RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Lollards
upon the archbishop delivered him over as a heretic to the secular arm. Henry vainly endeavored to induce him to recant, but he steadfastly refused and was imprisoned for weeks in the Tower. On Oct. 10, however, he escaped, and wild rumors spread through the country that the Lollards had resolved to kill the king and his brothers, as well as the archbishop and the clergy, to destroy all ecclesiastical edifices, and to make Oldcastle regent. There is no evidence that such a plot was actually formed, but on Jan. 11, 1414, about a hundred friends of Oldcastle, ignorant of his escape, gathered under the leadership of Sir Roger Acton in St. Giles to effect his liberation. They were dispersed without bloodshed, but some of the leaders were captured and executed, while two edicts were issued, one forbidding the reading of the Bible under penalty of death and the other declaring all Lollards heretics. Guarded by his friends, Oldcastle eluded capture for four years before he was taken in Wales by Lords Jeuan ab Gruffydd and Gruffydd Vychan of Garth. He was carried back to London and lodged in the Tower, where he was condemned to death Dec. 14, 1417, on the charges of high treason and heresy, his execution taking place on the same day.
With Oldcastle's death the hopes of Lollardism vanished. Minor recalcitrants were forced to choose between recantation and execution, and all political and social aspiration, if they had ever existed, disappeared. The Council of Constance (1414-18), moreover, had put an end to the Great Schism, and the Church, again able to devote its reunited energies to the suppression of heresy, forced the Lollards to seek refuge in secrecy and obscure hiding-places. Driven from the fields and the streets, they concealed themselves 8. Suppres- in hovels and barns, sand-pits and sion and caves, while conventicles in the houses Decline of replaced preaching in the streets. Lollardism. Their numbers at first remained undiminished, and in some parishes the Lollards formed so large a proportion that pilgrimages and processions, as well as the observance of saints' days, were neglected. Some of the clergy were found among them, but after the execution of Oldcastle the leader was gone, although the Lollard hatred of the Church was occasionally manifested by rabid outbursts on the part of individuals. Executions for Lollardism continued long after the middle of the fifteenth century, and in 1476 the University of Oxford again had to proceed against some of its members for Wyclifite heresy. In 1485 and 1494 bishops preached in Coventry and Kyle against the " Bible Men," and in the first decade of the following century, before the thoughts of Luther had crossed the Channel, increasing numbers were condemned and burned for possessing Wyclif's writings, reading the Bible in the vernacular, and rejecting transubstantiation, auricular confession, the invocation of saints, and pilgrimages, the very things which had formed the point at issue in 1395. At Amersham, a Lollard center, thirty men were executed in 1506, and eleven years later sectaries called " Brethren in Christ " or " Known Men " (the latter name derived from a mistranslation of I Cor. xiv. 38) were cited before the courts. VII,— 2
In a certain sense, therefore, Lollardism, inherited for generations, was a real, though secret, precursor of the Reformation in England. With no Huss or Luther to lead them, they achieved what no other religious movement of the Middle Ages was able to do, when they succeeded in awakening and maintaining a longing for the Bible in the vernacular. The repeated efforts to secure an English Bible which were made by Tyndale, Coverdale, Taverner, Cranmer, the Geneva fugitives, and Parker were inspired primarily by the Lollard " Bible Men." From England Lollardism spread to Scotland. Oxford infected St. Andrews, and the teachers there were repeatedly accused of adhering to the doctrines of Wyclif's followers, while Knox expressly termed the Lollards of Kyle, Ayrshire, the forerunners of the Reformation and the descendants of the Lollards of the fifteenth century.
The tenets of the Lollards must be gleaned from the legal proceedings against them, contemporary accounts, the memorial of 1395, Piers Plowman's Creed, Piers Plowman's Complaint, The Lanthorn of Light, The Plowman's Prayer, and the Repressor of R. Pecock, but these documents must be used with caution. The scanty literature of the Lollards themselves, on the other hand, shows no trace of system. It is obvious from these sources, of which the most important is the Repressor, that Lollardism was based on the teachings of Wyclif and centered about the Bible, whence were derived all Lollard arguments and postulates. According to the Franciscan W Woodford, their chief dogma was that only what the pope and the car- 9. Tenets of dinals could deduce from the Bible was
Lollardism. true, all else being false, while if they could be convinced of the erroneous nature of this tenet, they would readily return to the Roman Catholic Church. The Plowman's Prayer makes true religion consist in love, fear, and trust in God above all things, and also declares that the soul of man, rather than an earthly temple, is the dwelling-place of the Lord. Pecock, in like manner, describes their faith as based on three postulates: Only what can be found in the Bible (especially in the New Testament) may be regarded as the command of God; each Christian man or woman of humble soul, and desirous to know the Scriptures, may comprehend their true meaning; whosoever has grasped the meaning of the Bible must refuse to accept any opposing arguments, whether derived from the Bible or reason. He also adds that the Lollards were called " Bible Men " because they memorized the New Testament in their mother tongue and found the reading of the Bible so profitable that they preferred it to instruction by scholars or priests. On the basis of these views, the Lollards protested against a series of ecclesiastical requirements
10. Lollard which find no authority in the Bible.
Opposition They rejected the use of images in the
to Roman churches, pilgrimages to holy places, Catholic the right of the clergy to possess land,
Doctrines, the orders of the hierarchy, the legislative power of the pope and bishops above the Bible, the institution of spiritual orders and the priestly mediation, the invocation of
Lollards
Lombards