. 281–5.
32 Henry of Hassia, Epistola (Historische Jahrbuch, 30 (1909), p. 306): ‘Est verum quod Hildegardis et Abbas Joachim sonant quasi fmem mundi et adventum Antichristi praecessurae sint una vel plurcs reformationes ecclesiae seu reductiones in statum primitivae sanctitaris.’ There is an excellent summary of this development in Lee, H., Reeves, M., and Silano, G., eds, Western Mediterranean Prophecy: The School of Joachim of Fiore and the Fourteenth-Century Breviloquiutn (Toronto, 1989)Google Scholar. From amongst the now massive bibliography on Joachim andjoachism, to which Marjoric Reeves and Bernard McGinn are major contributors, mention should be made of McGinn, B., The Calabrian Abbot:Joachim of Fiore in the History of Western Thought (New York, 1985Google Scholar). Note also Robb, Fiona, ‘“Who hath chosen the better part?” (Luke 10, 42Google Scholar): Pope Innocent III and Joachim of Fiore on the diverse forms of religious life’, Monastic Studies, 2 (1991), pp. 157–70.
33 Kcrby-Fulton, K., Reformist Apocalypticism and Piers Plowman (Cambridge, 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, although she virtually dismisses any relevance to Wyclif and Lollardy, p. 232 n. 6; Scase, W., Piers Plowman and the New Anticlericalism (Cambridge, 1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Reference should also be made to the seminal study by Bloomfield, M. W., Piers Plowman as a Fourteenth-Century Apocalypse (New Brunswick, NJ, 1961Google Scholar); Adams, cf. R., ‘The nature of Need in Piers Plowman’, Traditio, 34 (1978), pp. 273–301Google Scholar.
34 Scase, Piers Plowman, pp. 123, 164–7.
35 The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England, ed. M. Glasscoe (Exeter, 1982), pp. 1 — 17, and here further references. In England fools and minstrels were classified together in court records: Southworch, J., The English Medieval Minstrel (Woodbridge and Wolfcboro, NH, 1989), p. 167Google Scholar n. 1. For ‘lunatic lollers’ as holy fools and divine minstrels in Piers Plowman see Kerby-Fulton, Reformist Apocalypticism, pp. 128–9, 193–4: the author of the poem comes into this category, although it seems unlikely that the C-text is autobiographical. That Piers Plowman was com plaining about the failure of friars to live up to the ideals of St Francis rather than friars as such is stressed by Clopper, L. M., ‘Langland’s Franciscanism’. Chaucer Review, 25 (1990–1), pp. 54—75Google Scholar. See also Szittya, R R., The Antifraternal Tradition in Medieval Literature (Princeton. 1986CrossRefGoogle Scholar).
36 Scase, Piers Plowman, pp. 147–51,220 n. 21. Note Wyclif’s elaborate punning in Dialogus,27, p. 57: he was being suspended; Christ was suspended on the cross; but the real suspension was that of the papalists suspending truth. For the term Lollard see Lerner, R. E., Tlie Heresy of the Free Spirit in the Later Middle Ages (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London, 1972), esp. pp. 40–1, 57Google Scholar, and see here for further references and literature.
37 Lerner, R. E., ‘Refreshment of the Saints: the time after Antichrist as a station for earthly progress in medieval thought’, Traditio, 32 (1976), pp. 97–144Google Scholar; also ‘Medieval prophecy and religious dissent’, Past and Present, 72 (1976), pp. 3–24; ‘The Black Death and Western European eschatotogical mentalities’. American Historical Review, 86 (1981), pp. 533–52.
38 Reeves, Joachim of Fiore, pp. 43–4, 48.
39 De ente praedicamentali, 2, p. 18 (this is the anonymous De semine scripturarum, apparently originating from Bamberg c.1204/5, which Peter Olivi had attributed to Joachim and which became very popular in England: Kerby-Fulton, Reformist Apocalypticism, pp. 183–6), although at this stage he seems to have approved of Joachim’s condemnation for his theory of the Trinity: Purgans errores circa universalia, 5, pp. 45, 47. Later he sought to excuse Joachim, , ‘si Joachim ita dixit’, on the grounds of ignorance about the nature of universals: De universalibus, 11, ed. Mueller, I.J. (Oxford, 1985), pp. 263–4Google Scholar; and would argue that Joachim was wrongly persecuted by Innocent III when, like Wyclif himself, he was willing to be corrected if proved to be in error: De veritate sacrae scripturae, 7, i. 140–1; De eucharistia, 9, p. 278. For a list of other references to Joachim see Thomson, , Latin Writings, p. 14Google Scholar, although one may doubt Thomson’s assertion that these were all borrowings from Higden.
