Illustrations of the History of Medieval Thought and Learning/Chapter X

by Reginald Lane Poole

CHAPTER X.

WYCLIFFE’S DOCTRINE OF DOMINION.

In examining the various theories held in the middle ages concerning the relations of the civil and spiritual powers, two points in particular attract our notice. One is the marked disproportion between these theories and the facts which they were intended to support or over throw. A prince might brave excommunication or in terdict, might persuade himself and his adherents that such acts were invalid and of no effect unless duly, that is, divinely, authorised ; he might ridicule the pretension of the spiritualty to exercise them. Yet when once the decree was pronounced, it was never long before the stoutest champion of national rights found himself isolated among a people to whom the interdict was a terrible reality, insensibly subsided into the same terror, and ended by meekly accepting the doctrine which he had but now repudiated. a The pope on his side might declare at his indefeasible, absolute right to every sort of privilege in every land : over certain countries he might claim immediate sovereignty. But no pope ever thought of carrying the complete doctrine into practice. If Gregory the Seventh be considered an exception, the fact remains certain that he omitted to take any steps to enforce that feudal superiority which he once claimed over England, and which William the Conqueror pointedly rejected. The phrase of the plenary jurisdiction and plenary lord ship of the vicar of Christ served indeed well enough for manifestoes meant to animate men s loyalty ; but when any specific demand had to be made and met, the high- sounding words were virtually exchanged for the more practical language of barter and the common chicane of the market. Neither party could afford to negotiate on

their theoretical footing.

The other peculiarity to which we have referred, is the medley of systems and maxims which had to do duty in the middle ages as the factors of a political philosophy. One theorist extracted from the Old Testament the model of a hierarchy ; another read in Aristotle principles nearly approaching those of a modern constitutional polity. The civil law added something, added much to the imperialists systems ; the canon-law, with its wonderful adaptations of Biblical texts, was of no less value to the curialists. But the basis of all was either the Bible of the Christians or the Bible of the philosophers, the Scriptures or Aristotle. And what is perhaps the most curious fact of all is that none of the opponents of papal claims (the advocates were naturally contented with their own canon-law) make any attempt to adjust their schemes to the political or legal framework of their own country. The publicists not only of France but even of England and Germany, write as though the state were constructed on an Aristotelian basis or at most as though its only law was that of the Roman jurisconsults. To this rule however there is one exception, an exception perhaps more illustrative of it than any direct confirmation. For the most ideal scheme of polity conceived in the middle ages, and the furthest removed from practical possibility, was also one modelled closely on the organisation of feudalism. This is the Doctrine of Dominion suggested indeed by a previous English writer but so appropriated and matured by John of Wycliffe that he may be fairly considered its author.^[1] In introducing the name of Wycliffe it is well to state at the outset that we have nothing here to do with his position as a precursor of protestant theology. The works in which he first treated the subject of dominion were the production of his years of teaching at Oxford ; in these the doctrine is completely developed, and his later writings do but presuppose and resume their con tents. At this time he was vigorous indeed in exposing the political abuses of the hierarchy, but in dogmatic theology he was without blemish.^[2] His criticism was directed against the outer not the inner organisation of the church, and in such criticism he was the ally of many of the loyallest catholics. They saw as he did that the church was falling under the weight of an administration into which the vices of the world had entered almost too deeply to be eradicated. The necessity of reform was becoming gradually felt throughout Christendom; and except among those whose interests were identified with the existing state of affairs, the only question related to the means of carrying the reform into effect. It is important to bear this fact in mind, lest we should infer (as we are apt to infer, knowing Wycliffe s later history) that in resisting Roman encroachments he was therefore also resisting the current of catholic feeling. He was acting in truth as many catholic Englishmen had done before him. His Christianity did not efface his patriotism, and it was with honest reverence for the papacy that he sought to free it from those mundane temptations which had long proved an obstacle to its real work of guiding the spirits of men.

Since almost every particular in Wycliffe s life has been made the subject of eager controversy, it is perhaps desirable that we should preface our account of his doc trine of dominion by a short sketch of his history as far as the time when he framed and published that doctrine. For the place of his birth we are dependent upon two notices of John Leland ; one of which states that he drew his origin from the house of Wycliffe, settled in the village of Wycliffe-upon-Tees, the other that he was born at Ipreswel, now known as Hipswell, in the immediate neighbourhood of Richmond in Yorkshire.^[3] The date we can only conjecture ; but as he died in 1384, it is natural to fix it somewhere about the year 1320.^[4] The well-ascertained connexion which subsisted between the family of Wycliffe and Balliol College, no doubt deter mined his enrolment at that foundation when he entered the university of Oxford; but considerable obscurity hangs over the details of his subsequent career. A confusion of dates has given rise to the common belief that he was at first a member of the Queen s College, and a confusion with a namesake has set him down as steward of Merton College.^[5] But it may be taken as proved that Wycliffe began and con- tinued at Balliol, where he must have been a fellow, until in or before the year 1360 he was elected master of the college. Very shortly however he withdrew for a time from the active work of the university to the seclusion college living. In the spring of 1361 he was insti tuted to the rectory of Fillingham in Lincolnshire, and not long afterwards gave up his office at Balliol.^[6] He is supposed to have e occupied rooms at Queen's at various times between 1363 and 1380. It is natural to connect his return to Oxford with his procedure to degrees in divinity, in which he became doctor not long before December 1373;^[7] and the renewed intercourse with the university, the attraction of schools and disputations, may have made it more difficult for him to feel at home in his country parsonage. At all events in 1368 he obtained two years' leave of absence, to the end that he might devote himself to the study of letters in the university. In November of that year he quitted the rectory in exchange for the living of Ludgarshall in Buckinghamshire, and nearly six years later (to pass on for a momemt to the sequel of his preferments in the church) the crown presented him to the rectory of Lutterworth in Leicestershire. At Lutterworth he died on the 31st December 1384.

