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Wyclif and the Independence of the Church in England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 January 2009

William Alva Gifford
William Alva Gifford
Affiliation:
Professor of Ecclesiastical History, Wesleyan Theological College, Montreal, Canada
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Extract

I was moved to investigate the subject of this study by an admiration of long standing for John Wyclif, and by the feeling that James Gairdner, the latest historian of Lollardy, had done scant justice to the religious movement that began with Wyclif, and that survived through a century and a half to lend powerful aid to Henry VIII, when the hour struck for the rejection of the Roman jurisdiction. When the work was finished, I found myself at a goal not far removed from that of Dr. Gairdner, although I had reached it with less reluctant feet. Dr. Gairdner had the spirit of the true archivist.1 He had no aversion to dust; he could endure even dirt; but disorder, never. And Lollardy, in English society in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, was a source of disorder. I do not revolt at disorder when great changes are necessary. Unlike Dr. Gairdner, I can find great uses for the man who “refused to recant or bow to the opinion of trained judges,” even though they “presumably understood such questions better than himself.” I cannot view the literature of Lollardy, admittedly crude, as “poisonous.” And I respectfully dissent from the view that an admission of the right of sects to exist is “fatal to the essence of Christianity itself.” But I have found ever increasing reason to concur in the conclusion to which Dr. Gairdner's unrivalled knowledge led him, viz., that Lollardy survived through the troubled days of the fifteenth century to “help Henry VIII put down the Pope,” that Henry's reformation of the Church was “precisely on Lollard lines,” and that “Lollardy affected the Church more and more after his death.”

Type
Research Article
Information
Papers of the American Society of Church History , Volume 7 , March 1923 , pp. 131 - 155
Copyright
Copyright © American Society for Church History 1923

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References

page 133 note 1 Indeed DrGairdner, described himself as “a mere retired archivist,” whose work it was to “arrange matter for real historians to utilize.” Lollardy and the Reformation in England, iii, p. ix.Google Scholar

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page 134 note 1 Ibid., iii, p. xii.

page 134 note 2 Ibid., iii, p. viii.

page 134 note 3 Ibid., ii, p. 478.

page 134 note 4 Ibid., iii, p. xxiii.

page 134 note 5 Shirley, , Fasciculi Zizaniorum, R. S., Introd., pp. xlvff., gathers up the references to Wyclif's personal appearance, to be found in his own and other writings.Google Scholar

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page 137 note 3 Trialogus, iv, pp. 248,262. De Eucharistia (Wyclif Society, ed. 1892) p. 13.

page 138 note 1 As reflected in Langland, Chaucer, Gower, the rebels of 1381, those in Parliament who demanded the confiscation of church property, those who rioted against monasteries, etc.

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page 151 note 4 Luther, declared, when first he became acquainted with the works of Huss, that he had always been a Hussite, and the Hussite movement has long been recognized as a revival of Wyclifism. See Lechler, op. cit., pp. 2–3;Google ScholaralsoLoserth, , Wydif and Huss, ii, pp. 181–280. In 1523 the Theological Faculty of the University of Paris decided that the Doctrinale of Thos.Google Scholar Netter of Walden, written to refute Wyclif, ought to be published, “because the same is of great use for the refutation of the destructive Lutheran heresies” (Loserth, , op. cit., ii, 3, 4).Google Scholar

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page 154 note 1 Letters and Papers, iv, pp. 4130, 4131, 5859.

page 154 note 2 Ibid., v, p. 171; Spanish Calendar, iii, II, p. 277.

page 154 note 3 Letters and Papers, iv, III, p. 5797.

page 155 note 1 Ibid., v, p. 805; vii, p. 51.

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