Wycliffism and Hussitism: Methods of Thinking, Writing, and Persuasion, C. 1360-c. 1460 (Medieval Church Studies, 47) 9782503583822, 2503583822

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Wycliffism and Hussitism

MEDIEVAL CHURCH STUDIES Volume 47 Editorial Board under the auspices of the Department of History, University of Nottingham Ross Balzaretti, Peter Darby, Rob Lutton, Claire Taylor Previously published volumes in this series are listed at the back of the book.

Wycliffism and Hussitism Methods of Thinking, Writing, and Persuasion, c. 1360 – c. 1460

Edited by Kantik Ghosh and Pavel Soukup with the assistance of cosima gillhammer

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

© 2021, Brepols Publishers n. v., Turnhout, Belgium. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. D/2021/0095/150 ISBN 978-2-503-58382-2 eISBN 978-2-503-58383-9 DOI 10.1484/M.MCS-EB.5.116728 ISSN 1378–868X eISSN 2294–8449 Printed in the EU on acid-free paper.

Table of Contents

Introduction Philosophy, Politics, and perplexitas: A Socio-Epistemic Approach to Late Medieval Religion Kantik Ghosh and Pavel Soukup9

Setting the Scene Ideas, Institutions, and Public Scandal: Academic Debates in Late Medieval Scholasticism Maarten J. F. M. Hoenen29 Part I Methods of Thinking: Philosophical and Theological Speculation John Wyclif on Implicit Faith Christophe Grellard75 A Question of Style: The Place of Rhetoric in Jean Gerson’s Understanding of Theological Language and Method Isabel Iribarren99 Puri philosophi non est theologizare: Reflections on Method in John Wyclif’s and his Bohemian Followers’ Discussions of the Eternity of the World Luigi Campi117 New Texts Relevant to the Reception of John Wyclif in Late Medieval Bohemia Martin Dekarli139 From Oath to Confession and Back?: Protestatio in the Late Middle Ages, and its Transformation in the Thought of Wyclif and the Hussites Dušan Coufal157

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Part II Methods of Writing: Compilation Practice and the Material Text Trewe and Pretended: The Middle English Rosarium on Law Fiona Somerset181 ‘Openliere and shortliere’: Methods of Exegesis and Abbreviation in a Wycliffite ‘Summary’ of the Bible Hannah Schühle-Lewis201 Wyclif and Hus at the Council of Constance Petra Mutlová223 Stanislav of Znojmo and the Arrival of Wyclif’s Remanence Theory at the University of Vienna Monica Brînzei245 Non-biblical Texts in Old Czech Bibles Kateřina Voleková275 Thomas Gascoigne’s Research on Central Europe c. 1456 Michael Van Dussen299 Part III Methods of Persuasion: Politics and the Transmission of Ideas The Mediation of God’s Word in Hussite Apocalyptic Exegesis and the Influence of Joachimism Pavlína Cermanová321 Scriptural Exegesis and Clerical Discourse in Hussite Preaching Pavel Soukup341 Fighting for the Minds of the People: Strategies of Argumentation in the Vernacular Discourse on Church Unity in Fifteenth-Century Bohemia Pavlína Rychterová361 Patchwork Campaigning Against Hussitism: The University of Vienna and its Tractatus contra articulos Hussitarum from 1424 Christina Traxler387 Theological Diplomacy? Cusanus and the Hussites Thomas Woelki409 Index nominum433 General Index439

Introduction

Kanti k Ghosh and Pavel S ou k u p

Philosophy, Politics, and perplexitas A Socio-Epistemic Approach to Late Medieval Religion

Late medieval Europe witnessed, from the latter decades of the fourteenth century onwards, a widespread, destabilizing, yet productive interpenetration of university life and an extra-mural world of religious debate and lay intellectual and literary ambition. What is characteristic of this period is a particularly clear and problematic overlap of the realms of philosophical and hermeneutic controversy within the university world and much larger processes of social and cultural conflict. Such conflict, in its textual forms, often took place at several removes — methodological as well as generic — from scholastic Latinate debate couched in the technical idioms and conducted according to the procedural conventions of the arts and theology faculties. This spilling over into each other of the disparate socio-cultural and intellectual discourses of the late medieval university and of lay spiritual and intellectual aspiration, often combined with a vigorous critique of the institutions and discourses of learning, had important implications. The scholastic milieu itself was, by the late Middle Ages, fractured by conflicts which increasingly refused resolution via the traditional academic mechanisms which had evolved over the preceding century and a half. Instead, brute power, entrenched politico-intellectual positions, and intolerance came to occupy the foreground via a process which Maarten Hoenen analyses, in a scene-setting essay for this volume, as one of ‘cultural crystallization’. At heart was a widespread anxiety — allied to dubitatio, scrupulositas, perplexitas — about the (im)possibility of achieving moral or religious certainty. This seemed especially to be the case in a society presided over soteriologically by a schismatic Church (1378–1417) riven by seemingly ever-proliferating ‘heresies’, and intellectually by a burgeoning academic theological magisterium1 scarred by high-profile and increasingly

1 Across Europe, there were over forty new university foundations between c. 1350 and 1500: see Verger, ‘Patterns’, pp. 55–60. Kantik Ghosh  •  is Stirling-Boyd Fellow and Tutor in Medieval English at Trinity College, Oxford. Pavel Soukup  •  is Researcher at the Centre for Medieval Studies, Institute of Philosophy, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague. Wycliffism and Hussitism: Methods of Thinking, Writing, and Persuasion, c. 1360 – c. 1460, ed. by Kantik Ghosh and Pavel Soukup, MCS 47 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021), pp. 9–26 FHG10.1484/M.MCS-EB.5.124367

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violent ruptures. The protracted and fraught pan-European attempts at reaching consensus through conciliar deliberations from Pisa (1409) to Constance (1414–1418) to Basel-Ferrara-Florence (1431–1449), in which university-trained lawyers and theologians took centre stage,2 both assuaged and intensified the fertile tensions which informed and shaped these decades. Three of the most major figures of this period — and playing an important role in the present volume of essays — were John Wyclif in England (d. 1384), Jan Hus in Bohemia (d. 1415), and Jean Gerson in France (d. 1429).3 All three were of lasting pan-European impact. The ideas of Wyclif, the flos Oxoniae, were condemned as heretical from the 1370s onwards, and he himself was posthumously condemned as heresiarch at the Council of Constance in 1415. Gerson was Chancellor of the University of Paris and a major player at Constance, where Jan Hus and his friend and colleague Jerome of Prague, both from Prague University and both ardent admirers of Wyclif, were burnt at the stake in 1415. All thinkers emerged from within the university milieu,4 all three were involved with their respective vernaculars, directly and extensively so in the case of Gerson and Hus, and via his disciples in the case of Wyclif, and all were the origin of philosophical, theological, and politico-ecclesiological ideas which resonated through most of the fifteenth century (and possibly beyond) across a large swathe of Europe from England through France, the Low Countries, to Central and Eastern Europe.5 The present volume puts Wycliffite and Hussite scholarship into conversation with the religio-intellectual history of later medieval Latin Europe. Wycliffism and Hussitism are conceived here as phenomena related through their origin (for example, via the influence of Wyclif ’s thought on the formation of Hussite ideology), and through their fortunes vis-à-vis the ecclesiastical mainstream of the period (i.e. conciliar condemnation and persecution). A detailed comparison of the two movements is an important desideratum in scholarship, and it is chastening to note how little truly comparative work has been done to date; making up for this is, however, not the objective of this collection of articles. Instead, one of the motivations of this volume is the question of the relationship between the two major hereticated movements of the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and those contemporary figures





2 See Swanson, Universities, Academics and the Great Schism; Swanson, ‘Academic Circles’; Müller and Helmrath, ed., Die Konzilien von Pisa (1409), Konstanz (1414–1418) und Basel (1431–1449). 3 Authoritative overviews are provided in Levy, ed., A Companion to John Wyclif; Šmahel and Pavlíček, ed., A Companion to Jan Hus; McGuire, ed., A Companion to Jean Gerson. 4 John Van Engen comments on the emergence of secular masters of theology (such as Wyclif, Hus, and Gerson) in positions of leadership in the late fourteenth century, struggling for dominance with friar-theologians: see Van Engen, ‘A World Astir: Europe and Religion in the Early Fifteenth Century’, p. 25. 5 For accounts of the historiography, see Hornbeck II (with Bose and Somerset), A Companion to Lollardy; Van Dussen and Soukup, ed., A Companion to the Hussites.

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and currents that were similarly revisionist and critical of ecclesiastical life and scholastic method and yet remained within the mainstream or aligned themselves in opposition. This book therefore brings together Wycliffite and Hussite scholarship with that on Gerson, Cusanus, and other intellectuals who played a key role in the debates. Furthermore, it seeks to bridge the persistent disciplinary gulf between scholarship on scholastic philosophical theology and that on the broader transmission of texts and ideas, in Latin as well as in vernacular languages — in particular Middle English and Old Czech — in a range of literary genres. As a number of influential volumes of essays published in recent decades show, cross-disciplinary and / or transnational collaborations, especially with scholars from Central and Eastern Europe, have made welcome strides since the 1990s. Facilitated by the new political order, dialogue between scholars from hitherto separate academic cultures intensified immediately after the end of the Cold War. The symposia on heresy and literacy (Oxford 1992), on Jan Hus (Bayreuth 1993), and on ‘the premature Reformation’ (Munich 1995), defined the state of the art not only in Wycliffite and Hussite research, but more broadly in late medieval European religious, ecclesiastical, and intellectual history.6 Biennial conferences of The Bohemian Reformation and Religious Practice, also beginning in the 1990s, began to foster — and have continued to do so since — trans-Atlantic communication on religion, liturgy, and theology from the late fourteenth to the early seventeenth centuries. An overarching interdisciplinary framework was a standard feature of these gatherings from the very beginning, as they habitually brought together scholars in history, theology, philology, and literary studies, to name just the major fields. These necessary and welcome initiatives have since been built on substantially by new generations of scholars. One important focus has been on placing Wycliffite and Hussite texts and figures in the context of late medieval controversies — those over Wycliffite and Hussite teaching in the first place, but also other academic, ecclesiastical, and political conflicts.7 A burgeoning research area has been energized and transformed by impulses from new cultural history, communication and media studies, and various vernacular philologies. As a result, our understanding of public communication, group-formation and the building and permeability of ideological boundaries has been significantly developed and refined.8 At the same time, the history of philosophical theology and academic speculation has remained an important

6 Biller and Hudson, ed., Heresy and Literacy; Seibt, ed., Jan Hus; Šmahel and Müller-Luckner, ed., Häresie und vorzeitige Reformation. 7 Barr and Hutchison, ed., Text and Controversy from Wyclif to Bale; Bose and Hornbeck, ed., Wycliffite Controversies; Van Dussen and Soukup, ed., Religious Controversy in Europe. 8 Somerset, Havens, and Pittard, ed., Lollards and their Influence; Gillespie and Ghosh, ed., After Arundel; Rychterová and Ecker, ed., Pursuing a New Order; Cermanová and Soukup, ed., Husitské re-formace.

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concern, enriched by newly formulated topics and an enlarged geographical scope.9 In sum, these recent collections of essays, of which we have mentioned only a few which seem to capture the latest research trends and shape the trajectories of collaborative future research especially clearly, have together taken a crucial step: from juxtaposing various research topics and traditions, they have begun to define shared spaces of historical inquiry.10 The present volume, stemming from a conference held in Oxford in 2018 and a preparatory workshop held in Prague two years earlier,11 both builds on and departs from the existing collections. In particular, it aims to foreground that two major areas of late medieval studies — broadly philosophical theology and the history of universities on the one hand, and book- and religio-literary history on the other — are not only adjacent and interconnected, but must also inform each other at a fundamental interpretative level for a more nuanced and adequate understanding of various phenomena in late medieval religious dissidence and conflict. It is for this reason that we have brought together in one volume studies in philosophical theology and a broadly conceived histoire de texte — a step taken rarely in previous publications and collaborations. By doing so, we hope to open up new pathways for dialogue between the well-established and distinct approaches — in part arising out of the formidable and disparate technical demands — of the history of philosophy and the history of religious culture. This volume therefore makes a programmatic effort to synthesize and put into conversation scholarship on the late medieval university, its ideas and its institutional forms, and on the production, transmission, and reception of texts from a wide range of genres in Latin as well as in the vernaculars. Informing this effort is an abiding consciousness — indeed, one that is shared by many of the texts studied here — of the methodological dimension of debate and conflict. This methodological consciousness arises in part out of the fact that high-level academic speculation and the systematic popular dissemination of ideas were interconnected: new (non-conformist) social, political, and religious proposals, and the proselytizing zeal connected to them, resulted from certain conceptions which arose within academic discourses, while at the same time the imperatives of the religious education of ‘the people’ provided the impetus to rethink the methods of university thought. Thus, we can observe a nexus between philosophy, politics, and popular dissemination, between methods

9 See most recently Campi and Simonetta, ed., Before and After Wyclif. Also of note is substantial new work on Viennese and French responses to Hussitism: see Traxler, ‘Firmiter velitis resistere’; and Marin, La Patience ou le zèle. 10 See esp. Hornbeck II and Van Dussen, ed., Europe after Wyclif. 11 These events were suported by the ERC COST Action IS1301, ‘New Communities of Interpretation. Contexts, Strategies and Processes of Religious Transformation in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe’; the project ‘Cultural Codes and Their Transformations in the Hussite Period’, Czech Science Foundation; the Ludwig Fund, New College, Oxford; the Centre for the Study of the Book, Bodleian Library, Oxford; and MHRA.

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of thinking, methods of writing, and methods of persuasion. ‘Intellectual history’, as understood here, therefore encompasses not just the delineation of ideas and their development in the abstract but also their institutional formation, their polemical imperatives, their material instantiations, and, last but not least, their generic and rhetorical shaping. The ‘epistemic’, in this view, is better understood as ‘socio-epistemic’. Indeed, a notable characteristic of the intellectual history of this period is the volume and complexity of ideas and methods that moved between the university milieu and an extra-mural world, with each having an impact upon the other. Furthermore, ‘historiographical’ reflection on the institutions and discourses of scholasticism that one might characterize as ‘meta-scholastic’ informed work emerging both from within and outside the university.12 Wyclif himself engaged in a complicated and conflicted process of defining and redefining the meaning and role of scholastic philosophy across his vast oeuvre. As Luigi Campi shows, Wyclif ’s criticism of what he perceived to be the failings of contemporary discourses in philosophical theology involved a reaction against epistemological pluralism and sought to offer, as it were, a ‘post-disciplinary’ account of ‘scientific’ knowledge based on a re-conceptualization of the philosophical arts. These arts must be ‘rectified’ and made to conform with their standard and measure, Holy Scripture, since it is entirely and absolutely unacceptable, in Wyclif ’s view, to posit philosophy as a self-sufficient discipline with its own methodological coherence distinct from that of faith. At the same time, as Christophe Grellard shows, Wyclif moves faith itself from the institutional to the cognitive domain so that, in a radical move, ‘implicit faith’ is located in the field of ‘opinion’ (i.e. in the field of probability and fallibility) rather than in certitude as validated by the institutional Church. Holy Scripture as source, principle, and standard of all knowledge demands direct textual engagement on the part of each viator: a cognitive engagement which involves a questioning of the inherited sites of authority and a re-evaluation of the arts of language and philosophy. Radical re-evaluation and re-conceptualization also characterize the work of Jean Gerson, which foregrounds the notion of a stylus theologicus which seeks to ensure that theological discourse is adequate to deal with its exalted subject-matter and its intended audiences. Furthermore, as Isabel Iribarren explicates, such a style, in contrast to the legal rigorism of canon lawyers, is acutely sensitive to the rhetorical effect of a form of words: what Gerson describes as ‘juridical style’, and indeed canon law itself, must therefore be seen as clearly subordinate to theology and its appropriate style. From an 12 Maarten Hoenen points to the emergence of a ‘Historiographie der Scholastik’ in this period: see Hoenen, ‘Zurück zu Autorität und Tradition’, p. 146. Olivier Marin explores the theorization of the idea of the university in Wycliffite and Hussite discourses: see Marin, ‘“Les Universités sont de fondation païenne et sont aussi peu utiles que le diable à l’Église”’. Kantik Ghosh places these late medieval emphases in the context of the longue-durée impact of the 1277 Parisian condemnation of Bishop Étienne Tempier: see Ghosh, ‘Logic and Lollardy’.

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ecclesiological standpoint remote from that of Wyclif, Gerson nevertheless shares with him an imperative to re-evaluate the scholastic theologico-legal project and rectify what he considers, like Wyclif, to be its Achilles’ heel of intellectual vainglory and existential misdirection.13 The large-scale systemic engagement with and reorientation of disciplines, styles, and methods that we see in the work of Wyclif and Gerson inform much sophisticated textual output in the vernacular as well. In the Middle English Rosarium, a redacted version of a Wycliffite encyclopaedic compilation in Latin, an attempt is made to parse the interrelationship of human and ‘divine law’, of jurisprudence and scriptural exegesis, and to demonstrate a broad consistency between the two, despite errors and missteps. Fiona Somerset clarifies how the Middle English text is not a mere derivative or over-simplification of its Latin source but instead develops its own interests in legal theory, and makes a concerted attempt to educate its intended readership — likely to be both preachers and members of the laity who might need to justify their religious practices and beliefs — in a new conceptual vocabulary pertaining to jurisprudence in the vernacular. An innovative approach to exegetical method also characterizes another substantial Wycliffite project in Middle English: the generically indeterminate combination of biblical summary, inventory, and commentary now extant in Oxford, Trinity College, MS 93. As Hannah Schühle-Lewis shows, this text bears witness to a remarkable degree of exegetical enterprise and ambition in the vernacular as it quarries and crafts into its own sui generis shape a range of authoritative commentary materials in Latin. Indeed, the self-positioning vis-à-vis academic theology of many of the discourses and texts studied in this volume was productive of a socio-epistemic stance enabling both critique and creativity. This is especially evident in the domains of hermeneutics and ecclesiology where a pronounced awareness of the shortcomings of scholastic method becomes the motor of both institutional and epistemological explorations. Campi underlines what he describes as Wyclif ’s ‘moralistic epistemology’ in which divine influence works with and guides man’s pursuit of ‘scientific’ knowledge from within his being by healing and restoring his frail postlapsarian rational powers. Iribarren highlights Gerson’s predilection for critiquing scholasticism through the postulation of a higher, ‘mystical theology’ wherein affective contemplation is married to an intuitive knowledge of God. While this is evidently a deeply traditional move — indeed, one intended to be perceived as such — it is nevertheless fundamentally shaped by and embedded in the ecclesiastical and political disorder wrought

13 Another of Wyclif ’s major opponents, Thomas Netter of Walden, lauded a theological stylus pauper as opposed to what he derided as scholasticus ludus: see Bose, ‘The Opponents of John Wyclif ’, p. 441. Netter’s vast Doctrinale antiquitatum fidei ecclesiae catholicae, finished before 1430, was extensively consulted in the anti-Hussite deliberations at the Council of Basel.

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by the papal Schism, eloquently described by Rudolf Schüssler as the origin of an ‘epistemological shock’.14 In such a milieu, the intellectual critique of the claims of scholastic method to lead to truth is intimately tied up with the socio-political critique of the institutions validating them: i.e. the university and its magisterium, and the Church. Grellard shows how the soteriological and epistemological fallibility (or otherwise) of ‘experts’ (experti / periti), already subject to penetrating analyses in the work of Ockham, is given even more rigorous and hostile scrutiny by Wyclif, for whom trust in expertise is relegated firmly to the domain of mere ‘opinion’.15 His followers and opponents would variably endorse or contest this radical dismissal, which had profound consequences in the period immediately following him, especially in the Hussite milieu and at the Council of Constance. Dušan Coufal charts the way in which Jan Hus and his followers, drawing on Wyclif, transformed the traditional scholastic protestatio — in effect a procedural get-out clause by which an academic submitted himself to ecclesiastical correction and thereby pre-empted accusations of heresy16 — into a confessional declaration of their dismissal of the authority of the institutional Church, and of its replacement by a ‘transcendent, idealistic’ authority to which the individual had non- or supra-hierarchical access. As Hoenen shows, the consequences at Constance were grave. At his trial, Hus refused to comply with ‘the institutionalized compromise of the academic system that expected him to renounce what he himself claimed not even to have said’, instead adhering to ‘conscience’ and Holy Scripture, authorities outside and above the university system. The ‘law of conscience’ was, we may recall, pervasively invoked in the Wycliffite milieu as well — famously by Richard Wyche and William Thorpe17 — and it is extensively theorized in the vernacular, as Somerset shows in her account of the Rosarium. This bypassing of inherited sites of institutional authority in order to claim a direct self-validating access to God is a widespread move in dissident exegesis. Pavlína Cermanová’s study of Hussite chiliastic preachers draws attention to their predilection for Joachimite apocalypticism and its vision of an immediate ‘pneumatic’ apprehension of divine truth. She also highlights the reliance of more moderate Hussites on the moral validation of exegesis, the truth or falsehood of which was held to be dependent on the exegete’s approximation of imitatio Christi, the vita apostolica, and the putative values and traditions of the ecclesia primitiva, as well as his or her internal qualities

14 Schüssler, ‘Jean Gerson, Moral Certainty and the Renaissance of Ancient Scepticism’, p. 457. 15 For a wide-ranging account of later medieval European engagement with and criticism of experts and their claims to authority, see Rexroth, Expertenweisheit; Rexroth, ‘Systemvertrauen und Expertenskepsis’. 16 See Larsen, The School of Heretics, pp. 270–72. 17 See Bradley, ‘Trials of Conscience and the Story of Conscience’. For the impact that the adoption of Wyclif ’s ecclesiology had on Hus’s concept of conscience, see Patschovsky, ‘Das Gewissen als Letztinstanz’; also Soukup, Jan Hus.

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of purity, humility, and mercy.18 On the opposing side, as Thomas Woelki shows, when Nikolaus of Cusa addressed the Hussite Utraquist demand for communion under both kinds at the Council of Basel, he sought to re-establish the normative authority of the Church as both absolutely valid and infallible yet capable of encompassing changes and developments iuxta temporis qualitatem. Woelki’s study illuminates the various intellectual contortions and stratagems on which a brilliant lawyer such as Cusanus had to rely in order to be able to posit an infallible Church.19 This was at a time when political leaders such as the secular princes — tired of the seemingly everlasting wrangling of Pope and Council, each supported by legions of academic apologists — were explicitly invoking perplexitas as the basis of their declaration of neutrality.20 What we see in the debates at Basel is a kind of cul-de-sac: endlessly proliferating arguments and counter-arguments, all proffered with considerable rhetorical and logical expertise, so that the very mode of scholastic debate comes to be seen as systemically dysfunctional when it comes to the real-life resolution of causae fidei.21 Pavlína Rychterová provides an account of Hussite thinkers whose work shows that they were clear that the forms and methods of scholastic polemic were no longer relevant to the search for salvation and the fate of the ecclesia militans: indeed, she describes a tract written in Old Czech from the 1430s–1440s by Jan of Příbram as ‘utterly pessimistic’ in its bleak vision of the human (in)capacity for truth. We are here firmly in the ambit of a criterion-problem, i.e. the recognition that there is no longer any clear or agreed-upon criterion of discerning true from false theological claims.22 Equally disturbing is the recognition, in an era of ambitious public intellectuals of both popular and transnational reach, that almost everyone — whether lay or clerical, dissenting or reactionary — seems to be aware of this. How this awareness affected the self-perception of intellectuals in relation to theological traditions is a question for larger diachronic research. Late medieval thinkers still operated in an environment inflected — at least in theory — by the distrust of radical novelty, and their arguments were expected to fit into

18 The hermeneutic association of morality and exegesis formed one of the main sites of contention in Wycliffite and anti-Wycliffite discourses as well; for example, the long cycle of 294 Wycliffite sermons in the vernacular, known as The English Wycliffite Sermons, tussles pervasively with this nexus of ideas. While the legitimacy of immoral office holders was debated in Hussitism, the invalidity of their interpretation and jurisdiction was beyond doubt. For Hus’s position, see Patschovsky, ‘Das Gewissen als Letztinstanz’, pp. 150–51. 19 There are comparable contortions in Netter’s defence of the authority of the Church in his Doctrinale: see Ghosh, Wycliffite Heresy, pp. 183–93. 20 See below, Woelki, ‘Theological Diplomacy?’, p. 412. 21 The impasse at Basel can be seen as a political culmination of the process of cultural crystallization outlined by Hoenen: see below, pp. 30–31. 22 A recent magisterial account, albeit with a primary focus on the early modern era, of the rules and norms by which medieval thinkers sought to manage ‘disagreement and a sprawling plurality of opinions’, is Schüssler, Debate on Probable Opinions; the quotation above is at p. 1.

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inherited intellectual traditions within the well-defined framework of the university system.23 A deepening sense of allegiance to ‘schools of thought’ and entrenched ecclesio-political positions24 further contributed to the apparent impossibility of arriving at universally acceptable conclusions. This same sense also made it difficult to make a clean break with inherited methodologies and start anew. As a result, the solutions proposed to address this crisis were as divergent as the approaches that had generated the epistemic impasse in the first place, and ranged from the dogmatic reaffirmation of institutional authority to its complete abandonment. Some of the research in this volume accordingly impels us to rethink the (dis)continuities in medieval intellectual history. Monica Brinzei’s study of the reception of the Eucharistic writings of Stanislav of Znojmo at the University of Vienna reveals the long prehistory of this controversy: immediately triggered by the Prague reception of Wyclif, its Viennese reiteration was fuelled by traditions reaching as far back as Berengar of Tours, possibly without immediate knowledge of the relevant Wyclif texts. Straightforward intellectual pedigrees are similarly complicated by the findings of Martin Dekarli concerning the reception of Wyclif ’s logic at Prague. He shows that, even before the heterodox transmission channels of the ‘LollardHussite fellowship’25 were opened, a rich corpus of English logic had become available at Prague, preparing the ground for the reception of Wyclif’s treatises. These and other new insights coming from the study of unedited manuscripts have the potential to modify existing historiographical paradigms. A consideration of the material text and the realities of textual production provides important correctives to sweeping narratives of intellectual developments and influences.26 The availability of texts was a crucial concern and limitation in a chirographic age, and it was directly linked with even more serious concerns to do with authenticity and authority. Thomas Gascoigne’s encyclopaedic Liber de veritatibus, examined in the present volume by Michael Van Dussen, is a revealing example of the importance given to the authenticity of sources, and indeed of their individual copies. Gascoigne’s practice of providing precise references to codices that he consulted also extended to those dealing with current affairs in Central Europe. His sense of the relevance of Central European material for English controversies and a (possibly) Oxonian audience adds a further dimension to insular–continental relations long after the heterodox channels of communication between England and Bohemia had dried up. Of course, the research-techniques of medieval authors and their hunt for

23 In the Wegestreit, for instance, both the antiqui and the moderni used authorities of the (variously tailored) past as a means of self-validation: Hoenen, ‘Zurück zu Autorität und Tradition’. 24 On this subject, see the work of Maarten Hoenen, especially ‘Via antiqua and via moderna’; and ‘Thomismus, Skotismus und Albertismus’. 25 See Van Dussen, ‘Conveying Heresy: “a certayne student” and the Lollard-Hussite Fellowship’. 26 For recent trends in manuscript studies, see Johnston and Van Dussen, ed., The Medieval Manuscript Book.

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sources were of more than just practical significance. Gascoigne’s references to original sources also meant that he could claim for them higher authenticity. Similarly, Cusanus’s predilection for hunting out old texts, pointed to by Woelki, was inseparably linked with his sensitivity to historical interpretation that affected his understanding of the Church’s magisterium and thus also his stance on the Hussite question. Modern scholars have long abandoned the facile approach to interpreting borrowings in medieval texts as an indication of intellectual inferiority and ‘plagiarism’.27 Careful textual comparison and critical collation nevertheless remain key to a more adequate evaluation of medieval writing-practices, not least because such practices were linked to authorial strategies of self-positioning and self-fashioning. In extreme cases such as Jan Hus’s trial at Constance, such self-positioning involved a careful negotiation of traps and pitfalls.28 On various occasions during his career, Hus advertised his use of Wyclif as auctor to a variable extent in accordance with his current aims. In Constance, he found himself trapped between fidelity to a religious ideal and the constraints of his legal situation; furthermore, his writing was dependent on the availability of texts. Petra Mutlová re-evaluates Hus’s practice in quoting Wyclif and emphasizes the role of florilegia and private excerpts which may have shaped his written output as much as ideological considerations. The widespread re-use of existing texts was certainly a product of medieval authors’ pragmatism, but it should nevertheless be seen as a creative choice rather than merely a virtue made of necessity. The contemporary success (in terms of dissemination) of some works which, from a modern point of view, appear as hybrids clumsily cobbled together from other texts should make us sensitive to the distinctive literary qualities valued in the period. This is especially true of the Viennese anti-Hussite tract Iussit reverendissima, characterized as a ‘patchwork’ text by Christina Traxler, who suggests that its phenomenal success was owing to the fact that it offered an authoritative and comprehensive set of arguments. The contemporary appreciation of this ‘heresiological manual’ can be ascribed to two circumstances: its topical subject, given that the perceived Hussite threat was at its peak in the mid-1420s, and its complete coverage of the issues raised by the Hussite Four Articles. These positives seem to be typical of the late medieval period. The popularity of the brief and to-the-point tract has long been established as a key feature of late medieval intellectual exchange.29 Rather than being comprehensive in the manner of the high-medieval summae, the late medieval tract was expected to be handy as well as exhaustive — not in the sense of covering and reconciling the entire intellectual tradition but rather containing everything likely to be

27 See, e.g., Minnis, ‘Nolens auctor sed compilator reputari’; Schabel, ‘Haec ille: Citation, Quotation and Plagiarism’; Calma, ‘Plagium’. 28 For the context, see Provvidente, ‘Hus’s Trial in Constance’, esp. pp. 282–84. 29 See Hobbins, ‘The Schoolman as Public Intellectual’.

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useful for the current moment and occasion. Hence the popularity of various alphabetical or thematic dictionaries, surveys of moral, pastoral, and other religious topics, or registers tied to longer treatises. These genres became widespread not only in Latin but also, and perhaps to an even greater extent, in the vernaculars. The Middle English Wycliffite texts examined in this volume by Somerset and Schühle-Lewis can serve as examples. One of the research questions in this field is how the popularizing literary production of the era was shaped by its unresolvable epistemological conflicts. In Hussite preaching, intra-clerical discursive procedures remained largely hidden from the lay audience, and the authoritative, catechetical voice prevailed. However, as Pavel Soukup shows in his study of Hussite sermon collections, the practice of homiletic exegesis was in the long term influenced by key tenets of the new ‘Hussite orthodoxy’ that had originated in a fierce academic debate and subsequently served as symbols reinforcing the endangered Utraquist community. We must not overlook that public dissemination or Öffentlichkeitsarbeit as the ultimate aim of theological reflection resulted inevitably from certain emphases emerging in late medieval thought, be it a heightened sense of pastoral responsibility and of the evangelizing imperative of the apostolic ideal, or the growing opposition to what was perceived and denigrated as vainglorious ‘sophistry’. In consequence, even the ‘lower’ levels of religious literature and education became polarized, and vernacular as well as popular Latin production became a battlefield.30 The intended societal impact of theological writings remains a promising area of further research. To what extent, for example, were anti-heretical treatises meant to be used by parish clergy in instructing the congregation about Hussite, Lollard, Waldensian, or other threats? With other genres, the pastoral purpose is much clearer and can be inferred from various signs such as paratexts, structuring, layout, or additional apparatus included in manuscripts. Kateřina Voleková’s research on manuscripts of the Old Czech Bible shows how their use was facilitated by non-biblical additions such as prologues or lists of pericopes. Based on these features, and on the high appreciation of Holy Writ in Hussitism, Voleková concludes that there was an increasing use of the vernacular Bible in liturgy, preaching, reading, and recitation.31 Customized manuscripts of the vernacular Bible constitute one type of sources that allow us to infer some things about readership and usage. Determining the details of the reception of other vernacular — as well as some Latin — texts remains challenging. Using internal evidence, Schühle-Lewis suggests that the audience of the

30 The extreme factionalism of early fifteenth-century religious literature in the Czech vernacular has recently been stressed by Perett, Preachers, Partisans, and Rebellious Religion. 31 Comparable evidence is offered by copies of the very widely disseminated English Wycliffite Bible: see Solopova, Manuscripts of the Wycliffite Bible. The corpus of Old Czech translations of biblical prologues has recently been made available in a critical edition: Svobodová and Voleková, ed., Staročeské biblické předmluvy.

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Wycliffite ‘summary’ of the Bible that she analyses were likely to be intelligent and highly educated laymen, possibly small study-groups led by an expert. It is therefore illuminating to place the late medieval code-switch to the vernacular in the context of the debate over the right language of scholarly disciplines. In her study of Gerson’s ideas about rhetoric, Iribarren argues that the Chancellor was interested not in a postulated hierarchy of languages but rather in the question of appropriate ‘style’ in any language. This supra-linguistic concept therefore opens the door to the vernacularization of theological discourse, and the personal investment of Gerson in this area is well known. Yet the ways in which this vernacular energy was channelled by various movements varied according to their epistemological premises. Introducing the moral variable into the hermeneutic equation, for instance, was common to Wyclif, Gerson, and Hus. Making the validity of interpretation dependent on the moral qualifications of the interpreter, however, was an ambiguous move. While in Gerson, the true meaning of the Bible was ultimately determined and transmitted by the institutional Church (irrespective of the debates over the precise location of ecclesiastical authority in the conciliar era), elsewhere it led to a wholesale questioning of the role of the clergy. In Wycliffite-Hussite milieux, the vacant space was filled by a highly motivated laity and, as a result, traditional interpretative hierarchies were flattened out.32 The involvement of the laity in theological interpretation, theoretically supported by intellectual reappraisals such as the radical understanding of ‘implicit faith’ put forward by Wyclif, could easily develop into lay participation in religious decision-making if conditions allowed.33 Such participation, a reality in Hussite Bohemia and an issue debated fiercely between the Hussites and the Council of Basel, is just one instance of how conflicts born within academia became intertwined with politics. The close contact between academia and politics during and after the Great Schism came with its own tensions and challenges. While accepting the counsel offered by academics was optional for the secular lords, political support for solutions put forward by academics was mandatory if they were to be realized. Even though the magisterial authority of academic professionals in ecclesiastical-political issues was useful for princes and high churchmen (as shown by Traxler’s account of Cardinal Branda’s employment of Viennese experts), it seems that theologians needed power-holders more than vice versa. Indeed, the verve for public dissemination, generally linked to pastoral concerns and the so-called

32 See in this context Rita Copeland’s discussion of the Lollard ‘horizontal classroom’: Copeland, Pedagogy, Intellectuals, and Dissent in the Later Middle Ages, pp. 99–114. The vernacular Wycliffite writings discussed in this volume by Somerset and Schühle-Lewis attest to this as they leave space for the reader’s active role in interpretation. For the role assigned to laymen in the Bohemian reform, see Marin, L’Archevêque, le maître et le dévot, pp. 453–575. 33 See Alexander Russell’s account of conciliar deliberations on this subject: Russell, ‘Popular Authority in Conciliar and Canonistic Thought’; also Russell, Conciliarism and Heresy in Fifteenth-Century England, pp. 85–115.

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apostolic ideal, at times appears to have had purely political aims. Rychterová’s analysis of Hussite and anti-Hussite vernacular polemic points to the effort made by various players in opposed camps to gain political backing, and to the uneven degree of success that they achieved in this endeavour. The practical implementation of academic ideas reached the limits of the possible in many cases, revealing the proposals as utopian at best and ill-conceived at worst. While Wyclif ’s and Hus’s concept of predestination was jettisoned in later Hussite ecclesiology as impracticable, the horizontal model of the Church with devolved hermeneutic authority was to a large extent realized in the Utraquist Church.34 Before this could happen, however, the more radical and fantastical proposals had to be rejected. Vis-à-vis radicalism, the reactions of Hussite moderates and Catholic authorities often overlapped — a well-known fact confirmed here in the chapters of Cermanová and Coufal.35 In the end, intellectuals from all camps agreed in diagnosing a crisis in late scholasticism and finding its roots in the loss of clear hermeneutic criteria.36 The solutions they proposed only deepened the divergences without establishing a new epistemological consensus. Was a complete change of paradigm needed to overcome the crisis? Locating a redemptive change in ‘humanism’ or ‘the Reformation’ is historiographically no longer adequate.37 For scholarly attempts to go beyond narratives compromised by teleological or progressivist imperatives, fifteenth-century Europe, as the essays gathered together in this volume amply show, offers vast, often barely known, terrains in a multitude of languages which demand sustained collaborative, interdisciplinary, and transnational investigations.

Plan of the Volume Essays have been grouped into three broad categories. The first group of essays, Methods of thinking: philosophical and theological speculation, focusses on the conceptual end of Wycliffite, Hussite, and related thought, with certain key concepts, discourses, and debates foregrounded. The nature of faith and the act of believing, the role of rhetoric in theology, and the disciplinary formations and discursive boundaries of late medieval scholasticism are examined with reference to the relevant thinkers — major as well as less prominent — including

34 Zilynská, ‘The Utraquist Church after the Compactata’. 35 This observation accords with the model of the Hussite revolution supposing a wave of radicalism, its gradual ebbing, and attempts at restoration, as proposed by Šmahel, Die hussitische Revolution, iii, p. 2006. Possible trajectories of further research are outlined in Cermanová and Soukup, ‘Valde notabilis in hominibus mutacio’. 36 See in this context the contribution of Levy, Holy Scripture and the Quest for Authority. 37 For recent attempts at the conceptual re-evaluation of the religious and cultural changes of this period, see, e.g., Hamm, ‘Abschied vom Epochedenken’; Walsham, ‘Migrations of the Holy’; Corbellini and Steckel, ‘The Religious Field during the Long Fifteenth Century’.

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Wyclif, Hus, Gerson, and various English and Bohemian theologians and polemicists. The institutions of the late medieval university and its enabling procedural conventions, in particular the academic protestatio praemissa, are scrutinized as they develop controversially over the course of the debates, with intellectual and institutional history shown to be intimately informing and shaping each other. The second group of essays, Methods of writing: compilation practice and the material text, highlights how the realities of textual production dovetailed with the intellectual trends and polemical needs of this tense period. All of the sources analysed in this section can be seen as products of a complex treatment of pre-texts. For example, despite drawing on traditionally authoritative textual forms, Wycliffite reference works implied by their structure and content that ultimate authority resided outside the text. This authority was transcendent, yet still directly accessible to an active user, regardless of his or her professional background and hierarchical position. The volume of available learned production had always meant that selection was inevitable in any process of compilation; however, some of the cases studied in this section foreground how textual choices became markedly political. In the polarized discourses of Wycliffite and Hussite controversy, tradition was considered binding only to a limited extent. On both sides of the dispute (for example with the guardians of Eucharistic orthodoxy as well as Jan Hus in Constance), a revered intellectual heritage was deployed ever more strategically according to the exigencies of the moment. The third and final group of essays, Methods of persuasion: politics and the transmission of ideas, examines the role played by university thought and learned biblical scholarship as they inform and complicate a range of overlapping discourses, from popular verse-satire and polemic, via vernacular homiletics and exegesis, to Latinate debates and political conflict at the highest levels of university and council. The intramural, extra-mural and in-between worlds of the late medieval church, council, and university, and an ever-burgeoning and multifarious lay agency and creativity — aristocratic and otherwise — in various shades of vernacular, are shown to enter into a tense, creative, and transformative engagement in the destabilizing context of the Hussite movement. The discursive and political energies released in the process are thereby shown to have an impact, the implications of which for the history of late medieval Europe are profound but still remain largely unexamined.

Works Cited Secondary Works Barr, Helen, and Ann M. Hutchison, ed., Text and Controversy from Wyclif to Bale: Essays in Honour of Anne Hudson (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005) Biller, Peter, and Anne Hudson, ed., Heresy and Literacy, 1000–1530 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994)

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Bose, Mishtooni, ‘The Opponents of John Wyclif ’, in A Companion to John Wyclif: Late Medieval Theologian, ed. by Ian Christopher Levy (Leiden: Brill, 2006), pp. 407–55 Bose, Mishtooni, and J. Patrick Hornbeck II, ed., Wycliffite Controversies (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011) Bradley, Christopher G., ‘Trials of Conscience and the Story of Conscience’, Exemplaria, 24 (2012), 28–45 Calma, Monica B., ‘Plagium’, in Mots médiévaux offerts à Ruedi Imbach, ed. by I. Atucha, D. Calma, C. König-Pralong, and I. Zavattero (Porto: FIDEM/ TEMA, 2011), pp. 559–68 Campi, Luigi, and Stefano Simonetta, ed., Before and After Wyclif: Sources and Textual Influences (Basel: FIDEM/TEMA, 2020) Cermanová, Pavlína, and Pavel Soukup, ed., Husitské re-formace. Proměna kulturního kódu v 15. století (Prague: Nakladatelství Lidové noviny, 2019) Cermanová, Pavlína, and Pavel Soukup, ‘Valde notabilis in hominibus mutacio? Úvodní zamyšlení’, in Husitské re-formace. Proměna kulturního kódu v 15. století, ed. by Pavlína Cermanová and Pavel Soukup (Prague: Nakladatelství Lidové noviny, 2019), pp. 7–21 Copeland, Rita, Pedagogy, Intellectuals, and Dissent in the Later Middle Ages: Lollardy and Ideas of Learning (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001) Corbellini, Sabrina, and Sita Steckel, ‘The Religious Field during the Long Fifteenth Century: Framing Religious Change beyond Traditional Paradigms’, Church History and Religious Culture, 99 (2019), 303–29 Ghosh, Kantik, The Wycliffite Heresy: Authority and the Interpretation of Texts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002) ———, ‘Logic and Lollardy’, Medium Aevum, 76 (2007), 251–67 Gillespie, Vincent, and Kantik Ghosh, ed., After Arundel: Religious Writing in Fifteenth-Century England (Turnhout: Brepols, 2012) Hamm, Berndt, ‘Abschied vom Epochendenken in der Reformationsforschung. Ein Plädoyer’, Zeitschrift für historische Forschung, 39 (2012), 373–411 Hobbins, Daniel, ‘The Schoolman as Public Intellectual: Jean Gerson and the Late Medieval Tract’, The American Historical Review, 108 (2003), 1308–35 Hoenen, Maarten, ‘Thomismus, Skotismus und Albertismus. Das entstehen und die Bedeutung von philosophischen Schulen im späten Mittelalter’, Bochumer philosophisches Jahrbuch für Antike und Mittelalter, 2 (1997), 81–103 ———, ‘Via antiqua and via moderna in the Fifteenth Century: Doctrinal, Institutional, and Church Political Factors in the Wegestreit’, in The Medieval Heritage in Early Modern Metaphysics and Modal Theory, 1400–1700, ed. by Russell L. Friedman and Lauge O. Nielsen (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2004), pp. 9–36 ———, ‘Zurück zu Autorität und Tradition. Geistesgeschichtliche Hintergründe des Traditionalismus an den spätmittelalterlichen Universitäten’, in Herbst des Mittelalters? Fragen zur Bewertung des 14. und 15. Jahrhunderts, ed. by Jan A. Aertsen and Martin Pickavé (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2004), pp. 133–46 Hornbeck II, J. Patrick (with Mishtooni Bose and Fiona Somerset), A Companion to Lollardy (Leiden: Brill, 2016)

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Hornbeck II, J. Patrick, and Michael Van Dussen, ed., Europe After Wyclif (New York: Fordham University Press, 2017) Johnston, Michael, and Michael Van Dussen, ed., The Medieval Manuscript Book: Cultural Approaches (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015) Larsen, Andrew, The School of Heretics: Academic Condemnation at the University of Oxford, 1277–1409 (Leiden: Brill, 2011) Levy, Ian Christopher, ed., A Companion to John Wyclif: Late Medieval Theologian (Leiden: Brill, 2006) Levy, Ian Christopher, Holy Scripture and the Quest for Authority at the End of the Middle Ages (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012) Marin, Olivier, L’Archevêque, le maître et le dévot. Genèses du mouvement réformateur pragois. Années 1360–1419 (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2005) ———, ‘“Les Universités sont de fondation païenne et sont aussi peu utiles que le diable à l’Église”. Sens et fortune d’une proposition Wycliffiste’, in Universitas scolarium: Mélanges offerts à Jacques Verger par ses anciens étudiants, ed. by Cédric Giraud and Martin Morard (Geneva: Droz, 2011), pp. 123–47 ———, La Patience ou le zèle: les Français devant le hussitisme (années 1400 – années 1510) (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020) McGuire, Brian Patrick, ed., A Companion to Jean Gerson (Leiden: Brill, 2006) Minnis, Alastair, ‘Nolens auctor sed compilator reputari: The Late-Medieval Discourse of Compilation’, in La Méthode critique au Moyen Âge, ed. by Mireille Chazan and Gilbert Dahan (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), pp. 47–63 Müller, Heribert, and Johannes Helmrath, ed., Die Konzilien von Pisa (1409), Konstanz (1414–1418), und Basel (1431–1449): Institution und Personen (Ostfildern: Thorbecke, 2007) Patschovsky, Alexander, ‘Das Gewissen als Letztinstanz. Wahrheit und Gehorsam im Kirchenverständnis von Jan Hus’, in Autorität und Wahrheit. Kirchliche Vorstellungen, Normen und Verfahren (13.-15. Jahrhundert), ed. by Gian Luca Potestà (München: Oldenbourg, 2012), pp. 147–58 Perett, Marcela K., Preachers, Partisans, and Rebellious Religion: Vernacular Writing and the Hussite Movement (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018) Provvidente, Sebastián, ‘Hus’s Trial in Constance: Disputatio Aut Inquisitio’, in A Companion to Jan Hus, ed. by František Šmahel and Ota Pavlíček (Leiden: Brill, 2015), pp. 254–88 Rexroth, Frank, Expertenweisheit: Die Kritik an den Studierten und die Utopie einer geheilten Gesellschaft im späten Mittelalter (Basel: Schwabe, 2008) ———, ‘Systemvertrauen und Expertenskepsis. Die Utopie vom maßgeschneiderten Wissen in den Kulturen des 12. bis 16. Jahrhunderts’, in Wissen, maßgeschneidert: Experten und Expertenkulturen im Europa der Vormoderne, ed. by Björn Reich, Frank Rexroth, and Matthias Roick (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2012), pp. 12–44 Russell, Alexander, ‘Popular Authority in Conciliar and Canonistic Thought: The Case of Elections’, Revue de l’histoire des religions, 231 (2014), 313–40

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———, Conciliarism and Heresy in Fifteenth-Century England: Collective Authority in the Age of the General Councils (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017) Rychterová, Pavlína, and Julian Ecker, ed., Pursuing a New Order.  i: Religious Education in Late Medieval Central and Eastern Central Europe. ii: Late Medieval Vernacularization and the Bohemian Reformation (Turnhout: Brepols, 2019) Schabel, Chris, ‘Haec ille: Citation, Quotation and Plagiarism in 14th Century Scholasticism’, in The Origins of European Scholarship, ed. by Ioannis Taifacos (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2005), pp. 163–75 Schüssler, Rudolf, ‘Jean Gerson, Moral Certainty and the Renaissance of Ancient Scepticism’, Renaissance Studies, 23 (2009), 445–62 ———, The Debate on Probable Opinions in the Scholastic Tradition (Leiden: Brill, 2019) Seibt, Ferdinand, ed., Jan Hus. Zwischen Zeiten, Völkern, Konfessionen (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1997) Šmahel, František, Die hussitische Revolution, trans. by Thomas Krzenck, 3 vols, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Schriften, 43 (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 2002) Šmahel, František, and Elisabeth Müller-Luckner, ed., Häresie und vorzeitige Reformation im Spätmittelalter (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1998) Šmahel, František, and Ota Pavlíček, ed., A Companion to Jan Hus (Leiden: Brill, 2015) Solopova, Elizabeth, Manuscripts of the Wycliffite Bible in the Bodleian and Oxford College Libraries (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2016) Somerset, Fiona, Jill C. Havens, and Derrick G. Pittard, ed., Lollards and their Influence in Late Medieval England (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2003) Soukup, Pavel, Jan Hus: The Life and Death of a Preacher (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2019) Svobodová, Andrea, and Kateřina Voleková, ed., Staročeské biblické předmluvy (Prague: Scriptorium, 2019) Swanson, R. N., Universities, Academics and the Great Schism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979) ———, ‘Academic Circles: Universities and Exchanges in the Age of the Great Schism’, in Religious Controversy in Europe, 1378–1536: Textual Transmission and Networks of Readership, ed. by Michael Van Dussen and Pavel Soukup (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), pp. 17–47 Traxler, Christina, ‘Firmiter velitis resistere’: Die Auseinandersetzung der Wiener Universität mit dem Hussitismus vom Konstanzer Konzil (1414–1418) bis zum Beginn des Basler Konzils (1431–1449) (Vienna: Vienna University Press, 2019) Van Dussen, Michael, ‘Conveying Heresy: “a certayne student” and the LollardHussite Fellowship’, Viator, 38 (2007), 217–34 Van Dussen, Michael, and Pavel Soukup, ed., Religious Controversy in Europe, 1378–1536: Textual Transmission and Networks of Readership (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013) ———, ed., A Companion to the Hussites (Leiden: Brill, 2020)

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Van Engen, John, ‘A World Astir: Europe and Religion in the Early Fifteenth Century’, in Europe After Wyclif, ed. by J. Patrick Hornbeck II and Michael Van Dussen (New York: Fordham University Press, 2017), pp. 11–45 Verger, Jacques, ‘Patterns’, in A History of the University in Europe. i: Universities in the Middle Ages, ed. by Hilde de Ridder-Symoens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 35–76 Walsham, Alexandra, ‘Migrations of the Holy: Explaining Religious Change in Medieval and Early Modern Europe’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 44 (2014), 241–80 Zilynská, Blanka, ‘The Utraquist Church after the Compactata’, in A Companion to the Hussites, ed. by Michael Van Dussen and Pavel Soukup (Leiden: Brill, 2020), pp. 219–57

Setting the Scene

Maarten J. F. M. Hoenen

Ideas, Institutions, and Public Scandal Academic Debates in Late Medieval Scholasticism*

Introduction Wycliffism and Hussitism were two phenomena that were rooted in, but at the same time transcended, late medieval scholasticism. The focus of this opening chapter is therefore on late medieval scholasticism, its driving forces, and its limits: how can this period be characterized? And is there a particular connection with the other element mentioned in the subtitle, namely academic debates? Well, of course, as the reader will anticipate, the answer is yes, otherwise I would not have used this title for my contribution. But the matter is not as easy as that. Academic debates are not a specific feature of late medieval scholasticism. They occur across the entire history of philosophy. However, what is remarkable is the fact that from the thirteenth century, at medieval universities and mendicant convents, academic debates became institutionalized as an element of the educational programme.1 Simultaneously, and contrary to what one might expect, ideas pursued within this scholastic framework did not fossilize; instead, they flourished and proliferated, so much as to lead to confusion rather than clarity and certainty. To take one example: is the activity of the intellect nobler than the activity of the will? To answer this question, a favourite in the Schools, the masters discussed the meaning of will, intellect, and noble activity, only to discover that they disagreed on all three issues and that even the authorities they invoked to support their views pointed in opposite directions.2 What, then, is specific to late medieval



* I thank Nadja Germann and Colin G. King for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this chapter. 1 See the articles collected in Schabel, ed., Theological Quodlibeta in the Middle Ages, i: The Thirteenth Century, and ii: The Fourteenth Century. 2 This debate was widespread and left traces in vernacular as well as Latin sources. See, e.g., Paradisus anime intelligentis (Paradis der fornuftigen sele), ed. by Strauch; second edition, ed. by Largier and Fournier, p. 5: ‘in disir predigade dispitirit brudir Gisilher von Maarten J. F. M. Hoenen  •  is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Basel. He has authored several books and numerous articles on the history of late medieval philosophy and theology. Wycliffism and Hussitism: Methods of Thinking, Writing, and Persuasion, c. 1360 – c. 1460, ed. by Kantik Ghosh and Pavel Soukup, MCS 47 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021), pp. 29–72 FHG10.1484/M.MCS-EB.5.124368

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scholasticism, a period that began somewhere around the time of the Great Schism and reached its peak with the movements of Wycliffism and Hussitism, the condemnations at the Council of Constance, and the ensuing Wegestreit? Cultural Crystallization

Let me try to give an answer. It is not so much the multiplicity of views, since that was not a new phenomenon, but rather the particular significance that became attached to some of them. This tendency forced masters to react to their opponents not only by way of academic argument, as was their wont, but also institutionally and politically, by accusing them of destroying the core of knowledge, the glory of the Catholic Church, peace amongst academics, and the souls of their students, to mention only a few of the most popular accusations, thus introducing a dimension to the debates that had not been there before.3 This is a process which, in the terms of recent scholarship in the field of the history of ideas, can be labelled as cultural crystallization.4 In late medieval scholasticism, there is such a plethora of ideas available, stretching from Aristotle through Augustine and Anselm to Bonaventure and Thomas Aquinas, and such a high level of logical and rhetorical expertise that any position whatsoever can convincingly be argued for. Seemingly new ideas are not actually new, but rather replications, blends, or adaptations of earlier ones, as the scholastics are the first to admit, portraying themselves as defenders of past masters such as Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus, and



Slatheim, der lesimeister was zu Kolne und zu Ertforte, widir di barfuzin und bewisit daz diz werc der fornuft edilir ist dan diz werc dez willen in deme ewigin lebine, und brichit di bant der barfuzin id est argumenta meisterliche’, and Thomas of Sutton, Quodlibeta, ed. by Schmaus and González-Haba, Quaest. 15, p. 287 and pp. 293–94: ‘Quamvis de hac quaestione [i.e. utrum in beatitudine principalior actus sit actus intellectus quam actus voluntatis] sint contrariae opiniones magistrorum, tamen secundum sententias sanctorum et secundum rectam rationem tenendum est quod visio sit ipsa substantia beatitudinis […]. Sed sunt quaedam obiectiones, quae ostendunt apparenter operationem voluntatis esse principaliorem quam operationem intellectus, quas aliqui adducunt, quae solvendae sunt, ne per eas aliqui decipiantur’. For more information about this debate, see Putallaz, Insolente liberté, pp. 179–87; and Brungs, ‘Intellekt, Wille und Willensschwäche’. 3 See the statements mentioned in the documents collected and referred to in Ehrle, Der Sentenzenkommentar Peters von Candia, pp. 281–342 (Anhang von Aktenstücken); and Gabriel, ‘Via Antiqua und Via Moderna’. 4 Vilfredo Pareto coined the concept of crystallization in his Traité de sociologie générale, pp. 1713–19 (§ 2553). It was extensively employed and discussed by Arnold Gehlen in the articles collected in his Die Seele im technischen Zeitalter, esp. pp. 283–361. For more recent uses see, e.g., Burke, Varieties of Cultural History, pp. 52, 199, and 207; and Wittrock, ‘The Age of Trans-Regional Reorientations’. My understanding of the concept draws mostly upon Arnold Gehlen who used it to characterize periods that are marked by, as he calls it, ‘stationary movement’ and as a consequence become obsessed with principles, politics, and scandal. For more details, see Thies, Arnold Gehlen zur Einführung, pp. 135–37.

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William of Ockham.5 The result is an enormous productivity of arguments and views which nevertheless are all contained within the well-defined boundaries of an educational system. Nonetheless, despite the curricular specifications, a consensus about principles can no longer be reached. There are far too many ideas and too many authorities in their support. The mounting multiplicity threatens the stability of the system, a stability which in response is increasingly defended by virtue of appeal to ideals and goals that can no longer be defended academically — how would that be possible? — but are instead imposed on the system authoritatively and ideologically, through menace and power, leading to the intolerance of all those who do not belong to the same school of thought.6 In short: late medieval scholasticism can be characterized by a threefold process of cultural crystallization, constituted, first, by its wealth of ideas and its reference to past authorities; second, its academic boundaries; and third, and most significantly, its ideological recourse to politics, jurisdiction, and public scandal. In what follows, I will first give two examples to illustrate this process, which, of course, did not begin overnight, but developed slowly, as historical processes usually do. Both examples are concerned with condemnations of theological and philosophical opinions, in one case put forward by Meister Eckhart, in the other by John of Montesono. What interests me about these cases, both situated in the fourteenth century, but divided by a time-span of about fifty years, is that they display a certain structural similarity, with growing intensity, that may help us to understand what I have just called the process of cultural crystallization, and especially its impact on the case of Jan Hus and his condemnation at the Council of Constance, which I will discuss in the further course of this chapter.

Meister Eckhart Attitude

Let us begin with Meister Eckhart. His views were condemned by Pope John XXII. After earlier investigations carried through in Cologne, initiated by William of Nideggen and Hermann of Summo, who had submitted a number of alleged heretical theses extracted from Eckhart’s works to the Archbishop of Cologne, the case was brought to the Pope in Avignon. He installed a commission of theologians that examined the dossier and produced a report, discussing 28 theses attributed to Eckhart, on the basis of which he



5 On the late medieval schools, see Zahnd, Wirksame Zeichen?, and Meliadò, Sapienza peripatetica. 6 A case in point is the condemnation of nominalism in Paris. Its political and ideological background is addressed in Kaluza, ‘La Crise des années 1474–1482’.

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then eventually condemned 17 as heretical and 11 as potentially heretical in his bull In agro dominico, published 27 March 1329.7 For our purposes, I will first focus on the general tenor of the condemnation, expressed in the opening statement of the bull.8 According to the Pope, the main problem with Eckhart was that he had preached highly sophisticated theological, not to say heretical, material to audiences that were not able to understand what he was saying, and that he had put this same material into writing as well. Therefore, instead of illuminating his hearers and readers, he had obscured their views, since they were not able to comprehend his teachings.9 Thus, the Pope accused Eckhart of irresponsibility as a master and preacher, targeting not only his views, but also his attitude and conduct towards the audience he had to guide. This is in line with Humbert of Romans, past Master of the Dominican Order and author of the Treatise on the Formation of Preachers, who, referring to Gregory the Great’s Pastoral Rule, had argued that ‘even when it is appropriate to preach, it is not appropriate to preach the same thing to everybody. Different people should be preached different things, according to their capacities’.10 Evidently, the criticism that the Pope directed against Eckhart was not new. It is an instance of the application of the scholastic principle that everything is received according to the mode of its receiver, frequently referred to in the writings of Thomas Aquinas and other scholastics.11 What is remarkable here is Eckhart’s rejection of this generally accepted principle.

7 The text of this bull is edited in Acta Echardiana, ed. by Sturlese, n. 65, pp. 596–600. On the condemnation, see the classic Trusen, Der Prozeẞ gegen Meister Eckhart; and, with references to recent literature, Senner, ‘Meister Eckhart’s Life, Training, Career, and Trial’, pp. 44–84. 8 In this opening statement, John XXII presents himself as a defender of the faith, who has to fight the dissemination of error. On the nature of this statement, see Trusen, Der Prozeẞ gegen Meister Eckhart, pp. 123–24. 9 Acta Echardiana, ed. by Sturlese, n. 65 (In agro dominico), p. 597: ‘[D]ogmatizavit [i.e. Meister Eckhart] multa fidem veram in cordibus multorum obnubilantia, que docuit quam maxime coram vulgo simplici in suis predicationibus, que etiam redegit in scriptis’. For the late medieval understanding of preaching, with an extensive bibliography, see Martin, Le Métier de prédicateur. 10 Humbert of Romans, De eruditione praedicatorum, ed. by Berthier, Quarta pars, XVIII, pp. 421–22: ‘Item, notandum quod illis quibus praedicandum est non sunt omnibus eadem praedicanda: sed diversa diversis, prout eis competunt’. The translation, with small adaptations, is according to Humbert of Romans, Treatise on the Formation of Preachers, ed. by Tugwell, esp. p. 246 n. 212. Humbert quotes in this connection from Gregory the Great’s Regula pastoralis. See Gregory the Great, Règle pastorale, vol. II, ed. by Judic, Rommel, and Morel, Pars III, prol., pp. 258–61. 11 See, e.g., Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, Pars I, quaest. 12, art. 4, p. 120: ‘Cognitum autem est in cognoscente secundum modum cognoscentis’. Sources for this principle were Boethius’s Consolatio philosophiae and the Liber de causis. See Boethius, De consolatione philosophiae, ed. by Moreschini, Lib. 5, pros. 4, p. 149, n. 25, and Liber de causis, ed. by Pattin, p. 160 (Prop. 9 (10), nn. 98–99). It was also included in the Auctoritates Aristotelis. See Les Auctoritates Aristotelis, ed. by Hamesse, p. 232 n. 12.

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In his Liber benedictus, in obvious contradiction to Humbert of Romans’s directions, Eckhart claims that the preacher should not worry about whether or not his audience understands his words. Whether or not they understand God’s message is beyond the preacher’s means and only in the hands of those who listen to him. Therefore, the preacher should focus on the truth. He must seek to heal the people’s souls and this he can do effectively only if he tells the truth as the truth is, and not as the people understand it.12 To corroborate his determinate and uncompromising view and demonstrate its conformity with the theological tradition, Eckhart refers to the opening passage of St John’s Gospel which, he argues, speaks about the highest and most difficult issue, the divine Word. Nevertheless, he adds, St John wrote his Gospel, often misunderstood, for all people, irrespective of whether or not they were believers and educated.13 At first sight this may seem to be a traditional discussion about the appropriateness of two opposing authorities, Gregory the Great on the one hand, and St John the Evangelist on the other, applied to the problem of preaching — nothing to worry about since the publication of Abelard’s Sic et non.14 But here the situation is different. Not only does Eckhart refer to Scripture and, thus, claim to have the highest authority on his side, he also insists that the activity of preaching, that is the transmission of the divine Word, must accord with the nature of the message and not that of the audience.15

12 Meister Eckhart, Liber benedictus, ed. by Quint, pp. 60–61: ‘[E]nsol man niht lêren ungelêrte liute, sô enwirt niemer nieman gelêret, sô enmac nieman lêren noch schrîben. […] Ist aber ieman, der diz wort unrehte vernimet, waz mac des der mensche, der diz wort, daz reht ist, rehte sprichet?’ For a discussion of the Liber benedictus, see Gottschall, ‘Eckhart’s German Works’, pp. 149–63. It was, amongst others, passages from the Liber benedictus that raised the accusation of heresy against Eckhart. He replied to these accusations in a treatise called Requisitus, composed in 1325–1326. See Acta Echardiana, ed. by Sturlese, pp. 192–93 n. 45. 13 Meister Eckhart, Liber Benedictus, ed. by Quint, p. 61: ‘Sant Johannes sprichet daz heilige êwangelium allen geloubigen und ouch allen ungeloubigen, daz sie geloubic werden, und doch beginnet er das êwangelium von dem hœhsten, daz kein mensche von gote hie gesprechen mac; und ouch sint sîniu wort und ouch unsers herren wort dicke unrehte vernomen’. The reference is to John 1. 1: ‘In principio erat Verbum et Verbum erat apud Deum et Deus erat Verbum’. 14 Abelard discussed the issue of conflicting authorities in the prologue to his Sic et non, and proposed a method for dealing with them. See Abelard, Sic et non, ed. by Boyer and McKeon, Prol., pp. 89–104, esp. p. 89: ‘Cum in tanta verborum multitudine nonnnulla etiam sanctorum dicta non solum ab invicem diversa verum etiam invicem adversa videantur, non est temere de eis iudicandum per quos mundus ipse iudicandus est, sicut scriptum est “Iudicabunt sancti nationes”; et iterum: “Sedebitis et vos iudicantes”’. See Wisdom 3. 8 and Matthew 19. 28. For a discussion, see Bady, ‘Le Prologue du Sic et non d’Abélard’. 15 As Eckhart writes in his sermons, God opens himself only to those who are like God. See Meister Eckhart, Predigten, ed. by Quint, Sermon 4 (Omne datum optimum), pp. 58–74, esp. p. 71: ‘Got muoz mir sich selber geben als eigen, als er sîn selbes ist, oder mir entwirt niht noch ensmecket mir niht’ and Sermon 12 (Qui audit me), pp. 190–206, esp. p. 200: ‘Alsô ist gote lustlich und genuoclich, dâ er glîcheit vindet. Ez ist im lustlich, daze er sîne natûre und sîn wesen alzemâle dâ giezende ist in die glîcheit, wan er diu glîcheit selber ist’.

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To be sure, all theologians would agree that a preacher has to expound the Word as the Word is. Nevertheless, according to them, every preacher must be aware that he himself as well as his audience belong to the ordo creationis which necessarily is pluriform. Consequently, as Humbert of Romans has it, he must realize that ‘if he wants to exercise his function judiciously, the preacher should always pay attention to the kind of people he addresses’.16 For Eckhart, by contrast, taking this pluriformity into account would amount to preaching the unity of the divine Word according to the multiplicity of creation, which, to him, is in clear opposition to Scripture, and, therefore, must be avoided by the preacher whose task is to lead his audience to God. It is no surprise, then, that John XXII criticized this posture as thoughtless and contrary to the guidelines of faith.17 Having looked into Eckhart’s uncommon attitude as a preacher, let us now turn to the list with his views that were condemned. Eternity

In the list, three articles are devoted to the problem of the eternity of the world. These three articles are the first items on the list, which marks their significance. This is not surprising, as the issue was already hotly debated in the thirteenth century.18 First of all, however, it is important to notice that there is a crucial distinction between this list and the Condemnation of 1277, which also targeted the eternity of the world. Eckhart’s arguments have little to do with the Aristotelian theory of time and motion, but are based on his conception of the divine Trinity as put forward in his commentaries on Genesis and on the Gospel of St John.19 They are theological, not philosophical. Every divine activity is identical with the divine substance, 16 Humbert of Romans, De eruditione praedicatorum, ed. by Berthier, Quarta pars, XVIII, p. 425: ‘[E]t ideo interest praedicatoris ad hoc ut discrete hoc officium exequatur, ut attendat semper quibus praedicat, et quae, et quantum, et qualiter, et quare, et quando, et ubi, etc.’. As above, the translation, with small adaptations, is according to Humbert of Romans, Treatise on the Formation of Preachers, ed. by Tugwell, p. 250 n. 228. 17 See Acta Echardiana, ed. by Sturlese, n. 65 (In agro dominico), p. 597: ‘[P]lura voluit [i.e. Meister Eckhart] sapere quam oportuit et non ad sobrietatem neque secundum mensuram fidei, quia a veritate auditum avertens ad fabulas se convertit’. As the editor, Loris Sturlese, noted, John XXII refers in this passage to Romans 12. 3 and ii Timothy 4. 4. The Pope thus underlines that Eckhart did not act according to wisdom of the Gospel, even if he claimed to do so. 18 See, e.g., the treatises collected in Dales and Argerami, ed., Medieval Latin Texts on the Eternity of the World. The discussion reached a climax in 1277, when the Bishop of Paris, Étienne Tempier, condemned the view that the world did not have a beginning in time. See Piché, La Condamnation Parisienne de 1277, p. 106 (n. 87, nn. 89–91) and pp. 109–10 (nn. 98–99). On Meister Eckhart’s position, see Grotz, ‘Nur mit Vorsicht zu genießen’. 19 See Meister Eckhart, Expositio libri Genesis (Rec. CT), ed. by Weiss, cap. 1, v. 1, pp. 186–91 (nn. 2–7); Expositio libri Genesis (Rec. L), ed. by Sturlese, cap. 1, v. 1, pp. 61–65 (nn. 2–7); Expositio sancti Evangelii secundum Iohannem, ed. by Christ and Koch, cap. 1, v. 3, pp. 46–50

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Eckhart argues. Therefore, the act that produces the Son must necessarily be the same as the act that produces the world. The production of the Son is eternal, and consequently the production of the world is as well. Or, as Eckhart put it with reference to the authority of the saints: that God created the world ‘in principio’, ‘in the beginning’, as Genesis has it, means that he created it ‘in the Son’ or ‘in eternity’, as the Gospel of St John gives us to understand.20 For Eckhart, this does not mean that the world has no beginning in time. However, to grasp the temporal existence of the created world, one has to consider creation not from the divine perspective, but from that of the created world itself. Beyond the active and eternal creation in God, there is a passive and temporal creation in the world which does not exist in God, and which prevents it from being coeternal with God.21 For the commission that investigated Eckhart’s views, this reply was not sufficient to rebut the accusation that he had defended the eternity of the world. The scriptural meaning of ‘in the beginning’ in Genesis is temporal, and only temporal, they argued, and this temporal meaning is understood when, in the Creed, the Church states that God is creator of heaven and earth.22 One cannot identify the creation of the world with the production of the Son, as Eckhart did, since the former is temporal, the latter eternal. Every understanding that blends or even identifies the two is heretical. It allows for such statements as ‘God produced the world as soon as he existed’, statements that Eckhart had put forward in his commentary on Genesis.23

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(nn. 56–60), v. 5, p. 61 (n. 73), and v. 38, pp. 179–86 (nn. 213–22). See also the protocol of Eckhart’s reply to the commission in Avignon in Acta Echardiana, ed. by Sturlese, n. 59 (Votum theologorum avenionensium), p. 569 (n. 4) and p. 571 (n. 15). Meister Eckhart, Expositio libri Genesis (Rec. CT), ed. by Weiss, cap. 1, v. 1, pp. 188–89 (n. 5), and Expositio libri Genesis (Rec. L), ed. by Sturlese, cap. 1, v. 1, p. 63 (n. 5): ‘Hinc est quod sancti communiter exponunt deum creasse caelum et terram in principio, id est in filio, qui est imago et ratio idealis omnium’. In the protocol, Eckhart highlights the unity and eternity of the divine activity. See Acta Echardiana, ed. by Sturlese, n. 59 (Votum theologorum avenionensium), p. 569 (n. 4): ‘[C]reare est dei actio et per consequens est dei substantia aeterna, quia omnis dei actio est sua substantia. Unde idem nunc aeternitatis est quo deus mundum creavit et quo deus est, et quo deus filium sibi coaeternum generavit’. This was the main point of Eckhart’s defence to the commission. See Acta Echardiana, ed. by Sturlese, n. 59 (Votum theologorum avenionensium), p. 569 (n. 4): ‘Nec sequitur quod, si creatio dei actio sit aeterna, quod mundus sit aeternus, quia deus sic produxit mundum de novo et ex tempore et in nunc temporis, quod mundus et eius creatio passio est in tempore seu nunc temporis; et creatio passio non est in deo, sed in creatura’. Acta Echardiana, ed. by Sturlese, n. 59 (Votum theologorum avenionensium), p. 569 (n. 2): ‘[F]ides ponit quod deus mundum creavit in principio temporis, et sic ecclesia accipit articulum fidei “creatorem caeli et terrae” per hoc quod Moyses ait: “in principio creavit caelum et terram”’. See Genesis 1. 1. Acta Echardiana, ed. by Sturlese, n. 59 (Votum theologorum avenionensium), p. 570 (n. 5): ‘[C]ontra fidem est dicere quod creatio actio sit aeterna et in nunc aeternitatis, quo mensuretur ut aeterna dei actio’. See Meister Eckhart, Expositio libri Genesis (Rec. CT),

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To be sure, the commission did not deny that the saints took the phrase that God created the world ‘in the beginning’ to refer to the eternal Son as the principle of all beings, as Eckhart had claimed. But they distinguished the eternal ‘in the beginning’ of the Son from the temporal ‘in the beginning’ of the time in which the world was created. Unlike Eckhart, they differentiated between the Gospel of St John and the Book of Genesis.24 In sum, Eckhart’s statements were considered heretical because they denied the insurmountable gap between God and creation, symbolized by the distinction between eternity and temporality.25 Before we can put these findings into a broader perspective and see the connections with both the process of cultural crystallization and Jan Hus, let us approach our second fourteenth-century example, the condemnation of John of Montesono.

John of Montesono Authority

John of Montesono was a Dominican friar criticized by the University of Paris in 1387 for defending a number of statements, among which was the view that it was not against faith to claim that some creatures are absolutely necessary.26 In 1388, the case moved to the pope in Avignon. Since John of Montesono refused to be interviewed by the commission which investigated his case, he

ed. by Weiss, cap. 1. v. 1, p. 190 (n. 7), and Expositio libri Genesis (Rec. L), ed. by Sturlese, cap. 1. v. 1, p. 65 (n. 7): ‘Ait ergo Moyses deum caelum et terram creasse in principio absolute primo, in quo deus ipse est, sine quolibet medio aut intervallo’. 24 Acta Echardiana, ed. by Sturlese, n. 59 (Votum theologorum avenionensium), p. 571 (n. 12): ‘Quod vero sancti exponunt “in principio creavit”, id est in aeterno filio, verum est tamquam in verbo et “arte plena omnium rationum viventium”. Sed in principio tamquam in mensura durationis creavit in principio temporis et non in nunc aeternitatis, ut fides tenet’. 25 As the criticism of the commission shows, among the medieval scholastics, there was a constant need to highlight this chasm, because God, as the first cause of creation, was not only conceived of as beyond time, but also, as sustaining creation, existing along with time, which could provoke such positions as Eckhart’s that crossed the border between eternity and temporal existence. On this problem, see the interesting study by Fox, Time and Eternity in Mid-Thirteenth-Century Thought, esp. pp. 309–29. 26 The statements are listed in Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis, vol. iii, ed. by Denifle and Chatelain, n. 1559, pp. 491–96, esp. pp. 493–95. Another issue was his criticism of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception as it was defended by the University of Paris. On this issue and its impact inside and outside the university, see Lamy, ‘Les Dominicains dans la tourmente’. However, though important in the debate, the issue of the Immaculate Conception is not mentioned in a letter in which John of Montesono defends himself against the University of Paris. Rather, the focus is on the authority of Thomas Aquinas which John of Montesono had invoked to back his statements. See Krupa, ‘La Lettre en défense’, p. 640.

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was excommunicated on 27 January 1389. In the meantime, on 23 August 1387, the Bishop of Paris, at the instigation of the university, had condemned his views and prohibited their defence either privately or publicly.27 The intriguing thing about John of Montesono’s case is not only the content of his statements, but also the way in which he defended them. Let us begin with the latter and then continue with the former. As mentioned earlier, there is a striking parallel with the condemnation of Eckhart. However, John of Montesono does not refer to the Gospel of St John as his main witness, but to Thomas Aquinas, claiming that what Aquinas had put forward in his writings can be defended by any theologian, and therefore also by himself, independent of criticisms by the university, since Urban V had declared Thomas’s doctrine to be true and in accordance with the Catholic faith.28 This recourse to Aquinas as a theological authority, approved by the pope, forced the University of Paris to react, with the effect that it began to position itself against this claim. Pierre d’Ailly, the representative of the university, took on the charge to defend its position. In a treatise specifically devoted to the issue, he showed that the writings of Thomas Aquinas at some places were ambiguous and could easily lead to erroneous views, such as those defended by John of Montesono. Thus, he concluded, the works of Aquinas do not have the same authority as the Scriptures and can only be used with caution in

27 For an account of the events, with references to further literature, see Pascoe, Church and Reform, pp. 84–86, and Moule, Corporate Jurisdiction, pp. 18–26. See also Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis, vol. iii, ed. by Denifle and Chatelain, n. 1559 (document of 23 August 1387), pp. 491–96, esp. pp. 495–96, and n. 1567 (document of 27 January 1389), pp. 506–12. 28 John of Montesono’s claim is mentioned by Pierre d’Ailly in his Tractatus ex parte Universitatis, ed. by Du Plessis d’Argentré, p. 82, in which Pierre d’Ailly gives an account of the supplication that John of Montesono had submitted to Clemens VII: ‘[P]onit dictus Frater [i.e. John of Montesono] in supplicatione sua […]: [A]liquae conclusionum suarum trahuntur ex doctrina S. Thomae […]. Dominus Urbanus Papa V. per eius bullam Universitati Studii Tholosani scripsit et voluit eiusdem Sancti doctrina tanquam veridicam et Catholicam sequi et teneri a Christicolis et Studiosis et eam pro viribus ampliari […]. [S]olius Sedis Apostolicae est declarare, damnara et reprobare. […] Ex quibus sequi videtur, quod nec Episcopus nec Facultas praedicta conclusiones praemissas potuerunt iudicialiter condemnare nec earum dogmatizationem aut publicationem vel defensionem sententialiter cohibere’. The bull referred to is Laudabilis Deus published in 1368 by Urban V and addressed to the Archbishop and University of Toulouse. For this bull, which was quoted almost verbatim in John of Montosono’s supplication, see Acta Sanctorum, vol. vii, ed. by Bollandus, Henschenius, and Papebrochius, pp. 731–32, esp. p. 732. In the letter in which John of Montesono defends himself against the university, referred to above, he also underlines that Thomas’s doctrine has been approved by the Church. See the edition of this letter (composed in Avignon shortly before May 1388) in Krupa, ‘La Lettre en defense’, pp. 643–47, esp. pp. 645–46: ‘Nunquid hic doctor sanctus in doctrina sua ueridica non solum ab hominibus mortalibus ecclesie militantis, uerum eciam ab incolis ecclesie triumphantis et ad ultimum summi pontificis utriusque ecclesie, scilicet Christi Ihesu, testimonio infallibili extitit approbatus?’.

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an academic debate.29 More importantly, he claimed that not only the pope, but also the Faculty of Theology of the University of Paris had the right and duty to investigate matters of faith and to qualify certain views of its members as erroneous or heretical, which it did by condemning the views John of Montesono had defended based on the authority of Aquinas.30 Necessity

This leads us to the content of the positions that were condemned by the university and the Bishop of Paris. As with Eckhart, at their centre was the relationship between the temporal and eternal order. In a remarkably long chapter in his Summa contra gentiles, Aquinas had argued that even though everything depends on God’s free will as the first cause, this does not exclude that God had created some beings that are simple and absolutely necessary. These beings, then, do not have attached to their nature the possibility of non-being. As soon as they were created, they existed, and they continue to exist forever. The possibility of non-being presupposes the existence of matter, Aquinas argued. Beings that are created without matter, such as the separate substances or angels, or entities whose matter cannot accept any additional form, such as the heavenly bodies, do not have this possibility and therefore are absolutely necessary.31 Aquinas distinguishes here between the nature of some creatures and their being created out of nothing. That the separate substances are created out of nothing does not mean that they necessarily have within their nature a tendency towards non-being. To be sure, they can exist only if God wants them to exist. But this does not touch their proper nature. Rather, their

29 Pierre d’Ailly, Tractatus ex parte Universitatis, ed. by Du Plessis d’Argentré, p. 128 (sexta conclusio): ‘[L]icet praedicta sancti Thomae doctrina secundum eius intellectum vel intentionem aliqualiter esset vera, tamen propter hoc, sub illa verborum improprietate et falsi sensus ambiguitate, sine veri sensus expositione a scholasticis non est simpliciter asserenda’. 30 Pierre d’Ailly, Tractatus ex parte Universitatis, ed. by Du Plessis d’Argentré, p. 78 (quinta conclusio): ‘Ad dictam Facultatem Theologiae contra certas personas, scilicet contra singulares Magistros et Baccalaureos eiusdem Facultatis iuratos quandoque pertinet, non solum doctrinaliter, sed etiam aliquo modo iudicialiter assertiones haereticas aut erroneas condemnare’. This claim shows a growing self-understanding of the Faculty of Theology, not only as student but also as defender of doctrinal truth. For more details on this development, see Taber, ‘Pierre d’Ailly and the Teaching Authority of the Theologian’; Pascoe, Church and Reform, pp. 165–205; and Moule, Corporate Jurisdiction, pp. 201–36. 31 Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles, Lib. 2, cap. 30, p. 338: ‘Licet autem omnia ex Dei voluntate dependeant sicut ex prima causa, quae in operando necessitatem non habet nisi ex sui propositi suppositione, non tamen propter hoc absoluta necessitas a rebus excluditur […]. Illae igitur res in quibus vel non est materia, vel, si est, non est possibilis ad aliam formam, non habent potentiam ad non esse. Eas igitur absolute et simpliciter necesse est esse’. On the creation of absolutely necessary creatures according to Aquinas, see Porro, Tommaso d’Aquino. Un profilo storico-filosofico, pp. 181–86.

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existence depends on a cause which is absolutely free, and because of its freedom can choose to create beings that both arise out of nothing and are absolutely necessary.32 The reason why Aquinas insists on the existence of these kinds of creatures lies in the Aristotelian metaphysics which he shares, and which consitutes a crucial element of his theology. For Aristotle, separate substances, because they are pure forms without matter, or heavenly bodies, because their matter is unchangeable, can neither be caused nor be annihilated. Therefore they exist necessarily.33 Aquinas adopts this notion of separate substances and heavenly bodies from Aristotle, with the only addition that they are created by a free cause, namely God. Within the metaphysics of Aristotle, however, there is no first, efficient cause that has created the world. The first cause for him is the unmoved mover, a separate substance that necessarily exists and moves other subordinated separate substances, which also necessarily exist, by being the final cause of their action.34 Aquinas, however, distinguishes between the process of creation, which is a voluntary act of the first cause that produces reality out of nothing, and the causal processes within the realm of creation. Measured according to the laws of the created world, and here Aquinas again follows Aristotle, there exist beings that have a possibility of non-being, such as plants and animals, as well as those that do not have this possibility, such as the separate substances and the heavenly bodies, and therefore exist necessarily.35 32 Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles, Lib. 2, cap. 30, p. 338: ‘Si autem dicatur quod ea quae sunt ex nihilo, quantum est de se, in nihilum tendunt; et sic omnibus creaturis inest potentia ad non esse: — manifestum est hoc non sequi. Dicuntur enim res creatae eo modo in nihilum tendere quo sunt ex nihilo. Quod quidem non est nisi secundum potentiam agentis’. According to Thomas, God creates freely and not necessarily because his nature is perfect. He does not need creation but only himself. See Summa contra gentiles, Lib. 1, cap. 81, p. 225: ‘[O]mnia enim in ipso sunt universaliter perfecta. Potest igitur Deus velle non esse quamcumque rem aliam praeter se. Non igitur de necessitate vult esse alia a se’. For information about the Summa contra gentiles, its content and set-up, see Imbach and Oliva, La Philosophie de Thomas d’Aquin, pp. 108–15. 33 Aristotle, Metaphysics, xii. ii, 1069b25–26, and cap. viii, 1073a36–b1. For the Aristotelian theory of matter and form, see Judson, ed., Aristotle’s Physics. 34 Aristotle, Metaphysics, xii. vii, 1072a19–1073a13. On the nature of the first and the subordinated separate substances, and their place within the Aristotelian cosmos, see Guthrie, Aristotle. An Encounter, pp. 252–76. 35 There is a second reason why Aquinas adopts Aristotle’s notion of the separate substances as necessary beings. It is part of God’s perfection that he bestows upon creation all the qualities he possesses, as long as these qualities do not contradict created being. Necessary existence is one of these qualities. It is the kind of existence that in the order of being is most highly ranked. The created order therefore can only be perfect if it includes beings that are absolutely necessary. The existence of such beings does not challenge the unique perfection of God. Rather, it is a sign of his ultimate goodness and absolute freedom that he has created necessary beings, next to those that possess only possible being. See Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles, Lib. 2, cap. 30, p. 338: ‘Ad divinam perfectionem pertinet quod rebus creatis suam similitudinem indiderit, nisi quantum ad illa quae repugnant ei

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Ambiguities

As if Aquinas sensed that he had entered explosive territory, no sooner had he finished the long chapter on necessary beings than he embarked on the issue of the eternity of the world, arguing that even though some beings do not have the possibility of non-being, it is not necessary for them to have existed from eternity.36 His argument here is similar to the one we have just seen. Creatures do not have being by themselves. If they did not receive being from a cause, they would not exist. Since necessary beings depend on God’s free will, they do not exist by themselves, but only once God has created them.37 In short, necessary beings do indeed exist by themselves if the focus is on their nature as having no possibility of non-being, but they do not if the focus is on their nature as creatures presupposing a cause. Here we hit upon the ambiguity Pierre d’Ailly had noticed in the writings of Thomas Aquinas, which in his view had the potential to spark heresies, an error of which John of Montesono had made himself guilty. As we have seen, among the accused statements was his claim that it in no way contradicted faith to defend the existence of creatures with simple and absolutely necessary being.38 The University of Paris judged this statement to be false and in opposition to the common theological doctrines.39 The Parisian theologians, taking their responsibility as arbiters in matters of faith, drew a clear demarcation line between God and creation.40 Pierre d’Ailly, in the treatise referred to above, pursued this line of thought in more detail. According to some, the claim that there is a necessary being besides God contradicts the Scriptures, he argued, since Exodus clearly

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quod est esse creatum: agentis enim perfecti est producere sibi simile quantum possibile est. […] Nihil igitur prohibet quasdam res sic esse productas a Deo ut tamen eas esse sit necesse simpliciter. Immo hoc divinae perfectioni attestatur’. See Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles, Lib. 2, cap. 31, p. 342: ‘Ex praemissis autem restat ostendere quod non est necessarium res creatas ab aeterno fuisse’. See also, Porro, Tommaso d’Aquino, pp. 186–92 and pp. 446–47. Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles, Lib. 2, cap. 31, p. 343: ‘Quod est ex voluntate, non est absolute necessarium, nisi forte quando voluntatem hoc velle est necessarium. Deus autem non per necessitatem naturae, sed per voluntatem producit creaturas in esse […]. Non igitur est absolute necessarium creaturam esse. Neque ergo necessarium est eas semper fuisse’. See note 26 above. Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis, vol. iii, ed. by Denifle and Chatelain, n. 1559, p. 494 (sexta propositio): ‘Recovanda est [i.e. John of Montesono’s statement] tanquam falsa et malesonans in fide secundum modum loquendi communem theologorum’. Next to this, there is another statement that was the target of the Parisian theologians, similar in nature to the one just mentioned, namely that necessary being is not repugnant to being caused. This statement they considered false as well, and also erroneous as far as faith is concerned. The point here was that John of Montesono had identified necessary being with being immutable according to both substance and properties. This kind of being immutable, the theologians maintained, only belongs to God. See Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis, vol. iii, ed. by Denifle and Chatelain, p. 494 (septima propositio).

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conveys that necessary being is the proper name of God, who called himself I am the one who is. Theologians such as Nicholas of Lyra took this to mean that the uniqueness of God is named by the necessity, the infinity, and the immutability of his being. It is for this reason, Pierre d’Ailly continues, that many accuse Thomas Aquinas of having committed an error against faith by attributing something to creatures which belongs only to God, namely necessary being.41 Aquinas and with him John of Montesono, therefore, seemed to have crossed limits that should not have been transgressed. Beside the notion of God as necessary being, it was also the concept of God’s freedom, necessarily linked to his necessity, which attracted the attention of these theologians, as Pierre d’Ailly maintained. God is the necessary being who is also free, and therefore, in contradiction to Aquinas’s argument, unable to produce a necessary created being. This is not because of any limits imposed on God, but a necessary consequence of his freedom. That God created the world freely means that he created the world contingently, with the possibility of non-being. Therefore all creatures are contingent and without necessity. Conversely, if the being of a creature is necessary, then the will of God must have been necessary, a conclusion which, as he adds, Aquinas and all catholics deny.42

41 Pierre d’Ailly, Tractatus ex parte Universitatis, ed. by Du Plessis d’Argentré, p. 125 (primus error): ‘Primus error est, quia ponit aliquid aliud a Deo esse necesse esse, quod videtur contra Scripturam sacram et intentionem Sanctorum, quia necesse est proprium nomen Dei. Et haec videtur intentio Scripturae sacrae, Exod. 3 […]. [U]nde hic dicit magister Nicolaus de Lyra, quod per hoc quod dicitur “Ego sum qui sum” significatur necessitas essendi, et infinitas et immutabilitas per omnem modem, quae est conditio propria et singularis ipsius Dei’. See Exodus 3. 14 and Nicholas of Lyra, Biblia Latina cum Glossa ordinaria, fols t[1]v–t2r. The issue was considered delicate, Pierre continued, as Aquinas himself, in his Summa contra gentiles, before discussing the subject of creation, had postulated that it is important to have a clear understanding of the created world to avoid any errors concerning God, indicating that one should not confuse the nature of God with the nature of creation. See Pierre d’Ailly, Tractatus ex parte Universitatis, ed. by Du Plessis d’Argentré, p. 125 (primus error): ‘Et ideo dicunt multi quod Sanctus Thomas hic incidit in illum secundum modum errandi circa fidem, quem ipsemet ponit in eodem secundo libro contra Gentes, cap. 3, in errorem videlicet illorum qui illud quod Dei solius est creaturis aliquibus adscribunt’. See Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles, Lib. 2, cap. 3, p. 277. 42 Pierre d’Ailly, Tractatus ex parte Universitatis, ed. by Du Plessis d’Argentré, p. 127 (tertius error, prima ratio): ‘[S]i Deus libere et contingenter et non de necessitate vult quamlibet creaturam esse, sequitur quod quaelibet creatura est contingenter et nulla de necessitate. Unde etiam ex opposito sequitur oppositum, quia sequitur: Haec creatura est, ergo Deus vult eam esse. Et per consequens, si antecedens est necessarium simpliciter, consequens est necessarium simpliciter. Si ergo hanc creaturam esse est necesse simpliciter, Deum velle eam esse est necessarium simpliciter […]. Igitur non produceret eam libere et contingenter, sed necessario et inevitabiliter, quod negat sanctus Thomas et omnes Catholici’. Here, as earlier, Pierre d’Ailly is putting forward the criticism of ‘aliqui’ against Aquinas, both to show that the latter’s views are ambiguous and need to be carefully interpreted to avoid errors against faith, and to identify contradictions within Aquinas himself. It is unclear which theologians he has in mind. Perhaps, in this case, they were the followers of John Duns Scotus. See note 44 below.

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Pierre d’Ailly is justified in saying that Aquinas denies the view according to which God’s will is in any way necessitated.43 But for Aquinas there is no opposition between a free acting God and his creation of a necessary being. Pierre d’Ailly refers to a different, more straightforward view inspired by John Duns Scotus. Accordingly, a free cause always produces contingent beings, a necessary one only necessary beings.44 The sophistication of Aquinas’s argument that combines divine freedom and created necessity is no longer understood by the theologians mentioned by Pierre d’Ailly, or perhaps better, it is very well understood, but no longer accepted, as it is considered a threat to faith. In their philosophical arguments, masters speaking about God need to be in line with the theological tradition, and choose their authorities accordingly, lest they raise confusion and scandal. This means for Aquinas that he should not have chosen Aristotle as his source when dealing with separate substances and heavenly bodies, and for John of Montesono, that he should not have insisted on the authority of Aquinas without carefully reading and diligently interpreting him.45

A Preliminary Conclusion Transcendence

Let us now come to a first, preliminary conclusion. In late medieval scholasticism, there were two developments that met and intensified each other. On the one hand, there was a growing urge to acknowledge the transcendence of the divine being. God’s nature is fundamentally different from that of creation. Therefore, the two need to be distinguished carefully. That is why 43 See, e.g., Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles, Lib. 2, cap. 31, p. 343: ‘Deus autem non agit ex aliqua necessitate ad creaturarum productionem’. 44 See John Duns Scotus, Ordinatio, vol. ii, Lib. 1, dist. 2, pars 1, quaest. 1–2, pp. 176–77 (n. 80): ‘[S]i prima necessario movet, quaelibet alia necessario movetur et quidlibet necessario causatur; igitur si aliqua causa secunda contingenter movet, et prima contingenter movebit, quia non causat causa secunda nisi in virtute primae causae in quantum movetur ab ipsa’. See also John Duns Scotus, Lectura, vol. xvii, Lib. 1, dist. 39, quaest. 1–5, p. 489 (n. 35), and p. 509 (n. 91): ‘[S]i prima habitudo primae causae ad suum effectum sit non-necessaria […] nihil est simpliciter necessarium in universo’. For Scotus’s notion of contingent causation, see Contingency and Freedom. Lectura I 39, ed. by Vos Jaczn, Looman-Graaskamp, Veldhuis, Dekker, and den Bok. 45 As Pierre d’Ailly had argued earlier in his treatise, Aquinas’s teaching easily might lead to errors of faith because in many subjects it is based upon human reason, and more specifically Aristotle. See Pierre d’Ailly, Tractatus ex parte Universitatis, ed. by Du Plessis d’Argentré, p. 117 (primum corollarium): ‘[C]um auctoritas vel doctrina sancti Thomae in multis fundetur in ratione humana, saltem in illis non oportet quod sit ita firma, quin possit esse in fide erronea. […] [I]n omnibus etiam arduissimis fidei articulis et humanam rationem transcendentibus ipse utitur Aristotelis’. On the (diverse) uses of Aristotle, see Bianchi, ed., Christian Readings of Aristotle from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance.

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the issue of the eternity of the world became so momentous. It is certain that the need to distinguish between God and creation resulted from the reading of Aristotle’s Physics and Metaphysics, which since the thirteenth century had gained a dominant position as authoritative texts, both in philosophy as well as in theology.46 For Aristotle, God, or to put it in his terminology, the unmoved mover, is not an absolutely transcendent being, but an integral part of the universe. To be sure, he is the most perfect being, but not essentially different from the subordinated separate substances mentioned in the Metaphysics.47 Since Aristotle had such a prominent place in the educational programme of the arts faculties, it is quite natural that the preoccupation with this pagan author raised questions of whether or not, when thinking along Aristotelian lines, the central beliefs of the Christian faith remained safeguarded, namely that God, being the creator of the world, was essentially different from creation and ‘dwelled in the light that no man can see’, as i Timothy has it.48 Significantly, one of the main points of criticism that Pierre d’Ailly had raised against Aquinas in the context of the case against John of Montesono was that Aquinas had modelled his theology too much according to the principles of Aristotelian philosophy. This, Pierre d’Ailly added, was not right for a theologian, who should follow not the writings of a pagan author but of the Christian tradition that had corrected human wisdom.49 In the writings of Marsilius of Inghen a similar tendency can be observed. Marsilius carefully distinguishes between the approach of human reason, that uses Aristotle as 46 See, e.g., Courtenay, Schools and Scholars in Fourteenth-Century England, and Amerini and Galluzzo ed., A Companion to the Latin Medieval Commentaries on Aristotle’s Metaphysics. 47 See the references in note 34 above. 48 i Timothy 6. 16. In most arts faculty statutes, an item was included on how to deal with those passages in the writings of Aristotle that contradicted faith, such as those concerning the eternity of the world. The masters then had to take the side of faith and contradict Aristotle. See, e.g., Geschichte der kaiserlichen Universität zu Wien, ii: Statutenbuch der Universität, ed. by Kink, n. 15, pp. 170–226 (statutes of 1389), esp. p. 202: ‘Item, quod si contingit aliquem Vestrum determinare uel respondere in materia tangente Veritates Fidei, ut de creacione uel Mundi eternitate uel huiusmodi, partem Fidei tenebitis et contrarias Raciones pro posse dissoluetis’. Similar statements were part of the statutes in Freiburg and Tübingen. For information about the educational programme of the arts curriculum at the late medieval Universities, see, e.g., Kenny and Pinborg, ‘Medieval Philosophical Literature’. 49 To substantiate his claim, Pierre d’Ailly refers to William of Auxerre, who had argued that heresies emerge when arguments from the realm of creation are applied to the divine order. If the infinite gulf between creator and creation is taken into account, such heresies will not arise. See Pierre d’Ailly, Tractatus ex parte Universitatis, ed. by Du Plessis d’Argentré, pp. 117–18 (primum corollarium): ‘Dominus Altissiodorensis in principio suae summae Theologiae […] dicit quod ideo decepti fuerint haeretici, quia rationes rerum naturalium proprias volebant applicare rebus Divinis. Et postea subdit: Si autem considerassent haeretici res Divinas in infinitum excedere res naturales, nunquam proprias rationes rerum naturalium voluissent applicare rebus Divinis’. See William of Auxerre, Summa aurea, Liber primus, ed. by Ribaillier, Prologus, pp. 18–19. He also quotes from the Historiae sacrae epitome, attributed to Haymo of Halberstadt, to make the same point with reference to Origen, who in the eyes of Pierre d’Ailly represented a case comparable to that of Aquinas.

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main authority, and that of faith, showing that on a whole range of issues, such as creation from nothing, the eternity of the world, divine power, and divine will, the two authorities go in different directions and even contradict each other.50 There is harmony between faith and reason, but not in the sense of Aquinas who does not admit of a contradiction between the two. Rather, in Marsilius’s account, reason should understand that it is defective and needs to be corrected if it wants to follow the truth of faith.51 Order

This brings us to the second development mentioned in the beginning of the preceding section. In the period under consideration, the system of universities and studia slowly but surely was seeking a new balance between academic disputes and authoritative correction.52 Already Augustine, in De ordine, had argued that human beings can reach knowledge of the divine nature only within a system of carefully distinguished steps that are structured

See Pierre d’Ailly, Tractatus ex parte Universitatis, ed. by Du Plessis d’Argentré, p. 117 (primum corollarium), and Haymo of Halberstadt, Historiae ecclesiasticae, Lib. 6, cap. 3, p. 70. For the (dubious) authorship of the latter treatise, see Gansweidt, Art. ‘H. v. Halberstadt’, col. 1864. 50 See Marsilius of Inghen, Abbreviationes super octo libros Physicorum Aristotelis, Lib. 8, tractatus 4, fols 39va–40ra, and Marsilius of Inghen, Quaestiones, [edn Strasbourg, 1501/Frankfurt am Main, 1966] Lib. 2, quaest. 1, art. 2, fols 201vb-207vb, and Lib. 2, quaest. 10, art. 2, fol. 244va: ‘[M]odus Aristotelis huic modo [i.e. arguing according to faith] non in omnibus concordat, quia sequendo puras experientias naturales creationem non esse possibilem dicit et ex hoc annihilationem non posse esse ponit, ex quo Deum necessario ad extra agere concedit et ponit’. On Marsilius’s interpretation of Aristotle, see Corbini, ‘Considerazioni sulla “cristianizzazione” di Aristotele in alcuni commenti di Marsilio de Inghen’. 51 Marsilius of Inghen, Quaestiones, [edn Strasbourg, 1501/Frankfurt am Main, 1966] Lib. 2, quaest. 10, art. 1, fol. 243rb: ‘[M]aior est Sacrae Scripturae auctoritas quam omnis humani ingenii perpicacitas. Unde nullo Christiano licet aliquam propositionem Sacrae Scripturae negare ad eam mentem ad quam in Sacro Canone expressa est’ and Lib. 4, quaest. 7, art 1, fol. 526ra: ‘[O]mnis fidelis captivare debet intellectum suum in fidei obsequium, ne plus credat suis phantasiis et apparentiis quam Sacrae Scripturae et Ecclesiae testimoniis. Plus enim potest Deus facere quam mens hominis intelligere’. See ii Corinthians 10. 5 and Philippians 2. 17. For the history of the notion of captivare intellectum see Bianchi, ‘Captivare intellectum in obsequium Christi’. For Aquinas, unlike Marsilius, there can be no contradiction between reason and faith: Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles, Lib. 1, cap. 7, p. 19: ‘Quamvis autem praedicta veritas fidei Christianae humanae rationis capacitatem excedat, haec tamen quae ratio naturaliter indita habet, huic veritati contraria esse non possunt’. For Marsilius, however, contradictions are not excluded, as natural reason, unaided by faith, necessarily concludes that creation is impossible, as is the case with Aristotle. See Marsilius of Inghen, Quaestiones, Lib. 2, quaest. 1, art. 2, fol. 205va–vb: ‘[C]reatio est possibilis non potest probari ex lumine puro naturali […], quia idem lumen non probat contradictorias, cum non possint simul esse verae [i.e. “Creatio est possibilis” and “Creatio non est possibilis”]’. 52 For the two aspects of academic dispute and authoritative correction, see, respectively, Weijers, A Scholar’s Paradise, pp. 107–38, and Thijssen, Censure and Heresy at the University of Paris.

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according to a well-designed hierarchy of disciplines. Within this system of disciplines, certain rules need to be followed: most importantly, reason and authority should be weighed against each other appropriately. The student who is seeking knowledge needs the authority of the master to show him the right way.53 However, when set on its track, it is the reason of the student which understands that the authority of the master is authentic. The role of the master, therefore, is continually to challenge his student, demonstrating his authority through action and argument, but at the same time leave the student the freedom to find the truth on his own, and to act and argue accordingly.54 Augustine was of course not thinking of the medieval university, an institution which came into being only much later. However, his ideas were fundamental to the set-up of the university.55 The highest authority, of course, was God, who had revealed himself through the Scriptures that were studied and commented upon in the faculty of theology. Even though in this faculty there were masters and students, in a certain sense they all were students of the divine Word which needed to be taught and applied to the questions of the day.56 But what is one to do if there was a disagreement among students about the understanding of the divine Word? In his Summa aurea, William of Auxerre discussed this situation when dealing with the Trinity. Some aspects of the Trinity that are prominent in the discussion are not explicitly

53 The treatise begins as a conversation among friends discussing the problem of divine order, but ends in a long private discourse in which Augustine addresses the relationship of authority and reason as well as the order of the disciplines. He switches from dialogue to monologue, as he explains, since his friends were not yet fully prepared to discuss divine matters, as their arguments had revealed. First, they need to have knowledge of the disciplinary order and the right attitude as seekers of truth, to which Augustine, being their master, introduces them in his long discourse. See Augustine, De ordine, ed. by Green, Lib. 2, cap. 7, p. 120 (n. 24). The relationship between authority and reason is discussed in Lib. 2, cap. 9, pp. 121–23 (nn. 26–27); the disciplinary order in Lib. 2, cap. 12–19, pp. 127–35 (nn. 35–51). For a commentary on this treatise, see Trelenberg, Augustins Schrift ‘De ordine’. 54 Augustine, De ordine, ed. by Green, Lib. 2, cap. 9, pp. 121–22 (n. 26). The same notion is also expressed in Augustine, Soliloquiorum libri duo, ed. by Hörmann, Lib. 2, cap. 11, p. 71 (n. 20): ‘R(atio). Numquidnam magister noster nolebat nos credere, quae docebat, et nosse? A(ugustinus). Immo vehementer ut nossemus instabat’. 55 Significant for the impetus behind the disciplinary structure of the medieval university, that knowledge should be ordered into a curriculum, was, next to Augustine’s De ordine, his De doctrina Christiana, in which he discussed the use of pagan disciplines by Christians. See Augustine, De doctrina christiana libri quattuor, ed. by Green, Lib. 2, n. 104–52, pp. 63–78. 56 Notably, for Pierre d’Ailly, theologians participate in the spiritual power that Christ gave to his apostles to teach and preach the Gospel, which is transmitted to them through the granting of the licentia docendi by Christ’s vicar, the pope. See Bernstein, Pierre d’Ailly and the Blanchard Affair, pp. 197–236 (Pierre d’Ailly, Radix omnium malorum est cupiditas), esp. pp. 208–09, and pp. 237–98 (Pierre d’Ailly, Super omnia vincit veritas), esp. pp. 243–44. For a discussion of the theologian’s status according to Pierre d’Ailly, see Pascoe, Church and Reform, pp. 165–205. For a more general approach, but with a focus on the thirteenth and early fourteenth century, see Marmursztejn, L’Autorité des maîtres, and König-Pralong, Le Bon Usage des savoirs.

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mentioned in the Scriptures as being a necessary part of the faith, he notes. Therefore, the masters must understand that, when discussing these items, they are students who may and should put forward arguments, but not insist on their positions, refusing correction from others. If someone does insist, he sins mortally, since he puts himself above God, arriving at conclusions about the divine Word where God himself was not explicit.57 As these examples show, late medieval scholasticism was supported and sustained by an institutional system of universities and studia that invited masters and students to discuss and challenge their understanding of God and creation, thus producing in the course of time highly sophisticated arguments which, in turn, due to their complexity, caused increasing confusion.58 This paved the way for the intervention of authorities, either the pope, as in the case of Meister Eckhart, or the university, as in the case of John of Montesono, who felt the need to set limits and condemn views if boundaries were trespassed, either concerning the matter discussed or the audiences addressed. Conflict

We are now in a position to understand why the combination of the two developments outlined above reinforced each other almost naturally, and produced the mode of cultural crystallization with its wealth of ideas and its high potential for conflict characteristic of late medieval scholasticism. The scholastic order with its continuous debate yielded a whole range of ideas about how to express divine transcendence: its eternity, infinity, freedom, unity, Trinity, and power, without coming to a definite conclusion as to which the most appropriate attribute is. To be sure, there is a definite position, shared by all, that God exists and that he created the world. But what makes him unique? This question is perhaps easily solved when there is only discussion about God. If, however, he is compared with creation problems arise. Is it

57 William of Auxerre, Summa aurea, ed. by Ribaillier, Lib. 1, tract. 7, cap. 3, p. 120: ‘Qui ergo sua auctoritate asserit aliquid de Deo, ponit se supra Deum, quia iudicat de eo, et ita peccat mortaliter, hec est superbia intellectus quam prohibit Apostolus ubi dicit: “Non plus sapere quam oportet sapere”’. See Romans 12. 3. See also note 17 above. 58 Even theologians who agreed on certain points were divided over the way these points should be argued for. See, e.g., the criticism of John Duns Scotus’s view on the divine attributes of intellect and will in the Liber propugnatorius super primum Sententiarum contra Johannem Scotum, attributed to Thomas Anglicus, Lib. 1, dist. 2, quaest. 3, fol. 22va: ‘In ista autem quaestione, quamvis conclusiones sint verae omnes quas probat doctor iste [i.e. Scotus], tamen in aliquibus insufficienter arguit et dicit’. For a discussion of the dubious authorship of this treatise, see Johannes Schneider in Thomas of Sutton, Quaestiones ordinariae, ed. by Schneider, pp. 63*–66*. Ockham shows a similar attitude towards Aquinas when discussing the issue of divine knowledge. See his Scriptum in librum primum Sententiarum. Ordinatio, ed. by Etzkorn and Kelly, Lib. 1, dist. 35, quaest. 1, p. 425: ‘Quamvis conclusio [i.e. the point made by Aquinas] sit vera secundum bonum intellectum, tamen ista ratio est insufficiens’.

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possible for creation to exist eternally, as Aquinas argued?59 But what is then the difference between it and the divine eternity? Or take the idea of unity. God is the perfect unity. But is unity not also the fundamental nature of the human soul, as Eckhart put forward in his sermons? As a result, a whole number of concepts that were not problematic in the eyes of some who used them in their teaching and writings alarmed others who sensed a different meaning with a possible heretical import, as they contradicted either the limited nature of creation or God’s infinity.60 Who has the authority to decide in such a situation? The academic order allows for debates in which the masters discuss the signification of such concepts, but when the nature of God is concerned, they cannot put themselves above God. The discussion therefore continues and, in most cases, the situation will become more complicated. The virtue of making distinctions, typical of scholasticism, becomes a vice, as it produces new concepts and more meanings that make the concepts under discussion only more ambiguous.61 René Descartes grasped the core of this problem very well. He criticized the scholastics for being engaged in a system of knowledge production that would not end up with truth, but only with endless confusion.62 In his Discours de la Méthode, therefore, he chose a method that was different, insisting on common sense, which all human beings shared equally, and that needed only

59 Thomas Aquinas, De aeternitate mundi, p. 88: ‘Sic ergo patet quod in hoc quod dicitur aliquid esse factum a Deo et numquam non fuisse, non est intellectus aliqua repugnantia’. 60 An interesting case in point is also the debate over esse and existence, whether or not their real distinction was necessary to safeguard the limited nature of creation, which was denied by Henry of Ghent and Godfrey of Fontaines, but vehemently argued for by Thomas of Sutton, Quaestiones ordinariae, ed. by Schneider, Quaest. 26, p. 727: ‘[I]sta positio [i.e. that they are not really distinct] nullo modo potest stare, quia destruit totam fidem de creatione rerum et gubernatione, et ponit omnia esse aeterna et nihil esse creatum in rerum natura’. For a discussion of this debate, see with references to further literature, Wippel, ‘Essence and Existence’. 61 Already Augustine had argued that distinguishing between concepts is among the main characteristics of any discipline. See his Soliloquia, ed. by Hörmann, Lib. 2, cap. 11, p. 73 (n. 20): ‘[N]ec ulla mihi occurrit cuiusvis facies disciplinae, in qua non definitiones ac divisiones et ratiocinationes’. Boethius had composed a treatise on the art of partitioning, which was highly influential: see De divisione liber, ed. by Magee. The excessive use of pagan disciplines, which also implied the making of endless distinctions and additions, was already warned against by Augustine, De doctrina christiana, ed. by Green, Lib. 2, n. 140, p. 74: ‘In quibus omnibus tenendum est “Ne quid nimis”’ and Lib. 2, n. 148, pp. 76–77: ‘[H]oc modo instructus divinarum scripturarum studiosus [i.e. the one who employes the pagan disciplines] cum ad eas perscrutandas accedere coeperit, illud apostolicum cogitare non cesset: “Scientia inflat, caritas aedificat”’. The references are to Terence, Andria, 61, and to i Corinthians 8. 1. 62 René Descartes, Regulae ad directionem ingenii, ed. by Crapulli, Regula 2, p. 5: ‘[P]ost multos labores serò tandem animadvertunt, se dubiorum multitudinem tantùm auxisse, nullam autem scientiam didicisse’. The Regulae were written between 1619–1620 and 1626–1628. For dating and information about the treatise, see Gaukroger, Descartes, pp. 111–26 and pp. 152–81.

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to be applied correctly to arrive at the truth.63 Late medieval scholastics also had a means to stop this process, as we have seen before, and that was falling back on authorities, either the ecclesiastical powers of pope and bishop or the academic ones of the university. Conscience

There is, however, a third type of authority which needs to be taken into consideration and becomes ever more important as we move along the timeline. This authority is the individual theologian who mirrors himself in the person of Christ, the divine Word that had assumed human nature to help mankind find its way to God, as we have already seen with Meister Eckhart. The theologian carries out Christ’s order to teach the Gospel, thus sharing in the apostolic mission of pastoral care. As Peter in his First Epistle had addressed his audience as a ‘chosen generation, a royal priesthood’ of Christ, the theologian could assume a sharing in the nature of Christ not only for himself, but also for the faithful whom he teaches. Against this background, it is comprehensible that Eckhart in his sermons neglected the different natural capacities of his listeners and readers, and claimed that those who understand the divine Word will understand it as he preaches it.64 Christ himself had urged his followers to insist on unambiguous speech, admonishing that their communication be ‘yea, yea; nay, nay’, and displayed unshakeable trust in the divine truth, so that he was prepared even to die for it.65 Accordingly, Eckhart preached to his audience with reference to St John that all who hate their soul in this life will keep it in eternity.66 This sounds harsh and indeed it is. It expresses a growing tension within the system that wants to safeguard divine transcendence, but gets vexed by all the competing and compromising strategies to do so, and hence appeals to absolute truth.

63 See its famous opening lines in René Descartes, Discours de la méthode, ed. by Adam and Tannery, Première partie, p. 1: ‘Le bon sens est la chose du monde la mieux partagée’. See also, Seconde partie, pp. 12–13: ‘Et ainsi ie pensay que les sciences des liures, au moins celles dont les raisons ne sont que probables, & qui n’ont aucunes demonstrations, s’estant composées & grossies peu a peu des opinions de plusieurs diuerses personnes [as was the case in scholasticism], ne sont point si approchantes de la verité, que les simples raisonnemens que peut faire naturellement vn homme de bon sens touchant les choses qui se presentent’. 64 See i Peter 2. 9, and Eckhart’s sermon Beati pauperes spiritu, ed. by Steer, p. 169: ‘Nû bite ich iuch, daz ir alsô sît, daz ir verstât dise rede; wan ich sage iu bî der êwigen wârheit: ir ensît glîch der wârheit, von der wir nû sprechen wellen, sô ensult ir mich nicht verstân’. The sharing in the nature of Christ is addressed in Meister Eckhart, Predigten, ed. by Quint, Sermon 4 (Omne datum optimum), pp. 72–73. There, he refers to Romans 8. 17. 65 Matthew 5. 37, and Mark 14. 36. 66 Meister Eckhart, Predigten, ed. by Quint, Sermon 17 (Qui odit animam suam), p. 293: ‘Bittet des unsern lieben herren, daz wir unser sêle hazzen under dem kleide, als si unser sêle ist, daz wir sie behüeten in daz êwige leben’. See John 12. 25.

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Eckhart is not the only example. He certainly is, however, among the first. As we move towards the period of late scholasticism, the focus on the passion of Christ becomes significant, as in Jan Brugman’s sermons. He preached to his audience that those who suffered and died in great misery are close to Christ.67 Most outstanding in this respect, though, is Jan Hus, who in the course of his trial appeals to Christ, refusing to comply with the ‘yea and nay’, the institutionalized compromise of the academic system that expected him to renounce what he himself claimed not even to have said. He preferred instead to refer to his conscience and insist that he had preached and taught nothing but what the Scriptures declared. In his behaviour he remained faithful to the words of Christ ‘yea, yea; nay, nay’, meaning either yes or no, but not both somehow simultaneously. It caused his death at the stake.68

Jan Hus Late Medieval Scholasticism

I mention Hus not only because he and Wyclif are the main subjects of this volume, but also because with them the process of cultural crystallization that we discussed earlier comes to a peak. Hus, therefore, is key to understanding late medieval scholasticism in its opaque intricacy: the existence of a stable academic system, but at the same time an abundance of ideas, the intervention of authorities, and public scandal. Jan Hus was a preacher and master with his own authorities and heroes, who himself set an example that attracted his many followers, inside and outside the university.69 It is no exaggeration to say that he kept the entire 67 For the late medieval focus on passion, see van Engen, ‘Multiple Options’, esp. p. 278. For Brugman’s sermons, see Jan Brugman, Verspreide Sermoenen, ed. by van Dijk, esp. sermon 4 (Van .ix. edelheit der sielen), p. 41. Information on Brugman is provided by van den Hombergh, Leven en werk van Jan Brugman. 68 See Petr of Mladoňovice’s account of Hus’s trial in Relatio de Magistro Johanne Hus, ed. by Novotný, pp. 115–16: ‘Et ego [i.e. Jan Hus] dico constanter, quod non est tucior appellacio, quam ad Ihesum Christum dominum, qui non flectitur pravo munere, nec falitur falsa atestacione […]. Ecce isti episcopi hortantur me ad hoc, quod revocem et abiurem; timeo hoc facere, ne sim mendax in conspectu domini, et eciam ne conscienciam meam et dei veritatem offendam […]. Et cum hec dixisset, circumsedentes pontifices et alii de dicto concilio dixerunt: “Iam videmus, quoniam induratus est in malicia sua et pertinax in heresi”’. Hus refers to Matthew 5. 37 repeatedly. See, e.g., Jan Hus, Questiones, ed. by Kejř, Quaest. 1 (De testimonio fidei christianae), pp. 1–9, esp. p. 4 and p. 7, and Jan Hus, Defensio articulorum Wyclif, ed. by Eršil, p. 195: ‘[V]alde cavendum est, ne condempnetur veritas et affirmetur falsitas contra illud preceptum Domini Matth. 50: “Sit sermo vester: est, est, non, non”’. For Hus’s reference to his conscience, see also note 118 below. His appeal to Christ is discussed in Soukup, Jan Hus, pp. 148–58. 69 On Jan Hus, see (with an extensive bibliography), Šmahel and Pavlíček, ed., A Companion to Jan Hus; and Soukup, Jan Hus.

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religious, political, and academic spheres in his spell for many years, and that his activities left enormous traces in the landscape of late medieval scholasticism. The Wegestreit is an indirect but far reaching result of the bitter debates between the Bohemians and non-Bohemians at the University of Prague, provoked by his activities and those of his fellow-campaigners and culminating in the departure of the Germans from Prague.70 Other universities tried to avoid such devastating debates undermining academic unity. They became suspicious of the ideas that had driven the Bohemian masters, most notably their realism, and therefore excluded realism from their teaching programmes, establishing nominalism as the norm.71 Hence, in the remainder of this chapter, I intend to illustrate the situation of late medieval scholasticism by looking more closely at a text of Jan Hus which exemplifies the characteristics of the period outlined above, namely the Principia to his Commentary on the Sentences. Positioning Oneself

Principia are solemn introductions to certain texts, in most cases the Sentences of Peter Lombard. Given by bachelors to acquire the master’s degree in theology, they had belonged to the educational system since the thirteenth century, but acquired real significance in the fourteenth century. Other than Jan Hus, authors whose Principia to the Sentences have survived are Pierre d’Ailly, Peter of Candia, Henry of Oyta and Marsilius of Inghen, to mention but a few of the most well-known masters, all testifying to the importance of the genre.72 Jan Hus held his Principia in Prague between 1407 and 1409. He lectured on each of the four books of the Sentences and, accordingly, produced four Principia.73 They all consist of two main parts, as Principia usually do. They begin with praise of the Scriptures and the Sentences in the form of a sermon, whereupon a disputed question follows, in which Hus positions himself against the bachelors who delivered their Principia on the Sentences in the same academic year and others who participated in the discussion.74

70 See Šmahel, ‘The Kuttenberg Decree and the Withdrawal of the German Students from Prague in 1409’; and Šmahel and Nodl, ‘Kuttenberger Dekret nach 600 Jahren’. 71 This was, e.g., the case in Cologne, before the university turned to realism. See Tewes, Die Bursen der Kölner Artisten-Fakultät, pp. 311–22. 72 I discussed the nature of late medieval Principia to the Sentences in Hoenen, ‘Neuplatonismus am Ende des 14. Jahrhunderts’. Also, the lectures on the Bible started with a Principium. See, e.g., Prügl, ‘Medieval Biblical Principia as Reflections on the Nature of Theology’. 73 Hus’s Principia are edited as part of his Commentary on the Sentences. See Jan Hus, Super IV Sententiarum, ed. by Flajšhans and Komínková. For the dating, see Pavlíček, ‘The Chronology of the Life and Work of Jan Hus’, pp. 21–22. 74 For the similar two-part structure of Peter of Candia’s Principia, see Brown, ‘Peter of Candia’s Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard’, pp. 441–53. Hus’s Principia are discussed in Lahey, ‘The Sentences Commentary of Jan Hus’, pp. 135–42. However, Lahey is confused about the genre, mixing the Principia with the Inceptio, puzzled by the editors of Hus’s Sentences commentary, who use as header ‘Inceptio’. See Jan Hus, Super IV

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The Principia were open to the whole academic community and counted among the highlights of academic life. Here, the bachelor demonstrated his intellectual skills as a future master of theology. The Principia of Jan Hus, therefore, provide a unique insight into academic discussions at the University of Prague in the early fifteenth century. Although Principia have a clear-cut twofold structure, they leave enough room to the bachelor. He himself chooses the theme of the inaugural sermon, which is repeated but differently elaborated upon in the four Principia according to the subjects of the four books of the Sentences. Hus had chosen a pericope from the Epistle of James, to wit, the verse ‘If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God’.75 Likewise, the subjects of the inaugural disputations were selected by the bachelor, for each of the four Principia a different one. Just like the sermon, they have a relationship with the books of the Sentences, but the bachelor can embark on any of the topics within these books that he wants to highlight and also establish connections between them. For Hus, two subjects were of major importance, first the nature of the Scriptures, whether or not they were revealed exclusively out of grace, and second, the nature of creation, whether or not God could have created the world eternally.76 In these questions, Hus expounds his views to his fellow bachelors Štěpán Páleč, Peter Mangolt, Johannes von Berg, Nikolaus Stoer, and Matouš of Zbraslav, who in their own Principia, in their inaugural disputations, discuss their own preferred subjects and responded to Hus’s views, as Hus himself does to theirs in the second part of his Principia. Like Hus, Johannes von Berg and Matouš of Zbraslav zoom in on the issue of the eternity of the world,

Sententiarum, ed. by Flajšhans and Komínková, pp. 3, 189, 373, and 501. Hus, however, clearly speaks of ‘Principia’. See, e.g., p. 189: ‘Circa principium primi libri’. Furthermore, the editors inaccurately divide the second part into two separate pieces, the question itself and the discussion with the fellow bachelors. These two sections, however, belong together in all four Principia, as Hus’s wording shows when he moves from the question to the discussion. See, e.g., the beginning of the discussion at p. 20: ‘Iam restat cum venerandis magistris meis et dominis supra dictis conferre et contra eorum dicta secundum conswetudinem replicare’. Next to the main two parts, Principia contain some standard formulae like the ‘Invocatio divini nominis’ at the beginning of the sermon and the ‘Protestatio fidei’ at the beginning of the question. For the ‘Protestatio fidei’ in the Principia of Hus, see the edition at p. 196, and note 110 below. 75 Jan Hus, Super IV Sententiarum, ed. by Flajšhans and Komínková, Principium 1, p. 3: ‘Pater et Filius et Spiritus Sanctus idem Deus, qui affuit in cursus mei principio, assit et in Sentenciarum inicio, in cuius nomine idem thema isti libro applico ita dicens: “Si quis vestrum indiget sapiencia, postulet a Deo”’. See James 1. 5. The same theme is repeated in the subsequent inaugural sermons, see Principium 2, p. 189; Principium 3, p. 374; Principium 4, p. 501. 76 The subjects were discussed mainly in the first two inaugural disputations, but reappear in the final two in the discussion with his fellow bachelors. See Jan Hus, Super IV Sententiarum, ed. by Flajšhans and Komínková, Principium 1, pp. 12–29; Principium 2, pp. 195–205; Principium 3, pp. 383–89; Principium 4, pp. 517–21.

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while Štěpán Páleč and, again, Matouš of Zbraslav address related matters, such as the theory of ideas and the nature of intelligible beings.77 If we consider the tradition of the commentaries on the Sentences, it is clear that these subjects were very popular among theologians. They were put on the agenda in the 1360s in Paris by theologians such as John of Ripa, Gerard of Kalkar, and Peter of Candia, who discussed the problem of unity and diversity, the scale of perfections, and the nature of divine ideas. From Paris, these topics moved to other universities, such as Heidelberg, where Marsilius of Inghen discussed them in the Principia of his Commentary on the Sentences.78 Remarkably, Marsilius defends a position concerning divine ideas that is quite similar to that of Jan Hus and, moreover, deals with the order of creation, a subject that appears in Hus’s Principia as well.79 The interest in these issues remained. In the 1440s, at the University of Cracow, Tomasz of Strzępin broached the problem of divine ideas, quoting extensively from Marsilius of Inghen’s Principia.80 Offensiveness

Principia are not easy to read. The bachelors show off their intellectual and disputational skills, making many subtle distinctions which, at first sight, seem extremely confusing but are introduced to criticize fellow bachelors.

77 The subjects of the inaugural disputations chosen by the other bachelors can be deduced from their discussion in Hus’s Principia. Some of these scholars, such as Štěpán Páleč, are well known. He played a crucial role in Hus’s career, first as an ally, then as an opponent. For information on these fellow bachelors, with references to further literature, see the index to Šmahel and Pavlíček ed., A Companion to Jan Hus, pp. 427–47. For Páleč as Hus’s opponent, see also Fudge, Jan Hus between Time and Eternity, pp. 82–87. 78 See the evidence collected in Hoenen, Marsilius of Inghen, pp. 143–56. 79 Both argue that divine ideas coincide with the divine nature and have an existence only as objects of God’s thought, or objectivaliter. See Marsilius of Inghen, Questiones super quattuor libros Sententiarum, ed. by Santos Noya, Lib. 1, quaest. 1, art. 1, pars 3, p. 21: ‘Nullae ideae sunt in Deo distinctae intrinsece et realiter sive formaliter’; and p. 23: ‘In Deo sunt infinitae ideae extrinsece et obiectivaliter. Patet, quia tot sunt, quot sunt res producibilis, igitur’. As to Jan Hus, his view appears from the answer to Matouš of Zbraslav, who had claimed that in God there are no intelligible beings or ideas according to which God has created the world. Here, Hus replies that there are intelligible beings in God, but they do not have any real or quiditative being (as the Scotists would say), but only as objects of thought. See Jan Hus, Super IV Sententiarum, ed. by Flajšhans and Komínková, Principium 3, p. 385: ‘[R]estat expedire […] magistrum meum Matheum, sacre theologie baccalarium, de Aula Regia, qui contra meum notabile, in quo dixi: “Creare est aliquid de esse intelligibili nullo preter Deum presupposito ad extra producere” arguit sic: “nullum est esse intelligibile”; nego assumptum, quando arguit “vel ipsum esset aliquod esse reale vel quidditativum, vel non”: dico, quod non. Et quando infert: “Igitur illud esse intelligibile esset solum in intellectu sine correspondencia rei”, nego istam consequenciam, quia ipsa nititur destruere omne obiectum ipsius intellectus’. Matouš, though a bachelor in theology, is addressed as master, since he, obviously, is a master of the Arts Faculty. 80 See Hoenen, Marsilius of Inghen, p. 144.

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Also, the polemics are sometimes harsh, aimed at showing the intellectual incompetence of one’s colleagues. These practices cater to marking out one’s own position and to highlighting those subjects which the bachelor himself, as a future master, considers important.81 Jan Hus is no exception to this rule, even though extreme in his offensiveness and tendency to scandal. He argues with extraordinary hostility against Matouš of Zbraslav, for example, to reveal his colleague’s inability to understand Aristotle’s Categories due to the fact that he is a monk, while aiming to present himself as a brilliant logician.82 Perhaps it is owing to this acerbity and sarcasm, which can also be found elsewhere in Hus’s writings, that already after the first Principium some of his fellow bachelors, namely Štěpán Páleč, Peter Mangolt, and Nikolaus Stoer, no longer responded to his views and left Hus, as he himself put it, in peace, so that he, referring to himself as a playful dog, decided not to irritate them any longer.83 Indeed, Hus, in his first Principium, attacks with equal scorn Štěpán Páleč, who had argued that no creature has the power to create, a view which is absolutely orthodox and shared by many theologians to emphasize the chasm between God and creation.84 Hus, however, criticizes this view, insisting that Christ is both God and human being and, since Christ did create, human beings can create. He then turns to strike, asking whether Štěpán Páleč and Peter Mangolt would like to be counted among those who changed the wording of the Scriptures in the Epistle of Paul to the Galatians, reading ‘Christus natus’ instead of ‘Christus factus’, and who thus considered Christ only as God and

81 Already Franz Ehrle noticed the special nature of the Principia, even though, of course, some bachelors were more respectful than others. See Ehrle, Der Sentenzenkommentar Peters von Candia, pp. 39–56, esp. pp. 41–42 and p. 50. 82 See Jan Hus, Super IV Sententiarum, ed. by Flajšhans and Komínková, Principium 4, pp. 517–18: ‘Sed parcendum est magistro [i.e. Matouš of Zbraslav], quia cum sit monachus, debet esse diligencior de psalterio, quam de Aristotelis Postpredicamento’. 83 See Jan Hus, Super IV Sententiarum, ed. by Flajšhans and Komínková, Principium 2, p. 200: ‘[Q]uia magister meus Stephanus Palecz et magister Nicolaus Stoer nec non frater Petrus Mangolt volunt mecum in pace quiescere, igitur ego, ut iuvenis catulus, nolo eos eciam irritare’. Hus’s sarcasm is demonstrated, e.g., in Daňhelka, ‘Das Zeugnis des Stockholmer Autographs von Hus’. 84 See Jan Hus, Super IV Sententiarum, ed. by Flajšhans and Komínková, Principium 1, pp. 20–21: ‘Et primo contra reverendum magistrum meum Stephanum de Palecz, qui dicit in corellario quinti notabilis, quod nulla creatura creative potest aliam creaturam producere’. As to the orthodoxy of Páleč’s view, see, e.g., Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles, Lib. 2, cap. 21, p. 313: ‘Impossible est igitur aliquod ens creatum esse causam alterius per creationem’. It needs to be noted, however, that Peter Lombard discussing the sacrament of baptism ponders the idea that God may create through the ministerial power of a creature. See Peter Lombard, Sententiae in IV libris distinctae, Lib. 4, dist. 5, cap. 3, n. 3, p. 267. This view, though, was not accepted by the masters. See Angotti, ‘Les Listes des “opiniones Magistri Sententiarum quae communiter non tenentur”’, p. 88 (n. 8) and p. 129 (n. 18*). Jan Hus refers to this view of Peter Lombard in Super IV Sententiarum, ed. by Flajšhans and Komínková, Lib. 4, dist. 5, p. 544.

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not as a creature, since they denied the creature Christ divine power.85 In the guise of an intellectual game, this boiled down to accusing his colleagues that they, not thinking clearly enough, had moved in the direction of heresy and forgery of the Scriptures. Later in his Commentary on the Sentences, Hus returns to this issue. There it becomes clear that only a tiny little word was at stake; a word Štěpán Páleč had not used and which would have changed the whole issue, namely the word ‘pure’. Creatures that are pure creatures cannot create, yet Christ who is not a pure creature but also of divine nature, can. It is quite understandable that Štěpán Páleč and Peter Mangolt decided not to argue with Hus any longer.86 This is a small episode, but revealing of the conceptual tenor of Hus’s Principia. They deal with the nature of God, with that of creation and with the authority of the Scriptures, topics which are consistently considered from an extreme angle, lending small items tremendous significance, if certain boundaries are held to have been transgressed. Only God is eternal, creation necessarily is in time, and the Scriptures are absolutely true. This tendency towards extremes and the unwillingness to compromise about seemingly minor issues of wording are particularly striking examples of the features associated with an advanced stage of cultural crystallization. God

Let us have a closer look at the first two topics, the nature of God and of creation. For Hus it is evident that God necessarily is eternal, while for creation this is impossible. This is not only a matter of faith, but in his view also philosophically imperative. Eternity is a unique property of God. No creature can be equal to God nor, therefore, eternal.87 His argument is not based on the impossibility of an infinite number of human souls or revolutions of the heavens, as put 85 See Jan Hus, Super IV Sententiarum, ed. by Flajšhans and Komínková, Principium 1, pp. 20–21: ‘Contra: Christus Jesus est creatura et Christus Jesus creative aliam creaturam produxit: igitur aliqua (alia, ed.) creatura potest aliquam creative producere. […] Nec estimo, quod magister meus Stephanus vel eciam frater Petrus vellet esse de numero illorum, qui corrumpentes textum Apostoli dicunt: “non debet dici factus, sed natus”’. See Galatians 4. 4. To substantiate his reading of the Scriptures, Hus refers to Bede. See, e.g., Beda Venerabilis, Retractatio in Actus Apostolorum, ed. by Laister, cap. 2, n. 35, p. 117: ‘[I]n diuinitate quidem aeternaliter a patre natus est [i.e. Christ], in humanitate autem ex tempore ab ipso patre factus est’. Hus dealt with the issue of the human, and thus created, nature of Christ more extensively in his commentary on the third book of the Sentences. See Jan Hus, Super IV Sententiarum, ed. by Flajšhans and Komínková, Lib. 3, dist. 11, n. 3, pp. 426–30. 86 See Jan Hus, Super IV Sententiarum, ed. by Flajšhans and Komínková, Lib. 2, dist. 1, n. 4, pp. 209–13, esp. p. 210: ‘[N]on potest accio creativa conpetere pure creature’. Štěpán Páleč addressed Hus’s unfair treatment of his opponents in his later polemic treatise Antihus. See Sedlák, ‘Pálčův Antihus’, p. 206. 87 See Jan Hus, Super IV Sententiarum, ed. by Flajšhans and Komínková, Principium 2, pp. 198–99, and Principium 3, pp. 386–87, esp. p. 387: ‘[N]ulla res creata potest Deo eternaliter coexistere, cum eternitas vere essencie conpetat soli Deo’.

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forward by, e.g., Bonaventure, but instead follows the line of Anselm, according to whom God is the most perfect being.88 This attribute can be predicated of only one being, namely God; otherwise he would not be the most perfect one. Eternity is among those predicates that constitute God’s perfection. It is a special predicate, however, as it most clearly expresses the divine perfection, meaning that it is the fullness of ever-perfect being. Creatures, or rather ‘pure’ creatures to be more precise, by contrast do not possess the fullness of being: they are not perfect and therefore necessarily exist in time.89 That creatures are not perfect and necessarily exist in time is an immediate consequence of divine perfection. God’s perfection and the imperfection of creation imply each other. For Hus, it is not true that God could have created an eternal world if he had so wished, a view defended, for instance, by Thomas of Strasbourg. Rather, it is the perfection of God himself that makes an eternal world impossible; for an eternal world is a contradiction which God, being perfect, cannot produce.90 A few decades earlier, the same argument was put forward by Marsilius of Inghen in his reply to Thomas of Strasbourg. Eternal being and created being exclude each other, just as horse and cow do, as Marsilius has it, or man and donkey, as Hus puts it.91 At this point, it is worthwhile to dig a little deeper. Hus is arguing against Matouš of Zbraslav. The latter followed Thomas of Strasbourg who, in his

88 See, e.g., Anselm, Monologion, ed. by Schmitt, cap. 1, pp. 13–15, and cap. 24, p. 42: ‘[V]eram aeternitatem soli illi inesse substantiae, quae sola non facta sed factrix esse inventa est, aperte percipitur […], quod nulli rerum creatarum convenire, eo ipso quod de nihilo factae sunt, convincitur’. Hus refers to Anselm’s Monologion in Super IV Sententiarum, ed. by Flajšhans and Komínková, Principium 2, p. 196. For the different approach of Bonaventure, see his Liber II Sententiarum, ed. by Bello, dist. 1, pars 1, art. 1, quaest. 2, pp. 13–16. 89 Hus defines the notion of eternity in Super IV Sententiarum, ed. by Flajšhans and Komínková, Principium 2, p. 198. See also Lib. 1, dist. 19. n. 4, pp. 114–15. For a discussion, see Matula, ‘The Understanding of Time and Eternity in the Philosophy of Magister John Hus’. 90 Jan Hus, Super IV Sententiarum, ed. by Flajšhans and Komínková, Principium 2, p. 199: ‘[R]epugnat divine potencie omne simpliciter inpossibile inplicans contradiccionem; et quia mundum sensibilem per creacionem eternaliter esse productum inplicat contradiccionem, ideo dicitur divine potencie repugnare’. For the opposing view of Thomas of Strasbourg, see his Commentaria in IIII libros Sententiarum, Lib. 2, dist. 1, quaest. 2, art. 2, fol. 131va: ‘[Q]uicquid Deus ab aeterno potuit velle, hoc ab aeterno potuit producere. Sed ab aeterno potuit velle mundum esse, ergo ab aeterno potuit eum producere in esse’. Hus mentions Thomas of Strasbourg in Super IV Sententiarum, ed. by Flajšhans and Komínková, Principium 2, p. 203. 91 See Marsilius of Inghen, Quaestiones, Lib. 2, quaest. 1, art. 2, fol. 207va: ‘[C]reaturam esse coaeternam Deo intellectus hominis non potest intelligere, plus quam equum esse bovem’. Jan Hus, in his acerbic manner, equates his opponent, Matouš of Zbraslav, with the man that God could have turned into a donkey, if God could have created an eternal world. That God has this power, however, is impossible and cannot be proved, Hus argues. See Jan Hus, Super IV Sententiarum, ed. by Flajšhans and Komínková, Principium 3, p. 386: ‘[Q]uando assumit [i.e. Matouš of Zbraslav] […] “Deus omnipotens conditor omnis creature […] si voluisset, mundum ab eterno produxisset et producere potuisset”, hic concedo consequenciam, sicut et istam: “Deus omnipotens si voluisset, illum sic arguentem asinum fecisset”. Sed probet magister meus, quod potuit Deus illud velle’.

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Principium, argued that God can produce creatures eternally, just as the Father within the divine substance eternally produces the Son.92 For Thomas of Strasbourg and Matouš of Zbraslav, therefore, God has the power to create an eternal world, because of the unity of his essence. The activity within the Holy Trinity is the same as the essential activity that brings about creation. With this argument, Thomas of Strasbourg and Matouš of Zbraslav pursue a similar line of thought as Meister Eckhart, merging the process of the Trinity with the process of creation, which was so heavily criticized by the theologians who examined Eckhart’s case at Avignon.93 Jan Hus, by contrast, adopts the criticism of these theologians, and separates the divine and the created world, thereby using the attribute of eternity in order unambiguously to emphasize the uniqueness of the divine being. This move bears on a different notion of eternity. Thomas of Strasbourg had argued that God cannot produce an equally perfect being, since no being can be his equal, but that the divine power allowed the creation of an eternal world. He therefore distinguishes between eternal being in a weak and a strong sense.94 In contrast, Jan Hus, in line with Marsilius of Inghen and also Henry of Oyta, did not make this distinction. Eternal being, for him as for them, is a special predicate that is identical with absolute perfection and under no circumstances can be attributed to created beings.95 Meanwhile, realist authors had traditionally used the concept of eternal being to qualify the objects of the human sciences as being necessary, perfect, and unchangeable.96 These 92 See Matouš of Zbraslav’s argument quoted by Jan Hus in Super IV Sententiarum, ed. by Flajšhans and Komínková, Principium 3, p. 386: ‘“Sed persona divina producit ab eterno personam a se personaliter differentem, ergo eciam divina essencia potuit ab eterno producere essenciam a se essencialiter differentem, videlicet mundum”’. This is an almost verbatim quotation from Thomas of Strasbourg, Commentaria in IIII libros Sententiarum, Lib. 2, dist. 1, quaest. 2, art. 2, fol. 131ra (n. 6). 93 For Eckhart, see above. There is also a further similarity between the two thinkers. Like Eckhart, who speaks of a ‘creatio passio’, Thomas of Strasbourg uses the term ‘potentia passiva’ to denote that, considered in itself, creation is not eternal, even though God can create eternally. See Thomas of Strasbourg, Commentaria in IIII libros Sententiarum, Lib. 2, dist. 1, quaest. 2, art. 2, fol. 131ra: ‘[M]undus non potuerit esse ab aeterno possibilitate potentiae passivae’. 94 See Thomas of Strasbourg, Commentaria in IIII libros Sententiarum, Lib. 2, dist. 1, quaest. 2, art. 2, fol. 131va (ad primum): ‘[S]i creatura ab aeterno fuisset, adhuc sua propria mensura non fuisset aeternitas’. 95 Henry of Oyta defends this view in his second Principium of his Commentary on the Sentences which he had delivered in Prague. See Vienna, ÖNB, Cod. Pal. Vind. 4004, fol. 134r: ‘[S]impliciter est impossible aliquod ens aliud a Deo infinite et immense fuisse vel futurum esse. […] [P]atet ex hoc quod est omnipotens, et ex hoc quod ipse est quo maius cogitari non potest’. Later, in his Parisian Quaestiones Sententiarum, however, he changed his view and followed the line of Thomas of Strasbourg. See Lang, Heinrich Totting von Oyta, p. 199. 96 The source is Aristotle, Ethica Nicomachea, vi. iii. 1139b19–24. See also Les Auctoritates Aristotelis, ed. by Hamesse, p. 240 (n. 109): ‘Scientia est de his quae non possunt se aliter habere, id est de aeternis’. An example of a realist author who, in his debates with

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authors, now, in hindsight, appeared to have conflated the divine and human realms and were therefore open to charges of heresy, even though it was, once again, realists such as Hus himself who now separated the two spheres. The insistence on the univocity of eternity allowed for unexpected alliances, as in the case of Hus who followed Henry of Oyta and Marsilius of Inghen, nominalist authors, and produced new paradigms to assess theories with surprising and even fatal consequences.97 Pierre d’Ailly accused Jan Hus in Constance of defending Wyclif ’s theory of remanence, since, as he assumed, a realist such as Hus had to defend the eternal being of the bread, an implication that Hus denied, but had no opportunity to invalidate successfully.98 That Hus in Constance became the victim of a semantic radicalization which he himself had endorsed is the irony of a period in which clarity and confusion go hand in hand. Humility

A similar kind of radicalization can be observed in the parts of Hus’s Principia that are devoted to the praise of the Scriptures and the Sentences, that is the sermons. Commending the Scriptures and the Sentences in an explicit way is not new, but belongs to the tradition of this part of the Principia, which usually addresses the truth of the Scriptures and the humility required to understand them. With Hus, however, these two subjects, namely truth and humility, reinforce each other and come to an unexpected climax, when in the fourth sermon he deals with the issue of swearing and unswearing an oath.99 This topic leads us to the moral attitude of the bachelor or master towards his academic institution. As in other writings, Hus in his Principia argued that the Scriptures are without any mistake or ambiguity. Therefore, in the literal meaning of the words they are absolutely true. Here he followed John Wyclif.100 His argument, however, is traditional and in the vein of Augustine and Anselm. God is the most perfect being who cannot produce any error, confusion or

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nominalists, insisted on this qualification of the object of the sciences is Heymericus de Campo. See his Problemata inter Albertum Magnum et sanctum Thomam, fols aiir–avir. For Henry of Oyta and his influence in Prague, see Dekarli, ‘Henry Totting of Oyta and the Prague Nominalist Schola Communis’. See Petr of Mladoňovice, Relatio de Magistro Johanne Hus, ed. by Novotný, p. 75: ‘Tunc cardinalis Cameracensis [i.e. Pierre d’Ailly] […] querebat ab ipso Magistro Johanne, si poneret universalia realia a parte rei. Et ipse respondit, quod sic […]. Tunc ipse arguebat cardinalis: “Sequitur, quod facta consecracione remaneat substancia panis materialis”’. Jan Hus, Super IV Sententiarum, ed. by Flajšhans and Komínková, Principium 4, p. 503. For an example of an inaugural sermon that likewise praises the Scriptures and the Sentences, see the Principium of Johannes Pfeffer, delivered at the University of Freiburg in 1460, in Johannes Pfeffer von Weidenberg, ed. by Füssinger, pp. 160–69. For Wyclif ’s understanding of scriptural truth, see with references to further literature Brungs and Goubier, ‘On Biblical Logicism’.

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lie. The Scriptures are the expression of this divine perfection, inasmuch as the uncreated wisdom of the Trinity reveals itself in the inspired wisdom of the Scriptures.101 It is this wisdom that Hus invokes with the theme he chose for all four sermons: ‘If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God’. Because the wisdom of the Scriptures is without error, theologians who deal with matters of faith must always refer to the Scriptures as the strongest proof of all arguments. Their entire reasoning must be focused on this one argument, the unum argumentum of the Scriptures, which is an allusion to Anselm’s Proslogion. Only with the help of the divine wisdom of the Scriptures can theologians find a definite answer to all their questions and uncertainties, which will always pester them as human beings.102 According to Hus, this does not mean that theologians must read only the Scriptures. Rather, it is their duty to elucidate the faith and to explain it to others. Finding good reasons to understand and to prove increases faith and makes it worthier. Therefore, theologians must strengthen the truth of the faith with philosophical arguments. The Scriptures, however, should be their guide, as it is in this document that God produced an unshakeable testimony of his truth. Again, Hus is following Anselm’s programme of faith seeking understanding.103 However, to get a clearer notion of the theologian’s role according to Hus, it is necessary to take into consideration his reply to Matouš of Zbraslav, who in his Principium had argued that the study of theology by itself is meritorious, and that no particular attitude to such study is needed.104 For Hus this view contradicts daily experience. Evidently, it is not the case that the work of

101 Jan Hus, Super IV Sententiarum, ed. by Flajšhans and Komínková, Principium 1, p. 4: ‘[N]ecesse est agnoscere increatam sapienciam que est sanctissima Trinitas, unus Deus, a quo procedunt omnia, et […] sapienciam inspiratam, que est scriptura sacra, qua disponuntur singula’; and p. 10: ‘[S]icud summum bonum nullam potest in se maliciam includere, sic nec eius veritas, quam dicit, potest includere falsitatem, cum “inpossible sit Deum mentiri”’. See Hebrews 6. 18. For the background to this view, see, e.g, Augustine, Soliloquiorum libri duo, ed. by Hörmann, Lib. 1, cap. 1, p. 5 (n. 3): ‘Deus veritas, in quo et a quo et per quem vera sunt, quae vera sunt omnia’; and Anselm, Proslogion, ed. by Schmitt, cap. 14, p. 112: ‘Quam ampla est illa veritas [i.e. God], in qua est omne quod verum est, et extra quam non nisi nihil et falsum est!’. 102 Jan Hus, Super IV Sententiarum, ed. by Flajšhans and Komínková, Principium 1, p. 10: ‘[L]ocus ab auctoritate sacre scipture est primus locus vel sedes prima argumentorum, ad quem omnia argumenta alia tamquam ad unum primum reducuntur’. See Anselm, Proslogion, ed. by Schmitt, Prooemium, p. 93: ‘[U]num argumentum, quod nullo alio ad se probandum quam se solo indigeret’. 103 Jan Hus, Super IV Sententiarum, ed. by Flajšhans and Komínková, Principium 1, 10: ‘[F]ides augetur, dum fidelis exercitatus in theologia noscit racionem reddere de hiis, que continentur in sacra sciptura et dum scit eos redarguere, qui veritati contradicunt’; and Principium 2, p. 194: ‘[S]criptura sacra non potest in minimo fore falsa capiens veritatis stabilitatem ab ipso Deo’. 104 Matouš of Zbraslav’s view is quoted by Jan Hus in Super IV Sententiarum, ed. by Flajšhans and Komínková, Principium 3, p. 389: ‘Sacre theologie studium est vite eterne meritorium’. The question of whether or not the study of theology is meritorious was often discussed

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theologians explaining faith is always meritorious. Their work can cause the exact opposite and separate human beings from divine wisdom. Respect and love are necessary to find the path to God.105 For Hus, therefore, theologians need a specific mental and moral attitude, which once again connects him with the tradition of Augustine’s De ordine and Anselm’s Proslogion. What kind of respect and love is needed? First, it is respect and love towards the Scriptures, the strong belief and trust that the truth of the Scriptures as the inspired wisdom of God is absolute. Even though there is no opposition between faith and reason, human beings carry the burden of original sin that darkens the human mind. Without the help of the divine wisdom they are lost, which is why they must respect and love this wisdom. Second, and even more, it is respect and love towards Christ, wisdom incarnate, who, as a human being, teaches human beings the way towards God. Christ with his faith, humility, and love towards God is the perfect example for mankind to aspire to the divine wisdom.106 That theologians need an appropriate attitude lest they fail to understand the divine wisdom, is argued for on several occasions in Hus’s Principia: theologians must be virtuous.107 However, his discussion of this topic reaches a culmination in his final Principium, when he embarks on the subject of solemn affirmations. Oath-Taking

Solemn affirmations belong to the daily business of academic institutions. For example, before bachelors were promoted, they had to take an oath that

in the late Middle Ages. It appears, e.g., in Adam Wodeham’s Sentences commentary and in Henry of Oyta’s Abbreviation of Wodeham’s commentary. See Courtenay, Adam Wodeham, p. 187 and p. 223. 105 Jan Hus, Super IV Sententiarum, ed. by Flajšhans and Komínková, Principium 3, p. 389: ‘[S]acre theologie studium de se est indifferens ad merendum vel demerendum, cum plures demerentur quam merentur […]. [D]ico sacre theologie studium est inmeritorium, quia informe sine caritate’. 106 Jan Hus, Super IV Sententiarum, ed. by Flajšhans and Komínková, Principium 3, p. 375: ‘[Q]uilibet viator per traduccionem peccati originalis descendens indiget sapiencia incarnata, ut ipsum firmet, doceat et bonificet’ and p. 376: ‘[E]stote fideles, humiles, studiosi, mundi ac fervidi, quia sic in cortice humanitatis videbitis Deum interiori oculi […], qui incarnacionem pro redempcione humani generis disposuit, in qua nichil est contempnendum, tamquam inutile, nichil respuendum, tamquam falsum’. In his manual for the quodlibetal disputation of 1411, Jan Hus called Christ the most ethical and best philosopher, who cannot be ignored in any debate; otherwise, falsities remain. See Jan Hus, Quodlibet, ed. by Ryba, p. 8: ‘[Q]ui ipsum [i.e. the “moralissimum et optimum philosophum Christum”] excluderet, veritatem proculdubio excluderet et sic in tota disputacione falsitas sophistica remaneret’. On Hus’s notion of Christ as Truth, see Molnár, ‘Réflexion sur la notion de vérité dans la pensée de Jean Hus’. 107 See, e.g., Jan Hus, Super IV Sententiarum, ed. by Flajšhans and Komínková, Principium 1, p. 11: ‘Et patet, quod non gratis, sed meritorie magistri articulos fidei discuciunt, presupposito tamen illo, quod vivant in suis actibus virtuose’.

