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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 February 2016
Historians should not need Wyclif to alert them to the dangers of words. Even if our professional futures are unlikely to be threatened, as his was, by the challenging of accepted terms, the words we use can lead us into false positions, and we sometimes need, like Wyclif, to probe the historical dimension of our terminology. What exactly do we mean when we call Wycliffites or Lollards a ‘sect’? How does our word relate to contemporary usage? Do we import alien interpretations by failure to recognize semantic change? If ‘sect’ is a word that leads us into something of an impasse, this paper does not attempt the impossible of pointing to a way out; my aim is merely to indicate some of the hazards of the linguistic terrain and to suggest that looking at the term may itself tell us something useful about Wycliffites and contemporary attitudes towards them.
I am most grateful to Perm Szittya for his helpful comments and suggestions on this paper, and to Barrie Dobson for answering questions and giving advice.
1 Fasciculi Zizaniorum, ed. Shirley, W. W. (RS, London, 1858), p. 272Google Scholar; The Complete Works of John Cower, ed. Macaulay, G. C., 4 vols (Oxford, 1899-1902), 4, p. 347,11. 30–1Google Scholar; EWS, ed. Anne Hudson and Pamela Gradon, 5 vols (Oxford, 1983–96), 2, p. 64.
2 Longman Dictionary of the English Language (new edn, Harlow, 1991), p. 1456.
3 Thomson, , Lollards, p. 239Google Scholar; idem, ‘Orthodox religion and the origins of Lollardy’, History, 74 (1989), pp. 39–55, at pp. 41, 48–50; see also p. 53: The development of sectarianism was probably a reaction to the increased level of persecution from the accession of Henry IV onwards.’ In addition to the above see now the same author’s ‘Knightly Piety and the Margins of Lollardy’, in Lollardy and Gentry, pp. 95–111.
4 Horst, I. B., The Radical Brethren: Anabaptism and the English Reformation to 1558 (Nieuwkoop, 1972), p. 58Google Scholar.
5 Hudson, , PR, pp. 168–73Google Scholar, at pp. ‘69, 172: ‘opponents … piled upon the whole sect all the insults they could imagine.’
6 Leff, , Heresy, pp. 559–605; p. 590Google Scholar: ‘For its part, Lollardy became a clandestine sect, its leaders driven into hiding and its adherents formed into conventicles and small groups.’
7 Loadcs, David. Politics, Censorship and the English Reformation (London and New York, 1991), p. 182Google Scholar. MacCulloch, Diarmaid, The Later Reformation in England 1547–1603 (London, 1990), pp. 154–5Google Scholar, considers how these distinctions apply to Lollardy, pointing out the need to distinguish between non-conformity and Nonconformity.
8 The word could be seen to be derived either from sequor, to follow (whence sectatores, followers) or from seco, to cut (whence sectio, cutting).
9 Rymer, T., Foedera, Conventiones, Litterae (London, 1816-33)Google Scholar, 2, Pt. I, pp. 481–2, 2, pt 2, p. 1016.
10 Knighton, , pp. 92–5. I differ from this translation in thinking that the passage, which seems ambiguous, describes different suits for different sides. The episode is reported as hearsay – ‘rumor populi’.Google Scholar
11 Réville, A., Le Soulèvement des travailleurs d’Angleterre en 1381 (Paris, 1989), p. 257Google Scholar. On conventicles see below at nn. 39–40 and 85–6.
12 The Clerk’s Tale, 11. 1170–2; The Poetical Works of Chaucer, ed. Robinson, F. N. (Cambridge, MA, n.d), p. 137Google Scholar. For comments on this passage see Evans, Ruth and Johnson, Lesley, eds., Feminist Readings in Middle English Literature: The Wife of Bath and All her Sect (London and New York, 1994), pp. 2–4Google Scholar and notes 4–5, p. 19. Considerable commentary has become attached to this passage (one of a handful in which Chaucer uses the word ‘secte’) and the new OED has canonized the reading of ‘sex’, which was not that adopted by the Middle English Dictionary.