40 See his use of Isaiah 5. 20, ‘Woe unto those who call evil good and good evil’ in De potestale papae, 5, p. 87: ‘etsicde illorum contrariis perversum est nostrum judicium maniace in contrarium iudicium rationis, et tarn multi ac magni inciderunt in istam rabiem quod maior pars mundi arguet docentes et servantes istam sententiam ut insanos, sic quod generalior, accusatior et perseveranrior est persecutio in paucos docentes licet remisse istam sententiam quam olim fuerat in prophetas’. See also De mandatis divinis, 28, p. 410,’Sed notandum est hie quod mundus est tantum positus in maligno quod doctores detegentes sensum scripturae et Christi consilium dicuntur ex hinc inimici veritatis et perversores Ecclesiae’; similarly De civili domini, ii. 16 and 17, pp. 232 and 240; De veritate sacrae scripturae, 28, iii. 120; De Ecdesia, 12, pp. 264–5.
41 For Ecclesia malignantium or Eccksia haereticorum, De officio regis, II, pp. 251 and 257; De potestate papae, 7, p. 139 for the pope as ‘caput Ecclesiae malignanrium et synagogae Sathanae’
42 According to De potestate papae, 10, p. 233, the Great Schism was caused by Urban’s attempt to bring the cardinals to adopt the apostolic life: ‘Quam sententiam audivi de papa nostra Urbano VI ipsum dixisse cardinalibus Gregorii qui excessit decalogum ac quia increpans corum limitavit eos ad vitam apostolicam primaevam, conspiraverant contra cum, eligendo sibi Robertum Gilbonensem, virum ut dicitur dissolutum, superbum, bellicosum et legis Christi ignarum.’ Nevertheless both popes could be accepted if miracuiose they accepted these principles.
43 Supplementum Trialogi, 4, p. 426, ‘Et tunc ista duo monstra cum membris diaboli sibi adhaerentibus sese destruerent, Ecclesia fidelium stante salva. Quod autem istorum capitum sit nequius, est nobis impertinens diffinire, sed creditur probabiliter quod Robertus … Debemus enim credere … quod nullus talis papa necessarius est per ordinationem Christi, sed per cautelam diaboli introductus’: they are pseudopapae, false Christs, and the false prophets of Matt. 24. 23–6 (9, p. 448); similarly De quattuor seeds novellis, 3 and 5, pp. 249 and 257, notwithstanding continued use of’our Urban’ (7, p. 265); De petfectione statuttm, 3, p. 458; Opus evangelicum, i. 3, i. 141–2.
44 Joachim’s use of both seven-age and three-age patterns is well known: e.g. Reeves, Joachim of Fiore, p. 8. For Chaucer note the interesting suggestions made by Brown, P. and Butcher, A., The Age of Saturn: Literature and History in the Canterbury Tales (Oxford, r 991Google Scholar).
45 The threefold division made it easier to accommodate the Donation of Constantine as the turning point between the first apostolic age and the second period which came to an end around 1200 with Innocent HI and the Decretales on one side and the institution of the friars on the other, making the third age both an age of Antichrist and an Age of the Spirit.
46 Wyclif’s constant insistence that he understood Scripture better than anybody else, e.g. De civili dominio, ii. 10, p. 105, ‘Undc audacter non pompaticc assero de insolubilitate scripturae sacrae, quae est fides mea, sccurus quod omnes doctores mundi non possunt veritatem istam dissolverc’, would lead him to argue that the Tightness of papal and conciliar decrees, as in the case of the eucharist, could be ascertained by measuring them up against his own interpretation: De eucharistia, 1, pp. 25–6. The bishops should be grateful to him for teaching them the true nature of the Church: De Ecclesia, 1, p. 2.