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they would comply with all the rules and always serve the unity and peace of the institution.108 Likewise, when degrees were awarded, oaths were taken expressing the rights and duties of the academic ranks involved.109 More specifically, at the beginning of lectures or disputations, the bachelors and masters were required to swear that they respected the Catholic faith and all the condemnations decreed by the Church, the councils, or any academic institution. This oath was called the Protestatio fidei. Hus had to swear such an oath when delivering his Principia, like anyone else in Prague.110 Put briefly, academic oaths expressed the ideal image of the students, bachelors, and masters as members of the institution to which they belonged. For Hus, however, as we have seen, the ideal is the academic who seeks divine wisdom as expressed in the Scriptures and incarnated in Christ and who is prepared to accept its truth unconditionally, as Christ himself did.111 Now, this is the 108 See, e.g., the ‘Iuramenta communia’ of the theological faculty of the University of Vienna, in Geschichte der kaiserlichen Universität zu Wien, vol. ii: Statutenbuch der Universität, ed. by Kink, Titulus 8, p. 114: ‘[I]urent [i.e. the bachelors] reuerentiam et honorem et bonum Vniuersitatis et facultatis […] et quod iura, libertates, ordinaciones, consuetudines laudabiles Facultatis sue defendent er seruabunt, ad quemcumque statum peruenerint. […] Item, quod pacem, tranquillitatem inter seculares et Religiosos et inter facultates et Naciones conseruent et procurent’. Similar oaths were part of the statutes of other universities, also in Prague. The German nations in Prague, e.g., referred to this oath that concerns the peace and well-being of the university when they formulated their pledge against the Kutná Hora Decree of 1409. See Documenta magistri Johannis Hus, ed. by Palacký, n. 13 (Formula iurisiurandi), pp. 352–53, esp. p. 352. Hus too refers to this primum iuramentum in his Principium. See Jan Hus, Super IV Sententiarum, ed. by Flajšhans and Komínková, Principium 4, p. 503. For more information on the situation in Prague, see (with a German summary) Nodl, ‘Iurare vel promittere. Příspěvek k problematice pražských univerzitních statut’. 109 See, e.g., the oaths in Geschichte der kaiserlichen Universität zu Wien, vol. ii: Statutenbuch der Universität, ed. by Kink, Titulus 9–13, pp. 115–19, and in Liber decanorum Facultatis Philosophicae Universitatis Pragensis, n. 30 (De juramento magistrandorum), p. 58. 110 An example of such an oath is provided in the earlier mentioned Principium of Johannes Pfeffer delivered in Freiburg. See Johannes Pfeffer von Weidenberg, ed. by Füssinger, pp. 161–62: ‘Protestor igitur in primis et ante omnia, quod nec in actu praesenti nec in aliquo actu futuro divina favente clementia per me fiendo intendo aliquid dicere, quod est contra orthodoxam fidem vel sacrosanctam Romanam Ecclesiam aut contra dicta sanctorum conciliorum ab ea approbatorum, vel quod tendat in favorem alicuius aut aliquorum articulorum in aliqua universitate approbata legitime condemnatorum, sive quovis modo est piarum aurium offensivum’. For Jan Hus, see Super IV Sententiarum, ed. by Flajšhans and Komínková, Principium 2, p. 196. In Hus’s Principium, the Protestatio is not inserted in full length, but only referred to by the inital verb protestor, as it was a standard formula. Bachelors and masters had to use this formula at different occasions while delivering their academic duties. Some of them, therefore, wrote the text down in their notebooks. See, e.g., the formula in Basel, Universitätsbibliothek, MS F VI 58, fol. 311v, which was owned by the Dominican Albert Löffler. For further discussion of the Protestatio in the late medieval period, see the contribution of Dušan Coufal in this volume, pp. 157–77. 111 Such unconditional acceptance for Hus includes paying with one’s life. See, e.g., Jan Hus, Defensio libri de Trinitate, ed. by Eršil, p. 47: ‘[V]olo veritatem, quam michi Deus cognoscere concesserit, et presertim veritatem Scripture divine usque mortem defendere’. Remarkably,

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virtuous academic Hus has in mind in his final Principium. He distinguishes himself from the academic who accepts the rules and prescriptions of his university without pondering their congruence with the truth. He thus swears upon them without knowing whether or not they contradict the truth of the Scriptures. Hus therefore discusses the issue of oath-giving in a negative way, by focusing on oaths that have been sworn illegitimately. He underscores that when someone swears illegitimately and becomes aware of this fact, he should seek not to fulfil what he has sworn. Referring to Peter Lombard, he mentions the case of a person who swears something that is opposed to faith. This may happen without him realizing the contradiction. But as soon as the person becomes aware of it, he must break his oath; otherwise he sins and destroys the faith.112 This means that bachelors and masters, who have come to the conclusion that certain condemnations to which they have sworn are not rightful, should consider themselves no longer bound by oath to these condemnations. Rather, they must oppose these condemnations. Hus does not mention any condemnation in particular. But since all members of the university had taken the oath to respect faith and all its condemnations, while Hus had expressed his devotion to Wyclif as the doctor evangelicus, this opposition also implied opposing the condemnations of John Wyclif that were issued in London and in Prague and, hence, included in the oath. For Hus, in such a case, the truth of the divine wisdom must prevail over the blindness of the academic institution.113 in his Defensio libri de Trinitate, Hus delivers a ‘Protestatio fidei’, but leaves out the Church and the condemnations, mentioning only the Scriptures. See Jan Hus, Defensio libri de Trinitate, ed. by Eršil, p. 41: ‘[P]rotestando more scolastico et solito, quod nec in hoc actu nec in quocunque alio per me fiendo imposterum intendo aliquid pertinaciter asserere vel defendere, quod esset sacre Scripture contrarium vel quovismodo erroneum’. 112 Jan Hus, Super IV Sententiarum, ed. by Flajšhans and Komínková, Principium 4, p. 503: ‘“[I]uramentum, quod est contra fidem, vel contra caritatem, quod observatum in peiorem vergit exitum, pocius mutandum est quam inplendum”. Unde “qui sic iurat, vehementer peccat, cum autem mutat, bene facit”’. See Peter Lombard, Sententiae in IV libris distinctae, vol. ii, Lib. 3. dist. 39, cap. 9, n. 4, p. 226. 113 Wyclif ’s views were condemned in Prague in 1403. See Documenta magistri Johannis Hus, ed. by Palacký, n. 1 (Instrumentum de facta condemnatione), pp. 327–31. In his Sentences commentary, however, Hus defends Wylif ’s orthodoxy when discussing the issue of eternal damnation. He attacks those who had audaciously and thoughtlessly condemned Wyclif. See Jan Hus, Super IV Sententiarum, ed. by Flajšhans and Komínková, Lib. 4, Dist. 20, n. 3, p. 621: ‘Hec propter illos disserui, qui iudicio temerario Magistrum Johannem Wiclef certitudinaliter asserunt et predicant esse dampnatum eternaliter in inferno. Ego autem a temerario volens declinare iudicio, spero, quod sit de numero salvandorum’. Notably, Hus called Wyclif doctor evangelicus while discussing Peter Lombard’s distinction on swearing in the third book of his Sentences commentary, referring to his De mandatis divinis. See Jan Hus, Super IV Sententiarum, ed. by Flajšhans and Komínková, Lib. 3, Dist. 39 n. 3, p. 495. Later on, in 1412, Wyclif was censured again. Once more, Hus contested this condemnation, now on behalf of the Bohemian masters, arguing that Wyclif had been misunderstood, and that the condemnation was not convincingly argued for. See Jan Hus, Defensio articulorum Wyclif, ed. by Eršil, p. 195: ‘[N]ostra universitas non acquievit condempnacioni, facte per doctores

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This means that Hus no longer accepted a crucial rule that had been part of the university system since its earliest beginnings. According to this rule, when opinions are divided, no bachelor or master can insist on his own position, but must be ready to be corrected by the wisdom of the university, the bishop, or the pope. Hus, in opposition to this academic rule, appealed to an authority outside and above the university system, namely the truth of the Scriptures and the integrity of the theologian.114 He displays the same rigorous attitude as Meister Eckhart, but with an important difference. Eckhart had renounced his teachings, subjected himself to the authority of the pope and thus had returned to the community of teachers, as John XXII proudly underscored in his bull. Hus, however, was not willing to submit himself to any authority other than the Scriptures and his own judgment as a theologian.115 At the Council of Constance, the issue of oath-taking reappeared again and once more its legitimacy was at stake. This time, however, the outcome was dramatic and the immediate cause of Hus’s execution. For Hus was not prepared to renounce opinions which, according to himself, he had in pretorio, 45 articulorum, sed poscit continue condempnacionis huiusmodi racionem, eo quod stultum est aliquid sine racione et sic irrationabiliter facere, et presertim in materia morum et fidei asserere vel dampnare’. Also, in his Principium, Hus used the statement of Peter Lombard to criticize the oath of the Germans referred to in note 108 above, according to which they would leave Prague for ever if King Wenceslas IV would not withdraw the Kutná Hora Decree. See Jan Hus, Super IV Sententiarum, ed. by Flajšhans and Komínková, Principium 4, p. 503. I thank Dušan Coufal for having pointed out this connection to the Decree to me. It is clear, however, that Hus’s discussion of swearing is part of his more general treatment of the theologian’s necessary mental and moral attitude addressed in his Principium and elsewhere in his Sentences commentary. 114 Hus claimed that he had always followed this rule of academic humility. He limited it, however, accepting only the truth of the Scriptures and of valid argumentation. See Jan Hus, Defensio libri de Trinitate, ed. by Eršil, pp. 41–42: ‘[P]aratus sum revocare humiliter et, si aliqua persona ecclesie Scriptura sacra vel racione valida docuerit, paratissime consentire. Nam a primo studii mei tempore hoc michi statui pro regula, ut quocienscunque saniorem sentenciam in quacunque materia perciperem, a priori sentencia gaudenter et humiliter declinarem’. In his treatise Antihus, Štěpán Páleč underlined that Hus did not accept instruction from others. See Štěpán Páleč, Antihus, ed. by Sedlák, p. 425: ‘tota communitas sapientum non sufficiet te informare, cum tuis erroribus inheseris animo obdurato’. 115 That Hus was not willing to submit himself was noted in the Council’s final condemnation. See the Sentencia diffinitiva contra Iohannem Hus, ed. by Novotný, p. 503: ‘[S]ancta synodus […] cognovit eundem Iohannem Hus pertinacem, incorrigibilem et adeo talem, quod non cupiebat ad gremium sancte matris ecclesie redire neque hereses et errores per eum publice defensatas et predicatas, defensatos vel predicatos [preadicatos, ed.] velle abiurare’. For John XXII’s different remark on Eckhart, see Acta Echardiana, ed. by Sturlese, n. 65 (In agro dominico), p. 600: ‘[P]refatus Ekardus in fine vite sue fidem catholicam profitens predictos viginti sex articulis […] revocavit ac etiam reprobavit et haberi voluit pro simpliciter et totaliter revocatis, ac si illos et illa singillatim et singulariter revocasset, determinationi apostolice sedis et nostre tam se quam scripta sua et dicta omnia submittendo’.

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never defended, and to swear that he would not teach them again. Such a renunciation, proposed by the Council to settle the case in his advantage and to save him from heresy, he considered to be an illegitimate act because of the suppositio falsi that he had said something which he had not, a charge he was not willing to face, since he was committed only to the truth of divine wisdom and his own integrity.116 This refusal to renounce made him a heretic, officially declared so by the Council. He was handed over to the secular power and sentenced to death at the stake.117

A Final Conclusion Indeed, Hus’s rigour is surprising, but not coincidental. It is the culmination of a gradual process stretching from Eckhart’s attitude as a preacher through John of Montesono’s appeal to Thomas Aquinas to the Wegestreit of the early fifteenth century. As such, it is the distinctive feature of a period in which a growing multiplicity of ideas confused the academic system. Reliable boundaries began to be looked for, not only by virtue of philosophical and theological arguments capable of separating the divine and the human order, but also, and increasingly so, by appeal to authority, be it the authority of tradition, one’s own integrity, or authorities outside the realm of academia or the church order. It is this particular stage of cultural crystallization which distinguishes late medieval scholasticism so sharply from earlier periods.118 116 See Petr of Mladoňovice, Relatio de Magistro Johanne Hus, ed. by Novotný, pp. 103–04: ‘[R]ogo propter deum, quod michi laqueum dampnacionis non veletis inponere, ut non cogar mentiri et abiurare illos articulos, de quibus teste deo et consciencia michi nihil constat […] quia abiurare, ut in Katholicon me legisse memoror, est errori prius tento renunciare’. The reference is to John Balbus, Catholicon, De littera A ante B (not foliated): ‘Abiuratio onis fe. ge. est rei creditae abnegatio’. This definition of ‘abiurare’ was widespread. It appears in another medieval dictionary as well. See the Breviloquus vocabularius, fol. a2r. Matěj of Knín used the same argument earlier in 1408, when the Archbishop asked him to renounce his alleged erroneous view concerning the Eucharist. See Documenta magistri Johannis Hus, ed. by Palacký, n. 5 (Testimonium de actione adversus Mag. Matthiam de Knin), p. 338: ‘[A]bjurare haeresim sit prius tentae haeresi renuntiare, ad quod faciendum dictus M. Mathias minime obligaretur, ut asserebat [i.e. Matěj himself]’. For a discussion, see Nodl, Das Kuttenberger Dekret von 1409, pp. 193–201, esp. p. 195. 117 Sentencia diffinitiva contra Iohannem Hus, ed. by Novotný, p. 503. For a discussion of the Council’s final decision, see Provvidente, ‘Hus’s Trial in Constance’, pp. 280–88; and Soukup, Jan Hus, pp. 189–208. 118 In Constance, Hus appealed to his ‘conscientia’, see notes 68 and 116 above. To be sure, Hus was not the first to argue that one could not set aside one’s conscience. But his case was special. Much earlier, having the Condemnation of 1277 in mind, Godfrey of Fontaines claimed that acting against one’s conscience is a greater sin than following it and thereby disobeying a condemnation or risking excommunication. See Godfrey of Fontaines, Les Quodlibet cinq, six et sept, ed. by de Wulf and Hoffmans, Quodlibet 7, quaest. 18, pp. 402–05, esp. p. 404: ‘[S]emper enim agens contra conscientiam erroneam magis peccat quam agens secundum eam’. Unlike Hus, however, Godfrey stated that one can hardly suppose

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that a bishop who issued a condemnation or excommunication had erred, as long as the Church does not oppose him. Therefore, the bishop’s decision must always be interpreted benevolently. See p. 405: ‘Quia tamen non est de facili supponendum in talibus praelatum manifeste errare quamdiu ab Ecclesia toleratur […] fidelis doctor debet conari illud exponere bono modo’. Godfrey therefore accepted the authority of the Church, whereas Hus did not, but invoked Christ. This invocation upset the Church authorities, as dicussed in Kejř, Die Causa Johannes Hus und das Prozessrecht der Kirche, pp. 90–94. It ignored and challenged the hierarchical order on earth, appealing to something beyond, namely the creator in heaven.

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Bady, Guillaume, ‘Le Prologue du Sic et non d’Abélard’, in Les Réceptions des Pères de l’Eglise au Moyen Âge. Le devenir de la tradition ecclésiale, ii, ed. by Rainer Berndt and Michel Fédou, Archa Verbi, Subsidia 10/2 (Münster: Aschendorff, 2013), pp. 727–42 Bernstein, Alan E., Pierre d’Ailly and the Blanchard Affair: University and Chancellor of Paris at the Beginning of the Great Schism, Studies in Medieval and Reformation Thought, 24 (Leiden: Brill, 1978) Bianchi, Luca, ‘Captivare intellectum in obsequium Christi’, Rivista Critica di Storia della Filosofia, 38 (1983), 81–87 ———, ed., Christian Readings of Aristotle from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, Studia Artistarum, 29 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011) Brown, Stephen F., ‘Peter of Candia’s Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard’, in Mediaeval Commentaries on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, ii, ed. by Philipp W. Rosemann (Leiden: Brill, 2010), pp. 439–69 Brungs, Alexander, ‘Intellekt, Wille und Willensschwäche im Korrektorienstreit. Einheit des Menschen vs. Homunculi’, in Das Problem der Willensschwäche in der mittelalterlichen Philosophie, ed. by Tobias Hoffmann, Jörn Müller and Matthias Perkams, Bibliotheca, 8 (Leuven: Peeters, 2006), pp. 265–83 Brungs, Alexander, and Frédéric Goubier, ‘On Biblical Logicism: Wyclif, virtus sermonis and Equivocation’, Recherches de Théologie et Philosophie médiévales, 76 (2009), 199–244 Burke, Peter, Varieties of Cultural History (Cambridge: Polity, 1997) Corbini, Amos, ‘Considerazioni sulla “cristianizzazione” di Aristotele in alcuni commenti di Marsilio de Inghen’, in Luca Bianchi ed., Christian Readings of Aristotle, pp. 287–316 Courtenay, William J., Adam Wodeham: An Introduction to His Life and Writings, Studies in Medieval and Reformation Thought, 21 (Leiden: Brill, 1978) ———, Schools and Scholars in Fourteenth-Century England (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987) Daňhelka, Jiří, ‘Das Zeugnis des Stockholmer Autographs von Hus’, Die Welt der Slaven, 27 (1982), 225–33 Dekarli, Martin, ‘Henry Totting of Oyta and the Prague Nominalist Schola Communis between 1366 and 1409: A Preliminary Draft’, Acta Universitatis Carolinae. Historia Universitatis Carolinae Pragensis, 55.1 (2015), 53–70 Ehrle, Franz Kardinal, Der Sentenzenkommentar Peters von Candia, des Pisaner Papstes Alexanders V. Ein Beitrag zur Scheidung der Schulen in der Scholastik des vierzehnten Jahrhunderts und zur Geschichte des Wegestreites (Münster: Aschendorff, 1925) Fox, Rory, Time and Eternity in Mid-Thirteenth-Century Thought, Oxford Theological Monographs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006) Fudge, Thomas A., Jan Hus between Time and Eternity: Reconsidering a Medieval Heretic (Lanham: Lexington, 2016) Gabriel, Astrik L., ‘Via Antiqua und Via Moderna and the Migration of Paris Students and Masters to the German Universities in the Fifteenth Century’, in Antiqui und Moderni. Traditionsbewußtsein und Fortschrittsbewußtsein im späten Mittelalter, ed. by Albert Zimmermann, Miscellanea Mediaevalia, 9 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1974), pp. 439–83

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Gansweidt, Birgit, Art. ‘H. v. Halberstadt’, in Lexikon des Mittelalters, iv (Munich: Artemis, 1989), col. 1864 Gaukroger, Stephen, Descartes: An Intellectual Biography (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995) Gehlen, Arnold, Die Seele im technischen Zeitalter und andere sozialpsychologische, soziologische und kulturanalytische Schriften, Gesamtausgabe, 6 (Frankfurt a. M.: Klostermann, 2004) Gottschall, Dagmar, ‘Eckhart’s German Works’, in A Companion to Meister Eckhart, ed. by Jeremiah M. Hackett, Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition, 36 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), pp. 137–83 Grotz, Stephan, ‘Nur mit Vorsicht zu genießen. Die Lehre von der Ewigkeit der Welt bei Meister Eckhart und Nicolaus Cusanus’, in Meister Eckhart und Nikolaus von Kues, ed. by Harald Schwaetzer and Georg Steer, MeisterEckhart-Jahrbuch, 4 (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2011), pp. 83–106 Guthrie, William Keith Chambers, Aristotle: An Encounter, A History of Greek Philosophy, 6 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990) Hoenen, Maarten J. F. M., Marsilius of Inghen: Divine Knowledge in Late Medieval Thought, Studies in the History of Christian Thought, 50 (Leiden: Brill, 1993) ———, ‘Neuplatonismus am Ende des 14. Jahrhunderts. Die Prinzipien zum Sentenzenkommentar des Marsilius von Inghen’, in Marsilius von Inghen. Werk und Wirkung, ed. by Stanisław Wielgus (Lublin: Redakcja Wydawnictw KUL, 1993), pp. 165–94 Imbach, Ruedi, and Adriano Oliva, La Philosophie de Thomas d’Aquin, Repères philosophiques (Paris: Vrin, 2009) Judson, Lindsay, ed., Aristotle’s Physics: A Collection of Essays (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991) Kaluza, Zénon, ‘La Crise des années 1474–1482. L’Interdiction du Nominalisme par Louis XI’, in Philosophy and Learning: Universities in the Late Middle Ages, ed. by Maarten J. F. M. Hoenen, J. H. Josef Schneider, and Georg Wieland, Education and Society in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, 6 (Leiden: Brill 1995), pp. 293–327 Kejř, Jiří, Die Causa Johannes Hus und das Prozessrecht der Kirche, trans. by Walter Annuß (Regensburg: Friedrich Pustet, 2005) Kenny, Anthony, and Jan Pinborg, ‘Medieval Philosophical Literature’, in The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy from the Rediscovery of Aristotle to the Disintegration of Scholasticism 1100–1600, ed. by Norman Kretzmann, Anthony Kenny, and Jan Pinborg (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 11–42 König-Pralong, Catherine, Le Bon usage des savoirs. Scolastique, philosophie et politique culturelle, Études de philosophie médiévale, 98 (Paris: Vrin 2011) Krupa, Paweł, ‘La Lettre en défense de saint Thomas d’Aquin de Jean de Monzon OP (1388)’, in Archivum Franciscanum Historicum, 98 (2005), 633–47 Lamy, Marielle, ‘Les Dominicains dans la tourmente. Les suites de l’affaire Jean de Monzon’, in Religion et société urbaine au Moyen Âge, ed. by Patrick Boucheron and Jacques Chiffoleau, Histoire ancienne et médiévale, 60 (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2000), pp. 177–200

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Lang, Albert, Heinrich Totting von Oyta, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Theologie des Mittelalters, 38/4–5 (Münster: Aschendorff 1937) Lahey, Stephen E., ‘The Sentences Commentary of Jan Hus’, in A Companion to Jan Hus, ed. by František Šmahel and Ota Pavlíček, Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition, 54 (Leiden: Brill, 2015), pp. 130–69 Marmursztejn, Elsa, L’Autorité des maîtres. Scolastique, normes et société au xiiie siècle, Histoire, 81 (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2007) Martin, Hervé, Le Métier de prédicateur en France septentrionale à la fin du Moyen Âge (1350–1520), Histoire (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1988) Matula, Jozef, ‘The Understanding of Time and Eternity in the Philosophy of Magister John Hus’, in Time and Eternity: The Medieval Discourse, ed. by Gerhard Jaritz and Gerson Moreno-Riaño, International Medieval Research, 9 (Turnhout: Brepols 2003), pp. 223–30 Meliadò, Mario, Sapienza peripatetica. Eimerico di Campo e i percorsi del tardo albertismo, Dokimion, 40 (Münster: Aschendorff, 2018) Molnár, Amedeo, ‘Réflexion sur la notion de vérité dans la pensée de Jean Hus’, Listy Filologické, 88 (1965), 121–31 Moule, Gregory S., Corporate Jurisdiction, Academic Heresy, and Fraternal Correction at the University of Paris, 1200–1400, Education and Society in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, 51 (Leiden: Brill, 2016) Nodl, Martin, Das Kuttenberger Dekret von 1409. Von der Eintracht zum Konflikt der Prager Universitätsnationen, trans. from the Czech original by Roswitha und Pavel Cervicek, Forschungen zur Geschichte und Kultur des östlichen Mitteleuropa, 51 (Cologne: Böhlau, 2017) ———, ‘Iurare vel promittere. Příspěvek k problematice pražských univerzitních statut’, Acta Universitatis Carolinae. Historia Universitatis Carolinae Pragensis, 47.1–2 (2007), 49–57 Pareto, Vilfredo, Traité de sociologie générale, Œuvres complètes, 12 (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1968) Pascoe, Louis B., Church and Reform: Bishops, Theologians, and Canon Lawyers in the Thought of Pierre d’Ailly (1351–1420), Studies in Medieval and Reformation Traditions, 55 (Leiden: Brill 2005) Pavlíček, Ota, ‘The Chronology of the Life and Work of Jan Hus’, in A Companion to Jan Hus, ed. by František Šmahel and Ota Pavlíček, Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition, 54 (Leiden: Brill, 2015), pp. 9–68 Piché, David, La Condamnation Parisienne de 1277, Sic et non (Paris: Vrin, 1999) Porro, Pasquale, Tommaso d’Aquino. Un profilo storico-filosofico, Frecce, 136 (Rome: Carocci, 2012) Provvidente, Sebastián, ‘Hus’s Trial in Constance. Disputatio aut Inquisitio’, in A Companion to Jan Hus, ed. by František Šmahel and Ota Pavlíček, Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition, 54 (Leiden: Brill, 2015), pp. 254–88 Prügl, Thomas, ‘Medieval Biblical Principia as Reflections on the Nature of Theology’, in What is ‘Theology’ in the Middle Ages? Religious Cultures of Europe (11th–15th Centuries) as Reflected in their Self-Understanding, ed. by Mikołaj Olszewski, Archa Verbi Subsidia, 1 (Münster: Aschendorff, 2007), pp. 253–75

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Putallaz, François-Xavier, Insolente liberté. Controverses et condamnations au xiiie siècle, Vestigia, 15 (Fribourg: Editions Universitaires, 1995) Schabel, Christopher, ed., Theological Quodlibeta in the Middle Ages, i: The Thirteenth Century, and ii: The Fourteenth Century, Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition, 1 and 7 (Leiden: Brill, 2006 and 2007) Sedlák, Jan, ‘Pálčův Antihus’, in Miscellanea husitica Ioannis Sedlák, ed. by Jaroslav V. Polc and Stanislav Přibyl (Prague: Univerzita Karlova, 1996), pp. 180–207 Senner, Walter, ‘Meister Eckhart’s Life, Training, Career, and Trial’, in A Companion to Meister Eckhart, ed. by Jeremiah M. Hackett, Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition, 36 (Leiden: Brill, 2013), pp. 7–84 Šmahel, František, ‘The Kuttenberg Decree and the Withdrawal of the German Students from Prague in 1409: A Discussion’, History of Universities, 4 (1984), 153–66 Šmahel, František, and Martin Nodl, ‘Kuttenberger Dekret nach 600 Jahren. Eine Bilanz der bisherigen Forschung’, Acta Universitatis Carolinae. Historia Universitatis Carolinae Pragensis, 49.2 (2009), 19–54 Šmahel, František, and Ota Pavlíček, ed., A Companion to Jan Hus, Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition, 54 (Leiden: Brill, 2015) Soukup, Pavel, Jan Hus, Kohlhammer-Urban-Taschenbücher. Geschichte, Politikwissenschaft, 737 (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2014) Taber, Douglass, ‘Pierre d’Ailly and the Teaching Authority of the Theologian’, Church History, 59 (1990), 163–74 Tewes, Götz-Rüdiger, Die Bursen der Kölner Artisten-Fakultät bis zur Mitte des 16. Jahrhunderts, Studien zur Geschichte der Universität zu Köln, 13 (Cologne: Böhlau, 1993) Thies, Christian, Arnold Gehlen zur Einführung (Hamburg: Junius, 2000) Thijssen, Johannes M. M. H., Censure and Heresy at the University of Paris, 1200–1400, The Middle Ages Series (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998) Trelenberg, Jörg, Augustins Schrift ‘De ordine’, Beiträge zur historischen Theologie, 144 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009) Trusen, Winfried, Der Prozeẞ gegen Meister Eckhart. Vorgeschichte, Verlauf und Folgen, Rechts- und Staatswissenschaftliche Veröffentlichungen der GörresGesellschaft, NF 54 (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1988) van den Hombergh, Frederik A. H., Leven en werk van Jan Brugman OFM (± 1400–1473), Teksten en Documenten, 6 (Groningen: Wolters, 1967) van Engen, John, ‘Multiple Options. The World of the Fifteenth-Century Church’, Church History, 77 (2008), 257–84 Weijers, Olga, A Scholar’s Paradise: Teaching and Debating in Medieval Paris, Studies on the Faculty of Arts, 2 (Turnhout: Brepols 2015) Wippel, John, ‘Essence and Existence’, in The Cambridge History of Medieval Philosophy, ii, rev. edn, ed. by Robert Pasnau and Christina van Dyke (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), pp. 622–34

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Part I

Methods of Thinking: Philosophical and Theological Speculation

Christophe Grellard

John Wyclif on Implicit Faith

This essay addresses the way in which John Wyclif deals with the concept of implicit faith, and attempts to draw out some of its ecclesiological consequences. It explores certain new developments in religious observance in the late Middle Ages, and identifies crucial points of tension between the individual and the ecclesiastical institution. Indeed, one of the most important facets of late medieval religious life is the deepening tension between the individual and the Church in the administration of faith and salvation. Whereas the Church sought to develop an increasingly juridical approach to faith and salvation, requiring for the most part mere obedience from the faithful, individuals began to develop strategies to achieve a more interior and personal faith, grounded in a direct relationship with God. The question of implicit faith, and especially Wyclif’s attacks on this concept, constitute an illuminating case study enabling a nuanced understanding of the fraught relationship between the individual and the institution. As is well known among medieval scholars, the concept of implicit faith has an important ecclesiological dimension since it allows the organization of the relation between clerks and lay people according to a cognitive hierarchy.1 Accordingly, the epistemic superiority of the clerks entails a relation of obedience of lay people to the clerks.2 To understand this point, it is necessary to recall some properties of the medieval concept of faith, a concept John Van Engen correctly labelled as ‘a concept of order’.3 Beyond the social and institutional dimensions of religion, Christianity is an alethic, soteriological and universalist



1 Interestingly, the concept of implicit faith is still used to describe the political and social situations of the ‘delegation of belief ’. See, for example, Bourdieu, La Distinction, chap. 8, pp. 463–541. 2 Surprisingly, there are very few studies on this topic. See Ritschl, Fides implicita; Hoffmann, Die Lehre von der Fides Implicita; Schmitt, ‘Du bon usage du credo’. 3 Van Engen, ‘Faith as a Concept of Order’. Christophe Grellard  •  ([email protected]), is Professor (Directeur d’études) at the Ecole pratique des hautes études (University PSL), in the Department of Religious Studies, and a member of the Laboratoire d’études des monothéismes (CNRS, UMR 8584). Wycliffism and Hussitism: Methods of Thinking, Writing, and Persuasion, c. 1360 – c. 1460, ed. by Kantik Ghosh and Pavel Soukup, MCS 47 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021), pp. 75–97 FHG10.1484/M.MCS-EB.5.124369

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religion. In other words, it claims that salvation is produced by assent to a revealed truth (which is warranted by the Church understood as a chain of witnesses), and that nobody can be saved except by this truth.4 Due to this relation to truth, there is not only a practical but also a cognitive dimension to this kind of religion. This aspect has some embarrassing consequences, mostly in the case of people (e.g. lay people, uneducated people, etc.) who do not or are held not to have the cognitive capacity to access such a truth. The problem is then the spiritual control of lay people. When facing this problem, theologians have to preserve the idea of an ecclesiastical mediation in the administration of the truth (that is, in the definition of true beliefs and of the rituals which express these beliefs). This ecclesiastical mediation is a part of the social control of lay people but it also takes account of the sociological reality of a largely uneducated population. In this perspective, medieval theologians elaborated the concept of implicit faith, by which lay people put their trust in clerics, and in some way, delegate their belief to them. But such an indirect access to the truth raises many questions. If salvation requires an assent to the truth, and if faith is a kind of knowledge of this truth, can we offload this cognitive requirement onto somebody else? When we consider the formation of the notion of implicit faith, it clearly appears that from the beginning there are tensions within the concept of faith between the dimension of (direct) knowledge and the dimension of trust (or indirect knowledge). John Wyclif deeply values the cognitive part of Christianity by claiming that every Christian should know the Scriptures (as the origin of truth).5 At the same time, this defence of direct knowledge is linked to a criticism of the ecclesiastical hierarchy.6 As a consequence, Wyclif ’s epistemology of belief seems to form the framework of his conception of the Church. Indeed, his articulation of the concepts of faith (fides) and opinion (opinio) allows him to engage in a subtle deconstruction of the concept of implicit faith. This essay will begin by briefly sketching the development of the concept of implicit faith before Wyclif; it will then consider Wyclif ’s epistemology of belief and its consequences for the concept; it will end by examining some examples of reactions to Wyclif ’s criticism of implicit faith.

Implicit Faith before Wyclif Even if the expression as such appears only in the early thirteenth century, one of the first witness being found in the work of William of Auxerre, the concept



4 The idea was clarified by Jan Assman in relation to the concept of the ‘Mosaic distinction’, but Assman, as far as I know, ignored the question of the link between truth and salvation. See Assmann, The Price of Monotheism. 5 On this point, see Ghosh, The Wycliffite Heresy; Hurley; ‘Scriptura sola’. 6 On Wyclif ’s ecclesiology, see Shogimen, ‘Wyclif ’s Ecclesiology’.

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relies on older discourses and directly depends on the notion of fides velata (veiled faith) introduced by Peter Lombard in the Sentences. It was very soon turned into a mode of institutional control. Furthermore, the concept of implicit faith was developed in the shadow of the notion of the ‘faith of the Church’ (fides ecclesiae) and in a close relation with it. As has been pointed out by Marie-Thérèse Nadeau in her comprehensive study of this notion,7 it has a twofold meaning, objective and subjective. According to the objective meaning, the faith of the Church is the entire body of its dogma, whereas according to the subjective meaning, fides ecclesiae is akin to collective belief, i.e. the beliefs of all the faithful. Until the late eleventh–early twelfth centuries, the objective meaning was the pre-eminent (if not the sole) meaning. But discussions relating to the baptism of children introduced a change. The baptism of young children who are not able to believe by themselves (that is, to assent to ecclesiastical dogma and trust in the Church) must be grounded in the faith of others (fides aliena). In Peter Lombard’s thought in particular, the faith of the Church, which guarantees the faith of the children, is a collective of the beliefs of the entire body of the baptized faithful (consortio fidelium).8 The function of these faithful is to confess the faith of the children in their place. In other words, they have to believe for them and to warrant their future personal beliefs. Moreover, this faith of the Church offers a way to solve the problem of priestly deficiencies (for example, if the priest is a heretic and does not believe in the efficacy of the sacrament). These debates about fides ecclesiae therefore gradually made room for the idea of a collective belief, and for the possibility that one’s belief could be delegated. It is this idea of a delegation of belief that forms the core of the concept of implicit faith. But, as we shall see, beyond these common features shared by fides ecclesiae and implicit faith, there is a major difference: implicit faith requires an individual act of belief in the Church, i.e. an enunciation of our trust in the Church. The Birth of the Concept of Implicit Faith

In his Sentences, Peter Lombard asks which kind of faith is enough for salvation (de sufficientia fidei).9 The problem is to determine if someone can be saved with only a partial knowledge of the revealed truth. To answer this question, Peter first introduces the idea of a minimal core of faith, a mensura fidei, which determines the conditions of salvation. According to Hebrews 11. 6, it is necessary to believe that God exists and that he rewards people who trust him: ‘Est autem quaedam fidei mensura, sine qua nunquam potuit esse salus. Unde Apostolus: Oportet accedentem credere quia est, et quod remunerator est sperantium in se’ (There is some measure of faith without which salvation was never possible. Hence the Apostle: ‘The one who comes to God must believe that God is, and

7 Nadeau, Foi de l’Eglise. 8 Peter Lombard, Sententiae, ii, bk 4, dist. 4, c. 4, p. 259. 9 Peter Lombard, Sententiae, ii, bk 3, dist. 25, c. 1–2, pp. 152–55.

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that he is the rewarder of those who hope in him’).10 Second, for people who do not have the cognitive capacities completely to grasp revealed truth, Peter introduces a differentiation between a clear and a veiled revelation. People may have direct and clear faith in the articles (on the model of the Patriarchs); or, they can have an indirect and indistinct faith. In such a case, people believe in something that they cannot understand and they believe it because a higher authority (the maiores who have a distinct faith) has taught them to believe it: Sicut et in Ecclesia aliqui minus capaces sunt, qui articulos Symboli distinguere et assignare non valent, omnia tamen credunt quae in Symbolo continentur: credunt enim quae ignorant, habentes fidem velatam in mysterio; ita et tunc minus capaces, ex revelatione sibi facta, maioribus credendo inhaerebant, quibus fidem suam quasi committebant. (In the Church also there are some who are less able, and so cannot distinguish and explain the articles of faith, but who nevertheless believe all that is contained in the Creed; these believe what they do not know, having a faith veiled under a mystery. In the same way, in that earlier time, too, those who were less able, on the strength of a revelation made to them, adhered in faith to the elders, to whom they, as it were, entrusted their faith.)11 This distinction between veiled and clear faith, along with the model of ox and donkeys ( Job 1. 14), is the ground of later theories of implicit and explicit faith. William of Auxerre was among the first to use the term ‘implicit faith’. Around 1220, in the Summa aurea, commenting on Peter Lombard’s Sentences, he addresses the question of the layman’s faith: Sed prelati tenentur credere omnes explicite, quia tenentur reddere rationem de ea que est in eis fide et spe, sicut dicit beatus Petrus. Credere autem implicite est credere in hoc universali: quicquid credit Ecclesia, credere esse verum. (But prelates are obliged to believe explicitly all the articles, since they are obliged to give an account of what is contained in these articles, according to faith and hope, as St Peter says. But to believe implicitly is to believe in this universal proposition: I believe that everything that the Church believes is true.)12 Clerics, especially prelates and preachers, have to educate and teach the lay people. For this reason, they must have a complete knowledge of the articles

10 Peter Lombard, Sententiae, ii, bk 3, dist. 25, c. 1, pp. 152–53; Peter Lombard, Sentences, trans. by Silano, iii, p. 106. 11 Peter Lombard, Sententiae, ii, bk 3, dist. 25, c. 2, p. 155; Peter Lombard, Sentences, trans. by Silano, iii, p. 108. 12 William of Auxerre, Summa aurea, ed. by Ribaillier, Lib. iii, tract. 12, c. 6, p. 212.

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of faith, that is, an explicit faith.13 By contrast, lay people must rely on clerics’ explicit faith: that is, they are not required to give a rational account of each of their beliefs, nor do they have to believe any article of faith in particular. They only need to know the Creed and to claim they trust in the Church, by giving an assent to a general proposition: ‘I believe that all that the Church believes is true’. The reduction of implicit faith to a general trust in the Church was popularized by Pope Innocent IV. He explicitly defined it by the motto ‘quidquid credit ecclesia’ in a comment on the first canon of the fourth Lateran Council (Extra Firmiter): Firmiter credimus. De fide teneas quia quaedam est fidei mensura ad quam quilibet tenetur et quae sufficit simplicibus et etiam forte omnibus laicis, scilicet quia oportet quemlibet adultum accedentem ad fidem credere quia Deus est et quod est remunerator omnium bonorum. Item oportet alios articulos credere implicite, id est, credere verum esse, quicquid credit ecclesia catholica. (We believe firmly. About faith, you must hold that there is a rule of faith to which everyone is obliged to adhere, and which is enough for the simple or unlettered, and perhaps also for all lay people. Indeed, it is required of any adult who comes to faith that he believe that God exists, and that he rewards all good actions. Moreover, it is required that he believe implicitly the other articles, that is, believe that everything that the catholic Church believes is true.)14 Drawing on Peter Lombard’s mensura fidei and William of Auxerre’s fides implicita, Innocent IV clearly assigns to lay people the obligation to believe explicitly in God’s existence and bounty, and to believe implicitly in the Church as the guarantor of all other truths of faith. The Tension between Trust and Knowledge from Aquinas to Ockham

Obviously, the difficulty with the concept of implicit faith lies in the tension between the attempt to control lay people and the necessity for any faithful Christian to know some truth in order to be saved. Aquinas’s solution consists in including the teaching duties of the clerics (the officium dicendi fidem) into the hierarchical system of the Church as an institution: Ad quartam quaestionem dicendum quod illi quibus incumbit officium docendi fidem sunt medii inter Deum et homines; unde respectu Dei sunt

13 The social involvement of the former theologians (of the so-called ‘Peter the Chanter’s circle’) has been well studied by John Baldwin: see Baldwin, Masters, Princes and Merchants. The same work remains to be done in the case of William of Auxerre and his generation. 14 Innocent IV, Apparatus in quinque libros Decretalium, in i Decret., tit. 1 De summa Trinitate et fide catholica, c. 1. On Firmiter credimus, see Rainini, ‘Firmiter credimus’.

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homines et respectu hominum sunt dii, inquantum divinae cognitionis participes sunt per scientiam Scripturarum vel per revelationem. (To the fourth question, we have to answer that those to whom pertains the duty to teach the faith are intermediates between God and men. In relation to God, they are men, but in relation to men, they are gods, inasmuch they take part in divine knowledge through knowledge of Scripture or through revelation.)15 Indeed, Aquinas insists on the duty to teach that belongs to the maiores since they are an intermediary between God and men. In other words, the faith of lay people is a trust in the faith (understood as a form of knowledge) of the clerics. But Aquinas is anxious to provide a warrant for this trust. For this he uses a Dionysian outline of transmission by participation. The clerics take part in the divine Truth by illumination or via Scripture and transmit to the lower levels of the Church the knowledge they have received. In this case, the trust of lay people can be warranted by this participation by clerics in the deity. Here, the hierarchy of cognitive relations overlaps with the hierarchy of the potestates: the higher the clerics, the more learned they are (since they are closer to God).16 This tension between knowledge and trust reaches a peak and finds a resolution with William of Ockham in the second quarter of the fourteenth century.17 Ockham claims that a layman has to believe explicitly in a single universal proposition, from which follow many other singular propositions which he is supposed to believe implicitly. This proposition is the following: everything taught by the Scriptures of the universal Church is true. To this explicit belief must be added another condition, namely that the layman does not obstinately adhere to a possibly false dogma since the criterion of obstinacy distinguishes heresy from mere error. Discipulus: Quomodo potest simplex laicus integram fidem servare, qui de multis quae ad fidem catholicam spectant nunquam cogitavit? Talis ergo laicus catholicus esse non potest si omnis catholicus integram tenet catholicam fidem. Magister: Respondent theologi quod servare vel tenere integram fidem contingit omnia quae ad fidem pertinent orthodoxam explicite vel implicite fideliter et absque ulla dubitatione credendo. (Disciple: How can a simple layman observe the whole faith, who has never thought of many things that belong to the Catholic faith? 15 Thomas Aquinas, In III Sent., ed. by Moos, dist. 25, q. 2, a. 1, p. 799. On Aquinas’s theory of implicit faith, see La Soujeole, ‘Foi implicite et religions non chrétiennes’. 16 The use of a Dionysian model for giving an intellectual justification of political and social differences is a common trend in the Middle Ages from the eleventh century onwards. See Duby, Les Trois Ordres, and Bougard, Iogna-Prat and Le Jan, ed., Hiérarchies et stratifications sociales. 17 See Grellard, ‘La fides chez Guillaume d’Ockham’.

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Such a layman therefore cannot be a catholic, if every catholic holds the whole catholic faith. Master: Theologians answer that to observe or hold the whole faith is possible by believing faithfully and without any doubt, explicitly or implicitly, all things that pertain to the orthodox faith.)18 At first sight, Ockham’s position could seem very ordinary. But actually, the change is important on two levels. First, Ockham defends a highly cognitive conception of faith. Indeed, faith is organized as a deductive system from some universal premises: Credere implicite est alicui universali ex quo multa sequuntur firmiter assentire et nulli contrario pertinaciter adhaerere, et ideo qui firmiter tenet omnia tradita in scriptura divina et doctrina universalis ecclesiae esse vera et sana, et non adhaeret pertinaciter alicui assertioni veritati contrariae orthodoxae, fidem catholicam inviolatam tenet et integram et catholicus est censendus. (To believe implicitly is to assent firmly to some universal [statement] from which many things follow and not adhere pertinaciously to anything contrary, and therefore whoever firmly holds that everything handed down in divine scripture and the teaching of the universal church is true and sound, and does not adhere pertinaciously to any assertion contrary to orthodox truth, holds the catholic faith inviolate and whole and should be considered a catholic.)19 Ockham moves from a conception of implicit faith as a delegation of belief to a conception of implicit faith as an indistinct or diffuse form of knowledge which will be clarified over time. At the same time, Ockham stresses the general fallibility of the experts in the Church (that is, lawyers and theologians), and even of the pope. No clerical functions can offer any protection against error in matters of faith. In his theological works produced in England between 1317 and 1323, Ockham criticized the scientific status of theology.20 In a convergent perspective, in his ecclesiological work in the 1330s, he pointed out that no viator is confirmed in grace and faith, since every viator is a sinner. He deduced from this soteriological fallibility an epistemological fallibility. Since anyone may sin, he may also err in the matters of faith: Qui non est confirmatus in fide, si usum habeat racionis, potest errare contra fidem, sed papa non est confirmatus in fide quia si esset confirmatus in

18 Ockham, Dialogus, ed. and trans. by Kilcullen, i. iii. 1. 19 Ockham, Dialogus, ed. and trans. by Kilcullen, i. iii. 1. This conception of faith as a deductive system would be highly influential in the following centuries, since it is used by Jean Gerson and Gabriel Biel, among others. 20 On this point see Guelluy, Philosophie et théologie chez Guillaume d’Ockham; Biard, Guillaume d’Ockham et la théologie.

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fide per aliquod donum supernaturale confirmaretur in fide; sed nullum supernaturale donum apparet collatum pape per quod confirmetur in fide. (Whoever has not been confirmed in faith and has the use of reason can err against the faith; but the pope has not been confirmed in faith because if he were confirmed in faith he would be confirmed in faith by some supernatural gift, but no supernatural gift by which he is confirmed in the faith appears to have been conferred on the pope.)21 It appears that the combination of a cognitive and deductive conception of the faith along with the insistence on the fallibility of experts opens a space for the personal examination of divine truth: Sed omnes magistri in theologia, et etiam omnes alii a papa in generali concilio congregati, possunt contra fidem errare, quia nec magistri in theologia nec omnes alii a papa in generali concilio congregati sunt tota illa ecclesia pro qua Christus oravit ne fides eius deficeret, licet si sint catholici sint pars eiusdem ecclesiae, sicut quilibet Christianus est pars illius ecclesiae. (But all masters in theology and even all others gathered together by the pope in a general council can err against the faith, because neither masters in theology nor all the others gathered together by the pope in a general council make up that whole church for which Christ prayed that its faith would not fail, although if they are catholics they are part of that church just as any Christian is part of that church.)22 Therefore, the dimension of trust is not absent from Ockham’s description of implicit faith. But such trust cannot have an institutional dimension as was the case for the thirteenth-century theologians. Ockham repeatedly asserts that our faith cannot rely on human wisdom or authorities: Cum tamen asserat Apostolus quod fides nostra non est in sapientia hominum 1 ad Corinthios 2 et multo fortius non est in voluntate hominum. Ecclesia igitur universalis nullam recipit veritatem tanquam catholicam nisi quia divinitus revelatur vel quia in sacris literis invenitur. Talis autem veritas etiam si nulla esset ecclesia vere esset catholica. (Yet since the Apostle affirms in i Corinthians 2[.5] that our faith does not rest on human wisdom, much more is it so that it does not rest on human will. The universal church accepts no truth as catholic, therefore,

21 Ockham, Dialogus, ed. and trans. by Kilcullen, i. v. 3. In another passage of the same book, Ockham links together the voluntary dimension of faith and the possibility of erring in matters of faith: ‘Causa autem quare Christianus potest contra fidem errare est quia nemo credit nisi volens, eo quod articuli fidei non sunt de se evidentes’ (Dialogus, i. v. 36). 22 Ockham, Dialogus, ed. and trans. by Kilcullen, i. ii. 32.

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unless it is revealed divinely or is found in the sacred writings. Such a truth, however, would be truly catholic even if there were no church.)23 Indeed, the guarantor of the truth of what one has to believe is not the Church as an institution, but the universal Church, that is, the congregatio fidelium or communio christiani. Unlike the institutional Church, the universal Church is infallible since it is divinely inspired. The opposition to an institutional conception of the Church is nowhere as clear as in the famous passage where Ockham claims that the universal Church could be (and indeed, de facto, at least once, was) contained in only one person. This was the case after Christ’s death, when only the Virgin kept her faith in her son. From this claim, it clearly follows that the teaching of universal faith, which warrants implicit faith, cannot be reduced to the teaching of the institution of the Church. There is a clear superiority of the Scriptures and divine inspiration (warranted by miracles) over the authority of the institutional Church, which is only a human and fallible authority. On this point, Wyclif is obviously Ockham’s heir.

Faith and Belief in Wyclif Wyclif ’s use of implicit faith is included in a wider epistemological theory of belief. At first glance, Wyclif depends on Hugh of Saint-Victor’s classical division: by its certainty, faith is located above opinion (opinio), but it is below scientific knowledge (scientia) by its mode of grasping the truth. For example, in the Trialogus,24 faith is defined as ‘the habitual and supernatural grasping of the objects of faith, between opinion and knowledge’ (fides dicit supernaturalem et habitualem notitiam credendorum, inter reputationem atque scientiam). The definition is repeated in De dominio divino.25 But when examined in detail, Wyclif ’s theory seems to re-evaluate the field of belief by identifying several degrees of belief. And this re-evaluation allows him to change the nature of implicit faith. Faith, Opinion, and Certitude

Even if the topical or dialectical meaning of fides (as the assent produced by a dialectical proof) sometimes occurs in Wyclif, he generally conceives of faith as an act (or a habit) of adhesion to a truth without hesitation, that is sine formidine.26 The expression sine formidine (or the opposite, cum formidine)

23 Ockham, Dialogus, ed. and trans. by Kilcullen, i. ii. 13. 24 Wyclif, Trialogus, ed. by Lechler, iii. 2. p. 133. On Hugh of Saint-Victor’s description of faith in the De sacramentis, i. 10, col. 330d, see Baron, Science et sagesse, pp. 27–29. 25 Wyclif, De dominio divino, ed. by Poole, chap. 9, p. 77. 26 On the dialectical conception of fides, see Byrne, Probability and Opinion; for a more general overview on medieval theories of faith, see Wirth, ‘La Naissance du concept de croyance’.

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is the criterion which allows one to establish the certainty or the uncertainty of a particular act of assent.27 As a consequence, the main epistemic property of faith is indubitability (and, on this point, Wyclif is not at all original): Et sic supponimus in toto isto colloquio credere fide sumi, non autem loquimur tam laxe in proposito sicut boicius quod quecunque opinio quam quis habuerit sit sibi fides, sed loquimur de fide catholica quoniam necesse est opinionem transcendere, cum facit certitudinem. (Hence, we will assume in this entire dialogue that we deal with believing through faith; and we will not say, in the present case, in a loose sense, like Boethius, that any belief someone could obtain is for him a kind of faith, but [instead] we will deal with the catholic faith. Indeed, it is necessary that it exceed any opinion since it produces certitude.)28 But where does this indubitability which distinguishes faith from opinion arise? It comes from a supernatural motion of the human intellect by God through infused grace. Therefore, the proper meaning of faith, as a certain assent, is faith formed by charity: ‘Fidelis autem est qui habet fidem a Deo infusam, sine aliqua trepidatione fidei contraria, quae suae fidei sit commixta’ (The faithful one is he who has a faith infused by God, without any anxiety contrary to faith which might be mixed with his faith).29 But what is this opinion (opinio), which Wyclif tries hard to distinguish from true faith? It is an act of assent with hesitation, that is, a fallible assent which could be wrong. Once again, Wyclif is not original on this point. Wyclif’s most interesting contribution to the medieval epistemology of belief is the clear distinction of several degrees of belief, depending on the strength of the proofs or evidences available. In other words, belief belongs to the field of probability. Wyclif’s most interesting presentation of this topic can be found in the Dialogus. He highlights four degrees of assent. The highest degree is the degree of both faith and knowledge: ‘Quedam enim sunt simpliciter supra opiniones hominum concedenda ut veritates fidei, veritates sensibiles, et veritates doctrinales ex certis principiis demonstrate’ (Indeed, some propositions, beyond [the realm of] human opinion, must absolutely be accepted, such as the truths of faith, perceptual truths, and scientific or doctrinal truths demonstrated from certain principles).30 This kind of assent has a truth as an object and cannot be false, whichever the way we grasp this truth, by revelation or inspiration, by experience, or by demonstration. Interestingly, Wyclif, contrary to Hugh of Saint-Victor, considers as similar the truth of science and the truth of faith. The second lower degree pertains to dissent from falsehood, that is from propositions which must be rejected: ‘In secundo vero gradu sunt alique 27 See Porro, ‘Il Timore dell’altra parte’; Storck, ‘Opinio et formido’. 28 Wyclif, Dialogus, ed. by Pollard, chap. 12, p. 23. 29 Wyclif, Trialogus, ed. by Lechler, iii. 3, p. 135. 30 Wyclif, Dialogus, ed. by Pollard, chap. 12, p. 24.

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neganda simpliciter ut falsitates opposite veritatibus supradictis’ (But at the second level, some propositions must absolutely be rejected as falsehoods contrary to the aforesaid truths).31 Between these two extremes, we can find two degrees of belief which correspond to the two meanings of believing he introduced earlier: assenting with hesitation or assenting without hesitation but opinative. Indeed, the lowest degree of belief is the degree of the dubitanda, that is, propositions which are neither absolutely true nor absolutely false; or, in other terms, propositions for which we do have some good evidence which moves us to assent, but also some evidence for the opposite part, which precludes full assent to the proposition: ‘Tertio vero sunt alique dubitanda ut verba hominibus proposita que propter evidencias contrarias nec sciunt simpliciter esse vera nec sciunt simpliciter esse falsa’ (But at the third level, some propositions must be doubted, such as words asserted to men, which are neither absolutely known as true, nor absolutely known as false, because of some opposite proofs).32 Finally, there is another higher degree of belief: ‘In quarto vero gradu sunt alique supponenda ut opinabilia citra vera primo modi de quibus homo non est certus fide vel demonstracione vel eorum oppositis, licet non habeat evidenciam ad contrariam opinandum’ (But at the fourth level, some propositions must be assumed as believable, below the truths of the first mode. A man cannot have certitude about this truth either by faith or by demonstration, and cannot have certitude about its opposite, even if he does not have any proof which allows him to believe the opposite).33 This kind of belief is below the first degree of assent, and cannot pretend to be certain, but it is without hesitation since there is no good evidence for the opposite part. As a consequence, this is a kind of belief which is very close to faith and knowledge. Its truth cannot be absolutely warranted, and for this reason the assent is fallible, but it is firm since no contrary proofs appear. This kind of belief is a key to Wyclif ’s transformation of the traditional concept of implicit faith. Implicit Faith as a Form of Opinion

To give an account of Wyclif ’s theory of implicit faith requires that we pay attention to the evolution of his thought on this topic. At the beginning, Wyclif seems to rely on a very ordinary conception of implicit faith. For example, in De dominio divino (1373), he distinguishes the pure faith of the lay people from the learned faith of the doctors: Oportet enim fidelem inniti articulis fidei tamquam principiis; sed plebeius in pura fide quiescentibus, doctores ecclesie debent progrediendo mereri sibi et aliis solvendo instancias sophisticas que faciunt cathecuminos 31 Wyclif, Dialogus, ed. by Pollard, chap. 12, p. 24. 32 Wyclif, Dialogus, ed. by Pollard, chap.  12, p. 24. 33 Wyclif, Dialogus, ed. by Pollard, chap. 12, p. 24.

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fluctuare et quibus infideles videntur fidem creditam infirmare, et inveniendo raciones probabiles, quibus instabiles roborentur et constantes in Creatoris sapiencia delectentur. (Indeed, it is necessary that the faithful rely on the articles of faith as basic principles; but, whereas the peasants rest in pure faith, the doctors of the Church must obtain merits for them and others by progressing and resolving sophistical objections which make novices hesitate, and which seem to allow infidels to refute the believed faith. By finding probable [i.e. provable] arguments, through which unstable beliefs are made strong and firm, they take pleasure from the wisdom of the Creator.)34 Wyclif clearly defends the right (and the duty) of lay people not to seek a proof of their faith, and to rely instead on clerics’ faith. At the same time, clerics must fight for the defence of the faith, by refuting objections, and by strengthening faith through rational arguments. This programme perfectly fits with the motto of fides quaerens intellectum! But, very soon, a break appears in this traditional conception of the relation between clerics and lay people. Two years later, in De civili dominio (1375), Wyclif provides some details about explicit and implicit faith. There is a minimal explicit faith, required from any faithful, that is, the belief in a providential God, in accordance with Hebrews 11. 6: ‘Non enim oportet nos de necessitate absoluta salutis quidquam fidei credere explicite, nisi quod Deus est et remunerate servos suos’ (Indeed, it is not required of us, in order to achieve salvation, to believe everything by an explicit faith, except that God exists and rewards his servants).35 Besides this explicit faith, each Christian must have an implicit faith in some articles of faith, and an explicit faith in some others, depending on the historical development of the Church (in conformity with God’s providence): Oportet ergo omnem Christianum de absoluta necessitate salutis quemlibet articulum fidei saltem implicite credere, et aliquos pro suo tempore oportet explicite credere; de necessitate vero salutis, ex ordinacione Dei supposita, oportet hunc plures articulos et hunc pauciores explicite credere, sicut Deus ordinavit ad edificacionem ecclesie. (It is therefore required of every Christian, in order to achieve salvation, that he believe every article of faith at least implicitly, and that he believe explicitly some articles according to his era; indeed, in order to achieve salvation, he is required, according to the assumed divine disposition, to believe either more or fewer articles, according as God ordained for the edification of his Church.)36

34 Wyclif, De dominio divino, ed. by Poole, chap. 11, p. 80. 35 Wyclif, De civili dominio, ed. by Poole, i, chap. 44, p. 437. 36 Wyclif, De civili dominio, ed. by Poole, i, chap. 44, p. 438.

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Once again, Wyclif seems to adopt a traditional conception of implicit faith. But at the same time, he explicitly rules out any institutional interpretation of implicit faith. Even if the faithful must trust the Church, whose head is Christ, and its doctors, this does not entail a trust in prelates, or in a college (like a council), since the ultimate norm is Scripture: ‘Sic ergo debet credi ecclesie, de quanto Caput ecclesie influit in doctorem; cuius speculum examinatorium est Scriptura sacra si in ipsa sit concors sentencia. Sed non sequitur “Credi debet ecclesie, ergo episcopo vel collegio talis loci”’ (Hence, the Church must be believed, inasmuch as the Head of the Church determines the doctor, whose mirror for inquiry is Holy Scripture, and whether it contains a statement in accordance [with what the doctor is proposing]. But it does not follow: ‘the Church must be believed; therefore, such and such a bishop or an assembly, in such and such a place, must be believed’).37 Wyclif is here moving from an institutional to a cognitive conception of implicit faith, from trust to knowledge. The primacy of Scripture (as a cognitive norm) and the rejection of institutional hierarchy lead Wyclif to confront a crucial objection: the faithful Christian would not be obliged to obey his priest: ‘nullus laicus teneretur credere de sacerdote suo, curato sive episcopo quod sit membrum ecclesie vel vere habens nomen talis officii, et periret omnis honor impendendus prelatis et fides populi laicalis’ (No layman would be obliged to believe his parish priest or his bishop, even if he is a member of the Church, or truly bears the name of the office, and all honours given to prelates and the faith of the lay people would perish).38 Wyclif responds twice to this objection, in De ecclesia (1377) and in the Dialogus (1379), and he is led substantially to modify his conception of implicit faith. He does not entirely give up the idea of trust, but belief in the Church is explained as an indistinct or common knowledge of the teaching of the Church: Secundo, notandum quod alia est fides que est credulitas fidelis explicita et alia fides implicita, ut catholicus habens habitum fidei infusum vel acquisitum explicite credit ecclesiam catholicam in communi, et in illa fide communi credit implicite vel confuse quodcunque singulare contentum sub sancta matre ecclesia, sicut logici vere dicunt quod sciendo ens esse in suo analogo sciunt omnia et singulare in communi. (Second, it must be noted that the faith which is an explicit credence of the faithful is different from implicit faith, which is such that a catholic who has an infused or acquired habit of faith explicitly believes in the catholic Church in general, and in this common faith, he implicitly or indistinctly believes any particular proposition contained in the teaching of holy Mother Church, just as logicians correctly say that

37 Wyclif, De civili dominio, ed. by Poole, i, chap. 44, p. 417. 38 Wyclif, De ecclesia, ed. by Loserth and Matthew, chap. 3, p. 42.

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when we know a being in its analogue,39 we know everything and each singular in general.)40 However, this common belief in the Church is not an act of trust in each priest. The lay people must trust only the members of the true Church, that is the Church of the Elect. Their actions testify that they teach the truth: Cum actus sunt suppositorum singularium et nostri fideles laici communicant cum suis presbyteris et curatis, necesse est quod habeant fidem de illis; ideo laici tenentur de aliquibus prepositis suis credere saltem implicite quod sunt partes ecclesie et capita sua, et de aliis non tenentur. (But since actions pertain to individual subjects and since our faithful lay people live with their parish priests, it is necessary that they do have faith in them. For this reason, lay people are obliged to believe their superiors, at least implicitly, since they are parts of the Church and its head, but they are not obliged to believe the others.)41 For this reason, the priest must win this trust by his virtuous actions: ‘Pastor tenetur monere subditos suos per instructiones operum virtuosuorum ut fidem sibi adhibeant […]. Quando ergo subditus non cognoscit talia fructuosa opera sui prepositi, non tenetur credere quod sit talis’ (A pastor is obliged to teach his inferiors through the teaching of his virtuous actions so that they have faith in him […]. When the inferior does not know of any such fruitful actions of his superior, he is not obliged to believe that he is such [i.e. a member of the true Church]).42 A new step and a new degree of clarification are reached in the Dialogus. In this text, Wyclif applies his conception of ‘opinion’ to the notion of implicit faith. The beginning is the same: if a layman is obliged to believe only in Scripture, and not in the pope, all trust would disappear. The objection uses a famous Augustinian argument (from De utilitate credendi) which claims that a society would perish without trust (fides).43 To answer this objection, Wyclif sets out his distinction of degrees of belief, as noted above. Our trust in a priest or in the pope depends on the evidence we have. In the case of a priest, since we are living with him, we can experience (or not) that he is living virtuously and can be trusted; it is not an act of faith but a high degree of belief: ‘ut habita experiencia de conversacione sacerdotis qui vivit catholice, supponi potest ab experiente quod sit membrum ecclesie, et tamen non debet credi ab aliquo tamquam fides, quia nescitur si sit predestinatus aut prescitus ad tartarum propter lapsum’ (Through the direct experience of the mode of life of a priest 39 Wyclif is here referring to the ‘esse anologum’, i.e., the relevant universal through which the generic and specific essences of the individual may be known. 40 Wyclif, De ecclesia, ed. by Loserth and Matthew, chap. 3, p. 42. 41 Wyclif, De ecclesia, ed. by Loserth and Matthew, chap. 3, p. 43. 42 Wyclif, De ecclesia, ed. by Loserth and Matthew, chap. 3, p. 43. 43 Augustine, De utilitate credendi, ed. by Zycha, xii. 26, p. 34.

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who leads a catholic life, it can be assumed that he is a member of the [true] Church, but nevertheless, this must not be believed of anyone as an act of faith, since it is not known whether he is predestined or foreknown to hell because of sinfulness).44 On the other hand, in the case of the pope and the curia, since we experience their failure, we can have only a weak degree of belief: ‘Et sic opinative potest homo credere bullis papalibus; et specialiter si super illas rei experiencia addat opinionem; quia ille per se non faciunt fidem et multis hominibus parvam aut nullam credulitatem, cum tam papa quam sua curia falli poterunt et fallere propter lucrum et ignoranciam veritatis’ (A man can believe, as an opinion, in the papal bulls; and especially so if experience supports his opinion of these bulls; indeed, they do not engender faith by themselves, but among many men they produce a weak and useless credence, since the pope and the curia may be wrong and are wrong, due to greed and ignorance of the truth).45 From now it is clear that for Wyclif, the traditional notion of implicit faith, as trust in and obedience to the institutional Church, is only a kind of opinion, and we often have more reasons to put our trust in our parish priest than in the higher echelons of the Church. This devaluation of implicit faith (understood as trust and obedience), which is reduced to the level of mere opinion, is parallel to the revaluation of a cognitive injunction to know Scripture, even in the case of lay people. For this reason, any faithful must be learned in logic and philosophy in order to acquire the tools for reading Scripture: ‘Expedit autem pro habenda huiusmodi scripturae notitia, quod fidelis in recta logica et philosophia depurate a Dominio sit instructus’ (It is useful in order to get a knowledge of Scripture in this way, that the faithful be instructed in a right logic and philosophy purified by the Lord).46 The inclusion of implicit faith in the field of opinion rather than faith, that is, in the field of probability and fallibility rather than certitude, is clearly linked to the criticism of the ecclesiastical institution, and to the emphasis on the cognitive aspect of being a Christian through the direct reading of Scripture.47 Since each faithful has to seek the truth by himself, trust in a human authority can only be a more or less strong opinion. The devaluation of ecclesiastical mediations is undoubtedly a general trend of the fourteenth century,48 but it reaches a peak with Wyclif ’s devaluation of implicit faith. Such a robust and fundamental critique of ecclesiastical authority naturally did not remain unanswered. In the final section of this article, we turn briefly to some of these reactions.

44 Wyclif, Dialogus, ed. by Pollard, chap. 12, p. 24. 45 Wyclif, Dialogus, ed. by Pollard, chap. 12, p. 24. 46 Wyclif, Trialogus, ed. by Lechler, iii. 31, p. 242. 47 On probability and hermeneutics, see Ghosh, ‘Genre and Method’; Ghosh, ‘And so it is licly to men’. 48 On this topic, see Chiffoleau, La Religion flamboyante.

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Early Reactions to Wyclif’s Criticism of Implicit Faith The fate of Wyclif’s ecclesiology is well known and this is not the place to come back to this topic. Here I will point to some examples of direct or indirect early reactions to Wyclif ’s position on implicit faith, and more widely, to his conception of the relation between clerics and lay people. The twofold injunction to know Scripture directly and to obey only those priests who lead an authentic Christian life entails the dissolution of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, and of the relationship based on obedience and trust. For this reason, some early reactions point out the social danger resulting from the rejection of Church law. As early as 1397, in a sermon preached in Latin in Paris, Jean Gerson deals with the topic of failed churchmen through a comparison with Judas. At one moment, in relation to the problem of the priest whose life betrays his duties,49 Gerson alludes to the English situation: Dic igitur qualiter erit ille caput in ecclesiastica hierarchia qui non meretur dici membrum? Respondi potestates et gratias istas esse distinctas secundum donum praelationis et donum caritatis seu fidei. Propterea potestas praelationis manere potest, immo dari desinentibus aliis, sicut abscedente caritate manet saepe fides et spes. Error oppositus magnam, ut audio, in Anglia in rixam dedit. Materia igitur sufficiens ad praelationem de facto ut suscipiendam vel retinendam est homo baptizatus viator intendens recipire id quod Ecclesia conferre constituit. (Tell me who could be the head of the ecclesiastical hierarchy without deserving to be considered as a member? It can be answered that these powers and graces are different according to the gift of authority and the gift of charity or faith. For this reason, the power of authority can persist, and even more, can be given when the other gifts are lacking, as when charity being lost, faith and hope often persist. The opposite error, as I was told, was the cause of a big conflict in England. But it suffices for the acquiring and retention of authority that a man be a baptized wayfarer and wishes to receive what the Church has determined to confer [upon him].)50 Obviously, the ‘big conflict in England’ is a reference to Wyclif ’s critique of the priest whose life is lacking in charity and who is unable to fulfil his sacramental duties. For Gerson, on the contrary, the preservation of the ecclesiastical hierarchy requires that we distinguish between authority and grace.51

49 Jean Gerson, Œuvres complètes, vol. v: L’Œuvre oratoire, ed. by Glorieux, p. 557, no. 249: ‘Proditor est ecclesiasticus suscipiens sacrum presbyteratus officium si perdite vivendo exhibit se diabolo execrabile mancipium, quem oportuerat sanctis operibus esse Dei sacerdotem et ministrum’. 50 Jean Gerson, Œuvres complètes, vol. v: L’Œuvre oratoire, ed. by Glorieux, p. 548. 51 See Brown, Pastor and Laity, pp. 36–73.

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However, in England at the beginning of the fifteenth century, the adversaries of Wyclif seem to focus much more on the cognitive dimension of the problem, that is on the injunction to the layman to read Scripture. For example, around 1420, Thomas Netter of Walden, in his Doctrinale antiquitatum, clearly opposes the role of the maiores in the Church and Wyclif ’s idea of Scripture: ‘Post auctoritatem scripturae sacrae, insuper et universalis Ecclesiae, adhuc superset authoritas incumbens determinationi Majorum in rebus dubiis, quam simpliciter negat, dicens Wycleffus, apud Sapientes reliquendum et tamquam impertinens veritati, quicquid scriptura sacra non ponit expresse’ (After the authority of holy Scripture, and of the universal Church, remains the authority belonging to the decisions of the higher doctors in doubtful matters. Wyclif absolutely rejects it by saying: everything that holy Scripture does not explicitly assert must be discarded as irrelevant truth by the wise).52 Netter’s critique of Wyclif reintroduces the necessity of a warrant for the apostolic tradition, and for Scripture. Trust in the Church is the precondition to trusting the testimony of the apostles and evangelists. Therefore, it is necessary to accept the authority of the Church, and, as a consequence, of its doctors: ‘Ex hoc fundamento maxime infideli, videtis, quomodo destruit articulum fidei quo credimus Ecclesiam Catholicam et Apostolicam, nihil reseruans authoritatis eius testimonio, vel decretis, sine qua nec Euangelio crederemus’ (From this extreme basis of faithlessness, you can see how he destroys the article of faith by which we believe in the catholic and apostolic Church, reserving nothing for the authority of its testimony or its decisions, without which we cannot believe in Scripture).53 Against Wyclif, the ‘latitude of Christian belief ’ (latitudo Christianae credentiae) must be grounded on a threefold source: we must trust Scripture, the customs and decisions of the Church, and especially the articles of faith, and finally, the doctors (the lovers of truth): Dicamus latitudinem christianae credentiae sic esse dispositam ut primam fidem tribuamus Scripturis Canonicis. Secundam sub ista, definitionibus et consuetudinibus Ecclesiae Catholicae, juxta illum articulum in Symbolo Credo unam sanctam ecclesiam catholicam et apostolicam. Post istas habent Christiani credere, non quidem sub poena perfidiae, sed proterviae, vel crassae contumaciae, studiosis viris et amatoribus Veritatis. (We are claiming that the latitude of Christian beliefs is disposed in such a way that we have primary faith in canonical Scripture. Secondary faith is to be had in the definitions and customs of the catholic Church, in conformity with this article of the Creed: one holy catholic and

52 Thomas Netter of Walden, Doctrinale antiquitatum, ed. by Blanciotti, i, lib. ii, a. 2, c. 23, cols 361–62. 53 Thomas Netter of Walden, Doctrinale antiquitatum, ed. by Blanciotti, i, lib. ii, a. 2, c. 23, col. 362.

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apostolic Church. After these two kinds of faith, Christians must believe, not indeed under pain of perfidy, but of obstinacy or crass contumaciousness, in learned men and the lovers of truth.)54 Thomas Netter clearly returns to a model of faith understood as a form of trust which has its roots in the ecclesiastical warrant of the apostolic tradition. And in this Church, the expertise of the doctors is a norm of truth. But probably the most interesting and fascinating instance of the reactions to Wyclif is the macaronic collection of sermons in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 649 edited by Patrick Horner.55 As has been pointed out by several scholars,56 the relationship between clerics and lay people is a key problem for this anonymous Benedictine monk. Two topics at least seem to be clearly directed against Wyclif: first, the content of explicit faith; and second, the right to seek the truth by oneself. Both topics aim at reducing any lay pretention to knowledge in the matter of faith. The first point is the role of the Creed that everyone is supposed to know and to believe firmly: ‘Rami istius articuli fidei, puncta tui credo quos quilibet tenetur cognoscere et credere firmiter sub pena damnationis’ (Its branches are the articles of faith, the points of your creed, which everyone is required to know and to believe firmly under pain of damnation).57 The Creed is labelled as the complete norm of faith (‘plena mensura fidei’),58 and the ground of the Christian religion: ‘Pes nostra fidei est tuum credo. Hic est fundus nostre credulitatis, hoc est fundamentum totius Christianae religionis’ (The foot of our faith is your creed. This is the foundation of our belief, this is the foundation of all Christian religion).59 The Creed defines the boundaries of faith for lay people, and by a singular reversal, the Creed, which was for most scholastic theologians a minimal core of beliefs (that any faithful must know explicitly), becomes here a maximum of faith, in such a way that lay people should not exceed its twelve articles: ‘Tu qui est illiteratus, tene te deorsum ad pedem montis, serua te infra limites fidei, cape tuum credo in corde and passe not þat. Serua te infra limites fidei, ne intromittas te vlterius. Crede sicut Ecclesia docet et sufficit tibi’ (You who are illiterate, hold yourself down below at the foot of the mountain, keep yourself within the limits of faith, hold your creed in heart and do not pass beyond that. Keep yourself within the limits of faith, do not involve yourself further. Believe as the Church teaches and it is enough for you).60 This text is undoubtedly paradigmatic of the suspicious attitude of clerics towards lay people in the aftermath of the Wycliffite controversies.

54 55 56 57 58 59 60

Thomas Netter of Walden, Doctrinale antiquitatum, ed. by Blanciotti, i, lib. ii, a. 2, c. 23, col. 365. A Macaronic Sermon Collection, ed. and trans. by Horner. See Horner, ‘Benedictines and Preaching’; Ghosh, ‘Magisterial Authority’. A Macaronic Sermon Collection, ed. and trans. by Horner, Sermon 3, p. 79. A Macaronic Sermon Collection, ed. and trans. by Horner, Sermon 6, p. 169. A Macaronic Sermon Collection, ed. and trans. by Horner, Sermon 13, p. 347. A Macaronic Sermon Collection, ed. and trans. by Horner, Sermon 13, p. 347.

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And it clearly exhibits how the notion of implicit faith can be a useful tool for providing lay people with ideological support. For lay people, indeed, almost every kind of explicit knowledge of Scripture is prohibited, and mere obedience to the Church is enough for salvation. It is an extraordinarily reductive conception of lay spirituality, but it is explicitly justified by the Lollard problem. The limitation to just the Creed is a protection against the vain curiosity of the Lollards: Be not to bold ne to besy mouere questions, be not to curious cognoscere Dei concilium, go not to fer. Potes de leui errare et exire viam rectam. Quid fecit, queso, omnes istos hereticos et Lollardos certe mobilitum, waueryng, et instabilium in fide? Noluerunt seruare se infra scutum, noluerunt stare determinacioni Ecclesie […]. Caue per istos, Christiane, et in omnibus materiis fidei submitte alas, operi te sub scuto fidei, sta ad tuum credo, ne ultra moueris. (Be not too bold nor too busy to move questions, be not too curious to know God’s counsel, go not too far. You can easily err and go off the right path. What, I ask, made all these heretics and Lollards so changeable, wavering, and unstable in faith? They would not keep themselves within the shield, they would not stand by the determination of the Church […]. Beware of them, Christians, and in all matters of faith lower your wings, cover yourself under the shield of faith, stand by your creed, that you may not be moved farther.)61 The limitation of lay people to explicit faith in the Creed is clearly linked to the rejection of any lay inquiry into matters of faith. It is difficult to establish whether this anonymous monk had a precise knowledge of Wyclif ’s theology, but it must be pointed out that his argumentation consists in reducing the faith of the Lollards to mere opinion, produced by the imagination, as if he would like to reverse Wyclif ’s reduction of implicit faith to mere fallible opinion: Ista vasa terrea sunt vasa diaboli, falsi Lollardi qui pretendunt exterius al irþe — al holiness, lowness, meknes, and paciens —, set intus est al atter and venym, pleni serpentibus, pleni malicia, miseria et falsis opinionibus. Quod Ecclesia docet vellent destruere, quod Ecclesia approbat despiciunt et reprobant. (These earthen jars are the jars of the devil, the false Lollards who outwardly show forth all earth — all holiness, lowness, meekness and patience — but inwardly it is all adder and venom, filled with serpents, filled with evil misery, and false beliefs. What the Church teaches they wish to destroy, what the Church approves, they despise or reprove.)62

61 A Macaronic Sermon Collection, ed. and trans. by Horner, Sermon 6, p. 173. 62 A Macaronic Sermon Collection, ed. and trans. by Horner, Sermon 10, p. 275.

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The knowledge of the subtilitas of faith belongs exclusively to clerics.63 By himself a layman cannot reach the level of the faith, unless he agrees to obey the Church. Finally, salvation consists entirely in trust in the Church: ‘Si vis saluari corpore et anima, tenet e in secura parte, serua doctrinam Ecclesie, in qua tui patres tenuerunt se, in qua sancti mortui sunt. Crede sicut Ecclesia credit’ (If you wish to be saved body and soul, hold yourself in the safe part, keep the doctrine of the Church in which your fathers held themselves, in which the saints died. Believe as the Church believes).64 We here reach a peak in the medieval reduction of faith to obedience to an institution.

Conclusion Wyclif ’s critique of implicit faith is undoubtedly radical. This concept elaborated by theologians and canonists through the thirteenth century plays an important role in organizing and justifying the obedience of lay people to the ecclesiastical institution, especially to its doctors and prelates. Relying on the cognitive dimension of Christianity, the link between truth and salvation, it achieves a transference from cognition to trust, and legitimizes the hierarchies of the Church through their mastery of the divine words. In opposition to this, by promoting the direct reading of Scripture by lay people and by reducing trust in the doctors and prelates to mere opinion, Wyclif removes any epistemic legitimation for this institutional control of the laity. The violence of the reactions against this aspect of Wyclif ’s programme should not therefore surprise us. Across the fourteenth century, in a variety of ways, we can see the development of a horizontal model of the Church. Wyclif is representative of this development (amongst others such as Ockham). But the intellectual reactions to Wyclif are also representative of the institutional reaction of the fifteenth century. Indeed, threatened by the intellectual offensive of Wyclif, and its social consequences, the Church tried hard to protect itself by radicalizing the separation between clerics and lay people.

Works Cited Primary Sources Augustine of Hippo, De utilitate credendi, ed. by Josef Zycha, Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, 25 (Vienna: Tempsky, 1891) Hugh of Saint-Victor, De sacramentis, in Patrologiae cursus completus: series latina, ed. by Jacques-Paul Migne, clvi (Paris: Garnier, 1844–1864), cols 173–610

63 See A Macaronic Sermon Collection, ed. and trans. by Horner, Sermons 6 and 13, pp. 169, 347. 64 A Macaronic Sermon Collection, ed. and trans. by Horner, Sermon 10, p. 279.

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Innocent IV, Apparatus in quinque libros Decretalium (Apud Claudium Servanium: Lyon, 1554) Jean Gerson, Œuvres complètes, v: L’Œuvre oratoire, ed. by Palémon Glorieux (New York: Desclée & co, 1963) John Wyclif, Trialogus, ed. by Gotthard Lechler (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1869) ———, Dialogus sive Speculum Ecclesie Militantis, ed. by Alfred W. Pollard, Wyclif Society (London: Trübner, 1886) ———, De ecclesia, ed. by Johann Loserth and F. D. Matthew, Wyclif Society (London: Trübner, 1886) ———, De dominio divino, ed. by Reginald Lane Poole, Wyclif Society (London: Trübner, 1890) ———, De civili dominio, ed. by Reginald Lane Poole and Johann Loserth, 4 vols, Wyclif Society (London: Trübner, 1895–1904) A Macaronic Sermon Collection from Late Medieval England: Oxford MS Bodley 649, ed. and trans. by Patrick J. Horner (Toronto: PIMS, 2006) Peter Lombard, Sententiae in IV Libris Distinctae, vol. ii, books 3 and 4 (Grottaferrata: Collegium S. Bonaventurae ad Claras aquas, 1981) Peter Lombard, The Sentences. Book 3, On the Incarnation of the Word, trans. by Giulio Silano (Toronto: PIMS, 2008) Thomas Aquinas, Scriptum super libros Sententiarum magistri Petri Lombardi episcopi Parisiensis, iii, ed. by M. F. Moos (Paris: P. Lethielleux, 1956) Thomas Netter of Walden, Doctrinale antiquitatum fidei catholicae ecclesiae, ed. by Bonaventura Blanciotti, i (Venice: A. Bassanesii, 1757) William of Auxerre, Summa aurea. Liber tercius, ed. by Jean Ribaillier (Paris: CNRS, 1986) William of Ockham, Dialogus, ed. by John Kilcullen and others [accessed 5 July 2021] Secondary Works Assmann, Jan, The Price of Monotheism (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010) Baldwin, John, Masters, Princes and Merchants: The Social View of Peter Chanter and His Circle (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970) Baron, Roger, Science et sagesse chez Hugues de Saint-Victor (Paris: Lethielleux, 1957) Biard, Joël, Guillaume d’Ockham et la théologie (Paris: Le Cerf, 1999) Bougard, François, Dominique Iogna-Prat, and Régine Le Jan, ed., Hiérarchies et stratifications sociales dans l’Occident médiéval (400–1100) (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008) Bourdieu Pierre, La Distinction. Critique sociale du jugement (Paris: Minuit, 1979) Brown, Peter, Pastor and Laity in the Theology of Jean Gerson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987)

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Byrne, Edmund F. Probability and Opinion. A Study in the Medieval Presuppositions of Post-medieval Theories of Probability (The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1968) Chiffoleau, Jacques, La Religion flamboyante 1320–1520 (Paris: Le Seuil, 1988) Duby, Georges, Les Trois Ordres ou l’imaginaire du féodalisme (Paris: Gallimard, 1978) Ghosh, Kantik, The Wycliffite Heresy: Authority and the Interpretation of Texts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002) ———, ‘Magisterial Authority, Heresy and Lay Questioning in Early FifteenthCentury Oxford’, Revue de l’histoire des religions, 231/2 (2014), 293–311 ———, ‘Genre and Method in the Late Sermones of John Wyclif ’, in Language and Method: Historical and Historiographical Reflections on Medieval Thought, ed. by Ueli Zahnd (Freiburg im Breisgau: Rombach, 2017), pp. 167–82 ———, ‘And so it is licly to men: Probabilism and Hermeneutics in Wycliffite Discourse’, Review of English Studies, 70 (2019), 418–36 Grellard, Christophe, ‘La fides chez Guillaume d’Ockham. De la psychologie à l’ecclésiologie’, Archa Verbi. Subsidia, 12 (2014), 335–67 Guelluy, Robert, Philosophie et théologie chez Guillaume d’Ockham (Louvain: E. Nauwelaerts, 1947) Hoffmann, Georg, Die Lehre von der Fides implicita innerhalb der katholischen Kirche (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1903–1909) Horner, Patrick J., ‘Benedictines and Preaching in Fifteenth Century England: The Evidence of Two Bodleian Manuscripts’, Revue Bénédictine, 99 (1989), 313–32 Hurley, Michael, ‘Scriptura sola: Wyclif and his Critics’, Traditio, 16 (1960), 275–352 La Soujeole, Benoît-Dominique de, ‘Foi implicite et religions non-chrétiennes’, Revue Thomiste, 106 (2006), 315–34 Nadeau, Marie-Thérèse, Foi de l’Eglise. Evolution et sens d’une formule (Paris: Beauschene, 1988) Porro, Pasquale, ‘Il Timore dell’altra parte. Il ruolo della formido nei dibattiti scolastici sull’assenso (da Tommaso d’Aquino a Pietro Aureolo)’, Archivio di filosofia, 83.1–2 (2015), 209–20 Rainini, Marco, ‘Firmiter credimus. Premesse teologiche e obiettivi polemici della costituzione I del Concilio Lateranense IV’, in Il Lateranense IV. Le ragioni di un concilio, ed. by Il centro italiano di studi sul basso medioevo — Accademia Tudertina (Spoleto: Fondazione Centro Italiano di Studi sull’alto Medioevo, 2017), pp. 111–55 Ritschl, Albert, Fides implicita – Eine Untersuchung über Köhlerglauben, Wissen und Glauben, Glauben und Kirche (Bonn: Marcus, 1890) Schmitt, Jean-Claude, ‘Du bon usage du Credo’, in Jean-Claude Schmitt, Le Corps, les rites, les rêves, le temps. Essais d’anthropologie médiévale (Paris: Gallimard, 2001), pp. 97–126 Shogimen, Takashi, ‘Wyclif ’s Ecclesiology and Political Thought’, in A Companion to John Wyclif: Late Medieval Theologian, ed. by Ian Christopher Levy (Leiden: Brill, 2006), pp. 199–240

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Storck, Alfredo, ‘Opinio et formido: la position de Georgio Benci dans les débats probabilistes’, in Miroir de l’amitié. Mélanges offerts à Joël Biard, ed. by Christophe Grellard (Paris: Vrin, 2017), pp. 465–78 Van Engen, John, ‘Faith as a Concept of Order in Medieval Christendom’, in John van Engen, Religion in the History of Medieval West (Aldershot: Ashgate Variorum, 2004), pp. 19–67 Wirth, Jean, ‘La Naissance du concept de croyance, xiie–xviie’, Bibliothèque d’humanisme et de Renaissance, 45 (1983), 7–58

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A Question of Style The Place of Rhetoric in Jean Gerson’s Understanding of Theological Language and Method*

The association of rhetoric and theology is hardly a Gersonian innovation. Rhetorical analysis played an important role in Augustine’s De doctrina christiana, in which the theologian prescribed good command of the rules of eloquence in the elaboration of doctrine. Cassiodorus, Bede, as also the Victorines later, all directed the arts of the trivium towards the service of doctrine and exegesis.1 Gerson follows this tradition in many respects. His contribution to the debate on the Roman de la Rose is an illuminating example of this. The Chancellor’s allegorical treatise Talia de me presents ‘éloquence théologique’ in heated argument against the Roman’s advocates: Jean de Meun neglects the rules of ‘my school’, according to which one should ‘consider who is speaking, the audience to whom the discourse is addressed, as well as the circumstances’.2 Like all good orators, the theologian should take into account the laws of elocutio, which prescribe that language should be adapted to the content of the discourse and to the status of its recipients.3



* This article constitutes a shortened, revised, and adapted version of an earlier French contribution to Zahnd, ed., Language and Method: Historical and Historiographical Reflections on Medieval Thought (Freiburg im Breisgau: Rombach, 2017), pp. 183–221. 1 See Dahan, ‘Le Sens littéral dans l’exégèse chrétienne’, p. 256. 2 Gerson, Letter to Pierre Col Talia de me, ed. by Glorieux, ii, pp. 65–70, at p. 67; see also Gerson, Poenitemini sermon on luxury (24 December 1402), ed. by Glorieux, vii. 2, p. 839: ‘Mais il [maistre Jehan de Meun] failli en ce qu’il feist parler raisons en ung fol amoureux; secondement en ce qu’il enhortoit parler communement femmes et autres; tiercement en ce que il publia son livre a jeunes gens qui en abusoient; quartement en ce que ses raisons monstrent aussi que on devroit aller nus. Se diz pour respondre que les mos sont lais pour le mal qui en vient en lequel on y entant’. 3 See Cicero, De l’invention, ed. and trans. by Achard, i. 7. See also Gregory the Great, Cura pastoralis, iii, on the different kinds of listeners, considered from a casuistic standpoint useful to confessors. Alain de Lille’s De arte praedicatoria, widely circulated in the Middle Ages, also Isabel Iribarren  •  ([email protected]), is Professor of Medieval Church History and Philosophy at Strasbourg University. She has published monographs and many articles on the history of medieval Thomism, scholastic angelology and Jean Gerson, and has produced an annotated and commented French translation of his Josephina. Wycliffism and Hussitism: Methods of Thinking, Writing, and Persuasion, c. 1360 – c. 1460, ed. by Kantik Ghosh and Pavel Soukup, MCS 47 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021), pp. 99–115 FHG10.1484/M.MCS-EB.5.124370

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Gerson recommends in conclusion, not without sarcasm, a closer reading of Book IV of Augustine’s De doctrina christiana. The old Augustinian precept of eloquentia ancilla sapientiae is here given a new meaning, leading Gerson to champion a theologically informed eloquence distinct from the vana locutio of a purely rhetorical expertise. Inversely, a theology which disregards rhetoric is denounced as detrimental to doctrine.4 But if Gerson adopts the Augustinian programme, it is in order to develop a wide-ranging commentary on scholarly language which goes beyond the purely exegetical domain. Rhetoric plays a threefold and pivotal role in the Chancellor’s work: as an art governing theological expression; as a vantage point from which to examine the question of the status of philosophical discourse; and as a supra-linguistic criterion justifying the use of the vernacular in doctrinal matters.5 The latter is all the more interesting if we consider that medieval university culture tended to associate rhetoric with Latin.6 The question of ‘the language of sciences or disciplines’, to paraphrase a well-known article by Zénon Kaluza,7 becomes in Gerson’s view a matter of style, thus surpassing all hierarchical formulations of the relationship between Latin and the vernacular in terms of diglossia. Rhetoric becomes constitutive of linguistic cultures and the ultimate criterion in the definition of the modes of accessing knowledge in the theological and philosophical domains.8 In



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pays particular attention to the question of the diversity of the audience. For an excellent example of Gerson’s rhetorical sensitivity, see the sermon Factum est, preached on St Michael’s Day 1392, ed. by Glorieux, v, p. 310: ‘In duplicis hujus puncti elucidatione speculativa magis quam morali stabit collatio. Stylus quoque declaratorius mutabitur in temperatum et aequale loquendi genus, ut et materia intelligitur facilius et pronuntiationis difficultas evitetur. Nec metaphoricis, ut fieri posset, translationibus multum utar, proelium scilicet spirituale verbis proelio materiali congruentibus explicando, quia et prolixior essem et longe obscurior’. Gerson, Letter to Pierre Col, ed. by Glorieux, ii, p. 70; see also Gerson, sermon Bonus pastor, ed. by Glorieux, v, p. 129: ‘Exigitur ergo ad officium praedicationis ingenium velox, solers atque versatile […]. Exigitur eloquentia torrens et vehemens, suadibilis et suavis copiosaque […]. Exigitur eruditio Scripturarum sacrarum cum ceteris omnibus quae ad mores spectant […]. Exigitur multiplex experientia actuum humanorum et conditionis annotatio eorum qui docendi sunt. Exigitur exemplaris vita […]. Exigitur denique gustatio spiritus per contemplationem’. See also Michel Pintoin’s statement on Gerson’s eloquence in Chronique du Religieux de Saint-Denis, ed. by Bellaguet, ii, p. 224; iii, p. 604; v, p. 136. For Augustine, see De doctrina christiana iv. 3. 3 and 5. 8. The phrase ‘wisdom without eloquence’ alludes to the opening passage of Cicero’s De l’invention, ed. and trans. by Achard, i. 1–3. See also Cecchetti, ‘L’elogio delle arti liberali’, esp. pp. 3–11; Kaluza, Études doctrinales sur le xive siècle, esp. pp. 233–40. On this subject, see Iribarren, ‘Le Paradis retrouvé’, pp. 223–51. For the role of rhetoric in Gerson’s works, see also Hobbins, Authorship and Publicity before Print, pp. 111–19. I wish to thank Serge Lusignan for having made me aware of this dimension of Gerson’s reflections on language. Kaluza, ‘Les Sciences et leurs langages’. For a general overview of the place of rhetoric in the Middle Ages, see Dahan, ‘L’Entrée de la Rhétorique d’Aristote’; Robert, ‘L’Idée de logique morale’, pp. 27–45; Black, Logic and Aristotle’s ‘Rhetoric’.

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what follows, I shall examine Gerson’s understanding of the role of rhetoric in his definition of theological language and method in the context of their twofold inheritance, namely, revelation and pagan philosophical discourse. In the course of my analysis, the question of the relation of ‘Church and tradition’9 which occupied much of the anti-Hussite debate at Constance will be considered from this perspective, that is, as a rhetorical issue and not only as a matter of biblical hermeneutics.

Rhetoric, Bible, and stylus theologicus In Gerson’s work, stylus theologicus designates a criterion of normativity governing theological discourse and functioning not only within the realm of biblical hermeneutics, but also in matters of doctrinal censure. The 1416 treatise Octo regulae super stylo theologico is instructive in this respect. It constitutes one of the documents submitted by Gerson at Constance in order to plea for the resumption of the condemnation of Jean Petit’s articles on tyrannicide,10 after the legal annulment of the Paris sentence from February 1414.11 In his treatise, the Chancellor advances ‘some articles or brief rules describing the theological style or the mode of proceeding in the condemnation of errors’.12 Gerson deliberately maintains the ambivalence of the Latin word stylus: it is understood both in the rhetorical sense of the manner of constructing a discourse, insisting on its adequacy (what Quintilian named decor or convenientia)13 to the subject-matter, the circumstances, and the intended public; and in the juridical sense of the usual ordinary way of settling a case by the Roman curia, according to a meaning attested in curial contexts.14

9 See Oberman, The Harvest of Medieval Theology. 10 On 23 November 1407, Louis d’Orléans, brother of king Charles VI, was murdered on the orders of John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, his rival for the regency. In March of the following year, Jean Petit, a lawyer hired by John the Fearless, pronounced in Paris a defence of Orléans’s murder, known as the Justification du duc de Bourgogne, before representatives of the nobility, the clergy, the bourgeoisie, and a university delegation. The Duke was subsequently acquitted, and civil war was soon to break out. After a first, ephemeral condemnation of the Justification du duc de Bourgogne at a ‘council of faith’ held in Paris in February 1414, the Jean Petit affair occupied Gerson — in vain — for most of his stay in Constance. See Guenée, Un meurtre, une société, esp. pp. 232–64. See also Jean Juvenal des Ursins’s chronicle, Histoire de Charles VI, ed. by Godefroy. 11 See Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis, ed. by Denifle and Chatelain, iv, pp. 277–79, no. 2011. 12 Gerson, Octo regulae, ed. by Glorieux, x, p. 257: ‘proponimus coram hoc sacro Concilio sub certis articulis seu brevis regulis, declarare stylum theologicum seu modum procedendi in condemnandis erroribus laudabiliter in sacris conciliis generalibus hactenus observatum et qui Parisius observatur, et in hoc concilio practicatus invenitur, ad finem inferius declarandum’. 13 Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, ed. by Radermacher, ix, 2. 71 and xi. 1. 8. 14 See Giordanengo, Le Droit féodal dans les pays de droit écrit, p. 138.

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Both registers are intertwined in the treatise, in a manner not dissimilar to William of Ockham’s approach in his Dialogus. According to Gerson, in the condemnation of errors, theological style privileges divine law over positive law, and consequently subordinates canon law to theology: Pro cujus declaratione sciendum est quod quaelibet scientia, immo ars quaelibet, etiam mechanica, habet stylum suum, id est modum procedendi sibi proprium. Quid enim est stylus nisi procedendi modus cuicumque scientiae appropriatus? Cum ergo sacra theologia sit omnium scientiarum signum, habet suum stylum juridicum; et sicut scientia canonica pro majori et digniori sui parte subalternata est sacrae theologiae, sic stylus juridicus theologico, maxime in causa fidei subalternatus est et subjectus, et non e contra. (Every science, or rather every art, even the mechanical arts, has its own style, that is, its own way of proceeding. For what is style but the mode of proceeding appropriate to each science? And just as sacred theology, which is the banner of all sciences, has its own style or its appropriate mode, so has canonical science its own juridical style. And just as canonical science, in virtue of its greatest and most worthy part, is subordinated to sacred theology, in the same way juridical style is subordinated to theological [style]; it is subordinated to the latter, and not vice-versa, especially in matters of faith.)15 In a single gesture, Gerson establishes theology as a superior science occupying a regulatory function vis-à-vis other sciences, and as supreme tribunal in the judgment of doctrinal errors. Such a hierarchical conception of the classification of sciences constitutes a typical feature of the medieval masters and comes as no surprise. However, in Gerson’s work it also has an ecclesiological dimension as he considers the canonists’ legal rigorism as partly accountable for the Schism.16 On account of their privileged access to divine revelation, theologians are alone capable of judging according to the intention of Christ with a view to the edification of the Church. Indeed, in the Octo regulae, Gerson insists time and again on the importance of ensuring the common good of Christendom (res publica christiana) in the

15 Gerson, Octo regulae, ed. by Glorieux, x, p. 257. 16 See for example Gerson, Quomodo stabit, ed. by Glorieux, vii. 2, p. 980. Gerson is not the first theologian to accuse the canonists of legal positivism. He takes over an old theme that William of Ockham (Dialogus i. 1. 1–15), among others, had already developed. Like Ockham, Gerson maintains that the determination of the truth of faith, as also the judgment of heresy, pertain to the theologian by virtue of his superior knowledge or discipline to which canon law is subordinated. See also Aquinas, Summa theologiae, IIa–IIae, q. 88, a. 11 and Quodlibet XI, q. 8, a. 8. On this subject, see Meyjes, Jean Gerson, Apostle of Unity, pp. 210–46; Ozment, ‘The University and the Church’, pp. 117–19; Pascoe, Jean Gerson. Principles of Church Reform, pp. 74–89; Burrows, Jean Gerson and the De Consolatione Theologiae, pp. 126–35.

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condemnation of errors, rather than limiting one’s action to the amendment of those committing them. In these passages, the Chancellor’s rhetorical sensitivity converges with the censor’s sagacity: In condamnatione errorum attendendum est et singulariter considerandum ad sensum quae faciunt secundum communem intelligendi modum, habito etiam respectu ad materiam subjectam et causam dicendi et alias circumstantias, quae possunt esse occasiones scandali, juxta illud Philosophi: ‘sermones secundum materiam subjectam sunt intelligendi’ […]. Et ideo si una assertio habeat unum sensum erroneum, scandalosum aut piarum aurium offensivum, potest rationabiliter condemnari, non obstante quod de virtute sermonis grammaticalis aut ex vi vocis logicalis, ipsa habere posset aliquem sensum verum. (In the condemnation of errors, one must take particularly into consideration the meaning they have according to the common mode of understanding, taking into account what belongs to the subject-matter [materia subjecta], what motivated them and other circumstances that could have been cause of scandal, according to what the Philosopher says: ‘words must be understood according to the subject-matter’ [Nicomachean Ethics i. 1. 1094a 21–b 22] […]. Consequently, if a given statement has an erroneous, scandalous or offensive meaning to pious ears, it can reasonably be condemned, even if in virtue of their grammatical or logical signification the same words could convey a true meaning.)17 As Gerson sees it, the stylus theologicus should be more attentive to the circumstances and the effect of a given statement on the faithful than to its erroneous content. The exclusive consideration of the latter is rather characteristic of a juridical approach, which the Chancellor considers as specious (captiosus) insofar as it takes into account only the literal sense of the propositions. The materia subjecta is thus established as the theologian’s method properly speaking: in his way of proceeding, the theologian ought to apply a kind of reasoning appropriate to the moral matter concerned.18 Of Aristotelian origin,19 materia subjecta (i.e. what pertains to the subject-matter) referred to a new method in the analysis of propositions which 17 Gerson, Octo regulae, ed. by Glorieux, x, p. 259. 18 Gerson, De modis significandi, ed. by Glorieux, iii, p. 629 n. 38: ‘Theologus in expositione moralium et historialium, immo et prophetiarum considerare debet et insequi modos loquendi vulgares et parabolicos simul et rhetoricos atque figurativos; alioquin ageret indisciplinate, quaerens aptare sermones non secundum subjectam materiam. Esset denique scandalosus apud moralium praeceptorum scrutatores aut doctores quales sunt juristae’. 19 See Ethica Nicomachea, i. 1. 1094b 22, ed. by Gauthier, p. 142: ‘Dicetur autem utique sufficienter si secundum subiectam materiam manifestetur’. See also Thomas Aquinas, Sententia libri Ethicorum, i. 3, n. 1, ed. by Busa. On Gerson, see Schüssler, ‘Jean Gerson, Moral Certainty’, esp. p. 453.

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had its origin in the well-known Parisian statute of 29 December 1340.20 Developed in the context of the controversies surrounding Ockham’s works at the University of Paris, this statute, of Buridanist affiliation, was intended to transcend an over-restrictive sense of the value of propositions, by prescribing the relativization of the notions of proper and improper meaning of a word in privileging its relation to a given discipline.21 Gerson’s subsequent contribution to the debate is found in his De duplici logica (1401), in which the Buridanist influence is also patent.22 The treatise establishes a distinction between a speculative logic dealing with the property of words and which Gerson circumscribes to the rules contained in Peter of Spain’s Summulae logicales, and a logic pertaining to the ‘moral sciences’, which he calls ‘rhetoric’ appropriato vocabulo and of which the Scriptures are the supreme example: ‘as a moral and historical (historialis, i.e. narrative) science, the sacred Scriptures have a logic proper to them, which we call rhetoric’.23 Biblical discourse is not subject to the criteria of speculative logic, but rather follows the rules of rhetoric, which is more attentive to the context when it comes to explaining the meaning of words and better suited to the figurative language of the Scriptures.24 20 See Kaluza, ‘Les Sciences et leurs langages’, pp. 241–43; Kaluza, ‘Les Étapes d’une controverse’, pp. 297–317; Kaluza, Les Querelles doctrinales à Paris, esp. pp. 49–62; Kaluza, ‘La Crise des années 1474–1482’, pp. 293–327. On the same subject, see also Hoenen, ‘Via antiqua and via moderna in the Fifteenth Century’, pp. 9–36; Hoenen, ‘Jean Wyclif et les universalia realia’, pp. 173–92. 21 The statute’s text is found in Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis, ed. by Denifle and Chatelain, ii, n. 1042. 22 See Jean Buridan, Questiones in rhetoricam Aristotelis i. 2, unedited transcription by B. Preben-Hansen, quoted by Biard, ‘Science et rhétorique dans les Questions sur la rhétorique de Jean Buridan’, pp. 135–52. On the Buridanist origin of the conception of rhetoric as a logic pertaining to the ‘moral sciences’, see Kaluza, ‘Les Sciences et leurs langages’, esp. pp. 233–38; Kaluza, ‘Le Chancelier Gerson et Jérôme de Prague’, pp. 81–126. 23 Gerson, De sensu litterali sacrae scripturae, prop. 2, ed. by Glorieux, iii, p. 334: ‘Sensus litteralis sacrae Scripturae accipiendus non est secundum vim logicae seu dialecticae, sed potius iuxta locutiones in rhetoricis sermonibus usitatas, et iuxta topos et figuratas locutiones quas communis usus committit, cum consideratione circumstantiarum litterae ex praecedentibus et posterius appositis. Habet enim Scriptura sacra, sicut et moralis et historialis scientia, suam logicam propriam, quam rhetoricam appellamus’; De duplici logica, ed. by Glorieux, iii, p. 58: ‘notandum summo opere arbitror juxta etiam Philosophi sententiam quod duplex est logica; quaedam subserviens scientiis naturalibus ac pure speculativis, quae usitato nomine et quasi antonomastice logica nominatur et quae ad omnium methodorum viam habere describitur ab Hispano; quae sermocinalis a quibusdam nominatur. Porro altera est logica quam appropriato vocabulo rhetoricam dicimus; quae principaliter ancillatur, servit et adminiculum praestat scientiis moralibus, politicis et civilibus, ad intellectum practicum spectans’; De concordia metaphysicae cum logica, ed. by Glorieux, ix, p. 635 n. 20. 24 Gerson, De duplici logica, ed. by Glorieux, iii, p. 59: ‘nullo modo in historicis narrationibus sicut nec in prophetiis et documentis moralibus exigitur vel attenditur veritas dictorum conformiter ad strictas regulas prioris logicae, sed sufficit quod modus loquendi communis, cui maxime se conformat rhetorica, servetur, ubi figuratae locutiones tropicae et transsumptae per parabolas et similitudines admittuntur, et amplius quam reliquae’.

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In this respect, and as Zach Flanagin has shown,25 the joint analysis that Gerson makes of Jean Petit’s and Jan Hus’s errors26 is revealing of an association that surpasses the simple coincidence of the two condemnations launched by the Council fathers on 6 July 1415. As the Chancellor sees it, the Parisian master, as well as his Czech counterpart, are both examples of abusive readings of the biblical text smacking of heresy: the over-spiritualization of the letter capable of accommodating the crime of tyrannicide was nothing but the flip side of the Hussite danger of an ad litteram reading of isolated biblical passages taken out of context. A case in point is Gerson’s analysis in De necessaria communione laicorum sub utraque specie of the Hussite understanding of John 6. 54 as a justification of communion in both kinds. The Chancellor’s criticism attempts to show that the passage is invalidated once one takes into account other testimonies of Christ’s words, such as John 6. 51–52, in support of the claim of the sufficiency of bread alone. Beyond this intermediary level of interpretation based on context, Gerson includes another level based on the extra-textual tradition conveyed by the apostolic succession. I do not wish to dwell here on the much-debated question of the ecclesiological implications of Gerson’s conception of the relation between tradition and exegesis;27 suffice it to say that when he refers to ‘tradition’ as a hermeneutic norm, it is mainly in order to insist on the importance of abiding by the standard way of speaking (usus loquendi) of the doctors and ancient interpreters of the Scriptures.28 In this respect, Gerson often resorts to a well-known Augustinian passage in De civitate Dei enjoining the application of a certa regula, in particular when broaching delicate doctrinal issues before an unlearned public.29 The hermeneutic divide between the letter and the spirit is manifested here in terms of ‘logical’ or grammatical meaning (sensus logicalis) and ‘literal theological meaning’ (sensus theologicus litteralis), the latter representing the true meaning of the Bible, according to the 25 See Flanagin, ‘Making Sense Of It All’, pp. 133–35 and 161–63. For Gerson, De necessaria communione, ed. by Glorieux, x, p. 56. 26 Among other examples, see De nuptiis Christi et eccleiae, ed. by Glorieux, vi, p. 208; and Nova positio, ed. by Glorieux, vi, pp. 146–54. 27 On the role of the institutional Church in the interpretation of the biblical text according to Gerson, see Burrows, ‘Jean Gerson on the “Traditional Sense” of Scripture’, pp. 152–72; Meyjes, Jean Gerson, Apostle of Unity; Oberman, The Harvest of Medieval Theology, esp. pp. 314–34. 28 Gerson, Réponse à la consultation des maîtres, ed. by Glorieux, x, p. 241: ‘Ponit [H. de Hoyta] enim tria ad cognoscendum sensum litteralem: unum est circumstantia litterae praecedentis et sequentis; alium consideratio modorum loquendi per figuras et tropos et colores rhetoricos; tertium est usus loquendi sanctorum doctorum et expositorum sacrae Scripturae, sicut docet Augustinus, De doctrina christiana per totum’. On this subject, see Burrows, Jean Gerson and De Consolatione Theologiae, pp. 88–125. 29 Augustine, De civitate Dei, x, 23, ed. by Dombart and Kalb. For Gerson, see for example De sensu litterali sacrae scripturae, prop. 10, ed. by Glorieux, x, p. 336; Mémoire sur la réforme de l’enseignement théologique, attached to the letter addressed to Pierre d’Ailly on 1 April 1400, ed. by Glorieux, ii, p. 26; Contra curiositatem studentium, ed. by Glorieux, iii, p. 244.

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interpretation conveyed by the Church since its apostolic origins and through authoritative revelations. These interpretations have been preserved by the theological tradition, by which is meant not only the dogmatic decisions of the Church, but also the statements pronounced by the Fathers and doctors.30 Doctrinal tradition thus serves as a safeguard against the errors that a reading of the Scriptures nudis terminis can entail.31

Rhetoric and the Language of ‘affective theology’ Let us go back for a moment to Gerson’s distinction in De duplici logica between ‘moral logic’ and ‘speculative logic’. As he explains it, each designates a distinct and original field corresponding to a given faculty of the soul. Whereas the speculative intellect operative in philosophico-theological discourse makes use of demonstrative syllogisms in order to reach the truth, the practical intellect governing moral logic applies probable arguments built around metaphors and figures of speech with the aim of stirring the reader’s feelings and thus lead him towards the knowledge of spiritual realities.32 The prioritization of moral logic in theology prompts Gerson to foster a specific model of ‘theological wisdom’ which, contrary to the speculative theology practised in the schools, is inflected in an ‘affective’ direction. Indeed, the affective model serves as the basis for the Chancellor’s construction of an alternative paradigm of knowledge. As he develops it in 1402 in his first letter to the Carthusian Barthélemy Clantier: Vult ergo aliquis esse et dici vere sapiens? Habeat utramque contemplationis speciem, illam videlicet affectus quae saporem dat, et illam intellectus quae scientiae luminositatem praestat, ut constituatur sapientia id est sapida

30 See Gerson, De sensu litterali sacrae scripturae, prop. 6, ed. by Glorieux, iii, p. 335; Declaratio compendiosa quae de necessitate sunt de salutate credendae, ed. by Glorieux, vi, p. 182: ‘Secundus gradus est veritatum ab Ecclesia determinatarum quae ab indubitata relatione Apostolorum per successionem continuam devenerunt. Est autem haec Ecclesia auctoritas tanta ut dicit Augustinus: “evangelio non crederem nisi me auctoritas Ecclesiae compelleret”; quamquam vicissim dici possit: “Ecclesiae non crederem si non auctoritas Sacrae Scripturae impelleret”. Et ita diversis respectibus auctoritas utraque mutua se confirmat’; Réponse à la consultation des maîtres, ed. by Glorieux, x, p. 244: ‘Unde expositiones universales de Sacra Scriptura possunt et debent aliter exponi quam propositiones assertorum [ Jean Petit] hujusmodi assertionum; primo, quia Scriptura Sacra exponit suam regulam per semetipsam, secundum diversos passus Scripturae et juxta sacros doctores; non sic autem invenitur quod assertor hujusmodi se exposuerit, immo potius oppositum, considerando causas dicendi. Secundo, quia Sacrae Scripturae debetur talis reverentia quod non licet eam credere esse falsam in aliquo sensu litterali; non sic est de propositione praedicti assertoris vel alterius doctoris’. 31 Gerson, De necessaria communione laicorum sub utraque specie, ed. by Glorieux, x, p. 57. 32 Gerson, De duplici logica, ed. by Glorieux, iii, p. 58; De concordia metaphysicae cum logica, ed. by Glorieux, ix, pp. 632–42, esp. p. 635 n. 20: ‘rhetorica specialis est ad moralem scientiam tamquam logica sua specialis’; De sensu litterali sacrae scripturae, ed. by Glorieux, iii, p. 334.

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scientia. Quod si altera carendum est, eligibilius judicarem communicare in prima quam in secunda, sicut optabilius est habere pium affectum humilem et devotum ad Deum quam intellectum frigidum solo studio illuminatum. Scientia quippe inflat, intellige si sola est, caritas aedificat [i Corinthians 8. 1]. Nihilominus ubi de veritate fidei quaeritur tradita in sacris scripturis, magis interrogandi consulendique sunt theologi vigentes in contemplatione secunda quam idiotae pollentes in prima. (Does someone wish to be (and to be considered) truly learned (sapiens)? Let him enjoy two kinds of contemplation, namely, that of the affect, which bestows the taste (saporem), and that of the intellect, which gives the light of knowledge, thus enabling him to acquire wisdom, that is, the flavourful science (sapida scientia). If one or the other [kind of contemplation] were to be missing, I would judge it preferable to benefit from the first one rather than the second one, just as it is preferable to be driven to God by a pious, humble and devout affect, than by a cold intellect, enlightened solely by study. For ‘knowledge puffs up’, that is, when it is left alone, and ‘love builds up’ [i Corinthians 8. 1]. Nevertheless, when we seek to know the truth of faith transmitted by the sacred Scriptures, we must rather question and consult the theologian skilled at the second kind of contemplation, than the ignorant person accomplished in the first.)33 Scientia and wisdom thereby constitute two different paradigms of contemplation, designating in their turn two distinct fields of knowledge: speculative theology, prerogative of the university masters, and affective theology, a superior form of knowledge accessible to the unlearned, nevertheless insufficient in doctrinal matters. As Gerson makes clear in his second letter to Clantier in 1408, the superior role of the learned doctors is underlined not to reinforce clerical hegemony in learning, but in order to emphasize the manner of speaking (or ‘style’) of experienced theologians as a normative criterion in doctrinal matters, following the Latin dictum unicuique in sua arte perito credendum est.34

33 Gerson, First letter to the Carthusian Barthélemy Clantier (March 1402), ed. by Glorieux, ii, p. 61. 34 Gerson, Second letter to the Carthusian Barthélemy Clantier (April-June 1408), ed. by Glorieux, ii, p. 98: ‘Secunda consideratio: […] Tolerent igitur patienter homines inferioris gradus et scientiae si dicta eorum quaerantur ad proprium usum coarctari, non in perniciem doctrinae catholicae dilatari. Haec consideratione permotos existimo doctores novissimos Thomam, Bonaventuram et similes, dum omisso omni verborum ornatu tradiderunt theologiam per quaestiones ut sub certis regulis et sub praecisa verborum forma tutissimam gaberemus theologiam tam practicam quam speculativam, reducendo doctores omnes priores ad unam securamque locutiones proprietatem. Tertia consideratio: unicuique in sua arte perito credendum est. Haec est ratio cur doctoribus in sacra theologia exercitatis datur auctoritas interpretandi doctrinaliter sacram scripturam, quod maxime fieri habet in scholis, doctrinam impartiendo hiis qui tam ingenio quam exercitatione continua capaces sunt ad intelligendum’.

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The same emphasis is found in the Chancellor’s famous university lessons Contra curiositatem studientium (1402),35 mirroring his programme of reform of theological studies outlined during his stay in Bruges in 1400. Gerson’s principles of reform aimed mainly at amending theology’s method and style in three respects: it should follow the tritum iter, that is, follow the doctrine commonly accepted by the theologians; develop doctrine in a morally edifying way; and ensure that it is suitable for preaching in its mission of moral exhortation.36 Beside the canonical writings of the Fathers and the Victorine mystics, Gerson’s syllabus includes an overwhelming majority of thirteenth-century scholastics whose ‘style’ he enjoins to imitate: William of Auvergne, Bonaventure, Henry of Ghent, and the very unlikely pair, Thomas Aquinas and Durand of Saint-Pourçain.37 From the same period is the Montagne de contemplation, a treatise addressed by Gerson in French to his sisters in order to initiate them into the life of contemplation. Here again, the pseudo-etymological wordplay sapientia = sapida scientia is invoked in order to raise sapiential or experiential wisdom to the status of a superior kind of knowledge, distinct from speculative theology.38 Within this context, the comparison Gerson makes with the physician is not 35 Gerson, Contra curiositatem studientium, cons. 8 and 9, ed. by Glorieux, iii, pp. 247–49; see also his Super doctrinam Raymundi Lulle, ed. by Glorieux, x, pp. 112–28: ‘Dixit quidem et scripsit iste Raymundus multa vera; sed modus applicationis suae fuit extraneus a modis tam philosophorum quam theologorum, propius quoque sibi et suae imaginationi; cui se conformando necesse foret traditiones patrum veterum deserere, quas Ecclesia suscepit et in eis se suosque hactenus exercuit. Caveamus obsecro ne fiat in doctrinis ecclesiasticis quaedam babylonica confusio idiomatum vel linguarum se mutuo non intelligentium’. 36 Gerson, Lettre aux messieurs de Navarre (Bruges, 29 April 1400), ed. by Glorieux, ii, pp. 30–35, at p. 33: ‘Ad haec dignoscenda solers sit theologiae novus auditor consulere unum e multis cujus sibi doctrina, mores famaque complaceant, qui longo multoque vivendi, legendi ac bene vivendi exercitio docere faciliter possit, quam amplecti doctrinam interrogantis studium moresque desiderent sive [1] pro parte illa theologiae quae inter scolasticos magis vertitur, sive [2] pro illa quae legentis mores aedificet, regulet et componat, sive [3] pro illa quae praedicantibus congruit’. 37 Gerson, Lettre aux messieurs de Navarre, ed. by Glorieux, ii, p. 33. 38 Gerson, Montagne de contemplation, ed. by Glorieux, vii. 1, p. 19 n. 5: ‘[Car] science appartient principalement et comme seulement à l’entendement, et sapience a l’affection; et emporte selon son nom sapience autant comme savoureuse science. Et ceste saveur regarde l’affection, le desir, l’apetit et la volenté de la personne. Si puet estre en aucune personne grande science ou congnoissance, ou sera petite ou nulle sapience, car n’aura point de scaveur ou d’affection ad ce qu’elle saura. Et ce je monstre par gros exemples. On puet bien congnoistre la nature du miel par oir dire ou par estudier es livres, sans que on ait quelconque saveur en goust de la doulceur du miel. Li medecins congnoissent la nature des maladies, et mieulx souvent que li malades; mais quant a sentir la douleur et la savourer, c’est clair que li malades en sentent plus et scevent, non mie par raison mais par espreuve […]. Si vées que selon ce nous pouons concepvoir que sapience puet estre grande sans grande congnoissance, et clere congnoissance ou science sans moult de sapience’ [my emphasis]. See also Gerson, De Consolatione theologiae, iv, pr. 2, ed. by Glorieux, ix, p. 236; Letter to Michel Bartine, ed. by Glorieux, ii, p. 276; De examinatione doctrinarum, ed. by Glorieux, ix, p. 475.

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without significance, since it steers the theologian’s method in a casuistic direction.39 In the same vein, in a later work, he qualifies the theologian as a lex viva, whose judgment is able to adapt itself to concrete cases.40 The lex viva alludes not only to the legislator’s adaptability, but also, and more literally, to his living experience. For the living doctors do not have any less authority than the dead ones in the doctrinal explanation of the Scriptures or in the interpretation of the law, just as those who have not written do not enjoy less [authority] than those who have written.41 Indeed, advice from a living person (viventium consilium) is more efficient in resolving individual cases of moral dilemma than the multiplying of scholarly opinions. In this perspective, the ability to find the more advantageous solution according to the circumstances prevails over the development of a learned judgment. Scriptura cum experientia42 becomes the theologian’s watchword: like the physician who applies his knowledge to concrete cases of illness, the theologian must show adaptability in his examination of moral circumstances, even more diverse than bodily conditions. The emancipation of theology from the epistemological criteria of theoretical sciences entails not only a new

39 See Gerson, De directione cordis, ed. by Glorieux, viii, p. 101; see also the letter-treatise De valore orationis et de attentione addressed to his brother Jean le Célestin (Constance, 1416–1417), ed. by Glorieux, ii, p. 191. Joël Biard has pointed out the role played by medicine in fourteenth-century epistemological reflections as an example of an experience-related discipline. See Biard, ‘Science et rhétorique’, p. 148; see also Agrimi, ‘Les Quaestiones de sensu attribuées à Albert de Saxe’, pp. 193–204; Federici Vescovini, ‘La Médecine comme synthèse d’art et de science’, pp. 238–55. 40 Gerson, De contractibus, i, ed. by Glorieux, ix, p. 391: ‘Arbitrio legislatoris convenit nedum leges in contractibus ponere, sed potius interpretari, non tantum doctrinaliter ut juris periti possunt, sed auctoritative et judicaliter. Est itaque legislator tamquam lex viva, director et epyekes, dum et ubi provenit circa leges difficultas ex circumstantiarum varietate quae sunt innumerabiles, nec cadere possunt sub arte vel lege, quae per accidens sunt. Hinc est illud vulgati auctoris: “Ipsae etiam leges cupiunt ut jure regantur” [Cato, Distichs, xvii]’ [my emphasis]; De vita spirituali animae, iv, ed. by Glorieux, iii, p. 166. 41 Gerson, De contractibus, ii, ed. by Glorieux, ix, p. 420: ‘Attendatur quod super casu particulari, fuerunt inquisita plurima consilia peritorum, etiam theologorum, in variis locis et collationibus, nominatim Constanciae in reformatorio et ad partem et in schedulis subscriptis; et qui vidit testimonium perhibuit quod contractus praedictus et similes sunt liciti. Doctores autem viventes non minorem habent auctoritatem doctrinaliter exponendi Sacram Scripturam vel interpretandi jura, quam mortui, et qui non scripserunt quam qui scripserunt. Et ideo frustra fit aliquando tot allegationum multiplicatio, confestim ut unus aliquid scripsit, et contemnitur viventium consilium, qui saepius attendere magis possunt circumstantias particulares secundum quas variari judicium saepe necesse est, quemadmodum dicunt experientissimi medicorum in hominibus sanandis quod regulae generales traditae sub arte, vix inveniuntur practicabiles absque exceptione; multo magis in moralibus hoc evenit, quanto plures sunt mutationes animorum quam corporum. Propterea necessitatus est Philosophus dum medium virtutis inquireret, dicere: prout sapiens judicabit’ [my emphasis]. 42 Gerson, De consolatione theologiae, iii, pr. 2, ed. by Glorieux, ix, p. 218.

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scientific paradigm, but also a linguistic liberation: clerical Latin is deprived of its status as the uniquely sapiential language. Thereby, Gerson overturns the model of literacy in force within the medieval scholarly milieu: the written word is no longer the sole vehicle of knowledge, just as oral expression and experience are not devoid of scientific value. ‘Dic non quod alii scripserunt, sed quid tu ipse dicis vel sentis’ (Do not say what others have written, but what you yourself say or feel), the Chancellor declares in his attempt to promote a practical kind of wisdom unburdened by scholastic models.43 Gerson’s overhaul of the scientific paradigm is not only compatible with, but indeed calls for a popularization of theological knowledge, henceforth understood not as a matter of intellectual speculation, but as an affective experience. Gerson adopts the Ciceronian myth of the perfect orator and adapts it to his portrayal of the perfect theologian: ‘just as the orator described by Cicero is a morally good man and a gifted speaker [De oratore I, 202], so is the theologian a good man learned in the sacred Scriptures; learned, that is, not of intellect alone, but rather in affect’.44 In both cases, theoretical expertise is channelled in a moral direction and assessed according to practical/pastoral criteria. Revealing of the place Gerson reserves to rhetoric in his conception of theology is the fact that the Ciceronian inspiration serves to revisit, by adapting it, the myth of civilization in the opening passages of De inventione:45 the association of doctrinal knowledge and eloquence is the main warrant of

43 Gerson, De contractibus, ii, ed. by Glorieux, ix, p. 420: ‘Patet exinde quorumdam nimia humilitas vel vanitas, qui requisiti dicere quid sentiat de aliquo casu morali, confugiunt statim ad allegationes super allegationes, et ad glossas super glossas, dimissis etiam quandoque textibus aut principiis universalibus ad quae debet resolutio fieri, dicentes: iste sic sentit, alter sic sentit, alter approbat eum, alter sentit cum isto; quibus recte dici potest: dic non quod alii scripserunt, sed quid tu ipse dicis vel sentis. Dicit enim Aristoteles, vi Ethicorum [Nicom. Ethics vi. 12. 1143b: “Quare oportet attendere expertorum et seniorum vel prudentum indemonstrabilibus enunciacionibus et opinionibus non minus demonstracionum; propter habere enim ex experiencia visum vident principia”], quod judicia prudentium et expertorum habenda sunt quasi pro principiis ubi etiam nullam assignarent rationem, quoniam ex multis experientiis et studiis evenit illud; cara, id est pretiosa, datur longo prudentia temporis usu. Sic in medicina, sic in omni arte [cf. Jerome quoting Horace, Epist. 53. 6. PL 22, col. 544: “quod medicorum est promittunt medici, tractant fabrilia fabri”]. Unde orta est illa maxima, a sapiente et philosophis posita: “cuilibet experto in sua arte credendum est”’. The dictum comes from Peter of Spain, who calls it a ‘logician’s maxim’: Summulae logicales v. 36, ed. by Lambertus de Rijk, p. 76. See also Gerson, De consolatione theologiae, i. pr. 2 and 3, ed. by Glorieux, ix, pp. 190–92. 44 Gerson, De consolatione theologiae, iv, pr. 4, ed. by Glorieux, ix, p. 237: ‘theologia non admixta fidei, spei et caritati, inflat et officit quemadmodum de philosophia Romanorum refert Apostolus: quoniam propter ingratitudinem dati sunt super alios homines in reprobum sensum; causam reddit, quia cum cognovissent Deum non sicut Deum glorificaverunt neque gratias egerunt. Ingratitudinem vero maiorem esse in contemptu vel abusu theologiae quam philosophiae nemo dubitaverit; propterea, sicut apud Ciceronem orator describitur, quod est vir bonus dicendi peritus, ita theologum nominamus bonum virum in sacris litteris eruditum; non quidem eruditione solius intellectus, sed multo magis affectus’. 45 Cicero, De l’invention, i. 1–3, ed. by Achard.

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public peace and social order. According to Gerson’s ideal of Christian society, and much in contrast to Wyclif ’s re-reading in De civili dominio of Augustine’s conception of civitas Dei, the theologian becomes not only the safeguard and leading figure of the Church on earth, but also the worthy descendant of the vir bonus dicendi peritus of the classical era, simultaneously learned, eloquent, and morally discerning.46

Conclusion: Styles and mores scientiarum Gerson’s diatribe against certain scholastic practices is founded, as I have attempted to show, on a distinction between two kinds of contemplation, each constitutive of a scientific paradigm related in a hierarchical way. Of an inferior rank, intellectual contemplation designates a rational kind of knowledge acquired de communi lege, that is, via a natural acquisition of knowledge through sense perception. Such a way of proceeding, which Gerson qualifies as mos scolasticus, is characteristic of the theoretical sciences such as speculative theology and philosophy.47 Of a superior kind, insofar as it proceeds in an extraordinary manner in that it depends on supernatural grace, affective contemplation characterizes mystical theology as an intuitive knowledge of God, alone deserving to be called wisdom. When it fails to submit itself to the affective model of theology, scholastic knowledge becomes a pure intellectualist practice, thereby ‘sophistic’ and damaging to the soul.48 As Zénon Kaluza has well shown, Gerson’s criticism of certain scholastic mores is revealing of an obsolete understanding of the status questionis of the larger philosophical debate of his day. In his view, the Chancellor’s knowledge of the scholastic doctrines he assails is outdated and deployed only when he fears that they might become current again.49 Indeed, it would be naive to

46 Gerson, sermon Bonus Pastor, ed. by Glorieux, v, p. 129. On this subject, see Grellard, ‘Le Sermon comme exercice de casuistique chez Jean Gerson’, pp. 457–77. 47 See Gerson, Quia unum est necessarium, letter to his brother Jean le Célestin (Lyons, 1 October 1425), ed. by Glorieux, ii, p. 262: ‘Nunc autem hodie primo mysticum nescio quid aliud aperitur; quod si scolastico more debeat reserari, videtur quod hujusmodi theologia mystica docens unionem cum Deo neque consistit in opere intellectus nec in operatione affectus, quamvis praeexigantur tamquam necessariae dispositiones de communi lege’; Tractatus de oculo, ed. by Glorieux, iii, p. 151. 48 See Gerson, De mystica theologia, i, ed. by Glorieux, iii, p. 120: ‘Contemplatio namque, si nude consideretur sine dilectione vel affectu subsequente, iam arida est, inquieta est, curiosa est, ingrata est, inflata est, denique fit longe ab illa pace, qui “exsuperat omnem sensum” [Philippians 4. 7]; quapropter concludere fas est, quod scola orandi laudabilior est, ceteris paribus, quam scola litteras edocendi, quemadmodum scola religionis pro affectu excellit scolam eruditionis pro intellectu’. 49 Kaluza, Les Querelles doctrinales, pp. 42–44. For a convincing analysis of the topical character of such debates at the beginning of the fourteenth century in Paris, see Zahnd, ‘Der Dank an die Meister’, pp. 81–106, esp. pp. 84, 90 and 99.

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suppose that Gerson is engaging in the debates of his time when he blames the styles and methods of John Duns Scotus, Bradwardine, or John of Ripa. The Chancellor’s critique is rather revealing of a larger project, shaped by the context of ecclesiastical and political disorder in which it is embedded, and reflected in the heated debates at Constance. The caustic portraits that Gerson draws of certain authors, like his panegyrics of certain thirteenth-century scholastic figures whom he seeks to save from oblivion, are tantamount to ‘ideal types’ serving to synthesize and contrast two scholarly practices. On the one hand, an affective kind of theology putting into service a logica moralis in the interpretation of the Scriptures; on the other hand, speculative theology, of detrimental consequences when it falls victim to a methodological and stylistic confusion leading one astray from the path of salvation and aiming, at best, at some kind of ‘mental felicity’. Thus described, Gerson’s project differs very little from that of Bonaventure or Bernard of Clairvaux, both equally preoccupied with subjecting the intellect in obsequium Christi through the via affectiva. The Chancellor’s innovation resides rather in the pivotal role that rhetoric assumes as a supra-linguistic device allowing one to judge the value of a specific science or discipline in terms of its discursive ‘style’. In this context, ‘style’ designates the mode of expression and the way of constructing a discourse that is adapted to the subject-matter and to the receiving public — a method that Gerson synthesizes in Aristotelian terms as materia subjecta. The question of rhetorical convenience thus comes to the foreground in the Chancellor’s multiple interventions at Constance, be it in his struggle against Jean Petit’s tyrannicide theses or in his fight against Hussite biblical hermeneutics.

Works Cited Primary Sources Aristotle, Ethica Nicomachea, in Aristoteles Latinus xxvi. 1–3, ed. by R. A. Gauthier (Turnhout: Brepols, 1972–1974) Augustine, De civitate Dei, ed. by Bernhard Dombart and Alfons Kalb, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 47 and 48 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1955) ———, De doctrina christiana, ed. by Klaus-Detlef Daur and Josef Martin, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 32 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1962) Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis, ed. by Henri Denifle and Émile Chatelain, 4 vols (Paris: Delalain, 1889–1897) Cicero, De l’invention, ed. and trans. by Guy Achard (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1994) Gregory the Great, Règle pastorale, ed. by Floribert Rommel; introduction, notes and index by Bruno Judic; trans. by Charles Morel, Sources Chrétiennes 381 and 382 (Paris: Cerf, 1992) Jean Gerson, Œuvres complètes, ed. by Palémon Glorieux, 10 vols (Tournai: Desclée & Cie, 1960–1973)

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Jean Juvenal des Ursins, Histoire de Charles VI, roy de France, et des choses mémorables advenues durant 42 années de son règne, depuis 1380 jusques à 1422, ed. by Denys Godefroy (Paris: Imprimerie royale, 1653) Michel Pintoin, Chronique du Religieux de Saint-Denis, ed. by Louis Bellaguet, 9 vols (Paris: Comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques, 1839–1852) [reprint 1994] Peter of Spain, Summulae logicales, ed. by Lambertus de Rijk (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1972) Quintilian, Institutio oratoria libri XII, ed. by Ludwig Radermacher (Leipzig: Teubner, 1907) [reprint 1959] Thomas Aquinas, Quaestiones disputatae: et quaestiones duodecim quodlibetales vol. v: Quaestiones quodlibetales (Turin: Marietti, 1942) ———, Summa theologiae, 3 vols, ed. by Pietro Caramello (Turin: Marietti, 1952–1962) ———, Sententia libri Ethicorum, ed. by Roberto Busa (Rome: Editio Leonina, 1969) William of Ockham, Dialogus, ed. by John Kilcullen and others (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011) Secondary Works Agrimi, Joel, ‘Les Quaestiones de sensu attribuées à Albert de Saxe. Quelques remarques sur les rapports entre philosophie naturelle et médecine chez Buridan, Orseme et Albert’, in Itinéraires d’Albert de Saxe. Paris-Vienne au xive siècle, actes du colloque organisé le 19–22 juin 1990 dans le cadre des activités de l’URA 1085 du CNRS, ed. by Joël Biard (Paris: Vrin, 1991), pp. 193–204 Biard, Joël, ‘Science et rhétorique dans les Questions sur la rhétorique de Jean Buridan’, in La Rhétorique d’Aristote: traditions et commentaires de l’Antiquité au xviie siècle, ed. by Gilbert Dahan et Irène Rosier-Catach (Paris: Vrin, 1998), pp. 135–52 Black, Deborah L., Logic and Aristotle’s Rhetoric and Poetics in Medieval Arabic Philosophy (Leiden: Brill, 1990) Burrows, Mark S., Jean Gerson and the De Consolatione Theologiae: The Consolation of a Biblical and Reforming Theology for a Disordered Age (Tübingen: Siebeck, 1991) ———, ‘Jean Gerson on the “Traditional Sense” of Scripture as an Argument for an Ecclesial Hermeneutics’, in Biblical Hermeneutics in Historical Perspective: Studies in Honor of Karlfried Froehlich on his Sixtieth Birthday, ed. by Mark S. Burrows and Paul Rorem (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991), pp. 152–72 Cecchetti, Dario, ‘L’elogio delle arti liberali nel primo Umanesimo francese’, Studi francesi, 10 (1966), 1–14 Dahan, Gilbert, ‘L’Entrée de la Rhétorique d’Aristote dans le monde latin entre 1240 et 1270’, in La Rhétorique d’Aristote: traditions et commentaires de l’Antiquité au xviie siècle, ed. by Gilbert Dahan and Irène Rosier-Catach (Paris: Vrin, 1998), pp. 65–86

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———, ‘Le Sens littéral dans l’exégèse chrétienne de la Bible au Moyen Âge’, in Gilbert Dahan, Le sens littéral des Écritures, ed. by Olivier-Thomas Venard (Paris: Cerf, 2009), pp. 237–62 Federici Vescovini, Graziella, ‘La Médecine comme synthèse d’art et de science chez Pierre d’Abano’, in Les Doctrines de la science de l’antiquité à l’âge classique, ed. by Roshdi Rashed and Joël Biard (Leuven: Peeters, 1999), pp. 238–55 Flanagin, D. Zach, ‘Making Sense Of It All: Gerson’s Biblical Theology’, in A Companion to Jean Gerson, ed. by B. P. McGuire (Leiden: Brill, 2006), pp. 133–77 Giordanengo, Gérard, Le Droit féodal dans les pays de droit écrit. L’exemple de la Provence et du Dauphiné. xiie-début xive siècle (Rome: Ecole française de Rome, 1988) Grellard, Christophe, ‘Le Sermon comme exercice de casuistique chez Jean Gerson’, Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques, 98 (2014), 457–77 Guenée, Bernard, Un meurtre, une société. L’assassinat du Duc d’Orléans, 23 novembre 1407 (Paris: Gallimard, 1992) Hobbins, Daniel, Authorship and Publicity before Print: Jean Gerson and the Transformation of Late Medieval Learning (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009) Hoenen, Maarten J. F. M., ‘Via antiqua and via moderna in the Fifteenth Century: Doctrinal, Institutional and Church Political Factors in the Wegestreit’, in The Medieval Heritage in Early Modern Metaphysics and Modal Theory, 1400–1700, ed. by Russell L. Friedman and Lauge O. Nielsen, The New Synthese Historical Library 53 (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2003), pp. 9–36 ———, ‘Jean Wyclif et les universalia realia. Le débat sur la notion de virtus sermonis au Moyen Âge tardif et les rapports entre la théologie et la philosophie’, in La Servante et la consolatrice. La philosophie dans ses rapports avec la théologie au Moyen Âge, ed. by Jean-Luc Solère and Zénon Kaluza, Textes et Traditions 3 (Paris: Vrin, 2002), pp. 173–92 Iribarren, Isabel, ‘Le Paradis retrouvé: l’utopie linguistique de Jean Gerson’, in Langue et autorité théologique à la fin du Moyen Âge, ed. by I. Iribarren, Revue de l’histoire des religions, 231.2 (2014), 223–51 Kaluza, Zénon, ‘Le Chancelier Gerson et Jérôme de Prague’, Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Âge, 51 (1984), 81–126 ———, Les Querelles doctrinales à Paris. Nominalistes et réalistes aux confins du xive et du xve siècles (Bergamo: P. Lubrina, 1988) ———, ‘Les Sciences et leurs langages. Note sur le statut du 29 décembre 1340 et le prétendu statut perdu contre Ockham’, in Filosofia e teologia nel Trecento: studi in ricordo di Eugenio Randi, ed. by Luca Bianchi (Louvain-la-Neuve: FIDEM, 1994), pp. 197–258 ———, ‘Les Étapes d’une controverse. Les nominalistes et les réalistes parisiens de 1339 à 1482’, in La Controverse religieuse et ses formes, ed. by Alain Le Boulluec (Paris: Cerf, 1995), pp. 297–317 ———, ‘La Crise des années 1474–1482. L’interdiction du nominalisme par Louis XI’, in Philosophy and Learning: Universities in the Middle Ages, ed. by Maarten J. F. M. Hoenen, Jakob H. F. Schneider, and Georg Wieland (Leiden: Brill, 1995), pp. 293–327

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———, Études doctrinales sur le xive siècle. Théologie, logique, philosophie (Paris: Vrin, 2013) Meyjes, Posthumus G. H. M., Jean Gerson, Apostle of Unity: His Church Politics and Ecclesiology, trans. by J. C. Grayson (Leiden: Brill, 1999) Oberman, Heiko, The Harvest of Medieval Theology: Gabriel Biel and Late Medieval Nominalism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967) Ozment, Steven E., ‘The University and the Church: Patterns of Reform in Jean Gerson’, Mediaevalia et Humanistica, 1 (1970), 111–26 Pascoe, Louis B., Jean Gerson: Principles of Church Reform (Leiden: Brill, 1973) Robert, Aurélien, ‘L’Idée de logique morale aux xiiie et xive siècles’, in Philosophies morales. L’éthique à la croisée des savoirs (xiiie-xive siècles), ed. by Iacopo Costa, Aurélien Robert and Nathalie Bouloux, Médiévales, 63 (2012), 27–45 Schüssler, Rudolf, ‘Jean Gerson, Moral Certainty and the Renaissance of Ancient Scepticism’, Renaissance Studies, 23 (2009), 445–62 Zahnd, U., ‘Der Dank an die Meister. Anmerkungen zu einigen gratiarum actiones spätmittelalterlicher Sentenzenlesungen’, in Schüler Und Meister, ed. by Thomas Jeschke et Andreas Speer (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016), pp. 81–106

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Puri philosophi non est theologizare Reflections on Method in John Wyclif’s and his Bohemian Followers’ Discussions of the Eternity of the World*

In his seminal 1979 essay on the reception of Plato in medieval Bohemia, Édouard Jeauneau called attention to Jan Hus’s favourable attitude towards Plato’s account of the genesis of the world.1 Despite his unacceptable affirmation of the eternity of prime matter, Plato conceived of the world as created by God, and therefore as having a beginning with time — a view which, unlike Aristotle’s, was to be considered ‘catholic’. Hus expressed this belief in an apologia, dating back to 27 July 1410, in which he publicly took up the defence of Wyclif ’s De Trinitate, one of the eighteen texts by the Oxford master that the Archbishop of Prague, Zbyněk of Házmburk, had ordered to be burned not long before. In rejecting any allegation of heresy directed against Wyclif ’s tract and challenging the Archbishop to prove his claim, Hus wondered why Zbyněk did not rather order the burning of other theological works, such as Peter Lombard’s Sententiae, which undoubtedly contained a great number of errors, or philosophical texts such as Aristotle’s De caelo et mundo and





* A substantial revision of this contribution was undertaken under the aegis of the project ‘Philosophy at the University of Prague around 1409: Matěj of Knín’s Quodlibet as a Crossroads of European Medieval Knowledge, 19–16793S’, funded by the Czech Science Foundation (GA ČR), based at the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague. This research was also funded by the Department of Philosophy ‘Piero Martinetti’ of the University of Milan under the Project ‘Departments of Excellence 2018–2022’ awarded by the Ministry of Education, University and Research (MIUR). 1 Jeauneau, ‘Plato apud Bohemos’, p. 212 and n. 159. A significant part in promoting a Christian reading of Plato was taken by William of Conches, who ascribed to Plato the belief in the world’s beginning with time. See Gregory, Anima Mundi, pp. 41–59; Pépin, Théologie cosmique et théologie chrétienne, pp. 39–44, 84–97; Dales, ‘Discussion of the Eternity of the World’, pp. 502–04. About the circulation of William of Conches’ writings in medieval Bohemia, see Jeauneau, ‘Plato apud Bohemos’, pp. 181–96. Luigi Campi  •  is Lecturer at the University of Milan. He has published extensively on John Wyclif’s thought. He is currently working on late medieval philosophical debates at Prague. Wycliffism and Hussitism: Methods of Thinking, Writing, and Persuasion, c. 1360 – c. 1460, ed. by Kantik Ghosh and Pavel Soukup, MCS 47 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021), pp. 117–137 FHG10.1484/M.MCS-EB.5.124371

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Physica, whose main tenets were patently irreconcilable with the principles of the Christian faith as revealed in Holy Writ.2 The rhetorical style and the line of argument of this caustic passage have their model in the concluding speech delivered by Jerome of Prague at the annual Quodlibet organized by the Prague Faculty of Arts in 1409 and presided over by Matěj of Knín.3 Not only did Jerome’s speech greatly impress the audience, it also had a significant impact on subsequent Bohemian pamphleteering in defence of Wyclif. The presence of polemical references to Aristotle in these partisan works was no coincidence. Rather, even though scholars have not drawn attention to this phenomenon so far, the rejection of Aristotle’s eternalism in the first decade of the fifteenth century was one of the hallmarks of the group of Bohemian masters from Charles University influenced by the teachings of John Wyclif, and it played a part in the academic controversies related to the reception of his thought. Within the apologetic framework in which Hus’s defence of the De Trinitate appeared, the attack on Aristotle was rhetorically impressive, as Jerome had originally intended it to be. The argument ran as follows: granted that, even though they transmit several errors and heresies, Aristotle’s books are mandatory subjects in the curriculum studiorum at the Faculty of Arts since they contain many philosophical truths, why are the works of Wyclif, which are also full of (holy) truths, to be condemned, banned, and burnt? It would be wiser to deal with Wyclif as with Aristotle, namely to read his tracts carefully and dismiss whatever is false or dangerous, while keeping 2 Hus, Defensio libri de Trinitate, ed. by Eršil, pp. 40–41: ‘Unde ergo nostris condempnatoribus Scripture auctoritas aut patens deduccio, ut tot et tanti libri logice, philosophie et ceterarum facultatum tam in brevi examine in nocumentum universitatis et regni Bohemie vilipendium conburantur? Cur, rogo, non conbusserunt librum Aristotelis De celo et mundo, qui totus in destruccionem primi articuli nostre fidei sacratissime machinatur am nostre Scripture sacratissime inicium dicit: “In principio creavit Deus celum et terram” — Gen. 1, Aristoteles dicit: “Non creavit Deus celum et terram”. Cur librum Physicorum eius non conbusserunt, in quo derisorie de Platone catholice de creacione mundi senciente post multas raciones, quas adduxit sophisticas, dicit: “Solus Plato generat ipsum”, scilicet mundum, id est dicit esse factum Cur eciam libri Sentenciarum magistri Petri Lombardi non conbusserunt, in quo errores plurimi continentur? Revera latet aliquid, quod ipsos ad conburendum libros magistri Iohannis Wycleff movit et ad conburendum istos non movit. Veniant ergo in palam ductores conbustionis et ostendant palam manifestam heresim in libro De Trinitate et Scripturam, que eos movit ad taliter conburendum’. 3 Jerome of Prague, Recommendacio arcium liberalium, ed. by Šmahel and Silagi, pp. 214–15: ‘Quod si Aristotelem paganum cum ceteris paganis philosophis adhuc in iuvenili etate et cum sudore legimus et diligentissime studemus, in quorum libris errores quam plurimi fidei catholice repugnantes inserti comperiuntur, attamen veritates claras quam plurimas in eorum libris repositas capere non prohibemur, ita cur non legamus libros Wikleff, cum in eis infinite veritates sancte ab eodem elegantissime sunt reposite, quamvis turbant et clericos tumentes et laycos’. The same idea was expressed by Jerome at Constance in 1416; see Magnum oecumenicum Constantiense concilium, ed. by Hardt, iv, col. 751: ‘Item ad octavum articulum esse verum quod vidit et studuit libros Johannis Wicleff, sed non quod vellet sequi errorem suum, sed ut libros magni Philosophi †recipiendi† materiam et doctrinam bonam et dimittere malam’.