13 olychronicon Ranulphi Higden … with the English Translations of John Treviso, ed. Babington, C., 9 vols (RS, 1865-86), 1, p. 129Google Scholar; Poetical Works of Chaucer, ed. Robinson, , p. 346Google Scholar, The House of Fame’, 11. 1432–4.
14 Dutripon, F. P., Concordantiae Bibliorum Sacrorum Vulgatae editionis (Paris, 1844)Google Scholar, s.n. Secta. Acts 24.5,14; 26.5; 28.22; Gal. 5.20; II Pet. 2.1,10 (the last being the exception in the Greek). In the AV ‘sect’ appears also in Acts 5.17; 15.5 and I Cor. 11.19 where the Vulgate has haeresis.
15 Theodosiani Libri XVI cum constitutionihus Sirmondianis, ed. Kriiger, P. and Mommsen, T., 2 vols (Berlin, 1905), 1 (2), XVI:5: 12, 25, 41–2, 44, 57, 64, 66, ‘De Haereticis’, pp. 859–60, 863–4, 868–9, 870, 875, 878, 879–80Google Scholar. My thanks to Perm Szittya for directing me to this source.
16 Isidori Hispalensis Episcopi Etymologiarum sive Originum, ed. Lindsay, W. M., 2 vols (Oxford, 1911), i, Lib, VIII, iiiGoogle Scholar. I have used and somewhat altered the translation of Edward Peters, in Heresy and Authority in Medieval Europe (London, 1980), pp. 49–50.
17 Southern, R. W., Robert Grosseteste: The Growth of an English Mind in Medieval Europe (2nd edn, Oxford, 1992), p. 292Google Scholar.
18 Isidori… Etymologiarum, ed. Lindsay, , I, Lib. VIII, vGoogle Scholar; Peters, , Heresy and Authority, p. 50Google Scholar. St Augustine, , Contra Faustum Manichaeum, Lib. 20Google Scholar, cap. iii – distinguishing between secta and schisma (‘Secta vero est longe alia opinantem quam caeteri, alio etiam sibi ac longe dissimili ritu divinitatis instituísse culturam’), PL 42, col. 369.
19 S. Thomae Aquinatis Summa Theologiae, ed. Caramello, P., 3 vols (Turin, 1962-3), 2, pp. 64–6Google Scholar, II, ii, quest, xi, De haeresi, arts 1–2.
20 ‘… predicatores videlicet, quia verius prevaricatores execrabilis nove secte, Lollardos vulgariter nuncupates’; Reg. Trefnant, p. 232. The phraseology of Trefnant’s long preamble, in which he condemns the preachers of this ‘new sect’ with fulsome ecclesiastical rhetoric, including the deceptive appearance of their ‘simulated guise of sanctity’ (on which more below) is of special interest in view of his expertise in canon law. Richard G. Davies, The episcopate’, in Clough, C. H., ed., Profession, Vocation, and Culture in Later Medieval England (Liverpool, 1982), p. 69, and p. 75Google Scholar on bishops’ need to have some understanding of canon law, on Trefnant’s large collection of canon law texts (the Decretals, the Sext, the Clementines, Guido de Baysio, among others), see BRUO, 3, p. 1901.
21 Complete Works of John Gower, 2, p. 14, 11. 349–51; 4, p. 347 (see epigraph and n. 1 above).
22 Reg. Trefnant, pp. 406–7; Calendar of Papal Letters, 1362–1404, pp. 515–16.
23 Rotuli Parliamentorum, 6 vols (London, 1776–77), 3, pp. 466–7, 473–4; McHardy, A K., ‘De Herético Comburendo, 1401’, in Lollardy and Gentry, pp. 115–18Google Scholar.