47 Benrath, G. A., Wyclifs Bibclkommentar (Berlin, 1966)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; also Smalley, B., ‘John Wyclif’s Postilta super totam Bibliam’, Bodleian Library Record, 4 (1953), pp. 186–205;’Wyclif’s Postilla on the Old Testament and his Prittcipium’, Oxford Studies presented to Daniel Callus (Oxford, 1964), pp. 254–96Google Scholar. Wyclif would also have absorbed Joachimite material through his use of Nicholas of Lyra, on whom see above, pp. 36–7. But the basic character which he assigned to himself came from his extensive use of the biblical text. As Sawyer, J. F. A., Prophecy and the Prophets of the Old Testament (Oxford, 1987), esp. pp. 1–2, 15–18, 58f, 87f.Google Scholar, has pointed out, the Old Testament prophet had a double function, on the one hand interpreting and pro claiming the truth of Scripture and the nature of righteousness, and on the other hand fore telling the pattern of events leading to the ‘day of the Lord’. As an opponent of current ritual practices, he would be rejected by contemporaries and condemned by false accusations, but would survive under the protection of the royal court to which he acted as an adviser. It might almost be a description of Wyclif himself.
48 The Expositio Matthaei XXIII (or De vae octuplici) and the Expositio Matthaei XXIV cannot how ever be earlier than mid-1382 and I would prefer to date them to 1383: parts of the latter re appear in the Opus evangelicum. which can be firmly dated to 1384 but is largely a compilation of earlier material. Note the use of these chapters of Matthew to attack the friars as hypocrites and pseudo-prophets in the Defundationesectarian, p. 16, which dates to about August 1383. But cf. De officio regis, 11, p. 252.
49 Hudson, , Lollards and their Books, pp. 202–3Google Scholar, referring to the Vae Ocluplex and Of Mynystris in fe Chirche: Exposicioun of Matthew XXIV’, cd. Arnold, T., Select English Works (Oxford, 1869–71), 2, pp. 379–89 and 393–423Google Scholar. Note Of Mynystris, p. 408, ‘per shal be wepynge and gnasting of teej>: bis laste word, unexpowned bifore, is dredeful to prelatis.’ See also now English Wycliffite Sermons, cd. A. Hudson and P. Gradon (Oxford. 1983–93), I, pp. 49–50, although it seems unlikely that these tracts were ever actual sermons: the English sermons were based on the Latin sermons, which were produced in 1383 as a treatise, ostensibly on preaching, but were never actually preached.
50 Expositio Matthaei XXIII, 1, p. 313; cf. Espositio Matthaei XXIV, 1, pp. 344–5.
51 De vaticinatione seu prophetia, I, p. 165. Hildegard is cited fairly often for her attacks on clerical abuses, e.g. De fundatione sectarum, 14, p. 67; Trialogus, iv. 26, p. 338; and Merlin is presumably Geoffrey of Monmouth; but it is difficult to date the De vaticinatione precisely. Loscrth rather hesitantly suggested about 1378, whereas Thomson would prefer late 1382: but since Wyclif still seems to be at Oxford before the Peasants’ Revolt and the eucharistic controversy, a date of 1379/80 seems more probable. But he scorned the use of astrology in making prophecies: De quattiwr sectis novellis, 10, p. 280, ‘Nee credatur pseudoloquentibus in ista materia ut victoria regnis et regibus sicut antea ascribebatur, quia iuxta fidem pax et caritas sunt Deo plus placitae quam dominationis acquisitio, famae, victoriae vel honoris; et profitendo quod ncc sum astrologus nee propheta, ignoro si istorum planetarum coniunctio, quae proximo est futura, sit benevola regno nostro, cum luna, quae est planeta infimus, dicitur super Anglicos dominari.’ On Lollard use of Hildegard see now Hudson, Anne, Two Wycliffite Texts, EETS 301 (Oxford, 1993), pp. 96–7Google Scholar.
52 De vaticinatione, 2, p. 170, ‘Sed hii tertio garriunt quod ex talibus sentenrus frustra perturbatur Ecclesia, sed ipsi nee attendunt ad qualitatem sentenriae nee considerant quodomodo lesu noster dicit Matt. 10. 34 quod non venit pacem carnalem vel mundanam mittere in terram, sed gladium ad ligas huismodi dividendum. Et illud officium executi sunt sancti sequentes. …’ The king should wage a war of resistance against possessioner clergy in the same way that his predecessors resisted the barbarian invasions: 2, p. 174.