From this bare summary of his official career one might think that there was little room for Wycliffe's remarkable influence as a teacher at Oxford. Yet although his principle of clerical duty did not apparently allow him to hold more than one living at a time, he seems not to have scrupled to spend a great part of the year in the university; and he has even been supposed on no contemptible authority to have filled the post of warden of Canterbury-hall, а foundation of which the site is now occupied by a portion of Christ Church, between the years 1365 and 1367.^[8] As to this matter it is only necessary to notice that a certain John Wycliffe was appointed to that office, and afterwards expelled in order to make room for a monk. The deprived warden appealed to Rome and lost his case. Now, this being known, when a religious agitator of the same name had made himself objectionable to the correct catholics of his day, and in particular to the religious orders, it was all but inevitable that the antecedent history of the one should attach itself to the other. There are indeed strong grounds for believing that the warden of Canterbury-hall was the same person with the steward of Merton whose name, as we have already seen, has caused a certain amount of confusion in the reformer s biography. But if on the whole we are inclined to reject the connexion of the latter with Canterbury-hall, it is right that we should explain that this decision is in no degree owing to the scandal which Wycliffe’s opponents have discovered in his ejection by the archbishop of Canterbury. So far as we can see, there was nothing discreditable to either party in the transaction, and nothing discreditable to the pope who dismissed Wycliffe s appeal, or to the English king who confirmed the papal sentence. It was simply a dispute, one of a kind that constantly arose, between the secular and the regular clergy. At the same time if the reformer be actually the person who was thus deprived we shall no doubt be right in looking upon this event in his personal history as one of the elements which produced his subsequent rancour against the monastic system.

At whatever decision we arrive with respect to this affair, it remains certain that Wycliffe continued active in the Oxford schools ; and this is all that we are here concerned to know, since it was not until many years later that he became conspicuous as a leader of opposition to the established doctrine of the church. Yet even now he had made himself a name outside of Oxford. He was, it ap. seems, a h chaplain to the king, and had already entered the lists of controversy as an advocate, though in guarded terms, of the rights of the English nation as against the papal claim to tribute from it. In the tract to which we refer^[9] he puts in the mouth of seven lords in council the arguments which might be urged against this claim; and to one of these speakers he gives the announcement of his own special doctrine of dominion. This was in 1366^[10]: perhaps at this very time, i hardly in any case very long after, he was engaged in his treatise Of the Divine Dominion. About five years later he supplemented the work by a more extensive treatise Of civil Dominion; so that by 1371 or 1372 his views on this characteristic subject were fully formed and given to the world.^[11]

Dominion and service, in Wycliff’s scheme, are the two ends of the chain which links humanity to God. Dominion is not indeed a part of the eternal order of things, since kit only comes into existence by the act of creation : God in the first chapter of Genesis becomes cod. Lord in the second, because there are now creatures to be his servants; just as J the lower animals are put in the relation of servants by the creation of man. Dominion and service are thus necessarily correlative terms, including, but not identical with, other terms of human relation, Dominion for instance presupposes right and power, and the exercise of either; but it is not the same^with them : it cannot exist without the coexistence of an object to operate upon ;^[12] whereas a man may have right without actual possession, and power without the means of exercising it. No catholic, for instance, will deny that the power of the keys is committed to the priest, albeit he have none subjected to his power. Dominion then is neither a right nor a power ; it is a habit of the reasonable nature,^[13] essentially involved in the existence of that nature, and irrespective of any condition except that of being set above something inferior to it. Thus, in the case of the Creator, n it seems probable that his dominion is immediate and of itself, by virtue of the act of creation, and not by virtue of his government or conservation of the universe. It surpasses all other dominion because God stands in no need of service, because it is sure and irremovable, and because it meets with universal service.

As yet we are in the midst of scholastic definitions and distinctions; but Wycliffe soon finds occasion to state what may be called the fundamental principle of his theory. P God, he says, rules not mediately through the rule of subject vassals, as other kings hold dominion, since immediately and of himself he makes, sustains, and governs all that which he possesses, and helps it to perform its work according to other uses which he requires. There is a feudalism here, but a feudalism in which there are no mesne lords; all men hold directly of God, with <i differences no doubt in accidentals, but in the main fact of their tenure all alike. It is this principle of the dependence of the individual upon God and upon none else that dis tinguishes Wycliffe’s views from any other system of the middle ages. He alone had the courage to strike at the root of priestly privilege and power by vindicating for each separate man an equal place in the eyes of God. By this formula all laymen became priests, and all priests laymen. They all held of God, and on the same terms of service.

These are some of the elements of the doctrine of dominion which Wycliffe enunciates in the early chapters of his work De Dominio Divino. The rest of the treatise is principally occupied with the discussion of various questions of a strictly theological or of a metaphysical character, following upon his view of the relation of the Creator to the world, but only indirectly illustrative of that special portion of it with which we are here con cerned. The practical application of the latter is found at large in the three books Of civil Dominion which fill more than a thousand pages of close and much-contracted handwriting in the only copy known to exist, a nearly contemporary manuscript now preserved in the palace library at Vienna. What is essential however for our present purpose will be found nearly complete in the first thirty-four chapters of the first book, which treat of dominion and government in themselves. This section, as the following sketch will show, indicates in its main outline Wycliffe’s salient doctrine of the relation of the secular to the spiritual power; and we need not pursue its delineation further, when the author, with the exhaustive prolixity of a schoolman, defines its bearing in minute detail upon all the problems arising from this relation which called for criticism in his day.

