Wycliffite Controversies

The philosophical and theological ideas of John Wyclif, their dissemination among clerical and lay audiences, and the movement of religious dissent associated with his name all provoked sharp controversies in late medieval England. This volume brings together the very latest scholarship on Wyclif and Wycliffism, with its contributors exploring in interdisciplinary fashion the historical, literary, and theological resonances of the Wycliffite controversies. Far from adhering to the traditional binary divide between ‘orthodoxy’ and ‘heresy’ as a tool for explaining the religious turmoil of the late fourteenth, fifteenth, and early sixteenth centuries, essays here explore the construction and rhetorical use of those terms, collectively producing a more nuanced account of the religious history of pre-Reformation England. Topics include the use of religious lyrics and tables of lessons as indirect rebuttals of Wycliffite claims; the social networks through which dissenters transmitted their ideas; dissenting and mainstream readings of Scripture; the ‘survival’ of Wycliffism in the run-up to Henry VIII’s reformation; and the fate of Wyclif and Wycliffism in later historiography. Leading contributors include Anne Hudson, Alastair Minnis, and Peter Marshall.