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Reformatio regni: Wyclif and Hus as leaders of religious protest movements

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Michael Wilks
Michael Wilks*
Affiliation:
Birkbeck College, university of London
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Extract

In May 1382 William Courtenay, archbishop of Canterbury since the murder of his predecessor Sudbury during the Peasants’ Revolt the previous year, declared it to be a matter of frequent complaint and common report that evil persons were going about his province preaching without authority, and spreading doctrines which threatened to destroy not only ecclesiastical authority but civil government as well. They were the adherents, he was informed, of a certain teacher of novelties at Oxford, named John Wyclif, whose sect broadcast the seeds of pestiferous error so widely in the pastures of Canterbury that only the most savage hoeing would root them out. The chroniclers hastened to confirm this account. According to their accounts, by 1382 Wyclif had been able, through his writings and the preaching of his followers, to seduce the laity, including great lords and members of the nobility, over a great part of the realm. Even members of the clergy and scholars were not free from infection. Thus Knighton commented that – at least in the area around Leicester – every other person one met was a Lollard. Thirty years later it is the same story in Bohemia. As the carthusian prior Stephen of Dolany complained, despite the condemnation of Wyclif’s teachings at the university of Prague in 1403, the Wycliffites swarmed everywhere: ‘in the state apartments of princes, in the schools of the students, in the lonely chambers of the monks, and even in the cells of the Carthusians’.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 9: Schism, Heresy and Religious Protest , 1972 , pp. 109 - 130
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1972

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References

page no 109 note 1 Fasciculi Zizaniorum, ed Shirley, W.W., RS 5 (London 1858) p 275 Google Scholar; Wilkins, [D.], Concilia (London 1737) 111 pp 158 and 172Google Scholar.

page no 109 note 2 [Henry], Knighton, Chronicon, ed Lumby, J. R., RS 92, 2 vols (London 1889-95) 11 p 191 Google Scholar; compare pp 176, 183, 185; Eulogium Historiarum, first continuation, ed Haydon, F. S., RS 9, 3 vols (London 1858-63) 111 pp 351, 354-5Google Scholar; compare [Thomas of] Walsingham, Historia Anglicana, ed Riley, H. T., RS 28, 2 vols (London 1863-4) 1 p 325 Google Scholar; 11 pp 50, 53; Chronicon Angliae, ed Thompson, E. M., RS 64 (London 1874) p 396 Google Scholar. Although outdated in some respects, the best survey of this material is still Cannon, H. L., ‘The Poor Priests: A Study in the Rise of English Lollardy’, Annual Report of the American Historical Association for 1899 (Washington 1900) 1 pp 451-82Google Scholar.

page no 109 note 3 Cited Workman, H. B. and Pope, R. M., The Letters of John Hus (London 1904) p 11 Google Scholar.

page no 110 note 1 Zilka, F., ‘The Czech Reformation and its Relation to the World Reformation’, Slavonic and East European Review, VIII (London 1929-30) pp 284-91Google Scholar; compare Kafka, F., ‘The Hussite Movement and the Czech Reformation’, Journal of World History (=Cahiers d’histoire mondiale), V (Paris 1960) pp 830-56Google Scholar.

page no 110 note 2 Workman, [H.B.], [John Wyclif: A Study of the English Medieval Church,] 2 vols (Oxford 1926)Google Scholar.

page no 110 note 3 For example Dahmus, J. H., The Prosecution of John Wyclif (New Haven 1952) p 81 Google Scholar; McFarlane, [K.B.], [John Wycliff: and the Beginnings of English Nonconformity] (London 1952) pp 96-7Google Scholar; compare Hurley, M., ‘Scriptura Sola: Wyclif and his Critics’, Traditio, XVI (New York 1960) pp 275-352 Google Scholar.

page no 112 note 1 Walsingham, , Historia Anglicana, 1 pp 353ffGoogle Scholar.

page no 113 note 1 De compositione hominis, 4, ed Beer, R., W[yclif] S[ociety] (London 1884) p 73 Google Scholar.

page no 113 note 2 De compositione hominis, 4 p 58.