Wycliffe begins his book by the proposition, of which the latter part was already noted as dangerous by Gregory the Eleventh in 1377, that no one in mortal sin has any right to any gift of God, while on the other hand every man standing in grace has not only a right to, but has in fact, all the gifts of God. He takes literally the aphorism which an ancient tradition inserted in the Book of Proverbs, The faithful man hath the whole world of riches, but the unfaithful hath not even a farthing ;^[14] and he supports it with much fulness and ingenuity of argumentation. The first part of his thesis is indeed a legitimate following out of the doctrine which saint Augustin had enforced, of the negative character of evil. Sin, he said, is nothing, and men, when they sin, become nothing: if then, argued Wycliffe, sinners, as such, are nothing, it is evident that they can possess nothing. Moreover possession presupposes a right or title to possess, and this right or title can only be held ultimately to depend upon the good pleasure of God, who, it is evident, cannot be thought to approve the lordship of the wicked or the manner in which they abuse their power. Again, by the common law it is not permitted to an inferior lord to alienate, in particular to mortmain, any real property without the license of his lord-in-chief, and any grant in contravention of his will is unrighteous ; accordingly, inasmuch as God is the lord-in-chief of all human beings, it should appear that any grant made to a sinner must be contrary to his will, and thus being unrighteous must be no possession in any strict or proper sense of the word. But even granting that the sinner have such possession, all human dominion, natural or civil, is conferred upon him by God, as the prime author, in consideration of his returning continually to God the service due unto him ; but by the fact that a man by omission or com mission becomes guilty of mortal sin, he defrauds his lord-in- chief of the said service, and by consequence incurs forfeiture : wherefore . . . he is rightfully to be deprived of all dominion whatsoever. How then does the wicked man come to have property in earthly things ? Wycliffe’s explanation turns upon the double meaning of the word church, b ibid., f. 4 A, cap. 3 f. 5 c; Matth. xxv. 29 Vulg. c cap. 7 f. 15 D, 16 B, &c. d De dom. div. iii. 2 f. 71 D. e ibid.; de civ. dom. i. 7 fol. 16 D. f ibid., f. 16 B. g Rom. viii. 28. h De civ. dom. i. 14 f. 31 C.

considered either as the holy spouse of Christ or as, in its transitory condition, the human society mixed of good and evil. To the church in its ideal signification God makes his grant; the wicked have their share only by virtue of their outward membership of it.^[15] But since, as has been said, the sole sufficient title to any possession is the immediate grant of God, it results that such possession as the wicked have is not worthy the name of possession at all: and ^[16] Whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken even that which he seemeth to have.

By means of this and similar texts of Scripture the way is prepared for Wycliffe's second main principle; namely, that the righteous is lord of all things, or in precise terms ^[17] every righteous man is lord over the whole sensible world. If a man has anything he has everything: for, as Wycliffe says elsewhere, ^[18] the grant of God is most appropriate, most ample, and most useful to the creature; so ample indeed that ^[19] God gives not any dominion to his servants except he first give himself to them. Thus, ^[20] even when the righteous is afflicted in this life, he still has true possession of the whole universe, inasmuch as ^[21] all things work together for good to him, in assisting him towards eternal happiness. It would be impossible to indicate the spiritual nature of the dominion claimed by Wycliffe for the righteous, more distinctly than by this example: yet he proceeds to dwell upon its literal truth in a way that might almost persuade us that he is really developing a system of polity applicable to the existing conditions of life. He is not afraid to pursue his doctrine to the logical conclusion that, ^[22] as there are many righteous and each is lord of the universe, all goods must necessarily

15 Wycliffe makes a curious distinction between 'giving' and 'granting,' dare and donare; the former is a general term, the latter applies only to the righteous, or to the church. Donacio dicit gratuitam dacionem, et dacio est equivocum ad tradicionem solum ad bonum nature (aut esse primum) vel ad bonum gracie (vel perfeccionem secundam): primo modo dat Deus omni inanimate vel iniusto quidquid habet; sed secundo modo dacionis, que est donacio, non dat aliquid nisi iustis: Cap. 2 f. 3 D. j n common.^[23] He expounds the rules of charity laid down by saint Paul (charity with Wycliffe is the correlative term to grace), and interprets the sentence, * Charity seekcth not her own- kseeketh not to be a proprietor but to have all things in common. Any objections to the doctrine he dismisses as sophistical, Those adduced by Aristotle hold, he says, only in regard to the community of wives proposed by Plato ; but this application may be proved to be logically fallacious.