24 Rotuli Parliamentorum, 3, pp. 583–4; Lyndwood, W., Provinciale (Oxford, 1679), end section of Provincial Constitutions, pp. 65–6Google Scholar. See Thomson, , ‘Orthodox religion’, History, 74 (1989), p. 47, n. 34CrossRefGoogle Scholar for ‘new sect’ in a London writ of 1413.
25 Chronicon Angliae, ed. Thompson, E. M. (RS, 1874), pp. 174–81Google Scholar; Dahmus, J. H., The Prosecution of John Wyclyf (New Haven, CN, and London, 1952), pp. 35–55Google Scholar on the five bulls, with translations of their texts; Leff, , Dissolution, pp. 138–41Google Scholar; LefF, , Heresy, 2, pp. 413–22Google Scholar. On these models and Wyclif’s De civili dominio see Thomson, W. R., The Latin Writings of John Wyclyf (Toronto, 1983), pp. 50, 53–4Google Scholar.
26 ‘Et in tantum hi nempe, ne dicamus viri sed virorum umbre dampnose, cum ex eis sint quam plures propemodum litterati, contra fidem orthodoxam et sacrosanctam Romanam et universalem ecclesiam, in cuius gremio ad eorum et multorum confusionem et eternam dampnacionem litteras didicerunt …’; Reg. Trefnant, p. 406.
27 LefF, , Heresy, 2, p. 484Google Scholar; idem, Dissolution, pp. 130–5.
28 Rogeri Dymmok Liber Contra XII Errores et Hereses Lollardorum, ed. Cronin, H. S. (WS, London, 1921), p. 25Google Scholar, gives the Latin version of the Tretensus stilus lollardorum’, which Boniface’s bull followed closely, Reg. Trefnant, p. 406.
29 The first attempt to define the official attitude to manifest dissent’; Brenda Bolton, Tradition and temerity: papal attitudes to deviants, 1159–1216’, SCH, 9(1972), pp. 79–91, at p. 85.
30 Friedberg, 2, col. 780, Lib. V, tit. vii, De Haereticis, cap. ix; Mansi, 22, cols 476–8; Reg. Trefnant, p. 406; Lambert, Heresy, pp. 66–8; Moore, Dissent, p. 227.
31 Gui, Bernard, Practica Inquisitionis Heretice Pravitatis, ed. Douais, C. (Paris, 1886), p. 235Google Scholar and following, on the method of enquiry into and examination of heresy, makes regular use of the word ‘sect’ for the ‘secta Manicheorum’ and the ‘secta and heresis’ of the Valdenses, including (p. 245) the statement that the ‘sect’ of the Poor Men of Lyons were called Waldensians after their initiator (‘secta dicta est seu nominata a quodam nomine Valdesio seu Valdensi actore et inventore primo ipsius secte’); Gui, Bernard, Manuel de l’Inquisiteur, ed. Mollat, G., 2 vols (Paris, 1926-7), 1, pp. vii, 8, 34–65Google Scholar. For remarks on Gui’s ‘systematic descriptions of sects’, see Biller, Peter in Biller, P. and Hudson, A, eds, Heresy and Literacy, 1000–1530 (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 2, 8Google Scholar.
32 Lyndwood, , Provinciale, last section pp. 65–6 and pp. 295–7Google Scholar (with some verbal differences). The phrase is repeated: ‘si quis contrarium de determinatis per ecclesiam … quamcumque sive haeresis speciem, sive sectam publico vel occulte docuerit …’ These distinctions were important when it came to recidivism and relapse – a matter raised by Arundel in this same chapter. Lyndwood’s commentary recites the judgement of the Sext on this important point; namely that someone convicted on one heretical opinion or deviation (‘convictus de una specie vel secta haeresis’), who after abjuration embraced another such, was guilty of relapse. Lyndwood, p. 296, note n on Relapso: ‘qui convictus de una specie vel secta haeresis, … postmodum abjurans haeresin simpliciter vel generaliter, extunc in alia haeresis specie sive secta … judicandus est ut haereticus relapsus’; Friedburg, 2, col. 1072, Sext, lib. 5, tit. II, cap. viii.
