The King and Erring Clergy: A Wycliffite Contribution

Abstract

One of the questions that appeared in the theologians’ list of questions to be asked of suspected Lollards was ‘An reges et domini temporales existentes in peccato mortali eo ipso cadunt ab omni iure et titulo ad illa regna vel dominia.’ This question appears between one that enquires whether anyone may preach without authority from the pope or a bishop, and another that seeks to know whether the suspect considers that the laity may freely ad suum arbitrium correct and judge delinquent lords. At the same position in the longer list put together by a jurist appears a somewhat different question: ‘an domini temporales possunt ad arbitrium suum auferre bona temporalia ab ecclesia et a viris ecclesiasticis.’ Wyclif’s followers would have returned a positive answer to both questions, though the enthusiasm of their reply would have been the more audible for the second. Throughout the history of the movement Lollards were notable for the stridency of their objections to clerical prerogatives, and, especially in the view of their opponents, for their sympathy towards the secular rulers. Individual heretics and isolated texts applied Wyclif’s views of dominion to kings and secular lords, but the theory was undoubtedly primarily used against ecclesiastics. Academic debate of Wyclif’s theory of dominion was early, and the issue formed the heart of Gregory XI’s condemnation in 1377. But the question does not seem to have figured largely in the disputations that followed Wyclif’s departure from Oxford in 1381.