Foundations of the Anglican Church XXI

The Church in England in the fourteenth century was rife for trouble and John Wycliffe was just the man to stir the hornet’s nest.  We have seen the anti-papal legislation of the Statutes of Provisors and of Praemunire that tried to limit papal power in England and, even more important, to stem the flow of English gold to Rome.  Geoffrey Chaucer would chronicle the amusing idiosyncrasies and corresponding dispiriting decay of the English religious scene at the end of the fourteenth century in the Canterbury Tales.  This was Wycliffe’s world.
John Wycliffe was born c 1323 in the Yorkshire village of Hipswell and after local primary school found himself at Oxford, probably about the age of fifteen as was then usual.  Though he would accept a number of Church appointments, Oxford would always remain the center of his life.  His career seems to have begun at Baliol, and he studied natural science, mathematics, philosophy, and theology.  Advancement to degrees was not the fairly straightforward things it is today and it took him over thirty years before he attained the doctorate in theology.  In the meantime he had served as the Master at Baliol and later as the head of Canterbury Hall—a residence for men preparing for the secular priesthood.  Wycliffe himself was a secular priest.  After only a few years at Canterbury Hall, the new Archbishop—Simon Langham—replaced Wycliffe as head of the Hall with a monk.  Wycliffe appealed his deprivation to Rome but without satisfaction.  Wycliffe seems to have turned against the monastic and religious clergy from this point. 
There was another event at this time that poisoned the feelings of many English towards the papacy.  If you remember our entry on King John, I mentioned that John had been forced to cede England to the Pope and receive it back as a feudal holding.  This was, as I said, largely symbolic but it did involve the paying of an annual tribute of one thousand silver marks.  This was at the time equivalent to about  £ 660; today it would be several million dollars.  In any event, over the years the tribute had ceased being paid to the pope and no one noticed.  Then in 1365 Pope Urban V demanded the tax once again.  Parliament—remembering the Statutes of Provisors and Praemunire—reacted strongly and declared that King John and, indeed no king or other person, had the authority to cede the sovereignty of England and no tribute would be paid.    The pope backed down but anti-papal feeling was running high in England.  And remember at this time the popes were living in Avignon where they were very much disposed politically in favor of the French, the enemies of England. 
As a theologian, Wycliffe was particularly interested in the scriptures and espoused the older patristic approach of doing theology based in the scriptures rather than the new scholastic approach which saw theological principles in the light of Aristotelian logic.  His study of the scriptures gave him a desire that they should be available to the common people—at this time there was no English translation and the scriptures were available only in Latin.  Granted, more people knew Latin in the fourteenth century—any educated man (and the relatively few educated women) knew Latin—but that still was only a handful of the population.  Wycliffe had been “given the rectory” of Lutterworth—that is, appointed the rector (we would say pastor) of Lutterworth parish in Leicestershire and while he continued his work at Oxford he spent considerable time in the parish and it was there he made the first English translation of the scriptures in an attempt to make them accessible to the common person. 
Wycliffe’s reading of the scriptures soured him on the wealth and power of the institutional Church.  The Gospels, in particular, can do that. The extravagance of the papal court at Avignon was a scandal to him and the greed with which churchmen accumulated salaries and appointments in order to have more luxurious lives stood in sharp contrast with the poverty of Christ and his apostles.  Wycliffe saw the religious orders to be no better. The monasteries held vast wealth in lands and Church ornaments.  Orders such as the various mendicant groups—Franciscans, Carmelites, Augustinians—once founded in poverty had become known for good food and drink, comfortable life, and immoral behavior.  Wycliffe saw the hope for renewal of the Church in secular priests who would live poor lives among the people teaching and preaching the scriptures.   
Wycliffe believed that the true Church of Christ was a pure and poor Church, very different from the Institutional Church of the hierarchy and monks.  He spoke of an “invisible Church of the elect”—an idea that would surface two centuries later with John Calvin.  This “invisible Church” was comprised of those holy souls whom God had predestined to salvation.  No one knew with certainty who were among these forechosen.   You could look at a Sunday congregation or a pilgrimage assembled at Canterbury or the throngs of faithful gathered to see the Pope and only God knew who belonged to him and who did not.  Such a view made not only the hierarchy but the clergy themselves irrelevant to the plan of salvation and it is not surprising that the Church’s axe fell on the priest of Lutterworth.  Gregory XI dispatched to England five copies of a bull condemning Wycliffe in May 1377.  But Wycliffe had a protector in John of Gaunt, the uncle of Richard II and, during Richard’s minority, his regent.  Joan of Kent, the King’s mother, as well as Henry Percy, the Lord Marshal of England also supported him.  It was a question of England vs. the foreigner—always a flash point for the English. Many of the nobility supported Wycliffe because they were jealous of the land that the Church had accumulated and wanted to seize it; the London mob was also pro-Wycliffe as they too resented the wealth and power of the Church while they lived with struggle and hard work and had little to show for it. But in the end it was his Englishness that saved Wycliffe.  Wycliffe was one of them and represented England; the Pope was a foreign prince and they resented a foreign prince claiming authority in England.  Perhaps the bishops and even the Crown had eventually caved in to the papacy but in the hearts of many English, they still wanted independence. 
Wycliffe was indicted several times in episcopal courts and had to defend his doctrines but he never was convicted of heresy nor was he deprived of his living.  On December 28^th 1384, the feast of the Holy Innocents, while saying Mass in his parish church, he suffered a stroke and three days later he died.  He was buried beneath the floor of his church. 
Wycliffe’s ideas spread through the universities of Europe and in Prague they were taken up by an energetic and evangelical young chaplain, Jan Hus.  Hus was not so fortunate as Wycliffe.  He was charged with heresy and when he came to the Council of Constance to defend himself, the Emperor broke faith with the safe conduct he had been guaranteed and Hus was burned at the stake as a heretic.  The same council posthumously declared Wycliffe a heretic and at the orders of Pope Martin V, his body was exhumed some  31 years after his death, burned, and his ashes thrown into a local river.  But Wycliffe’s influence survived where his ashes did not.   

