RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Wyclif
who hold under the king, should pay him dutiful tribute. To this end temporal power offers protection, justice, and in its earliest times gave account for its employment. The honors which attach to temporal power hark back to the king; those which belong to precedence in the priestly office, to the priest. In what does the royal office consist? The king must apply his power with wisdom, his laws are to be in unison with those of God. From God laws derive their authority, including those which royalty has over against the clergy. If one of the clergy neglects his office, he is a traitor to the king who calls him to answer for it. It follows from this that the king has an “evangelical” control. Every one in the service of the Church must have regard to the laws of the State. In confirmation of this fundamental principle the archbishops in England make sworn submission to the king and in view of that receive their temporalities. This is a relation based upon the law. The king is, moreover, to protect his poor vassals against every damage which might happen to their possessions; in case the clergy through their misuse of the temporalities in this respect cause injury, the king must afford protection. When the king turns over temporalities to the clergy, he places them under his jurisdiction, from which later pronouncements of the popes can not release them. If the clergy relies on papal pronouncements, it must be subjected to obedience to the king.
It appears thus that this book, like those that preceded and followed, had to do with the reform of the Church in head and members, in which the temporal arm was to have an influential part. Especially interesting is the teaching which Wyclif addressed to the king on the protection of his theologians, 1.e., the theological faculty, whose duty it is to advise king and people in theological concerns. By this was not meant theology in its modern sense, but rather knowledge of the Bible. Since the laws of the land are to be in agreement with Scripture, knowledge of theology is necessary to the strengthening of the kingdom; it is a consequence of this that the king has theologians in his entourage to stand at his side as he exercises power. The position of these is that of the prophets under the old covenant. It is their duty to explain Scripture according to the rule of reason and in conformity with the witness of the saints; also to proclaim the law of the king and to protect his welfare and that of his kingdom.
In all the books and tracts of Wyclif’s last six years one may discover an immense and almost unreviewable mass of attacks upon the papacy and the entire hierarchy of his times. Hach successive year they focus more and more, and at the last pope and
Antichrist seem to him practically
12. Attitude equivalent conceptions. Yet there are toward the to be found in his writings passages Papacy which are moderate in tone in dealing Constant. with pope and papacy; in fact, Lechler’s opinion that in Wyclif’s relations
with the papacy three steps of development are to be discovered finds confirmation both among German and English scholars. The first step, which carried him to the outbreak of the schism, involves a moderate recognition of the papal primacy; the second, which carried him to 1381, is marked by an
estrangement from the papacy; and the third shows him in sharp contest. However, Wyclif reached no valuation of the papacy before the outbreak of the schism different from his later appraisal. If in his last. years in his keen tracts he identified the papacy with antichristianity, the dispensability of this papacy was strong in his mind before the schism. If it be remarked that it was this very man who labored to bring about the recognition of Urban VI. (1378- 1389), this fact appears to contradict his former attitude and to demand an explanation. In fact, Wyclif’s influence was never greater than at the moment when pope and antipope sent their ambassadors to England in order to gain recognition for themselves. In the presence of the ambassadors he delivered an opinion before parliament that showed, in an important ecclesiastical political question, viz., the matter of the right of asylum in Westminster abbey, a position that was to the liking of the State. How Wyclif came to be active in the interest of Urban is seen in passages in his latest writings, in which he expressed himself in regard to the papacy in a favorable sense. On the other hand he says explicitly that it is not necessary to go either to Rome or to Avignon in order to seek a decision from the pope. Every place is sufficient for the penitent, since the triune God is everywhere. Our pope is Christ. Here Wyclif has broken with the papacy, though only with it as it exists.” If one thoroughly examines the situation, it seems clear that he was an opponent of that papacy which had developed since the donation of Constantine. He taught that the Church can continue to exist even though it have no visible leader; but as on earth there is no order unless there be a higher unity, there can be no damage when the Church possesses a leader of the right kind. But what qualities must such a leader possess? How does he appear with his pretensions to temporal power? In a word—to make firm the distinction between what the pope should be, in case one is necessary, and the pope as he appeared in Wyclif’s day was the purpose of his book on the power of the pope. The Church militant, Wyclif taught, needs a head; but such a head is not the one whom the cardinals choose but one whom God gives the Church. Such a one is of the elect. The elector [cardinal] can then only make some one a pope if the choice relates to one who is elect [of God]. But that is not always the case. It may be that the elector is himself not predestinated and chooses one who is in the same case—a veritable Antichrist. One must regard as a true pope one who in teaching and life most nearly follows Christ and Peter, whose rule is not of this world.
These are the teachings and fundamentals of Wyclif before the outbreak of the schism; but their expression became sharper in the later period. The point is that he distinguished the true from the false papacy. Since all signs indicated that Urban VI. was a reforming and consequently a “‘true’’ pope, the enthusiasm which Wyclif manifested for him is easily understood as it comes to expression in his work on the Church. These views concerning the Church and church government are those which are brought forward also in the last books of his Swmma, “De simonia, de apostasia, de blasphemia.” To be
Wyclif