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You are here: Home / Reformation Jubilee 500 / Indulge Me: About the Lollards

Indulge Me: About the Lollards

June 26, 2017 by Benjamin Dueholm

Please indulge me as I share my own odd Reformation-era enthusiasm: the Lollards. Originating in the work of priest and Oxford scholar John Wycliffe (d. 1384), Lollardy flourished as a movement for church and civil reform from the 1370s and the Peasants’ Revolt. After rebellions led or inspired by Lollards in 1414 and 1431 were suppressed, the movement scattered, but it never disappeared. Its influence was evident in the reforms of Jan Hus in Bohemia, Luther in Germany, all the way to the English Puritans.

In theology, Wycliffe and his followers blazed the trail for ideas that would go further in the 16th century, as well as some that would end up in eccentric dead ends. They taught that the sacrament was “very Goddis body” and yet bread at the same time; they criticized the temporal power and wealth of prelates; they criticized the use of pilgrimages, images, and prayers to saints. Rightly or wrongly, Lollard views of church and state were considered dangerous to public order, as well as heterodox in theology. Specific Lollard views were condemned by the church in the 1370s and 1380s. Suppression by the civil authorities followed as Lollard preaching continued and was intermingled with civil unrest.

This suppression was effective enough to limit the number of original Lollard texts available today. But it was far from total. Apart from their specific theological claims, the Lollards changed the shape of Christianity in England by translating the Bible partially into English and stressing vernacular preaching. Archbishop Arundel forbade the possession of any Bibles by Wycliffe or later translators in 1407, as well as English tracts.

And it is in this surviving vernacular literature that we can sense the real import of the Lollard movement. Wycliffe’s translations, unlike later efforts, did not return to Greek or Hebrew, but rendered the Vulgate in homely, vivid English. Of the Prodigal Son: “And aftir that that he hadde endid alle thingis, a strong hungur was maad in that cuntre, and he bigan to haue nede.” The tradition of editing and translating that would swell majestically through Tyndale to the Authorized Version owes little to Wycliffe except his belief that English was a suitable language for Scripture and theology (or politics!) at all. As one scholar of the Lollards says, it is not their literary merit, but this attempt to create a vernacular public discourse that was “their greatest achievement.” For decades, simply to write in English–then a language of commoners, not the clerical elite or the Norman rulers–was nearly to be suspected of heresy or sedition.

I appreciate both the insight and the eccentricity of the Lollards. Even more, I admire their brave commitment to preach and teach directly to a new public in a language whose rapid evolution they would help to advance and shape. An early critic lamented that the language of angels (i.e., Latin) was being supplanted by the language of Englishmen. Leaving aside the status of Latin, he was not wrong. From those few radical seeds, a whole vernacular theology and literature has grown.

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Filed Under: Indulgences, Reformation Jubilee 500


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About Benjamin Dueholm

Benjamin J. Dueholm is pastor at Christ Lutheran Church in Dallas, Texas, and the author of Sacred Signposts: Words, Water, and Other Acts of Resistance (Eerdmans 2018).

Issue 22.2 – After Pentecost 2017

Pop art Martin Luther

Reformation Jubilee 500

Appreciating Luther

Martin Luther, The Peasants’ War, And Anti-semitism: A Quincentennial Rumination

By Gregory Holmes Singleton

Why Did Luther Demonize His Theological Opponents?

By Robert Saler

More Than Just Table Talk

By Francisco Herrera

“Are you ignorant of what it means to be ignorant?”: Luther’s Insults

By Tyler Rasmussen

An Appreciation of Luther’s Pastoral Writings

By Anna Marie Johnson

My Appreciation of Martin Luther’s Sacramentality and His Attention to the Human Body

By Frank C. Senn

An Appreciation of Luther’s Critique of the Eucharistic Sacrifice

By Shane Brinegar

Indulgences

Indulge Me: Johann Reuchlin (1455-1522), Christian Humanist and Hebrew Scholar

By Theodor Dunkelgrün

Indulge Me: King Johan III

By Frank C. Senn

Indulge Me: The Book of Common Prayer

By Pamela Dolan

Indulgence: Johannes Bugenhagen Pomeranus, Reformer of the Church

By Kurt Hendel

Indulge Me: The Heidelberg Theses and the Theology of the Cross

By Benjamin Dueholm

Indulge Me: Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553)

By Frank C. Senn

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By Dawn Mass Eck

Evanston Reformation 500 and Beyond: The Proof is the Beyond….A Joint Reflection

By Betty Landis and Joseph Tito

Music Events at Grace for Reformation 500

By Michael D. Costello

Historic Medallion Commemorating the 500th Anniversary of the Reformation

By Frederick J. Schumacher