Such are in brief the fundamental principles of the treatise Of civil Dominion : the righteous has all things ; the wicked has nothing, n only occupies for the time that which he has unrighteously usurped or stolen from the righteous. Dominion, in a word, is founded in grace ; and grace, or, from another point of view, the law of the Gospel, being alone essential to it, it follows necessarily that human ordinances are accidental or indifferent. These, Wycliffe maintains, are in fact the mere con- sequence of the fall of man: they originate in sin, in the lust of dominion ; and for the most part they betray their origin evidently enough by the opportunities they offer for wrong-doing and tyranny. When therefore we require, in addition to the natural dominion which is if. that of the Gospel, an inferior sort of dominion, civil dominion, the latter, it is clear, must not pretend to any absolute or essential character; it is transitory and liable to modification according to the changing conditions of human society; above all it is entirely subordinate to capp. 5, 19 that natural dominion sfrom which it draws whatever claim it may have to righteousness.^[24] Accordingly, saving this one grand principle, Wycliffe does not care to lay down any fixed rules as to the best form of government. Like Ockham, he feels too deeply the necessary infirmity of all human institutions to be able to dogmatise about their relative excellence. u Suppose, he says, the whole people desire a certain man to be their civil ruler, it does not follow on that account that he is rightly their ruler; nor can any human laws touching hereditary succession or the conveyance of property make such succession or transfer righteous or true, unless they are conformable to the law of nature.^[25] The law of nature in Wycliffe’s mouth is something far different from that of which other schoolmen found the exposition in the Politics of Aristotle. He adopts in fact the point of view of the strict hierarchical advocates, only with the all- important difference that his lawgiver is not the church but the Bible itself.

There is therefore a lack of decision about Wycliffe’s treatment of the different methods according to which a society may be governed. In the abstract he thinks that an aristocracy, by which he understands the rule of judges in the Old Testament sense, must surpass any other constitution, because it is the least connected with civil ordinances. He applies the example of the Israelite history, according to which, he says, judges were first set by God over his people and monarchy was a sign of their defection from the divine rule; finally, he adds, they came under the worst sort of rule, that of priests, which was most of all vitiated by human tradition and indeed altogether corrupt. Balancing the two former modes of government, J Wycliffe appears to feel that, granted the sinful state of mankind, government by single ruler is on the whole the most beneficial, since it is the strongest to restrain their excesses, Be goes on to enquire whether dominion should be transmitted by hereditary succession or whether a fresh choice should take place at every vacancy. On the one hand it may be urged that the security of tenure possessed by an hereditary monarch, and the certainty he has of handing down his dominion to his son, is an inducement to him to play the tyrant ; on the other hand this very fact may increase his care for his dominion and cause him to make the best use of it. It is here assumed, as regularly in the middle ages, that a prince whom the community has elected, it may depose ; while an hereditary monarch, according to the common belief, could not be legally deprived of his power. Again, in favour of the elective principle, a it may be said that an election in which all qualified persons take part must be right. But Wycliffe, as we have seen, has no opinion of the value of the popular vote : since the fall of man, he says, it generally happens that the electing community is, altogether or in its greater part, infected by crime ; and thus it happens that it is at fault in elections, even as in other acts alike concerning God and the common wealth.^[26] Wycliffe argues at length on both sides; incidently he discloses a good deal of political acuteness, and he leans towards a preference for the hereditary principle : but no experience or historical observation will induce him to forego the application here also of his first doctrine ; and thus c he decides that neither heredity nor election furnishes any title sufficient for the foundation of human dominion, without the anterior condition of grace in the person so elected or so succeeding, a Wherefore it appears to me that the discreet theologian will determine nothing rashly as touching these laws, but will affirm according to law that it were better that all things should be had in common. But dominion, as was stated at the outset, has another aspect to it ; e the theory of the community of dominion in itself involves its counterpart, the community of service, In this we find the only check recognised by Wycliffe, upon the action of kings : they have a responsibility, not we may infer from the tenour of his argument to the people over whom they rule, but to God from whom they derive their dominion, f They are his stewards, and lords only by virtue of service. God is the only lord whose dominion is unattended by this condition ; all other lords are servants not only of God but also of all their fellow-men, s The superscription of papal letters, servus servorum, acknowledges this truth in the most exalted of ecclesiastical potentates : it has the authority of the apostle who bade the Galatians, By love serve one another. We have seen the corollary of this principle; since all are lords and all servants one of another, then, all things, all that we call property, must belong in common to all. But if we are startled by the premature socialism of the thesis, we have to bear in mind that Wycliffe had yet to learn its effects in practical life, as displayed in the excesses of the rebels of 1381. Such application indeed was never in his mind ; nor did he ever pass a word which could be interpreted into approval of a violent assertion of those rights which notwithstanding he fully conceded. All things were all men s, but so long as the present state of polity subsisted it was unlawful to acquire them by force : for on the one hand the human constitution of society had the divine sanction, although it were imperfect by comparison with its eternal or evangelical ordering; and on the other hand force was incompatible with the primary dictates of the law of God.

Wycliffe’s communism is thus expressly limited to a condition of the world not present, but to be looked for and worked for : nor 1 only thus ; it is also limited to a field of possession other than that of human or temporal acquirement. Earthly loss is heavenly gain, and the care of earthly things is a barrier to our love of those which are our proper objects. 1 If we seek the shadow we shall fail of the substance, but if we press forward to the substance the shadow will follow and attend us too. The righteous therefore has all things, not necessarily, not principally, in this present life; but as his right now, and as his sure and indefeasible enjoyment hereafter. His dominion, being founded in grace, has the warrant of God s decree : the fruition of it may be delayed, so far as earthly goods are concerned, but possession of all things remains his inalienable right. The sinner on the contrary by the very fact of sinning loses all right to anything. His dominion is no longer founded in grace, it has no substantial existence ; it may seem to stand for a time, but he reaps his good on this earth only to be one day terribly recompensed.