page no 113 note 3 De compositione hominis, I p 11; compare 2, p 35, ‘homo est duae substantiae vel naturae’. Wyclif does of course emphasise that these are essentially theoretical distinctions, and that in practice the two natures should be taken together - each in isolation would be incomplete - so that it is possible to describe both together as a complete third nature: ‘ut quilibet homo est natura spiritualis cui accidit esse animam; est iterum natura vel essentia corporea cui accidit esse corpus humanum; et haec duo incommunicabiliter sunt distincta; et est tertio natura ex corpore et anima integrata quae distingwatur ab utraque...Nec est negandum quin omnis persona hominis sit tres naturae, duae incompletae et tertia integra’. His immediate application of this is to the two ends of human life, p 13.

page no 114 note 1 De compositione hominis, 5 p 92. The work was specifically written to serve as an introduction to his discussion of lordship and obedience: 1 pp 1-2, ‘Tria movent ad tractare materiam de compositione hominis...Tertio quia antecedit ad tractatum humani dominii, cum relatio non potest cognosci nisi per notitiam sui principii subiectivi. Nee sciri potest quomodo homo naturaliter dominetur atque servat sibiipsi...nisi praecognoscatur quomodo homo est duarum naturarum utraque, secundum quas relatio servitutis et dominii in eodem supposito congregantur’.

page no 114 note 2 Thomson, S.H., ‘John Wyclif’s “Lost” De fide sacramentorum ’, JTS, XXXIII (1932) pp 359-65 at p 363CrossRefGoogle Scholar; compare p 364, ‘sic constat in Sacramento altaris. Ibi est forma vel substantia Christi humanitatis spiritualiter, et forma vel substantia panis corporaliter’. For the correlation between eucharist, Ecclesia and the nature of Christ, see, for example, De Ecclesia, 1, ed Loserth, J., WS (London 1886) p 8 Google Scholar; De eucharistia, 9, ed Loserth, J., WS (London 1892) p 325 Google Scholar.

page no 114 note 3 De fide sacramentorum, p 365; De eucharistia, 4 p 100, ‘Et sic conversio illa non destruit naturam panis, nec mutat naturam corporis inducendo in materiam aliam quidditatem, sed facit praesentiam corporis Christi et tollit principalitatem panis’; cf. 3 p 82, ‘potest ergo dici quod panis et vinum convertuntur principaliter in corpus Christi et sanguinem...nec panis aut vinum deterioratur sed melioratur...manet namque utraque natura’. Both substances co-exist, but they are looked at in different ways, and by consecration attention is switched from one to the other, in the same way that the stars are still present but are ignored and not seen when the sun comes out: 5 pp 130, 137; 7 p 231.

page no 115 note 1 Compare Spinka, M., John Hus’ Concept of the Church (Princeton 1966) pp 253-6Google Scholar, and Leff, G., Heresy in the Later Middle Ages (Manchester 1967) pp 638-9Google Scholar; ‘Wyclif, and Hus, : A Doctrinal Comparison’, BJRL, L (1967-8) pp 387–410 Google Scholar at 403ff, both of whom broadly accept the view of de Vooght that Loserth had been wrong to regard Hus as a slavish imitator of Wyclif and that Hus refused to follow him into error: for example de Vooght, P., ‘Jean Hus et ses juges’, Das Konzil von Konstanz: Beiträge zu seiner Geschichte und Theologie, ed Franzen, A. and Müller, W. (Freiburg, Basle, Vienna 1964) pp 152-73Google Scholar; and see also Thomson, S. H. in the introduction to his edition of Hus, Tractatus de Ecclesia (Boulder, Col., and Cambridge 1956) pp viii–x, xxxiiiGoogle Scholar. The continuing debate is well summarised by Kaminsky, H., A History of the Hussite Revolution (Berkeley and Los Angeles 1967) pp 35-7Google Scholar, who rightly follows Kalivoda, R., Husitská ideologie (Prague 1961) pp 151-91Google Scholar, in accepting the basic identity of doctrine between Wyclif and Hus. See now also Smahel, F., ‘ Doctor evangelicus super omnes evangelistas: Wyclif’s Fortune in Hussite Bohemia’, BIHR, XLIII (1970) pp 16–34 Google Scholar at pp 26-8.

page no 115 note 2 Benrath, G. A., Wyclifi Bibelkommentar (Berlin 1966) pp 266-71CrossRefGoogle Scholar, indicates that Wyclif had already accepted the principle of remanence in his Postilla super totam Bibliam and was dubious then about the accepted theory of transubstantiation. In the De eucharistia, 2 p 52, Wyclif says himself that his theory is a logical extension of his philosophical work on the question of annihilation.

