Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- List of abbreviations
- PART I THE INVENTION OF HERESY
- PART II THE LATE FOURTEENTH CENTURY: CANONIZING WYCLIFFISM
- PART III THE EARLY FIFTEENTH CENTURY: HERETICS AND EUCHARISTS
- PART IV FEELING WYCLIFFITE
- PART V EPILOGUE
- 8 Heresy, Wycliffism, and English literary history
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index of manuscripts cited
- General index
- CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN MEDIEVAL LITERATURE
8 - Heresy, Wycliffism, and English literary history
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- List of abbreviations
- PART I THE INVENTION OF HERESY
- PART II THE LATE FOURTEENTH CENTURY: CANONIZING WYCLIFFISM
- PART III THE EARLY FIFTEENTH CENTURY: HERETICS AND EUCHARISTS
- PART IV FEELING WYCLIFFITE
- PART V EPILOGUE
- 8 Heresy, Wycliffism, and English literary history
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index of manuscripts cited
- General index
- CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN MEDIEVAL LITERATURE
Summary
Augustine, citing Paul (1 Cor. 11.19), asserts that the “condemnation of heretics of course makes apparent what your church believes and what correct doctrine holds. For there must also be heresies, so that the approved may be manifest among the weak.” Rendering active the passive voice in Paul, we can say more directly that heresy is necessary – so necessary, in fact, that it was always already a part of the Christian tradition as soon as the latter began to recognize itself as orthodox, singular, and authoritative. Even the Gospels and Pauline epistles themselves can be said to disclose all heresies avant la lettre, a point John Wyclif himself knew well. Writing after a time when his views were already described by Pope Gregory XI as “heresies smacking of depravity,” as the canonical saying goes, Wyclif elaborates upon the same Pauline passage: “unde cum omnis heresis sit mala moraliter contra fidem, in scriptura autem omnis fides includitur et omne vicium condempnatur, patet, quod omnes hereses vel earum opposita reperies in scriptura … omnis heresis est in scriptura [whereupon since every heresy is an evil morally opposed to the faith, and moreover since every aspect of the faith is included in scripture and every vice condemned, it is certain that you will discover all heresies and their opposites in scripture … Every heresy is (known) in scripture].” If this is the case, then one can generalize and say that in the Judaeo-Christian West there was never an era without heresy.
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- Literature and Heresy in the Age of Chaucer , pp. 185 - 188Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2008