This opposition between the righteous who have all things and the unrighteous who have nothing, runs through all Wycliffe s argument on the question of dominion. In it he finds the secret of the differences of human lot; by its means he is able to reconcile the prosperity of the wicked with the troubles and disappointments of the good. He translates the Bible into the language of feudalism, and then he proceeds to explain his new-found polity on a strictly spiritual basis. But however ideal the principle on which Wycliffe goes, it has none the less a very plain meaning when applied to the circumstances of the religious organism in the writer s own time. For the essence of the whole conception lies in the stress which he laid upon inner elements, as opposed to outer, as those which determine a man s proper merit. To Wycliffe it was the personal relation, the immediate dependence of the individual upon God, that made him worthy or unworthy; it was his own character and not his office, however exalted in the eyes of men, that constituted him what he really was. The pope himself, if unworthy, if personally a bad man, lost ipso facto his entire right to dominion.

Here however, as so often in Wycliffe, an important distinction has to be settled. Every good man, we have seen before, is lord of all things, but he is not on that account at liberty to assert his possession of them in contravention of civil right : so also m he cannot claim to disobey the civil ruler because that ruler is personally unworthy of his post ; his rule is at least permitted by God. Thus Wycliffe expressly repudiates the inference which might naturally and logically be drawn from his premises. God, ran his famous paradox, ought to obey the devil ;^[27] that is, no one can escape from the duty of obedience to existing powers, be those powers never so depraved.^[28] But there is logic also in Wycliffe s position. As things are, he felt, the spheres of spiritual and temporal sovereignty are kept asunder. The spiritual authority has no competence to interfere with the temporal, nor the temporal with the spiritual. Each is paramount within its own area of jurisdiction, so far as the present state of affairs is concerned ; but in the eternal order of the universe right, power, dominion, and the practical exercise of authority, are dependent on the character, the righteousness, of the person to whom they belong.

It is Wycliffe s veneration for the spiritual dignity of the church that led him to sever its sphere of action from that of the world. No pope or priest of the church, he held, could claim any temporal authority: he is a lord. yea even a king, but only in things spiritual. So far as the pope, to take the salient instance, recedes from this position, so far as he holds any earthly power, so far is he unworthy of his office. For to rule temporal possessions after a civil manner, to conquer kingdoms, and exact tributes, appertain to earthly dominion, not to the pope ; so that if he pass by and set aside the office of spiritual rule, and entangle himself in those other concerns, his work is not only superfluous but also contrary to holy Scripture. It would however be a mistake to regard Wycliffe s intention here as directed in any sense to the overthrow of the papacy. He has not only a clear perception of, a firm belief in, the supremacy of the spiritual chief of the church; he goes so far as to assert that no one can have even the goodwill of his fellow-men, amicitia, except by grant of the pope, ratifying the grant of God. This dignity, he feels, is in truth in compatible with the business of the external world : he would free it from those impediments.

In such an endeavour Wycliffe had forerunners in several of the controversial writers with whom we have been occupied in the preceding chapter. There was nothing new in his argument on this head, save only the way in which he fitted it into his framework of dominion. The pope, he explained, is indeed lord ; all men are lords : but just by virtue of mutual service. If any one should seek to raise himself above service, to make himself lord absolute, he becomes by this very act all the more a servant, all the less a lord. This paradoxical position is protected by the altogether ideal character of the scheme. To resume for a moment his salient conception, Wycliffe tries to withdraw himself from the thought of any civil polity; he insists that Q the law of the gospel is sufficient by itself, without the civil law or that called canonical (the qualification is noteworthy), for the perfect rule of the church militant ; human laws and ordinances, he considers but the consequence of the fall of man. He looks forward to a state of things in which it will be possible to dispense with everything but the divine and eternal law: he has not, as Thomas Aquinas had, the philosopher’s insight which could recognise a human law as some thing inextricably involved in the existence of an human

society.

It was therefore when the powers of the spiritual and the temporal lord crossed one another that Wycliffe s strict principle came into play, When the church exercised functions which justly belonged to the state, when it became involved in transactions about money and territorial possession, then, he held, it was time for the state to interfere and vindicate its right over its own affairs. The mis-used revenues of the church were to be won back and the spiritualty was to be limited to its proper spiritual office. Such at the date in Wycliffe’s history to which alone our attention is directed, was the main result to which his theorising had led him.^[29] But it is evident that the principle on which he built could not fail to bring with it other no less practical conclusions. By means of his doctrine of dominion he not only under mined the fabric of the hierarchy, since each individual is answerable to God alone ; but also he was already moved to question, with Ockham, whether the pope be an indis pensable element in the fabric ;^[30] he even speculates whether it be not possible that one day the ship of Peter, the church, may not consist exclusively of laymen.^[31] Another step, such a step as was suggested by the schism of 1378, would lead Wycliffe into fixed opposition to the papacy. At present he is still animated by a loyal reverence towards the head of the church : he only disputes the pope s pretensions when they exceed the sphere of his true functions as such; he only discusses in a theoretical way the abstract necessity rather than the expediency of the existing order of things.

