For Lollardy, within the people “out there” lay a source of authorization and empowerment that historically had been excluded from active political participation. But just what did laypeople authorize and what were the political implications of such authorization? Were laypeople simply to be shaped as submissive citizens under an oppressive state, and manipulated into supporting secular power? Or were they undergoing an education of egalitarian liberation that would challenge hierarchy and authority, as Rita Copeland has suggested (e.g., 5-6, 11-12, 14-15, 40-49, 141-42)? On the one
hand, Lollard texts, notably vernacular texts, made frequent expressions of allegiance to secular authority, even tyrannical power. On the other hand, the call to reform and the promotion of the egalitarian community of Christians informed Lollard vernacular writings.
Rather than seeing the emphasis on the absolute nature of secular authority and the fundamental commitment to dissent and egalitarian idealism as irreconcilably disparate, opposed, or united only by the spirit of polemical confrontation, as Gloria Cigman has characterized (“Lollard Preacher” 479-96), I want to suggest that these two apparently opposing views on politics and governance at once reinforced the centrality of the secular basis of political community and opened up the discourse of political authority to scrutiny, debate, and discussion. Wycliffite teaching on submission to monarchical government underscored the secular basis of political power, and such a teaching on obedience to even tyranny promoted the discussion of the meaning of authority and the relations between the prince and his subjects among the laity. While the universal Lollard belief in dissent and the egalitarian community of Christians certainly enhanced the investigation of the basis of power and the conditions of the community, its embrace of the expression of difference and inclusion was also not necessarily antagonistic to the absolute legitimation of secular power, since secular power posed as a different source of power, a viable alternative to the clerical establishment.
The logical gap between the promotion of absolute secular power and the conviction in the basic equality of all Christians and their right to express themselves remained, however, and the way Lollards reconciled these two opposing views took place as a dynamic negotiation. The result of such a negotiation was a complex discourse that envisioned the formation of a new political community, one without church power, yet accountable to Lollard ideals of equity and public dialogue.
Wyclif and his Lollard followers preached submission to secular authority, even tyrannical government. While this may seem contradictory for a movement that insisted on the rights of subjects to resist tyranny, Lollards respected secular political authority even as they practiced social dissent.
Historically, even when the secular state pursued an apparent policy of persecution against the movement, a policy that began as early as the reign of Richard II, Lollards continued to look to the secular hierarchy for support of their reformist effort, and this in consistency with their commitment to the
primacy of secular authority (Richardson 1-28). As Helen Barr has shown, Lollards, like the rebels in the Great Uprising of 1381, had no interest in attacking the secular lords; their target was the clergy (“Wycliffite Representations” 197-216, esp. 214-15). Oldcastle’s rebellion, even while it sought to topple a regime, centered on keeping the king away from corrupt factious advisors and on informing the king of proper Lollard values.
In a sermon in Middle English, the preacher stressed that “Crist was suget to þes tyrauntis, as God obescheþ to mannys voys. Þis subiection is no synne” (Hudson and Gradon 1: E25). Civil obedience in this and other sermons like it was a teaching to be disseminated to common subjects of the realm. In one sermon devoted exclusively to such a teaching, the preacher cited Christ’s example:
Crist shulde paye þis tribute for Goddis lawe, þat is Goddis wille nedide Crist to paye þis. And here may men se by resoun þat Cristis prestis shulden not grucche зif men token þer temperaltees; for oure Iesu grucchide not. And зit he hadde no temperaltees of kyngis þat dwelten in þis erþe, for he ordeyned in þe olde lawe þat his prestis shulden haue no siche lordschip, and he kepte it in þe newe lawe for hym and hise ful streytly . . . And þus Crist tauзte þat God wolde þat he obeschide þus to þis kyng, for ellis hadde Crist synned here in doing þat he shulde not do, or þat God wolde not þat he dide. (3: 228)
The agenda of clerical disendowment strengthened the claims of secular rulers.
While the sermon discussed the difference between earthly and spiritual authority, it also taught firmly that obedience was to be paid to the secular ruler, the only legitimate wielder of political authority.
