Lollardy, also known as Lollardism or the Lollard movement, was a

Proto-Protestant Christian religious movement that existed from the

mid-14th century until the 16th-century English Reformation. ...

The Lollards' demands were primarily for reform of Western

Christianity.

Lollard, in late medieval England, a follower, after about 1382, of

John Wycliffe, a University of Oxford philosopher and theologian
whose unorthodox religious and social doctrines in some ways
anticipated those of the 16th-century Protestant Reformation.

What did the Lollards believe?

At the core of Lollard ideology lay the belief that Christianity could
be improved by a closer connection to scripture. They aimed to
achieve this by translating the bible into vernacular English. This was
a personal project of their leader John Wycliffe.

Lollard, in late medieval England, a follower, after about 1382, of

John Wycliffe, a University of Oxford philosopher and theologian
whose unorthodox religious and social doctrines in some ways
anticipated those of the 16th-century Protestant Reformation.

The name, used pejoratively, derived from the Middle Dutch lollaert
(“mumbler”), which had been applied earlier to certain European
continental groups suspected of combining pious pretensions with
heretical belief.
At Oxford in the 1370s, Wycliffe came to advocate increasingly
radical religious views. He denied the doctrine of transubstantiation
and stressed the importance of preaching and the primacy of Scripture
as the source of Christian doctrine. Claiming that the office of the
papacy lacked scriptural justification, he equated the pope with
Antichrist and welcomed the 14th-century schism in the papacy as a
prelude to its destruction. Wycliffe was charged with heresy and
retired from Oxford in 1378. Nevertheless, he was never brought to
trial, and he continued to write and preach until his death in 1384.

The first Lollard group centred (c. 1382) on some of Wycliffe’s

colleagues at Oxford led by Nicholas of Hereford. The movement
gained followers outside of Oxford, and the anticlerical undercurrents
of the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 were ascribed, probably unfairly, to
the influence of Wycliffe and the Lollards. In 1382 William
Courtenay, archbishop of Canterbury, forced some of the Oxford
Lollards to renounce their views and conform to Roman Catholic
doctrine. The sect continued to multiply, however, among
townspeople, merchants, gentry, and even the lower clergy. Several
knights of the royal household gave their support, as well as a few
members of the House of Commons.

The accession of Henry IV in 1399 signaled a wave of repression

against heresy. In 1401 the first English statute was passed for the
burning of heretics. The Lollards’ first martyr, William Sawtrey, was
actually burned a few days before the act was passed. In 1414 a
Lollard rising led by Sir John Oldcastle was quickly defeated by
Henry V. The rebellion brought severe reprisals and marked the end
of the Lollards’ overt political influence.

Driven underground, the movement operated henceforth chiefly

among tradespeople and artisans, supported by a few clerical
adherents. About 1500 a Lollard revival began, and before 1530 the
old Lollard and the new Protestant forces had begun to merge. The
Lollard tradition facilitated the spread of Protestantism and
predisposed opinion in favour of King Henry VIII’s anticlerical
legislation during the English Reformation.

From its early days the Lollard movement tended to discard the
scholastic subtleties of Wycliffe, who probably wrote few or none of
the popular tracts in English formerly attributed to him. The most
complete statement of early Lollard teaching appeared in the Twelve
Conclusions, drawn up to be presented to the Parliament of 1395.
They began by stating that the church in England had become
subservient to her “stepmother the great church of Rome.” The
present priesthood was not the one ordained by Christ, while the
Roman ritual of ordination had no warrant in Scripture. Clerical
celibacy occasioned unnatural lust, while the “feigned miracle” of
transubstantiation led men into idolatry. The hallowing of wine,
bread, altars, vestments, and so forth was related to necromancy.
Prelates should not be temporal judges and rulers, for no man can
serve two masters. The Conclusions also condemned special prayers
for the dead, pilgrimages, and offerings to images, and they declared
confession to a priest unnecessary for salvation. Warfare was contrary
to the New Testament, and vows of chastity by nuns led to the horrors
of abortion and child murder. Finally, the multitude of unnecessary
arts and crafts pursued in the church encouraged “waste, curiosity,
and disguising.” The Twelve Conclusions covered all the main
Lollard doctrines except two: that the prime duty of priests is to
preach and that all men should have free access to the Scriptures in
their own language. The Lollards were responsible for a translation of
the Bible into English, by Nicholas of Hereford, and later revised by
Wycliffe’s secretary, John Purvey.