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whatever is true and useful — that is, the vast majority of his doctrines. The same idea is expressed in Hus’s De libris hereticorum legendis, published in 1411, where he takes up Jerome’s argument, adding Averroes’ books to the list of sources spreading doctrinal errors and heresies which are not only read and commented on by the Masters of Arts, but even endorsed and taught (leguntur, exponuntur et tenentur).4 A leitmotif emerging from these texts is that Aristotle’s doctrine of the eternity of the world is not only heretical, but also philosophically erroneous. This is remarkable, given that Thomas Aquinas had maintained that, from a ‘purely philosophical’ viewpoint, the eternity of the world cannot be ruled out and that it would not be incompatible with the world being metaphysically dependent upon God. However, Aquinas had also stated that the temporal beginning of the world, though worthy of belief on the grounds of the Christian faith, cannot be an object of scientific knowledge. In contrast, according to Hus, Aristotle reached his eternalist conclusions at the end of a deceptive argumentative process, through which he objected to Plato’s thesis that the world had a beginning with time.5 Any Master of Arts should therefore reject Aristotle’s conclusion both as a believer and as a philosopher. Conversely, anyone who reads Wyclif ’s writings will find that the number of catholic and philosophically tenable tenets is far larger than that of outrageous conclusions. Hence, Wyclif should be followed insofar as he was a prominent philosopher, and in any case — as already in part suggested by Jerome — it should not be the Archbishop’s task, but that of the Masters of Arts, to determine what is philosophically tenable and what is not in Wyclif ’s writings.6 Clearly, Hus and his friends made ideological use of their genuine rejection of Aristotle’s eternalism for apologetic purposes in favour of

4 Hus, De libris hereticorum legendis, ed. by Eršil, p. 15: ‘Sic enim naturales philosophi et presertim Aristoteles, qui creacionem mundi in libro De celo et mundo reprobat, et Averois, eius commentator, qui negat Trinitatem in divinis, allegantur in veritatibus et tenentur et ipsorum libri in universitatibus studiorum generalium leguntur, exponuntur et tenentur. Item liber Sentenciarum magistri Petri in multis reprobatur et tamen non conburitur, sed pre omnibus aliis libris in generalibus studiis practisatur’. See also Hus, Contra Iohannem Stokes, p. 56: ‘Item multi sunt libri magistri Iohannis Wigleff, qui nec tangunt clerum, qui sibi irascitur, nec Scripturam sacram, sed docent puram logicam, methaphizicam moralem et naturalem phiam [phizicam, ed. Eršil; philosophiam phisicam, Prague, NK, MS III G 18, fol. 152r, l. 2], in quibus non est timendum de heresi’. 5 Hus, Defensio libri de Trinitate, ed. by Eršil, p. 40: see note 2 above. 6 Hus, Defensio libri de Trinitate, ed. by Eršil, p. 41: see note 2 above. Cf. also Jerome of Prague, Reccomendacio arcium liberalium, ed. by Šmahel and Silagi, p. 215: ‘Ergo quantum ad me attinet, summopere vos moneo, ut libros eius [viz. Wyclif], et presertim in artibus, legatis frequenter atque studeatis diligenter; quod si in libris eius ea inveniretis, que ob infirmitatem vestri tenuis ingenii percipere ut deceret non valetis, pro forciori etate reponite; quod si in eis sunt quedam, que videntur fidei contraria, non hoc defendite aut tenete, sed pocius fidei vos submittite’; Magnum oecumenicum Constantiense concilium, ed. by Hardt, iv, col. 751: ‘Ad sextum et quintum articulos nihil respondit nisi dixit quod laudavit Johannem Wicleff tanquam

hilosophum, non tanquam haereticum’.

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Wyclif ’s ideas in general. Still, this rejection was actually grounded in Wyclif ’s own teachings. In a passage of a quaestio disputed at the Faculty of Arts probably in 1408/09, the so-called Quaestio de effectu indesinibili, Hus dismissed Aristotle’s views on the eternity of the world as entirely untenable and further maintained that Plato’s opinion about the world’s creation can be defended physice and therefore endorsed on philosophical grounds.7 This statement is a corollary to a conclusion reached by Hus in the light of Wyclif ’s threefold taxonomy of being (esse intelligibile, esse in causis, and esse existere). While the intelligible being of everything is eternal as it is identical with God’s essence, no kinds of being ad extra are eternal. Hence, while every creature can be said eternally to be (esse), none can be said eternally to exist (existere). Creation is the transition from intelligible to existential being, and such a transition makes something which did not exist begin to exist, that is — broadly speaking — it makes it acquire a kind of created being with which it was not provided before.8 The eternity of the sensible world is therefore to be excluded, pace Aristotle, whose arguments have no demonstrative force.9 What Hus was taking for granted, in the wake of Wyclif, was that there is another kind of world that can be said to be eternal: the intelligible world (mundus intelligibilis or archetypus), a model for the sensible world that is eternally provided with intelligible being in God’s mind. The very same conclusion was reached by Jerome of Prague in his Quaestio de potentia materiae primae, dating between mid-1409 and 7 Hus, Quaestio de effectu indesinibili, ed. by Kejř, pp. 25–31 (p. 28): ‘Conclusio secunda: Omnis effectus incepit fieri. Probatur: Omnis effectus incepit produci de puro esse intelligibili ad existenciam, igitur conclusio. Consequencia tenet ex notabili primo. Assumitur, nam produccio de puro esse intelligibili ad existenciam non potest poni eterna. Non enim res producitur ad existenciam nisi esse intelligibil pro aliqua mensura precedat [precedat ms.; precedit ed.] existenciam et per consequens apparet, quod instans mensurans esse intelligibile precedat instans mensurans ipsam existenciam. Sed illud instans primum est dandum, quia est dare produccionem illam ab esse intelligibili ad existenciam. Ergo cum in terra sit ordo prioritatis naturalis et secundum immediate sequitur ex primo et secunda mensura sequitur immediate ex mensura, sequitur quod omnis effectus incepit fieri. Correlarium: Mundus corporeus cum omnibus suis partibus est effectus, qui fieri incepit. Correlarium secundum: Mundus corporeus non eternaliter existebat. Correlarium tercium: Opinio Platonis de faccione mundi corporei est physice sustinenda’. 8 Hus, Quaestio de effectu indesinibili, ed. by Kejř, p. 25: ‘Pro quesito primo ego noto, quod quamvis produci non potest diffiniri a priori, cum sit valde commune, potest tamen notificari sic, quod produci est fieri de puro esse intelligibili et sic de nichilo in effectum ad esse effectuale extra Deum, vel fieri ex aliquo in effectum aliquid in effectum’; p. 27: ‘Secundo vero accipitur laxius incepcio rei sic, quod res habeat factum esse quod per ante non habuit, et desinicio rei post factum esse non esse factum est secundum hoc effectus desinibilis esset effectus, qui post factum esse posset factum non esse, et econtra effectus indesinibilis, qui post factum esse non potest deficere a facto esse, sicut e contrario effectus incipiabilis est effectus, qui potest habere esse factum esse, quod prius non habuit et sic conformiter de aliis existenciis’. 9 Hus, Quaestio de effectu indesinibili, ed. by Kejř, p. 28: ‘Argumentum Aristotelis ex eternitate mundi corporei quo ad existenciam nichil probavit’.

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1412: the world, Jerome maintains, can be said to be eternal only in its ratio, the relevant ideal model that God has in his mind; except in this sense, the eternity of the world is not a defensible philosophical conclusion, where ‘philosophy’ is to be understood as christiana philosophia.10 Many further examples could be adduced from Bohemian texts, also in the field of theology: one is the quaestio Hus determined in the principium of Book 2 of his Sentences commentary; in arguing against a fellow bachelor, Hus charges Aristotle, the Philosopher, and his followers with having defended the eternity of the world inphilosophice.11 Yet, this textual evidence is enough for my purpose here, which is to highlight the influence that Wyclif exerted on the anti-eternalism of some Bohemian masters and their attitude towards Aristotle, as well as on their denial that some conclusions can be considered true within the domain of philosophy, even if contrary to the principles of the Christian faith. Wyclif had already hinted at the topic of the eternity of the world in earlier works and had dealt with it in Chapter 12 of his major metaphysical work, the De universalibus, which had a wide circulation in Bohemia. A particularly interesting discussion is found in his unpublished De potentia productiva Dei ad extra, which is probably one of the latest tracts included in his Summa de ente, possibly dating from 1374.12 This tract is extant in only two manuscript copies: an almost complete one is found in Cambridge, Trinity College, MS B.16.2 (hereafter C); the other copy consists of a fragment, transmitting Chapter 1 and most of Chapter 2, preserved in Prague, NK, MS IX.E.6 (hereafter P). As 10 Jerome of Prague, Quaestio de potentia materiae primae, ed. by Šmahel and Silagi, p. 152: ‘Non est inconveniens, sed consonum Christiane phylosophie mundum dicere eternum. Patet, quia non est inconveniens cuiuslibet effectus extrinsecus racionem dicere eternam. Cum igitur iste mundus sensibilis sit perfectissimus effectus extrinsecus, racionem eius eternam dicere non est inconsonum Christane phylosophie, sed ista racio est intelligibilis mundus, sive mundus archetypus, etc. […] Mundum istum sensibilem dicere eternum non est philosophicum, sed error in philosophia’. 11 Hus, Super IV Sententiarum, ed. by Flajšhans, ii, Principium 2, pp. 198–99: ‘Ponatur illa in esse, quod mundus sensibilis eternaliter est. Tunc ex illa de in esse arguitur sic: iste mundus sensibilis per creacionem est; igitur mundus sensibilis ex nichilo [existendo, ed.] preter Deum cepit esse et per consequens existendi novitatem. Tenet ista consequencia ex diffinicione creacionis, que ponitur in notabili primo. Et ex secunda de in esse arguitur sic: iste mundus sensibilis eternaliter existit; igitur iste mundus sensibilis non ex nichilo preter Deum cepit esse et per consequens nec existendi novitatem enet consequencia ex vi eternitatis, quam supposui in notabili esse sine inchoacione et desicione, et per consequens sine novitate, cum novitas et eternitas correspondent sibi ex opposito sicut creacio et eternitas. Et hinc Philosophus, sed inphilosophice, cum suis sequacibus istum mundum sensibilem posuit increatum. Ex ista conclusione sequitur 1° quod inplicat contradiccionem istum mundum sensibilem esse creatum et ipsum eternaliter existere; 2° sequitur quod repugnat creature ex parte sui eam fuisse ab eterno’. On Hus’s discussion of the eternity of the world in his Sentences commentary, see Maarten Hoenen’s contribution to this volume, pp. 29–72, where Hus’s criticism of Aristotle’s eternalism is labelled as ‘philosophically imperative’ (p. 54). 12 See Campi, ‘Introduction’, pp. lv–lvi.

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I have shown elsewhere,13 extended textual borrowings from the De potentia productiva are found in Matěj of Knín’s 1409 Quodlibet — and precisely apropos of the eternity of the world — and Jan Hus drew upon it, at least once, in his Sentences commentary.14 Wyclif opens the De potentia productiva with a theological emphasis, by presenting the distinction between the ordained and the absolute power of God and discussing many theological authorities. Yet, Aristotle’s eternalism is introduced already at the end of Chapter 1: Aristotle maintained that God has infinite power, and came to such a conclusion through an argument from the eternity of time and movement which implies that the world did not begin with time — viz. that it was not produced de novo.15 I will not go into the details of Wyclif ’s philosophical and theological counter-arguments, some of which are quite traditional (the mutual exclusion of creatum and eternum, the objection from the infinite number of souls in act, etc.),16 while others are typical of his own metaphysical approach (as is already evident from Hus’s above-mentioned example). Rather, I will focus on some methodological comments sorrounding such a discussion or found in passages focusing on different topics in other works. First of all, Wyclif adopts the attitude towards Aristotle’s eternalism displayed by one of his favourite authors, Grosseteste. Both in his Hexaëmeron and in his commentary on the Physics, Grosseteste denounced the futility of any attempt to propose an expositio reverentialis of Aristotle, such as the one according to which his genuine intention was not to deny the world’s creation 13 In my paper ‘Anti-eternalism at the Prague Faculty of Arts in the Wake of Wyclif: Notes in the margins of Matěj of Knín’s Quodlibet (1409)’, presented at the conference Studying the Arts in Medieval Bohemia in Prague in December 2016 at the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Prague. 14 My edition of Matěj of Knín’s quaestio principalis for the 1409 Quodlibet will be published in a forthcoming volume prepared in the framework of the project ‘Philosophy at the University of Prague around 1409’. As for Hus’s borrowing from Wyclif ’s De potentia productiva, see Pavlíček, ‘Filosoficko-teologické základy myšlení Jana Husa’, pp. 868–69. 15 Wyclif, De potentia productiva Dei ad extra, Cambridge, Trinity College, MS B.16.2, fol. 139va [hereafter I am transcribing from C, using P only to correct the text when necessary; cf. P, fol. 52v]: ‘Et illo modo demonstrat Aristoteles 8 Physicorum quod deus sit potencie infinite, eo quod eternaliter ex se movet mundum causando ordinate omnes effectus; et patet error eorum qui putant ex uno latere quod deus solum intenditur ab Aristotele esse potencie infinite durative, ut sunt nature incorruptibiles; intendit enim quod deus sit in fine potencie, sicut est in fine essencie, in fine bonitatis, et cuiuscumque analogi quod sibi competit. Et ad hoc vadunt argumenta Aristotelis ponencia [ponencia P, presencia C] ipsum esse primum motorem moventem mundum eternaliter, ut forma exemplaris efficiens et finis ultimus, quod est alienum ab omni natura causata possibili. […] Nam in primo processu 8 Physicorum negat Aristoteles possibilitatem creacionis, et primo De celo et mundo dat statum talibus naturalibus quem non possunt excedere, ideo mirum esse quodcunque hoc intenderat denegare; contradictorium patet igitur, si hoc sequatur ex principiis Aristotelis, hoc fuit preter eius noticiam vel intentum’. 16 See Bianchi, L’errore di Aristotele, pp. 115–61; Dales, Medieval Discussions of the Eternity of the World, pp. 178–98.

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with time, but only in time, or another according to which he considered the world perpetual, but not eternal. Ancient Greek and Latin commentators of Aristotle — who had the original Greek texts at their disposal, rather than the corrupted versions available to Latin readers of Wyclif ’s time — were of one mind in ascribing eternalist views to Aristotle.17 The reason why Aristotle denied that the world had a beginning with time is that his affectus mentis, his appetite, was so much caught up in false fantasies and fixed on mundane realities that he could not lift up his aspectus mentis, his mind’s gaze, towards God’s eternity. Hence Aristotle failed correctly to distinguish between eternity and time and to avoid the falsa ymaginacio according to which each instant of time is always preceded by another; in so doing, he confused eternity with infinite temporal extension (‘sub phantasmate extensionis temporalis’), and, by rightly denying the possibility of empty time, concluded that movement must be eternal, and so must the world.18 In spite of the long doctrinal and epistemological debate which followed Grosseteste’s assessment — and in particular in spite of Aquinas’s position on the issue, which marked a

17 Wyclif, De potentia productiva Dei ad extra, fol. 142va: ‘Unde creacionem secundum tempus set non secundum ordinem negaret Aristoteles cum suis sequacibus, et creacionem de nichilo secundum esse intelligibile diceret esse inpossibilem, quod patenter est necessarium, cum repugnat aliquid fieri in effectu nisi fiat ex esse intelligibili eiusdem, et sic non ex nichilo, quia ex deo supplente vicem cause materialis. Set illud dictum patet inpugnare fidem catholicam que ponit incepcionem temporalem mundi tantum, finitos spiritus creatos, et tempus fuisse simpliciter creatum. Ideo dicit Lincolniensis in suo Exameron, capitulo 10, contra tales inordinate affectos Aristoteli vel sibi ipsis inaniter iactando, quod sciunt glosare patrem philosophie Aristotelem concordando omnia dicta sua cum theologia, quod studium huiusmodi est inane, cum tam greci expositores, qui habebant textum Aristotelis suis floribus non corruptum, quam et precipui expositores latini plane eliciunt ex sensu racionum 8 Physicorum, primo De celo, et multis locis quod intencionis sue fuit probando asserere quod mundus nec motus, tempus aut instans simpliciter potuit temporaliter incepisse, set infinitum diu ante quodcunque instans significandum duravit quodlibet talium’. Cf. Grosseteste, Hexaëmeron, ed. by Dales and Gieben, p. 61. 18 Wyclif, De potentia productiva Dei ad extra, fol. 146va: ‘Tercium argumentum Aristotelis est hoc: omne instans est continuacio temporis preteriti cum futuro, igitur omne instans precessit tempus, et per consequens non est dare primum instans in quo mundus inciperet. […] Et potest racio confirmari ex dictis Commentatoris in commento. Nam inpossibile est instans esse sine tempore [...], et inpossibile est tempus esse in eius inicio, ut patet 6 Physicorum de omnibus successivis quod non sunt in sui principio vel fine; igitur inpossibile est instans esse nisi mediet inter tempora quorum unum sit preteritum et aliud futurum. Ex quo palam sequitur tempus esse eternum, et per consequens motum et mobile, et sic mundum. Ad istud respondet Lincolniensis, ubi supra, quod assumptum est nostra peticio. […]. Ideo dicit Lincolniensis “sine dubio Aristoteles non habet demonstracionem [scripsi; demencionem C]” ad probandum tempus non habere inicium, “set sola ymaginacio perpetuitatis” temporis “fecit eum hoc falsum ponere”. Unde, ut dicit, “necesse fuit philosophos in hunc errorem incidere,” “cum mentis aspectus vel intelligencia non possit superius ascendere quam ascendit affectus. Et ita cum philosophorum affectus ligati erant plus cum transitoriis [scripsi; transcendentiis (!) C] quam eternis, illorum apprehensiva in fantasmatibus mutabilium detenta simplicitatem eternitatis [scripsi; eternis C] attingere non potuit”’. The references are actually to Grosseteste’s De finitate motus et temporis, which stems

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watershed in the history of such a debate — in his De potentia productiva Wyclif turns to the moralistic epistemological approach of the Bishop of Lincoln, and explicitly recalls his arguments to reject any contemporary defence of eternalist stances. Incidentally — but quite interestingly in the light of his views on the logic of Scripture, to which I shall briefly return later on — Wyclif had already invoked Grosseteste in the second prologue to his commentary on the Song of Songs, the lecture (principium) he gave in incepting as a Doctor of Theology (autumn 1372). In it, he stressed the good disposition of the affectus mentis as a necessary prerequisite for the attainment of a notitia debita Scripturarum and for avoiding errors. It is therefore noteworthy that he defended such an idea against, in particular, the objections of a hypothetical natural philosopher.19 Another methodological point concerns the rejection of any kind of distinction between the realms of philosophical truth and theological truth, or truth simpliciter.20 In the De potentia productiva, such a point is presented by Wyclif on the basis of his theory of illumination: a previous faithful assent of the mind is necessary for any act of human understanding or judgment, and the mind is moved to such an assent by the inner teachings of the highest Master, Christ, as Wyclif had already argued at length in his De Trinitate. If this is the case with human knowledge of worldly things, it is all the more so when it comes to the human acceptance of the articles of faith: were it possible to demonstrate the latter only on the grounds of natural reasoning, philosophers would already have done so, without the need for revelation and illumination. Yet, once the human mind is moved by Christ to assent to the articles of faith, the truth of each of them can also be rationally corroborated

from the same material he used to compile his commentary on the Physics: see Grosseteste, De finitate motus et temporis, ed. by Baur, pp. 103–05; cf. Grosseteste, Commentarius in VIII libros Physicorum Aristotelis, ed. by Dales, pp. 146–47. 19 Wyclif, Prefatio introductoria ad intellectum Cantici Canticorum seu potius totius Scripture, ed. by Benrath, pp. 338–41: ‘Tria sunt que magis conferunt mundicordibus, ut perveniant ad noticiam debitam scripturarum. Primum est moralis disposicio informans affectum […]. Secundum est laudabilis habitudo intellectus in triplici philosophia, scilicet sermocinali, naturali et morali […]. Tercium est virtualis operacio producens effectum secundum habitus supradictos. Ista quidem trinitas, si insit anime, plene disponit disposicione antecedenter necessitante ad veram sapienciam vel veritatem theologicam cognoscendam, quia habita disposicione completa materie formator non potest informando deficere. […] Sed hic quereret philosophus naturalis quomodo disposicio affectus antecedit disposicionem intellectus ad sapienciam theologicam capescendam, cum intellectus antecedit voluntatem in ordine cognoscendi. […] Errat igitur naturalis philosophus, partem considerans et non totum’. Cf. Wyclif, De universalibus, ed. by Müller, p. 77: ‘Sic igitur indubie error intellectus et affectus circa universalia est causa totius peccati regnantis in saeculo’. On Grosseteste’s views on affectus and aspectus with reference to the arts of the trivium, see Lewis, ‘The Trivium’. See also Callus, ‘Robert Grosseteste as a Scholar’, p. 21; Ginther, ‘Natural Philosophy and Theology at Oxford in the Early Thirteenth Century’, pp. 130–31. 20 See Cesalli, ‘Augustine and Wyclif on Truth’, 159–60.

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in an appropriate way.21 It thus becomes especially evident to the believer that any argument against those articles must be defective either in terms of content or form, for otherwise their truth would be compromised. Given such a unitary conception of truth, for Wyclif any claim in support of the eternity of the world based on an allegedly separate philosophical logic is wholly untenable. Furthermore, there is no possible sense according to which a conclusion which is contrary to an article of faith can be considered philosophical at all: for philosophy is a kind of scientific knowledge and, as such, cannot but be the knowledge of truth. Hence, if on the basis of philosophical principles someone reaches conclusions that are contrary to the articles of faith, and which are therefore false, he cannot be considered a philosopher, nor can his conclusions be taken to be philosophical — unless, of course, one defines philosophy as a different and non-scientific kind of knowledge, whose conclusions are partly true and partly false, which seems to Wyclif an unsatisfactory outcome.22 This is exactly what happens, however, with those who claim to undertake their enquiries ‘purely’ as philosophers (pure philosophantes), as if philosophy were a self-sufficient discipline: they admit that the world is brought by God into existential being out of its intelligible being, yet they maintain with Aristotle that this production is eternal and that the world has no beginning with time.23 Any believer, and even more

21 Wyclif, De potentia productiva Dei ad extra, fol. 140ra [cf. P, fol. 53v] ‘Tales enim altercaciones [altercaciones P, alteraciones C] fuerunt circa problemata neutra. Ideo, ut estimo, expedit pro loco et tempore supersedere a talibus altercacionibus [altercacionibus P, alteracionibus C] circa articulos fidei. Hoc tamen credo quod nullus est articulus fidei christiane quin demonstari poterit modo suo, fide tamen prius inclinante ad assensum. Nec potest aliqua conclusio doctrinalis demonstrari sine previo consensu fidei, ut patet de dictis tractatu De Trinitate’. Cf. Wyclif, De Trinitate, ed. by duPont Breck, pp. 1–38. 22 Wyclif, De potentia productiva Dei ad extra, fol. 140ra: ‘Ideo, ut alias dixi, notabiliter decipiunt qui ponunt philosophicum esse negare articulos fidei vel aliquam veritatem, quia consequenter habent dicere quod philosophicum esset concedere quamlibet conclusionem naturalem contradicere sibi ipsi: ut theologus asserens philosophice negandum esse quod deus est trinus et unus, quod deus est creativus, et cetera, eo quod repugnant principiis philosophie, habet consequenter concedere quod quelibet particula philosophie repugnat eciam sibi ipsi. Ista foret mirabilis sciencia cuius quelibet particula repugnat, nedum alteri sciencie, set eciam sibi ipsi!’; fol. 140rb: ‘Item philosophus, ut huiusmodi, est habituatus sciencia philosophica. Capio igitur totum habitum quo est formaliter philosophus, sive sit unus simplex habitus sive aggregatum ex multis, et patet quod omnis talis habitus est simpliciter verorum, cum sciencia dicitur relative ad scibile; cum igitur philosophus non debet quicquam concedere philosophice secundum sua principia nisi secundum inclinacionem dati habitus, et nullus talis inclinat ad falsum concedendum, sequitur quod philosophus non debet concedere falsum secundum suam scienciam’. 23 Wyclif, De potentia productiva Dei ad extra, fol. 143rb: ‘Ex istis probabiliter credi potest quod deus de potencia absoluta non posset mundum ad extra eternaliter produxisse; eternaliter, dico, sine principio temporis […]; set in oppositum arguitur dupliciter. Primo ex hoc quod Aristoteles et alii pure philosophantes concederunt mundum habere esse nisi a deo, ac produci ab esse intelligibili ad existenciam sine possibilitate sue incepcionis.

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so any theologian, should recognize that while the premise is true and absolutely necessary, the conclusion is false and impossible: for, according to an established theological tradition, to posit the world as created yet eternal implies a formal contradiction, since to be created means to have a beginning with time.24 Incidentally, it is worth pointing out that Wyclif is critical not only of the claims of professional philosophers, so to speak, but also — and, perhaps, especially — of certain trends in the theology of his day: for, on the basis of a misuse of the distinction between the absolute and the ordained powers of God, certain theologians have formulated hypotheses that carry fascinating philosophical implications, but come to entirely unsubstantiated conclusions according to revelation. These hypotheses include the ideas that God can annihilate created substances (Ockham) or create a void space (Bradwardine), and that the second person of the Trinity could have taken on any created nature whatsoever (Aquinas, among others).25 Wyclif’s reaction to epistemological pluralism takes the shape of an attempt to revive the Augustinian ideal of christiana sapientia as an integrated and all-encompassing form of knowledge of both mundane and extra-mundane reality. This operation is not far removed from Bonaventure’s aim, but it is based on a peculiar view of Scripture, of which the clearest articulation is offered by Wyclif in his De veritate sacrae Scripturae. Such a view has been taken into account by many scholars and it would be redundant to reproduce

[…] Ad primam consequenciam in oppositum dicitur quod nemo potest concedere vel intelligere quod mundus iste non incepit; ideo omnes philosophi concedentes talia signa in parte philosophantur, et in parte decipiunt, ut patet de Aristotele, Averoe [Averoys C] et suis sequacibus’. See Maarten Hoenen’s emphasis in this volume (p. 54) on Jan Hus’s use of the adjective ‘pure’ in his Principia as an example of the ‘tendency towards extremes and the unwillingness to compromise about seemingly minor issues of wording’. Hoenen considers these to be typical features of the ‘cultural crystallization’ proper to late medieval scholasticism. 24 Wyclif, De potentia productiva Dei ad extra, fol. 143rb–va: ‘Repugnat igitur formaliter quod mundus fuit eternus a parte ante, hoc est sine principio temporis, et tamen incepit aut creabatur a deo, quia oportet mensuram creacionis esse primum instans temporis, ut patet tractatu De tempore, capitulo 3°. Unde oportet theologum dicere Aristotelem et multos alios errantes in philosophia posuisse unum antecedens absolute necessarium et suum consequens absolute necessarium formaliter sequens negasse tamquam inpossibile, ut patet de veritatibus istis superius recitatis, “deus est” et “deus est trinus, humanabilis, et creativus” et cetera, et nedum philosophi, set multi catholici verisimiliter credunt philosophice deum esse tamquam absolute necessarium, et tamen aliqui attribuunt sibi quasdam passiones huiusmodi tamquam inpossibiles absolute’. 25 Wyclif, De potentia productiva Dei ad extra, fol. 143va: ‘Et indubie altera pars opinatur inpossibile et negat necessarium simpliciter, ut aliqui theologi concedunt ut absolute necessarium quod deus est adnichilativus, infiniti vacui creativus, cuiuscunque nature create ypothetice susceptivus, cuiuslibet corporis dimencionaliter multiplicativus, et sic de huiusmodi infinitis que concernunt divinam potenciam. Alius autem econtra dicit quodlibet tale inpossibile, unde non est inconveniens philosophos quoscunque viantes preter unum concedere in casu absolute necessarium negare ut inpossibile’.

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their arguments in detail.26 Suffice it to say that Wyclif holds that (1) every scriptural statement is true according to the properties of language, and that (2) Holy Writ contains the truths of every human science; furthermore, he urges learned theologians to discover (3) the hidden logic of Scripture, which encompasses all the other kinds of logic, as it is their measure. In Wyclif ’s opinion, all this implies that true philosophy (according to 2 and 3) cannot but be in agreement with Scripture, as the latter leads every human science to its perfection and fulfilment. The conclusion reached by Wyclif in his De potentia productiva is formulated in his De veritate sacrae Scripturae within a more refined epistemological system. In his effort to revive such a unitary approach against the methodological pluralism which had gained widespread acceptance in contemporary scholastic debate, Wyclif states that genuine philosophy, theology, and the patristic tradition all contribute to the attainment of truth.27 Within this holistic framework, for Wyclif it is unacceptable to uphold the eternity of the world according to philosophy, when scriptural and patristic witnesses assert that the world has been created out of nothing and with time. So, in spite of the indubitable philosophical stature of Aristotle, whose works are legitimately included by the Faculties of Arts in their curricula and are perused by students to their great advantage, a Christian should not endorse Aristotle’s eternalism, but rather learn the rationes Scripturae about the creation of the world with time, rejecting the pagan philosopher’s errors and sophisms.28 What is at issue here is not the pre-eminence of Aristotle or Plato over all other philosophers, nor is this a matter of determining whether Aristotle’s philosophy should be generally followed (except when it is patently erroneous). For whatever its historical form, philosophy must be accepted as genuine only insofar as it is in agreement with Scripture.29 This is apparent to anyone who understands 26 Hoenen, ‘Jean Wyclif et les universalia realia’, pp. 173–92, Hoenen, ‘Theology and Metaphysics’, pp. 23–55; Brungs and Goubier, ‘On Biblical Logicism’, pp. 201–46; Goubier, ‘Wyclif and the Logica Augustini’, pp. 137–66; Cesalli, ‘Augustine and Wyclif on Truth’, pp. 153–63. 27 Wyclif, De scientia Dei, ed. by Campi, p. 91: ‘Et idem dicunt concorditer philosophi et theologi et cum generali professione ecclesie caventes de deo quod in ipso sunt idem esse, vivere et intelligere’; Wyclif, De statu innocencie, in Wyclif, Tractatus de mandatis divinis. Accedit tractatus de statu innocencie, ed. by Loserth and Matthew, p. 475: ‘Pro cuius indagine utendum est testimonio scripturae, dictis sanctorum, et probabili ratione’; Wyclif, Trialogus, ed. by Lechler, p. 66: ‘Et sic intelligendo terminos modo quo scriptura sacra et philosophi rectiloqui conceperunt, non subversa philosophia, sed praeparata esset via ad philosophiam nobis miseris cognoscendam’. 28 Wyclif, De veritate sacrae Scripturae, ed. by Buddensieg, i, pp. 29–30: ‘Non nego, tamen, quin Aristoteles fuit magnus philosophus cuius libri licite leguntur et meritorie adiscuntur; errores vero suos de eternitate mundi, maris, temporis et aliorum, que cristianus ponit creacione cepisse, non debemus adiscere, sed raciones scripture, ut sciamus errores suos destruere et sophismata sua dissolvere’. 29 Wyclif, De veritate sacrae Scripturae, ed. by Buddensieg, i, p. 29: ‘Unde cristianus philosophiam, quam religiose discit de libris Aristotelis, non ipsam discit quia Aristotelis, sed quia autorum scripture sacre et per consequens tamquam suam scienciam, que in

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that Christ is the highest philosopher and that he is philosophy itself.30 In the light of all these remarks, one may fully appreciate the import of Wyclif ’s rejection — already clear in the De potentia productiva — of the principle according to which practising theology does not suit a ‘pure’ philosopher (‘puri philosophi non est theologizare’): rather, if on the basis of philosophical principles he reaches conclusions contrary to revelation, the ‘pure’ philosopher is not doing philosophy at all.31 Such a meta-historical perspective leads Wyclif to a, as it were, ‘post-disciplinary’ account of scientific knowledge.32 According to Wyclif, appropriate training in the arts, as institutionalized disciplines with specific techniques,33 provides theologians with essential skills for apologetic purposes or for avoiding minor errors at the beginning of their enquiries which would lead them to much more serious doctrinal errors in their conclusions.34 Not only that but, libris theologie reccius est edocta’; pp. 31–32: ‘Omnis philosophia est sciencia, igitur omne philosophicum est scientificum, sed nullum falsum est scientificum, cum illud, quod non est nisi scitur , igitur nullum falsum est philosophicum, et per consequens non est philosophicum falsum quodcunque asserere vel tenere. Et ex hoc patet, quod nulla philosophia Aristotelis vel cuiuscunque alterius philosophi repugnat theologie, licet errores philosophorum repugnant huic sacre sciencie, secundum quod exciderunt a nomine veri philosophi’. Cf. n. 18 above. 30 Wyclif, De veritate sacrae Scripturae, ed. by Buddensieg, i, p. 32: ‘Si autoritate Aristotelis vel alterius ethnici debet credi conclusio, multo magis autoritate Cristi, summi philosophi, debet credi oppositum [viz. that the world had a beginning with time] et per consequens hoc discredi’; Wyclif, De potentia productiva Dei ad extra, fol. 143va–b: ‘Si Aristoteles fuit precipuus philosophus et preclarus, nos tamen vere credimus Christum notabiliter ipsum in philosophicis precessisse, sicut et sanctos patres tam novi quam veteris testamenti. Ideo ubi Commentator dicit deum ordinasse Aristotelem pro regula nature, ut patet in prologo primi Physicorum, nos vere asserimus hoc de Christo, in quo sunt omnes thesauri sapiencie et sciencie absconditi’. 31 Wyclif, De potentia productiva Dei ad extra, fol. 143rb: ‘Et sic Aristoteles ac alii philosophantes paululum plus illuminati concederent consequenter ex suis principiis mundum incepisse a deo, sicut ab eo principiatur, set per quot annos duravit; et sic de aliis diffinicionibus particularibus non est philosophorum discutere, nisi forte ad tantum fuerint [scripsi; fuerit C] illustrati’; fol. 143va: ‘Triplicem glosam audivi suis dictis inpositam: prima quod in lumine naturali non habuit ipse vel individuum speciei humane quid aliud diceret, et puri philosophi non est theologizare; ideo debuit sic ponere, set illud superius inprobatum est’; Wyclif, De veritate sacrae Scripturae, i, p. 33: ‘Nemo ergo in discendo solum tales conclusiones [viz. that the world is eternal] foret philosophus, sed pocius philofalsus’. 32 I use the term ‘post-disciplinary’ with all due caution, being aware that both ‘scientia’ and ‘disciplina’ were technical terms in high and late medieval scholastic debates and underwent significant semantic shifts over time. See for example Berndt, ed., ‘Scientia’ und ‘Disciplina’. 33 I am here modifying a point Kantik Ghosh makes in ‘Logic and Lollardy’, pp. 254, 267–68; Ghosh, The Wycliffite Heresy, pp. 22–66. 34 Wyclif, Postilla in Lucam, 9, 3, in Wyclifs Bibelkommentar, ed. by Benrath, p. 364: ‘Decet theologum scire sophismata, ne a infidelibus confundatur’; Wyclif, Sermones, ed. by Loserth, i, p. 63: ‘ista responsio non consistit in grossa metaphisica, sed in rudi grammatica qua infideles non distinguunt quantitatem a subiecto’; Wyclif, De statu innocencie, ed. by Loserth and Matthew, p. 503: ‘Et quoad terciam evidenciam confirmativam prioris sentencie dicitur quod oportet dilatantes istam materiam esse in metaphysica et naturali scientia educatos’;

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as stated by Wyclif in his principium and, to some extent, in his slightly later Determinatio against Kenningham (beginning of 1373), training in the arts is also a prerequisite for the attainment of any proper insight into the study of Scripture and for the detection of the truths contained therein.35 At the same time, however, in many works Wyclif insists on the fact that theologians must learn a new grammar, a new logic, a more subtle and higher metaphysics, and so on. Upon closer inspection, this is not a matter of learning new disciplines, but of learning the philosophical arts in a new way, something which will enable theologians to attain the true meaning of Scripture, which they have been made ready to embrace by the institutionalized and limited practice of the same disciplines. Such a new way of learning requires theologians to rectify the arts, that is, to make them conform to their principle, standard and measure, which is found in Scripture; and this is possible only by impregnating or fertilizing them (quousque gravidata fuerit) with the moral and mystical senses of Scripture, as Wyclif says in the De veritate sacrae Scripturae apropos of natural philosophy.36 This is exactly what Wyclif had in mind when in his De

p. 519: ‘via Lincolniensis, quam sepe tenui et adhuc teneo, presupponit arcium rudimenta’. Cf. also Wyclif, De veritate sacrae Scripturae, ed. by Buddensieg, iii, pp. 280–81: ‘Quomodo igitur excusaremus opiniones erroneas philosophorum infidelium de eternitate mundi et suorum accidencium aperte, cum cristiani, qui minus pertinaciter sentenciam istam defendent, forent heretici Ignorancia igitur vel defectus instructoris catholici non excusat eos, quin cadant in heresim vel mortale . Ymmo, ut ego credo, nostri philosophi, qui propter inanem gloriam vel causam extraneandi gratis seminant dogma falsum, sunt in gradu suo heretici’. 35 Wyclif, Prefatio introductoria, in Wyclifs Bibelkommentar, ed. by Benrath, pp. 341–45: ‘Felix qui omnia ista perfecte cognosceret, sed felicior qui quodlibet latinum resolvere in primitivum grecum aut hebreum, cognoscendo rei proprietatem et racionem secundum quam nomen rei imponitur; felicissimus autem qui perfecte cognosceret dialecticam, cum dialectica vel ars silogizandi non minus est utilis, cum ipsa detegit veritates inertibus absconditas, dilucidat universales substancias plebeis incognitas, et extendit presenciam successivorum […]. Et si non fallor, non sunt alia puncta logica que plus istis conferunt ad apercionem scripture, ad solucionem dubiorum que concernunt dei prescienciam aut necessitatem contingencium futurorum […]. Nec dubium quin ad inveniendum illas veritates philosophicas in Scriptura preexigitur noticia philosophica naturalis […]. Philosophia moralis […] est perutilis huic arti, tum quia scriptura sacra est plena theologia philosophie moralis, quam sine sentencia in libris philosoficis (!) explicata non contingit theologum quemquem cognoscere, tum eciam quia practica huius philosophie est necessario requisita theologo’. 36 Wyclif, De veritate sacrae Scripturae, ed. by Buddensieg, i, p. 42: ‘oportet in scripturam sacram exponendo vel intelligendo adiscere novam grammaticam ac novam logicam, sicut patet per beatum Gregorium et alios sanctos, qui exponunt autoritate scripture novos sensus terminorum scripture, qui nusquam originantur ex libris gramatice’; p. 49: ‘Item cum in omni genere sit unum principium, quod est metrum et mensura omnium aliorum, patet, quod in genere logice oportet vel logicam scripture esse regulam aliis logicis vel econtra. […] sequitur quod ista logica [viz. scripture] sit regula omnium aliarum. Et cum principiatum sit reccius ut principio suo propinquius, patet, quod logice nostre sunt eo subtiliores quo sunt sibi similiores. Stultum ergo foret deserere illam logicam tam promptam et facilem ac laborare inutiliter circa peiorem et difficiliorem logicam alienam’; pp. 72–73:

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potentia productiva he stated that whoever denies the beginning of the world lacks the fundamentum rectificans of natural philosophy. Wyclif added that the arguments the theologians put forward for the creation of the world with time are sound, but need to be significantly rectified, in order more effectively to withstand the assaults of the allegedly ‘pure’ philosophers.37 The adverb pure is, therefore, counterpointed by recte, the latter pertaining to philosophical reasoning in accordance with Scripture.38 As is often the case, Wyclif ’s terminological choices are both fascinating and puzzling. In this case, nouns and verbs pertaining to the idea of ‘rectificatio’ seem to be used according to a combined polysemic sense: the institutionalized disciplines, developed by human beings after the Fall — that is, when they had already deviated from the infallibilis regula directiva39 according to which they had been originally instituted by God — need now to be ‘straightened’. This also means that they need to be ‘restored to their proper state’ — possibly, a state similar to that in which they were possessed by the innocent or in which they would have been possessed, had not mankind sinned in Adam. However it may be, it is clear that, for these disciplines to be restored and ‘refined’, it is required that divine influence, coming from outside, cooperates from within with human beings, as an inner guide, in their pursuit of scientific knowledge. Wyclif ’s moralistic epistemology here seems to conform to a broader theological pattern according to which divine

‘In talibus itaque figuris locucionis scripture latet omne genus philosophie naturalis, que ex intellectu scripture suscipit ultimum complementum. Nam philosophia naturalis usque adeo deficit ab ultimo complemento, quousque gravidata fuerit moralitate vel alio sensu mistico scripture. Et sic tam logica quam omnis alia philosophia recipit in scriptura sacra perfeccionem ultimam in deum propinquius dirigentem’; Wyclif, Postilla in Lucam, 9. 3, in Wyclifs Bibelkommentar, ed. by Benrath, p. 365: ‘Unde consequitur quod oportet theologum discere novo modo sciencias subalternatas, cum theologia rectificat omnes alias tamquam finis, ideo oportet quod alia sibi obedient, ut sugent sensum suum’. Cf. Brungs and Goubier, ‘On Biblical Logicism’, pp. 240–41. 37 Wyclif, De potentia productiva Dei ad extra, fol. 142va–b: ‘Ideo multe sunt evidencie que materialiter probant mundum incepisse et tamen in aliis quodammodo similibus deficiunt huiusmodi deducciones, quia deficit illis fundamentum rectificans. Et tales deducciones fecerunt philosophos despicere istam viam, ut theologi arguunt ex hoc mundum incepisse, quia aliter non esset racio quare sol vel alia pars mundi incepisset, quia est in dato situ, nisi detur instans creacionis vel incepcionis motus sui et continuitatem gradus motus usque huc. Tales deducciones sunt bone, set egent magna rectificacione, et multis modis quibus maior pars philosophancium hodie contradicit’; Wyclif, De veritate sacrae Scripturae, ed. by Buddensieg, i, p. 49: ‘Error igitur logice Aristotelis […] ibi corrigitur, ut patet de paralogismis et lege oppositorum. Et eius rectificacio recipit in sacris eloquiis ultimum complementum’. Cf. also Wyclif, Sermones, ed. by Lechler, i, p. 170: ‘Et cuncti philosophi ut Aristoteles et sibi similes errarunt non solum in lumine fidei sed eciam in lumine naturali, cum racio naturalis rectificata inducit et preparat ad cunctos articulos fidei cognoscendos’. 38 See Wyclif, De dominio divino, ed. by Poole, p. 102: ‘Hic dicitur quod omnes recte philosophantes debent concedere, tanquam philosophicum, creacionem universitatis cum eius partibus universis’. 39 See Wyclif, De statu innocencie, ed. by Loserth and Matthew, p. 499.

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coefficiency with secondary causes is conceived of as a form of concurrence,40 so that causal efficiency is attributed to both God and human beings. The latter have their own individual rational capacities and are more or less trained in scientific disciplines, from which follows their personal contribution to the attainment of scientific knowledge; God’s role is conceived as a sort of infused support, acting from within as a restoring and generative influence, healing fallen weakened rational powers and enabling them to reach new goals. In the strictnesses of their scientific boundaries, institutionalized disciplines are sterile, but thanks to divine help they are ‘fertilized’, gravidata, and are able to bear fruit, that is, to grasp the meanings and mysteries concealed in Scripture and reality. Such an approach might be considered ‘post-disciplinary’ in that it contemplates separate institutionalized disciplines as preliminary steps that any amicus veritatis has to climb to reach the top of a ladder — the wellknown scala sapientiae he mentions in his De universalibus — where indeed no mystical vision is enjoyed, but a form of scientific knowledge may be attained.41 Disciplinary boundaries are useful only as far as training in the arts is concerned; at an advanced stage of his or her studies, a Christian believer should go beyond these specific methodologies and techniques and recognize that there is but a single, unified science, whose method is derived from the logic of Scripture. In envisaging such a unitary epistemological framework, Wyclif often stresses that philosophical disciplines are ‘subalternated’ to theology and that theologians have the task of directing such a unified science, as Alexander Brungs and Frédéric Goubier have pointed out.42 In the late work Trialogus (1383), however, the post-disciplinary approach becomes even clearer: Wyclif ’s spokesman Phronesis — described as a subtilis theologus et maturus — rejects all the sophistries and falsehoods of the infidelis Pseustis, and leads to completion, or rectifies, the views of the solidus philosophus Alithia.43 Notably, in many cases Phronesis ends his discussions not only

40 See Campi, ‘Introduction’, pp. cxxix–cxxx. 41 Wyclif, De universalibus, ed. by Müller, p. 175: ‘notitia universalium est gradus praecipuus scalae sapientiae ad indandum veritates absconditas. Et haec credo est ratio quare Deus non permittit scholam de universalibus in toto deficere’. Cf. Brungs and Goubier, ‘On Biblical Logicism’, p. 240. 42 Brungs and Goubier, ‘On Biblical Logicism’, p. 241: ‘In the end, there is but one single, unified science, directed by the theologians who base their scientific activities on a method derived from the logic of Scripture’. 43 Wyclif, Trialogus, ed. by Lechler, p. 38; ‘Cum locutio ad personam multis plus complacet quam locutio generalis, et mens multorum qui afficiuntur singularibus, ex tali locutione acuitur, videri posset multis utilis quidam Trialogus, ubi primo tanquam Alithia solidus philosophus loqueretur, secundo infidelis captiosus tanquam Pseustis objiceret, et tercio subtilis theologus et maturus tanquam Phronesis decideret veritatem’. It is worth noting that two of the four Vienna codices used by Lechler (Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MSS 1387 and 3930) describe Alithia as a ‘solidus theologus’. The same description was originally to be found in one of the other two (Vienna, Österreichische

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with formulae such as ‘I leave this to the natural philosopher’, but also with ones such as ‘I leave this to the theologian’. This suggests that there are certain aspects of the topics Phronesis is dealing with that he considers either marginal or preliminary, and therefore forming the focus and competence of special sciences, including theology as an institutionalized discipline.44 At the same time, the core of these topics, their most theoretical content, the access to the truth they provide, and the enjoyment of happiness (felicitas) deriving from it, pertain to a subtle, mature, and post-disciplinary form of scientific knowledge which is modelled on the recta philosophia of Christ and of the heavenly blessed, and which was to some extent enjoyed by the whole of mankind before the Fall.45 Those who were able to practise it in via, like Wyclif ’s heroes — that is, Augustine, Anselm, and Grosseteste — are said to have been veri, sancti, perfecti, or clari philosophers.46 To the extent of my knowledge, Wyclif ’s views on the logic of Scripture and their epistemological outcomes were not shared by Hus and his disciples. However, these magistri were well aware of Wyclif ’s anti-eternalism and of

Nationalbibliothek, MS 4505), but was then corrected to ‘solidus philosophus’ by a second hand. Mark Thakkar has drawn my attention to the occurrence of ‘solidus theologus’ in two complete manuscript copies of the Trialogus that were not used by Lechler, namely Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, MS Plut.19.33, fol. 57v, and Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS 4516, fol. 88r. As I show in what follows, an interpretation of Wyclif ’s approach as ‘post-disciplinary’ would fit in with both descriptions of Alithia. 44 Cf. Wyclif, Trialogus, ed. by Lechler, p. 96: ‘Et de objectis istorum quinque sensuum interiorum tractatum specialem reliqui perspectivis. De objectis autem sensuum particularium relinquo tractatum diffusum philosopho naturali’; p. 402: ‘Utrum autem corpora damnatorum erunt ex condensatione oppressa et sibi nocentia, et sic multa in eodem parvo loco indebite cumulata, et in qua proportione habebunt plus de terra et aqua quam de aliis elementis, relinquo theologisantibus declarandum’. 45 Wyclif, De statu innocencie, ed. by Loserth and Matthew, p. 498: ‘Theorica autem istarum arcium que est proprie sciencia infuisset, cum multi post lapsum statim consenciunt plurimis conclusionibus doctrinalibus eciam per demonstrandi medium sine previo demonstrante. Unde miserum foret dimissa theorica sciencia in qua consistit felicitas istis septem artibus nimis attendere. Ideo istud indubie non fecissent innocentes, semper in melius operandum spiritu dei ducti, sed solum intendissent praxi theorice vel mediis necessariis ad eandem’; Wyclif, De veritate sacrae Scripturae, ed. by Buddensieg, i, p. 34: ‘Non enim debet iuvenis exercitari in disciplinabilibus nisi in eis, que inducunt, ut fiat sapiens, cum felicitas sit finis ultimus operum humanorum. Sed talis doctrina [viz. Aristotle’s view on the eternity of the world] non est via directe ducens ad sapienciam, sed seducens’. 46 Wyclif, De veritate sacrae Scripturae, ed. by Buddensieg, i, p. 32: ‘Summus ergo philosophus, ymmo ipsa sophia est Cristus, deus noster, quem sequendo et discendo sumus philosophi et discendo quodcunque falsum erramus a philosophia quia a sentencia beatorum, qui sunt veri philosophi’; Wyclif, De universalibus, ed. by Müller, p. 69: ‘Nam quando ille eximius philosophus et propheta Moyses dixit’; Wyclif, Sermones, ed. by Loserth, i, p. 75: ‘Et profundus philosophus Johannes ex dictu spiritus sancti approbat sensum platonicum’; Wyclif, De Trinitate, ed. by duPont Breck, p. 50: ‘Unde Sapiencie XI, 21 philosophice dicitur deo: Sed omnia in mensura et numero et pondere disposuisti’; Wyclif, Trialogus, ed. by Lechler, p. 84: ‘Democritus autem, Plato, Augustinus, Lincolniensis, qui ita senserant, sunt longe clariores philosophi et in multis methaphisicis scientiis plus splendentes [than Aristotle]’.

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his rejection of any form of epistemological pluralism, and shared the view that the eternity of the world is not defensible on philosophical grounds,47 while its creation with time can be an object of scientific knowledge. They also knew that Wyclif ’s attitude towards such problems — exemplified by Aristotle, the Philosopher par excellence — had been more cautious early on in his career, but had become quite radical in later years. In his De scientia Dei (1372), Wyclif states that Aristotle upheld untenable conclusions on the eternity of the world only at the first stage of his enquiries, but then changed his mind on the issue at the end of his life; in De potentia productiva, he even refers to some pseudo-epigraphic writings where Aristotle retracts his opinions.48 Both passages were known in Prague but the view that Aristotle had changed his mind was not endorsed. Part of the former text is rearranged by Hus in a question for his 1411 Quodlibet, while Matěj of Knín was clearly familiar with the latter passage but chose to ignore it by quoting only the immediately following section in the quaestio principalis of his 1409 Quodlibet.49 Matěj’s omission of Wyclif ’s reference to the pseudo-Aristotelian

47 On Hus’s rejection that God can produce creatures eternally and his dependence on Thomas of Strasbourg, see Hoenen in this volume, p. 56, note 92. 48 Wyclif, De scientia Dei, ed. by Campi, pp. 144–45: ‘Quoad illud de necessitate veritatis universalis de presenti, patet quod Aristoteles preter fidem et racionem opinatus est mundum fuisse eternum a parte ante; ideo non mirum si ipse diceret consimiliter species esse simpliciter eternas, cum modicus error in principio ducit distancius a veritate in consequentibus. Si autem vere dixisset, cum catholicis, mundum pro signando instanti fuisse creatum, sicut dixit in ultimis diebus suis, et tam ampliasset verba de presenti, […] concessisset consequenter mundum et omnes species creatas contingenter existere; Wyclif, De potentia productiva dei ad extra, fol. 141va: “Et in tali errore fuit Aristoteles licet in fine hoc revocaverit”, ut in De mundo, in Secretis secretorum, et in libro suo De pomo’. 49 Hus, Quodlibet, ed. by Ryba, p. 140; ‘Concedenti: Non est necessarium omnem triangulum habere tres angulos equales duobus rectis; sed habere triangulum tres angulos equales duobus rectis est unum principium mathematice; igitur, etc. Assumptum probatur: Non necesse est triangulum esse, igitur non necesse est triangulum habere tres equales, etc. Assumptum probatur: quia non necesse est mundum esse, cum ipse contingenter est, quia incepit esse, ut dixit Philosophus in ultimis diebus suis, suam opinionem priorem de eternitate mundi revocando, et probato isto “omnia cessant deposita necessitate”’ (text in italics is drawn from Wyclif, De scientia Dei; see note 48 above). Compare then Wyclif, De potentia productiva Dei ad extra, fol. 141va [cf. P, fol. 54r]: Et in tali errore fuit Aristoteles ad tempus de incepcione mundi, licet in fine hoc revocaverit, ut patet [patet P, om. C] in De mundo, in Secretis secretorum, et in libro suo De pomo. Supponitur […]. Et tercio suppono pro descripcione quid nominis creancie quod sit ad extra producere realiter causatum [causatum P, creatum C] de nichilo in effectum [effectum P, effectu C]. Ad hunc sensum quod preposicio “de” vel “ex” connotet privative circumstanciam cause materialis actualiter precedentis causatum, sic quod si aliqua substancia producatur in esse existere sine hoc quod sit substancia aliqua [aliqua scripsi; absoluta P, substanciata (?) vel C] materialis taliter [taliter P, materialiter C] preexistens ex qua producitur, tunc ipsa substancia vere [vere P, om. C] sic producta creatur’ with Matěj of Knín, Utrum summum bonum inmutabile, art. 3, Prague, NK, MS X.E.24, fol. 352r: ‘primo suppono quod creare est de puro esse intelligibili ad extra causatum de nichilo in effectum realiter producere ad istum sensum quod preposicio “de” connotet privative circumstanciam cause materialis actualiter precedentis causatum, sic quod

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writings containing Aristotle’s retractions is particularly revealing of his conviction that Aristotle did not actually make any such retraction. Upon closer inspection, then, even Hus’s re-use of the statement from De scientia Dei cannot be taken as evidence of his acceptance of the idea that the later Aristotle had retracted his views, since the passage in question appears among the arguments in support of a thesis that Hus obviously did not endorse — namely, the thesis that the principles of mathematics are not necessary. In De veritate sacrae Scripturae, Wyclif ultimately came to regard as futile any attempt to exonerate Aristotle from his error with regard to the eternity of the world, for example by maintaining that he had retracted his previous views in works of dubious authenticity.50 By this time, any reverence towards Aristotle was seen to play into the hands of those who upheld the disciplinary autonomy of philosophy, or the legitimacy of speculative theology based on a misinterpretation of the distinction between absolute and ordained divine powers. It was rather preferable to state clearly that Aristotle had sometimes reached untenable conclusions, and to explain why such conclusions are not philosophical at all. The Bohemian Wycliffites seem to have followed the late Wyclif on this point.

Works Cited Manuscripts and Archival Sources Cambridge, Trinity College, MS B.16.2 Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, MS Plut.19.33 Prague, Národní knihovna, MS III.G.18 ———, MS IX.E.6 ———, MS X.E.24 Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS 1387 ———, MS 3930 ———, MS 4505 ———, MS 4516

si aliqua substancia producatur in esse existere sine hoc quod sit substancia aliqua materialis preexistens ex qua producitur, tunc ipsa substancia vere sic producta creatur’ (text in italics is drawn from Wyclif ’s De potentia productiva quoted immediately above). 50 Wyclif, De veritate sacrae Scripturae, ed. by Buddensieg, i, pp. 30–31: ‘Nec videtur michi concedendum credendo commentatori suo Averroi, cum dicit in prologo primi Phisicorum, quod non est repertus error in dictis suis, aut quod non fuit intencionis sue negare incepcionem universitatis create, velut alii fingunt, vel quod postea revocavit errores in libro de Natura Deorum, in De Secretis Secretorum et in De Pomo, ut dicit dominus Albertus. Tales enim questiones sicut et questio, qua dubitatur, utrum illi libri erant sui vel non, utrum sit salvatus vel dampnatus cum sibi similibus, videntur cristiano inutiles’. See Campi, ‘Sicut dixit in ultimis diebus suis’, pp. 257–72.

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Primary Sources Jan Hus, Contra Iohannem Stokes, in Magistri Iohannis Hus Polemica, ed. by Jaroslav Eršil, 2nd edn, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis, 238 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), pp. 47–61 ———, De libris hereticorum legendis, in Magistri Iohannis Hus Polemica, ed. by Jaroslav Eršil, 2nd edn, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis, 238 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), pp. 3–22 ———, Defensio libri de Trinitate, in Magistri Iohannis Hus Polemica, ed. by Jaroslav Eršil, 2nd edn, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis, 238 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), pp. 25–43 ———, Quaestio de effectu indesinibili, in Magistri Iohannis Hus Questiones, ed. by Jiří Kejř, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis, 205 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), pp. 25–31 ———, Quodlibet, ed. by Bohumil Ryba, 2nd edn, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis, 211 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006) ———, Super IV Sententiarum, ed. by Václav Flajšhans (Prague: Bursík, 1904) Jerome of Prague, Quaestio de potentia materiae primae, in Magistri Hieronymi de Praga Quaestiones, Polemica, Epistulae, ed. by František Šmahel and Gabriel Silagi, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis, 222 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), pp. 141–59 ———, Recommendacio arcium liberalium, in Magistri Hieronymi de Praga Quaestiones, Polemica, Epistulae, ed. by František Šmahel and Gabriel Silagi, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis, 222 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), pp. 201–22 John Wyclif, De dominio divino, ed. by Reginald Lane Poole, Wyclif Society (London: Trübner, 1890) ———, De scientia Dei, ed. by Luigi Campi, Auctores Britannici Medii Aevi, 30 (Oxford: Oxford University Press for the British Academy, 2017) ———, De Trinitate, ed. by Allen duPont Breck, Studies and Texts in Medieval Thought, 3 (Boulder: University of Colorado Press, 1967) ———, De universalibus, ed. by Ivan J. Müller (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985) ———, De veritate sacrae Scripturae, ed. by Rudolf Buddensieg, 3 vols, Wyclif Society (London: Trübner, 1905–1907) ———, Prefatio introductoria ad intellectum Cantici Canticorum seu potius totius Scripture, in Wyclifs Bibelkommentar, ed. by Gustav Adolf Benrath (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1966), pp. 338–46 ———, Sermones, ed. by Johann Loserth, 4 vols, Wyclif Society (London: Trübner, 1887–1890) ———, Tractatus de mandatis divinis. Accedit tractatus de statu innocencie, ed. by Johann Loserth and Frederic D. Matthew, Wyclif Society (London: Trübner, 1922) ———, Trialogus cum supplemento Trialogi, ed. by Gotthard V. Lechler (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1869) ———, Wyclifs Bibelkommentar, ed. by Gustav Adolf Benrath (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1966)

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Magnum oecumenicum Constantiense concilium, ed. by Hermann von der Hardt, 6 vols (Frankfurt a. M.: Gensch, 1696–1700) Robertus Grosseteste, Commentarius in VIII libros Physicorum Aristotelis, ed. by Richard C. Dales, Studies and Texts in Medieval Thought, 4 (Boulder: University of Colorado Press, 1963) ———, De finitate motus et temporis, in Die philosophischen Werke des Robert Grosseteste, Bischofs von Lincoln, ed. by Ludwig Baur, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters, 9 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1912), pp. 101–06 ———, Hexaëmeron, ed. by Richard C. Dales and Servus Gieben, Auctores Britannici Medii Aevi, 6 (London: Oxford University Press for the British Academy, 1982) Secondary Works Berndt, Rainer, ed., ‘Scientia’ und ‘Disciplina’: Wissenstheorie und Wissenschaftspraxis im 12. und 13. Jahrhundert (Berlin: Akademie, 2002) Bianchi, Luca, L’errore di Aristotele. La polemica contro l’eternità del mondo nel xiii secolo (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1984) Brungs, Alexander, and Frédéric Goubier, ‘On Biblical Logicism: Wyclif, “Virtus Sermonis” and Equivocation’, Recherches de Théologie et Philosophie Médiévales, 76.1 (2009), 201–46 Callus, Daniel A., ‘Robert Grosseteste as a Scholar’, in Robert Grosseteste: Scholar and Bishop, ed. by Daniel A. Callus (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955), pp. 1–69 Campi, Luigi, ‘Introduction’, in John Wyclif, De scientia Dei, ed. by Luigi Campi, Auctores Britannici Medii Aevi, 30 (Oxford: Oxford University Press for the British Academy, 2017), pp. xi–cxlix ———, ‘Sicut dixit in ultimis diebus suis: Alberto Magno e il presunto ravvedimento di Aristotele circa l’eternità del mondo’, in Edizioni, traduzioni e tradizioni filosofiche (secoli xii–xvi). Studi per Pietro B. Rossi, ed. by Luca Bianchi, Onorato Grassi, and Cecilia Panti, Flumen Sapientiae, 7 (Rome: Aracne, 2018), pp. 257–72 Cesalli, Laurent, ‘Augustine and Wyclif on Truth: An Attempt to Elucidate Wyclif ’s Notion of logica sacrae Scripturae’, Recherches de théologie et philosophie médiévales, 80.1 (2013), 145–63 Dales, Richard C., ‘Discussion of the Eternity of the World during the First Half of the Twelfth Century’, Speculum, 57 (1982), 495–508 ———, Medieval Discussions of the Eternity of the World (Leiden: Brill, 1990) Ghosh, Kantik, The Wycliffite Heresy: Authority and the Interpretation of Texts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002) ———, ‘Logic and Lollardy’, Medium Aevum, 76 (2007), 251–67 Ginther, James, ‘Natural Philosophy and Theology at Oxford in the Early Thirteenth Century. An Edition and Study of Robert Grosseteste’s Inception Sermon’, Medieval Sermon Studies, 44 (2000), 108–34 Goubier, Frédéric, ‘Wyclif and the Logica Augustini’, Medioevo, 36 (2011), 137–66

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Gregory, Tullio, Anima Mundi. La filosofia di Guglielmo di Conches e la scuola di Chartres (Florence: Sansoni, 1955) Hoenen, Maarten J. F. M., ‘Jean Wyclif et les universalia realia: le debat sur la notion de virtus sermonis au Moyen Âge tardif et les rapports entre la théologie et la philosophie’, in La Servante et la consolatrice. La philosophie dans ses rapports avec la théologie au Moyen Âge, ed. by Jean-Luc Solère and Zénon Kaluza, Textes et traditions, 3 (Paris: Vrin, 2002), pp. 173–92 ———, ‘Theology and Metaphysics: The Debate between John Wyclif and John Kenningham on the Principles of Reading the Scriptures’, in John Wyclif. Logica, politica, teologia, ed. by Mariateresa Fumagalli Beonio Brocchieri and Stefano Simonetta, Millennio medievale, 37 (Florence: SISMEL – Edizioni del Galluzzo, 2003), pp. 23–55 ———, ‘Ideas, Institutions, and Public Scandal: Academic Debates in Late Medieval Scholasticism’, in Wycliffism and Hussitism: Methods of Thinking, Writing, and Persuasion c. 1360 – c. 1460, ed. by Kantik Ghosh and Pavel Soukup, Medieval Church Studies, 7 (Turnhout: Brepols, forthcoming). Jeauneau, Édouard, ‘Plato apud Bohemos’, Mediaeval Studies, 41 (1979), 161–214 Lewis, Neil, ‘The Trivium’, in The Scientific Works of Robert Grosseteste, ed. by Giles E. M. Gasper, Cecilia Panti, Tom C. B. McLeish, and Hannah E. Smithson, i (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2019), pp. 96–111 Pavlíček, Ota, ‘Filosoficko-teologické základy myšlení Jana Husa: Univerzálie a některá s nimi spojená témata’, Filosofický časopis, 63.6 (2015), 859–92 Pépin, Jean, Théologie cosmique et théologie chrétienne (Paris: PUF, 1964)

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Martin Dekarli

New Texts Relevant to the Reception of John Wyclif in Late Medieval Bohemia*

Introduction The transmission of John Wyclif’s works from Oxford to Prague is traditionally associated with the English–Bohemian political alliance established during the early 1380s.1 Furthermore, scholars generally agree that Prague Realists, such as Stanislav of Znojmo (d. 1414), Štěpán of Páleč (d. 1423), Jan Hus (d. 1415), Jerome of Prague (d. 1416), Matěj of Knín (d. 1410), Jakoubek of Stříbro (d. 1429), and Prokop of Plzeň (d. 1457), contributed significantly to the diffusion of the doctor evangelicus in Bohemia during the late Middle Ages.2 Their intellectual praxis has triggered debates amongst historians for more than a century. At present, there is no generally accepted consensus as to the date when Prague Realists first received and dealt with John Wyclif ’s tracts. Although the oldest preserved Czech copy of one of Wyclif ’s works



* This study was supported by the Czech Science Foundation (Grant No. 17–08410Y). I would like to thank Luke DeWeese for improving my English. 1 A summary of the relevant historiography is provided by Walsh, ‘Lollardisch-hussitische Reformbestrebungen’, pp. 77–108. 2 For the concept of Prague and Czech Realism, see Libera, La querelle des universaux, pp. 521, 570–73. The register of extant works and general biography of Stanislav of Znojmo (BA 1385, MA 1388, D.Th. 1405 Prague), Štěpán of Páleč (BA 1386, MA 1391, M.Div. 1411 Prague), and Jakoubek of Stříbro (BA 1393, MA 1397, B.Div. before 1410 Prague) is accessible in Spunar, Repertorium auctorum Bohemorum, i, pp. 214–50, 286–304, and 326–40. For the extant works of Jan Hus (BA 1393, MA 1396, Sentenciarus since 1405, Prague) and Jerome of Prague (BA 1398 Prague, MA 1405 Paris, MA 1406 Heidelberg, MA 1407 Prague), see Bartoš and Spunar, Soupis pramenů. For Jerome’s works, see also Quaestiones, Polemica, Epistulae, ed. by Šmahel and Silagi, pp. cxxix–cxliii. For Matěj of Knín (BA 1409 and MA 1404 Prague) and Prokop of Plzeň (BA 1403, MA 1408 Prague), see Tříška, Repertorium biographicum universitatis Pragensis, pp. 364 and 470–71. Martin Dekarli  •  ([email protected]), is Lecturer in the Department of Auxiliary Sciences of History and Archive Studies at the University of Hradec Králové, Czech Republic. Wycliffism and Hussitism: Methods of Thinking, Writing, and Persuasion, c. 1360 – c. 1460, ed. by Kantik Ghosh and Pavel Soukup, MCS 47 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021), pp. 139–156 FHG10.1484/M.MCS-EB.5.124372

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dates from 1397,3 recently discovered evidence indicates that Wyclif ’s influence on the Prague Realists goes back further. Stanislav of Znojmo’s Tractatus de universalibus (maior) and Štěpán of Páleč’s Commentarius in De universalibus Johannis Wyclif were composed between 1394 and 1395.4 In what follows, I re-examine the oldest extant texts of the Prague Realists identified in the historiography of the twentieth century. I also discuss treatises from the tradition of the Prague nominalist schola communis, hitherto unconsidered by scholars interested in the reception of Wyclif ’s works in Bohemia. Some of these texts shed light on the availability of Wyclif ’s corpus in Prague along with controversies before and around 1395. Finally, I propose a new contextual framework for the history of John Wyclif ’s reception in Bohemia.

The Oldest Extant Treatises of the Prague Realists More than a century’s worth of extensive manuscript research has identified the oldest extant texts of the Prague Realists. Only recently, however, has the authorship of some of these works come to light. Contrary to what was previously supposed, some of these works are not of Bohemian origin at all. The fifteenth-century logical treatise Tres modi respondendi, preserved in MS IV H 9 of Prague National Library, was mistakenly incorporated into Wyclif ’s miscellaneous works by the Wyclif Society in 1905. Current scholarship has suggested that the Prague Realist Stanislav of Znojmo is the tract’s genuine author.5 However, the text belongs to the genre of logical obligations (obligationes), which had been integrated into the logic curriculum of continental universities during the late 1330s, and the author closely follows the solution of obligations proposed by the English logician Roger Swyneshed (d. 1365).6 Furthermore, another copy was recently discovered among English



3 The oldest surviving Bohemian copy is Prague, NK, MS III G 10, containing Wyclif ’s treatise De ideis. Fol. 137v preserves the following colophon: ‘Explicit tractatus de ydeis. In nomine domini Amen Anno domini M°CCC°LXXXX° septimo finitus est liber iste in feria tercia Ante Ascensionis domini nostri Ihesu Christi per infinita secula seculorum g b q et cetera’. 4 For the dating of these works, see Šmahel, Život a dílo Jeronýma Pražského, p. 184, and Štěpán of Páleč, Commentarius in I–IX capitula tractatus De universalibus Johannis Wyclif, ed. by Müller, pp. 24–25 and 56–57. Wyclif ’s De universalibus, De ideis, De materia et forma, and De Trinitate influenced both works. 5 Tres modi respondendi is preserved in Prague, NK, MS IV H 9, fols 258v–259r. For the edition, see John Wyclif, Miscellanea philosophica, ii, ed. by Dziewicki, pp. 152–56. For details regarding its authorship, see Sousedík, ‘Stanislaus von Znaim († 1414)’, p. 41; and Spunar, Repertorium auctorum Bohemorum, i, p. 294. 6 For a general overview of medieval obligations literature, see Spade and Yrjönsuuri, ‘Medieval Theories of Obligationes’. For the passage that mentions Swyneshed, see Tres modi respondendi, in John Wyclif, Miscellanea philosophica, ii, ed. by Dziewicki, p. 152 l. 517. For the whole of Swyneshed’s work, see Spade, ‘Roger Swyneshed’s Obligationes’, pp. 255–56.

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logical tracts in Rome and dates to 1413.7 Presumably, the author of Tres modi respondendi was an English logician. Hence, a more careful examination of the manuscript tradition indicates that Stanislav of Znojmo is not the genuine author of the text, and that the work is not of Bohemian origin. Another item in MS IV H 9 from Prague National Library, the Insolubilia pulchra or Modus solvendi insolubilia secundum Magistrum Johannem Wyclif, was once also attributed by many scholars to Stanislav of Znojmo. A fragment of the text was likewise published among Wyclif ’s miscellaneous works by the Wyclif Society.8 The text propounds propositional realism and offers strategies to eliminate logical and semantic paradoxes (e.g., the so-called ‘liar paradox’ or the paradox of self-reference with the proposition ‘This is false’). Recently, Lambert Marie de Rijk discovered another copy of the treatise in the Chapter Library of Worcester Cathedral among fifteenth-century Oxford logical treatises, and concluded in light of its explicit that the treatise’s authentic author is the Oxford Realist, Robert Alyngton (d. 1398).9 The text, therefore, represents another work wrongly attributed to Stanislav of Znojmo, and should no longer be included in lists of the early texts of the Prague Realists. In 1970, František Šmahel drew attention to the logical treatises preserved in MS X H 9 of Prague National Library.10 It contains several works treating the problems of universals composed by another Prague Realist, Štěpán of Páleč (e.g. Commentarius in De universalibus Johannis Wyclif, Argumenta de universalibus realibus, two sets of quaestiones, and Disputata confusionum).11 The same codex contains five other treatises dealing with specific topics in logic,

7 Tres modi respondendi, Roma, Biblioteca Casanatense, MS 85, fols 22va–23va. The text is listed as anonymous in Ashworth, ‘Obligationes Treatises’, p. 121. 8 The Insolubilia pulchra is found in Prague, NK, MS IV H 9, fols 259v–262v. For the fragment wrongly attributed to Wyclif, see John Wyclif, Miscellanea philosophica, ii, ed. by Dziewicki, p. 156. For arguments as to Stanislav’s authorship, see Tříška, Literární činnost předhusitské university, p. 97; and John Wyclif, Tractatus de universalibus, ed. by Müller, p. lxvi. Others considered the work spurious, such as Vilém Herold, introduction to Stanislav of Znojmo, De vero et falso, ed. by Herold, p. 14; also Stanislav Sousedík, ‘Stanislaus von Znaim († 1414)’, p. 41; and Spunar, Repertorium auctorum Bohemorum, i, p. 303. 9 De Rijk, ‘Logica Oxoniensis’, pp. 121–64, especially pp. 139–40. For Alyngton’s biography, see Conti, ‘Linguaggio e realtà nel comment alle Categorie di Robert Alyngton’. 10 Šmahel, ‘Circa universalia sunt dubitationes non pauce’. 11 Štěpán of Páleč, Commentarius in De universalibus Johannis Wyclif, Prague, NK, MS X H 9, fols 1r–68v (for an edition, see Commentarius in I–IX capitula tractatus De universalibus Johannis Wyclif Stephano de Palecz ascriptus, ed. by Müller); Štěpán of Páleč, Argumenta de universalibus realibus, Prague, NK, MS X H 9, fols 68v–70r (for an edition, see Šmahel, ‘Ein Disputationsbehelf aus der Blütezeit des Prager Universalienstreites’, pp. 504–14). The extant quaestiones are: Štěpán of Páleč, Utrum inter quaslibet intelligentias moventes orbes celestes infatigabiliter est aliquis ordo essentialis, Prague, NK, MS X H 9, fols 120r–121v; and Štěpán of Páleč, Utrum universalia habeant solum nude pure esse in intellectu divino vel preter operationem intellectus creati subsistant realiter in propria forma, Prague, NK, MS X H 9, fols 121v–126v (for an edition based on five of the nine known manuscripts, see Palacz, ‘La Positio de universalibus d’Étienne de Palecz’).

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such as supposition, reference, confusion, obligation, and consequence; these comprise the parva logicalia of the author. Internal cross-references among them indicate that these works are also by Štěpán of Páleč.12 A single, unknown scribe wrote the majority of the texts in MS X H 9. He used a single column, the common cursiva textualis, and many conventional abbreviations, and left behind one indication as to the date of his work. The explicit of fol. 97v preserves the date of 1405 for the completion of one of the treatises. Current scholarship dates the codex to 1400–1410.13 Nevertheless, all the texts contained in it were written after Páleč completed his studies in the faculty of arts on 21 February 1391, and before he began his commentary on Wyclif ’s De universalibus c. 1393. These texts provide us with a unique testimony regarding Páleč’s early pedagogical activities and the praxis of teaching logic at Prague University during the early 1390s. The details of the Prague logic curriculum are well known. The university statutes from the early 1390s require students to pay twenty groschen for exercises in the parva logicalia, to procure their own logic handbooks, and to attend the exercises along with the disputations held every day for three days.14 However, no generally accepted consensus exists as to the authors and texts of the parva logicalia employed within the late medieval university system in Central Europe. The exact order and content of the tracts differ in the extant records, commentaries, and testimonies of academics. However, six logical treatises treating issues such as the properties of terms and propositions, logical and semantic paradoxes, various types of references, confusion, consequences, and obligations were established parts of the curriculum.15 For Prague

12 Štěpán of Páleč, Disputata confusionum, Prague, NK, MS X H 9, fols 76r–92r. For Páleč’s authorship, see fol. 92r: ‘Expliciunt disputata confusionum Magistri Stephani de Palecz’. Páleč’s other works in the manuscript are De suppositionibus (fols 92v–95r), Notabiliora confusionum (fols 95r–97v), Notabiliora consequentiarum (fols 98r–101r), Notabiliora in Richardi Billinghami Tractatum de propositionibus (fols 101r–108v), and Collecta de obligationibus (fols 109r–111v). The following internal references between the treatises are of interest: Disputata confusionum, fol. 76v refers to De suppositionibus, fol. 94v (the supposition typology). Notabiliora confusionum, fol. 95r refers to Disputata confusionum, fol. 76r (logical conclusion). Notabiliora confusionum, fol. 97v refers to Disputata confusionum, fols 76v–77r, 78v–78r, and 85r–85v (regula prima), and fols 78r–78v, 81r–81v, 82v–83r, and 85v (regula secunda). Notabiliora consequentiarum, fols 100v–101r contains analysis of the proposition ‘I promised you a penny’; and Notabiliora in Richardi Billinghami Tractatum de propositionibus, fol. 108r discusses promises as well as Collecta de obligationibus; fol. 109r discusses obligations. Notabiliora in Richardi Billinghami Tractatum de propositionibus, fols 103v, 106v, and 107r discusses comparatives; and the comparative’s definition can be found in Notabiliora confusionum, fols 95v and 97v. 13 For the dating, see MS Prague, NK, MS X H 9, fol. 97v: ‘Expliciunt Notabiliora confusionum. Anno incarnationis Mo 4o quinto’. For the dating of the whole manuscript to 1400–1410, see www.manuscriptorium.com. 14 Monumenta historica universitatis Carolo-Ferdinandeae Pragensis, i. 1, p. 107. The record is dated 19 November 1392. 15 Hoenen, ‘Parva logicalia’.

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University, only the records from the second half of the fifteenth century are available. They indicate that the parva logicala included some of the texts from Summulae logicales, a set of Marsilius of Inghen’s logical treatises, the Speculum puerorum of Richard Billingham (d. 1361), Richard Brinkley’s Insolubilia, the Consequentie of John of Holland (d. after 1371/5), and some unidentified tracts, including an unknown text of William of Heytesbury (d. 1372/3).16 One of Páleč’s extant tracts indicates that Billingham’s manual was used for teaching logic in the early 1390s.17 After 1359/60, Thomas Manlevelt’s texts became an established part of the logic curriculum at Prague.18 For four of Páleč’s treatises (Disputata confusionum, De suppositionibus, Notabiliora confusionum, and Notabiliora consequentiarum), Štěpán had clearly used three of Manlevelt’s tracts (De confusionibus, De suppositionibus, and De consequentiis) as models. However, Páleč was not the only lecturer in Prague who employed Manlevelt’s tracts while teaching logic during the 1390s. The Saxon master Helmoldus de Soltwedel (d. 1441) has also used Manlevelt in his extensive Quaestiones super libris Parvolum logicalium (c. 1396). More complicated is the case of determining the model for Páleč’s Collecta de obligationibus. He may have drawn upon the work of Manlevelt, Martinus Anglicus, Richard Brinkley, or John of Holland.19 All six of Páleč’s logical treatises take the form of a commentary and share the same structure. First, the subject is introduced (e.g., ‘What is supposition?’) with the Latin word utrum. Thereafter, arguments pro and contra follow. Páleč introduces his own opinion with the Latin words sciendum, nota, or respondetur. Arguments supporting a position, whether Páleč’s own or one quoted from another author, are indicated with the Latin adverb item. Further objections are determined by contra. As regards content, Páleč’s treatises contain an analysis of signification, properties of terms and propositions, divisions of signs, suppositional typology, restrictions, and a survey of the relation between individual and common 16 The list of books studied in the late medieval arts faculty at Prague is extant in Prague, NK, MS X G 13, fols 198v–200v and has been dated to the second half of the fifteenth century. A transcription of the list can be found in Tříška, Literární činnost předhusitské university, pp. 162–63. For all mentioned texts, see Petrus Hispanus, Tractatus Called Afterwards Summulae logicales, ed. by de Rijk, pp. 1–16 and 185–232; Marsilius of Inghen, Treatises on the Properties of Terms, ed. by Bos; Maierù, ‘Lo Speculum puerorum sive Terminus est in quem di Riccardo Billingham’, pp. 338–97; De Rijk, Some 14th Century Tracts on the Probationes terminorum, pp. 45–76 and 171–86; Spade, ‘Richard Brinkley’s Insolubilia’; and John of Holland, Four Tracts on Logic, ed. by Bos, pp. *29*–*30*. 17 Štěpán of Páleč, Notabiliora in Richardi Billinghami Tractatum de propositionibus, Prague, NK, MS X H 9, fols 101r–108v. 18 For details regarding the manuscript tradition of Manlevelt’s treatises in central Europe, see Lorenz, ‘Thomas Manlevelt’, pp. 390–91 and 398–409. For his texts, see Thomas Manlevelt, Compendiaria et admodum breuis peruulorum logicorum ([Erfurt], c. 1501), pp. [3]–[15]. 19 For Manlevelt’s text, see Lorenz, ‘Thomas Manlevelt’, p. 400. Cf. Martinus Anglicus, De obligationibus, ed. by Schupp, pp. 1–151; Richard Brinkley’s Obligationes, ed. by Spade and Wilson, pp. 3–4, 12–108; and John of Holland, ‘Obligationes’, in Four Tracts on Logic, ed. by Bos, pp. 87–121.

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terms. The first tract, Disputata confusionum, is the longest text, stretching over thirty-three folia.20 Páleč starts his analyses with the subject of the Libri confusionum, that is whether and under which conditions a confusion of terms could be the object of a science. Páleč’s exposition contains detailed comments on eight basic rules, along with other special rules (regulae speciales de ‘de differt’ et de aliis).21 The text includes not only a detailed analysis of various kinds of confusion, but also noteworthy references to other logical sources. In one passage, the author deals with the solutions introduced by nominalist masters such as Albert of Saxony.22 More importantly, Páleč prefers sources, concepts, and the authority of the English logical tradition. He directly quotes some English authors such as Richard Billingham or Richard Ferrybridge.23 A careful examination of the text reveals no direct reference to John Wyclif. The second treatise, De suppositionibus, deals with the semantic problem of supposition, that is, the question of reference or denotation.24 Páleč

20 Štěpán of Páleč, Disputata confusionum, Prague, NK, MS X H 9, fols 76r–92r. 21 Štěpán of Páleč, Disputata confusionum, Prague, NK, MS X H 9, fol. 78r. For a general overview of Manlevelt’s treatise and its place within the medieval university logic curricula, see Lorenz, ‘Thomas Manlevelt’, pp. 383–84. 22 Štěpán of Páleč, Disputata confusionum, Prague, NK, MS X H 9, fol. 84v: ‘Aliter solvitur argumentum secundum Albertum: “infinitum” distribuit terminum inclusum et non expresse expositum, ut patet in resolutione de qualibet specie numeri. Tempus est elapsum ubi ly “specie numeri” stat confuse distributive et ly “tempus” confuse et sic fit subsumtio sub termino non distributo, et sic consequentia non valet. Item, exponentes sunt false quia exponitur sic: tempus est elapsum et non est tempus quin illud sit elapsum, ergo et cetera’. Cf. Albert of Saxony, Logik, ed. by Berger, tr. 1, c. 5, p. 40 ll. 5–16; and Albert of Saxony, Quaestiones circa logicam, ed. by Fitzgerald, q. 6, pp. 118–27. 23 For references to Billingham, Ferrybridge, and the authority of English masters, cf. Štěpán of Páleč, Disputata confusionum, Prague, NK, MS X H 9, fols 86v, 87r, 88v–89r: ‘Nota: est argumentum Billingham qui dicit communem modum exponendi non valere probans per hoc argumentum, sed dicit sic debet exponi illa et consimilis: A incipit esse verum, ergo non est verum et immediate ante hoc non fuit ista quod “A est verum” et cetera. […]. Sed argumentum Billingham probaret communem modum exponendi non valere si verbum ampliaret post se, sed consequens schola tenet oppositum quod verbum ampliatum ampliat ante se et non post se, ergo argumentum suum non concludit. […]. Nota: propter hoc argumentum Ferrybridge dicit communem modum exponendi non valere, ut dicit quod nemo debet poni ante ly “immediate” si modus exponendi debet esse formalis sic A nunc est verum et non immediate ante hoc A fuit verum. Illo non obstante modus exponendi communis potest salvari, licet cautius negationem praeponere ante ly “immediate” quam postponere ad hoc quod modus exponendi sit formalis et sic argumentum salvando communem modum exponendi negatur antecedens. […] Unde illa secundum Anglicos non debet exponi per numerum pluralem sicut argumentum probat, sed per numerum singularem ita quod A exponatur per se et B per se, sicut A nunc est verum et immediate post hoc non erit verum […]. Et illa est responsio Anglicorum. Aliter potest dici et melius negando falsitatem consequentis ut prius ad probationem concedo consequentiam et consequens, ad improbationem negatur quod sit falsa quocumque modo exponatur quia exponendo per affirmativam de praesenti et negativam de futuro est vera’. Cf. Richard Billingham, Abbreviatio Pragensis, ed. by de Rijk, p. 182. 24 Štěpán of Páleč, De suppositionibus, Prague, NK, MS X H 9, fols 92v–95r. For a general outline of medieval theories regarding supposition, see Kann, ‘Supposition and Properties of Terms’.

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distinguishes proper from improper supposition, and several ways in which human concepts refer to various kinds of entities or states of affairs. Further, Páleč analyses diverse kinds of supposition, such as natural, material, simple, personal, discrete, and confused.25 The exposition contains only the general typology of supposition which was familiar to most medieval authors active after 1350. The text contains many basic examples indicating that it was intended for undergraduate students in logic. Páleč’s tract on supposition also lacks any direct allusion to Wyclif ’s works. The third treatise, Notabiliora confusionum, contains detailed analyses and definitions of several terms, such as ‘difference’, ‘another’, ‘like’, ‘rather’, ‘whole’, ‘infinite’, and ‘immediate’. The short text, preserved on only six folia, is apparently a supplement to Páleč’s first treatise, the extensive Disputata confusionum. Unlike the Disputata, the Notabiliora focuses on the spatial analysis of points or states of affairs, the latitude of forms, and differences existing between duration and time.26 Once again, the treatise evinces no indications of John Wyclif ’s authority. The fourth treatise, Notabiliora consequentiarum, introduces several kinds of logical consequences.27 Here, Páleč distinguishes material from formal consequence and thereby follows Manlevelt. Furthermore, he differentiates between valid and invalid consequences and provides a typology of valid consequences, i.e. formal and material. The text also contains many examples of valid consequences and analyses of several terms referring to states of affairs (e.g., ‘homo albus’), thereby increasing the likelihood that the treatises were intended for undergraduates. Páleč concludes with a discussion of the problem ‘promitto tibi denarius’, which was frequently discussed by English logicians in the fourteenth century and also in Prague logical sources after 1370.28 The Notabiliora likewise includes no allusions to Wyclif. Páleč’s fifth tract, Notabiliora in Richardi Billinghami Tractatum de propositionibus, sheds light on the commentary tradition of Billingham’s famous logic textbook in late medieval Bohemia.29 Páleč closely follows Billingham’s

25 Štěpán of Páleč, De suppositionibus, Prague, NK, MS X H 9, fols 93r–94v. 26 Štěpán of Páleč, Notabiliora confusionum, Prague, NK, MS X H 9, fols 95r–97v. The abovementioned topics are discussed in Goubier and Roques, ed., The Instant of Change in Medieval Philosophy and Beyond; and Sylla, ‘Medieval Concept of the Latitude of Forms’. 27 Štěpán of Páleč, Notabiliora consequentiarum, Prague, NK, MS X H 9, fols 98r–101r. A general overview of the medieval theories of logical consequences can be found in Klima, ‘Consequence’. 28 Štěpán of Páleč, Notabilia consequentiarum, Prague, NK, MS X H 9, fol. 101r. For medieval debates regarding the promised denarius, see Read, ‘I promise a penny that I do not promise’. One of the oldest texts of Prague origin discussing the problem is Martinus Anglicus, Tractatus de suppositione, ed. by Berger, p. 172. 29 Štěpán of Páleč, Notabiliora in Richardi Billinghami Tractatum de propositionibus, Prague, NK, MS X H 9, fols 101r–108v. Other commentaries are listed in Maierù, ‘Lo Speculum puerorum sive Terminus est in quem di Riccardo Billingham’, pp. 316–17. General accounts appear in Bos, ‘Richard Billingham’; and Bos, ‘Properties of Terms’.

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analysis of the properties of terms and basic rules, and further analyses topics frequently discussed within the commentary tradition, such as the epistemology of propositional proofs and the coherence of individual proofs with respect to states of affairs. A careful examination reveals that Páleč’s exposition follows, however limitedly, the Prague abbreviated version of Billingham’s logic textbook.30 Along with direct references to Billingham, the text contains allusions to the Logica (Regule solvendi sophismata) of William Heytesbury, but contains no reference to Wyclif.31 The last treatise, Collecta de obligationibus, provides a detailed survey of obligations.32 Páleč first specifies three modes of valid obligation. Then he presents two rules regarding them along with their three main senses (‘positio, impositio et depositio’) accompanied by many examples. Notably, within the analysis of copulative obligations Páleč quotes John of Holland’s Obligationes several times.33 Thus, the Obligationes, compiled between the late 1360s and early 1370s in Prague, was certainly one of Páleč’s models. Once again, no direct reference to Wyclif occurs in the text. Short content analysis of the oldest extant works of the Prague Realists reveals facts hitherto not taken into account in the historiography. Páleč’s six logical treatises were composed between 1391 and 1393. These are exercises in the parva logicalia, and consequently intended for undergraduates in the Prague arts faculty. All six treatises share two features. (1) Páleč’s exposition deals strictly with issues of logic and semantics, and relies upon English logicians such as Richard Billingham, Richard Ferrybridge, Richard Brinkley, and William of Heytesbury. (2) The six treatises contain no direct reference to Wyclif. In light of this evidence, the following is probable: Prague Realists were not interested in Wyclif ’s logical texts until 1393. The works of other English logicians, however, paved the way for Wyclif ’s reception in late medieval Bohemia.

30 Richard Billingham, Abbreviatio Pragensis, ed. by de Rijk, pp. 171–86. 31 Štěpán of Páleč, Notabiliora in Richardi Billinghami Tractatum de propositionibus, Prague, NK, MS X H 9, fols 107v–108r: ‘Et sic definit “scire” ipse Heytesbury in Logica sua, Tractatu de scire. “Dubitare” est credere alicui cum haesitatione vel cum formidine ad oppositum. “Credere” est assentire alicui sine experientia eiusdem. “Intelligere” est aliquid intellectu comprehendere. “Significare” est signo aliquid notificare vel repraesentare. “Promittere” est obligari signo aliquo ad aliud’. 32 Štěpán of Páleč, Collecta de obligationibus, Prague, NK, MS X H 9, fols 109r–111v. The treatise is also listed in Ashworth, ‘Obligationes Treatises’, p. 121 (Páleč’s authorship has been suggested by Julian Dealth). The development of medieval theories of obligations is outlined in Novaes and Uckelman, ‘Obligationes’. 33 E.g. Štěpán of Páleč, Collecta de obligationibus, Prague, NK, MS X H 9, fol. 110v: ‘Nulla copulativa oportet quod ambae vel una pars negatur, ex quo positio tenet quod non stat copulativa negari et quamlibet partem concedere, quamvis hoc dicat Hollandrius in Obligationibus’. Cf. John of Holland, Obligationes, ed. by Bos, p. 93 ll. 11–12.

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Treatises from the Tradition of the Prague Nominalist Schola Communis MS Kraków, BJ 686, fols 1ra–79rb contains an anonymous text testifying to the teaching of sophistria at Prague University.34 Careful analysis has determined that the text was written between 1394 and 1397 in the local arts faculty.35 University statutes required that sophistria disputations be held three times during the semester for one hour (from Monday until Friday, either at eight o’clock or just before midday). Attendance cost students a mandatory fee of twelve groschen.36 Evidence suggests that the author wrote each portion of the text immediately after giving a particular lecture. In any event, he left blank pages in the codex that testify to the unfinished nature of the work. The unknown author was probably a member of the Prague Nominalist schola communis. A member of the Polish university nation at Prague, Franciszek Krzyszowic of Brzeg (d. 1432), has been identified as the manuscript’s owner. He also added some marginalia to the tract’s text.37 The author clearly intends to equip his students with the skills necessary to eliminate sophistic arguments and to deliver similar logical disputations.38 The text is divided into two parts. (1) The author quotes a passage from Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics (i. 32. 88b23–25) and appends approximately one hundred topics in the form of questions.39 (2) Thereafter follow only eighteen questions with proofs of propositions (probationes propositionum). Here, the author closely follows Billingham’s logic handbook, the Speculum puerorum. The author was also influenced by other logicians, such as William of Heytesbury, Richard Kilvington (d. 1361), Thomas of Cleves, Thomas of Manlevelt, John Buridan and especially Marsilius of Inghen.40 More importantly for present purposes, the author undoubtedly evinces acquaintance with Wyclif ’s corpus available at Prague University during the early 1390s. The text reflects the impact of the local schools and doctrinal models and reveals that the universals controversy had begun to rage between the Prague Realists and Nominalists. Some passages illustrate these trends. One contains noteworthy criticism of universals. The passage follows 34 Logica modernorum in Prague about 1400, ed. by Bos, pp. 47–432. For the most important additions to and corrections of this edition, see Ashworth, ‘Logic Teaching at the University of Prague around 1400 a.d.’. 35 Logica modernorum in Prague about 1400, ed. by Bos, p. 5. 36 Monumenta historica universitatis Carolo-Ferdinandeae Pragensis, i. 1, pp. 89–90. The record is dated 21 October 1387. 37 Logica modernorum in Prague about 1400, ed. by Bos, pp. 6 and 26. For more on Franciszek, see Tříška, Repertorium biographicum universitatis Pragensis, p. 103. 38 Logica modernorum in Prague about 1400, ed. by Bos, tr. 1, q. 2, p. 48 ll. 12–16 and p. 50 ll. 23–25. Ashworth, ‘Logic Teaching at the University of Prague around 1400 a.d.’, p. 219. 39 Logica modernorum in Prague about 1400, ed. by Bos, tr. 1, q. 1, p. 45 l. 3. 40 Logica modernorum in Prague about 1400, ed. by Bos, pp. 11–21. Ashworth, ‘Logic Teaching at the University of Prague around 1400 a.d.’, pp. 213 and 217.

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Billingham’s procedure for testing the validity of a proposition and questions the demonstrability of the existence of universals in this way: (1) A universal is proposed (e.g. communis animalitas) that is shared by individuals such as a human being and a donkey. The text then conflates the two, ‘A human being is a donkey’. (2) The proposition ‘A human being is a donkey’ is split into two propositions: ‘This is a human being’ and ‘This is a donkey’. (3) The validity of the entire proof along with the state of affairs is tested.41 The anonymous nominalist author considers the proof of universals to be invalid due to the equivocation (equivocatio) of both concepts. According to him, in the proposition ‘A human being is a donkey’, the term ‘human being’ refers only to individual human beings and the term ‘donkey’ refers only to individual donkeys. Hence, neither concept refers to a universal as such (i.e. the communis animalitas employed in the example). The text alludes to the case of inference that Wyclif uses in some of his works. The nominalist author was probably familiar with Wyclif ’s doctrine.42 Another passage from a lecture delivered in 1394 treats the issue of universal affirmative propositions, quotes and criticizes Wyclif by name, and indirectly also criticizes the Prague Realist Stanislav of Znojmo.43 Passages from 1396 reveal that the exposition of simple supposition (suppositio simplex) and merely confused supposition (suppositio confuse tantum) was on the lesson’s programme.44 Both issues belong to the semantic analysis of reference. Concretely, they concern whether singular concepts, employed within the testing and proof of propositions, refer to individuals or to universals. Two digressions in the text provide further evidence concerning local schools and models. They introduce a further analysis of universals along with proper examples of inferences. Specifically, the case of a merely confused supposition proposed by Richard Brinkley was analysed during the lectures. Likewise, the wrong inference and erroneous application of simple supposition by the Prague Realist, Stanislav of Znojmo, was discussed.

41 Logica modernorum in Prague about 1400, ed. by Bos, tr. 2, q. 2, p. 351 ll. 29–33. 42 For the case of inference that Wyclif refers to, see John Wyclif, Logicae continuatio, tr. 3, in: Tractatus de logica, ii, ed. by Dziewicki, p. 16 ll. 9–27, p. 127 ll. 25–35, p. 193 l. 33–p. 194 l. 19; further John Wyclif, De ente in communi, tr. 1, in Summa de ente, ed. by Thomson, p. 74 ll. 1–12; likewise John Wyclif, Purgans errores circa veritates in communi, in De ente, ed. by Dziewicki, p. 16 ll. 4–14; as well as John Wyclif, Purgans errores circa universalia in communi, in De ente, ed. by Dziewicki, p. 29 ll. 7–8, p. 29 ll. 13–15, p. 32 l. 32–p. 33 l. 3; or John Wyclif, Purgans errores circa universalia in communi, ed. by Thomson, pp. 341 and 343; furthermore John Wyclif, Tractatus de universalibus, ed. by Müller, p. 28 l. 171–p. 29 l. 184 and p. 84 ll. 300–12; and finally John Wyclif, Tractatus de Trinitate, ed. by duPont Breck, pp. 129–30 and 133. 43 Logica modernorum in Prague about 1400, ed. by Bos, tr. 2, q. 11, p. 368 ll. 3–4: ‘propter hoc Wyclef dicit quod secunda exponens debet sic sumi “non est homo non currens”, vel sic “nullus homo est non currens”’. Stanislav is mentioned as an ‘Auctor’ on p. 369 l. 19 and ‘alicui dicunt’ are mentioned on p. 370 l. 5. 44 Logica modernorum in Prague about 1400, ed. by Bos, tr. 1, q. 55–56, pp. 149–61.

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Two principal attitudes toward simple supposition prevailed among fourteenth-century authors. According to the via antiqua, simple supposition refers to the universal existing outside the human mind. Contrariwise, for the via moderna, simple supposition refers either to a universal concept in the human mind or to nothing real at all, as John Buridan proposed.45 Our anonymous nominalist author makes references to both approaches in his tract. In particular, from the antiqui tradition he quotes Scotus, Brinkley, and Wyclif; among the moderni he mentions Buridan, Marsilius of Inghen, Manlevelt, and Thomas of Cleves.46 In his detailed analysis, he closely follows the moderni tradition.47 The author’s exposition of simple supposition complements the work of other Prague nominalists from the late 1360s and early 1370s, such as Henry Totting of Oyta (d. 1397) and John of Holland.48 For our purposes, digressions discussing realist philosophers, such as Wyclif and Brinkley, and their arguments are significant. The first digression presents proofs employed by the antiqui for the existence of universals.49 The author asserts that the adherents of realism, such as Scotus, Brinkley, and Wyclif, postulate the existence of universals by evidence of common natures (nature communes), which exist in many individuals, and yet are simultaneously really distinct from any particular that instantiates them. All three authors presuppose the convertibility of language with reality, and use simple supposition to argue their case. For instance, the individual term ‘human being’ refers to the humanity shared by many human beings (i.e., to both the common nature and the universal).50 The second digression discusses merely confused supposition (suppositio confuse tantum). By contrast to simple supposition, the treatment of merely confused supposition was more complex in the later Middle Ages. First, the anonymous author deals with proofs employed by some of the antiqui for the evidence of universals, in particular by using the following inference: From ‘Homo est animal’ follows ‘Omnis homo est animalitas communis’.51

45 For the semantic theory of supposition in the fourteenth century, see Bos, Braakhuis, Duba, Kneepkens, and Schabel, ed., Medieval Supposition Theory Revised, pp. 233–424; for Buridan’s denial, see pp. 371–84. 46 Logica modernorum in Prague about 1400, ed. by Bos, tr. 1, q. 55, p. 149 ll. 23–24. For a recent summary of the via antiqua and via moderna, see Hoenen, ‘Via Antiqua and Via Moderna in the Fifteenth Century’. 47 Logica modernorum in Prague about 1400, ed. by Bos, tr. 1, q. 55–65, p. 151 l. 5–p. 190 l. 10. 48 Henry Totting of Oyta, Quaestiones in Isagogen Porphyrii, ed. by Schneider, q. 2 n. 21–24, q. 7 n. 8, pp. 16–19; and q. 15 n. 21–22, pp. 24, 54, 56–57, 100; John of Holland, Suppositiones, in Four tracts on logic, ed. by Bos, pp. 11 l. 12–p. 19 l. 26. 49 Logica modernorum in Prague about 1400, ed. by Bos, tr. 1, q. 55, p. 150 ll. 3–5 and pp. 9–10: ‘“ydeam posuit Plato”, “homo ydealis dicebatur esse a Platone”, “homo universalis distinctus a singularibus ponebatur a Wikleph” […] “homo ydealis potest esse”, et similiter ista “homo universalis in essendo potest esse”’. 50 Logica modernorum in Prague about 1400, ed. by Bos, tr. 1, q. 55, pp. 150 l. 21–p. 151 l. 1. 51 Logica modernorum in Prague about 1400, ed. by Bos, tr. 1, q. 64, p. 178 ll. 19–23.

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The proof along with the inference originated in the work of John Wyclif and Stanislav of Znojmo.52 The anonymous author must have been acquainted with at least some of their works. Afterwards, he presents Brinkley’s semantic concept of merely confused supposition. According to Brinkley, in the case of merely confused supposition, the singular term refers to individuals.53 Finally, the unknown author uses Brinkley’s solution against the proofs for the evidence of universals favoured by Czech Realists, especially Stanislav of Znojmo.54 Like Buridan, the author insists that simple supposition is not valid and the whole argumentation of Prague Realists is erroneous. Further in the text, the author proposes an alternative solution to save universals. First, Czech Realists should reject simple supposition within the semantic theory of reference, and Wyclif ’s doctrine specifically. Second, they should modify their proofs in light of merely confused supposition as introduced by Brinkley. One more text from the Prague nominalist school tradition supplies evidence of the controversy surrounding simple supposition and the universals.55 Kraków, BJ, MS 1939, fols 40v–43v contains an anonymous commentary on Manlevelt’s De suppositionibus, which originated in Prague c. 1400. Some passages quote Wyclif and some of his Prague adherents, especially Stanislav of Znojmo. First, the author summarizes attitudes toward simple supposition that had been proposed by fourteenth-century authors, such as Wyclif, Brinkley, Manlevelt, and Thomas of Cleves. Thereafter, the text reproduces the semantic theory of simple supposition employed by the Prague Realists to establish the extra-mental reality of universals.56 The two texts from the Prague Nominalist schola communis reveal hitherto unknown evidence regarding the realist and nominalist schools in late medieval Prague and the universals controversy that raged between them. 52 John Wyclif, De logica, in Tractatus de logica, ed. by Dziewicki, i, p. 4 l. 33–p. 5 l. 4, p. 44 ll. 28–33; p. 47 l. 38–p. 48 l. 4; also John Wyclif, Logicae continuatio, tr. 1, in Tractatus de logica, i, ed. by Dziewicki, p. 85 ll. 11–29; John Wyclif, De ente in communi, tr. 1, in Summa de ente, ed. by Thomson, p. 24 ll. 13–19; also John Wyclif, Purgans errores circa veritates in communi, in De ente, ed. by Dziewicki, p. 16 ll. 4–14; John Wyclif, Purgans errores circa universalia in communi, ed. by Thomson, pp. 342, 344; John Wyclif, De intelleccione Dei, in De ente, ed. by Dziewicki, p. 73 ll. 9–16; John Wyclif, Tractatus de universalibus, ed. by Müller, p. 84 ll. 300–12, p. 93 l. 188–p. 94 l. 195, p. 152 ll. 60–66, p. 159 ll. 216–25; Stanislav of Znojmo, Tractatus de universalibus (maior), in John Wyclif, Miscellanea philosophica, ii, ed. by Dziewicki, p. 26 ll. 12–17, p. 108 l. 1–p. 109 l. 29; alternatively, Stanislav of Znojmo, De vero et falso, ed. by Herold, p. 45 ll. 6–15. 53 Logica modernorum in Prague about 1400, ed. by Bos, tr. 1, q. 64, p. 178 l. 27–p. 179 l. 3. See also Richard Brinkley, Tractatus de suppositionibus, ed. by Cesalli and Lonfat, pp. 297–99 (2.2–2.4, 4.1), p. 300 (6.14, 7.1). 54 Logica modernorum in Prague about 1400, ed. by Bos, tr. 1, q. 64, p. 179 ll. 4–7. See also Stanislav of Znojmo, Tractatus de universalibus (maior), in John Wyclif, Miscellanea philosophica, ii, ed. by Dziewicki, p. 108 ll. 6–9, p. 120 ll. 22–34. 55 Berger, ‘Zur Pariser Philosophie des Spätmittelalters’, pp. 291–96. 56 Berger, ‘Zur Pariser Philosophie des Spätmittelalters’, pp. 295–96.

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Furthermore, the anonymous Prague sophistria tract supports the claim that the Prague Realists became acquainted with Wyclif ’s logical corpus in 1394 or slightly earlier.

Conclusion A careful examination of the manuscript tradition reveals the following about academic life in late medieval Prague: (1) Between 1391 and 1393, Štěpán of Páleč composed a series of six logical treatises. These are the oldest extant texts of the Prague Realist tradition and reflect Páleč’s pedagogical praxis with the parva logicalia in the arts faculty of Prague University. These evince no evidence of Wyclif ’s influence on Prague Realists before 1393. (2) Thereafter, the transmission of English logical treatises composed by Martinus Anglicus, Richard Kilvington, William Heytesbury, Richard Billingham, and Richard Brinkley, which had started between 1369 and 1370, prepared the way for the reception of Wyclif ’s corpus in Prague.57 (3) Finally, two hitherto unknown nominalist tracts written after 1394 reveal a new reference framework for the universals controversy in Prague, and thereby improve our understanding of the reception of Wyclif ’s corpus in late medieval Bohemia. Hence, the reception of Wyclif ’s texts was part of the transmission process of the English philosophical tradition on the continent, which had started by the 1320s.58 Scholars have usually assumed that the transfer of Wyclif ’s texts from England to Bohemia resulted from the English–Bohemian political alliance and diplomatic correspondence that emerged shortly before the marriage of Richard II and Anne of Bohemia in 1382. Serious doubts persist, however, as to whether the major political participants in the cultural exchange of that era were interested in Wyclif ’s works at all.59 Finally, the controversy over universals must have begun between the Czech Realists and the Prague Nominalists sometime around 1394.60 The controversy came to light especially within debates regarding the validity of simple supposition and proofs of propositions.

57 The treatises compiled by John of Holland in Prague between 1369 and 1373/5 shed light on the reception of English logic textbooks in the arts faculty at Prague. Holland’s Insolubilia was influenced by William of Heytesbury (see Spade, The Mediaeval Liar, pp. 66–68) and his Consequentie by Billingham’s Speculum puerorum (see John of Holland, Four Tracts on Logic, ed. by Bos, p. *18*). 58 For the spread of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century English philosophical works on the continent, see Courtenay, Ockham and Ockhamism, pp. 138–43, and the recent update in Courtenay, ‘The Two “Late Middle Ages”’. 59 The Diplomatic Correspondence of Richard II, ed. by Perroy, pp. 13, 16, 20–24, 28–29, 65–66, 94, 130, and 161–63. 60 For further controversies at Prague University and the implications of these debates in the late Middle Ages, see Maarten Hoenen’s and Luigi Campi’s chapters in this volume.

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Works Cited Manuscripts and Archival Sources Prague, Národní knihovna České republiky, MS I F 20 ———, MS III G 10 ———, MS IV H 9 ———, MS X G 13 ———, MS X H 9 Roma, Biblioteca Casanatense, MS 85 Primary Sources Albert of Saxony, Logik, ed. by Harald Berger, Philosophische Bibliothek, 611 (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 2010) ———, Quaestiones circa logicam, in Albert of Saxony’s Twenty-Five Disputed Questions on Logic, ed. by Michael J. Fitzgerald, Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters, 79 (Leiden: Brill, 2002) Bartoš, František Michálek, and Pavel Spunar, Soupis pramenů k literární činnosti M. Jana Husa a M. Jeronýma Pražského (Prague: Historický ústav ČSAV, 1965) The Diplomatic Correspondence of Richard II (1377–1399), ed. by Édouard Perroy, Camden Society, 3rd series, xlviii (London: Camden Society, 1933), pp. 1–175 Henry Totting of Oyta, Quaestiones in Isagogen Porphyrii, ed. by Johannes Schneider, Veröffentlichungen der Kommission für die Herausgabe ungedruckter Texte aus der mittelalterlichen Geisteswelt, 8 (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1979) Jerome of Prague, Quaestiones, Polemica, Epistulae, ed. by František Šmahel and Gabriel Silagi, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis, 222 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010) John of Holland, Four Tracts on Logic (Suppositiones, Fallacie, Obligationes, Insolubilia), ed. by Egbert Peter Bos, Artistarium, 5 (Nijmegen: Ingenium, 1985) John Wyclif, Tractatus de logica, ed. by Michael Henry Dziewicki, 3 vols (London: Trübner, 1893–1899) ———, Miscellanea philosophica, ed. by Michael Henry Dziewicki, 2 vols (London: Trübner 1902–1905) ———, De ente librorum duorum excerpta, ed. by Michael Henry Dziewicki (London: Trübner, 1909) ———, Purgans errores circa universalia in communi, ed. by Samuel Harrison Thomson in ‘A “Lost” Chapter of Wyclif ’s Summa de ente’, Speculum, 4 (1929), pp. 339–46 ———, Summa de ente. Libri primi tractatus primus et secundus, ed. by S. Harrison Thomson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1930) ———, Tractatus de Trinitate, ed. by Allen duPont Breck, Studies and Texts in Medieval Thought (Colorado: University Press of Colorado, 1962) ———, Tractatus de universalibus, ed. by Ivan J. Müller (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985)

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Logica modernorum in Prague about 1400: The sophistria disputation ‘Quoniam quatuor’ (MS Cracow, Jagiellonian Library 686, ff. 1ra-79rb), with a partial reconstruction of Thomas of Cleve’s Logica, ed. by Egbert Peter Bos, Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters, 82 (Leiden: Brill, 2004) Marsilius of Inghen, Treatises on the Properties of Terms, ed. by Egbert Petr Bos, Synthese Historical Library, 22 (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1983) Martinus Anglicus, De obligationibus. Über die Verpflichtungen, ed. by Franz Schupp, Philosophische Bibliothek, 462 (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1993) ———, Tractatus de suppositione, in Harald Berger, ‘Martinus Anglicus (dictus Bilond?): Tractatus de suppositione. Einleitung und Text’, Bochumer Philosophisches Jahrbuch für Antike und Mittelalter, 12 (2007), pp. 157–73 Monumenta historica Universitatis Carolo-Ferdinandeae Pragensis, i. 1 (Prague: J. N. Gerzabek, 1830) Petrus Hispanus, Tractatus Called Afterwards Summulae logicales, ed. by Lambert Maria de Rijk (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1972) Richard Billingham, Abbreviatio Pragensis, in Some 14th Century Tracts on the Probationes terminorum: Martin of Alnwick O.F.M., Richard Billingham, Edward Upton and Others, ed. by Lambert Maria de Rijk, Artistarium, 3 (Nijmegen: Variorum, 1982), pp. 171–86 Richard Brinkley, Richard Brinkley’s Obligationes: A Late Fourteenth Century Treatise On the Logic of Disputation, ed. by Paul Vincent Spade and Gordon A. Wilson, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Theologie des Mittelalters, Neue Folge, 43 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1995) ———, Tractatus de suppositionibus, ed. by Laurent Cesalli and Joël Lonfat, in Laurent Cesalli, ‘Richard Brinkley on Supposition’, Vivarium, 51 (2013), 275–303 Stanislav of Znojmo, De vero et falso, ed. by Vilém Herold (Prague: Ústav filosofie a sociologie ČSAV, 1971) ———, Tractatus de universalibus (maior), in John Wyclif, Miscellanea philosophica, ed. by Michael Henry Dziewicki, 2 vols (London: Trübner, 1902–1905), ii, pp. 1–151 Štěpán of Páleč, Commentarius in I–IX capitula tractatus De universalibus Johannis Wyclif Stephano de Palecz ascriptus, ed. by Ivan J. Müller (Prague: Filosofia, 2009) Thomas Manlevelt, Compendiaria et admodum breuis peruulorum logicorum ([Erfurt]: [n. pub], [c. 1501]) Secondary Works Ashworth, Earline Jennifer, ‘Logic Teaching at the University of Prague around 1400 a.d.’, in History of Universities, xxi. 1, ed. by Mordechai Feingold (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006), pp. 211–21 ———, ‘Obligationes Treatises: A Catalogue of Manuscripts, Editions and Studies’, Bulletin de Philosophie Médiévale, 36 (1994), 118–47 Berger, Harald, ‘Zur Pariser Philosophie des Spätmittelalters und ihrer zeitgenössischen Rezeption’, Bulletin de Philosophie Médiévale, 57 (2015), 265–325

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Bos, Egbert Peter, ‘Properties of Terms’, in Encyclopedia of Medieval Philosophy: Philosophy between 500–1500 (Dordrecht: Springer, 2011), pp. 1250–58 ———, ‘Richard Billingham’, in Encyclopedia of Medieval Philosophy: Philosophy between 500–1500 (Dordrecht: Springer, 2011), pp. 1118–1120 Bos, Egbert Peter, H. A. G. Braakhuis, William Duba, C. H. Kneepkens, and Christopher Schabel, ed., Medieval Supposition Theory Revised (Leiden: Brill, 2013) Conti, Alessandro D., ‘Linguaggio e realtà nel commento alle Categorie di Robert Alyngton’, Documenti e studi sulla tradizione filosofica medievale, 4 (1993), 179–85 Courtenay, William J., Ockham and Ockhamism: Studies in the Dissemination and Impact of His Thought, Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters, 99 (Leiden: Brill, 2008) ———, ‘The Two “Late Middle Ages”’, in Contemplation and Philosophy: Scholastic and Mystical Modes of Medieval Philosophical Thought, ed. by Roberto Hofmeister Pich and Andreas Speer, Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters, 125 (Leiden: Brill, 2018), pp. 110–21 Goubier, Frédéric, and Magali Roques, ed., The Instant of Change in Medieval Philosophy and Beyond (Leiden: Brill, 2018) Hoenen, Maarten J. F. M., ‘Via Antiqua and Via Moderna in the Fifteenth Century: Doctrinal, Institutional, and Church Political Factors in the Wegestreit’, in The Medieval Heritage in Early Modern Metaphysics and Modal Theory, 1400–1700, ed. by Russell L. Friedman and Lauge O. Nielsen (Dordrecht: Kluwer 2003), pp. 9–36 ———, ‘Parva logicalia: Towards the History of a Puzzling Literary Genre’, in Mots médiévaux offerts à Ruedi Imbach, ed. by Iñigo Atucha, Dragos Calma, Cathrine König-Pralong, and Irene Zavattero, Textes et Études du Moyen Âge, 57 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), pp. 517–26 Kann, Christoph, ‘Supposition and Properties of Terms’, in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Logic, ed. by Catarina Dulith Novaes and Stephen Read (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), pp. 220–44 Klima, Guyla, ‘Consequence’, in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Logic, ed. by Catarina Dulith Novaes and Stephen Read (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), pp. 316–41 Libera, Alain de, La Querelle des universaux. De Platon à la fin de Moyen Âge (Paris: Points, 2014) Lorenz, Sönke, ‘Thomas Manlevelt. Zu Verbreitung und Wirkung seiner Parva logicalia. Ein Beitrag zur spätmittelalterlichen Wissenschaft und Universitätsgeschichte Zentraleuropas’, in Text und Kontext. Historische Hilfswissenschaften in ihrer Vielfalt, ed. by Sönke Lorenz and Stephan Molitor, Tübinger Bausteine zur Landesgeschichte, 18 (Osfildern: Jan Thorbecke, 2011), pp. 381–465 Maierù, Alfonso, ‘Lo Speculum puerorum sive Terminus est in quem di Riccardo Billingham’, Studi Medievali, 10 (1969), 338–97

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Novaes, Catarina Dulith, and Sara L. Uckelman, ‘Obligationes’, in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Logic, ed. by Catarina Dulith Novaes and Stephen Read (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), pp. 370–95 Palacz, Ryszard, ‘La Positio de universalibus d’Étienne de Palecz’, Mediaevalia Philosophica Polonorum, 14 (1970), pp. 113–29 Read, Stephen, ‘“I promise a penny that I do not promise”: The Realist/Nominalist Debate over Intensional Propositions in Fourteenth-Century British Logic and its Contemporary Relevance’, in The Rise of British Logic, ed. by Osmund Lewry, Papers in Medieval Studies, 7 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1985), pp. 335–59 Rijk, Lambert Maria de, ‘Logica Oxoniensis: An Attempt to Reconstruct a Fifteenth Century Oxford Manual of Logic’, Medioevo, 3 (1977), 121–64 ———, Some 14th Century Tracts on the Probationes terminorum: Martin of Alnwick O.F.M., Richard Billingham, Edward Upton and Others, Artistarium, 3 (Nijmegen: Variorum, 1982) Šmahel, František, ‘Circa universalia sunt dubitationes non pauce I–III. Studie a texty k pražskému sporu o universalia realia’, Filosofický časopis, 18 (1970), 987–98 ———, ‘Ein Disputationsbehelf aus der Blütezeit des Prager Universalienstreites: Argumenta de universalibus realibus magistri Stephani Palacz’, in František Šmahel, Die Prager Universität im Mittelalter / The Charles University in the Middle Ages. Gesammelte Aufsätze / Selected Studies (Leiden: Brill, 2007), pp. 504–14 ———, Život a dílo Jeronýma Pražského. Zpráva o výzkumu (Prague: Argo, 2010) Sousedík, Stanislav, ‘Stanislaus von Znaim († 1414). Eine Lebensskizze’, Mediaevalia Philosophica Polonorum, 17 (1973), 37–56 Spade, Paul Vincent, The Mediaeval Liar: A Catalogue of the Insolubilia-Literature, Subsidia Mediaevalia, 5 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1975) ———, ‘Roger Swyneshed’s Obligationes: Edition and Comments’, Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Âge, 44 (1977), 243–85 ———, ‘Richard Brinkley’s Insolubilia: A Preliminary Assessment’, Rivista di storia della filosofia, 46 (1991), 245–56 Spade, Paul Vincent, and Mikko Yrjönsuuri, ‘Medieval Theories of Obligationes’, in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. by Edward N. Zalta, [accessed 5 July 2021] Spunar, Pavel, Repertorium auctorum Bohemorum provectum idearum post Universitatem Pragensem conditam illustrans, Studia Copernicana XXV, 2 vols (Wrocław: Ossolineum, 1985–1995) Sylla, Edith Dudley, ‘Medieval Concept of the Latitude of Forms: The Oxford Calculators’, Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Âge, 40 (1973), 223–83 Tříška, Josef, Literární činnost předhusitské university (Prague: Univerzita Karlova, 1967)

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———, Repertorium biographicum universitatis Pragensis praehussiticae 1348–1409. Životopisný slovník předhusitské pražské univerzity 1348–1409 (Prague: Univerzita Karlova, 1981) Walsh, Katherine, ‘Lollardisch-hussitische Reformbestrebungen in Umkreis und Gefolgschaft der Luxemburgerin Anna, Königin von England (1382–1394)’, in Häresie und vorzeitige Reformation im Spätmittelalter, ed. by František Šmahel and Elisabeth Müller-Luckner, Schriften des Historisches Kollegs, 39 (Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 1998), pp. 77–108

Dušan Coufal

From Oath to Confession and Back? Protestatio in the Late Middle Ages, and its Transformation in the Thought of Wyclif and the Hussites*

Protestatio fidei — the public proclamation of faith — became an increasingly frequent convention at the theological faculties of medieval universities roughly from the middle of the thirteenth century. Research until now had no reason to problematize this convention.1 Nevertheless, as will be shown below, a fundamental transformation of the function and content of late medieval protestations was taking place, both with John Wyclif and, in relation to him, with his Hussite followers in Bohemia.2 Because they questioned nothing less than the doctrinal authority of the institutional Church, this article focuses on the Catholic counter-reaction in England, Bohemia, and at the Councils of Constance and Basel, and shows how the Hussite transformation of traditional protestations and the Catholic reaction intensified the fraught ecclesiological debates of the first half of the fifteenth century. The present study thus views the epistemic crisis of late medieval academic theology and its institutions through a (hitherto neglected) new lens.

Protestations in the Late Middle Ages The standard form of protestations can be best observed from university statutes, and from the specific works of universities. For the former, we can look specifically at the most detailed statute known, that of the medieval theological faculty of Bologna (1364), or at the Viennese statute (1389), shared by the faculty

* This work has been supported by Charles University Research Centre programme no. 204053. 1 See Rosemann, The Story of a Great Medieval Book, p. 72; Rashdall, The Universities of Europe in Middle Ages, i, p. 474 n. 3; Marcolino, ‘Der Augustinertheologe an der Universität Paris’, p. 177; Courtenay, Adam Wodeham, p. 174, and Courtenay, ‘Inquiry and Inquisition’, pp. 178−79. For other titles, see below. 2 I present here the results of research which I published in Czech in a more elaborate form, also citing additional sources, see Coufal, ‘Od přísahy ke konfesi a zpět?’. Dušan Coufal  •  ([email protected]), is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Medieval Studies, Institute of Philosophy, Czech Academy of Sciences, in Prague. Wycliffism and Hussitism: Methods of Thinking, Writing, and Persuasion, c. 1360 – c. 1460, ed. by Kantik Ghosh and Pavel Soukup, MCS 47 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021), pp. 157–177 FHG10.1484/M.MCS-EB.5.124373

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of divinity in Cologne (1392).3 For specific works, we may include protestations from works originating especially in Paris, Vienna, Cracow, and Leipzig.4 Based on this, we can claim that a protestatio formally had two parts: the general pronunciation (protestatio generalis), where the author promises not to assert anything which is contrary to the Catholic faith, Scripture, Church decisions, statements of the authorized Church doctors, and good morals, nor to assert anything from condemned articles, nor anything injurious to pious ears. The second part of the protestation is the so-called general or conditional revocation (revocatio generalis vel conditionalis), where the author openly states his willingness to publicly recant anything which might be contrary to the given status quo, and to subordinate himself to particular institutional authorities, or simply to those appointed by title and office to correct error.5 According to the Bolognese and Viennese statutes, protestations were used by all theologians debating quaestiones at disputations, at principia of the expositions of Peter Lombard’s Sentences, and also during other public presentations in the aula. They could also be used implicitly through the phrase ‘(consueta) protestatione praemissa’, if the protestation had already been fully presented before.6 Proclamations of faith were also conditionally presented by masters of arts faculties, especially during quodlibets, if their quaestio topic demanded it; this did not necessarily relate to the anomalous conditions of Prague university in the beginning of the fifteenth century.7 Although the structure and content of protestations from individual universities did not significantly differ from one another, there are clear and notable distinctions. Two top theologians of the University of Paris from the early fifteenth century, Pierre d’Ailly and Jean Gerson, noted the norm of condemned articles as something typical of Parisian protestations.8 This can be demonstrated

3 For the establishment of protestations in the statutes of Bologna, including an exemplary model, see I più antichi statuti, ed. by Ehrle, pp. 46−47; for the Viennese, Geschichte der kaiserlichen Universität zu Wien, ed. by Kink, ii, p. 102; for those of Cologne, Gescher, ‘Die Statuten der theologischen Fakultät’, p. 74, commentary on p. 63; on the relationship between the statutes of Vienna and Cologne, pp. 49−51. Cf. also Uiblein, ‘Zu den Beziehungen der Wiener Universität’, pp. 178−79. 4 Discussed in greater detail below. 5 I take the Latin terminology from the Constance tractate of Jean Gerson on public protestations from 1415, see Iohannes Gerson, ‘De protestatione circa materiam fidei’, ed. by Glorieux, esp. p. 155, with more detail below on pp. 165−66. 6 I più antichi statuti, ed. by Ehrle, p. 47; and Geschichte der kaiserlichen Universität zu Wien, ed. by Kink, ii, p. 102. 7 An interesting document from the north German town of Greifswald in 1467 shows that protestations of faith were requested by the faculty of arts in order to promote unity with the theological faculty: see Ehrle, Der Sentenzenkommentar Peters von Candia, p. 215 n. 2. For the Prague environs, see for example the protestation of the Wycliffite master Petr of Benešov, pronounced during the 1416 quodlibet, in ‘M. Petri de Benešov Utrum pro reformanda’, ed. by Nechutová, p. 104. 8 See Thijssen, Censure and Heresy, p. 22 n. 98, where he cites the words of d’Ailly: ‘Et etiam hoc apparet ex communi protestatione, quae solet fieri in actibus theologicis, qua scholastici protestantur nihil dicere, quod cedat in favorem articulorum Parisiis per reverendos

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directly: Damasus Trapp, for instance, has drawn attention to an independently preserved protestation from the period roughly around 1380, which he attributes to a Prague student (rightly suggesting Henry Totting of Oyta) who went for further education to Paris. Over the course of his theological studies in Paris, he swore to assert nothing ‘in accordance with articles condemned in the Roman Curia or by the University of Paris, nor anything explicitly or implicitly contrary to the accepted dicta of the catholic doctors’. In his revocation, he then submitted himself to the Curia, the Bishop of Paris, the Chancellor of the university, and all the masters of the Parisian theological faculty.9 It is unsurprising that the norm of condemned articles is also found at other, older faculties adhering to the Parisian model, such as those of Bologna, Vienna, and Cologne. It seems that this was not the case, however, in the younger Central European faculties in Cracow10 and Leipzig,11 where Sentences commentators were satisfied with the norms of Scripture, Church decisions, the Church doctors, and ‘pious ears’. episcopos et magistros in theologia damnatorum’. Further: Iohannes Gerson, ‘Nova positio’, ed. by Glorieux, p. 151: ‘Facit pro praemissis, ad ostendendum de consuetudine laudabili legitime praescripta, quod nedum in Universitate Parisiensi sed in aliis studiis generalibus fit protestatio communis per theologos dum faciunt aliquos actus, quod nihil dicent contra articulos Parisius condemnatos vel qui alibi sunt rationabiliter condemnati’. The basis and origin of the articles denounced in Paris may have been especially the collection of 219 heretical articles, denounced 7 March 1277 by the Parisian bishop, Étienne Tempier, cf. Courtenay, ‘Inquiry and Inquisition’, p. 180. 9 See Munich, BSB, MS Clm 27034, fol. 250v: ‘Quantum ad 2m protestor, quod nec in isto actu modo nec in alis actibus universaliter, quos favente Deo facturus sum, intendo aliquid dicere assertive, quod cedat in favorem articulorum in Romana curia et in studio Parisiensi dampnatorum aut quod obviet directe vel indirecte dictis approbatorum et catholicorum doctorum. Et si aliquid istorum obreperet, quod absit, paratus sum revocare ad insinuacionem vel mandatum cuiuscumque michi errorem meum insinuantis. Specialiter tamen post sanctam sedem Romanam in hoc me subicio reverendo in Cristo patri et domino domino episcopo Parisiensi et reverendo ac speciali domino meo et magistro domino cancellario Parisiensi et omnibus aliis magistris meis reverendis sacre theoloyce facultatis Parisiensis constitutis, quorum omnium dominorum et magistrorum correccioni in omnibus et per omnia me et dicta mea cum omni reverencia hic submitto’. For the entirety, cf. Trapp, ‘Clm 27034’, pp. 352−53. Further, cf. the work of the baroque historian Jean of Launoy, focused on the history of the main educational institutions of western Europe from Charlemagne on, where we find a chapter dedicated to late medieval Parisian protestations along with four examples: see ‘Joannis Launoii De scholis celebrioribus’, pp. 164−65. 10 See Scripta manent, ed. by Włodek and Tatarzyński, p. 5 (the protestation of Jakub of Nowy Sącz); p. 20 ( Jan of Dąbrówka); and pp. 30−31 (Matthew of Łabiszyn). On dating their principia, Scripta manent, ed. by Włodek and Tatarzyński, pp. ix−x. An establishment of protestations is missing from the known statutes of the Cracow theological faculty, see ‘Statuta theologicae Facultatis Studii Generalis Cracoviensis’, pp. 73−94. The case is similar in the oldest statutes of Heidelberg: see Urkundenbuch der Universität Heidelberg, i, ed. by Winkelmann, pp. 20−23, no. 20. 11 See the protestations in the principia of master Prokop of Kladruby, who in Leipzig continued his study of divinity from Prague, and read the Sentences in 1431/32: see Prague, APH–KMK, MS F 19, fols 29v, 42v−43r and 208v. Full citations in Coufal, ‘Od přísahy ke konfesi a zpět?’, pp. 28‒29 nn. 19‒20.

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This discrepancy is attention-worthy in relation to the as yet unmentioned University of Prague. The little surviving evidence from the statutes of Prague’s theological faculty is not helpful in discussing protestations, and it is thus necessary to turn directly to the texts.12 Even here, however, we are faced with a marked challenge, namely, that in the most influential Prague lectura — the exposition of Konrad of Soltau from the turn of the 1370s and 1380s, whose principium to the first book was even published — we encounter only the phrase ‘praemissa protestatione consueta’, rather than protestations in their full wording.13 Neither the commentaries of his contemporary, Mikuláš Biceps,14 nor of the much younger lecturer from 1407−09, Jan Hus, tell us more. In the latter’s case the situation is similar to Soltau, because in certain manuscripts, his protestation in the principia to the second and third books is marked only by the word ‘Protestor’.15 One of Hus’s opponents was the Cistercian Matouš of Zbraslav. Kassian Lauterer, an expert on Matouš’s life and work, has traced the principium to the second book in a Leipzig manuscript, where we happen to find only the introduction of a protestation and its first sentence.16 They are formulated in such a way as to overlap with the Leipzig protestations of Prokop of Kladruby.17 It would be logical to assume that the Prague form of protestation would be adopted in Leipzig, and we could consequently imagine that the Prague bachelor’s protestation − from around 1407 − did not mention the condemned articles.18 Nevertheless, in the context of how old the Prague theological faculty was, this would be fairly surprising. Since, however, much remains to be done regarding the study of Prague lectures (and also quaestiones), the whole matter remains open.19 This does not mean, however, that we should doubt the general contours of the traditional protestations of Sentences commentaries in Prague, which were for sure identical to those elsewhere, with the majority of their prescribed

12 On this, cf. Kavka, ‘Zur Frage der Statuten’, pp. 129−43, who on p. 142 recalls protestations based on the Viennese statutes. 13 See ‘Edycja kwestii I–IX i XI–XXI Komentarza Konrada z Sołtowa’, p. 25, and for example Prague, NK ČR, MS I D 23, fols 1rb, 57vb, 94va, and 123ra, for all four principia. 14 See Prague, APH–KMK, MS C 19, the principium to the second book in version A. 15 See Iohannes Hus, Super IV Sententiarum, ed. by Flajšhans, pp. 136 and 378. 16 Cited by Lauterer, ‘Matthäus von Königssaal als Theologe’, p. 132 n. 6. 17 See note 11 above. 18 The most detailed reflection to date on the institution of the protestation in the context of the Prague University disputes is Marin, ‘Libri hereticorum sunt legendi’, pp. 36 and 38−39, where he claims that the ‘protestatio fidei was reduced to a vague pledge which left aside the reference to the Paris condemnations, and passed over in silence which articles of faith were enforced by theologians, and which were left to discussion’. It is not entirely clear which sources he draws from, whether Hussite or non-Hussite. 19 Apart from the repertorium of Stegmüller, Repertorium commentariorum, cf. Tříška, ‘Sententiarii Pragenses’; and more recently also Schabel, Maga, and Brînzei, ‘A Golden Age of Theology at Prague’.

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norms. The protestation provided a space for intellectual training and the legitimate search for theological truth, and the person concerned could not easily be accused of heresy, as is illustrated by one of the Oxford protestations of William of Ockham from the 1320s.20 Yet they also formed a legal basis for the occasional prosecution of those who transgressed their oaths, at least in the eyes of the guardians of academic doctrinal purity. This was true under the standard conditions. However, there were some in England, and later in Bohemia, who adhered to the traditional institution of the protestation while simultaneously transforming its content and thus also its function, thereby turning the traditional instrument of disciplining university intellectuals upside down.

John Wyclif If we now turn our attention to the numerous protestations of John Wyclif in his works, we immediately find an essential difference from contemporary practice. Here, however, I must limit myself only to one representative example — Wyclif ’s protestation from his influential work De potestate pape from 1379. In the opening of the general protestation, a good deal of attention is given to the positive exposition of the author’s intent, i.e. to follow Christ, and to his definition of non-institutional norms − Christ’s law and the statements of Church doctors founded upon it. Wyclif ’s is also distinct from traditional protestations in its revocation, where he states his willingness to subordinate himself exclusively to appropriate instruction, namely, only that which proves an error in these objectives or in the application of the norms referred to above. The identity of his potential accuser would not matter — whether the pope, a layman, or whoever else — because those norms (and also reason) are for him self-evident, and no one has personal power over them.21 The institution of the general protestation with the revocation is ever-present in Wyclif ’s work and thought because, in its dependence on contemporary university practice, it offered him a degree of intellectual freedom as guaranteed by the authorities. In De blasfemia (1381), Wyclif wrote that someone accused

20 See Guillelmus de Ockham, Tractatus de corpore Christi, ed. by Grassi, p. 90: ‘Proinde de isto altissimo sacramento aliqua brevia conscripturus protestor me nihil asserturum nisi quod Romana tenet et docet Ecclesia. Quaedam autem philosophica inserenda et universaliter quaecumque dicenda, quae non sunt per Romanam Ecclesiam authenticata, non temerarie approbando sed tantum recitando causa exercitii et veritatis inquirendae cum omni humilitate et modestia explicabo, correctioni quorumcumque peritorum catholicorum orthodoxorum, quorum interest, me subiciens et exponens’. See the entire first chapter entitled ‘De protestatione fidei catholicae’. 21 Wyclif, Tractatus de potestate pape, ed. by Loserth, pp. 396−97. The frequency of protestations in Wyclif ’s literary work is documented by Hussite collections of these protestations, which note up to thirty-two citations from nineteen of his works. More detail below, p. 163.

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of heresy and engaging in a protestation is not a heretic according to God’s law if he maintains his willingness to revoke.22 As we have noted, however, Wyclif either exchanged the original institutional norms for uncertain, idealistic ones, or kept these traditional norms in his revocation, but explicitly subordinated them to impersonal ones, namely Scripture, God’s law, and reason. Now, he was willing to revoke his opinions only if he would be brought to a ‘better opinion’. This he declared already in De universalibus (1368/9?), where he asserted that if he found the evidence against him convincing, he would abandon his old position without concern for the opinions and renown of the men he followed because, as a result of (his) imperfect nature, he actually knew less than what he did not.23 He thus delegitimized the power of institutions to judge and condemn in the search for theological truths, and rather subordinated himself to ‘higher’, impersonal authorities. The traditional protestation thus underwent a fundamental transformation. For Wyclif, it represented not only a traditional means to legitimize ideas, but rather a new and declarative tool to innovatively understand authority in theology and the life of the Church.

Jan Hus Our interests now, however, will focus on the reception of Wyclif ’s protestations by the Wycliffites of Prague. With the condemnation of the forty-five Wycliffite articles by Prague University in 1403, the traditional protestations — with the norms of condemned articles, authorized Church doctors, and Church decisions — gained an entirely new meaning in Prague and, consequently, the traditional oaths became highly controversial. This can be seen in the texts of the Prague intellectuals, but again, for the sake of brevity, we will limit our discussion to only two of them — Jan Hus and Jakoubek of Stříbro. I have been able to find the following protestations in works of Jan Hus: the first from 1410 in his defence of Wyclif ’s work De Trinitate, the second in De cruciata, his quaestio on indulgences from 1412, and the third in his quaestio, De sufficiencia legis Cristi, which he prepared in 1414 for his journey to Constance. Variants of the latter can also be seen in his other Constance tractates.24 22 Wyclif, Tractatus de blasphemia, ed. by Dziewicki, p. 75. 23 Wyclif, Tractatus de universalibus, ed. by Müller, p. 82. 24 Iohannes Hus, ‘Defensio libri Wyclef de Trinitate’, ed. by Eršil, pp. 25−26; Iohannes Hus, ‘De indulgentiis (de cruciata)’, ed. by Kejř, pp. 70−71; Iohannes Hus, ‘De sufficiencia legis Cristi’, ed. by Krmíčková and others, p. 43 (see also p. 68). See also Iohannes Hus, ‘De fidei sue elucidacione’, ed. by Krmíčková and others, pp. 83−84, and Iohannes Hus, ‘De sacramento corporis et saguinis Domini’, ed. by Krmíčková and others, pp. 185−86.

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In all three cases, we find either the explicit citation of, or allusion to, Wyclif ’s protestations from De universalibus, De postate pape, and Trialogus.25 Hus even reflected directly on his appreciation of Wyclif ’s protestations: while polemicizing with the English diplomat and canonist John Stokes in 1411, he defended his assertion that Wyclif was in heaven and stated, among other things, that he was led to this conclusion by Wyclif ’s protestations, which he cited and often repeated in his own texts.26 Their popularity among Czech venerators of the Evangelical Doctor is also proven by some under-appreciated sources, the excerpts of Wyclif ’s protestations which appear in independent collections found in at least six codices of Hussite provenance. In total, we find thirty-two citations from nineteen works, from De logica (1363?) to texts from 1384, the year of Wyclif ’s death. Of general interest is the fact that only two of these manuscripts fit into an identifiable textual tradition, while the rest are unique collections. These are distinct not only in the number of citations, but also in their ranges, introductions, and, in some cases, even in their different wording. We are thus dealing with a living collection of thematically unified citations, repeatedly updated, broadened, or shortened.27 We can only speculate on the degree to which Jan Hus could have inspired or made use of such collections, as evidenced by his own protestations. What is clear is the fact that the Bethlehem preacher completely adopted their rationale himself. This is best demonstrated by his crucial protestation in his De sufficiencia legis Cristi, prepared for the Council fathers. Here, he first offers a positive objective for his efforts, describing and declaring the non-institutional, idealistic norms of Christ’s law and reason to which he submits himself in his revocation, and he declares that he is willing to recant only according to an argument on these grounds. He is no longer concerned, as were the traditional authors and institutions, with the standard preventative renunciation of error, but declares his acceptance of the doctrinal authority of anyone who teaches truly in accordance with Christ’s law and reason.28

25 For the first three works of Hus mentioned in the previous note, cf. Wyclif, Tractatus de universalibus, ed. by Müller, p. 82; Wyclif, Tractatus de potestate pape, ed. by Loserth, pp. 396−97; and Wyclif, Trialogus cum supplemento Trialogi, ed. by Lechler, p. 70. 26 See Iohannes Hus, ‘Contra Iohannem Stokes’, ed. by Eršil, p. 52: ‘Quinto movent me sue protestaciones, quas ponit in suis sentenciis sepissime resumendo’. 27 These collections, and their reception in Hussite manuscripts and texts, warrant a study of their own. Here I note only the basic information: the broadest collection, including 26 items, from Prague, NK ČR, MS XI E 3, fols 58r−59r, was already (poorly) published by Höfler, ‘Anna von Luxemburg’, pp. 235−38; further, see Prague, KNM, MS VIII F 38, pp. 248−50, with 19 citations; Prague, APH−KMK, MS D 50, fols 23v−24v with 13 items; mutually similar manuscripts are Prague, NK ČR, MS X H 12, fol. 76rv and Vienna, ÖNB, MS 4308, fols 118v−120r, with 14 citations; see also Prague, NK ČR, MS XI D 9, fol. 156v, with 8 excerpts. 28 Iohannes Hus, ‘De sufficiencia legis Cristi’, ed. by Krmíčková and others, p. 43.

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Over time, as his situation changed, the introductions of Hus’s protestations increasingly assumed the form of personal confessions. This is apparent in his declaration of faith, which he made in a letter to John XXIII on 1 September 1411. He began by asserting that Christ’s law is so strong in truth that none of its letters can be wrong, and that Christ’s Church is so firmly founded on the rock that the gates of hell cannot overwhelm it. Therefore, he is prepared to rather suffer the punishment of agonizing death in the faith of its head, which is Christ, than deliberately maintain anything opposed to Christ’s will and that of his Church.29 Yet it is one thing to make a declaration and another to meet Church authority face to face. Later at Constance, the Council’s expectation for Hus to unconditionally and absolutely recant and subject himself to its judgement, even regarding those opinions which he was convinced he had never held, led to a spiritual struggle and crisis in conscience for him, since it meant he would have to act contrary to his long-held declaration of faith. He could not simply renounce something (i.e. as contrary to the truth) of which he had no knowledge. Simply put, he rather chose an agonizing death in a ‘better position’, under the rule of God’s law and reason, than allow Church institutions to prevail over his protestations. In this respect, Hus was consistent. He must have decided his position regarding submission to the Council long before, in his earlier reception of Wyclif ’s transformed protestations and associated ideas, and we may therefore return to the basic question of when this reception began. I stated above that I do not yet know of any protestation by Hus from before 1410, yet a frequent part of the traditional protestationes is the declaration of the consistency of the author’s position. Hus was no different when, in 1414, he repeatedly referred to the entirety of his previous works in his protestations.30 We have no reason to doubt Hus. In his protestation in defence of Wyclif ’s De Trinitate, he stated that he had adopted Wyclif ’s rule of accepting a ‘better opinion’ already at the beginning of his studies.31 Thus, with this in mind, Jan Hus did not need to undergo any fundamental transformation, influenced as he was by the protestations of his spiritual teacher from the beginning of his public activities. Thus, we can only regret that, in the manuscripts of Hus’s surviving commentary on the Sentences, we do not find a full version of a protestation.

29 M. Jana Husi, Korespondence, ed. by Novotný, no. 31, pp. 95−100, here p. 96. 30  Iohannes Hus, ‘De sufficiencia legis Cristi’, ed. by Krmíčková and others, p. 43, esp.: ‘Unde sicud in responsionibus et actibus scolasticis ac in predicacionibus publicis me submisi sepissime, ita et nunc submitto’, and Iohannes Hus, ‘De sacramento corporis et saguinis Domini’, ed. by Krmíčková and others, p. 186: ‘Unde sub ista protestacione quosdam scripsi libellos, docui, legi, respondi in universitate Pragensi et predicavi populo per regnum Boemie, et specialiter Prage, ewangelium Iesu Cristi’. 31 See Loserth, Hus und Wiclif, pp. 225−26.

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The Catholic Reaction Wyclif ’s practice of using the institution of the protestation, apparently also adopted by his followers in Oxford, the Wycliffites at Prague University, and Jan Hus at the Council of Constance, understandably evoked opposition. In England, between 1407 and 1409, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Arundel, published the provincial Constitutiones, which prohibited conclusions inside or outside the university which appeared to oppose faith and good morals, regardless of whether they were reached in the context of a protestation. This meant nothing less than the legal elimination of the traditional space maintained for relatively free academic discussion, made possible by the protestation.32 Between 1412 and 1414, the Catholic opposition in Prague was represented especially by Stanislav of Znojmo and Štěpán of Páleč, who — in reaction to the Wycliffites’ protestations and their declared rejection of institutional authorities — strove to force the Wycliffites to accept the traditional university oaths, albeit now in their stronger, institutional form. They requested that all doctors and masters of Prague University confess under oath that they wish to believe in accordance with the Roman Church, whose head is the pope, and whose body is the college of cardinals.33 What historians have as yet ignored is the fact that the related battle of ecclesiological tractates on the matter of doctrinal authority, including Hus’s famed work De ecclesia, was the logical consequence of the much earlier controversy between and concerning protestations, where both sides had already declared their distinct positions explicitly. The Parisian theologian Jean Gerson also took a closer look at the institution of protestation. In the short tractate De protestatione circa materiam fidei (completed in Constance in 1415), he explicitly stated that he took up the pen because some, especially heretics in Constance, used the protestation with recantation as a veil for their falsity and sinfulness. Also clear from Gerson’s considerations is that, by the early fifteenth century, the broader institution of the protestation with the revocation had found itself in a crisis, under the influence of ‘heretics’. Contrary to Arundel, however, the Parisian Chancellor maintained his role in university teaching, and in protecting the refinement of theological knowledge; he noted the weak points of the use of general

32 See Concilia magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae, ed. by Wilkins, iii, p. 317: ‘Inhibemus, ne quis, vel qui, cujuscunque gradus, status, aut conditionis existat, conclusiones aut propositiones in fide catholica seu bonis moribus adverse sonantes, praeter necessariam doctrinam facultatis suae, in scholis, aut extra, disputando aut communicando, protestatione praemissa vel non praemissa, asserat vel proponat, etiamsi quadam verborum aut terminorum curiositate defendi possint’. On the whole matter, cf. Bose, ‘The Opponents of John Wyclif ’, pp. 411−12; and Larsen, ‘Academic Condemnation and the Decline of Theology at Oxford’, pp. 24−25. 33  Documenta Mag. Joannis Hus, ed. by Palacký, no. 51, here pp. 476−78 (second and third articles); no. 51E, here p. 486 (second and third articles); and no. 53, here p. 508.