page no 116 note 1 Even the De logica, ed Dziewicki, M. H., WS (London 1893-9)Google Scholar, appears to have envisaged the application of his philosophical principles to Biblical studies: 1 proem. (1 p 1), ‘Motus sum per quosdam legis Dei amicos certum tractatum ad declarandum logicam sacrae scripturae compilare’; compare Mallard, W., ‘John Wyclif and the Tradition of Biblical Authority’, Church History, XXX (Chicago 1961) pp 50–60 Google Scholar at p 56.

page no 116 note 2 Epistola 127, ed Luard, H. R., RS 25 (London 1861) p 360 Google Scholar, but cited by Wyclif in its version as a separate work De cura pastorali.

page no 117 note 1 For example De Ecclesia, 11 p 292.

page no 117 note 2 De Ecclesia, 12 p 265.

page no 117 note 3 De eucharistia, 5 pp 140-1.

page no 118 note 1 Snow, V. F., ‘The Concept of Revolution in Seventeenth-Century England’, HJ, V (1962) pp 167-74CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

page no 118 note 2 See further my ‘Predestination, Property and Power’, SCH, 11 (1965) pp 220-36. For the importance of the idea of the voluntas inordinata in Wyclif’s theory see now de Boor, F., Wyclifs Simoniebegriff: Die theologischen und kirchenpolitischen Grundlagen der Kirchenkritik John Wyclifs (Halle 1970), espec pp 64ffGoogle Scholar.

page no 119 note 1 De vaticinatione seu prophetia, 1, ed Loserth, J., Opera Minora, WS (London 1913) p 165 Google Scholar, ‘spectat ad officium doctoris evangelici prophetare’; and note his comparison of himself with St Paul and his sufferings, De eucharistia, 9 pp 294-5. He had already pointed out in the Postilla that a prophet would need to secure the help of lay lords to protect him from the persecution of evil priests, Benrath, p 89 n 212.

page no 120 note 1 For example De apostasia, 13, ed Dziewicki, M. H., WS (London 1889) p 173 Google Scholar, ‘nunc Ecclesia nostra occidua in qua sunt multi maniaci’.

page no 120 note 2 For example De Ecclesia, 15 p 357, ‘ideo propter multitudinem, propter famam et propter terrorem istorum satellitum exterriti sunt pauci simplices dicere veritatem’. Although only a year or so later (1379-80) he was claiming that ‘certe sumus quod plures nobiscum sunt quam cum illis’, Responsiones ad Strode (Opera Minora) p 198.

page no 120 note 3 See the numerous instructions on preaching given to the simple followers of Christ living an apostolic vita in the Postilla: Benrath, espec pp 179-90, 341-6; compare Smalley, B., ‘Wyclif’s Postilla on the Old Testament and his Principium ’, Oxford Studies presented to D. Callus (Oxford 1964) pp 253-96Google Scholar at pp 280-1. As pointed out by Mallard, W., ‘Dating the Sermones Quadraginta of John Wyclif’, Medievalia et Humanistica, XVII (Boulder, Colorado 1966) pp 86–105 Google Scholar at p 99, there is a passage in a sermon (iv 59 p 462) firmly datable to 19 October 1376 which suggests that there was a recognisable group in existence: ‘Et licet scribae nostri dicant praedicantes religionem istam esse blasphemos atque haereticos, destructionem Ecclesiae machinantes, tarnen visis miraculis veritatem nostri ordinis confitentur’. It may perhaps be suggested that the series of sermons on the Ten Commandments (iv 35-45) of the spring of 1377, some addressed ‘vestrac fraternitati’, and which seem to have been given to mixed audiences in different places, may have been intended for a group or groups of adherents.

page no 120 note 4 De blasphemia, 2 p 37, ‘Sacerdos enim mundo incognitos, qui similius sequitur Christum in moribus, habet potestatem regendi et aedificandi Ecclesiam excellentius, quia non consistit regimen Ecclesiae in spoliatione...sed in meritoria operatione...Sic quod melius foret Ecclesiae non esse papam vel praelatos huiusmodi, sed, abiecta tota traditione caesarea, sacerdotes pauperes docere nude et familiariter legem Christi’; cf. 1 p 9, ‘Unde potens est Deus illuminare et exercitare mentes paucorum fidelium qui constanter detegant et moneant, si digni sumus, ad destructionem huius versutiae Antichristi’.