A partial vernacular rendition of Wyclif’s De officio regis asserts that Christ favored and preferred the secular hierarchy to the religious, by the various events and actions associated with his life:
Þe þrid part of þo chirche is muche praysid in Goddis lawe, as kyngis and dukis and nobulemen and knyзttis . . . God chese to be borne when þo empirer florischid moste; Criste chese to be worschipid and susteyned by thre kyngus; Crist payed taliage to þo emperour; Crist tauзt to pay to þe emperoure þat was his;
Crist ches to be biried solemply of knyзttis, and he commyttid his chirch to gouernaile of knyзttes . . . And þerfore he þat aзeynestondus iuste powere of knyзttus, aзeynestondis God to his owne dampnacion. (Hudson, Selections 128-29)
Yet the text does not stop with the teaching of simple-minded submission.
Instead, it uses the topic of secular authority as a way of opening up a whole investigation of various aspects of authority. The worldly power with which Christ identified, after all, was the “iuste powere of knyзttus” (emphasis added). Beyond teaching submission, the treatise also engages its audience in a complex treatment of the meaning and function of political authority, its specific responsibilities, and its jurisdiction and hierarchy. It is an extensive disquisition on kingship and secular hierarchy:
Þre þingis mouen men to speke of kyngis office: furst, for kyngus may hereby se þat þei schulden nout be ydel but rewle by Gods laws to wynne þo blys of heuen; þo secunde is for kyngus schulden not be tirauntus of her pepul, but rewle hem by reson þat falles to þer state; þo þrid cause is most of alle, for þus Goddis law be better knowen and defended, for þerinne is mannys helþe bothe of body and soule þat euermore schal laste.
(128)
The monarch is the ideal ruler for Christian society. The jurisdiction of the secular prince, which is to be subject to God’s law, occupies a later chapter of the treatise (129). As a king must have total unified rule over his kingdom, no one is exempt from his jurisdiction: “And hit were al one to say þat þes men bene exempt and not sugett to þeire kynge in dedis of þer office, and to say þat kyngus bene not fulle lordus of her kyngedome; and on þis wyse myзt anticriste distroye mony rewmes” (130). Consequently, the clergy is to be subject to the secular hierarchy: “þes þat lyuen apostilys lyfe schulden be sugett to lordis and obedient to iche man, as techis Cristis lawe” (130).
The Lollard commitment to the secular establishment, therefore, moves beyond the unquestioning support of the state towards a thorough critique of authority, its rights, and duties. While the vernacular treatise based on De officio regis delves into various aspects of the secular state in terms of responsibility and jurisdiction, Lollard sermons emphasize that the obverse of
secular power is lordly duty, in particular, the duty to disenfranchise and discipline the corrupt clergy:
lordis shulden chastise symonye and oþer synnes þat ben usid in þe chirche. For, siþ clerkis ben lege men to kyngis in whoys londis þey ben ynne, kyngis han power of God to punysche hem in Goddis cause, boþe in body and in catel . . . so lordis shulden wiþdraw mater of þis synne of prestis, for ellis þey mayntenyden þis synne and disusiden aзen God godis þat þey shulden be lordis off. (Hudson and Gradon 3: 165)
For the Lollard preacher, the lay hierarchy, by neglecting its duty to discipline and punish the church, condones corruption and therefore sins against God.
The example of Pontius Pilate serves as a reminder that earthly power is no license to act against God. Pilate “hadde not from aboue power to do þus Crist to deþ. And here men taken wisely зif þey han power of erþely lordis, neþeles al þis power must be reulid by Goddis lawe” (3: 179). Lollard emphasis on the centrality of secular authority, therefore, does not simply rest with the unquestioning submission to tyranny, but facilitates and promotes the examination, in the vernacular, of the responsibilities and duties of lordship and the meaning of a just and godly government.
Besides the emphasis on the responsibility of the secular hierarchy, Lollards also promoted an egalitarian community in the same sermons and treatises. Lay preaching itself is a challenge to hierarchy: “And heereinne shulde eche man sue Crist to speke and do þat God biddiþ” (3: 192). The right—and the moral responsibility, following Christ’s example—to voice oneself is universal; it belongs to every human being. Nor is Lollard vernacular literature critical only of religious authority, but of secular authority as well. One sermon attacks the hypocrisy of both secular and spiritual lords (3: 130). The Lollards’ appeal to secular power to disendow the clergy reflects the irresponsibility of the secular establishment in present reality. One preacher observes: “kyngis and worldly lordis ben in perelis in þis mater, for þei mayntenen religious ofte tymes to spuyle þer tenauntis, and to emprisoun þer oune briþeren aзenus þe dedis þat Crist dide here” (3: 147).