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protestations, and suggested improvements. The protective function of a protestation was to be henceforth derived from one’s professional qualifications and office, from which the responsibilities of publicly expounding correct faith flowed. In case of any kind of suspicion, absolute (and not simply conditional) retraction must follow.34

Jakoubek of Stříbro Another important figure who influentially contributed to the transformation of traditional university protestations into a declarative instrument of the new Hussite orthodoxy was Hus’s successor at the head of the Prague reform movement, Jakoubek of Stříbro. This is already visible in his earlier tractate on remanence from c. 1408, and in his defence of Wyclif ’s Decalogue in 1410. Here, Jakoubek declared that he wants to say nothing which would be contrary to God’s law and the faith of Jesus Christ, and in his revocation, he adopted Wyclif’s principle of correction − by anyone who is capable − instead of unambiguous submission to the list of traditional authorities. With Jakoubek, however, what appears above all is a seriously held responsibility for the education of the Church and the simple people. In neither of his protestations does he legitimize himself or his statements negatively (by renouncing errors) but positively, by searching for the truth, and desiring to share it with others.35 Understandably, we find several protestations from among Jakoubek’s quaestiones and tractates from between 1414 and 1418 devoted to his life’s goal — the lay reception of the Eucharist under both kinds. In Prague, the battle for this liturgical novelty was concluded in March 1417, when Prague University approved the lay chalice as orthodox, starkly opposing the opinion of the Council of Constance. In a quaestio which emerged from this context, Jakoubek presented the following protestation: Inprimis protestor, quod hoc non intendo dicere, quod esset contra summum pontificem futurorum bonorum, Dominum Iesum Cristum, vel contra suam perfectissimam et sufficientissimam legem, in qua est omnis veritas secundum Augustinum tercio De doctrina cristiana, vel contra suam sanctissimam sponsam, katholicam et apostolicam ecclesiam. (First, I declare, that I do not intend to say anything which would be contrary to the highest pontiff of future benefits, the Lord Jesus Christ, or anything against his perfect and sufficient law, in which,

34 See Iohannes Gerson, ‘De protestatione circa materiam fidei’, ed. by Glorieux, pp. 155−65. In the context of combating university heresy in Paris, this text is discussed by Moule, Corporate Jurisdiction, Academic Heresy, pp. 165−200, esp. pp. 166−73. 35  Iacobellus de Misa, ‘Tractatus de remanencia’, ed. by De Vooght, p. 328; and Iacobellus de Misa, ‘Defensio Decalogi Iohannis Wyclef ’, ed. by Sedlák, p. 316.

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according to Augustine, in the third chapter of De doctrina Christiana, all truth is found, or against his most holy spouse, the Catholic and apostolic Church.)36 This protestation, with its normativity, is a clear polemic against the institutional Roman Church. We must ask ourselves, however, whether the absence of a revocation, otherwise a normal part of Jakoubek’s protestations, may have some deeper purpose here. Given the specific circumstances of this quaestio’s origin, we may suggest that it is exactly here that Jakoubek gave way to his triumphant (self-)consciousness of discovered truth, which is entirely in harmony with the declared absolute norms, meaning that the lay chalice was no longer mere academic discussion, but assertion of fact.37 Meanwhile, this was not the case with Jakoubek’s other innovation: the giving of the Eucharist to small children (communio parvulorum). In his tractate Ad honorem, written before 20 January 1419 to support this practice, we find a protestation which again refers to one of his older ones, but this time only the revocation appears: Supposita consueta mea protestacione, qua semper paratus sum nedum a maiori vel equali, sed a quocumque minimo fideli, ymmo ab asina Balaam [cf. Numbers 22. 28−30], si illam michi loqui est possibile, instrui, corrigi et emendari et docto per scripturas aut raciones me aliud, quam deberem, dicere vel facere castigari, in primis tractabo Deo duce et auctore sentenciam katholicam de conmunione sacramentali omnium generaliter baptisandorum et maxime parvulorum. (With the assumption of my standard protestation, that I am always prepared to be educated, corrected, and convinced, not only by superiors or equals, but by any believer howsoever minor, even by the ass of Balaam — if it could talk to me — and that I am prepared to be rebuked, as long as I am instructed by the Scriptures and concrete accounts that I said or did something that I should not have, I first will discuss the catholic theses with the guidance of God, who is their author, the sacramental communion of all baptised, and especially of infants.)38 Since this ‘sententia catholica’ (catholic theses) was an ongoing controversy which eventually led to dissent from within the reform movement, it is understandable that Jakoubek welcomed nuanced opinions on the matter. Moreover, since the debate was to be led based on the non-institutional norms

36 See Vienna, ÖNB MS 4488, fol. 97r. For the quaestio itself, see Spunar, Repertorium auctorum Bohemorum, i, no. 570. 37 For the conditions surrounding the quaestio’s origin, see Coufal, ‘Die katholischen Magister’. 38 See Prague, NK ČR, MS X H 10, fol. 132r. For the work, see Spunar, Repertorium auctorum Bohemorum, i, no. 611.

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of Scripture and reason, anyone eligible could by engaged in it. The search for theological truths, liberated from institutions by Wyclif, was to thus bear its fruits especially in disputations and tractate polemics. We can easily understand, therefore, how the institution of the protestation remained alive even outside the traditional university setting — and even outside Roman orthodoxy — as an institution of intra-Hussite polemics. In 1420, Jakoubek engaged in debate with the Prague master Jan of Jičín, who adhered to the chiliastic expectations circulating at the outset of the revolutionary turmoil.39 Jičín accused Jakoubek of writing many things against God, the prophets, Jesus Christ, and his apostles, in one of the latter’s pamphlets sent to the clergy. One way in which Jakoubek responded was with a protestation which, though entirely transformed in its enumeration of norms and its form of revocation, otherwise conformed in form and structure with the academic tradition.40

Confrontation at the Council of Basel In the Hussite–Catholic and internal Hussite intellectual conflicts of the 1410s and 1420s, the controversy between and concerning protestations had not yet reached its climax. This occurred only during the disputation on the Four Prague Articles between the Hussites and the Council of Basel in 1433. At the beginning of the scholarly debates, the Prague Master Jan Rokycana pronounced a protestation in the name of the whole Czech delegation, to which the speaker of the Council and Parisian master, John of Ragusa, reacted with his own declaration of faith. Again, this amounted to a direct confrontation of protestations and the associated opinions of each side, though in very exceptional conditions. While John of Ragusa pronounced an entirely traditional university protestatio with an emphasis on institutional norms,41 the Hussite protestation was a classic example of the Wycliffite-Hussite transformation of the original tradition of university protestations as described above.42 Its introductory section was compiled from two texts of Jan Hus: his protestation from the 1414 quaestio, De sufficiencia legis Cristi, and his declaration of faith from 1 September 1411.43 We may moreover assume that the chief author of the Basel protestation in its final form was the Hussite radical Mikuláš of Pelhřimov, who had already produced this compilation in his De confessione Taboritarum.44 Since Hus 39 See Kaminsky, A History of the Hussite Revolution, pp. 314 and 428. 40 See Kaminsky, A History of the Hussite Revolution, p. 534. 41 See ‘Replica Johannis de Ragusio contra Rokyczana’, ed. by Mansi, cols 708−09. 42 See ‘Positio magistri Johannis de Rockozana’, ed. by Mansi, col. 269. 43 See Iohannes Hus, ‘De sufficiencia legis Cristi’, ed. by Krmíčková and others, p. 43, and M. Jana Husi Korespondence, ed. by Novotný, no. 31, p. 96. 44 See Confessio Taboritarum, ed. by Molnár and Cegna, pp. 66−68.

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had not been allowed to present the principles of his faith at Constance, the matter should be atoned for in Basel.45 It appears that it was mainly the Hussite radicals who adhered to Hus and Wyclif in this way in Basel. The chief representative of the moderate Hussites, Jan Rokycana, originally considered proceeding differently. In the surviving preparation for his defence of the chalice at Basel, the Prague preacher used a protestation in which he drew from the text of Matěj of Janov, The Rules of the Old and New Testaments, written around 1390. Even if Rokycana’s use of Janov’s protestatio also weakened traditional institutional norms, it was not Wycliffite.46 Matěj’s protestation with its structure and most of its keywords corresponded to the classical university declaration; it even included a revocation. Yet, in the enumeration of norms, where traditional protestations consistently refer to the ‘decision of the Church’, Janov speaks generally of ‘the Holy Catholic Church of Jesus Christ’. In the revocation, he submits to the Church as ‘his godly mother’ and ‘his orthodox fathers’. Thus, in the context of Matěj’s ecclesiology (which prefers the concept of the Church of the Saints who live a good life over the institutional Church defined as a community of faith and sacraments), an exclusive, idealistic understanding of these categories is imposed.47 Nevertheless, it was the more radical Wycliffite official protestation delivered by Rokycana which gave John of Ragusa the opportunity for an overpowering and unique critique. Ragusa explicitly challenged the norms declared by the Hussites as uncertain, and also noted the fact that the Czechs spoke heterogeneously concerning the Church. Building on this point, he raised the contentious issue of ecclesiology again in the following debates, an issue which he finally closed in the 1440s with his well-known Tractatus de ecclesia.48 Thus, we are again able to observe how the conflict between and regarding protestations organically accelerated ecclesiological discussion in the fifteenth century.

From Oath to Confession and Back? The changing position of the Hussites, expressed by their protestation at Basel, demonstrated that — given the intellectual confusion of the 1420s and the

45 More detail provided by Coufal, ‘Jan Hus na basilejském koncilu’, esp. pp. 43−45. 46 On Rokycana’s preparation, see Coufal, ‘Der Laienkelch im Hussitentum’, esp. p. 48. 47  Mathiae de Janov, Regulae Veteris et Novi Testamenti, ed. by Kybal and Odložilík, v, p. 23. For Matthias’s ecclesiology, see Valasek, Das Kirchenverständnis des Prager Magister Matthias von Janow. 48  ‘Replica Johannis de Ragusio contra Rokyczana’, ed. by Mansi, col. 709. There exists a range of studies on the ecclesiology of Basel in its confrontation with the Hussites; see for instance Binder, ‘Der “Tractatus de Ecclesia” Johannes v. Ragusio’; Krämer, Konsens und Rezeption, pp. 69−124; and more recently Strika, Johannes von Ragusa († 1443), pp. 127−44.

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stress of intra-Hussite disputes — there was an increasing number of Utraquists who were convinced that institutions could not simply be sacrificed in matters of faith, a sentiment obviously also reflected in protestations. Surprisingly, already in 1429, one defender of Wyclif ’s remanentist arguments in Hussite Bohemia, Peter Payne, prefixed a public disputation with Jan of Příbram − an opponent of Wyclif ’s radicalism and a defender of transubstantiation − with a protestation in which he also used the traditional structures along with the general declaration and revocation. Even though its first part allowed only non-institutional norms (‘orthodox faith’ and ‘pious ears’), his revocation is considerably more conservative, marking a return to institutions, even if only Hussite ones. Thus, Payne submitted himself to the ‘correction of the holy mother Church, and all others who are officially obliged to return the misguided to the path of catholic truth’.49 A similar tendency can be observed during the negotiations with the Council of Basel, this time in a conservative Hussite context. The fact that the official Hussite protestation from January 1433 was a product of the radicals is made clear from a slightly later situation in August 1433. Here, a member of the second delegation to Basel, Master Prokop of Plzeň, introduced a protestation in his speech in which he proclaimed that he did not intend to stubbornly hold to any argument, and if he could be better informed in his intentions, statements, and methods, he would be prepared to be corrected by the respectable Council.50 Though the Wycliffite principle of correction by ‘better opinion’ remained in the background, traditional institutions were no longer entirely taboo, a detail whose importance is not diminished by the fact that Prokop did not present the official position of the Hussite delegation. Prokop’s companion among Hussite conservatives, Jan of Příbram, also moved some way towards accepting the authority of the Roman Church, even though he did not intend to submit to it without reservation either. Already

49  Prague, NK ČR, MS IV G 14, fol. 130r, esp.: ‘Reverendi domini, fratres et amici! Quia in actibus huiusmodi mos est ad cautelam et magnam securitatem protestacionem facere, hinc est, quod Petrus Anglicus hic coram omnium vestrum reverenciis publice protestatur, quod sue intencionis non est aliquid pertinaciter asserere, quod dissonum est fidei orthodoxe aut piarum aurium offensivum. Et si, quod absit, quidquam tale dixerit vel scripserit ex circumstancia inordinata qualicumque, haberi petit illud pro non dicto sive scripto subiciens se correccioni sancte matris ecclesie nec non et omnium aliorum, quibus incumbit ex officio ipsum corrigere taliter delinquentem et ad viam reducere katholice veritatis’. On the tractate, Bartoš, Literární činnost M. Jana Rokycany, M. Jana Příbrama a M. Petra Payna, no. 13, pp. 103−04. For the historical and intellectual context, cf. Kejř, Mistři pražské university, pp. 73−74; and Perett, ‘A Neglected Eucharistic Controversy’, pp. 64−89. 50 The source is cited by Prokeš, M. Prokop z Plzně, p. 67 n. 273: ‘Protestor nichil me tenere, asserere aut dicere temere et pertinaciter aut contumaciter, sed in omnibus meis conceptibus, locucionibus et moribus doctus et specialiter ab hoc venerando et almo concilio corrigi sum paratus’.

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in the early 1430s, he had not hidden his desire to be an obedient son of the universal Roman Church and its superiors, including the pope, (but only) in what was honest, lawful, and did not contradict God’s law.51 Later, at Basel in 1437, when he defended the necessity of the chalice for salvation, he repeated his conviction at the beginning of his speech thus: Ante omnia supposita a me sincero corde firma et perseveranti adhesione, materna reverencia atque filiali obediencia ipsius sancte Romane ecclesie in omnibus licitis et honestis, a qua sine causa se segregare dico periculo scismatis laborare, ut lacius dicam in fine huius operis. Ista equidem etsi ita loquor, tamen hec dissero non ut censor aut ipsius reprehensor, sed ut humilimus eiusdem matris exorator. (Above all, I continue to act with a sincere heart, firm and steadfast adherence, reverence due to a mother and filial obedience toward the holy Roman Church in all that is lawful and honest; I say that anyone who separates himself from her without cause struggles with the danger of schism, as I will discuss in detail at the end of this work. If I utter such things in this way, I nevertheless say them not as her judge or critic, but as a humble suppliant to the same mother.)52 Here, we may note that Příbram’s declarations express his deeper intellectual convictions, and we know these to be of a person who abandoned Wyclif partially, and, when faced by confusion in the faith, longed for a return to the institutional support of the Roman Church. At the same time, however, he was not willing entirely to sacrifice Hus’s reform principles when, like him, he made ‘legitimacy and honesty’ according to God’s Law the preconditions for his submission to decisions of the ecclesiastical authorities.53 Příbram, and certainly not just he, did not wish to retreat completely to traditional waters, but instead attempted to follow a kind of middle way in the matter of the authority of the Roman Church. For now, however, without further source analysis, it is difficult to form a broader judgement on the Hussite protestations of this period.

51 See Příbram’s De professione fidei catholicae et errorum revocatione from the beginning of the 1430s in Iohannes Cochlaeus, Historiae Hussitarum libri duodecim, pp. 503−47, here p. 504: ‘Item profiteor fideli corde et ore, quia omni voluntate et desiderio sum in spe, et esse cupio in re, ex integro inuiolabiliter et inseparabiliter membrum sanctę matris Ecclesiae Catholicae, Vniuersalis et Romanae, per totum orbem diffusę’, and esp. p. 525: ‘Item profiteor humiliter syncere et ueraciter, quod teneo et volo usque ad mortem meam esse humiliter subiectus et obediens Ecclesiae sanctae Romanae, et eius summo Pontifici et legitimo, et omnibus aliis praepositis et praelatis meis, et hoc in omnibus licitis et honestis, Deo et legi eius non aduersis’. 52 See Vienna, ÖNB, MS 4488, fol. 109r. For the tractate, see Spunar, Repertorium auctorum Bohemorum, i, no. 322. 53 On Hus, cf. Patschovsky, ‘Das Gewissen als Letztinstanz. Wahrheit und Gehorsam im Kirchenverständnis von Jan Hus’, p. 154.

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Summary and Conclusion If we are to summarize our findings, it is peculiar that the institution of the late medieval protestatio has as yet gone un-problematized in historical research. We have observed that the protestation underwent an important transformation in Wyclif ’s and Hussite thought, one which began with the elimination of the institutional authority of the Church in favour of transcendent, idealistic authority. With this, the common tool of revoking heresy became the declarative tool of the new doctrinal principles of Wycliffite-Hussite thought. This is clear especially in the work of Jan Hus, whose protestations increasingly assumed the form of a confession. The use or abuse of the traditional institution by ‘heretics’ did not continue for long without a reaction from the side of Roman orthodoxy; in England, Prague, Constance, and Basel, countermeasures with institutional and theoretical consequences were already observable relatively soon thereafter. Moreover, it was exactly in the conflict over protestations that authors expressed their deeper conceptual stances, accelerating the development of late medieval ecclesiological thought, and immediately resulting in, among other writings, several tractates De ecclesia. At the same time, faced by the confusion of faith in 1420s, there were increasing numbers of Hussites who longed for a return to institutional authority in the decision-making around matters of faith, and who did not try to hide it in their protestations. Thus, it can be asserted that the late medieval protestationes represent an as yet seriously under-appreciated indicator of development and change in the ecclesiological convictions of their authors, and not only in the case of the Hussites: another round of the conflict of protestations, with even more serious results, was sparked by the Leipzig public disputation of Martin Luther in 1519.54 Translated by Martin Pjecha.

Works Cited Manuscripts and Archival Sources Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, MS Clm 27034, fol. 250v Prague, Archiv Pražského hradu — Knihovna Metropolitní kapituly, MS C 19 ———, MS D 50, fols 23v−24v ———, MS F 19, fols 29v, 42v–43r, 208v Prague, Knihovna Národního muzea, MS VIII F 38, pp. 248−50 Prague, Národní knihovna České republiky, MS I D 23, fols 1rb, 57vb, 94va, 123ra ———, MS IV G 14, fol. 130r

54 See D. Martin Luthers Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe, lix, pp. 433−34, namely the protestations which opened the Leipzig disputation.

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———, MS X H 10, fol. 132r ———, MS X H 12, fol. 76r–v ———, MS XI D 9, fol. 156v ———, MS XI E 3, fols 58r−59r Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS 4308, fols 118v−120r ———, MS 4488, fols 97r, and 109r Primary Sources Concilia magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae, iii, ed. by David Wilkins (London: R. Gosling and others, 1737) Confessio Taboritarum, ed. by Amedeo Molnár and Romolo Cegna, Fonti per la storia d’Italia, 105 (Roma: Istituto storico Italiano per il medio evo, 1983) D. Martin Luthers Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe, lix: Nachträge (Weimar: Böhlau, 1983) Documenta Mag. Joannis Hus vitam, doctrinam, causam in Constantiensi concilio actam et controversias de religione in Bohemia annis 1403−1418 motas illustrantia, quae partim adhuc inedita, partim mendose vulgata, nunc ex ipsis fontibus hausta, ed. by František Palacký (Prague: F. Tempsky, 1869) ‘Edycja kwestii I–IX i XI–XXI Komentarza Konrada z Sołtowa do I księgi Sentencji Piotra Lombarda’, ed. by Zbigniew Chmyłko, Stanislaw Obszyński, Józef Świerkosz, and Joanna Judycka, Acta Mediaevalia, 5 (1989), 24−134 Geschichte der kaiserlichen Universität zu Wien, ii: Statutenbuch der Universität, ed. by Rudolf Kink (Vienna: Carl Gerold & Sohn, 1854) Guillelmus de Ockham, Tractatus de corpore Christi, in Guillelmi de Ockham Opera Philosophica et Theologica. Opera Theologica, x, ed. by Carolus A. Grassi (New York: St Bonaventure University, 1986), pp. 89−234 I più antichi statuti della Facoltà teologica dell’Università di Bologna, ed. by Franz Ehrle (Bologna: Istituto per la storia dell’Università di Bologna, 1932) Iacobellus de Misa, ‘Defensio Decalogi Iohannis Wyclef ’, ed. by Jan Sedlák, Studie a texty k náboženským dějinám českým, 1 (1914), 316−28 ———, ‘Tractatus de remanencia: Confiteor antiquam fidem’, in Paul De Vooght, Jacobellus de Stříbro († 1429), premier théologien du hussitisme, Bibliothéque de la Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 54 (Louvain: Bibliothéque de l’université, bureaux de la Revue, 1972), pp. 319−50 Iohannes Cochlaeus, Historiae Hussitarum libri duodecim (Mainz: Franciscus Behem, 1549) Iohannes Gerson, ‘De protestatione circa materiam fidei’, in Jean Gerson, Œuvres complètes, vi: L’Œuvre ecclésiologique, ed. by Palémon Glorieux (Paris: Desclée & Cie, 1965), pp. 155−65 ———, ‘Nova positio’, in Jean Gerson, Œuvres complètes, vi: L’Œuvre ecclésiologique, ed. by Palémon Glorieux (Paris: Desclée & Cie, 1965), pp. 146−54 Iohannes Hus, ‘Contra Iohannem Stokes’, in Magistri Iohannis Hus, Polemica, ed. by Jaroslav Eršil, Corpus Christianorum – Continuatio mediaevalis, 238, Magistri Iohannis Hus Opera omnia, 22 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), pp. 45−61

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———, ‘Defensio libri Wyclef de Trinitate’, in Magistri Iohannis Hus, Polemica, ed. by Jaroslav Eršil, Corpus Christianorum – Continuatio mediaevalis, 238, Magistri Iohannis Hus Opera omnia, 22 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), pp. 23−43 ———, ‘De fidei sue elucidacione’, in Magistri Iohannis Hus, Constantiensia, ed. by Helena Krmíčková, Jana Nechutová, Dušan Coufal, Jana Fuksová, Lucie Mazalová, Petra Mutlová, Libor Švanda, Soňa Žákovská, and Amedeo Molnár, Corpus Christianorum – Continuatio mediaevalis 274, Magistri Iohannis Hus Opera omnia 24 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2016), pp. 81−98 ———, ‘De indulgentiis (de cruciata)’, in Magistri Iohannis Hus, Questiones, ed. by Jiří Kejř, Corpus Christianorum – Continuatio mediaevalis 205, Magistri Iohannis Hus Opera Omnia 19a (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), pp. 67−155 ———, ‘De sacramento corporis et saguinis Domini’, in Magister Iohannes Hus, Constantiensia, ed. by Helena Krmíčková, Jana Nechutová, Dušan Coufal, Jana Fuksová, Lucie Mazalová, Petra Mutlová, Libor Švanda, Soňa Žákovská, and Amedeo Molnár (†), Corpus Christianorum − Continuatio mediaevalis 274, Magistri Iohannis Hus Opera omnia 24 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2016), pp. 183−210 ———, ‘De sufficiencia legis Cristi’, in Magistri Iohannis Hus, Constantiensia, ed. by Helena Krmíčková, Jana Nechutová, Dušan Coufal, Jana Fuksová, Lucie Mazalová, Petra Mutlová, Libor Švanda, Soňa Žákovská, and Amedeo Molnár, Corpus Christianorum – Continuatio mediaevalis 274, Magistri Iohannis Hus Opera omnia 24 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2016), pp. 39−63 ———, Super IV Sententiarum, ed. by Václav Flajšhans, Spisy M. Jana Husi 4−6, Sbírka pramenů českého hnutí náboženského ve XIV. a XV. století, 4−6 (Prague: J. Bursík, 1904) ‘Joannis Launoii De scholis celebrioribus seu a Carolo Magno seu post eundem Carolum per occidentem instauratis Liber’, in Joannis Launoii, Constantiensis, Parisiensis Theologi, Socii Navarraei, Opera Omnia, iv. 1 (Cologne: Fabri & Barrillot and others, 1732), pp. 1−172 Iohannis Wyclif, Tractatus de blasphemia, ed. by Michael Henry Dziewicki (London: Trübner, 1893) Joannis Wiclif, Trialogus cum supplemento Trialogi, ed. by Gotthard Viktor Lechler (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1869) Johannis Wyclif, Tractatus de potestate pape, ed. by Johann Loserth (London: Trübner, 1907) John Wyclif, Tractatus de universalibus, ed. by Ivan J. Müller (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985) Mathiae de Janov dicti Magister Parisiensis, Regulae Veteris et Novi Testamenti, v: De corpore Christi, ed. by Vlastimil Kybal and Otakar Odložilík, Sbírka pramenů českého hnutí náboženského ve stol. XIV. a XV., 13 (Prague: Česká akademie věd a umění, 1926) M. Jana Husi, Korespondence a dokumenty, ed. by Václav Novotný, Spisy M. Jana Husi, 9, Sbírka pramenů českého hnutí náboženského ve XIV. a XV. století, 14 (Prague: Česká akademie věd a umění, 1920)

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‘M. Petri de Benešov Utrum pro reformanda. Questio disputationis de quolibet Pragae anno 1416 habitae’, ed. by Jana Nechutová, Sborník prací filosofické fakulty brněnské univerzity, B 20 (1973), 101−23 ‘Positio magistri Johannis de Rockozana’, in Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, xxx, ed. by Giovanni Domenico Mansi (Venice: Antonius Zatta, 1792), cols 269−306 ‘Replica Johannis de Ragusio contra Rokyczana’, in Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, xxix, ed. by Giovanni Domenico Mansi (Venice: Antonius Zatta, 1788), cols 699−868 Scripta manent. Textus ad theologiam spectantes in Universitate Cracoviensi saeculo XV conscripti, ed. by Zofia Włodek and Ryszard Tatarzyński, Studia do dziejów Wydziału Teologicznego Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, 12 (Kraków: Wydawnictwo naukowe Papieskiej akademii teologicznej, 2002) ‘Statuta theologicae Facultatis Studii Generalis Cracoviensis’, ed. by Józef Szujski, Archiwum Komisji dla Historii i Oświaty w Polsce 1 (1878), 73−94 Urkundenbuch der Universität Heidelberg, i: Urkunden, ed. by Eduard Winkelmann (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1886) Secondary Works Bartoš, František Michálek, Literární činnost M. Jana Rokycany, M. Jana Příbrama a M. Petra Payna, Sbírka pramenů k poznání literárního života československého, iii. 9 (Prague: Česká akademie věd a umění, 1928) Binder, Karl, ‘Der “Tractatus de Ecclesia” Johannes v. Ragusio und die Verhandlungen des Konzils von Basel mit den Hussiten’, Angelicum, 28 (1951), 30−54 Bose, Mishtooni, ‘The Opponents of John Wyclif ’, in A Companion to John Wyclif, Late Medieval Theologian, ed. by Ian Christopher Levy, Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition, 4 (Leiden: Brill, 2006), pp. 407−56 Coufal, Dušan, ‘Die katholischen Magister Peter von Mährisch Neustadt, Johann von Königgrätz, Nicolaus von Pavlíkov und die Formierung der utraquistischen Universität in Prag 1417’, Acta Universitatis Carolinae − Historia Universitatis Carolinae Pragensis, 49 (2009), pp. 127−41 ———, ‘Der Laienkelch im Hussitentum. Neue Quellen zu Johann Rokycanas Verteidigung des Laienkelchs auf dem Basler Konzil im Januar 1433’, in Die hussitische Revolution: Religiöse, politische und regionale Aspekte, ed. by Franz Machilek, Forschungen und Quellen zur Kirchen- und Kulturgeschichte Ostdeutschlands, 44 (Cologne: Böhlau, 2012), pp. 39−56 ———, ‘Jan Hus na basilejském koncilu’, in Jan Hus 1415 a 600 let poté, ed. by Jakub Smrčka and Zdeněk Vybíral, Husitský Tábor. Supplementum, 4 (Tábor: Husitské muzeum, 2015), pp. 41–68 ———, ‘Od přísahy ke konfesi a zpět? Univerzitní protestace v pozdním středověku a její proměna ve Viklefově a husitském myšlení’, in Husitské reformace. Proměna kulturního kódu v 15. století, ed. by Pavlína Cermanová and Pavel Soukup (Prague: Nakladatelství Lidové noviny, 2019), pp. 22–68

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Courtenay, William J., Adam Wodeham: An Introduction to His Life and Writings (Leiden: Brill, 1978) ———, ‘Inquiry and Inquisition: Academic Freedom in Medieval Universities’, Church History, 58 (1989), pp. 168−81 Ehrle, Franz, Der Sentenzenkommentar Peters von Candia, des Pisaner Papstes Alexanders V.: Ein Beitrag zur Scheidung der Schulen in der Scholastik des 14. Jahrhunderts und zur Geschichte des Wegestreites, Franziskanische Studien Beiheft, 9 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1925) Gescher, Franz, ‘Die Statuten der theologischen Fakultät an der alten Universität’, in Festschrift zur Erinnerung an die Gründung der alten Universität Köln im Jahre 1388, ed. by Hubert Graven (Cologne: Schroeder, 1938), pp. 43−108 Höfler, Constantin, ‘Anna von Luxemburg, Kaiser Karl’s IV. Tochter, König Richard’s II. Gemahlin, Königin von England. 1382−1394’, in Denkschriften der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Philosophisch-historische Classe, 20 (1871), pp. 89−240 Kaminsky, Howard, A History of the Hussite Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967) Kejř, Jiří, Mistři pražské university a kněží táborští (Prague: Univerzita Karlova, 1981) Krämer, Werner, Konsens und Rezeption. Verfassungsprinzipien der Kirche im Basler Konziliarismus, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie im Mittelalter, N.F., 19 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1980) Larsen, Andrew Eric, ‘Academic Condemnation and the Decline of Theology at Oxford’, History of Universities, 23 (2008), 1−32 Lauterer, Kassian, ‘Matthäus von Königssaal als Theologe’, Cistercienser Chronik, 74 (1967), 129−41 and 170−80 Loserth, Johann, Hus und Wiclif. Zur Genesis der hussitischen Lehre (Leipzig: Tempsky und Freytag, 1884) Kavka, František, ‘Zur Frage der Statuten und der Studienordnung der Prager theologischen Fakultät in der vorhussitischen Zeit’, Folia diplomatica, 1 (1971), 129−43 Marcolino, Venicio, ‘Der Augustinertheologe an der Universität Paris’, in Gregor von Rimini: Werk und Wirkung bis zur Reformation, ed. by Heiko A. Oberman (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1981), pp. 127–94 Marin, Olivier, ‘Libri hereticorum sunt legendi: Svoboda výuky na pražské univerzitě (1347−1412)’, Acta Universitatis Carolinae − Historia Universitatis Carolinae Pragensis, 42 (2002), 33−58 Moule, Gregory S., Corporate Jurisdiction, Academic Heresy and Fraternal Correction at the University of Paris, 1200−1400, Education and Society in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, 51 (Leiden: Brill, 2016) Patschovsky, Alexander, ‘Das Gewissen als Letztinstanz. Wahrheit und Gehorsam im Kirchenverständnis von Jan Hus’, in Autorität und Wahrheit. Kirchliche Vorstellungen, Normen und Verfahren (13. − 15. Jahrhundert), ed. by Gian Luca Potestà, Schriften des Historischen Kollegs 84 (München: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2012), pp. 147–58

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Perett, Marcela K., ‘A Neglected Eucharistic Controversy: The Afterlife of John Wyclif ’s Eucharistic Thought in Bohemia in the Early Fifteenth Century’, Church History, 84 (2015), 64−89 Prokeš, Jaroslav, M. Prokop z Plzně. Příspěvek k vývoji konservativní strany husitské, Husitský archiv, 3 (Prague: Společnost Husova musea, 1927) Rashdall, Hastings, The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, i (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1936) Rosemann, Phillip W., The Story of a Great Medieval Book: Peter Lombard’s Sentences (Toronto: Broadview Press, 2007) Schabel, Chris, Mihai Maga, and Monica Brînzei, ‘A Golden Age of Theology at Prague: Prague Sentences. Commentaries from 1375 to 1385, the terminus post quem for Evidence of Wycliffism in Bohemia’, Acta Universitatis Carolinae − Historia Universitatis Carolinae Pragensis, 40 (2015), 19−40 Spunar, Pavel, Repertorium auctorum Bohemorum provectum idearum post Universitatem Pragensem conditam illustrans, i, Studia Copernicana, 25 (Warsaw: Zakład Narodowy imienia Ossolinskich and Wydawnictwo Polskiej Akademii Nauk, 1985) Stegmüller, Friedrich, Repertorium commentariorum in Sententias Petri Lombardi, 2 vols (Würzburg: Schöningh, 1947) Strika, Zvjezdan, Johannes von Ragusa († 1443): Kirchen- und Konzilsbegriff in der Auseinandersetzung mit den Hussiten und Eugen IV. (Augsburg: Wißner, 2000) Thijssen, Johannes M. M. Hans, Censure and Heresy at the University of Paris, 1200−1400 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996) Trapp, Damasus, ‘Clm 27034: Unchristened Nominalism and Wycliffite Realism at Prague in 1381’, Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale, 24 (1957), 320−60 Tříška, Josef, ‘Sententiarii Pragenses’, Mediaevalia philosophica Polonorum, 13 (1968), 100−10 Uiblein, Paul, ‘Zu den Beziehungen der Wiener Universität zu anderen Universitäten im Mittelalter’, in The Universities in the Late Middle Ages − Les Universités à la fin du Moyen Age, ed. by Jozef Ijsewijn and Jacques Paquet, Mediaevalia Lovaniensia, i. 6 (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1978), p. 168−89 Valasek, Emil, Das Kirchenverständnis des Prager Magister Matthias von Janow (1350/55–1393). Ein Beitrag zur Geistesgeschichte Böhmens im 14. Jahrhundert (Roma: The Pontifical Lateran University, 1971)

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Part II

Methods of Writing: Compilation Practice and the Material Text

Fiona Somer set

Trewe and Pretended The Middle English Rosarium on Law

The legal teaching within the Middle English translation of the Rosarium prompts us to reconsider the purposes and contents of the Wycliffite alphabetical compendiae of religious knowledge known as the Floretum and Rosarium more broadly, and to re-evaluate our understanding of their audiences and reception in England and Bohemia. The prologue to the Floretum, extant in several copies, emphasizes its usefulness for preachers, and this purpose has been the focus of most research on this work and its reception.1 However, both works are also replete with legal references. While the legal interests and training of Hussite reformers have been well studied, those of Wycliffites have received much less attention: attending to how vernacular works made legal teaching available to lay readers as well as preachers will contribute to redressing this imbalance. In this essay I discuss the Middle English Rosarium’s articles on law, including transcriptions of ‘mandata’ and ‘ius’. I consider them in the context of the successive modifications to the Floretum and Rosarium, focusing especially on the series of articles between ‘iudex’ and ‘iusticia’, which mirror the series of topics covered in the widely disseminated index to Gratian’s Decretum known as the Margarita Decreti. In the alphabetical encyclopaedia of religious knowledge known as the Floretum and its redacted version the Rosarium, we can discover a collaborative process of systematic accumulation, organization, and movement of knowledge both within, and between, the Wycliffite and Hussite movements.2 In this



1 Christina von Nolcken emphasizes the usefulness for preachers in her edition of the Middle English version, Rosarium theologie; see esp. pp. 29, 34–37. The same emphasis appears in her ‘Notes on Lollard Citation’; the appendices to this article include an edition of the Floretum’s prologue, and an index to citations of Wyclif in the copy of the Floretum in BL, MS Harley 401, with some details from the Middle English Rosarium included. 2 The foundational research on the Floretum and Rosarium and the relationship between them appears in the following four articles: Hudson, ‘Lollard Compilation and the Dissemination of Wycliffite Thought’, and Hudson, ‘Lollard Compilation in England and Bohemia’; Kejř, Fiona Somerset  •  ([email protected]), is Professor of English at the University of Connecticut. She is the author of Feeling Like Saints: Lollard Writings after Wyclif and editor of Four Wycliffite Dialogues. Wycliffism and Hussitism: Methods of Thinking, Writing, and Persuasion, c. 1360 – c. 1460, ed. by Kantik Ghosh and Pavel Soukup, MCS 47 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021), pp. 181–199 FHG10.1484/M.MCS-EB.5.124374

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essay I will investigate how the Floretum and Rosarium were a means for their producers and readers to learn about law. That the compilers intended these works to be useful to those seeking legal knowledge seems obvious, even if they confine their attention to canon law and do not cite English law or Roman law.3 Either work could readily have been used as a topical index to canon law, for many entries incorporate citations from canon law sources, often clustered at the end. The bulk of these are derived from the Margarita Decreti, a popular and widely available index to Gratian’s Decretum.4 But not all of the compilations’ citations of the Decretum derive from this work, and other canon law collections and commentators are also cited: the compilers drew on more than just one book, as we will see. By the early fifteenth century, the sources for canon law and resources for their interpretation were vast.5 The canonical books included the Decretum, Liber Extra, Liber Sextus, and Clementines. Each had acquired a standard gloss, but had also accumulated any number of more or less standardized interlinear and marginal glosses and had been addressed in freestanding commentaries. Since the bulk of this material was overwhelming, it had also been epitomized, indexed, cross-referenced, and discussed in consilia that compiled advice on specific legal topics. Thus, many forms of access to legal information were available; I propose that the Floretum and Rosarium aimed to augment these sources by providing a specifically Wycliffite interpretation of the law of the church.6 In contrast with the Hussite movement, where the legal interests of some participants have been extensively investigated, little work has been done



3



4



5



6

‘“Rosarius”’ and ‘Ještĕ jednou o “Rosariu”’. The last article cited provides the most complete published list of manuscripts. Wyclif ’s and Wycliffite writings do sometimes cite statute law or Roman law, but generally their citations are few and confined to especially famous examples; canon law citations form the bulk of legal references in most works. For a brief survey of Wycliffite attention to law see Somerset, ‘Lollard and Religious Writings’. On the Margarita Decreti see Schulte, Geschichte der Quellen, ii, p. 137. This index appears both with the Decretum and independently; it is extant in many manuscript and printed copies, and was commonly printed with early editions of the Decretum, as in the 1582 edition of the Corpus Juris Canonici digitized by UCLA. I will cite this version of the Margarita Decreti, by page number, column, and item number within the entry in that column. On the contributions made by the various printed editions of the Decretum, see Winroth, Making of Gratian’s Decretum, pp. 9–11. For a very brief introduction to the development and sources of canon law see Pennington, Short History. For a comprehensive survey of the development of legal training and practice see Brundage, Medieval Origins of the Legal Profession. Schulte, Geschichte der Quellen, provides a comprehensive guide to the writings of canon law; Pennington, Donahue, and others, Bio-Bibliographical Guide, includes all known commentators, but not all epitomes, indices, tables of cross-references, etc. Support for this interpretation is provided by Russell’s discussion of the Floretum’s entries on papa, vicarius, obedientia, and electio: Russell, Conciliarism and Heresy, pp. 131–34, 164.

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on Wyclif ’s or Wycliffite interest in law.7 Indeed, references to law among Wyclif ’s and Wycliffite writings have seemed potentially incompatible with their complaints about the corruption of human institutions, or in conflict with their frequent insistence that ‘God’s law’ — that is, the law that can be derived from sacred scripture — should be the basis for human conduct. Although Wyclif and Wycliffites can be dismissive of human law, I have become increasingly convinced that Wycliffites cite canon law so often not only in order to argue with their opponents on their own terms, nor simply because canon law is such a convenient repository of scriptural, patristic, and more recent authorities of all kinds.8 Instead, I think they are interested in demonstrating a broad consistency between human laws and God’s law, except where human law is simply wrong, and that they see that broad consistency as a basis for their political and social thought. Human jurisprudence is much more than simply irrelevant to the project of attempting to derive God’s law from the exegesis of scripture. In the Floretum and Rosarium we can discover not only a convenient alphabetical guide to legal (among other) topics, but a coherent presentation of Wyclif ’s and Wycliffite views on where and how human law is compatible with God’s law. The Middle English translation of the Rosarium is of particular interest, since like many Wycliffite texts it seems focused on providing knowledge to a wider audience within England who do not read Latin. In this essay I will focus on how divine and human law are defined and explained in the Middle English Rosarium, but I will attend also to the revisions that led to this version’s presentation of legal information. The Middle English Rosarium is for the most part a faithful translation of the Latin Rosarium: it grafts English morphology onto Latin terms where no English word is available, glosses some words with alternative translations, truncates or extends some quotations, and only occasionally omits material.9 The Latin Rosarium’s alterations to the Floretum are far more drastic. Von Nolcken has shown that the bulk of the revisions seem to have taken place in two stages (even while some extant copies do also contain more idiosyncratic adaptations). The number of entries was reduced first from around 509 to 371,





7 An essential survey and guide to Czech scholarship, newly translated into English but also available in Czech and German, is Soukup, Jan Hus; Soukup traces legal theory and practice among Hussites. See also Kejř, Die Causa Johannes Hus; Kejř, ‘Johannes Hus als Rechtsdenker’; and Kejř, Husitský právník. Russell, Conciliarism and Heresy, is attentive to the implications of Wyclif ’s assertions for legal reformers of the fifteenth century. The sole monograph attempting to trace Wyclif ’s legal thought is Farr, Wycliffe As Legal Reformer. On law in Wycliffite writings, see Somerset, ‘Lollard and Religious Writings’. On evidence that some of Wyclif ’s followers were lawyers, see Jurkowski, ‘Lawyers and Lollardy’, and Jurkowski, ‘Lollardy and Social Status’. 8 Both these explanations do carry weight; they have been convincingly argued, e.g., by Hudson, Premature Reformation, pp. 375–82 and esp. p. 380. See also Hudson, ‘Lollard Compilation and the Dissemination of Wycliffite Thought’, pp. 24–25. 9 These observations are my own, but see also Von Nolcken’s edition for further discussion of the translation, Rosarium theologie, pp. 42–43.

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chiefly to avoid overlap, and then to 303.10 In the intermediary version, still more in the second revision, frequently only part of a Floretum entry is retained; lengthy quotations are truncated or omitted, and material is reorganized and occasionally elaborated. While most Floretum entries seemingly compile material in bulk, in the order in which sources were consulted, Rosarium entries typically make some attempt at an organized exposition of their topic, opening with a distinction, as for example between true and pretended law, then developing the definition of a term in a more or less systematic way.11 There are three entries in the Rosarium that seek to provide a general definition of law and its kinds: mandata, lex, and ius. The Rosarium retains all three of these entries on law from the Floretum, despite the apparent overlap between them. This in itself demonstrates a closely engaged interest in defining and differentiating the types of law. However, the Rosarium extensively alters each entry, in ways that usefully illustrate the works’ differing approaches to presenting legal information for their readers. Both works’ attention to all three terms reflects the careful attention to differentiating and defining each of them found in Wyclif ’s De mandatis divinis, the work by Wyclif that is most heavily cited and quoted in the Floretum and Rosarium as a whole, and that provides his most extended discussion of the relationship between divine and human law.12 As Stephen Lahey explains, De mandatis seems to have been extensively revised in Wyclif’s final years. It most likely began as a commentary on the commandments, but Wyclif then added materials that were probably first composed as separate treatises: the first nine chapters form an extended prologue on the nature of ius, Chapters 11 through 14 form a treatise on love, and Chapters 19 through 21 form a treatise on prayer. The popularity of De mandatis in England and Bohemia is attested not only by its heavy use in the Floretum and Rosarium, but also by its seventeen extant manuscripts.13 Given that Wyclif ’s De mandatis is so frequently cited or quoted elsewhere in both works, it might seem odd that the entry on the commandments in

10 Von Nolcken, Rosarium theologie, pp. 25–29. 11 For further comments on differences between versions and copies see Hudson, ‘Lollard Compilation and the Dissemination of Wycliffite Thought’, pp. 16–18; Hudson, ‘Lollard Compilation in England and Bohemia’, pp. 32–38. At this preliminary stage I have consulted the mixed Floretum / Rosarium text in Cambridge, Trinity College MS O.7.30, and the copies of the Rosarium in Cambridge, Trinity College MS B.14.44, Cambridge, Gonville and Caius College MS 217/32, and BL MS Harley 3226 (all microfilms kindly loaned to me by Christina von Nolcken). Among Bohemian copies of both works available through www. manuscriptorium.com, I have relied most heavily on the copy of the Rosarium in Prague, NK MS IV G 19 and the copy of the Floretum in Prague, NK MS V B 2, but have also consulted the Rosarium manuscript Prague, NK MS IV E 14 and the Floretum manuscripts Prague, NK MS VIII B 18 and Prague, NK MS IX D 6. 12 Hudson provides a general overview of sources, citing De mandatis as the work by Wyclif most frequently quoted: ‘Lollard Compilation and the Dissemination of Wycliffite Thought’, pp. 18–23. Von Nolcken adds further details, Rosarium Theologie, pp. 21–24. See also n. 2 above. 13 Lahey, ‘John Wyclif: Spiritual and Devotional Guide?’, pp. 30–39 and esp. pp. 37–38.

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the Floretum and Rosarium, mandata, does not cite Wyclif ’s De mandatis. The Floretum entry is much longer than that in the Rosarium, and includes a lengthy discussion of each commandment in turn. However, the greater part of this commentary is drawn not from De mandatis, but from Wyclif ’s shorter commentary on the ten commandments composed ‘ut mandatus sum a quodam devoto layco’ (as I have been commanded by a certain devout layman), and now extant only in the version incorporated into sermons 13 to 22 of Wyclif ’s sermons on the Sunday gospel lections.14 A briefer commentary on the commandments composed with a lay audience in mind was certainly more appropriate for inclusion in the Floretum than the chapters of De mandatis that directly discuss each commandment in turn, for these chapters are lengthy and digressive and would have been difficult to excerpt. The Rosarium entry for mandata (see Appendix A) cuts out the whole of the Floretum’s commentary on the decalogue drawn from Wyclif. Instead, it jumps directly from Wyclif ’s and the Floretum’s conventional brief explanation that the three commandments of the first table enjoin love of God while the seven on the second table teach love of neighbour, to the incitamenta, or stiryngz (stirrings), toward keeping the commandments listed at the Floretum mandata entry’s end.15 The Floretum includes only six incitamenta, each bolstered by one or more biblical quotations. The sixth and last, a string of quotations that do not match up neatly with the final incitement, ends with a reference to pseudo-Chrysostom’s Homily 20 in the Opus Imperfectum that appears in the Rosarium’s seventh stirring. The Rosarium’s first five stirrings are the same as the Floretum’s, though with more and longer quotations; but the final four differ, incorporating increasingly more quotations and a long excerpt from Augustine’s De sermone domini in monte as well as one from pseudo-Chrysostom’s Homily 20 in the Opus Imperfectum. This is a good example of how the Rosarium refashions the Floretum rather than merely cutting or shortening its quotations, and it helps to clarify the collections’ differing purposes. The Rosarium is less compendious in intent than the Floretum, or than many of the alphabetical collections and indices on which both works relied. Here as elsewhere, the Rosarium focuses on exhortation, on making or providing possible arguments, rather than on providing comprehensive information. While both compendia may rely on an intermediary source for the incitamenta, the Floretum seemingly redacts, while the Rosarium expands.

14 Wyclif, Sermones, ed. by Loserth, i, p. 89 ll. 22–23. 15 Hugh of Strasbourg, Compendium Theologicae Veritatis, has the same opening and similarly proceeds to a detailed discussion of each commandment in turn. In these opening sentences Hugh and the Rosarium both specify that the tablets are made of stone, while the Floretum does not: the Rosarium redactors may have independently consulted this source in fashioning their entry. However, the Compendium does not include incitamenta. The Floretum and Rosarium attribute this work to ‘Thomas’ (i.e. Thomas Aquinas) and quote from it extensively in many entries.

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Neither the Floretum nor the Rosarium uses its mandata entry as an occasion for explaining the relationship between God’s law and the various forms of human law, a central topic in Wyclif ’s and Wycliffite writings and indeed also for the first twenty distinctions of Gratian’s Decretum.16 That task is left to the entries on lex and on ius, or as they appear in the Floretum, leges and iuris diffinicio. The Rosarium does not only simplify the titles of these entries; it excerpts and summarizes the long quotations from De mandatis that the Floretum entries begin with and were perhaps designed to provide an occasion for, and also trims and reorders the Floretum’s concluding citations from the Margarita Decreti, interleaving interpretative expansions. The redacted entries are not, however, less influenced by Wyclif, even if they no longer provide an opportunity to incorporate some of the central claims Wyclif makes in De mandatis in Wyclif ’s own voice. Rather, the Rosarium’s entries seem more carefully curated to present a consistent stance on the status of human law in the conduct of life in this world. Thus, the centrepiece and the bulk of the Floretum’s long entry on leges is a series of four extended quotations from Wyclif ’s De mandatis, from Chapter 7 on the old and new law, Chapter 17 on the importance of keeping the commandments, Chapter 8 on the new law compared with the old, and a passage later in Chapter 8, on the many new laws of the church in the present. These are preceded by biblical quotations on law: first a jumble probably derived from a biblical index, presented without any sort of interpretative comment, then a numbered list of scriptural quotations illustrating why law has been given to humanity that is surely drawn from an intermediary source not yet identified. Next follows a long quotation contrasting public and private law attributed to Pope Urban II and cited from C. 19 q. 2 c. 2 of the Decretum, then the quotations from Wyclif ’s De mandatis.17 After the Wyclif quotations appear first a selection of quotations from patristic and other writers favoured by Wycliffites, then selected citations from canon law derived from the entry on lex in the Margarita Decreti, two of them repeated references to C. 19 q. 2 c. 2.18

16 In addition to De mandatis, ed. by Loserth and Matthew, see Wyclif ’s De civili dominio, ed. by Poole and Loserth, De officio regis, ed. by Pollard and Sayle, and De potestate pape, ed. by Loserth. Among Wycliffite writings, ‘Sixteen Points on which the Bishops Accuse Lollards’, Point 8 provides an introductory exposition: Selections, ed. by Hudson, pp. 19–24, on p. 22. The question of how ecclesiastical law might apply to Richard Wyche is a key point of contention in his account of his examination for heresy in the Letter of Richard Wyche: see Bradley, ‘Letter of Richard Wyche’, and Matthew, ‘Trial of Richard Wyche’. See also the translation of the first twenty distinctions of Gratian’s Decretum in Gratian, Treatise on Laws, trans. by Thompson and Gordley. 17 In all citations of canon law I use the modern form explained by Brundage, Medieval Canon Law, pp. 190–202. 18 On the sources commonly used by the compilers of both works, see n. 12 above. One of the patristic quotations comes from the Manipulus florum (identified by Von Nolcken as an important source) but not the rest, suggesting that the compilers were using indices to specific authors or else another distinction collection in addition to the Manipulus florum.

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The Rosarium shortens and reorders this material and adds an interpretative framework to guide readers through its exposition of law, or lex.19 It begins by distinguishing trewe from pretended law, drawing on Chapter 3 of Wyclif ’s De mandatis, then defines true law using a new quotation from Wyclif ’s De mandatis Chapter 4: ‘a sothfastenez directiue or riȝttyng of a creature for to haue it as it ow to þe begynnyng of it’ (a directive toward truth, or correction of a created thing, so it may be as it should, from its beginning).20 Neither of these new adaptations of De mandatis to frame the entry as a whole is attributed to Wyclif, who is elsewhere usually cited when he is quoted. True law is divided into man’s law and God’s law: the remainder of the entry discusses each in turn. The law of God does four good things: the first three do not appear in the Floretum entry, but the fourth, on spiritual profit and its superiority to bodily profit, draws quotations from the selection of authorities near the end of the Floretum entry, opening with pseudo-Chrysostom then quoting at length from Peraldus’s discussion of the avarice of lawyers in his Summa on virtues and vices: the ‘lucratiue science’ (lucrative study) of ‘konnyng of decreez’ (the knowledge of canon law), ought ‘in gret party for to be excluded out of holy church’ (for the most part to be excluded from holy church).21 The law of God is divided into the old law and new law: exposition of this point draws an excerpt from the first of the four extended quotations from Wyclif ’s De mandatis in the Floretum entry, from Chapter 7: the moral truths of the old law are everlasting, most especially the ten commandments, but its ceremonies and judgements have been superseded. Law is given for seven reasons: six are taken from the enumerated list of scriptural quotations near the start of the Floretum entry, while one is added. Some law is common and some private: this distinction is drawn from the letter of Pope Urban II that the Floretum had quoted at length just before its quotations from De Mandatis and cited twice more from C. 19 q. 2 c. 2 in the canon law citations at the end of the entry. But here the Rosarium excerpts selectively, and omits the later references in its own list of citations. Common law has been ‘schewed aboue’ (p. 76 line 18), so only private law is explained here, using Urban’s letter and selections from the Margarita Decreti that quote scripture to explain how the law of conscience is written kyndely in the heart. Finally, man’s law is either true and good or false and wicked: a list of citations from the Margarita Decreti provides the means of determining when man’s law can be relied upon, and

19 Von Nolcken includes the Middle English Rosarium’s entry on lex in Rosarium Theologie: see pp. 74–77 and notes on pp. 115–17. 20 Rosarium theologie p. 74 ll. 6–7. This new recourse to De mandatis is evidence for Von Nolcken’s observation that the compilers of the Rosarium make independent use of both indices and original works rather than merely summarizing and reordering what they find in the Floretum. See Wyclif, De mandatis, ed. by Loserth and Matthew, p. 18 ll. 1–3, p. 30 ll. 8–10 (not identified by Von Nolcken). 21 Von Nolcken, Rosarium theologie, p. 75 ll. 13, 11, 16–17.

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when it should be put aside. The product of this carefully attentive cutting and restructuring of the Floretum entry is a tightly focused exposition of how any reader might distinguish between laws that must be followed and laws that must be rejected on the basis of conscience. The whole discussion is framed by Wyclif ’s definition of the topic in De mandatis, even if it quotes him more briefly than the Floretum. Human law is true only when it conforms with God’s law and the law written in the heart; but it is evident that much of written law sustains this conclusion rather than undermining it, even if that law’s practice is often corrupted by human venality. The Floretum entry on iuris diffinicio, much shorter than its entry on leges, has a perhaps disproportionately greater ambition to provide a comprehensive definition of law, or rather of riȝt or lawe, as the Middle English Rosarium translates ius. The Floretum entry’s first section is a long quotation from the opening of De mandatis, where Wyclif explains the relationship between ius and justice. Its second section is drawn from Chapter 3 of De mandatis, where Wyclif distinguishes pretended human ius from true ius. The final section of the Floretum entry distinguishes natural and positive law, drawing on Gratian’s Decretum by way of the Margarita Decreti, and especially drawing on the first few distinctions of Book I, whose first twenty distinctions are also known as the Treatise on Laws, where Gratian explains the nature of ius through extended commentary on successive quotations from Isidore’s Etymologies.22 The Rosarium refashions the Floretum’s entry on iuris diffinicio into an entry titled ius, once again more tightly organized and expository than its counterpart (see Appendix B). Its opening aptly summarizes the Floretum’s long quotation from the opening of Wyclif ’s De mandatis. One meaning of ius is for occasions when one person exerts power over another, as when a king can take the children of his subjects. A second meaning refers to special prerogatives belonging to a special class of persons, as when Aaron and his children become the high priests of the Israelites. The third meaning of ius, of greatest interest, is ‘a stedfast or aylastyng wille giffyng to euery man þat is his’ (a steadfast or everlasting will giving to every man what is his), but ‘þis discripcion acordeþ al only to þe first ri3twisnes wich is God’ (this description refers only to the first righteousness, which is God). The Floretum’s second section quoting from Chapter 3 of De mandatis disappears from the Rosarium’s ius entry — although as we have already noted it is repurposed in the distinction that frames the entry on lex at its opening. Instead the Rosarium goes on to distinguish natural from positive law, as in the Floretum’s third section, but in a way that now seems smoothly to continue developing the contrast between Wyclif ’s first two definitions of ius, which might be exercised unjustly, and the third, which conforms

22 Gratian, Treatise on Laws, trans. by Thompson and Gordley; on the limitations of this edition see Winroth, Making of Gratian’s Decretum, p. 9 n. 20.

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to justice and seemingly corresponds with natural law as the entry goes on to define it. The Rosarium expands the Floretum’s list of citations from the Margarita Decreti to include explanatory passages and a quotation from Acts, emphasizing that natural law is the law of the gospel, according to which all things are held in common, while positive law is either canon or civil law, established to ‘refreyne rebellis to holy reulez’ (restrain rebels within holy rules) and ‘by occasion of synne’ (because of sin) so as to order human affairs in the world. While this entry gives precedence to God’s law, nonetheless it is framed around Wyclif ’s definition of ius, while in its elaboration of the contrast between natural and positive law its citations and organization are derived from canon law, and provide an introduction to that law’s key principles as presented in the opening distinctions of Gratian’s Decretum. Again, the entry provides a succinct interpretative summary, rather than lengthy quotation, of the Floretum’s corresponding quotations from Wyclif ’s De mandatis. In the Rosarium, the entry on ius appears amidst a sequence of entries that has been pruned and revised to form the Rosarium’s own miniature treatise on laws: iudex, iudicium, iuramentum, iurisdiccio, ius, iusticia. This is of course an accident of the alphabet; but it is also an opportunity for consecutive exposition of topics to do with ius and etymologically derived from it. Here, the Rosarium excludes intervening Floretum entries on other topics such as the Jews, yokes, Judith, and youth to create a list of entries on legal topics that corresponds exactly to those selected for this portion of the alphabet by the Margarita Decreti: a kind of alternative index to law. It would be a mistake, of course, to expect a loosely organized alphabetical compendium to provide a systematic exposition of Wycliffite views on law across the course of these entries. Still, the Rosarium’s decision to focus on legal topics across an extended span of entries does provide, seemingly by design, for an introduction to key issues and approaches. In analysing this section I will focus on the contents of the Rosarium’s sequence of entries, rather than comparing at every turn with the longer and more loosely organized Floretum. Among this sequence of entries, only those on iuramentum, iurisdiccio, and ius focus throughout their length on legal theory and practice in the conduct of life in this world. Still, as we will see, legal concepts are nonetheless pivotal to how the entries on iudex and iudicium pursue their more theological aims. The entry on iusticia is the outlier: it has nothing jurisprudential to say, and does not develop the themes of the ius entry as readers might expect. Instead this entry focuses on iusticia as a cardinal virtue, and it is chiefly a sequential compendium of three different biblically based discussions of iusticia. The canon law citations piled together at the end of the entry do not draw from the Margarita Decreti, although there is some overlap, and they are not arranged so that they develop any particular claim, even if they would still be useful to readers in search of what the Decretum has to say about justice. In contrast with the broad theoretical scope of the entry on ius, the entries on iuramentum and iurisdiccio are more narrowly topic-focused. We might

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hope that iurisdiccio would provide a characteristically Wycliffite description of the scope and application of particular kinds of human law. Intriguingly, this brief entry does not take this approach. After a brief general definition and what seems a promising division into secular and spiritual, actual and habitual jurisdiction, this entry focuses exclusively on the jurisdiction of curates, and specifically their right to appoint a vicar within the bounds of their jurisdiction to aid them in the office of preaching as well as other ministry without special leave from their bishop or ‘licence of watsomeuer souerayn’ (license of any sovereign whatsoever) (fol. 59r). This highly topical discussion over who can license preachers was of course of great interest to Wycliffites, even if (as Ian Forrest has shown) it had also been a more longstanding concern.23 This entry is accompanied by two notae in the margin, in what looks to be the hand of the scribe, and it cites more recent canon law authorities rather than the Decretum, the Rosarium’s favoured source: the Clementines, two decretals of Innocent III, and the commentators Johannes Andreae and Hostiensis. The topicality and intensive focus apparent in this entry suggest that one anticipated audience for the Rosarium as well as the Floretum was indeed preachers — but also that this audience, and other anticipated readers as well, may have been more keenly interested in legal topics than we might have supposed. The preceding entry on iuramentum (fols 57v–59r) is the longest among the series of legal entries, but similar to the entry on jurisdiction in that it has a relatively narrow topical focus. The distinction between lawful and unlawful swearing explored fully here was a topic of contention that directly affected preachers and their listeners in heresy trial settings, where they might be required to swear an oath or be asked questions about the lawfulness of swearing.24 It was also an aspect of lollard belief much discussed in their writings. This entry provides not only moral but legal guidance. Indeed, while it presents a typical range of sources for a Rosarium entry, from biblical quotations to citations of favoured authorities to canon law sources, most of these sources turn out to be cited in, or relevant to, Causa 22 in Part II of the Decretum, in which Gratian presents the case of a bishop who swears to be false what he knows to be true, then compels his archdeacon to show reverence to him even though the archdeacon knows about his false oath: does the bishop thus perjure himself twice, by swearing falsely and by forcing another person to do the same?25 The iuramentum entry begins with four reasons to avoid unlawful swearing, each backed with scriptural quotations, then expatiates at length

23 Forrest, Detection of Heresy, pp. 60–68. 24 See, for example, the extensive discussion in the Testimony of William Thorpe, ed. by Hudson, pp. 74–80, ll. 1633–1826 and notes, pp. 126–29. 25 For an edition of this Causa together with its standard glosses see the online edition of the Decretum, Corpus Juris Canonici, cols 1647–1709. Henceforth cited by column.

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on why swearing by creatures is always unlawful, citing C. 22 q. 1, Jerome on Matthew 5. 34, C. 22 q. 5, pseudo-Chrysostom, and finishing with six reasons why swearing by Christ’s limbs is worse than taking part in the crucifixion. Three conditions for lawful swearing come next, in a quotation from Wyclif ’s commentary on the second commandment in De mandatis — but these conditions also appear in Causa 22 q. 2 c. 2 and its gloss, which are clearly the reference point for Wyclif ’s discussion.26 The exposition of a mnemonic verse on six kinds of lawful swearing that follows also draws on Causa 22 as well as patristic and scriptural sources; the verse itself is a modified form of a legal mnemonic found in the gloss to the Decretals, Book I Title 6 Chapter 4.27 Perjury is defined as swearing falsely or compelling another to do so, and backed by three quotations from Augustine and one from Origen: the Augustine quotations appear in the Manipulus florum, but also again in Causa 22. Finally, a series of canon law citations, all from Causa 22, draws heavily on the Margarita Decreti, but reorders the items to contrast the swearing of God with that of humanity, and only then surveys limitations and special cases of human swearing. The entries on iudex and iudicium that begin the Rosarium’s series of legal entries are similarly more broadly focused (fols 56r–v, 56v–57v). Like the iuramentum entry they are longer entries, and somewhat disjointed, which seems justified given that the Decretals and subsequent canon law collections devote a whole book each to the topics of judges and judgement. The two entries encroach on one another somewhat: it is hard to discuss judges without referring to the judgement they give, and vice versa. Their structure is broadly parallel in that both entries distinguish divine from human judgement, use human law as a frame of reference for understanding divine judgement, and comment at length on the Last Judgement. However, they differ in the sources they rely on, and thus in their expository method. The entry on iudex introduces the distinction between divine and human judges indirectly, by way of the Last Judgement: it begins by declaring that Christ on the Day of Judgement will judge not only by ordinary jurisdiction, as God with all the Trinity, but by delegate jurisdiction, as man (fol. 56r). Ordinary, delegate, and other types of judges are much discussed in canon

26 For Wyclif ’s discussion of the conditions of truth, judgement, and justice see Wyclif, De mandatis, ed. by Loserth and Matthew, p. 195 ll. 18–26, pp. 195 l. 27–196 l. 2, p. 196 ll. 2–8. (Von Nolcken traces the Floretum’s longer quotation from De mandatis in its iuramentum entry, ‘Notes on Lollard Citation’, p. 434). But see also Decretum, col. 1658, bottom of page. 27 ‘Lex et fama fides reuerencia caucio dampni | Defectus veri tibi dant iurare licenter’. This verse appears in the same form in the Latin Rosarium manuscripts; it appears to be a variant of the verse found in the Gloss to the Decretals 1.6.4, ‘Pax et fama fides reverentia cautio damni | Defectus veri sibi poscunt magna caveri’. See Decretals in Corpus Juris Canonici, column 111, bottom of page. The version of the verse from the Decretals is used in the Hussite treatise De Iuramento: see the edition by Cegna, ‘Tractatus de iuramento’, pp. 463–89.

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law (see e.g. Decretals, Book I Titles 29–32, Liber Sextus, Book I Titles 15–16, and Clementines, Book 1 Titles 8–9), but none of those sources is cited here. While many of the introductory distinctions found in Rosarium entries are a framing device of the compilers themselves, this one is imported directly from Hugh of Strasbourg’s Compendium theologice veritatis, attributed here to Thomas [Aquinas]. The entry’s opening section is quoted verbatim from the Compendium Book V Chapter 17; another long verbatim quotation from Book V Chapter 19 follows, describing the Last Judgement, then a chain of mostly biblical quotations about God as judge and the Last Judgement, then the rest of the Compendium’s Book V Chapter 19. It may have been the distinction between ordinary and delegate jurisdiction that brought the compilers to begin with the Compendium, but they stuck with it through many pages of homiletic exposition of the joys and pains to come. At the end of the Compendium’s Chapter 19 the Rosarium switches abruptly to consider human judges, presenting first a series of biblically derived directives, then a large number of canon law citations stipulating what judges should or must do. These are drawn from the Margarita Decreti, but with a significant omission: ‘Quod papa est judex omnium et nemo ipsius’ (That the pope is the judge of all and nobody is his judge) is silently suppressed.28 The entry on iudicium again draws a distinction between divine and human judgement from an external source, quoting Augustine to distinguish judgement in this world from the final judgement, then compiles descriptions of the Last Judgement: first Jerome’s, then a large number of biblical quotations. The discussion of God’s judgement finishes with a list of canon law citations drawn from the Margarita Decreti, which, as in the iudex entry, explain divine judgement by reference to human law. Unlike a human judge (this restriction was duly cited in the final section of the iudex entry), it is appropriate for God to act as both judge and witness (fol. 57r). While he disregards this restriction on human judgement, however, God does observe double jeopardy: he does not judge the same crime twice (fol. 57r). The entry then segues abruptly to discuss human judgement. Human judgement is further divided into righteous and unrighteous. Canon law citations subdivide righteous judgement into private and public and further explain private judgement; biblical quotations expatiate on private judgement, then long quotations from Augustine and pseudo-Chrysostom on Matthew 7. 1 explain its limitations: ‘A man demeþ a man in dede or werke, God forsoþ in þe herte’ (A man judges another man by his deeds, God truly by his heart) (fol. 57r). Several canon law citations drawn from the Margarita Decreti explain how public judgement should properly be conducted: notably, an item on the authority of popes and holy fathers is omitted: ‘Item [publicum iudicium] debet secundum auctoritatem

28 Margarita Decreti, p. 39, col. c item 12. The scepticism about the scope of papal power implied by this omission is corroborated by Russell’s observations; see note 6 above.

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decretorum et sanctorum patrum diffiniri’ (Public judgement should be defined according to the authority of decretals [that is, papal letters] and holy fathers).29 Although it was righteous judgement that had been subdivided into private and public, unrighteous judgement is brought back into play as faulty forms of public judgement come under discussion, drawing mainly but not only on the Decretum Causa 11. Presumptive (or temerary) judgement is explained using a long quotation from Augustine, then grounded in three more canon law citations that cite Augustine. Finally, four ways in which human judgement can be corrupted are listed, again quoting Augustine and citing canon law where he is quoted. What, then, can this survey of entries in the Rosarium and Floretum teach us about the understanding of human law that Wycliffite writers hoped to convey to their readers? Here and elsewhere, Wyclif and Wycliffites cite legal sources when they want to make general claims about the relationship between human law and God’s law. While they give the highest authority to God’s law and claim all law is derived from it — as indeed did Gratian — they cite legal theory, rather than only scripture or perhaps also its commentators, whenever they want to discuss complex questions of jurisdiction and conscience. We have seen that the Floretum makes accessible Wyclif ’s views on divine and human law as conveyed in De mandatis divinis and in his decalogue commentary now extant only in his sermons on the Sunday gospels. The Rosarium omits or shortens these long quotations from the legal entries as part of its general plan of abridgement. However, we have seen that the interpretative framework the Rosarium adds to many entries, with an introductory distinction, definitions, and subsequent subdivisions, provides in the entries on lex and ius a succinct summary of Wyclif ’s claims in De mandatis that might, if anything, have been more effective than the Floretum’s long quotations in conveying Wyclif ’s views. Both the Floretum and the Rosarium provide a topical index to the Decretum with occasional reference to other law books, in that many entries end with one or several citations of canon law. The more interpretative expository style of the Rosarium goes further by introducing legal concepts to those unfamiliar with them, and linking them with theological claims, as for example in the entries on iudex and iudicium. One use that may have been anticipated for the Rosarium in particular, including its Middle English version which presumably hoped for a somewhat wider audience of readers and listeners, may have been to enable that audience not only to compose sermons and engage in polemic, but also to learn and teach legal concepts. In the entries on iurisdiccio and iuramentum in particular, we see how legal know-how might have become crucially important to preachers and their audiences who found themselves forced to justify their religious practice and beliefs.

29 Margarita Decreti, p. 40, col. b item 24; again this omission supports Russell’s conclusions; see note 6 above.

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Appendix A Mandata30 þe comandementis of God bene 10, wich war writen in tuo tabblez of stone, of wich þe first contenyng 3 comandementis techiþ how God is to be loued afore al þings, and þe 2. contenyng 7 comadementis techiþ how our neȝtbour is effectually to be louffed. þer ar 9 stiryngz31 of keping of þe comandementis of God þe first is for to þat is a man made. Eccl 12. 13 ‘Drede God and kepe his comandementis; þis is euery man’. þe 2. is for þe kepynge of þe comandementis is þe moste tokone of frendescheppe. John 14. 15 ‘If ʒe luffe me kepe my comande’, [fol. 71v] and John 15. 14 ‘ʒe bene my frendez if ʒe do þo þingz wich I comande to ʒow’, and Exodus 19. 5 ‘þerfore if ʒe here my voice and kepe my couenant ʒe schal be to me in special32 of al puple’. þe 3. for kepyng of comandementis is sacrifice most kynde to God. Ecclesiasticus 35. 2 ‘a heleful sacrifice is for take hede in þe comandementis and departe away fro al wickednes’, etc., et I Kings 15. 22 ‘weþer our lorde wille sacrifice and offeryng and noʒt raþer þat it be obeyed to þe voice of our lorde’. þe 4. is þe liʒtnez of þe comandementis of God. I John 5. 3 ‘þe comadementis of hym bene noʒt heuy or greuous’, et Matthew 11. 30 ‘for soþ my ʒok is swete of softe’, etc. þe fifte for he þat kepiþ noʒt þe comandementis of God renneþ into malison. Deuteronomy 27. 26 ‘weried be he þat duelleþ noʒt in wordez of þis lawe33 ne performeþ þam noʒt in werkis’, et Psalm 119. 21 (118.21) ‘weried be þai þat declyneþ fro þi comandementis’, et Ecclesiasticus 10. 23 ‘forsoþ þat sede schal be vnhonored þat passeþ beside þe comandementis of God’,34 et Ecclesiasticus 41. 11 ‘wo to ʒow wicked men’.

30 In all quotations from unpublished portions of the Middle English Rosarium I generally follow Von Nolcken’s practice in her edition: long and short i both appear as i; u and v are distinguished, ȝ is transcribed as z where appropriate since the two are not distinguished, initial ff is treated as a capital, but presented as f where not compatible with modern capitalization and punctuation practice. Abbreviations to mark ordinal numbers are simply rendered as a period. Modern word division and paragraphing has been imposed; wt has been transcribed as wiþ; more generally, expansions match with fully written forms that appear elsewhere; crossed ll is often otiose and is expanded only where plural or genitive is clearly intended. Modern references have been substituted for medieval citations of the bible, canon law, and other sources. Emendations are minimal and explained in the notes; I note scribal additions (e.g. supralinear glosses that may have been the first stage toward correction), but impose the scribe’s corrections only where erasures have been marked. 31 stiryngz] stryngs stiryngz first word underlined but not marked for erasure. 32 special] gode suplin. 33 lawe] Floretum finishes here, adding, etc., and has a different sixth item. 34 God] our lorde suplin.

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þe 6. is for he þat kepiþ þam haþe partyng wt al þam þat kepiþ þam. Psalm 119. 63 (118.63) ‘I am partiner of al þam þat dredeþ þe and kepþ þi comandementis’. þe 7. is for þai þat despiceþ þe comandementis and kepiþ þam noʒt schal be dampned. Vnde Crisostom omelia 20. ‘þai al only perich þat despiseþ þe comandementis of Criste’.35 Proverbs 19. 16 ‘He þat kepiþ þe comandementis kepiþ his soule’, et Ecclesiastes 8. 5 ‘he þat kepiþ þe comandementis schal be experte noþing of yuel’. þe 8. for he þat kepiþ þe comandementis schal be made wise and konyng over oþer. I John 2. 3 ‘in þat wote we for þat we haue knowen hym if we kepe þe comandementis of hym’, et Psalm 119. 100 (118. 100) ‘I haue vnderstanden aboue oþer36 men for I haue souʒt þi comandementis’, et Ecclesiasticus 6. 37 ‘haue þoʒt in þe comandementis of God and be moste bisy in þe mandementis of hym and he schal giffe ane herte to þe; couaityng of wisdome schal be giffen to þe’. þe 9. for he þat kepiþ þe comandementis schal gete aylastyng liif. Matthew 19. 17 ‘if þou will entre in to life kepe þe comandementis’, et Matthew 5. 19 ‘he forsoþe þat loufeþ one of þise leste comandementis and techiþ men so he schal be called þe lest in þe kyngdom of heuen’. opon wich seiþ Austyn ‘þe leste comandement ar tokoned be one iot37 and one ticle, þerfor he þat loufeþ and techeþ so þat is after þat þat he loufeþ and noʒt after þat þat he haþe founden and redde he schal be called þe leste in þe kyngdome of heuene and parauenter þerfor schal he noʒt be in þe kyngdome of heuen were may none be bot grette’.38 ‘he for soþ þat doþe and techiþ þus’, þat is, after þat þat he redeþ and noʒt after þat þat he loufeþ, ‘he schal be called grete in þe kyngdome of heuen’.39

Appendix B Ius Riʒt or lawe is taken on 3. maners. First for any maner soþefastenez made riʒtwisly vsed about a seruant as vse of þings I Kings 8. 11 ‘þis is þe law or riʒt of þe kyng þat schal comande to ʒow he schal take ʒour childere’, etc. Þe 2. riʒt or lawe is taken for þe power of þe lorde for to vse vt Exodus 29. 27–28 ‘þou schalt halow þe litel breste consecrate and þe schuldre wich þat þou tuyned fro þe wedre or schepe, by wich is iniciate or halowd Aaron and 35 In Floretum, this quotation from Chrysostom appears at the end of item 6. pseudo-Chrysostom, Homily 20, Opus Imperfectum, ed. by Migne, col. 744. 36 oþer] old suplin. 37 iot] i the scribe illustrates the meaning of the term by making a single stroke. 38 Augustine, De sermone Domini in monte, ed. by Mutzenbecher, i. chap. 8, pp. 20–21. 39 Matthew 5. 19.

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his sonnes. And þai schal falle in to þe parte of Aaron and of his childer by euerlastyng riʒt or lawe [fol. 59v] fro þe chelder of Israel’. And þe 3. riʒt or law is taken for soþefastnes vnmade exsampled al made riʒtwisnes. And so riʒt or law is a stedfast and aylastyng wille giffyng to euery man þat is his. And þis discripcion acordeþ al only to þe first riʒtwisnes wich is God. Riʒt or law is diuided in to þings, þat is to sey, into naturel law and into positiue lawe, vt patet D. 1 dict. ante c. 1. Natural law is tokned in þe gospel we[r]40 it is seid ‘al þings þat euer ʒe well þat men do to ʒow also do ʒe þe same to þam’.41 Þat law of nature is sette afore lawe positiue as first and more worþi: D. 5 dict. ante c. 1. Also vnto law natural, al custome or constitucion giffeþ stede: D. 9 per totum. Also þat ageyns natural lawe is noʒt admitted dipensacion but to eschewe mor yuel D. 13 dict. ante c. 1 et D. 6 d. post c. 3. Also natural law wil al þings for to be comoun, but law positiue restreyneþ it to myne and þine. D. 8 dict. ante c. 1 et c. 1 per Augustinus. Et Acts 4. 32 scribitur pro iure naturali, ‘Off þe multitude of trowyng men was ane herte and one soule ne no man seid any þing of þo þings þat he hade for to be his owne but al þings war comon to þam’. Law positiue is a42 law ordened be man, and þat is on to maners: ouþer it is lawe canon or lawe ciuel. Lawe canon is law ordeyned and schewed of prelatez of holy chirch for to refreyne rebellis to holy reulez. Law ciuile is a lawe fonden of man by occasion of synne for to iustifie þe comon þings constreingly as to þe godez of þe body or of fortune. Þat law positiue or manes law haþ diuerse spicez, for ouþer it is law ciuile, or law of gentiles or paynemez, or law of knyʒtehode, or comon,43 or quiritez, þat is, of Romanez: D. 1 per totum. Þat þings or godez bene hade by þe law of God, but defferently C. 23 q. 5 c. 1 per Augustinus. Godez law is ordeyned of God al on explanate be Criste wiþ worde and dede or werkis as law of the gospell.

Works Cited Manuscripts and Archival Sources Cambridge, Gonville and Caius College, MS 217/32 Cambridge, Trinity College, MS O.7.30 ———, MS B.14.44 London, British Library, MS Harley 401 ———, MS Harley 3226

40 wer] we. 41 Luke 6. 31. 42 a] suplin., marked for insertion. 43 comon] opone suplin.

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Prague, Národní knihovna, MS IV E 14 ———, MS IV G 19 ———, MS V B 2 ———, MS VIII B 18 ———, MS IX D 6 Primary Sources Augustine, De sermone Domini in monte, ed. by Almut Mutzenbecher, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina 35 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1967) Bradley, Christopher G., ‘The Letter of Richard Wyche: An Interrogation Narrative’, Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 127.3 (2012), 626–42 Cegna, Romolo, ‘Il Tractatus de iuramento di Nicola della Rosa Nera’, Aevum 82 (2008), 429–89 pseudo-Chrysostom, Opus Imperfectum in Matthaeum, in Patrologiae cursus completus: series graeca, ed. by Jacques-Paul Migne, lvi (Paris: Garnier, 1844–1864), cols 611–946 Corpus juris canonici emendatum et notis illustratum. Gregorii XIII. pont. max. iussu editum, 3 parts in 4 vols (Rome: In aedibus Populi Romani, 1582). Accessed from electronic edition: UCLA Digital Library Program. Corpus Juris Canonici (1582) [accessed 11 August 2019] Gratian, The Treatise on Laws (Decretum DD. 1–20) with the Ordinary Gloss, trans. by Augustine Thompson and James Gordley, intro. by Katherine Christensen, Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Canon Law, 2 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1993) Hugh of Strasbourg, Compendium Theologicae Veritatis, in Opera Omnia S. Bonaventurae, vol. viii (Quaracchi: Collegium S. Bonaventurae, 1898), pp. 63–247 Matthew, F. D., ‘The Trial of Richard Wyche’, English Historical Review, 5 (1890), 530–44 ‘Sixteen Points on which the Bishops Accuse Lollards’, in Selections from English Wycliffite Writings, ed. by Anne Hudson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997), pp. 19–24 Testimony of William Thorpe, in Two Wycliffite Texts, ed. by Anne Hudson, Early English Texts Society, o.s. 301 (Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 24–93 Von Nolcken, Christina, The Middle English Translation of the Rosarium Theologie: A Selection (Heidelberg: Winter, 1979) Wyclif, John, Sermones, ed. by Johannes Loserth, 4 vols, Wyclif Society (London: Trübner, 1887–1890); vol. i (1887) ———, De officio regis, ed. by Alfred W. Pollard and Charles Sayle, Wyclif Society (London: Trübner, 1887) ———, De civili dominio, ed. by Reginald L. Poole and Johannes Loserth, 4 vols, Wyclif Society (London: Trübner, 1885–1904)

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———, De potestate pape, ed. by Johann Loserth, Wyclif Society (London: Trübner, 1907) ———, De mandatis divinis, ed. by Johannes Loserth and F. D. Matthew, Wyclif Society (London: Kegan Paul, 1922) Secondary Works Brundage, James A., Medieval Canon Law (London: Longman, 1995) ———, The Medieval Origins of the Legal Profession: Canonists, Civilians, and Courts (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008) William E. Farr, John Wycliffe as Legal Reformer (Leiden: Brill, 1974) Forrest, Ian, The Detection of Heresy in Late Medieval England, Oxford Historical Monographs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005) Hudson, Anne, ‘A Lollard Compilation and the Dissemination of Wycliffite Thought’, Journal of Theological Studies, n.s. 23 (1972), 65–81, repr. in Anne Hudson, Lollards and Their Books (London: Hambledon, 1985), pp. 13–29 ———, ‘A Lollard Compilation in England and Bohemia’, Journal of Theological Studies, n.s. 25 (1974), 129–40, repr. in Anne Hudson, Lollards and Their Books (London: Hambledon, 1985), pp. 30–42 ———, The Premature Reformation: Wycliffite Texts and Lollard History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988) Jurkowski, Maureen, ‘Lawyers and Lollardy in the Early Fifteenth Century’, in Lollardy and the Gentry in the Later Middle Ages, ed. by Margaret Aston and Colin F. Richmond (Stroud: Sutton, 1997), pp. 155–82 ———, ‘Lollardy and Social Status in East Anglia’, Speculum, 82 (2007), 120–52 Jiří Kejř, Husitský právník M. Jan z Jesenice (Prague: Československá akademie věd, 1965) ———, ‘“Rosarius” — domnělé dílo slovenského husity’, Studie o rukopisech, 14 (1975), 83–110 ———, ‘Ještě jednou o “Rosariu”’, Studie o rukopisech, 15 (1976), 103–06 ———, ‘Johannes Hus als Rechtsdenker’, in Jan Hus — Zwischen Zeiten, Völkern, Konfessionen, ed. by Ferdinand Seibt (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1997), 213–26 ———, Die Causa Johannes Hus und das Prozessrecht der Kirche, trans. Walter Annuß (Regensburg: Pustet, 2005) Lahey, Stephen E., ‘John Wyclif: Spiritual and Devotional Guide?’, in Wycliffite Spirituality, ed. and trans. by J. Patrick Hornbeck II, Stephen E. Lahey, and Fiona Somerset, Classics of Western Spirituality (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 2013), pp. 30–39 Pennington, Kenneth, A Short History of Canon Law from Apostolic Times until 1917, [accessed 15 July 2021] Pennington, Kenneth, Charles Donahue Jr., and others, Bio-Bibliographical Guide to Medieval and Early Modern Jurists, [accessed 15 July 2021]

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Russell, Alexander, Conciliarism and Heresy in Fifteenth-Century England: Collective Authority in the Age of the General Councils (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017) Schulte, Johann Friedrich, Die Geschichte der Quellen und Literatur des canonischen Rechts, von Gratian bis auf Papst Gregor, 3 vols in 4 parts (Stuttgart: Enke, 1875–1880) Somerset, Fiona, ‘Lollard and Religious Writings’, in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Law and Literature, ed. Candace Barrington and Sebastian Sobecki (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming) Soukup, Pavel, Jan Hus: The Life and Death of a Preacher (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2020) Von Nolcken, Christina, ‘Notes on Lollard Citation of John Wyclif ’s Writings’, Journal of Theological Studies, n.s. 39 (1983), 411–37 Winroth, Anders, The Making of Gratian’s Decretum (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000)

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‘Openliere and shortliere’ Methods of Exegesis and Abbreviation in a Wycliffite ‘Summary’ of the Bible

By the early 1390s, a group of scholars working in Oxford, and probably inspired by the recently deceased theologian John Wyclif, had completed two separate but related translations of the whole Bible into Middle English.1 These translations, commonly known as the Earlier Version and the Later Version (EV and LV) of the Wycliffite Bible (WB), were the culmination of several years of patient and careful study, but they were by no means the final expression of Wycliffite dedication to vernacular scripture. The General Prologue prefixed to several copies of LV demonstrates that Wycliffites saw the translation as in some sense a beginning: a text to be paraphrased (as it is in Chapters 3–11 of the Prologue itself), and a text to be expounded.2 The writer of the Prologue asserts that he himself has undertaken to gloss several books,3 and goes on to trust that: A symple man wiþ Goddis grace and greet trauele [labour] myȝte expowne myche openliere and shortliere þe Bible in English þan þe elde grete doctours han [have] expowned it in Latyn, and myche sharplier and groundliere þan many late [recent] postilatours or expositours han do [have done].4

1 The Wycliffite Bible, ed. by Solopova, is a particularly thorough and informative recent study. For general information on the Wycliffite Bible (henceforth WB), see also Hudson, Premature Reformation, and Dove, The First English Bible. Henry Ansgar Kelly is the latest of a small group of scholars to argue that the translation was probably not the work of Wycliffites: see Kelly, The Middle English Bible. For a recent (re)consideration of the relationship between EV and LV, see Hudson, ‘Earlier Version / Later Version’. 2 The Prologue is found, in whole or in part, in sixteen LV manuscripts, most containing full bibles. See Solopova, ‘The Manuscript Tradition’, p. 233. 3 ‘The Prologue to the Wycliffite Bible’, ed. by Dove, ll. 1963–65 (p. 57), ll. 2079–82 (p. 60). 4 ‘The Prologue to the Wycliffite Bible’, ed. by Dove, ll. 2868–71 (p. 82). Hannah Schühle-Lewis  •  is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Kent, working on the Leverhulme-funded project ‘Whittington’s Gift: Reconstructing the Lost Common Library of London’s Guildhall’. Wycliffism and Hussitism: Methods of Thinking, Writing, and Persuasion, c. 1360 – c. 1460, ed. by Kantik Ghosh and Pavel Soukup, MCS 47 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021), pp. 201–221 FHG10.1484/M.MCS-EB.5.124375

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This passage demonstrates the ambition, dedication and intellectual confidence of the scholars connected with WB even after the completion of the initial LV translation. It suggests a group who, while retaining respect for the work of much earlier Latin exegetes (the ‘elde grete doctours’), nevertheless sought to create a body of vernacular exegesis to accompany their vernacular Bible. Rather than advocating a wholesale translation of any particular Latin exegetical text(s), the writer of the Prologue here envisages a new work, inspired by God and achieved through hard study. This work would ‘expowne’ the Bible ‘openliere and shortliere […] sharplier and groundliere’ than any Latin text had, either in the recent or more distant past. How are we to understand these criteria? First, it is important to note that, in Middle English, the verb expounden carried a number of interconnected meanings, including ‘to describe’, ‘to explain’, ‘to interpret’, and even ‘to paraphrase’.5 The other words used in this passage are similarly polysemous. Openli suggests clarity, intelligibility, honesty, certainty and boldness, and might also refer to a style of exegesis prioritizing the literal sense.6 Although shortli can carry a suggestion of haste or rashness, it is used here instead to imply brevity and concision, perhaps with a secondary sense of immediacy.7 Sharpli serves on the one hand to intensify the senses of openness and brevity already mentioned, but on the other suggests keenness, wisdom, cleverness and accuracy.8 Finally, the word groundli suggests a text that is thorough, and interested primarily in fundamentals.9 So, the work envisaged by the Prologue writer is one that might combine elements of description, interpretation and paraphrase; a work which would elucidate biblical meaning clearly, likely with a focus on the literal sense, and in such a way as to balance the demands of brevity and thoroughness, certainty and accuracy, intelligence and intelligibility. In the years immediately following the translation of LV, a work emerged which seems to have been an attempt at just such an exposition. Drawing not only upon LV itself, but also upon the Vulgate and a substantial corpus of commentary sources including the Postilla litteralis of Nicholas of Lyra, the Magna Glosatura of Peter Lombard and the Glossa ordinaria, it condenses and augments the LV text. Although its methods at times coincide with those used in other contemporary works of Wycliffite biblical scholarship,10 this work, preserved uniquely in Oxford, Trinity College, MS 93 (hereafter T93), is exceptional both in its breadth of coverage and in its methodological

5 6 7 8 9 10

‘Expounen, expounden’ (v.), in Middle English Dictionary. ‘Openli’ (adv.), in Middle English Dictionary. ‘Shortli’ (adv.), in Middle English Dictionary. ‘Sharpli’ (adv.), in Middle English Dictionary. ‘Groundli’ (adv.), in Middle English Dictionary. These include, notably, the Prologue to WB; the Old Testament ‘summaries’ of Cambridge, University Library, MS Ee.1.10 and Manchester, John Rylands Library, MS 89; the capitulalists and extensive marginal glossing found in a number of WB manuscripts; the English Wycliffite Sermons; and the substantial commentaries known as the Glossed Gospels.

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variety.11 This article therefore examines in detail the text’s considered and flexible approach to biblical paraphrase, and demonstrates the extent of its borrowing from Latin exegetical sources, which are translated, excerpted, and woven together with great skill and originality. The article highlights the innovative richness of this long-overlooked work, and in doing so it also sheds light on complex questions concerning Wycliffite attitudes toward scriptural authority, Latin and vernacular glossing, and exegetical (un)certainty. Although all scholars who have studied the text in depth recognize the presence of a large amount of exegesis, particularly of certain books, most have followed N. R. Ker in describing it primarily as a ‘summary’ of the Wycliffite Bible.12 It is certainly true that the compiler takes a confident and creative approach to abbreviating scripture, employing a number of methods which at times seek to preserve the wording of LV, and at others focus far more upon conveying instead the general content of the text. At the same time, the central role of exegesis led David Fowler to describe the text as ‘a summary and commentary’ on the Bible, and to refer to it primarily as a commentary.13 I agree with Jean-Pascal Pouzet in his assertion that this characterization is similarly unsatisfactory.14 Although the text contains far more glossing than even Fowler understood, and demonstrates a particular interest in exploring the possibilities and limits of exegetical endeavour, it still contains long sections where the summary elements vastly outweigh the glossing. Pouzet himself is correct to attempt to bridge the scholarly divide, though his label, ‘compendium’ still seems to me to prioritize the text’s brevity at the expense of its exegetical and methodological complexity.15 The text itself provides few clues to suggest how its compiler (and its contemporary readership) would have viewed it,16 but at the end of the

11 Whether the T93 text was compiled by someone familiar with the WB Prologue (or vice versa) must remain an open question, though it is interesting to note that many of the biblical books that the Prologue passes over relatively briefly — notably Job, the Psalter, and the Prophets — are treated in great detail in the T93 text. See ‘The Prologue to the Wycliffite Bible’, ed. by Dove, ll. 1959–2023 (pp. 57–59), ll. 2079–82 (p. 60). In two of these instances the writer of the Prologue justifies moving on swiftly because he has already completed longer works on the books in question. On the possibility of a connection between the two texts, see Somerset, Feeling Like Saints, p. 185; Ghosh, ‘The Prologues’, p. 169 n. 35. 12 See Ker, ‘A Middle English Summary of the Bible’, p. 155; Reilly, ‘A Middle English Summary of the Bible’, p. i; Somerset, Feeling Like Saints, p. 179; A Glossed Wycliffite Psalter, ed. by Kuczynski, p. lvi. 13 Fowler, ‘A Middle English Bible Commentary’, p. 67. Somerset also acknowledges that the text should be considered both summary and commentary, but she refers to it habitually as a summary. She also notes that ‘commentary and summary often blend into one another in the Middle Ages’: see Somerset, Feeling Like Saints, p. 185; p. 185 n. 51. 14 Pouzet, ‘Entre abbreviatio et auctoritas’, p. 102. 15 Pouzet, ‘Entre abbreviatio et auctoritas’, p. 102. 16 I use the word ‘compiler’ in its Bonaventuran sense, to indicate that the text contains almost nothing that is not traceable to an earlier source. See Minnis, Medieval Theory of Authorship, p. 94.

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Psalter, in a rare note addressed directly to the reader, it calls the preceding book a ‘declaracion of þe psauter’.17 Although in this instance the compiler is using the word to refer only to his treatment of one particular book, which is decidedly exegetical, I would argue that it aptly describes the whole text in all its variety. The Middle English Dictionary includes evidence that ‘declaracion’ was used to mean ‘an explanation, interpretation’ before 1387, but by the early fifteenth century it could also mean ‘an inventory’ (it is first attested in this sense in 1414), and by the middle of the century it is recorded in the sense of ‘a telling, narration’ (c. 1450).18 While only the first of these three definitions can therefore be certainly attested at the time of the text’s compilation, it is not difficult to imagine that the word might also have been used to describe a narrative summary by the 1390s. If so, it would deftly incorporate the two meanings of summary and commentary, perhaps with an emphasis on the latter, while reflecting something of the way in which the compiler viewed his work. In light of this, and in view of the fact that no scholarly consensus has yet been reached with regard to what the text should be called, I will refer to it as the Declaracion on the Bible (hereafter Declaracion).

The Manuscript and its Contents T93 is a compact manuscript, measuring around 204 × 140 mm. A number of leaves are now missing, but as it survives the manuscript contains 200 parchment folios, with parchment and paper flyleaves front and back. The single text contained within runs to around 260,000 words in length, and is written in a neat anglicana hand with some secretary features, which is dateable to around 1400 and consistent with hands found in Wycliffite works of a similar date.19 It is difficult to gauge whether the whole text is the work of a single compiler; if not, it can be assumed to have been produced by a group of men with similar education and interests, working in collaboration,20 likely for an intelligent (and probably highly educated) audience.21 There is some

17 Fol. 68r. 18 ‘Declaracioun’ (n.), in Middle English Dictionary. 19 Hudson identifies similar anglicana hands with some secretary influence in three manuscript copies of the English Wycliffite Sermons, for example: see English Wycliffite Sermons, i, ed. by Hudson, pp. 59, 67, 69, 80. 20 Since the question of authorship is not the main focus of the present paper, I will, like all previous scholars, assume a single compiler throughout. 21 Citing the simplicity of some of the summary material, Somerset envisages a mixed audience that would have included ‘members with little formal schooling’ (Somerset, Feeling Like Saints, p. 187). However, even at its most accessible the text contains material that would have been unintelligible (or at least potentially misleading) without relatively thorough scriptural knowledge and at least a basic understanding of exegetical theory. It is possible

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evidence of revision, particularly in the early part of the manuscript, but in general the text is laid out clearly and copied cleanly.22 That revision continued after copying is unsurprising given the ambition and complexity of the text itself, which skilfully blends biblical summary, scriptural quotation, and commentary, proceeding chapter-by-chapter through scripture. The way in which these elements are mixed together varies substantially across the text, from book to book, and even at times from chapter to chapter. The Pentateuch, historical books of the Old Testament and the majority of the Wisdom books tend to be rendered relatively briefly, mainly employing biblical paraphrase, interspersed with brief quotations from LV (often partial verses ending ‘&c.’), some independent translations from the Vulgate, and a smattering of interpolated glosses. The gospels and Acts employ a similar mix of elements, but are in general fuller than the Old Testament accounts, and incorporate more glossing. Job is the first book to break this mould. Having written the first two chapters of the book in the brief, straightforward summary style he had employed in all previous books, the compiler includes a long gloss before Chapter 3. I will discuss this gloss and its implications in more detail below, but for the present it is sufficient to say that from this point onwards the treatment of Job is far more exegetical and far less paraphrastic than anything that has gone before. This exegetical style, in which brief biblical lemmata, either copied directly from LV or translated independently from the Vulgate, are followed by extensive sections of commentary, is also the dominant mode in Isaiah, and is used intermittently in most of the other prophetic books.23 While these other prophetic books are laid out less formally, with a less clear distinction between biblical and exegetical material, they nevertheless contain a large proportion of commentary; the same is true of the Epistles, though these contain almost no underlined lemmata. The most obviously and thoroughly exegetical book is the Psalter, which occupies 32 folios and is set out rigidly, complete with Latin incipits, underlined English lemmata, and substantial commentary sections attributed to Lyra and ‘the glose’ (Magna Glosatura). At the other end of the spectrum, the Song of Songs includes little or no commentary, and consists largely of excerpted partial verses from LV.24

to imagine that the text was intended to aid study in small groups, led by an experienced scholar. On the likelihood of such an arrangement in other Wycliffite contexts, see Ghosh, The Wycliffite Heresy, pp. 112–13; Kuczynski, ‘The Psalms and Social Action’, pp. 205–06. 22 For evidence of revision see for example Genesis 9, fol. 2r; Exodus 30, fol. 4r. 23 Jonah, a notable exception, is rendered almost entirely as biblical paraphrase, in the manner of the historical Old Testament books. 24 The Prologue to WB recognizes the particular complexity of the Song of Songs: in view of this, it might have been felt that the Declaracion should refrain from glossing this book altogether rather than attempting a cursory and potentially misleading exegesis. On Wycliffite attitudes to the Song of Songs and its interpretation, see Dove, ‘Love ad litteram’. See also ‘The Prologue to the Wycliffite Bible’, ed. by Dove, ll. 2049–62 (pp. 59–60).

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The Declaracion as Biblical Summary Biblical summary was a popular mode, in both Latin and the vernacular, throughout the Middle Ages, and WB inspired a number of vernacular works that might be termed ‘summaries’ around the turn of the fifteenth century.25 Setting aside for a moment the question of the Declaracion’s approach to exegesis, I will now attempt to situate the text in relation to some of these. It would be impossible, in so short a space, to provide a full analysis of the many different techniques by which the Declaracion summarizes and abbreviates scripture. This section will focus on the ways in which the text balances a respect for the wording of its scriptural sources with a desire for breadth of coverage. The interplay of these twin (but often competing) concerns is demonstrated in the Declaracion’s rendering of Luke 23. Here, as in much of the rest of the text, biblical quotation and biblical paraphrase are used in concert with one another to create a paratactical but fluent account. In the following example, verbatim biblical quotations of more than two words are highlighted in bold, while normal type signifies material paraphrased to a greater or lesser extent from LV:26 Iesus is led to Pilat, &c. Of his accusing. Ppilat send hym to Heroud, &c. Heroud & Pilat are made frendes. Pilat seyd he founde no cause to do hym to þe deþe, &c. Baraban is delyuerd [released], &c. Ssymond of Sirenen [Simon of Cyrene] beres þe crosse, &c. Iesus seyd to wymmen þat sued [followed] hym weyling, Douȝters of Ierusalem, Nil ʒe wepe on me [do not weep for me], &c., ffor if in a grene tre þey done þise þinges [for if they do these things when the tree is green], &c. Iesus is done on crosse [crucified]. He preyed for his enemyse. Þey parted [divided up] his cloþes & cast lottes. How he was scorned. Of þe superscripsion writen with Greke letters, of Latyn & of Hebrewe. One of þe þeues [thieves] blasfemed hym. His felowe blamed hym & accused hymself, & seyd, Lord haue mynde on me [Lord, remember me], &c. Þe sunne was mad [made] derk. Þe veyl of þe temple was rent [torn]. Iesus cried, Ffadre, into þi handes I bitake [commend] my spirit, &c. Centurio, glorifiyng [praising] God, seyd, Verily [truly] þis man was iust. How þe peple smyten her brestis [beat their breasts], &c. All his knowen stoden o fer [all who knew him stood at a distance]. How þe body was biried. Wymmen made redy [prepared] swete smelling spices & oynementis. Bot in [on] þe Sabbot þey restid. (fol. 161r–v)

25 On biblical paraphrase more generally, see Morey, ‘Peter Comestor, Biblical Paraphrase and the Medieval Popular Bible’; Morey, Book and Verse; Doležalová and Visi, ed., Retelling the Bible. On Latin verse summaries of the later medieval period, see Dinkova-Bruun, ‘Biblical Versifications and Memory in the Later Middle Ages’. 26 Except where otherwise stated, punctuation in examples from the Declaracion has been altered in line with modern practice.

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Though the biblical quotations are not visually distinguished from the paraphrased material in the manuscript, highlighting them here demonstrates just how closely the Declaracion relies upon the LV translation. At times the method of biblical abbreviation is simply to excerpt partial verses and stitch them together, omitting the material in between. The line ‘Douȝters of Ierusalem, Nil ʒe wepe on me, &c., ffor if in a grene tre þey done þise þinges, &c.’ is an amalgamation of two truncated LV verses, Luke 7. 28 and Luke 7. 31. This precise, surgical approach, which seeks to preserve the wording of its scriptural source even as it abbreviates, is reminiscent of two partial vernacular Old Testament Bible summaries that have often been mentioned in conjunction with the Declaracion, and which are preserved uniquely in Cambridge, CUL MS Ee.1.10 and Manchester, John Rylands MS 89. The CUL summary covers all books of the Bible from ii Chronicles to ii Maccabees, while the John Rylands text covers Ezekiel to the beginning of i Maccabees. Each uses as its main source a version of EV, which is abbreviated simply by presenting only a selection of excerpted (whole and partial) verses from each chapter.27 As in the example from the Declaracion above, these texts regularly demonstrate a great deal of care in the selection of their material, and attention to detail in the way in which it is stitched together. See for example the following quotation from the opening of i Ezra 7 in the Cambridge text (the bracketed numbers, not present in the manuscript, indicate from which verses the material is quoted): [1] Forsoþe [truly] aftir þese wordis in þe regne of Artaxerses king of Persis [Persia] Esdras [Ezra] þe sone of Saraie sone of Azarie &ce // [10] Forsoþe made his hert redi [ready] þat he enserche [study] þe lawe of þe Lord; & do & tech in Israel mandement & doom [law and justice].28 Although the selection and amalgamation of verses has been handled just as carefully here as in the Declaracion example quoted above, the CUL compiler lacks the same willingness either to pick out short quotations from WB, or to paraphrase scripture. While this gives a fuller sense of those verses and sections of the Bible that the CUL text does quote, the weaknesses of such a rigid approach are clear. Because the text includes longer verbatim quotations than are common in the Declaracion, it necessarily lacks the same scope. After the first and tenth verses quoted above, CUL i Ezra 7 quotes three sustained sections (verses 11–14, 21–23 and 25–27) in their entirety, while completely omitting the material in between. In the CUL text, then, preservation of 27 The John Rylands text in fact includes two whole books, of which one, Daniel, is in LV. The rest of the text, including the other whole book, Jonah, agrees with EV. The CUL text, meanwhile, uses a text of EV which shows some evidence of having been revised in light of LV. See Hargreaves, ‘An Intermediate Version of the Wycliffite Old Testament’; Sutherland, English Psalms, pp. 152–55. 28 Cambridge, CUL MS Ee.1.10, fol. 181v. In examples from this manuscript, original punctuation is preserved, although double slashes have been used to represent paraphs.

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the scriptural text is consistently prioritized over breadth of coverage, with brevity achieved primarily through the wholesale omission of large sections of each chapter. The Declaracion’s most sustained experiment with summary that preserves the words of WB in a similar way is in the Song of Songs, though the compiler takes a slightly different approach which ensures broader (if more disjointed) coverage of the biblical chapter in question. The whole of the first chapter is presented below, along with the corresponding section of the CUL text. Once again, although verbatim quotations are not visually distinguished in the manuscript, here they are highlighted in bold, with normal text representing material slightly paraphrased from WB. In this case, the original punctuation has been retained: T93: Kis he me with þe cus [kiss] / Better are þi pappes [breasts] / oyle shed oute is þi name / ʒong damyselles [women] / drawe me / Celeres [cellars] / Rightful men lufen [love] þe / I am blak / tabernaculs of cedar / skynnes of Salomon / þe son hace discoloured / þe sons of my moder / a keper in vyneres [vineyards] / shewe to me where þou restes in myd dey / if þou knowes not þi self feyre among wymmen / þe chares [chariots] of pharao / chekes as of a turtil [turtledove] / Nek as broches / golden ournementes / þe king in his resting place / Narde [spikenard] / a boundel [bundle] of myrr / a cluster of cipre tre among þe vyneres of Engaddy / lo þou art feyre my frendesse / þine eghne [eyes] as of doufes / oure bed is feyre as floures / trees of cedar / Coupels [rafters] of cipresse / I am a floure of þe felde / as a lily among þornes / as an appeltre [apple tree] (fol. 74r) CUL: Kisse he me with þe coss [kiss] of his mouþ // þe vois of þe fadir / ffor bettre ben þi tetis [breasts] þan wijn smelling wiþ best oynementis // þe vois of þe chirche / oyle held out þi name þerfore þe ȝong waxen [adolescent] wymmen loueden þee fulmiche [wholly] &cetera (fol. 254r) The CUL rendering here quotes verbatim the first two verses of the chapter as they are given in EV, but completely omits all material after this point. As in the example from Luke above, the Declaracion uses shorter quotations, allowing it to provide some sense of the shape and content of the whole chapter. More importantly, when compared to the CUL and John Rylands texts, the Declaracion, even in this unusually lexically faithful section, demonstrates a much greater willingness to stray from the wording of its biblical source text.29 This should not be taken to imply, however, that the Declaracion does 29 It has often been noted that a significant number of the verses included in the CUL text do not reproduce the text precisely as it is generally found in EV, but even where it does stray from EV, the text tends merely to substitute independent translation from the Vulgate. On this point, see The Holy Bible, ed. by Forshall and Madden, i, p. liv; Hargreaves, ‘An

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not demonstrate respect for the LV translation. Even when paraphrasing, the text frequently preserves the lexis of LV even as it alters the syntax or omits material, and when translating independently from the Vulgate, the compiler still seems to be influenced by the wording of LV, as in the following example from Psalm 6 (underlining is consistent with the manuscript): T93: Domine ne in furore: Lord not in þi strong vengaunce LV: Lord, repreue thou not me in thi stronge veniaunce Although the translation seems to have been undertaken independently by the compiler in an attempt to mirror the syntax and cut-off point of the Latin incipit, the lexical similarities between LV and the Declaracion are undeniable.30 Similar examples are common, particularly in books, such as the Psalter and Isaiah, which have a high concentration of underlined English lemmata. Often, though, like the summary in the Prologue to WB, the Declaracion abandons any idea of strict lexical fidelity to LV or the Vulgate. At these times, it is most obviously reminiscent of a capitula-list. These texts, typically affixed to full Bibles (or part-Bibles), provide a brief paratactical account of the contents of each chapter, and function primarily as a finding-aid. They were common in Latin Bibles until c. 1230, and a number of WB manuscripts include a New Testament capitula-list in the vernacular.31 In this example, an extract from Matthew 6 in the Declaracion is followed by the listing for Matthew 6 as given in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Selden Supra 51 (henceforth SS), one of five full or partial WB manuscripts in Oxford to contain such a list.32 Bold type again signifies verbatim WB quotation of a couple of words or more; italics are used to highlight places where the Declaracion contains a lexical echo of LV, using the same basic vocabulary but with alterations in word order or

Intermediate Version of the Wycliffite Old Testament’, pp. 135–47. Hargreaves focused his attention on the Psalter which, as he admitted, is one of the books in which the text differs most from EV (p. 133). 30 The use of the phrase ‘strong vengaunce’ to translate the Vulgate ‘furore’ is particularly suggestive of LV influence. Neither EV nor Rolle’s English Psalter include the word ‘strong’, and nor is it added in the Revisions to Rolle’s Psalter Commentary. Likewise, it is absent from the Middle English Glossed Prose Psalter. EV, Rolle and the Revised Psalter Commentary all translate ‘furore’ as ‘wodnesse’, while the Prose Psalter just uses ‘vengeaunce’. See The Holy Bible, ed. by Forshall and Madden, ii, p. 742; Richard Rolle, The Psalter, ed. by Bramley, p. 21; Two Revisions of Rolle’s English Psalter Commentary, ed. by Hudson, i, p. 45; The Middle English Glossed Prose Psalter, ed. by Black and St-Jacques, Part i, p. 5. 31 On Latin capitula-lists, see Light, ‘Non-Biblical Texts in Thirteenth-Century Bibles’, p. 171; Light, ‘French Bibles c. 1200–30’, pp. 171–73. On the function of vernacular capitula-lists in WB manuscripts, see Hudson and Solopova, ‘The Latin Text’, p. 111. 32 See Solopova, Manuscripts of the Wycliffite Bible in the Bodleian and Oxford College Libraries, p. 293. Three of the other manuscripts — Oxford, Bodl. Lib., MS e Musaeo 110, Oxford, Bodl. Lib., MS Fairfax 2 and Oxford, Christ Church, MS 146 — contain a version of the same capitula-list which is quoted here. Meanwhile, the list found in Oxford, Bodl. Lib., MS Hatton 111, an EV manuscript, is independent of the others. In quotations from Selden Supra 51, slashes indicate line breaks.

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tense. Underlined material, meanwhile, is exegetical, translated in this case from the Postilla litteralis, and can for the present be discounted:33 T93: How men shold do her [their] almes. How men shold prey, & what, in þe Pater Noster. How men shold forgif. How men shold fast & do penaunce. Of inordinate [excessive] making of tresories in erþe. Of a simple iʒe [eye] þat is a right intencion, & a wickid iʒe a wickid intencion, &c. (fol. 151v) SS: Hou þou schalt preye & what preier. Hou þou schalt faste / Þat þou tresoure [store up treasure] in heuene & not here / That þou be not bysy [concerned] but for soule heele [spiritual health]. (fol. 4r) The similarities between the two extracts are immediately obvious. Both provide a concise, paratactical inventory of biblical content, and there is even some linguistic agreement, most clearly in the persistent use of the word ‘How’. This chapter of the Selden Supra list is in fact unusual, both in its consistent use of the second person pronoun ‘þou’ and in its use of ‘þat’ as a way of opening sentences. The opening of SS Matthew 8 is more representative: ‘Of a leperous mannes heling / Hou Centurio preied for his seruaunt / Hou he heelid Petris modir in lawe’ (fol. 4r).34 This example demonstrates that the wording and detached style of Declaracion Matthew 6 is very much in keeping with the mode and methods of the capitula-list. Like a capitula-list, the Declaracion frequently prioritizes brevity and clarity over precise adherence to the words of its biblical source, while simultaneously pointing toward that source. The habitual use of the words ‘How’ and ‘Of ’ underline the point that the Declaracion cannot provide readers with a full account of scripture; nor does it pretend to. Although the Declaracion is often written in such a way as to preserve, as far as possible, the lexis of scripture (whether in the Vulgate or, more often, the LV translation), the text also employs paraphrase that is lexically distinct from either biblical source. This looser paraphrase, the approach of which was surely influenced by that of the capitula-lists extant in Latin and English Bibles, is crucial in allowing the Declaracion to balance the aims of concision and thoroughness (or, to borrow the Prologue to WB’s language, shortliness and groundliness), allowing the text to give some sense of the shape of each chapter even though it might treat each incident or idea therein briefly. As will become clear below, by emphasizing the fact that the Declaracion is 33 I am using the Postilla litteralis included in the Bibliorum Sacrorum cum Glossa Ordinaria, 6 vols (Venice, 1603). References are given according to volume, column and note number. For these glosses, which are not underlined in the manuscript itself, see v. 138. 8; v. 136. 11; v. 137. 2. The reference to penance is likely influenced by Postilla v. 133. 4. 34 The treatment of this material in the Declaracion is rather longer, but for comparison the relevant parts of the chapter read as follows: ‘He helid a mesel of his lepre, & bad hym go shewe hym to prestis & offer after þe lawe of Moyses. What þe offering of a mesel was when he was clensid, loke Leuitici 14. Þe seruant of Centurio, of whome Iesus seyd he founde not so grete feyth in Israel, is helid of þe palsy […] Petre wifis modre is helid of þe fiueris’. See T93, fol. 152r.

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not scripture itself, this looser summary also allows for the introduction of extensive glossing, without the requirement that such exegesis be consistently demarcated from the rest of the text. Wycliffite texts generally at least attempt to provide such demarcation, and had the Declaracion been more consistently faithful to the wording of LV, it is likely that the compiler would have felt a greater compunction always to distinguish the glossing in some way, either by attribution, underlining, lexical markers, or some other visual means.35 The next section will explore the ways in which the Declaracion incorporates exegesis, demonstrating that commentary plays a much more central role in the text than has previously been supposed.

Exegetical Approaches in the Declaracion As Michael Kuczynski and others have noted, the Wycliffite suspicion of ‘falce glosatours’ did not preclude them from glossing scripture themselves, nor from trusting certain existing glosses.36 The WB translators had relied upon Latin exegetical texts to help them to understand the true meaning of scripture, and had subsequently translated portions of these texts for inclusion in certain WB manuscripts, particularly in LV.37 Wycliffite scholars are also presumed to have been instrumental in preparing the substantial commentaries now known as the Glossed Gospels, and of course they also added supplemental glossing to existing English commentaries, most notably to Richard Rolle’s English Psalter commentary.38 The precise sources used vary — the Glossed Gospels draw upon the Catena aurea, for example, while marginal glosses in LV manuscripts tend to cite Lyra and the Glossa ordinaria — but in each case the glossators are selecting from uncontentious and authoritative Latin sources, which are translated faithfully. The Declaracion, too, makes heavy use of Latin exegetical material. Chief among these sources is Lyra’s Postilla litteralis (hereafter Postilla). This work, which, as the name suggests, is focused primarily on expounding the literal sense of the whole Bible, was popular with orthodox readers, but seems to have been particularly highly regarded by Wycliffite scholars.39 The Glossa ordinaria is 35 On the separation of text and gloss in Wycliffite texts, see for example Kuczynski, ‘Glossing and Glosses’, p. 348. 36 Kuczynski, ‘Glossing and Glosses’, p. 355; Ghosh, The Wycliffite Heresy, pp. 63–64, pp. 115–20. 37 ‘The Prologue to the Wycliffite Bible’, ed. by Dove, ll. 2800–11 (p. 80); Dove, The First English Bible, pp. 152–72; Kuczynski, ‘Glossing and Glosses’, pp. 346–53. 38 On the Glossed Gospels see Hargreaves, ‘Popularising Biblical Scholarship’; Hudson, Doctors in English. On the revisions to Rolle, see Two Revisions of Rolle’s English Psalter Commentary, ed. by Hudson. 39 Lyra was one of the most popular exegetes of the later Middle Ages: his work survives in over eight hundred manuscripts (see Krey and Smith, ed., Nicholas of Lyra: The Senses of Scripture, pp. 8–12). Nevertheless, it is true that the Wycliffites seem to have held him in particularly high esteem. The writer of the WB Prologue mentions that Lyra’s commentary

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also used throughout the Declaracion, for both its interlinear and marginal glosses, while the influence of Lyra’s Postilla moralis is much less frequent. The influence of other commentators seems to be confined to particular books: for example, the Psalter is highly dependent upon Peter Lombard’s Magna Glosatura, which is also used (though less frequently) to provide material in the Pauline Epistles.40 Acts, meanwhile, includes several translated passages from Peter Comestor’s Historia scholastica.41 The influence of all the exegetical sources has until now been deeply underestimated. Even those scholars who have worked in some detail on the text have not attempted the kind of in-depth analysis that is required to understand the full extent of extra-biblical influence, and often seem to have assumed that non-attributed glossing material was original to the Declaracion. Reilly, for example, asserts that the compiler ‘has himself added glosses to the text in many places’, suggesting that ‘they seem to be at least as frequent as direct references to other commentators’. However, the examples he cites are both actually copied from Lyra’s Postilla.42 Somerset makes a similar error in her examination of the manuscript, where, in claiming that the compiler ‘invents his own commentary’, she cites his habit of commenting on narrative voice: one of the two examples she gives is from the same source.43 In fact, the vast majority of the glosses in the Declaracion are translated very closely from a standard authoritative Latin source. The compiler frequently employs cognate English words when translating exegesis, as in the following example from Romans 9 (in this case, the underlining is included in the manuscript): T93: Paul sweris [swears] how þat he was heuy [grieved] & sory, for þe Iewes, þat were his cosyns, bileued not on Crist, and how he desired to be departed [divided] fro Crist for þem. Þis mey be vnderstanden on two maneres: on one wise [in one way], to referr þis to þe tyme in which he pursued Crist in his membres [through his followers], Actus 9, ffor þen he desired to be departed fro Crist for ʒele [zeal] of þe Iewes lawe. An ‘helpide ful myche’ in preparing the translation, and uses it himself when discussing fourfold exegesis; it also provides the source for the majority of marginal glosses found in LV manuscripts. See ‘The Prologue to the Wycliffite Bible’, ed. by Dove, ll. 2806–07 (p. 80); ll. 2555–90 (pp. 73–74); Kuczynski, ‘Glossing and Glosses’, pp. 356–67. 40 The Declaracion Psalter refers to the Magna Glosatura only as ‘þe glose’. Thus, some scholars have been confused by the lack of similarity between the Psalter commentary found in the Declaracion and that found in the Glossa ordinaria, attributing material to the Declaracion compiler when it is in fact closely copied from Lombard’s text. See Somerset, Feeling Like Saints, p. 197. 41 Comestor is cited only twice, first as ‘Magister historiarum’ in Chapter 16, T93 fol. 198r, and then as ‘meystre of stories’ in Chapter 17, T93 fol. 198v. My research has uncovered a further three instances of clear influence of the Historia scholastica on the Declaracion in Acts (Acts 6, fol. 196r–v; Acts 8, fol. 196v; Acts 24, fol. 200r). 42 Reilly, ‘A Middle English Summary of the Bible’, p. vii. The two glosses mentioned by Reilly are found in Lyra, Postilla, i. 1551. 4 and ii. 1380. 7. 43 See Somerset, Feeling Like Saints, p. 186; Lyra, Postilla, iv. 725. 3.

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oþer manere it mey be remened [related], or referred to þe tyme after his conuersion, and so he desired to be departed fro Crist by deleying of his blis for a tyme to lif [live] here & to labour to conuert þe Iewes. (fol. 167r) The underlined gloss is translated almost verbatim from Lyra’s Postilla using a number of cognate English words, including ‘referr’, ‘membres’, ‘ȝele’ and ‘conuersion’, the only major differences between this translation and the Latin original being the removal of a single unnecessary clause (‘in quo praedicabat fidem catholicam’), the inclusion of a single synonymous variant (Lyra’s ‘referendo’ becomes ‘remened, or referred’), and the change of chapter number from Acts 8 to Acts 944: Postilla: Quod dupliciter potest intelligi. Uno modo referendo ad tempus, in quo persequebatur Christum in membris suis, Act. 8, et hoc ex zelo Iudaicae legis, et sic optabat se separatum esse a Christo. Alio modo referendo ad tempus post conuersionem suam, in quo praedicabat fidem catholicam: et tunc aliquando optabat separari a Christi per dilationem suae gloriae ad tempus, ut intenderet conuersioni Iudaeorum ad fidem. (Lyra, Postilla, vi. 119. 1) In translating so faithfully from the Latin original here, the compiler demonstrates an affinity with the methods of the WB glossators, who, as Kuczynski notes, also routinely employ cognate English words when translating from the Postilla and the Glossa.45 However, unlike them, as is evident above, the compiler of the Declaracion does not routinely attribute his glosses to their Latin sources. In fact, while in the above example underlining is used to distinguish the gloss from the biblical summary, in the majority of books such visual signposting is very rare. Most books include almost no glossing that is either attributed or otherwise visually demarcated. Only sometimes is exegesis preceded or followed by a lexical marker, the most common of which is the simple, unequivocal phrase ‘þat is’. This method of exegesis, which in effect either hides glossing in plain sight or frames it in such a way as to suggest hermeneutic certainty, is interesting given the Wycliffite tendency to switch between presenting scripture as essentially ‘open’ — with a meaning both determinable and accessible — and, at other times, inherently polysemous and unfathomable.46 By treating the bulk of its glossing in the ways discussed above, the Declaracion seems to place the accuracy (or, to borrow the wording of the WB Prologue, the sharpness) of the readings beyond doubt. The irony, of course, is that this method of asserting scripture’s openness results in a

44 This change may simply be a copy error, though Paul does persecute the Jews in both Acts 8 and 9. 45 Kuczynski, ‘Glossing and Glosses’, p. 356. Kuczynski also notes the Declaracion’s use of cognates in its translations from Lyra: see A Glossed Wycliffite Psalter, ed. by Kuczynski, p. lvi. 46 On the similar approach taken in the English Wycliffite Sermons, see Ghosh, The Wycliffite Heresy, pp. 120–35.

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text, the Declaracion itself, which is less than open with regard to its use of commentary. By choosing not to distinguish glossing consistently, the text makes it very difficult for readers to be able even to identify exegetical material. In doing so, it impedes their ability to engage critically with the exegetical sources, and, ultimately, to come to their own conclusions regarding the accuracy or otherwise of the gloss in question. Even where glosses are more obviously distinguished, the habitual use of the phrase ‘þat is’ and relative infrequency of multiple glosses on the same word or phrase admits little room for questioning. Further, the general lack of attribution would have robbed Wycliffite readers of one of their crucial tools for judging any interpretation: a consideration of the life and virtue (and therefore the authority) of the glossator.47 The compiler seems in these moments implicitly to suggest that he has access to what Annie Sutherland has called ‘divine authorial “entent” [intention]’, and that readers can safely be guided by the glosses he has chosen, which serve to make that ‘entent’ available to a wider audience.48 This is not to say that the compiler of the Declaracion is always entirely comfortable with assuming the mantle of exegetical authority, or that the text does not also recognize that scripture is at times so obscure as to render human hermeneutics necessarily uncertain and fallible. Having glossed the preceding books of the Old Testament relatively infrequently and in the style discussed above, the compiler includes a long gloss immediately before Job Chapter 3, signalling a completely new approach to exegesis, one which admits that the meaning of the biblical text is not always ‘open’: T93: Here is to vnderstand þat þe wordes of Iob in þe thrid chapitre & after, þat semen to a fleschly man þat hace not þe gostly vnderstanding of scripture as þey sowned inpacience or blasfemy: þem most outher be vnderstanden gostly, as Seynt Gregori in his morals & oþer doctours expoune hem; or elles þey are spoken after þe disposicion of þe sensual parte, þat often suffers peynes with heuynes, þat reson þorw þe vertu of pacience receyues with greet gladnes. Or elles, as Lira seys, þem most be taken noght þat Iob spekes þem of his owne sentence, bot as wordes dryuen owte by disputacion of þe errand wordes of þem þat disputed with hym; for þof his frendes seyd many tru þinges, ʒit þey erred in summe þinges, and so Iob concluded of her erring sentence many wordes þat shold sue of her errours. Þus to vnderstand Iob shal h[e] neþer be noted of inpacience nor of blasfemy. To take þen þis chapitre & all þe disputacion after betuene Iob & his frenedes after þe exposicion doctoris de Lira.49 (fols 31v–32r)

47 Ghosh, The Wycliffite Heresy, p. 64. 48 Sutherland notes that a similar implicit claim is made by the author of the English Prose Psalter: see Sutherland, English Psalms, p. 127. 49 ‘Here it is to be understood that the words of Job in the third chapter and after, that seem to a fleshly man who does not have spiritual understanding of scripture as if they tend to impatience or blasphemy, must either be understood spiritually, as Saint Gregory in his

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Here, named exegetical sources are quoted (or paraphrased) at length. On a more fundamental level, scripture is treated as a text whose meaning is not always completely accessible. To quote one authority at length would make this point; to cite multiple authorities, two of them named and highly respected, and to note that they offer different interpretations, makes it all the more forcefully, even if in this example the grouping of all the interpretations together is copied directly from Lyra’s Postilla.50 Furthermore, although the final line seems to suggest that Lyra’s reading is the one to keep in mind, the others are not refuted. Instead, the text seems to encourage each reader to weigh the evidence and come to his or her own conclusion.51 Such instances are rare in the majority of the text, but relatively frequent in the more exegetical books, in particular Isaiah, and habitual in the Psalter, where Lyra’s literal interpretation is often followed by a moral interpretation translated from the Magna Glosatura. In general, these alternative glosses are not presented as antithetical to one another, and seem intended merely to demonstrate the polysemy of the biblical text: this attitude is particularly evident in the Psalter, in which the literal and moral readings of the text are allowed simply to coexist. In Psalm 3, the compiler goes so far as to include four different glosses: a literal-historical reading attributed to Lyra, an allegorical (Christological) reading attributed to ‘the glose’ (Lombard’s Magna Glosatura), and finally another Christological and a moral reading, both of which are unattributed, but which also come from Lombard’s commentary: T93: Domine quid Lord wherto As to þe letter [literal sense], Lira seys þat Dauid made þis psalme for afflictions þat he sufferd when he fled fro Absolon, &c., 2º Regum 15, &c., and it is diuided in to iij: ffirst he describes þe multitude of his pursuers; after þere, Bot þu Lord, he telles how God defended hym; and þere, For þu hace smyten [struck], how his aduersaries were destroyed. After þe glose, as to þe allegori, þe intent of þe prophete here is to confounde þem þat þinken [think] þat God myght not meke [humble] hym self to be cum [become] man, and so þis psalme hace ij parties [parts].

Moralia and other doctors interpret them; or else they are spoken in the attitude of the carnal part, that often suffers pains with grief, which reason, through the virtue of patience, receives with great gladness. Or else, as Lyra says, they ought to be interpreted not as if they reflect Job’s own thoughts, but as words elicited by disputing with the erring words of those who disputed with him. For although his friends said many true things, yet they erred in some things, and so Job deduced from their erroneous ways of thinking many words that should follow from their errors. By understanding Job in this way, one shall accuse him neither of impatience nor blasphemy. We should interpret then this chapter and all the disputation following between Job and his friends after the interpretation of Doctor Lyra’. 50 Lyra, Postilla, iii. 43. 1. 51 On the similar approach taken by Lyra and other earlier exegetes, see Smith, ‘Uncertainty in the Study of the Bible’, pp. 141–45; on hermeneutic uncertainty in Wycliffite writing, see Ghosh, ‘“And so it is licly to men”’.

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In þe first parte he reherses [describes] ij contrary parties in þe manere of fighters: þe multitude of þe pursuers of Criste on þat one side; & on þat oþer side Criste armed with preyer sikerly hafeand God his vptaker [surely having God as his defender]. In þe second parte þere I slepped [slept], is mynde [a reminder] of his resurrection which was ende of his passion; & þerfore it was not to hym to drede [he need not dread]. Þis psalme mey also be taken as þe voice of all Criste, þat is to sey of Criste & holy chirch þat is his body, þat suffers here many persecuciouns. Moraly, it mey be þe voice of ilk [each] feythful persone þat is pursued of [by] vices, whome God delyuers, & smytes [strikes] doun his gostly enmyes.52 Nothing about the way in which the different readings are presented here suggests that the reader need necessarily choose between them. At other times, however, different interpretations of the same sense are put forward in such a way as to suggest that the reader should do just that. In this example from Acts 6, the first and third of the listed literal interpretations are drawn from Lyra’s Postilla, while the middle one is from the Historia scholastica: T93: When þe noumbre of Cristen peple encresed, þe Grekes gruched ageyn [complained against] þe Hebrewes, for her [their] wydoes were despised [disrespected] in ich [each] deyes mynistring [serving of food]; which mey be vnderstanden on [in] iij maneris: eþer þat þe Greke wydoes as rude [uncouth] wymmen were not suffred [allowed] to mynistre [serve at table]; [196v] or elles þat þey were to mych greued in her mynistring, as seruyng in vile offices [or else that they were too much burdened with service, as serving in base roles]; or elles þat necessaries were not als wele [as well] mynistred [provided] to þe Greke wydoes as to þe Hebrewes.53 The insistent use here of the language of alternatives (‘eþer […] or elles […] or elles’), along with the lack of any attribution which might aid readers in their choice, seems to demonstrate a desire to give over some of the exegetical responsibility into the hands of the reader.54 The most clear choice in this regard is presented in i Corinthians 11 when, as David Fowler points out, the compiler leaves the reader to ‘decide for himself whether Paul is being ironical or not’, in effect allowing (and inviting) the reader to choose between two directly opposing interpretations of the sacred text: ‘Paul preyses þem

52 Fol. 36r. For the sources, see Lyra, Postilla, iii. 453. divisio; Peter Lombard, Commentaria in Psalmos, col. 78b and col. 80c; col. 81a–81c. 53 Fol. 196r–v. For the sources, see Lyra, Postilla, vi. 1040. 3; Peter Comestor, Historia Scholastica, ed. by Migne, col. 1662c. 54 As Anne Hudson notes, a similar approach is taken in the Glossed Gospels: ‘Implicitly the citation of multiple authorities puts the ball firmly into the receiver’s court for deciding which patristic interpretation is to be accepted’. See Hudson, Doctors in English, p. cxxxix.

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for þey kepped his comandements, or elles he spekes yronice, blamyng þem þat kept hem not’.55 Here and elsewhere, by refusing to arbitrate between the glosses, the text invites the reader to take an active role in the interpretation of scripture. At the same time, the Declaracion encourages the reader to remember that even respected exegetical authorities are fallible. In ii Thessalonians 2, commenting on the passage ‘þat he þat holdes now hold he, &c.’ (ii Thessalonians 2. 7), the compiler of the Declaracion writes that ‘þe compilator of þe comyn glose knowleches [acknowledges] here þat he wist nere [does not know] what Paul ment here: neþeles [nevertheless] diuerse opinions how many men vnderstanden þem he reherses here’ (fol. 189v). This is an accurate representation of the commentary contained in the Magna Glosatura.56 It is interesting, though, that the Declaracion includes the admission (‘Ergo prorsus quid dixerit me fateor ignorare’), and none of the interpretations. It seems that at this moment it is the admission itself that is important to the compiler: it effectively signals to the reader just how difficult and uncertain the task of exegesis can be. Framing exegetes and exegesis in this way of course has the apparent effect of flattening out interpretative hierarchies. As Kantik Ghosh has asserted, Wycliffite hermeneutics tend to prioritize ‘a more diffuse and less hierarchical or institutionally specific location of interpretative authority’.57 However, in the case of the Declaracion, this diffusion goes only so far. It is clear that the readership envisaged for the Declaracion was, at least in the first instance, an academic one. In the example from Lombard given above, the omission of any of the various interpretations seems to imply that the reader is expected to be able to access them elsewhere. A similar expectation is demonstrated even more clearly in a rare note to the reader at the very end of Declaracion Ezekiel which asserts that, ‘To vnderstand fro þe xl chapitre of Eʒechiel to þe ende of his boke […] it is gode to se or to haue þe figure [diagram] þat Doctor de Lira hace descryued [drawn] in his writing vp on Eʒechiel, ffor it is a ful hard processe [passage] to vnderstand’.58 The casual nature in which Lyra’s work is mentioned here makes it clear that the reader is expected to be familiar with it. Moreover, the compiler seems to suggest that the reader would have access to a full or partial copy of Lyra’s Postilla complete with diagrams. This suggests access to an institutional library, and probably an academic setting.

55 T93, fol. 174r. See Fowler, ‘A Middle English Bible Commentary’, p. 76. 56 Peter Lombard, Commentaria in Epistolam II Ad Thessalonicenses, col. 318d. 57 Ghosh, ‘“And so it is licly to men”’, p. 429. 58 fol. 130r. The ‘figure’ in question is a detailed diagram of the temple interior included by Lyra as part of his commentary on Ezekiel 40: see Postilla, Ezekiel, 1401–1402. A copy of the same diagram is included in two manuscripts in Oxford which are roughly contemporary with the Declaracion: see Oxford, Bodl. Lib. MS Canon. Bibl. Lat. 70, fol. 156r; Oxford, Bodl. Lib. MS Laud Misc 156, fol. 11r.

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The Declaracion seems ultimately to admit, then, that the meaning of the biblical text is most easily accessible to those with the right training: men steeped in exegetical tradition and equipped with academic resources and a certain amount of intellectual confidence.59 This is not to say, however, that this experimental text does not in its own way fulfil the criteria set out at the start of this essay. Its exposition of the biblical text takes a complex form which encompasses description of content (as in the sections reminiscent of the capitula-lists), paraphrase (which is influenced to a greater or lesser extent by the wording of LV), and interpretation drawing largely on the standard authorities. In those sections that prioritize biblical summary, the text demonstrates a desire to balance the often-competing demands of concision and thoroughness. In the more heavily exegetical sections, meanwhile, the text grapples with the question of scriptural ‘openness’. At times its glosses are incorporated with such apparent certainty as to imply a fully accessible text; such glossing also draws attention to the literal sense, and demonstrates a certain bold confidence on the part of the compiler himself. At other times, however, the compiler is compelled, presumably out of a sense of academic scrupulousness, to admit that the biblical text is inherently polysemous and its meaning, at least in parts, unknowable to even the most revered of human exegetes. While it is impossible conclusively to prove a connection between the Declaracion and the work of exposition envisaged in the WB Prologue, it does seem to attempt an ‘openliere and shortliere […] sharplier and groundliere’ exposition of scripture than survives in any other text connected to WB.

Works Cited Manuscripts and Archival Sources Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, MS Ee 1.10 Manchester, John Rylands Library, MS 89 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS e Musaeo 110 ———, MS Fairfax 2 ———, MS Hatton 111 ———, MS Laud Misc 156 ———, MS Canon. Bibl. Lat. 70 ———, MS Selden Supra 51 Oxford, Christ Church, MS 146 Oxford, Trinity College, MS 93

59 Ghosh suggests that the audience for the EV translations of Jerome’s Old Testament prefaces must have been similarly learned: see Ghosh, ‘The Prologues’, p, 181.

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Primary Sources English Wycliffite Sermons, ed. by Pamela Gradon and Anne Hudson, 5 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983–1996) A Glossed Wycliffite Psalter: Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Bodley 554, ed. by Michael Kuczynski, 2 vols, Early English Text Society, o.s. 352, 353 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019) The Holy Bible, Containing the Old and New Testaments, with the Apocryphal Books, in the Earliest English Versions, ed. by Josiah Forshall and Frederic Madden, 4 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1850) The Middle English Glossed Prose Psalter, edited from Cambridge, Magdalene College, MS Pepys 2498, Part i, ed. by Robert Ray Black and Raymond St-Jacques (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2012) Nicholas of Lyra, Postilla litteralis, in Bibliorum Sacrorum cum Glossa Ordinaria, 6 vols (Venice: [n. pub.], 1603) Peter Comestor, Historia scholastica, in Patrologiae cursus completus: series latina, ed. by Jacques-Paul Migne, cxcviii (Paris: Garnier, 1844–65), cols 1049–1722a Peter Lombard, Commentaria in Psalmos, in Patrologiae cursus completus: series latina, ed. by Jacques-Paul Migne, cxci (Paris: Garnier, 1844–1865), cols 61b–1296d ———, Commentaria in Epistolam II Ad Thessalonicenses, in Patrologiae cursus completus: series latina, ed. by Jacques-Paul Migne, cxcii (Paris: Garnier, 1844–1865), cols 311a–326b ‘The Prologue to the Wycliffite Bible’, in The Earliest Advocates of the English Bible: The Texts of a Medieval Debate, ed. by Mary Dove (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2010), pp. 3–85 Reilly, Robert, ‘A Middle English Summary of the Bible: An Edition of Trinity College (Oxon) MS 93’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Washington, 1966) Richard Rolle, The Psalter or Psalms of David and Certain Canticles With a Translation and Exposition in English, ed. by H. R. Bramley (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1884) Two Revisions of Rolle’s English Psalter Commentary and the Related Canticles, ed. by Anne Hudson, Early English Text Society, 3 vols, o.s., 340, 341, 343 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012–2014) Secondary Works Dinkova-Bruun, Greti, ‘Biblical Versification and Memory in the Later Middle Ages’, in Culture of Memory in East Central Europe in the Late Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period, ed. by Rafał Wójcik (Poznań: Biblioteka Uniwersytecka, 2008), pp. 53–64 Doležalová, Lucie, and Tamás Visi, ed., Retelling the Bible: Literary, Historical, and Social Contexts (Frankfurt a. M.: Peter Lang, 2011) Dove, Mary, ‘Love ad litteram: The Lollard Translations of the Song of Songs’, Reformation, 9.1 (2004), 1–23

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———, The First English Bible: The Text and Context of the Wycliffite Versions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007) Fowler, David C., ‘A Middle English Bible Commentary (Oxford, Trinity College MS 93)’, Manuscripta, 12.2 (1968), 67–78 Ghosh, Kantik, The Wycliffite Heresy: Authority and the Interpretation of Texts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002) ———, ‘The Prologues’, in The Wycliffite Bible: Origin, History and Interpretation, ed. by Elizabeth Solopova (Leiden: Brill, 2017), pp. 162–82 ———, ‘“And so it is licly to men”: Probabilism and Hermeneutics in Wycliffite Discourse’, The Review of English Studies, 70.295 (2019), 418–36 Hargreaves, Henry, ‘An Intermediate Version of the Wycliffite Old Testament’, Studia Neophilologica, 28.2 (1956), 130–47 ———, ‘Popularising Biblical Scholarship: The Role of the Wycliffite Glossed Gospels’, in The Bible and Medieval Culture, ed. by W. Lourdaux and D. Verhelst (Louvain: Leuven University Press, 1979), pp. 171–89 Hudson, Anne, The Premature Reformation: Wycliffite Texts and Lollard History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988) ———, Doctors in English: A Study of the Wycliffite Gospel Commentaries (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2015) ———, ‘Earlier Version/Later Version — in the Wycliffite Bible Is that the Only Choice?’, in Medieval and Early Modern Religious Cultures: Essays Honouring Vincent Gillespie on his Sixty-Fifth Birthday, ed. by Laura Ashe and Ralph Hanna (Cambridge: Brewer, 2019), pp. 63–82 Hudson, Anne, and Elizabeth Solopova, ‘The Latin Text’, in The Wycliffite Bible: Origin, History and Interpretation, ed. by Elizabeth Solopova (Leiden: Brill, 2017), pp. 107–32 Kelly, Henry Ansgar, The Middle English Bible: A Reassessment (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016) Ker, N. R, ‘A Middle English Summary of the Bible’, Medium Aevum, 29.2 (1960), 115–18 Krey, Philip D., and Lesley Smith, ed., Nicholas of Lyra: The Senses of Scripture (Leiden: Brill, 2000) Kuczynski, Michael ‘The Psalms and Social Action in Late Medieval England’, in The Place of the Psalms in the Intellectual Culture of the Middle Ages, ed. by Nancy Van Deusen (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999), pp. 191–214 ———, ‘Glossing and Glosses’, in The Wycliffite Bible: Origin, History and Interpretation, ed. by Elizabeth Solopova (Leiden: Brill, 2017), pp. 346–67 Levy, Ian Christopher, ‘Trinity and Christology in Haimo of Auxerre’s Pauline Commentaries’, in The Multiple Meaning of Scripture: The Role of Exegesis in Early-Christian and Medieval Culture, ed. by Ineke van ‘t Spijker (Leiden: Brill, 2009) pp. 101–23 Light, Laura, ‘French Bibles c. 1200–30: A New Look at the Origin of the Paris Bible’, in The Early Medieval Bible: Its Production, Decoration and Use, ed. by Richard Gameson (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 155–76

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———, ‘Non-Biblical Texts in Thirteenth-Century Bibles’, in Medieval Manuscripts, their Makers and Users: A Special Issue of Viator in Honor of Richard and Mary Rouse, ed. by Christopher Baswell (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011) pp. 169–83 Middle English Dictionary [accessed 15 July 2021] Minnis, Alastair, Medieval Theory of Authorship: Scholastic Literary Attitudes in the Later Middle Ages, 2nd edn (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010) Morey, James H., ‘Peter Comestor, Biblical Paraphrase, and the Medieval Popular Bible’, Speculum, 68.1 (1993), 6–35 ———, Book and Verse: A Guide to Middle English Biblical Literature (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000) Pouzet, Jean-Pascal, ‘Entre abbreviatio et auctoritas: Les Modes de l’écriture vernaculaire dans un Compendium Moyen-Anglais de la Bible’, in The Theory and Practice of Translation in the Middle Ages, ed. by Rosalynn Voaden, René Tixier, Teresa Sanchez Roura, and Jenny Rebecca Rytting (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003), pp. 101–11 Smith, Lesley, ‘Uncertainty in the Study of the Bible’, in Uncertain Knowledge: Scepticism, Relativism, and Doubt in the Middle Ages, ed. by Dallas G. Denery, Kantik Ghosh and Nicolette Zeeman (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), pp. 135–59 Solopova, Elizabeth, Manuscripts of the Wycliffite Bible in the Bodleian and Oxford College Libraries (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2016) ———, ed., The Wycliffite Bible: Origin, History and Interpretation (Leiden: Brill, 2017) ———, ‘The Manuscript Tradition’, in The Wycliffite Bible: Origin, History and Interpretation, ed. by Elizabeth Solopova (Leiden: Brill, 2017), pp. 223–45 Somerset, Fiona, Feeling Like Saints: Lollard Writings After Wyclif (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2014) Sutherland, Annie, English Psalms in the Middle Ages, 1300–1450 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015)

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Wyclif and Hus at the Council of Constance*

The reception of Wyclif ’s writings in medieval Bohemia has fascinated both English and Czech scholars, and research on this topic has explained many of the complexities of the relations between John Wyclif and the Czech reformers.1 The question of the extent to which John Wyclif influenced and inspired his followers in Bohemia has been of utmost importance to historians, philosophers, theologians, and philologists. For all of them, the only available materials for research into this subject are the surviving texts of the relevant authors. The methods currently applied by textual scholarship to understand the transmission of ideas in textual corpora are based on textual comparison in the broadest context. Scholars seem to be past the mechanical approach of juxtaposing passages and building their arguments about the (in)dependencies of individual authors merely on these, as applied in the nineteenth century in connection with the Czech Reformation, notably by Johann Loserth.2 The recent digitization of textual resources and the ensuing innovations in the field of digital humanities are a great asset for textual scholarship and have advanced the process of source identification immensely.3 Still, disentangling the intricate networks of textual borrowings in medieval texts largely depends

* Research leading to this study was financially supported by a grant from the Czech Science Foundation (GA ČR), ‘Jan Hus and Hussite Literature for the 21st Century’, grant agreement no. 17–15433S. 1 For a recent overview of relevant scholarship, see e.g. Hudson, Studies in the Transmission; Šmahel, ‘Wyclif ’s Fortune in Hussite Bohemia’, pp. 467–89; Van Dussen, From England to Bohemia. 2 Loserth, Hus und Wiclif, whose book triggered a long and heated debate about the ideological background of the Czech Reformation. References in the following are made to the English version of the first edition, Wiclif and Hus, trans. by Evans. 3 Andrews and Macé, ed., Analysis of Ancient and Medieval Texts and Manuscripts; Boot, and others, ed., Advances in Digital Scholarly Editing. Petra Mutlová   •  ([email protected]), is Associate Professor in the Department of Classical Studies, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic. Wycliffism and Hussitism: Methods of Thinking, Writing, and Persuasion, c. 1360 – c. 1460, ed. by Kantik Ghosh and Pavel Soukup, MCS 47 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021), pp. 223–244 FHG10.1484/M.MCS-EB.5.124376

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on the availability of edited sources and is governed by the editor’s knowledge of the overall historical context. Traditional and digital methods of textual scholarship for tracing the origins of certain ideas continue to yield varying results. The level to which, for example, Wyclif ’s ideas seem to reverberate in Hus’s texts keeps changing with every new critical edition of a relevant text. In consequence, the circulation of Wyclif ’s writings and his intellectual influence in medieval Bohemia is still poorly understood in the widest context of the network of medieval European intellectuals.4 It is indisputable that an approach with high precision is needed. However, the promising ‘lateral’ approach to Wycliffism, recently called for by the editors of the volume Europe after Wyclif,5 cannot be easily applied to the Czech material, which, to a large extent, remains unedited. For example, the question of the very beginnings of access to Wyclif ’s works in Bohemia, traditionally dated to 1381 or even 1378, has been recently opened anew. The examination of relevant primary unedited material has cast doubt upon the evidence of the spread of Wyclif ’s works in Prague before 1385.6 However this particular issue is resolved, the case is quite symptomatic. The journey of Wyclif ’s ideas to Hus’s and Hussite texts was naturally not a direct one. The gradual progression of Wyclif ’s opinions through the Bohemian context are still to be uncovered, and we do not yet see many of the connecting parts of this chain. Furthermore, because many of his texts still lack critical editions, the strategies informing Hus’s usage of Wyclif are poorly understood. This is true especially of Hus’s engagement in (and switching between) academic discourse and the popular dissemination of ideas that he had adopted from Wyclif. A valuable perspective on the propagation of ideas can be offered by texts with intricate transmission histories. In this respect, homiletic material is of special value. Late medieval religious debates were shaped by constant struggles between academic discourses and lay milieux. As the present volume shows, understanding such issues is an important goal of current scholarship. Among other things, it can illuminate how political and cultural brokers effectively influenced their audiences. In the case of Hus’s sermons, his strategy of working with Wyclif ’s ideas is currently far from clear. This article will therefore examine whether a chronological perspective can explain Hus’s development in this respect or whether other factors were more influential. It aims at contributing to this subject by analysing Hus’s policy in presenting Wyclif ’s ideas during his own trial at the Council of Constance in 1415. The





4 Many suggestions and questions were raised by Hudson, ‘The Survival of Wyclif ’s Works’. 5 Hornbeck and Van Dussen, ed., Europe After Wyclif, p. 4, propose this method as ‘lateral (as opposed to regional or teleological), in as much as it is concerned with the geographical and cultural reach of the Wycliffite controversies in their own time and with the cultural interplay of their period in medieval Europe, rather than with teleological trajectories determined by regional or confessional preoccupations’. 6 Schabel, Brinzei, and Maga, ‘A Golden Age of Theology at Prague’, pp. 19–40; also see the contribution of Dekarli in this volume, pp. 139–56.

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corpus of analysed texts comprises selected treatises that have recently been critically edited under the title Constantiensia.7 As a starting-point, methods applied by previous Hussite scholars to the question of Hus’s usage of Wyclif ’s texts will be discussed. This will be followed by a survey of the texts that Hus wrote in Constance and the way in which he used Wyclif ’s ideas in them. An analysis of a treatise selected from the Constantiensia volume, the De fidei sue elucidacione, will subsequently illustrate Hus’s strategy in detail.