53 De vaticinatione, 1, p. 168. The Pauline notion of the Christian as a champion who wins victory in a race or contest, athleta or pugilis Christi, is usually applied by Wyclif to his followers generally: De civilidominio, iii. 3 and 23, pp. 36 and 564; ironically Gregory XI had told the scholars of Oxford in 1377 that they should be champions of the faith: Dahmus, Prosecution, p. 48. For the biblical origins see Evans, C. F., The Theology of Rhetoric: The Epistle to the Hebrews (Dr Williams’ Library, London, 1988), p. 7Google Scholar.
54 The point that charity grows cold (Matt. 24. 12) in a three-stage process leading to Antichrist and the end of the world is made by Thomas Wimbledon: see Knight, I. K., Wimbledon’s Sermon: Redde Rationem Villicationis Tue (Pittsburgh, 1967), pp. 109fGoogle Scholar. For furthet examples of Wyclif’s use of St Paul (Ephes. 5. 16; II Tim. 3. if) to declare that the last days had been reached see De Ecclesia, 3, p. 51; Depotestalepapae, 8, p. 193.
55 In De officio regis, 11, pp. 251–2, this is linked to Daniel’s prophecy (Dan. 2. 40–5) of the break-up of the Roman Empire, the ‘iron monarchy’: ‘In quo regno oportet, instat ferri, quod tetram content et seipsum consumit, quod sutgat gens contra gentem et regnum adversus regnum, sicut prophetat Veritas xxiii [Matt. 24. 7] …’; and see also the use of the Matthew passage to argue that wars, plagues, and earthquakes are evidence of the decline of faith and the advent of Antichrist in Opus evangelicum, iii. 31, ii. 113–14. Also Benrath, Bibelkommemar, pp. 281, 308.
56 The term is taken from Marsilius, Defensor pads, I. i. 5. His criticisms of’rites and ceremonies’ are too numerous to specify: e.g. Decivilidominio, ii. 13, p. 165; cf. I Reg. 15. 22, Isa. 1. 10–17, 66.3,Jer. 7. 22, Amos 5. 25.
57 The sacerdotes simplices of the Responsioties ad XLIV conclnsiones monachales, proem pp. 201–2, ‘Nee est illis quod vocantur a satrapis ydiotae, quia sic vocabantur apostoli evangelium praedicantes, ut patet Act. 4. 13,… non confidunt de ingenio proprio vel potestate humana, sed quod Deus utitur tamquam organis ad hoc opus. Habent autem hoc signum caritaris communicandi altrinsecus quod volunt libenter offere doctrinam suam adinvicem ct praedicare populo sine pecunia vel proprietate aliqua acquirenda.’ The ‘pauperes presbyteri clamando usque ad mortis periculum’ only want to preach freely the evangelium Iesu Cliristi: Dedemonio meridiano, 3, pp. 419, 424–5; cf. De diabolo el membriseius, 4–5, pp. 371–2, where the simplices sacerdotes have the sensum Cliristi, ‘sensum ewangelicum divinitus eis darum’, and ‘qui volunt esse secundum formam ewangelii Dei adiutores’ according to I Cor. 3.9. But they were also to do physical labour, and could teach grammar to children: Dialogus, 25, p. 51; and should visit widows and orphans (Jas. I. 27) in the description of them in De civili dominio, 1, p. 4, where, in opposition to the ‘possessionem’, they are secular clergy adopting ‘paupertatcm, castitatem et obedientiam niatri Ecclesiae’ and friars following poverty: ‘mendicantcs vero volcnres srricrius sequi Christum … abdicant onineni civilem proprietateni’. See further the valuable comments of Schmidt, M., ‘John Wyclifs Kirchenbegriff: Der Christus humlis Augustins bei Wyclif’, Gedenkschrift für D. W. Elert, ed. Hübner, F., Maurer, W., Kinder, E. (Berlin, 1955), pp. 92–108Google Scholar. Also Benrath, E., Bibelkomtncntar, pp. 180, 188–9, 245, 274–305Google Scholar.
58 For the duty of the ptophet to condemn corrupt priests see 1 Reg. 3. 11–14. A further indication of the time of Antichrist was the loss of supporters: ‘Nee confunduntur quod quidam qui inchoarunt, nunc deciderunt, quia sic fuit de Christi apostolis’, citing John 6.66, and I John 2. 18–19. Also Benrath, Bibelkommentar, pp. 102, 163, 173, 233, 369.
59 On the need for caritas ‘quae est Dei dilectio’, see e.g. De civili dominio, ii. 7, pp. 61–2; iii. 23, pp. 492–4, 505; De fundatione sectarum, 13, p. 63.