The ultimate form which Wycliffe’s teaching assumed is a commonplace of religious history. We have here restricted our consideration of it to a time when it might still be regarded as a genuine product of catholic thought. Like the ferment of questions which filled the deliberations of the councils of Constance and Basle half a century later, they are still charged with the spirit of the middle ages. Like those debates they point forward also to an age that is yet to come. The full solution of the political problems of the church was left for the more strenuous struggle of the sixteenth century; but if Wycliffe s later career made him in spirit the precursor of the protestant reformation, he had already found out for himself the great secret of modern belief, a principle far more important than any of the special doctrinal details which afterwards roused his antagonism. He has not indeed the credit of having discovered the peculiar formula of justification by faith, which to superficial readers appears to constitute the kernel of reformation-teaching, but he has dared to codify the laws which govern the moral world on the basis of the direct dependence of the individual man on God.^[32] In using the word individual we are indeed departing from the strict meaning of Wycliffe s words, and introducing an apparent contradiction to that doctrine of community which lies at the root of his exposition. Such is however the purport of his language, as we should now understand it : to Wycliffe himself the individual Christian was nothing save by virtue of his membership of the Christian body; but since he divorced the idea of the church from any necessary connexion with its official establishment and left it purely spiritual, to say that a man’s relation to God is determined by his union with the church, is the same as to say that he stands on his own private spiritual footing. Individualism is therefore only another aspect of Wycliffe’s communism; and thus, however visionary and unpractical the scheme may be in which he framed it, however bizarre in many of its details, the fundamental principle of his Doctrine of Dominion justifies its author s title to be considered in no partial sense as the father of modern Christianity.

The uniqueness of Wycliffe’s conception may justify the length at which we have dwelt upon it; but we must not claim for it more than its proper due. Wycliffe, it should seem, started from the point of view of an ecclesiastical politician. Leaving out of account some dialectical treatises, which were merely what was expected of a master in the university schools, his earliest productions were professed political pamphlets; and his maturer works on civil dominion have the appearance of giving the solution which he had discovered for the ecclesiastical problems which agitated his century, rather than the results of self-contained philosophical speculation. Wycliffe did not in fact possess the philosophical temper in its finer development. He was thoroughly grounded in what passed for philosophy in the scholastic world of his day; but it is impossible to deny that philosophy was by this time far gone in its decadence. The richer the materials in men’s possession, the less they were concerned to apply to them the higher gifts of the intellect, the more they wearied themselves in fruitless ingenuity, in infinite refinements of infinitesimal distinctions. Even homely fallacies in logic they did not disdain to cloak by their expertness in its technical manipulation. Fashion demanded that a certain number of proofs should be adduced for every proposition; and the weight or even the relevance of the proof was, as often as not, immaterial. In the most laborious, or the most laboured, arguments we frequently find the elements

of serious enquiry to be altogether wanting. In his formal exposition Wycliffe is as great a sinner as the rest. More than this, if we pardon the vices of his method, it is not, we must acknowledge, in deference to a commanding intellectual vigour. He had not, Ockham had only in part, that keen political insight which gives Marsiglio of Padua his enduring renown : but Ockham and Wycliffe were dominated by an overpowering religious principle; and it is the latter s instinctive, his prophetic, sympathy with the aims and ideals of the modern reformed churches that constitutes his real historical significance.