Naming and Quoting Wyclif By way of introduction, a few words need to be said about the way Hus allegedly worked with Wyclif ’s texts. It has been noted that Hus’s strategy of quoting Wyclif represented an irregularity in his otherwise typically medieval modus operandi.8 Anežka Vidmanová-Schmidtová, who edited several of Hus’s texts, explained this by the fact that Wyclif was too recent an authority. Hus’s explicit citations of Wyclif must be read as proclaiming his support for his revered doctor evangelicus, whose authority Hus intentionally elevated to those of traditionally accepted auctoritates. Vidmanová pointed out two different strategies in Hus’s use of Wyclif: passages from Wyclif that Hus quoted without referring to him by name; and passages where Hus explicitly named Wyclif as his source. She distinguished two different phases in the ‘fight over Wyclif ’ in Bohemia, namely the periods 1403–1407 and 1411–1412. Vidmanová argued that when using passages from Wyclif ’s texts, Hus as a rule did not name him. The few places where he did mention Wyclif ’s name explicitly represent deliberate exceptions. Vidmanová then analysed these passages in some detail, because — as she pointed out — scholars up until that point had paid attention only to textual borrowings by Hus from Wyclif suppresso nomine, i.e. those used and adapted in the common medieval way. The places in Hus’s treatises where references to Wyclif’s name and/or texts appear are not numerous. One of the first references appears in Hus’s earliest sermon collection, the so-called Puncta, dated to 1401–1403.9 Vidmanová suggested that Wyclif ’s name could have been left there for private purposes, made while reading and studying Wyclif’s texts in the circle of Hus’s colleagues and friends, and not intentionally as a manifestation of support for Wyclif. It should be emphasized that Wyclif ’s name does not appear in all copies of this as yet unedited text and that Hus adopted only a few lines from Wyclif ’s Sermones here.10 Two further examples stemmed from a period after Wyclif ’s 7 Magistri Iohannis Hus Constantiensia, ed. by Krmíčková and others. 8 Schmidtová, ‘Hus a Viklef ’, p. 222. The following paragraphs summarize her findings. 9 Unedited, see Bartoš and Spunar, Soupis pramenů, p. 138, no. 87. 10 Soukup, ‘K pramenům Husových Punkt’, p. 242, registers that Wyclif ’s name does not appear in Prague, Archiv Pražského hradu, Knihovna metropolitní kapituly, MS O 10, which is in his opinion a representative copy of the Puncta.

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teachings had been condemned by the authorities in Prague. Therefore, Vidmanová interpreted these explicit references as a form of political protest and a manifest expression of Hus’s support for Wyclif. One of these texts is Hus’s Sermones de sanctis from 1403–1407;11 the other is the university commentary Super IV Sententiarum, whose third book — which contains the quotation from Wyclif — Hus read during the autumn semester of 1408.12 What is worth mentioning is that even though in the university expositions it was permissible to discuss any topic or any author, the explicit mention of a contemporaneous author’s name was a transgression of the format and style of these expositions.13 Vidmanová explained this by the historical context and Hus’s moral support for his disciple Matěj of Knín, who was accused of adherence to Wyclif’s ideas. After 1409, alongside political changes, the practice of citing Wyclif changed too. This had to do, among other reasons, with the burning of Wyclif ’s books that took place in Prague on the archbishop’s orders in 1410. Hus subsequently authored several tracts in defence of Wyclif ’s various books and opinions. He also excerpted Wyclif ’s texts in his own treatises more often. His leadership of the annual quodlibetic disputation of 1411 gave him a further opportunity to defend Wyclif.14 In addition, Hus named Wyclif several times in his university exposition, Explicatio in septem priora capita primae epistolae s. Pauli ad Corinthios, composed at the end of 1411.15 As with the above examples, Vidmanová understood all of these as direct manifestations of Hus’s support and defence of Wyclif. Even though both the Quodlibet and the Explicatio were delivered at a university level, there appears to have been a difference between political action (Quodlibet) and an exposition of the New Testament for students of theology (Explicatio). In her later study, Vidmanová refined her findings and argued that Hus promoted Wyclif ‘from author to authority’ in 1407 when he started quoting him openly by name.16 Based on a survey of several of Hus’s homiletic texts, she argued that Wyclif ’s influence over Hus grew steadily, and that in his later works Hus more often supplied the authorities himself, disregarding those cited by Wyclif.17 She claimed that Wyclif ’s influence became conspicuous in Hus’s Leccionarium bipartitum, where — in its summer part composed 11 Bartoš and Spunar, Soupis pramenů, pp. 146–48, no. 96; uncritical edition printed as Iohannes Hus, Sermones de sanctis, ed. by Flajšhans, pp. 135, 197, 239. 12 Bartoš and Spunar, Soupis pramenů, pp. 68–71, no. 5; uncritical edition printed as Iohannes Hus, Super IV Sententiarum, ed. by Flajšhans, p. 621. 13 Schmidtová, ‘Hus a Viklef ’, pp. 220–21. Nevertheless, no such regulation or official rule survives for the pre-Hussite Prague University. 14 Magistri Iohannis Hus Quodlibet, ed. by Ryba. 15 There are no medieval copies of this text, which is preserved only in Flacius’s print from 1558. See Bartoš and Spunar, Soupis pramenů, pp. 71–72, no. 6. 16 Vidmanová, ‘Autoritäten und Wiclif in Hussens homiletischen Schriften’, p. 392. 17 Vidmanová, ‘Autoritäten und Wiclif in Hussens homiletischen Schriften’, p. 387. Based on his research into Hus’s sermons, this conclusion is accepted also by Soukup, ‘Jan Hus as a Preacher’, p. 122.

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in 1407 — Hus mentioned Wyclif ’s name six times and quoted his texts on additional occasions. This, Vidmanová argued, was the decisive moment for Hus in accepting Wyclif ’s authority. Since Vidmanová examined only selected homiletic works, her conclusions cannot be easily extended to all of Hus’s writings, which typologically vary to a great extent. Even though the public performance of a preacher and a university teacher cannot be separated, a distinction should be made between, for example, homiletic works and academic expositions. At any rate, a purely chronological account does not seem to provide a sufficient explanation. To give an example, it does not tally with recent analysis of Hus’s synodal preaching with regard to the development of his Antichrist rhetoric.18 In the case of two synodal sermons delivered by Hus in 1405 (Diliges Dominum Deum) and 1407 (State succincti), more numerous and significant arguments extracted from Wyclif ’s works appear in the earlier piece, while Wyclif ’s rhetorical influence is not pronounced in the later one. It is apparent that the above evidence is heterogeneous and cannot always be explained only by political or historical circumstances. A more precise classification of Hus’s strategy is clearly needed. Vidmanová undoubtedly triggered and made an invaluable contribution to minutely detailed textual research into Hus’s works and Hussite literature.19 A holistic approach to Hus’s texts in relation to Wyclif is still a desideratum, yet in the meantime individual studies can contribute to defining a more suitable approach to the matter. Let me mention one further example. The similarities between Wyclif and Hus were noted also by Vilém Herold.20 Herold called for caution when comparing textual similarities without considering the wider context of the circulation of relevant opinions. He stressed that from a methodological point of view, not only an immediate source of an idea must be examined, but the wider context of its circulation through the network of textual borrowings. Only a ‘distinctly substantive agreement’ in treating selected issues can point to textual dependencies.21 Herold demonstrated this approach via two examples, namely the homiletic works of Milíč of Kroměříž, and the teaching about Platonic ideas at Prague University at the turn of the fifteenth century.

18 Mazalová, ‘The Influence of John Wycliffe on the Antichrist Rhetoric of Jan Hus’, compared, among others, Hus’s two synodal sermons with the university sermon Abiciamus opera tenebrarum (1404). 19 Among her numerous studies on the subject, see Vidmanová, ‘Probleme der Textkritik im Spätmittelalter’, pp. 114–19; Vidmanová, ‘Zitationsprobleme zur Zeit des Konstanzer Konzils’, pp. 16–32. The inadequacy of analysing Wyclif ’s influence based on explicit and implicit textual borrowings from Wyclif in the works of Hus’s friend and disciple Jerome of Prague was demonstrated by Pavlíček, ‘Wyclif ’s Early Reception in Bohemia and his Influence on the Thought of Jerome of Prague’, pp. 89–114. 20 Herold, ‘How Wycliffite was the Bohemian Reformation?’, pp. 25–37. 21 Herold, ‘How Wycliffite was the Bohemian Reformation?’, p. 32.

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With regard to Milíč of Kroměříž, Herold compared several quotations from Bernard of Clairvaux in Milíč’s texts and showed convincingly that Hus’s adaptation is much more similar to the texts of Milíč than to those of Wyclif, especially if one considers the strategies of individual authors in using the authorities. To show that even such a result cannot be taken as evidence of direct textual dependence, Herold pointed to a particular quotation from Bernard of Clairvaux.22 This passage criticizes the profligacy of the contemporary Church and was used to highlight the contrast with the primitive Church by Milíč, but it does not appear in Wyclif ’s De ecclesia or Sermones. This passage appears coincidentally in several of Hus’s treatises: the sermon cycle Collecta, the university sermon Abiciamus opera tenebrarum, the polemical response Contra occultum adversarium, the major exposition De ecclesia, and in two pieces written at the end of his life — Sermo de pace and Responsiones ad articulos Páleč.23 What Herold did not emphasize, however, is the interesting fact that the introduction to this quotation appears in the above texts in two versions: a shorter (Collecta, Contra occultum adversarium, De ecclesia, Responsiones ad articulos Páleč) and a longer one (Abiciamus opera tenebrarum, Sermo de pace). Milíč also used the longer version.24 Remarkably, only in the Sermo de pace, written by Hus in 1414 to be presented at the Council of Constance, does an interesting insert in the introduction to Bernard’s text appear. This short insert concerning the hypocrisy of the clergy appears in all complete manuscripts of the Sermo de pace either as a part of the main text (notably in the basic manuscript), superscribed, or in the margin. This quotation from Bernard appears also in a manuscript which belonged to one of the college libraries of the medieval Prague University, and which Herold suggested as one of the florilegia that could have been used by Bohemian reformers, including Milíč or Hus.25 This manuscript contains alphabetically ordered excerpts from various authorities and the introductory passage from Bernard appears here in its longer version (fols 115v–116r). However, the relevant passage on fol. 116r does not contain the insert, either. It follows, therefore, that Hus, in his Sermo de pace aimed at the Council of Constance, either independently decided to add a sting to the criticism of the clergy, or — which seems more likely — Hus used a model 22 Herold, ‘How Wycliffite was the Bohemian Reformation?’, pp. 29–30; the sermon in question is no. 33 of Bernard’s Sermones super Cantica Canticorum. 23 All references to Herold, ‘How Wycliffite was the Bohemian Reformation?’, p. 30 n. 19, with the exception of Magistri Iohannis Hus Sermones de tempore qui Collecta dicuntur, ed. by Schmidtová, p. 101. In the critical edition of the Constantiensia, the quotation appears in the Sermo de pace on pp. 11–12 and in the Responsiones ad articulos Páleč on p. 268. One sentence from the same passage appears also in Hus’s question about indulgences: Magistri Iohannis Hus Questiones, ed. by Kejř, p. 137. 24 Iohannis Milicii de Cremsir Tres sermones synodales, ed. by Herold and Mráz, pp. 112–13. 25 Iohannis Milicii de Cremsir Tres sermones synodales, ed. by Herold and Mráz, pp. 19–20. The codex is Prague, NK, MS IV G 30, and is available at: [accessed 15 July 2021].

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for his text that has not been discovered so far. Bernard’s sharp words were naturally used by other medieval authors too — among others they appear in Jacob de Voragine’s Legenda aurea — but the way they got into Hus’s text is simply impossible to trace at present.26 The fact that virtually no systematic research has been done on the florilegia used in the Bohemian environment fundamentally limits any textual comparison. Almost half a century ago, Herold — in line with Vidmanová — suggested that this kind of research into Hussite and pre-Hussite literature would yield valuable results.27 Later on, he stressed that based purely on textual congruence no direct link between any two authors can be made, and underlined that such a caveat applies to Wyclif ’s texts as well.28 Herold concluded that given the volume and state of unexplored documents, to evaluate at that time the ‘intellectual contents of the Bohemian Reformation […] [was] premature’.29 Currently, a great deal more material is available for study, among others owing to the meticulous analyses of Anežka Vidmanová. Nevertheless, no new approach with regard to comparing Wyclif ’s texts and Hus’s oeuvre has been defined.30 As shown above, the methodological approaches applied by Loserth or Vidmanová did not yield satisfactory results. It is clear that not only the chronological framework, but also the question of genre, played a role in the way Hus worked with Wyclif ’s texts. In order to provide grounds for defining a more suitable approach to this task, more analytical case studies must be carried out. To this end, the following analysis will consider the way Hus used and quoted Wyclif ’s texts in Constance.

Hus and his Constance Tracts (Constantiensia) The texts related to Hus’s participation at the Council of Constance between 1414 and 1415 have been labelled and edited as Constantiensia.31 This collection comprises eleven treatises by Hus and four sets of articles that were presented to Hus by the prosecution at the Council, to which he then had to respond. Understandably, they vary considerably in subject-matter, scope, and circulation.

26 Hus could have been inspired also by Wyclif, as a similar criticism — though different in wording — of the hypocrisy of the clergy appears in Wyclif ’s sermon no. 55 (Iohannis Wyclif Sermones, vol. i: Super evangelia dominicalia, ed. by Loserth, pp. 365–57, no. 55) where Wyclif alludes to Guillaume Peraldus (Parisiensis), an important author to both Wyclif and Hus. See also Vidmanová, ‘Hus a Vilém z Auvergne’, pp. 29–47. 27 Iohannis Milicii de Cremsir Tres sermones, ed. by Herold and Mráz, pp. 19–20. 28 Herold, ‘How Wycliffite was the Bohemian Reformation?’, p. 30. 29 Herold, ‘How Wycliffite was the Bohemian Reformation?’, p. 37. 30 Some of the previous approaches and opinions were summarized by Šmahel, ‘Instead of Conclusion’, pp. 394–97. 31 Magistri Iohannis Hus Constantiensia, ed. by Krmíčková and others.

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Hus worked on all of the eleven self-contained texts while he was in Constance, either before or after his imprisonment.32 Three of these texts, however, stand out in so far as the way they were composed is concerned: Hus started to work on them prior to his departure for Constance and completed their final redaction in Constance. Formally, these were speeches that Hus hoped to deliver at the Council but was not given the opportunity to do so. They include the following: 1. Sermo de pace (Sermon on peace) with which Hus intended to greet the Council; 2. De sufficiencia legis Cristi (On the sufficiency of the Law of Christ) in which he argued that the Law of Christ is sufficient for the administration of the Church Militant; and 3. De fidei sue elucidacione (On the explanation of personal faith) where he explained his concept of faith and several issues connected with it. A draft of these three sermons survives in Hus’s autograph in a codex presently housed in Vienna. This draft was written between September and October 1414.33 Apart from the three above-mentioned texts, the volume of the Constantiensia contains: 4. De sumpcione sangwinis Iesu Cristi sub specie vini (On receiving the blood of Jesus Christ under the species of wine), Hus’s only text in which he expressed his views on the lay chalice, a politically loaded issue that was being fervently discussed in Bohemia at that moment. In all probability, Hus finished this treatise before his first imprisonment in Constance (i.e. between 3 and 28 November 1414), being forced by the aggravating situation in Bohemia to give a statement about the issue. Hus built his arguments with the help of excerpts from texts supplied by his colleagues and took a moderate stand in solving the issue, namely, that the lay chalice was not necessary, but only beneficial for salvation.34 Subsequently, during his first imprisonment at the Dominican monastery (after 6 December 1414), Hus wrote seven shorter texts at the direct request of his

32 For Hus’s trial in Constance, see e.g. Novotný, M. Jan Hus. Život a učení, i. 2, pp. 355–460; Kejř, Die Causa Johannes Hus und das Prozessrecht der Kirche, pp. 126–84; Fudge, The Trial of Jan Hus; see also Provvidente, ‘Hus’s Trial in Constance’, pp. 254–88. 33 Under the title Autographum Vindobonense it is critically edited in Magistri Iohannis Hus Constantiensia, ed. by Krmíčková and others, pp. 99–102; analysed by Molnár, ‘Pohled do Husovy literární dílny’, pp. 239–46; translated into Czech by Dobiáš and Molnár, Husova výzbroj do Kostnice, pp. 40–42; see also an English summary of Molnár’s findings by Šmahel, ‘Instead of Conclusion’, pp. 380–82. 34 The question of the lay chalice was analysed by Krmíčková, Studie a texty k počátkům kalicha v Čechách; see also Krmíčková, ‘The Fifteenth Century Origins of Lay Communion sub utraque in Bohemia’, pp. 57–65; Krmíčková, ‘Utraquism in 1414’, pp. 99–105.

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jailors. They reflect on various issues of pastoral nature that were personally interesting to these Italian clerics. These short pieces are among Hus’s most widely circulated treatises (the number of extant copies of individual tracts varies between fourteen and twenty-four). There are indications that Hus composed them one after another, yet because these texts were copied and circulated individually, it is impossible to determine their sequence or dating with any precision. These seven tracts were labelled Constantiensia parva and they include: 5. De mandatis Dei et de Oracione Dominica, a short exposition of basic Christian tenets and practices of catechetic character; 6. De peccato mortali, an explanation of how a mortal sin is committed and how it leads to condemnation, explicitly dedicated to Hus’s jailor Robert; 7. De cognicione Dei, a short lesson about the Christian attitude to God, namely how God can be recognized, desired, and loved charitably, and ultimately how Christians should delight in God; 8. De tribus hostibus hominis, an instruction on the seven deadly sins and the connections between them, in which Hus named three enemies (the flesh, the world, and the devil) which prompt men to three basic sins (pride, greed, and lust), from which all other sins stem (the text is dedicated to his jailor George); 9. De penitencia, which too discusses sins, while it focuses on the forms of repentance in connection with the period of Lent and is aimed at his jailor Jacob; 10. De matrimonio, in which Hus instructed one of his jailors, Robert, on matters related to matrimony; 11. De sacramento corporis et saguinis Domini (often known by its incipit Sepius rogasti), the only Eucharistic tract that Hus ever wrote, finished on 5 March 1415, in which Hus summed up his views on the Eucharist in four lengthy sections at the repeated request of his jailor Robert. Last but not least, Hus composed four sets of articles, the so-called Responsiones, in which he responded to the articles of his accusation formulated by the Council. Hus’s answers are determined and delimited by the content of the accusations and hence are somewhat peripheral to the analysis of Hus’s own usage of Wyclif in Constance. They include: 12. Responsiones ad deposiciones testium contra M. Iohannem Hus, three sets of accusatory articles elicited from various witnesses and related to Hus’s activity in Bohemia between 1409 and 1411. Sometime in September or October 1414, Hus supplied these articles with his own responses and took the material with him to Constance. Hus’s answers are not long and they address the sacraments (above all the Eucharist), ecclesiological issues (papacy, excommunication), or Hus’s political actions (preaching in the Bethlehem chapel, university activities). There are several places where

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Hus was directly confronted with his adherence to Wyclif: in two articles, for example, Hus responded in the positive about having held that Wyclif was a catholic doctor.35 13. In the Responsiones ad articulos Wyclef, Hus was confronted with forty-five articles extracted from Wyclif ’s texts by Johannes Hübner and condemned by Prague University in 1403. The Fathers of the Council were surprised that — when he was given the opportunity to respond to these at the turn of 1414 and 1415 — Hus readily denied most of the articles and assented to only four of them. 14. The Responsiones ad articulos Páleč were concerned with crucial points of Hus’s teachings, above all with ecclesiology. Hus’s one-time friend Štěpán Páleč together with the prosecutor Michael de Causis formulated thirty-four articles extracted mainly from Hus’s treatise De ecclesia. To these, a further eight articles were added which reportedly attested to Hus’s erroneous public activities and behaviour and proved that he had expressed heretical opinions in his other treatises. The Council confronted Hus with these forty-two articles at the beginning of January 1415. In his responses, Hus strove to show that the individual statements were misinterpreted, taken out of context, or that he had never expressed them in the presented form. 15. The Responsiones breves ad articulos ultimos are Hus’s short answers to the final thirty articles presented to him by the Council at the very end of the trial. Some of the articles had already been presented to him earlier; the wordings of some were amended; and some were newly extracted from Hus’s treatises. These articles were publicly read and accepted by the Council on 18 June 1415, and subsequently presented to Hus in order to give him a last chance to recant. Having refused to do so two days later, Hus was — based on these articles — condemned by the Council of Constance on 6 July 1415.

Wyclif in Hus’s Constance Tracts It is a widely accepted fact that Hus was condemned by the Council of Constance to a large extent because of his adherence to Wyclif ’s opinions, formulated above all in his treatise De ecclesia.36 It has been noted by many Hussite scholars that Wyclif ’s influence reverberates also in Hus’s texts written

35 Magistri Iohannis Hus Constantiensia, ed. by Krmíčková and others, pp. 217, 234; see also pp. 219, 220, 228, 235. 36 Mistr Jan Hus, Tractatus de ecclesia, ed. by Thomson, pp. xi–xxiv; the book was first published as Magistri Johannis Hus Tractatus de ecclesia in 1956. See De Vooght, L’Héresie de Jean Huss; Patschovsky, ‘Ekklesiologie bei Johannes Hus’, pp. 370–99; Herold, ‘Wyclif ’s Ecclesiology and Its Prague Context’, pp. 15–30.

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in the last days of his life.37 Previous research was based on uncritically edited printed material, and thus it will be interesting to contrast it with the recently published critical edition of Hus’s texts written in Constance. A look at the index to Hus’s Constance tracts naturally cannot convey the intricate way Hus worked with Wyclif ’s texts. Yet a short summary will be useful as an introduction. There are almost sixty entries with references to Wyclif ’s works, all of them indirect allusions (and surely even more will surface in the future). Quite understandably, Hus did not cite Wyclif ’s texts directly in any of his Constance tracts. Nevertheless, it is remarkable that all of the references to Wyclif — with two insignificant exceptions — come from the three tracts on which Hus started working while he was still in Bohemia. In his treatise arguing for the sufficiency of Christ’s law, Hus cited mainly from Wyclif ’s De civili dominio and De veritate sacre scripture. Wyclif ’s more famous or more widely disseminated texts Dialogus (Speculum ecclesie militantis) and De ecclesia are quoted only in Hus’s explanation of faith. Together, these treatises make up half of the total number of Hus’s references to Wyclif in the Constantiensia volume. The other half comprises references to Wyclif ’s Latin sermons, which are profusely quoted in all three of Hus’s above-mentioned texts. Already Loserth observed that in these three texts Hus made good use of Wyclif ’s sermons, yet he printed juxtaposing passages only from the Sermo de pace and its models in Wyclif ’s Sermones dominicales (T278, T85) and Sermones quadraginta (T278).38 He suggested (although without concrete evidence) that Hus freely adapted here some of Wyclif ’s other writings, namely De Christo et suo adversario Antichristo, De ecclesia, and Trialogus, and that Hus had used all these texts previously in his own treatise De ecclesia.39 Contrary to Loserth’s assumption, the critical edition makes it clear that it is mostly Wyclif ’s sermons that reverberate in Hus’s Constance tracts. Hus quoted from all three collections in which Wyclif ’s sermons survive.40 There are twenty-seven references to eleven of Wyclif’s sermons. These sermons include four of the famous Sermones quadraginta (T261, T277, T278, T282), two of the Sermones viginti (T237, T239), and finally five sermons of the widely circulated Sermones dominicales (T85, T98, T137, T205, T206) — here Hus quoted from all three cycles of the Sermones dominicales (two references are

37 The Sermo de pace, for example, was seen as an example of the most pronounced influence of Wyclif by Novotný, M. Jan Hus. Život a učení, i. 2, p. 351. Others, however, saw in the text Hus’s effort to showcase his orthodoxy, e.g. Kybal, M. Jan Hus. Život a učení, ii. 2, pp. 505–07. For a summary of further opinions, see Nechutová, ‘Sermones de pace’, pp. 17, 16–27. 38 Loserth, Wiclif and Hus, pp. 274–79. Loserth printed Wyclif ’s sermons in four volumes: Iohannis Wyclif Sermones, ed. by Loserth, 4 vols (1887–1890). References to Wyclif ’s sermons prefixed with T together with a number indicate items in the modern catalogue compiled by Thomson, The Latin Writings of John Wyclyf. 39 Loserth, Wiclif and Hus, pp. 278–79. 40 Hudson, ‘Wyclif ’s Latin Sermons’, pp. 223–48.

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to the dominical sermons; one to the Sanctorale sermons; and two to the dominical epistles).41 It is unfortunately impossible to offer a proper comparison with other works by Hus. Those that are available in older editions are hampered by the lack of modern tools. For this reason, it is only natural that many references to Wyclif went unnoticed, as their editors did not have searchable databases at their disposal. For the sake of a rough impression, the index to Hus’s university questions, written between c. 1408 and 1412, registers only ten allusions to Wyclif (even though there are more);42 in contrast, Hus’s polemical treatises composed in 1410–1413 and edited with the help of modern tools contain over eighty references to Wyclif, most of which are to the De civili dominio;43 while in Hus’s major piece De ecclesia from 1413 there are over sixty quotations from Wyclif, mostly from the De ecclesia and the De potestate pape.44 In Hus’s chronologically last postil written in Latin, the Postilla adumbrata from 1412, there are thirty-five references to Wyclif, almost all to his Sermones.45 What is more interesting is that the Questiones and the De ecclesia do not contain any references to Wyclif’s Sermones, while the Polemica contains only two. Thus, the high number of Wyclif’s sermon references in Hus’s Constantiensia is significant. To consider the usage of Wyclif ’s Sermones in Hus’s homiletic works, modern critical editions would be needed.46 Let me add at least a few observations relevant to Wyclif ’s sermons in Hus’s Constantiensia. The earliest mention of Wyclif in Hus’s unedited sermon collection Puncta refers to Wyclif ’s sermon T66, which does not appear in Hus’s Constance tracts.47 As mentioned above, the most numerous references to Wyclif ’s Sermones seem to appear in Hus’s Postilla adumbrata — yet there are only two references to Wyclif ’s sermons in the Constantiensia. In one case, the reference is to an altogether different passage (T137).48 The other case is 41 Or, to put it differently: in the Sermo de pace Hus quoted sermons T85 (3x), T237, T277 (4x), T278 (3x); in the De sufficiencia legis Cristi sermons T137 (2x), T205, T206, T261; and in the De fidei sue elucidacione sermons T98 (7x) and T282 (2x); two references appear in the above-mentioned preparatory notes Autographum Vindobonense (T237, T239). 42 Magistri Iohannis Hus Questiones, ed. by Kejř, p. 200. 43 Magistri Iohannis Hus Polemica, ed. by Eršil, pp. 630–32, which Gabriel Silagi analysed with the help of available searchable databases. 44 Mistr Jan Hus, Tractatus de ecclesia, ed. by Thomson, p. 241. 45 Magistri Iohannis Hus Postilla adumbrata, ed. by Ryba and Silagi, p. 776. 46 According to the indices of relevant editions, there are no references to Wyclif ’s sermons in Hus’s homiletic collections Collecta Ad te levavi (1404–1405), Passio Domini nostri Iesu Cristi (1407), Sermones de sanctis (1407–1408); the Quadragesimale (1410) is still unedited. Regarding their source material, Vidmanová, ‘Husova tzv. Postila de tempore (1408/9)’, pp. 17–18, suggested a strong division between Hus’s homiletic works intended for preaching in the Bethlehem chapel and those aimed at a university environment. 47 The same holds true for the two above-mentioned references to Wyclif ’s Sermones in Hus’s Polemica. 48 Magistri Iohannis Hus Postilla adumbrata, ed. by Ryba and Silagi, pp. 420–21; Magistri Iohannis Hus Constantiensia, ed. by Krmíčková and others, pp. 44–45, 52.

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more interesting: in his gospel for the Assumption of Mary (T282), Wyclif quite extraordinarily made a reference to his own parish at St Mary’s.49 In Hus’s Postilla adumbrata, the passage is only slightly adjusted and the allusion to St Mary’s parishioners dropped so as not to stand out in Hus’s text.50 However, the adjustment of this passage in Hus’s explanation of faith written in Constance is more complex.51 Here, in the middle of his final rogation to Virgin Mary, Hus referred to his own preaching in the Bethlehem chapel in Prague and mentioned how he had the vernacular Creed written on the walls of the chapel. This he then promptly connected with the above reference to Wyclif ’s sermon. As opposed to the Postilla adumbrata, a shorter part of the relevant passage in the sermon is quoted here, but the personal reminiscence is undeniably present and perhaps even intentionally underlined. Whether this could be read as a deliberate imitation of Wyclif must be left to speculation, but it does strengthen the assumption that Hus read Wyclif ’s sermon at some point of his life. Interestingly, in one of the manuscripts of the second part of Hus’s sermon collection Leccionarium bipartitum (pars aestiva), which is still unedited, thirty-eight of Wyclif ’s sermons are used as prothemes to the Sunday gospel sermons.52 There are only two sermons that appear both in this part of the Leccionarium and in one of the Constance tracts, the De sufficiencia legis Cristi (T205, T206). In the case of Wyclif ’s sermon T205, the wording in the Leccionarium is closer to the original model, which in Hus’s Constance treatise is also more abbreviated.53 This, contrary to the previous example, points to the fact that Hus did not have an exemplar of this sermon at hand while writing his De sufficiencia legis Cristi. For the time being, it can only be said that the high number of references to Wyclif ’s Sermones made by Hus in his Constance tracts is a remarkable phenomenon, even more so since the selection of concrete passages from Wyclif ’s sermons seems to be unparalleled in Hus’s other works. Naturally, this observation very much depends on the editorial approaches and decisions made in every single critical edition as well as on the material analysed for the purpose. At any rate, the intricate way Hus worked with Wyclif ’s sermons certainly deserves further attention. To demonstrate this, Hus’s explanation of faith written in Constance will serve as the closing example.

49 Iohannis Wyclif Sermones, iv: Sermones miscellanei, ed. by Loserth, p. 391; see Thomson, The Latin Writings of John Wyclyf, p. 185. 50 Magistri Iohannis Hus Postilla adumbrata, ed. by Ryba and Silagi, p. 395. 51 Magistri Iohannis Hus Constantiensia, ed. by Krmíčková and others, p. 98. 52 Hudson, ‘Wyclif ’s Latin Sermons’, pp. 225–26. The manuscript in question is Prague, NK, MS III B 19, fols 2r–250v. 53 I compared Iohannis Wyclif Sermones, iii: Super epistolas, ed. by Loserth, pp. 245–46; Magistri Iohannis Hus Constantiensia, ed. by Krmíčková and others, pp. 48–49; MS Prague, NK, MS III B 19, fol. 41v.

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A Case in Point: De fidei sue elucidacione In this tract, written sometime between September and October 1414, Hus meant to explain his understanding of the Church as a subject of faith. The reason behind this was that some of the indictments brought against him claimed that Hus’s concept of the Church did not comply with the then accepted definition. For this reason, Hus used the Apostles’ Creed as the guiding principle for the structure of his defence. The text was transmitted in at least five medieval copies, one of which is presently lost.54 By way of opening his text, Hus stressed his obedience to God’s Law and his orthodoxy in believing in the Trinity. Following the Trinitarian structure of the Apostles’ Creed (‘credo in Spiritum sanctum, sanctam ecclesiam catholicam, sanctorum communionem’), Hus thus strove to keep the threefold division throughout the text quite successfully and ingeniously in many details. After the introductory protestation, the thema is introduced three times (this part takes up almost thirty per cent of the whole text); this is then followed by a division and an exposition of the three articles of the thema (this part takes up c. fifty per cent of the whole text); and concluded by a rogation to Christ and Virgin Mary. For his arguments, Hus apparently utilized his own treatise De ecclesia (1413) where he substantially excerpted several texts by Wyclif, especially the De ecclesia. Let us take a detailed look at the way in which Hus took over passages from Wyclif ’s texts. The text opens with a handful of biblical quotations with the help of which Hus composed his protestation of orthodox faith. Subsequently, in the very first introduction of the thema, Hus made good use of one of Wyclif ’s Sunday gospels, written in the last years of Wyclif ’s life spent in his parish in Lutterworth between 1381 and 1384 (T98).55 Hus skipped Wyclif’s introductory part with the allegorical interpretation of the passage from Mark 7. 37 (‘Bene omnia fecit’), with which Wyclif opened his sermon, and excerpted the moral explanation of how men should serve God. Wyclif listed twenty articles of the Creed for this purpose and Hus used the first two of these. Hus adjusted Wyclif ’s text at several places, skipping sentences or adding his own text or biblical quotations. In the second introduction of the thema, after his own summary of the three Christian Creeds, Hus continued to cite from the same place in Wyclif ’s sermon (T98) where he ended in the previous part. Nevertheless, in a passage speaking about the three levels of faith in God (de credere), Hus added to Wyclif ’s texts quotations from Augustine and Bede adopted through Lombard’s Sentences. Such an adjustment can be found already in his previous treatises De credere (1411), De tribus dubiis (1412), and De sex erroribus (1413). The exact wording at the beginning of this passage in the De fidei sue elucidacione is closer to the De sex erroribus, but subsequent

54 Magistri Iohannis Hus Constantiensia, ed. by Krmíčková and others, pp. xx–xxiii, 81–98. 55 Iohannis Wyclif Sermones, i: Super evangelia dominicalia, ed. by Loserth, pp. 291–97, no. 44.

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longer parts and the general context are excerpted from the De tribus dubiis. In the De fidei sue elucidacione, Hus concluded cautiously that faith is not to be placed in any man who is not God (‘non est credendum in hominem, qui non est Deus’), thus adopting Augustine’s original statement about the Church (‘non est credendum in ecclesiam, cum non sit Deus, sed domus Dei’). Interestingly, in a second redaction of the De tribus dubiis (as yet unedited), Hus expanded this passage by an insertion that this highest manner of believing is not to be bestowed upon the pope (‘cum ergo papa non sit Deus omnipotens […] non est in papam credendum’).56 This, understandably, Hus did not repeat in his Constance text. There are further short passages that appear in other texts by Hus, yet the De tribus dubiis positively seems to be the source of this passage in the De fidei sue elucidacione. The following part excerpts again Wyclif ’s above-mentioned sermon (T98). Subsequently, Hus rephrased Wyclif ’s explanation of the three senses of the word credere, which is closest in wording to Wyclif ’s Dialogus. In the following exposition of the first article of the thema, Hus continued to excerpt Wyclif’s above-mentioned sermon (T98). He supplied Wyclif’s text with more biblical references as well as references to Augustine, but for the first time in this text draws on his own treatise De ecclesia. A similar strategy is applied in the second part of the exposition, which starts again with Wyclif’s sermon (T98), but is sewn together mostly from Hus’s own De ecclesia and Wyclif’s tract of the same name. Nevertheless, it is evident that Hus’s own De ecclesia was the real model for this part. Hus combined and put together passages from various places of the first two chapters in a disorderly way and jumped forward and backward in the cited text. There are, however, other places where the wording of Wyclif’s De ecclesia and Hus’s De ecclesia are closer to each other than to the reading of Hus’s De fidei sue elucidacione.57 The third part of the exposition opens again with an allusion to Wyclif’s sermon (T98), but generally follows Hus’s De ecclesia (chapters 2 and 3), augmented by biblical references. In the final rogation, Hus alluded to one of Wyclif ’s Sermones quadraginta (T282), in which Wyclif ’s personal reminiscences appeared. As discussed above, Hus in all probability imitated this by referring to his own preaching activities in the Bethlehem chapel in Prague, as the comparison with the adaptation of the same passage in Hus’s Postilla adumbrata revealed. The above evidence suggests that in the first part of his De fidei sue elucidacione Hus largely excerpted one of Wyclif ’s Sermones (T98), while in the second part he supplied it also with material from his own De ecclesia. The crucial question to ask, naturally, is what kind of material was at Hus’s

56 Krmíčková, ‘K rukopisnému dochování Husova traktátu De tribus dubiis’; I thank Helena Krmíčková for kindly sharing her transcription with me. 57 For example, in a passage interpreting the Church as the bride of Christ: Magistri Iohannis Hus Constantiensia, ed. by Krmíčková and others, p. 93; Mistr Jan Hus, Tractatus de ecclesia, ed. by Thomson, p. 3; Iohannis Wyclif Tractatus de ecclesia, ed. by Loserth, pp. 2–3.

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disposal in Constance. Hus complained about the lack of books there on several occasions.58 Scholars generally accept that when working on his responses to the accusatory articles (the above-mentioned Responsiones), Hus had a copy of his own De ecclesia at his disposal.59 Nevertheless, the case of the De fidei sue elucidacione shows that the situation was not that simple. In one of his letters from Constance, Hus mentioned that apart from the Bible he had brought with himself also his university exposition of the Sentences.60 Yet the quotation from Lombard in the De fidei sue elucidacione shows that Hus did not rely either on his De ecclesia, or on his own commentary of the Sentences, or even directly on Lombard’s Sentences, but took another of his treatises as a model (De tribus dubiis). In any case, it is difficult to comprehend the reason why Hus would have brought his Sentences commentary to Constance. Moreover, the disorderly manner of citations from Hus’s De ecclesia in the De fidei sue elucidacione is not in accordance with the supposition that the De ecclesia was the main source of material for Hus in Constance. We can assume that Hus had made notes and excerpted Wyclif for future purposes while he still had access to relevant material in Bohemia. Yet the way he used Wyclif ’s texts in Constance — above all his Sermones — is perplexing and suggests that Hus must have had at his disposal excerpts that have not been identified so far.

Conclusion The whole matter of Hus’s strategy in using Wyclif ’s texts is complicated and difficult to understand. I have tried to show that the generally accepted hypothesis that in the course of his life Hus gradually quoted from and referred to Wyclif more often and more openly is not sufficiently precise and for certain concepts simply does not hold. In his Constance tracts written between 1414 and 1415, Hus quite understandably dropped his previous attitude of openly referring to Wyclif. Yet these texts are still patchworks of Wyclif ’s texts. However, these texts are largely different from those Hus had used earlier in his career. Was this intentional? Did Hus believe that the Fathers of the Council would not recognize Wyclif if he substituted his De ecclesia with more of the Sermones? And why exactly the Sermones? A nuanced understanding of this issue is substantially complicated by the problem of identifying sources of concrete thoughts and passages, as discussed at the beginning of this paper.

58 For example Magistri Iohannis Hus Constantiensia, ed. by Krmíčková and others, pp. 171, 192. 59 Magistri Iohannis Hus Constantiensia, ed. by Krmíčková and others, pp. lvi–lxxi. See also Šmahel, ‘Instead of Conclusion’, pp. 370–75. Apart from this, Hus brought with himself his polemical texts Contra occultum adversarium, Contra Stephanum Palecz, and Contra Stanislaum de Znoyma. 60 M. Jana Husi Korespondence a dokumenty, ed. by Novotný, pp. 311–12: ‘adduxeram Super sentenciarum, bibliam, et aliam’. Flajšhans in Iohannes Hus, Super IV Sententiarum, ed. by Flajšhans, p. xi, identifies this mention with Hus’s commentary.

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In his Constance tract De sacramento corporis et saguinis Domini, for example, Hus followed very closely one of his earliest sermons from the collection Sermones de primo anno predicacionis from 2 June 1401 and made even a direct reference to it.61 The style and the diction of this sermon are greatly inspired by Wyclif, whom Hus even mentioned explicitly.62 It is unlikely that Hus had this sermon with him in Constance or made excerpts from it beforehand, for he could not have anticipated that he would be asked about this very issue by one of his jailors. Can we then assume that Hus had such an excellent memory and was able to cite almost verbatim his own text after fourteen long years? Also, would he rather remember his own text or a quotation from Wyclif ’s treatise that he had studied earlier? The issue of memorial reconstruction was left out from the above ruminations. Yet it is precisely quoting from memory which presents a valid and strong viewpoint when speaking about source identification and quotations. Vidmanová expressed doubts that Hus could have remembered his previous writings so precisely and suggested that his chronicler, Petr of Mladoňovice, who admired the almost supernatural abilities of Hus’s memory, was perhaps laying grounds for a future legend about his master.63 Still, more precision is needed in this respect too. The generally accepted assumption that medieval authors quoted from memory much more precisely than we can imagine today and that the imprecise wording of quotations is a result of this practice, is too vague.64 In the Constantiensia volume, Hus seems to remember Wyclif ’s texts very well and seems also to have made deliberate adjustments to them. However, another possibility, that he was using so far unidentified excerpts from relevant works or florilegia, should not be overlooked or underestimated. This second option might be suggested by the way Hus used Wyclif ’s Sermones in his Constance tracts. In any case, the circulation of Wyclif ’s Sermones in Bohemia does not stand out from the general context.65 Sermones are not among the extant autographs of Hus’s copy of Wyclif ’s works;66 they are not among Wyclif ’s texts that survive only in Bohemia; but they are recorded in the Hussite catalogue of Wyclif ’s works that circulated in medieval Bohemia.67 With respect to the above, there might be something more in the way Hus worked with this source than the general observation that he 61 Magistri Iohannis Hus Constantiensia, ed. by Krmíčková and others, pp. 192–93. Unlike the authorship of the whole collection, this sermon is explicitly ascribed to Hus, see Bartoš, ‘Studie k Husovi a jeho době 2. Hus ve sporech o Viklefa 1401–1408’, pp. 285–89. 62 Bartoš, ‘Studie k Husovi a jeho době 2. Hus ve sporech o Viklefa 1401–1408’, p. 288. 63 Vidmanová, ‘Zitationsprobleme zur Zeit des Konstanzer Konzils’, pp. 31–32. 64 Šmahel, ‘Instead of Conclusion’, p. 392. For the general context, see Carruthers, The Book of Memory. 65 The four extant copies of the above-described Wyclif ’s sermon T98, which Hus extracted in his De fidei sue elucidacione, belong to the group of manuscripts in which Wyclif ’s sermons commonly survive: see Thomson, The Latin Writings of John Wyclyf, p. 116. 66 Šmahel, ‘Instead of Conclusion’, pp. 370–75. 67 Hudson, ‘The Hussite Catalogue of Wyclif ’s Works’, pp. 16, 17, 20.

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supplied Wyclif ’s text with authorities of his own choice.68 For instance, in Hus’s Sermo de pace, the longest passages are taken from Wyclif ’s sermon on John 20. 21 (T277). The editor of this text argued that the lengthy passages from Bernard of Clairvaux which appear here are not quoted through Wyclif ’s Sermones, but are used in different contexts: that Hus was concerned with the moralistic context, while Wyclif was primarily concerned with dogmatic problems.69 It has also been pointed out that when Hus reworked his earlier sermon into a full-text scholarly sermon aimed for reading, the so-called Dixit Martha, he drew upon his university commentary on the Sentences, but extracted also Wyclif ’s Sermones.70 These examples show that Hus’s approach to Wyclif ’s Sermones in his homiletic oeuvre was varied and that it is difficult to differentiate between his use of florilegia and quoting from memory.71 To go further, more critically assessed material is needed for comparison — not only Hus’s own texts (both Latin and Czech), but also treatises of his colleagues and opponents. With more material at hand, it would be useful to turn the perspective the other way round and to follow individual references to a certain passage in the works of other authors, i.e. references to individual places in Wyclif ’s texts in Hus’s own and Hussite texts. This is naturally considered during the preparation of every critical edition but a large-scale analysis is still missing. The subjective methodology of source identification will continue to complicate our understanding of this issue. Nevertheless, we are lucky that the attempts at destroying Wyclif ’s texts were not very effective and that anyone could have had access to Wyclif’s texts throughout the fifteenth century.72 This way, we can still hope that further manuscript research will reveal more about Hus’s strategy of quoting Wyclif, and in consequence help to refine the presently applied methodology. This would certainly benefit our understanding of how Wyclif ’s texts were disseminated in medieval Bohemia.

Works Cited Manuscripts and Archival Sources Prague, Národní knihovna České republiky, MS IV G 30 ———, MS III B 19

68 Vidmanová, ‘Zitationsprobleme zur Zeit des Konstanzer Konzils’, pp. 23–24; Soukup, ‘Jan Hus as a Preacher’, p. 122. 69 Nechutová, ‘Sermones de pace’, p. 21. 70 Soukup, ‘Jan Hus as a Preacher’, pp. 118–19. Unfortunately, the two sermons used here do not appear in the Constantiensia volume and thus do not provide grounds for comparison. 71 Vidmanová, ‘Autoritäten und Wiclif in Hussens homiletischen Schriften’, p. 391, claimed that the cases where Hus quoted an authority without explicitly naming it were those when he used excerpts and was unaware of the original source. 72 Hudson, ‘The Survival of Wyclif ’s Works’, p. 41.

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Primary Sources Hus, Jan, Constantiensia, ed. by Helena Krmíčková, Jana Nechutová, Dušan Coufal, Jana Fuksová, Lucie Mazalová, Petra Mutlová, Libor Švanda, Soňa Žákovská, and Amedeo Molnár (†), Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis, 274 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2016) ———, Korespondence a dokumenty, ed. by Václav Novotný (Prague: Komise pro vydávání pramenů náboženského hnutí českého, 1920) ———, Passio Domini nostri Iesu Cristi, ed. by Anežka Vidmanová-Schmidtová, Magistri Iohannis Hus Opera omnia, 8 (Prague: Československá akademie věd, 1973) ———, Polemica, ed. by Jaroslav Eršil, 2nd edn, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis, 238 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010) ———, Postilla adumbrata, ed. by Bohumil Ryba and Gabriel Silagi, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis, 261 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015) ———, Questiones, ed. by Jiří Kejř, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis, 205 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004) ———, Quodlibet. Disputationis de Quolibet Pragae in Facultate Artium Mense Ianuario anni 1411 habitae Enchiridion, ed. by Bohumil Ryba, 2nd edn, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis, 211 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006) ———, Sermones de sanctis, ed. by Václav Flajšhans, Spisy M. Jana Husi, 7–8 (Prague: J. R. Vilímek, 1907) ———, Sermones de tempore qui Collecta dicuntur, ed. by Anežka Schmidtová, Magistri Iohannis Hus Opera omnia, 7 (Prague: Československá akademie věd, 1959) ———, Super IV Sententiarum, ed. by Václav Flajšhans, Spisy M. Jana Husi, 4–6 (Prague: Jaroslav Bursík, 1904) ———, Tractatus de ecclesia, ed. by S. Harrison Thomson (Prague: Komenského evangelická fakulta bohoslovecká, 1958) Milíč of Kroměříž, Tres sermones synodales, ed. by Vilém Herold and Milan Mráz (Prague: Academia, 1974) Wyclif, John, Sermones, ed. by Johann Loserth, 4 vols (London: Trübner & co., 1887–1890) ———, Tractatus de ecclesia, ed. by Johann Loserth (London: Trübner & co., 1886) Secondary Works Andrews, Tara L., and Caroline Macé, ed., Analysis of Ancient and Medieval Texts and Manuscripts: Digital Approaches (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014) Bartoš, František, ‘Studie k Husovi a jeho době 2. Hus ve sporech o Viklefa 1401–1408’, Časopis Musea království Českého, 89 (1915), 273–89 Bartoš, František Michálek, and Pavel Spunar, Soupis pramenů k literární činnosti M. Jana Husa a M. Jeronýma Pražského (Prague: Historický ústav ČSAV, 1965)

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Boot, Peter, Anna Cappellotto, Wout Dillen, Franz Fischer, Aodhán Kelly, Andreas Mertgens, Anna-Maria Sichani, Elena Spadini, and Dirk van Hulle, ed., Advances in Digital Scholarly Editing (Leiden: Sidestone Press, 2017) Carruthers, Mary, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008) De Vooght, Paul, L’Héresie de Jean Huss, 2 vols (Louvain: Publications de l’Université de Louvain, 1975) Dobiáš, F. M., and Amedeo Molnár, Husova výzbroj do Kostnice (Prague: Kalich, 1965) Fudge, Thomas A., The Trial of Jan Hus: Medieval Heresy and Criminal Procedure (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013) Herold, Vilém, ‘How Wycliffite Was the Bohemian Reformation?’, in The Bohemian Reformation and Religious Practice, ii, ed. by Zdeněk V. David and David R. Holeton (Prague: Main Library, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, 1998), pp. 25–37 ———, ‘Wyclif ’s Ecclesiology and Its Prague Context’, in The Bohemian Reformation and Religious Practice, iv, ed. by Zdeněk V. David and David R. Holeton (Prague: Main Library, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, 2002), pp. 15–30 Hornbeck II, Patrick J., and Michael Van Dussen, ed., Europe After Wyclif (New York: Fordham University Press, 2017) Hudson, Anne, Studies in the Transmission of Wyclif’s Writings (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008) ———, ‘The Hussite Catalogue of Wyclif ’s Works’, in Studies in the Transmission of Wyclif’s Writings (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), iii, pp. 1–35 ———, ‘Wyclif ’s Latin Sermons: Questions of Form, Date and Audience’, in Studies in the Transmission of Wyclif’s Writings (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), vi, pp. 223–48 ———, ‘The Survival of Wyclif ’s Works in England and Bohemia’, in Studies in the Transmission of Wyclif’s Writings (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), xvi, pp. 1–43 Kejř, Jiří, Die Causa Johannes Hus und das Prozessrecht der Kirche (Regensburg: Friedrich Pustet, 2005) Krmíčková, Helena, Studie a texty k počátkům kalicha v Čechách (Brno: Masarykova univerzita, 1997) ———, ‘The Fifteenth Century Origins of Lay Communion sub utraque in Bohemia’, in The Bohemian Reformation and Religious Practice, ii, ed. by Zdeněk V. David and David R. Holeton (Prague: Main Library, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, 1998), pp. 57–65 ———, ‘Utraquism in 1414’, in The Bohemian Reformation and Religious Practice, iv, ed. by Zdeněk V. David and David R. Holeton (Prague: Main Library, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, 2002), pp. 99–105 ———, ‘K rukopisnému dochování Husova traktátu De tribus dubiis’, Studie o rukopisech, 49.1 (2019), 27–36 Kybal, Vlastimil, M. Jan Hus. Život a učení, ii: Učení, Part 2 (Prague: Jan Laichter, 1926)

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Loserth, Johann, Wiclif and Hus, trans. by M. J. Evans (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1884) Mazalová, Lucie, ‘The Influence of John Wycliffe on the Antichrist Rhetoric of Jan Hus’, Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch, 55.1 (2020), 92–112 Molnár, Amedeo, ‘Pohled do Husovy literární dílny’, Listy filologické, 82 (1959), 239–46 Nechutová, Jana, ‘Sermones de pace’, in The Bohemian Reformation and Religious Practice, x, ed. by Zdeněk V. David and David R. Holeton (Prague: Filosofia, 2015), pp. 16–27 Novotný, Václav, M. Jan Hus. Život a učení, i: Život a dílo, Part 2 (Prague: Jan Laichter, 1921) Patschovsky, Alexander, ‘Ekklesiologie bei Johannes Hus’, in Lebenslehren und Weltentwürfe im Übergang vom Mittelalter zur Neuzeit: Politik — Bildung — Naturkunde — Theologie, ed. by Hartmut Boockman, Bernd Moeller, and Karl Stackmann (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1989), pp. 370–99 Pavlíček, Ota, ‘Wyclif ’s Early Reception in Bohemia and his Influence on the Thought of Jerome of Prague’, in Europe After Wyclif, ed. by Patrick J. Hornbeck II and Michael Van Dussen (New York: Fordham University Press, 2017), pp. 89–114 Provvidente, Sebastián, ‘Hus’s Trial in Constance: Disputatio aut Inquisitio’, in A Companion to Jan Hus, ed. by František Šmahel with Ota Pavlíček, Brill’s Companions to the Christian tradition, 54 (Leiden: Brill, 2015), pp. 254–88 Schabel, Chris, Monica Brinzei, and Mihai Maga, ‘A Golden Age of Theology at Prague: Prague Sentences Commentaries from 1375 to 1385, the terminus post quem for Evidence of Wycliffism in Bohemia’, Acta Universitatis Carolinae — Historia Universitatis Carolinae Pragensis, 55.1 (2015), 19–40 Schmidtová, Anežka, ‘Hus a Viklef ’, Listy filologické, 79 (1956), 219–27 Soukup, Pavel, ‘Jan Hus as a Preacher’, in A Companion to Jan Hus, ed. by František Šmahel with Ota Pavlíček, Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition, 54 (Leiden: Brill, 2015), pp. 96–129 ———, ‘K pramenům Husových Punkt: Jan Hus a Bernard Gui’, Studia historica Brunensia, 62.1 (2015), 235–47 Šmahel, František, ‘Wyclif ’s Fortune in Hussite Bohemia’, in Die Prager Universität im Mittelalter / The Charles University in the Middle Ages. Gesammelte Aufsätze / Selected Studies (Leiden: Brill, 2007), pp. 467–89 ———, ‘Instead of Conclusion: Jan Hus as Writer and Author’, in A Companion to Jan Hus, ed. by František Šmahel with Ota Pavlíček, Brill’s Companions to the Christian tradition, 54 (Leiden: Brill, 2015), pp. 370–409 Thomson, Williell R., The Latin Writings of John Wyclyf: An Annotated Catalog (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1983) Van Dussen, Michael, From England to Bohemia: Heresy and Communication in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012) Vidmanová, Anežka, ‘Husova tzv. Postila de tempore (1408/9)’, Listy filologické, 94 (1971), 7–22

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———, ‘Autoritäten und Wiclif in Hussens homiletischen Schriften’, in Antiqui und Moderni. Traditionsbewuβtsein und Fortschrittsbewuβtsein im späten Mittelalter, ed. by Albert Zimmermann (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1974), pp. 383–93 ———, ‘Hus a Vilém z Auvergne’, Studie o rukopisech, 18 (1979), 29–47 ———, ‘Probleme der Textkritik im Spätmittelalter’, Philologus, 123.1 (1979), 114–19 ———, ‘Zitationsprobleme zur Zeit des Konstanzer Konzils’, Communio viatorum, 40.1 (1998), 16–32

Monica Brînzei*

Stanislav of Znojmo and the Arrival of Wyclif’s Remanence Theory at the University of Vienna

In 1447, when Tommasso di Bartholomeo Parentucelli, previously master of theology at the University of Bologna, was elected Pope Nicholas V, he was guided by an ambitious project: to build a library. This was the origin of what is known today as the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana. It is not my goal here to retrace the history of this institution, but I will begin by pointing out that from its beginnings a special place in Nicholas’s library was devoted to Sentences commentaries.1 In 1455, when Nicholas V died, his library consisted of around 800 Latin manuscripts and approximately 400 Greek manuscripts, with none in other languages. In one single room, eight cabinets gathered together the main tools for a substantial theological education: the first cabinet, Bible and glosses; the second, Augustine, Jerome, Gregory, and Ambrose; in the third, Thomas Aquinas shared shelves with Albertus Magnus and a few theological treatises by other authors; the fourth cabinet was allocated to Sentences commentaries; the fifth collected ecclesiological treatises and vitae sanctorum; the sixth cabinet held canon law writings; the last two (a sinistra versus fenestram) were dedicated to texts from the Faculty of Arts: the Aristotelian corpus, some natural science, and rhetoric. As is clear from the above, priority was given to Sentences commentaries. As a general impression of the Pope’s collection, we have the canonical texts of the genre, but he seems to have had a preference



* Access to copies of manuscripts consulted for this paper was assured by ERC-THESIS n° 313339. I benefited from excellent working conditions in completing this research under the aegis of ERC-DEBATE n° 771589 and RISE project PN-III-P4-ID-PCCF-2016–0064. Stephen Lahey, Ota Pavlíček, and Chris Schabel read versions of this paper and provided comments and suggestions. 1 The first inventory of his library was edited by Müntz and Fabre, Bibliothèque du Vatican au xve siècle d’après des documents inédits, pp. 48–114. Monica Brînzei  •  is Directeur de recherche (DR2) at the IRHT, CNRS, Paris, specializing in late medieval philosophy and intellectual history. Wycliffism and Hussitism: Methods of Thinking, Writing, and Persuasion, c. 1360 – c. 1460, ed. by Kantik Ghosh and Pavel Soukup, MCS 47 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021), pp. 245–274 FHG10.1484/M.MCS-EB.5.124377

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for Franciscan (Alexander of Hales, Bonaventure, Richard of Mediavilla, Peter John Olivi, John Duns Scotus, Peter Auriol) and Augustinian authors (Gerard of Siena, Thomas of Strasbourg, Gregory of Rimini). According to the medieval catalogue, the collection of Sentences texts was completed by a group of anonymous commentaries that are still waiting to be identified. In the majority of cases there is just Book IV, which suggests an interest in sacramental theology. Among these anonymous works, I will focus on BAV, MS Vat. lat. 1120,2 which was described in the medieval inventory of the library from 16 April 1455 compiled by Cosme de Montserrat,3 as follows: ‘Item aliud volumen magne forme ex pergameno, copertum veluto morato cum quatuor serraturis argenteis in quarum scutis sunt arma pape Nicolai Quinti’ (Another volume of parchment of large format, covered in black velvet with four silver clasps on the shields of which are the arms of Nicholas V).4 Indeed, it is a large, luxurious manuscript with a monogram of Nicholas V on the first folio, and many decorative details seem to emphasize the importance of the text. The codex impresses by the elegance of its decoration, style, and writing.5 What was so special about the contents of the codex and why was it part of Nicholas V’s own collection? Whilst I am not sure I can provide clear answers to these queries, I will examine the suggestive evidence this manuscript furnishes in relation to one of the main concerns of the present volume: the complex and ambiguous role played by universities, in this case Vienna, in the reception of, and formulation of responses to, controversial topics broached by the Wycliffite and Hussite reformers and dissidents. BAV, MS Vat. lat. 1120 is no longer anonymous today, since Loris Sturlese identified these questions on Book IV of the Sentences of Peter Lombard as belonging to Peter Reicher of Pirchenwart, who read the Sentences at Vienna in 1417–1419. The present study is focused on this particular codex because of its presence in the collection of Pope Nicholas V and because Stegmüller omitted it when he compiled his catalogue on the Sentences.6 As Pirchenwart



2 The manuscript can be consulted online at this link and under the name of Peter of Pulkau: [accessed 31 July 2021]. A codicological analysis was published in the catalogue by Pelzer, Bibliothecae Apostolicae Vaticanae, p. 744. See also Manfredi, ‘I codici latini di Niccolò V’, pp. 180*–81*, 182. 3 Müntz and Fabre explain why this is not Calixtus III’s inventory, as was previously thought, but that of Nicholas V († 24 March), the completion of which they date to 16 April 1455, between Calixtus’s election and coronation (8 and 20 April). Cf.  Bibliothèque du Vatican au xve siècle d’après des documents inédits, ed. by Müntz and Fabre, p. 41. 4 Bibliothèque du Vatican au xve siècle d’après des documents inédits, ed. by Müntz and Fabre, p. 70. 5 See Pasut, ‘Per la miniatura a Roma alla metà del Quattrocento’, pp. 124, 147. For an interpretation of other decorated manuscripts from Nicholas V’s library, see Pasut, ‘Libri, miniatori e artisti alle originii della Vaticana’, pp. 416–65. 6 Sturlese, Dokumente und Forschungen zu Leben, pp. 78–82. It is missing from the list of manuscripts attributed to Pirchenwart by Stegmüller, Repertorium commentariorum in Sententias, n° 172, p. 283.

Stani slav o f Z no j m o

himself claimed at the end of the question to which this paper is devoted, he was a disciple of Peter Czech of Pulkau (c. 1370–1425, not of Czech origin; fol. 57ra: magister meus Petrus de Pulkau), a famous theologian from Vienna who was present at Jerome of Prague’s trial.7 Despite Sturlese’s discovery, a few years ago, when I began working with Chris Schabel on the Sentences questions of Nikolaus of Dinkelsbühl, the manuscript was still commonly attributed to Dinkelsbühl, as were many other sets of Sentences questions produced in the first years of the University of Vienna. In order to clarify the connection and the affiliation between these texts, we introduced the label ‘Vienna Group commentaries’, since all these writings were just variations of a base text compiled by Dinkelsbühl at Vienna.8 The algorithm of fractals could better illustrate how other commentaries developed from Dinkelsbühl’s original text following the same pattern. From Dinkelsbühl’s autograph, Vienna, Schottenstift, MS 269, succeeding generations built up a tradition of sedimentary texts, the final goal of which was to create a textbook serving theological instruction in Vienna. One of these clones is codex BAV, MS Vat. lat. 1120, which belongs to the third generation of the ‘Vienna Group’.9 Among the Vienna Group, Pirchenwart’s commentary on Book IV seems to be the most complete in terms of dealing extensively with all the common questions in this book,10 which might explain why we find this text in the collection of Pope Nicholas V. Having examined the entire text and located the explicit quotations,11 I can offer a general overview of the contents of the codex. The table in Appendix 1

7 On Pulkau, see Girgensohn, Peter von Pulkau und die Wiedereinführung des Laienkelches; Shank, Unless You Believe, You Shall Not Understand, pp. 117–22; Brinzei and Schabel, ‘The Past, Present, and Future of Late Medieval Theology’, pp. 201–06. Michael Shank discusses Jerome’s trial from the perspective of the history of the University of Vienna: ‘In visiting Vienna, Jerome was not entering neutral territory; on the contrary, a tribunal drawn from members of the Faculty of Arts supplemented by a few theologians — including Nicholas of Dinkelsbühl and Peter of Pulkau — formally charged Jerome with heresy’: Shank, ‘University and Church in Late Medieval Vienna’, p. 48. See also Walsh, ‘Von Wegestreit zur Häresie’, pp. 41–42. 8 Brinzei and Schabel, ‘The Past, Present, and Future of Late Medieval Theology’, pp. 174–266; Brinzei, and Schabel, ‘Nicholas of Dinkelsbühl and the University of Vienna’; Courtenay, ‘From Dinkelsbühl’s Questiones Communes to the Vienna Group Commentary’. 9 Zahnd, ‘Plagiats individualisés et stratégies de singularisation’, pp. 129–35; Courtenay, ‘From Dinkelsbühl’s Questiones Communes to the Vienna Group Commentary’, pp. 283–95; Sturlese, Dokumente und Forschungen zu Leben, pp. 78–82. 10 In general, it seems that Pirchenwart tries to present a Book IV that is as complete as possible. Compared to other versions in the Dinkelsbühlian line, his treatment of individual questions is much more extensive, without adding new questions. Cf. Zahnd, ‘Plagiats individualisés et stratégies de singularisation’, p. 126. 11 A list of citations was also compiled by Courtenay based on two different manuscripts: Göttweig, Klosterbibliothek, MS 261 (272), fols 1ra–376vb; and Klosterneuburg, Stifsbibliothek, MS 340, fols 1ra–287ra. Cf. Courtenay, ‘From Dinkelsbühl’s Questiones Communes to the Vienna Group Commentary’, pp. 304–15.

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below presents the results in parallel with the first version of Book IV of Dinkelsbühl compiled from Klosterneuburg, Stifsbibliothek, MS 301, illustrating the Vienna Group’s evolution from the Urtext. Pirchenwart thus remains close to Dinkelsbühl’s original. The number of quotations from canonical authorities such as John Duns Scotus, Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, and Durand of Saint-Pourçain is very similar, although BAV, MS Vat. lat. 1120 enriches the data with additional quotations from other theologians, such as Peter of Candia and Richard FitzRalph, notably increasing the prominence of Thomas of Strasbourg, who goes from having five excerpts to twenty-five. Some of the exotic quotations, indicating connections with Parisian theologians from the second half of the fourteenth century, such as Gottschalk of Nepomuk or Richard Barbe, are taken from Dinkelsbühl and found in his autograph manuscript, Vienna, Schottenstift, MS 269.12 When we compare texts sharing the same tradition and belonging to the same corpus, finding bricolage textuel13 is no longer a source of excitement. One way to escape platitudes or formulas such as ‘medieval plagiarism’ is to investigate what is not similar, what is not copied from one text to another, and therefore what the points of discontinuity inside the tradition are. Following this path, one finds that Pirchenwart distances himself from Dinkelsbühl’s text by injecting new sources and ideas into ongoing theological discussions. The Cistercian James of Eltville, who read the Sentences at Paris in 1369–1370, and whom Pirchenwart quotes five times, is an interesting case study.14 But the most surprising by far, although not completely unexpected after the Schism, is the presence of five explicit references to the Tractatus de corpore Christi of Stanislav of Znojmo, or Stanyslaus de Bohemia, as Pirchenwart introduces him. Calling attention to Stanislav and his treatise is interesting with respect to the ‘Vienna Group’, since from its beginnings the Faculty of Theology of Vienna adopted a very cautious and moderate attitude towards polemics or controversial topics.15 Dinkelsbühl himself avoided discussing the Schism

12 See the edition of the fragment, in which the Vienna Group quotes these two Parisian theologians via James of Eltville, in Zahnd, ‘Plagiats individualisés et stratégies de singularisation’, p. 223. Concerning Richard Barbe see Brinzei and Schabel, ‘The Past, Present, and Future of Late Medieval Theology’, pp. 221–22 n. 78. Alexander Baumgarten from University Babes-Bolyai, Cluj-Napoca is currently editing the Sentences commentary of Gottschalk of Nepomuk. See: [accessed 31 July 2021]. 13 Bricolage textuel or textual patchwork was popular in medieval texts. See Calma, ‘Plagium’, pp. 559–68; and Eco, ‘Riflessioni sulle tecniche di citazione nel Medioevo’, pp. 461–84. 14 For the reception of James of Eltville in Vienna, see Brinzei and Curut, ‘From Author to Authority: The Legacy of James of Eltville in Vienna’, pp. 419–78. 15 Marielle Lamy dedicates a short chapter (‘Retentissements à l’Université de Vienne et dans le monde germanique’) to the reaction of the Faculty of Theology at Vienna concerning the debate over the Immaculate Conception that shook Paris in the late fourteenth century. Letters from students in Paris to masters in Vienna attest that the latter were informed and tried to avoid similar debates. See Lamy, L’Immaculée Conception: étapes et enjeux d’une

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and conciliarism, although he seems to have been extremely concerned with the Jews (an issue current in the Vienna of his time);16 and he shows some interest in the Hussites. Indeed, the longest quaestio in Dinkelsbühl’s later Melk commentary on Book IV, from after the Schism and extant in hundreds of copies, a question occupying 46 columns of text (fols 74va–86ra) in the beautiful deluxe Klosterneuburg, Stiftsbibliothek, MS 47 (dated 1426), is dedicated to the Hussites and had an impact on later discussions.17 The quaestio, ‘Whether it is by evangelical law necessary for salvation to take the sacrament of the Eucharist in both kinds’, deals with Hus’s position on the Eucharist, but it does not contain any reference to Stanislav, unlike Pirchenwart’s version. Dinkelsbühl is thus not Pirchenwart’s source. Are Pirchenwart’s comments on Stanislav’s treatise a personal contribution to the Viennese theological debate? The answer is an emphatic no. His master, Peter of Pulkau, whose memory is praised at the end of Pirchenwart’s quaestio for Distinction 10 of Book IV, is the key to explaining Pirchenwart’s interest in Stanislav’s treatise, since, in his Vespera, Pulkau introduces Stanislav into Viennese theology. Jan Sedlák was the first to identify the reference to Stanislav in the Vespera in Vienna, ÖNB, MS 4300, fols 10r–21r,18 but he had doubts about the authorship, since the text is dated to several years after Pulkau’s lectures on the Sentences (1410 versus 1403–1405). Pirchenwart’s reference to the title of the Vespera, however, in combination with the name of his master confirms that this text is by Pulkau.19 Pirchenwart mentions Stanislav when he deals with the topic of Distinction 10 of Book IV20 in connection with the issue of transubstantiation, emphasizing Stanislav’s belief in the remanence of the bread and wine post-consecration. Pirchenwart presents him as someone who is not yet well known amongst Viennese theologians. We do not have information about the circulation of Stanislav’s texts in Vienna while Pirchenwart was active. The six surviving

controverse, pp. 587–91. On the attitude of the Vienna Faculty of Theology towards the Hussites, see the recent book by Traxler, ‘Firmiter Velitis Resistere’: Die Auseinandersetzung der Wiener Universität mit dem Hussitismus. 16 See the example of the forced baptism of Jewish infants in Brinzei, Friedman, and Schabel, ‘The Reception of Durand’s Sentences Commentary’, pp. 295–341. 17 Brinzei and Schabel, ‘The Past, Present, and Future of Late Medieval Theology’, p. 259. 18 Sedlák, Eucharistické traktáty Stanislava ze Znojma, pp. 359–60. I am grateful to Ota Pavlíček for assistance with this text. Girgensohn indicates another copy of Pulkau’s Vespera in Vienna, Schottenstift, MS 351, fols 231v–240v. Cf. Girgensohn, Peter von Pulkau und die Wiedereinführung des Laienkelches, p. 168. 19 In this paper I will limit my interpretation of Pulkau’s Vespera; my doctoral student Luciana Cioca will focus on this in one of the chapters of her dissertation on the tradition of vesperial quaestiones: ‘From Inceptor to Magister: The History of Vesperial Questions at the Medieval Universities’. 20 Peter of Pirchenwart, Sent. IV, dist. 10, BAV, MS Vat. lat. 1120, fols 48rb–57ra: ‘Ad declaratione distinctionis decime queritur: utrum corpus Christi et sanguis Christi in consecratione Eucharistie realiter sub speciebus panis et vini fiant et contineantur’.

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fifteenth-century manuscripts of Stanislav’s treatise arrived in Vienna21 only in the sixteenth century.22 He thus gives all the basic information: Stanislav is a theologian from Prague who wrote a small treatise entitled De corpore Christi.23 A short introduction to Stanislav will help us evaluate Pirchenwart’s reference to his treatise. Stanislav was one of the major figures of the Reform movement in Bohemia.24 Known as Jan Hus’s professor in Prague, Stanislav is probably the person who introduced his famous pupil to the teachings of Wyclif. A few treatises by him are extant and they enjoyed a large circulation in the Czech lands, some of them eventually reaching Vienna.25 These texts form the profile of a philosophical mind concerned with the status of universals,26 the theory of propositions,27 and epistemology, but also a polemical spirit who did not easily tolerate certain doctrines and customs of the Church. The treatise of Stanislav that Pirchenwart quotes is a pastiche, if not an abbreviated form, of Wyclif ’s treatise De Eucharistia. Hus himself recognized Stanislav’s support of remanence theory, when, in a letter addressed to his astronomer and mathematician friend Christian of Prachatice, Hus attests (scio certitudinaliter) to Stanislav’s conviction (tenuit et in scripto sententialiter scripsit) of the ‘remanence of the bread’ after consecration, to which he dedicated a treatise.28

21 Vienna, ÖNB, MSS 4308, 4315, 4483, 4509, 4515 and also the ‘P 30’ that belonged to the library of the Collegium Nationis Bohemorum. Cf. Spunar, Repertorium auctorum Bohemorum, p. 288. 22 See Spunar, Repertorium auctorum Bohemorum, p. 457. 23 Peter of Pirchenwart, Sent. IV, dist. 10, art. 3, BAV, MS Vat. lat. 1120, fol. 53va: ‘Unde quidam magister theologie nomine Schanyslaus de Bohemia quendam tractatulum Prage suscripsit, quem tractatum De corpore Christi intitulavit, in quo dicit sine tamen assertione quod panis per sanctificationem et quandam mirabilem non tamen suppositalem unionem ad corpus Christi fit corpus Christi et econverso corpus Christi fit panis, et cum hoc quod propria substantialitate naturali iste panis sit aliud a corpore Christi quo ad ipsius corporis propriam substantialitatem, quia dicit: “Panis est aliqua propria substantia naturalis et suppositum proprium aliud quam sit corpus Christi”, et huius sanctificationem panis et admirabilem unionem ipsius ad corpus Christi vocat transubstantionem panis in corpus’. This detailed presentation is in contrast with the way he mentions the name of Altavilla (Eltville) when he opposes to Stanislav this Cistercian theologian, who was very trendy in Vienna at that time. I am grateful to Ota Pavlíček for providing access to the edited fragments of Stanislaus’s treatise De corpore Christi by Sedlák, ‘Mgri Stanislai de Znoyma Tractatus primus de Eucharistia’, pp. 100–20 and for informing me about the online manuscripts from Prague. 24 Stephen Lahey is currently working on a monograph on Stanislaus. Meanwhile a series of his public lectures on Stanislaus is accessible on his Academia account. Also see Sousedík, ‘Stanislaus von Znaim’, pp. 37–56; Šmahel, ‘Wyclif ’s Fortune in Hussite Bohemia’, pp. 467–89. 25 For a list of Stanislaus’s manuscripts, see Spunar, Repertorium auctorum Bohemorum, pp. 289–304. 26 See Lahey, ‘Stanislaus of Znojmo and Prague Realism’, paper presented at the ‘Bohemian Reformation and Religious Practice’ Conference, Prague 2014. 27 Nuchelmans, ‘Stanislaus of Znaim (d. 1414) On Truth and Falsity’, pp. 314–41. 28 Wyclif, De Eucharistia tractatus maior, ed. by Loserth, pp. 46–47 n 1; Documenta mag. Joannis Hus, p. 56: ‘Vos scitis, quomodo Palecz loquebatur prius in domo vestra. Et scio certitudinaliter quod Stanislaus tenuit et in scripto sententialiter scripsit “de remanencia

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Pirchenwart’s project is to compose an all-embracing question on Eucharistic doctrine, presenting different conceptions. According to this plan, Stanislav seems to be a passage obligé, because he was a partisan of Wyclif ’s controversial doctrine of remanence.29 The framework of the discussion is given by the third article of Distinction 10, Book IV, where Pirchenwart asks if the transubstantiation of the bread and wine during the sacrament of Eucharist occurs in one or two mutations from one substance to another.30 At one point, Pirchenwart refers to an old error mentioned by Peter Lombard in Distinction 11, according to which the substance of the bread remains after the consecration. In fact, Lombard embraced the position of Hugh of St Victor from De sacramentis, who maintained that during the consecration there is a transformation of substance (substantiam converti in substantiam).31 Opposed to this conception were the partisans of the ‘remanence’ of the substance of the bread and wine in union with Christ’s body and blood. In Distinction 12 this so-called error is analysed in depth by Lombard. According to Pirchenwart, this error is defended sine tamen assertione by Stanislav, who based his theory on the authority of Pope Innocent III’s Firmiter, which source Stanislav simply borrowed from Wyclif. To this quotation, Pirchenwart counter-attacks with another from Innocent III, De officio, Part 4, Chapter 10, where the Pope says that during the consecration the accidents of the bread remain without a subject.32 In order better to understand Pirchenwart’s reaction to Stanislav’s position, we should go back to the Prague theologian’s text and follow its reception as I present it in the text of Appendix 2A. This shows33 how Stanislav attacks the Church when he criticizes the way that this institution decides what is catholice credendum based on two types of authorities: textual and individual. Stanislav says that the Church reads and sings and thus embraces the theory

29

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panis”; et a me quaesivit antequam disturbium incepit, si vellem idem sensum tenere. Ecce postea iuravit et abiuravit […] dixit per iuramentum quod tractatum illum non perfecit’. On this passage see also Brinzei and Curut, ‘From Author to Authority: The Legacy of James of Eltville in Vienna’, pp. 428–29. Sousedík characterized Stanislaus’s position on remanence as neutral, a view not shared by De Vooght in his analysis of Stanislaus’s doctrine. Sousedík, ‘Huss et la doctrine eucharistique “rémanentiste”’, pp. 383–407; Herold, ‘Jan Hus: A Heretic, A Saint, or a Reformer?’, p. 17. We should add here that Stanislaus revised the second part of his treatise on more orthodox lines after he was accused of heresy. This is also the longest article of this quaestio: Peter of Pirchenwart, Sent. IV, dist. 10, art. 3, BAV, MS Vat. lat. 1120, fols 51vb–57ra: ‘Tertius articulus est: Utrum transubstantio seu substantialis versio sit una mutatio vel due’. Hugh of St Victor, De sacramentis, ii. 8. 9, col. 468. Cf. Petrus Lombardus, Sententiae in IV Libris, iv, dist. 11, cap. 1, p. 296, l. 13. Peter of Pirchenwart, Sent. IV, dist. 10, art. 3, BAV, MS Vat. lat. 1120, fol. 53va: ‘Et quod non valeat ista sua responsio patet manifeste ex scripto Innocentii III, De officio misse parte quarta, cap. 10, ubi manifeste ponit quod accidentia facta consecratione stent sine subiecto et solvit ibi etiam auctoritates aliquas quas predictus doctor pro se allegat’. See below, p. 264.

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of the non-remanence of the bread and the theory of the accidents remaining without a subject solely on the basis of the opinion of saints and famous doctors. Since the Church can be mistaken and deceived in accepting and following opinions, Stanislav continues, it does not seem that this alone should make this opinion something one must believe. To emphasize the fallibility of the Church, Stanislav then introduces the topic of the current Schism, when people of all ranks, both clergy and lay, accepted as the true pope Pedro de Luna, that is, Benedict XIII, the pope of Avignon (or, for Stanislav and today’s Church, the antipope), just as they had accepted Robert of Geneva as Clement VII. Stanislav is not original in using this example, since Wyclif himself referred to the ‘antipope’ Robert of Geneva, as opposed to ‘our pope Urban’, at least three times in his treatise. Stanislav chose to be rather ironic, and we can easily measure his sarcasm with the long enumeration of the ‘antipope’s’ partisans: religiosi et sacerdotes, doctores, magistri, et scolares, reges, duces, comites, barones, milites et reliqui de vulgo. All these followers of popes and antipopes are the very people who denied the truth of his position on remanence. Stanislav concludes: the sacrament is a profound mystery inspired by God, and the Church should follow this inspiration, not the human interpretations pertaining to non-remanence or the subsistence of accidents without a subject. From the text of the third column of the table of Appendix 2A, we can see how Pirchenwart first reproduces Stanislav’s position and then reacts by defending the Church. He attacks Stanislav by saying that he is neither a saint nor someone famous enough for the Church to take into consideration his position on remanence, which actually is not even an opinion, but merely an ancient error already rejected by the Church. Two remarks on Pirchenwart’s responses: first, he tactically avoids commenting on the schismatic example, which is an embarrassing episode in the Church’s history. Second, he does not connect Stanislav’s position with Wyclif, but just with an old error mentioned by Peter Lombard citing Ambrose. The Viennese theologian defends strongly what he considers the true path: a treatise like that of Stanislav is dangerous and erroneous in many respects, and it must be said firmly that the bread does not remain and is not annihilated, but converted into Christ’s body. Pirchenwart builds up his offensive with a long list of seventeen authorities that begins with Augustine and ends with Thomas Aquinas (gathering names like Ambrose, Gregory, Bede, and Lombard, all quoted either by Stanislav or by the Lombard), to emphasize the mistaken nature and singularity of Stanislav’s view in the face of the tradition of the Church and of its doctors. According to Pirchenwart, the list of authorities proves the falsity of Stanislav’s doctrine,34

34 Peter of Pirchenwart, Sent. IV, dist. 10, art. 3, BAV, MS Vat. lat. 1120, fol. 54rb: ‘Ex hiis omnibus patet falsitas periculosi erroris antiqui nuper per Stanislaum doctorem pragensem resumpti dicentis in Eukaristia facta consecratione panem et vinum substantialiter manere, cuius

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and he repeats that it is nothing new, since the Prague theologian just reiterates the old error mentioned by the Lombard. This list of authorities, printed as Appendix 1, should be understood as a tool against heresy. Pirchenwart was not the first one to use it, since he borrowed it verbatim from his master Peter of Pulkau.35 In fact, at the end of the question, Pirchenwart praises the memory of his master, the venerable Peter of Pulkau: Et hunc errorem cum aliis tribus erroribus circa sacramentum eukaristie venerabilis magister meus, magister Petrus de Pulka, pulchre, lucide et clare eradicat et evellit, impossibilitatem quo ad aliqua et heresim quo ad cetera eius dicta declarando in questione vesperiarum suarum que est: Utrum in sacramento altaris sit aliquid substantie panis. Ubi etiam oppositum, scilicet veritatem, manifeste rationibus et auctoritatibus sanctorum fundat et ex Ecclesie determinatione deducit, ut partim superius tractatum est. (In the question of his Vesperies entitled ‘Whether there is anything of the substance of the bread in the sacrament of the Eucharist’, my venerable master, master Peter of Pulkau, beautifully, lucidly, and clearly uproots and tears out this error with three others concerning the sacrament of the Eucharist, declaring its impossibility with respect to some of its statements and its heresy with respect to the rest. He also manifestly establishes the opposite there, namely the truth, with arguments and authoritative passages of the saints and he deduces it from the determination of the Church, as was partially treated above.)36 Pirchenwart must have had Pulkau’s text in front of him, since he lets us know that in his Vespera question Pulkau argued against some heretical doctrines, gives its title, and mentions the four types of error that in fact provide the structure for Pulkau’s Vespera. Pulkau’s Vespera is dated 1410 in Vienna, ÖNB, MS 4300, fol. 21r (per consequens de tota questione vesperiarum. Anno domini 1410),37 so it is post Stanislav’s treatise. It appears that this Vespera was successful among Viennese theologians. Girgensohn lists a second codex of Pulkau’s Vespera (Vienna, Schottenstift, MS 351, fols 231v–240v),38 and I have found two more copies, one in Vienna, ÖNB, MS 4736, fols 125r–132v and the second one in Sankt Paul im Lavanttal, Stiftsbibliothek MS 245/4, fols 212r–222r. The Sankt Paul catalogue

oppositum verum est et sufficienter ab Ecclesia determinatum, prout cuilibet Christiano sufficere debet, ut liquet ex predictis’. 35 See Appendix 1, pp. 263. 36 Peter of Pirchenwart, Sent. IV, dist. 11, art. 1, BAV, MS Vat. lat. 1120, fol. 57ra (emphasis mine). 37 The reference to the date of the treatise seems to be added with a different ink, but by the same hand, which might be Pulkau’s. I cannot confirm this since I have worked with a microfilm. 38 Girgensohn, Peter von Pulkau und die Wiedereinführung des Laienkelches, p. 168.

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attributes this Vespera to Paulus Wann de Kemnat, a later theologian from Vienna (Sentences lectures 1454, master 1460),39 based on the tabula of the manuscript: fo. 212 Questiones vesperiales de corpore Christi. M. p. Wann.40 Paul Wann was preoccupied with the Hussites, to judge from the fact that he had in his personal library a codex containing the condemned articles of Hus from Constance and other sermons and documents from the Council.41 The text from Sankt Paul im Lavanttal, Stiftsbibliothek, MS 245/4 omits the title of Pulkau’s question, but the rest of the text is identical with the copy in Vienna, ÖNB, MS 4300. Since Paul Wann is certainly not the author, it is possible that the Sankt Paul witness belonged to Paul’s collection, suggesting that for a long time in Vienna the remanence doctrine was associated more with Stanislav than with Wyclif. As mentioned, Pirchenwart tacitly borrows a critical tool from his master’s Vespera in order to attack Stanislav, a list of authorities that contains arguments that Pulkau had formulated against the Prague theologian. Pulkau starts his question by listing a series of errors surrounding the sacrament of the Eucharist, which he calls benedictum sacramentum altaris. The list opens with an error, inspired by Augustine’s exposition of Psalm 54, according to which the host is merely a sign of the body of Christ, which heresy Peter Lombard discussed extensively in his Sentences.42 The second, related one Pulkau labels the pestilentissimus error of one John Scotus, which Berengar publice dogmatizavit, that the verum corpus of Christ is not in the sacrament of the Eucharist, but only the material bread and wine: Ex hiis verbis Veritatis longe postea secundus error et pestilentissimus pullulavit, ponens quod in sacramento altaris sit solum panis materialis et vinum materiale et non verum corpus Christi quod traxit de Virgine, nec eius verus sanguis quem fundit in cruce realiter et vere secundum substantiam, sed quod solum corpus et sanguis Christi sit ibi in substantia panis et vini ut in sacramento et signo. Nunc errorem primo incidit Johannes Scotus, non ille doctor Scotus qui Subtilis vocari solet, sed alius illius nominis eo longe prior, quem sequendo Berangarius ipsum renovavit et publice dogmatizavit cum suis sequacibus, quorum novissimus fuit Johanes Bikleff heresiarcha recentissimus. Cuius tertius articulorum anno Domini 1380 ab archiepiscopo Cantuarensi et 8 episcopis et 30 magistris Londoniis dampnatorum erat ille: Christus non est in sacramento altaris identice et 39 For the most detailed account of this theologian, see Huber and Worstbrock, Paul Wann (Paulus de Kemnat, aten), cols 711–22. See also Binder, Die Lehre des Nikolaus von Dinkelsbühl, pp. 145–47. 40 See Christine Glassner’s inventory online: [accessed 31 July 2021]. 41 See the contents of Stuttgart, WLB, MS I 91 and the attribution: Iste liber est Pauli Wann. For a full description of the manuscript, see Autenrieth, Fiala and Irtenkauf, Die Handschriften der ehemaligen Hofbibliothek Stuttgart, pp. 163–67. 42 Petrus Lombardus, Sententiae in IV Libris, iv, dist. 10, cap. 1, pp. 290–04.

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vere et realiter in propria persona corporali. Hii asserere presumpserunt substantiam panis non converti in corpus Christi nec vinum in sanguinem, sed Christum dixisse significantem: Hoc est corpus meum, sicut dixit Apostolus: Petra autem erat Christus, i Cor. 10, acsi dicens: ‘Hoc demonstratum’, scilicet panis, ‘est significatum vel figura corporis mei’. Huius erroris occasionem secundum Magistrum d. 10 quarti sumpserunt, ut predixi, ex verbis Veritatis quibus instruxit 12 secum remanentes dicens: Spiritus est qui vivificat, etc., quasi dicens, secundum beatum Augustinum Super Ps. 54 prellegato: ‘Spiritualiter intelligite que locutus sum’. (Long afterwards, from these words of the Truth there sprouted a second and extremely pernicious error that posited that in the sacrament of the altar there is only material bread and material wine and not the true body of Christ that he received from the Virgin, nor his true blood that he shed on the cross really and truly according to the substance, but rather that the body and blood of Christ are only there in the substance of the bread and wine as in a sacrament and a sign. Now the first to fall into this error was John Scotus, not that doctor Scotus who is accustomed to be called Subtle, but another of that name well before him. Following him, Berengar revived [this error] and publicly pronounced it as dogma along with his followers. The newest of them was John Wyclif, the most recent heresiarch. Of his articles that were damned by the Archbishop of Canterbury and eight bishops and thirty masters in London in the year of the Lord 1380, the third one was this: Christ is not in the sacrament of the altar identically and truly and really in his own bodily person. They dared to assert that the substance of the bread is not converted into the body of Christ nor the wine into the blood, but rather that Christ said, ‘This is my body’ intending, just as the Apostle said, ‘The rock was Christ’ in i Corinthians 10, as if to say, ‘This thing pointed to’, namely the bread, ‘is a significate or a figure of my body’. Following the Master in distinction 10 of the fourth book, as I said above, they took the pretext for this error from the words of the Truth with which he instructed the twelve remaining with him, saying ‘It is the spirit that brings to life’ etc., as if to say, according to the blessed Augustine on Psalm 54 cited above, ‘Understand spiritually the things that I have said’.)43 This passage contains the only reference to John Wyclif in Pulkau’s entire Vespera, which suggests that in 1410 in Vienna Wyclif was not the focus of the

43 Peter of Pulkau, Questio in vespera, art. 1, Vienna, ÖNB, MS 4300, fol. 10v (emphasis mine). Since this is a simple transcription and not a critical edition, I give only select variants. Sankt Paul, Stiftsbibliothek, MS 245/4 reads thus: Scotus] scolasticus || Londoniis] exp. These variants may suggest further confusion about Wyclif.

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reaction to the remanence doctrine. According to Pulkau, this is an old doctrine originating with John Scotus — whom Pulkau feels he has to distinguish from John Duns Scotus for the reader.44 Among Eriugena’s followers ranks the latest heresiarch, Wyclif, a modern theologian whose errors are said to have been condemned in 1380. In expanding on his presentation of the error, Pulkau writes as if he has no direct access to Wyclif ’s text, instead discussing the doctrine of remanence in terms of an old theological controversy with many references to Peter Lombard’s Distinctions 10–11 from Book IV and merely linking Wyclif to Eriugena’s teaching. After mentioning the third error concerning the sacrament of the Eucharist, damned at the Council of Ephesus and labelled here a scelleratissima heresis,45 Pulkau comes to the fourth and final error, to which he devotes a paragraph in introducing Stanislav to the scene.46 In order to combat errors 2, 3 and 4 and to demonstrate the heretical character of these theological positions, Pulkau presents in the second article of his Vespera the same list of theological authorities that is found in Pirchenwart’s Sentences. The only difference is

44 The remark concerning the distinction between John Scotus Eriugena and John Duns Scotus seems to reflect a common confusion toward the end of the fourteenth century, since we find a similar note in Jean Gerson when he mentions Eriugena as a follower of the Amalrician heresy of c. 1200: ‘Et autem iste Johannes Scotus non ille de Ordine Minorum sed alter qui transtulit libros Dionysii de graeco in latinum longe ante ipsum’. Cf. Gerson, ‘De concordia metaphysica cum logica’, p. 638. I am grateful to Irene Caiazzo alerting me to the passage from Gerson. 45 Peter of Pulkau, Questio in vespera, art. 1, Vienna, ÖNB, MS 4300, fol. 11r: ‘Tertius error fuit quorumdam hereticorum qui ad quasdam difficultates circa hoc sacramentum evadendum in tantam vesaniam prorumperunt ut dicerent quod caro filii hominis, quam oportet manducare ad consequendum vitam eternam iuxta promissionem Christi, non esset caro Christi de Virgine sumpta, sed quod semper in ecclesia inveniretur aliquis talis sanctus homo per plenitudinem gratiarum et virtutum ad tantam dignitatem profectus quod illius caro vel corpus verbo Dei coniungeretur, et sic manducata daret vitam eternam a Christo promissaram. Sed hec heresis scelleratissima dampnata est in Ephesina Synoda 150 episcoporum, presidente auctoritate Romane ecclesie Cyrillo Alexandrino, qui canones eiusdem concilii dictavit et eiusdem synodi nomine epistolariter eosdem per totam ecclesiam transmisit scribens contra eumdem in hec verba sic: “ad misticas benedictiones accedimus et sanctificamur participes sancti corporis et pretiosi sanguinis Christi omnium nostrum redemptoris effecti, non communem carnem percipientes — quod absit — nec ut viri sanctificati et verbo coniuncti secundum dignitatis unionem, aut sicut divinam possidentis habitationem, sed vere vivificatricem et ipsius Verbi propriam carnem factam”, ut allegat Engelbertus abbas Addmontensis tractatu secundo, capitulo 11, ex antiquis canonibus’. For a reference to the text of the Council of Ephesus, see Collectio Hispana Gallica Augustodunensis (5BAV 1341), Synodus Ephesina, preface Canon. 46 Peter of Pulkau, Questio in vespera, art. 1, Vienna, ÖNB, MS 4300, fol. 12r–v: ‘Quartus error et novissimus est quorumdam modernorum quem cum suis apparentiis et motivis sub protestatione recitat sine tamen eius assertione Magister Stanislaus in tractatu quem Prage de presenti conscripsit materia, dicens quod tenendum est panem et vinum post consecrationem non solum sacramentum sed etiam verum corpus et sanguinem Domini nostri Ihesu Christi esse et in veritate sensualiter frangi manibus, sacramentum tractari et fidelium dentibus atteri’.

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the conclusion of the two Viennese theologians, where Pirchenwart focuses only on Stanislav’s doctrine while Pulkau employs the list to respond to three errors. The passages in the Vespera of Pulkau and in the Sentences of Pirchenwart thus reveal a difference in attitude.47 While Pulkau tends to be more general against the Eucharistic errors, Pirchenwart aims his attacks strictly at Stanislav, to whom he refers explicitly many times (magister nomine Schanyslaus de Bohemia, predictus doctor, prenominatus doctor, per illum magistrum sit periculose resumptus et inutiliter palliatus, per Stanislaum doctorem Pragensem resumpti, addit magister Stanislaus), whereas Pulkau has only one reference (sine tamen eius assertione magister Stanislaus in tractatu quem Prage de presenti conscripsit materia). The same remark also applies to copy-paste passages: Pirchenwart’s question abounds in verbatim quotations from Stanislav, so he surely had not only Pulkau’s text but also Stanislav’s on his desk, but so far in Pulkau’s Vespera I have found only a few quotations from Augustine shared also by Stanislav’s text. This is not sufficient to conclude that Pulkau took them from Stanislav, since Augustine quotations can be very common and could have come to Pulkau from a third source.48 Moreover, when Pulkau includes Stanislav in his list of heretical figures he does not seem to copy from Stanislav’s text, and in his commentary, Pulkau ignores all of Stanislav’s ecclesiastical subtleties and critiques, to which Pirchenwart reacts promptly.

47 We can compare here the answers of both masters: Peter of Pulkau, Questio in vespera, art. 2, Vienna, ÖNB, MS 4300, fol. 15v: ‘Ex hiis patet falsitas secundi, tertii et quarti errorum’; and Peter of Pirchenwart, IV Sent., dist. 10, art. 3, BAV, MS Vat. lat. 1120, fol. 54rb: ‘Ex hiis omnibus patet falsitas periculosi erroris antiqui nuper per Stanislaum doctorem Pragensem resumpti dicentis in Eukaristia facta consecratione panem et vinum substantialiter manere, cuius oppositum verum est et sufficienter ab Ecclesia determinatum’. 48 Here is Stanislaus’s reference to Augustine that is shared by Pulkau: Stanislaus of Znojmo, De corpore Christi, Prague, MS G VI 26, fol. 45r: ‘videntur expresse sonare quod ibi sit panis et quod accidentia non sint sine subiecto, sicut specialiter sanctus Augustinus in libro quodam Soliloquiorum, qui per modum dialogi scriptus est, dicit de accidentibus in hec verba: “Illud vero quod interrogasti, quis concesserit aut cui posse fieri videatur ut illud quod est in subiecto maneat ipso intereunte subiecto? Monstruosum enim et a veritate alienissimum ut illud quod non esset nisi in ipso esset, etiam cum ipsum non fuerit, possit esse”. Et in libro Retractationum, ubi non fuit immemor sacramenti altaris et conversionis panis in corpus Christi, ubi etiam sex dicta in precedenti libro Soliloquiorum modicum minus caute moderat et exponit et rectificat et septimum dictum retractat, nullam penitus facit mentionem de verbis iam allegatis’. This reference can be found in Peter of Pulkau, Questio in vespera, art. 2, Vienna, ÖNB, MS 4300, fol. 14r: ‘expresse videntur sonare quod ibi sit panis et non stent accidencia sine subiecto. Et specialiter beatus Augustinus in quodam libro Soliloquiorum per modum dialogi scripto dicens in hec verba: “Illud vero quod interrogasti, qui concesserat aut cui fieri posse videatur ut illud quod est in subiecto maneat ipso intereunte subiecto? Monstruosum enim et a veritate alienissimum est ut illud quod non esset nisi in ipso esset, etiam cum ipsum non fuerit, possit esse”. Et in libro Retractationum, ubi non immemor conversionis panis in corpus Christi, sex eiusdem libri modicum minus caute posita rectificans et septimum retractans, nullam facit mentionem de verbis iam allegatis’(emphasis mine).

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Indeed, it is not even clear whether Pirchenwart even knew that someone other than Stanislav had recently defended the same ideas, since Stanislav never mentions Wyclif by name, and in Pulkau’s text, there is only the one passing reference to Wyclif mentioned above. The table from Appendix 349 may betray the connection between Wyclif and Pirchenwart via Stanislav. By affirming that Stanislav is the one who revives the old error, it seems that Pirchenwart was of the opinion that Stanislav was alone in resurrecting it. Are Pulkau and Pirchenwart actually ignorant of the fact that Stanislav was preceded by Wyclif? Or do the two Viennese theologians simply hold their tongue about Wyclif, since he was a condemned author in Vienna (as evidenced in the trial of Jerome of Prague), and moreover, as mentioned above, a general abhorrence of conflict characterized Vienna? Should we advance the idea that, just after the Schism, Wyclif ’s concept of transubstantiation was not known in Vienna, and that he was solely perceived as a modern sequax of an ancient heresy? Did Wyclif ’s Eucharistic teaching enter the local theological milieu via Pirchenwart, viewed through Stanislav’s glasses? Yet the oldest known extant manuscript of Wyclif from Vienna containing his De Eucharistia dates to 1410, and the next copy is from 1418,50 but they were written in Bohemia where they had been kept until the mid-sixteenth century. Why, then, did a theologian such as Pirchenwart, who had the ambition of producing an exhaustive set of questions on the Sentences, fail to note that Stanislav’s doctrine was not just the reincarnation of an error discussed in Lombard, but the reiteration of a more current view? And why did those who wrote on the Sentences at Vienna before Pirchenwart remain quiet about the theory of remanence? Pirchenwart’s attitude may then reflect a relative ignorance of Wyclif in Vienna between 1410 and 1418. If we take into consideration that Hus was officially condemned in Constance in 1415, it is interesting to note the silence of Viennese theologians on this topic before 1418 and how this attitude changed after 1420, as has been demonstrated recently by Christina Traxler.51 In contrast, Berengar of Tours, who, according to Pulkau, renovavit et publice dogmatizavit the error of Eriugena, was well known in Vienna for his deviation on the Eucharist. Indeed, Wyclif himself considered the defence of Berengar against accusations of heresy to be key to vindicating his own position on remanence.52 Berengar’s heresy had consisted in part in a denial of substantial change, claiming instead that it is absurd to hold that the substance of the bread and the wine does not remain after consecration. In other words, Berengar held a remanence theory. In 1059 he was forced to recant and to take what is known as the confessio Berangarii, the famous confession of faith taken 49 See pp. 267–70. 50 Wyclif, Trialogus, trans. by Lahey, ‘Introduction’, p. 29. 51 Traxler, ‘Firmiter Velitis Resistere’. Die Auseinandersetzung der Wiener Universitat mit dem Hussitismus. 52 See the interpretation of Bakker, La Raison et le miracle: les doctrines eucharistiques, pp. 282–84.

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before Pope Nicholas II. Even this forced confession caused difficulty for later commentators, however, because it did not reject remanence explicitly and stated that after the consecration there is not only a sacrament but also the true body of Christ, which the priests and faithful truly break and chew when they break and chew the host, a concept Berengar abhorred.53 Peter Lombard mentions the episode in his Distinction 12 of Book IV, arguing that the breaking and chewing should apply to the sacrament and not to the true body of Christ. In the gloss on Gratian’s Decretum, Bartholomew of Brescia († 1258) agreed that only the species of the bread are broken and chewed, not the body of Christ, further asserting that during the sacrament the substance of the bread and the wine does not really remain, but only their appearance or accidents (see text below). Eventually, this became an issue on which theologians commented extensively and to which Wyclif, like Stanislav, paid particular attention. According to Stanislav, who closely follows Wyclif, the Glossator is wrong. In fact, Wyclif and thus Stanislav consider the gloss to be heretical, since in the literal sense (de virtute sermonis), if only the accidents of the bread remained, then these accidents would be at once a sacrament and the real body of Christ, and so the body of Christ would be both his body and a sign of his body.54 Pirchenwart responds that Bartholomew’s interpretation is actually correct and agrees when Bartholomeus glosator urges that everyone iuxta illum intellectum sane intelligat verba Berengarii (see the text in Appendix 2C). Accepting Bartholomew’s explanation that the accidents of the bread are just a representation or an appearance of the bread, one can avoid the charge of heresy, since it is wrong to believe that during transubstantiation the corpus Christi realiter dividiretur. After Pirchenwart has finished the presentation of Bartholomew’s position, he introduces a more modern authority, James of Eltville, a Cistercian who read the Sentences at Paris in 1369–1370,55 thus 53 This episode is well summarized by Rosier-Catach: ‘Si Béranger reste dans la mémoire officielle de l’Eglise catholique comme le héraut d’une thèse “hérétique”, selon laquelle le pain et le vin subsistent après la conversion eucharistique, le corps du Christ étant présent comme un signifié dans un signe, son influence sur la théologie sacramentaire fut marquante et durable, à double titre. D’une part, pour justifier sa position, Béranger introduisit un dossier de citations d’Augustin sur le signe, pour permettre la redéfinition du sacrement en tant que tel. D’autre part, toujours dans le même but, il inaugura un mode de réflexion logico-linguistique sur les formules sacramentelles: il chercha, à partir de l’analyse de certains énoncés, à l’aide de la grammaire et de la dialectique, à prouver une thèse théologique’. Rosier-Catach, La Parole efficace, p. 36; see also the entire first chapter, pp. 35–98. On Berengar, see Häring, ‘Berengar’s Definitions of Sacramentum’, pp. 109–46; Van den Eynde, ‘Les Définitions des sacrements pendant la première période’, pp. 182–228; Macy, ‘Berengar’s Legacy as Heresiarch’, pp. 47–67; Hankey, ‘Magis … Pro nostra Sententia’, pp. 213–45. 54 Wyclif, De Eucharistia, ed. by Loserth, c. 7, p. 225, ll. 7–29. 55 The latest volume in the series Studia Sententiarum is a collection of papers dedicated to this German Cistercian educated in Paris. See The Cistercian James of Eltville († 1393). Author in Paris and Authority in Vienna, ed. by Brinzei and Schabel.

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revealing his source for this section of text. Unlike with Stanislav, Pirchenwart does not provide any further information about Eltville beyond his name, which suggests that Pirchenwart’s public was well acquainted with Eltville’s authority. The frequent references to the Cistercian Eltville within the Vienna Group commentary on the Sentences support this hypothesis. I can also add the example of Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, MS Clm 3546 containing the quaestiones on the Sentences of the Carmelite Arnold of Seehausen (1404–1405), the socius with whom Pulkau debated as bachelor during his principia,56 who incorporated at the beginning of his Book IV the entirety of the six questions of Eltville’s own Book IV. So there is no doubt that Eltville’s text circulated and was read and commented on in Vienna.57 In fact, the passage that Pirchenwart takes from Eltville was already borrowed by the Cistercian from the Augustinian Thomas of Strasbourg (Sent. IV, dist. 12, quaest. 2, art. 3), from lectures delivered at Paris c. 1334–1335, complete with the remark that it is a wonder that Pope Nicholas II and so many bishops in attendance accepted such a confession without further clarification. This example is one of the many parallel passages between Strasbourg and Eltville that Paul Bakker has found in this context,58 but whereas the two Parisian theologians merely express their bewilderment, Pirchenwart adds a possible explanation and stresses that Berengar’s confession should not be understood literally (non oportet verba sue confessionis tam stricte intelligi) as we can read in the table of Appendix 2C.59 From a parallel reading of the texts in Appendix 2C, we can deduce that Pirchenwart seems to be unaware of Thomas of Strasbourg’s role in the story.60 The Viennese theologian is thus confronting Stanislav, who is actually repeating Wyclif ’s statement on Berengar’s confession, with James of Eltville, who is also just repeating Thomas of Strasbourg’s solution on this matter. This example shows the ongoing debate surrounding Berengar’s confession and the perpetuation of the two positions (pro and contra) inspired by him. At the same time, since Thomas of Strasbourg wrote a few decades before Wyclif, this provides a broader perspective on the context in which Wyclif and Stanislav referred to Berengar’s confession. Wyclif and Stanislav not only defended Berengar’s initial statement and his denial of the substantial

56 The Vespera of Pulkau also contains a marginal note where we find this testimony, fol. 17r: ‘ut diffuse probavi in primo meo principio contra magistrum meum Arnoldum’. This shows that Pulkau was debating on the remanence topic in his principia. More generally on principia in Vienna, see Zahnd, ‘Disputing without socii’, (forthcoming). 57 See Brinzei and Curut, ‘From Author to Authority: The Legacy of James of Eltville in Vienna’, pp. 421–22. 58 Bakker and Schabel, ‘Sentences Commentaries of the Later Fourteenth Century’, esp. p. 455; Bakker, La Raison et le miracle: les doctrines eucharistiques, pp. 73–82. 59 See p. 266. 60 We can see from the table of quotations that Pirchenwart quoted the Augustinian theologian in other contexts, but there are no references to Thomas in this question of Pirchenwart.

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change of the bread and wine during consecration, but they also confronted a long tradition of theologians reading the Sentences, who rejected Berengar’s first position, as we saw through the examples of Thomas of Strasbourg, James of Eltville, and Peter of Pirchenwart. Thus Wyclif and Stanislav were not merely reviving an ancient ‘heresy’, but also battling a long history of scholastic interpretation.

Conclusion Quaestiones from lectures on the Sentences of Peter Lombard at the medieval universities constitute our main evidence for instruction in theology faculties, an often unexplored source for unexpected information. In this study I have aimed to illustrate how a micro-reading of a few unedited texts can provide a more detailed picture of the reception of Wycliffism at the University of Vienna. Peter of Pirchenwart’s exhaustive set of questions on Book IV of the Sentences, from lectures delivered at Vienna in 1417–1419, reveal the critical context of their composition just after the Great Schism and in the aftermath of the condemnation of Jan Hus at the Council of Constance on 6 July 1415.61 Even in his own day, Pirchenwart’s text was probably already recognized as an important work in this genre, which would help explain why the luxurious manuscript BAV, MS Vat. lat. 1120, analysed in this paper, was commissioned for Pope Nicholas V’s private library. Could it also be that the pope was motivated to seek a copy of Pirchenwart’s Sentences because the Viennese theologian denounced as heretical the position on the Eucharist of Stanislav of Znojmo, Jan Hus’s professor?62 At the University of Vienna, Pirchenwart seems to have been a pioneer in adopting a firm stance against Stanislav’s doctrine of the remanence of the substance of the bread and wine in the sacrament of the altar and against Stanislav’s sarcastic attitude toward the Church. Pirchenwart expends much energy in devoting more than ten columns of his Distinction 10 of Book IV of his Sentences to combating Stanislav’s dangerous position and to refuting the Czech master’s sharp critiques. Inspired by his master Peter of Pulkau, who ‘beautifully, lucidly, and clearly uproots and tears out this error’, Pirchenwart attacks the heretical core of Stanislav’s position without linking the Prague theologian to John Wyclif, but rather opposing Stanislav with Peter Lombard’s much earlier work. Comparing the texts of Wyclif, Stanislav, and Pirchenwart, it appears that Stanislav summarized Wyclif while Pirchenwart had before him just

61 See Bakker, ‘Réalisme et remanence. La doctrine eucharistique de Jean Wyclif ’, pp. 87–112, esp. pp. 87–89. 62 Another copy of this commentary, BAV, MS Vat. lat. 1121, was in Nicholas V’s collection, but this rather modest and small codex lacks the entire debate between Pirchenwart and Stanislaus.

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Pulkau’s Vespera and Stanislav’s writing. Pirchenwart quotes from the first three of the nine chapters of Stanislav’s treatise defending Wyclif ’s position, and it is possible that Pirchenwart was ignorant of the link between Stanislav and Wyclif on the remanence doctrine. This ignorance may be related to a general tendency at the University of Vienna, since we cannot find any other traces of reaction to Wyclif. Nikolaus of Dinkelsbühl, a major figure preceding Pirchenwart, is another example of the lack of reaction to Wyclif ’s doctrine at Vienna, although Dinkelsbühl seemed to be more sensitive to Hussitism.63 In contrast to Vienna, the University of Prague had close connections to Oxford, with exchanges between students from Prague and Oxford taking place already in the fourteenth century.64 Perhaps Wyclif ’s texts were not as accessible in Vienna as in Prague, making it more likely that remanence theory in Vienna was still attached to Stanislav’s name in the late 1410s, a hypothesis reinforced by another copy of Pulkau’s Vespera, attributed to a later theologian, Paul Wann. While there is doubt about Pirchenwart’s knowledge of Wyclif, there is no doubt that BAV, MS Vat. lat. 1120 and Pirchenwart’s quaestiones on the Sentences provide evidence for the reception of Wyclif’s doctrine in the Faculty of Theology at Vienna just after the Schism. The evidence so far shows that Stanislav’s De corpore Christi provoked a reaction to the doctrine of remanence, probably marking one of the first stages of the entrance of Wyclif ’s Eucharistic teaching into the Viennese theological debates.

Appendices This section contains three appendices. Appendix 1 provides a list of authoritative quotations in Book IV of Pirchenwart’s Sentences commentary, BAV, MS Vat. lat. 1120, presented in parallel with the authorities quoted in the first version of Book IV of Dinkelsbühl’s Sentences commentary, Klosterneuburg, Stifsbibliothek, MS 301. The second appendix with three sets of tables (Appendix 2A, 2B, 2C) supplies some textual evidence on which I base my argument concerning the connections between the authors discussed in the paper. Appendix 3 offers a parallel between article 2 of Pulkau’s Vespera and distinction 10, article 3, of Book IV of Pirchenwart’s Sentences commentary, which philologically speaking is an additional witness to Pulkau’s text, showing that Pirchenwart must have had Pulkau’s text in front of him.

63 See footnote 17 above. 64 Šmahel, ‘Wyclif ’s fortune in Hussite Bohemia’, p. 472. Similar conclusions were arrived at by Trapp, ‘Clm 27034: Unchristened Nominalism and Wycliffite Realism at Prague in 1381’, p. 320.

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Appendix 1 University Theologian

John Duns Scotus, OFM Thomas Aquinas, OP Bonaventure, OFM Durand of Saint-Pourçain, OP Thomas of Strasbourg, OESA Adam Wodeham, OFM Richard of Mediavilla, OFM Landolfo Caracciolo, OFM Albertus Magnus, OP Stanislav of Znojmo James of Eltville, OCist Henry of Langenstein Robert Holcot, OP John Baconthorpe, OCarm Peter of Palude, OP Peter of Tarentaise, OP John Klenkok, OESA Peter Auriol, OFM Thomas Bradwardine Alexander of Hales, OFM Richard FitzRalph William of Auxerre Gottschalk of Nepomuk, OCist Godfrey of Fontaines Hugolino of Orvieto, OESA Richard Barbe (Magister) Theodoric of Hammelburg Paul of Perugia, OCarm Peter of Candia, OFM Scotellus, OFM Francis of Meyronnes, OFM William of Ockham, OFM Gerhardus Germani Nicole Oresme Magister Marius Peter of Pulkau

Peter of Pirchenwart, IV Sentences BAV, MS Vat. lat. 1120 221 197 145 116 25 19 14 10 6 5 5 5 4 3 3 3 3 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1

Nikolaus of Dinkelsbühl, IV Sentences Klosterneuburg, MS 301 193 128 97 59 7 3 16 5 1 0 2 5 4 0 6 0 0 3 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

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Appendix 2A Wyclif, De eucharistia, c. 5, p. 125 and c. 9, pp. 315–16

Stanislav of Znojmo, De corpore Christi, Prague, NK, MS G. VI 26, fols 48v–49r

Peter of Pirchenwart, Sent. IV, dist. 10, art. 3, BAV, MS Vat. lat. 1120, fol. 53va–b

Et ex istis credo diffinicionem Urbani nostri cum suis episcopis tenere antiquam fidem Romane ecclesie, licet Robertus cum suis teneat ficticiam Avinone de transsubstanciacione; nec videtur alter eorum dignus in papam recipi, nisi declarare sciverit istam fidem, cum docere fidem katholicam sit precipuum illorum officium.

Et si Ecclesia legit et cantat hoc solum sequens et acceptans opinionem sanctorum et famosorum doctorum in hac materia, et cum Ecclesia in acceptatione et secucione opinionum potest fallere et falli, non videtur quod ex hoc solo sit illud katholice credendum. Quot enim episcopi cum Petro de Luna, prelates, prelati spirituales ecclesie, religiosi et sacerdotes, doctores, magistri, et scolares, reges, duces, comites, barones, milites et reliqui de vulgo tenent et dicunt summum pontificem esse apud Petrum de Luna et fuisse apud Robertum Genonensem, et nos illud dictum credimus non esse verum! Similiter nec illi credunt tenendum edictum de nostra parte esse verum! Et cum hoc sacramentum corporis Christi sit nimis alti misterii, quomodo non a sapientibus et prudentibus absconditum, qui forte plus sensui humano quam divine inspirationi voluerunt inniti! Si tamen Ecclesia tenet hoc ex inspiratione Dei, quod non remaneat panis et quod accidentia stant sine subiecto, tunc utique est katholicum.

Ulterius dicit prenominatus doctor quod si Ecclesia legit et canit quod ‘accidentia stent sine subiecto’ quemadmodum facit in festo corporis Christi, quod hoc solum facit sequens et acceptans opinionem sanctorum et famosorum doctorum in hac materia. Et dicit consequenter quod Ecclesia in acceptatione et secutione opinionum potest fallere et falli. Quare sibi videtur quod istud non sit katholice credendum. Et indubie multum mirandum est de scripto istius doctoris. Si enim Ecclesia sequens et acceptans opinionem sanctorum et famosorum doctorum in acceptatione et secucione talium potest fallere et falli ut sibi videtur. […] /fol. 53vb/ […] Et merito respondere habet quod sic, cum ipse non sit sanctus vel saltem non habetur pro tali nec aliquo modo ita famosus est sicut illi quorum opinionem Ecclesia in hoc acceptavit et sequitur; ymmo dico quod in hoc isti qui suam opinionem sequuntur et acceptant periculose fallunt et falluntur. Nec meretur dici opinio, sed est error antiquus et sufficienter per Ecclesiam reprobatus, ut satis patet ex dictis, licet iam per illum magistrum sit periculose resumptus et inutiliter palliatus. Unde puto quod suus tractatulus quo ad plura puncta sit erroneus et periculosus. Teneri ergo debet pro firmo illud quod supra dictum est, scilicet quod panis non manet in Eukaristia nec annihilatur, sed convertitur in corpus Christi, ut patet per Magistrum in littera allegantem ad hoc beatum Ambrosium manifeste ad hoc loquentem.

[…] ideo sicut docemur in practica noscere istam fallaciam: Robertus Gibbonensis asserit sic cum suo clero, ergo verum; et secta sua tanta probabilitate negat consequenciam istam: Urbanus noster cum suis cardinalibus sic determinat, ergo verum.

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Appendix 2B Wyclif, De eucharistia, c. 5, p. 126, l. 11–23

Stanislav of Znojmo, De Peter of Pirchenwart, Sent. corpore Christi, Prague, NK, IV, dist. 10, art. 3, BAV, MS Vat. lat. 1120, fol. 54vb MS G VI 26, fols 46v–47r

Secundo confirmatur ex evangelio Apostoli I, Cor. X, 14, 16, 17, ubi primo precipit: Fugite et ab ydolorum cultura. Et adiungit: Calix benediccionis cui benedicimus nonne communicacio sanguinis Christi est? et panis quem frangimus nonne participacio corporis Domini est? quoniam unus panis et unum corpus multi sumus; ubi manifeste patet quod loquitur de pane et vino materialibus, que post benediccionem sunt hoc sacramentum; et iterum manifestum est quod hic utitur predicacione tropica et non ydemptica, dum intelligit panem et vinum figurare unionem ecclesie cum Christo qui est res huius sacramenti.

Et videtur nimis difficile vel quasi inpossibile efficaciter defendere quod non remaneat panis post consecracionem in altari, cum Apostolus dictat I Cor. 10: Panis quem frangimus, participatio corporis domini est. Et non est facile defendere quod ibi per panem Apostolus intelligat accidencia, cum eciam ibi dicat: Calix benediccionis, cui benedicimus, nonne communicacio sanguinis Christi est? Ubi videtur quod per calicem non possit ibi intelligi vas vel accidencia vini vel sanguinis Christi in se, sed ipsum vinum in calice. Nam benedicciones, quibus Christus principaliter et post eum sacerdotes ministri Ecclesie instrumentaliter accepto pane et calice verbis benedicunt eis dicentes hoc est corpus meum, hic est sanguis meus, ille, inquam, benedicciones nonnisi consecraciones, sanctificaciones et transsubstanciaciones passive non vasi, non sanguini Christi nec accidentibus, sed pani et vino conveniunt, cum illa sola transsubstancientur in corpus et sanguinem Christi.

Sed contra hanc solutionem arguit Sthanislaus prenominatus dicens quod ‘videatur nimis difficile vel quasi impossibile efficaciter defendere quod non remaneat panis in sacramento altaris, cum dicat Apostolus I Cor. 10: Panis quem frangimus nonne participatio corporis Domini est?’ Et subdit: ‘Nec est facile defendere quod per panem intelligat accidentia, cum etiam ibi dicat: Calix benedictionis cui benedicimus nonne communicatio sanguinis Christi est? Ubi per calicem non videtur posse intelligi vas vel accidentia vini vel sanguinis Christi, sed ipsum vinum, cum benedictiones Christi et sacramentum de quibus loquitur non sint nisi consecrationes transubstantive que non conveniunt vasi nec sanguini Christi nec accidentibus, sed solum pani et vino qui transubstantiantur in corpus et sanguinem Christi’.

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Appendix 2C Thomas of Strasbourg, Sent. IV, dist. 12, quest. 2, art. 3, ed. Venice 1564, fol. 103rb

James of Eltville, Sent. IV, quest. 4, Cambrai, BM, MS 570, fol. 238vb

Peter of Pirchenwart, In IV Sent., dist. 10, art. 3, BAV, MS Vat. lat. 1120, fol. 54vb

Ad primum respondeo cum Bartholomaeo Brixiensi in apparatu super illo verbo frangi quod ly ‘frangi’ et ‘atteri’ non debet referri ad corpus Christi, sed solum ad species sacramenti. Quod probat Bartholomaeus ibidem per auctoritatem Augustini iam inductam. Et idem Apparator hortatur quemlibet legentem ut iuxta istum intellectum sane intelligat verba Berengarii ne incidat in maiorem errorem ac heresim quam ipse Berengarius [fuit], quia revera valde enormis error esset credere quod corpus Christi realiter divideretur. Et ideo saepius miratus sum quod papa Nicolaus cum tot episcopis umquam acceptaverunt istam confessionem sine lucidiori declaratione veritatis.

Et eandem solutionem ponit Bartholomeus in apparatu suo super verbo frangi sic quod li ‘frangi’ et ‘atteri’ non debent referri ad corpus Christi, sed solum ad species sacramenti. Et probat hoc auctoritate beati Augustini, et ponitur De consecratione, d. 2. […] Idem etiam Bartholomeus ibidem hortatur quemlibet legentem ut iuxta illum intellectum sane intelligat verba Berengarii ne incidat in maiorem heresim quam ipse Berengarius, quia sine dubio enormis esset error credere quod corpus Christi realiter divideretur. Et ideo bene admirandum est quod papa Nicholaus cum centum 12 episcopis istam confessionem recipit sine maiori declaratione veritatis.

Et eandem solutionem ponit Bartholomeus in apparatu suo super verbo frangi dicens quod li ‘frangi’ et ‘atteri’ non debent referri ad corpus Christi, sed solum ad species sacramenti. Et probat hoc auctoritate Augustini, et ponitur De consecratione, d. 2. […] Idem etiam Bartholomeus glosator Decreti hortatur quemlibet legentem ut iuxta illum intellectum sane intelligat verba Berengarii ne incidat in maiorem heresim quam ipse Berengarius, quia sine dubio enormis esset error credere quod corpus Christi realiter divideretur. Et ideo bene mirandum est, ut dicit Iacobus de Altavilla, quod papa Nicolaus cum centum et 12 episcopis istam confessionem Berengarii recepit sine maiori declaratione veritatis. Sed forte Ecclesia confessionem eius sub planis verbis, apertis, et captabilibus ab omnibus recepit propter infamiam sui erroris quam apud omnes publice incurrererat, ut apparet omnibus ipsum hoc revocasse quod dixerat verum corpus Christi non esse in altari neque sumi, sed solum panem. Quare non oportet verba sue confessionis tam stricte intelligi ut sonant in superficie, quia hoc esset in maioris heresim ruere, ut pretactum est.

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Appendix 3 Peter of Pulkau, Questio in Vesperis, Peter of Pirchenwart, IV Sent., dist. 10, art. 2, Vienna, ÖNB, MS 4300, fol. 15r–v; art. 3, Sankt Paul im Lavanttal, Stiftsbibliothek, BAV, MS Vat. lat. 1120, fols 53v–54rb MS 245/4, fol. 216r–v Item beati Augustini in libro Sententiarum Prosperi dicentis: ‘Nos autem in specie panis et vini quam videmus, res invisibiles, id est carnem et sanguinem, honoramus, nec similiter pendimus has duas species sicut ante consecrationem pendebamus, cum fideliter fateamur ante consecrationem panem esse et vinum quod natura formavit, post consecrationem vero carnem et sanguinem Christi, quod benedictio consecravit’. Idem, De verbis Domini, sermone 2: ‘Dixi’, inquid, ‘vobis quod, ante verba Christi, quod offertur panis dicatur, sed cum verba Christi deprompta fuerint iam non panis dicitur, sed corpus Christi appellatur’.Item beati Gregorii in omelia paschali dicentis: ‘Species et similitudo illarum rerum vocabula sunt, que ante fuerunt, scilicet panis et vini’. Et habetur De consecratione, dist. 2. Item beatus Bernhardus in quodam sermone De corpore Christi dicit: ‘Hostia quam iam vides iam non est panis et vinum, sed caro et sanguis eius qui pependit in cruce pro mundi vita’. [P 216v] Item beatus Anselhmus in tractatu De corpore Christi dicit: ‘Cum ad benedictiones misticas operante invisibiliter verbo divino corpus in corpus, substantia in substantiam sit mutata, sicut in mensa nuptiali aqua in vinum mutata, solum affuit vinum in quod mutata est aqua, sic in mensa altaris solum adest corpus Domini in quod vere mutatus est panis’. Et infra subdit: ‘De aqua nichil remansit in mutatione illa, de pane vero mutato ad peragendum sacri institutum misterii sola remanet species visibilis’. Et infra: ‘In misteriis’, inquit, ‘vera est dominici corporis substantia absque visibili specie sua et est vera species visibilis panis, sed absque sua substantia’.

Item ad hoc est Augustinus in libro Sententiarum Prosperi dicentis: ‘Nos autem in specie panis et vini quam videmus, res invisibiles, id est carnem et sanguinem, honoramus, nec similiter pendimus has duas species sicut ante consecrationem pendebamus, cum fideliter fateamur ante consecrationem panem esse et vinum quod natura formavit, post consecrationem vero carnem et sanguinem Christi, quod benedictio consecravit’. Idem, De verbis Domini, sermone 2: ‘Dixi’, inquid, ‘vobis quod, ante verba Christi, quod offertur panis dicatur, sed cum verba Christi deprompta fuerint, iam non panis dicitur, sed corpus Christi appellatur’. Item beatus Gregorius in omelia paschali dicit: ‘Species et similitudo illarum rerum vocabula sunt, que ante fuerunt, scilicet panis et vini’. Et habetur De consecratione, dist. 2. Item beatus Bernhardus in quodam sermone De corpore Christi [54ra] dicit: ‘Hostia quam iam vides iam non est panis et vinum, sed caro et sanguis eius qui pependit in cruce pro mundi vita’. Item Beatus Anselmus in tractatu De corpore Christi dicit: ‘Cum ad benedictiones misticas operante invisibiliter verbo divino corpus in corpus, substantia in substantiam sit mutata, sicut in mensa nuptiali aqua in vinum mutata, solum affuit vinum in quod mutata est aqua, sic in mensa altaris solum adest corpus Domini in quod vere panis est mutatus’. Et infra subdit: ‘De aqua nichil remansit in mutatione illa, de pane vero mutato ad peragendum sacri institutum misterii solum remanet species visibilis panis, sed absque sua substantia’.

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Peter of Pulkau, Questio in Vesperis, Peter of Pirchenwart, IV Sent., dist. 10, art. 2, Vienna, ÖNB, MS 4300, fol. 15r–v; art. 3, Sankt Paul im Lavanttal, Stiftsbibliothek, BAV, MS Vat. lat. 1120, fols 53v–54rb MS 245/4, fol. 216r–v Item venerabilis Hugonis 2 De sacramentis parte 8va dicentis: ‘Quemadmodum species illic cernitur cuius res vel substantia ibi esse non creditur, sic res ibi veraciter et substantialiter presens creditur cuius species non cernitur. Videtur enim species panis et vini et substantia panis et vini non creditur’. Et infra cap. 9: ‘Per verba sanctificationis vera panis et vera vini substantia in verum corpus et sanguinem Christi convertitur, sola specie panis et vini remanente et substantia in substantiam transeunte. Conversio enim ipsa non secundum unionem sed secundum transitionem credenda est’. Item Innocentius De officio misse super illo verbo canonis: fregit, etc., expresse dicit quod ‘substantia panis transit, sed accidentia remanent’. Harum auctoritatum plures aperte sonant substantiam panis non manere, alie vero substantiam panis transire. Transire autem desitionem denotat, iuxta sententiam Hugonis ultimo inductam. Item communiter sancti doctores, ymmo decreta conciliorum, utuntur hiis verbis ‘species panis et vini’, astruentes [W 15v] katholice existentiam corporis et sanguinis Christi in hoc sacramento dicendo sub speciebus panis et vini ea veraciter contineri, et non sic utuntur hiis verbis ‘panis et vinum’ nisi rarissime attribuendo vocabula specierum substantiis prius eis affectis, iuxta verba beati Gregorii preallegata. Sed utique convenientius et congruentius dicerent sub pane et vino illas res sacramenti contineri. Igitur per hunc modum loquendi manifeste sententiant propositum. Item eadem secunda pars conclusionis probatur ex alio, nam Christus ante consecrationem corporis et sanguinis sui dixit: ‘Non bibam de generatione vitis donec

Item venerabilis Hugo 2 De sacramentis parte octava dicit: ‘Quemadmodum species illic cernitur cuius res vel substantia ibi esse non creditur, sic res ibi veraciter et substantialiter presens creditur cuius species non cernitur. Videtur enim species panis et vini et substantia panis et vini non creditur’. Et infra cap. 9: ‘Per verba sanctificationis vera panis et vera vini substantia in verum corpus et sanguinem Christi convertitur, sola specie panis et vini remanente et substantia in substantiam transeunte. Conversio enim ipsa non secundum unionem sed secundum transitionem credenda est’. Item Innocentius De officio misse super isto verbo canonis: fregit, etc., expresse dicit quod substantia panis transit, sed accidentia remanent. Harum auctoritatum plures aperte sonant substantiam panis non manere, alie vero substantiam panis transire. Transire autem desicionem denotat, iuxta sententiam Hugonis ultimo inductam. Item communiter doctores sancti, ymmo decreta conciliorum, utuntur hiis verbis ‘species panis et vini’, astruentes katholice existentiam corporis et sanguinis Christi in hoc sacramento dicendo sub speciebus panis et vini ea veraciter contineri, et non sic utuntur hiis verbis ‘panis et vinum’ nisi rarissime attribuendo vocabula specierum substantiis prius eis affectis. Iuxta verba beati Gregorii preallegata. Sed utique congruentius et convenientius dicerent sub pane et vino istas res sacramenti contineri. Igitur per hunc modum loquendi manifeste sententiant propositum. Item idem probatur ex alio, nam Christus ante consecrationem corporis et sanguinis sui dixit: ‘Non bibam de generatione vitis donec regnum Dei veniat’;

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Peter of Pulkau, Questio in Vesperis, Peter of Pirchenwart, IV Sent., dist. 10, art. 2, Vienna, ÖNB, MS 4300, fol. 15r–v; art. 3, Sankt Paul im Lavanttal, Stiftsbibliothek, BAV, MS Vat. lat. 1120, fols 53v–54rb MS 245/4, fol. 216r–v regnum Dei veniat’; et post consecrationem sumpsit suum sanguinem; igitur non mansit ibi substantia vini, et per consequens nec substantia panis, neque hodie manet a simili. Consequentia nota et maior patet per textum evangelii Luc. 22 dicentem: ‘Desiderio desideravi hoc pascha manducare vobiscum antequam patiar. Dico enim vobis, quia ex hoc non manducabo illud donec impleatur in regno Dei’. Et accepto calice gratias egit, et dixit: ‘Accipite, dividite inter vos. Dico enim vobis quod non bibam de generatione vitis, donec regnum Dei veniat’. Qui calix, secundum Bedam, ad vetus pascha pertinet, et sequitur de novo: Et accepto pane gracias egit, et fregit, et dedit eis dicens: ‘Hoc est corpus meum, quod pro vobis tradetur. Hoc facite in meam commemorationem’. Similiter et calicem, postquam cenavit, dicens: ‘Hic est calix novum testamentum in meo sanguine, qui pro vobis effundetur’. Minor probatur, quia hoc expresse habetur in Glosa super illud Ruth 3: Cumque comedisset et bibisset, dicente quod Christus commedit et bibit in cena cum corporis et sanguis sui sacramentum discipulis tradidit. Unde quia pueri communicaverunt carni et sanguini et ipse participavit eisdem. Idem plane videtur velle Ysidorus Super Leviticum, scilicet quod Christus seipsum sumpserit per hoc quod ewangeliste dicunt: Accepit, dedit discipulis suis. Et beatus Ieronimus ad Elbidiam dicens: ‘Dominus Ihesus, ipse convina et convinium ipse comedens et qui comeditur’. Et hoc rationabiliter ut aliis exemplum manducandi daret, sicut et baptizatus est quando baptismi sui in se condidit sacramentum, quia in omnibus primatum tenens se docuit esse principium, De consecratione, dist. 4, ‘Proprie in morte’.

et post consecrationem sumpsit suum sanguinem; igitur non mansit ibi substantia vini, et per consequens nec substantia panis, neque hodie manet a simili. Consequentia nota et maior patet per textum ewangelii Luc. 22 dicentem: ‘Desiderio desideravi hoc pascha manducare vobiscum antequam paciar. Dico enim vobis, quia ex hoc non manducabo illud donec impleatur in regno Dei’. [V 54rb] Et accepto calice gratias egit, et dixit: ‘Accipite, dividite inter vos. Dico enim vobis quod non bibam de generatione vitis, donec regnum Dei veniat’. Qui calix, secundum Bedam, ad vetus pascha pertinet, et sequitur de novo: Et accepto pane gracias egit, et fregit, et dedit eis dicens: ‘Hoc est corpus meum quod pro vobis tradetur. Hoc facite in meam commemorationem’. Similiter et calicem, postquam cenavit, dicens: ‘Hic est calix novum testamentum in meo sanguine, qui pro vobis effundetur’. Minor probatur, quia hoc expresse habetur in Glosa super illud Ruth 3: Cumque comedisset et bibisset, dicente quod Christus comedit et bibit in cena cum corporis et sanguis sui sacramentum discipulis tradidit. Unde quia pueri communicaverunt carni et sanguini et ipse participavit eisdem. Item plane videtur velle Esicius Super Leviticum, scilicet quod Christus seipsum sumpserit per hoc quod ewangeliste dicunt: Accepit, dedit discipulis suis. Et beatus Ieronimus ad Elbidiam dicens: ‘Dominus Ihesus Christus, convina et convinium ipse comedens et qui comeditur’. Et hoc rationabiliter ut aliis exemplum manducandi daret, sicut et baptizatus est quando baptismi sui in se condidit sacramentum, quia in omnibus primatum tenens se docuit esse principium, De consecratione, dist. 4, ‘Proprie in morte’.

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Peter of Pulkau, Questio in Vesperis, Peter of Pirchenwart, IV Sent., dist. 10, art. 2, Vienna, ÖNB, MS 4300, fol. 15r–v; art. 3, Sankt Paul im Lavanttal, Stiftsbibliothek, BAV, MS Vat. lat. 1120, fols 53v–54rb MS 245/4, fol. 216r–v Ideo Sanctus Thomas pro illo allegat hec metra vulgata: ‘Rex sedet in cena, cinctus turba duodena: se tenet in manibus, se cibat ipse cibus’. Ex hiis patet falsitas secundi, tertii et quarti erroris.

Ideo Sanctus Thomas pro illo allegat hec metra vulgata: ‘Rex sedet in cena, cinctus turba duodena: se tenet in manibus, secibat ipse cibus’. Ex hiis omnibus patet falsitas periculosi erroris antiqui nuper per Stanislaum doctorem pragensem resumpti dicentis in Eukaristia facta consecratione panem et vinum substantialiter manere cuius oppositum verum est et sufficienter ab Ecclesia determinatum, prout cuilibet Christiano sufficere debet, ut liquet ex predictis.

Works Cited Manuscripts and Archival Sources Besançon, Bibliothèque Municipale, MS 198 Cambrai, Bibliothèque Municipale, MS 570 Göttweig, Klosterbibliothek, MS 261 (272) Klosterneuburg, Stifsbibliothek, MS 47 ———, MS 301 ———, MS 340 Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, MS Clm 3546 Prague, Národní knihovna České republiky, MS G. VI 26 Sankt Paul im Lavanttal, Stiftsbibliothek, MS 245/4 Stuttgart, Württembergische Landesbibliothek, MS I 91 Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Vat. lat. 1119 ———, MS Vat. lat. 1120 ———, MS Vat. lat. 1121 Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS 4300 ———, MS 4308 ———, MS 4315 ———, MS 4483 ———, MS 4509 ———, MS 4515 ———, MS 4736 Vienna, Schottenstift, MS 269 ———, MS 351

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Bakker, Paul J. J. M., and Christopher Schabel, ‘Sentences Commentaries of the Later Fourteenth Century’, in Medieval Commentaries on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, ed. by G. R. Evans, vol. i (Leiden: Brill, 2002), pp. 425–64 Binder, Karl, Die Lehre des Nikolaus von Dinkelsbühl über die unbefleckte Empfängnis im Licht der Kontroverse, Wiener Beiträge zur Theologie, 31 (Vienna: Herder, 1970) Brînzei, Monica, and Ioana Curut, ‘From Author to Authority: The Legacy of James of Eltville in Vienna’, in The Cistercian James of Eltville († 1393). Author in Paris and Authority in Vienna, ed. by Monica Brînzei and Christopher Schabel, Studia Sententiarum, 3 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018), pp. 419–78 Brînzei, Monica, and Christopher Schabel, ‘The Past, Present, and Future of Late Medieval Theology: The Commentary of Nicholas of Dinkelsbühl’, in Medieval Commentaries on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, ed. by Philipp W. Rosemann, vol. iii (Leiden: Brill, 2014), pp. 174–266 ———, ‘Nicholas of Dinkelsbühl and the University of Vienna on the Eve of the Reformation’, in What is New in the New Universities? Learning in Central Europe in Later Middle Ages (1348–1500), ed. by Elzbieta Jung (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo IFiS PAN, 2018), pp. 358–442 Brînzei, Monica, and Christopher Schabel, ed., The Cistercian James of Eltville († 1393). Author in Paris and Authority in Vienna, Studia Sententiarum, 3 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018) Brînzei, Monica, Russell L. Friedman, and Chris Schabel, ‘The Reception of Durand’s Sentences Commentary, with Two Case Studies: Peter Auriol († 1322) and Nicholas of Dinkelsbühl († 1433)’, in Durandus and His Sentences Commentary: Historical, Philosophical and Theological Issues, ed. by Andreas Speer, Guy Guldentops, Thomas Jescke, and Fiorella Retucci, Recherches de Théologie et Philosophie médiévales – Bibliotheca (Leuven: Peeters, 2014), pp. 295–341 Calma, M. B. (see Brînzei), ‘Plagium’, in Mots médiévaux offerts à Ruedi Imbach, ed. by Inigo Atucha, Dragos Calma, Catherine König-Pralong, and Irene Zavattero, FIDEM – TEMA (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), pp. 559–68 Courtenay, William, J., ‘From Dinkelsbühl’s Questiones Communes to the Vienna Group Commentary. The Vienna “School”’, in Nicholas of Dinkelsbühl and the Sentences at Vienna in the Early Fifteenth Century, ed. by Monica Brînzei, Studia Sententiarum, 1 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), pp. 268–316 Eco, Umberto, ‘Riflessioni sulle tecniche di citazione nel Medioevo’, in Ideologie e pratiche del reimpiego nell’alto Medievo, Settimane di studio del Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medievo, 46 (Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medievo, 1999), pp. 461–84 Girgensohn, Dieter, Peter von Pulkau und die Wiedereinführung des Laienkelches. Leben und Wirken eines Wiener Theologen in der Zeit des großen Schismas, Veröffentlichungen Des Max-Planck-Institut für Geschichte, 12 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1964) Glassner, Christine, Papierhandschriften aus Spital am Pyhrn (Signaturenreihe: 1/4–376/4, [accessed 29 July 2019]

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Hankey, Wayne, J., ‘Magis … Pro nostra Sententia: John Wyclif, his Medieval Predecessors and Reformed Successors, and a Pseudo-Augustinian Eucharistic Decretal’, Augustiniana, 45 (1995), 213–45 Häring, Nicholas M., ‘Berengar’s Definitions of Sacramentum and their Influence on Medieval Sacramentology’, Medieval Studies, 10 (1948), 109–46 Herold, Vilém, ‘Jan Hus — A Heretic, a Saint, or a Reformer?’, Communio Viatorum, 45 (2003), 6–23 ———, ‘The Spiritual Background of the Czech Reformation: Precursors of Jan Hus’, in A Companion to Jan Hus, ed. by František Šmahel and Ota Pavlíček (Leiden: Brill, 2016), pp. 69–95 Huber, Alfons, and F. J. Worstbrock, ‘Paul Wann (Paulus de Kemnat, aten)’, in Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters. Verfasserlexikon, vol. x, ed. by Burghart Wachinger, Gundolf Keil, Kurt Ruh, Werner Schröder, and Franz J. Worstbrock (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2010), cols 711–22 Lahey, Stephen, ‘Stanislaus of Znojmo and Prague Realism: First Principles of Theological Reasoning’. Paper presented at ‘Bohemian Reformation and Religious Practice’ Conference, Prague 2014 ———, ‘Stanislaus of Znojmo and the Ecclesiological Implications of Wyclif ’s Divine Ideas’, in Before and After Wyclif: Sources and Textual Influences, ed. by Luigi Campi and Stefano Simonetta (Basel: FIDEM/TEMA, 2020), pp. 95–110 Lamy, Marielle, L’Immaculée Conception: étapes et enjeux d’une controverse au Moyen Age (xiie-xve siècles) (Paris: Institut d’Etudes Augustiniennes, 2000) Macy, Gary, ‘Berengar’s Legacy as Heresiarch’, in Auctoritas und Ratio, Studien zu Berengar von Tours, ed. by Peter Ganz, R. B. C. Huygens, and Friedrich Niewöhner (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1990), pp. 47–67 Manfredi, Antonio, ‘I codici latini di Niccolò V. Edizione degli inventari e identificazione dei manoscritti’, in Studi e documenti sulla formazione della Biblioteca apostolica vaticana, vol. i, Studi e testi, 359 (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1994) Nuchelmans, Gabriel, ‘Stanislaus of Znaim (d. 1414) On Truth and Falsity’, in Medieval Semantics and Metaphysics, ed. by Edbert P. Bos, Artistarium Supplementa, 2 (Nijmegen: Ingenium Publishers, 1985), pp. 314–41 Pasut, Francesca, ‘Per la miniatura a Roma alla metà del Quattrocento: il “Miniatore di Niccolà V”’, in Niccolo V nel sesto centenario della nascita. Atti del Convegno internazionale, Sarzana 8–10 ott. 1998, ed. by Franco Bonatti, Antonio Manfredi (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 2000), pp. 103–55 ———, ‘Libri, miniatori e artisti alle originii della Vaticana: tra Niccolò V e Sisto IV’, in Le origini della Biblioteca Vatica tra umanesimo e Rinascimento (1447–1534), ed. by Antonio Manfredi (Vatican City: Storia della Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 2010), pp. 416–65 Pelzer, Auguste, Bibliothecae Apostolicae Vaticanae codices manu scripti recensiti. Codices Vaticani Latini 679–1134 (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1931) Rosier-Catach, Irène, La Parole efficace. Signe, rituel, sacré (Paris: Vrin, 2004) Sedlák, Jan, Eucharistické traktáty Stanislava ze Znojma (Brno, 1906)

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———, ‘Mgri Stanislai de Znoyma Tractatus primus de Eucharistia’, in Miscellanea husitica Ioannis Sedlák (Prague: Univerzita Karlova, 1996), pp. 100–20 Shank, Michael, H., ‘Unless You Believe, You Shall Not Understand’. Logic, University, and Society in Late Medieval Vienna, Princeton Legacy Library (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988) ———, ‘University and Church in Late Medieval Vienna: Modi Dicendi et Operandi, 1388–1421’, in Philosophy and Learning: Universities in the Middle Ages, ed. by Maarten J. F. M. Hoenen, J. H. Josef Schneider, and Georg Wieland, Education and Society in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, 6 (Leiden: Brill, 1995), pp. 43–59 Šmahel, František, ‘Wyclif ’s Fortune in Hussite Bohemia’, in František Šmahel, Die Prager Universität im Mittelalter. Charles University in the Middle Ages, Education and Society in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, 28 (Leiden: Brill, 2007), pp. 467–89 Sousedík, Stanislav, ‘Stanislaus von Znaim († 1414). Eine Lebensskizze’, Medievalia Philosophica Polonorum, 17 (1973), 37–56 ———, ‘Huss et la doctrine eucharistique “rémanentiste”’, Divinitas, 21 (1977), 383–407 Spunar, Pavel, Repertorium auctorum Bohemorum provectum idearum post Universitatem Pragensem conditam illustrans, Studia Copernicana, 25 (Wrocław: Institutum Ossolinianum ‒ Officina Editoria Academiae Scientiarum Polonae, 1985) Stegmüller, Frederich, Repertorium commentariorum in Sententias Petri Lombardi, vol. i (Würzburg: Schöningh, 1947) Sturlese, Lorris, Dokumente und Forschungen zu Leben und Werk Dietrichs von Freiberg (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1984), pp. 78–82 Traxler, Christina, ‘Firmiter Velitis Resistere’. Die Auseinandersetzung der Wiener Universitat mit dem Hussitismus vom Konstanzer Konzil (1414–1418) bis zum Beginn des Basel Konzils (1431–1449) (Göttingen: V&R Unipress, 2019) Trapp, Damasus, ‘Clm 27034: Unchristened Nominalism and Wycliffite Realism at Prague in 1381’, Recherche de théologie ancienne et médiévale, 24 (1957), 320–60 Van den Eynde, Damien, ‘Les Définitions des sacrements pendant la première période de la théologie scolastique (1050–1235)’, Antonianum, 24/1 (1949), 182–228 Walsh, Katherine, ‘Von Wegestreit zur Häresie: Zur Auseinandersetzung um die Lehre John Wyclifs in Wien und Prag an der Wende zum 15. Jahrhundert’, Mitteilungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung, 94 (1986), 25–47 Zahnd, Ueli, ‘Plagiats individualisés et stratégies de singularisation. L’évolution du livre IV du commentaire commun des Sentences de Vienne’, in Nicholas of Dinkelsbühl and the Sentences at Vienna in the Early Fifteenth century, ed. by Monica Brînzei, Studia Sententiarum, 1 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), pp. 85–265 ———, ‘Disputing without socii. The Principium on Book IV of Conrad of Rothenburg, Vienna 1408/09’, in The Rise of a New Genre of Scholasticism: Principia on the Sentences in the Fourteenth Century, ed. by Monica Brînzei and William Duba, Studia Sententiarum 6 (Turnhout: Brepols, forthcoming)

Kateřina Vole ková

Non-biblical Texts in Old Czech Bibles*

In the medieval Vulgate, the Latin biblical text was often accompanied by other textual material supplied by the scribes and users. Such added texts as prefaces, summaries, or tables of contents could influence the reception and the interpretation of the Bible; some of them were reading aids serving the function of generating a guided reading for lay readers.1 The importance of the textual instructional material is even more significant in the first Bible translations in the vernacular, which were predominantly intended for the laity and widely used by them. This calls for scholarly attention to be paid to the layout and addenda of vernacular Bibles as witnesses to the modes of reception of the biblical text by clergy and laity, and to the transformation of reading strategies in the late Middle Ages.2 In the present study, I will examine the layout of Old Czech Bibles from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and focus on non-biblical texts in them, and also examine the importance of sacred scripture in Hussitism. The Old Czech Bible translation in the late Middle Ages is preserved in more than one hundred Old Czech biblical manuscripts and even several prints from the end of the fifteenth century,3 containing four distinct revisions of the Bible translation into Old Czech, traditionally called redactions.4 The biblical





* The research was funded by the Czech Science Foundation, project no. P405/12/G148 (Cultural Codes and their Transformations in the Hussite Period). 1 Cf. Roldán-Figueroa, ‘Justified without the Works’, p. 210. 2 Cf. Corbellini and Hoogvliet, ‘Holy Writ and Lay Readers in Late Medieval Europe’. On the orthodoxy and heterodoxy of the Wycliffite Bible, see e.g. Poleg, ‘Wycliffite Bibles as Orthodoxy’. 3 Witnesses to a large number of other, no longer extant Old Czech Bibles are almost one hundred manuscript fragments from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. For a recent list of the Old Czech biblical manuscripts see Staročeské biblické předmluvy, ed. by Voleková and Svobodová, pp. 518–32. 4 Pečírková, ‘Czech Translations of the Bible’, p. 1171; Sichálek, ‘European Background: Czech Translations’, p. 75. Kateřina Voleková  •  ([email protected]), Department of Language Development, Czech Language Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague. Wycliffism and Hussitism: Methods of Thinking, Writing, and Persuasion, c. 1360 – c. 1460, ed. by Kantik Ghosh and Pavel Soukup, MCS 47 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021), pp. 275–297 FHG10.1484/M.MCS-EB.5.124378

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manuscripts did not just contain the text of Holy Writ in the vernacular, but they were often extended by various textual materials. These texts were most often aids for biblical studies, for preaching or for the liturgical use of the Bible, and because of their presence within manuscripts they can help us investigate the purpose for which the late medieval Czech Bible was created and how it was used in practice. Besides various notes and user comments in the margins of the manuscripts, five Old Czech non-biblical texts were most often added to the complete Bibles or part-Bibles (i.e. separately copied New or Old Testaments): biblical prologues, interpretations of Hebrew names, chapter summaries, lists of Mass lections, and a Lent lectionary. Each of these has a different origin, dissemination, use, and reception during the late Middle Ages in the Czech lands. Tracing the evolution of the forms taken by the Czech Bible is therefore essential for determining reading strategies in Utraquist and Catholic practice in the fifteenth century.