60 De civili dominio, i. 6, p. 46, ‘Et tcrtio exemplificat nobis quomodo debemus inimicis nostris proportionaliter misereri, non contentione tumultuosa scandalisando, scd causam nostram, servando caritatem iraternam, in manu Iudicis committendo’; as required by both divine and natural law, De mandatis divinis, 8, p. 69.
61 De officio regis, II, pp. 256–7. In the Old Testament the sons of the prophets were associations of disciples recording and preserving the teachings of a father figure: I Reg. 10. 5–10; 19. 20; IV Reg. 2. 15; 4.38; Amos 7. 14.
62 De veritate sacrae scripturae, 6, i. 124. For the saints as eroyci, De civili dominio, ii. 13, p. 156.
63 De ordinatione fratrum, 2, p. 95, ‘sacerdotes fideles qui ostendunt in vita et opere quod sunt pugiles legis Dei’; and see above n. 53.
64 De veritate sacrae scripturae, 13, i. 326–7, following a long complaint (pp. 318f.) that the world has fallen into falsehood, making men traitors to the truth and to themselves, and urging them to die for the truth after the example of the martyrs: ‘Quomodo, quaeso, sequimur martires vel sanctos confessores qui pro quaestu vel otio non audemus dicere fidem scripturae coram domesricis, quam ipsi ad profectum sui et Ecclesiae confessi sunt coram saevissimis persecutoribus et tyrannis, specialiter cum pro defensione scripturae disccrnimur a pseudoapostolis et reportamus ex fide scripturae lucrum beatitudinis’ (p. 326); De mandatis divinis, 2, p. 8, citing Matt. 5. 10; cf. De civili dominio, iii. 3, p. 40.
65 Trialogus, iii. 3, p. 139, ‘Quis, quaeso, in Scotia propter legis libertatem et privilegia regis Angliae non laetanter pateretur, si cum hoc foret securus quod integer et vivax rediret in Angliam proportionabiliter ad punitionem a rcge Angliae praemiandus? Talis, inquam, gratanter reciperet tribulationes in Scotia pro spe praemii in Anglia conscquendi. Et multo magis tribulatus in valle huius miseriae, et transferendus ad locum patriae… certaret viriliter pro praemio beatitudinis consequendo, cum certi sumus ex fide quod oportet nos a Scotia ista recedere, et correspondenter ad gratitudinem pro passione tribularionis coelestis Angliae perpetuo praemiari vel pro ingratitudine perpetuo cruciari’ cf. Dialogus, 27, pp. 57–8.
66 SCH, 30 (1993).
67 Trialogus, iii. 15, p. 181, ‘Unde luciferina est excusatio qua hypocritae moderni dicunt quod non oportct liodie sicut in primitiva Ecclesia pati martyrium, quia nunc omnes vel maior pars conviventium sunt fideles: ideo non superest tyrannus qui prosequatur contra Christum usque ad mortem membra eius:erhaec ratio quarehodie non sunt martires sicut olim.’This, he added, only helped to demonstrate that a perverse clergy was the abomination of desolation prophesied by Daniel according to Matt. 24. 15, and (iii. 17, p. 186) ‘probabiliter ponitur quod Romanus pontifex sit praecipuus Antichristus.’
68 For the ‘suffering servant’ theme see Isa. 40–66. The duty of the prophet to intervene with God on behalf of the people is laid down in Amos 7. 2–5, cf. Isa. 6. 11.
69 For Wyclif on the virtues of Christian suffering see Benrath, Bibelkommentar, pp. 195–7, although he allowed a limited right of resistance and permitted flight when necessary.
70 Cruciata, 5, p. 606, vere dicitur quod vox populi est vox Dei. populi videlicer simpliciter spiritu Dei ducti’.
71 De veritate sacrae scripturae, 29, iii. 164.
72 De officio regis, 11, p. 255.
73 Trialogus, iv. 33, p. 364.
74 Russet signified virtuous work: ‘russetum vero significat laborem suum in illis duabus virtutibus absconditum, ne sint hypocritae’, Supplementum Trialogi, p. 435; also Defuttdatione sectarum, 4, p. 27, but he condemned friars who claimed that their holy dress was a guarantee of salvation, when they were covered from head to foot in lies: Expositio Matthaei XXIII, 3, p. 322; De oratione et ecclesiae purgatione, 4, p. 351; De nova praevaricantia mandatorum, 7, p. 143.