APPENDIX

References

1. The relation between Wycliffe’s doctrine and that of Richard fitz- Ralph, archbishop of Armagh, was pointed out by William Woodford, a younger contemporary. See his treatise Ad versus Johannem Wicle- fum Anglum, xvi. in Edward Brown s edition of Orthuinus Gratius Fasciculus rerum expeten- darum et fugiendarum, 1. 237, 1690. Compare Mr. F. D. Mat- thew s introduction to the volume of English Works of Wyclif hith- erto unpublished which he edited for the Early English Text Society in 1880, p. xxxiv. The fact is confirmed in many details by so much as I have read of fitzRalph’s treatise De pauperie Salvatoris in the Bodleian manuscript, auc.t. F. infra, 1. 2. [In 1890 I printed the first four books of this work as an appendix to Wycline s books De dominio divino, pp. 257-476.]
2. The nineteen conclusions con- demned by Gregory the Eleventh in his bulls of May 1377 relate ex- clusively to ecclesiastical politics, church-lands, the power of excom- munication, and the like. Only one can be held to be of dogmatic significance; that, namely, which asserts that every priest has author- ity to dispense the sacraments and to absolve the penitent : nr x vi, in J. Lewis, History of the Life and Sufferings of John Wiclif 317, 2nd ed., Oxford 1820 (nr xv, in the Fasciculi zizaniorum 253, cd. W. W. Shirley, 1858). But this too when read with the context in Wycliffe s original, De civili domi- nio i. 38 cod. Vindob. 1341 f. 93 B, proves to be of political purport; since the explanation runs, Nam quantum ad potestatem ordinis omnes sacerdotes sunt pares, licet potestas inferioris racionabiliter sit ligata. This has been already noticed by Dr. Lechler, Johann von Wiclif und die Vorgeschichte der Reformation 1. 573 n. 2.
3. A long dispute about the place arose from a misprint in Hearne’s edition of the Itinerary of Leland. It so happens that the original manuscript in the Bodleian library is defective exactly at the point where the name ought to occur, vol. v. fol. 114 b, and that of the various existing transcripts only one, John Stow s (cod. Tanner. 464). was made before the manu- script was mutilated. Stow there- fore remains our sole authority for the name; but his handwriting is perfectly unambiguous, and the word is Ipreswel. This, as I pointed out in the Athenaeum newspaper, nr. 2960. p. 82 (July 19 1884), Hearne inexcusably read as Spreswel, mistaking the capital l for a long s; and from that day to this every single biographer of Wycliffe has perplexed himself (Dr. Ivobert Vaughan s exploits in the search are notorious) in endeavouring to discover a place which owed its existence purely to a scriptural error. [In Domesday Book f. 310 D the name is written Hiplewette.]
4. Dr. Lechler vol. 1. 268 sq., thinks 1320 the latest date possible. Shirley however was inclined to place it some years later: Fasci- culi zizaniorum, intr., p. xii. The traditional date, since Lewis s con- jecture, p. 1, has been 1324.
5. The former supposition is refuted by Shirley, intr., pp. xii, xiii ; the latter is to my mind decisively invalidated by the arguments of the same writer, pp. 513-516, as well as by those adduced by Peter Lorimer, in his notes to the English translation of Dr. Lechler's Wicliff, ed. 1881. It seems indeed clear that Balliol and Merton in Wycliffe's time formed the opposite poles of the academical world.
6. He first appears as master in 1360; see Lorimer, ubi supra, p. 133. The later dates are April and July 1361: Shirley, intr., p. xiv notes 4 and 5.
7. [Calendar of Entries in the papal Registers relating to Great Britain and Ireland, 4. 193; 1902 Shirley, intr., p. xvii erroneously fixed the date between 1361 and 1366.]
8. The best argument in favour of this identification appeared in the Church quarterly Review 5. 119-141, October 1877. On the other hand Shirley s observations in the Fasciculi zizaniorum 513 528 remain of high critical value; although he erred in underestima ting the authority of a contem porary chronicle, which he knew only from a translation of the six teenth century, but of which the original has recently been dis covered by Mr. [now sir] E. Maunde Thompson. See the latter s edi tion of the Chronicon Angliae 1328-1388 p. 115; 1874. In favour of our Wyclifl e having been warden of Canterbury -hall it may be urged that Middleworth who had been at Merton and who was made fellow of Canterbury -hall at the same time with Wycliffe, was also at a later date resident, as Wycliffe was, at Queen s ; but, as Shirley points out, pp. 519 sq., there was really not much choice, at a time when only six colleges existed and not all were open to all comers. [Nor is it at all certain that the Queen s resident was the same person as the reformer : see H. T. Riley s remarks in the Second Report of the Royal Commission on historical Manuscripts, pp. 141 6 sq., 1871; and H. Rashdall, in the Dictionary of National Bio graphy, 63. 203 6; 1900.] As for the extract printed by Dr. Lechler, vol. 2. 574 sq., and in part by Shirley, p. 526, from Wycliffe s treatise De ecclesia xvi [pp. 370 sq., ed. J. Loserth, 1886], it seems to me to decide nothing ; Dr. Lechler s inference from the passage depends entirely on the force of a com parative, in familiariori exemplo, which need not be pressed to mean in the writer s personal case. [Though most scholars ac cept the identification, one of the latest and most learned, Dr. Rash dall, now dean of Carlisle, inclines with me to reject it, ubi supra, p. 204 b.]
9. The Determinatio quedam ma- gistri Johannis Wyclyff dedominio is printed by Lewis, pp. 349-356; not however, as Dr. Lechler, vol. 2. 322 n. 1, seems to suggest, as an excerpt : its fragmentary condi- tion is due to the manuscript itself, which is in the Bodleian library, arch. Seld. B. 26 [olim 10] ff. 54 sqq. I agree with Mr. F. I). Matthew, intr., p. vi, as against Shirley, intr., p. xix, Lechler, vol. 1. 330, and ap- parently Milman, vol. 8. 163, that this docs not contain a report in the strict sense of the word. Wycliffe was very likely present at the debate in parliament ; but even though he may give what he sup- poses that the lords said, or ought to have said, still the language, the arrangement, and a good deal of the argument, are unmistakably Wycliffe’s own. Wycliffe refers to the Responsio septem dominorum in his De civili dominio iii. 7 cod. Vindob. 1340 f. 41 B.
10. [Dr. Loserth has brought for- ward convincing arguments to show that the tract cited was written at least eleven years later. See his papers in the English Historical Review, 11. 319-328, 1896; and in the Sitzungsberichte der kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien, philoso- phisch-historische Classe, 136. pt 1. 31-44, 1897.]