The Beginning of the Translation of the Bible and Parabiblical Texts into Old Czech The Old Czech Bible translation has its origin in the vernacular notes and glosses in the margin or between the lines of a text to explain a difficult word or an obscure passage. The Glosy olomoucké (‘Olomouc Glosses’), kept in the Olomouc chapter library, belongs among the oldest Czech translation glosses.5 The parchment manuscript, which originates from between the end of the tenth century and the beginning of the twelfth century in the Swabian region,6 probably originally formed part of a multi-volume Latin Bible. It is not exactly known when the volume with the prophetic and sapiential books was imported into the Czech lands, but perhaps like other Latin codices of foreign origin, this happened during the episcopate of Jindřich Zdík (1126–1150).7 Seven Czech words were inserted by a later Czech reader of the twelfth century between the lines of the Latin prologue Ieremias propheta8 on the first folio. The Olomouc Glosses are a precursor to the later interest of Czech readership in the biblical prologues, which introduce biblical books in general and summarize their contents. But in the first instance, before commentaries and para-biblical materials, the selected sections of the Bible used in the liturgical practice were translated into Old Czech, namely a Book of Psalms and Gospel lections. The Old Czech Psalter and the Gospel lectionary from the early fourteenth century were primary

5 Olomouc, Zemský archiv, CO 400, fol. 1r–1v. 6 The origin of the codex was recently determined by an analysis of its decoration. See Černý, ‘Eine illuminierte Bibelhandschrift’, pp. 4–15. 7 Cf. Černý, ‘Iluminované rukopisy’, p. 95. 8 Stegmüller, Repertorium Biblicum, no. 487.

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tools for understanding the Latin Divine Office and Latin Mass liturgy. Later they were used for personal devotion; and Czech Gospel lections could be used by a preacher while he was preparing his sermon. Psalms were usually copied together with the Canticles, the Athanasian Creed, and other Old Czech liturgical texts for the needs of personal piety; e.g. the Litany of the Saints, the Seven Penitential Psalms, the Office of the Dead, etc.9 The earliest Czech translation of the whole Bible was finished in the 1350s. The so-called first redaction was the collective work of several translators, who can be divided into two groups according to the biblical terminology they used.10 Their intention was to make the biblical text available to the particular section of the pious readership using a vernacular language in religious life, or for priests using Old Czech religious texts in their pastoral practice, but they generally did not intend to provide them with additional non-biblical tools for further study. The Czech translators were not consistent in their approach to the Latin prologues that precede biblical books in their source text, the widely disseminated Paris Bible from c. 1230. Each member of both groups of translators dealt with them at his own discretion, and most of the translators did not translate the prologues at all. In general, the first-redaction manuscripts contain a relatively small number of prologues: only short prefaces to individual Pauline Epistles including a summarizing introduction to all Catholic Epistles. Another prologue is placed before the Gospel of Matthew: an unknown compiler has included two standard Latin prologues to Matthew from the Paris Bible in one short introduction.11 The last two first-redaction prefaces to the Book of Genesis and to the Acts of the Apostles do not build on the Latin Vulgate tradition, but they are original works of one of the translators, an anonymous member of the Order of Preachers. Unlike the usual introductions to biblical books by St Jerome, the Dominican’s prefaces were more sophisticated, written for expert readers, especially for theologians. The preface to Genesis is a philosophical reflection on God’s existence before the creation of the world and on the reason why God created man, and the preface to the Acts is dedicated to showing the operation of the Holy Spirit in the lives and the acts of the apostles.12 From the perspective of this translator, the vernacular Bible translation was not intended directly for an uninformed reader, but for a well-educated one.



9 Sichálek, ‘European Background: Czech Translations’, pp. 68–69; Voleková, ‘Mariánské hodinky’, pp. 223–24. 10 Sichálek, ‘European Background: Czech Translations’, pp. 76–77. 11 The Czech preface starting with the words ‘Svatý Matěj byl jest židovského pokolenie’ (Saint Matthew was from a Jewish tribe) is based on the Latin prologues Matthaeus ex Iudaeis and Matthaeus cum primo praedicasset (Stegmüller, Repertorium Biblicum, nos 590 and 589), which are usually placed before the Gospel of Matthew in the Paris Bible. See Light, ‘The Thirteenth Century and the Paris Bible’, p. 385. 12 Kyas, Česká bible, pp. 44, 48; Staročeské biblické předmluvy, ed. by Voleková and Svobodová, pp. 92, 138, 240–41, 451–52.

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These prologues of the first redaction were copied along with the Old Czech biblical text as an integral part of it. However, it is thought that there were only very few complete Bibles until the end of the fourteenth century. Only one manuscript, the so-called Bible drážďanská (‘Dresden Bible’), written in the late 1360s, is known; unfortunately, this parchment codex was destroyed during the First World War.13 The next surviving manuscript with the first redaction of the Old Czech Bible, Proroci rožmberští (‘Rosenberg Prophets’), was copied in the 1390s, at a time when the nobility, including royalty, began to order costly and elaborate manuscripts for personal use and display. However, this paper codex with a cheap decoration was intended for a less wealthy audience; it contains only the prophetic books and it lacks the prologues of the first redaction. Witnesses to other manuscripts from the fourteenth century are several fragments from Czech Bibles from the second half of the fourteenth century, but also without prologues. The existence of further biblical manuscripts, one of which was the exemplar of two preserved Czech Bibles from the 1410s, can be only assumed. The essential change came with the new century and with a religious reform movement that stressed that the Word of God should be as accessible as possible to everyone everywhere, in cities as well as in the countryside. The theologian, preacher, and university master Jan Hus and his followers emphasized that even a layman should have direct access to the Bible in his mother tongue, and that he should be able to verify God’s truth himself, not just through a mediator. However, this idea was against the official teaching of the Roman Church. Most priests in the Czech lands did not support it, as can be seen from the letter of Hus to the urban community in Pilsen from October 1411, where the limit of three sacred biblical languages was questioned, and the right to study the Holy Writ in the vernacular was promoted: Přišel mi list, v němž psáno jest, že bránie kněžé čísti čtenie přirozeným jazykem česky neb německy […], každý móž zákon boží mluviti, vyznávati, a umie-li, i čísti, buď latině, jako svatý Marek čtenie psal, buď řecky, jako svatý Jan své čtenie a kanoniky neb epištoly psal, buď židovsky, jako svatý Matheus své čtenie popsal, buď syriansky, jako svatý Lukáš své čtenie popsal, buď persky, jako svatý Šimon čtenie kázal a popsal, buď indsky, jako svatý Bartoloměj, a tak o jiných jazyciech: kterakž dáte kněžím brániti, aby lidé zákona božieho nečtli česky neb německy?14 (A letter has come to me, in which it is written that priests impede reading the gospel in the native language, in Czech or German […]. [E]veryone may speak, confess, and if he can, even read God’s Law, in Latin, as St Mark wrote the Gospel, or in Greek, as St John wrote his Gospel and canonical letters or epistles, or in Syriac, as St Luke

13 Sichálek, ‘European Background: Czech Translations’, p. 73. 14 Prague, NK ČR, MS XI D 9, fols 68r–69r; Sto listů M. Jana Husi, ed. by Ryba, pp. 62–64.

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wrote his Gospel, or in Persian, as St Simon preached the gospel, or in Indian, as St Bartholomew, and so in other languages: how do you allow priests to impede people from reading God’s Law in Czech or German?) A literate lay audience, whose ability to read was restricted to the vernacular, and rural priests, who often had a poor knowledge of Latin, should know the Bible properly and understand its content. Therefore, the Bible in a Czech translation was absolutely essential.15 For the catechization of the common people, the first guides to the Bible written in the vernacular language were created. Jan Hus provided his Old Czech treatise on the basic prayers, Ten Commandments, and Creed, called Výklady (‘Expositions’) and written in 1412 during his rural exile, with an introduction in which the reader could find instructions on how to find references in the Bible and how to quote biblical passages properly.16 The pre-Hussite and Hussite efforts for the laicization of the biblical word stimulated a linguistic and textual revision of the first Bible translation at the beginning of the fifteenth century, resulting in the so-called second redaction — this label refers to the numerous adjustments to the translation of the Old Czech Bible, which were certainly not made by only one author.17 The aim of this revised translation was to modernize the version that was already fifty years old, and to express correctly God’s truth hidden in the Bible, using the right Old Czech expressions and figures of speech. Nevertheless, soon after this, a third translation arose, probably at Prague University, which strove to achieve the same goal by translating the Latin source text as accurately as possible, and in this manner it differs from the previous translations that were looser and often used paraphrases and explanations.18 Both versions spread fairly quickly, and they are preserved in dozens of manuscripts from the fifteenth century. The Czech reform movement encouraged an extraordinary interest in Holy Writ and God’s Law in the vernacular, accompanied by a need for textual aids for biblical studies. Around 1410, the nobleman Petr Zmrzlík of Svojšín (d. 1421), the Master of the Royal Mint during the reign of King Wenceslas IV, and his wife Anna of Frymburk, commissioned a vernacular Bible. This happened under the influence of other noblemen, even of King 15 Šmahel, ‘Instead of Conclusion: Jan Hus’, pp. 401–03, 409. 16 Šmahel, ‘Instead of Conclusion: Jan Hus’, pp. 402–05. 17 The question of the role of Jan Hus in the creation of the second or the third redactions of the Old Czech Bible translation has not yet been resolved. See Kyas, Česká bible, pp. 73–77; Šmahel, ‘Instead of Conclusion: Jan Hus’, pp. 406–08. 18 Unlike previous translations, whose authors used the Paris Bible as source text, the academic translator of the third redaction chose as a model a three-hundred-year-old manuscript that had an older version of the Latin Vulgate. The text was corrected and shorn of all additions; all non-biblical explanations and comments were placed outside of the main text in the margins.

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Wenceslas himself, who owned decorated Vulgate manuscripts or vernacular Bibles.19 The so-called Bible litoměřicko-třeboňská (‘Litoměřice-Třeboň Bible’) or Zmrzlíkova bible (‘Zmrzlík’s Bible’) was produced luxuriously: it is made of parchment, in large format (47 × 33 cm), and comprises multiple volumes.20 It is a very fine book with superb illuminations; several excellent illuminators from different workshops participated in decorating it.21 The production of the manuscript for Petr Zmrzlík took at least five or six years. Some difficulties in obtaining the Old Czech texts can be supposed: the main scribe Matěj of Prague received books of the Old and New Testament in parts and in random order,22 which was subsequently reflected in the unusual sorting of books in the three volumes of this Bible (vol. i: Maccabees, Proverbs–Sirach, Acts, James–Jude, Matthew–John, Genesis–Ruth; vol. ii: Kings–Tobit, non-biblical texts; vol. iii: Judith–Psalms, Isaiah–Malachi, Romans–Hebrews, Revelation). Finished around the year 1414, the Litoměřice-Třeboň Bible is the oldest surviving Old Czech manuscript of the complete Bible. Its text belongs to the revision of the first redaction from the end of the fourteenth century. The codex is exceptional in terms of non-biblical texts. Written by two different scribes, four non-biblical texts in Old Czech were added in the second volume: interpretations of Hebrew names, biblical prologues, chapter summaries, and lists of Mass lections. All of them are attested for the first time in the Litoměřice-Třeboň Bible, and no other Czech manuscript with so many biblical aids in the vernacular survives from the Middle Ages. Moreover, there were not many other similar textual aids for biblical studies and liturgy in the vernacular. In the Old Czech biblical manuscripts, we lack other para-biblical texts known from Latin Bibles, such as verbal or topical Bible concordances, biblical themes selected for preaching, Gospel harmonies, versified biblical summaries, and Christ’s genealogies.23 Surprisingly, even calendars, which enabled readers to identify the feasts of the temporale and sanctorale, were largely omitted in Old Czech biblical manuscripts,24 while they are quite common

19 The Wenceslas Bible, written in German and made in Prague in the 1390s (Vienna, ÖNB, MS 2759–2763). The multi-volume illuminated manuscript was a model for another early fifteenth-century Bible, the Antwerp Bible in Latin (Antwerp, Plantin-Moretus Museum, MS M 15/1–2), owned by the Master of the Royal Mint, Chancellor and Archbishop Conrad of Vechta (d. 1431). 20 The Bible is divided into three volumes. Today, they are kept separately in Litoměřice, SOA, MS BIF 3.2 (vol. i), MS BIF 3.1 (vol. ii), and Třeboň, SOA, MS A 2 (vol. iii), siglum B14. The sigla of the Old Czech biblical manuscripts and prints refer to Figure 12.1 on p. 289. 21 Brodský and Šumová, Iluminované rukopisy, pp. 130–43. 22 Kyas, Česká bible, p. 57. 23 Light, ‘The Thirteenth-Century Pandect and the Liturgy’, p. 186; Poleg, Approaching the Bible, p. 115. 24 Except in one manuscript where a calendar was placed at the beginning of the Žaltář poděbradský of 1396 (‘Poděbrady Psalter’; Dresden, SLUB, MS Mscr.Dresd.k.2, siglum P9), which was designed as a prayer book for a noblewoman.

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in late medieval Latin Bibles,25 and in other vernacular Bible translations, especially in the Wycliffite Bible.26 The interpretations of Hebrew names and a large number of the biblical prologues usually accompany the Latin biblical text in the Paris Bible.27 It is evident that the compiler of the manuscript, the scribe Matěj of Prague himself or the patron, Petr Zmrzlík of Svojšín, wanted to make this vernacular Bible very similar to the Latin model. It is to be supposed that the function of the Litoměřice-Třeboň Bible was mainly to represent and declare the patron’s status and affiliation: the owner was a nobleman who supported the reform movement and the efforts of Hus and other reformers. However, the inclusion of the lists of Mass lections also points to a possible personal use of this exceptional Old Czech Bible manuscript.

Biblical Prologues The Litoměřice-Třeboň Bible contains biblical prologues from two different translations. There are a few prefaces coming from the first redaction of the Old Czech Bible, placed before the relevant biblical books. Apart from these, a special collection of biblical prologues is located between other para-biblical texts in the second volume of the Litoměřice-Třeboň Bible; the collection is traditionally called Prology litoměřické (‘Litoměřice Prologues’, fols 144r–173r). The extensive collection of Old Czech biblical prefaces emerged at the beginning of the fifteenth century in connection with the revision of the earliest translation, when it was felt to be desirable to complement the Old Czech Bible with prologues according to the Vulgate;28 after all, the manuscripts of the first Bible redaction did not contain them. The corpus of prefaces was translated from the Latin original by an unknown translator. However, based on a linguistic comparison, we can say that the same author translated the interpretations of Hebrew names immediately following the prologue collection in the second volume of the Litoměřice-Třeboň Bible.29 The translated Vulgate prologues were mostly by St Jerome. The separate collection contains Old Czech prologues to almost all books of the Bible or its larger parts, offering even two or three items for some of them. It comprises more than a hundred items as it also gathered other prologues not included in the Paris Bible. The translator also seems to have used other sources, such as earlier Latin Bibles or the Glossa ordinaria. His intention 25 Poleg, Approaching the Bible, p. 112. 26 Poleg, ‘Wycliffite Bibles as Orthodoxy’, p. 87; Solopova, Manuscripts of the Wycliffite Bible, pp. 15–17. 27 Light, ‘The Thirteenth Century and the Paris Bible’, pp. 383–91. 28 Cf. the inclusion of English translations of the prologues in the Wycliffite Bible. See Ghosh, ‘The Prologues’, p. 181. 29 Kyas, Česká bible, p. 62.

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was not only to offer several introductions to the study and interpretation of the most important biblical books in the vernacular, but rather to provide the target audience with all the available introductory material he could find, although some prefaces were redundant and not fully applicable to the user. For example, the Old Czech translation of Jerome’s preface Novum opus, dedicated to Pope Damasus,30 which deals with canon tables created by Eusebius of Caesarea, was included in the collection, although Eusebian canons never appear in Czech biblical manuscripts.31 The biblical prologues are written in a very specific language and style — they are mostly scholarly texts with literary-historical and philological explanations, containing numerous terms for which Old Czech did not have any established equivalents. The Czech translator of the prologue collection followed the Latin text strictly and translated the prefaces word by word, often using multiple equivalents for one Latin word, which shows his frequent uncertainty about the translation. Sometimes he left the foreign terms and Greek words that he was not able to translate in the original wording and added an explanatory note based on Latin commentaries.32 Despite all the efforts of the translator, the Old Czech prefaces remain in many places incomprehensible without a knowledge of the Latin prologues.33 The Czech prologue collection has been preserved in only two copies from the first quarter of the fifteenth century. The Litoměřice Prologues from the Litoměřice-Třeboň Bible became the main source for the second existing copy, the Prology kapitulní (‘Metropolitan Chapter Prologues’), which is not accompanied by the biblical text in the manuscript, but only by a Czech translation of the Interpretatio Hebraicorum nominum. For the most part, the prefaces from the collection were disseminated separately. Individual items were selectively adopted and copied before the relevant biblical books in forty-five Bible manuscripts of the second and third biblical redactions. The prefaces were included mostly in complete Bibles (87 per cent); they are also part of most Old Testament manuscripts (69 per cent) and separate New Testaments (68 per cent).34 The presence of biblical prologues in Czech manuscripts varied; none of them contains all of the items included in the 30 Novum opus (Stegmüller, Repertorium Biblicum, no. 595) and Sciendum etiam (Stegmüller, Repertorium Biblicum, no. 601). 31 Neither did the preface addressed to Pope Damasus subsequently spread in Czech manuscripts: it was copied into only three Old Czech Bibles. The new Czech translation of the preface appeared in the Bible prints of the sixteenth century. See Staročeské biblické předmluvy, ed. by Voleková and Svobodová, p. 82. 32 The translator worked with a commentary on the biblical prefaces, Expositiones prologorum Bibliae, written by William Brito in the thirteenth century, and perhaps also with the Glossa ordinaria. See Staročeské biblické předmluvy, ed. by Voleková and Svobodová, pp. 39–40. 33 On the same problem with the English translation of the biblical prologues, see Ghosh, ‘The Prologues’, p. 181. 34 However, the Old Czech Psalters lacked the biblical prefaces. See Staročeské biblické předmluvy, ed. by Voleková and Svobodová, p. 152; cf. Figure 12.1 on p. 289.

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prologue collections. But the high number of Bibles with prefaces shows that the prologues became a common part of Old Czech Bibles. They were copied along with the biblical text as a standard part of the biblical codex. The wording of the prefaces was often revised along with the revision of the biblical text. In rare cases, if the prefaces were missing in the source text and if the patron wished to have the Old Czech Bible with its usual para-biblical texts, a new translation of the biblical prefaces appeared, probably made by a gifted copyist. The tradition of the biblical prefaces continued in the period of early printing. As the first attempt to establish a vernacular Bible in print, the New Testament was chosen around 1481–1483, based on an unknown manuscript with the biblical text of the second redaction and with numerous biblical prefaces.35 However, in the first complete printed Czech Bible of 1488, the number of biblical prefaces was greatly reduced. The Bible pražská (‘Prague Bible’), representative of the fourth redaction of the Old Czech Bible translation, contains only five selected prologues. Four of them, written by Jerome, appear in a new Czech translation: the general prologue (Frater Ambrosius), the prologue to the Pentateuch (Desiderii mei), the prologue to the Four Gospels (Plures fuisse), and the prologue to Luke (Quoniam quidem multi).36 The fifth preface is placed before the Book of Psalms and was composed by the translator of the new rendering of the Psalter that had been printed separately a year earlier (in 1487).37 The main intention of the authors of the fourth redaction was to provide biblical prefaces in a clear and intelligible way. These prefaces of the fourth redaction occur in other biblical incunabula, too, and they became a common part of the humanistic prints of the Bible, accompanied by other older and new translations of the biblical prologues.38

Interpretations of Hebrew Names As the same Czech equivalents for unusual Latin words suggest, the Interpretationes Hebraicorum nominum was translated into Old Czech at the beginning of the fifteenth century by the same person as the translator of the prologue collection for the new type of vernacular Bible. The original was a popular exegetical Latin dictionary, in which preachers found inspiration for the homiletic exegesis of biblical proper nouns. The glossary to Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic proper names of the Vulgate is the most common addition in late medieval Latin Bibles, existing in three discrete versions (Adam, Aaron,

35 Staročeské biblické předmluvy, ed. by Voleková and Svobodová, p. 75. 36 Stegmüller, Repertorium Biblicum, nos 284, 285, 596, 49. 37 Vintr, ‘Prvotisky českého žaltáře’, pp. 183–84; Svobodová, ‘The New Old Czech Translation of the Psalter’, p. 55; Staročeské biblické předmluvy, ed. by Voleková and Svobodová, pp. 75–76. 38 Staročeské biblické předmluvy, ed. by Voleková and Svobodová, pp. 81–86.

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and Aaz).39 The Old Czech rendering, traditionally called Výklady hebrejských jmen (‘Interpretations of Hebrew Names’), was based on the most popular Aaz version of the Interpretationes Hebraicorum nominum, whose entries contain a short etymology of the name, presenting not only the literal sense, but also allegorical, tropological, and anagogical senses, though without any historical information or biblical references.40 Unlike the Latin Interpretationes, the Old Czech dictionary was not widely disseminated; only three copies of the Old Czech Interpretations of Hebrew Names have survived: in the second volume of the Litoměřice-Třeboň Bible (fols 173r–232r), in one non-biblical manuscript from the same time,41 and in a manuscript fragment written in Glagolitic script and probably coming from the Glagolitic Old Czech Bible of 1416.42 All the manuscripts come from the same period and most likely from the same milieu interested in explanatory tools in Old Czech. The copy of the Interpretations of Hebrew Names in the Glagolitic Bible points to the connection between the pre-Hussite movement and the Emmaus monastery of the South Slavic Benedictine monks in the New Town of Prague, which was founded by Charles IV in 1347. Benedictines were allowed to practice liturgy in Old Church Slavonic, and their scribes copied Czech translations of important religious works in Glagolitic script in their own monastic scriptorium. However, there are no later copies of the Latin-Czech dictionary; the lay interest in the Interpretation of Hebrew Names was of limited duration. The interest in biblical etymology remained limited to priests studying in Latin and it did not spread among Czech layfolk, neither of the Utraquist sect, nor of the Catholic religion.43

Chapter Summaries In the Middle Ages, different types of texts summarizing the content of the Latin Bible to help the reader to orient himself emerged, either in verse or in prose. For example, the poem Sex. prohibet. peccant. Abel. Enoch. archa fit. intrant that shortened each biblical chapter into a single keyword, was one of the most widespread summaries accompanying late medieval Bibles.44 Yet in Old Czech Bibles, only summaries in prose are found, based on Latin

39 Poleg, Approaching the Bible, pp. 111, 118–20. 40 Poleg, Approaching the Bible, p. 122. 41 Prague, APH–KMK, MS A 127, fols 1r–34v. 42 Only the second volume and ten fragments from the other two volumes of the Glagolitic Bible are extant: Prague, NK ČR, MSS XVII A 1; XVII J 17/17. Prague, KNM, 1 D c 1/1A, B, C, D; 1 D c 1/15; 1 D c 1/17B, 1 D c 1/21, 1 D c 1/29. Košice, Archív Centra spirituality, sine; siglum B7. 43 In a similar way, Interpretationes Hebraicorum nominum were presumably never translated and included in the Wycliffite Bible. See Poleg, ‘Wycliffite Bibles as Orthodoxy’, pp. 77–79; Hudson and Solopova, ‘The Latin Text’, p. 109. 44 Doležalová, ‘The Summarium Biblicum’, p. 163.

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summaries of individual chapters, the so-called capitula or breves (libri), which were a text-orientation aid for the study of Holy Writ in Latin and summarized the content of each chapter of all biblical books in a short paragraph.45 The collection of Latin chapter summaries was translated into Old Czech, probably at the same time as the other para-biblical texts, the prologues collection and the Interpretationes Hebraicorum nominum, but by another anonymous translator, judging by the Old Czech vocabulary and biblical terms.46 The chapter summaries were not a common part of the Paris Bible,47 nor did they spread much in the Czech Bibles, and we can find them only in a few manuscripts. The collection of Old Czech chapter summaries is preserved in its entirety only in the second volume of the Litoměřice-Třeboň Bible (fols 233r–290r). Interestingly, the scribe of the summary collection attempted to reflect the unusual order of the biblical books in the Litoměřice-Třeboň Bible, and therefore summaries of biblical books of the first volume were written first (but according to their usual order, and not exactly as they are included in the Litoměřice-Třeboň Bible), then summaries of the books from the second volume and finally summaries of the books from the third volume.48 In addition, the collection contains chapter summaries of the deuterocanonical IV Ezra, whose Old Czech translation was not included in the Litoměřice-Třeboň Bible. It follows that the Czech set of chapter summaries was apparently independent of the manuscript, but the scribe edited it to some extent according to the Litoměřice-Třeboň Bible. The collection of the summaries of biblical books is provided with a preface that begins with the words ‘Jakož die svatý Jeroným v jednéj epištole, jenž slóve Helmitá’ (As Saint Jerome says in a letter called ‘Provided with a helmet’, fol. 233r). The incipit refers to St Jerome’s text Viginti et duas. In the Middle Ages, it was placed before the Books of Kings as a prologue and was called Prologus galleatus (‘Preface provided with the helmet’).49 The Old Czech

45 Light, ‘French Bibles’, pp. 168–73. The capitula-lists were adapted into English at the end of the fourteenth century and they circulated in manuscripts of the Wycliffite Bible. See Hudson and Solopova, ‘The Latin Text’, pp. 110–11. On a similar chapter-by-chapter biblical summary in Middle English, but more elaborate and augmented by commentaries, see Schühle-Lewis in the present volume, pp. 201–21. 46 The exact Latin source text of the Czech translation has not yet been identified. 47 Light, ‘French Bibles’, p. 171. 48 However, the unknown scribe made a mistake while copying the summaries. He unintentionally omitted the chapter summaries of the Book of Acts of the Apostles, which were included in the first volume immediately after the Book of Ecclesiasticus and preceded the canonical epistles. Instead, he mistakenly duplicated the chapter summaries of the Revelation of St John, which he included both directly after the chapter summaries of the canonical epistles, and at the very end, after the chapter summaries of the Epistle to the Hebrews. 49 Stegmüller, Repertorium Biblicum, no. 323. The preface has been preserved in the other three Old Czech Bibles and was also copied separately at the end of a Latin Bible (Stuttgart, WLB, Cod.bibl.qt.19, fols 475v–476r). See Schröpfer, ‘Ein Stuttgarter alttschechischer Bibelprolog’, s. 349–70; Staročeské biblické předmluvy, ed. by Voleková and Svobodová, pp. 149–50.

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preface to the chapter summaries Jakož die svatý Jeroným is a paraphrase of this Latin prologue and it is dedicated to analysing the biblical canon: Jerome divided a total of twenty-two biblical books into three thematic groups and excluded those writings that do not belong to canonical books of Bible. This topic could also be of use to readers of the summaries. The other Old Czech biblical manuscripts included the biblical summaries only exceptionally and selectively. The Old Czech chapter summaries survive in nine biblical manuscripts from the second third of the fifteenth century.50 In four manuscripts, summaries were placed mainly before individual chapters of the selected biblical books of the Old Testament and they were primarily intended to help readers to orient themselves in the content of the various and copious texts of the Old Testament, describing the long period of the history of the Jewish people. The chapter summaries are sometimes included in the Old Czech Books of Psalms; they were also used as a tool for orientation for one hundred and fifty psalms, which not only served as liturgical texts in the Mass and Divine Office liturgy, but were also increasingly used in private prayer. Each psalm differs in content and could accordingly be used as a prayer or praise, or for penitence in personal devotion. Therefore, a summary placed at the beginning of each psalm could be very useful for finding the appropriate psalm for a given occasion. We can find summaries in five Bibles and in two separate psalters, which were tailored according to the needs of users. One of them is a psalter from the mid-fourteenth century, which was extended by psalm summaries and a list of psalm incipits one hundred years later. This addition testifies to the use of the older rendering of the Book of Psalms even in the second half of the fifteenth century.51 The second psalter with summaries was made for a ‘brother Jieša’ in 1475 and was designed as his personal prayer book. Summaries in this psalter were exploited for the devotional personalization of the manuscript. The layout of the psalms in Jieša’s psalter regularly consists of three parts: a superscription, the text of a psalm, and a short prayer at the end. The rubric superscription is composed of two parts: the titulus, the first verse of the psalm, is placed at the beginning, then a summary in the wording of the summary collection is added; it summarizes the content of the psalm and its literal meaning, and sometimes explains the metaphorical, especially christological meaning as well.52 The importance of psalm summaries for orientation purposes was also recognized by the first printers. New versions of biblical summaries appeared in the first printed psalter of 1487. Its author newly translated the psalms into Old Czech and provided each psalm with a summary which points out its spiritual meaning.53 The chapter summaries of further biblical books were

50 51 52 53

See Figure 12.1 on p. 289. Voleková, ‘Mariánské hodinky’, p. 224. Voleková, ‘The Old Czech Psalter and its Manuscript Tradition’, p. 51. Svobodová, ‘The New Old Czech Translation of the Psalter’, p. 57.

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added to the printed Bibles later, first in the Bible benátská (‘Venice Bible’) that was printed in Italy in 1506. The publishers took advantage of the fact that more advanced printing techniques enabled a more complex layout and different types and sizes of fonts to distinguish paratexts, and they added more para-biblical material to this printed Bible.54 As a result, the Venice Bible comes closer to humanistic prints in terms of print quality and content.

Lists of Mass Lections and Lent Lectionaries The last non-biblical text recorded in the second volume of the LitoměřiceTřeboň Bible is a list of liturgical readings for the Mass, arranged according to the liturgical year. The Latin lists of the Mass lections (capitularies or capitula lectionum) were created as a tool for finding the lections for each liturgical occasion.55 They were usually presented in the form of a table composed only of the incipits and explicits of a given epistle and gospel. The layout of the table of lections in the Litoměřice-Třeboň Bible (fols 290v–297r) is similar to the Latin model, as it contains both the temporal and the sanctoral. Počíná sě registrum, točíš zpráva epištol a čtenie, jakož kostel drží na mšech přěs cělý rok, i každého potom svatého. Počíná sě najprve prvá neděle v advent: epištola k Římenínóm ve třinádcté kapitole ‘Vědúce, že hodina jest’, konec ‘Ale oblecte sě v pána Jezukrista’; čtenie svatý Matúš v jedenmezcietméj kapitole ‘Když sě přiblíži Ježíš’, konec ‘Požehnaný jest přišel ve jméno božie’.56 (The register begins as an index of epistle and gospel lections, as the Church reads at Mass all year long, then proceeds to every saint. The first Sunday of Advent begins: epistle to the Romans in the thirteenth chapter: ‘Knowing the time’, the end: ‘But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ’; gospel: St Matthew in the twenty-first chapter: ‘When Jesus drew nigh’, the end: ‘Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord’.) The table of lections was translated from Latin in its entirety; the scribe did not look at the wording of the biblical text in the Litoměřice-Třeboň Bible and he did not adapt the incipits and explicits to its translation, which is slightly different. Nevertheless, it can be assumed that an experienced user could find the relevant reading for the given liturgical occasion in the Litoměřice-Třeboň Bible using the appended table of lections. Incorporating this liturgical aid into the Old Czech Bible brought about a substantial change in the manuscript tradition. The common biblical manuscript from the fourteenth century, the Old Czech Gospel lectionary, 54 Svobodová, ‘The New Old Czech Translation of the Psalter’, p. 54. 55 Peikola, ‘Tables of Lections in Manuscripts’, p. 353. 56 Litoměřice, SOA, MS BIF 3.1, fol. 290v.

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became obsolete in the Hussite period as far as its textual and linguistic form was concerned. Instead of the Gospel lectionary, people purchased whole Bibles or part-Bibles of the second or the third redaction. The Old Czech Bible manuscripts of the fifteenth century are notably diverse in terms of their size, level of execution, and practical use. Codices of all sizes were copied during the Hussite period: they were produced as expensive, illuminated volumes (e.g. Litoměřice-Třeboň Bible), or plain, utilitarian manuscripts. The large and medium-size complete Bibles were made for owners who did not need to carry their books with themselves. Most of them are professionally made, richly decorated manuscripts, sometimes personalized with heraldic insignia of the aristocratic patron.57 The portable or pocket Bibles, especially separately copied New Testaments, appeared at the beginning of the Hussite period;58 they were commercially available thanks to their small format.59 While the Old Czech Bibles replaced the older Gospel lectionaries, lists of Mass lections became, along with the prefaces, the most common additional text circulating in fifteenth-century Old Czech biblical manuscripts. They occur in fifty-one Old Czech biblical manuscripts (53 per cent), both complete Bibles and New Testaments.60 Out of a total of twenty-eight Bible manuscripts, more than half contain such lists; moreover, the lists of Mass lections occur in nearly all surviving New Testaments. In several New Testament manuscripts, references to Old Testament readings were intentionally omitted, as it was not possible to find their full-text versions within the manuscript. However, the majority of New Testaments were extended by Old Testament readings for the manuscript to be fully functional for the purposes of liturgical use or as a preaching aid. In the oldest surviving New Testament of 1417, the Lent lectionary appears placed before the lists of Mass lections. This particular liturgical aid consisted of the Old Testament lections for the forty-day period of the Great Lent when it was preached daily. The Lent lectionary was quite widely disseminated; it occurs in twenty-two surviving New Testaments and one complete Bible.

57 Compare the Wycliffite Bible: see Solopova, ‘The Manuscript Tradition’, pp. 227–28. 58 Nový zákon Dobrovského (‘Dobrovský’s New Testament’, Budapest, Egyetemi Könyvtár, MS Slav. 6, siglum NT4) from the year 1417 is the oldest surviving manuscript. 59 For example, the New Testament of the 1440s from the library of the Augustinian monastery in Lnáře (Plzeň, SVK, MS 21 A 35, siglum NT14) is a pocket Bible; the manuscript was produced in parchment in 12mo format; it measures 11.5 × 8.3 cm, due to cutting during rebinding at the turn of the seventeenth century. However, the first part of the manuscript with the Gospels and Epistle to the Romans is missing, and it begins with i Corinthians 11. 27. See Petr, ‘Český Nový zákon’, p. 73. The Bremen New Testament of 1477 (Bremen, Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Bremen, MS msc 0020, siglum NT2) is even smaller; it measures 10.5 × 7.5 cm and includes lists of lections. See Stahl, Katalog der mittelalterlichen Handschriften, p. 206. 60 See Figure 12.1 on p. 289. The tables of Mass lections are the most common para-biblical text in the Wycliffite Bible too. See Poleg, ‘Wycliffite Bibles as Orthodoxy’, p. 76; Hudson and Solopova, ‘The Latin Text’, p. 111.

N o n - b i b l i c al T e x t s i n O ld C zech Bi b le s Figure 12.1. The dissemination of non-biblical texts in Old Czech Bible manuscripts and incunabula.

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In contrast, eight manuscripts from the second third of the fifteenth century lacked the Lent lectionaries; instead of them, the lists of Mass lections were extended by the full-text Old Testament readings. This last model with the augmented table of Mass lections was taken over in the third printed New Testament of 1497–1498,61 while previous printed Bibles and New Testament copies contained only tables of Mass lections in the traditional form without the full-text Old Testament lections. The presence of lists in the Old Czech Bibles shows that they are closely related to liturgical practice. It may indicate usage of the Czech Bibles as liturgical books, intended either for the priest’s private study and public reading of biblical lections, or for the participant to be able to follow the Latin Mass. In particular, they could have been used during the Utraquist liturgy instead of lectionaries. As is well known, one of the Hussite aims was to vernacularize the liturgy of the Mass. Following and broadening the ideas of Jan Hus, the reformers demanded that religious songs and Mass pericopes be sung in Czech. This was approved at the Hussite Synod of 1418. However, there is only little source evidence of any real implementation of this: there are only a few Old Czech manuscripts such as missals or hymnals which could have been used during the liturgy.62 It is likely that Hussites did not translate readings anew on their own but rather exploited already existing biblical translations. Due to the lack of lectionaries in late medieval Bohemia, Bibles with lists of Mass lections seem to have been used instead.63

Conclusion The fifteenth-century Old Czech Bible became a book owned and used by individuals, certainly by priests and preachers, wealthy members of the nobility and urban elite, and perhaps by other literate laymen too. Surviving manuscripts of the Old Czech Bible often attest to the great effort invested in making the exemplars personal and customizing them to the owner’s wishes, especially regarding non-biblical texts. As in the Wycliffite Bible, some of the para-biblical texts became quite popular and widely copied during the fifteenth century in the Czech lands. A small-format New Testament

61 Prague: [Printer of Prague Bible], 1497–1498, siglum PNT3. 62 Holeton, ‘The Role of Jakoubek of Stříbro in the Creation of a Czech Liturgy’, p. 82; Dittmann, ‘Slawische Sprachen in der eucharistischen Liturgie’, pp. 103‒40. 63 The use in the liturgy prolonged the life of the Old Czech Bible manuscripts into the era of printed Bibles. Many fifteenth-century manuscripts were marked with liturgical annotations and cross-references by a more recent hand of the sixteenth century, or a list of Mass readings was added. For example, Bible mikulovská (‘Mikulov Bible’, Brno, MZK, MS Mk 1, siglum B16) — copied in the 1440s or 1450s, and containing an independent rendering of the Gospels — was read and studied at the beginning of the sixteenth century. The more recent reader marked with different ink colours the beginnings and endings of the pericopes.

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became the most common biblical manuscript, owned by ordinary priests and literate burghers and tailored to their needs. It usually contained lists of lections with full-text Old Testament readings or a separate Lent lectionary, and sometimes biblical prologues were also included. Such a manuscript was perfect for practical use in many ways: for public recitation, for preaching, and for private devotional reading as well. At the end of the fifteenth century, the first printers imitated the design of the common biblical manuscripts, as far as the appearance and the layout were concerned. To reach the widest range of potential readers and to suit their usual reading strategies, they integrated all the most popular addenda — prologues and lists of Mass lections. They thereby established for the following period a new model of vernacular Bible, printed together with common para-biblical texts. The complementing of the Old Czech Bible with non-biblical texts may have been initially motivated by attempts to match the model of the Latin Bible. Gradually, the Old Czech Bible, augmented with these aids for study and for liturgical use, took over most of the roles and functions of Latin Bibles. Thus, the Old Czech Bible translation became a very important and influential text not only in the late Middle Ages, but also in the early modern era.

Works Cited (B = Bible, PB = printed Bible, NT = New Testament, PNT = printed New Testament, OT = Old Testament, POT = printed Old Testament, P = Psalter, PP = printed Psalter) Manuscripts and Archival Sources B1 B2 B3 B4 B5 B6 B7

B8 B9 B10 B11

Brno, Moravský zemský archiv, G 10 Sbírka rukopisů Zemského archivu, 123/1–2 Olomouc, Vědecká knihovna v Olomouci, M III 3 New York City, Morgan Library and Museum (formerly Pierpont Morgan Library), MS M.752 Prague, Národní knihovna České republiky, XVII A 37 destroyed (formerly Dresden, Sächsische Landesbibliothek — Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Dresden, Mscr.Dresd.Oe.85) Kroměříž, Zámecká knihovna, O/c V 3, 76 Prague, Národní knihovna České republiky, XVII A 1. Fragments: Prague, Národní knihovna České republiky, XVII J 17/17. Prague, Knihovna Národního muzea, 1 D c 1/1A, B, C, D; 1 D c 1/15; 1 D c 1/17B, 1 D c 1/21, 1 D c 1/29. Košice, Archív Centra spirituality Východ-Západ M. Lacka, sine Prague, Národní knihovna České republiky, XVII A 30 Prague, Národní knihovna České republiky, XVII A 29 Prague, Národní knihovna České republiky, XVII B 11 Prague, Knihovna Národního muzea, I A 13

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B12 B13 B14

B15 B16 B17 B18 B19 B20 B21 B22 B23 B24 B25 B26 B27 B28 NT1 NT2 NT3 NT4 NT5 NT6 NT7 NT8 NT9 NT10 NT11 NT12 NT13 NT14 NT15 NT16 NT17 NT18 NT19 NT20 NT21 NT22

Brno, Moravská zemská knihovna, Mk 3 missing (formerly Litoměřice, Státní oblastní archiv v Litoměřicích, Biskupské sbírky Litoměřice, BIF 2) Litoměřice, Státní oblastní archiv v Litoměřicích, Biskupské sbírky Litoměřice, BIF 3.2 (1st vol.), BIF 3.1 (2nd vol.). Třeboň, Státní oblastní archiv v Třeboni, Rukopisy Třeboň, A 2 (3rd vol.) Brno, Moravský zemský archiv, G 10 Sbírka rukopisů Zemského archivu, 122 Brno, Moravská zemská knihovna, Mk 1 Milan, Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense, AE XIII 35 Prague, Národní knihovna České republiky, XVII A 10 Moscow, Gosudarstvennyj istoričeskij muzej, Khludovskoe D sobranie Nr. 130 Prague, Knihovna Národního muzea, XVIII A 42 Prague, Knihovna Národního muzea, IV B 12 Olomouc, Vědecká knihovna v Olomouci, M III 1/I–II Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. 1175 Prague, Národní knihovna České republiky, XVII A 7. Fragments: Prague, Knihovna Národního muzea, 1 K 132 Schaffhausen, Stadtbibliothek, Msc Generalia 29 Prague, Národní knihovna České republiky, XVII A 28 Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek, Cod. Guelf. 25.12 Extrav Lviv, Lvivska Nacionalna Naukova Biblioteka Ukrainy Imeni V. Stefanyka, 9 O/H Oд. 3б. 3897 Prague, Národní knihovna České republiky, XVII D 19 Bremen, Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Bremen, msc 0020 Brno, Moravský zemský archiv, G 12, Cerr II 384 Budapest, Egyetemi Könyvtár, Cod. Slav. 6 Prague, Františkánská knihovna u P. Marie Sněžné – historické fondy, Af 3 Prague, Národní knihovna České republiky, XVII E 6 Prague, Národní knihovna České republiky, XVII E 13 Prague, Národní knihovna České republiky, XVII B 15, fols 1r–150r Prague, Knihovna Národního muzea, II H 24 Prague, Národní knihovna České republiky, XVII D 30 Prague, Knihovna Národního muzea, III E 28, fols 1r–279r, 339r–344r Křivoklát, Hradní knihovna, I c 37 Prague, Knihovna Národního muzea, I G 10 Plzeň, Studijní a vědecká knihovna Plzeňského kraje, 21 A 35 Nelahozeves, Roudnická lobkowiczká knihovna, VI Fd 18 Nelahozeves, Roudnická lobkowiczká knihovna, VI Fg 35 Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. 3304 Prague, Národní knihovna České republiky, XVII G 55, fols 2r–191r, 244v–248r Prague, Knihovna Národního muzea, I D 13 Prague, Knihovna Národního muzea, XVIII D 37 Prague, Knihovna Národního muzea, I H 28 Prague, Knihovna Národního muzea, Nostická knihovna, MS a 3

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NT23 NT24 NT25 NT26 NT27 NT28 NT29 NT30 NT31 NT32 NT33 NT34 NT35 NT36 NT37 NT38 NT39 NT40 NT41 OT1 OT2 OT3 OT4 OT5 OT6 OT7 OT8 OT9 OT10 OT11 OT12 OT13 OT14 OT15 OT16 OT17 OT18 OT19 OT20 OT21

Oxford, Bodleian Library, Laud Misc. 516 Prague, Národní knihovna České republiky, XVII G 5 Prague, Knihovna Národního muzea, V E 42 Brno, Moravská zemská knihovna, Mk 78 Rajhrad, Knihovna Benediktinského opatství Rajhrad, R 390, fols 79r–271v missing (formerly in the property of Juraj Ribay) Prague, Strahovská knihovna, DB II 1 Olomouc, Vědecká knihovna v Olomouci, M I 168 Olomouc, Vědecká knihovna v Olomouci, M II 47, fols 65r–370r Tarnów, Biblioteka Wyższego Seminarium Duchownego, BWDS Rkps: 01 Cieszyn, Książnica Cieszyńska, SZ DD IV 8, fols 1r–252r Brno, Moravská zemská knihovna, Klášter minoritů v Brně — deponát, Mn 26 Prague, Národní knihovna České republiky, XVII D 17 Třeboň, Státní oblastní archiv v Třeboni, Rukopisy Třeboň, Ad A 2, fols 1r–68v Prague, Národní knihovna České republiky, XVII D 37 Budapest, Országos Szechenyi Könyvtár, Fol. Boh. Slav. 29 Prague, Knihovna Královské kolegiátní kapituly sv. Petra a Pavla, MS 3 Prague, Národní knihovna České republiky, XVII E 3 Prague, Národní knihovna České republiky, XXVI A 25 Prague, Národní knihovna České republiky, XI A 14, fols 249r–296r Prague, Strahovská knihovna, DG I 12 Prague, Strahovská knihovna, DB IV 50 Prague, Knihovna Národního muzea, IV B 13/II Prague, Strahovská knihovna, DE V 18 Prague, Archiv Pražského hradu, Knihovna Metropolitní kapituly u sv. Víta, B 85/1 Prague, Národní knihovna České republiky, XVII B 15, fols 150r–259v Prague, Národní knihovna České republiky, XVII A 34 Rome, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Reg. Lat. 87 Litoměřice, Oblastní muzeum v Litoměřicích, SV, 23945 Litoměřice, Státní oblastní archiv v Litoměřicích, Biskupské sbírky Litoměřice, BIQ 13 Nelahozeves, Roudnická lobkowiczká knihovna, VI Fc 4 Prague, Národní knihovna České republiky, XVII G 55, fols 192r–243v, 249r–286v Brno, Moravská zemská knihovna, Mk 2 Brno, Moravská zemská knihovna, Mk 10 Prague, Národní knihovna České republiky, XVII E 16, fols 1r–352r Prague, Knihovna Národního muzea, III B 9 Prague, Národní knihovna České republiky, XVII A 36 Prague, Knihovna Národního muzea, III F 2 Sankt Peterburg, Rossijskaja akademija nauk, F No. 219 Rajhrad, Knihovna Benediktinského opatství Rajhrad, R 390, fols 1r–66r, 298r–302r

293

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OT22 OT23 OT24 OT25 OT26 OT27 P1 P2 P3 P4 P5 P6 P7 P8

Prague, Knihovna Národního muzea, IV B 13/I Prague, Národní knihovna České republiky, XXIII F 39, fols 1r–143r Olomouc, Vědecká knihovna v Olomouci, M I 502, fols 18r–194v, 224r–276r Cieszyn, Książnica Cieszyńska, SZ DD IV 8, fols 283r–434r Prague, Národní knihovna České republiky, XVII C 56 Prague, Národní knihovna České republiky, XVII F 4 missing (formerly Olomouc, Vědecká knihovna v Olomouci, M II 133) Prague, Národní knihovna České republiky, XVII F 8 Prague, Knihovna Národního muzea, III H 28 Prague, Národní knihovna České republiky, XVII E 15, fols 1r–115v Prague, Knihovna Národního muzea, I E 65, fols 1r–82r Prague, Národní knihovna České republiky, XVII A 12 Prague, Národní knihovna České republiky, XVII H 12 Český Krumlov, Státní oblastní archiv v Třeboni, pobočka Český Krumlov, Sbírka rukopisů Český Krumlov, 318 P9 Dresden, Sächsische Landesbibliothek — Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Dresden, Mscr.Dresd.k.2 P10 Olomouc, Vědecká knihovna v Olomouci, M II 47, fols 1r–63r P11 Wittenberg, Bibliothek des Evangelischen Predigerseminars, A VI 6, fols 1r–262r PB1 [Bible pražská], Prague: [Printer of Prague Bible], 1488. GW 4323; ISTC ib00620000; Knihopis: INC013 PB2 [Bible kutnohorská], Kutná Hora: Martin z Tišnova, 1489. GW 4324; ISTC ib00621000; Knihopis: INC035, INC036 PB3 Biblí Česká […], Venice: Peter Liechtenstein, 1506 PNT1 [Nový zákon se signetem], [Plzeň: Successor of the Printer of Statuta provincialia, around 1481–1483]. GW M45676; ISTC ib00650600; Knihopis: INC005 PNT2 [Nový zákon Dlabačův], [Plzeň: Successor of the Printer of Statuta provincialia (?), around 1492]. GW M45679; ISTC ib00650650; Knihopis: INC006 PNT3 [Nový zákon ilustrovaný], Prague: [Printer of Prague Bible], 1497–1498. GW M45682; ISTC ib00650700; Knihopis: INC025 PP1 [Žaltář první tištěný], Prague: [Printer of the Psalter / Martin z Tišnova], 1487. GW M36275; ISTC ip01069500; Knihopis: INC011 PP2 [Žaltář plzeňský Bakalářův], [Plzeň: Mikuláš Bakalář], 1499. GW M36274; ISTC ip01069600; Knihopis: INC044 Antwerp, Museum Plantin-Moretus, Cod. M 15/1–2 Olomouc, Zemský archiv v Opavě — pobočka Olomouc, fond Metropolitní kapitula Olomouc, CO 400 Prague, Archiv Pražského hradu, Knihovna Metropolitní kapituly u sv. Víta, A 127 ———, Národní knihovna České republiky, XI D 9 Stuttgart, Württembergische Landesbibliothek, Cod.bibl.qt.19 Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. 2759–2763

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Primary Sources Staročeské biblické předmluvy, ed. by Kateřina Voleková and Andrea Svobodová (Prague: Scriptorium, 2019) Sto listů M. Jana Husi, ed. and trans. by Bohumil Ryba (Prague: Jan Laichter, 1949) Secondary Works Brodský, Pavel, and Martina Šumová, Iluminované rukopisy v archivech na území Čech (Prague: Masarykův ústav a Archiv AV ČR, v. v. i., 2017) Černý, Pavol, ‘Iluminované rukopisy Zdíkova skriptoria’, in Jindřich Zdík (1126– 1150). Olomoucký biskup uprostřed Evropy, ed. by Jana Hrbáčová and Josef Bláha (Olomouc: Muzeum umění Olomouc, 2009), pp. 88–96 ———, ‘Eine illuminierte Bibelhandschrift schwäbischer Herkunft in Olmützer Kapitelbibliothek’, Czech and Slovak Journal of Humanities, 2 (2012), 4–15 Corbellini, Sabrina, and Margriet Hoogvliet, ‘Holy Writ and Lay Readers in Late Medieval Europe: Translation and Participation’, in Texts, Transmissions, Receptions: Modern Approaches to Narratives, ed. by André Lardinois, Sophie Levie, Hans Hoeken, and Christoph Lüthy (Leiden: Brill, 2015), pp. 259–80 Dittmann, Robert, ‘Slawische Sprachen in der eucharistischen Liturgie in den böhmischen Ländern bis 1621’, in Linguistik als diskursive Schnittstelle zwischen Recht, Politik und Konflikt (Hamburg: Dr Kovač, 2018), pp. 103‒40 Doležalová, Lucie, ‘The Summarium Biblicum: A Biblical Tool Both Popular and Obscure’, in Form and Function in the Late Medieval Bible, ed. by Eyal Poleg and Laura Light (Leiden: Brill, 2013), pp. 163–84 Ghosh, Kantik, ‘The Prologues’, in The Wycliffite Bible: Origin, History and Interpretation, ed. by Elizabeth Solopova (Leiden: Brill, 2016), pp. 162–82 Holeton, David, ‘The Role of Jakoubek of Stříbro in the Creation of a Czech Liturgy: Some Further Reflections’, in Jakoubek ze Stříbra. Texty a jejich působení, ed. by Ota Halama and Pavel Soukup (Prague: Filosofia, 2006), pp. 49–86 Hudson, Anne, and Elizabeth Solopova, ‘The Latin Text’, in The Wycliffite Bible: Origin, History and Interpretation, ed. by Elizabeth Solopova (Leiden: Brill, 2016), pp. 107–32 Kyas, Vladimír, Česká bible v dějinách národního písemnictví (Prague: Vyšehrad, 1997) Light, Laura, ‘French Bibles c. 1200–30: A New Look at the Origin of the Paris Bible’, in The Early Medieval Bible: Its Production, Decoration and Use, ed. by Richard Gameson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 155–76 ———, ‘The Thirteenth Century and the Paris Bible’, in The New Cambridge History of the Bible. Volume 2. From 600 to 1450, ed. by Richard Marsden and E. Ann Matter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), pp. 380–91 ———, ‘The Thirteenth-Century Pandect and the Liturgy: Bibles with Missals’, in Form and Function in the Late Medieval Bible, ed. by Eyal Poleg and Laura Light (Leiden: Brill, 2013), pp. 185–215

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Pečírková, Jaroslava, ‘Czech Translations of the Bible’, in Interpretacija Svetega pisma / Interpretation of the Bible, ed. by Jože Krašovec (Ljubljana and Sheffield: Slovenska akademija znanosti in umetnosti, and Sheffield Academic Press, 1998), pp. 1167–1200 Peikola, Matti, ‘Tables of Lections in Manuscripts of the Wycliffite Bible’, in Form and Function in the Late Medieval Bible, ed. by Eyal Poleg and Laura Light (Leiden: Brill, 2013), pp. 351–78 Petr, Stanislav, ‘Český Nový zákon z knihovny augustiniánského kláštera ve Lnářích’, Studie o rukopisech, 26 (1987–1988), 73–81 Poleg, Eyal, Approaching the Bible in Medieval England (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013) ———, ‘Wycliffite Bibles as Orthodoxy’, in Cultures of Religious Reading in the Late Middle Ages: Instructing the Soul, Feeding the Spirit and Awakening the Passion, ed. by Sabrina Corbellini (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), pp. 71–91 Roldán-Figueroa, Rady, ‘Justified without the Works of the Law: Casiodoro de Reina on Romans 3,28’, in The Formation of Clerical and Confessional Identities in Early Modern Europe, ed. by Wim Janse and Barbara Pitkin, Dutch Review of Church History, 85 (Leiden: Brill, 2005), pp. 205–24 Sichálek, Jakub, ‘European Background: Czech Translations’, in The Wycliffite Bible: Origin, History and Interpretation, ed. by Elizabeth Solopova (Leiden: Brill, 2016), pp. 66–84 Solopova, Elizabeth, Manuscripts of the Wycliffite Bible in the Bodleian and Oxford College Libraries (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2016) ———, ‘The Manuscript Tradition’, in The Wycliffite Bible: Origin, History and Interpretation, ed. by Elizabeth Solopova (Leiden: Brill, 2016), pp. 223–45 Schröpfer, Johannes, ‘Ein Stuttgarter alttschechischer Bibelprolog und die Orthographia bohemica’, in Sodalicium Slavizantium Hamburgense in honorem Dietrich Gerhardt, ed. by Johannes Schröpfer (Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1971), pp. 349–70 Stahl, Irene, Katalog der mittelalterlichen Handschriften der Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Bremen (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2004) Stegmüller, Fredericus, Repertorium Biblicum Medii Aevi. Tomus I: Initia biblica, apocrypha, prologi (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1950) Šmahel, František, ‘Instead of Conclusion: Jan Hus as Writer and Author’, in A Companion to Jan Hus, ed. by Ota Pavlíček and František Šmahel (Leiden: Brill, 2015), pp. 370–409 Svobodová, Andrea, ‘The New Old Czech Translation of the Psalter in the First Printed Bibles’, in Vernacular Psalters and the Early Rise of Linguistic Identities. The Romanian Case, ed. by Vladimir Agrigoroaei and Ileana Sasu, Museikon Studies, 1 (Bucharest: DARK Publishing – Muzeul Național al Unirii Alba Iulia, 2019), pp. 55–59 Vintr, Josef, ‘Prvotisky českého žaltáře’, in Čeština v pohledu synchronním a diachronním: stoleté kořeny Ústavu pro jazyk český, ed. by Světla Čmejrková, Jana Hoffmannová, and Jana Klímová (Prague: Karolinum, 2012), pp. 179–84

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Voleková, Kateřina, ‘Mariánské hodinky v kontextu staročeského překladu žaltáře’, in Karel IV. a Emauzy. Liturgie – text – obraz, ed. by Kateřina Kubínová (Praha: Artefactum, 2017), pp. 220–30 ———, ‘The Old Czech Psalter and its Manuscript Tradition in Late Medieval Bohemia’, in Vernacular Psalters and the Early Rise of Linguistic Identities: The Romanian Case, ed. by Vladimir Agrigoroaei and Ileana Sasu, Museikon Studies, 1 (Bucharest: DARK Publishing – Muzeul Național al Unirii Alba Iulia, 2019), pp. 47–53

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Michael Van Dussen

Thomas Gascoigne’s Research on Central Europe c. 1456

In 1455, after twenty-one years of research on his Liber de veritatibus, Thomas Gascoigne had his autograph manuscript copied into a single volume. By then it had become a vast compilation of theological and pastoral ‘veritates’, arranged under alphabetized subject headings, ‘secundum formam tabule’ (in tabular form).1 Neither that volume nor the autograph survives, but what we do have — a large copy split between two Lincoln College manuscripts — shows that Gascoigne’s researches continued for at least two more years (the last dated reference is from 1457, the year before Gascoigne’s death).2 This is confirmed by evidence in his sole surviving notebook, half of which contains notes from 1456 that are clearly slated for the Liber. Among his interests at this time were the life of Bridget of Sweden and the ongoing dispute with the maverick English bishop Reginald Pecock.3 As I discuss here, a significant portion of the datable references from this final stage of his research also pertains to the politics of Latin Christendom broadly speaking, especially the contemporary crusading efforts against the Ottomans, the recent general councils at Constance and Basel, and the controversies in Bohemia.4 This continental material in particular is imperfectly integrated with the existing work, but Gascoigne does provide evidence that helps us



1 Oxford, Lincoln College, MS Lat. 118, p. 14. 2 The manuscripts are Oxford, Lincoln College MSS Lat. 117 and 118 (hereafter Linc. 117 and 118; both manuscripts are paginated). 3 Gascoigne’s controversy with Reginald Pecock is discussed in R. M. Ball, ‘Opponents of Pecok’. On Gascoigne and Bridget of Sweden, see Ball, Thomas Gascoigne, pp. 28–30; and Ball, ‘Opponents of Pecok’, p. 259. 4 Ball’s detailed study, Thomas Gascoigne, establishes much of the dating for Gascoigne’s research throughout his career. For more on the relevant controversies at Constance and Basel, see Petra Mutlová’s and Thomas Woelki’s chapters in the present volume. Michael Van Dussen  •  is Associate Professor of Medieval English Literature at McGill University (Montréal). His publications include From England to Bohemia: Heresy and Communication in the Later Middle Ages. Wycliffism and Hussitism: Methods of Thinking, Writing, and Persuasion, c. 1360 – c. 1460, ed. by Kantik Ghosh and Pavel Soukup, MCS 47 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021), pp. 299–318 FHG10.1484/M.MCS-EB.5.124379

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gain a sense of how these later additions served his larger purposes for the Liber, and of how these purposes could be adapted to the encounter with new information and emphases. Thomas Gascoigne was a theologian, preacher, and twice Chancellor of Oxford University. As he frequently reminds his readers, he came from a Yorkshire family, and his northern ties would be instrumental in his research process. He began the Liber in 1434, as he later writes, perhaps in a moment of enthusiasm upon encountering the autograph manuscript of Grosseteste’s commentary on Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, but certainly at a point when Grosseteste was projected to be a central authority at this initiatory stage of Gascoigne’s research.5 The work comes to about 850,000 words and is the product of Gascoigne’s research mainly at Oxford, but also elsewhere in England, including Syon Abbey. It has been called a commonplace book; an elaborate set of distinctiones; a preacher’s aid; and a florilegium.6 Yet if it is any of these, then it is such on Gascoigne’s own terms. As one ready point of comparison, it shares over 50 per cent of its headwords, if not its content, with the Manipulus florum, and so Gascoigne seems to have had at least somewhat analogous ambitions or models. Yet if we consider his views on preaching, for example, which were grounded in patristic precedent, it is not likely that he set out to compile a traditional list of distinctions or prothemata. Under the headword Episcopus he notes that Augustine preached 400 sermons to the clergy and the laity ‘absque aliquo themate et absque textus assumpcione in principio sermonis sui’ (without adopting any theme or text at the beginning of his sermon). Gascoigne claims to have followed suit in his own preaching, and says, disapprovingly, that to proceed by divisions and themes is a relatively recent introduction.7 The Liber was clearly designed to serve







5 The reference to the initiation of the work comes at the end of a passage drawn from Grosseteste’s commentary: ‘Hec dominus Lynconiensis super textum Apostoli predictum ad Romanas [sic] vo capitulo, quam exposicionem scriptam manu propria ipsius domini Lynconiensis doctoris Roberti Grosseteste. Ego Thomas Gascoigne, in Eboracensi dyocesis in Anglia natus vidi Oxonie anno Domini Mo cccco xxxiiiio quando incepi secundum formam tabule et secundum ordinem literarum alphabeti librum seu scriptum de veritatibus collectis ex sacra scriptura et ex scriptis sanctorum et doctorum’. See Linc. 118, p. 14; transcription in Gascoigne, Loci e Libro veritatum (hereafter Loci), ed. by Rogers, p. 129. In the present chapter, cited passages that also appear in Rogers’s edition incorporate corrections to his frequent errors in transcription. 6 Christina von Nolcken calls the Liber a preacher’s aid (ODNB, s.v. ‘Gascoigne [Gascoyne], Thomas’); for other characterizations (e.g., commonplace book, set of distinctions), see Ball, Thomas Gascoigne, p. 4 and the nuanced discussion of genre in Mishtooni Bose, ‘Thomas Gascoigne’s Biographies’. For discussion of another alphebetized preacher’s aid, from a Wycliffite circle, see Fiona Somerset’s contribution to the present volume. 7 Linc. 117, p. 409 (Loci, ed. by Rogers, pp. 43–44): ‘In quo anno [1450], in octavis Sancti Johannis evangeliste, die dominica, ostendi in sermone meo in Oxonia in ecclesia Sancti Martini in Quadrivio, quod beatus doctor Augustinus predicavit 400 sermones ad clerum et ad populum, absque aliquo themate et absque textus assumpcione in principio sermonis sui, et sic ego predicavi die et anno predictis in Oxonia nullum thema accipiendo, nec textum

Tho m a s G as co i g n e ’s R e s e a rc h o n Ce n tral Euro pe c . 1456

the needs of preachers, at least in part; but it also aimed to shift preaching practices themselves away from the mainstream, both through ‘materiae utiles’ (profitable subject-matter) and through direct critique of modern practices by contrast with those of the patristic tradition. That fact provides crucial context for his interest in, and characterization of, events in Central Europe in the final years of his research. Gascoigne’s authorities comprise a combination of those we would expect to find in such a compilation, though heavily tilted toward patristic sources: Jerome features most prominently, with over 3000 references; Augustine, Bede, and Gregory appear with high frequency. These are often paraphrased, rather than quoted verbatim, a practice that serves as a constant reminder of Gascoigne’s intermediary role. Even this feature was likely part of a deliberate attempt to follow patristic precedent. In his notebook, for example, he remarks ‘quomodo sancti doctores solebant allegare verba sanctorum secundum sensum seu intellectum verborum pocius quam secundum verborum ordinem’ (how the holy doctors were in the habit of setting out the words of the saints according to the sense or understanding of the words rather than verbatim) — clearly a model for his own practice.8 Of his post-patristic sources, Gascoigne favours Robert Grosseteste (only Jerome is cited more often).9 The former Bishop of Lincoln’s famously un-scholastic exegesis provided an important authenticating precedent for Gascoigne’s own. But Gascoigne’s reverence for Grosseteste went beyond intellectual sympathy. As detailed below, he insistently marks the cases in which he has personally seen Grosseteste’s autograph manuscripts in the library of the Oxford Greyfriars. This is consistent with his more widespread concern to document the physical locations of books he used and the channels by which he gained access to them.10 Gascoigne’s interest in Grosseteste was not merely a recognition of Grosseteste’s patristic approach to exegesis or his stature in European theological discourse more generally; it was also firmly situated in Gascoigne’s milieu and physical location at Oxford (and perhaps also inspired by the fact that Grosseteste was from the north).

ad repetendum vel ad concludendum assumendo, sed materias utiles, ut credidi, populo ministravi tunc, et declaravi in illo sermone meo Oxonie absque quocunque themate et absque repeticione alicujus textus, sed textus ad materias propositas pertinentes exposui et declaravi. Modus enim predicandi per divisiones et per thema incepit circa annum Domini millesimum et fere ducentesimum, ut patet per auctores talium sermonum’. 8 The notebook is now Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Lat. th. e. 33 (with the passage here on p. 30). Discussed in Ball, Thomas Gascoigne, p. 40 and n. 245. 9 On the frequency of Gascoigne’s citations, see Ball, Thomas Gascoigne, List I (pp. 44–86). 10 Here, however, his proximity to the person of the author himself is highlighted. His relationship with the Franciscans became so close that they gave him the copy of Augustine’s De civitate Dei and Gregory’s Moralia in Job that Grosseteste once annotated, now Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 198. At one point he remarks that he has seen a pair of Grosseteste’s bulrush sandals that were kept by the Oxford Franciscans. See Gieben, ‘Thomas Gascoigne and Robert Grosseteste’, pp. 56–58. The reference to Grosseteste’s sandals, cited in Gieben (p. 57 n. 6), is found in Linc. 118, p. 89.

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Beyond his work with Grosseteste, Gascoigne situates other significant portions of his work in a very specific intellectual environment, at times betraying a clear northern English ‘regionalism’,11 while at others a broader engagement with English controversies of his day. The recorded details about his research process give a sense of how he exploited his ties to gain access to book collections and other information, often from fellow northerners at Oxford. At several points, in fact, these same ties conditioned his access to and interpretation of information from further afield, including Central Europe, and news of European religious politics is frequently cast in terms of pastoral concerns closer to home.12 The combination of traditional authorities with topical details that one might expect in, say, a chronicle or even an antiquarian account, gives rise to the impression of eclecticism in terms of both genre and content. This is arguably the result of Gascoigne’s failure to integrate his topical material consistently, even within single entries, or to signal how properly to navigate a book that was designed for non-sequential reading. In many alphabetized collections, cross-referencing was seen to be a way around the problem of the artificial division of related subject-matter. John Whethamstede, for example, a contemporary of Gascoigne’s who made use of resources to which they had mutual access, helpfully directs his readers to related entries in his alphabetized compilation, the Granarium (which bears passing resemblance to Gascoigne’s Liber). In the Liber, by contrast, related subject-matter, including topical information or news of current events, is scattered unpredictably across multiple subject heads, without cross-references, and so the alphabetical arrangement is not always a reliable guide. Such distribution, inefficient as it may be, nevertheless increases the likelihood that readers consulting the book will encounter a particular subject randomly. Preparation for this dispersal seems to have been part of his annotation process. In his notebook, for instance, multiple entries drawn from Grosseteste’s works appear in rapid succession, many repeating the fact that Gascoigne found them in Grosseteste’s autographs at the Oxford Franciscans — a repetition that is odd in entries that appear in close succession, but which has an apparent practical value once the extracts are scattered more widely across the Liber. Presumably he followed a similar practice in notebooks that no longer survive. Yet the material is not inserted indiscriminately. Evidence from his later research suggests that Gascoigne was at least in the process of incorporating new, and in some cases less obviously related, material into the existing pastoral-theological scope of his project. A case in point is a rambling passage under the headword Bellum that begins with discussion of crusading efforts

11 The term is borrowed from John B. Friedman’s discussion of book production in the north of England during this period: Friedman, Northern English Books, p. xxi. 12 For more on Gascoigne’s movement between his local environment and events further afield, see Bose, ‘Thomas Gascoigne’s Biographies’.

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against the Ottomans.13 His interest in the subject was roused, though not initiated, by a visit from the priest Erasmus Fullar in 1456. The Hungarian governor and general John Hunyadi had commissioned Fullar to convey news of the Ottomans’ defeat at Belgrade earlier that year to other parts of Europe (Gascoigne reports that Fullar was in Rome before coming to England). Gascoigne had already been following developments surrounding the fall of Constantinople in 1453 and its aftermath, perhaps stemming from his earlier interest in the negotiations for a possible union with the Eastern Church at the Council of Florence,14 but Fullar’s eyewitness report of Christian victory was more inspiring. Under the ‘Bellum’ entry, Gascoigne details Fullar’s report of John of Capistrano’s charismatic preaching of the crusade and the siege at Belgrade, and says that he personally examined Hunyadi’s letter and seal. The details are specific, including reported speech, which suggests that Gascoigne copied excerpts from the letter itself.15 If the arrangement of information in the Bellum entry is anything to go on, Gascoigne considered the crusades to form a common picture with earlier

13 Linc. 117, p. 111 (Loci, ed. by Rogers, p. 8): ‘Bellum. Anno Christi Iesu 1456 fuit bellum Dei et eius victoria ostensa in paucis Christianis in regno Hungarie pugnantibus ibi contra maledictos Turcos et eorum imperatorem, qui ante illum annum invasit et obtinuit civitatem Constantinopolim, quia imperator intendebat, ut dixit, delere nomen Iesu Christi sub celo, quia clam et furtive intravit per mare in Danubium, fluvium magnum, et in nocte ante vigiliam Beate Marie Magdelene, dimissis galeis suis in aquam Danubii, intravit in regnum Hungarie cum suo excercitu malo et magno, et facto ibi insultu suo contra castrum vocatum “Altus Gradus”, et contra villam ei annexam vocatam Cris Wissenbergis, \i.e. Christi alba villa/, pugnabant in vigilia et in festo sancte ac beate Marie Magdalene cum 40ta millibus Christianis de Hungaria exiuntibus [sic] extra castrum predictum et villam, semper alta voce clamantibus, “Iesus! Iesus! Iesus!” doctore Johanne de Capistrano ordinis sancti Francisci precedente Christianos cum magna cruce et clamante et eciam faciente Christianos alte clamare, “Iesus! Iesus! Iesus!” continuis vocibus, quo facto, viso, et audito a perfidis Turcis paganis, percussit eos Deus et eorum perfidum imperatorem tanto timore et horrore quod fugierunt a facie Dei; et predicta 40ta millia Christianorum occiderunt de illis Turcis paganis centum millia et 50ta millia, captis eorum magnis diviciis manu et auxilio Dei omnipotentis’. 14 His interest in the aftermath of the Fall of Constantinople is seen, for example, in his reports of the ‘Bulla Turcorum’ of Calixtus III, discussed below. Gascoigne draws on the bull in his account of the Battle of Belgrade. In an earlier letter, Gascoigne expressed enthusiasm for a breakthrough in negotiations with the Greeks at the Council of Florence regarding a possible union. He also commented on the negotiations in his Liber, though after they had broken down. See the references in n. 23 below. Gascoigne also draws on the letter from Calixtus under the heading Fides Ihesu Christi, where he indicates that it was sent to Thomas Bourchier, Archbishop of Canterbury. See Linc. 117, pp. 519–20 (Loci, ed. by Rogers, pp. 103–04). 15 The passage follows immediately upon the passage cited in n. 13 above (Linc. 117, p. 111; Loci, ed. by Rogers, pp. 8–9): ‘ut testatur in literis, sigillo armorum suorum sigillatis, capitaneus illius belli Christianorum dominus Johannes de Hungat, comes perpetuus Wisterciensis, quas literas suas misit in Angliam cum Domino Erasmo Fullar, sacerdote de Hungaria qui in illo bello contra Turcos fuit. […] [E]t hec predicta novit Thomas Gascoigne, eboracensis diocesis, vocatus doctor theologie Oxonie, qui hec audivit Oxonie et vidit in literis predicti comitis, sigillo armorum suorum sigillatis, et fecit sermonem coram vniversitate Oxonie, in processione ibi generali, cantato ibi “Te Deum laudamus” usque in finem, in ecclesia Beate

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events in Bohemia and certain proceedings of the fifteenth-century general councils. Fullar’s visit may even have stimulated further research on the Central European region. The subject ‘Bellum’ acts as a point of departure and return, but does not obviously characterize each part of the entry. It appears that the logical link went initially through John of Capistrano. Gascoigne tells us that Capistrano had preached and introduced reforms in Hungary, and that he had likewise preached in Bohemia in the wake of the destructive heresy of Jan Hus and Jerome of Prague.16 Now on the subject of Hus and Jerome, he adds that the two were in turn nurtured by the heretical writings of John Wyclif. Here it becomes clear that Gascoigne is not following Fullar’s report alone, but adding information from at least three other sources. He tells us that Wyclif ’s books were brought to Bohemia by ‘Bohemi scholares’, as he had seen in a certain book De gestis concilii Constanciensis et Basiliensis. This book (in fact, a three-volume set, as we shall see) likely contained a version of the English delegation’s interrogation of Hus at Constance, during which Hus was pressed to tell how Wyclif ’s books reached Bohemia.17 The matter of transmission then prompts Gascoigne to recall Peter Payne, whom he blames for carrying many of Wyclif ’s books to Prague — a claim that is difficult to substantiate in its particulars, and which may be based on an assumption.18

Fridiswide virginis’. Other details about Hunyadi’s earlier excommunication by Nicholas V and the period between 1451 and 1456 are inserted elsewhere under the headword Indulgencie, likely relying on Fullar’s reporting as well. 16 Linc. 117, p. 111 (Loci, ed. by Rogers, pp. 9–10): ‘Predictus doctor Bononiensis, sancte memorie predicator et socius Sancti Bernardini, anno Christi 1450 Rome canonizati, doctor Johannes de Capistrano fecit multas predicaciones et reformaciones in regno inclito Hungarie de episcoporum moribus malis, et abbatum et religiosorum et sacerdotum, et laicorum adiuvantibus eum, et contra eosdem defendentibus eum dominis temporalibus in Vngaria; qui eciam predicavit in regno Boemie multum destructo per hereticos Boemos M. Johannem Husse et per alium magistrum arcium Jeronimum de Praga in regno Boemie, qui nutriti erant in malis eorum erroribus et herisibus [sic] per libros mali doctoris Johannis Wycliff de Anglia, quos libros Boemi scholares in Oxonia portaverunt in Boemiam, vt patet in libro De gestis consilii Constanciensis et Basiliensis quos [sic] vidi. Et pessima regina Boemie uxor 3ii Wenceslaii regis Boemie defendebat predictos duos hereticos Bohemios et eis adherentes, et eciam malum magistrum arcium Oxonie Petrum Anglicum, qui portavit libros multos predicti Wyclyffe heretici de Anglia in Pragam in regnum Boemie, qui Petrus fuit filius vnius Fransegeni [sic], sed natus fuit in villa Anglie que vocatur Hogh iuxta villam vocatam Grantham, et vocavit se ipsum “Petrum Clericum”, anglice “Clark”. Et predicti Johannes Hus et Jeronimus de Praga fuerunt combusti ut heretici in Constancia tempore consilii Constanciensis, ut dixit mihi, doctori Gascoigne, bone memorie episcopus quondam Herfordensis, dominus Thomas Spofforth, sepultus Eboraci, qui hoc vidit Constancie in tempore predicti consilii generalis Constancie’. 17 The episode is recorded in the Relatio of Petr of Mladoňovice (ed. by Novotný, pp. 107–08), which is not to say that Gascoigne read this particular account. 18 Gascoigne may have had privileged information regarding Payne’s activities, or he may have operated on assumptions. He is the sole source for the claim that Peter Payne stole the chancellor’s seal at Oxford to secretly authorize falsehoods about Wyclif in producing a testimonial letter in 1406. The letter soon made its way to Prague, where it was often

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Next he returns to Hus and Jerome to mention their executions at Constance, as reported to him by Thomas Spofford, Bishop of Hereford, who had witnessed the executions at Constance and is now buried at York. Spofford died in 1456, though it is not clear when the conversation took place. Finally, when Gascoigne returns to the Ottomans at the end of the entry, he excerpts the so-called Bulla Turcorum of Calixtus III, which was written in 1456 and sent to England the same year.19 The progress of the passage is characteristic of Gascoigne’s anthologizing tendency: information appears in sequential units, likely in the order in which he recorded from his sources or transcribed from his notes, and there is little attempt to integrate the notes into a systematic narrative within the entry, whether governed by chronology, theme, or otherwise. Connections are instead to be drawn by inference, in many cases by the proximity of information within an entry, and occasionally by reading one entry in the context of those that surround it, or in the context of those found elsewhere in the book. This is not consistently the case, but under the Bellum heading — which contains only three entries, the one we have been discussing surrounded by two others — placement seems to matter. The first entry draws on Jerome’s Super Abdiam, in which Jerome discusses licit and illicit war and outlines a situation in which war between ‘brothers in one faith of Christ’ is not permitted.20 This is immediately followed by the entry on Belgrade, the councils, and Bohemia, which I have already discussed. A brief third entry then summarizes passages displayed, and its use came up again during Hus’s trial at Constance. Gascoigne was also Chancellor of Oxford on two separate occasions, and so the use of the seal of this office to endorse Wyclif was certainly a sore point for him. See Linc. 117, p. 326 (Loci, ed. by Rogers, p. 20); for discussion, see Van Dussen, From England to Bohemia, p. 90. 19 Linc. 117, p. 112 (Loci, ed. by Rogers, p. 10): ‘Et predictus imperator Turcorum, Waldewach nomine, filius bastardus Cassiani Imperatoris Turcorum, invasit et adquisivit sibi et Turcis civitatem Constantinapolim, et occidit imperatorem orientalium Christianorum, et papa Calistus tercius vocat in bulla sua missa in Angliam anno Christi 1456o alterum Macometum, et iste imperator Turcorum sic scripsit in scriptis suis isto stilo: “Waldewach, gracia Macometi imperator Turcorum, Tartarorum, et Grecorum, et inimicus omnium Christianorum”, et frater ejus ex parte patris sui imperatoris Turcorum, heres Turcorum, captus fuit per Venetos, et Rome mandato Pape Calisti 3ii baptizatus fuit, et vocatus fuit Valentinus, sicut fuit papa ille vocatus ante suum papatum’. The bull (Calixtus III, Bulla 29 June 1456) was printed by Gutenberg the same year it was issued. It is not clear if this was the version that Gascoigne saw. The bull, beginning ‘Cum hiis superioribus annis’, expresses alarm at the Turks’ conquest of Constantinople in 1453 and requests further support for Calixtus’s crusading effort. 20 The entry is as follows (Linc. 117, p. 111; not transcribed in Loci): ‘Bellum. Dominus prohibuit populum Israel arma arripere et bellare contra Edom et Esau, filium Ysaac et fratrem Iacob; ideo enim terra Esau non datur in possessionem Israel nec de extraneis gentibus computatur. Hec sanctus Ieronimus super Abdiam Prophetam. Sic Christiani qui sunt fratres in una fide Christi non pugnarent invicem ut unus in uno regno dilatet regimen suum in aliud regnum quod forte non potest recte regere si regat duo regna simul’. Gascoigne here appears especially to have Jerome’s commentary on Abdias 10–14 in mind. See, Jerome, In Abdiam, ed. by Adriaen, pp. 362–66.

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from Jerome on the prophet Hosea, in which Jerome recounts an instance when the Israelites went to war with their brethren with God’s assistance.21 In this broader context of point and counter-point that frames the topical passage, the entire Bellum section can be read as an attempt to justify holy war against members of one’s own faith in certain circumstances, perhaps including the earlier wars against the Hussites, by framing the discussion with biblical and patristic arguments (as was characteristic for Gascoigne). Within the central Bellum entry itself, while Gascoigne’s association of the councils, the Hussites, and the crusade against the Ottomans proceeds by paratactic accumulation, many of his contemporaries would have understood there to be an implicit connection. Basel was convened among other reasons to address the troubles in Bohemia as well as the Ottoman encroachment as it appeared in the 1430s. The threat of militant Bohemian heresy to Christian unity was not seen to be altogether different from that of Muslim invasion, as much of the anti-Hussite rhetoric of the period attests.22 Elsewhere Gascoigne mentions the council’s efforts to bring about union with the Greeks after the council had moved to Ferrara and then to Florence.23 He mentions Capistrano’s rousing preaching in Hungary and Bohemia, but Hungarian forces had long been engaged in fighting the Hussites in Upper Hungary, and this reduced their ability to expend further resources on a second front.24 Other connections could be adduced. Yet whatever Gascoigne knew about these broader contexts, they were not his primary concern; threats to the integrity of Christendom were the effects of what troubled him most: namely, lapses in the duty to preach and

21 The third entry (Linc. 117, p. 112; not transcribed in Loci) reads: ‘Bellum. Populus Israel pugnabant Deo iuvente contra homines Gabaa civitatis in tribu Beniamyn eo quod non permittebat illa civitas illos homines occidi qui incredibili luxuria uxorem cuiusdam viri occiderunt in eadem urbe Gabaa, ut patet Iudicum xixo et 20 cao. Et populus Israel pugnans contra homines tribus Beniamyn bene fecerunt persequendo filios iniquitatis, sed quia non puniebant homines ibidem maius peccatum facientes contra Deum, scilicet, ydolatriam in domo Miche sacerdotis ideo permisit Deus illos homines occidi quos pugnare contra homines Gabaa precepit Iudicum 20 cao, ut testatur Sanctus Jeronimus super cao 10 Osee Prophete. Super illo textu non comprehendet illos in Gabaa prelium super filios iniquitatis et populus Israel non erit captivus quia pugnabat contra populum urbis Gabaa. In hoc enim benefecerunt occidendo eos qui correccionem et punicionem peccati impediverunt, sed populus Israel ex diebus Gabaa peccavit, hoc est in illo tempore peccavit eo quod maius peccatum factum contra Deum non puniebant, sed punire illud et illud per penam delere neglexit. Hec Sanctus Ieronimus Super Osee Prophetam libro 3o’. For Jerome’s commentary, Jerome, In Osee, ed. by Adriaen, pp. 112–14. 22 See Soukup, ‘“Pars Machometica”’. 23 See, for example, Linc. 117, p. 606, Linc. 118, p. 455, and an unedited letter attributed to Gascoigne that is found in Cambridge, Trinity College, MS B.4.23, fol. 192v, in which Gascoigne sends news about negotiations with the Greeks at Florence in 1439, evidently before the talks broke down. The letter appears to draw on a bull of Pope Eugenius from 1439. 24 See, for example, Lysý, ‘Husitské vpády’; and Zsuzsa, Hunyadi, pp. 208–09.

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other forms of pastoral negligence, particularly by bishops. In several related entries — including the one we have been discussing — the events he describes hinge on the issue of pastoral care, primarily preaching, pluralism, and absenteeism. A barbed aside that he inserts just after recounting Fullar’s report of the siege at Belgrade in the Bellum entry is telling: ‘et non novi nec audivi quod episcopi Anglie predicaverunt materiam divine laudis pro hoc magno miraculo divino, sed si hi episcopi tacuerint, lapides clamabunt, i.e. simplices Christiani dicent, “omnis spiritus laudet Dominum semper!”’ (and I have not known or heard that English bishops preached matter of divine praise for this great divine miracle, but if these bishops may have remained silent, yet the stones will cry out, that is, simple Christians will declare, ‘let every spirit praise the Lord forever!’). This last phrase (‘omnis spiritus laudet Dominum semper’) appears with similar material in an entry under Fides, where it punctuates a second account of the Bulla Turcorum, and specifically its exhortation to preach in support of the continued crusading effort.25 Read together (and of course the entries do not appear together in the Liber), it seems likely that the aside under Bellum is meant to criticize English bishops specifically for failing to preach in celebration of the crusaders’ victory and to spread word of the crusading indulgence that is announced in Calixtus’s bull. Elsewhere, in two separate entries under the headwords Appropriacio and Abusus, both of which mention the destruction caused by war in Bohemia, Gascoigne lays the blame not on the Hussites per se, but rather unaccountably on the rampant appropriation of benefices, pluralism, and the promotion of unworthy priests.26 To a point, then, these entries, for all their topical references to events in Central Europe, are made, albeit imperfectly, to cohere with his overarching pastoral concerns in the Liber, even if we might

25 The passage is in Linc. 117, pp. 519–20 (Loci, ed. by Rogers, pp. 103–04), with the reference here on p. 520 (Loci, ed. by Rogers, p. 103). The phrase here does not appear in the bull itself. 26 Linc. 117, pp. 60–61 (Loci, ed. by Rogers, pp. 5–6) (Appropriacio ecclesiarum): ‘Indigna enim promocio inhabilium personarum et appropriacio ecclesiarum parochialium cause fuerunt destruccionis regni Bohemorum, et hereticorum illam patriam et regnum destruentium, et quando verisimile fuit quod talia mala imminerent regno Bohemie, per indignos prelatos, per appropriacionem ecclesiarum, et per curatos non residentes in curis suis, Vniversitas Pragensis scripsit pape Martino 5o pro remedio horum malorum, sed remedium non fuit consecutum sed destructum est regnum Bohemorum et ecclesie destructe et combuste per Hus hereticorum principem et per Petrum Clerk Anglicum, magistrum artium inutilem Oxonie, qui fuit natus in Anglia in villa juxta Grawntham vocata Anglice “Hoch”, et ibi mansit pater eius, qui fuit Gallus seu Francus nacione, natus in Gallia, qui Petrus associatus fuit malo heretico Procopio, in Praga principali heretico’. Linc. 117, pp. 65–66 (Loci, ed. by Rogers, p. 7) (Abusus): ‘Nam Pragenses heretici et Bohemi heretici, qui magnam partem orbis suis erroribus et suis bellis vastaverunt in tempore Pape Martini quinti, ex hoc precipue in errores venerunt, quod cura animarum inter eos defecit per indignos in ecclesia promotos, et per non residentes in curis et in officiis, et per appropriaciones et per commendas ecclesiarum et prebendarum; vt patet in literis missis Pape Romano Martino ab Vniversitate Pragensi, in quibus scripserunt Pape quod verisimile fuit ibidem errores in regno Bohemie pululare pro causis predictis’.

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question Gascoigne’s decision to scatter this material across a work that was not designed for sequential reading. Gascoigne’s interest in the crises of Central Europe also fed into his involvement with specific controversies closer to home. His discussion of violence in Bohemia under Appropriacio, for example — violence that he attributed in part to a slackening of papal control there — was used not only to make a point about the effects of appropriation in general terms, but specifically to punctuate his criticism of the practice by collegiate churches and in the province of York.27 Notably, too, in the background of Gascoigne’s research into the councils and related events c. 1456 was his controversy with Reginald Pecock, at that time Bishop of Chichester. Pecock appears at several points in the Liber, mainly under the headword Episcopus, and the last dated reference to anything in the book pertains to the burning of Pecock’s books in 1457.28 Gascoigne was alarmed most by Pecock’s derogation from the importance of preaching, including his assertion that preaching was not an episcopal obligation.29 Pecock also opposed the patristic movement that had emerged at Oxford and Cambridge, of which Gascoigne was a vocal member. Gascoigne does not explicitly mention Pecock in the context of the councils or events in Central Europe, but his controversy with the bishop seems clearly to have informed Gascoigne’s interpretation of the significance of these events and guided his reading of some of the relevant sources — for instance, his richest source for the councils, a copy of acta from the councils of Pisa, Constance, and Basel to which he refers at several points throughout the Liber. Gascoigne’s persistent references to the acta locate the copy within a network of his close northern contacts and the colleges with which they were affiliated. In a long entry under Papa, for example, in which Gascoigne discusses attempts at Pisa and Constance to resolve the Schism, he remarks: ‘Hec omnia patent in libro De Gestis concilii Pisani et Constanciensis, quem vidi Oxonie in collegio Dunelmie, quod habet illum librum ex dono doctoris Roberti Burtun’ (All these things are shown in the book De Gestis concilii Pisani et Constanciensis, which I have seen at Oxford in Durham College, which holds that book from the gift of Doctor Robert Burton).30 Under Predicare Gascoigne further explains that the book was in fact a three-volume set, written on paper, and that it contained the acta of Basel as well as those of

27 Gascoigne’s comments on appropriation and unworthy promotion in Bohemia are cited in the previous note. These immediately follow a substantial list of appropriations in the north of England (Linc. 117, p. 60; Loci, ed. by Rogers, p. 5). 28 Linc. 118, p. 599. 29 Ball, ‘Opponents of Pecok’, p. 133 (and elsewhere). Note that Gascoigne specifically takes Pecock to task on this issue under Episcopus, and much of the Episcopus section has to do with the duty of bishops to preach. Mentioned in Ball, ‘Opponents of Pecok’, p. 237. See esp. Linc. 117, pp. 343–56. 30 Linc. 118, p. 173 (Loci, ed. by Rogers, p. 160).

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Pisa and Constance.31 Robert Burton had been a member of the first English delegation to Basel, along with other Yorkshire and Lincolnshire men such as Peter Partridge (who exchanged bitter words there with Peter Payne, who was also from Lincolnshire). Gascoigne likely knew Burton, though as Burton died in 1449, and since most evidence suggests Gascoigne was working with the volumes in 1456, he may have learned about the acta by other means at a later point. Perhaps he accessed them through William Gray, a mutual associate of Burton and Gascoigne who is connected to a similar copy of Basel material in Oxford, Balliol College, MS 166A, as well as other Balliol manuscripts that contain Basel sermons (MSS 164, 165A, and 165B). (Balliol 166A does not appear to be the copy that Gascoigne used, however.32) Gascoigne writes little of Pisa, and makes mainly passing comments about Constance, but he says quite a lot about the more recent council at Basel. The Basel acta he consulted contained responses by council fathers to the positions of the Hussites on the Four Articles of Prague; a list of Wyclif ’s 45 condemned articles; a letter of Archbishop Arundel from 1411; and a set of determinaciones de unione Grecorum.33 Of the material on the Four Articles, which interested 31 Linc. 118, p. 455 (Loci, ed. by Rogers, p. 187): ‘predictus liber De factis seu gestis in Concilio Pisano et in Concilio Constanciensi et in Concilio Basiliensi, quod fuit translatum ad Ferrariam, et postea ad Florenciam, est in tribus voluminibus scriptus in papiro in Oxonia in collegio Dunelmie’. Cf. Linc. 117, p. 596 (Loci, ed. by Rogers, p. 121). 32 Oxford, Balliol Coll., MS 166A is a paper manuscript, produced on the continent. It contains all four of the responses by the Hussites’ opponents from the 1433 disputation at Basel, though this is not enough to connect it conclusively with Gascoigne. Brian Twyne, a seventeenth-century antiquarian, suggests that Balliol MS 166A, or perhaps its exemplar at Durham College, was the copy Gascoigne accessed while compiling his Liber, and that this manuscript contains a text (Palomar’s response to Payne) that Gascoigne referenced in his entry on Predicare. See Twyne’s note in Balliol MS 166A, p. 18 (repeated, almost verbatim, in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Twyne XXIII, p. 645): ‘Istius tractatus [i.e., Palomar’s] meminit Thomas Gascoigne in suo Theologico Dictionario in verbo Praedicare p. 455 ex loco videtur etiam constare hoc ipsos libros de Actis Concilii Basil. Pisani et Constant. olim in Bibliotheca Ricardi Buriensis, hoc est in Bibliotheca Coll. Dunelm. Oxon. repositos fuisse et inde huc translatos vel saltem inde transcriptos’. Twyne’s claim that the manuscript contains a text that Gascoigne also consulted (even if from another copy) is incontrovertible. Mynors is overly dismissive of a connection between the acta mentioned in Gascoigne’s Liber and the Balliol MSS (which, in addition to MS 166A, include MSS 164, 165A, and 165B), claiming: ‘Gascoigne does indeed mention three large volumes of the Acts of the three Councils […]. Their contents were not the same as those of our manuscripts [i.e., the group of MSS with Basel material at Balliol], and there is no reason to identify the two sets’. This last point is clearly incorrect; Balliol MS166A could not be closer in content to what Gascoigne mentions, even if this was not the copy that Gascoigne used. See Mynors, Catalogue, p. 172. 33 The responses to the Hussite defences of the Four Articles are mentioned in Linc. 118, pp. 455–56 (Loci, ed. by Rogers, pp. 186–88) (for an edition of the responses themselves, see Mansi and others, Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio (hereafter Mansi), xxix, cols 868–1168 and xxx, cols 596–99); the 45 articles are referenced in Linc. 117, p. 550 (Loci, ed. by Rogers, p. 116) (edited in Mansi, xxvii, cols 632–34), after a partial transcription of a letter by Thomas Arundel from 1411, in which he refuted a letter that testified to Wyclif ’s

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him the most, Gascoigne comments on Heinrich Kalteisen’s response to Oldřich of Znojmo (the third article to be defended, on preaching), and gives some attention to Juan Palomar’s rebuttal of Payne (on civil dominion). Brief reference is made to the second article, on the correction of sins, but there is nothing on utraquism. There is no indication that Gascoigne had access to the positions of the Hussites themselves, which suggests that this copy of the acta contained only the responses by representatives of the council.34 The article that was debated third, on the free preaching of the Word of God, unsurprisingly appealed to Gascoigne, as did Kalteisen’s particular arguments on the obligation of bishops to preach. Kalteisen, responding to Oldřich of Znojmo,35 argued that Christ’s command that the apostles should preach applied especially to bishops, the apostles’ successors, but that it did not follow that the command should apply equally to all priests and deacons.36 Bishops’ ability to preach ‘libere’ (a key word in the third article) was itself limited, in that bishops may not preach in a foreign diocese if the diocesan of the place forbids it.37 This was enough for Gascoigne, however, who, under the headword Episcopus, says of Kalteisen’s position: ‘I do not see that the pope has exempted bishops from the duty of preaching, nor that thus he is able to license or relieve them, or to unburden bishops from the act of preaching publicly to their people’38 — almost certainly a comment

orthodoxy, issued by the Office of the Chancellor at Oxford in 1406; and the determinations concerning negotiations with the Greeks are mentioned in Linc. 118, p. 456 (Loci, ed. by Rogers, p. 187). For these and other contents of the acta beyond those that pertain to Basel, see Ball, Thomas Gascoigne, pp. 132–35. Ball was not aware that a version of the letter from Arundel to which Gascoigne refers is found in Prague, Národní knihovna, MS VIII.G.13, fol. 118v, and edited by Höfler in Geschichtschreiber, ii, p. 193. For discussion, see Van Dussen, From England to Bohemia, pp. 86–99. 34 In fact, it was rare for copies of Basel acta to contain the Hussites’ positions. Of the 34 extant manuscripts that contain Kalteisen’s Oratio de libera praedicatione, only seven contain Oldřich of Znojmo’s Oratio. I thank Pavel Soukup for sharing his data with me. 35 Kalteisen’s paraphrase of Oldřich’s position is as follows (Mansi, xxix, col. 1012): ‘Et in notabili super termino, Libere, dixit proponens quod talis missio seu licentia datur per ministerium episcopi, et a Domino, quando ad ordinem diaconatus vel presbyteratus quis promovetur. Conclusistis ergo, quod ex mandato Christi tenetur praedicare, nec possent ab illo prohiberi’. 36 Mansi, xxix, col. 1024: ‘respondeo quod veritas est quod Christus praecepit Apostolis praedicare; sed ex hoc non sequitur. Ergo omnibus presbyteris & diaconibus; quia presbyteri et diaconi non sunt successores Apostolorum, sed soli episcopi’. 37 Mansi, xxix, col. 1024: ‘dato quod hoc praeceptum episcopos obligaret, qui sunt Apostolorum successores, adhuc nullus eorum esset sufficienter missus ad officium praedicationis per totum mundum: quia non possunt praedicare aliena diocesi, si prohibeantur ad episcopo illius loci, nisi speciali sibi committeretur auctoritate superioris, vel a Deo missos specialiter probare se possent’. 38 Linc. 117, p. 320 (partial transcription in Loci, ed. by Rogers, p. 16): ‘ut probat bene in consilio Basiliensi doctor Henricus Caldifren de ordine predicatorum contra Wulricum Bohemium de libertate predicandi, non video quod papa exemit episcopos ad onere predicandi, nec quod sic potuit licenciare uel eos excipere uel disonerare episcopos ab actu publice

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made with an eye to Reginald Pecock, and a sign that in researching the Basel acta he was also gathering ammunition for his (and perhaps others’) disputes with Pecock and other bishops who renounced or neglected their duty to preach in the late 1450s. Although Gascoigne shows no direct awareness of the fact, it is tempting to think that the arguments against the Bohemians at Basel were all the more compelling to him, in that they relied ostensibly on patristic authorities in accordance with the agreement that the Hussites and representatives of the Council of Basel made at Cheb in 1432. The ‘Cheb Judge’ stated that the Hussites’ articles had to be judged by nothing other than the lex divina, the practices of Christ, the apostles and primitive church, and the councils and doctors who truly conform to them.39 A look at Kalteisen’s sources, for example, shows that he adhered fairly closely to this agreement, with some exceptions.40 The Cheb Judge allowed some latitude, but it ruled out many of the more recent scholastic theologians, and so the emphasis fell on the same authorities that Gascoigne and his contemporaries in the patristic movement at Oxford and Cambridge also favoured.41 This represents a remarkable moment of hermeneutic and polemical convergence; whether or not he was prepared to recognize it, Gascoigne and the members of his patristic movement were heirs to the increasingly anti-scholastic interpretative models that emerged in response to the challenges that both the Wycliffite and Hussite movements posed, and which represented a partial adoption of reformist modes of scriptural interpretation.42 It is also in this context that the use of Thomas Netter at Basel would be profitably understood (something that Gascoigne must have known about, particularly as Kalteisen cites Netter three times).43 In his Doctrinale antiquitatum fidei ecclesiae catholicae (1420s), Netter drew on similar patristic authorities for his dismantling of Wyclif ’s doctrines,44 but also to attack the contemporary ‘Wycliffites’ (a term assigned also to the Hussites

predicacionis populis eorum; obligaciones enim episcoporum ad predicandum populo suo in scriptura sacra legi iuxta illud precepit nobis predicare populo et testificare. Sed non lego ibi disoneraciones eorum ab illo actu predicandi, nec eorum ab illo onere adquietancias coram Deo’. 39 See John of Ragusa, Tractatus de reductione Bohemorum, ed. by Palacký, p. 220: ‘Item in causa quatuor articulorum, quam ut praefertur prosequuntur, lex divina, praxis Christi, apostolica et ecclesiae primitivae, unacum conciliis doctoribusque fundantibus se veraciter in eadem, pro veracissimo et indifferenti judice in hoc Basiliensi concilio admittentur’. 40 He draws most frequently (in this order) from Aquinas, Augustine, and Gregory, followed by Jerome and Bernard of Clairvaux. Chrysostom, Lyra, Albertus Magnus, and Ambrose make regular appearances. 41 For characterization of this movement, see Ball, ‘Opponents of Pecok’, p. 243. 42 Kantik Ghosh discusses the Wycliffites’ contribution to a reconfiguration of late medieval intellectual culture, particularly in England; see The Wycliffite Heresy. 43 Mansi, xxix, cols 977, 1011, and 1022. 44 On Netter’s patristic method and its context in the history of English anti-Wycliffite polemic, see Bose, ‘The Opponents of John Wyclif ’, esp. pp. 436–46.

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by their opponents). In the context of Basel, Netter’s encyclopaedic treatise provided ready-made arguments for confronting the Bohemian reformists. Peter Payne himself requested to see a copy — no doubt to learn what Netter (an old foe of his) had written about him, but surely also to prepare himself for the arguments of his opponents.45 In a passage under Predicare, however, Gascoigne gives a sense of his frustration with the copy of Basel acta at Durham College, and his comment jolts us back to the immediate context of his research.46 After noting that the council was moved to Ferrara and then Florence, he inserts a strikingly personal comment: ‘et opto vt aliquis bonus vir per Dei graciam, laboret ad habendum acta in illo concilio scripta vera manu’ (and I wish that some good man, by the grace of God, would work to have the acta in that council copied in a fair hand). He then describes the contents, after which he repeats: ‘queratur ergo, in nomine Domini, vera copia predicti libri De actis et gestis in Concilio sacro Basiliensi’ (and so, in the name of the Lord, a fair copy of the aforesaid book De actis et gestis in Concilio sacro Basiliensi should be sought). If we regard the Liber as a reference work that aims for wide distribution, then comments like these are unsuitable. Perhaps an assistant found the remarks in a notebook and transcribed them in their entirety, along with the more pertinent material, without discrimination. In any case, the passage comes across as a brief list of documents or contents that Gascoigne is unable fully to process, a note to himself or to others that more research ought to be done on Basel, and that the record of the council ought to be better preserved in English, or specifically Oxonian, libraries — perhaps a direct address to members of an immediate reading public that shared common values (and had similar access). That impression is borne out in other entries that explicitly rely on the three-volume set for their information. Unlike many of his other sources, these reveal little about the contents that impressed Gascoigne. They are cursory, and they nearly always rely on summary rather than direct quotation. Were the acta unreliably written, or written in a continental hand that he had difficulty deciphering? Presumably this was why he twice expressed his desire for some ‘bonus vir’ to copy them ‘vera manu’. 45 See Petr of Žatec, Liber diurnus, ed. by Palacký, p. 307: ‘Post prandium quatuor ex nostris, Anglicus [i.e., Payne] et Episcopus [i.e., Mikuláš Biskupec], Mathias Lauda et Gira, ad legatum iverunt, optantes ab eo responsum. Qui hoc dedit responsum: Loquentur tres ex parte concilii, non tamen diffinitive. Eodem tempore monuit legatum Anglicus, ut monachum ad ostendendum auctoritatem Vicleph propositam in forma teneret. Legatus dicebat, virtualiter quod ostendat. Eodem die XXIIII hora legatus volumen unum domino Procopio per duos suos servitores transmisit, ut conspiceret continens dictum cujusdam fratris Carmelitarum, Thomae Walden Anglici, contra libros Wicleph compositum ipsi Martino Quinto; qui scilicet Procopius grate volumen suscipiens, transmisit hora eadem Petro magistro Anglico, qui multum gaudebat viso volumine’. Jan Rokycana appears also to have become acquainted with Netter’s arguments, at one point claiming that Netter wrote falsely about Eucharistic practices in Bohemia (see Petr of Žatec, Liber diurnus, p. 344). 46 Linc. 118, pp. 455–56 (Loci, ed. by Rogers, pp. 186–87).

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If we look to the final phase of Gascoigne’s research, it seems clear, on the one hand, that the Liber as it survives represents an ongoing, unfinished project, particularly as it was envisioned at this late stage. But what was that project shaping up to be? Mishtooni Bose has argued convincingly that Gascoigne’s coupling of the ‘particular and the universal’, or of ‘eternal and quotidian temporalities’, finds a precedent in scholastic forms such as collections of distinctiones, where we sometimes see an admixture of local references with material of timeless significance, and that Gascoigne’s self-consciousness as an author presents less of a departure from tradition than a ‘natural culmination’ of certain scholastic practices.47 Bose cautions against interpreting Gascoigne’s autobiographical and localizing gestures to be signs of an intellectual parochialism. To do so would be to miss the fact that Gascoigne was ‘honing […] a particular scholastic form of creativity in which the recorded life was a vital resource to think with, both devotionally and polemically’.48 It would also ignore Gascoigne’s demonstrated interest in wider European religious politics and his concern for historical precedent. Gascoigne’s practice does not represent a break from established forms, then, but his blending of local or regional references with more broadly accessible material is certainly noteworthy in its persistence and even its particular emphases. To the loci or topoi that are the staple of florilegia and related reference works — the ‘common places’ of theological learning — Gascoigne added a different kind of topicality, ostentatiously situating his own specific acts of accessing and using books in a way that might challenge an assumption that the Liber was intended for general use or application, even as he addresses Central European and other international religious controversies. The insistence of Gascoigne’s references to specific manuscripts, sources, and repositories in fact suggests a particular manifestation of the concern for originalia, or for accessing texts in their entirety (not as disassembled extracts), in the high and late medieval period.49 This concern is found frequently in discussions of florilegia and other preachers’ aids in particular. One of Gascoigne’s contemporaries, Thomas Cyrcetur, for example, who was likewise involved in the Pecock controversy, used preaching aids of this kind begrudgingly. He acknowledged their practicality but suggested that they could be abused by those who cull them for clever and frivolous passages.50 Earlier, Thomas Hibernicus wrote in the prologue to the Manipulus florum that his extracts from the auctores should not be taken as valid replacements for access to the original works in their entirety. He did not indicate where these works could be found (though he worked primarily at the Sorbonne), but did provide a

47 48 49 50

Bose, ‘Thomas Gascoigne’s Biographies’, pp. 61, 72. Bose, ‘Thomas Gascoigne’s Biographies’, p. 73. See, for example, Richard Rouse and Mary Rouse, ‘Statim invenire’, esp. pp. 216–18. Ball, ‘Thomas Cyrcetur’, p. 214.

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list of titles as an appendix.51 Gascoigne goes further, turning his book into a kind of resource for locating not only the originalia, but also particular copies of authoritative works. What is more, these copies often have further claims to authenticity — by way of their origin, their owners, their associations, or their placement (and in the case of Grosseteste’s autographs, their proximity to the author himself). On top of all of this are Gascoigne’s claims to access, an ostentatious show of eye-witnessing that was central to his ambitions to cast his research as reliable and authoritative. On a practical level, however, many of his references to specific books, libraries, or other sources (including oral sources) would have had little value much beyond the locations where copies of his Liber were eventually deposited: Syon Abbey (where he had conducted important work on Bridget of Sweden) and Lincoln College, Oxford (a foundation with which he had close personal and ideological ties).52 His work does not appear to have circulated more widely, but there is an aptness to its placement in these libraries at the end of his life or shortly thereafter. R. M. Ball has traced much of Gascoigne’s research activity through his annotation of books, many of which survive today. These books not only give a sense of his reading programme, but include cross-references, commentaries, and summaries, some of them apparently intended to serve as guides to subsequent readers.53 Perhaps he was inspired by Robert Grosseteste’s annotation system, evidence of which would surely have been familiar to him, as a model for linking a wide array of manuscripts by means of a sophisticated organizational scheme. Grosseteste had compiled a tabular system consisting of 440 subject headings, accompanied by a unique set of concordantial signs intended to assist in gathering references for the accompanying index. Using these signs, readers could conceivably mark relevant passages for inclusion in the index while reading, while others could locate passages that were already marked in the originalia by having recourse to the tabular list (provided that they used the copies in Grosseteste’s library).54 Both reference systems, mutatis mutandis, place specific copies of texts in relation to one another in a way that is necessarily localizing. Both also evince the contingencies of conducting extensive research by means of the manuscript medium, and the intellectual creativity that such an environment affords or demands when it comes to the ordering of knowledge. In 1881, James E. Thorold Rogers published a non-critical edition of selections drawn from Gascoigne’s Liber, under the title Loci e Libro veritatum. Aside

51 Printed in Richard Rouse and Mary Rouse, Preachers, Florilegia and Sermons, pp. 251–310. 52 Gascoigne specifically bequeathed a copy of the Liber (not the one that survives) to Syon. See Ball, Thomas Gascoigne, p. 5. It is unclear if he specifically gave the surviving volumes to Lincoln College, though he is known to have donated several of his other books to the new foundation. Detailed in Ball, Thomas Gascoigne, List II. 53 Ball, Thomas Gascoigne, pp. 34–37 and List IV. 54 Grosseteste’s Tabula is edited by Rosemann in Opera Omnia Roberti Grosseteste Lincolniensis, i, pp. 235–320.

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from critiques of its poor readings in many places, it has become common in studies of Gascoigne to speak of Rogers’s selection of only the most topical references in the Liber as limited and misleading — a representation of only one aspect of the collection to the exclusion of others. There is some truth to that charge; Rogers did indeed extract these kinds of passages from their broader context, a context in which traditional theological or pastoral material clearly takes up the largest portion of the compilation as a whole. But there is reason to believe that Rogers was in part justified in giving this material such prominence. Evidence in the manuscripts themselves suggests that readers, at least, saw these references to be central to the project. My analysis of readerly marks in the margins of the Liber shows that subsequent users were especially drawn to the topical passages. Marginal signs, mainly trefoils, but also crosses and notae (nearly 150 of them) point to topical references, not to sententious extracts from the auctores, with near uniformity. Further, most of the references that are singled out pertain to specific manuscripts, libraries, or book owners, including references to Gascoigne’s use of these resources. In other words, subsequent readers of the Liber found its localizing features to be particularly noteworthy. Perhaps scribes were responsible for a few of the marginal notes. But a variety of signs are used, and these do not come from a single reader or annotator. Certainly, one known reader of the Liber — John Bale — made a point of noting Gascoigne’s topicality in his Scriptorum illustrium maioris Brytanniae […] catalogus, where he remarked that Gascoigne ‘historias sui temporis eleganter adducit plures’ (elegantly cited many accounts of his own time).55 To consider this project within the broad generic categories of reference works at the time, then — florilegia, sets of distinctiones, etc. — while by no means irrelevant, and to regard his frequent and surprisingly topical references as chatty or eccentric curiosities, is to misconstrue what I take to be the deliberate situation of Gascoigne’s Liber within a specific and well-connected milieu. Yet his intellectual environment afforded him the ability to remain firmly grounded in an Oxonian setting while maintaining access to information that held national and international, contemporary and historical significance. The Liber not only reflected that environment, but retained much of its practical significance within it. Gascoigne’s incorporation of the Central European material that interested him at the end of his career is a case in point. The acts of eye-witnessing that he records so insistently in these sections position Gascoigne as a mediator and interpreter of news, books, and conversations about continental affairs for audiences and purposes closer to home. Members of these audiences themselves, however, were more than bit players in many of the events that he describes. His own process of negotiating local and European spheres likewise resists political or intellectual parochialism, sometimes defiantly so. This process reveals an intellectual 55 Bale, Scriptorum illustrium maioris Brytanniae […] catalogus, ii, p. 596.

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agility that at once prizes the explanatory force of historical precedent and contemporary events abroad, and understands England’s implication in the religious controversies of Latin Christendom.

Works Cited Manuscripts and Archival Sources Calixtus III, Bulla 29 June 1456 (Mainz: Johann Gutenberg, 1456; ISTC no: ic00060000) Cambridge, Trinity College, MS B.4.23 Oxford, Balliol College, MS 164 ———, MS 165A ———, MS 165B ———, MS 166A Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 198 ———, MS Lat. th. e. 33 ———, MS Twyne XXIII Oxford, Lincoln College, MS Lat. 117 ———, MS Lat. 118 Prague, Národní knihovna, MS VIII G 13 Primary Sources Bale, John, Scriptorum illustrium maioris Brytanniae […] catalogus, vol. ii (Basel: Johannes Oporin, 1559; facsimile reprint, Farnborough, UK: Gregg International, 1971) Gascoigne, Thomas, Loci e Libro veritatum: Passages Selected from Gascoigne’s Theological Dictionary Illustrating the Condition of Church and State, 1403–1458, ed. by James E. Thorold Rogers (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1881) Grosseteste, Robert, Tabula, ed. by Philipp W. Rosemann, in Opera Omnia Roberti Grosseteste Lincolniensis, vol. i, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis, 130 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1995), pp. 235–320 Höfler, Konstantin, ed., Geschichtschreiber der husitischen Bewegung in Bömen, vol. ii (Vienna: Kaiserlich-Königlichen Hof- und Staatsdruckerei, 1865) Jerome, St, In Abdiam, in Commentarii in prophetas minores, ed. by Marcus Adriaen, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina, 76 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1969), pp. 349–75 ———, In Osee, in Commentarii in prophetas minores, ed. by Marcus Adriaen, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina, 76 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1969), pp. 1–158 John of Ragusa, Tractatus de reductione Bohemorum, ed. by František Palacký, in Monumenta conciliorum generalium seculi decimi quinti, vol. i, ed. by František Palacký and Ernst Birk (Vienna: Holzhausen, 1857), pp. 133–286

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Mansi, J. D. and others, ed., Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, vols xxvii, xxix, and xxx (Venice: Antonio Zatta, 1784, 1788, and 1792) Petr of Mladoňovice, Petri de Mladoniowicz relatio de Magistro Johanne Hus, in Fontes rerum Bohemicarum, vol. viii, ed. by Václav Novotný (Prague: Nadání Františka Palackého, 1932), pp. 25–120 Petr of Žatec, Liber diurnus de gestis Bohemorum in concilio Basiliensi, ed. by František Palacký, in Monumenta conciliorum generalium seculi decimi quinti, vol. i, ed. by František Palacký and Ernst Birk (Vienna: Holzhausen, 1857), pp. 287–357 Secondary Works Ball, R. M., ‘Thomas Cyrcetur, A Fifteenth-Century Theologian and Preacher’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 37 (1986), 205–39 ———, ‘The Opponents of Bishop Pecok’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 48 (1997), 230–62 ———, Thomas Gascoigne, Libraries and Scholarship (Cambridge: Cambridge Bibliographical Society, 2006) Bose, Mishtooni, ‘Thomas Gascoigne’s Biographies’, in Recording Medieval Lives, ed. by Julia Boffey and Virginia Davis, Harlaxton Medieval Studies XVII: Proceedings of the 2005 Harlaxton Symposium (Donington, UK: Shaun Tyas, 2009), pp. 59–73 ———, ‘The Opponents of John Wyclif ’, in A Companion to John Wyclif, ed. by Ian Christopher Levy (Leiden: Brill, 2011), pp. 407–55 Friedman, John B., Northern English Books, Owners, and Makers in the Late Middle Ages (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1995) Gieben, Servus, ‘Thomas Gascoigne and Robert Grosseteste: Historical and Critical Notes’, Vivarium, 8 (1970), 56–67 Ghosh, Kantik, The Wycliffite Heresy: Authority and the Interpretation of Texts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002) Lysý, Miroslav, ‘Husitské vpády do Uhorska v rokoch 1428–1431’, Historický časopis, 55 (2007), 411–32 Mynors, R. A. B., Catalogue of the Manuscripts of Balliol College Oxford (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963) Rouse, Richard, and Mary Rouse, Preachers, Florilegia and Sermons: Studies on the Manipulus Florum of Thomas of Ireland (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1979) ———, ‘Statim invenire: Schools, Preachers, and New Attitudes to the Page’, in Authentic Witnesses: Approaches to Medieval Texts and Manuscripts (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991) Soukup, Pavel, ‘“Pars Machometica” in Early Hussite Polemics: The Use and Background of an Invective’, in Religious Controversy in Europe, 1378–1536: Textual Transmission and Networks of Readership, ed. by Michael Van Dussen and Pavel Soukup (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), pp. 251–87

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Van Dussen, Michael, From England to Bohemia: Heresy and Communication in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012) Von Nolcken, Christina, ‘Gascoigne [Gascoyne], Thomas’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography [accessed 20 September 2019] Zsuzsa, Teke, Hunyadi János es kora (Budapest: Gondolat, 1980)

Part III

Methods of Persuasion: Politics and the Transmission of Ideas

Pavlína Cermanová

The Mediation of God’s Word in Hussite Apocalyptic Exegesis and the Influence of Joachimism*

Around 1420, radical Hussite preachers were predicting the end of the world as people knew it. Some, citing biblical prophecy, said the world would burn and be cleansed in fire and brimstone. Others had visions of a massive transformation that would eradicate sin and sinners from the face of the Earth. Every individual would be converted, and the world would enter a new, perfect phase. The coming status was defined not only by new conditions for human beings on earth and a new physical and social order, but also by God’s self-revelation, the presence of the Holy Spirit on earth, and an unmediated understanding of God’s truth. The radical Taborite preachers rejected the hermeneutic tradition and the writings of the Church doctors. Disregarding medieval theories of the literal and figurative senses1 and refusing any interpretation, they used the text of the Bible — the plain letter — as a blueprint for action. Where the Bible spoke of revenge, violence, and the punishment of sinners, the radicals performed it. Their approach was unacceptable even for moderate Hussite theologians such as Jakoubek of Stříbro.2 Hussite chiliastic teachings included the variously expressed idea that the coming state of affairs would no longer require books, as all knowledge would be written into the hearts of believers. This flood of revelatory knowledge





* This study was supported by grant no.19–28415X ‘From Performativity to Institutionalization: Handling Conflict in the Late Middle Ages (Strategies, Agents, Communication)’ from the Czech Science Foundation (GA ČR), awarded to the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences. 1 Cf. Froehlich, ‘Always to Keep the Literal Sense’. 2 Jakoubek of Stříbro (d. 1429) was a preacher in Bethlehem chapel and an eminent theologian of Prague University utraquism. He played an essential role in the defence of John Wyclif in Bohemia and was one of the initiators of communion sub utraque. Pavlína Cermanová  •  ([email protected]), is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Medieval Studies, Institute of Philosophy, Czech Academy of Sciences, in Prague. Wycliffism and Hussitism: Methods of Thinking, Writing, and Persuasion, c. 1360 – c. 1460, ed. by Kantik Ghosh and Pavel Soukup, MCS 47 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021), pp. 321–339 FHG10.1484/M.MCS-EB.5.124380

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was to transform Christian society into its perfect spiritual and social form. This idea served to intensify the debate within the Hussite religious reform movement about significant questions, including the ability and necessity of mediating the Word of God, the authority of preachers charged with doing so, and the legitimacy of biblical interpretations.3 Medieval authors and preachers were aware of the pitfalls of biblical hermeneutics and the dangers that lie in excessively literal interpretations. An intense polemic on this topic flared up at the beginning of the 1420s amongst moderate and radical Hussite theologians. This study asks how this was reflected in Hussite apocalyptic thinking across its full range: from preachers of radical chiliasm to authors of pastoral exegetic expositions of biblical apocalyptic texts. We will investigate the origin of ideas typical of the chiliastic school of thought within the Hussite movement and the possible methodologies supporting them.

Sol humanae intelligencie At the beginning of the 1420s, radical preachers presented their believers and followers with the comforting assurance that they were participating in the developing transcendent battle between good and evil; that their lives were part of a supra-personal drama, one filled with vengeance visited upon sinners and the prosperity of the chosen ones. If we can believe the records of chiliastic articles, first and foremost in the chronicle of Vavřinec of Březová, Hussite apocalyptic teachings and articles claimed that written Scripture would no longer be necessary in Christ’s repaired kingdom, as God’s Law and all wisdom would be written into believers’ hearts. The Hussites associated the new, coming state of affairs, characterized by a perfection that exceeded the primitive church, with a wealth of knowledge where believers would acquire all understanding without an interpreter. In one of two records of Hussite chiliastic articles in the chronicle of Vavřinec of Březová, we first learn that the glory of the renewed kingdom that would last until the general resurrection would be greater than that of the primitive church and it would be granted even greater gifts.4 It also states that the militant church whose perfection corresponds to the status of innocence would no longer require God’s Law to be written in Scripture, as it would be written into the hearts of believers: ‘Sol humane intelligencie non lucebit hominibus, hoc est, quod non docebit unusquisque proximum suum, sed omnes erunt docibiles dei’ (The sun of human reason will not shine for people, as no one will teach their neighbour, as everyone will be God’s disciple).5 The same connection between the



3 For the formation of Hussite chiliasm, see Kaminsky, A History of the Hussite Revolution, pp. 310–60. 4 Vavřinec z Březové, Kronika husitská, ed. by Goll, p. 457. 5 Vavřinec z Březové, Kronika husitská, ed. by Goll, p. 457.

The M e di at io n o f G o d’s Wo r d i n H u s s i te Apo caly pti c Exege si s

perfection of the renewed kingdom and unmediated knowledge was noted by Vavřinec in another shorter selection of chiliastic teachings that he included in his historiographical work.6 Another factor that would make the ‘sun of human reason’ unnecessary was, at least in the view of the chiliasts he was quoting, the return to perfection during the state of innocence. This state excluded all sin that would prevent the correct understanding of God’s Word and lead to delusions. Chiliastic articles in the sections cited expound verses from the Book of Jeremiah (31. 33–34) and the Gospel of John (6. 45). This can be read as wholly orthodox to this point. However, Hussite chiliasts, just like the Joachimite school of medieval apocalyptic thinking, associated this vision of an abundance of knowledge and enlightenment with temporal history and read it literally; so much so that eyewitnesses tell us that they burned or destroyed books or sold them abroad in order not to contaminate any longer the spiritual understanding coming into the Kingdom of Bohemia. Jakoubek of Stříbro, a leading Prague theologian who sharply distanced himself from the Taborite radicals at the beginning of the 1420s, wrote in his Výklad na Zjevenie sv. Jana (Interpretation of the Revelation of St John): ‘Duchové bludní praví, že nejsau knihy potřebné a užitečné, ani písmo, protož je pálé, trhají a prodávají cizozemcuom, aby se nehodily věrným v tomto království’ (The spiritually lost [i.e. the chiliasts] say that books are not necessary or useful, nor is Scripture. That is why they burn, destroy, and sell them to foreigners so that they are not owned by the faithful in this kingdom).7 Jan of Příbram,8 already a staunch opponent of early Taborite radicalism, repeats the same criticism in his Život kněží táborských (The Life of Taborite Priests) ten years later. He first extensively describes the fanatical violence committed by the Taborites. Příbram recounts events in Bohemia through the prism of God’s actions, giving them an atmosphere of Old Testament fatalism. At first, he mentions the Taborites’ expectation that God would ‘miraculously’ allow all sinners and base individuals to die overnight. According to Příbram, when this did not happen Taborite preachers began calling for the prophecy to be fulfilled and to carry out what God did not do himself: to exterminate sinners with a number of blows as stated in the Wisdom of Sirach.9 In his account, Příbram moves on to visions of order in this new state where unmediated knowledge is mentioned twice, as well as being further elaborated upon. His record corresponds to the report cited by Vavřinec





6 Vavřinec z Březové, Kronika husitská, ed. by Goll, p. 415: ‘Item gloria huius regni sic reparati in hac via ante mortuorum resureccionem erit maior quam primitive ecclesie. Item sol humane intelligencie non lucebit hominibus in regno reparato, qui anon docebit unusquisque proximum suum, sed omnes erunt docibiles dei’. 7 Jakoubek ze Stříbra, Výklad na Zjevenie sv. Jana, ed. by Šimek, ii, p. 319. 8 Jan of Příbram (d. 1448) was a master of Prague University, a priest, an adherent of the Utraquist party, and one of the most active opponents of the Taborite radicals. 9 Jan z Příbramě, Život kněží táborských, ed. by Boubín, p. 42; Sirach 39. 29–30; Sirach 40. 9.

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to a great extent. ‘In the kingdom purified by such blows, all people will be knowledgeable and exceptionally learned without anyone teaching their neighbour, as all will be taught by God. […] The sun of human reason will no longer shine for them’.10 Příbram also points out that the Taborites had rid themselves of all books, either by destroying them or by selling them beyond the borders of Bohemia as a result of this delusion.11 Further on, he repeats that ‘the written Word of God will end and written Bibles will no longer exist and will not be necessary […] at that time, the Word of God will be written into their hearts and thus they will not require other teaching’.12 He later specifies that all this came from the sermons of Taborite preacher Václav Koranda in Pilsen, saying that those selected by God to survive the bloody blows of God’s wrath ‘will not need any written books as all will be taught by God’.13 Příbram based his criticism of Taborite teachings on his own experiences and memories, but also on records from his predecessors. Much of what he wrote about the Taborites was sourced from the chronicle by Vavřinec of Březová, including the basic list of chiliastic delusions. Příbram probably also had separate copies of records of the radical Taborite articles. One of these copies can be found in the same manuscript that included Život kněží táborských. This record, however, omits the points related to unmediated knowledge.14 As we will see later, however, even this summary of Taborite teachings includes important and unique details. The vision that people will not teach one another, that books will not be needed, and that the chosen will be directly enlightened by God’s wisdom was not foreign to medieval theology as it was based on the prophetic books

10 Jan z Příbramě, Život kněží táborských, ed. by Boubín, p. 51: ‘Item, že v tom království opraveném těmi ranami budú lidé všichni umělí a velice učení, aniž kdo již bude učiti svého bližnieho, ale všichni budú učení boží. […]. Slunce človiečieho rozumu nebude jim viece svietiti’. 11 Jan z Příbramě, Život kněží táborských, ed. by Boubín, p. 52: ‘Item i z té nevěry, že nebude se třeba učiti, i z toho, že jsú jim všichni doktorové odporni, jali sú se najprvé všech kněh svatých doktoruov páliti i trhati a kaziti anebo do cizích zemí přepotřebné k lidskému spasení kniehy jako za kus chleba prodávati. A v tom sú nenabyté oblúpenie učinili zemi české! […] Item potom jali sú se libraří předrahých a přeušlechtilých kaziti a v ně násilně upadati a všecky kniehy, jenž jsú najdražší klénot české země, každý sobě roztrhovati a jedni je kaziti a jedni prodávati’ (Those that believed that they would not need to learn and those that despise all scholars first moved to burn and destroy all books by the holy or sold the books needed for human salvation abroad like a chunk of bread. And in this they robbed the Czech lands! Then they began to destroy priceless and noble libraries that are the most valuable jewel of the Czech lands and violently tear up and destroy all books or sell them). 12 Jan z Příbramě, Život kněží táborských, ed. by Boubín, p. 53: ‘zákon boží psaný má přestati a že bible psané mají zkaženy býti a že jich netřeba bude […] v tom času zákon boží bude každému napsán na jich srdcie, a proto nebude třeba jiného učenie’. 13 Jan z Příbramě, Život kněží táborských, ed. by Boubín, p. 53: ‘nebude třeba žádných kněh psaných, nebo všichni budú učeni od Boha’. 14 Třeboň, SOA, MS A 16, fols 190r–192v. This version of Taborite articles was published several times, most recently Jan z Příbramě, Život kněží táborských, ed. by Boubín, pp. 93–99.

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of the Old Testament. The cited Hussite sources have clear references to the books of Isaiah and Jeremiah, as well as to the Gospel of John, where John 6. 45 refers to the words of the prophet that everyone will be docibiles Dei. Unmediated enlightenment and knowledge of God’s secrets were thus not a revolutionary idea. The problem was applying this vision to temporal history. The chiliasts understood it as being nascent while less radical preachers, in a more orthodox fashion, expected this order only as part of the eschatological state after the Second Coming of Christ. That was the view taken in the Hussite environment by Jakoubek of Stříbro, who, when interpreting Revelations 21 (while also referring to Jeremiah 31. 34 and John 6. 45), said that neither books nor teaching from another would be needed as everyone would be taught directly by God.15 Jakoubek, however, did not connect this vision with temporal history, but with a heavenly post-historic order. The chiliastic belief in the direct apprehension of God’s wisdom invalidated the words of the Church Fathers, which the chiliasts considered wholly unnecessary in the future state of direct understanding of God’s Word: et sic plurimi Thaboritarum presbiteri magnam habentes populi confluenciam et adherenciam dimissis doctorum sanctorum Ambrosi, Jeronimi, Augustini, Gregorii et ceterorum ab ecclesia approbatorum sentenciis suis de propriis ingeniis elaboratis glossulis antiquum et novum interpretati sunt testamentum multa falsa et erronea veris inmiscentes, per que facilius corda simplicium poterant ad eorum sentencias inclinari.16 (And so numerous Taborite priests, when many gathered around them and supported them, abandoned the words of the holy teachers Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, Gregory, and the other teachers recognized by the church. They devised their own explanations from their own reason, interpreting the Old and New Testaments, mixing much falsehood and delusion into the truth. That made it easy to attract the hearts of simple people to their opinions.) The same disdain was held for university scholars. In their sermons, the radical clerics maligned them as useless, as they spent their days only with human knowledge and wisdom that were an anachronism in a reconstituted chiliastic kingdom.17 Martin Húska,18 who was among the leading Taborite chiliasts, pronounced before his death at the stake in August 1421 that all that was needed for salvation was to emulate the life of Jesus Christ as described

15 Jakoubek ze Stříbra, Výklad na Zjevenie sv. Jana, ed. by Šimek, ii, p. 503. 16 Vavřinec z Březové, Kronika husitská, ed. by Goll, p. 403. 17 Vavřinec z Březové, Kronika husitská, ed. by Goll, p. 413: ‘in sola humana sapiencia dies suos confusive consummunt’. 18 Martin Húska (executed in 1421) was the main architect of Hussite chiliastic ideology and a visionary of the new perfect age. His teaching was closely connected with the Eucharistic heresy, denying the real presence of Christ in the Sacrament.

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in the Gospels and not books ‘by doctors and those imagined by masters’.19 However, the writings of the Church Fathers and scholars were rejected only by the most radical preachers. More moderate priests, including chief Taborite theologian Mikuláš Biskupec of Pelhřimov,20 did not take such extreme positions and often quoted church authorities.21 This was lampooned by Jan of Příbram, who accused them of never hesitating to quote a holy scholar if it confirmed their views.22

Joachimite Inspirations Hussite chiliastic articles lead us to question the originality of the concept of direct enlightenment through God’s wisdom and the absence of a need for an intermediary to acquire theological understanding in an apocalyptically defined portion of temporal history. Joachim of Fiore, an abbot from Calabria and one of the most famous apocalyptic thinkers and ‘prophets’ of the Middle Ages, also discussed the status of spiritual knowledge and of intelligentia/intellectus spiritualis.23 In his Expositio in Apocalypsim, Joachim spoke of the unmediated understanding of God’s secrets and of a deep affective love of God and neighbour as characteristics of the ‘third state’.24 The last of the three states of human history, as defined by Joachim of Fiore, was to come with the presence of the Holy Spirit as the last and final act of God’s self-revelation.25 As the first state was based on knowledge (sciencia), the second on wisdom (sapiencia), the third was filled by full understanding (plenitudo intellectus).26 Joachim was well aware of the Old Testament foundations of his thinking. His interpretation of Revelation 3. 7 (‘This is the message from the one who is holy and true, the one who has the key of David. What he opens, no one can 19 ‘Vyznání o chlebu živém a věčném’, ed. by Frinta, p. 8: ‘ale ne v doktorských, kteréžto vymysleli mistři’. 20 Mikuláš Biskupec of Pelhřimov was a Hussite theologian, elected an elder of the Taborites. He defended the ideological positions of the Taborites in a number of polemical exchanges with Prague University, with radical Hussites, and finally with Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini at the Council of Basel. His literary legacy comprises several works including the Expositio in Apocalypsim. 21 On the conflict between Biskupec and Martin Húska over the use of church authorities, see Patschovsky, ‘Der taboritische Chiliasmus’, pp. 169‒97, here especially p. 175. 22 Jan z Příbramě, Život kněží táborských, ed. by Boubín, p. 52. 23 See McGinn, The Calabrian Abbot, pp. 123‒44. I am also grateful for a fruitful discussion with Matthias Riedl and Martin Pjecha as part of the workshop Theology of Revolution that took place under the auspices of CEFRES in May 2019 in Prague. 24 For Joachim’s concept of mystical caritas see McGinn, ‘Apocalypticism and Mysticism’, pp. 163–96. 25 Riedl, ‘Longing for the Third Age’, pp. 277–78. 26 See Riedl, Joachim von Fiore, p. 281; Riedl, ‘Joachim of Fiore as Political Thinker’, pp. 53–73, here especially pp. 64–67.

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close; and what he closes, no one can open’) cites verses from Jeremiah 31. 33–34 that speak of the end of human knowledge and of unmediated learning.27 Joachim adds John 6. 45 to a long excerpt from the prophet Jeremiah to form an argument describing a vision in which there would be no secrets in the third state as all scholars would be scholars of God.28 Similar statements can be found in later writings that were part of the Joachimite tradition. These overlapped with his ideas so significantly that they were attributed to him during the Middle Ages. Besides Joachim of Fiore’s works, the Super Hieremiam probably written in the 1240s and falsely attributed to Joachim could be considered a possible source of inspiration for Hussite chiliasts’ ideas.29 Super Hieremiam is one of the first post-Joachimite texts that brings up the idea of a third state.30 It follows in the footsteps of the Calabrian abbot in terms of this state’s characteristics and explicitly mentions charismatic knowledge: ‘omnes [electi] erunt Dei docibiles, qui celestis patria velut terra erit repleta sciencia Domini […]. Quia spiritus Domini replevit orbem terrarum’ (All [the elect] will be disciples of God because the heavenly home and the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord).31 Similarly to what we have seen in the Hussite sources, the author of Super Hieremiam also attributes revolutionary consequences to the presence of charismatic knowledge on earth, including the casting out of written works and the teachings of ‘fleshly doctors’, whose lecterns will be overturned.32 The pride of clerics will collapse at the same time.33 Super Hieremiam thus radicalizes Joachim of Fiore’s ideas through the addition of intelligenciae spiritualis where the perfect understanding of God is gradually developed over time from the point of original sin to the end times. The carnal people of the Old Testament thus could not correctly interpret the Bible. This ability gradually increased over time with the growing presence of the Holy 27 See Fischer, Jeremia 26–52, pp. 173–74. 28 Joachim of Fiore, Expositio in Apocalypsim, fol. 86r: ‘Post dies illos, dicit Dominus, dabo legem meam in visceribus eorum et in cordibus eorum scribam eam, et ero eis in Deum et ipsi erunt mihi in populum. Et non docebit ultra vir proximum suum et vir fratrem suum dicens cognoscite Dominum, omnes enim cognoscent me a minimo eorum usque ad maximum, ait Dominus quia propitiabor iniquitatibus eorum et peccati eorum non memorabor amplius. Nec ideo tamen negamus in tercio illo statu futuros esse doctores designatos in Christo […]. Sed quia iam nuda erunt et aperta misteria, nec labor erit doctoribus illis in docendo, nec perfectis discipulis in retinendo, quia erunt homines docibiles Dei’. 29 Moynihan, ‘The Development of the “Pseudo-Joachim” Commentary’, pp. 109–42. On the manuscript tradition, see Morris, ‘The Historiography of the Super Prophetas’. For basic information on the origin and importance of Super Hieremiam and a list of manuscripts, see Reeves, The Influence of Prophecy, pp. 518–19. 30 Reeves, The Influence of Prophecy, p. 151. 31 Pseudo-Joachim of Fiore, Super Hieremiam, fol. 42r. 32 Pseudo-Joachim of Fiore, Super Hieremiam, fol. 42r: ‘cathedrae doctorum carnalium subvertentur’. 33 Pseudo-Joachim of Fiore, Super Hieremiam, fol. 42r.

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Spirit that culminated in the third state of history.34 Joachim of Fiore based his ideas on patristic teachings which assert that the level of knowledge in the world is ever-increasing.35 Before original sin, people were in a state of perfect understanding of the Creator. The punishment for sin was falling away from this understanding to ignorance. The ability to understand God without an intermediary will then gradually return to people through God’s grace.36 We can only speculate as to how the ideas of Joachim of Fiore and his epigones influenced Hussite teachings. The truth is that there are few copies of authentic works by Joachim in Bohemian manuscript records (there is evidence of copies of the Exhortatorium Iudeorum and Enchiridion super Apocalypsim in medieval Bohemia),37 and pseudo-Joachim’s Super Hieremiam cannot be found in a Bohemian copy.38 Nevertheless, eight manuscripts and fragments of another one of pseudo-Joachim’s work, Super Isaiam, have been discovered and identified as being of Bohemian origin. This version of Super Isaiam, also known as Super prophetas, is supplemented by another work, the Praemissiones, which maps Joachim’s ideas using graphic diagrams.39 PostJoachim prophecies, especially the works of Jean of Roquetaillade and copies of the works of Peter John Olivi, enjoyed a lot of popularity in late medieval Bohemia.40 We can thus expect Czech medieval readers to have shown rather significant interest in Joachim’s, pseudo-Joachim’s, and post-Joachim texts, including Super Hieremiam. If we turn again to the sources of Hussite chiliasm, we can see that it is much indebted to Joachim and later Joachimite concepts. However, we cannot wholly exclude the possibility that these concepts were placed into

34 Potestà, El tiempo del Apocalipsis, pp. 99–100. 35 Gregorius Magnus, Moralia in Iob, ed. by Adriaen, ix. 11, p. 467, ‘Dumque per eos diebus singulis magisque scientia caelestis ostenditur, quasi interni nobis luminis uernum tempus aperitur, ut nouus sol nostris mentibus rutilet et eorum uerbis nobis cognitus se ipso cottidie clarior micet. Urgente etenim mundi fine, superna scientia proficit et largius cum tempore excresit. Hinc namque per Danielem dicitur: Pertransibunt plurimi et multiplex erit scientia [Daniel 12. 4]’. For this topic, see Potestà, ‘Prophetie als Wissenschaft’, pp. 276–77; Webb, ‘“Knowledge will be Manifold”: Daniel 12. 4 and the Idea of Intellectual Progress in the Middle Ages’. 36 Riedl, Joachim von Fiore, pp. 258–59. 37 Selge, ‘Handschriften Joachims von Fiore in Böhmen’, pp. 53–60. On the spread of Joachimite works in Bohemia, see Selge, ‘Die Überlieferung der Werke Joachims von Fiore’, p. 54. On BAV MS Reg. Lat. 132, which includes Joachim’s Enchiridion super Apocalypsim and parts copied in the fourteenth century in Bohemia, see Hledíková, ‘Pelhřimovský školmistr Konrád’, pp. 249–52. Exhortatorium Iudeorum is incuded in Prague, APH‒KMK, MS C 95; for a description of the codex, see Ioachim Abbas Florensis, Exhortatorium Iudeorum, ed. by Patschovsky, pp. 86–91. 38 It is necessary to add that the ‘Prague manifesto’ by Thomas Müntzer written in 1521, for example, drew from Super Hieremiam. See Selge, ‘Handschriften Joachims von Fiore in Böhmen’, p. 54. 39 Morris, ‘A Case of Mistaken Identity’. 40 Olomouc, SOkA, MS 291.

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the mouths of chiliast preachers who may never said them.41 That could be the case with the above-mentioned record of chiliastic teachings that survives in the Regional State Archives in Třeboň, MS A 16. Here and only here among the Taborite articles can we read that ‘at this time, the New Testament will expire’.42 It is the point that utterly doubts the centrality of the Gospels43 while also referring to a certain derivation from Joachim’s teachings about the three states. This collection of Taborite articles is to be treated with caution, however, because within it we can find other records that are also unique among Hussite sources. They testify to the heresy of Taborite Eucharistic teachings. Here we encounter a rather unusual argumentative sequence contradicting the Eucharistic theory of concomitance. According to the teachings supported by moderate Hussite theologians, Jakoubek of Stříbro in the first place, the body of Christ was present in the sacrament after its blessing, and his blood and divinity naturally accompanied him.44 By contrast, Taborite chiliasts argued that only the body was present in the sacrament after the blessing, and the soul, blood, and divinity were not. They used Old Testament rules to support their claims. It is here that the previously discussed record of chiliastic articles provides an exceptional testimony: according to the record, radical Taborites claimed that believers cannot consume meat that contained blood after being slaughtered. That is why blood cannot be present in the host after the blessing; only the body. They also rejected the presence of the soul and divinity, which negated the respect which was to be shown to the sacrament.45 As we have seen, Vavřinec of Březová described chiliastic teachings about unmediated temporal knowledge using the same biblical verses as Joachim of Fiore, juxtaposing passages from the Book of Jeremiah and the Gospel of John. An important moment for both sets of ideas is the moment of original sin and the Hussite vision of a return to the perfect state of innocence. This also suggests a return to perfect unmediated knowledge. When Vavřinec arrives at the first list of Taborite chiliastic articles in his chronicle, he prioritizes a report according to which chiliastic preachers, including Martin Húska, ‘turn prophetic writings and the reading of Scripture to their own devices to say that Christ’s

41 Note here the critical analysis of sources dealing with the phenomenon of Hussite Adamitism carried out by Patschovsky, ‘Der taboritische Chiliasmus’. Certain stereotypes of their own Eucharistic heresy that appear in polemics with Hussite chiliasts were pointed out by Cermanová, ‘Biblické výklady’, pp. 29–30. 42 Jan z Příbramě, Život kněží táborských, ed. by Boubín, p. 96: ‘v tento čas skoná Nový zákon’. 43 For the later challenge to the Gospels by Joachim’s followers, see McGinn, The Calabrian Abbot, p. 127. Also, Julia Wannenmacher posed the question vis-à-vis medieval theologians: ‘Welchen Einfluss hat die zu erwartende intelligentia spiritualis, das Kennzeichen des dritten Status, auf die Rolle Christi und die Bedeutung seiner Erlösertat? Muss nicht befürchtet werden, dass sie damit in der Zukunft als überholt gelten müsse?’, Wannenmacher, Die Hermeneutik, p. 28. 44 For the concomitance, see Megivern, Concomitance and Communion. For Jakoubek’s attitude to concomitance, see Coufal, ‘Die Theologie des Laienkelchs’, pp. 177–78. 45 Jan z Příbramě, Život kněží táborských, ed. by Boubín, p. 98.

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kingdom will be renewed now’.46 According to the words of the chronicler, in this case everyone was seduced by the intellectual enticements of a certain Prague tavern-keeper named Václav who was surprisingly well-read in the Bible and ‘interpreted the New from the Old and the Old from New Testaments’.47 This minor claim was then read by Howard Kaminsky to mean that the Prague teacher of chiliastic priests was someone that came into close contact with the teachings of Joachim of Fiore, who made the relationship between the Old and the New Testaments one of the foundations of this thinking.48 Vavřinec continues listing the main points of Hussite chiliastic teachings including an article about a return to the perfect state of innocence and unmediated knowledge. At the end of this section, he looks into how the Taborite priests worked: they used biblical citations which they interpreted as they wished (‘ad sensum suum interpretantes’) to support their claims about Christ’s kingdom on earth.49 According to Vavřinec, the biblical quotations that chiliastic preachers abused first and foremost included Revelation 10. 7, followed by Daniel 12. 7. Both these sections discuss the fulfilment and culmination of God’s prophecies. Vavřinec’s text suggests that Taborite preachers assumed that the seventh angel would sound the horn and fulfil God’s prophecy as stated in Revelation 10. 7 ‘during their time’. This is where Hussite chiliasm abandons the Augustinian sequence of ecclesiastical states and approaches Joachimite philosophy.50 It was Joachim who combined the temporal sabbath with the seventh apocalyptic angel: when he breaks the seventh seal, all of history and prophecy will be fulfilled.51 In Expositio in Apocalypsim, he interprets the breaking of the seventh seal as the beginning of a general repose. He even quotes Revelation 10. 7 and combines the sabbath status with the fulfilment of God’s mysteries (‘consumaretur mysterium Dei’), when silence will fall and the period of interpreting Scripture will end.52 The same is expressed in Liber Concordiae: in the third state, ‘mysteries will lie naked and open before the eyes of believers’.53

46 Vavřinec z Březové, Kronika husitská, ed. by Goll, p. 413: ‘scripturas prophetarum et evangelia ad suum infatuatum sensum retorquentes reparari regnum Christi nunc in nostris diebus ad vulgum publicabant’. 47 Vavřinec z Březové, Kronika husitská, ed. by Goll, p. 413: ‘Et hii omnes respectum habebant ad quendam Wenceslaum in Praga pincernam, qui ultra omnes in biblia notus novum per antiquum et e converso exponebat testamentum’. 48 Kaminsky, A History of the Hussite Revolution, pp. 351–52. 49 Vavřinec z Březové, Kronika husitská, ed. by Goll, p. 416. 50 Both systems were briefly but clearly compared in Riedl, ‘Joachim of Fiore as Political Thinker’, p. 66. 51 Joachim of Fiore, De septem sigillis, p. 352, ‘cessaverunt ystorie et prophetie, et concessus est sabbatismus populo die’. Compare with Joachim of Fiore, Expositio in Apocalypsim, fol. 14v, where he uses the same words for the sabbath of the second state. 52 Joachim of Fiore, Expositio in Apocalypsim, fol. 123r. 53 Joachim of Fiore, Concordia Novi ac Veteris Testamenti, ed. by Patschovsky, iii, p. 755: ‘Enuda erunt mysteria et aperta fidelibus’. For a possible interpretation of this sentence, see Riedl, ‘Joachim of Fiore as Political Thinker’, p. 69.

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Vavřinec also included the most qualified witness in his description of Taborite delusions when he added a treatise attributed to Martin Húska to his chronicle. Here, Húska explains his understanding of the term consummacio seculi that is currently happening — not only the merciless destruction of everything evil in the world, but also a great ontological change that will occur within every individual that will be worthy of surviving the bloody end of the current state and the move into the new period of perfection.54 If Joachim of Fiore spoke of changes that would lead to a perfect spiritual existence for the human race, then the Hussites also spoke of it to a certain extent.55 With regard to this point, they were part of the school of thought founded in the works of the Calabrian abbot and his followers. Húska also repeats the well-known passages that believers in the new and cleansed world would shine like the sun as light enters their hearts and it would no longer be necessary for the sun of human intelligence to shine.56 Analysing the sources which present Hussite chiliastic doctrine, the apparent echo of Joachimite thinking can be found primarily in works reporting radical doctrines but written by the opponents of the Taborites. It was Vavřinec of Březová in the first place who transmitted chiliastic teaching and formulated it in terms known from Joachim’s, or rather pseudo-Joachim’s works. Hussite critics of chiliasm were acquainted with pseudo-Joachim’s works Super Isaiam and Super Hieremiam. We can therefore speculate that it was only Vavřinec who expressed chiliastic ideas in (pseudo‑) Joachimite terminology. Nevertheless, it cannot be excluded that Hussite radicals themselves absorbed some derivation of Joachimite thinking.