just an advisory--I will be travelling and at meetings the next week or so and my posts may be somewhat sporadic --hope not, but no promises.

Roots of the Reformation V: Ecumenical Councils and Papal Monarchy

What happens when no one is sure who the Pope is?  What happens if there are two fellows—or even three—parading around in tiaras and extending the foot to be kissed—who is the real pope?  How can you tell?  How do you know?  What happens when you have One Pope in Delia, Kansas and another in Springdale, Washington?  How can you tell who the real pope is? O wait, the Pope in Springdale died.  OK, so we have a Pope in Delia Kansas, and one in Hertfordshire.  (That’s in England.)  Oh—and then there seems to be two more in Brussels.  And apparently thee is one each in Lucerne and Angoulême.  What’s a Catholic to do?  OK, we will leave aside those who have arranged their own conclaves in the back room of a store or whom Jesus personally ordained, consecrated, and crowned in a mystical vision and focus on just three popes:  one in Rome; one in Avignon; and one in Pisa.  That is the situation in which the Church found itself in the fifteenth century, specifically in 1414 when a (Ecumenical) Council opened in Konstanz, Switzerland.  The King of Hungary and Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund had summoned the bishops to end a schism which saw three men—all with somewhat sound claims (certainly sounder than the formerly mentioned visionaries and psychotics) to be the legitimate heir of Peter the Apostle.

You have a Roman claimant, Gregory XII, who traced his lineage back through Urban VI, who was elected pope upon the death of Gregory XI in 1378.  Gregory was the pope who moved the papacy back to Rome at the end of the Avignon papacy.  He was duly elected by the Cardinals—all the Cardinals, French and Italian—and his coronation was carried out with great detail so there would be no doubt of his legitimacy.   Sound like the Pope, doesn’t he?

Problem—five months  later the French Cardinals met at Fondi—a town between Rome and Naples—and elected one of their own, Robert of Geneva Pope, claiming that the election of Urban was invalid because they had been coerced by the Roman mob into choosing an Italian pope.  The charge was true and they had a point.  Of course, the fact that the King of France put the French Cardinals up to this colors the story a bit too.  But if the Cardinals were coerced by fear and the election were not to be a free election, would it be valid?  This is not an abstract question.  There are some fringe groups in the Church that claim that the 1958 and 1963 conclaves were prevented under threats from electing the late Cardinal Giuseppe Siri  (or that Siri was elected and prevented from taking the papal office by outside threats). 

How do you solve the problem of who is pope when you have two of them?  Who has the authority to decide? To break the stalemate?  The theology faculties of various universities including Paris (at the time, the leading theology faculty of Europe), leading theologians of the day (including Jean de Charlier de Gerson and Conrad of Gelnhausen), the town councils of cities across Europe, crowned heads, agreed—it would take an Ecumenical Council to cut the Gordian knot.  A delegation of Avignon-obedience cardinals met with a delegation of Roman-obedience cardinals and agreed upon a Council.  Their respective popes weren’t happy and each called his own rival Council: The Avignon Benedict XIII for Perpignan and the Roman Gregory XII for Aquilea.  Almost no one went to Aquilea or Perpignan, but 22 cardinals, 80 bishops, proxies for another hundred bishops, 87 Abbots, 41 priors or general superiors of religious orders, and 300 doctors of theology or doctors of canon law showed up in Pisa where they proceeded to declare both Gregory and Benedict deposed and elected Alexander V as pope.  The story is a little more complicated, but we will save it for another day.  Neither Gregory nor Benedict would abdicate, so now there were three popes.   