75 Sec the long list of grievances against Innocent III in De eucharistia, 9, pp. 274–8, 311–15; where in addition to persecuting Joachim, Innocent claimed unlimited supremacy over the Empire and England, encouraged war with France, prohibited vernacular Bible translation, established the friars (who then helped to produce the Decretales), and of course authorized the false doctrine of transubstantiation, despite the credit he obtained by writing De contemptu mundi. In the Purgalorium sectae Christi, 4, p. 305, his chief objection to the friars is that they were founded by the pope.’iste religiosarcha in vita etoperesuo ostendit quod est mendaciter et capitalitcrcontrarius Iesu Christi’; cf. De petfectione statuum, 4, p. 463, ‘duplex pater istarum fratrum, scilicet dyabolus et papa’.
76 De ordinatione fratrum, 2, pp. 91–5, where he lists his predecessors who have tried to reform the mendicants, including Bonaventure, William of Saint Amour, Grosseteste, Ockham, and ‘beams Richardus’ Fitzralph.
77 The secta Christi was a term which clearly began as a reference to his followers, e.g. De veritate sacraescripturae, 14, i. 345, ‘ego cum secta mea’; i. 357, ‘omnes fautores meos’, although he would later argue that they were the only true Christians and therefore the expression meant the whole Church: ‘Sic secta christianorum debet includere singulos viatores. … Patronus autem huius sectae est Dominus Iesus Christus et regula sua est fides catholica, scilicet lex ewangelica’, Defundationesectarum, 3, p. 22;’Sed quomodo possemusesse in ista caritatecon-foederati ad invicem nisi Christum et suam sectam principaliter diligcremus, cum ipsum aliter odiremus?’ 13, p. 63; cf. 6, p. 37, ‘Omnes enim christiani sunt fratres in Domino, et istud nomen est ab istis sectis propter ypocrisim usurpatum’; also De triplici vinculo amoris, 8, p. 187, ‘Augustinus declarat quod omnis viator est mendicus Dei’. The date of the Purgatorium seclae Christi is usually estimated as c.i 382/3, but it could be earlier. Thomson, Latin Writings, p. 295, comments, ‘His frequent mentions of the secta Christi do not take us any closer in this instance to grasping the dimensions and precise identity of that amorphous group than we were at the outset of this section.’
78 ‘Abbas noster Christus’, Trialogus, iv. 3, p. 364; ‘Christus qui est prior nostri ordinis atque principium, in se virtualiter et exemplariter congregavit’, Decivilidominio, ii. 8, p. 73; also ii. 13, p. 166; iii. 1, p. 1; iii. 2, p. 75; De veritate sacrae scripturae, 10, i. 206; De officio regis, 5, p. 99.
79 De veritate sacrae scripturae, 10, i. 206; and De civili dominio, i. 18, p. 129; iii.i, pp. 4–6; iii. 2, pp. 17–18, commending Franciscan poverty. But for a very different view, citing Hildegard as prophesying the friars as diabolical seducers, see Trialogus, iv. 26–38, pp. 336–85, especially pp. 361–2.
80 Note his complaint in De veritate sacrae scripturae, 14, i. 354–6, about the Oxford doctor who had been attacking the English Franciscans. According to Walsingham, Chronicon Angliae (RS, 1874), p. 118, John of Gaunt appointed a friar from each of the four mendicant orders to help Wyclif at his hearing in 1377.
81 De civili dominio, ii. 13, pp. 164–5; iii. I, p. 1; iii. 3, pp. 31–6; cf. De Ecclesia, 14, p. 308; De fundatione sectarum, 4, p. 29; 16, p. 80.
82 De civili dominio, iii. 20, pp. 417–19; De demonio meridiano, 3, pp. 424–5; and see above, n. 77.
83 De civili dominio, iii. 20, p. 417.
84 But the prize goes to the Austrian chronicler: ‘iste draco magisrer Johannes Wycleff… qui plus quam tertiam partem militantis Ecclesiae in suum errorem pervertit’, Fontes rerum Austriacarum, SS, vi. 124.