The Mediation and Interpretation of God’s Word in Hussite Exegesis Taborite theologians abandoned chiliastic teachings rather quickly in 1421. However, that does not mean ideas of direct intervention by Christ and the tendency to read events in Bohemia through the prism of apocalyptic prophecy completely disappeared from Taborite sermons. In his Expositio super Apocalypsim from the end of the 1420s, Mikuláš Biskupec of Pelhřimov drew a clear parallel between the earthly actions of Christ and current events. He understood his present as a point in time when the church was being renewed and reformed, just as was the case during Christ’s life after his first coming to earth. The Taborites, working as Christ’s servants and forming part of his body that operated on earth, acted to expel unclean spirits and punish false clerics in Christ’s name. According to Biskupec, this vision of Christ’s ‘secret’ second coming where

54 Vavřinec z Březové, Kronika husitská, ed. by Goll, p. 418. 55 Compare with Riedl, ‘Longing for the Third Age’, p. 288. 56 Vavřinec z Březové, Kronika husitská, ed. by Goll, p. 423.

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he would act in the same way as during his earthly life, was taking place ‘right now’ in Bohemia.57 However, the entire work is marked by an unwavering criticism of chiliastic preachers and their approach to biblical prophecy. In the interpretation of Revelations 12, he explicitly denounces chiliastic concepts and the incorrect understanding of Scripture by chiliastic preachers: Sed ex nostris inveniuntur derisores et adulatores, qui sanctis vocibus et celestibus adversantur, dum de reparacione ecclesie locuntur, dum de vindicta Dei et de adventu occulto Christi, de ritibus primitive ecclesie; quia non sunt spiritu Dei potati, sed felle amaritudinis et vino luxurie et adulterii potaverunt populum usque ad vomitum.58 (Those that mock and flatter can be found among the Taborites, those who stand in opposition with their holy and heavenly voices while speaking of reforming the church, of God’s wrath, of the secret coming of Christ, of the practices of the primitive church; because they did not drink of the Holy Spirit, but from bitterness, and the wine of profligacy filled the people until they vomited.) This apocalyptic strain in Taborite Hussite thinking at the end of the 1420s no longer included speculation about a specific date that would fulfil the prophecy, or of personal intervention by Christ in a sinful world, as was the case a few years earlier. Despite all the flexibility of the prophetic genre as an interpretative and polemical tool, the radical beginnings of apocalyptic prophecy had to be re-evaluated by later Hussite theologians. Mikuláš Biskupec used the apocalyptic images of the open rule of the Antichrist and the need for the chosen ones to fight for the true faith as a fundamental interpretative category and as an effective part of the reform debate that called on each specific believer to lead a moral life, just as it also motivated armed resistance to hostile Catholic forces. It remained true that apocalyptic prophecy and its interpretations gave Hussite preachers a powerful tool for convincing believers. Taborite theologians of the post-chiliastic phase remained anchored in the environment formed by a long academic exegetic tradition of seeking Christ’s laws and the truth of the primitive church, despite always prioritizing the authority of the Bible. On the one hand, they used previous exegetic explanations and other interpretative tools; on the other, they were well aware of the treacherousness of biblical hermeneutics and the danger concealed in excessively literal interpretations.59 They also 57 Vienna, ÖNB, MS 4520, fol. 260v: ‘Christus enim, cum regnum suum ampliare et dilatare voluerit, demonia eiecit et spiritus inmundos turbavit; quod fecit in primo suo adventu. Sic erit in reformacione et reparacione ecclesie: inmundos spiritus per suos ministros eiciet et falsos religiosos conturbabit, sicut patet intuentibus, quid fecerit in istis terris monachis et ceteris spiritualibus’. 58 Vienna, ÖNB, MS 4520, fol. 254r-v. 59 For biblical hermeneutics at the beginning of the fifteenth century, see Froehlich, ‘Always to Keep the Literal Sense’, pp. 44–48. On the authority of biblical texts in the Czech Hussite environment, see Molnár, ‘Zur hermeneutischen Problematik’, pp. 93–110.

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reflected the shifts of meaning that inevitably occur in biblical interpretation and perceived a certain degree of destruction of the original biblical message. They described their role as returning the original meaning to biblical texts after they were lost under the influence of an overly worldly church and the misguided interpretations of their contemporaries, chiefly radical chiliastic preachers. This is how Jakoubek of Stříbro expressed himself in Výklad na Zjevení: ‘A ač sú jednnostajná slova, ale jiný smysl svatých prvotnie cierkve nežli nynějšiech falšieřuov’ (The words may be the same, but the primitive church had a different purpose than that which is attributed to it by those who wound and spoil it).60 The Hussite movement, except for the purely chiliastic strain, was not anti-intellectual in this respect.61 Taborite theologians recognized the tradition of biblical expositions and cited church authorities while granting a central role to the Bible and making God’s Law the fundamental norm. The relationship between Holy Scripture and the authority of later interpretations was an important topic from the beginning of the Hussite movement. In 1417, Jakoubek of Stříbro conducted a written polemic against Jean Gerson, a leading theologian of the time, about the validity and necessity of biblical interpretation.62 Jakoubek here says that the interpreter should extrapolate the true meaning of biblical texts primarily from Scripture. He designates conformity to the life of Christ and his apostles as the chief interpretative principle.63 Jakoubek attributes a lower standing and less authority to the post-biblical tradition than to the Bible itself. If the life of an author was in accordance with the life of Christ and the Apostles, he did not reject his teaching and admitted its value.64 In one of his Latin postils, Jakoubek wrote that he considered the interpretation of the biblical text to be correct if it was inspired by the activity of the Holy Spirit, whose presence in a person is reflected in how they led their life.65 Jakoubek found himself embroiled in a polemic with the Taborite radicals at the beginning of the 1420s and much of that conflict was transferred to the pages of the above-mentioned Výklad na Zjevenie that he wrote at the time of his dispute with the Taborite chiliastic movement. In his interpretation of Revelation 8. 10, he used the imagery of springs and rivers to suggest a succession in the influence of the Holy Spirit and with it a spiritual interpretation of Scripture. The Holy Trinity is the springs that create the streams of basic faith that then flow into rivers, which were the prophets, apostles, and evangelists. The rivers are also established by the original sacraments that the order of the church is based upon, primarily the Mass and communion under 60 61 62 63 64 65

Jakoubek ze Stříbra, Výklad na Zjevenie, ed. by Šimek, i, p. 258. For the Wycliffite environment, see Ghosh, The Wycliffite Heresy, pp. 6–8. Coufal, ‘Výklad a autorita Bible’, pp. 45–72. Coufal, ‘Výklad a autorita Bible’, p. 70. Coufal, ‘Výklad a autorita Bible’, p. 58. Cited by Kybal, M. Jan Hus, ii. 1, p. 144. More broadly, see Coufal, ‘Výklad a autorita Bible’, pp. 57–58.

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both kinds (the basic tenets of the Hussite programme, but also the subjects of intra-Hussite polemics). Rivers are also understood to be saints, namely Dionysius the Areopagite and Cyprian, whose teachings allowed people to find the wisdom necessary for their salvation. Jakoubek describes a huge star falling into this functioning system of springs and rivers of shared holy wisdom after the third angel sounds a horn as written in the Book of Revelation, e.g. a delusion that tempts people from the path of the correct understanding of Scripture.66 The star is a representation of the Taborite radicals who refused the teachings of the saints by pointing out their humanity.67 From Jakoubek’s point of view, the Taborite radicals violated the proper succession of understanding the Bible’s texts informed by the presence of the Holy Spirit. By brushing aside the mediating ‘river’ of holy interpretations and wanting to drink directly from the spring, they allowed the devil to enter the fray with his temptations. The devil then contaminated the original understanding of Scripture with his illusions, something Jakoubek was certain had occurred in Tábor.68 Jakoubek thus partially softened his views expressed in the aforementioned polemic with Jean Gerson. He denied the Taborite radicals the right to study only the Bible’s text without explanatory interpretations because he knew from ongoing events in the chiliastic school of thought that this path can lead where he himself would never go. The question of who is authorized to interpret God’s Word, who is able to understand its message correctly, and who has the authority to disseminate it was also asked in the Taborite milieu by Mikuláš Biskupec, who took much from Jakoubek. The experience from the beginning of the 1420s led Taborite theologians to put (unwritten) limits on the article about the free preaching of God’s Word. Biskupec was well aware that everything has to have rules and not everyone can interpret Scripture on their own. In many cases, he repeated the rebukes that Jakoubek hurled at the Taborite radicals, saying they interpreted Scripture according to ‘propriis capitibus et fantasiis’ (their own heads and fantasies) which seduced people into delusions and entered a space that was no longer acceptable, even for such non-conformists as the Taborite theologians. Biskupec discussed the question of preachers’ authority to interpret Scripture in his explanation of Revelation 5. 2. The angel is a preacher, but only if his heart is innocent and his body is pure (‘propter innocenciam cordis et castitatem corporis’). The traditional interpretative method based on recapitulation allowed him to see preachers (provided they fulfilled the basic demands for purity and innocence) as those who replicated the role of prophets and discovered and fulfilled the words of prophecy. Their actions actively battled the Antichrist, which gave them the same authority once held

66 Jakoubek ze Stříbra, Výklad na Zjevenie, ed. by Šimek, i, p. 327. 67 Jakoubek ze Stříbra, Výklad na Zjevenie, ed. by Šimek, i, p. 328. 68 Jakoubek ze Stříbra, Výklad na Zjevenie, ed. by Šimek, i, p. 328.

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by Enoch and Elijah. This strategy was a constant in medieval apocalyptic interpretations, and the identifications of biblical figures with historical ones naturally differed depending on the context in which the text was created.69 A rejection of the material world was a fundamental condition for a preacher to achieve this role. Humility and gauging one’s own strength were also important. Here, Biskupec repeats the words of Jakoubek that it is better for all when the preacher admits his lack of knowledge or inadequacies instead of attributing delusive meanings to Scripture. Unfortunately, this does not happen often, as both authors agree. Furthermore, Biskupec, independent of the model in Jakoubek’s work, describes the problems with the arrogance of his Taborite brothers and self-proclaimed theologians. He again speaks of the need for humility when interpreting God’s Word, as he says that there are those who barely know how to read but, filled with exceptional confidence in themselves, reject any advice. These are much like students who hear a tiny portion of God’s Law and then believe they know everything and understand completely. Supplementing this lament (in Latin), the author adds in Czech that these people think: ‘I already know what to do. There is no need to teach me more’.70 Biskupec repeats Jakoubek’s claim that the only way to avoid interpretative mistakes is to accept the examples seen in the lives of Christ and the saints of the primitive church.71 For both Jakoubek and Biskupec, the Eucharistic motif of the blood of Christ is the condition of the correct understanding of biblical texts. Believers cannot eliminate errors only through their own actions, but require Christ and his blood (‘meritum Christi Agni et sanguinis eius’).72 The blood of Christ thus indicates to his chosen ones that he will not allow them to fall into delusion. As we have seen, Mikuláš Biskupec was very critical of the Taborite chiliastic movement. He chastised them for abandoning the principles of the primitive church through their delusions that led them down the path to a sodomitic life and shattered the original unity of the Taborite brothers: Trahuntur hoc flumine a predicacione veritatis, a statu virtuoso ecclesie primitive usque ad vitam Sodomorum, ut qui erant optimi, nunc pessimi existant. Trahuntur ab unitate cordis unius et anime unius in sectas nimis multas, a se divisas in heresim erroris.73 (This movement pulls them away from preaching the truth; away from the state of virtue of the primitive church to a life of the Sodomites;

69 For the foundations of the exegesis of the Book of Revelation in the Middle Ages, see Mégier, ‘Die Historisierung der Apokalypse’, p. 588. See also Fredriksen, ‘Tychonius and Augustine’, pp. 20–37. 70 Vienna, ÖNB, MS 4520, fol. 50v: ‘Již ja viem, coť mám činiti, netřeba jest mě učiti’. 71 Jakoubek ze Stříbra, Výklad na Zjevenie, ed. by Šimek, i, p. 258; Vienna, ÖNB, MS 4520, fol. 61r. Both texts return to this line of thinking several times. 72 Vienna, ÖNB, MS 4520, fol. 61v. 73 Vienna, ÖNB, MS 4520, fol. 175v.

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and those who were the best now seem to be the worst. They are ripped from the unity of a single heart and a single soul into a vast number of sects separated from one another by heretical delusions.) This allusion cannot be considered just a minor contribution to the debate about Taborite Adamism that may confirm its historicity,74 but must also be seen as a witness to Biskupec’s thinking and argumentation, of his coupling together the correct understanding of the Bible with leading an exemplary Christian life. For Biskupec, conforming to the life of Christ, the apostles, and the primitive church was a guarantee of correctly interpreting Scripture. Taborite chiliasts, however, gave up the morals of the primitive church and indulged in a sinful, sodomitic life of cruelty and perversion as described by Jan Žižka immediately after their violent suppression.75 According to Biskupec’s logic, their obviously sinful practices also confirmed the error of their interpretations. They were not capable of correct biblical interpretation because of sin, and the sins they lived in were also a sign of the error in their interpretations. *** Hussite radicals relied on apocalyptic discourses in their interpretation of events surrounding them and thus to a certain extent transformed secular events into sacred history. One of the central problems within apocalyptic Hussite radicalism was the transmission of God’s Word, the authority to interpret it, and its further dissemination. This complex conundrum was associated with the challenge of adhering to biblical norms, primarily the life of Christ, and in extreme cases with the characteristics of the age of innocence. Both the chiliastic and the more moderate approach, despite being opposed to each other, were based on the same idea, namely a return to innocence as a precondition for the proper understanding of Scripture. In their visions, radical chiliasts included the idea formulated by Joachim of Fiore and his followers that there would be no need to interpret the Word of God in the state immediately after the defeat of the Antichrist as everyone would be a direct student of God and everything would be written directly onto their hearts. In order to achieve this level of enlightenment, the church would have to return to a state without sin that existed in the age of innocence, which was proclaimed to be the guarantee of the direct understanding of God’s truth. This necessary purgation of sin was fundamental to the thought of both extreme Hussite radicals and moderates. While for radicals who followed the post-Joachimite tradition to some extent, the purification was realized 74 See Patschovsky, ‘Der taboritische Chiliasmus’; Kaminsky, A History of the Hussite Revolution, pp. 429–31. 75 Vavřinec z Březové, Kronika husitská, ed. by Goll, pp. 517–18. For the problems with this source, see Patschovsky, ‘Der taboritische Chiliasmus’.

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by the Holy Spirit, for moderate Hussites it was a matter of following moral precepts. Hussite theologians critical of radical chiliasts also set the fulfilling of biblical examples as the evaluation criterion for interpretations, but in this case it was in the form of conforming to the life of Christ, the apostles, and the traditions of the primitive church. Purity, humility, and mercy were the imperative in contemplations concerning the correctness or otherwise of interpreting God’s Word, as well as the evaluation of the authority of the preacher or exegete to interpret Scripture. If the preacher had a reputation for sinful or forbidden behaviour that was in conflict with the ideals of the evangelical order, it was a sign and confirmation that his interpretation would lead down a delusional and dangerous path. Sodomitic behaviour (no matter how polemical or imaginary) that moderate Hussite theologians attributed to Taborite radicals was presented as the obvious evidence of how false their chiliastic visions were.

Works Cited Manuscripts and Archival Sources Olomouc, Zemský archiv v Opavě, pobočka Olomouc (SOkA), MS 291 Prague, Archiv Pražského hradu, Knihovna Metopolitní kapituly, MS C 95 Třeboň, Státní oblastní archiv, MS A 16 Vienna, ÖNB, MS 4520 Primary Sources Gregorius Magnus, Moralia in Iob. Libri I–X, ed. by Marcus Adriaen, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina, 143 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1979) Ioachim Abbas Florensis, Exhortatorium Iudeorum, ed. by Alexander Patschovsky (Roma: Istituto storico italiano per il Medio Evo, 2006) Jakoubek ze Stříbra, Výklad na Zjevenie sv. Jana, ed. by František Šimek, 2 vols (Prague: Komise pro vydávání pramenů českého hnutí náboženského ve století XIV. a XV., 1932–1933) Jan z Příbramě, Život kněží táborských, ed. by Jaroslav Boubín (Příbram: Státní okresní archiv and Okresní muzeum, 2000) Joachim of Fiore, Concordia Novi ac Veteris Testamenti, ed. by Alexander Patschovsky, Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Quellen zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters, 28 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2017) ———, De septem sigillis in Julia Eva Wannenmacher, Die Hermeneutik der Heilsgeschichte. ‘De septem sigillis’ und die sieben Siegel im Werk Joachims von Fiore (Leiden: Brill, 2005), pp. 259–355 ———, Expositio in Apocalypsim (Venice: F. Bindoni and M. Pasini, 1527, reprint Frankfurt a. M.: Minerva, 1964) Pseudo-Joachim of Fiore, Super Hieremiam (Venice: Soardi, 1516)

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Vavřinec z Březové, Kronika husitská, ed. by Jaroslav Goll, in Fontes rerum Bohemicarum, vol. v, ed. by Josef Emler, Jan Gebauer, and Jaroslav Goll (Prague: Nadání Františka Palackého, 1893), pp. 327–534 ‘Vyznání o chlebu živém a věčném Martina Húsky’, ed. by Antonín Frinta, Jihočeský sborník historický, 1 (1928), 6–12 Secondary Works Cermanová, Pavlína, ‘Biblické výklady a biblická paměť v táborském apokalyptickém myšlení’, Husitský Tábor, 22 (2018), 9–33 Coufal, Dušan, ‘Výklad a autorita Bible v polemice mezi Janem Gersonem a Jakoubkem ze Stříbra z roku 1417’, Listy filologické, 131 (2008), 45–72 ———, ‘Die Theologie des Laienkelchs bei Jacobell von Mies († 1429)’, Archa Verbi, 14 (2017), 157–201 Fischer, Georg, Jeremia 26–52, Herders Theologischer Kommentar zum Alten Testament (Freiburg: Herder, 2005) Fredriksen, Paula, ‘Tychonius and Augustine on the Apocalypse’, in The Apocalypse in the Middle Ages, ed. by Richard K. Emmerson and Bernard McGinn (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992), pp. 20–37 Froehlich, Karlfried, ‘Always to Keep the Literal Sense in Holy Scripture Means to Kill One’s Soul: The State of Biblical Hermeneutics at the Beginning of the Fifteenth Century’, in Literary Uses of Typology: From the Late Middle Ages to the Present, ed. by Earl Miner (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977), pp. 20–48 Ghosh, Kantik, The Wycliffite Heresy: Authority and the Interpretation of Texts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002) Hledíková, Zdeňka, ‘Pelhřimovský školmistr Konrád a jeho rukopis’, in Septuaginta Paulo Spunar oblata (70+2), ed. by Jiří K. Kroupa (Prague: Koniasch Latin Press, 2000), pp. 249–52 Kaminsky, Howard, A History of the Hussite Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967) Kybal, Vlastimil, M. Jan Hus. Život a učení, vol. ii: Učení, part 1 (Prague: Jan Laichter, 1923) McGinn, Bernard, The Calabrian Abbot. Joachim of Fiore in the History of Western Thought (New York: Macmillan, 1985) ———, ‘Apocalypticism and Mysticism in Joachim of Fiore’s Expositio in Apocalypsim’, in The End of the World in Medieval Thought and Spirituality, ed. by Eric Knibbs, Jessica A. Boon, and Erica Gelser (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), pp. 163–96 Mégier, Elisabeth, ‘Die Historisierung der Apokalypse oder von der globalen zur geschichtlichen Zeit der Kirche in lateinischen Apokalypsenkommentaren, von Tychonius bis Rupert von Deutz’, in Abendländische Apokalyptik. Kompendium zur Genealogie der Endzeit, ed. by Veronika Wieser, Christian Zolles, Catherine Feik, Martin Zolles, and Leopold Schlöndorff (Berlin: Akademie, 2013), pp. 579–604

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Megivern, James J., Concomitance and Communion: A Study in Eucharistic Doctrine and Practice (Fribourg: The University Press, 1963) Molnár, Amedeo, ‘Zur hermeneutischen Problematik des Glaubensdisputs im Hussitentum’, in Studien zum Humanismus in den böhmischen Ländern, ed. by Hans-Bernd Harder, Hans Rothe, Jaroslav Kolár, and Slavomír Wollman (Cologne: Böhlau, 1988), pp. 93–110 Morris, David, ‘The Historiography of the Super Prophetas (also known as Super Esaiam) of Pseudo-Joachim of Fiore’, Oliviana, 4 (2012) [accessed 16 July 2019] ———, ‘A Case of Mistaken Identity: The Lobkowicz Codex (MS VI Fc. 25) of Pseudo-Joachim of Fiore’, Studia mediaevalia Bohemica (forthcoming) Moynihan, Robert, ‘The Development of the “Pseudo-Joachim” Commentary “Super Hieremiam”: New Manuscript Evidence’, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome. Moyen Age, Temps modernes, 98 (1986), 109–42 Patschovsky, Alexander, ‘Der taboritische Chiliasmus. Seine Idee, sein Bild bei den Zeitgenossen und die Interpretation der Geschichtswissenschaft’, in Häresie und vorzeitige Reformation im Spätmittelalter, Schriften des Historischen Kollegs Kolloquien 39, ed. by František Šmahel (München: R. Oldenbourg, 1998), pp. 169–95 Potestà, Gian Luca, ‘Prophetie als Wissenschaft. Das Charisma der Seher der Endzeit’, in Das Charisma. Funktionen und symbolische Repräsentationen, ed. by Pavlína Rychterová, Stefan Seit, and Raphaela Veit (Berlin: Akademie 2008), pp. 275–86 ———, El tiempo del Apocalipsis. Vida de Joaquín de Fiore, trans. by David Guixeras (Madrid: Trotta, 2010) Reeves, Marjorie, The Influence of Prophecy in the Later Middle Ages: A Study in Joachinism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969) Riedl, Matthias, Joachim von Fiore. Denker der vollendeten Menschheit (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2004) ———, ‘Joachim of Fiore as Political Thinker’, in Joachim of Fiore and the Influence of Inspiration, ed. by Julia Eva Wannenmacher (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), pp. 53–73 ———, ‘Longing for the Third Age: Revolutionary Joachism, Communism, and National Socialism’, in A Companion to Joachim of Fiore, ed. by Matthias Riedl (Leiden: Brill, 2018), pp. 267–318 Selge, Kurt-Victor, ‘Die Überlieferung der Werke Joachims von Fiore im 14./15. Jahrhundert’, in Das Publikum politischer Theorie im 14. Jahrhundert, ed. by Jürgen Miethke (München: Oldenbourg, 1992), pp. 49–60 ———, ‘Handschriften Joachims von Fiore in Böhmen’, in Eschatologie und Hussitismus, ed. by Alexander Patschovsky and František Šmahel, Historica Series Nova, Supplementum 1 (Prague: Historisches Institut, 1996), pp. 53–60 Wannenmacher, Julia Eva, Die Hermeneutik der Heilsgeschichte. ‘De septem sigillis’ und die sieben Siegel im Werk Joachims von Fiore (Leiden: Brill, 2005) Webb, J. R., ‘“Knowledge will be Manifold”: Daniel 12. 4 and the Idea of Intellectual Progress in the Middle Ages’, Speculum, 89 (2014), 307–57

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Scriptural Exegesis and Clerical Discourse in Hussite Preaching*

Preaching is generally assigned great significance in the Hussite movement. In a period before the invention of the printing-press, it must have been primarily through preaching that Hussitism secured its diffusion in society. Even historians sceptical of the impact of sermons, given the spatio-temporal limitations of the spoken word, acknowledge that the pulpit was the main means of Hussite propaganda.1 The impact of genres such as verse compositions and vernacular treatises is contestable given the low rates of manuscript survival and the lack of any firm evidence of oral delivery or performance.2 Visual media, even if employed in a polemical context, tend to be of more ambiguous impact; moreover, access to them may have been rather limited.3 In preaching, on the contrary, the exhortatory discourse is clearer and the authoritative voice much more outspoken; in many cases, the authors of sermons can be identified as leading figures in Hussite theology and politics; and the sermons were easily available in the oral and, if need be, in the written form. All of this gives them prominence in the public communication of the Hussites as an interface between academia (the majority of known authors of Hussite sermons held university degrees) and a larger public.



* This study was supported by grant no. 19–28415X ‘From Performativity to Institutionalization: Handling Conflict in the Late Middle Ages (Strategies, Agents, Communication)’ from the Czech Science Foundation (GA ČR). 1 Šmahel, Die Hussitische Revolution, i, pp. 514–15 and 522–28; succinctly Šmahel, ‘Literacy and Heresy’, pp. 242–44. For a full appreciation of the role played by preaching, see Čornej and Bartlová, Velké dějiny zemí Koruny české, vi, pp. 278–83. Preaching is largely missing from the account of Hussite propaganda in Fudge, The Magnificent Ride, pp. 178–274. 2 On this genre of sources, see Perett, Preachers, Partisans, and Rebellious Religion. Perett deals with only a few sermons by Jan Hus (pp. 28–36), instead focusing on vernacular songs and tracts. 3 Bartlová, Pravda zvítězila, pp. 276–77 (English summary at pp. 344–45). Pavel Soukup  •  ([email protected]), is researcher at the Centre for Medieval Studies, Institute of Philosophy, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague. Wycliffism and Hussitism: Methods of Thinking, Writing, and Persuasion, c. 1360 – c. 1460, ed. by Kantik Ghosh and Pavel Soukup, MCS 47 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021), pp. 341–360 FHG10.1484/M.MCS-EB.5.124381

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Around one hundred and fifty sermon collections from late medieval Bohemia are extant. For a middle-sized European region in the fifteenth century, it is a very substantial body of texts, and constitutes a large and under-researched pool of sources. Only 11 per cent of surviving sermon collections (or postils, as they are traditionally called in the Bohemian context) are available in (more or less) modern editions, and most of the edited collections are of works by Jan Hus. Preaching, as one of the central axes of Hus’s career and mission, has received exceptional scholarly attention.4 The limited knowledge of later postils and preaching-practice does not correspond to historians’ high appreciation of the influence of preachers. Some studies focusing on selected sermon collections have appeared in the last decade, but a comprehensive survey of Hussite preaching is missing, as are studies analysing individual manuscripts in detail.5 While it would be wrong to extrapolate findings from Hus’s corpus to the whole of Hussite preaching, isolating Hus from subsequent developments is not satisfactory either. Rather than portraying later Hussitism as a period of decline and the fading-out of original impulses, we should try to understand the challenges and needs of Utraquism. The solutions put forward by its main representatives deserve to be acknowledged as serious, independent, and often original contributions to the intellectual and ecclesiastical struggles of the late Middle Ages.6 This paper investigates the method of Hussite preaching. It asks how preachers produced the content they wanted to convey in sermons, and what the relationship of their preaching was to intellectual-historical developments and religious and social changes of the fifteenth century. The connection between sermons and society is understood as one of mutual influence: not only did critical reformist sermons stimulate action with an impact in real life, but the changing political and social position of Hussitism in Bohemia and Moravia affected the evolution of the content and aims of Utraquist preaching. Therefore, while Jan Hus remains at the core of the analysis (as is inevitably the case in any study of Hussite preaching due to the quantity and accessibility of his homiletic work), this paper also considers later periods, up to and including postils dated to the 1470s. I will first examine the construction of sermons with special attention paid to scholarly styles and genres that may have penetrated into popular preaching. In the second part, I will give some examples of the homiletic interpretation of Scripture with the aim of tracing some interpretative moves characteristic of the Hussites.



4 During the process of editing Hus’s sermons, valuable textual-critical studies were produced. An accessible summary of the findings is Vidmanová, ‘Hus als Prediger’. For a more recent survey of Hus’s preaching, see Soukup, ‘Jan Hus as a Preacher’. 5 One exception is Marek, Jakoubek ze Stříbra. Older works, meritorious as they were, focused on the selective description of individual manuscript postils. See above all Bartoš, Dvě studie o husitských postilách. 6 A major re-evaluation of later Utraquism has been offered by David, Finding the Middle Way. Marek, ‘Major Figures of Later Hussitism’, is suggestive of the wealth and variety of the Hussites’ written output in the latter part of the fifteenth century.

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* * * Given the influence that John Wyclif ’s works exerted on early Hussite thought and textual production, Wyclif ’s sermons appear as a natural comparandum. The recent research on Wyclif ’s Latin sermons is particularly useful since it has concentrated on questions of publication and audience,7 examined the sermons’ rhetorical and methodological features,8 and noticed the combination of pastoral and polemical aims.9 One especially noteworthy aspect is the penetration of scholastic methodology, even metaphysics, into Wyclif ’s sermons that are explicitly announced as popular.10 The transgression of the line between academic and popular spheres is a key feature of Wycliffite and Hussite religious thinking. Prominent reformists from Prague University shared with Wyclif the ability to move between scholastic theology and extra-mural exhortation. The Council of Constance castigated the Wycliffites, and prominently Jan Hus, for their inadmissible mixing of internal clerical and external catechetical discourses. Hus and his colleagues intentionally crossed the discursive boundaries in order to bring their ecclesiastical critique to the ears of lay people.11 However, the extent to which Bohemian Wycliffites used philosophical-theological speculation as the source and vehicle of popular instruction in matters of church reform, and whether they did it specifically in preaching, demands more nuanced scrutiny. The well-known appropriation of Wyclif ’s texts by Hus leads naturally to the question of the direct use or otherwise of Wyclif ’s sermons in Bohemian preaching. The late Sermones of John Wyclif, arranged in three cycles during Wyclif ’s retirement in Lutterworth (probably in 1381–1382), stand out by blending pastoral themes, philosophical reasoning, and topical polemical concerns. Wyclif famously labelled them ‘sermones rudes ad populum’ (simple sermons for the people)12 and covered therein a range of pastoral topics. At the same time, he included demanding theological and philosophical discussion on numerous occasions. Such deliberations occur especially — but not exclusively — in the dubia that form the concluding, and thematically largely independent, part of some sermons.13 Jan Hus excerpted Wyclif ’s sermons for his own homiletic works. His last Latin sermon cycle, the Postilla adumbrata of 1411–1412, contains several portions of text borrowed from Wyclif ’s sermons,



7 Hudson, ‘Aspects of the “Publication”’; Hudson, ‘Wyclif ’s Latin Sermons’; Gradon, ‘Wyclif ’s Postilla and his Sermons’. 8 Auksi, ‘Wyclif ’s Sermons and the Plain Style’; Ghosh, ‘Genre and Method’. 9 Otto, ‘The Authority of the Preacher’; Otto, ‘The Reform Program’. 10 Hudson, ‘Wyclif ’s Latin Sermons’, p. 234; Ghosh, ‘Genre and Method’, pp. 168–69. 11 Ghosh, ‘Wyclif, Arundel, and the Long Fifteenth Century’, pp. 554–55; Rychterová, ‘Die Verbrennung von Johannes Hus’, pp. 379–82; Soukup, Jan Hus, pp. 154–55. 12 Wyclif, Sermones, ed. by Loserth, i, Praefatio. 13 Hudson, ‘Wyclif ’s Latin Sermons’, pp. 233–34; Otto, ‘The Reform Program’, pp. 44–47.

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in some cases longer continuous passages. All of these borrowings, however, are moral and spiritual in content and show nothing academic in style.14 Wyclif ’s sermons served Hus as a source for his Czech Sunday Postil, too. Some sermons include extensive passages translated or adapted from Wyclif; other are drafted independently or based on other sources.15 Hus’s use of Wyclif ’s sermons in the Czech Postil was by no means mechanical; on the contrary, Hus proceeded creatively and subordinated the adoptions to his own authorial intentions. He abridged, interpolated, and rephrased the Oxford master’s text.16 Hus took over from Wyclif mostly historical and allegorical exegesis, relying on the gospel expositions in the first set of Wyclif ’s sermons. Occasionally he also copied polemical passages, but in other instances he inserted original ecclesiastical critiques into Wyclif ’s exposition.17 Interestingly, he skipped the dubia (with one exception discussed below) and avoided passages freighted with philosophy and references to university life. A couple of examples may illustrate his strategy. In the exposition of the gospel passage about the wedding at Cana, Wyclif offers a reading of Mary’s complaint to Jesus about the lack of wine ( John 2. 1–5). He claims that Mary did not sin by reproaching Jesus; elucidates Jesus’s answer ‘My hour has not yet come’; and explains why Mary reacted by instructing everybody to do whatever Jesus told them. Wyclif notes that Mary’s comment about the lack of wine was true because, as ‘it is clear to both theologians and logicians’ (‘patet tam logicis quam theologis’), Mary could not lie. This remark possibly mirrors Wyclif ’s conviction that the different kinds of knowledge that different academic disciplines acquire of the one ‘final’ biblical truth must not contradict one another; if that were the case, then something would be wrong with those disciplines.18 Hus rendered Wyclif quite faithfully; nevertheless, he skipped this remark. Similarly, in the usual morally critical punchline at the end of this passage, Hus replaced Wyclif ’s criticism of clerical ‘sophistry’ with more straightforward (and not

14 Hus, Postilla adumbrata, ed. by Ryba and Silagi, no. 9, pp. 40–41; no. 22, pp. 91–92; no. 93, pp. 393–95; no. 102, pp. 415–19; shorter excerpts are in no. 1, p. 3; no. 26, p. 107; no. 103, pp. 420–21. 15 The extent of the borrowings is clearly visible from the apparatus of Hus, Česká nedělní postila, ed. by Daňhelka, pp. 587–664. Hus’s Sermones de sanctis and his 1410–1411 Sermones in Bethlehem also draw on Wyclif ’s Sermones but the apparatus of neither of these editions gives an adequate idea of the exact use of Wyclif. See Hus, Sermones de sanctis, ed. by Flajšhans, pp. xxx–xxxi (sample juxtaposition); and Hus, ‘M. Io. Hus Sermones in Capella Bethlehem’, ed. by Flajšhans, i, p. xiii; cf. Loserth, Huss und Wiclif, pp. 136–40. 16 See the evaluation of Hus’s procedure by Sedlák, who first discovered the tacitly employed source: Sedlák, ‘Pramen české Postilly Husovy’, p. 282. 17 E.g. Hus, Česká nedělní postila, ed. by Daňhelka, p. 100 (on the greed of confessors); cf. Sedlák, ‘Pramen české Postilly Husovy’, p. 266. 18 Cf. Ghosh, The Wycliffite Heresy, p. 52; Brungs and Goubier, ‘On Biblical Logicism’; Campi in this volume, pp. 117–37.

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methodologically loaded) censure of clerical fornication.19 Interestingly, the same Wyclif sermon was adapted in English in the long cycle of 294 sermons conventionally known as the English Wycliffite Sermons. The vernacular transformation and simplification are similar to Hus, amounting to what has been described as a ‘self-conscious attempt to address a non-specialist audience’. It should be noted, however, that the Middle English writer, while excluding the above-mentioned references to theology, logic, and sophistry, nevertheless touched upon the complex question of the transformation of matter — an abstruse dubium of Wyclif ’s that Hus entirely ignored.20 The explanation of how Christ’s human nature is generated by the divine Trinity was probably at the limit of the kind of academic discourse Hus was willing to include in his Postil. Two verses from the Gospel of John (2. 27–28) served Wyclif as the springboard for a dense exposition of selected aspects of trinitarian theology with brief references to loosely related matters. Hus kept the core of this exposition while eliminating some of the more technical vocabulary and intramural digressions. On Christ’s statement that the Father loved the disciples because they had loved him, Wyclif commented that this was the proof of temporal things being able to cause eternal things, as in predestination theory and other matters. Hus left this entire passage out, despite the fact that he was a proponent of predestination.21 The exposition which follows of Christ’s coming from and returning to the Father Hus rendered faithfully as to its content. He kept and explained expressions such as eterna generacio; he nevertheless sacrificed a number of other Latin terms (personalis distinccio, produccio ad extra, regeneracio triumphantis) in favour of more literal and explicit information.22 This simplification was intentional and did not by

19 Wyclif, Sermones, ed. by Loserth, i, pp. 73–74: ‘Tunc enim nostri prelati et clerici, ymmo fratres peculiares huius domine, non sic sophisticarent in operibus mandatis et consiliis Christi contrariis’ (Then [i.e. if everybody did what Christ tells them] our prelates and clerics, nay rather, friars specially devoted to this Lady [i.e., Franciscans?], would not ‘sophisticate’ thus by means of works contrary to the mandates and counsels of Christ); Hus, Česká nedělní postila, ed. by Daňhelka, pp. 91–92: ‘Ó, bychom my, jenž sloveme slúhy Kristovy, té jejie svaté rady poslúchali, tehdy bychom nesmilnili ani kterého hřiechu smrtedlného činili, ale plně vóli jeho svatého přikázanie bychom plnili’ (Oh, may we, who are called Christ’s servants, obey her holy counsel; then we would not fornicate nor commit any mortal sin but fulfil completely the intent of his holy commandments). 20 English Wycliffite Sermons, ed. by Hudson and Gradon, i, pp. 360–63; for a discussion and the quotation, see Ghosh, ‘After Wyclif ’, p. 172. 21 In his Czech Postil, Hus often supplemented the mentions of the Church with the specification ‘that is the congregation of the predestined’: Sedlák, ‘Pramen české Postilly Husovy’, p. 273 n. 2. 22 Wyclif, Sermones, ed. by Loserth, i, p. 194: ‘Crediderunt autem apostoli fide antecedente ad istum amorem quod Christus “exivit de Deo” per eternam generacionem et personalem distinccionem et post istam generacionem eternam “exivit a patre” produccione ad extra et “venit mundum” per carnis assumpcionem, et “iterum reliquit mundum” quoad viacionis habitudinem et “vadit ad patrem” quoad triumphantis regeneracionem’ (The apostles also believed through faith which preceded this love that Christ ‘came forth from God’ through eternal generation and personal distinction [i.e., distinction between their persons], and

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any means result from an inadequate understanding of Wyclif. Hus’s stylistic manipulation of the original reveals that he could handle his source with confidence. His editorial choices (as also his omission of the immediately following short passage addressing the ‘modus loquendi scripture’) show that Hus was not primarily interested in metaphysics, logic, or philosophical theology, but was ‘translating’ Wyclif into a non-university culture. To be sure, Hus made it clear to the readers of his Czech Postil that the exegesis he was providing them with was the result of careful scholarly scrutiny. He occasionally burdened his readers with Greek loan-words in Latin, and in the above-mentioned discussion of the wedding at Cana, he listed no fewer than eight alternative Czech equivalents for the Greek hydria (water-pot) in order not to pick the wrong one.23 More than once he admitted difficulties in interpreting certain gospel passages and did not hesitate to disagree with one of Gregory the Great’s expositions, thus revealing the open, discursive nature of biblical exegesis.24 In Hus’s Latin sermons, we occasionally find technical language drawn from university learning, especially in passages phrased as rhetorical questions.25 His Sermones in Bethlehem, for example, contain a brief discussion of whether priests should be compelled to perform services in the regular form of a quaestio.26 The exposition of a related topic in the vernacular Postil — secular lords’ right to compulsion in religious matters — is

after this eternal generation, ‘came forth from the Father’ through external production [i.e., production into external existence], and ‘came into the world’ through the assumption of flesh, and ‘left the world again’ in accordance with the habit of wayfaring [i.e., the nature of earthly life], and ‘is going to the Father’ as regards [his] rebirth as the triumphant one). Hus, Česká nedělní postila, ed. by Daňhelka, p. 241: ‘Tu věz, že věřili sú učedlníci, že Kristus od boha jest vyšel věčným rozením, tak že od věčnosti otec bóh rodí syna boha jinú osobú. Pak po tom vyjití vyšel jest Kristus jelikožto stvořenie ode všie svaté trojicě. Neb Kristus jelikožto člověk jest stvořen od svaté trojice. A přišel jest na svět, přijem člověctvie v životě panny Marie, i urodil sě a obcoval v světě. A opět opustil jest svět k óbcování, že již tělestně jako strastný neobcuje v světě, a šel jest k ótci, když jest na nebe vstúpil. A tak die: “Vyšel sem od otce a přišel sem na svět; opět opúštiem svět a jdu k ótci”’ (Here be aware that the apostles believed that Christ ‘came from God’ through eternal generation, so that God the Father generates the Son eternally as a different person. After this emergence, Christ as a creature came forth from all Holy Trinity, for Christ as a human being was created by the Holy Trinity. And he ‘came into the world’, having accepted humanity in the womb of the Virgin Mary, and he was born and performed actions in the world. And he left the world as an actor again so that he no longer acts in the world physically as a man of sorrow, and ‘went to the Father’ when he ascended to heaven. And thus he says: ‘I came from the Father and have come into the world, and now I am leaving the world and going to the Father’). 23 Hus, Česká nedělní postila, ed. by Daňhelka, p. 92; cf. pp. 284–85 for the loan-words purpura and byssus. 24 Hus, Česká nedělní postila, ed. by Daňhelka, pp. 123–24. 25 Hus, ‘M. Io. Hus Sermones in Capella Bethlehem’, ed. by Flajšhans, iv, pp. 199–200; also Hus, Postilla adumbrata, ed. by Ryba and Silagi, pp. 263–64 (on frequent communion). 26 Hus, ‘M. Io. Hus Sermones in Capella Bethlehem’, ed. by Flajšhans, iv, p. 224. The short paragraph has all the main parts, introduced respectively with ‘Utrum’, ‘Videtur quod’, and ‘Respondetur’.

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also modelled after a university disputation. Its beginning is copied from a dubium of one of Wyclif ’s sermons. Hus adopted three reasons that seemingly contradict the thesis (‘et videtur quod non’) and added a fourth one. In the resolution of arguments, however, although he accepted Wyclif ’s conclusions fully, Hus chose an exposition independent in wording and illustrated his reasoning with his own vivid examples taken from everyday life.27 Thus, we can see that Hus did not proceed to the same level of abstraction as Wyclif in his dubia. Even in the academically structured portions, Hus dealt mostly with topics of moral or spiritual relevance. In at least one case, however, Wyclif’s sermons were received in the Hussite environment word by word. As Anne Hudson has pointed out, thirty-four of Wyclif’s sermons were copied into a manuscript of Hus’s collection de tempore known as Leccionarium bipartitum. This fact is all the more interesting in our context in that these are sermons from the third set (on epistles) which has been characterized as rather distant from Wyclif ’s (putative) Lutterworth congregation, with more frequent references to contemporary controversies at Oxford and London than is the case in the other two sets of the late Sermones.28 The compilator of the Prague manuscript trimmed some of Wyclif’s sermons but he copied many of them in their entirety, thus introducing into the Bohemian contexts some very specific references to English affairs.29 The abridgement performed by the Bohemian copyist concerned in most cases the quaestiones or dubia.30 In many other cases, however, the Hussite editor borrowed the highly academic and abstract portions as well. Thus, the Prague manuscript contains a technical discussion of the Eucharist introduced by Wyclif with the words ‘nec est horrenda logica’ (and logic is not to be feared). Logic is addressed again in an exposition concerning universals and predication, and it is done in Wyclif ’s typical sarcastic way: ‘Sed (ut sepe dixi) isti ydiote in primis addiscerent logicam et fidem ecclesie’ (But, as I have often said, these idiotae should first learn logic and the faith of the church). The first person is also kept in phrases such as ‘in actibus scolasticis sepe dixi’ (I often said in university disputations), here introducing the employment of the hypostatic union theory in favour of Church reform.31 References to England, first-person utterances suggesting authorship (the inserted sermons are not credited to Wyclif so that they might have been easily 27 Hus, Česká nedělní postila, ed. by Daňhelka, pp. 299–301; Wyclif, Sermones, ed. by Loserth, i, pp. 233–34. 28 Hudson, ‘Wyclif ’s Latin Sermons’, p. 235. 29 The Bohemian reader thus could become acquainted with the scandal of fornicating friars in a village near Oxford or inform himself about the English name of Pentecost, ‘dies dominica sapiencialis’ (Whitsunday): Prague, NK, MS III B 19, fols 27r and 57v; Wyclif, Sermones, iii, pp. 219 and 257. The references to the Earthquake Council are noted in Hudson, ‘Wyclif ’s Latin Sermons’, p. 239. 30 An overview of Wyclif ’s sermons found in MS III B 19 has been provided by Hudson, Studies in the Transmission of Wyclif’s Writings, Appendix II, pp. 6–8. 31 Wyclif, Sermones, iii, pp. 193, 279, and 199; Prague, NK, MS III B 19, fols 3r–v, 77v, and 8v–9r. I prefer the manuscript reading ‘in actibus’ to the ‘in castris’ of the edition.

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misattributed to Hus), comments on singular, highly topical, or personal matters — all this suggest that the texts as they appear in the manuscript were not meant for direct presentation to a wider audience. In one passage, also contained in the Prague manuscript, Wyclif comments on the salutary effect the discussed issue would have ‘if it were faithfully preached to the common people’ (‘Et ista materia fideliter predicata vulgaribus […]’).32 This phrase, along with the numerous instructions for ‘a sympathetic preacher who would use the sets as a resource for his own sermons’,33 indicate that Wyclif did not preach the sermons as he wrote them; he anticipated that they would undergo a certain transformation in content and form before being preached to the people. The relation between preserved texts and oral delivery is of course one of the key questions of sermon studies. Textual production and transmission in the field of preaching can be quite complex.34 Most of the sermon texts preserved from the late Middle Ages stem from preachers’ materials (notes, drafts, or edited versions), not from what listeners might have heard. In the absence of records of live sermons (reportationes), it is difficult to say to what extent their more speculative parts were intended for the laity. It is nevertheless clear that Wyclif ’s and Hus’s sermons, due to their strong personal timbre, do not represent typical model sermons. If they were used as such, they certainly would have needed substantial editing. It is likely that such editing before any oral delivery would also have affected those passages phrased in an overly academic tone. Preachers and scribes included the learned expositions for their own use, and the authors probably composed them with the intention that they be shared amongst clerics. Hus’s Leccionarium bipartitum, with which Wyclif ’s epistle homilies were merged in the manuscript discussed above, is an exegetical tool for students of divinity rather than a transcript of sermons as actually delivered. Its presumed use would consist in preachers informing themselves about the range of admissible interpretations, choosing the one that might fit them best, and compiling a sermon of their own. The metatextual remarks on scholarly procedures, polemical or otherwise, might have been useful for the clerical user of the sermons but was hardly intended for or made available to the lay end-audience. In preaching praxis, the academic/clerical and popular/ catechetical discourses were probably not intentionally mixed. It is difficult to extend these observations to later Hussite postils due to the unsatisfactory state of research and editorial processing. A tentative analysis suggests that they differ from Wyclif ’s and Hus’s collections as to their homiletic text-type: to an even smaller extent were they usable as direct

32 Wyclif, Sermones, iii, p. 383; Prague, NK, MS III B 19, fols 136v–137r. 33 Hudson, ‘Wyclif ’s Latin Sermons’, p. 233. 34 Scholarship on medieval sermons and their performance has expanded notably during the last couple of decades. Particularly inspiring studies include Thompson, ‘From Texts to Preaching’; Mertens, ‘Relic or Strategy’.

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models. Their limited transmission and user-unfriendly format point to a more private, documentary character; the intention of publishing them was secondary if any. The majority of collections probably capture the materials compiled by more eminent Utraquist preachers during their preparation for popular preaching. We find virtually no traces of academic jargon or specialized textual structuring. They contain the usual amount of biblical exegesis taken from widely available handbooks, patristic quotations, moral exhortation, and occasional polemic. Nothing in them suggests that specific Hussite tenets had risen from advanced theological speculation or academic methodologies. A good example is offered by the sermons for the feast of Corpus Christi. Surprisingly, Hussite postils do not contain the eloquent defences of Utraquist practice and the florid praise of the redemptive chalice that one would expect. In fact, the Latin collections hardly mention the communion under both kinds in their exposition of John 6.35 Utraquism was simply assumed; while the authors would habitually speak of ‘manducacio et bibicio’ (eating and drinking) as if they were coupled inseparably together,36 they apparently perceived no need to defend Utraquist belief. There is almost no substantiating polemic, or exhortation — at the most we find remarks such as ‘in utraque enim specie communicabant antiquitus fideles’ (the faithful in ancient times communicated under both kinds).37 In contrast to the Latin sermons, the Corpus Christi entry in Jan Rokycana’s vernacular postil contains a long discussion of communion sub utraque in the form of a passionate popular exhortation. The Utraquist archbishop stressed the orthodoxy of this doctrine that God had revealed exclusively to the Bohemians and Moravians.38 He explained why the practice was right despite being considered heretical by everyone else. He even reminded the audience of the discussion at the Council of Basel and the resulting agreement that confirmed the orthodoxy of Utraquism. Finally, Rokycana addressed his readers or listeners directly as follows: And if the opposite party asks you why you receive communion under both kinds, tell them: ‘Because the Lord, our venerable and dear bishop, 35 It should be noted that the usual pericope for Corpus Christi was John 6. 56–59 (‘Caro enim mea vere est cibus […]’) and thus excluded the key verse of the controversy over Utraquism (‘Nisi manducaveritis […]’, John 6. 54). 36 See the sermons by Martin Lupáč from c. 1430 in Prague, NK, MS III D 2, fol. 40vb; and the Latin postil of Jan Rokycana from 1469 in Prague, NK, MS IX A 1, fol. 205v. 37 Prague, NK, MS III F 9, fol. 32r (postil connected with Václav of Dráchov). 38 ‘[…] poněvadž vzláštní nad jiné národy vůkolní Pán Bůh všemohaucí z své hojné milosti dal nám Čechům a Moravanům poznati víru světlú a čistau i jistau o přijímání důstojné a velebné svátosti pravého těla a krve Spasitele našeho, Pána Ježíše Krista, pod obojí spůsobau podlé jeho svatého nařízení a poručení’ ([…] for the Lord God omnipotent, from his abundant mercy, granted especially to us, Bohemians and Moravians, rather than to other surrounding nations, the knowledge of the bright, pure, and certain faith concerning the communion of the honourable and venerable sacrament of the true body and blood of our Saviour, Lord Jesus Christ, under both kinds according to his holy command and order). Postilla Jana Rokycany, ed. by Šimek, ii, p. 768.

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Lord Jesus, in the Last Supper on Maundy Thursday instructed us to do so’. And thereafter let them tell who, when, and where first started to receive communion under one kind; indeed, they do not know how to answer.39 The lack of this kind of discourse in Latin homiletic notebooks suggests that the preserved Latin postils were written for the internal use of Hussite clergy, for their study and inspiration. The actual sermons they gave to the laity might have been quite different. The clerical and popular discourses were kept apart rather than being conflated. Jan Rokycana’s anecdote about the founding theologian of Utraquism, Jakoubek of Stříbro, points in the same direction. The diary of the Hussite delegation at Basel recorded Rokycana saying that, on his deathbed, Jakoubek advised Hussite clergy as follows: ‘Duplices habere debetis libros, quosdam pro comtemplatione vestra, et cum illis ad populum non accedatis; alios autem pro populi informatione’ (You should have two sets of books: some books for your contemplation, and with these do not go before the people; and others for instructing the people).40 In his exposition of John’s Revelation, Jakoubek said that clerics, ‘if they have a definite recognition of truth, should know when to reveal it and when not […]. For not every truth is useful at all times’.41 This approach implies shaping the theological content of sermons according to education and intellectual capacity, and as such it seems to contradict the Wycliffite position. The Wycliffite sermons and other vernacular texts explicitly address the idiotae irrespective of how much subtle learning they actually convey,42 thus suggesting that truth is one for all. Including philosophical discussions in sermons (even though they were not directly intended for preaching) is characteristic of Wyclif ’s methodological approach, indebted to his hermeneutic ‘holism’.43 Abstract deliberations belonged to the written text because they were part of the procedure by way of which the peculiar ideas conveyed in the sermon were created. In the works of Hus’s generation, we can observe a similar, yet modified approach. The crossing of discursive boundaries in early Hussite sermons did not assume the form of 39 ‘A když by se vás ta odporná strana otázala, proč vy přijímáte pod obojí spůsobau, rctete jim: “Neb tak ustanoviti ráčil Hospodin, náš velebný a drahý biskup, Pán Ježíš, na poslední večeři u Veliký čtvrtek!” A nechť oni potom také povědí, kdo jest nejprvé začal, kdy anebo kde přijímati pod jednau spůsobau; toliko v pravdě že ť neumějí pověděti’, Postilla Jana Rokycany, ed. by Šimek, ii, p. 776. 40 Monumenta conciliorum, ed. by Palacký and Birk, i, p. 298. 41 ‘Dává se naučenie kněžím, aby, jestliže mají poznánie pravdy jisté, věděli však, kdy mají zjeviti a kdy nic […]. Nebo ne každá pravda každého času jest potřebná’, Jakoubek ze Stříbra, Výklad na Zjevenie sv. Jana, ed. by Šimek, i, pp. 393–94. For Jakoubek’s careful appreciation of circumstances suitable for publicizing theological findings, see Ransdorf, Kapitoly z geneze husitské ideologie, pp. 137–39. 42 Ghosh, ‘After Wyclif ’; cf. the designation of the audience in the Wycliffite Glossed Gospels as ‘lewid men’ despite the ‘fairly advanced’ content: Hudson, Doctors in English, pp. xix and cxxxix. 43 Goubier, ‘Wyclif and the logica Augustini’, pp. 150–51.

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a superimposition of various methodological frameworks (since academic philosophy was largely absent). What was included was ecclesiastical critique. Hus and his colleagues, following the imperative of the ‘truths’ discovered in academic study, brought this polemic to the ears of lay people. If Hus retained some hints of his scholarly method of proceeding, it was in order to show that his preaching was validated by the authority of the theological profession. * * * The need to guarantee the validity of interpretations did not disappear from the later postils, although they lack explicit reflections of how their specifically Hussite content was produced. The elimination of the institutional guardians of correct exegesis put emphasis on the textual sources of authority. Through his Wyclif-inspired teaching on ecclesiastical obedience, Jan Hus gave to each individual the right to interpret divine law, and thus the responsibility for his or her salvation. Later in the development of Hussitism, this principle faded into the background as clerical leadership assumed prominence. The responsibility remained individual in the sense that it was not guaranteed by any institution but the invisible, mystical true Church. But interpretative agency was not demanded from each individual; simple believers were rather expected to rely on the judgement of a good priest, on his advice from the pulpit or in conversation. This is why specialized exegesis was kept within the limits of intra-clerical debate, while vernacular writings and, presumably, actual preaching transmitted only its results. Exegesis as practised in sermons normally consists of assigning meaning to scriptural imagery with the help of homiletic tools and relying on exegetical tradition. As such, it is defined by its intertextual reach. With the exception of Taborite radicals who rejected the use of any exegetical, even patristic tradition, Hussite preachers worked on traditional lines. The principle they followed was to admit to their postils Scripture and everything from patristic and later tradition that was held not to contradict Scripture. The norm they used to select quotations were the putative beliefs and practices of the primitive Church.44 Thus, Hussite preaching was decisively influenced by its ecclesiological context. The guide that navigated preachers through all possible interpretations of a given biblical passage was a preconception of what would sound right in the Church of Jesus Christ. The distinctive content of Hussite sermons was not the product of an exegetical method on a micro-textual level, but had to do with changing the overall interpretative framework. This approach may be best shown in relation to those topics that concerned ecclesiology.45

44 On the role of ecclesia primitiva as an epistemic instrument of Hussite thought, see Coufal, ‘Key Issues in Hussite Theology’, pp. 270–76. 45 The following examples are discussed in more detail in Soukup, ‘Výklad biblických norem v postilách husitské doby’.

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The founding formula of the Christian Church, Christ’s words, ‘You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church’, featured in the readings for the various feast days of St Peter. Augustine provided two possible understandings from which the reader had to choose: either Peter — and all the popes after him — was the rock, or it was Christ himself who built the Church on Peter’s confession, ‘You are the Son of the living God’.46 In the exegetical and homiletic tradition, these two options appear as not irreconcilable. The Glossa ordinaria offered authorities in favour of both of them, and Jacobus de Voragine maintained that Jesus founded the Church on Peter’s confession even while making him the supreme pontiff. Nicholas of Lyra read the passage as locating the Church wherever true belief is, and not basing it on persons with formal power and dignity — to the delight of the Utraquist preacher Jan Rokycana, who repeatedly quoted him in support of predestinarian ecclesiology.47 In the context of Prague ecclesiological controversy of 1412–1414, however, the conflict between the Christological and the papalist interpretations of this biblical passage was brought to a head. Jan Hus famously promoted the former interpretation and made it clear in his sermons. His stance was succinctly expressed in two glosses that became a mandatory part of virtually all later Hussite sermons on the topic: the rock is the faith confessed in Christ, and the Church founded upon it is the community of the elect.48 The power of the keys Hus claimed for all priests, not just the pope or bishops as Peter’s successors, and made it related to, if not dependent on, their moral qualification, and their ability to follow in the footsteps of Jesus and Peter.49 This insistence on moral commitment on the part of the clergy remained a firm part of the Hussite exegetical repertoire. The spiritual head of the Taborites, Mikuláš Biskupec, advised his readers to ask false bishops claiming to be Peter’s vicars whether they follow him in the sanctity of life; if they answer in the affirmative, they should be required to prove it by performing a miracle and living in poverty.50 As late as the 1470s, a macaronic Utraquist postil associated with the Prague preacher Michal Polák

46 Augustine, Retractationum libri II, ed. by Mutzenbecher, p. 62. 47 Biblia sacra cum Glossa ordinaria, v, cols 279–80; Voragine, Sermones de sanctis, fol. 256r; Prague, KNM, MS XII D 3, fol. 275vb; Prague, NK, MS IX A 1, fol. 218rb. 48 ‘“Et super hanc petram edificabo ecclesiam meam”, id est super me, petram, quam confessus es et a qua accepisti firmitatem, “edificabo ecclesiam meam”, id est predestinatorum universitatem’ (‘and on this rock I will build my church’, that is, on myself, the rock that you have confessed and from which you have received your stability, ‘I will build my Church’, that is, the community of the predestined). Hus, Postilla adumbrata, ed. by Ryba and Silagi, p. 306; similarly Hus, ‘M. Io. Hus Sermones in Capella Bethlehem’, ed. by Flajšhans, iv, p. 239. Cf. Hus, Tractatus de ecclesia, ed. by Thomson, pp. 58–59. 49 Hus, Sermones de sanctis, ed. by Flajšhans, pp. 85–86. 50 Prague, KNM, MS XIII F 7, vol. 2, fol. 67v: ‘Sed querat fidelis a pseudo episcopo dictum hoc Domini allegante, si ex sanctitate vite sue, que sit vite Petri similis, sit verus Petri vicarius. Quod si presumptuosus yppocrita frontose sic asserit, queratur prudenter similitudo vite illius ad Petrum, est specialiter in gracia faciendi miracula et humili paupertate’.

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reprised all the elements of Hussite homiletic exegesis of ‘Tu es Petrus’. Starting with the meaning of the rock, he went on to maintain that neither was Holy Church represented by prelates nor was it confined to Rome, but consisted of all the elect, from Abel to the last righteous man who will be born before the end of the world. He adduced Lyra’s non-hierarchical definition of the Church, denied papal primacy, and castigated the sins of the clergy. Finally, he accused the Roman Church of being remote from the primitive church of the apostles. If the Romanists would revert to that ideal, the visible sign of which would be their acceptance of the lay chalice, the Utraquists would happily unite with them.51 Polák’s sermon shows the persistence of certain exegetical figures and associations throughout the Hussite period. Such a hermeneutic continuity in sermons can be explained by the impact of some of the foundational ideas of Hussitism. Just as certain ecclesiological principles influenced preaching on St Peter, similarly, certain (Wycliffite) teachings on obedience influenced the exegesis of the gospel passages about the twelve-year-old Jesus. The pericope alluded to the issue of obedience with one inconspicuous clause: having rejoined his parents after teaching for three days in the temple, Jesus ‘was subject to them’ henceforth (Luke 2. 51). The exegetes agreed that by being subject to his parents, Jesus taught us a lesson in humility; however, they diverged substantially as regards the more practical implications of this subjection. Jacobus de Voragine demanded obedience to biological fathers who are ‘good’, and to ecclesiastical prelates in any case.52 Wycliffite understanding inclined to the opposite. Wyclif used the episode to develop a discussion of the paradox that those in high ranks should obey those with lower status. This interpretation, he said, would destroy the conventions current in religious orders as well as the obedience claimed by the papacy and prelates.53 The English Wycliffite Sermons took up Wyclif ’s remark about the ‘private’ religions and appended to the relevant sermon a polemical excursus against them. Concerning obedience, it said that obedience to Christ was not only mandatory but also sufficient; any ‘oþur obedience […] doþ harm manye

51 ‘Soli se preciderunt [the adherents of the Roman Church] a primitiva ecclesia appostolica, que fuit pauper, laboriosa, despecta, et isti tunc dominant sicut reges. Nechť oni najprv přistúpie [Let them first approach] ad priorem ecclesiam appostolicam, et nos eciam accedemus ad eos. Solent dicere: “Quare discessistis ab ecclesia Romana?” Dicite: “Et quare vos eciam recessistis ab ecclesia appostolica, que distribuebat sub utraque specie? Accedite vos prius ad eam, et nos eciam ad vos, et sic erimus una ecclesia sancta, ex uno pane et ex uno calice omnes utentes”. Mi Deus, dočakáme-li toho [shall we live to see it]?’. Prague, NK, MS XI F 3, fols 178v–179r. 52 ‘Ex his instruimur, quod ad patrem cœlestem debemus nos habere cum reverentia. Ad patres carnales bonos cum obedientia. Ad patres spirituales, id est ad pręlatos, cum subjectione. In hoc repræhenduntur quidam scioli, qui habentes pręlatos minus peritos eis subijci dedignantur’. Voragine, Sermones dominicales, fol. 34r–v. 53 Wyclif, Sermones, ed. by Loserth, i, pp. 69–71.

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weyȝes’ because it supposes that the prelate’s command is in line with that of Christ which, of course, is not always the case.54 Jan Hus’s comments on the boy Jesus’s obedience point in the same direction. The Wycliffite polemic against religious orders was ignored; the Hussite focus was instead on obedience in religious matters in general, evidently in direct connection with their own conflict with Church authorities. In his sermons from 1411 and 1412, Hus insisted that God’s commandments were superior to those of one’s parents, and if these two contradict each other one should ‘trample on the wishes of father or mother and obey God’.55 In the following year, driven into exile by the adverse unfolding of his trial, Hus explicitly extended the teaching on conditional obedience to include not just parents but all superiors. He complained that the mandates of God were pushed back by mandates of the Antichrist, and warned his audience: ‘Ergo, karissimi, cauti in subieccione sitis’ (Therefore, dear ones, be cautious in subjection).56 In his vernacular Postil, he added more critique of a corrupt hierarchy and topical references to his own legal case, but also some more general propositions concerning obedience (probably indebted to the issues he simultaneously treated in his De ecclesia), such as the view that in carrying out a sinful command both the ordering one and the obedient one sin.57 To deduce from a story about Jesus’s obedience to his parents the right to disobedience was by no means self-evident. Nevertheless, this understanding prevailed in Hussite preaching. It became habitual to accompany the expounded verse with the concessive gloss ‘in licitis obedire’ (to obey in what is licit).58 The passage remained closely associated with Hus’s favourite citation, Acts 5. 29 ‘We must obey God rather than men’.59 Jan Rokycana’s Czech Postil from around 1460 confirms that it was also the outspoken socio-political application, another strong emphasis of Hus’s, that survived into later Hussitism. ‘Well, the pope, the emperor, the king, princes, officers, town councillors, they all may issue orders’, Rokycana said,

54 English Wycliffite Sermons, ed. by Hudson and Gradon, i, pp. 357–59, quote p. 358. 55 ‘[…] sic nobis dedit exemplum, ut si Deus precipit aliud, quam pater vel mater carnalis, desiderio patris vel matris percalcato Deo est obediendum’. Hus, ‘M. Io. Hus Sermones in Capella Bethlehem’, ed. by Flajšhans, ii, p. 211; cf. Hus, Postilla adumbrata, ed. by Ryba and Silagi, p. 56. 56 Prague, KNM, MS XV F 3, fol. 51r. 57 Hus, Česká nedělní postila, ed. by Daňhelka, p. 87. For the broader context of this issue, see Somerset, ‘Before and After Wyclif ’. On Hus’s teaching on obedience, cf. Soukup, Jan Hus, pp. 129–33. 58 After Hus (Leccionarium bipartitum. Pars hiemalis, ed. by Vidmanová-Schmidtová, p. 229), his colleague Jakoubek of Stříbro used these same words: Prague, NK, MS X G 11, fol. 218v. On conditional subjection to formal authority in Hussite thought, see Dušan Coufal’s chapter in this volume, p. 158. 59 For Hus, see Prague, KNM, MS XV F 3, fol. 50v. Acts 5. 29 was explicitly quoted around 1438 by the conservative Utraquist Prokop of Plzeň in Prague, NK, MS X G 7, fol. 141r; implicitly, it underlies any comment on obeying God more than people.

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‘but if you know that God commands otherwise, do not obey and tell them: “I must obey God rather than men”’.60 These examples show how Hussite ideology limited the range of possible interpretations of biblical passages and centred the exposition on certain distinctive tenets. Hus’s teaching on the essence and jurisdiction of the Church overrode all other explanations of the relevant pericope. However, the success of certain interpretations in Hussite homiletics should not obscure the fact that these interpretations did not conclusively result from the evidence adduced in sermons. Having chosen Christ over Peter as the ‘rock’, Hussites provided no proof that could resolve Augustine’s primordial hesitation between the two divergent readings. The reason for making this arguably arbitrary choice came from outside of the homiletic discourse. Hussite views on the origin of the Church and on ecclesiastical obedience became a premise of Utraquist homiletics rather than arising out of homiletic exegesis. Preachers would automatically understand and explain these and other biblical metaphors against the background of pre-existent Hussite doctrine. Preaching did not create Hussitism, though it significantly contributed to the spread of Hussite ideas once they were formulated. * * * Uncovering the methods of Wycliffite preaching in England and Hussite preaching in Bohemia is complicated by the tension between the written text and oral delivery. The Latin sermon texts reflect primarily the intra-clerical communication about preaching. Sermons transmitted in the vernacular may be as remote from live performance as the Latin ones, but can be suggestive of the shifts occurring during translation between various discourses. The multiplicity of conceptual approaches in sermons such as Wyclif ’s was not necessarily visible to the lay audience, but it reflects how the university-educated preachers struggled to create a message that would simultaneously meet academic standards and satisfy the growing lay appetite for adequate religious instruction. The interpretative framework of Hussite sermons was rooted in a priori ecclesiastical critique, which itself was a product of theological study. Compared to previous exegetical practice, some of the associations between biblical metaphors and their homiletic exposition changed forever with the emergence of Hussitism. The new interpretative horizon of preaching was formed not only by the theological ideas that became part of Hussite orthodoxy but also by the novel situation inaugurated by the establishment of the Utraquist Church after the 1436 Compactata. Much of the topical polemic, critical acumen,

60 Postilla Jana Rokycany, ed. by Šimek, i, p. 188: ‘Ba, přikazujte všichni — papež, ciesař, král, kniežata, úředníci, konšelé — a ty vieš, že jinak Buoh velí, nikoli neposlúchaj řka: “Musímť já Boha poslúchati viece než lidí”’.

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and occasional methodological references present in Jan Hus’s homiletic oeuvre disappeared in later Hussite sermons. This is to be understood in connection with the challenges of the time: for later generations of preachers, the task of the day was no longer producing new theological content but rather determining the main points vital for the practical survival of their ecclesial community and affirming and strengthening them by way of repetition. In his Latin sermon on the twelve-year-old Jesus, the Archbishop of the Utraquists, Jan Rokycana, commented on the via media between an absolute and exclusive obedience to divine precepts on the one hand and prioritizing human customs over Christ’s law on the other. ‘Quousque est ecclesia Christi hic in mundo, numquam potest vivere sine institucionibus’ (As long as Christ’s Church is in this world, it can never live without institutions), he observed.61 In the late 1460s, Rokycana found himself navigating a delicate path between memories of intellectual rebellion and the realities of pastoral responsibility. The clerical voice was present in Utraquist sermons, but it was an authoritative voice, not one allowing the uninitiated glimpses into an intra-clerical, scholarly discourse. We can perhaps discern here the effects of the catechetical tradition of the Bohemian reform and its vernacular productions: even lay writers of religious prose such as Tomáš Štítný and Petr Chelčický resorted to a catechetical tone. Jan Hus stands firmly within this tradition, and the Utraquists even more so. The lack of explicit reflection on methodological issues places them somewhat apart from the varied critical currents that eroded late scholasticism from within. But their preaching, among other means of popular influence, helped them to build and maintain a functional religious community that took part in the troublesome process of flattening hierarchical religious discourses. In the end, Hussite preachers may have dismantled more of the defining elements of medieval religion than just scholasticism.

Works Cited Manuscripts and Archival Sources Prague, Knihovna Národního muzea [= KNM], MS XII D 3 ———. MS XIII F 7 ———, MS XV F 3 Prague, Národní knihovna České republiky [= NK], MS III B 19 ———, MS III D 2

61 Prague, NK, MS IX A 1, fol. 36va: ‘Et sic homines molestant circa consuetudines, quia quidam totaliter contempnunt eas, et quidam tenent eas magis quam legem Christi. Optimum est ergo medium tenere’.

Scriptural Exegesis and Clerical Discourse in Hussite Preaching

———, MS III F 9 ———, MS IX A 1 ———, MS X G 7 ———, MS X G 11 ———, MS XI F 3 Primary Sources Augustine, Retractationum libri II, ed. by Almut Mutzenbecher, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina, 57 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1984) Biblia sacra cum Glossa ordinaria novisque additionibus, 6 vols (Venice: Giunta, 1603) English Wycliffite Sermons, ed. by Anne Hudson and Pamela Gradon, 5 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983–1996) Hus, Jan, Sermones de sanctis, ed. by Václav Flajšhans, Spisy M. Jana Husi, 7–8 (Prague: J. R. Vilímek, 1907) ———, ‘M. Io. Hus Sermones in Capella Bethlehem’, ed. by Václav Flajšhans, 6 parts, Věstník Královské české společnosti nauk (Prague: Královská česká společnost nauk, 1938–1945) ———, Tractatus de ecclesia, ed. by S. Harrison Thomson (Prague: Komenského evangelická fakulta bohoslovecká, 1958) ———, Leccionarium bipartitum. Pars hiemalis, ed. by Anežka VidmanováSchmidtová, Magistri Iohannis Hus Opera omnia, 9 (Prague: Academia, 1988) ———, Česká nedělní postila. Vyloženie svatých čtení nedělních, ed. by Jiří Daňhelka, Magistri Iohannis Hus Opera omnia, 2 (Prague: Academia, 1992) ———, Postilla adumbrata, ed. by Bohumil Ryba and Gabriel Silagi, 2nd edn, Magistri Iohannis Hus Opera omnia, 13; Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis, 261 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015) Jakoubek ze Stříbra, Výklad na Zjevenie sv. Jana, ed. by František Šimek, 2 vols, Sbírka pramenů českého hnutí náboženského ve století XIV. a XV., 18–19 (Prague: Česká akademie věd a umění, 1932–1933) Monumenta conciliorum generalium seculi decimi quinti. Concilium Basileense. Scriptores, vol. i, ed. by František Palacký and Ernst Birk (Vienna: K. u. k. Hofund Staatsdruckerei, 1857) Rokycana, Jan, Postilla Jana Rokycany, ed. by František Šimek, 2 vols, Sbírka pramenů českého hnutí náboženského ve století XIV. a XV., 16–17 (Prague: Česká akademie věd a umění, 1928–1929) Voragine, Jacobus de, Sermones de sanctis per anni totius circulum (Venice: Giovanni Battista Somascho, 1573) ———, Sermones dominicales per totum annum (Venice: Giovanni Battista Somascho, 1579) Wyclif, John, Sermones, ed. by Johann Loserth, 4 vols, Wyclif ’s Latin Works, 11–14 (London: Trübner & Co., 1887–1890)

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Secondary Works Auksi, Peter, ‘Wyclif ’s Sermons and the Plain Style’, Archiv für Reformations­ geschichte, 66 (1975), 5–23 Bartlová, Milena, Pravda zvítězila. Výtvarné umění a husitství 1380–1490 (Prague: Academia, 2015) Bartoš, F. M., Dvě studie o husitských postilách (Prague: Nakladatelství ČSAV, 1955) Brungs, Alexander, and Frédéric Goubier, ‘On Biblical Logicism: Wyclif, virtus sermonis and Equivocation’, Recherches de théologie et philosophie médiévales, 76 (2009), 199–244 Čornej, Petr, and Milena Bartlová, Velké dějiny zemí Koruny české, vi (Prague: Paseka, 2007) Coufal, Dušan, ‘Key Issues in Hussite Theology’, in A Companion to the Hussites, ed. Michael Van Dussen and Pavel Soukup, Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition, 90 (Leiden: Brill, 2020), pp. 261–96 David, Zdeněk V., Finding the Middle Way: The Utraquists’ Liberal Challenge to Rome and Luther (Washington: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2003) Fudge, Thomas A., Magnificent Ride: The First Reformation in Hussite Bohemia (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998) Ghosh, Kantik, The Wycliffite Heresy: Authority and the Interpretation of Texts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002) ———, ‘Wyclif, Arundel, and the Long Fifteenth Century’, in After Arundel: Religious Writing in Fifteenth-Century England, ed. by Vincent Gillespie and Kantik Ghosh (Turnhout: Brepols, 2012), pp. 545–62 ———, ‘Genre and Method in the Late Sermones of John Wyclif ’, in Language and Method: Historical and Historiographical Reflections on Medieval Thought, ed. by Ueli Zahnd (Freiburg im Breisgau: Rombach, 2017), pp. 167–82 ———, ‘After Wyclif: Philosophy, Polemics and Translation in the English Wycliffite Sermons’, in Before and After Wyclif: Sources and Textual Influences, ed. by Luigi Campi and Stefano Simonetta, Textes et Études du Moyen Âge, 97 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020), pp. 167–86 Gradon, Pamela, ‘Wyclif ’s Postilla and his Sermons’, in Text and Controversy from Wyclif to Bale: Essays in Honour of Anne Hudson, ed. by Helen Barr and Ann M. Hutchison (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005), pp. 67–77 Goubier, Frédéric, ‘Wyclif and the logica Augustini’, Medioevo, 36 (2011), 137–64 Hudson, Anne, ‘Aspects of the “Publication” of Wyclif ’s Latin Sermons’, in LateMedieval Religious Texts and Their Transmission: Essays in Honour of A. I. Doyle, ed. by Alastair J. Minnis (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1994), pp. 121–29 ———, ‘Wyclif ’s Latin Sermons: Questions of Form, Date and Audience’, Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Âge, 68 (2001), 223–48 ———, Studies in the Transmission of Wyclif’s Writings, Variorum Collected Studies Series, 907 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008) ———, Doctors in English: A Study of the Wycliffite Gospel Commentaries (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2015)

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Loserth, Johann, Huss und Wiclif. Zur Genesis der hussitischen Lehre, 2nd edn (Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 1925) Marek, Jindřich, Jakoubek ze Stříbra a počátky utrakvistického kazatelství v českých zemích. Studie o Jakoubkově postile z let 1413–1414 (Prague: Národní knihovna ČR, 2011) ———, ‘Major Figures of Later Hussitism (1437–1471)’, in A Companion to the Hussites, ed. by Michael Van Dussen and Pavel Soukup, Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition, 90 (Leiden: Brill, 2020), pp. 141–84 Mertens, Thom, ‘Relic or Strategy: The Middle Dutch Sermon as a Literary Phenomenon’, in Speculum Sermonis: Interdisciplinary Reflections on the Medieval Sermon, ed. by Georgiana Donavin, Cary J. Nederman, and Richard Utz, Disputatio, 1 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), pp. 293–314 Otto, Sean, ‘The Authority of the Preacher in a Sermon of John Wyclif ’, Mirator, 12 (2011), 77–93 ———, ‘The Reform Program of John Wyclif ’s Latin Sermons’, in Reformation Worlds: Antecedents and Legacies in the Anglican Tradition, ed. by Sean A. Otto and Thomas P. Power, Studies in Church History, 13 (New York: Peter Lang, 2016), pp. 43–59 Perett, Marcela K., Preachers, Partisans, and Rebellious Religion: Vernacular Writing and the Hussite Movement (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018) Ransdorf, Miloslav, Kapitoly z geneze husitské ideologie (Prague: Univerzita Karlova, 1986) Rychterová, Pavlína, ‘Die Verbrennung von Johannes Hus als europäisches Ereignis. Öffentlichkeit und Öffentlichkeiten am Vorabend der hussitischen Revolution’, in Politische Öffentlichkeit im Spätmittelalter, ed. by Martin Kintzinger and Bernd Schneidmüller, Vorträge und Forschungen, 75 (Ostfildern: Thorbecke, 2011), pp. 361–83 Sedlák, Jan, ‘Pramen české Postilly Husovy’, Studie a texty k náboženským dějinám českým 1 (1914), 257–82 Šmahel, František, ‘Literacy and Heresy in Hussite Bohemia’, in Heresy and Literacy, 1000–1530, ed. by Peter Biller and Anne Hudson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 237–54 ———, Die Hussitische Revolution, 3 vols, Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Schriften, 43 (Hannover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 2002) Somerset, Fiona, ‘Before and After Wyclif: Consent to Another’s Sin in Medieval Europe’, in Europe after Wyclif, ed. by J. Patrick Hornbeck II and Michael Van Dussen (New York: Fordham University Press, 2017), pp. 135–72 Soukup, Pavel, ‘Jan Hus as a Preacher’, in A Companion to Jan Hus, ed. by František Šmahel and Ota Pavlíček, Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition, 54 (Leiden: Brill, 2015), pp. 96–129 ———, ‘Výklad biblických norem v postilách husitské doby’, in Husitské re‑formace. Proměna kulturního kódu v 15. století, ed. by Pavlína Cermanová and Pavel Soukup (Prague: Nakladatelství Lidové noviny, 2019), pp. 69–100

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———, Jan Hus: The Life and Death of a Preacher (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2020) Thompson, Augustine, ‘From Texts to Preaching: Retrieving the Medieval Sermon as an Event’, in Preacher, Sermon and Audience in the Middle Ages, ed. by Carolyn Muessig (Leiden: Brill, 2002), pp. 13–35 Vidmanová, Anežka, ‘Hus als Prediger’, Communio viatorum 19 (1976), 65–81

Pavlína Rychte rová

Fighting for the Minds of the People Strategies of Argumentation in the Vernacular Discourse on Church Unity in Fifteenth-Century Bohemia

Approaches to reform in Wycliffism and Hussitism may be studied philosophically, theologically, and ecclesiologically. The comparative methods of the founders of Wycliffite and Hussite studies at their beginnings in the nineteenth century may be regarded today as too simplistic,1 but they nevertheless help to understand distinctive aspects of the reform efforts in England and Bohemia. One important source group, Hussite religious vernacular literature, deserves more study than it has yet received. This chapter will focus on this material and address the question of if and how the participation of laymen influenced the theological as well as ecclesiological debate in Hussite Bohemia. Hus and the circle of theologians led by him built on the active support of various lay groups; their reform concepts spread very quickly among lay audiences in the churches in which the leaders of reform held the pulpits. Their churches became the basis of a movement that in the end included members from all strata of society. They engaged members of the nobility as proponents of their cause; indeed, Hus himself could rely on a supportive circle of noblewomen, among whom sometimes even Queen Sophia is counted. Though the reform ideas of the Prague circle were initially formulated and debated in Latin, the Hussite reform movement used one of the vernacular languages of the Bohemian realm, Czech, as a vehicle for the dissemination of ideas, and thus created a stable basis for the reform approach among the lay population. The leaders of reform pursued a universalist goal — to reform the church in capite et membris. But they relied on local supporters and had to approach their ‘local’ interests, especially to position their particular group in



1 See here the first and crucial contribution of Loserth, Huss und Wiclif, which outlined the limits of the debate; scholarship focused on the question of the originality or otherwise of Hus’s teaching for many decades to come. Pavlína Rychterová  •  ([email protected]), is Researcher at the Institute of Medieval Research, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna. Wycliffism and Hussitism: Methods of Thinking, Writing, and Persuasion, c. 1360 – c. 1460, ed. by Kantik Ghosh and Pavel Soukup, MCS 47 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021), pp. 361–385 FHG10.1484/M.MCS-EB.5.124382

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the overall plan of salvation, and to define its distinct and exceptional identity.2 The lay supporters did not, at least at first, form a coherent group. They became one under the influence of the leading ideologists of the movement, foremost among whom was Jan Hus.3 Hus actually started to write down his reformist teaching in Czech only when he was prohibited from preaching and banned from Prague in 1412. He continued to do so until his departure for the Council in Constance, but by then, his vernacular works were already an issue among the church hierarchy: they were condemned by the Council in 1415 together with their author.4 During the five years after Hus’s death at the stake, his movement gradually disintegrated into factions. As a result, the vernacular works of those who took over the leadership not only aimed to educate the lay followers and adherents of reform among less educated clerics, as Hus’s works had, but also became the means of intra-confessional debates and polemic.5 Although the number of extant vernacular works written by the Hussite leaders after 1415 — moderate as well as radical — may seem negligible,6 they should nevertheless not be regarded as inferior to the Latin ones, i.e. as less important for the history of Hussite thinking. They cover the key symbolically loaded themes, especially communion under both kinds (sub utraque specie). As early as 1415, Jakoubek of Stříbro produced a Czech treatise on the topic, in which he transferred the formal structure of a scholastic question into the vernacular in order to summarize the theological arguments in favour of the liturgical innovation.7 It would nevertheless be premature to interpret this work as a point of departure for a vernacular inter-confessional debate, as this continued to be conducted in Latin. The reform movement’s Catholic opponents at the university, it seems, did not consider the vernacular a suitable medium for theological debate, nor did they conceive of the lay faithful as potential participants





2 See on this Rychterová, ‘Gens, nacio, communitas — lingua, sanguis, fides’, pp. 75–95. 3 See on this Rychterová, ‘Die Verbrennung von Johannes Hus als europäisches Ereignis’. On a selective and somewhat speculative account of Hus and his communication with his followers, see Perett, Preachers, Partisans, and Rebellious Religion, esp. pp. 21–78. 4 See Rychterová, ‘The Vernacular Theology of Jan Hus’. 5 On this topic, see Rychterová, ‘Preaching, the Vernacular, and the Laity’, as well as Rychterová, ed., Pursuing a New Order II, especially the essays of Martin Dekarli, Jakub Sichálek, Jan Odstrčilík, and Petra Mutlová. Some of the Hussite and anti-Hussite songs are described and (to some extent) contextualized in Perett, Preachers, Partisans, and Rebellious Religion, pp. 79–142. 6 Two important Czech treatises by Jakoubek of Stříbro, for example, have been transmitted in only one or two fragmentary copies respectively. See Dekarli, ‘Translating Political Theology into Vernacular’. 7 See Rychterová, ‘Preaching, the Vernacular, and the Laity’. Jakoubek of Stříbro (d. 1429) was a master of Prague university (1397) and a leading theologian of early Hussitism. He was one of the initiators of lay communion under both kinds (Utraquism) in 1414.

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in it. Prague, Knihovna Národního muzea, MS I E 6 contains a letter written by one of the most important opponents of Hus and his party at the University of Prague, Mařík Rvačka, in 1418.8 He writes to Eliška of Kravaře and Plumlov, the widow of Jindřich of Rožmberk and mother of Oldřich II of Rožmberk, probably the most important Czech nobleman and the underage heir of the extensive Rožmberk domain. Eliška converted to Utraquism several years before the letter was written and was one of Jan Hus’s most prominent female supporters. Mařík Rvačka approaches the noble lady as follows: Modlitba věrná napřed, dóstojná paní a slúho božie! Jako jedu, tak přijímanie z kalicha sě varuj. Jablko v ráji dobré bylo v sobě, ale pro zápověd jed bylo. Drž zápověd cierkve svaté a starých předkóv obyčeje svaté, a v tom budeš spasena. Psal sem o tom [řádu] cierkve kostelnie, a to máte písmo papežem potvrzeno i ciesařem, a toho sě držte. Polož sobě z kalicha přijímanie z nebe takto odlúčenie jako Evě z ráje. Věř tak silně radě kostelnie jako božské, a nového nálezu střez sě jako jedu, kterým tělo božie z kalichu ďábelsky radie přijímati lidé. Sama zápověd z nehříchu hřiech i peklo činí; stój v starém poslušenství, a nebuď Evú. Srozuměj, coť píši. Lépeť jest umřieti, než z kalichu přijímati. Nadějiť se skoro, žeť budu psáti jiné. Stój bezpečně do konce a sebú nehýbaj, nebť na tobě mnoho leží jako na slúpu. Na samé ženě panně Marii viera byla zachována, když všichni apoštolé byli sě pronevěřili. Pomniž na též. A tento list mú rukú psaný všem ukaž.9 (My prayer for you first, dear Madam and God’s servant! Avoid the communion from the chalice just like poison. The apple in Paradise was tasty but forbidden to eat, and therefore poison. Uphold the restraint of the Holy Church and the holy customs of the old predecessors, and by this you will be redeemed. I wrote about the directive of the Church and it was confirmed by the pope as well as by the emperor. Just adhere to it! Consider that communion from the chalice is expulsion from heaven, as Eve was expelled from Paradise. Believe in the advice of the Church as much as if it were the advice of God, and avoid the new invention like poison, which is devilishly recommended by certain people. Something which is basically no sin, the restriction changes into sin and into hell. Be firm in the old obedience and be no Eve; understand what I write: it is better to die than to communicate from the chalice. I hope I will be able to

8 The manuscript, written between 1419 and 1424, represents a collection of various kinds of anti-Hussite documents from the years 1412–1421. The letter is recorded on fol. 225v. Mařík Rvačka (d. after 1424) was a master of Prague University (1387) and prolific antiHussite author. He attended the Council of Constance and afterwards lived in exile in Poland. 9 Archiv Český, iii, ed. by Palacký, pp. 299–300. The translation and paraphrase are mine.

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write quite the opposite [in the sense of: ‘better news’] soon. Be firm and do not waiver [from the faith], for a lot rests on you as on a pillar. Only in the Virgin Mary was the faith saved, as all the apostles turned apostate. Think about it! And show this letter written by my own hand to everybody.) The tone in which Mařík addresses Eliška is remarkable. He admonishes and commands her, using explicit and implicit threats. There is not a single attempt to argue for his case, no attempt to persuade her through reasoning, no appeal to her ability in the ‘discernment of spirits’. The most important Bohemian theologians in the last third of the fourteenth century, the Archbishop of Prague, Jan of Jenštejn, a master of Prague University, Matthew of Cracow, as well as the theologian and reformer Matěj of Janov,10 had firmly believed that this ability dwells especially in the illiterate and in women. We can assume that Mařík was both familiar with the relevant arguments and aware of Eliška’s status and importance — he calls her a pillar of faith and compares her to Mary. The only passage pointing at the context in which relevant arguments had been formulated is the reference to one of Mařík’s own works — probably the Tractatus de communione sub utraque specie ‘Apostolica docet sentencia’, which he had written in late 1417 in Constance. This tract is of wide dissemination. Thirty-two copies are extant;11 it probably served as a sort of summary of anti-Utraquist arguments appreciated by the Catholic priesthood. There is no vernacular version known and very probably there was none. In his letter to Eliška, Mařík mentions his tract, and in particular that it had been confirmed both by Pope Martin V and by Emperor Sigismund, but he does not make any attempt to summarize its arguments or conclusions for his reader. Apparently, Eliška was to consider Mařík’s reference to the highest ecclesiastical and secular authorities as sufficient proof. Given his instruction to Eliška to show his letter to others — most likely other high-status lay nobles of her acquaintance, and her son Oldřich — Mařík evidently considered his letter well-written and suitable for its purpose of convincing the noblewoman to abandon Utraquism. However, while Oldřich of Rosenberg did indeed convert back to Catholicism in 1420, his decision was likely inspired more by pragmatic reasons than Mařík’s exhortations.

10 The positive attitude of all three theologians towards laywomen and their ability in the discernment of spirits is known especially in relation to the reception of the Revelationes of Saint Bridget of Sweden in Bohemia in the last third of the fourteenth century. See Rychterová, ‘The Revelations of St Birgitta in the Holy Roman Empire’. Matthew of Cracow (d. 1410) was a reform-minded theologian, a master of Prague University, professor at Heidelberg from 1395 and bishop of Worms from 1405. Matěj of Janov (d. 1393) was a master of the University of Paris; he returned to Prague in 1381 and had a marked influence on the Hussite movement with his biblical theology. 11 Spunar, Repertorium, i, pp. 309–11, no. 859.

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It is not clear how typical such behaviour towards lay believers was among the anti-Hussite party at the university because the sources concerning this question are scarce. We may describe Mařík’s letter to Eliška with reference to Christophe Grellard’s chapter in this volume12 as an attempt to maintain the special status of the clergy (whom the lay believer has to obey without questioning) irrespective of reality. At the time Mařík wrote his letter, the Hussite party was already in control of half of Prague’s parishes, and the future of the Catholic orthodoxy depended on lay power-holders and on their decision as to which party to support, on the basis of whether it seemed to them to act in their spiritual as well as material interests. In contrast to the Hussite leaders, the Catholic theologians at the university clearly missed their chance to mobilize lay supporters for their cause. The extant works of the most prominent anti-Hussite theologians who stayed at the university, even after the Decree of Kutná Hora was issued in 1409, focus almost exclusively on the academic debate13 from which lay people were excluded per se, and they show a stubborn insistence on the sole hierarchically organized interpretative authority of the Church. But this authority had disintegrated quite spectacularly after the outbreak of the Great Western Schism in 1378. In the last decades of the fourteenth century, the leading theologians at the University of Prague as well as influential prelates at the archiepiscopal court understood the peril of the degradation of the authority of the institutional Church, and its impact on lay believers. Matthew of Cracow, for example, whose concern for pastoral care was exceptional,14 stressed that the sacrament of the Eucharist is the only reason for which lay people still show some respect for the clergy. Without the Eucharist, this respect would vanish entirely.15 Like other leading churchmen who felt responsibility for their congregations, he formulated more or less elaborate plans to improve the moral conduct of the clergy and the pastoral care they provided, and argued for a more ambitious religious education of the laity in the vernacular.16 Why did theologians and ecclesiastics of the following generation not continue these efforts? It seems that, as a result of the dead-end debate about Wyclif at the university, it became impossible for Catholic theologians to

12 See pp. 75–97. 13 See the collections of individual works in Spunar, Repertorium, i–ii as well as the collections of anti-Hussite works in the Repertorium operum antihussiticorum, available online at [accessed 30 March 2019]. 14 Nuding, Matthäus von Krakau, pp. 32–69. 15 Matthew of Cracow expressed this and similar ideas in his synodal sermons. See Nuding, Matthäus von Krakau, pp. 69–75, here p. 70. 16 The number of translations and adaptations of theological, hagiographic, as well as didactic religious and catechetic literature increased significantly in Bohemia in the last third of the fourteenth century.

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express ideas that might suggest sympathies with their opponents’ views, such as criticism of the Church as an institution, or arguments in favour of increasing lay engagement with the liturgy or with the debate on Church reform. The fronts hardened more and more between 1409 and 1411, and, certainly from 1412, after the indulgence riots and the subsequent ban of Hus and his appeal to Christ with which he denied the church hierarchy as appointed and competent to pass judgement on him,17 there seems to have been no place for compromise. The critics of Wyclif ’s philosophy and theology effectively denied themselves the possibility to formulate their own positive reform approach towards the laity and to communicate this to their flock, whose engagement in the end was decisive for the success of any reform effort.

Turning on their Own Ranks As the now entirely Hussite university declared itself to be the highest religious authority in the country in 1418, prominent anti-Hussite theologians were either in exile or remained silent. For the time being, the Wycliffites had won the battle for lay minds, but they had won against an enemy who, to the very end, did not fully understand what was being fought over. There are three extant Czech vernacular songs dated to 1417–1418, containing anti-Wycliffite polemics. The older Czech research ascribed them to Mařík Rvačka; today they are regarded as of uncertain authorship.18 In any case, they display the same or a very similar attitude which we observed in Mařík’s letter to Eliška of Plumlov. All of them appeal directly to the community, i.e. the laity: Slyžtež všichni, poslúchajte, svésti se žádnému nedajte, držte se viery pravé, to jest vše dobré.19 (Hear all of you, hear, do not let anybody seduce you, hold the right faith, everything of it is good.)

17 Kejř, Husovo odvolání. 18 See Spunar, Repertorium, i, pp. 322–24, nos 894 (‘Slyšte všickni, staří i vy děti’), 895 (‘Všichni poslúchajte, chválu Bohu vzdávejte’), and 896 (Píseň hanlivá na husity — ‘Slyšte všickni, poslúchajte, svésti se žádnému nedajte’). 19 Prague, NK, MS XI C 8, fol. 155v.

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And similarly: Všichni poslúchajte, chválu Bohu vzdávajte, žalujiť na ty Husy, žeť nám vedú bludné kusy v našéj dávnéj vieře.20 (Hear, all of you, praise God, I accuse these Hussites who introduce erroneous things in our ancient faith.) The texts concentrate on the transgressions of the reform party against the clergy, pointing out that the ‘Wycliffites’ act against Christian love which is defined as identical with obedience towards the church hierarchy: ‘papežě za nic nemáte / dobrým kněžím utrháte / činíte, co chcete nad nimi / s jinými světskými’ (You hold the pope in contempt / you disgrace good priests / you do to them whatever you like / together with other secular [lords]).21 All three songs contain passages ridiculing the activity of lay people, and the efforts of Hussite priests to involve laymen in the liturgical and ecclesiastical decision-making processes are condemned with harsh words. All three songs work with rhetorical means or sarcasm and irony — i.e. rhetorical means which usually are directed towards members of one’s own group, the ‘inner circle’, people who (a) do not need to be persuaded, and (b) who are so well informed and well educated as to be able to decipher the sarcasms and the message behind them: that the Hussite party as well as laity in general are not worthy of debate.22 It is therefore perhaps not surprising that the first extant vernacular text debating the key elements of Utraquist doctrine was not written by the Catholic opponents of Wycliffism at the university, but a decade after the decisive year of 1418 by a former Wycliffite. In 1428, Šimon of Tišnov, a former associate of Hus,23 wrote his Admonition for the Czechs so that they may Return to the Obedience of the Church, a letter addressed to the council of the

20 Výbor z literatury doby husitské, ed. by Havránek, Hrabák, and Daňhelka, ii, p. 283. 21 Prague, NK, MS XI C 8, fol. 155v. 22 Catholic anti-Hussite songs repeatedly targeted laywomen and their religious activity. In one particular song, the so-called ‘viklefice’, i.e. the laywoman as religious teacher, is ridiculed, her ‘teaching’ here meaning sexual intercourse by which she seduces a young scholar. The song transmits a Boccaccio-esque story: the metaphors used to describe the erotic dealings are elaborate, and the narrative of high literary quality. Výbor z literatury doby husitské, ed. by Havránek, Hrabák, and Daňhelka, ii, pp. 281–83. 23 Šimon of Tišnov (d. c. 1432) was a master of Prague university (1399), initially an adherent of Hus, but an opponent of Hussitism from 1419.

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Utraquist town Písek.24 Šimon addressed the burghers as ‘Dear Czechs and dear Christians’25 and greeted them: ‘Milost a pokoj pána boha a sjednánie s cierkví svatú obecnú rytěřující buď s vámi. Poňavadž sem křěsťan, tehdy sem vedle křěsťanského zákona zavázán vás milovati jako sám sě. A protož mám vás vystřiehati od toho, což vás vede na ztracenie. A byl bych to rád dávno učinil, ale čekalť sem v zemi slyšěnie. A tu byl bych s boží pomocí všicknu obec zpravil toho, na čemž pochybeno jest od kněží v tomto království; a tak zavedeno jest proti bohu i proti lidem ve mnohé zlé. A na to sem byl mnoho písma sebral. Ale nynie vám nětco málo ohmatných příkladóv z písma svatého miením poslati. A z těch budete moci rozuměti, kterak byšte sě měli mieti.’ (May the mercy and peace of the dear Lord and harmony of the universal Church militant be with you! As a Christian I am bound by the Christian law to love you as I love myself. I therefore have to help you avoid the things which lead you to damnation. I would have written to you earlier but I was waiting for the general assembly during which I planned to inform the whole community of the errors of the priests in this realm, by 24 The Czech text survives in three copies, and a fourth contains additionally also a Latin version summarizing the argumentation. This could have been either a draft on the basis of which the letter was written or an excerpt made from the vernacular texts. On the transmission of the text, see Spunar, Repertorium, i, no. 971 (pp. 347–48). The individual extant copies are in Vienna, ÖNB, MS 4314, fols 152r–54r; Prague, APH‒KMK, MS O 28, 67r–69v; Prague, NK, MS III G 16, fols 25r–26v; and Třeboň, SOA, MS A 16, fol. 449r–v (Latin version), fols 449v–51v (Czech version). František Palacký edited the copy of the text in Prague, NK, MS III G 16 in Archiv český, vi. 23, pp. 416–20. In this article, I rely on the text as found in the Vienna codex which is almost identical with the copy in MS III G 16; it nevertheless contains a handful of variants indicating that the copyist of the Vienna codex worked more carefully than the copyist of MS III G 16. The Vienna codex also contains the Czech tract of Jan of Příbram discussed in this essay (On Obedience to Superiors and on Christian Unity). The manuscript itself is unspectacular, described in the catalogue as a theological miscellany. It was written in Prague by several authors over the course of several decades during the fifteenth century. The first thirty-three folios contain Latin lectiones for the feasts of the Virgin Mary, St Wenceslas, and St Jerome, as well as various other sermons, followed by notes on the individual signs of the zodiac (fols 34r–35v) and excerpts from geographical works. Further Latin sermons and hymns take up the bulk of the manuscript, from fol. 36r to fol. 130r. After the Liber occultus [Erfordensis] by Nicolaus of Bibra follow three short Latin lists of Waldensian and Wycliffite errors (134v–35r) and a short sermon against John Wyclif. From fol. 139r on, three Czech texts are recorded: Šimon’s text is followed by Jan of Příbram’s On Obedience to the Superiors and on Christian Unity and an anonymous Czech text On the Communion ‘sub utraque specie’, probably written by a Catholic opponent of the Utraquist party. Latin themata sermonum take up the manuscript’s final twenty folios (fols 163r–181r). Concerning the authors, i.e. the owner or owners of the codex, we may suppose that he was a Czech priest from Prague of moderate Utraquist or Catholic views and interested in inter-confessional issues. The first two of the three vernacular texts recorded in the manuscript were written by a leading Utraquist and a Catholic theologian, respectively. The third, anonymous, text is transmitted only in this manuscript. 25 Vienna, ÖNB, MS 4314, fol. 153v: ‘milí Čechové a milí křěsťané’.

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which much evil against God and people has been introduced. And for this I collected many [quotations from] Scripture. And now I intend to make you acquainted with a few already known quotations from Scripture, which will help you to understand how to conduct yourself in this.)26 Šimon’s chosen scriptural quotations serve to demonstrate that the sacraments had been continuously adjusted during the times of both the Old and New Testaments, as well as of the apostolic Church. While he adapted his own Latin treatises on the topic, especially Contra hereses Wiclefistarum et Hussitarum and De ecclesie catholice unitate,27 he did not explicitly refer to them in his letter. Šimon thus neither merged the Latin and vernacular discourses, nor did he use his Latin oeuvre to increase the authority of his vernacular argumentation, as Mařík Rvačka had done in his letter to Eliška of Kravaře and Plumlov in 1418. Šimon’s purpose was to offer arguments in favour of communion under one kind as a legitimate liturgical adjustment confirmed by Jesus Christ himself, who, according to Šimon, also sometimes changed his instructions to the faithful, as evidenced in the gospels.28 Šimon’s first example concerns the hotly debated topic of the poverty of the clergy. He argues that Jesus later softened his initial requirement of strict apostolic poverty: A takovú změnu sám pán Ježíš učinil jest v Novém zákoně, neb prvé byl jest apoštolóm svým ustavil a přikázal takto. ‘Jdúce, kažte, že přiblíží sě královstvie nebeské, nemocné uzdravujte, mrtvé křieste, malomocné učišťujte, diábly vymietajte, […] neroďte vlásti zlatem ani střiebrem ani mějte peněz na pásiech vašich. Nemějte mošny na cěstě’. To ustavenie stojí psáno v X. kapitole […] A potom pán Ježíš hned před svú smrtí toto své přikázanie proměnil, jakož stojí psáno Lucas 22: ‘A takto řekl svým apoštolóm: “Když sem poslal vás bez mieška a bez mošny, zda li sě vám čeho nedostávalo?” A oni jsú odpověděli: “Nic”. A pán Ježíš řekl jest jim: “Ale již pravím vám, ktož měšec má, vezmi s tiem i mošnu!”’ Znamenajtež, že sám pán Ježíš své svaté ustavenie změnil jest.29 (Lord Jesus himself made this change in the New Testament. At first, he ordered his apostles: ‘Go and preach to the people about the arrival of the kingdom of heaven, healing the sick, raising the dead, purifying the lepers, exorcizing demons […] [D]o not carry gold or silver, or a money bag on your belts; do not take an alms purse for the journey’. This rule is written in the tenth chapter [of the Gospel of Luke]. […] And then just before his death, the Lord Jesus changed

26 Vienna, ÖNB, MS 4314, fol. 152r. The half-sentence ‘sě měli mieti’ (to conduct yourself in this) is crossed out in the copy from Vienna, and in the margin another hand has instead added ‘mohli mieti poznánie pravé v bludech’ (to gain correct understanding of the errors). 27 On these works see Spunar, Repertorium, i, pp. 344–45, nos 960 and 965. 28 Vienna, ÖNB, MS 4314, fol. 152r. 29 Vienna, ÖNB, MS 4314, fol. 152r–v.

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this command as it is written in the twenty-second chapter of the Gospel of Luke: ‘And this the Lord said to his apostles: “As I sent you without a money bag or an alms purse, did you lack anything?” And they answered: “Nothing”. And Lord Jesus told them: “I tell you now, who amongst you has a money bag, take the alms purse too!”’ You may see that Lord Jesus himself changed his ruling.) His second example, the changes to the baptismal formula made by the Apostle Peter, Šimon uses as proof of the legitimacy of liturgical changes introduced after the apostolic period. The latter, in turn, serve as an argument in the debate on the dependence of the validity of the sacraments upon the moral conduct of the officiant.30 Šimon does not discuss all the sacraments systematically and — more importantly — he merges examples belonging to different discourses and therefore of different authority. As Šimon announces at the beginning of his work, not all of his points are supported by biblical authority. He treats changes to the sacraments, to enactments of the Decalogue and to Church customs together: adjustments to Sabbath observation or the method of calculating Easter, the introduction of the sacraments of matrimony and of penance are all presented as arguments of equal significance. Šimon’s final remark in this section is rather offhand: ‘And there are many changes in the law of God, which would be too long to write about’.31 He concludes that all these changes (heterogenous as they are) prove that alterations to the liturgical practice of the sacrament of communion for the laity are proper and justified. Šimon uses the term ‘God’s Law’,32 the key term of Hussite theology, expressing the sola scriptura principle familiar to all adherents of the reform party, professional as well as lay, and redefines it. In his interpretation, God’s Law spans everything from Easter dating methods to the sacraments, and as such may be constantly changed. The seemingly rather confused list of various liturgical (and other) changes may have been very carefully elaborated by the author in order to diminish the value of the central term of Hussite doctrine in the eyes of the reform’s lay supporters. The most radical members among them defined themselves as ‘champions of God’s Law’. To defend God’s Law was the foremost task of each ‘true believer’ in the Wycliffite and Hussite sense.33

30 Here Šimon takes the opportunity of a short excursus on the so-called Donatist error, a theological position the Catholic party reproached Hus and Wyclif with, according to which immoral (sinful) priests were incompetent to administer a sacrament. 31 Vienna, ÖNB, MS 4314, fol. 152v: ‘A mnoho jest jiných proměn ustavenie zákona božieho, ješto dlúho bylo by je psáti’. 32 Vienna, ÖNB, MS 4314, fol. 152v: ‘Tehdy tu svú proměnu spravil a naučil jest pán Ježíš, že mohú úředníci cierkve svaté některé ustavenie v zákoně božiem proměniti vedlé toho naučenie potřěby časóv pro lidské spasenie’. (He [ Jesus] made his change and taught [us] that office-bearers in the Church may change some rules according to the teaching and the needs of time for the sake of the salvation of the people). 33 See the song ‘Ktož jsú boží bojovníci’ (‘Ye Who Are Warriers of God’) in Výbor z české literatury doby husitské, ed. by Havránek, Hrabák, and Daňhelka, i, pp. 324–25.

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Šimon stresses that he, too, had previously adhered to Utraquism, until he understood that God’s Law is constantly changing, and that these changes were rightly introduced by Church officials. The latter were empowered by God to do so. He also emphasizes that he had never subscribed to the doctrine of the necessity of taking communion under both kinds for salvation, ‘because this’ — and only this — ‘is heresy’,34 not communion under both kinds as such. Šimon’s line of argument allows us to conclude that communion under both kinds for lay people is according to him unproblematic as long as it is offered as a minor variant in sacramental practice. Although he surely did not plan it, he opened, as a consequence, the door for more flexible interpretations of this central sacrament in general. Šimon defines the sacrament’s ‘necessity for salvation’ as the necessity of being ‘in harmony with other Christians in the [Christian] world’.35 This can be reached only by maintaining obedience to the Roman Church. However, Šimon does not argue for the moral or other superiority of the Catholic clergy. Instead, he stresses the origin of the papal and episcopal offices in God’s will. He once again invokes biblical proof: Judas was accepted among the apostles, and Caiaphas was a bishop; therefore the decisions they made in their ‘offices’ (to betray and sentence Christ, respectively) were legitimate.36 Šimon here does not add any further explanation and simply concludes: ‘They [the followers of Wyclif ’s teaching] made the holders of the spiritual office loathsome for you, so you vilify them and refuse to be obedient to them’.37 The letter generally lacks explanations which would help readers not trained in exegetical dialectics to avoid extravagant or idiosyncratic interpretations (for example concerning Judas). At the end of the letter, Šimon quotes St Augustine regarding the unconditional obedience without which nobody may be redeemed, and argues that the truth of this statement can be seen in the many deadly sins the Utraquists brought upon themselves since they apostatized. Although they may regard their victories as a sign of God’s grace, in Šimon’s view they are mistaken in this, because Scripture shows that God

34 Vienna, ÖNB, MS 4314, fol. 153v: ‘A já pokud sem byl neprohléd v také proměny v Cierkvi svaté, kteréž sú sě staly od úřědníkóv mocí od pána boha jim danú, také sem byl přěstúpil poslušenstvie, dávaje tělo a krev boží lidu obecnému pod dvojím zpósobem. Ale nikdy sem nedržal by jinak spaseni nemohli býti, neb to jest kacieřstvie. A to ižádným písmem nemóž dovedeno býti’. 35 Vienna, ÖNB, MS 4314, fol. 153v: ‘Protož prosím pro Buoh pro vaše spasenie, sjednajte sě s jinými věrnými po všem světě křěsťany u vieřě i ve všem křěsťanském řádu. Neb nám jinak nelzě spasenu býti’. 36 Vienna, ÖNB, MS 4314, fol. 153v: ‘A zvláště nedajte sobě úředníka Cierkve svaté najvyšieho a jiných poddaných hyzditi a u mrzkost klásti. Neb oni sú od pána boha nám dáni. A pán buoh řekl jest jim: “Ktož vás slyší, mě slyší, ktož vámi zhrzie, mnúť zhrzie”. Pomněte, že Jidáš byl zlý, avšak od boha za Apoštola zvolen byl. Caypháš zlý a vydal súd a odsúdil pána Jezukrista, avšak měl moc biskupskú’. 37 Vienna, ÖNB, MS 4314, fol. 153v: ‘Protože sú vám ty duchovnie úřědníky zhyzdili, proto vy sě k nim potupně máte. A tak jste z jich poslušenstvie vystúpili’.

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gave many victories to the Philistines too.38 Šimon emphatically invokes the unity of the Church, outside of which salvation is not possible,39 and stresses that the admonition is addressed to himself as well as to the whole ‘Czech land’.40 Šimon’s letter differs dramatically from the one sent by Mařík to Eliška of Kravaře and Plumlov ten years earlier. Addressing his lay audience, Šimon largely demonstrates acceptance of the basic features of the Wycliffite party’s discourse as defined during the 1410s: he challenges neither the Wycliffite criticism of the clergy’s moral conduct nor the main argument for the introduction of communion under both kinds (returning to the practice of the apostolic Church). The elements of Hussite doctrine that Šimon does subtly call into question are the key terms of ‘God’s law’ and the necessity of communion sub utraque specie for salvation, which he destabilizes with the help of the Bible and St Augustine. He is trying to build a new basis for vernacular debate with the aim of reaching some sort of compromise between the Catholic and Utraquist positions. Nevertheless, he fails to present his arguments in a coherent way that would take into account the educational horizon of his supposed addressees. This could mean that his target audience were actually not lay people but clergy involved in various levels of pastoral care, but we cannot be sure. In any case, Šimon’s text indicates that there was no stable discourse of serious lay theological participation at this time in Bohemia. It had to be invented.

The New Middle Ground Roughly at the same time that Šimon was writing, Jan of Příbram wrote his tract On Obedience to Superiors and Christian Unity (O poslušenství starších a jednotě křesťanské),41 an extensive polemical text based on his Latin treatises arguing against Hussite radicals. Jan of Příbram’s confessional/theological journey was similar to Šimon’s. He was a prominent Utraquist theologian and an associate of Jakoubek of Stříbro, the leader of the Hussite movement following Hus’s death. Witnessing the disintegration of the movement into various factions — some of them increasingly radical and violent — in the 38 Vienna, ÖNB, MS 4314, fol. 153v. 39 Vienna, ÖNB, MS 4314, fols 153v–54r. 40 Vienna, ÖNB, MS 4314, fol. 154r. 41 Spunar, Repertorium, ii, pp. 158–59, no. 301. The tract is transmitted in two manuscripts, Vienna, ÖNB, MS 4314, fols 139r–51v (see above, note 22), and Brno, Moravský zemský archiv, E 6 – H d 37 (olim: Rajhrad H h 12), fols 69v–81r. MS E 6 has been dated to 1517 and was written by a fiercely Catholic opponent of the Utraquists, as the sentences he added at the beginning and the end of the text show. He comments at the start (fol. 69v) ‘Proti těm, kteří v opovržení mají církev svatú a všecky řády kostela římského, traktát velmi pěkný’ (Against those who despise the Holy Church and all the hierarchies of the Roman Church, a very good treatise), and adds on fol. 81r: ‘A tak sě ten přeužitečný traktátík skonává k této zavržené zemi’. (And so this most useful tract on this cursed land ends).

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1420s, he returned to a more or less Catholic position.42 In his tract On Obedience to Superiors and Christian Unity, he focuses on the same problem as Šimon: the restoration of Church unity. He purposely begins with the same words that Jan Čapek had used fifteen years earlier in his macaronic Latin-Czech song in support of communion sub utraque: ‘A question very useful to know about in this land in these times’.43 Also like Čapek, Jan of Příbram draws on the formal structure of an academic questio.44 His question is: Jsú li křěsťané zavázáni býti v jednotě v poslušenství kostela římského. A též jsú li zavázáni pod hřiechem smrtedlným slušieti v ty úřady veliké od papežstvie až do biskupstvie a od nich sě neoddělovati.45 (Whether Christians are bound to stay in the unity and in the obedience of the Roman Church. And whether they are bound, under threat of deadly sin, to be part of the higher offices of the Church, from the papal to the episcopal, and to not separate themselves from these.) Then the author announces that he does not want to present his own reasoning but only to list arguments from Scripture and from the writings of the doctors of the Church ‘from the apostles to the present day’.46 Regarding the main targets of his arguments, he says: ‘I want to present these especially against Wyclif and the “English” [i.e. Peter Payne]’.47 He then claims that he will enumerate Wyclif ’s and the Wycliffite party’s main arguments against the Roman Church. However, he does not actually provide their reasoning, but only the invectives that the Wycliffite reformists had formulated in the course of time. According to Jan of Příbram, the Wycliffites claim that the institutional church is a congregation of Satan, and that its power originates in Antichrist; that the church hierarchy is the whore of Babylon and the bed of devils. Church office holders have to be eradicated like the twelve officers of the Antichrist; and no papal office should exist and no pope be appointed because the pope is the greatest heretic, Antichrist, and seducer of Christians. The summit of all heresy is the papal office and the pope is the leader of the regiment of the Antichrist. All prelates are true heretics and have to be

42 Jan Příbram (d. 1448) became a master of Prague University in 1413; he later advanced to become the most influential spokesman of conservative Hussitism. 43 See Rychterová, ‘Preaching, the Vernacular, and the Laity’. Jan Čapek (d. after 1429) was a priest of the radical Hussite community of Tábor. He authored a number of topical songs and liturgical writings in the Czech vernacular. 44 In the copy of Příbram’s tract transmitted in Vienna, ÖNB, MS 4314, a later hand has rubricated the individual parts of the tract in Latin according to the parts of the scholastic questio (questio, responsio, etc.). 45 Vienna, ÖNB, MS 4314, fol. 138r. 46 Vienna, ÖNB, MS 4314, fol. 139r: ‘K té otázcě odpoviedajie nechci mluviti z své hlavy, ale chci vésti písma a pevné dóvody velikých svatých doktoróv od Apoštolóv až do času nynějšieho’. 47 Vienna, ÖNB, MS 4314, fol. 139r.

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slaughtered and robbed and driven out of Church properties. All of them are cursed and should be avoided, and all Christians have to fight against them. Such prelates do not administer the sacrament but offer poison to the people. At the end, this list of invectives transforms into a list of Wycliffite ‘errors’: A že proto, že držie, že chléb nezostává na oltáři posvěcený, jsú všichni najhorší kacieři se všěmi, ktož s nimi tak držie vieřie; a že takové mají páleni býti, hnáni a puzeni jako bludní mnohoslužebníci a kacieři; a že jich mšě v ornátiech s tiem řádem, jako je slúžie, jsú od kacieřóv ustavené, a ne od Krista; a že jsú kacieřstvie. A že nenie hřiech smrtedlný slúžiti bez ornátóv, a že takoví nemají moci posvěcovati těla božieho a krve božie. (And [the Wycliffites] say that the bread does not stay consecrated on the altar and therefore they are the worst heretics, together with all those who follow them, and as such they have to be burnt and persecuted like erroneous servants of idols and heretics. [The Wycliffites say] that mass celebrated in prescribed vestments, and with prescribed orders, [is wrong, since] these were prescribed by heretics and are heresy. And that it is not a mortal sin to celebrate mass without vestments and that such [Catholic prelates] cannot consecrate God’s body and God’s blood.)48 The list which introduces the tract and sets the course for the subsequent argumentation characterizes the teaching of the Wycliffite faction as a combination of chaotic slander and perverted liturgical ideas. These were in fact a) examples of hyperbolic rhetoric used in the preaching of Jan Hus whom Jan of Příbram generally exempted from his critique of the Wycliffite heresy, and b) liturgical concepts ascribed to the most radical wing of the Taborite faction of Martin Húska and Petr Kániš, which had already been eradicated in the year 1421. We may therefore describe the introduction as a (master-)piece of manipulative polemical rhetoric. A lament about the evils arising from the enumerated errors follows. In the eyes of Jan of Příbram, the most serious problem is that the erroneous teachings of Wyclif and his followers have spread among priests as well as lay people, who learned it from preachers ‘as it is generally known in this land’.49 The author’s main concern is that the land of Bohemia has been torn apart and is suffering as a result of the deeds of these heretics. In the following text, Jan of Příbram uses much more ambitious argumentation as well as more complex rhetorical strategies than Šimon of Tišnov. On the problem of immoral office holders, for example, he offers a lengthy quotation from the work of John Chrysostom, in which the difference

48 Vienna, ÖNB, MS 4314, fol. 139r–v. 49 Vienna, ÖNB, MS 4314, fols 139v–40r.

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between the office and its holder is elaborated.50 Matthew 16: 18–19 (tu es Petrus) forms the leitmotif of the treatise, which is filled with quotations from selected Church Fathers, including Augustine, Jerome, Gregory, Ambrose, and John Chrysostom. Jan of Příbram addresses directly not only the followers of Hussite radicals but also the followers of Wycliffite priests in general: Protož prosím, najmilejší, a radím, aby ižádný z vás nezahynul a aby sě všichni v jednom těle, v jednom lóně jědné matky shrnuli se vším lidem křěsťanským sě svolili. A nemóžete li vuódcuóv svých slepých od bludného ottrženie a od cierkve svaté oddělené odvésti, aspoň vy ďábelné oslepenie obludnú cěstu opustiece na cěstu pravú sě napravte! […] Važiž tyto řěči pilně a srozumieš, kterak kněžie češčí a Poláci přilezlí do Čech od mnohých let nebezpečně stojie se všěmi jich sě přidržějícími.51 (Therefore I beg you, dearest ones, and give you advice, so that none of you would perish; and so that all of you unite in one body and in one womb of one mother together with all Christian people and be in concord with each other. And if you cannot turn your blind leaders away from [their] erroneous dissent and separation from Holy Church, at least you may take the right path forsaking devilish blindness. […] Consider these words carefully and you will understand how Czech priests and Poles who stole into Bohemia have stayed already for many years in a dangerous fashion with all of those who adhere to them.) Here, Jan of Příbram refers to the current situation in the realm between the years 1422 and 1434, especially the activities of Sigismund Korybut in Bohemia — a situation that he addresses a few lines earlier by describing Bohemia as a ‘land torn apart’. The narrative of the realm invaded by a foreign army, followed by a lament about the land torn apart in this way, is a topos in Bohemian / Czech narratives of identity, shaped from the twelfth century onward by the Chronicle of Cosmas of Prague and perfected in the vernacular ‘Chronicle of the so-called Dalimil’ at the beginning of the fourteenth century. In the fifteenth century, this chronicle was very popular and the strategies of identification formulated in it well known.52 Šimon of Tišnov, too, uses the motif of the ‘land torn apart’ as an argument in the plea for Church unity aimed explicitly at his lay addressee. The foreign invasion, i.e. ‘land torn apart’ in the metaphorical language of the tract, is interpreted by Příbram as a result of disobedience toward ‘a priest who is the deputy of Christ’: the pope. Following this introduction, Jan of Příbram presents arguments from authorities in favour of papal primacy, which lead him to conclude: ‘Aj, z té řěči máš, že křěsťané zavázáni sú pod zatracením k jednotě cierkvi svaté obecné 50 Vienna, ÖNB, MS 4314, fol. 141r–v. 51 Vienna, ÖNB, MS 4314, fol. 144r–v. 52 See Rychterová, ‘The Chronicle of the So-Called Dalimil’.

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římskému ku poslušenství řádnému papežskému. A to u věcech hodných a slušných, kteréž proti bohu ani spasení nejsú’ (From these speeches [quotations from the Church Fathers] it follows that Christians are bound under threat of damnation to uphold the unity of the Roman Church and obedience to the pope — in all the right and proper issues which are not against God and salvation).53 Jan of Příbram does not go on to discuss the fact that the last condition was potentially destructive for the unity of the Church; after all, Jan Hus had turned against Church authorities with exactly the argument that they were acting against God and salvation. We may assume that Jan of Příbram here used Hus’s definition of obedience on purpose. It shows how carefully he tried to shape the memory of the reform movement’s founder (and, it seems, his paragon). All the features of Hus’s teaching that actually effected the division of the Church in Bohemia are either eliminated in Příbram’s interpretation or left without comment as part of a new middle ground. In addition, Příbram sets the beginning of the Church’s division in 1419, when the first violent riots of Hussite radicals took place, thereby firmly associating the latter with ‘tearing the country apart’ as well as with the current state of disunity. Jan of Příbram tried to define a new middle ground for the debate by avoiding the most controversial subjects. His treatise targets in fact the so-called Four Prague Articles (basic postulates that the individual Hussite parties agreed upon in 1420), which, however, are never mentioned as such. This is a clever move. Had he explicitly set out to disprove the Four Articles, Jan of Příbram would likely have been immediately identified as an ‘adversary’ by his lay audience/readers, as a person belonging to a clearly distinguishable anti-Hussite party (in the worst case that of fierce, anti-Wycliffite ‘Germans’, whose attacks Hus’s supporters blamed for their leader’s death at the stake). Such a clear-cut positioning on one side of the debate would probably have severely limited the potential impact of his tract, which was intended to engage not the adherents of just one of the two hostile parties, but those undecided, in the middle. Concluding his collection of authorities, Jan of Příbram returns to the criticisms aimed at the Church by Wyclif and Peter Payne (he does not consider Hus’s reception of Wyclif ’s ideas) and attacks the concept of the Church of the Elect: A jiného mnoho zlého, hrozného téměř všichni světí vyčítají na ty, ktož sě od cierkvi svaté odtrhují z své vóle zlostně, nemajíc k tomu příčiny hodné, nechtiece u vyšie úřady duchovnie slušěti, aniž jich chtie poslúchati hledajíce zlé svobody, pod níž by mohli obcěmi vlásti, všěm rozkazovati a jim ižádný, a všěchny své úmysly zlé neb dobré rosievati. Protoť potupují preláty a úřady veliké cierkve svaté řiekajíce bláznivě a všetečně, ‘móžem

53 Vienna, ÖNB, MS 4314, fol. 145r.

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tak dobřě bez nich spaseni býti jako oni bez nás!’ A aby vždy jich vznikli poslušenstvie, na to sobě vymyšlují jinú cierkev svatú a nakřivují písma svatých k svému falešnému rozumu po svém Wiclefovi, ješto tak světí nerozumějí, a řkúce, že cierkev svatá jsú toliko všichni, ktož mají spaseni býti. A přidávají k tomu, že papež s preláty, nejsú li z toho počtu spasencóv, tehdy oni nejsú cierkev svatá, aniž jich má poslúcháno býti.54 (And many other bad, horrible things nearly all the saints specify about those who separate themselves evilly and deliberately from Holy Church, without proper reason, refusing to belong among the higher church offices, or to be obedient to them. They long for evil freedom, which would allow them to master the congregation, to command all people, to be under no one’s command, and to spread all their views, bad or good. Therefore they defame the prelates and the offices of the great Holy Church, saying madly and self-righteously, ‘we may be redeemed without them as they may be without us!’ And they want to escape the obedience forever and therefore they invent another Holy Church and warp the words of the saints according to their false reason and according to Wyclif; but the saints do not understand it like that. They say that Holy Church is the congregation of only those who will be redeemed. And they add that the pope and the prelates, if not belonging to those who will be redeemed, are not of Holy Church, and [therefore nobody] has to be obedient to them.) Jan of Příbram gives explicit instructions to the reader on how to counter these arguments: Rci, že tak nemluvie světí, byť ten toliko počet byl cierkev S[vatá] obecná, a nic jiní. A rci, že té cierkvi ižádný nemóž věděti, aniž sě jie doptati, leč by komu buóh zjevil. A tak ižádný z nás nebude věděti, které cierkve má poslúchati jako syn matky a kterú sě zpravovati, aniž bude věděti kteří úřadové duchovní a zákony sú z cierkve svaté […] Pakli dějí, že cierkev S[vatá] jsú toliko všichni věrní křěsťané, kteříž sú v láscě a v milosti božie a bez hřiechóv smrtedlných, rci takto, žeť to pravie, týž zmatek učiní jako i první, nebo nemóžem věděti, kto jest bez hřiechu smrtedlného.55 (Tell them that the saintly Doctors do not say anything like this: that only these [i.e. the Elect] are of the Holy Universal Church and nobody else. And tell them that nobody can know about this Church, and he or she cannot get to know about it, unless God reveals it to him or her. And therefore none of us will know which church he or she has to obey and which to follow, and he or she will not know which offices and rules are of Holy Church. […] And if they say that only

54 Vienna, ÖNB, MS 4314, fols 148v–49r. 55 Vienna, ÖNB, MS 4314, fol. 149v.

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those faithful Christians are of Holy Church who are in the grace of God and are without deadly sins, tell them that saying this causes the same confusion as the previous view, for nobody can know who is without deadly sin.) After these two suggestions for arguments, Jan of Příbram formulates a sort of anti-Wycliffite creed: Proto rci jim takto: ‘Jáť věřím, že cierkev svatá obecná zde na světě jest zbor všěch věrných křěsťanóv v Krista věřících. A tak praví mistr Hus v svých knihách v otázcě proti Cruciátám, to přidada, že toho zboru kostel římský jest hlava a zprávcě najvyší a najmocnější, jímž a jeho úřady má sě zpravovati všecko jiné množstvie, a pod ně slušěti a jim poddáno býti, jakožto vypravují jich písma svatých svrchu položená.’ (Tell them this: ‘I believe that the Holy Universal Church here in the world is a congregation of all faithful Christians believing in Christ, as Jan Hus says in his book against crusades, adding that the Roman Church is the highest and mightiest head and administrator of this congregation. The offices [of the Roman Church] have to administer the congregation, which has to obey. The same the works of saints listed above confirm’.)56 Highly interesting in this statement of faith is the use of the expression věrní křěsťané (‘faithful Christians’). John Wyclif, Jan Hus and the reform theologians gathered around the latter used the expression to designate both their clerical and their lay followers, i.e. all adherents of the reform doctrine formulated by them.57 Jan of Příbram re-interprets the context of the expression: the ‘faithful Christians’ are all those believing in Christ regardless of whether they are involved in the reform effort. The discursive strategy Jan uses here is very similar to the discursive strategy of Šimon of Tišnov: re-definition, broadening and de-radicalization of the key terminology of the reform movement. His final argument in favour of the Roman Church Jan of Příbram takes from Matěj of Janov, a member of the reform circle around Jan of Jenštejn, and a prolific theologian, whose work Hus and Jakoubek of Stříbro declared as the most important source of inspiration for their own reform ideas: Aby Čechové všěch řěčí svatých svrchu položených měli plné potvrzenie, aj znamenajte, co Mistr Matěj Pařížský Čech mluví o cierkvi svaté obecné římské, že též rozumie jako světí svrchu psaní. A to v svých knihách, v traktátu O cierkvi svaté a řka takto: ‘Svatý Dionýsius mluvě o cierkvi S[vaté] obecné pokládá, že v nebeské říši mnoho jest koróv a úřadóv mezi

56 Vienna, ÖNB, MS 4314, fol. 150r. 57 Rychterová, ‘Gens, nacio, communitas — lingua, sanguis, fides’.

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anděly, nad nimiž jest jediný pán’. Takto všěm má zřiezena býti cierkev svatá zde na světě jako dcerka mateře své velmi nápodobná.’ (In order that Czechs would get full confirmation of the words of the saints quoted above, be aware of what Master Matěj of Paris, the Czech, says about the Holy Universal Roman Church, that he understands the issue in the same sense as the saints quoted above did. And in his books, in the tract On the Holy Church he says: ‘Saint Dionysius, talking about Holy Universal Church, states that in the heavenly kingdom there are many angelic choirs and offices, above which only one Lord resides’. In this way the universal Church here in the world has to be established like a daughter in the likeness of her mother.)58 Further, the hierarchy of the Church and her likeness to the angelic choirs under one lord is elaborated in a paragraph declared at the end, again as a direct quotation from the work of Matěj of Janov: Tři sú věci hlavnie a trój zřětel, kterýž mají křěsťané zachovati. První k bohu, druhý k řádu k cierkvi Svaté a k obci všeho křěsťanstva. Třetí samého k sobě. První zřětel k bohu činí v tobě najvětčie poslušenstvie a lásku k bohu. Druhý k cierkvi Svaté činí řádné poslušenstvie k svým starším a spravedlivé zřěnie k svým vyším. Třetí zřětel k sobě činí, aby člověk stál a trval v svém řádu a v svém zavolání.59 (There are three main things, three considerations which Christians have to bear in mind. The first of them towards God, the second one towards the order of Holy Church and towards the congregation of all Christendom. The third towards him/herself. The first consideration towards God effects the greatest obedience and love towards God. The second one towards Holy Church effects the right obedience towards the Elders and rightful consideration towards authorities. The third observance towards him/herself effects that the human being stays and remains in his/her estate and in his/her calling.) Jan of Příbram translated Matěj’s passage quite accurately, but he nevertheless defined several terms more precisely and narrowly than Matěj, reinterpreting

58 Vienna, ÖNB, MS 4314, fol. 150r. 59 Vienna, ÖNB, MS 4314, fol. 150v. It is indeed a quotation and paraphrase of Matěj’s argumentation from the Regulae veteris et novi testamenti, a key passage on Matěj of Janov’s understanding of the hierarchic order of the church of the saints. See Kybal, M. Matěj z Janova, p. 101: ‘Tres sunt respectus vel relaciones principales in omnibus suppositis universitatis: 1us respectus ad unum, unde principium, 2us respectus ad ordinem universitatis vel ad communitatem quasi ad medium, per quod fit egressio ab uno et regressio ad unum, 3us et ultimus respectus ad seipum et ad ea, que sua sunt. Primus facit primam et summam obedienciam deo et caritatem. Secundus facit debitam obedienciam suis superioribus et ordinacionem iustam de suis inferioribus. Tercius facit hominem tenere suum gradum et in sua vocacione permanere’.

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them to fit his goal. So for example, Matěj’s universitas appears in Příbram’s quotation as ‘Holy Church’. This of course changes the meaning, i.e. reduces the range of interpretation for the reader from universitas as the community of believers to the institutional (and hierarchical) Church. Matěj of Janov and Jan Hus are the only contemporary authorities that Jan of Příbram quotes. The likely reasons for this are manifold. Explicit reference to the founders of the movement and the use of their words could have helped present Příbram’s own ideas about the outcome of the Church reform as a part of the original plan. It might also have aided his attempt to define his struggle for a new middle ground, able to overcome the hardened fronts in the quarrels between Catholics and Utraquists. It also delivered a model of faith to be followed: A aby skutečně věděl, kterak sú sě měli Mistr Hus a Mistr Matěj na tom poslušenství, věz, že Mistr Hus v knihách svých proti Stanislavovi osvědčuje a ohlašuje, že chce státi v té vieřě a v zřiezení svatého kostela římského jako každý věrný a nábožný křěsťan. To Mistr Hus. A též Mistr Matěj mluví, kterak té cierkve svaté římské a jejích těch úřadóv má každý následovati a poslúchati, a kterak sě on jim poddává. Aj, o tom takto praví, že já Mistr Matěj zvláště a znamenitě poddávám sě i všěcka svá písma nábožně a pokorně svaté matcě mé milostvé i najmilostivějšie, římskému kostelu a jeho poctivým doktoróm a svatým a prosě před milostivým Ježíšem, aby zkusili mne v všěch mých skutkóv až do poslednieho. A já vydávám sě hotově poslúchati a jiej následovati věda, že to jest cěsta královská najjistějšie, najbezpečnějšie, kterúž chodě, nebudu poraněn na věky. To jest poddánu býti v pokořě Pánu Ihesu Kristovi v obecné věřě, naději a láscě svaté obecé cierkvi křěsťanské. To Mistr Matěj in prohemio O rozeznání duchóv.60 (In order really to know how Master Hus and Master Matěj dealt with the issue of obedience, you should know that Master Hus in his books against Stanislav [of Znojmo] confirms and announces that he wants to stay in the faith and in the order of the Holy Roman Church as a faithful and devout Christian. Thus far, Master Hus. And Master Matěj says, too, that everybody has to be obedient and follow the Holy Roman Church and its offices, and that he himself yields to them. And he says that ‘I, Master Matěj, submit devoutly and sincerely myself as well as all my writings to my merciful and most gracious Holy Mother, the Roman Church, and its virtuous doctors and the saints, begging in front of gracious Jesus, that they examine all my deeds, including the last one. And I deliver myself to them that I will obey and follow her [the Church], knowing that this is the king’s way, most secure and safest; taking it, I will be not wounded forever. This means to be 60 Vienna, ÖNB, MS 4314, fol. 151r.

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subjected humbly to Lord Jesus Christ, in the common faith, hope and love of the Holy Universal Christian Church.’ Thus Master Matěj in the prohemium of On the Discernment of Spirits.) Jan of Příbram thus presents Matěj of Janov’s as well as Jan Hus’s assertions of their orthodoxy towards the Church authorities in their writings as professions of faith able to repair the ‘torn’ Bohemian society, and to end wars and upheavals: Aby všichni též učinili, dajž to pán buoh našim všetečkám, ať by tak vstúpili v tu jednotu a v též poddánie i poslušenstvie, a tudy aby mohl uveden býti řád v této zemi světský i duchovní, a války a neřádové aby tudy byly vytaženy a řádové zasě zdviženy.61 (So that all may do this [i.e. maintain the unity of the Church], may God give [sense] to our self-righteous know-it-alls, so that they enter the unity, and the obedience, and the observance; in this way the secular as well as spiritual order will be restored in this land, and wars and chaos will be expelled, and order established again.) At the end, Jan of Příbram apologizes that he himself used to adhere to Wyclif ’s teaching and compares himself to St Jerome, who erred concerning Origen, and to the Apostle Paul, who erred too: ‘jakož die S. Augustýn, veliká jest múdrost každému, ač jest neopatrně činil nebo mluvil, opraviti’ (As St Augustine says, to correct one’s own imprudent deeds or speeches is the greatest wisdom).62 Crucially, Jan of Příbram does not argue against communion sub utraque specie in his vernacular treatise, only against the destruction of Church unity as a result of the doctrine of predestination. He thus leaves aside the most visible liturgical symbol and most fought-over — and for the movement’s lay adherents, without doubt the most comprehensible — feature of the new confession. Instead, he targets the main theological issue of Wycliffite reform. His explicit instructions to his lay readers on how to argue with Hussites on Church unity (and not on communion sub utraque for the laity) show that he regarded the teaching on predestination as crucial also for lay believers. The arguments he formulates for laymen to use against radical Hussite positions also provide the key to understanding his later, major work for lay readers, The Books on the Great Tribulations of the Holy Church (Knížky o zamúcenie cierkve české).63 Jan of Příbram wrote this voluminous vernacular tract roughly five to ten years after On Obedience to Superiors and On Christian Unity. In the intervening

61 Vienna, ÖNB, MS 4314, fol. 151r. 62 Vienna, ÖNB, MS 4314, fol. 151v. 63 The work survives in three manuscripts, all of them from the second half of the fifteenth century, and was published in two early prints, one from 1538 (no longer extant) and the other from 1542. See Spunar, Repertorium, ii, pp. 153–54, no. 287.

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years, however, the political constellation had changed dramatically. On the one hand, the Council of Basel had agreed to negotiate with the Bohemian Utraquists in 1433 in order to find a modus vivendi. On the other, the field troops of radical Hussites led by Prokop the Bald had been defeated by the united forces of Bohemian nobility at Lipany in 1434. This opened the door for negotiations with both the Council and the Emperor, who was the heir to the Bohemian throne. The Bohemian confessional divide between Catholics and Utraquists was recognized by the secular and ecclesiastical powers; all hopes for the restoration of Church unity were thus destroyed, at least for the time being. In contrast to his earlier treatise, in The Books on the Great Tribulations Jan of Příbram does not try to teach his reader how to argue against the views of ‘heretical’ adversaries. Moreover, he abandons the idea of a collective addressee that otherwise characterized his vernacular treatises. The intended reader of the Tribulations is an individual Christian, who is no longer engaged in trying to convince his contemporaries of the right constitution of the ecclesia militans, but who is instead concerned with the quest for the salvation of his or her own soul. The work consists of three parts: a short exposition of the Book of Revelation, an exposition of the seven deadly sins, and finally, a lengthy exposition of Christ’s passion. Once again, the only non-biblical authority whom Jan of Příbram mentions by name is Matěj of Janov. Jan Hus serves as a prominent example of Christian virtue modelled on the biblical Job, though the author never calls Hus by his name, instead describing him as ‘the good man’ or ‘the preacher’. Příbram uses Hus’s life to illustrate the text’s main ideas: the elaborated concept of temptation, and particularly the concept of deadly sin and its omnipresence. Nobody can avoid committing (deadly) sin, and only absolute fuga saeculi and endless patience in the face of many tribulations can ensure that the temptations of the devil (identified with the Antichrist and vice versa) may be overcome — only by divine Grace, never by human will or deeds. This grace we may meet only in Christ’s passion, and its account, which takes up nearly half of the treatise, is the only biblical narrative (as compounded from the accounts of the gospels and the apocrypha) which is interpreted step by step in order to provide instruction for the pious reader’s daily Christian conduct. The Tribulations were written roughly at the same time as Thomas à Kempis’s Imitation of Christ, a text which similarly aimed at the spiritual education of lay people and which was very quickly (by 1470 at the latest) translated into Czech. In comparison to Kempis’s text, however, the Tribulations may be characterized as utterly pessimistic. According to Jan of Příbram, there cannot be any harmony between life in this world and a serious pursuit of salvation. And, maybe even more importantly, the poor and illiterate do not have the gift of the Holy Spirit. Příbram argues that their ability to discern spirits is very poor — as indeed is their leaders’. In this respect, Jan of Příbram differed dramatically from his declared ideals, Matěj of Janov and Jan Hus, who both believed firmly in the ‘truth’ dwelling in the poor and uneducated, i.e. laity.

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In the Tribulations, Jan of Příbram delivers the ultimate argument against the concept of the Church of the Elect: the omnipresence of deadly sin and the impossibility of avoiding it. Both Šimon of Tišnov and Jan of Příbram tried to reach in their vernacular treatises not their direct adversaries but the whole community of believers: the lay faithful on whose decision the restoration of Church unity depended. To reach this goal, the two writers tried to construct a middle ground on which all the various groups of lay believers — except the radical one — could meet. An important part of this new middle ground was the acceptance of originally highly symbolically loaded elements of the Hussite movement’s ideology as formulated by the first generation of reformers. These included the principle of sola scriptura, criticism of the moral conduct of both the clergy and ecclesiastical power-holders, the right to return to the liturgical practice of the apostolic Church, and the martyrdom of the movement’s founder. Although the majority of arguments used in the two authors’ vernacular texts was generated during the debates conducted in Latin, their transfer into the vernacular nevertheless changed the conditions of their contextualization dramatically. Both Šimon of Tišnov as well as Jan of Příbram were aware of this problem. Šimon’s solution was to offer his reader a whole range of rather precarious arguments concentrated on the most debated symbol of the movement, communion under both kinds, trying to reformulate its position on the path to salvation. Jan of Příbram, by contrast, ignored the chalice entirely, and concentrated on the predestination concept. In addition, he separated the (saintly) founders of the movement from its subsequent radicalization. Příbram attacked the idea of predestination from several angles, the most important of which is the unavoidability of deadly sin. The deadly sins are omnipresent in the Church. This makes it impossible to determine the Church of the Elect, and therefore the whole concept is useless as a guideline for both the collective as well as the individual path of salvation. There is only one possible path to salvation: taking the path of Job through imitation of Christ. In the Tribulations, Jan of Příbram left the field of intra-confessional polemics and concentrated on the individual’s way to salvation. We nevertheless should consider the possibility that his tract was actually meant as a polemical text — against Petr Chelčický, whose exclusively vernacular work offered a radical and utterly original spiritual path to salvation outside of the structures of the Catholic as well as Utraquist churches.64 Chelčický, who had many contacts with Taborite radicals, was very probably not unknown to Jan of Příbram, although there is no explicit polemic against or quotations from his writings evidenced in Příbram’s treatises. Although the goals of Petr

64 Petr Chelčický (d. after 1450) was a minor nobleman from southern Bohemia with no university education or clerical ordination. He authored a number of vernacular treatises on religious topics and his thought influenced the early Unity of Brethren which split off from the Hussite mainstream.

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Chelčický may be described as quite the opposite to those of Jan of Příbram, they had in common one important aspect: they understood that the battle for souls could not be led with the means and methods of scholastic polemic and quoting authorities anymore, and that the fate of the ecclesia militans would not be decided by the university masters but by the lay believers.