It ended up with Sigismund calling another Council—this one for Konstanz—and the results were somewhat similar except that this time the  Roman claimant, Gregory, sent proxies who convoked the council in his name and then submitted—again in his name—his abdication.  It was a clever, and I suspect sincere, move for it preserved the authority (and thus the legitimacy) of the Roman line even though it lost the papacy for Gregory himself.  In other words, by not refusing to acknowledge the legitimacy of the Council but imposing his “convocation” of it over the Emperor’s original summons, it forced the Council into acknowledging the authority of the Pope—and in this case, the Roman Pope—to call a Council.  It thus disposed the Council to recognize the legitimacy of the Roman claim as neither the Avignon nor Pisan pope had given their authority to holding the assembly.  By abdicating Gregory did not allow the Council to depose a pope; and by abdicating while his rivals would not, he forced the Council to depose them which, again, asserted the legitimacy of the Roman line. 

It sounds like it all wrapped up neatly.  Unfortunately that is not quite true.  They always say that the winners write the history books, but they are wrong.  Whoever writes the history book is the winner.  The war is not won on the field, but in the telling of the story.  The Roman popes told the story pretty much as I have.  The pope convoked the Council.  The pope abdicated.  A new pope was elected.  But many of the Council participants told the story differently.  They had gathered in Council on the initiative of the Emperor at the request of the Church (not the pope, but the bishops, the theologians, the universities, the towns, and others who had petitioned the Emperor for a Council), and in Council they accepted the abdication of the Roman claimant and deposed the two refusniks (to use a term from the late twentieth century), and they elected a new pope.  Note—the cardinals did not elect the pope—the council did.  The conclave consisted of the cardinals present and thirty representatives of the Council. 

Konstanz ended and everybody went home but some went home with the opinion that a Council could depose and/or elect a pope.  In this case, the pope was not the highest authority in the Church.  Others went home with the idea that it takes a pope to convoke a Council and a pope can resign but only anti-popes, that is false claimants, can be deposed.   This argument would go on for a long time—and would cause confusion and division at the time of Luther and the Protestant Reformations. 

Roots of the Reformation IV: The Bohemian Reformer



Jan Hus being burned at the stake
Bethlehem Chapel, Prague

 Wycliffe found a posthumous disciple in a land far distant from his English countryside.  Jan Hus was a devout young man who had spent his youth as a church chorister and altar-server in order to finance his education at the Charles University in Prague where he received first his bachelor’s and then his master’s degrees in Theology in 1396.  Four years later he was ordained priest and then, two years later, was named Rector of the University and University Preacher at the newly constructed  Betlémská Kaple or Bethlehem Chapel.  It was at this time that he was exposed to the writings of John Wycliffe, dead these sixteen years or so. Wycliffe’s writings radicalized the young priest and he used his university pulpit to call for reform in the Church and particularly reform of the clergy.

This was a tumultuous time in the Bohemian Church where the Archbishops usually stood loyal to the Roman claimant to the papal throne and the King—Wenceslaus IV—did not.  (We haven’t looked at the great Schism yet, but there is a slight mention of it on February 4^th 2011 post. Wenceslaus’ opposition to the Roman Claimants—Boniface IX succeeded by Innocent VII succeeded by Gregory XII was because Wenceslaus had been elected King of the Germans and was thus entitled to be crowned Emperor, but the Roman Popes were reluctant to acknowledge the claim and have him crowned.) 

It was only a few years before Hus’s preaching that John of Nepomuk had been murdered on the orders of King Wenceslaus.  Although hagiographers say he was murdered for refusing to divulge the queen’s confession to the jealous and suspicious Wenceslaus, it seems that he was murdered in retaliation for his installing an Abbot contrary to the King’s wishes, an Abbot who was loyal to the Roman Claimant, and the story of the Queen’s confession is a later embellishment.  Nevertheless in popular mythology the confession story stands and he is the symbol of protecting the secrecy of the confessional.  Beneath the conflict we can see that there is stress between the Crown and the Church and this gives us some  background for Hus.  The Roman party represented vested clerical interest; the Royal party—while probably indifferent to the issue of clergy morals—were the anti-clerical party if for no other reason than the clergy supported the Roman Claimant to the papacy.  You will notice that I am not saying that Wenceslaus supported the Avignon Claimant (Benedict XIII) for he really wasn’t enthused about Benedict and when a third papal line emerges with the Pisan Claimants Alexander V and then John XXIII, Wenceslaus will support them.  I know this is confusing but bear with me.  Suffice it to say that the clergy supported the Roman Pope; the King  and anti-clerical party did not.      