33 Lyndwood, , Provinciale, p. 29Google Scholar$, notes b and c. Arundel’s ‘sectam aut speciem’ may be compared with the ‘falsas opiniones et sectas nostre fidei’ which Archbishop Courtenay found Leicester suspects guilty of preaching in 1389. The Metropolitan Visitations of William Courtenay, ed. Dahmus, J. H. (Urbana, IL, 1950), p. 171Google Scholar.
34 Lyndwood, , Provinciale, p. 295Google Scholar, note b, ‘Sectam. Sic dictam, quia sit quasi sectio vel divisio’; Baysio, Guido de, Lectura super sexto (Milan, 1490Google Scholar), sig. Ovir, ‘Secta; dicta est secta a divisione, quasi sectio, unde secte philosophorum vel hereticorum dicuntur.’
35 Lyndwood, , Provinciale, p. 295Google Scholar, note c, ‘Speciem heresis. Cujus species, 88 numerantur’; Summa Aurea D. Henrici Cardinalis Hostiensis (Lyons, 1548), bk 5, fol. 238r-v; Southern, Robert Grosseteste, pp. 292–3.
36 Eicoles d’ascun secte ou doctrine’; Rotuli Parliamentorum, 3, p. 584.
37 Wilkins, , Concilia, 3, p. 158Google Scholar, mandate for publication of the Blackfriars proceedings; Rotuli Parliamentorum, 3, pp. 124–5 refers to these proceedings; Richardson, H. G., ‘Heresy and the lay power under Richard II’, EHR, 51 (1936), p. 7Google Scholar. In my article on ‘Heresy and sedition’ I listed these repeating phrases without considering the significance of their sources; Aston, M., Lollards and Reformers (London, 1984), p. 6, n. 15Google Scholar.
38 ‘Lupos intrinsecus ovium vestimentis indutos… licet secundum canónicas sanctiones nemo prohibitus, vel non missus … sibi praedicationis offícium usurpare debeat … sub magnae sanctitatis velamine virtutum ejus abnegantes, auctoritatem sibi vindicant praedi- candi’; Fasciculi Zizaniorum, pp. 275–82 (cited at p. 275) dated 28 May 1382.
39 ‘Occulta conventícula celebrantes’; Friedberg, 2, cols 778–90 (Lib. V, tit vii), at 781; Mansi, 22, cols 476–8; Leff, , Heresy, 1, p. 37Google Scholar; conventícula haereticorum also featured in Isidore of Seville; Isidori Hispalensis … Etymologtarum, 1, Lib. VIII, i. Also on the term conventicle see below nn. 85–6.
40 Friedberg, 2, cols. 782, 785, 788. Perm Szittya points out that Lucius and Innocent alike turned back to the Justinian Code, which itself looked back to the Theodosian Code, in both of which conventícula celebrantes was the phrase used to describe prohibited religious activities outside the Church.
41 Biblia Sacra cum Glossa Ordinaria, 6 vols (Antwerp, 1617), 5, cols 149–50.
42 Szittya, , Antifratemal, pp. 6–7, 22, 45–6, 52, 54,61, 80, 87Google Scholar. My debt to this work extends far beyond the citations given here and below.
43 Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS Bodl. 158, fols 200V-2021-, cited Hudson, PR, p. 170; Aston, M., ‘Corpus Christi and Corpus Regni: heresy and the Peasants’ Revolt’, P&P, 143 (1994), P37Google Scholar.
