Abstract
From 1277 to 1409, a series of academic condemnations took place at Oxford, in which various scholars were accused of erroneous or heretical teaching. An exact count of these cases is hard to offer, since in some cases a scholar’s ideas were condemned without the scholar himself being named or targeted, while in one case multiple scholars were targeted simultaneously, while John Wyclif was the focus of a number of condemnation efforts, most unsuccessful. But an approximate count, treating all the cases dealing with John Wyclif as a single matter, is that there were 11 condemnations involving Oxford scholars.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
For a summary of all these cases, see Andrew E. Larsen, “Academic Condemnation and the Decline of Theology at Oxford,” History of Universities 23 (2008): 1–32. For a full study of these cases, see my The School of Heretics: Academic Condemnation at Oxford, 1277–1409 (Leiden: Brill, 2011).
For the Condemnation of John Kedington, see Henry Anstey, Munimenta Academica, or, Documents Illustrative of Academical Life and Studies at Oxford, 2 vols. (London: Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer, 1868), 1: 208–11;
Margaret Aston, “‘Cairn’s Castles’: Poverty, Politics and Disendowment,” in The Church, Politics and Patronage in the Fifteenth Century, ed. Barrie Dobson (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1984), 45–81, at 51 and 72–3, nn. 24–5;
Andrew E. Larsen, “The Oxford ‘School of Heretics’: The Unexamined Case of Friar John,” Vivarium 37 (1999): 168–77;
Andrew E. Larsen, “The Condemnation of John Kedington, OSA,” Augustiniana 59 (2009): 159–72; and, Larsen, School of Heretics, 92–108.
For this condemnation, see David Knowles, “The Censured Opinions of Uthred of Boldon,” Proceedings of the British Academy (1951): 306–42; Mildred Elizabeth Marcett, Uhtred de Boldon, Friar William Jordan, and Piers Plowman (PhD dissertation, New York University, 1938);
Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, Books Under Suspicion: Censorship and Tolerance of Revelatory Writing in Late Medieval England (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006), 358–74; and, Larsen, School of Heretics, 109–26.
See John Wyclif, De veritate Sacrae Scripturae, ed. Rudolf Buddensieg, 3 vols. (London: Trübner, 1905–7), 1: 356;
Jeremy Catto, “Wyclif and Wycliffism at Oxford 1356–1430,” in The History of the University of Oxford, ed. J. I. Catto and T. A. R. Evans (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 206–7; Larsen, “John Wyclif,” 4–5; and, Larsen, School of Heretics, 129–31.
The events are described in Thomas Walsingham, Chronicon Angliae, 1328–88, ed. Edward Maunde Thompson, Rolls Series 64 (London: Longman, 1874), 117–21 (hereafter Chron. Ang.); also in an English transcription of the same work, the “Transcript of a Chronicle in the Harleian Library of Mss No. 6217, Entitled ‘A Historicall Relation of certain passages about the end of King Edward the Third and of his Death’,” ed. Thomas Amyot, Archaeologia 22 (1829): 204–84 at 253–9. A rather different version of the events can be found in Walsingham’s Historia Anglicana, ed. H. T. Riley, 2 vols., Rolls Series 28 (London: Longman, 1863–76), 1: 235 (hereafter Hist. Ang.).
An independent account of the incident can be found in the Anonimalle Chronicle, ed. V. H. Galbraith (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1927), 103–4.
See also Herbert B. Workman, John Wyclif: A Study in the English Medieval Church, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1926; Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2001), 1: 284–8;
Joseph H. Dahmus, The Prosecution of John Wyclyf (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1952), 28–9;
Andrew Larsen, “John Wyclif, c. 1331–1384,” in A Companion to John Wyclif, Late Medieval Theologian, ed. Ian Christopher Levy (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 1–65 at 24–32; and, Larsen, School of Heretics, 131–3.
Eulogium historiarum sive temporis, ed. F. S. Haydon, 3 vols., Rolls Series 9 (London: Longman, 1858–63) 3: 347–8 (hereafter Eulog.); Chron. Ang., 173–4; Hist. Ang., 1: 345. See also Workman, John Wyclif, 1: 306–7; Dahmus, The Prosecution of John Wyclyf, 61–4; and, Larsen, School of Heretics, 133–48.
Thomas Walsingham, The St. Albans Chronicle: The Chronica Majora of Thomas Walsingham, ed. John Taylor, Wendy R. Childs and Leslie Watkiss (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 197–211; Hist. Ang., 1: 356–63; Eulog., 3: 348; Workman, John Wyclif, 1: 307–9; Dahmus, The Prosecution of John Wyclyf, 68–73;
Joseph H. Dahmus, William Courtenay, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1381–1396 (London: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1966), 54–8;
and, Henry Ansgar Kelly, “Trial Procedures against Wyclif and Wycliffites in England and at the Council of Constance,” Huntington Library Quarterly 61 (1998): 1–28 at 8.
Fasciculi Zizaniorum, ed. Walter Waddington Shirley. Rolls Series 5 (London: Longman, 1858), 110–3 (hereafter Fasc. Ziz.); Workman, John Wyclif, 2: 141–5; Dahmus, The Prosecution of John Wyclyf, 129–34;
Ian Levy, John Wyclif: Scriptural Logic, Real Presence, and the Parameters of Orthodoxy (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2003), 232–9; Larsen, “John Wychf,” 44–9; and, Larsen, School of Heretics, 148–63.
