Lollards

LOLLARDS

Origin of the Lollards (§ 1).
Wyclif and the Early English Lollarda (§ 2).
Spread of Lollardism in England (§ 3).
Lollard Memorial of 1395 (§ 4).
Ecclesiastical Opposition to Lollardiem (§ 5).
The Constitutions of Arundel (§ 6).
Sir John Oldcastle (§ 7).
Suppression and Decline of Lollardiam (§ 8).
Tenets of Lollardism (§ 9).
Lollard Opposition to Roman Catholic Doctrines (§ 10).
Lollard View of the Eucharist (§ 11).

I. Origin of the Lollards.

The name Lollards is applied both to a semimonastic charitable society originating in Brabant in the fourteenth century and to the English followers of John Wyclif. The Brabantine Lollards are mentioned by J. Hocsem, a canon of Liege c. 1350, in a notice of the year 1309, and from his account it is obvious that they received their name from the Middle Dutch loellen ("to sing softly, hum"). They first appeared prominently on the outbreak of the plague in Antwerp c. 1350, devoting themselves to the care of the sick and the burial of the dead, and received the name Alexians (q.v.) from their patron saint. Suspected of heresy from the very start, they were tolerated conditionally after 1347, and their dubious reputation transferred their name to the adherents of Wyclif when he began in 1380 to assail the accepted teachings of the Church in regard to the Eucharist. The term was so used for the first time by Thomas Walden and the Cistercian Crompe in 1382, who applied it to Wyclif's friends Hereford and Repington. Five years later five itinerant preachers are described as Lollards, and the name henceforth appears frequently in English documents, finally losing all trace of its Dutch origin and becoming the national term of derision for Wyclif's followers from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century.

2.. Wyclif and the Early English Lollards.

The middle of the fourteenth century was a period of religious transition for the English people, and the calm but intense conviction that the evils of the time must be overcome and that religious and social life must be reformed found expression in John Wyclif (q.v.). In 1378 he denied the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, receiving the support of his university, the court, the nobles, and the knights. Finding his model in the mendicant monks, he sent his closest friends, including Hereford, Aston, Bedeman (all members of the University of Oxford), Purvey (his vicar at Lutterworth), Thorpe, Parker, and Swinderby, to preach among the farmers and the artizans. For the first time in English history an appeal was made to the people rather than to the scholars, and dogma was superseded by the Bible, which was made the sole source, of faith and practise. Yet, though the stereotyped sermons of the mendicant orders were replaced by a new note of religious conviction, Wyclif had no ground of opposition to the ideals of St. Francis and St. Dominic, as is amply proven by his Short Rule of Life with its close affinities to the aims of St. Francis. Their followers, on the other hand, he bitterly assailed, not only for their teachings about the Eucharist, but also for their adherence to the two antipopes of the Great Schism (see Schism) after 1378, for their opposition to free preaching, and for their hostility to the Bible in the vernacular. Wyclif accordingly sent out his "Poor Priests" to invade the territory of the mendicant orders. Bound by no vows and no formal consecration, poor, and yet not mendicant, they wandered from village to village, barefoot, with a long staff in token of their pastoral vocation and coarse habits of reddish brown to symbolize poverty and toil. Prelates, priests, and abbots scorned and hated them, but the people loved them and flocked around them.

3. Spread of Lollardism in England.

This was the beginning of the Lollard movement, which stirred England to its depths for nearly a century and a half and formed the essential basis of the Reformation. [It seems probable that Wyclif and his "Poor Priests" did not originate the type of Evangelical life and thought known as Lollardism. They rather evoked and made aggressive older forms of Evangelical life which survived the Roman Catholic conquest and may have been influenced by continental Evangelicals like the Waldenses, with whom they had much in common. The movement seems too extensive to be ascribed solely to the .preaching of Wyclif's evangelists. A. H. N.] The ranks of the "Poor Priests" were soon increased by many of the laity, who boldly opposed the authority of the Church, while some of the nobility who did not fear the wrath of the powerful John of Gaunt, such as the count of Salisbury, likewise joined them. Among the common people their success was enormous, until their adherents were believed to number at least half the population. [This estimate is too high. It is not likely that one in ten was a Lollard. A. H. N.] Their weapon was the Bible in the vernacular, and true to their doctrine that each priest had the same power to bind and loose as pope or bishop, they ordained others to extend their work. By the middle of the fourteenth century the Lollards were at their zenith, at least numerically, but even during Wyclif's lifetime they met a rude shock when in 1382 Courtenay, archbishop of Canterbury, urged Parliament to take measures against the "Poor Priests," whom he accused of disobedience to their ecclesiastical superiors, stirring up class hostility, and propagating heresy. This was averted by Richard II., but on the insistence of the primate he placed the matter under the jurisdiction of the ordinaries, which were to proceed against the Lollards through their own episcopal officials. The result was the excommunication of Aston and the suspension of Hereford, Repington, and Bedeman from university privileges. On Dec. 31, 1384, Wyclif died, but the movement which he had inaugurated lived and grew.