page no 121 note 1 Compare Wilks, , SCH, V (1969) pp 69–98 Google Scholar.

page no 121 note 2 Hewitt, H.J., The Organisation of War under Edward III (Manchester 1966) pp 160-5Google Scholar.

page no 121 note 3 Jacob, E. F., Henry Chichele and the Ecclesiastical Politics of his Age (Creighton Lecture: London 1951) pp 2–3 Google Scholar.

page no 122 note 1 Compare Hewitt, Organisation of War, pp 165-8.

page no 122 note 2 For example De simonia, 5, ed Herzberg-Fränkel, S. and Dziewicki, M. H., WS (London 1898) p 67 Google Scholar, ‘O quam gloriosum foret exemplar Ecclesiae si Urbanus noster VI renuntiaret omnibus mundi divitiis sicut Petrus, ita quod in Urbano I et VI compleatur circulus quo clerus religione Christi relicta in saecularibus evagatur’. But note 7 p 93, ‘Tria autem remedia ex Dei gratia coniecturo. Primum quod Deus irradiet mentem papae exempli gratia Urbani VI quod...conquasset omnes huiusmodi symonias: sed illud foret inopinatum et immensum miraculum’; and by De blasphemia, 1 pp 7-8, he has decided that nothing is to be done but wait for Urban to die and hope for a better replacement: see the passage beginning ‘O si regnum nostrum post mortem Urbani sexti non foret seductum per satrapas, sic quod liberei se a tali capite et generatione hac pessima’.

page no 123 note 1 According to Wyclif, Gaunt thought that an action imperilling the realm was worse than deflowering the king’s daughter: De Ecclesia, 12 p 266.

page no 123 note 2 Responsiones ad Strode, pp 193-200.

page no 123 note 3 Jones, R. H., The Royal Policy of Richard II: Absolutism in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford 1968)Google Scholar.

page no 124 note 1 Responsiones ad Strode, pp 197-8, beginning ‘Unde in vulgari consuluit quod istud generaliter non fiat subito sed prudenter sicut coeperat paulative’ (where he is employing a favourite device of referring to himself in the third person).

page no 125 note 1 De blasphemia, 1 pp 8-9, 18, ‘Et tantum inveterata malitia invaluit quod unius simplicis momentanea rebellio parum proderit, cum satraparum suorum persecutione sit statissime extinguendus’.

page no 125 note 2 De simonia, 7 p 93; 8 pp 101-3.

page no 125 note 3 XXXIII Conclusiones, 25 (Opera Minora) p 55, citing Matt. 10: 34, ‘Unde doctor christianus non omitteret propter perturbationem pacem talem prudenter dissolvere’; and the similar passages in De vaticinatione, 2 pp 170 and 174, where he again uses Christ’s remark about bringing a sword, not peace, in order to answer accusations of disrupting the peace, adding ‘Sufficeret enim pars regni quae est iam toxice in manu mortua per se debellare vel in iusta causa resistere’.

page no 125 note 4 De simonia, 4 pp 44.

page no 125 note 5 Oman, [C.], [The Great Revolt of 1381] (2nd ed with introduction by Fryde, E. B.: Oxford 1969)Google Scholar; Dobson, [R.B.], [The Peasants’ Revolt 0f 1381] (London 1970)Google Scholar.

page no 126 note 1 Postan, M. M., Cambridge Economic History of Europe, 1 (2 ed, Cambridge 1966) pp 609-10Google Scholar.

page no 126 note 2 See the statute of 1382 against unlicensed preachers ‘in certain habits under the guise of great holiness’ who move from county to county and from town to town, preaching not only in churches but also in churchyards, fairs, markets and other public places: Rotuli Parliamentorum, 111 pp 124-3; and the mandate against lollard preaching issued by the bishop of Worcester on 10 August 1387, which refers to them preaching publicly in churches, graveyards and on the streets, and privately in halls, rooms, gardens and enclosures: Wilkins, , Concilia, 111 pp 202-3Google Scholar. For Swinderby’s wayside pulpit of millstones, Knighton, 11 p 192.

