Medieval Christianity: Forerunners of the Reformation

This is the first time that the letters of John Hus, the important medieval religious reformer, have appeared in English translation. Based on the critical edition of the letters published in 1920 by Vaclav Novotny in his M. Jana Husi Korespondence a documentary, Professor Spinka has correlated them with events treated more fully in his other writings on Hus. They are written to a variety of people including Wyclif's pupil Wyche of London, the Bohemian King Wenceslas and Pope John XXIII. They span the years 1404-15, from the period leading up to his exile from Prague to his trial at the Council of Constance where he was condemned as a heretic and then burnt to death at the stake. Their essential value lies in the fact that they reveal the personal reasoning and attitudes behind the public statements. Here he is not hampered by the restrictions imposed on his formal writings and we can see, first hand, the courage and determination which reinforced his stand against all the corruptions in the church at that time. The letters from Constance (1414-15) are particularly significant for without these our knowledge of his trial would be inadequate and biased. The correspondence, as a whole, constitutes the most important primary source for Hus' life,work and opinions.

The main section of this study examines the life and thought of a man whose beginnings were so humble that not even the date of his birth was recorded.In an Epilogue,Professor Spinka assays the permanent influence Hus had upon his nation and the Christian world by examining some of the consequences of his martyrdom.-Flap cover.

When John Hus was condemned to be burned at the stake as a heretic in 1415,at the time of the Great Schism, it was on the basis of thirty charges, none of which correctly represenyed his views.In this thorough study of Hus' writings,both Latin and Czech, the author's aim is to eliminate the misconceptions which stubbornly cling to Hus' name, particularly the idea that he merely echoed Wyclif's teachings.
The author uses the technique of presenting also the teachings of Hus' important predecessors who influenced him and those of the men who opposed him to bring out the polemical character of the development of Hus' ecclesiology,thus bringing the issues into sharp focus.Hus' forward looking ideas represented the initial stages of the Reformation;his "federal" concept of the Church and his ecumenical outlook can be better understood today than in any previous age.The reader discover how Hus' courageous affirmation of the right and duty of an individual to proclaim the truth as sees it led inevitably to his trial and death.-Flap cover.

These articles rely upon a wide range of evidence, trials and treatises relating not just to the Germanophone Waldenses of the 14th century but to the Waldenses throughout Latin Christendom between the 1170 and the 1530s.

"This book provides the first full single-volume scholarly account in English of the 'Waldenses' and examination of the concept of 'Waldensianism' from the late twelfth century of the Reformation. 'Waldenses' is the name given to diverse and widely scattered groups of religious dissenters since the time of the movement's reputed founder, a rich citizen of Lyon called Valdesius, in the late twelfth century. Though living within the culture of the Catholic Church, these people doubted the holiness of its priesthood and questioned its teachings about the destiny of souls after death. The various strands of this movement emerged and endured over a long period of time. In consequence some earlier historians assumed rather than demonstrated, that "Waldensian" heresy remained one coherent phenomenon throughout its life-span. They also tended to neglect some of the transient or "untypical" aspects of the movement.-Back cover.

"The Poor of Lyons, called by their detractors 'Waldensians' after their founder Waldo or Vaudes, first emerged around 1170. Like other groups of the period, they formed a religious community founded on the strict observance of the gospel, preaching and poverty. Defying Church rulings stating that the laity had no right to preach and applying the scriptures to the letter, in particular denying the existence of purgatory and refusing to take oaths, they were condemned as heretics. The community was forced underground and dispersed widely; but through a unique, organised body of intinerant preachers they nevertheless managed to maintain links throughout the whole of Europe." "This book is less a history of Waldensianism than an account of those men and women who, remaining true to an ideal, lived in anxiety and under suspicion, often fearful and sometimes in blind terror. Proclaiming their faith timidly, yet with an astounding - sometimes dogged - tenacity, they hold up a mirror to us today."--Jacket.

John Wyclif has alternatively been called hero and heretic, reformer and radical, guardian and gadfly. But the true tale of this most controversial of late-medieval Englishmen is far richer and more complex. In this first major biography of John Wyclif in nearly a century, G.R. Evans employs recent research to present a fresh, focused portrait of this pivotal historical figure. In doing so, she strips away the layers of legend that have obscured our view of the real Wyclif and places him within the features of his actual historical landscape. That landscape is the world of fourteenth-century Oxford, where Wyclif spent the majority of his life. Evans, one of today's leading historians of the era, recreates the scenery of this great medieval university town with clarity and detail, providing a comprehensive view of life and learning within its walls. It was here that Wyclif earned his reputation as one of the most learned and significant scholars of his day. And it was here that he developed his views regarding the Bible, the sacraments, ecclesiastical authority and political power - views that led to his eventual condemnation by the church.