4. Lollard Memorial of 1395.

A few years later Lollards were numerous in London, Lincoln, Salisbury, and Worcester, and their tenets, no longer restricted to religion, extended to economic and political life. In 1395, doubtless emboldened by the blunt refusal of Parliament to pass the archbishop's bill for the destruction of all Wyclif's translations of the Bible, the Lollards felt themselves sufficiently strong to present a memorial to Parliament and to demand the cooperation of that body is carrying out their reform. The twelve clauses of this memorial were as follows: Faith, love, and hope had vanished from the English daughter-churcb since she bad been lost in worldly wealth through her association with her great stepmother of Rome; the Roman Catholic priesthood was not that of Christ; the priestly law of celibacy resulted in unnatural vice; transubstantiation was a feigned miracle and conduced to idolatry; prayers over bread, salt, wine, water, oil, wax and the like were unlawful magic rites; it was contrary to the word of Christ (Matt. vi. 24) to have king and bishop or prelate and judge in one person; prayers for the dead were ineffectual, pilgrimages and the invocation of images were nearly idolatrous; auricular confession was not essential to salvation, but was a source of priestly arrogance and permission to sin; war was contrary to the New Testament, and death and pillage to the poor; the vows of nuns led to infanticide and unnatural impurity; and art was unnecessary and conducive to luxury and extravagance. [Cf. the tex in Fasciculi Zizaiorum, W. W. Shirley in Rolls Series, pp. 360-369, London, 1858; Wilkins, Concilia, III., p. 221; condensed transl. in Lechler's John Wyclif, ed. P. Lorimer, pp. 447-448.] In this memorial, however, the Lollards had overestimated their strength, and the king, who had taken no part hitherto in the episcopal proceedings against them, now admonished them sternly.

5. Ecclesiastical Opposition to Lollardism.

The decline of Lollardism now began. In 1396 Thomas Arundel, a bitter opponent of the movement, succeeded Courtenay as archbishop of Canterbury, and three years later Richard II. was murdered. The throne was then occupied by the Lancastrian Henry IV., who found it to his interests to follow the lead of the hierarchic and aristocratic faction which had given him the crown. In Jan., 1400, the bishops declared that they were unable to make headway against the heretics, and the statute De comburendo haretico was accordingly passed. The first to be executed under its provisions was W. Sawtrey (Chartris), who died at the stake in the following month. The act was enforced with special severity in the counties of southern and middle position to England, while those who were not burned to death were either tortured into recantation or ended their lives in prison. Undismayed by these measures, the Lollards sought support in their struggle for religious and political freedom in the hatred of the oppressed peasantry for the priests who lived in luxury. Both the secular and the regular clergy, and especially the friars, were regarded as being long since deserted the principles of their founders and as having persecuted their own brethren, the Fraticelli, the Beghards, and the Lollards, for remaining faithful to the teaching of their fathers. In Piers The Plowman's Creed (c. 1394) a man in search of the true doctrines of Christ is represented as inquiring of the four mendicant orders in succession, only to meet the scornful reply that the words of Jesus are no longer remembered, and not until he finds the "Poor Priests" does he obtain what he desires.

6. The Constitutions of Arundel

Popular approbation of the Lollards, however, could avail little against the power of the archbishop, who in 1408 extorted from the convocation of Oxford, then the center of the movement, the Constitutiones Thomas Arundel, which were designed to crush the tenets of Wyclif. Among other prohibitions, these regulations forbade preaching without the permission of the bishop, as well as the punishment of the sins of the clergy by the laity, and required that the writings of Wyclif and the Lollards be destroyed. They likewise enacted periodical inspection of the residences of Oxford students, and all suspected of Lollardism were ruthlessly expelled. The success of the measure was complete, and within a few years the university was one of the foremost defenders of Roman Catholic orthodoxy.

The movement of repression was now extended, and commoners in city and country alike were in peril of gallows, ax, and stake. On the other head, many of the nobility remained true to their principles. Prominent among the latter was Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham (see Oldcastle, Sir John), who gave free scope to the Lollards on his Kentish estates, especially as he was protected against Arundel by his friendship with Henry IV. and the Prince of Wales, afterward Henry V. The date of his conversion to Lollardism is unknown, but was before 1410, when he was in high favor with the prince, whom he even sought to win over to his sect. During the reign of Henry IV. he had no need to fear the hostility of the bishops, who hated him for his denial of transubstantiation and his opposition to auricular confession, pilgrimages, and the adoration of images, as well as for the wealth which he expended on the preparation and maintenance of itinerant preachers.