44 Political Poems and Songs, ed. Wright, T., 2 vols (RS, 1859-61), 1, pp. 233, 235, 241, 243Google Scholar.
45 John Wyclif’s De Ventate Sacrae Scripturae, ed. Buddensieg, R., 3 vols, WS (1905-7), 1, pp. 345, 357Google Scholar, cited by Wilks, M., ‘Wyclif and the Great Persecution’, in SCHS, 10 (1994), pp. 39–63, at p. 58Google Scholar (an important paper which has contributed much to this one). It seems that Wyclif’s concern with ‘sects’ only emerged, and then as of part of a defence mechanism, after Gregory XI’s bulls, with the growth of attacks on the mendicants and controversy over the Eucharist in the 1380s. See Thomson, W. R, The Latin Writings of John Wyclvyf (Toronto, 1983), pp. 95, 78, 86, 217, 279–302, and pp. 55–6Google Scholar for late 1377-end 1378 as the date of De ventate sacre scripture.
46 Fasciculi Zizaniorum, pp. 125–6; in Wyclif’s Confessio of 10 May 1381. On this text, which occupied a critical place in the censuring of Wyclif’s eucharistie teaching, see Thomson, , Latin Writings, pp. 69–71Google Scholar; Aston, M., Faith and Fire (London, 1993), p. 52Google Scholar.
47 Matt 23.13-16; compare Luke 18.9-14; Acts 26.5. EWS, 4, on The sects’, pp. 121–34, at p. 123.
48 The English Works of Wyclif Hitherto Unprinted, ed. Matthew, F. D. (EETS, 74,1880), p. 2Google Scholar.
49 Acts 26.5, 28.22 (AV). See n. 51 for the Wycliffite Bible wording of the latter passage.
50 EWS, 1, pp. 264–7, cited at p. 265.
51 John Wiclif’s Polemical Works, ed. Buddensieg, R., 2 vols, WS (London, 1883), 1, pp. 21–2Google Scholar. Acts 28.22 is translated in the earlier Wycliffite Bible: ‘forwhi of this secte it is knowun to us, for every where it is agen seid to it’; The Holy Bible, ed. Forshall, J. and Madden, F., 4 vols (Oxford, 1850), 4, p. 592Google Scholar.
52 De fundacione sectarum, in Polemical Works, i, pp. 30–1.
53 EWS, 2, p. 39 (Sermon 62) and 4, p. 245 (note on Sermon 25, the allegory of the tower of virtues necessary to salvation, ‘the towr of die gospel’, 1, pp. 324–5)- Also on secta Christi see 4, p. 125.
54 English Works ofWydtf, p. 301.
55 ‘Ego autem teneo fidem antiqui dierum’, wrote Wyclif, defending his scriptural understanding of the Eucharist against Rimington in the autumn of i$&y,Johannis Wyclif Opera Minora, ed. J. Loserth, WS (London, 1913), p. 213; Thomson, , Latin Writings, pp. 233–4Google Scholar. Predictably, others saw it the opposite way about. Thomas Netter indignantly rejected Wyclif’s claim that he stood for gospel antiquity while the religious orders were novelties: ‘Numquid sectae Wiclevisticae tanta est antiquitas?’ How could Wycliffites claim this, when their detestable novelty was barely fifty years old? Netter, Thomas, Doctrinale Antiquitatum Fidei Catholicae Ecclesiae, ed. Blanchiotti, B., 3 vols (Venice, 1757-9), 3, cols 573–9Google Scholar (cited col. 578) (De sacramentalibus, cap. 89). On the historical dimension of the appeal to the apostolic ideal embodied in scripture see Leff, ‘Apostolic ideal’, pp. 58–82. On ‘new’ carrying the loaded sense of ‘non-apostolic’, and possibly affecting the C-text of Piers Plowman, see Scase, Wendy, Piers Plowman and the New Anticlericalism (Cambridge, 1989), p. 123, and n. 12, p. 212Google Scholar.
