John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers/Chapter 10
CHAPTER X.
POPE GREGORY'S BULLS.
N May 22, 1377, as already mentioned, Pope Gregory XI. signed his bulls against Wyclif. They had not been received in England before the death of Edward III. on June 21st. It would be necessary to recall them if they had been despatched, or at any rate to send a covering letter for the personal appeal which was addressed to the King. In view of the consequent changes and pre-occupations of the English Government, Gregory would naturally allow two or three months to pass before he opened the matter. It does not appear that the documents were actually delivered in England until the Gloucester Parliament had been sitting for over a fortnight.
There were in all five bulls, one of which was addressed to the King, one to the University of Oxford, and the other three to the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London conjointly. Gregory called upon the Archbishop and Bishop to examine into the truth of the nineteen charges which had been brought against Wyclif, and which were set forth in the bulls. The ecclesiastics were to warn the Government of the country that they were harbouring a dangerous heretic, and were to demand his arrest; but if this demand were not complied with, they were to cite him to appear at Rome. As an alternative course, which may or may not have been suggested beforehand by Courtenay it was certainly in keeping with his personal courage and independence the last bull invited the prelates to arrest the accused (assuming that he was found to be guilty of heresy and that the civil arm would not touch him), and to await the sentence of the Pope.
The bull addressed to the King was an appeal for the royal favour and protection on behalf of the two prelates in their action against Wyclif—whom Gregory described as holding and teaching the "unlearned doctrine" of Marsilius of Padua, damnatæ memoriæ, who stands condemned by Pope John XXII., of happy memory. Writing to Oxford, the Pope declared that he could not but wonder and lament that, by their sloth and laziness, the authorities of the University permitted tares to spring up amongst the genuine wheat of their famous soil, and not only to spring up but, still more pernicious, to come to maturity, without taking any trouble to root them out. The Holy Father had been all the more distressed because the 
NEW COLLEGE, OXFORD.
PART OF THE CITY WALL, CONTEMPORANEOUS WITH WYCLIF.
flourishing of these tares had been recognised at Rome before any notice had been taken of it in England, where it was necessary that the remedy should be applied. After more expostulation he strictly enjoined the University, in virtue of their obedience to the Holy See, and under penalty of being deprived of all graces, indulgences, and privileges bestowed upon them by the said See, that for the future they should suffer no man to teach the condemned opinions within the University.
The nineteen charges which had been made against Wyclif, and which were endorsed by the Pope's bulls, attributed to him the following opinions:
1. Not even the universal consent of mankind since the time of Christ has power to ordain that Peter and his successors should hold political dominion over the world.
2. God himself could not give to any man and his heirs a civil dominion for ever.
3. Charters of human origin, concerning a perpetual inheritance for the future, are futile.
3. Everyone that is finally justified not only has a right to, but actually enjoys, all the good things of God.
5. Man can only ministerially give to his natural child, or to a child of imitation in the school of Christ, temporal or eternal dominion.
6. If God is [omnipotent], temporal lords may lawfully and meritoriously take away the property which has accrued to a delinquent Church.
7. Whether the Church be in such a state or not it is not my business to examine, but the business of temporal lords, who, if they find it in such a state, are to act boldly, and on pain of damnation to take away its temporalities.
8. We know that it is impossible that the Vicar of Christ should, purely by his bulls, or by them with the will and consent of himself and his College of Cardinals, qualify or disqualify anyone.
9. It is not possible for any man to be excommunicated, unless he be first and principally excommunicated by himself.
10. Nobody is excommunicated, suspended, or tormented with other censures so as to be the worse for it, unless it be in the cause of God.
11. Cursing or excommunication does not bind simply of itself, but only so far as it is denounced against an adversary of the law of Christ.
12. Christ has given to his disciples no example of a power to excommunicate subjects principally for their denying temporal things, but has rather given them an example to the contrary.
13. The disciples of Christ have no power forcibly to exact temporal things by censures.
14. It is not possible even for the absolute power of God to effect that, if the Pope or any other pretend that he binds or looses absolutely, he does actually so bind or loose.
15. We ought to believe that then only does the Pope bind or loose when he conforms himself to the law of Christ.
16. This ought to be universally believed, that every priest rightly ordained has a power of administering every one of the sacraments, and, by consequence, of absolving every contrite person from any sin.