The present permissiveness of the secular hierarchy towards the church has caused much suffering and evil, and for this damnation awaits the secular lords.
The critical attitude towards hierarchy and the inherent faith in every human being to participate actively in intellectual dialogue and exchange, following the example of Christ, finds a well-known and well-circulated expression in William Thorpe’s Testimony. Unlike the other Lollard autobiographical work that has survived, that of Richard Wyche, Thorpe’s Testimony was more widely circulated (Von Nolcken 132). The author himself opens his work with a profession that he wrote in response to popular demand: “dyuerse freendis in sunder placis spaken to me ful herteli. And þei diden to me ful freendli, comaundinge to me þat if it bifel þat I schulde be examined before þe Erchebischop, þat I schulde, if I miзte in ony wise, write to them boþe my aposynge and myn answeringe” (Hudson, Two Wycliffite Texts 24). In making community the basis of his authority, Thorpe reveals an intellectually engaged Lollard community that sustained and reproduced itself on textual practice.
Within the Testimony, the community of equals prevails as the only legitimate basis of speech and action. The work provides a rare picture of an individual’s view of his community, and how he understands his membership in it. Throughout his work, Thorpe makes no social distinction when characterizing members of his community; he never mentions fellow Christians in terms of social class. In doing so, the author makes a deliberate contrast with Arundel, whom he recalls consistently characterizing Lollards as
“þe lewid peple” (83), including him, “Lewed losel” (46). For Thorpe, fellow Lollards are “friends” (24), or simply “men and wymmen” (27). And he seems not too unhappy to see how unsettling his cool articulate confidence must be to Arundel, when he recounts the archbishop exclaiming “Herde зe euer losel speke þus?” (72).
When Arundel urges him to return to the church, the author characterizes the church as an institution of bondage incompatible with freedom: “I fynde nouзwhere in holi writ þat þis office þat зe wolden engeggen me now herewiþ acordiþ to ony preest of Cristis sect, neiþir to ony oþer christen man; þerfor to do þus it were to me a ful noyous bonde to be tied wiþ, and ouer greuous charge” (35). To pledge allegiance to the church is, therefore, to commit oneself in bondage. Elsewhere Thorpe challenges and attacks the church’s licensing of preaching as a way of compromising preachers:
We knowen wel, er, þat neiþer зe ne ony oþer bischop of þis lond wol graunte to vs only suche letter of licence, but we
schulden oblischen vs to зou and to oþer bischopis bi vnleeful ooþis . . . we dur not obleschen vs to ben þus bounden to зou for to kepe þe termes which зe wolden lymyte to vs, as зe don to freris and to suche oþer зoure proctours. (46–47)
The clerical privilege of preaching, for Thorpe, in fact creates lackeys for the establishment.
The true holy church of God is the community of the faithful, and authority of the church comes, not from the clergy, but from its members.
Without clerical hierarchy in such an egalitarian order, submission to authority—the authority of the community—is nevertheless still necessary: “I wolde submitte me only to þe rule and gouernaunce of hem aftir my knowynge whom, bi þe hauynge and vsynge of þe foreseide vertues, I perceyue to be þe membris of holi chirche” (33). Such authority is not static, but realized through the continual dialogue and pragmatic interaction between individual members and the community at large. Not only do individuals derive authority from the community for their actions, but they are accountable to the community as well. Mutual responsibility forges the relation between individual members and the Lollard community. As an activist-preacher, Thorpe is responsive to the demands of his community and nurturing and protective of it as well. On quite a few occasions he tells Arundel that he could not abjure his belief because this would affect the morale of his community (e.g., 38). And he does not think that his abjuration would just damage them passively, but that they would be reproachful of him and want to hold him accountable for his faithlessness. Thorpe brings up the example of Philip Repingdon. After Repingdon’s return to the orthodox church, Thorpe explains to Arundel, “ful many men and wymmen also wondren vpon hym, and speken hym myche schame and holden him Cristis enemye” (42). Despite his status as an elite intellectual and trained cleric, Repingdon has as much responsibility to the community as the rest. The community still holds him accountable for his defection. And his departure from the community shows how fundamental an individual’s moral action is to the well-being of the entire movement. In contrast to Repingdon, whose action has harmed Lollardy, Wyclif’s example has converted many men and women to the true faith. The heresiarch, by his personal behavior, has had a wide impact on society at large.