The actions of the later sessions of the Blackfriars Council can be found in Wilkins, Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae, 3: 160–73; Records of Convocation, ed. Gerald Bray, 6 vols. (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2005–6), 4: 45–58; Fasc. Ziz., 289–336. For a summary of the events, see Dahmus, The Prosecution of John Wyclyf, 89–128; Dahmus, William Courtenay, 78–106;
Anne Hudson, “Wycliffism in Oxford,” in Wyclif in his Times, ed. Anthony Kenny (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 67–84;
Anne Hudson, The Premature Reformation: Wycliffite Texts and Lollard History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), 69–73; and Catto, “Wyclif and Wycliffism at Oxford,” 214–9.
Snappe’s Formulary and Other Records, ed. H. E. Salter (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924), 121–2, 126–8; and, Larsen, School of Heretics, 222–31.
For a survey of the theory of dominium, see Janet Coleman, “Property and Poverty,” in The Cambridge History of Medieval Political Thought, c.350–c.1450, ed. J. H. Burns (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 607–48.
John B. Morrall, Political Thought in Medieval Times (London: Hutchinson, 1958; Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1980), 87–8;
Katherine Walsh, A Fourteenth-Century Scholar and Primate: Richard Fitzralph in Oxford, Avignon and Armagh (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), 380–1;
and, Graham McAleer, “Giles of Rome on Political Authority,” Journal of the History of Ideas 60 (1999): 21–36.
John Wyclif, De civili dominio, ed. Johann Loserth, Reginald Lane Poole and F. D. Matthew, 4 vols. (London: Trübner, 1900), 2.7.
See also Aubrey Gwynn, English Austin Friars in the Time of Wyclif (London: Oxford University Press, 1940), 212–6.
Josef Koch, “Der Prozess gegen den Magister Johannes de Polliaco und Seine Vorgeschichte,” in Koch, Kleine Schriften, 2 vols. (Rome, 1973), 2: 387–421; and, Walsh, Fourteenth-Century Scholar and Primate, 356.
Takashi Shogimen, “Academic Controversies,” in The Medieval Theologians, ed. G. R. Evans (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), 233–49 at 236–7. Super cathedram deals with a variety of issues, including mendicant burial rights, which do not appear to have been part of this particular controversy;
see Thomas Izbicki, “The Problem of Canonical Portion in the Later Middle Ages: The Application of Super cathedram,” in Proceedings of the Seventh International Congress of Medieval Canon Law, ed. Peter Linehan (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1988), 459–73.
For John of Pouilly, see J. G. Sikes, “John de Pouilli and Peter de la Palu,” English Historical Review 49 (1934): 219–40;
Mary Martin McLaughlin, Intellectual Freedom and Its Limitations in the University of Paris in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries (New York: Arno Press, 1977), 250–9; Koch, “Der Prozess gegen den Magister Johannes de Polliaco und Seine Vorgeschichte,” 2: 387–421;
J. M. M. H. Thijssen, Censure and Heresy at the University of Paris, 1200–1400 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998), 174;
and, Thomas E. Morrissey, “John de Pouilly,” in The Biographical Dictionary of Christian Theologians, ed. Patrick W. Carey and Joseph T. Lienhard (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press 2000), 286–7.
For one of these so-called wax doctors, John Nutone, see Munimenta, 207–8, Alfred B. Emden, Biographical Register of the University of Oxford to A. D. 1500, 3 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1957–1959), 2: 1380.
Gwynn, English Austin Friars, 80–9. See also Walsh, Fourteenth-Century Scholar and Primate, 349–451; Edith Wilks Dolnikowski, “FitzRalph and Wyclif on the Mendicants,” Michigan Academician 19 (1987): 87–100;
Christopher Ocker, Johannes Klenkok: A Friar’s Life, c.1310–1374, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 83, pt. 5 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1993), 33–8; and, Kerby-Fulton, Books Under Suspicion, 135–9.
Although Hardeby wrote De vita evangelica during this period, he did not publish it until 1385, contrary to the conventional dating of the work; see Benedict Hackett, William Flete, O.S.A., and Catherine of Siena (Villanova: Augustinian Press, 1992), 27–32.
For a discussion of concept of transubstantiation in the later Middle Ages, see Gary Macy, “The Dogma of Transubstantiation in the Middle Ages,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 45 (1994): 11–41.
For the proceedings against Foullechat, see Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis, ed. Heinrich Denifle and Emile Chatelaine, 4 vols. (Paris: ex typis fratrum Delalain, 1889–97), 3: 114–24, 182–6. See also McLaughlin, Intellectual Freedom and Its Limitations in the University of Paris in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries, 228–30;
Gregory Moule, Politics, Patronage, and Learning in Fourteenth Century France: The Case of Denis Foulechat (Unpublished master’s thesis, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1990), passim; and, Thijssen, Censure and Heresy at the University of Paris, passim. See Larsen, School of Heretics, 205–6 for my argument that the article in question was one of Foullechat’s.
Editor information
Copyright information
© 2014 Karen Bollermann, Thomas M. Izbicki, and Cary J. Nederman
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Larsen, A.E. (2014). Secular Politics and Academic Condemnation at Oxford, 1358–1411. In: Bollermann, K., Izbicki, T.M., Nederman, C.J. (eds) Religion, Power, and Resistance from the Eleventh to the Sixteenth Centuries. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137431059_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137431059_3
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-49221-3
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-43105-9
eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)