11. These works I am now preparing for publication by the Wyclif society. I have not at present found reason to modify the view put forward by Shirley, intr., pp. xvii, xxi n. 2, with respect to their date. My citations are taken from transcripts in my possession of the original codices which are preserved in the palace library at Vienna : the De dominio divino from nr 1339 (which I sometimes correct from two other copies in the same library, numbered 1294 and 3935); and the De civili dominio from the only copy known to be in existence, books nr 1341, and book iii from I should perhaps add that, as my work on these treatises is still incomplete, the following account of the doctrine they contain is only a tentative sketch. [My edition of the De civili dominio liber i was published in 1885. The second and third book was edited by Dr. J. Loserth in 1900-1903. It has not been necessary to insert references to the pages of my edition either of this book or of the De dominio divino, which I published in 1890, because the folios of the manuscripts are regularly entered in the margin of my editions.]
12. lus ergo, cum sit fundamentum dominii, licet sapiat relacionem respectu cuius dicitur his, non tamen est formaliter ipsum dominium ; sicut vis generativa patris non est formaliter ipsa paternitas, sed ad ipsum ut fundamentum pro aliquo tempore reqiiisita. Et per idem sequitur quod potestas non sit genus dominii : nam dominium dependet a possesso serviente vel suo principaliter [cod. 1294 : al. principium] terminante ; sed nulla potestas sic dependet, ergo nullum dominium est potestas : DC do- minio divino i. 2 f. 3 B; cf. cap. 1 f. 2 B.
13. Dominium est habitudo nature racionalis secundum quamdenomi- natnrsuo prefici servienti : cap. 1 f. 1 D ; also in the De civili dominio i. 9 f. 20 11. Locke was very merry at sir Robert Filmer s expense for his having used the phrase in habit and not in act of Adam’s position as governor before there was any one to govern : A very pretty way, he says, of being a governor, without government, a father, without children, and a king, without subjects. . . Adam, as soon as he was created, had a title only in habit and not -in act, which, in plain English, is, he had actually no title at all. See the first Treatise on Government iii. 18. Still Filmer s distinction is perfectly legitimate, and I only quote Locke’s words in order to shew that we have to accept a certain logical terminology before we can pretend to criticise a scho- lastic position such as Filmer’s or Wycliffe’s.
14. It is found in the Septuagint version at the end of Prov. xvii. 6, in the Alexandrine manuscript after ver. 4 : ToO irurrov oAos 6 KO<J/J.OS TWV xpypaTuv, rov 5e airiffrov ovSe ofios. ycliffe knew the text from Augustin, Epist. cliii. 26, Opp, 2. 534 E, and Jerom, Epist. 1., Opp. 4 ("2) 575, in the Benedictine editions.
15. 15
16. b
17. c
18. d
19. e
20. f
21. g
22. h
23. Omnis homo debet essc in gracia, et si est in gracia est domi- nus mundi cum suis contentis ; ergo omnis homo debet esse dominus universitatis : quod non staret cum multitudine hominum, nisi omnes illi deberent habere omnia in com- muni ; ergo omnia debent esse com- munia. bile singulis et ex equo multis
24. Wycliffe thus states the dis- tinction between natural and civil lordship : Dominium quidem natu- rale est dominium divinitus insti- tutum, in primo titulo iusticie fun- datum, quotlibet divites ex equo compaciens, sedalienacionemdomi- nantis, servata iusticia, non permit- tens : dominium autem civile est dominium occasione peccati hu- manitus institutum, incommunica- dominis, sed abdicabile servata iusticia : Cap. 18 f. 40 D.
25. Nam non sequitur, Totus populus vult Petrum dominari eivi- liter; ergo iuste : ymmo primus consensus populi ad ali quern civiliter dominandum, qui tamen fuit a peccato purior, non fuit iustus nisi presupposita racione, scilicet quod persona dominans sit a Deo accepta ad illud officium ; et per idem nulla principia iuns civilis de successions hereditaria vel commutacione mu tua terrenorum est iusta vel vera, nisi de quanto est legis nature particula : ibid., f. 42 B.
26. The only concession he makes is as follows : Non est possibile comniunitatem in elcccione defi- cere, nisi peccatum pertinens sit in causa ; Deus enim non potest deficere abinstinctu regitivopopu- li secundum sibi utilius, cum hoc quod populus utrobique Deo faciat quidquid debet : f. 69 c. But it will be seen that the qualification repeated in this sentence deprives it of most of its force.
27. This appears first in the- later list of Wycliffe s errors, 1382 : Lewis 358 ar vii, Shirley 278, 494. But it is perfectly in keeping with his earlier doctrine.
28. Wycliffe has a chapter in the De civili dominio, i. 28, in which he discusses, and decides in the affirmative sense, the duty of obe- dience to tyrants. : Hic dicetur quod dupliciter contingit iuste obedire mundi potent i bus : vel pure paciendo, servata caritate, quod non poterit esse malum ; vel active ministrando in bonis for- tune aut ministerio corporali, quod indubie, servata de possibili cari- tate, foret bonum. Yet, he hints, a Christian, si esset veri- simile homini per subtraccionea temporalis iuvaminis destruere potentatus tyrannidem vel abu- sum, debet ea intcricione subtra- here: f. 66 A, B.
29. Cf. de civ. dom. ii. 12 f. 198 A, B : Domini temporales possunt legittime ac mcritorie auferre divicias a quocunque elcrico habi- tualiter abutento; or in larger terms, f. 198 c : Domini tempo- rales habent potestatem ad aufe- rondas di vicias . legittime ac meri- torie eciam a tota ecclesia posses- sionatorum in casu quo eis habi- tualiter abutatur.
30. Gaput Christus cum sua lege est per se sufficiens ad regulam sponse sue; ergo uullus alius homo requiritur tamquam spoil- sus. . . . Suilicit enim inodo, sicut suffecit in primitiva ecclesia quod Christianus tit in gracia, cre- dendo in Christum, licet nulhim aliud caput ecclesie ipsnm dir- exerit : Lib. i. 43 f. 123 c.
31. Navicula quidem Petri est ecclesia militans . . . : nee video quin dicta navis Petri possit pure per tempus stare in laycis. Ideo nimis sophisticant qui triplicant templum Domini, et referunt navem Petri tamquam ad per se causam originalem, id est, ad istam Romanam ecclesiam vel quamcunque particularem citra Christum: ibid., f. 127 c.
32. Deus . . . dat sua carismata cuilibet Christiano, constituens cum eo, tamquam membro suo, unum corpus misticum ; ad mil- lam talcm influenciam requiritur persona hominis disparata; ergo nulla persona Romane eocle~ie requiritur tamquam mediamen absolute necessarian) ad regulan- dum ecclesiam : ibid., f. 123 B, c. Cf. f. 122 D : Quecunque ergo per- sona fidclis ecclesie, laycus vel clericus, Latinus vel Grecus, masculus vel femella, sufficit ad fidem instrumentaliter ac occasio- nalitcr gignendam. The entire argument of the chapter is highly instructive.