Lollards

Name

"Lollard" was originally a derogatory nickname for the followers of Wycliffe. Its etymology is uncertain. The Oxford English Dictionary suggests that it derives from the Middle Dutch lollaerd, "mumbler," from a verb meaning "to mumble." By the mid-fifteenth century the term was used broadly in England for anyone suspected of heresy. Scholars also use the more neutral term "Wycliffite."

Background

The movement originated with John Wycliffe, a theologian at the University of Oxford. From the 1370s onward Wycliffe criticized the secular power of the clergy and the authority of the Roman Church, arguing that the supreme authority in matters of faith and conduct was not the church or its priests but Scripture. For this reason he is said to have been expelled from Oxford in 1381. Wycliffe and his associates devoted themselves to translating the Bible into English. This translation is known as the Wycliffe Bible, and its later version is thought to have been revised by John Purvey, Wycliffe's secretary and associate. Wycliffe also sent preachers known as the "Poor Priests" out into the countryside.

Development

• Early period: At first the movement was carried on by Oxford scholars and centered on Wycliffe's writings. Gradually it expanded through English-language preaching and discussion groups and spread among the laity.
• 1395: Leaders of the movement presented the Twelve Conclusions of the Lollards to Parliament and posted them on the doors of Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's Cathedral. The document charged that the English church, subordinated to the Roman Church, had become excessively entangled with secular power. It also held that the priesthood as it then existed had not been instituted by Christ, and it rejected clerical celibacy, pilgrimage, images in churches, and capital punishment. It was not, however, an official creed, and not all Lollards agreed with everything in it.
• 1401: Under Henry IV, Parliament enacted the statute De heretico comburendo ("on the burning of heretics"). In March of that year William Sawtrey, a priest who had denied the veneration of saints and transubstantiation (the doctrine that the bread and wine of Communion are actually changed into the body and blood of Christ), was burned at Smithfield in London. He was the first Lollard executed under this law. Sawtrey had recanted his views before a bishop in 1399 but later resumed preaching.
• Early fifteenth century: Lollards took part in an uprising known as Oldcastle's Revolt. Thereafter the Lollards were regarded as a threat to the order of the realm and were persecuted more severely.

Consequences and Influence

In the roughly 130 years between the enactment of De heretico comburendo and Henry VIII's break with Rome, an estimated fifty people, Lollards among them, were executed for heresy. The statute was repealed in 1559. Wycliffe's ideas are also known to have influenced Jan Hus and the Hussites in Bohemia (in the present-day Czech Republic). In Korea, the writer Kim Seong-han's story "Babido" features a Lollard as its protagonist.

Assessment

Protestants, especially denominations standing in the tradition of the Reformation, regard the Lollards as forerunners of the Reformation, since their emphasis on Scripture as the supreme authority, their stress on the Bible and preaching in the vernacular, and their criticism of the clerical order overlap with the claims of the sixteenth-century Reformation. By contrast, the medieval church and the English state of the time judged the Lollards to be heretics who denied the authority and sacraments of the church and a dangerous force that threatened the social order. The Lollards were not a unified denomination but a loose current of diverse believers. Consequently, scholars differ over how directly the movement led to the later English Reformation.