The Wycliffite Heresy

Kantik Ghosh argues that one of the main reasons for Lollardy's sensational resonance for its times, and for its immediate posterity, was its exposure of fundamental problems in late medieval academic engagement with the Bible, its authority and its polemical uses. Examining Latin and English sources, Ghosh shows how the same debates over biblical hermeneutics and associated methodologies were from the 1380s onwards conducted both within and outside the traditional university framework, and how by eliding boundaries between Latinate biblical speculation and vernacular religiosity Lollardy changed the cultural and political positioning of both. Covering a wide range of texts - scholastic and extramural, in Latin and in English, written over half a century from Wyclif to Thomas Netter - Ghosh concludes that by the first decades of the fifteenth century Lollardy had partly won the day. Whatever its fate as a religious movement, it had successfully changed the intellectual landscape of England.

Medieval Europe was a hotbed of revolt against religious dogma. Particularly offensive to the established church were the views of the Cathars, whose dualist beliefs Rome condemned as heretical. Through a variety of literary works, this book explores the dualist religious movement which developed as a culture of the masses and took place in Europe between the 12th and 17th centuries. It examines the strong parallels between the Bogomils and Cathars and the religious practices of the British Lollards, extrapolating Lollardy's spread from eastern to western Europe. Providing numerous text comparisons, the work focuses on a number of authors including John Wycliffe, William Tynsdale, William Langland and John Milton, whose works exhibit the dualist philosophy.

The Courtly and Commercial Art of the Wycliffite Bible examines the illuminations of the first complete translation of the Bible into English and situates this art within networks of artists catering to bourgeois and noble clientele in both London and the provinces from the late fourteenth century into the early sixteenth century. In 1409, Archbishop Thomas Arundel banned the Wycliffite Bible, along with the heresy attributed to Oxford theologian John Wyclif for which it was named. Containing the first complete translation of the Bible into English, the Wycliffite Bible is nonetheless the most numerous extant work in Middle English by a wide margin. Nearly half the existing copies of the Wycliffite Bible are illuminated. This book offers the first sustained, critical examination of the decoration of Wycliffite Bibles. This study has found that many copies were decorated by the most prominent border and initial artists of their eras. Many more were modeled on these styles. Such highly regarded artists had little to gain from producing volumes that might lead them to trial as heretics and ultimately to the stake. This unprecedented study contributes to recent revisionist criticism and troubles long-standing assumptions about Wycliffism and the Wycliffite Bible. It contends that the manuscript record simply does not support a stark interpretation of the Wycliffite Bible as a marginalized text. Rather, this study reveals a prolific and vibrant textual exchange within the book culture of late medieval England.

The Wycliffite Bible: Origin, History and Interpretation offers new perspectives and research by leading scholars on the first complete translation of the Bible into English produced at the end of the 14th century by the followers of John Wyclif.

Vernacular writers of late medieval England were engaged in global conversations about orthodoxy and heresy. Entering these conversations with a developing vernacular required lexical innovation. The Language of Heresy in Late Medieval English Literature examines the way in which these writers complemented seemingly straightforward terms, like heretic, with a range of synonyms that complicated the definitions of both those words and orthodoxy itself. This text proposes four specific terms that become collated with heretic in the parlance of medieval English writers of the 14th and 15th centuries: jangler, Jew, Saracen, and witch. These four labels are especially important insofar as they represent the way in which medieval Christianity appropriated and subverted marginalized or vulnerable identities to promote a false image of unassailable authority.

The philosophical and theological ideas of John Wyclif, their dissemination among clerical and lay audiences, and the movement of religious dissent associated with his name all provoked sharp controversies in late medieval England. This volume brings together the very latest scholarship on Wyclif and Wycliffism, with its contributors exploring in interdisciplinary fashion the historical, literary, and theological resonances of the Wycliffite controversies. Far from adhering to the traditional binary divide between 'orthodoxy' and 'heresy' as a tool for explaining the religious turmoil of the late fourteenth, fifteenth, and early sixteenth centuries, essays here explore the construction and rhetorical use of those terms, collectively producing a more nuanced account of the religious history of pre-Reformation England. Topics include the use of religious lyrics and tables of lessons as indirect rebuttals of Wycliffite claims; the social networks through which dissenters transmitted their ideas; dissenting and mainstream readings of Scripture; the 'survival' of Wycliffism in the run-up to Henry VIII's reformation; and the fate of Wyclif and Wycliffism in later historiography. Leading contributors include Anne Hudson, Alastair Minnis, and Peter Marshall.