3. Pre-Reformation Resistance to Rome

A new era seemed to have dawned with the earnest and plain preaching of the Dominican (1221) and Franciscan friars (1224); but, becoming fat with lands, they lost their hold on the popular mind. Here and there a great bishop, like Grosseteste (q.v.; 1235-53), lifted up his voice against the corruption of the clergy, dared to resist the pope's assumption to force appointments within his diocese, and insisted upon the authority and preaching of the Scriptures. The great English chronicler Matthew Paris, in the middle of the thirteenth century, voices the protest of the people against the monetary exactions of the pope and his agents. The State was not completely paralyzed, but sought to meet ecclesiastical domination and abuses with remedial legislation. Two great acts stand out as protests against them. The statute of mortmain (1279) forbade the alienation of lands to religious corporations in such wise as to be exempt from taxation, while the statutes of praemunire and provisore (1351, 1391, etc.) made a royal license necessary to the validity of papal appointments and bulls within the realm. [The statute of preemumire forbade resort to foreign tribunals (the curia included) for the adjudication of ecclesiastical causes without express permission from the crown. The statute of provieors was aimed against the reservation by the pope for himself or his favorites of English benefices, with the collection of the revenues without equivalent service. In case endowed positions were kept vacant with such intent, the revenues were to go into the royal exchequer. A. H. N.] Neither of these acts accomplished much at the time, but the latter was used effectively by henry VIII. In 1386, a parliament of Edward III, definitely refused to pay the annual tribute of a thousand marks promised by John to the apostolic see. In the fourteenth century loud protests began to be heard from the people and the clergy. John Wyclif (q.v.; 1324-1384), " the morning star of the Reformation," translated the Scriptures and asserted the rights of the State and the individual conscience. He published in 1381 twelve theses against transubstantiation, and declared that the Lord wan in the sacrament as a king is in his realm. He insisted upon the practise of preaching, denounced the idleness and ignorance of the monks, defined the Church as " the organization of the elect,'f and called upon the pope to give up his pride and wealth. William Longland, without Erasmus' scholarship, but in a more popular and earnest vein than he, ridiculed the friars in rimes. The Lollards (q.v.) were so numerous that, according to the chronicler Knighton, every other person on the road was one. But the energetic opposition of Church and State was effective in silencing them or inducing them to recant. The statute "for burning heretics" was enacted in 1401. By the order of the Council of Constants (1415), Wyclif's ashes were disinterred and scattered in the Swift. The Church slumbered on for more than a century longer, but the great movement finally came, out of which Christianity in England, again crystallized in a distinctly national Church of England, started forward on a career of renewed life and achievement.