John Wycliffe, Wycliffe also spelled Wycliff, Wyclif, Wicliffe, or

Wiclif, (born c. 1330, Yorkshire, England—died December 31, 1384,
Lutterworth, Leicestershire), English theologian, philosopher, church
reformer, and promoter of the first complete translation of the Bible
into English. He was one of the forerunners of the Protestant
Reformation. The politico-ecclesiastical theories that he developed
required the church to give up its worldly possessions, and in 1378 he
began a systematic attack on the beliefs and practices of the church.
The Lollards, a heretical group, propagated his controversial views.
Early life and career

Wycliffe was born in the North Riding of Yorkshire and received his
formal education at the University of Oxford, where his name has
been associated with three colleges, Queen’s, Merton, and Balliol, but
with some uncertainty. He became a regent master in arts at Balliol in
1360 and was appointed master of the college, but he resigned in 1361
to become vicar of Fillingham, the college’s choicest living, or church
post. There is some doubt as to whether or not he became soon
afterward warden of Canterbury Hall, a house for secular (pastoral)
and regular (monastic) clergy; but there was a petition from the
university to the pope in 1362 to “provide” for him, and he was given
a prebend (a stipend) at Aust in the church of Westbury-on-Trym. He
drew his prebend while residing elsewhere, a practice he condemned
in others. In 1363 and 1368 he was granted permission from the
bishop of Lincoln to absent himself from Fillingham in order to study
at Oxford, though in 1368 he exchanged Fillingham for Ludgershall, a
parish nearer the university. He became a bachelor of divinity about
1369 and a doctor of divinity in 1372.

Political activities and theories

On April 7, 1374, Edward III appointed Wycliffe to the rectory of

Lutterworth in place of Ludgershall, and about this time the
theologian began to show an interest in politics. He received a royal
commission to the deputation sent to discuss with the papal
representatives at Brugge the outstanding differences between
England and Rome, such as papal taxes and appointments to church
posts. In this work, Wycliffe showed himself to be both a patriot and a
king’s man.

He complemented this activity with his political treatises on divine

and civil dominion (De dominio divino libri tres and Tractatus de
civili dominio), in which he argued men exercised “dominion” (the
word is used of possession and authority) straight from God and that
if they were in a state of mortal sin, then their dominion was in
appearance only. The righteous alone could properly have dominion,
even if they were not free to assert it. He then proceeded to say that,
as the church was in sin, it ought to give up its possessions and return
to evangelical poverty. Such disendowment was, in his view, to be
carried out by the state, and particularly by the king. These politico-
ecclesiastical theories, devised with ingenuity and written up at
inordinate length, may be criticized as the work of a theorizer with a
limited sense of what was possible in the real world. Exhibiting an
ingenuousness and lack of worldly wisdom, he became a tool in the
hands of John of Gaunt (1340–99), Duke of Lancaster and a younger
son of Edward III, who, from motives less scrupulous than those of
Wycliffe, was opposed to the wealth and power of the clergy.
Wycliffe preached acceptably in London in support of moderate disendowment, but the alliance with
Gaunt led to the displeasure of his ecclesiastical superiors, and he was summoned to appear before
them in February 1377. The proceedings broke up in disorder, and Wycliffe retired unmolested and
uncondemned. That year saw Wycliffe at the height of his popularity and influence. Parliament and
the king consulted him as to whether or not it was lawful to keep back treasure of the kingdom from
Rome, and Wycliffe replied that it was. In May Pope Gregory XI issued five bulls against him,
denouncing his theories and calling for his arrest. The call went unanswered, and Oxford refused to
condemn its outstanding scholar. Wycliffe’s last political appearance was in the autumn of 1378
when, after Gaunt’s men killed an insubordinate squire who had taken refuge in Westminster Abbey,
he pleaded for the crown before Parliament against the right of sanctuary. Wycliffe defended the
action on the ground that the king’s servants might lawfully invade sanctuaries to bring criminals to
justice.

