Fasciculi Zizaniorum I

Abstract

Fasciculi Zizaniorum. has become the bible of ‘Wycliffite’ and early protestant studies. The best known collection of materials relating to John Wyclif and his heresies, and roughly contemporary with what is described, it is the most important single source for the history of John Wyclif. The full title—Fasciculi Zizaniorum magistri Johannis Wycliff cum Tritico—is derived from the description which precedes the opening narrative in the MS. A great deal more is included in the MS. than this title would at first sight suggest. The collection also contains much about the heresies of the Oxford followers of Wyclif, about his leading opponents and the cases of many early Lollards. It also includes the Latin text of the two statutes against Lollards, De Haeretico Comburendo of 1401 and the Leicester Statute of 1414. To these Lollard materials are added the proceedings of the Council of Constance against Wyclif, John Hus and Jerome of Prague, and summaries of condemnation of heresies made by the Church before Wyclif's day, beginning with those condemned at Oxford and Paris in the thirteenth century. The other works are mostly concerned with the age-long controversies over Apostolic Poverty and the Mendicant Orders: a selection from the writings of archbishop Fitzralph of Armagh; the proceedings against the Irish Cistercian, Henry Crump, in 1392; the Protectorium Pauperis of the Carmelite, Richard Maidstone; the Defence of the Carmelite Order written in 1374 by Richard Hornby. The last two works in the MS., a sermon by John Hornby and the well known treatise against Wyclif's Trialogus by the Franciscan, William Woodford, are incomplete.