Within his writing, Thorpe presents a vision of community where equal members engage in intellectual discussion and practice virtuous living.
Opposed to such a community is the clerical institution. Thorpe suggests, in line with the Lollard agenda of clerical disendowment, priests should be stripped of their wealth and such wealth given to poor people (70). While the Lollard community embodies the pursuit of the pure life by Christians equal in the eye of God, it is precisely the church hierarchy that has hindered the ideal community’s growth and ascendancy.
Thorpe’s discourse of community, defined against the church hierarchy, is linked both ideologically and by contemporary circumstances to a text of a different genre, tone, and focus. While William Thorpe builds and represents an ideal community oppressed by the church, William Taylor’s sermon is a scathing anticlerical polemic. Preached in 1406, it is an occasional work whose agenda is that of incendiary attack against the church. In his autobiography Thorpe indicates that he finds resonance with the anticlericalism of the sermon, preached a year before the production of his autobiographical work, and he corroborates the controversy that the sermon aroused. It provoked a counter-sermon the next day from the orthodox priest Alkerton, who was in turn insulted publicly by the king’s lifelong supporter and loyal friend Robert Waterton (xiv). Thorpe characterizes himself as an eager participant in the contemporary controversy of the sermons, harassing the priest Alkerton (84-85). For Thorpe, the shared anticlericalism of both Taylor’s sermon and his own work centers ideologically disparate perspectives on community and on the secular state, on moral ideal and on hierarchical authority.
The fact that Thorpe does not find inconsistency between Taylor’s work and his own indicates that for Lollards, the hierarchical authorization of secular power and the commitment to the Christian community of equals are not diametrically opposed ideas, but different agendas that share the common hatred of the church and its persecution. Taylor’s sermon opens with an emphatic statement on Christian submission to secular authority: “Зeldiþ to Cesar þat bilongiþ to Cesar”; “Crist, nowiþstondynge þat Cesar was not riзtful man but a mawmetrer, confermyde to him his secular lordship raþere þan he wolde receyue it himsilf” (6). Such a promotion of secular authority is the obverse expression of the sermon’s central attack on the church.
The sermon provoked strong responses from both the clergy (Alkerton) and secular elite (Waterton). The controversy even threatened to embroil Henry IV, who took measures to protect his friend Robert Waterton. Where Eamon Duffy characterizes the crackdown on the Catholic church in the age of the Protestant Reformation as Henry VIII’s “personal diktat” (448) against his own people, a monarch’s own willful war against a traditional religion that had functioned cohesively and organically in medieval England, here we see evident fissures in that traditional religion, as proto-Protestant sympathies against the Catholic church existed within the secular elite well before the sixteenth century. Moreover, in this case, the secular elite’s anticlerical sympathies did not reflect the willful autocracy of a single monarch like Henry IV or the programmatic initiative of his government against the church.
Rather, they were part of a larger movement of religious dissent against the church. From the identity of these antagonists and protagonists we can see a whole complex of political agendas that radiated from its anticlerical message.
As far from Thorpe’s ideal of egalitarian community as this historical episode of political rivalry and animus may seem, individuals of disparate agendas, status, and perspectives such as Thorpe, Waterton, and Taylor, in the anticlericalism that they shared, sought a political community without the presence of the church. For Thorpe, “þe viciousenesse of prestis,” which harmed “boþe lordis and comouns” spiritually, united them in a common cause (Hudson, Two Wycliffite Texts 72). Waterton acted his part as the loyal servant of the crown and Lollard sympathizer. As a member of the secular elite he saw in the sermon’s anticlerical agenda a legitimation of kingship and his identity as a member of the secular elite, its right to unified rule of England without the interference of the clergy. Moreover, as a Lollard
As far from Thorpe’s ideal of egalitarian community as this historical episode of political rivalry and animus may seem, individuals of disparate agendas, status, and perspectives such as Thorpe, Waterton, and Taylor, in the anticlericalism that they shared, sought a political community without the presence of the church. For Thorpe, “þe viciousenesse of prestis,” which harmed “boþe lordis and comouns” spiritually, united them in a common cause (Hudson, Two Wycliffite Texts 72). Waterton acted his part as the loyal servant of the crown and Lollard sympathizer. As a member of the secular elite he saw in the sermon’s anticlerical agenda a legitimation of kingship and his identity as a member of the secular elite, its right to unified rule of England without the interference of the clergy. Moreover, as a Lollard