In 1403 the Archbishop of Prague was Zbynĕk Zajic who held office for political reasons and was without a serious theological background.  Like the King he (initially) did not support the Roman Claimant to the Papacy (Gregory XII).  Initially he supported Hus and his Reform preaching even though the clergy wanted the preaching stopped because Hus, in his enthusiasm with Wycliffe’s ideas, was denouncing them for their considerable wealth and poor morals.  

But then Hus got caught in a web of intrigue between the King Wenceslaus and the Archbishop.  The Archbishop switched his support to the Roman Pope, Gregory  XII, while the King (and Hus) supported Alexander V—the claimant who emerged from the Council of Pisa’s attempt to end the Western Schism.   Under Hus’ direction and with the king’s blessing, Wycliffe’s doctrines pervaded the University and spread throughout Bohemia.  Hus’ rode a wave of popularity because so many of the peasants and urban working classes resented the wealth of the Church and its vast estates.   

Hus’ call for the Church to disentangle itself from its vast wealth and its access to political power was a lost cause with the Catholic Church—and all three of its popes.  The Roman, Avignon, and Pisa claimants were all opposed to Wycliffe ‘s ideas as each wanted to be sole Pope of a wealthy and powerful Church.  As said above, Wenceslaus had thrown his lot in with the Pisan Claimant, Alexander V, and Hus, dependent on the King for his support of Hus’ calls for Reform, followed suit.  But when Alexander’s successor, anti-pope John XXIII declared a crusade against the king of Naples who was sheltering the Roman pope Gregory XII Hus found himself in a very uncomfortable position.  Hus could not support violence.  And when John offered indulgences to those who supported the crusade, Hus condemned the crusade and its sale of indulgences  saying that no pope or bishop could command believers to take up the sword   He reminded his followers of the Gospel command to “love your enemies; pray for your persecutors.   Hus’ followers then burned the bulls of anti-pope John XXIII,  not in loyalty to Gregory but in opposition to any pope—the institutional church, whichever of its claimants being Pope, was in their eyes only a coven of simoniacs.  Now the clergy had their revenge on Hus. The theology faculty of the University did not support Hus but many people did, especially from the lower classes.

Wenceslaus’ brother Sigismund of Hungry had outmaneuvered him in seeking the Imperial Crown and while he was not officially crowned until 1433 he was elected “King of the Romans”—the title of an Emperor-in-waiting in 1411.  He was Emperor in all but title and one of the expectations put on him—one of the reasons Wenceslaus who had a better claim to the title had been deposed from it in 1400—was to end the Great Schism.  To this end, Sigismund called a Council for Constance in 1415 and Hus was summoned to it to answer for his ideas.    The Council condemned both Wycliffe and Hus. 

Hus had travelled to Constance under a promise of safe-conduct issued by Sigismund and initially he lived in Constance as a free man, but was gradually imprisoned under ever more severe terms.  Sigismund was troubled by his arrest—and the danger of Hus’ being killed—but was assured that the pledge of safety he had given Hus was not binding as one did not have to keep one’s word with a heretic.     Hus was found guilty of heresy and, refusing to recant, was burned at the stake on July 6 1415.  His remains were thrown into the Rhine.

Hus did not follow all of Wycliffe’s ideas and one must be very careful to distinguish between them.  Wycliffe was a Nominalist and therefore could not accept the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist.  Hus, on the other hand, proposed a doctrine called “impanation” in which Christ’s flesh and blood become the bread and the bread becomes Christ’s flesh and blood.  This is similar to but not exactly what Luther would teach and which is called “consubstantiation.”  In other words, Hus affirmed the Real Presence though he rejected the idea of “Transubstantiation” as an explanation for it. 

What really brought condemnation down upon Hus—and posthumously upon Wycliffe—was their identification of the Church not with the Institutional or hierarchical Church, but with the community of true believers.  Their understanding of the Church made papacy and hierarchy superfluous, indeed made an ordained clergy more or less superfluous, though neither ever taught that non-ordained could administer the Sacraments.  Their opinions—formed by the Donatist heresy—did however insist that unworthy ministers could not effectively celebrate the Sacraments.  Whereas Wycliffe’s followers were long to remain as an underground movement subversive to but within the Church, following Hus’ death, masses of people—primarily about the poor and the peasantry—went into open breach with the Catholic Church forming communities of their own.  The Moravian Brethren (sometimes called the Moravian Church) continue Hus’s heritage today.  A later group, the Czechoslovak Hussite Church broke away from the Catholic Church in the first quarter of the twentieth century and while they claim the name “Hussite” and their clergy are educated by the Hussite Theology Faculty in Prague, they reflect more the Old Catholic heritage that separated from Rome over questions of modernism and papal infallibility.