Few Paris theologians like Beda’s bitterness. How can you win if you drive those who disagree with Luther into his camp? Hatred like this made Arius a heresiarch, drove Tertullian out of the Church. This is the way to make heretics.’ So Erasmus, and elsewhere he reflects how he exposed himself to the charge of heresy by trying to be just to heretics. He was kinder than Tertullian who had no mercy for them. Heresy is the devil’s work, one of the manifold ways he attacks truth. It is evil, it is sin; it is worse than schism, it is blasphemy, a kind of adultery, close to idolatry. Heresy brings eternal death, while persecution at least gives birth to martyrs. Heretics are the ravening wolves who attack Christ’s flock. Humanly considered, heresy is a sin of the flesh for, as an act of choice, it is self-assertion against God, and so the heretic is self-condemned. More properly it is demonic, the spiritual wickednesses from which it comes were sent by the devil.

The history of North African Christianity in antiquity is a peculiar blend of the local and the universal. Whether we consider the ‘catholic’ or the ‘dissenting’ traditions represented in it, we find ourselves at the intersection of two worlds. It was not only the ‘Catholicism’ of Optatus, Augustine and Aurelius and their friends and successors that linked the African Church with the Great Church across the seas. Professor Frend long ago drew attention to the similarities between the ecclesiologies of the Donatist and of other western schismatic churches. More recently we have been given a portrait of another such ‘dissident’ Church by M. Meslin in his impressive study of the Arian communities of the Danubian lands. As these developed in the course of the later fourth century, after earlier flirtation with the idea of an imperial Church cast in some ‘Arian’ mould, they came to bear many of the same features of ‘dissent’ which distinguished the Donatists. Donatism was no mere aberration; it was the local expression of a permanent religious option. But unlike the other ‘dissenting’ churches of the Roman world, Donatists did not adopt their dissenting posture as a mere response of defeated men driven into a corner by a hostile imperial and ecclesiastical establishment. It had a long pre-history in the African tradition of Christianity.

The council of Nicaea in AD 325 had to deal with disciplinary matters related to three schisms or heresies in addition to Arianism. The persons involved were the clergy among the followers of Meletius, Novatian, and Paul of Samosata.

The interpretation given in the standard history of the councils by Hefele and Leclercq is that the fathers at Nicaea did not require a new ordination of Novatian and Meletian clergymen who returned to the catholic Church. Their previous ordinations were valid but irregular. When this irregularity was corrected, the persons involved could then function in the clergy of the great Church. Later theory about the indelibility of ordination appears to have influenced unduly this interpretation.

I shall not be presenting in this communication the fruits of any original research: my aim will be simply to put together some of the results of recent work by others, and on that basis to offer a little contribution to ‘the great seven-storey library’ which professor Le Bras hopes will one day ‘be devoted to studies of the structure and whole life of every religion at every moment of its history’.

It is best to begin with some explanation of my title: much of the debate on the origins of heresy has centred on the question of whether or not it represented a ‘social problem’. Thus when Grundmann asks if social questions were at the root of heresy, he means, was heresy the expression of material deprivation on the part of the unprivileged? This sort of connection has of course been made by historians usually stigmatised as Marxist (though Marx himself would, I think, have disowned some of their crude anachronisms); Werner, for example, explains heresy as a protest movement against the economic and social exploitation of the feudal system.

The fourth Lateran council of 1215 represented a watershed in the official attitude towards heresy. It marked the end of a period of considerable flexibility and real experiment in dealing with dissident movements. For nearly sixty years, the Church had been seeking possible solutions to the problems posed by the formation of new religious groups which not only deviated in various ways from orthodox belief but which also failed to conform to accepted social patterns within the Christian community. Tradition and temerity were two elements in papal policy at this time. The tentative developments of the pontificate of Alexander III were given positive direction by the energetic actions of Innocent III who examined some of these groups to find a way by which they might be contained within the Church and thus allowed to fulfil their vocation. But at the same time, the Church was becoming institutionalised and its framework more rigid. The freedom of manoeuvre of the pope was limited. The episcopate and the regular orders saw Innocent’s actions as inimical to the hierarchical structure of the Church and, therefore, brought the whole weight of traditional opinion and influence to bear against the continuation of such policies.

In 1245 the General Chapter of the Cistercian Order gave reluctant approval to the establishment of a house of studies at Paris, and in so doing sanctioned a major breach with the traditions and practice of the Order. The new house grew rapidly. Accorded papal protection in 1246, it was already necessary to move to a more extensive site a year later. By 1250 student monks had been admitted to the new buildings of the Chardonnet, and, though its constitution continued to be the subject of capitular legislation, the new house was fully established, under the jurisdiction of the abbot of Clairvaux, but as a centre of studies for the whole Order. In January 1256, ten years after the decision of the General Chapter, Guy, abbot of l’Aumône, became the first cistercian to incept in theology and to receive the licence to teach.

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’.

The first case of lollardy in which Buckingham is known to have acted concerned William Swinderby, the hermit of Leicester. Swinderby’s story is well known, and needs no retelling here. What should be noted as important for our purpose is the timing of his prosecution: the first inhibitions and citations against him were dated 5 March 1382. Thus Buckingham took action before additional powers were obtained from the lay arm and before the Blackfriars council itself met, though it may be conjectured that when he acted he had the forthcoming meeting of the council in view. Buckingham issued the commission to Swinderby’s two judges on 12 May 1382 when he was in London for the council, and published the sentence against him on 11 July. On the following day he passed on to his archdeacons the council’s condemnation of Wycliffite opinions, though the decrees had already been published in the diocese, at Oxford, on 15 June 1382.