85 E.g. De civili dominio, ii. 7, p. 61, ‘Et patet quod si omnes tales essent subtracti ab Ecclesia, pauci in rctibus remancrcnt’; cf. De Ecclesia, 9, p. 189, ‘Christus auteni semper reliquit in una parte Ecclesiae suae vel aliqua aliquos fideles qui mundum deserant et in illis forte abiectis primaribus stat fides et continuatio sanctae matris Ecclesiae’, although in De potestate papae, II, p. 272, he could not resist adding the Ockhamist point that God could use his absolute potency to frustrate Wyclif’s belief (‘Ego autem credo quod est necessarium ex suppositione …’) that there must be a continuous line of true believers from the Ascension to the Day of Judgement.
86 De Ecclesia, 15, p. 357, ‘ideo propter multitudinem, propter famam et propter terrorem istorum satellitum exterriti sunt pauci simplices dicere veritatem’; cf. the use of the ‘many are called, but few are chosen’ theme in relation to the friars, De solutione Sathanae, 2, p. 397, ‘sic pauci fideles qui stant hodie in veritate legis Domini…’.
87 Cruciata, 5, p. 605.
88 De solutione Sathanae, 2, p. 396, citing Matt. 7. 13 and Apoc. 20. 8.
89 Dialogits, 11, pp. 21–2, ‘Qui autem credit ut fidem communitati vel populo est in ianuis ut stolide seducatur, quia Eccles. primo [15] scribitur “stultorum infinitus est numerus”. Et sapiens Daniel cum populus dampnasset Susannam ex falso testimonio sacerdotum si gcneraliter multitudo testium approbetur. … ldeo est stulta evidentia si maior pars militantum sic asserit, ergo verum, cum sit argumentum topicum ad contrarium concludendum, quia Deus scit si nunc militant plures filii patris mendacii quam filii veritatis’; cf. De potestate papae. 5, pp. 86–8. One is reminded of Marsilius’ valentior pars.
90 Cf. his comment on the Blackfriars Council: ‘Unde in ultimo suo concilio terraemotus in quo illudebant episcopi Christum Dominum nostrum vel membris suis triumphantis Ecclesiae tamquam haereticum condemnando regem nostrum et eius proccres, et per consequens commimitatem in castigationem pseudoclericorum haereticando, recoluerunt ex timore patrissui de Romano pontifice …’, Supplementum Trialogi, 8, pp. 445–6.
91 For the use of the drama as a vehicle for anti-Lollard propaganda sec Kolve, V. A., The Play Called Corpus Christi (London, 1966), esp. pp. 44–9Google Scholar; and in relation to the Croxron Play of the Sacrament sec now Nichols, A. E., ‘Lollard language in the Croxton Play of the Sacrament’, Notes and Queries, n.s., 234 (1989), pp. 23–5Google Scholar.
92 De civili dominio, ii. 14, pp. 170–1; iii. 2, p. 28; De potestate papae, 7, p. 157. St Paul,’doctor praecipuus’, was the ideal of a wandering preacher who was not deterred by popular opposition: De eucharistia, 9, pp. 294–5; Dialogus, 25, p. 52; Expositio Mallhaei XXIII. 4, pp. 323–4;cf. Opus evangelicum, iii. 6, ii. 22; Benrath, Bibelkommentar, pp. 243–4.
93 Opus evangelicum, iii. 46, ii. 170, ‘Pauperes autem presbyteri non possunt alitor facere in ista materia nisi loqui fidem Dei et tangere media per quae regnicolae poterunr esse salvi, quia principum potcstas et eorum qui portant gladium debet se extendere ad ista media practizanda’; Dialogus, 5, p. 11, ‘nec sufficiunt pauperes et pauci fideles sacerdotes resistere, nisi Deus per sacculare brachium vel aliunde cirius manus apposuerit adiutrices.’
94 According to Wyclif the seduction of secular lords by Antichrist was further proof of the end of the world: Opus evangelicum, i. 8, i. 26. On John of Gaunt see now Goodman, A., John of Gaum: The Exercise of Princely Power in Fourteenth-Century Europe (Harlow, 1992Google Scholar); Walker, S., The Lancastrian Affinity, 1361–1399 (Oxford, 1990)Google Scholar.
95 Wright, T., Political Poems and Songs (R.S, 1861), 2, 244Google Scholar. The point was implicitly raised by Wyclif himself when he remarked that the chroniclers provided few examples of popes who had become martyrs after the papacy obtained temporal power: De potestate papae, 7, p. 146.