17. It is lawful for kings to take away temporalities from ecclesiastics who habitually abuse them.
18. Whether temporal lords, or holy Popes, or saints, or the head of the Church, which is Christ, have endowed the Church with goods of fortune or of grace, and have excommunicated those who take away its temporalities, it is notwithstanding lawful, by the condition implied in the endowment, to strip her of temporalities for an adequate offence.
19. An ecclesiastic, yea, even the Pope of Rome, may lawfully be corrected by subjects, and even by the laity, and may also be accused or impeached by them.
We have only to carry ourselves back in spirit to the intellectual and religious atmosphere of the fourteenth century in order to realise how overwhelming such a charge as that now brought against Wyclif must have appeared to every pious person who accepted the allegations as correct. Even those who thought with him, who were able to keep pace with his logic, and knew how reverently his beliefs were entertained, must have stood aghast in many instances at the temerity with which he assailed the position of the Popes and the current orthodoxy of his day. And Wyclif himself could scarcely hope to escape the censures of Rome, or even of the English bishops if they were compelled to pronounce a formal judgment on his conclusions. He knew that it was impossible to obtain a perfectly impartial tribunal within the Church, and probably foresaw that only the lapse of time could discredit a system which had required so many generations to build it up.
The reception of the bulls was very different in different quarters. Courtenay alone rejoiced in his opportunity, and prepared to silence effectually this discordant and disturbing note within the national Church. Sudbury invited the Chancellor of Oxford to send him assessors and doctors of divinity, stating that he meant to hold an inquiry as requested by the Pope, but implying that he did not intend to go beyond the inquiry. At Oxford there was a decided feeling of annoyance over Gregory's message; and the King's Council could not fail to look with jealousy and dislike on the introduction of the bulls, which, strictly regarded, were a defiance of English law and an encroachment on the authority of the Crown.
It was necessary for Wyclif, in view of his official relations with Parliament, to send in a statement dealing with the bull which had been addressed to the King. Perhaps he was called upon to do so; or he may have thought it only respectful on his part to make his position clear to a body of men who had placed their confidence in him, and some of whom would certainly take the side of his accusers. There can be no doubt that the open censure of the Pope marked another important turning-point in his life, and that from this time forward he would have a largely increased number of his countrymen ranged against him. The paper presented to Parliament was in almost the same terms as that read before the Pope's Commissioners at Lambeth, to which we shall presently come; but it differs in its conclusion.
"This" he says, "is in some respect an answer to the bull. I want to be considered as delivering these conclusions like a grain of faith, separated from the chaff in which the unwelcome tares are burned, which tares, after their red blossom of malodorous revenge, provide materials for Antichrist against the genuine writings of faith. An unmistakable sign whereof is that a poison born of the Evil One reigns in the hearts of the clergy, a pride which consists in the lust of mastery, whose mate, the lust of earthly goods, begets children of the devil, whilst the children of evangelical poverty are extinct. You may judge of the fruitfulness of this procreation by the fact that many even of the children of poverty give countenance to the degenerate brood, either by speech or by silence, whether because they are not strong enough or because they do not dare, on account of the seed of the man of sin which has been sown in their hearts, or from a slavish fear of losing such temporalities as they have, to make a stand for evangelical poverty."
The tenour of the statement made by Wyclif to the University was very similar to this, and it is evident from the bitterness of the few sentences just quoted that the keen and natural indignation of the man could not be altogether suppressed. His moral and intellectual appreciation of the unchristlike attitude of the Christian Churches of his day, sensitive and palpitating as it was, had been stung to the quick. He would have been something very different from what we know him to have been if he could have seen anything less than Antichrist in the virulence with which an advocate of ecclesiastical poverty was attacked by the Vicar of Christ and by the English prelates.