It has recently been observed that ‘the corpus of surviving lollard literature is regrettably small, and it is to be found in the volumes of Wyclif’s so-called English writings and a few other printed and manuscript works’. To one concerned to re-edit the vernacular lollard literature the position seems otherwise: the corpus is formidably large, the printed material inadequately represents the state of the texts so edited, and there are a large number of other works still in manuscript. The printed material, if grouped together, would extend to perhaps five bulky volumes, in all about 2400 pages; a rough estimate of the vernacular texts now known suggests that this is perhaps only a fifth of the evidence available. Moreover, the editors were ignorant of a large number of the manuscripts of the works they printed, and hence could not assess the circulation of the texts: to give an example, Arnold used only one manuscript of what I shall call the standard lollard sermon-cycle, with fitful reference to three others, whereas now thirty manuscripts are known, together with a further three containing a modified series based on the original set. It is also impossible from the existing printed editions to gain any picture of the views of the lollard authors: only extensive commentary will reveal the implications of remarks made and vocabulary used.

In 1409 the council of Pisa, called by the cardinals in defiance of two rival popes, attempted to end the thirty-year-old Great Schism by deposing both rivals for heresy and schism. On 26 June 1409, the cardinals unanimously elected as pope Peter Philargi of Candia, cardinal ‘of Milan’, and amid general rejoicing he took the name Alexander V. The schism seemed over, provided that all the powers of Europe were prepared to acknowledge the new pope. Some time after the new election but before 27 July 1409, master John Luke who was at the council as a theologian, probably representing Oxford university, preached a sermon before the new pope, praising his election and hopeful of his role in the unity of the Church. Luke gave an elaborate justification of the deposition for heresy and schism of Gregory XII (the Roman pope, whom the English thought was the true one). It is with this sermon that I am concerned in the present paper.

One of the ways in which historians show their wisdom is by their reluctance to make general, definitive pronouncements. Is there anyone among us, for example, who can say with certainty that the spirit of ecumenism abroad today is deeper and more prevalent than in any preceding age? The history of ecumenical councils is the history of the Church’s constant striving to reconcile heretics and end schism. Furthermore, it is surely not true to say that concern for the unity of Christendom has been confined in the past only to the small group of council delegates who for spiritual, theological and often, unfortunately, political reasons were, so to speak, professionally involved. However, before I am anathematised for expounding on a negative generalisation let me hasten to draw your attention to the ecumenical interests of Thomas Rudborne, O.S.B.

It would seem that in the assessment of the forces prevalent on the eve of the Reformation too little attention has been paid to the determined steps which a number of cardinals initiated in 1511 when they took it upon themselves to convoke a general council at Pisa. The cardinals and the ensuing council have never had a good press. In fact there seems a unanimous condemnation of their initiative: they were labelled schismatics paradoxically because they tried to prevent a schism; they had proved themselves, so it was alleged, as mere instruments of French expansionist policy and had acted against the interests of papacy and Church prompted as they were by personal considerations and animosity against Julius II. It seems almost ‘heretical’ to question this general verdict.

The Pilgrimage of Grace has received much attention: besides the massive study of the Misses Dodds, both professor Knowles and professor Scarisbrick have devoted many detailed pages to it, and its importance as a challenge to the Henrician régime is not in question. What continues to perplex generations of scholars is why an outbreak of this kind should have occurred in the autumn of 1536, and whether the explanations for it should be primarily (though not necessarily exclusively) sought in the fields of administrative, economic, social or religious history. If religion is the key, is the Pilgrimage best understood as a rebellion by ‘conservative’ catholics who disliked the recent religious innovations, or of progressives who sought for further and more far-reaching reforms? Is it a heretical or schismatic movement or neither? The problem was clearly stated in a paper to this society by professor Dickens, and it has been the subject of local studies and detailed papers ever since. These studies have focused attention on the importance of regional differences in the Pilgrimage. They have shown clearly that our understanding of it will not be advanced further unless we are prepared to attend to these differences, and to the whole structure of local politics which accompanied them.

Few of the major heretical movements of continental Europe have found permanent homes in England. One of the periods when it seemed most likely that they might do so was the years between the Henrician reformation and the growth of native separatism towards the end of the sixteenth century. The persecution of continental anabaptists, sectaries and spiritualists in their native lands forced many of them into exile in England; an exile which they often used to continue their evangelistic work, as well as to maintain their own versions of the radical reformation. They found a ready reception for their beliefs among certain sections of the population of south-east England; notably, but not exclusively, the artisans. Devout but ill-disciplined study of the Bible, the lack of protestant preachers, and the social dislocation of Tudor England, all facilitated the missionary work of the radicals. A majority of the preachers were Netherlandish by origin, and continued to look to the Low Countries as the source of their inspiration; none more so than one of the most interesting of the spiritualist sects, the Family of Love.

A tradition existed, and perpetuated itself, amongst the relatively humble Congregationalists of Cambridgeshire that Francis Holcroft, their evangelist, was working on old-established foundations when he gathered in his church in the 1650s and 1660s. Calamy said that he ‘fell in with the Old Brownists’. Robert Browne, the arch-separatist, spent nine years evangelising in Cambridgeshire and Norfolk, after taking his degree in 1572-3 and spending a little while in the model puritan household of Richard Greenham, rector of Dry Drayton in Cambridgeshire, before leaving for the continent in 1581. The Brownists were not the only separatists who might have existed in the diocese of Ely in the late sixteenth century; the Family of Love is known to have taken firm root there, and a portion of the Letter Book of bishop Cox of Ely, is taken up with the examination of nearly seventy of its adherents in October, 1580.

In A View of Popishe Abuses which enlarged upon the corruptions remaining in the English church, already itemised by protestant radicals in An Admonition to the Parliament of 1572, the writer dwelt at some length upon the iniquities of cathedral foundations.