JOHN EYTON ALIAS REPYNGDON AND THE "SERMONES SUPER EUANGELIA DOMINICALIA" ATTRIBUTED TO PHILIP REPYNGDON

Abstract

The sermons on the Gospel readings for Sundays, attributed to Philip Repyngdon, an Austin canon, were well known in England during the fifteenth century. They were the subject of two doctoral dissertations in 1984 and 1985, though neither has been published. I have not seen the work of J. R. Archer, 'The preaching of Philip Repyngdon, bishop of Lincoln: a descriptive analysis of his Latin sermons' (unpub. Ph.D. diss., Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, Calif., 1984), but I have had the opportunity to read S. N. Forde's 'Writings of a reformer: a look at sermon studies and bible studies through Repyngdon's Sermones super euangelia dominicalia' (unpub. Ph.D. diss.,University of Birmingham, 1985), who provides a description of the manuscripts and an analysis of the fifty-one sermons consistently found in the series, leaving out a further three not always included. Their authorship has been treated as setded since the sixteenth century, but the manuscript evidence has never been tested. It presents an alternative context.The basic data on Philip Repyngdon's career were brought together by A. B. Emden, and Dr Forde himself contributed a brief biography in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography} The salient points are that he was a canon of Leicester Abbey at the time of his ordination on the day before Trinity Sunday, 26 May 1369.2 In 1382 he preached a sermon at Brackley, Northants, as a bachelor of theology, upholding as orthodox the teaching of John Wyclif on the eucharist, and again in Oxford a few weeks afterwards on the feast of Corpus Christi, 5 June.3 His defence of Wyclif's position meant that he was suspended from preaching on 15 June of that year and summoned to appear before Archbishop Courtenay at Black Friars in London. The defence put forward by himself and Nicholas Hereford survives in the anti-Wycliffite Fasciculi sgsgmiorum.4 By the end of November he had abjured any heresies and was restored to his academic status. He incepted as a doctor of theology at Oxford in the same year. From 1394 he was Abbot of Leicester. After 1399 he had the favour of King Henry IV and in 1404 he was promoted to Bishop of Lincoln, in which office he remained until his resignation in 1419 was accepted by Pope Martin V in 1420. He retired on a generous pension and died in 1424. It was his wish to be buried outside the porch of the parish church of St Margaret in the Close at Lincoln, as appears from his will.5 He had been nominated a cardinal by Pope Gregory XII in 1408, during the schism, but this promotion was never effective. One book given by him to Lincoln Cathedral can still be identified, now BL, Royal MS 8 G. iii, a copy of Petrus Aureolus, Compendium super Bibliam, with a lengthy inscription dated 6 February i422[/3].One Latin letter is securely linked to Philip's name when he was Abbot of Leicester, a letter addressed to King Henry IV in 1401, which had some circulation, since it was available to be copied, for example, by the chronicler Adam of Usk and a generation later by Thomas Bekynton. With such a letter one cannot be certain that it was not drafted by a secretary, and it is not evidence of literary intentions.6 The usual reference works make no mention of a short treatise in English, a conventional exposition of the commandments, 'For als mykyll as euerylke man whyls he lyffys in Jtis warld', which is found as a booklet of ten leaves in BL, Cotton MS Vespasian A. xxiii, fols 107-115v, with a Latin colophon, 'Expliciunt mandata Christi secundum magistrum Philippum quondam abbatem de Leycestria'.7 This copy deals only with the first four commandments, while a second copy, unascribed, in BL, Harley MS 2250, fols 88r~9ov, ends at the start of the fourth commandment and has been treated as part of a larger work.8 The wording of the ascription makes one ask, Why 'quondam abbatem'? If the work was put out after 1404, Philip would have been referred to as Bishop of Lincoln, so we may perhaps guess that the exemplar dated from his time as abbot and that a copyist has supplied the word 'quondam', unaware of Philip's later career but knowing or at least supposing he was no longer Abbot of Leicester. …