7. Sir John Oldcastle

Henry V., however, lent a ready ear to the complaints of the archbishop and the convocation. Oldcastle refused to be convinced of his errors by the king, and left the court without permission, retiring to his castle of Cowley in Kent. Ignoring Arundel's citations, he was placed under the ban for contumacy and arrested by a royal warrant. He now formulated a reply to a committee consisting of Arundel and the bishops of Winchester and London, but his answers concerning transubstantiation and confession were unsatisfactory. After much urging, he finally declared himself ready to accept the teachings of the Church, but denied that the pope, the cardinals, or the prelates had the right to define these matters. He was accordingly brought before another episcopal court on Sept. 25. He refused to retract his opinions and sharply rebuked the pope and the clergy, whereupon

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the archbishop delivered him over as a heretic to the secular arm. Henry vainly endeavored to induce him to recant, but he steadfastly refused and was imprisoned for weeks in the Tower. On Oct. 10, however, he escaped, and wild rumors spread through the country that the Lollards had resolved to kill the king and his brothers, as well as the archbishop and the clergy, to destroy all ecclesiastical edifices, and to make Oldcastle regent. There is no evidence that such a plot was actually formed, but on Jan. 11, 1414, about a hundred friends of Oldcastle, ignorant of his escape, gathered under the leadership of Sir Roger Acton in St. Giles to effect his liberation. They were dispersed without bloodshed, but some of the leaders were captured and executed, while two edicts were issued, one forbidding the reading of the Bible under penalty of death and the other declaring all Lollards heretics. Guarded by his friends, Oldcastle eluded capture for four years before he was taken in Wales by Lords Jeuan ab Gruffydd and Gruffydd Vychan of Garth. He was carried back to London and lodged in the Tower, where he was condemned to death Dec. 14, 1417, on the charges of high treason and heresy, his execution taking place on the same day.

8. Suppression and Decline of Lollardism.

With Oldcastle's death the hopes of Lollardism vanished. Minor recalcitrants were forced to choose between recantation and execution, and all political and social aspiration, if they had ever existed, disappeared. The Council of Constance (1414-18), moreover, had put an end to the Great Schism, and the Church, again able to devote its reunited energies to the suppression of heresy, forced the Lollards to seek refuge in secrecy and obscure hiding-places. Driven from the fields and the streets, they concealed themselves in hovels and barns, sand-pits and caves, while conventicles in the houses replaced preaching in the streets. Their numbers at first remained undiminished, and in some parishes the Lollards formed so large a proportion that pilgrimages and processions, as well as the observance of saints' days, were neglected. Some of the clergy were found among them, but after the execution of Oldcastle the leader was gone, although the Lollard hatred of the Church was occasionally manifested by rabid outbursts on the part of individuals. Executions for Lollardism continued long after the middle of the fifteenth century, and in 1476 the University of Oxford again had to proceed against some of its members for Wyclifi's heresy. In 1485 and 1494 bishops preached in Coventry and Kyle against the "Bible Men," and in the first decade of the following century, before the thoughts of Luther had crossed the Channel, increasing numbers were condemned and burned for possessing Wyclif's writings, reading the Bible in the vernacular, and rejecting transubstantiation, auricular confession, the invocation of saints, and pilgrimages, the very things which had formed the point at issue in 1395. At Amersham, a Lollard center, thirty men were executed in 1506, and eleven years later sectaries called "Brethren in Christ" or "Known Men" (the latter name derived from a mistranslation of I Cor. xiv. 38) were cited before the courts. In a certain sense, therefore, Lollardiam, inherited for generations, was a real, though secret, precursor of the Reformation in England. With no Hues or Luther to lead them, they achieved what no other religious movement of the Middle Ages was able to do, when they succeeded in awakening and maintaining a longing for the Bible in the vernacular. The repeated efforts to secure an English Bible which were made by Tyndale, Coverdale, Taverner, Cranmer, the Geneva fugitives, and Parker were inspired primarily by the Lollard "Bible Men. From England Lollardism spread to Scotland. Oxford infected St. Andrews, and the teachers there were repeatedly accused of adhering to the doctrines of Wyclif's followers, while Knox expressly termed the Lollards of Kyle, Ayrshire, the forerunners of the Reformation and the descendants of the Lollards of the fifteenth century.

9. Tenets of Lollardism.

The tenets of the Lollards must be gleaned fromthe legal proceedings against them, contemporary accounts, the memorial of 1395, Piers Plowman's Creed, Piers Plowman's Complaint, The Lanthornof Light, The Plowman's Prayer, and the Repressor of R. Pecock, but these documents moat be used with caution. The scanty literature of the Lollards themselves, on the other hand, shows no trace of system. It is obvious from these sources, of which the most important is the Repressor, that Lollardism was based on the teachings of Wyclif and centered about the Bible, whence were derived all Lollard arguments and postulates. According to the Franciscan W. Woodford, their chief dogma was that only what the pope and the cardinals could deduce from the Bible was true, all else being false, while if they could be convinced of the erroneous nature of this tenet, they would readily return to the Roman Catholic Church. The Plowman's Prayer ,makes true religion consist in love, fear, and trust in God above all things, and also declares that the soul of man, rather than an earthly temple, is the dwelling-place of the Lord. Pecock, in like manner, describes their faith as based on three postulates: Only what can be found in the Bible (especially in the New Testament) may be regarded as the command of God; each Christian man or woman of humble soul, and desirous to know the Scriptures, may comprehend their true meaning; whosoever has grasped the meaning of the Bible must refuse to accept any opposing arguments, whether derived from the Bible or reason. He also adds that the Lollards were called "Bible Men" because they memorized the New Testament in their mother tongue and found the reading of the Bible so profitable that they preferred it to instruction by scholars or priests.