How does Oxford bear the scrutiny of the nineteenth century in this connection, across an interval of five hundred years? Half a millennium has passed since the premier University drew to the close of her first golden age. For Wyclif Oxford was still the head-quarters of thought, and work, and love. It was to Black Hall in Oxford that he hurried, as soon as the session was concluded at Gloucester, in order to hold communion with his life-long—friends as another famous son of the English Church, in circumstances curiously contrasted, yet in a certain sense parallel with those of Wyclif at this crisis in his faith, went up from Littlemore in the memory of some who are still living, to see, as he puts it, "those familiar affectionate companions and counsellors, who in Oxford were given to me, one after another, to be my daily solace and relief; and all those others, of great name and high example, who were my thorough friends, and showed me true attachment in times long past; and also those many young men, whether I knew them or not, who have never been disloyal to me byword or by deed." Wyclif was approaching a mental and moral crisis quite as searching for him as that through which Newman had passed in 1843. His doubts on the subject of transubstantiation had already begun to take form and substance, and he must have felt that the action of Rome and Canterbury would impel him to a decision from which even his warmest friends would be likely to start back in alarm.
But up to this point the question was not of transubstantiation. The Archbishop and the Bishop, seeing that Wyclif had betaken himself to Oxford, and allowing the claim which he had thus tacitly made on his University, wrote on December 18th to demand that the Chancellor and the theological authorities should hold an inquiry and make a report in answer to the papal bull, and that they should then remit the accused to London, to appear to their own citation. Oxford stood the test. The Chancellor directed Wycliff to remain within the hall where he was lodging, and the "conclusions" which Gregory had condemned were duly examined, together with Wyclif's rejoinder. The decision arrived at was of a most important character. Oxford declared the conclusions to be true, and not heretical, though they were so expressed as to be open to misconception.
With this testimonial from his University Wyclif was able to make his appearance before the prelates with a stout heart, but probably not without a conviction that his struggle against the papal Court was rapidly coming to an issue.
Meanwhile his most implacable enemies must have regarded all these things as mere by-play, and they must have been impatient for the discipline of the Holy See to produce its natural effect. The lightning had been hurled, and they wanted to hear the unmistakable thunders of Rome. It was all very well for the nobles and the young King's mother to lull the heretic into fancied security, and for his University to stand by him in a spirit of simple partisanship; but Rome had spoken, and the efforts of the orthodox, continued over a series of years, were about to meet their due reward. Devout sons of the Church, and good friars in particular, had been scandalised and tricked often enough, but at last the fox was run to earth, and the whole hunt were longing to see him taken.
Archbishop Sudbury had originally cited Wyclif to appear on the 18th of December at St. Paul's, where, ten short months before, he had slipped through Courtenay's hands, owing to the disturbed condition of the city, and the deadly feud between the citizens and the Duke of Lancaster. It would not be strange if this appointment was countermanded because the citizens, with the easy versatility of mankind in the mass, were now more likely to be on Lancaster's side than against him. Possibly London had not changed its mind and its sympathies in regard to Wyclif, except that Gregory's bulls must have made it more Wycliffite than ever; but John of Gaunt had almost ceased to vex the citizens. They were enthusiastic for the Princess Joan, who had not concealed her liking for the Court preacher; and they had men to lead them, like brave John of Northampton, who had boasted that no bull from the Pope of Rome should harm John Wyclif within the liberties of the city.
The citizens had been stirred, no doubt, as Oxford had been stirred, and liberal-minded Christians throughout England, by a moving appeal just circulated far and wide over London and the provinces. It was an anonymous tract, vigorous and eloquent, calling upon all good clerks and Christians to stand together at that important crisis, and rally in defence of the conclusions of Wyclif, and the independence of the English Church. "If these conclusions are heretical," said the pamphleteer, "Holy Scripture itself falls to pieces." The tract has been generally ascribed to Wyclif. Whoever wrote it, it seems to have been very effective, and the Londoners were enthusiastic for the man who was making such a bold stand against the Pope.
At any rate the prelates lost their nerve, and they were compelled to change the venue. Sudbury postponed the hearing until after Christmas, and summoned the accused to his town-house near the Lamb Hithe. The Archbishop was just now on as good terms as ever with the Duke, and perhaps, if the truth were known, he was not sorry to shift his ground almost within earshot of the royal palace at Kennington. The whole thing was more Courtenay's affair than his, and, if Courtenay could not answer for the rabble round his own cathedral, the nearer they drew to the protection of the Court, the better Sudbury would be pleased.