56 ‘Secta Cristi ut fidèles Cristiani non debent contra quattuor sectas noviter introductas contenciose procedere, se fide, spe et caritate; primum deum pro ipsis petere et orare ut convertantur ad sinceram fidem ecclesie, et sectam liberam Iesu Cristi. Secundo debent sperare in domino quod doctis illis de secta facili et meritoria domini Iesu Cristi converti possent multi eorum secundum graciam domini ad eandem. Et tercio pulsali debent secundum evidencias fidei scripture ut consenciat secte Cristi’: BL, MS Harley 401, fol. 281r. The entry on Fratres (fol. 107r-v) ends with an attack on the mendicant orders for the lying pretence that the innovations of secta novelle were better than antiquam religionem Cristi.
57 Lollard Sermons, ed. Gloria Cigman (EETS, 294, 1989), pp. 50–1.
58 On this dating see Szittya, , Anlifratemal, pp. 196–7Google Scholar.
59 jack Upland, Friar Daw’s Reply and Upland’s Rejoinder, ed. Heyworth, P. L (Oxford 1968), pp. 57–8, 100, 108Google Scholar.
60 Ibid., pp. 81, 93, 103.
61 Ibid., pp. 93, 103, 105, 108. Matt 20.16, 22.14: ‘many are called, but few are chosen’. On charges of excessive numbers of friars see Szittya, , Antifiatemal, pp. 143–4, 222–5Google Scholar, and Scase, New Antidericalism, pp. 35–6.
62 Cannon, H. L., The poor priests: a study in the rise of English Lollardy’, Annual Report of the American Historical Association for îSçç (Washington, 1900), pp. 451–82, at pp. 470–4Google Scholar; Wilks, ‘Wyclif and the Great Persecution’, pp. 53–5. It seems legitimate to regard the evidence of an ‘order’ of poor priests as still an open question. Here too, exploration of the terminology would be useful. For instance, how much can be read into simplices sacerdotes (Wilks, p. 53, n. 57), given that this term was already in use? (See for example Innocent III in Friedberg, 2, cols 785, 786.) See also Thomson, , Latin Writings, pp. 93, 233, 281, 283Google Scholar, including (p.281) ‘the ideal of the secta Christi… small bands of sacerdotes simplices … must have been, inescapably, another commanding abstraction.’
63 Historia Anglicana, ed. Riley, H. T., 2 vols (RS, 1863-4), i, p. 324Google Scholar, ‘incedentes nudis pedibus’; compare Chronicon Anglie, p. 395 where Walsingham wrote of’disciples’ living in Oxford, and the word ‘sect’ is explicitly applied to their clothing: ‘Congregavit sibi plures discípulos pravitatis, habitantes simul in Oxonia, indutos longis vestibus de russerò sectae unius, pedibus incedentes’ (without the ‘nudis’). The idea of some sort of ‘uniform’ clothing (a poverty costume) ‘of one suit’ here may be compared with William Ramsbury’s matching tunic and cloak (de una secta’). On these and other passages on the Lollards’ appearance see Hudson, PR, pp. 144–7; Aston, , Faith and Fire, pp. 123–4Google Scholar.
64 Political Poems and Songs, 1, p. 233. Note in the preceding lines, p. 232, echoes of the scriptural phrases of condemnation used in 1382: ‘Sub sanctitatis specie … Sic simplices decipiunt … Lupi in agnos saeviunt’.
65 Knighton, pp. 292–3.
66 Crompton, James, ‘Leicestershire Lollards’, Transactions of the Leicestershire Archaeological and Historical Society, 44 (1968-9), pp. 30, 40Google Scholar; cited Hudson, PR, p. 77.
67 Three Middle English Sermons, ed. Grisdale, D. M (Leeds School of English Language, Texts and Monographs, 5, 1939), p. 65Google Scholar; quoted Hudson, , PR, p. 120Google Scholar.
68 Isidori… Etymologiarum, Lib. VIII, v; Heresy and Authority, ed. Peters, pp. 50, 179.
69 Walter Map, De Nugis Curialium, ed. James, M. R. in Anecdota Oxoniensa, Medieval and Modern Series, pt 14 (Oxford, 1914), p. 61Google Scholar (‘the Lord … sent them two and two’; Luke 10.1); Lambert, , Heresy, pp. 63–4Google Scholar; Heresy and Authority, p. 145.