page no 126 note 3 Aston, [M. E.], [‘Lollardy and Sedition, 1381-1431’], PP, XVII (1960) pp 1–44 Google Scholar at pp 5, 37; Dobson, p 71; compare Walsingham, Chronicon Angliae, pp 310-11. For the way in which the Revolt was seen as a vindication of Courtenay’s warnings against Wyclif, see Dahmus, J.H., William Courtenay, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1381-1396 (Pennsylvania and London 1966) pp 70-3Google Scholar.

page no 127 note 1 De blasphemia, 5 p 76; XXXIII Conclusiones, 22 p 49.

page no 127 note 2 De blasphemia, 13 p 194.

page no 127 note 3 Aston, pp 2-5, 36; Oman, pp 19-21, 101; Fryde, p xxxvii; Dobson, pp 367, 373-8; compare Cohn, N., The Pursuit of the Millennium (London 1957) p 413 Google Scholar: all agree that Wyclif was innocent of the charge of complicity, however damaging the revolt undoubtedly was for the future of the lollard movement. Similarly Workman, 11 pp 236-41; McFarlane, pp 99-100.

page no 127 note 4 De blasphemia, 13 pp 197-8. Compare Stacey, J., ‘The Character of John Wyclif’, London Quarterly and Holborn Review, CLXXXIV (London 1959) pp 133-6 at p 134Google Scholar.

page no 127 note 5 De blasphemia, 6 p 83; 13 pp 190, 198; 14 p 214; 17 p 267; Responsiones ad Strode, pp 198-200.

page no 127 note 6 De blasphemia, 13 p 190.

page no 127 note 7 De blasphemia, 13 p 197, ‘Tertio deficit populus in modo agendi multiplici...et tertio quia exspectari debet totius regni exhortado sive consilium’: the totum regnum should have acted ‘in parliamento publico’, 17 p 269.

page no 128 note 1 See now Weltsch, R.E., Archbishop John of Jenstein, 1348-1400: Papalism, Humanism and Reform in Pre-Hussite Prague (The Hague and Paris 1968)Google Scholar. A convenient survey of Wenceslas’s struggle with the higher nobility during the 1390s, which involved a further contest between the king and bishop John of Litomysl, is provided by Dvornik, F. The Slavs in European History and Civilization (New Brunswick, N.J, 1962) pp 183-8Google Scholar.

page no 128 note 2 [Mistra Jana Husi,] Korespondence [a Dokumenty], ed Novotný, [V.] (Prague 1920) pp 3–4 Google Scholar. The tract is written in the form of a letter from Wenceslas to Boniface IX, dated August 1402, in which the king supposedly threatens to throw his opponents into the Vltava, as had happened to Jenstein’s vicar-general, John of Pomuk, in 1393.

page no 129 note 1 For these events see now Spinka, [M.], John Hus: [A Biography] (Princeton 1968)Google Scholar; also de Vooght, P., L’Hérésie de Jean Huss and Hussiana (Louvain 1960)Google Scholar.

page no 129 note 2 This supports the testimony given at Constance by the Prague inquisitor, Nicholas of Nezero, according to which Wenceslas obliged Hus to go to the council: Spinka, John Hus’ Concept of the Church, p 353; John Hus, p 220. This statement has been generally decried as being part of evidence obtained under duress and contradicting earlier testimony, and on the grounds that Wenceslas would never have done this for the reason stated by Nicholas, to clear his realm of suspicion of heresy. This does not necessarily clear Wenceslas of blame, although his reasons may have been very different from that given by the bishop.

page no 130 note 1 For Sigismund’s invitation, Novotný, Korespondence, p 197. The safe conduct had been offered to Hus before he left Krakovec, since he refers to it on 1 September, although it was not actually issued until 18 October, when Hus had already set out (on 11 October). The document was ambiguously phrased so that it was not clear whether it covered Hus at Constance itself or on a return journey see Palacký, F., Documenta Magistri Joannis Hus (Prague 1869) p 238 Google Scholar; Spinka, [M.], (John Hus at the Council of Constance] (New York and London 1965) pp 89–90 Google Scholar. Hus later accused Sigismund of acting like Pilate in betraying him to his Czech enemies: Spinka, pp 259-60, 286; compare John Hus’ Concept of the Church, pp 331-7; John Hus, pp 222-37. Sigismund’s sincerity in the matter of the safe conduct is defended by de Vooght, L’Hérésie, pp 325-8, 334-5.