So, on the appointed day, John Wyclif came before his judges at Lambeth, and with his cool collected look he scanned the group of assessors doctors of decretals, professors of theology and of the "sacred page," whether secular clergymen, monks, or friars, who had come up for the occasion from Oxford and Cambridge. It was perhaps not he who would be most disconcerted by that mutual recognition.
He had brought with him a written paper of declarations, by way of defence against the charges. After the preliminaries were over, and Sudbury had reminded him what it was that he was called upon to answer, he would be allowed to read his defence; and the paper in which his apology was comprised has been handed down to us—carefully preserved by his stern censor, Thomas of Walden. This document, practically re-stating and justifying all the conclusions which had been attributed to him, opened in a strain of dignified humility.
"To begin with," he said, "I make my public profession, as I have often done elsewhere, professing and claiming with my whole heart to be, by the grace of God, a sound Christian, and that so far as I am able, whilst there is breath in my body, I speak forth and defend the law of Christ. Furthermore, if, by ignorance or any other cause, I fall short in this, I beseech my God for pardon, and I do here and now revoke and withdraw it, submitting myself to the correction of holy Mother Church. . . . I desire to state in writing my conviction in regard to that whereof I have been accused, which I will defend even to the death, as I hold that all Christians ought to do—and in particular the Roman Pontiff, and the other priests of the Church."
Then the indomitable man set himself to expound and expand his conclusions, and stated them all over again with increased clearness and pungency, neither shirking nor fining down, but treating every charge as a text for new exposition. Had it been arranged (by others, of course, than Courtenay) that he should have his say, completely and deliberately, and that then this abortive farce of the Pope's jurisdiction in England should be brought to an end? The Council, or at all events the Princess of Wales, had resolved that there should be no definite action upon Gregory's bulls; and on the previous evening, according to some accounts, but at any rate before the conclusion of the hearing, one Lewis Clifford brought them word from the King's mother that they were not to pass judgment on Wyclif. The reference of the St. Alban's chronicle to these proceedings is so quaint, and the indignation of the writer is so natural in an orthodox monk of his day, that a few sentences may be quoted here.
"It would be better to say nothing than to speak of the indifferent and slothful manner in which the two Bishops performed the task entrusted to them. . . . On the arrival of the day (instante die) appointed for the examination of that apostate, through fear of a reed shaken by the wind, they made their words softer than oil, to the public loss of their own dignity and to the damage of the universal Church. The men who had sworn that they would not obey the very barons and princes of the kingdom until they had punished the excesses of the heresiarch himself, according to the commands of the Pope, were paralysed with terror at the sight of some fellow from the court of the Princess Joan, who was neither a knight of good standing nor a man of any influence, one Lewis Clifford to wit, who pompously ordered them that they should not presume to come to any formal decision concerning the aforesaid John."
It is uncertain how far the inquiry before Sudbury and Courtenay was allowed to proceed. The Princess and the Duke were not the only bars to its progress. Possibly Wyclif had read his defence, and Courtenay, it may be, relieving the Gallio-like Archbishop of his function, had exchanged a few vigorous words with the accused. His judges were awkwardly placed, and were anything but masters of the situation. The few contemporary references to this dramatic scene unfortunately do not condescend to many details, and the details which they give are not consistent. According to the continuation of Murimuth's history, "the Archbishop imposed silence on him and all other persons, in regard to the matter in question, in the presence of the Duke of Lancaster," this being evidently mentioned as a proof of Sudbury's courage—" forbidding him thenceforth to meddle with or dwell upon the points at issue, or to suffer others," his Poor Priests, for instance, "to spread them abroad. And for a time both he and they kept silence"—which is not very likely,"—but at length, relying on the temporal authorities, they again took up the same opinions, and others which were far worse, and persevered in their mischievous errors."
Then the inevitable citizens, who had tramped across London Bridge, and through the Borough to the Archbishop's chapel, put themselves in evidence again; and it must have been clear to Courtenay that, even if the King's mother and uncle had not protected this obstinate sower of tares, still the headstrong merchants, tradesmen, and apprentices from his own diocese would have made it extremely difficult for him to give full effect to the papal bulls. As it was, the irruption of the citizens broke up the proceedings, and Wyclif, as just said, escaped with a mild warning. The St. Alban's chronicler, who was living at the time, declares that the crafty heretic (versipellis) tricked his examiners through the favour and zeal of the men of London, scoffed at the Bishops, and slipped away.