70 Luke 10.3-4; Matt. 10.9-10. Lambert, , Heresy, p. 42Google Scholar, on the spontaneous following of this model in the twelfth century, describes the clothing of wandering preachers as amounting to ‘a special uniform, with bare feet, minimal clothing and the donkey’, as signs of the humility of those practising the apostolic life.
71 Leff, , ‘Decline’, pp. 36–51, at p. 42Google Scholar; Reeves, Marjorie, The Influence of Prophecy in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford, 1969), pp. 14Google Scholar, $9-70; idem, Joachim of Fiore and the Prophetic Future (London, 1976), pp. 27, 33–4.
72 ‘Quod nullus simpliciter idoneus est ad instruendum homines de spiritualibus, nisi illi qui nudis pedibus incedunt’; Szittya, , Antifraternal, p. 15, n. 14Google Scholar, citing CUP, 1, no. 225, pp. 249- 50. According to the 1255 list of Gerard’s errors, the order to which the Eternal Gospel was to be committed, ‘quern ordinem appellat nudipedum’, was to be composed of both laymen and clerks. Reeves, Influence of Prophecy, p. 188, n. 1. On the text of the Liber introductorius see Szittya, p. 28, n. 48.
73 The fullest account of William of St Amour is M.-M Dufeil, Guillaume de Saint- Amour et la Polemique Universitaire Parisienne 1250–1250. (Paris, 1972); see also Dawson, J. D., ‘William of Saint-Amour and the Apostolic Tradition’, MS, 40 (1978), pp. 223–38Google Scholar; Szittya, , ‘The Antifraternal Tradition in Middle English Literature’, Speculum, 52 (1977), pp. 287–313CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
74 Traetendebant sanctitatis speciem … Austeritatem vitae praetendebant in his, quoniam in fimbriis illis ligabant spinas acutas, quibus sive ambularent, sive sederent, pungerentur, quasi sic commoniti retraherentur ad servitium Dei: ex quo apparet, quod ambulabant discalceati: aliter enim ambulando, non pungerentur a spinis’ – unless they had been barefoot they would not have been pricked by thorns; Gratius, O., Fasciculus Rerum Expentendarum et Fugiendarum, ed. Brown, E., 2 vols (London, 1690), 2, p. 43Google Scholar, from the 1256 sermon De Pharisao. On this, and the circulation of St Amour’s works in England see Szittya, pp. 17. 39–40. 62–7; Wilks, ‘Wyclif and the Great Persecution’, p. 44; for Knighton and St Amour’s Depericulis see below. The library of Knighton’s house at Leicester had a copy of St Amour; James, M. R., ‘Catalogue of the Library of Leicester Abbey’, ed. Thompson, A. H., Transactions of the Leicestershire Archaeological Society, 19 (1936-7), pp. 111–61, 378–440Google Scholar; 21 (1939-40), pp. 1–88, at p. 137 in the first part; Knighton, p. xxx.
75 Historia Anglicana, i, p. 324; Chronicon Angliae, p. 396. See also Eulogium Hisloriamm, ed. Haydon, F. S., 3 vols (RS, 1858-63), 3, pp. 354–5Google Scholar, for another chronicler (probably Franciscan) who made much of Wycliffite attacks on the religious orders, including mendicants, citing the well-worn text of II Tim. 3.6; ‘qui penetrant domos’. On ‘Sire Penetrans Domos’ as a disparagement of friars see Szittya, Antifratemal, pp. 3–10; Scase, New Anticlericalism, pp. 15- 16, 32–9.