Both in its own time and subsequently, the Lollard or Wycliffite movement of religious reform in late medieval England has been described in predominantly negative terms: historians, theologians, and literary scholars have emphasized the ways in which Wycliffites and their supporters rejected the doctrines of the institutional church, argued against such practices and structures as permanent endowment and the papacy, and constructed themselves as a remnant of true Christians persecuted by Antichrist. Luckily, however, there are other sources of evidence for the spiritual and devotional practices of Wycliffites and their communities. On the one hand, some particularly attentive bishops preserved in their registers many otherwise inaccessible details of the ways in which heresy defendants practiced their faith. On the other hand, recent scholarship has made it indisputable that any serious study of this late medieval heresy must engage critically and extensively with the texts written by those condemned as heretics. This new volume in the Classics of Western Spirituality series is a collection of modern English translations of Wycliffite texts and heresy trial records which disclose that, far from practicing a wholly negative Christianity, Wycliffites were as keenly interested in the spiritual life as many of their contemporaries. While Wycliffite spirituality, like that of many a persecuted Christian group, placed high value on the confession of faith and readiness to endure persecution or even martyrdom, they did not think of themselves as heretics who had rejected Christianity. Indeed, they engaged closely with contemporary pastoral and spiritual movements, and their attempts to provide an alternative spirituality were better developed and more coherent than scholarship has yet acknowledged.

"Kantik Ghosh argues that one of the main reasons for Lollardy's sensational resonance for its times, and for its immediate posterity, was its exposure of fundamental problems in late-medieval academic engagement with the Bible, its authority and its polemical uses. Examining Latin and English sources, Ghosh shows how the same debates over biblical hermeneutics and associated methodologies were from the 1380s onwards conducted both within and outside the traditional university framework, and how, by eliding boundaries between Latinate biblical speculation and vernacular religiosity, Lollardy changed the cultural and political positioning of both. Covering a wide range of texts - scholastic and extramural, in Latin and in English, written over half a century from Wyclif to Thomas Netter - Ghosh concludes that by the first decades of the fifteenth century Lollardy had partly won the day. Whatever its fate as a religious movement, it had successfully changed the intellectual landscape of England."--Jacket.

John Wyclif, who lived from the late twenties to the early eighties of the fourteenth century, was long ago given the title "The Morning Star of the Reformation." Protestants have admired him for his attacks on the wealth and corruption of the medieval Church and for his denunciation of the Papacy. Above all, he is thought of as the Oxford and Lutterworth preacher who first gave people the opportunity to read the Bible in English. Wyclif is less well known as a philosopher, even though he occupies a unique position in the history of thought. For he was the last of the great Oxford schoolmen who produced a synthesis of Christian and Aristotelian ideas which is perhaps the greatest intellectual legacy of the Middle Ages. His defense of realism in philosophy against the nominalists of his age contains many arguments that are still topical today. Dr. Kenny aims to do justice to Wyclif's philosophy as well as to his theology, and to reassess, in an ecumenical age, his significance as a religious reformer. - Back cover.

"The Lollards offers a brief but insightful guide to the entire history of England's only native medieval heretical movement. Beginning with its fourteenth-century origins in the theology of the Oxford professor, John Wycliff, Richard Rex examines the spread of Lollardy across much of England until its eventual dissolution amidst the ecclesiastical and doctrinal upheavals of the sixteenth century." "Taking account of recent scholarship, Rex reassesses Wyclif's political career and provides a compact survey of his theology which corrects a number of current misapprehensions about it and identifies those features which help explain the hostility it aroused. Whilst endorsing the traditional view that Lollardy was indeed the lay face of Wycliffism, the author nevertheless challenges a number of cherished myths about England's late medieval heretics. Rex controversially argues that Wyclif and the Lollards were far less important than the historians and literary scholars have often claimed, and takes issue with recent attempts to restore Lollardy to its once conventional position as a c̀ause' of the Reformation." "Powerful and persuasive, The Lollards is essential reading for anyone interested in the movement's relationship to Wyclif's teachings, its social and geographical distribution, its political significance, and its impact on the English Reformation."--Jacket.