It is possible enough, considering the force and boldness of Courtenay's character, that he may have had it in his mind and openly expressed his intention to condemn Wyclif in spite of the request of the Princess of Wales, even at the risk of personal disaster to himself. That would explain the holding of the sitting after Clifford's message, the presence and watchfulness of the Duke, and the turbulence of the crowd of citizens. It must be remembered that Sudbury and Courtenay were acting not merely as prelates but also as the Commissioners of the Pope; and the Bishop at all events may have felt and declared that his duty to the Holy Father was higher than his duty to the Princess. He is not likely to have changed his opinion on this point, though he may well have despaired for the moment of reaching the heretic behind the protection of the royal family and the public favour.
The death of Gregory, which would in any case have put an end to the Commission, took place on the 27th of March. The news would not reach England for some days later, and could not have been anticipated at the hearing in Lambeth Chapel. On the contrary, the authority of the Pope and the determination of Courtenay must have been considerably strengthened by the recent return of the papal Court to Rome.
The fact is manifest that the bulls of 1377, obtained by the religious Orders and acted upon by the Archbishop and Bishop, were not only a venturesome experiment against the laws of England and the notorious feelings of Englishmen, but also a grave tactical mistake on the part of the Holy See. The mere introduction of bulls into the country was an exasperating challenge to the English Parliament and Church, and could only weaken the cause which they were intended to promote. Courtenay, with some of the bishops and the friars, may have rejoiced over their promulgation, but it is doubtful if anyone else shared their feelings. The Archbishop certainly fought shy of them. The young King's advisers resolved at once to set them aside; and Oxford, as we have seen, was morally and intellectually strong enough to decide that the conclusions which the Pope had declared heretical were substantially true.
By the mistake of his enemies Wyclif came out of the ordeal stronger and more influential than he had been at any previous period of his life. From the time of his first prosecution in the spring of 1377 to the dark days in which he was accused of having incited the peasants to revolt, if not indeed to the end of his earthly career, he was the most important religious factor in England. Nevertheless it is clear that his enemies did not give him much rest between their successive attacks.
The English ecclesiastics had made up their minds to push the assault on Wyclif's position to an issue, and even the death of Gregory, with the subsequent schism, only served to interpose a brief delay. The outcome of the Lambeth hearing was naturally unsatisfactory to them, and they doubtless took counsel with the Roman Curia on the earliest possible opportunity, with a view to further and more effectual proceedings. It does not plainly appear whether Pope Urban took any immediate step to bring Wyclif to account, but there are passages in one of the Reformer's most important and well-considered works which read as though he had had something to answer in 1379. He wrote in the De Veritate Sanctae Scripturae in the spring of this year:
"I protested in writing, and it was sent to the papal Curia by the hands of two of the bishops, that I wish to insist upon my declaration, which I have made in the language of Holy Scripture and the sacred doctors; for my salvation in two senses depends upon that language, and my double death would follow upon its contradiction. . . . Surely it is clear from what I have done that I have no fear in consequence of those conclusions, since I circulated them through a great part of England and of Christendom, and even to the Roman Curia, in order that they might be inquired into, at any rate indirectly. . . . I have no misgiving as to the truth of the said conclusions, for I am willing that they should be examined not only by the Curia but by the whole Church militant and triumphant, that is to say our holy Mother Church, to which I have humbly submitted myself—and far be it from me to exclude the Roman Church, which I hold to be the head of all the militant Churches. Wherefore, since I wished the matter at stake to be communicated to the clergy and laity, I collected and forwarded thirty-three conclusions, written in both languages."
There is something which needs to be cleared up in connection with this bold challenge, and with the facts which preceded and followed it. Urban's own troubles, and the illness of Wyclif in 1379, may partly account for the delay of formal and public prosecution; but it would be interesting to learn the exact circumstances under which the two bishops sent the above-mentioned protest to Rome, and the answer (if any) which was made to the challenge.
POPE URBAN VI.
1378-89.