76 Matthew Paris, CM, 5, pp. 599–600, 6, pp. 335–9, error seven p. 336. Reeves, Influence of Prophecy, p. 62.
77 Szittya, Antifratemal, p. 107 on ‘the widespread interest in antifratemal writings among English monks’, and p. 207 on poets, distanced from rarefied ecclesiastical debates but understanding ‘the value of symbol’.
78 The Poems of Robert Henryson, ed. Fox, Denton (Oxford, 1981), p. 30Google Scholar; Szittya, Antifraternal, pp. 211–12. On the satirical image of the fox dressed in a habit see Scase, , New Anticlericalism, pp. 120–1Google Scholar.
79 Poems of John Audelay, ed. Whiting, E. K. (BETS, os 184, 1931), p. 1Google Scholar5.
80 Knighton, pp. xlii-xlvi, lv-lvi; Martin, Geoffrey, ‘Knighton’s Lollards’, in Lollardy and Gentry, pp. 28–40Google Scholar.
81 Knighton, p. 302.
82 Ibid., pp. 286–7, 290–1.
83 Hudson, Anne, ‘A Lollard Sect Vocabulary?’, in Boots, pp. 165–80, at 166–7Google Scholar.
84 Knighton, p. 296.
85 Hudson, PR, p. 178, cites as the first official description of Lollard schools a royal letter to London officials in 1392, in which clandestine scriptural meetings are, significantly, called conventicles [conventícula) – not schools. On Lollard ‘occulta conventicula’, ‘prive conventicles or assemblies’ for communicating suspect teaching, see Hudson, Books, p. 136; Heresy Trials in the Diocese of Norwich, 1428–31, ed. N. P. Tanner (Camden 4th ser. 20, 1977), and instruction, ‘though the wish to understand divine scriptures’ and exhortations to study them were in themselves commendable; such conventicles were a means by which lay people usurped the office of preaching, and ‘sacerdotum simplicitatem eludunt’. Friedberg, 2, col. 785 (Lib. V, tit. vii, cap. 12).
87 Knighton, pp. 298–301.
88 Ibid., pp. 304–5.
89 Ibid., pp. 244–5; citing St Amour’s De periculis rtovissimorum temporum. A more accessible text than that of the Opera Omnia ([Paris], 1632) is in Edward Brown’s Fasciculus Rerum Expetendarum, 2, pp. 18–41, where this passage is on p. 27. On this work see Szittya, Antifraternal, eh. I, and for Knighton’s writing with it in front of him, pp. 105–6. See Wilks, ‘Wyclif and the Great Persecution’, p. 50, for the view that Wyclif’saw himself as expressing Joachim’s Eternal Evangel’. Years before Knighton wrote this passage, in about 1373, the debate between Wyclif and the Carmelite John Kenningham had been concerned with Wyclif’s conception of scriptural truth as eternal (‘dico quod Novum Testamentum est aeternum’). Fasciculi Zizaniorum, pp. 47, 455; B. Smalley, The Bible and eternity: John Wyclif’s dilemma’, in idem, Studies in Medieval Thought and Learning (London, 1981), pp. 409–10, 412–13; Catto, “Wyclif, p. 195.
90 Knighton, pp. 249–50 (translation altered), signs 5 and 6; De periculis in Fasciculus Rerum Expetendarum, ed. Brown, 2, p. 28.
91 Knighton, pp. 284–5, 286–7, 290–1. (I have made some changes in the translatioa)
92 See the Middle English Dictionary, ed. H. Kurath, S. M Kuhn et al. (Ann Arbor, MI, 1954-) which includes among its definitions of sect/e, 2 (d) ‘a group within an organized religious body which adheres to doctrines or practices generally regarded by the larger body as unorthodox or heretical; also, the system of beliefs of such a group, a heresy’. Some of the citations relating to Lollardy listed under this heading seem to me to belong more properly under other definitions, and others need to be looked at carefully since (as this paper has been intended to show) this definition, if it arrived at all in the period, did so as the result of the Wycliffites, whose beliefs, or heresies, are debatably described as a ‘system’.