Wycliffe’s attack on the church

He returned to Lutterworth and, from the seclusion of his study, began a systematic attack on
the beliefs and practices of the church. Theologically, this was facilitated by a strong
predestinarianism that enabled him to believe in the “invisible” church of the elect,
constituted of those predestined to be saved, rather than in the “visible” church of Rome—
that is, in the organized, institutional church of his day. But his chief target was the doctrine
of transubstantiation—that the substance of the bread and wine used in the Eucharist is
changed into the body and blood of Christ. As a Realist philosopher—believing that universal
concepts have a real existence—he attacked it because, in the annihilation of the substance of
bread and wine, the cessation of being was involved. He then proceeded on a broader front
and condemned the doctrine as idolatrous and unscriptural. He sought to replace it with a
doctrine of remanence (remaining)—“This is very bread after the consecration”—combined
with an assertion of the real presence in a noncorporeal form.

Meanwhile, he pressed his attack ecclesiastically. The pope, the cardinals, the clergy in
remunerative secular employment, the monks, and the friars were all castigated in language
that was bitter even for 14th-century religious controversy. For this exercise, Wycliffe was
well equipped. His restless, probing mind was complemented by a quick temper and a
sustained capacity for invective. Few writers have damned their opponents’ opinions and
sometimes, it would appear, the opponents themselves, more comprehensively.

Yet most scholars agree that Wycliffe was a virtuous man. Proud and mistaken as he
sometimes was, he gives an overall impression of sincerity. Disappointed as he may have
been over his failure to receive desirable church posts, his attack on the church was not
simply born of anger. It carried the marks of moral earnestness and a genuine desire for
reform. He set himself up against the greatest organization on earth because he sincerely
believed that organization was wrong, and if he said so in abusive terms he had the grace to
confess it. Neither must his ingenuousness be forgotten. There was nothing calculated about
the way in which he published his opinions on the Eucharist, and the fact that he was not
calculating cost him—in all probability—the support of John of Gaunt and of not a few
friends at Oxford. He could afford to lose neither.

Translation of the Bible of John Wycliffe

From August 1380 until the summer of 1381, Wycliffe was in his rooms at Queen’s College,
busy with his plans for a translation of the Bible and an order of Poor Preachers who would
take Bible truth to the people. (His mind was too much shaped by Scholasticism, the
medieval system of learning, to do the latter himself.) There were two translations made at
his instigation, one more idiomatic than the other. The most likely explanation of his
considerable toil is that the Bible became a necessity in his theories to replace the discredited
authority of the church and to make the law of God available to every person who could read.
This, allied to a belief in the effectiveness of preaching, led to the formation of the Lollards.
The precise extent to which Wycliffe was involved in the creation of the Lollards is
uncertain. What is beyond doubt is that they propagated his controversial views.

In 1381, the year when Wycliffe finally retired to Lutterworth, the

discontent of the labouring classes erupted in the Peasants’ Revolt.
His social teaching was not a significant cause of the uprising because
it was known only to the learned, but there is no doubt where his
sympathies lay. He had a constant affection for the deserving poor.
The archbishop of Canterbury, Simon of Sudbury, was murdered in
the revolt, and his successor, William Courtenay (1347–96), a more
vigorous man, moved against Wycliffe. Many of his works were
condemned at the synod held at Blackfriars, London, in May 1382;
and at Oxford his followers capitulated, and all his writings were
banned. That year, Wycliffe suffered his first stroke at Lutterworth;
but he continued to write prolifically until he died from a further
stroke in December 1384.

Legacy
It is no wonder that such a controversial figure produced—and still
produces—a wide variety of reactions. The monks and friars
retaliated, immediately and fiercely, against his denunciations of
them, but such criticism grew less as the Reformation approached.
Most of Wycliffe’s post-Reformation, Protestant biographers see him
as the first Reformer, fighting almost alone the hosts of medieval
wickedness. There has now been a reaction to this, and some modern
scholars have attacked this view as the delusion of uncritical admirers.
The question “Which is the real John Wycliffe?” is almost certainly
unanswerable after 600 years.