Works Cited Manuscripts and Archival Sources Brno, Moravský zemský archiv, E 6 – H d 37 (olim: Rajhrad H h 12) Prague, Archiv Pražského hradu, Knihovna metropolitní kapituly, MS O 28 Prague, Knihovna Národního muzea, MS I E 6 Prague, Národní knihovna České republiky, MS III G 16 ———, Národní knihovna České republiky, MS XI C 8 Třeboň, Státní oblastní archiv, MS A 16 Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, MS 4314 Primary Sources Archiv český čili staré písemné památky české i moravské, vol. iii, ed. by František Palacký (Prague: Kronberg and Řivnáč, 1844) Archiv český čili stare písemné památky české i moravské, vol. vi, ed. by František Palacký (Prague: Fridrich Tempský, 1872) Secondary Works Dekarli, Martin, ‘Translating Political Theology into Vernacular: Réécriture of John Wyclif ’s Oeuvre in Late-Medieval Bohemia’, in Pursuing a New Order II: Late Medieval Vernacularization and the Bohemian Reformation, ed. by Pavlína Rychterová, The Medieval Translator, 17/2 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2019), pp. 53–89 Kejř, Jiří, Husovo odvolání od soudu papežova k soudu Kristovu (Ústí nad Labem: Albis international, 1999) Kybal, Vlastimil, M. Matěj z Janova. Jeho život, spisy a učení (Prague: Královská česká společnost nauk, 1905) Loserth, Johann, Huss und Wiclif. Zur Genesis der Hussitischen Lehre (Leipzig: Freytag, 1884) Nuding, Matthias, Matthäus von Krakau. Theologe, Politiker, Kirchenreformer in Krakau, Prag und Heidelberg zur Zeit des Großen Abendländischen Schismas, Spätmittelalter und Reformation, 38 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007) Perett, Marcela K., Preachers, Partisans, and Rebellious Religion: Vernacular Writing and the Hussite Movement, Middle Ages Series (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018)

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Repertorium operum antihussiticorum. Available online at [accessed 30 March 2019] Rychterová, Pavlína, ‘Die Verbrennung von Johannes Hus als europäisches Ereignis. Öffentlichkeit und Öffentlichkeiten am Vorabend der Hussitischen Revolution’, in Politische Öffentlichkeit im Spätmittelalter, ed. by Martin Kintzinger and Bernd Schneidmüller, Vorträge und Forschungen, 75 (Ostfildern: Thorbecke, 2011), pp. 361–84 ———, ‘Gens, nacio, communitas – lingua, sanguis, fides: Idea národa v ceském díle Jana Husa’, in Heresis seminaria. Pojmy a koncepty v bádání o husitství, ed. by Pavlína Rychterová and Pavel Soukup (Prague: Filosofia, 2013), pp. 75–110 ———, ‘The Vernacular Theology of Jan Hus’, in A Companion to Jan Hus, ed. by František Šmahel and Ota Pavlíček, Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition, 54 (Leiden: Brill, 2015), pp. 170–213 ———, ed., Pursuing a New Order II: Late Medieval Vernacularization and the Bohemian Reformation, The Medieval Translator, 17/2 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2019) ———, ‘The Revelations of St Birgitta in the Holy Roman Empire’, in A Companion to Birgitta of Sweden and her Legacy in the Later Middle Ages, ed. by Maria H. Oen, Brill’s Companion to the Christian Tradition, 89 (Leiden: Brill, 2019), pp. 247–68 ———, ‘Preaching, the Vernacular, and the Laity’, in A Companion to the Hussites, ed. by Michael Van Dussen and Pavel Soukup, Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition, 90 (Leiden: Brill, 2020), pp. 297‒330 ———, ‘The Chronicle of the So-Called Dalimil and its Concept of Czech Identity’, in Narrating Communities: Historiographies in Central and Eastern Europe (13th–16th ct.), ed. by Pavlina Rychterová and David Kalhous, Historiographies of Identity, 6 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020), forthcoming Spunar, Pavel, Repertorium auctorum Bohemorum provectum idearum post universitatem Pragensem conditam illustrans, 2 vols, Studia Copernicana, 25 and 35 (Wrocław: Ossolineum, 1985–1995) Výbor z české literatury doby husitské, 2 vols, ed. by Bohuslav Havránek, Josef Hrabák, and Jiří Daňhelka (Prague: Nakladatelství Československé akademie věd, 1963–1964)

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Patchwork Campaigning Against Hussitism The University of Vienna and its Tractatus contra articulos Hussitarum from 1424

Introduction Medieval universities considered themselves as ecclesiastical institutions that shared the responsibility for spreading the Christian religion and maintaining its orthodoxy. To keep the Christian faith free from error and to protect it from all kinds of distortion was first of all an intellectual endeavour and required advanced theological expertise. The University of Paris, in particular its faculty of theology, provided the model for this programme. By training catholic clergy for higher church offices and for preaching duties, theology professors considered themselves to be part of the magisterium of the Latin Church and developed a collegial model of scholarly critique and doctrinal surveillance. When the University of Vienna received its own faculty of theology in 1384, the statutes deliberately copied the Parisian model; and Viennese theologians too hastened to become guardians of the orthodoxy of the Catholic faith. The university, however, was not a branch of the inquisition. Primarily, the professors kept an eye on theological debates within the university. Occasionally they also reacted to accusations brought before them from outside, such as complaints about certain preachers in Vienna’s main church St Stephen, or requests by the bishops of Salzburg and Passau to investigate suspicious people, writings, or phenomena in their dioceses. Therefore, even before Hussitism began to spread in Bohemia, the University of Vienna played a role in defending orthodoxy in Austria. With Hussitism taking centre stage, however, the university faced a greater challenge, since this movement was by far more prominent and of larger dimensions than all the cases of alleged or real heresy before.1 In the long run, the Bohemian revolution contributed

1 Cf. Traxler, Firmiter velitis resistere. This article is an abridged English version of chapter 5 (‘Der Wiener Tractatus contra quattuor articulos Hussitarum’); cf. especially pp. 453–72. Christina Traxler  •  is University Assistant at the Department of Historical Theology at the University of Vienna. Wycliffism and Hussitism: Methods of Thinking, Writing, and Persuasion, c. 1360 – c. 1460, ed. by Kantik Ghosh and Pavel Soukup, MCS 47 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021), pp. 387–408 FHG10.1484/M.MCS-EB.5.124383

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to sharpening the profile and enhancing the reputation of the university, as it became a key player in opposing the Bohemian heresy on various fronts. The uncompromising stance against Hussitism spurred theologians in Vienna to emulate her parent in Paris, which also opted for an unrelenting fight against the new heresy.2 However, fighting heresies and defending the faith were not the first duty of a university. Other authorities, both ecclesiastical and secular, had a prior-ranking interest in controlling popular belief and practice. For Duke Albert of Austria, the Hussite revolution had above all a political dimension, but his fight against the Hussites was unleashed on many fronts: military, political, and theological. For the theological campaign he relied on ‘his’ university. Theology and politics were forming a broad coalition in the Hussite debates, and Duke Albert understood his duties as a Christian prince to encompass the role of a patron of the church. As a result, religion and church reform played an important role in his domestic politics. Strengthening church structures, supporting monasteries, and maintaining religious uniformity amongst the people served equally as measures of state control and formed part of his efforts to expand his princely claims over his entire territory. The university was both agent and beneficiary in this process. By supporting the prince and his fight against the enemies of his reign and the church, the university returned the support of the prince and his benevolence and was thereby able to enhance its influence and reputation. Duke Albert of Austria may be seen as one of the most prominent examples of the princely control of the late medieval church (‘landesherrliches Kirchenregiment’), where the administration of ecclesiastical institutions and control of religious life were part of the growing authority of the prince. Seeing himself as advocatus and patronus, he combined the role of founder, lord, and reformer of the church in his territory. The university, although potentially independent and always eager to defend its liberties, was nevertheless willing to support the political goals of the Duke by lending its expertise and displaying loyalty.3 The fact that Vienna, despite its importance and size, was not a diocese until 1469 (and therefore was not a residence of either a bishop or archbishop) may have also played into the hands of the university. Since the ordinary ecclesiastical authorities resided far away, the university was without rivals in displaying theological expertise and exerting inquisitorial control in the capital. In any case, the university was the most visible religious authority in Vienna and therefore was asked for advice and arbitrament. While a prominent reform movement in Bohemia prepared and foreshadowed some of the Hussite reform ideas, Austria in general and Vienna in particular did not face similar reform initiatives in the decades before 1410. However, Austria had been a fertile ground for Waldensian communities since the

2 See Marin, La Patience; Marin, L’Archeveque. 3 Cf. Koller, Princeps.

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thirteenth century, especially in Upper Austria in the area of Steyr.4 Although the pressure of inquisitorial activities forced them to go underground from the end of the fourteenth century onwards, the Waldensians nevertheless had a large number of followers in Austria when Hussite ideas eventually swept across the border. However, there is little evidence of larger Hussite communities or even much sympathy for their doctrines in Austria, neither in the years after Hus had been expelled from Prague nor in the 1420s or 1430s after the Hussite revolution broke out. Although the Hussite polemicist Jerome of Prague came to Vienna in 1410, there is no evidence that he won many supporters.5 The Viennese citizen Hans Griesser, who has long served as evidence for Jerome’s success in propaganda, seems to have supported Waldensian rather than Wycliffite or Hussite ideas.6 In general, there was a certain distrust of the catholic clergy and potential criticism of the wealth and power of the church, ideas that were not exclusively bound to Hussite or even Waldensian communities, but expressed consistently across Europe. Yet, in the years after the Council of Constance, church authorities were much more alert to heretical infiltrations, as we can see from the acts of Austrian diocesan and provincial synods between 1418 and 1431.7 These synods warned against (new?) heresies and reinforced inquisitorial and punitive measures. The occasion for this increased vigilance against heretics in the Austrian lands was certainly the Council of Constance, the legislation of which was expected to be implemented by provincial and diocesan councils. After the condemnation of Hus and Wyclif at the Council and the prohibition of the chalice for lay people, one would have expected that, in the wake of Constance, other synods would have taken measures against the spread of Hussitism. As plausible as this may sound, the allegedly Hussite features of the heresies described in these synods hint at the older Waldensian programme rather than indicating a Hussite contagion in Austria. Thus, it is much more likely that in the early fifteenth century, church officials in Austria were more concerned about Waldensians than about Hussites, who appeared to be mainly a Bohemian problem.8

4 See, for example, Selge, Die ersten Waldenser; Schneider, Europäisches Waldensertum; Maleczek, ‘Die Ketzerverfolgung’; Audisio, Die Waldenser; Biller, The Waldenses; De Lange and Tremp, ed., Friedrich Reiser. 5 Cf. Traxler, Firmiter velitis resistere, pp. 86–92; Fudge, Jerome of Prague, pp. 112–40; Klicman, ‘Der Wiener Process’; Strnad, ‘Die Zeugen’; Bernard, ‘Jerome of Prague’; Walsh, ‘Vom Wegestreit’. 6 Cf. Ubl, ‘Die Verbrennung’. 7 Cf. Traxler, Firmiter velitis resistere, pp. 179–231. 8 Cf. Can. 1 and 32 of the provincial synod in Salzburg in 1418. The synod picked only one or two of the condemned articles of Wyclif and Hus in Constance that questioned the authority of sinful priests. Sharp criticism of the sacramental system and of the clergy, however, were a common motif among Waldensian groups: ‘Item statuimus, ut si aliquis clericus, vel laicus utriusque sexus, cujuscumque dignitatis, religionis vel status existat, ausus sit praesumptione damnabili publice praedicare, aut occulte docere, credere, vel

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Since the ‘real’ threat of Hussitism infiltrating the people in Austria was rather slim, it is necessary to look at the university and its role in defining and shaping the perception of Hussitism. No matter how many Hussites eventually came to Austria, and no matter how concrete this threat was in fact, for the experts at the University of Vienna and the ecclesiastical hierarchy, Hussitism was a reality. With the condemnations of the Council of Constance and with the Four Articles of Prague, Hussitism could be better dealt with. The theologians perceived it as a set of doctrines, which could be disputed, refuted, and marked as heretical. Inquisitorial measures were no longer limited to individual persons who may have held, said, or believed this or that, but they could turn to theological convictions, to texts and doctrines. This was the specialism of universities. On this level, the conflict became meaningful and important, and so did the role of the university. Looking at the anti-Hussite actions taken by the university between 1410 and 1430, we see that the duke, the bishops, other universities, even the pope and his legates sought the university’s anti-Hussite expertise. Yet, the university was also slow to embrace this role and to find a coherent strategy in the face of the emerging heresy. Of course, it always lent support to the politics of the Austrian duke while simultaneously emphasizing its loyalty to the Roman Church and the papacy, but we see it reacting rather than acting, handling conflicts within the university carefully, in a discreet and balanced, sometimes even hesitant fashion. Particularly in the first years of the conflict, its attitude could be described as diplomatic, de-escalating rather than inflaming conflict. tenere, quod sacerdos in mortali peccato existens non possit conficere corpus Christi; seu, sic ligatus, non possit solvere vel ligare suos subditos a peccatis; pro haeretico et incredulo habeatur. Quem errorem hujus sacri Concilii approbatione damnamus, anathematizamus, et penitus reprobamus […]. Unde sacerdos, quantumcumque pollutus existat, divina non potest polluere sacramenta, quae purgatoria cunctarum contagionum existant. Licite ergo a quocumque sacerdote ab ecclesia tolerato divina mysteria audiantur, et alia recipiantur ecclesiastica sacramenta’; ‘Damnatione simili reprobamus quorumdam opinionem erroneam, asserentem, episcopum, presbyterum seu sacerdotem curatum non posse absolvere presbyteros fornicarios a fornicationis reatu propter votum castitatis’ (Concilia Salisburgensia, ed. by Dalham, pp. 979–80); ‘Cum nonnulli (quod dolenter ferimus) Vvicleffistarum et Hussitarum haeresibus et erroribus infecti, et de eisdem infamati et suspecti, terminos nostrae provinciae, sub agni specie gerendo lupum, latenter intrantes, ausu temerario praesumunt praedicare, tenere et docere occulte et publice praedictorum errores et haereses dudum ab universali ecclesia et generali Constantiensi concilio tanquam erroneos et haereticos condemnatos: nos saluti gregis Dominici nobis commissi, saluti animarum, et huic morbo periculoso pervigili cura providere volentes, ne scintilla modica in principio succrescat in flammam, et fermentum vilmodicum totam massam corrumpat, sacro approbante concilio, sub interminatione maledictionis aeternae, ac sub excommunicationis sententiis in singulares personas, et interdicti in loca, si communitates aut domini locorum infrascriptis negligentes aut culpabiles fuerint, quas contra facientes ac negligentes incurrere volumus ipso facto’ (Concilia Salisburgensia, ed. by Dalham, pp. 1002–03). Although this synod in Salzburg warned against potential Hussite preachers, the actual regulations of the synod repeated concerns about Waldensians rather than Hussite propaganda.

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In terms of theology, however, there was unanimous consensus that catholic doctrine and catholic practice had to be defended against the Bohemian rebels. There were different occasions on which to articulate and shape this consensus and to deepen the university’s commitment. An important text that seems to be a joint work of Viennese professors, and contributed a great deal to the shaping of the anti-heretical (self-)image of the University of Vienna, was a treatise against the Four Articles of Prague, and this will be the subject of this chapter. The Tractatus contra articulos Hussitarum was widely seen by historians as an official statement of the University of Vienna.9 As the colophon informs us,10 this confutation of the Four Articles of Prague was compiled ‘in uniuersitate Wiennensi’ on behalf of the papal legate Branda Castiglioni11 by Peter of Pulkau,12 Bartholomäus of Ebrach13 and Jacob of Clavaro,14 the former two being professors of theology in Vienna, the latter being the cardinal’s secretary. The treatise was widely copied. With fifty-six copies still extant, it ranges among the most popular and influential writings against the nascent Hussite movement. The oldest manuscript dates to 1424, although we know of a lost manuscript supposedly written in 1423.15

9 On the Tractatus contra articulos Hussitarum, see also Pulka, Ebraco, and Clavaro, Tractatus; Soukup, Repertorium; Prokeš, M. Prokop z Plzně, pp. 47 and 203; Bartoš, Husitika a bohemika, p. 10 (on Nürnberg, City Library, MS Cent. I, 78), p. 43 (on Basel, University Library, MS A II, 29) and pp. 51–53 (on Basel, University Library, MS A VII, 28); Bartoš, Manifesty mĕsta Prahy, p. 268; Bartoš, ‘Kníže Zikmund Korybutovič’, p. 193 n. 80; Machilek, Ludolf von Sagan, pp. 193–94; Girgensohn, Peter von Pulkau, pp. 175–78; Studt, Papst Martin V., pp. 535–37; Soukup, ‘Zur Verbreitung’, pp. 244–45; Coufal, Polemika o kalich, p. 182. 10 ‘Explicit tractatus contra articulos Hussitarum collectus in uniuersitate Wiennensi ad instanciam reuerendis­simi in Christo patris, etc. domini Placentini presbyteri cardinalis sacrosancte Romane ecclesie et apostolice sedis legati, per egregios sacre theologie professores ac magistros Iacobum, doctorem eiusdem cardinalis, Petrum Pulka et Bartholomeum de Ebraco, ordinis Cisterciensis etc.’, Pulka, Ebraco, and Clavaro, Tractatus, p. 177. 11 On the career and reform programme of Cardinal Branda, see Studt, Papst Martin V., pp. 479–99; Girgensohn, ‘Castiglione, Branda da’. 12 On Peter of Pulka, cf. Girgensohn, ‘Peter von Pulkau’; Girgensohn, Peter von Pulkau, pp. 9–81 (life) and pp. 165–91 (work) as well as the additions in Uiblein, ‘Zur Lebensgeschichte’, pp. 324–28. 13 Cf. Traxler, ‘Bartholomäus Frowein von Ebrach’; Machilek, ‘Frowein, Bartholomäus, von Ebrach’, p. 1980; Studt, Papst Martin V., pp. 535–36; Girgensohn, Peter von Pulkau, pp. 176–77. 14 Cf. Kaeppeli, Scriptores, ii, pp. 318–19; Studt, Papst Martin V., pp. 506–07 and 531–33; Girgensohn, Peter von Pulkau, p. 176. 15 On the manuscript tradition see Girgensohn, Peter von Pulkau, pp. 177–78; Machilek, ‘Zur Geschichte’, pp. 167–68; Kaeppeli, Scriptores, ii, pp. 318–19 n. 2086; Girgensohn, ‘Peter von Pulkau’, p. 448; and Soukup, Repertorium. Three manuscripts have to be added to Soukup, Repertorium: Augsburg, University Library, Cod. II.1.2° 21; Augsburg, University Library, Cod. II.1.4° 16 and Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Library, Cod. Guelf. 473 Helmst. For further details cf. the introduction to the edition of the Tractatus.

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Structure and Origin of the Tractatus: A Treatise ‘contra quattuor articulos Hussitarum’? If we look at the colophon in isolation, the origin, context, and character of this treatise seem to be clear. In the summer of 1423, Branda Castiglioni arrived in Vienna, accompanied by his secretary Jacob of Clavaro.16 Among other things, they planned for a formal discussion with the Hussites in Brno in the spring of 1424.17 The Viennese Tractatus has been characterized in the literature as a preparatory document for this planned debate, summarizing the most important arguments against the Four Articles.18 It seemed obvious that each of these three mentioned authors was responsible for at least one part or article both in the treatise and in the debate itself. Taking a closer look at this text, however, we notice a number of aspects that force us to rethink the purpose as well as the origin of this compilation. Despite its colophon labelling this text as ‘Viennese treatise against the Articles of Prague’, it seems as if this text was not written or compiled in its entirety in Vienna, nor is it a direct response to the Four Articles. The first reason for questioning the older theory is the heterogeneous composition of the Tractatus. This long treatise consists of five parts: after an introduction, which deals with hermeneutical problems regarding the correct exegesis of biblical arguments,19 the text argues (1) against the poverty of the clergy and expropriation of church property,20 (2) against freedom of preaching,21 (3) against the punishment of (public) sinners,22 and (4) against communion in both kinds.23 Although varying in length, the approach in the first three parts is rather similar: each part quotes the respective Article of Prague. It then refutes the demand itself and all the supporting quotations from Scripture, the Church Fathers, and other theologians, which are part of the original version of the Four Articles. So, there is no doubt that the first three parts of this text are responding directly to the respective Articles of Prague. The confutation of the lay chalice, on the other hand, offers a different picture. This part covers almost sixty per cent of the whole text and is in fact a treatise within the treatise. In style and theological argumentation it differs 16 Cf. Studt, Papst Martin V., pp. 499–576 (with further literature). 17 On the preparation of the planned debate in Brno and the supposed role of the Viennese treatise, see Studt, Papst Martin V., pp. 534–36; Brandmüller, Konzil von Pavia-Siena, pp. 322–23; Šmahel, ‘Pax externa et interna’, p. 242; Machilek, ‘Die hussitische Forderung’, pp. 515–17; Machilek, Ludolf von Sagan, pp. 192–94; Hauck, Kirchengeschichte, p. 1106. Coufal, Polemika o kalich, pp. 177–84 provides the most extensive and source-based reconstruction of these events (with further literature); on the Viennese treatise, cf. especially p. 182. 18 See below, p. 401. 19 Pulka, Ebraco, and Clavaro, Tractatus, pp. 1–7. 20 Pulka, Ebraco, and Clavaro, Tractatus, pp. 8–41. 21 Pulka, Ebraco, and Clavaro, Tractatus, pp. 42–51. 22 Pulka, Ebraco, and Clavaro, Tractatus, pp. 52–62. 23 Pulka, Ebraco, and Clavaro, Tractatus, pp. 63–177.

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from the rest of the treatise considerably. Not only does it start with its own introduction and a short summary,24 but its structure is also completely different compared to the former parts. In the introduction, the author reveals his intention: he wants to write a manual for the simplices, in order to illustrate the dangers of Hussite teachings for their salvation and to remind them of the true faith.25 The long argumentation against the lay chalice itself is divided into three parts and subdivided into several chapters.26 One could of course argue that the article of the chalice for lay people was so important and controversial that it was given special attention by the Viennese theologians. But taking a closer look at this part of the treatise, it is questionable whether it really argues against the Hussite article and whether it was actually composed in 1423/24. Let me specify these doubts in three points: (1) Part of the strategy of the entire Viennese treatise is to refute the auctoritates which accompany each of the Prague Articles. The last part of the Viennese treatise arguing against the lay chalice — let us call it from now on the ‘treatise on the chalice’ — also cites concrete auctoritates and texts in favour of the cup, but they do not correspond exactly to the texts and auctoritates that constitute the Prague Article. Moreover, not only do the references differ but the way of referencing itself does. The Viennese treatise argues against fifty-two quotations from Scripture and various theologians that seemingly support communion sub utraque, while the Article of Prague lists only thirty-seven auctoritates. Although some of the references occur in both texts, their order nevertheless varies.

24 Pulka, Ebraco, and Clavaro, Tractatus, pp. 63–81. 25 ‘[…] pusillus ego in ecclesia catholica — et utinam merito sic in numero existens — tot animarum perdicioni compaciens necnon fidei christiane laceracioni hoc opusculum ex diuersis collegi, existimans hoc utile fore instruccioni simplicium, ne plures per illorum fraudes seducerent et ut seducti cognitis ipsorum erroribus ad unitatem ecclesie redire festinent. Consulo autem omnibus non sufficienter exercitatis in scripturis sacris, pro quibus principaliter hec compilata sunt, quod illorum malas persuasiones nullatenus audiant nec inermes procedant ad prelium, sed pocius iuxta propositum Domini mandatum ab eorum communione omnino se separent, ne inuoluantur peccatis eorum. Si quis tamen male instructus adhuc illorum tenetur erroribus aut dubitat, si recte in hoc opusculo et diligenter inspexerit, utique intelligere poterit eos nullum habere assercionis sue fundamentum, sed a fide christiana alienos existere’: Pulka, Ebraco, and Clavaro, Tractatus, pp. 66–67. 26 ‘Vt autem unicuique id quo magis indiget cicius occurrat, presens opusculum in tres tractatulos diuisum est: (I.) In quorum primo declarantur auctoritates sacre scripture quas Hussite allegauerunt ad probandum prefatum communionis articulum, et soluuntur argumenta que ex eisdem auctoritatibus induxerunt. (II.) In secundo ponuntur soluciones racionum quas ex dictis doctorum multipliciter roborare frustra conati sunt. (III.) In tercio habentur efficaces raciones quibus euidenter ipsorum error conuincitur. In quibus manifeste ostenditur quod asserentes pertinaciter communionem sub utraque specie omnibus fidelibus esse de necessitate salutis errant et nihil habent de christiana fide. Porro omnes tractatus per capitula sunt distincti, quibus premittitur summula tocius operis in modum talem ut quibus breuior declaracio sufficit, omnium dictorum sentenciam, cicius capere et melius retinere possint’: Pulka, Ebraco, and Clavaro, Tractatus, p. 67.

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(2) With regard to several arguments, the Viennese treatise on the chalice mentions an adversarius, who is repeatedly identified as Jakoubek of Stříbro.27 Besides the fact that the respective arguments cannot be found in the formal Article of Prague, Jakoubek is presented in this text as the primary adversary. This seems quite interesting for a treatise that purports to be written in the mid-1420s. Furthermore, the author of the Viennese treatise specifically reacts to positions and arguments we know from Jakoubek, such as the ‘revelation’ Jakoubek emphasized in his treatise Pius Iesus,28 or contradictions allegedly found in Thomas Aquinas, which are criticized in Jakoubek’s Plures tractatuli pullulant.29 (3) The author does not mention the Council of Constance — neither the condemnation of Jan Hus and Jerome of Prague, nor the decree Cum in nonnullis,30 which prohibited the chalice for lay people. All this would have provided strong arguments against the Hussites. These aspects and inconsistencies suggest that, despite the fact that the colophon identifies the whole text as Tractatus contra articulos Hussitarum, the treatise on the chalice does in fact not argue against the relevant Article of Prague, formulated in 1420, although it takes issue with the practice of administering the chalice to the lay faithful. Since the Viennese treatise on the chalice does refer to a number of specific auctoritates, its author must have had a text or a list at hand against which he was arguing, even more so as the auctoritates are not quoted in their entirety, but only identified by a few opening words. This raises the question which text or author was the immediate opponent that our text tried to refute.31 Who might have been

27 ‘Et quod simplices magis deberent sequi uniuersalem ecclesiam quam Iacobellum cum discipulis suis, qui parue reputacionis fuerunt inter doctores christianitatis et ipsorum comparacione quasi nullius’ (Pulka, Ebraco, and Clavaro, Tractatus, p. 79). – ‘Racione eciam naturali persuadetur, quod omnis fidelis debet sequi uniuersalem ecclesiam pocius quam Iacobellum, quia ecclesia melius intelligit mandata Christi quam ipse’ (Pulka, Ebraco, and Clavaro, Tractatus, p. 79). – ‘Sed difficultas questionis consistit in hoc, uidelicet quis melius intelligat uerba et mandata Christi: an pauci perturbatores regni Bohemie, qui ipsum in spiritualibus et temporalibus destruxerunt, an uniuersalis ecclesia, que tot habuit et habet eciam hodie optimos doctores multo magis exercitatos cum timore Dei in scripturis sacris quam Iacobellus cum discipulis suis nouellis’ (Pulka, Ebraco, and Clavaro, Tractatus, p. 82). – ‘Et multo amplius credendum est omnibus doctoribus, immo omnibus christianis quam Iacobello et sociis eius, quia et multo plures sunt et multo magis in exercicio et doctrina famosi’ (Pulka, Ebraco, and Clavaro, Tractatus, p. 163). – On Jakoubek of Stříbro cf. Tilly, ‘Jakobellus von Mies’; Čejka and Krmíčková, Dvě staročeská utrakvistická díla; Coufal, ‘Sub utraque specie’. 28 Cf. Iacobellus, Pius Iesus, pp. 80 and 86. 29 Cf. Coufal, ‘Sub utraque specie’, p. 186 n. 116 (for the quotation). On the treatise Plures tractatuli pullulant, cf. Coufal, ‘Sub utraque specie’, p. 161 n. 24. 30 Conciliorum oecumenicorum generaliumque decreta, ii. 1, pp. 562–63. 31 For example: ‘Ad dictum sancti Thome: “Manducacio spiritualis” etc. responsum est […]’ (Pulka, Ebraco, and Clavaro, Tractatus, p. 140); ‘Ad dictum sancti Ieronimi: “Sacerdotes qui eucharistie seruiunt” dicendum […]’ (Pulka, Ebraco, and Clavaro, Tractatus, p. 140); ‘Ad

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the adversarius who is addressed so frequently in the text? As I said above, the author refers to the authorities used by his opponent only by short incipits. Sometimes these are so short that it is not possible to identify the passage the author is referring to.32 The author must have found the respective passages in a treatise at full length, to which he then responded. He was evidently arguing directly with a concrete opponent who alone was able to identify the short, abbreviated references in his own treatise. For any other reader it would have been very difficult to follow the debate and verify these references. Without the full text of the original auctoritates, the answers remain opaque, as does the Hussite argument. A reader not familiar with the controversy or the previous text has little chance to follow the full extent of the debate between the two antagonists, since he cannot even assess how long the passages were or how convincing they sounded. So, there is strong evidence that this last part of the Viennese treatise was written as part of a direct polemic between a Hussite and his Catholic opponent. The format and content of the debate do not allow us to situate the treatise on the chalice in the same context as the rest of the Viennese Tractatus. However, this kind of written dispute between two individual opponents fits well into the period between 1414 and 1418, when Jakoubek of Stříbro was promoting and defending the chalice for lay people.33 One of his opponents at the time was Andrew of Brod, a famous and well-known figure, but not the only antagonist of Jakoubek in Prague during these years.34 As Dušan Coufal has recently shown, the dominating themes at that time were the role of the apostles at the Last Supper, the significance of the words of institution of communion, and Christ’s command of the chalice for all people, lay included.35 The Viennese treatise focuses on these same issues. The author limits his objections to those arguments that were collected during the first months of the controversy, which would be quite unusual for a treatise that pretends to have been written in the 1420s. However, it fits perfectly in this earlier context.

dictum beati Gregorii: “Quis nam sit sanguis agni” etc. dicendum […]’ (Pulka, Ebraco, and Clavaro, Tractatus, p. 143); ‘Ad dictum Fulgencii: “Cum diceret idem magnus pontifex” etc. dicendum […]’ (Pulka, Ebraco, and Clavaro, Tractatus, p. 143); ‘Ad dictum Dionysii: “Postea postulans fieri dignus” etc. dicendum […]’ (Pulka, Ebraco, and Clavaro, Tractatus, p. 156). 32 For example: ‘Ad dictum sancti Ambrosii: “Huius sacramenti” etc.’ (Pulka, Ebraco, and Clavaro, Tractatus, p. 148); ‘Ad dictum beati Bernhardi: “Proponitur igitur species” etc.’ (Pulka, Ebraco, and Clavaro, Tractatus, p. 151). 33 Cf. Coufal, Polemika o kalich, pp. 158–67, especially p. 159; De Vooght, Jacobellus de Stříbro, pp. ix–xiii, and Schönberger, Repertorium, pp. 2086–95. 34 For an overview of the main arguments of Andreas de Broda, see Traxler, ‘Früher Antihussitismus’. For the time being, it is not possible here to identify exactly the antagonist of the Viennese treatise on the chalice, as this would require further research. Detailed comparisons with other anti-Hussite treatises written in this early stage of the controversy could provide more details. Many of these texts have not been edited yet (cf. Soukup, Repertorium). 35 Cf. Coufal, ‘Sub utraque specie’, pp. 160–61.

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Against this background, the frequent references to Jakoubek and his followers assume further importance. An analysis of the selection of the abbreviated quotations and their order in the Viennese treatise reveals that they correspond to a large extent with the ones in Jakoubek’s treatise Salvator noster from 141536 and with the Demonstratio,37 which was compiled by Jan of Jesenice in 1417. Jesenice collected arguments from Jakoubek and Nikolaus of Dresden. Fifty out of fifty-two quotations in the Tractatus contra Hussitas can be found in either one or the other of these two texts. Although none of Jakoubek’s known treatises can be identified as the immediate exemplar for the anonymous opponent, the Viennese treatise on the chalice seems to react to a lost or still unknown text that was composed by either Jakoubek himself or a close follower. This leads to the crucial question of the date of composition of the Viennese treatise on the chalice. Jakoubek’s literary activity reached its climax between 1414 and 1418. Beginning in 1420, the Four Articles38 took centre stage and were the target of anti-Hussite literature. Therefore, it seems very likely that the last part of the Viennese treatise against the Four Articles is older than the earlier parts and had already been written between 1414 and 1418. This time-span for a possible composition is supported by the fact that neither the trial of Jan Hus nor the condemnation of the lay chalice at the Council of Constance are mentioned. The author was familiar with Jakoubek’s writings and also with the events that were taking place in Prague, since he excoriates the activities of Jakoubek and his supporters. Thus, it is very likely that the author of the ‘Viennese’ treatise against the chalice belonged to the Prague group around Andrew of Brod. Further research and comparison with other texts may help to narrow down the list of possible authors. Furthermore, there are striking similarities between the Viennese treatise on the chalice, the long treatise Debemus invicem diligere of Johannes Hoffmann of Schweidnitz from 1421,39 and Nicolas of Dinkelsbühl’s text Barones regni Bohemie,40 which was written at the Council of Constance. Both of the latter

36 On the treatise Salvator noster, cf. Coufal, ‘Sub utraque specie’, p. 161 n. 23. 37 Iohannes de Jesenice, Demonstratio (edited under the name of Jakoubek of Stříbro). Two different versions of this treatise exist: an original version (Incipit: Fieri nullo modo potest), and a revised version (Incipit: Cenantibus autem illis). Cf. Kejř, ‘O některých spisech’; Coufal, ‘Sub utraque specie’, p. 162. 38 On the Four Articles of Prague, see Šmahel, ‘Die vier Prager Artikel’; Šmahel, Die hussitische Revolution, i, pp. 636–74; Malý, ‘Bibel und rechtliches Denken’; Šmahel, ‘The Hussite Critique’; Lancinger, ‘Čtyři artikuly pražské’; Uhlirz, Die Genesis. 39 Iohannes Hoffmann, Tractatus De communione sub utraque specie. Cf. Soukup, Repertorium; Bartoš, Husitika a bohemika, pp. 8 and 26; Bartoš, Husitská revoluce, i, p. 102 n. 19; Neumann, ‘Francouzská hussitica’, p. 6; Tříška, ‘Příspěvky k středověké literární’, p. 127; Hlaváček, ‘Z merseburských bohemik’, p. 93; Machilek, Ludolf von Sagan, pp. 186–88; Coufal, Polemika o kalich, pp. 143–48 (especially pp. 143–44 n. 12). 40 Nicolaus de Dinkelsbühl, Barones; see also Dinkelsbühl’s Lectura on the Sentences (delivered between 1420 and 1424 in Melk), especially book 4, dist. 9, qu. 3 (‘Utrum sit de lege evangelica et de necessitate salutis sacramentum eucharistiae sumere sub utraque

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treatises are directed against Jan of Jesenice’s Demonstratio; both texts introduce general soluciones and emphasize that although these soluciones would be sufficient to refute the Hussites’ arguments, they nevertheless want to respond to every single authority and quotation. The argumentation of the Viennese treatise against the chalice proceeds exactly in the same way.41 Furthermore, all three treatises stress the threat of Hussite teachings for the simplices and their salvation. The parallels are evident. Although further research remains to be done, I would like to suggest that the ‘Viennese’ treatise on the chalice possibly served as a model for Hoffmann and Dinkelsbühl.

Patchwork Campaigning against Hussitism These findings require a new contextualization of the larger ‘Viennese’ treatise against the Four Articles, which was composed by Peter, Bartholomäus and Jacob, as the colophon affirms. However, none of these three theologians seems to have written the treatise on the chalice or taken responsibility for it. The Dominican Jacob of Clavaro, personal assistant to Cardinal Branda, is not currently known as the author of any written work besides the Viennese treatise. Fortunately, we have texts from Peter of Pulkau and Bartholomäus of Ebrach that can be used for a comparison of style and argumentation, such as the well-known Confutatio Iacobi de Misa42 of Peter of Pulkau, written in 1415 in Constance, and the Lectura super ‘Firmiter credimus’43 of Bartholomäus of Ebrach, which was published in Vienna in 1414 and argues against the Waldensians, Wyclif, and Hus. A comparison of these two texts with the ‘Viennese’ treatise on the chalice shows convincingly that their authors cannot be identical.44 The differences in style and argumentation are so obvious that both Pulkau and Ebrach can be excluded as authors. specie?’, in Vienna, ÖNB, MS 3657, fols 89ra–98va), which corresponds almost verbatim to his argumentation in the treatise Barones regni Bohemie. An overview of the main arguments in Barones regni Bohemie is provided in Levy, ‘Interpreting the Intention’, pp. 180–82; and Traxler, Firmiter velitis resistere, pp. 60–75. Cf. also Spunar, Repertorium, i, pp. 324–25 n. 902; Fikrle, ‘Čechové’, p. 428 n. 20; Bartoš, Husitská revoluce, i, p. 43; Madre, Nikolaus von Dinkelsbühl, p. 254; Tříška, ‘Příspěvky k středověké literární’, p. 22; Soukup, ‘Zur Verbreitung’, p. 251; Andreas von Regensburg, Sämtliche Werke, ed. by Leidinger, p. 262; Coufal, Polemika o kalich, pp. 65–68. 41 ‘Iam satis ostensum est quod per scripturam sacram nequit ostendi absolutam communicandi sub utraque specie necessitatem omnibus fidelibus a Christo fuisse impositam per preceptum euangelii. Consequenter igitur respondendum est ad dicta doctorum ecclesie, quamuis iam sufficienter responsum sit’: Pulka, Ebraco, and Clavaro, Tractatus, p. 130. 42 Petrus de Pulka, Confutatio, p. 250; cf. Levy, ‘Interpreting the Intention’, pp. 178–80; Girgensohn, Peter von Pulkau, pp. 159–63; Kaeppeli, Scriptores, ii, pp. 318–19 n. 2068; Studt, Papst Martin V., pp. 535–37; Soukup, ‘Zur Verbreitung’, pp. 245–46; Coufal, Polemika o kalich, pp. 42–48; Traxler, Firmiter velitis resistere, pp. 38–47. 43 The Lectura super ‘Firmiter credimus’ is not yet printed. Cf. Machilek, ‘Frowein, Bartholomäus’. 44 A detailed comparison and analysis is provided in Traxler, Firmiter velitis resistere, pp. 438–49.

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Moreover, there is significant evidence that Pulkau and Ebrach were involved in compiling the first three parts of the Viennese treatise, i.e. the argumentation against the poverty of the clergy, freedom of preaching and the punishment of (public) sinners.45 One example of this evidence is that when arguing against the punishment of (public) sinners, the treatise quotes a long passage from Henry of Langenstein’s Lectura super Genesim,46 which warns the reader against adherents of the Antichrist, identified as forerunners of the Hussites.47 This passage closely matches the argumentation in the Viennese treatise. Langenstein’s monumental Lectura super Genesim consists of several parts and comprises hundreds of folia. It is very unlikely that someone would come across exactly this passage without knowing the Lectura quite well or having heard Langenstein lecturing in person. The only one of our three authors who was Langenstein’s student and could have attended his lectures on Genesis is Peter of Pulkau. This makes it very likely that he was at least involved in preparing or writing this part of the treatise. In this context another important question arises: How and why did a much older text, written probably in Prague or in a Prague context, find its way into a treatise that was compiled in the mid-1420s in Vienna? And how does the fact that the argumentation against the chalice was written by an anonymous theologian from Prague go together with the colophon, which explicitly mentions only Peter, Bartholomäus, and Jacob? Attributing an anti-Hussite treatise to more than one author is quite unusual among the many anti-Hussite writings that came down to us,48 and therefore needs to be taken seriously. As mentioned previously, it is very unlikely that the treatise against the chalice was authored by the two Viennese theologians. What remains to be determined is the role of Jacob de Clavaro, who is mentioned first in the colophon, in compiling this

45 Cf. Traxler, Firmiter velitis resistere, pp. 450–51. 46 Langenstein’s Lectura super Genesim is extant in about one hundred manuscripts, but it has never been printed so far. The prologue to the commentary (Lectura super prologos biblie) is currently being critically edited at the Department of Historical Theology at the University of Vienna (see  [accessed 04 August 2021]). 47 ‘Vnde uehementer timendum est in presenti cleri ordinarii persecucione impleri quorundam satis antiquam imaginacionem quam recitat uenerabilis magister Hainricus de Hassia in sua Lectura super Genesim, que fuit: “Quod tandem consurget in publicum cetus quidam ypocritarum, quos diabolus ex hereticis uel ex diuersis fidelium statibus colliget; in quibus modo latitant plures mali propter potestatem prelatorum, que aliquanta est, licet parua. Isti opportunitate capta exibunt in publicum predicantes clerum ordinarium iam a Deo reprobatum esse et abiectum, et ob hoc sibi amplius non esse obediendum nec credendum. Quid mirum si populus laicalis qui iam tantum temporalia cleri sibi usurpare cupit, illos auribus attentis audiat ypocritas, excessum sanctitatis et zelum salutis omnium exterius pretendentes? Quis non uideat istos primos antichristi precursores persecucionem grandem secuturam esse et dissensionem communis populi a prelatis ecclesiasticis?” Consideret igitur quilibet an illa quorumdam ymaginacio presenti cursui Hussitarum conueniat et reperiet quod sic, ex modo et forma ipsorum procedendi’: Pulka, Ebraco, and Clavaro, Tractatus, p. 60. 48 Pavel Soukup’s database Antihus lists 258 treatises; only two of them are attributed with certainty to more than one author.

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treatise. Unfortunately, we have almost no biographical information on him before the time he joined Cardinal Branda in 1421. Could the treatise against the chalice have been compiled by Jacob? Since there are no records of any written work by Jacob and since we do not have any other information, be it from himself or from others, the question cannot be answered with certainty. Nevertheless, it seems unlikely that the Italian Dominican gained so much familiarity with the controversies in Prague, or that he had the time to study the controversial writings in such detail during his travels with the Cardinal Legate, that he would have been able and willing to write this treatise himself. However, Jacob (or Branda) could have learned about this text or stumbled upon it and received a copy while travelling. From April 1421 on, the Cardinal Legate and his entourage were travelling across Germany, Austria, and Hungary. They negotiated with princes and prelates, participated in Diets and took measures to advance the reform of the church.49 Jacob — or maybe Branda himself — could have received this treatise from a number of people they met. Subsequently, the treatise could have stimulated both Jacob and Branda to produce a comprehensive answer against the newly issued Four Articles. This would explain why Jacob was mentioned so prominently in the colophon. Obviously he had this treatise with him when he came to Vienna in 1423. Meeting with university officials or professors in Vienna, Branda might have realized the value of an official response provided by university experts, and he could have entrusted his secretary with carrying out the task. In this case, Jacob would have been the main compiler or collector who decided which texts would be used and needed for this Tractatus contra articulos Hussitarum. This hypothesis is supported by another fact: if the treatise against the chalice was written or compiled in Vienna, one would expect Peter of Pulkau to be among the possible, if not obvious authors, since he had written the first refutation of the lay chalice at the Council of Constance. His Confutatio, however, received little attention in the years after the Council.50 If Pulkau was among the team that Cardinal Branda commissioned to write an official reply against the Four Articles, it would have been natural to entrust him with writing the part against the chalice, a subject on which he had already written a substantial and theologically first-rate treatise. In fact, however, the Viennese treatise against the chalice does not show any parallels with or influence of Pulkau’s Confutatio. Quite the contrary — this text is at odds with Peter’s arguments over and over again. The only explanation would be that the part on the chalice in the Viennese Tractatus was already complete, finished, and available when Branda and Jacob arrived in Vienna. So, for Jacob — if he was the main compiler and final redactor — there was no need to ask Pulkau for advice regarding the chalice. The Cardinal and his secretary needed expertise

49 Cf. Studt, Papst Martin V., pp. 499–576 (with further literature). 50 There are only two known manuscripts of Pulkau’s Confutatio Iacobi de Misa (Vienna, ÖNB, MS 4300, fols 1r–8v (autograph), and Vienna, ÖNB, MS 4922, fols 144r–151r).

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and input for the other three articles; this would explain the traces of ‘Viennnese’ theology in these earlier parts and the absence of Pulkau’s arguments in the text refuting the chalice. It would also explain the prominent place of Jacob in the colophon, being mentioned first, with Peter and Bartholomäus following suit. How could the compilation of the Tractatus collectus in universitate Viennensi thus have taken place? With the exception of its last part, the treatise seems to have been compiled by Peter, Bartholomäus, and Jacob together, with Jacob being the final redactor. The introduction of the Tractatus deals with principles of biblical exegesis, criticizing the Hussite tendency to interpret the Bible in the literal sense only.51 It also emphasizes the responsibility of the bishops and of the faithful to resist Hussite teachings.52 These principles are not invoked any more within the treatise itself, although they would have made a strong case in the refutation of each of the Prague Articles. It is probable that these considerations were added only after most of the treatise had been already finished. At this stage, the treatise against communion in both kinds was appended to the other parts of the text without any revision or adaptation to the new situation. Jacob (and perhaps also his two co-authors) found it a sufficient response to the request to administer the chalice to lay people, which was a new movement in the years surrounding the Council of Constance. But now, in 1423, the issue was one of the Four Prague Articles. So, the ‘Viennese’ Tractatus contra Hussitas can be characterized as ‘patchwork campaigning against Hussitism’, which combines texts from different periods of the Hussite controversy: one that was probably written between 1414 and 51 ‘Iussit reuerendissima uestra paternitas ac metuendissima dominacio talia que negare phas non est, ut uidelicet materias et motiua certorum articulorum, quibus moderni heretici wikleuiste et hussite moliuntur seducere fideles et ecclesiam Dei crudeliter molestare, a multis prius multipharie tractatas eciam nos conspicientes, contra ipsas ea que nostris occurrerent paruitatibus, scriberemus. Et quia ipsos articulos diuinarum scripturarum uerbis superficietenus, ut in cortice littere sonant, intellectis persuasos simplicibus, immo iam ualde impressos cernimus, idcirco ut clarius de ipsis et eorum motiuis ueritas eluceat certiorque scripturarum intellectus appareat, quedam generalia censuimus prelibanda: Inprimis quod periculosum nimis est sacram scripturam nude in solis suis terminis in illo sensu quem grammaticaliter sonant, absque alicuius exposicionis aut interpretacionis admissione accipere, uel sic eam ad probandum aliquid allegare, probatur’: Pulka, Ebraco, and Clavaro, Tractatus, p. 3. 52 ‘Tercio generaliter prelibamus quod incautissimum est fidelibus accipere et sequi nouas scripturarum exposiciones aut interpretaciones, quas non commendat famosa ueterum tradicio neque nouorum exponencium uite sanctitas nec miraculorum attestacio nec sincere ueritatis puritas nec uniuersalis ecclesie certa approbans auctoritas. Patet quia hoc est se exponere periculo salutis, cum ignorancia legis Dei neminem excuset in toto: Si quis enim ignorat ignorabitur, i Cor. 14. Immo nec simplices idiote pastorum suorum seu doctorum errancium eosque seducencium auctoritate uel errore in talibus excusantur […]. Vnde necesse est quod fidelium pastores accuratissima sollicitudine uigilent, sed et fideles subditi diligenter attendant quales aut quorum docencium interpretaciones aut exposiciones sacre scripture accipiant uel admittant, neque nouis interpretibus leui corde cito credant, ne a uia salutis regia periculose decepti ad errorum deuia et precipiciorum abrupta abducantur, presertim hiis nouissimis diebus quibus tempora periculosa instant et sunt homines amantes se ipsos etc., ii Tim. 3’: Pulka, Ebraco, and Clavaro, Tractatus, pp. 5–6.

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1418 in Prague, arguing against communion in both kinds, and another that was designed as a refutation of the other three Articles of Prague. The result of combining these two texts and introducing it as a work commissioned by Cardinal Branda Castiglioni was the Tractatus contra articulos Hussitarum collectus in uniuersitate Wiennensi.

The Tractatus as Preparatory Document for Brno? According to the arguments mentioned previously, we also have to challenge the interpretation that this text was meant to prepare or even document the planned but never realized disputation between Hussites and Catholics in Brno in the spring of 1424. Cardinal Branda was clearly involved in planning such a disputation; he stayed in Vienna from 1423 until 1425, and he commissioned this treatise, as the colophon says. This coincidence led Franz Machilek and others to see a link between the Tractatus and the disputation in Brno.53 But is this text really suited to serve as a preparation for a Hussite–Catholic discussion? The character of the treatise hardly supports this theory. Each part of the text emphasizes the danger for the simplices who are exposed to Hussite teachings and propaganda. The treatise reminds both the faithful and the bishops to withstand the Hussite heresy. So, the Catholic faithful are the target group at which the text aims. In no place did the authors address the Hussites or Hussite theologians directly. Furthermore, there are no instructions for an upcoming discussion, no ‘stage directions’, no strategies or agenda for a dispute between theologians. Especially the last part, the treatise against the chalice, was to a large extent not useful and somewhat outdated for such a purpose. It is hard to imagine that the Viennese professors went into a campaign with so weak a weapon. But were the professors from Vienna supposed to take part in the Brno talks at all? All we know for sure is that Branda instructed the University of Krakow to get ready for a disputation with Hussites in Brno. We have no matching order for the University of Vienna. When the University of Krakow refused to prepare the disputation, as we know from the sources,54 why did Branda insist so vehemently on their participation? Could he not have been content with the University of Vienna joining this debate instead? However, there were no plans for the Viennese professors to replace their colleagues from Krakow and to argue with the Bohemians in Brno. Also, this planned meeting in Brno must not be misunderstood as an anticipation of a general 53 Cf. Machilek, ‘Die hussitische Forderung’, pp. 515–17; Machilek, Ludolf von Sagan, pp. 192– 94; Studt, Papst Martin V., pp. 534–36; Brandmüller, Konzil von Pavia-Siena, pp. 322–23; Šmahel, ‘Pax externa et interna’, p. 242; Hauck, Kirchengeschichte, p. 1106; Coufal, Polemika o kalich, pp. 177–84. 54 Cf. Liber cancellariae Stanislai Ciołek, part 2, pp. 230–31. This letter is addressed to King Władysław II Jagiełło of Poland, and it was likely written after 30 November 1423. Cf. Machilek, Ludolf von Sagan, p. 222 n. 574; and Coufal, Polemika o kalich, p. 181.

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council like the one in Basel some years later, where numerous university professors from all nations were present and took part in discussions. The meeting in Brno might have had a different purpose and scope. Branda was perhaps concerned about the loyalty of the University of Krakow and wanted to see it taking a firm stance against the Hussites. Or he wanted to give the Polish king and his country a prominent role in the debate and the war against the Hussites — something they wanted to avoid. It could also be that Branda preferred the Polish professors because of linguistic reasons, so that lay people too could follow the talks. Whatever the reasons for Branda to address only Krakow, there is no evidence in official documents that Viennese theologians were intended at any time to participate in the planned Brno debate. Despite the lack of official instructions, certain theologians did mention the Brno discussion and Viennese professors being sent there. One important witness is the Viennese professor Thomas Ebendorfer. In March 1429 he delivered a speech to four delegates from the University of Paris, emphasizing that the University of Vienna had not only defended the true faith against the Hussites at the Council of Constance, in treatises and disputations, and through exhortations addressed to the pope and princes, but also via a ‘venerable crowd of professors’ (‘venerabilis caterva doctorum’) who had been sent to the Moravian town. According to Ebendorfer, the Hussites did not show up with their most prominent representatives, but instead with a few uneducated men (‘clientes rustici’), so that the Viennese theologians had to return without any result.55 Not only does Ebendorfer mention the Brno meeting, but so do Andrew of Regensburg in his Chronica Hussitarum and in his Dia­logus de haeresi Bohemica,56 as well as the Dominicans Johannes Nider57 and Heinrich Kalteisen58 in their treatises against the Hussites.

55 ‘Rursum et vice altera ad Brunna (!) transmissa est venerabilis caterva doctorum et magistrorum iuxta ipsorum vota et desideria ad idipsum peragendum, qui a pactis declinantes iterum minime comparverunt, sed adveniente termino tamquam subdoli dumtaxat aliquos clientes rusticos destinare curaverunt, unde nostrates compulsi sunt ad propria sine fine remeare’: Thomas Ebendorfer, Responsio, p. 176; cf. Coufal, Polemika o kalich, p. 184. 56 Cf. Andreas Ratisponensis, Chronica Husitarum, pp. 421–22; Andreas Ratisponensis, Dialogus, pp. 669–70. 57 ‘Husitis sepe sit data audiencia et quam pie sunt vocati. Primo sub personis Joh. Huss et Jeronimi tempore Constanciensis consilii […]. Secundo in obsidione civitatis Pragensis […]. Et pro tunc tantum 4 articulos proposuerunt, quos communiter per mundum nunc mittunt; in quibus cum nostris pro tunc satis concordabant, preterquam in articulo de necessitate communicandi sub utraque specie. Tercio in Bruenna postmodum Hus­sitarum litteratis datus fuit salvus conductus tutus pro eorum audiencia in presencia doctorum universitatis Wiennensis. Quarto in Ungaria coram rege Romanorum presentibus Procopio […]. Quinto in Nuremberga, cum hoc peterent coram omni populo proclamare suam sectam’: Nider, Attendite a falsis prophetis, Basel, University Library, MS E I 9/X, here fol. 19r; quoted from Bartoš, Husitika a bohemika, p. 61. 58 ‘Tercio in Brunna posmodum hussitarum litteratis datus fuit salvus conductus tutus per eorum audiencia in presencia doctorum universitatis Wienensis’: Kalteisen, Contra errores Hussitarum, Koblenz, Landeshauptarchiv, MS 701/183, fol. 49r. I would like to thank Thomas

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How to interpret these sources? First, all these notes date from the years 1429 and 1430, while the Brno meeting must have taken place in 1423/24, during the Council of Siena, as Branda’s letter Litteras dileccionis59 seems to say. On the eve of the Council of Basel, it had become a well-known narrative that the University of Vienna had been steadfastly fighting against the Hussites from the very beginning. Thomas Ebendorfer in particular cultivated this image. In 1429 he wanted to impress his French colleagues by praising the University of Vienna as a pioneer in fighting Hussitism, thereby joining the University of Paris, the model and ‘mother’ of Vienna, in its efforts. Analysing the commitment to fight Hussitism in Vienna between 1420 and 143060 one realizes, however, that Ebendorfer’s interpretation is somewhat biased and anachronistic, since he projects the situation of 1429/30 back on to the years before. Of course, the University of Vienna always fought and never supported Hussitism, but the clear and uncompromising position taken by Ebendorfer and his colleagues at the Council of Basel had only developed over the years. Furthermore, Ebendorfer did not mention Cardinal Branda, King Sigismund or other participants; nor did he inform us about any preparation for the planned debate. This makes it impossible to decide whether he was actually talking about the debate in question or another discussion, and which role professors from Vienna and the Tractatus might have played. The same applies to Andrew of Regensburg, Johannes Nider, and Heinrich Kalteisen.61 Although the postulated meeting in Brno requires further research, we can basically exclude that the Tractatus contra articulos Hussitarum was compiled to prepare for this meeting. On the contrary, it seems much more plausible that the Viennese treatise was intended to provide a manual for the higher Catholic clergy to help them invalidate the claims and arguments of the Hussites and to supply the Catholics with a comprehensive collection of arguments against the Four Articles of Prague. The text shows this intention very clearly. It would also explain the success of this treatise and its wide dissemination, regardless of whether the disputation in Brno ever took place or not. Branda was right when he calculated that a text authored by university professors and promoted as an official statement of a famous school would have much greater impact than a collection put together solely by his secretary.

Prügl for sharing his transcript of this treatise. Cf. also Prügl, Die Ekklesiologie, pp. 62–63; and Soukup, Repertorium. 59 See footnote 54 above. 60 Cf. Traxler, Firmiter velitis resistere, pp. 86–179, especially pp. 176–79. 61 Apart from the fact that Nider’s and Kalteisen’s accounts are basically identical, which proves that they must have copied from each other, these sources do not provide any further details. Cf. above, n. 50 and 51.

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Works Cited Manuscripts and Archival Sources Koblenz, Landeshauptarchiv, MS 701/183 Primary Sources Andreas Ratisponensis, Chronica Husitarum, in Andreas von Regensburg, Sämtliche Werke, ed. by Georg Leidinger, Quellen und Erörterungen zur bayerischen und deutschen Geschichte, N.F. 1 (Munich: Rieger, 1903), pp. 343–459 ———, Dialogus de haeresi Bohemica, in Andreas von Regensburg, Sämtliche Werke, ed. by Georg Leidinger, Quellen und Erörterungen zur bayerischen und deutschen Geschichte, N.F. 1 (Munich: Rieger, 1903), pp. 657–91 ———, Sämtliche Werke, ed. by Georg Leidinger, Quellen und Erörterungen zur bayerischen und deutschen Geschichte, N.F. 1 (Munich: Rieger, 1903) Concilia Salisburgensia Provincialia et Dioecesana, ed. by Florian Dalham (Augustae Apud Vindelicos: Matthaeus Rieger, 1788) Conciliorum oecumenicorum generaliumque decreta, ii: The General Councils of Latin Christendom, i: From Constantinople IV to Pavia-Siena (869–1424), ed. by A. García y García (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013) Iacobellus de Misa, Pius Iesus diligens suos fideles, in Jaroslav Kadlec, Literární polemika mistrů Jakoubka ze Stříbra a Ondřeje z Brodu o laický kalich, Acta Universitatis Carolinae – Historia Universitatis Carolinae Pragensis, 21.2 (1981), 71–88 Iohannes de Jesenice, Demonstratio per testimonia scripturae, patrum atque doctorum communicationem calicis in plebe christiana esse necessariam, in Hermann von der Hardt, Magnum oecumenicum Constantiense concilium de universali ecclesiae reformatione, unione et fide, iii (Frankfurt a. M.: Georg Christian Bohnstedt, 1698), pp. 805–27 Iohannes Hoffmann de Swidnicz, Tractatus De communione sub utraque specie (Venice: Dominicus Nicolinus, 1571) Liber cancellariae Stanislai Ciołek: Ein Formelbuch der polnischen Königskanzlei aus der Zeit der husitischen Bewegung, ed. by Jakob Caro, in Archiv für Österreichische Geschichte, 45 (1871), 319–545, and 52 (1875), 1–273 Nicolaus de Dinkelsbühl, Barones regni Bohemie, in Texte zum Problem des Laienkelchs. Nikolaus von Dinkelsbühl (1360–1433): Tractatus contra Errores Hussitarum. De sub utraque, ed. by Rudolf Damerau, Studien zu den Grundlagen der Reformation, 6 (Giessen: Schmitz, 1969), pp. 33–225 Petrus de Pulka, Confutatio Jacobi de Misa, in Dieter Girgensohn, Peter von Pulkau und die Wiedereinführung des Laienkelches: Leben und Wirken eines Wiener Theologen in der Zeit des großen Schismas, Veröffentlichungen des Max-Planck-Instituts für Geschichte, 12 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1964), pp. 217–50

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Petrus de Pulka, Bartholomaeus de Ebraco, and Iacobus de Clavaro, Tractatus contra articulos Hussitarum, ed. by Christina Traxler, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis, 305 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020) Thomas Ebendorfer, Responsio ad ambasiatorum universitatis Parysiensis proposicionem 1429 feria 2a post festum Pasche, in Ein Kopialbuch der Wiener Universität als Quelle zur österreichischen Kirchengeschichte unter Herzog Albrecht V.: Codex 57 G des Archivs des Stiftes Seitenstetten, ed. by Paul Uiblein, Fontes rerum Austriacarum. Diplomataria et acta, 80 (Vienna: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1973), pp. 174–77 Secondary Works Audisio, Gabriel, Die Waldenser. Die Geschichte einer religiösen Bewegung, aus dem Franz. übers. v. Elisabeth Hirschberger (München: Bechtermünz, 1996) Bartoš, František M., Husitika a bohemika několika knihoven německých a švýcarských, Věstník Královské české společnosti nauk, i. 5 (Prague: Královská česká společnost nauk, 1932) ———, ‘Manifesty mĕsta Prahy z doby husitské’, in Sborník příspěvků k dějinám hlavního města Prahy, 7 (1933), 253–309 ———, ‘Kníže Zikmund Korybutovič v Čechách’, in Sborník historický, 6 (1959), 171–221 ———, Husitská revoluce, vol. i: Doba Žižkova, 1415–1426 (Prague: ČSAV, 1965) Bernard, Paul P., ‘Jerome of Prague, Austria and the Hussites’, Church History, 27 (1958), 3–22 Biller, Peter, The Waldenses, 1170–1530: Between A Religious Order and A Church, Variorum Collected Studies Series, 676 (Aldershot: Ashgate 2001) Brandmüller, Walter, Das Konzil von Pavia-Siena 1423–1424, Konziliengeschichte: Reihe A, Darstellungen (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2002) Čejka, Mirek, and Helena Krmíčková, Dvě staročeská utrakvistická díla Jakoubka ze Stříbra, Opera Universitatis Masarykianae, Facultas Philosophica, 379 (Brno: Masarykova univerzita, 2009) Coufal, Dušan, Polemika o kalich mezi teologií a politikou 1414–1431. Předpoklady basilejské disputace o prvním z pražských artikulů (Prague: Kalich, 2012) ———, ‘Sub utraque specie: Die Theologie des Laienkelchs bei Jacobell von Mies († 1429) und den frühen Utraquisten’, Archa Verbi, 14 (2017), 157–201 De Lange, Albert, and Kathrin Utz Tremp, ed., Friedrich Reiser und die waldensischhussitische Internationale im 15. Jahrhundert. Akten des Kolloquiums ÖtisheimSchönenberg, 2. bis 4. Oktober 2003, Waldenserstudien, 3 (Ubstadt-Weiher: Regionalkultur, 2006) De Vooght, Paul, Jacobellus de Stříbro († 1429), premier théologien du hussitisme, Bibliothèque de la Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique, 54 (Louvain: Bureaux de la R.H.E., 1972) Fikrle, Jaroslav, ‘Čechové na koncilu Kostnickém’, Československý časopis historický, 9 (1903), 178–93, 249–62, 415–31

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Fudge, Thomas A., Jerome of Prague and the Foundations of the Hussite Movement (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016) Girgensohn, Dieter, Peter von Pulkau und die Wiedereinführung des Laienkelches: Leben und Wirken eines Wiener Theologen in der Zeit des großen Schismas, Veröffentlichungen des Max-Planck-Instituts für Geschichte, 12 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1964) ———, ‘Castiglione, Branda da’, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, ed. by Alberto M. Ghisalberti, xxii (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1979), pp. 69–75 ———, ‘Peter von Pulkau’, in Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters. Verfasserlexikon, 2nd edn, ed. by Kurt Ruh, vii (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1989), pp. 443–48 Hauck, Albert, Kirchengeschichte Deutschlands, v, 2 (Berlin: Hinrichs, 1920) Hlaváček, Ivan, ‘Z merseburských bohemik’, Československý časopis historický, 13 (1965), 89–98 Kaeppeli, Thomas, Scriptores ordinis Praedicatorum medii aevi, 4 vols, vol. iv ed. in cooperation with Emilio Panella (Rome: Istituto storico domenicano, 1970–1993) Kejř, Jiří, ‘O nĕkterých spisech M. Jana z Jesenice’, Listy filologické, 86 (1963), 77–91 Klicman, Ladislaus, ‘Der Wiener Process gegen Hieronymus von Prag 1410–1412’, Mitteilungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung, 21 (1900), 445–57 Koller, Gerda, Princeps in ecclesia. Untersuchungen zur Kirchenpolitik Herzog Albrechts V. von Österreich, Schriften des DDr. Franz Josef Mayer-GunthofFonds, 2. Archiv für österreichische Geschichte, 124 (Vienna: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1964) Lancinger, Luboš, ‘Čtyři artikuly pražské a podíl universitních mistrů na jejich vývoji’, Acta Universitatis Carolinae — Historia Universitatis Carolinae Pragensis, 3.2 (1962), 3–61 Levy, Ian Christopher, ‘Interpreting the Intention of Christ: Roman Responses to Bohemian Utraquism from Constance to Basel’, in Europe after Wyclif, ed. by J. Patrick Hornbeck II and Michael van Dussen, Fordham Series in Medieval Studies (New York: Fordham University Press, 2017), pp. 173–95 Machilek, Franz, Ludolf von Sagan und seine Stellung in der Auseinandersetzung um Konziliarismus und Hussitismus, Wissenschaftliche Materialien und Beiträge zur Geschichte und Landeskunde der böhmischen Länder, 8 (Munich: Lerche, 1967) ———, ‘Zur Geschichte der älteren Universität Würzburg’, Würzburger Diözesangeschichtsblätter, 34 (1972), 157–68 ———, ‘Frowein, Bartholomäus, von Ebrach’, Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters. Verfasserlexikon, 2nd edn, ed. by Kurt Ruh, vol. ii (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1980), pp. 982–85 ———, ‘Die hussitische Forderung nach öffentlichem Gehör und der Beheimsteiner Vertrag von 1430’, in Husitství – Reformace — Renesance. Sborník k 60. narozeninám Františka Šmahela, ed. by Jaroslav Pánek, Miloslav Polívka, and Noemi Rejchterová, Práce Historického Ústavu ČAV. Řada C, Miscellanea 9 (Prague: Historický Ústav, 1994), vol. ii, pp. 503–27

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Madre, Alois, Nikolaus von Dinkelsbühl: Leben und Schriften. Ein Beitrag zur theologischen Literaturge­schichte, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Theologie des Mittelalters, 40.4 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1965) Maleczek, Werner, ‘Die Ketzerverfolgung im österreichischen Hoch- und Spätmittelalter’, in Wellen der Verfolgung in der österreichischen Geschichte, ed. by Erich Zöllner, Schriften des Instituts für Österreichkunde, 48 (Vienna: Österreichischer Bundesverlag, 1986), 18–39 Malý, Karel, ‘Bibel und rechtliches Denken der Hussiten in den Vier Prager Artikeln’, in Jan Hus. Zwischen Zeiten, Völkern, Konfessionen, ed. by Ferdinand Seibt, Veröffentlichungen des Collegium Carolinum, 85 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1997), 227–34 Marin, Olivier, La Patience ou le zèle. Les Français devant le hussitisme (années 1400–années 1510), Collection des Études Augustiniennes. Série Moyen Âge et Temps modernes (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020) ———, L’Archevêque, le maître et le dévot. Genèses du mouvement réformateur pragois. Années 1360–1419, Études d’histoire médiévale, 9 (Paris: Champion, 2005) Neumann, Augustin, ‘Francouzská hussitica’, Studie a texty k náboženským dějinám českým, 3 (1923), 1–155 and 4 (1925), 1–172 Prokeš, Jaroslav, M. Prokop z Plzně. Příspěvek k vývoji konservativní strany husitské (Prague: Společnost Husova musea, 1927) Prügl, Thomas, Die Ekklesiologie Heinrich Kalteisens OP in der Auseinandersetzung mit dem Basler Konziliarismus: mit einem Textanhang, Veröffentlichungen des Grabmann-Institutes zur Erforschung der Mittelalterlichen Theologie und Philosophie, N.F. 40 (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1995) Schneider, Martin, Europäisches Waldensertum im 13. und 14. Jahrhundert. Gemeinschaftsform — Frömmigkeit — sozialer Hintergrund (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1981) Schönberger, Ralf, ed., Repertorium edierter Texte des Mittelalters aus dem Bereich der Philosophie und angrenzender Gebiete (RETM), 4 vols (Berlin: Akademie, 32014) Selge, Kurt-Victor, Die ersten Waldenser. Mit Edition des Liber Antiheresis des Durandus von Osca, 2 vols, Arbeiten zur Kirchengeschichte, 37 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1967) Šmahel, František, ‘The Hussite Critique of the Clergy’s Civil Dominion’, in Anticlericalism in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. by Peter A. Dykema and Heiko A. Oberman (Leiden: Brill, 1993), pp. 83–90 ———, ‘Pax externa et interna. Vom heiligen Krieg zur erzwungenen Toleranz im hussitischen Böhmen (1419–1485)’, in Toleranz im Mittelalter, ed. by Alexander Patschovsky and Harald Zimmermann, Konstanzer Arbeitskreis für Mittelalterliche Geschichte: Vorträge und Forschungen, 45 (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1998), pp. 221–73 ———, Die hussitische Revolution, 3 vols, trans. by Thomas Krzenck, ed. by Alexander Patschovsky, Schriften der Monumenta Germaniae Historica, 43 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2002)

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———, ‘Die vier Prager Artikel. Das Programm der hussitischen Reformation’, in Kirchliche Reformimpulse des 14./15. Jahrhunderts in Ostmitteleuropa, ed. by Winfried Eberhard and Franz Machilek, Forschungen und Quellen zur Kirchenund Kulturgeschichte Ostdeutschlands, 36 (Cologne: Böhlau, 2006), pp. 329–40 Soukup, Pavel, Repertorium operum antihussiticorum, online-database [accessed 22 September 2019] ———, ‘Zur Verbreitung theologischer Streitschriften im 15. Jahrhundert. Eine antihussitische Sammelhandschrift aus der Erfurter Kartause’, Studia mediaevalia Bohemica, 1 (2009), 231–57 Spunar, Pavel, Repertorium auctorum Bohemorum provectum idearum post universitatem Pragensem conditam illustrans, ii, Studia Copernicana, 35 (Wrocław: Institutum Ossolinianum, 1995) Strnad, Alfred A., ‘Die Zeugen im Wiener Prozess gegen Hieronymus von Prag: Prosopographische Anmerkungen zu einem Inquisitionsverfahren im Vorfelde des Hussitismus’, in Husitství, reformace, renesance: sborník k 60. narozeninám Františka Šmahela, 2 vols, ed. by Jaroslav Pánek, Miloslav Polívka, and Noemi Rejchterová, Práce Historického Ústavu ČAV: Řada C, Miscellanea, 9 (Prague: Historický Ústav, 1994), vol. i, 331–67 Studt, Birgit, Papst Martin V. (1417–1431) und die Kirchenreform in Deutschland, Forschungen zur Kaiser- und Papstgeschichte des Mittelalters, 23 (Cologne: Böhlau, 2004) Tilly, Michael, ‘Jakobellus von Mies’, Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon, ed. by Friedrich Wilhelm Bautz and Traugott Bautz, 2nd edn, ii (Hamm: Traugott Bautz, 1990), col. 1472–74 Traxler, Christina, ‘Früher Antihussitismus. Der Traktat Eloquenti viro und sein Verfasser Andreas von Brod’, Archa Verbi, 12 (2015), 130–77 ———, Firmiter velitis resistere. Die Auseinandersetzung der Wiener Universität mit dem Hussitismus vom Konstanzer Konzil (1414–1418) bis zum Beginn des Basler Konzils (1431–1449), Schriften des Archivs der Universität Wien, 27 (Göttingen: V&R Unipress, 2019) ———, ‘Bartholomäus Frowein von Ebrach († 1430)’, in BiographischBibliographisches Kirchenlexikon, xlii (2021), 241–44 Tříška, Josef, ‘Příspěvky k středověké literární universitě II’, Acta Universitatis Carolinae — Historia Universitatis Carolinae Pragensis, 9 (1968), 5–43 Ubl, Karl, ‘Die Verbrennung Johannes Grießers am 9. September 1411. Zur Entstehung eines Klimas der Verfolgung im spätmittelalterlichen Österreich’, Mitteilungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung, 119 (2011), 60–90 Uhlirz, Mathilde, Die Genesis der vier Prager Artikel, Sitzungsberichte, Philosophisch-Historische Klasse der (Kaiserlichen) Akademie der Wissenschaften, 175.3 (Vienna: Hölder, 1914) Uiblein, Paul, ‘Zur Lebensgeschichte einiger Wiener Theologen des Mittelalters’, in Die Universität im Mittelalter. Beiträge und Forschungen, ed. by Kurt Mühlberger, Schriften des Archivs der Universität Wien, 11 (Vienna: WUV-UniversitätsVerlag, 1999), pp. 315–28 Walsh, Katherine, ‘Vom Wegestreit zur Häresie: Zur Auseinandersetzung um die Lehre John Wyclifs in Wien und Prag an der Wende zum 15. Jahrhundert’, Mitteilungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung, 94 (1986), 25–47

Thomas Woelki

Theological Diplomacy? Cusanus and the Hussites

Theology is not diplomatic. Diplomacy and politics call for compromises, concessions, and flexible standpoints, whereas both theological and canonical statements are, in theory at least, bound to truth, relying on an epistemological optimism. Negotiations between the Catholic Church and the Hussites were, in fact, peace negotiations.1 Nicholas of Cusa took part in these proceedings at three stages of his life: from 1433 to 1437 at the Council of Basel, in 1451/52 in his role as a papal legate to Germany, and again in March 1462 as Cardinal of the Roman Curia.2 Attempts to solve the disagreement by military force failed one after another, the last being the devastating defeat at Domažlice of the Crusader legion led by the Cardinal Legate Giuliano Cesarini in August 1431.3 A month later, the same Cesarini took the lead at the Council of Basel and promoted a peaceful solution of the conflict with the Hussites.4 However, the road to peace had to follow the way of learned disputation5 — any alternative route appeared inconceivable at that time. The situation was







1 On this subject, see especially: Hallauer, ‘Glaubensgespräch’; De Vooght, ‘Confrontation’; Cook, ‘Negotiations’; Krämer, Konsens und Rezeption, pp. 69–129; Helmrath, Basler Konzil, pp. 353–72; Helmrath, ‘Kommunikation’, pp. 132–34, 138–40, 144–46; Senger, ‘Renovatio und unitas’; Christianson, ‘Church’; Fudge, ‘Hussites’; Prügl, ‘Verhandlungen’; Dahm, ‘Dialog’; Cadili, ‘Hussiti’. A useful access is provided by Šmahel, Die hussitische Revolution, and Van Dussen and Soukup, ed., A Companion to the Hussites. 2 For the early career at the Council of Basel, see Meuthen, Trierer Schisma; Woelki, ‘Nikolaus von Kues und das Basler Konzil’ (pp. 17–19 for the Hussite debate). For the legation (1451/52), see especially Meuthen, ‘Die deutsche Legationsreise’; Schneider, ‘Der lange Arm’. For the last period of Cusanus’s life in Italy, see Meuthen, Die letzen Jahre. The sources are extensively collected in Acta Cusana (currently until September 1458); henceforth AC. 3 For this battle and its consequences for the negotiations, see Helmrath, Basler Konzil, p. 356; Schlotheuber, ‘14. August 1431. Die Hussitenschlacht’; Fudge, ‘Hussites’, p. 255. 4 For the role of Cesarini, see especially: Christianson, Cesarini, pp. 70–91. 5 On the convention made in Cheb on 18 May 1432, see Monumenta conciliorum (henceforth MC) i, pp. 217–24; cf. Christianson, ‘Church’, p. 134; Fudge, ‘Hussites’, p. 256. Thomas Woelki  •  is a Research Assistant in Medieval History at the HumboldtUniversity of Berlin. He is, together with Johannes Helmrath, the editor of Acta Cusana. Wycliffism and Hussitism: Methods of Thinking, Writing, and Persuasion, c. 1360 – c. 1460, ed. by Kantik Ghosh and Pavel Soukup, MCS 47 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021), pp. 409–431 FHG10.1484/M.MCS-EB.5.124384

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therefore a paradigm of the two major developments which are dealt with in this volume: first, the spilling over of intellectual and political discourses into one another, and second, the academic embarrassment that arose from the impossibility of gaining religious certainty. This era stood out as one in which politics attained an increasingly professionalized and academic character.6 The great European controversies of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were approached in this way, most notably, the Western Schism of 1378 that set off an avalanche of treatises and catapulted the greatest scholars of the time into the ‘first squad’ of church politics — lawyers such as Baldus and Zabarella and theologians such as Gerson and d’Ailly.7 The success that the scholars achieved at the Council of Constance strengthened their faith in the power of academic learning even more. There were also hopes of solving the East–West Schism with the Greeks by way of disputation and possibly even proselytizing the Muslims. Late works by Juan of Segovia represent the most articulate example of such an optimistic vision — one would plunge the sword of faith into the Muslims’ hearts if only they could be confronted in an open disputation at a Union Council like the Hussites in 1433.8 Inter-faith dialogues like these presented the theologians with a rare chance to attract attention, especially since the precedence of theology over canon law was explicitly prescribed in the rules of this disputation.9 Otherwise, theologians found themselves at a disadvantage in the competition for lucrative posts compared to lawyers.10 Nicholas of Cusa was a characteristic figure of this period.11 He succeeded in pursuing a remarkable career from being a bourgeois merchant’s son to becoming one of the most renowned cardinals of the Roman Church. An ascent as steep as his would plainly not have been possible if not for the strong belief of his contemporaries that effective political performance and academic competence or even excellence were inextricably linked together. This is how Cusanus himself saw it: virtue and perseverance were rewarded only by the Church.12



6 See especially: Miethke, ‘Konzilien als Forum’, pp. 739–42, 753–55; Helmrath, ‘Rhetorik und Akademisierung’; Woelki, Lodovico Pontano, pp. 13–23. 7 See especially Swanson, Universities. For single paradigmatic careers, see Walther, ‘Baldus als Gutachter’; Girgensohn, ‘Francesco Zabarella’; Millet and Maillard-Luypaert, Le Schisme et la pourpre; Morrall, Gerson and the Great Schism; McGuire, Jean Gerson. 8 Johannes de Segovia, De gladio divini spiritus, ed. by Roth. See Wolf, Juan de Segovia, and the unpublished dissertation of Davide Scotto, Via pacis et doctrine. 9 See Christianson, ‘Church’, p. 134. 10 For this problem, see Woelki, Lodovico Pontano, pp. 223–28 with further references. 11 See the literature in n. 2. 12 Cusanus, ‘Autobiography’ (21 October 1449), in AC, i. 2, no. 849: ‘Et ut sciant cuncti sanctam Romanam ecclesiam non respicere ad locum vel genus nativitatis, sed esse largissimam remuneratricem virtutum, hinc hanc historiam in dei laudem iussit scribi ipse cardinalis’. For this text and its interpretation, see Meuthen, Nikolaus von Kues 1401–1464. Skizze einer Biographie, p. 23; Schwarz, ‘Über Patronage’, p. 307; Stieber, ‘“Hercules”’, p. 244.

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Extensive Hussite disputations between January and April 1433 may represent the absolute peak of academized politics; the effort to solve a political conflict by means of evidence and disputation was taken to an extreme.13 Already at the time of the Council of Constance, the intellectual discussion about Hussitism had reached a level that could hardly be topped.14 However, the actors at the Council, in direct confrontation with Jan Hus, had emphatically avoided entering into a proper inter-faith dialogue and ultimately only staged a trial of ‘heretics’.15 In contrast, at the Council of Basel, they tried to discuss at least the four main theses on which the heterogeneous Hussite movement could agree16 exhaustively, through to the finish, these four points being the lay chalice, punishment for mortal sins, freedom of preaching and restriction of church property rights. Both the time invested and the intellectual effort involved were immense: three months of the most intense disputations, speeches of enormous length and scope, replicas and duplicas, which often lasted for hours if not days. John of Ragusa’s speech on the lay chalice alone lasted for eighteen hours and had to be spread over nearly two weeks.17 The outcome was frustrating. The Hussites came to Basel still full of missionary ambition and were severely disappointed when the Council fathers did not flock over to their side as they had hoped. The Council fathers, for their part, were more and more frustrated by the Hussites’ stubborn adherence to their so manifestly heretical views. When another delegation of Hussites arrived in August 1433, they made the same old demands which had already been dismissed long ago.18 Twenty-eight additional points such as communion for newborns, the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, purgatory, indulgences, etc. could not even be discussed properly.19 Whichever way one looked, there was no agreement in sight. In a way, these symptoms revealed that the golden age of academic political counselling was past its prime. The big questions of Christendom were not to be solved through academic expertise. In principle, this was already true at the time of the Western Schism, since a political solution was made possible only by King Sigismund’s tour through Europe, irrespective of all the learned debate in Constance.20 The desperation of Basel became most apparent in the Pope’s and the Council’s contest for superiority when both parties sought the 13 For these debates, see Jacob, ‘Bohemians’; De Vooght, ‘Confrontation’; Helmrath, ‘Kommunikation’, pp. 144–46; Senger, ‘Renovatio und unitas’, pp. 21–22; Christianson, ‘Church’; Coufal, ‘Laienkelch’. 14 See now Traxler, Firmiter velitis resistere. 15 Helmrath, Basler Konzil, p. 356. For the event and its impact see Soukup, Jan Hus, pp. 189–208. 16 On the Four Articles, see Christianson, ‘Church’, pp. 127–28. 17 See Helmrath, ‘Kommunikation’, p. 145; Strika, Johannes von Ragusa, pp. 132–42; Fudge, ‘Hussites’, p. 263. 18 See Fudge, ‘Hussites’, p. 269. 19 Cf. Christianson, ‘Church’, p. 144; Fudge, ‘Hussites’, p. 265. 20 For the role of Sigismund, see, Frenken, ‘Sigmund’.

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recognition of secular princes. First and foremost, Nicholas of Cusa acted on behalf of the Pope and fought countless long rhetorical duels with Niccolò Tudeschi and Juan of Segovia who represented the Council.21 For years, the princes observed how the greatest Christian scholars exchanged arguments and failed to come to an agreement. At long last, they stated that they were still not able to make out who exercised authority over them — the Council of Basel or the counter-Council in Ferrara, Pope Eugenius IV or the antipope Felix V.22 They described this state in which true proofs were unattainable with the notion of perplexitas. The dialogue with the Hussites had reached a similar stage by the time the marathon of disputations in Basel had ended. Utterly aghast, Nicholas of Cusa repeated several times in 1452 that the truth had been showcased to the Hussites again and again with absolute clarity and by many learned men.23 Meanwhile, his duellist in the battle of pamphlets, the Hussite bishop Martin Lupáč, pointed out with pride: ‘a thousand doctors were not able to prove a single mistake to us in Basel’.24 Faith in the attainability of true proofs had crumbled by that time as became apparent on several occasions. As a result, the political culture gradually began to change over the course of the fifteenth century. Electoral princes put theological and canonical issues aside and started to base their decisions on what would benefit the Empire most: utilitas or iustitia. The principles of pax and iustitia had traditionally been joined together in the spirit of Augustine, but in Basel they were increasingly being seen as

21 See Stieber, ‘Hercules’, pp. 222–26; Woelki, ‘Nikolaus von Kues and das Basler Konzil’, pp. 29–31. 22 Declaration of neutrality of the Electors (17 March 1438), Deutsche Reichstagsakten, ed. by Beckmann, (henceforth RTA) xiii. 130, p. 218: ‘Quia vero inter predictum sanctissimum dominum nostrum ac sacrum Basiliense concilium, quod dolenter sustinemus, expresse vigent discordie, adversa quoque processus et mandata procedunt ab eisdem, que mentes nostras adeo perplexas reddiderunt, ut pro debito fragilitatis humane de illorum viribus habeamus merito dubitare […] nos propter dubium probabile et ad presens indiscussibile animos nostros suspensos retinebimus’. For the politics of neutrality, see Stieber, Pope Eugenius IV., pp. 278–302; Helmrath, Basler Konzil, p. 290; Woelki, Lodovico Pontano, p. 196; Helmrath, ‘Empire’, pp. 423, 427–38. For the philosophical debates about the dialectical consequences of the uncertainty of rules see above all: Schüßler, Moral im Zweifel. 23 Nicolai de Cusa, ‘Third letter to the Bohemians’ (11 October 1452), Opera omnia, xv. 1, ed. by Nottelmann and Senger, pp. 90–91: ‘Et quia iam praecesserunt doctissimi viri, qui haec latissime verissima esse ostenderunt neque possunt per aliquem rationem habentem difficultari, satis sit proposito nostro, scilicet non esse possibile sacerdotium necessitari ad dandum communionem laicis sub utraque specie’. For an English translation, see Nicholas of Cusa, Writings, trans. by Izbicki, p. 415. 24 Martin Lupáč to Cusanus (14 July 1452), AC, ii. 1, no. 2696: ‘In Basilea fuerunt doctores, ut dicebatur, prope mille et nec unum errorem in nos probare potuerunt, sed comperto, quod veritatem christianam et ewangelicam a Christo exemplatam pro fundamento habemus, illi locum dederunt, laudaverunt utilemque et salutarem ore et litteris patentibus predicaverunt’. Cf. also Bartoš, ‘Cusanus and the Hussite Bishop’; Fudge, ‘Hussites’, 277–78.

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alternatives to each other.25 When disputes, for example about dioceses, were to be negotiated, it was decided whether an amicable settlement seemed possible (Fiat pax! was then the instruction to the Council commissioners), or whether the claims of the parties to the dispute had to be discussed truthfully and decided authoritatively: Fiat iusticia.26 Though the split between the spheres of politics and theology was apparent in the Hussite conflict from early on, it was consolidated only gradually. Pax et fides, terms that used to complement each other harmoniously and permeated pamphlets and letters as well as papal bulls, came to be seen as alternatives: either pax or fides. Princes and cities shared an interest in peace regardless of their professed loyalty to either the Council or the Pope. Therefore, they favoured negotiated solutions and even became a motor of inter-faith dialogue. The Emperor Sigismund sought to be recognized as king of Bohemia; the Brandenburg Elector Albrecht Achilles, Duke Friedrich of Saxonia, and Duke Ludwig of Bavaria were most affected by the danger originating from the Hussites; and Bohemian nobles and town patricians were equally worried. Their call to bring the religious dispute to an end therefore grew louder and louder, especially since the deeper substance of those learned discussions remained impenetrable to them anyway. Nuremberg delegates expressed general frustration with ineffective religious debates in the most explicit way: upon reading Cusanus’s Third Letter to the Bohemians and failing to understand its subtle argumentation, they asked for permission not to publish it so that the laymen could stay out of the quarrel between clerics.27 The Compactata, upon which the Council and the moderate Utraquists succeeded in arriving at an agreement, merely represented an essentially politically motivated, formulaic compromise. They were phrased so vaguely that both parties were able to read their own interpretations into them. Eventually, the permanent legate of the Council to Prague, Philibert de Montjeu, also gave up insisting on the

25 See Sudmann, Basler Konzil, pp. 352–56; Woelki, Lodovico Pontano, pp. 729–30. For the Augustinian doctrine see especially, Augustine, Ennarationes in Psalmos, ed. by Luc Verheijen and others, 84. 11, p. 1173. Further material can be found in Budzik, Doctor pacis, pp. 25, 375–76. 26 See Sudmann, Basler Konzil, pp. 349–76. 27 Mayor and Council of Nuremberg to their legates in the Imperial court, Instructions for negociations with Cusanus (18 December 1452), AC, ii. 1, no. 2956: ‘Und wann uns nu versehen, das sollichs die Compactat antreffend sein, dargegen dann unser herre der legat ein tractat gemacht haben soll mit sollichen hohen und clugen synnen geziert und begriffen, das uns slechten leyen zuvil costlich und unbegreiflich sein mage, etc. […] das ir dann bey unserm herren legaten oder andern ennden fleiß getan hettet, dadurch wir sollicher verkundung bey uns zetun vertragen wurden und das es pfaff mit pfaffen außtrug und der ley damit unbeladen belib’ (Because we can see now that this touches on the Compactata, whereas the Legate is said to have written a treatise that is imbued with such high and wise thoughts that it cannot be understood by us ordinary laymen, etc. […] You should make an effort with our Lord the Legate or elsewhere so that this does not have to be proclaimed to us and that the clergy resolve it among themselves and the laity remains unchallenged by it).

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coherent application of theological principle.28 It seemed that the only way to peace was via leaving questions of faith and theology aside and excluding them from politics. A timeless phenomenon, in a sense: ecumenical dialogue is only possible when questions of faith remain untouched. In the scholarly literature, Nicolas of Cusa has traditionally been characterized as a promoter of ecumenism, as someone who demonstrated how inter-confessional dialogue can function well and yet acknowledge questions of faith, especially with regard to the dialogue with Muslims as presented in the idealistic vision of De pace fidei (less so in the more aggressive treatise Cribratio Alkorani).29 In relation to the Hussites, Cusanus hardly comes across as a tolerant ‘builder of bridges’; at best, he appears as an inept diplomat, his skill in negotiations falling far behind his theological-philosophical vision.30 He earned a reputation as a stickler for principles who tried to impose unworldly lifestyles on clerics and laymen alike and kept failing because he completely misjudged the scope of the possible.31 The following account of Cusanus and the Hussites will not paraphrase the various arguments and stages of negotiation as these have been well explored.32 Instead, I would like to revisit this topic from a different angle and look at how the contradiction between theology and diplomacy was approached. I will argue that neither an explicit separation of these domains, as voiced by the princes and cities, nor the implicit one of the Compactata was characteristic of Cusanus. Instead, he strived to integrate political and theological imperatives.

Debates at the Council of Basel 1433/34 Nicholas of Cusa played only a marginal role in the big Hussite debates of Basel, even though he preferred to present these events differently in retrospect.33 He was not present when Jan Rokycana delivered his extensive rhetorical defence of the lay chalice in the Middle of January 1433.34 At least until the end of January, Cusanus stayed in Koblenz and waited for his injured

28 Kleinert, Philibert de Montjeu, p. 409. 29 See Euler, Bedeutung. 30 For this view, see Hallauer, Glaubensgespräch, pp. 71–72. 31 This was the traditional perception of his activities in the diocese of Brixen; see Grass, Cusanus und das Volkstum der Berge; Baum, Nikolaus Cusanus in Tirol. 32 Cf. the works cited in n. 1. 33 Cusanus emphasizes especially his role in the concrete formulation of the Compactata; see his second Letter to the Bohemians (1452), Opera omnia, xv. 1, p. 68. 34 Jan Rokycana, Oration about the lay chalice (16 January 1433), in Mansi, ed., Amplissima collectio xxx, cols 269–306. Cf. MC, i, pp. 264–68, 292–93; Christianson, ‘Church’, p. 137. For Rokycana, see Heymann, ‘John Rokycana’; Hofer, Johannes Kapistran, ii, pp. 60–62; Hlaváček, ‘Rokycana’; Bendel, ‘Kirchenbild’; Coufal, ‘Laienkelch’.

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foot to heal.35 An unfortunate fall from a horse put the ambitious young scholar out of action. He emerged in the Hussite negotiations only after the great debates had taken place. In the middle of March, Cusanus represented a protector of the Council, the Duke Wilhelm of Bavaria, and acted as his ‘Latin mouthpiece’.36 He negotiated with the Hussites and discussed their incorporation, that is, their integration into the Council with all their rights and obligations in mind. An oath of obedience was a necessary precondition for the incorporation. The Bohemians hesitated; first, they wanted their demands relating to the Four Articles to be met. The solution that Cusanus put forward was refreshingly pragmatic against the backdrop of the exhaustive and dogmatic preceding debates: you get the lay chalice and request the remaining three to be considered by the Council as incorporated members (which technically meant dropping those demands).37 Upon closer inspection, this turns out to have been the only sensible compromise. It was finally agreed upon three years later, in 1436, and put down in the Compactata.38 In 1433, however, the Hussites were confused: why settle the most complex problem immediately, of all things, but not the rest? Cusanus’s response: so at least this issue is finally settled, especially since, in his eyes, the lay chalice was a question of faith, while the rest was a matter of reform.39 Naturally, the Hussites disagreed with this. To them, every single one of the Four Articles was a matter of faith, and this obscure doctor40 was unashamedly trying to dilute the relevance of their demands to faith. Indeed, the lay chalice in itself was not a question of pure faith in Cusanus’s view, only the claim that it was necessary for salvation. This was the essence of his academic contribution to the Hussite controversy, the treatise De usu communionis.41 Here, Cusanus puts forward his own discussion of the lay chalice issue. His argumentation is based on Rokycana’s

35 Cf. the letter of Francesco Pizzolpasso to Cusanus (7 January 1433, Basel), in AC, i. 1, no. 154: he wishes Cusanus, injured by a fall from his horse, a speedy recovery, as Basel prepares for the arrival of the Bohemians. On 12 January 1433 Cusanus is still in Koblenz; cf. AC, i. 1, no. 156. He seems to have returned by 30 January 1433, as the Council expressed its gratitude to the envoys of the Duke of Cleves for the friendly reception of Nicholas of Cusa; cf. AC, i. 1, no. 159. On 12 February 1433 he was elected to a conciliar office; cf. AC, i. 1, no. 160. 36 Liber diurnus de gestis Bohemorum, in AC, i. 1, no. 164 (13 March 1433), no. 165 (14 March 1433) and no. 166 (15 March 1433). For the text, see also Christianson, ‘Church’, pp. 135, 145; Fudge, ‘Prokop in the Bath’. 37 Liber diurnus, AC, i. 1, no. 166 (negotiations on 15 March 1433). 38 For the Compactata, see Helmrath, Basler Konzil, p. 353; Senger, ‘Renovatio und unitas’, p. 22; Christianson, ‘Church’, 145; Fudge, ‘Hussites’, pp. 274. 39 Liber diurnus, AC, i. 1, no. 166 ll. 49–52: ‘Ulterius Rokicana dixit: Ex quo in articulo dificiliori sine incorporacione possumus concludere, qualiter eciam non in aliis? Cui Doctor [= Cusanus]: Spero, ut intelleximus, quod cum paucis sumus discordes in aliis articulis, de quibus non videtur disputacioni insistere, sicut de hiis quatuor; alias quando esset finis?’. 40 Cusanus was introduced in the Liber diurnus as ‘some doctor of law’; see AC, i. 1, no. 164 l. 3: ‘Postea per doctorem quendam iuris Nicolaum allocutus est’. 41 Cusanus, De usu communionis (1433/34), in Opera omnia, xv. 1, ed. by Nottelmann and Senger, pp. 3–52. See AC, i. 1, no. 171.

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speech, Cusanus’s corresponding glosses and a canonistic-theological collection of comments on the lay chalice and its necessity for salvation.42 The treatise is designed as a persuasive appeal to the Hussites. Likewise, the text targeted the Council fathers. With such writings circulating and becoming popular amongst the council ‘public’, their author became more likely to be considered for a prestigious post in a committee or delegation.43 The Council became a stepping stone for the careers of young civil and canon lawyers such as Nicholas of Cusa. Every contribution to the never-ending storm of pamphlets also counted as an application letter for greater tasks. Cusanus already found himself on the defensive because his opponents from Trier staged a veritable mud-slinging against him.44 Large-scale ecclesiological schemes such as the Concordantia catholica acted as a safety net for his jeopardized career as well. Cusanus had to distinguish himself from his colleagues. He definitely stood out due to his unrivalled knowledge of legal history and antiquarian skill. Already back in Trier, where he acted as a lawyer in the diocesan conflict, he browsed through the archives searching for age-old deeds and chronicles.45 Later, when he became the Bishop of Brixen, this passion of his literally turned into a mania.46 The search for old texts was not exceptional in and for itself; it was actually in line with the trend of humanist scholarly culture. Moreover, many of his contemporaries including the Hussites had already broken free from the authoritative framework of the Decretum Gratiani and looked for quotations from the Church Fathers and in old Council records. However, Cusanus was nevertheless ahead of his colleagues and opponents thanks to his sensitivity to historical interpretation.47 The methodological range of his historical-critical source analyses is striking. Genealogical analyses of witness series made chronological reconstructions possible. Critical comparisons of parallel traditions enabled a critique of falsification. The most famous example was his unmasking of the Constantinian donation in the Concordantia catholica long before Lorenzo Valla.48 In his Hussite studies as well he locates every authority in its historic context. He presents the Church itself as an institution that took on different shapes throughout history and underwent continuous change. Church norms and authorities such as quotations from the Church 42 The glosses are contained in Bernkastel-Kues, St Nikolaus-Hospital, MS Cod. Cus. 166, fols 1r–21v; see AC, i. 1, no. 169; Hallauer, ‘Glaubensgespräch’, p. 54. The collection of comments is edited under the title Intentio, in Opera omnia, xv. 1, ed. by Nottelmann and Senger, pp. 105–15. See AC, i. 1, no. 170. 43 Cf. Woelki, Lodovico Pontano, pp. 275–323. 44 See AC, i. 1, nos 128, 135, 141, 145, 181. 45 Meuthen, Trierer Schisma, pp. 78 and following, 90–91, 137–38, 210; Woelki, ‘Nikolaus von Kues und das Basler Konzil’, pp. 25–26. 46 See espescially Hallauer, ‘Nikolaus von Kues als Rechtshistoriker’. 47 Cf. Meuthen, ‘Nikolaus von Kues und die Geschichte’; Helmrath, Basler Konzil, p. 425. 48 Cusanus, De concordantia catholica, iii. 2, ed. by Kallen, pp. 328–37; Laurentius Valla, De falso credita et ementita Constantini donatione.

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Fathers, council canons, papal decretals, and even biblical norms (praecepta evangelica) do not constitute a self-sufficient system for Cusanus. Norms have no absolute claims to validity and therefore contradictions between them cannot be resolved dialectically. Rather, they are only immediately valid in and for their period. According to Cusanus, the Church itself is the one single connecting bond, since only the Church can safeguard unity. It is above all norms, even above the praecepta evangelica and Holy Scripture. Of course, these remarks went directly against the quotation most sacred to the Utraquists, John 6. 54: ‘Nisi manducaveritis carnem filii hominis et sanguinem eius biberitis non habetis vitam in vobis’ (Except you eat of the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you). Тhe Hussites did not commit to a plain notion of sola scriptura; however, the return to Scripture was the cornerstone of their doctrine.49 Biblicism in particular had the potential to displace other sources of authority and therefore came to ever renewed prominence in various historical constellations of crisis.50 Inevitably, this cornerstone of Hussite doctrine was radically undermined by Cusanus’s historical interpretation, as he rendered even Holy Scripture itself evanescent and shaped by its own time.51 Only the Church is everlasting: it is older than Scripture and would continue to exist even if a tyrant were to destroy all existing copies.52 The method of historical interpretation, however, went far beyond being a mere tool to refute the doctrine of the Hussites; above all, it introduced further options for negotiation. If all norms and regulations were subject to historic change, a compromise with the Hussites could be reached without giving up on one’s own claims to truthful evidence. Nicholas of Cusa’s critique of Hussite ritual is cuttingly sharp and polemical; however, it is not absolute. Administering communion, the blood of Christ to laymen on a massive scale — that is, to dirty peasants and craftsmen — seems preposterous and dangerous to him, since even the pope himself rinses his mouth twice beforehand to ensure that the sacrament is treated with the due reverence.53 However, the deviant ritual is not heretical in itself, and it could be permitted in theory. The disagreement relates to faith alone: the ritual could be tolerated, but not faith in its necessity for salvation. The margin of compromise was, therefore,

49 Christianson, ‘Church’, p. 147. On conciliarist biblicism, see Prügl, ‘Schriftargument’. 50 For a diachronic comparison, see Pečar and Trampedach, ‘Biblizismus’. For the significance of the literal interpretation of Scripture in the context of Wycliffism and Hussitism see Levy, Holy Scripture and the Quest for Authority, especially pp. 11–23. 51 Cusanus, De usu communionis, in Opera Omnia, xv. 1, ed. by Nottelmann and Senger, pp. 9–10. 52 This argument is fully developed in the Third Letter to the Bohemians, Opera omnia, xv. 1, ed. by Nottelmann and Senger, p. 90. 53 Cusanus, Third Letter to the Bohemians, Opera omnia, xv. 1, ed. by Nottelmann and Senger, p. 85.

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very thin, since, needless to say, the Utraquists insisted on performing their ritual precisely because they believed that it provides a more certain path to salvation. This being said, the Utraquist rite had also become a manifestation of Bohemian cultural and ethnic identity.54 Pia interpretatio became key to Cusanus’s arguments concerned with the compatibility of political benefit and theological norm.55 He developed this notion on the basis of the Aristotelian principle of equitas, epikeia in Greek:56 a deviation from the literal meaning of a norm for reasons of equity. Above all, epikeia was a ruler’s privilege to suspend a certain norm in a particular case. In Nicholas of Cusa’s interpretation, the Church itself has the right to ‘epikeizate’ — a Cusanian neologism, epieikeizare.57 This term, however, was quite problematic for being defined differently by the various academic cultures and traditions that the Council brought together. For the legists, equitas was simply a more lenient reading of the law, in opposition to rigor iuris.58 Meanwhile, equitas canonica meant the opposite in the canonistic and theological domain, namely a narrowing of the literal meaning towards an interpretation as pious as possible, one that promises the greatest assurance of salvation.59 Cusanus still refers to this meaning of the term in De usu communionis,60 but in De pace fidei the phrase pia interpretatio stands for a benign exegesis of Islamic teachings which effectively turns faithful Muslims into clandestine Christians.61 In this sense, Cusanus promised a piissima

54 Cf. Hofer, Johannes Kapistran, ii, p. 62; Christianson, ‘Church’, pp. 133, 138. 55 This phrase was analysed in particular in connection with writings on Islam; see: Hopkins, ‘Role of pia interpretatio’; Kerger, Pia interpretatio; Kerger, ‘Die cusanische “Sichtung des Korans”’, pp. 95–98; Watanabe, ‘Cusanus, Islam, and Religious Tolerance’, p. 15. 56 For this concept see Woelki, Lodovico Pontano, pp. 418–19 with extensive references in n. 97. 57 Cusanus, De usu communionis, Opera omnia, xv. 1, ed. by Nottelmann and Senger, p. 29: ‘Dico, quando praesumo si veritatem scivissem, non mandasse, quoniam non est voluntas ecclesiae nisi ob causas propter quas, quibus cessantibus absque perplexitate — quoniam ita vult ecclesia — potius deo oboedire debeo, cuius mandatum propter causarum falsitatem non est per ecclesiam epieikeizatum. Secus igitur, si ecclesia divinum praeceptum limitaret aut interpretaretur epieikeizando ex causis, quas rationabiles iudicaret et quae veritati subessent, impune is dispensatione ecclesiae utitur’. For an English translation see, Writings, trans. by Izbicki, p. 45. 58 Cf. Horn, Aequitas; Bucci, ‘Per una storia’. 59 See Caron, ‘“Aequitas et interpretation”’; Landau, ‘“Aequitas”’. 60 Opera omnia, xv. 1, ed. by Nottelmann and Senger, p. 13 ll. 20–23: ‘Et hoc sit exemplum, ubi pius etiam intellectus praeceptorum cum maceratione, abstinentia et insecutione vestigiorum apostolorum et praxis Christi extra unitatem damnatur. Sicut econverso rigorosus intellectus praecepti et devius non damnatur, si unitati ecclesiae non praepontur’. For an English translation see Writings, trans. by Izbicki, p. 19. 61 See n. 55. A key text to explain this shift in the meaning of the phrase pia interpretatio in Cusanus is a letter by the Benedictine Johannes Schlitpacher, who visited various monasteries on behalf of Cusanus and called for a more flexible interpretation of the strict rules of the order; Schlitpacher to Cusanus (1452/53), AC, ii. 1, no. 2801 ll. 44–45: ‘Fiat igitur, humiliter obsecro, per benignam interpretacionem’.

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interpretatio to the Hussites as well when he dealt with the Bohemian question again in 1452, this time as a papal legate.62

The Scheduled Legation of 1451/52 From the very start, Bohemia was considered for the great legation, which took Nicholas of Cusa (by then, Cardinal) across all of the German Empire. One of the two legation bulls mentions Bohemia explicitly.63 Interestingly, Nicholas of Cusa formulated this bull himself and allowed it be issued independently of the curial chancellery.64 Bohemia seems to have been an important personal issue for Cusanus. However, it entered his agenda because of the political initiative of others, including requests made by the citizens of Nuremberg and German princes who were affected by the unrest in Bohemian lands, especially Albrecht Achilles, the Elector of Brandenburg. They expected Nicholas of Cusa to help them reach eminently political goals — to promote negotiations and bring about peace.65 In principle, such peacekeeping missions were characteristic of a legate’s responsibilities. The pope consistently provided the legates with the capacity both to reward compliance and to penalize non-compliance via measures such as excommunication and interdict.66 Cusanus should take rigorous measures in Bohemia and exercise the full might of ecclesiastical penalties — this was the tenor of Thomas Ebendorfer’s welcome address at the University of Vienna where the latter taught theology.67 Ebendorfer was an old colleague of Cusanus. Together they took part in the Hussite disputations in Basel. However, what was usually considered to be a legate’s sharpest weapon was

62 Cusanus, Instructions for Johannes Dursmid, his legate to Bohemia (end of June 1452), AC, ii. 1, no. 2671: ‘Dicetis omnibus, quantum cuique affectus sim et quod sim piissimus ad interpretandum quecumque’. 63 Nicholas V, Legation bull for Germany, Bohemia, and bordering areas (24 December 1450), AC, i. 2, no. 952. The second bull, dated 29 December 1450, does not mention Bohemia; AC, i. 2, no. 953. Cf. also a special bull for Bohemian affairs (29 December 1450); AC, i. 2, no. 955. The mission to Bohemia is also mentioned in the protocol of the Consistorium when Cusanus departed; see AC, i. 2, no. 962. Cf. Meuthen, ‘Die deutsche Legationsreise’, p. 443. 64 See Meuthen, ‘Die deutsche Legationsreise’, pp. 446–50; Schneider, ‘Der lange Arm’, p. 36. 65 See AC, i. 2, nos 826–30 (correspondence between Cusanus, Nuremberg, and Ulrich of Rosenberg, the leader of the Bohemian catholics; May 1449). Cf. Heymann, George of Bohemia, p. 44. 66 A good example of the equipment of a papal legate are the bulls for Cusanus’s legation to England, scheduled for 1451 but not accomplished; see AC, i. 3b, nos 1776–96; cf. Meuthen, ‘Die deutsche Legationsreise’, pp. 434–35. A similar number of bulls was given to the legate Juan de Carvajal (1455); see Pitz, Supplikensignatur, pp. 227–30. 67 Thomas Ebendorfer, Welcome Speech to Cusanus at the University of Vienna (1/2 March 1451); AC, i. 3a, no. 1068 ll. 56–61: ‘Contra quos, pater inclite, placeat exire, semen vestrum seminare, pharetram et arcum veri seminantis arripere et censure ecclesiastice arma in rebelles corripere, ut discant non blasphemare’.

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wholly inappropriate in Bohemia: an interdict was often opposed in other cases precisely because it caused heresy to flourish, Hussitism especially. Cusanus himself argued along these lines as a young lawyer at the Council of Basel when he opposed the interdict of Trier in the face of Hussite danger.68 In 1458, when he imposed an interdict on Tyrol, this same objection was directed back against him.69 What else was left to him? The carrot instead of the stick. So as to woo the Bohemian Catholics, Cusanus announced a jubilee indulgence for them as well, at least within the borders of the Meissen diocese.70 Had the legation to Prague really taken place, the jubilee could have been proclaimed there as well. This would surely have put the Hussite critique of indulgence to the test! What remained were money and diplomacy. Cusanus seriously planned to channel at least some of the money collected in exchange for jubilee indulgences towards the Bohemian mission.71 This was severely opposed,72 and his venture remained unrealized. Diplomatic negotiations were complicated as well: the Bohemian nobles were noticeably reluctant to negotiate with Nicholas, a social climber from a bourgeois family. For this reason, between 1436 and 1439 the Council of Basel had sent Philibert de Montjeu, a distinguished nobleman, as a permanent envoy to Prague and not one of the more well-known ‘star theologians’.73

68 See Cusanus’s supplication to the Council of Basel ( July 1432), AC, i. 1, no. 128 ll. 19–21: ‘ne vicina heresis nephanda, proch dolor, latenter diffusa cum vilipendio censurarum ecclesiasticique status contemptu in dies ad internicionem usque crescat’. Cf. Meuthen, Trierer Schisma, p. 133. 69 See Bolzano, Archivio di Stato, BA, Codex Handlung (formerly Innsbruck, TLA, MS 5911), fols 23r–24r (Theobald of Wolkenstein, Michael of Natz and Konrad Tegmayr to Nicolas of Cusa; 6 February 1458): ‘Dicitur etiam in populo, qualiter in favorem v(estre) r(everendissime) p(aternitatis) sit interdictum ponendum pre manibus, ex quibus populus mirum in modum incipit incendi contra v(estram) r(everendissimam) p(aternitatem), clerum et ecclesiam valde facta nostra detestantes, dicentes, qualiter talia ducant ad infidelitatem et fomentum sapiant Hussitarum et alia multa turpia, etc.’. See also Cusanus’s response (10 February 1458); Bolzano, Archivio di Stato, BA, Codex Handlung, fols 24r–25r: ‘Dicunt de Hussitis. Ego arbitror hanc opinionem plus quam hussitariam, quod episcopo iniuriose expulso, ipse teneatur complacere in concedendo curam aut subdelegando. Nullus pontifex securus esset. Tyranni dicerent: “Expellamus illum, qui est contrarius nobis! Sufficiant vobis sacerdotes”’. The texts are now edited in AC, ii. 6, nos 5488 and 5500. 70 See AC, i. 3b, nos 2041 (supplication of the Bishop of Meissen) and 2041 (Cusanus grants the jubilee indulgence for Catholic Bohemians in the Duchy of Meissen; 27 November 1451). 71 See especially AC, i. 3b, no. 2098 (Cusanus to Provost Sigismund of Salzburg, 14 December 1451): ‘Fuit dieta in Egra pro die sancte Barbare instituta cum Bohemis [scheduled on 4 December 1451; see AC, i. 3b, no. 2071], et quia sine aliquot milibus florenorum proficere non potuissem, recusavi venire, quia pecunia carui. Sed sub spe habendi annui in prorogacionem. Et si iterum oportet dimittere illam materiam fidei propter defectum talem, magna verecundia foret’. See also AC, i. 3b, nos 1992, 2095, 2098. Cf. Hallauer, ‘Glaubensgespräch’, p. 59. 72 See AC, ii. 1, nos 2583, 2599 n. 5, 3150 n. 10. 73 See Kleinert, Philibert de Montjeu, p. 376.

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The dialogue became especially difficult due to the presence of a charismatic Franciscan prior Giovanni da Capestrano.74 He was an apostolic nuncio and inquisitor in Bohemia. His tough rhetoric made even the moderate Utraquists shun any negotiation. He never allowed any political leeway and insisted on clear theological positions. Either the Utraquists or all remaining Catholics should be pronounced heretics, and whoever comes to a heretic’s defence is doomed to damnation.75 Cusanus tried to contain the Franciscan prior and to impel him to adopt a milder rhetoric,76 but he also acknowledged his warnings, especially with regard to how the Compactata could be interpreted. To Capestrano, the Compactata represented the ‘shield and helmet’ (clypeus et galea) of heresy. The Hussites could hide behind them and proclaim them to be a faithful commitment made by the Council. Cusanus could not tolerate this either. His relationship to Capestrano remained complicated and strained (out of disagreement over other issues such as the mendicants and the miraculous bleeding hosts);77 however, the two men maintained a collegial and cooperative bond.78 It is clear how Cusanus imagined the success of his legation to Bohemia. A triumphant entry procession in Prague, with a merciful admittance of sons who had gone astray and were now to return to the bosom of the Church, would have become the crowning glory of his mission. Without doubt, this is what Cusanus had hoped for, but he was also aware of potential failure and was not willing to take any big risks. It is, in fact, quite characteristic of him to 74 For the Bohemian mission of Giovanni da Capestrano, see Hofer, Johannes Kapistran, ii, pp. 57–146; Šmahel, Hussitische Revolution, iii, pp. 1897–98; Elm, ‘Johannes Kapistrans Predigtreise’; Viallet, ‘Les Deux Bras’. 75 Giovanni da Capestrano to Cusanus (17 May 1452), AC, ii. 1, no. 2582: ‘E duobus unum eligere me oportet: aut ipsum [sc. Jan Rokycana] hereticare, aut papam cum omnibus catholicis tam principibus ecclesiasticis et secularibus quam subditis universis. […] Si hereticos excusamus, nos ipsos condempnamus. […] Si hoc [sc. Compactatis] se clypeo et galea protegere potuerint, exemplum erit ceteris christianis peragendi similia et se rebellandi contra obedientiam et decreta sancte matris ecclesie’. Cf. Hallauer, ‘Glaubensgespräch’, pp. 61–62. 76 See AC, ii. 1, no. 2156 ll. 12–13 (Cusanus to John of Eych, bishop of Eichstätt; 4 January 1452): ‘Scribat r(everenda) p(aternitas) v(estra) viro domino Iohanni de Capistrano, qui est in Egra, ut non se precipitet ex fervore, sed salva securitate persone edificet, ut solet’. See also Capestrano to Cusanus (17 May 1452), AC, ii. 1, no. 2582 ll. 8–9: ‘nuper ad me perlatum est vestram reverendissimam dominationem in me aliqualiter turbatam, quod cum suis complicibus hereticaverim Rokyzanum’. The Emperor also intervened in moderating Capestrano; cf. AC, i. 3b, no. 1917 (21 October 1451). 77 For the involvement of Capestrano in the quarrel between the mendicant orders, see Woelki, ‘Kirchenrecht’, p. 127 n. 44. For Capestrano’s attitude to the problem of the bleeding hosts, see AC, ii. 1, nos 2892, 2916–17. 78 See especially AC, ii. 1, no. 2100 (to Johann of Eych, bishop of Eichstätt, 14 December 1451). Capestrano possessed also an original of the First Letter to the Bohemians (see n. 86): Capestrano, Archivio dei Minori Francescani, Carte 64. Cf. AC, ii. 1, no. 2664. In the Letters to the Bohemians Cusanus explicitly refers to Capestrano’s statements and authorizes them; Opera omnia, xv. 1, ed. by Nottelmann and Senger, pp. 56, 61, 85.

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sound out scheduled legations through preliminary talks and to call them off if he was not sure of their success. He cancelled four legations in this manner: one to the Teutonic Order in Prussia, two legations to England and, this time, the Bohemian mission.79 The notorious insecurity of the parvenu seems to show itself: in spite of his great academic achievement and confidence, he still feared being derided.80 At first, there was no sign of such an unpleasant prospect. Even though Capestrano and Rokycana had fought a pamphlet war, which had already poisoned the atmosphere81 even before Cusanus was able to step in, all parties including Capestrano had called for a peace conference. It was, however, already hard to agree on a location. Rokycana suggested a remote castle in Moravia, but Capestrano refused to convene at a place populated merely by ydiote, rudes et ignari homines (fools, peasants, and ignorant men).82 The latter would have preferred a big university town as a stage for negotiations.83 The image of a scholarly public as a judge of truth was still alive. At the same time, Capestrano would never have let the Hussites dispute freely again as in Basel, because in the meantime they had developed a remarkable talent for defending their doctrines by appealing to old authoritative writings.84 In June 1452, the conditions of the upcoming peace conference were being negotiated in Regensburg. It is difficult to recover anything certain about Cusanus’s diplomatic performance there, since the testimonies contradict each other. It was probably a mixture of dogmatic rigour and political open-mindedness (mel commiscens cum rigiditate).85 His basic demand sounded 79 For the scheduled legation to Prussia (1454) see AC, ii. 3, nos 4094–96. For the first legation to England (1451) see AC, i. 3a, nos 963, 1610–12, 1617, 1664; AC, i. 3b, nos 1777–96, 1822 n. 1, 2089, 2156, 2157; cf. Meuthen, ‘Die deutsche Legationsreise’, p. 434. For the second mission to England (1456) see AC, ii. 4, nos 4465, 4512, 4516–17, 4540–42, 4653, 4573, 4635. 80 Cusanus to John of Eych, Bishop of Eichstätt (4 January 1452), AC, i. 3b, no. 2156: ‘Omnino prudentissima circumspectio vestra omne ingenium applicet, ne Bohemi ludant nobiscum et derideant nos, uti hactenus ibi tractabatur’. 81 Cf. for instance AC, i. 3b, no. 2410 (Cusanus to Jacob of Sierck, Archbishop of Trier; 20 March 1452). 82 Capestrano to Rokycana (19 October 1451), AC, i. 3b, no. 1910. See also AC, i. 3b, no. 2410: intra silvam. Cf. Hofer, Johannes Kapistran, ii, pp. 100, 105–06. To this problem see also AC, i. 3b, no. 2198. 83 Capistrano to George of Poděbrady (11 October 1451), AC, i. 3b, no. 1987. 84 See Capestrano to Cusanus (17 May 1452), AC, ii. 1, no. 2582 ll. 26–30: ‘Ego semper fugi dietas cum Bohemis inire communi dietarum modo. Ipsi enim omnibus diebus nostris studuerunt suam perfidiam ex antiquis scripturis et observantiis iustificare, et iam habent omnium talium scripturarum supremam notitiam; et certe multe sunt pro communione utriusque speciei. Unde sciens cum pertinacissimis hereticis non esse contendendum, nolui in dietam nisi certo quodam modo consentire’. Cf. Hallauer, ‘Glaubensgespräch’, p. 61; Christianson, ‘Church’, p. 137. 85 Václav of Krumlov to Ulrich of Rosenberg, about the meeting in Regensburg (26 June 1452), AC, ii. 1, no. 2657: ‘Dominus legatus eciam rigide processit cum illis, quamvis interdum mel commiscens cum rigiditate. […] Optulit autem eis materiam tractandam, videlicet quod ipsi exhibeant et prebeant ac promittant obedienciam sedi apostolice realiter et cum effectu,

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uncompromising and undiplomatic: the Bohemians should first pledge obedience to the Church, unconditionally and with full effect. Then they might hope for merciful concessions on the subject of the lay chalice and some further points. This position disappointed not only the Bohemians but also the German princes who were hoping for a negotiated settlement. The outcome of the meeting at Regensburg was phrased accordingly as a political contract between the Imperial Estate and the Bohemian nobles. Cusanus’s so-called Bohemian letters (Epistulae ad Bohemos), however, were completely different. In June, September and October 1452, Nicholas of Cusa sent three circular letters to Bohemia in order to pave the way for the legation, and to sound out the potential risk of its failure: a prophylactic stirring of a hornets’ nest.86 The Bohemian letters contained no offer of political negotiation on a level playing-field. Even their outer appearance made the huge hierarchic disparity between the Cardinal and the Bohemian Estates very clear: they start with an authoritative intitulatio.87 In terms of their content, they joined in with the textual battle that had begun long ago. In particular, they did away with the unspoken agreement to ignore the conflict of interpretations which was ingrained in the Compactata. The main argument of the First Letter to the Bohemians (originally a credential letter of the vicar Johannes Dursmid) was that the Compactata were, in fact, wholly inconsequential.88 The lay chalice was to be tolerated only under certain conditions and only if in conformity to the rite and faith of the Catholic Church. This was never realized, and therefore the Compactata never actually took effect.89 Moreover, it was absurd to treat the Compactata as a mutually binding agreement. One could not pin the Roman Church down to a contract; one could only humbly await her mercy.90 The Second Letter to the Bohemians was written on 16 September 1452, out of frustration over the attack from the Hussite bishop Martin Lupáč.91 The latter wanted to provoke a fundamental theological dispute over the non verbo, sed cum effectu ita, ut non alias fecerint, sed alio modo debeant agere, quia ipse nollet cum illis pacticare, quia notum foret, quod talia et talia promiserunt et tamen illa non servaverunt’. For the meeting in Regensburg, see also AC, ii. 1, nos 2661–62, 2678, 2680. For the condition of the previous obedience performance, see also AC, i. 3b, no. 2181 (10 January 1452), and AC, ii. 1, no. 2671 ll. 16–17. 86 Opera omnia, xv. 1, ed. by Nottelmann and Senger, pp. 55–89 (third letter with the insertion of the first and the second letter; pp. 58–64 and 65–71). Writings, trans. by Izbicki, pp. 356– 429. For the intention of the Letters to the Bohemians, see AC, ii. 1, nos 2680, ll. 20–21; 2682, ll. 5–6. 87   Opera omnia, xv. 1, ed. by Nottelmann and Senger, pp. 55, 58, 65. 88  Cusanus, First Letter to the Bohemians, Opera omnia, xv. 1, ed. by Nottelmann and Senger, p. 61. 89  Cusanus, First Letter to the Bohemians, Opera omnia, xv. 1, ed. by Nottelmann and Senger, p. 63. 90  Cusanus, First Letter to the Bohemians, Opera omnia, xv. 1, ed. by Nottelmann and Senger, p. 60. 91  Martin Lupáč to Cusanus (14 July 1452), AC, ii. 1, no. 2696. Cf. Hallauer, ‘Glaubensgespräch’, pp. 66–68; Senger, ‘Ecclesia mathematica’, p. 396.

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notion of the church. Cusanus did not let himself become involved with it and only outlined the political framework again: obedience first, and as for the rest, we will see later.92 No prospect of anything beyond pia interpretatio. Cusanus’s Third (and last) Letter to the Bohemians, dated 11 October 1452, was in essence an apology for the failed dialogue; above all, an attempt to justify himself before the forsaken Bohemian Catholics. It became clear that the peace conference, which had been postponed again and again, would never take place. At this point, Cusanus once again employed his comprehensive erudition. The historical method was still prevalent, even stronger than in De usu communionis.93 Political sensitivity was no longer a priority. As a legacy of a wasted opportunity, in a sense, Cusanus summed up his arguments once again and delivered material which the Bohemian Catholics could put to use in their struggle with the Utraquists and with their own conscience.

The Curial Debate of 1462 Cusanus addressed the Hussite question one last time at the beginning of 1462. By then, he had long been banished from his diocese Brixen and had dedicated himself to being the voice of the reform and the Pope’s ‘good conscience’ at the curia.94 A Hussite delegation to Rome asked for the long-awaited confirmation of the Compactata.95 Cusanus was present at the negotiations and wrote an expert statement for the Pope, of which only a short excerpt has survived.96 In it, Cusanus expanded his dismissive position and added a substantial argument. Back then, the lay chalice was promised only to a generation of Bohemians that was used to this ritual anyway. Since this generation was slowly disappearing, the Compactata had already become virtually ineffective. Now it was time for a new legation, namely one that Bessarion, a friend of Cusanus, could carry out, potentially presenting the Bohemians with prospects of merciful concessions on the basis of equitas.97

92 Opera omnia, xv. 1, ed. by Nottelmann and Senger, p. 70. 93 Cf. Cusanus, Third Letter to the Bohemians, Opera omnia, xv. 1, ed. by Nottelmann and Senger, p. 73: ‘Nam ignorantia historiarum et scripturarum decepit Iacobellum et sequaces sacerdotes, qui plerosque hactenus seduxerunt’. This refers to Jakoubek of Stříbro († 1429), for Cusanus the author of the utraquist doctrine. Cf. Christianson, ‘Church’, p. 127; Coufal, ‘Sub utraque specie’. 94 For this period, see Meuthen, Die letzten Jahre; Meuthen, Nikolaus von Kues 1401–1464. Skizze einer Biographie, pp. 119–38. 95 Cf. Hallauer, ‘Glaubensgespräch’, p. 69; Heymann, George of Bohemia, pp. 262–76; Fudge, ‘Hussites’, p. 280. 96 Consilium, Opera omnia, xv. 1, ed. by Nottelmann and Senger, p. 101. Cf. Senger, ‘Renovatio und unitas’, p. 22. 97 Cusanus, Consilium, Opera omnia, xv. 1, ed. by Nottelmann and Senger, p. 101: ‘Apostolica Sedes complacebit regi [sc. George of Poděbrady, King of Bohemia] et regno in illo et omnibus, quae dei, regis et regni honorem, pacem et utilitatem respiciunt et faciet omnia grata, quae aequitate permittente possibilia sunt’.

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Conclusion Cusanus’s view of the Hussite question remained remarkably constant over decades. The summary will therefore be brief. At the core we can observe a tenacious resistance to the tendency of politics and theology to drift more and more apart. Cusanus refuses to accept implicit compromises and the rhetorical disguise of theological dissent for the sake of political arrangements. Instead, he advocates the compatibility of theological truth and political utility, of pax and fides. The Neoplatonic model of unity and variety became the basis for his famous formula of the unity of faith and variety of rites (una religio in rituum varietate). It was already incorporated in De usu communionis and then fully developed in De pace fidei.98 However, Cusanus was able to argue much more clearly in the dialogue with the Hussites. His historic interpretation of texts was the key that opened up space for mild and benign interpretations in the spirit of equitas-epikeia. Against the iron logic of dialectic, he offered a flexible, politically sensitive interpretation by the Roman Church, which had to remain the pivotal point of unity. These were the only conditions which allowed for a concord between the true proof of canonical norms and political utility. In short: pursuing diplomacy by means of theology is possible; however, the process remains exhausting.

Works Cited Manuscript and Archival Sources Bernkastel-Kues, St Nikolaus-Hospital, Cod. Cus. 166 Bolzano, Archivio di Stato, BA, Codex Handlung (formerly Innsbruck, TLA, Cod. 5911) Capestrano, Archivio dei Minori Francescani, Carte 64 Primary Sources Acta Cusana. Quellen zur Lebensgeschichte des Nikolaus von Kues, vol. i. 1–4, ed. by Erich Meuthen (Hamburg: Meiner, 1976–2000); vol. ii. 1, ed. by Hermann Hallauer and others (Hamburg: Meiner, 2012); vol. ii. 2–7, ed. by Johannes Helmrath and Thomas Woelki (Hamburg: Meiner, 2014–2020) (= AC) Augustinus, Aurelius, Ennarationes in Psalmos, vol. iii, Aurelii Augustini Opera, 10. 2, ed. by Luc Verheijen and others, Corpus Christianorum Series Latina, 39 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1956)

98 Senger, ‘Renovatio und unitas’, p. 27.

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Deutsche Reichstagsakten unter König Albrecht II., i: 1438, ed. by Gustav Beckmann, Deutsche Reichstagsakten. Ältere Reihe, 13 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1925) Johannes de Segovia, De gladio divini spiritus in corda mittendo, ed. by Ulli Roth, 2 vols, Corpus Islamo-Christianum. Series Latina 7 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2012) Laurentius Valla, De falso credita et ementita Constantini donatione, ed. by Wolfram Setz, Quellen zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters, 10 (Weimar: Böhlau, 1976; reprint 1986) Nicholas of Cusa, Writings on Church and Reform, trans. by Thomas M. Izbicki, The I Tatti Renaissance Library, 33 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008) Nicolai de Cusa Opera omnia, vol. xiv. 3: De concordantia catholica. Liber tertius, ed. by Gerhard Kallen (Hamburg: Meiner, 1969); vol. xv. 1: Opuscula Bohemica, ed. by Stephan Nottelmann and Hans Gerhard Senger (Hamburg: Meiner, 2014) Mansi, Giovanni Domenico, ed., Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, vol. xxx (Paris: Welter, 1904) Monumenta conciliorum generalium seculi decimi quinti. Concilium Basiliense. Scriptores, 4 vols, ed. by Ernst Birk and others (Vienna: Holzhausen, 1857–1935) Secondary Works Baum, Wilhelm, Nikolaus Cusanus in Tirol. Das Wirken des Philosophen und Reformators als Fürstbischof von Brixen, Schriftenreihe des Südtiroler Kulturinstituts, 10 (Bolzano: Athesia, 1983) Bartoš, František Michálek, ‘Cusanus and the Hussite Bishop Martin Lupáč’, Communio viatorum, 5 (1962), 35–46 Bendel, Rainer, ‘Das Kirchenbild des Johannes von Rokycana auf dem Konzil in Basel’, in Sudetenland, 41 (1999), 270–82 Bucci, Onorato, ‘Per una storia dell’equità’, in La persona giuridica collegiale in diritto romano e canonico. Aequitas Romana ed aequitas canonica. Atti del III colloquio (Roma 24–26 aprile 1980) e del IV colloquio (Roma 13–14 maggio 1981) Diritto romano — diritto canonico, ed. by Tarcisio Bertone and Ononorato Bucci, Utrumque ius, 11 (Rome: Libreria Ed. Vaticana, 1990), pp. 257–317 Budzik, Stanislaw, Doctor pacis. Theologie des Friedens bei Augustinus, Innsbrucker theologische Studien, 24 (Innsbruck: Tyrolia, 1988) Cadili, Alberto, ‘Gli hussiti come (mancata) minoranza conciliare al Concilio di Basilea (1431–1433)’, Annuarium Historiae Conciliorum, 49 (2020), 322–51 Caron, Pier Giovanni, ‘“Aequitas et interpretatio” dans la doctrine canonique aux xiiie et xive siècles’, in Proceedings of the Third International Congress of Medieval Canon Law, Strasbourg, 3–6 September 1968, ed. by Stephan Kuttner, Monumenta Iuris Canonici, Series C: Subsidia, 4 (Città del Vaticano: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1971), pp. 131–41 Christianson, Gerald, Cesarini, the Conciliar Cardinal: The Basel Years, 1431–1438, Kirchengeschichtliche Quellen und Studien, 10 (St Ottilien: EOS, 1979)

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Index nominum

Albert of Austria, duke  388 Albert of Saxony  144 Albertus Magnus  245 Albrecht Achilles  413, 419 Alexander of Hales  246 Ambrose, St  245, 252, 375 Andrew of Brod  395–96 Andrew of Regensburg  402–03 Anna of Frymburk  279 Anne of Bohemia  151 Anselm of Canterbury  30, 55, 57, 132 Proslogion 58–59 Aristotle  30, 39, 42–43, 117–34, 245, 418 Categories 53 De caelo et mundo 117 Metaphysics  39 nn. 33–34, 43 Physics  43, 117 Posterior Analytics 147 Arnold of Seehausen  260 Augustine, St  30, 57, 132, 191–93, 236, 245, 257, 300–01, 355, 371–72, 375, 381, 412 De civitate Dei  105, 111 De doctrina Christiana  45 n. 55, 99–100 De ordine  44–45, 59 De sermone domini in monte 185 De utilitate credendi 88 Averroes 119 Bale, John  315 Barthélemy Clantier  106–07 Bartholomäus of Ebrach  391, 397–98, 400 Bartholomew of Brescia  259

Basel (– Ferrara – Florence), Council of  10, 14 n. 13, 16, 20, 157, 168–71, 306, 308–12, 349–50, 382, 402–03, 409, 411–20, 422 Bede  54 n. 85, 99, 236, 252, 301 Benedict XIII, pope  252 Berengar of Tours  17, 258–61 Bernard of Clairvaux  112, 228–29, 240, 311 n. 40 Boethius 32 Bonaventure  30, 55, 108, 112, 126, 246, 248 Bologna, University of  157–72, 245 Branda Castiglioni, cardinal  20, 391–92, 397, 399–403 Bridget of Sweden  299 Calixtus III, Bulla Turcorum  305, 307 Cassiodorus 99 Cicero, De inventione 110 Clement VII, pope  37 n. 28, 252 Clementines  182, 190, 192 Cologne, University of  158–72 Constance, Council of  10, 15, 18, 22, 30–31, 57, 62–63, 101, 112, 157, 162, 164–66, 223–40, 254, 258, 261, 299, 304–05, 308–09, 343, 362, 364, 389–90, 394, 396, 399–400, 402, 410–11 Cosmas of Prague  375 Cosme de Montserrat  246 Cracow, University of  52, 158–72, 401–02 Cyprian 334 Damasus, pope  282 Decretals 191

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Descartes, René  47 Discours de la Méthode 47–48 Dionysius the Areopagite  334 Durand of Saint-Pourçain  108, 248 Eliška of Kravaře and Plumlov  363–66, 369, 372 Ephesus, Council of  256 Erasmus Fullar  303–04 Eriugena  256, 258 Étienne Tempier  13 n. 12, 34 n. 18 Eugenius IV, pope  412 Eusebius of Caesarea  282 Felix V, pope  412 Ferrara, Council of  10, 306, 312, 412. See also Basel Florence, Council of  10, 303, 306, 312. See also Basel Floretum 181–96 Franciszek Krzyszowic of Brzeg 147 Friedrich of Saxonia, duke  413 Gerard of Kalkar  52 Gerard of Siena  246 Giovanni da Capestrano  421–22 Giuliano Cesarini  409 Glossa ordinaria  202, 211–13, 281, 352 Glossed Gospels 211 Gottschalk of Nepomuk  248 Gratian, Decretum  181–93, 259 Gregory of Rimini  246 Gregory the Great  32–33, 245, 252, 301 Pastoral Rule 32 Hans Griesser  389 Haymo of Halberstadt  43 n. 49, 44 n. 49 Heinrich Kalteisen  310–11, 402–03 Helmoldus de Soltwedel  143 Henry of Ghent  47 n. 60, 108 Henry of Langenstein, Lectura super Genesim 398

Henry of Segusio (Hostiensis)  190 Henry Totting of Oyta  50, 56–57, 149, 158 Hermann of Summo  31 Hugh of Saint-Victor  83–84 De sacramentis 251 Hugh of Strasbourg: Compendium theologice veritatis 192 Humbert of Romans  32–34 Innocent III, pope  190, 251 Innocent IV, pope  79 Isidore, Etymologies 188 Jacob de Voragine  353 Legenda aurea 229 Jacob of Clavaro  391–92, 397–400 Jakoubek of Stříbro  139, 162–68, 322–25, 329, 333–35, 350, 362, 372, 378, 394–96 James of Eltville  248, 259–61, 266 Jan Brugman  49 Jan Čapek  373 Jan Hus  10–11, 15, 18, 20–22, 31, 36, 49–63, 105, 117–22, 126 n. 23, 132–33, 139, 160, 162–72, 224–40, 249–50, 254, 258, 261, 278–79, 281, 290, 304–05, 342–56, 361–62, 366–67, 374, 376, 378, 381–83, 389, 394, 396–97, 411 Abiciamus opera tenebrarum 228 Collecta 228 Contra occultum adversarium 228 De cognicione Dei 231 De credere 236 De cruciata 162 De ecclesia  165, 228, 232, 234, 236–38, 354 De fidei sue elucidacione 230, 236–38 De libris hereticorum legendis 119 De mandatis Dei et de Oracione Dominica 231

i nd e x no mi nu m

De matrimonio 231 De peccato mortali 231 De penitencia 231 De sacramento corporis et saguinis Domini  231, 239 De sex erroribus 236 De sufficiencia legis Cristi 162–61, 168, 230, 235 De sumpcione sangwinis Iesu Cristi sub specie vini 230 De tribus dubiis 236–38 De tribus hostibus hominis 231 Defensio libri de Trinitate 117–19, 162, 164 Dixit Martha 240 Explicatio in septem priora capita primae epistolae s. Pauli ad Corinthios 226 Leccionarium bipartitum 226, 235, 347–48 Polemica 234 Postilla adumbrata  234–35, 237 Principia 50–61 Puncta  225, 234 Questiones 234 Quodlibet  133, 226 Responsiones ad articulos Páleč  228, 232 Responsiones ad articulos Wyclef 232 Responsiones ad deposiciones testium contra M. Iohannem Hus 231–32 Responsiones breves ad articulos ultimos 232 Sermo de pace  228–30, 233, 239 Sermones de primo anno predicacionis 239 Sermones de sanctis 226 Sermones in Bethlehem 346 Jan of Jenštejn  364 Jan of Jesenice  396–97 Jan of Jičín  168 Jan of Příbram  16, 170–71, 323–26, 372–84

Jan Rokycana  168–69, 349–50, 352, 354, 356, 414, 422 Jean de Meun, Roman de la Rose 99 Jean Gerson  10–11, 13–14, 20, 22, 90, 99–112, 158, 165–66, 410 De consolatione theologiae 109– 10 De contractibus 109–10 De duplici logica  104, 106 De protestatione circa materiam fidei 165–66 Montagne de contemplation 108 Octo regulae super stylo theologico 101–03 Talia de me 99 Jean of Roquetaillade  328 Jean Petit  101, 105, 112 Jerome, St  191–92, 245, 277, 281–86, 301, 305–06, 375, 381 Super Abidiam 305 Jerome of Prague  10, 118–21, 139, 247, 258, 304–05, 389, 394 Jindřich Zdík  276 Joachim of Fiore  326–31, 336 Johannes Andreae  190 Johannes Hoffmann of Schweidnitz, Debemus invicem diligere 396–97 Johannes Hübner  232 Johannes Nider  402–03 Johannes von Berg  51 John Buridan  147–49 John Chrysostom  311 n. 40, 374–75 John Duns Scotus  30, 42, 46 n. 58, 112, 246, 248, 256 John of Capistrano  303–04, 306 John of Holland  149 Consequentie 143 Obligationes 146 John of Montesono  31, 36–38, 40–43, 46, 63 John of Ragusa  168–69, 411 Tractatus de ecclesia 169 John of Ripa  52, 112

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4 36

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John Stokes  163 John Wyclif  10, 13–15, 17–18, 20–22, 49, 57, 61, 75–94, 117–34, 139–51, 157, 161–72, 181–93, 201, 223–40, 245–70, 304–05, 309, 311, 321 n. 2, 343–56, 365–66, 370 n. 30, 371, 373–74, 376–78, 381, 389, 397 De blasfemia 161 De Christo et suo adversario Antichristo 233 De civili dominio  86–87, 111, 233–34 De dominio divino  85–86, 130 De ecclesia  87–88, 172, 228, 233–34, 236–38 De Eucharistia  250, 258, 264–65 De logica 163 De mandatis divinis 184–93 De potentia productiva Dei ad extra  121–28, 130, 133 De potestate pape  161–63, 234 De scientia Dei 133–34 De stato innocencie 132 De Trinitate  117–18, 124 De universalibus  121, 131, 162–63 De veritate sacrae Scripturae 127– 29, 132, 134, 233 Decalogue 166 Dialogus  84–86, 87–89, 233 Sermones  225, 233–35, 237–40, 343, 347 Summa de ente 121 Trialogus  83–84, 89, 131–32, 163, 233 John XXII, pope  31–32, 34, 62, 164 Juan of Segovia  410, 412

Marsilius of Inghen  43–44, 50, 52, 55–56, 147, 149 Principia 52 Summulae logicales 143 Martin Húska  325, 329, 374 Martin Lupáč  412, 423 Martin Luther  172 Martin V, pope  364 Martinus Anglicus  143, 151 Matěj of Janov  364, 378–82 The Rules of the Old and New Testaments 169 Matěj of Knín  118, 121, 133–34, 139, 226 Quodlibet 122 Matouš of Zbraslav  51–53, 55–56, 58, 160 Principium 58 Matthew of Cracow  364–65 Meister Eckhart 31–38, 46–48, 56, 62–63 Liber benedictus 33 Michael de Causis  232 Michal Polák  352–53 Mikuláš Biceps  160 Mikuláš of Pelhřimov  312 n. 45, 326, 331–36, 352 De confessione Taboritarum 168 Milíč of Kroměříž  227–28

Ludwig of Bavaria, duke  413

Niccolò Tudeschi  412 Nicholas II, pope  259–60 Nicholas V, pope  245–47, 261 Nicolaus Cusanus  11, 16, 18, 409–25 Nikolaus of Dinkelsbühl  247–49, 262, 396–97 Nikolaus of Dresden  396 Nicholas of Lyra  41, 352–53 Postilla litteralis  202–03, 210–13, 215–17 Nikolaus Stoer  51, 53

Margarita Decreti  181–82, 186–93 Mařík Rvačka  363–66, 369, 372

Oldřich of Rosenberg  364 Oldřich of Znojmo  310

Konrad of Soltau  160

i nd e x no mi nu m

Origen  191, 381 Oxford, University of  165, 262, 300, 314–15 Paris, University of  10, 36, 38, 40, 52, 104, 158–59, 248, 259, 387, 402–03 Paulus Wann de Kemnat  254, 262 Peter Abelard, Sic et non 33 Peter Auriol  246 Peter Comestor, Historia scholastica 212 Peter Czech of Pulkau  247, 249, 253–58, 261–63, 267–70, 391, 397–400 Vespera  253–57, 262–63, 267–70 Peter John Olivi  246, 328 Peter Lombard  60, 78, 251–54, 256, 259 Magna Glosatura  202–03, 212, 215–17 Sentences  50–52, 54, 57, 77–78, 117, 158–59, 236, 238, 240, 245–48, 254, 258, 261 Peter Mangolt  51, 53–54 Peter of Candia  50, 52, 248 Peter of Spain, Summulae logicales 104 Peter Partridge  309 Peter Payne  170, 304, 309, 312, 373, 376 Peter Reicher of Pirchenwart 246–70 Petr Chelčický  356, 383–84 Petr Kániš  374 Petr of Mladoňovice  239 Petr Zmrzlík de Svojšín  279–81 Philibert de Montjeu  413, 420 Pierre d’Ailly  37–38, 40–45, 50, 57, 158, 410 Pisa, Council of  10, 308–09 Plato  117, 119–20, 127 Prague, University of  10, 50–51, 118, 139–51, 158, 162, 165–66, 227– 28, 232, 262, 279, 343, 361–84 Prokop of Kladruby  160

Prokop of Plzeň  139, 170 Prokop the Bald  382 Pseudo-Chrysostom  187, 191–92 Opus Imperfectum 185 Quintilian 101 Reginald Pecock  299, 308, 311–13 Richard Barbe  248 Richard Billingham  144–46, 151 Speculum puerorum  143, 147 Richard Brinkley  146–51 Insolubilia 143 Richard Ferrybridge  144–46 Richard FitzRalph  248 Richard II, king of England  151 Richard Kilvington  147, 151 Richard of Mediavilla  246 Richard Rolle  211 Richard Wyche 15 Robert Alyngton, Insolubilia pulchra 141 Robert Burton  309 Robert Grosseteste  122–24, 132, 300, 301–03, 314 Ad honorem 166 Hexaёmeron 122 Rosarium  14–15, 181–96 Siena, Council of  403 Sigismund Korybut  375 Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor  364, 403, 411, 413 Šimon of Tišnov  367–75, 383 Stanislav of Znojmo  17, 139–41, 148, 150, 165, 245–70, 380 De corpore Christi  250, 262 Tractatus de universalibus (maior) 140 Štěpán of Páleč  51–54, 139–46, 151, 165, 232 Collecta de obligationibus 146 Commentarius in De universalibus Johannis Wyclif 140–42 De suppositionibus 143–45

437

43 8

i n de x n o m i n u m

Disputata confusionum 143–45 Notabiliora confusionum  143, 145 Notabiliora consequentiarum 143, 145 Notabiliora in Richardi Billinghami Tractatum de propositionibus 145–46 Syon Abbey  300, 314 Thomas à Kempis, Imitation of Christ 382 Thomas Anglicus, Liber propugnatorius super primum Sententiarum contra Johannem Scotum  46 n. 58 Thomas Aquinas  30, 32, 36–44, 63, 79–80, 119, 126, 192, 245, 248, 252, 394 Catena aurea 211 Thomas Arundel  309 Constitutiones 165 Thomas Bradwardine  112, 126 Thomas Cyrcetur  313 Thomas Ebendorfer  402–03, 419 Thomas Gascoigne  17–18, 299–316 Liber de veritatibus  17, 299–316 Thomas Hibernicus, Manipulus florum  191, 300, 313 Thomas Netter of Walden  14 n. 13, 16 n. 19, 91–92, 311–12 Doctrinale antiquitatum 91–92, 311 Thomas of Cleves  147, 149–50 Thomas of Manlevelt  143, 145, 147, 149–50 De suppositionibus 150 Thomas of Strasbourg  55–56, 246, 248, 260–61, 266

Principium 56 Thomas of Sutton  30, 46–47 Thomas Spofford  305 Tomáš Štítný  356 Tomasz of Strzępin  52 Toulouse, University of  37 n. 28 Tractatus contra articulos Hussitarum 391–403 Tres modi respondendi 140–41 Urban II, pope  186–87 Urban V, pope  37 Václav Koranda  324 Vavřinec of Březová  322–24, 329–31 Vienna, University of  17, 60 n. 108, 157–72, 245–70, 387–403, 419 Wenceslas IV, king of Bohemia 279–80 Wilhelm of Bavaria, duke  415 William Gray  309 William of Auvergne  108 William of Auxerre  76, 79 Summa aurea  43 n. 49, 45, 46 n. 57, 78 William of Heytesbury  143, 146–47, 151 William of Nideggen  31 William Thorpe 15 William of Ockham  15, 31, 46 n. 58, 80–83, 94, 104, 126, 160 Dialogus  80–83, 102 Wycliffite Bible 201–18 Zbyněk of Házmburk  117

General Index

affectus (and aspectus) mentis 123–24 ambiguity  40–42, 47 Antichrist  227, 332, 334, 336, 354, 373, 382, 398 apocalypticism Hussite 321–37 Joachimite  15, 323, 326–31, 336–37 arts, Faculty of  43 n. 48, 245 Faculty of, University of Prague  52 n. 79,118, 120,142, 143 n. 16, 146, 147, 151 Faculty of, University of Vienna  247 n. 7 assent  75–85, 124, 146 n. 31 being (and non-being)  38–39 Bible  236–38, 324, 327, 330–36, 351–52, 355 and logic  104, 124–32 and rhetoric  101–06 as argument  369–71, 373 as authority  75–97 as norm  87, 158–59, 162, 168, 417 exegesis of  15, 20, 105–06, 201–21, 301, 321–22, 331–37, 341–56, 400 in Czech  19, 275–97 in Latin (Vulgate)  202, 205, 208–10, 275–77, 280–81, 283–84, 291 literal sense of  57, 202, 211, 321–33, 400 prologues of  201–13, 218, 281–83 summaries of  14, 20, 201–21, 284–87 translations of  201–21

Wycliffite  19 n. 31, 201–21, 281, 290 Wyclif ’s view of  126–34 see also law borrowings, textual  223–27, 245–74, 343–44, 347 capitula-lists, in Bibles  209–10, 218, 285 casuistry 109 catechesis  231, 279, 343, 356 chiliasm 321–37 Church apostolic  91, 92, 106, 166, 167, 311, 369, 370, 372, 383 institutional  79–83, 157, 167, 169, 365, 373, 380, 416–17 of the Elect  88, 352, 353, 376, 377, 383 primitive  228, 311, 322, 332–37, 351, 353 unity of  372–76¸ 381–83 universal  79–83, 91, 171, 368, 377–81, 390 clergy and laity  19, 20, 75–97, 228–29, 275, 341–60, 365, 367, 369, 371–72, 383, 387–89, 392, 398, 403 role of  20 poverty of  369, 398 commonplace books  300, 313 communion (of infants)  167 under both kinds. See Utraquism Compactata  355, 413–15, 421, 423–24 compilatio  203, 217, 310–18, 398–400

440

ge n e r a l i n d e x

condemnation. See errors congregatio fidelium 83 conscience  15, 48–49, 63 n. 118, 164, 187–88, 193 Constitutions, Archbishop Arundel’s 165 contemplation, affective  14, 107–12 contingency (of creatures)  41–42 councils, general  60, 82, 299, 305–11, 401–02, 410 see also Index nominum entries: Basel; Constance; Ephesus; Ferrara; Florence; Pisa; Siena Creed, the  35, 78–79, 91–93, 235–36, 277–79 crusades Hussite 409 Ottoman  302–03, 306, 307 ‘cultural crystallization’  9, 21, 30–31, 46, 49, 54, 63, 126 debates, academic  29–72 diplomacy  409, 414, 420, 425 disciplines, academic  14, 20, 45, 47 n. 61, 100, 117–37, 344 disputations  51–52, 147, 158, 168, 170, 172, 309 n. 32, 347, 401–03, 409–12, 419, 422 quodlibetal  59 n. 106, 118, 122, 133, 158, 226 distinctiones  300, 313, 315 dubia 343–47 ecclesiology  10, 14, 15 n. 17, 21, 76, 81, 90, 102, 105, 157, 165, 169, 172, 231–32, 351–53, 355, 416 eloquence  99, 100, 110 epistemology  14, 76, 84, 117–37, 250 equity (epikeia)  418, 424–25 errors, condemnation of  101–06, 158–62, 226, 231–32, 343 essence, and existence  47 n. 60 eternity of God  46–47, 54–55

of the world  34–36, 40–44, 51–56, 117–37 Eucharist, the sacrament of  17, 22, 63 n. 116, 245–74, 312 n. 45, 329, 347 see also Utraquism experts  15, 20, 81, 82, 92, 107–11, 388–90, 399, 411 faith 236–38 implicit  20, 75–97 proclamation of  157–72, 236, 378 unity of  425 see also reason florilegia  18, 228–29, 239–40, 300, 313, 315 Four Articles, Hussite  18, 168, 309–10, 376, 390–93, 396–403, 415 free will, divine  38, 40, 41 genre  229, 341–42 Hebrew names, interpretation of 283–84 heresy  9, 10, 11, 15, 18, 19, 33 n. 12, 43 n. 49, 54, 57, 63, 80, 102 n. 16, 105, 117, 119, 161–62, 165, 172, 190, 247 n. 7, 251 n. 29, 253–61, 304, 306, 307 n. 26, 329, 371–74, 387–90, 401, 420–21 hermeneutics. See Bible, exegesis of hierarchy 75–97 church–  353–54, 362, 365–67, 373, 379 of disciplines  45, 102 of languages  20, 100, 278 historiography, scholastic  13 ideas, Platonic  227 imitatio Christi  15, 383 ‘implicit faith’. See faith individual (and the Church)  75–97 indulgences  162, 228 n. 23, 307, 411, 420 innocence, state of  322–23, 329–30, 334, 336 inquisition  387–90, 421

ge ne ral i nd e x

intellect  29, 84, 106–07, 110, 112 and will  29, 46 n. 58 intolerance  9, 31

necessity (of creatures)  36, 38–42 nominalism, philosophical  31 n. 6, 50, 144, 147–51

justice  188–89, 191 n. 26, 412–13

oaths  57, 59–61, 157–77, 190–91 see also protestatio obedience  75–97, 351, 353–55, 356 opinio  13, 15, 76, 83–85, 88–89, 93, 252 orality  348, 355 orders, religious  353–54, 421 originalia  18, 313–14

laity  9, 14, 20, 75–97, 275, 278–79, 284, 290, 300, 343, 348, 350–51, 355–56, 361–85, 402, 413 n. 27 education of  362, 365, 372, 382 see also clergy Last Judgment  191–92 Latin, status of  110 law God’s  102, 161–66, 171, 230, 233, 236, 249, 278–79, 322, 332–33, 335, 351, 356, 370–72 human and divine  14, 181–99, 311 lex viva 109 natural  188, 189 positive  102, 188, 189 Wycliffite engagement with 181–99 see also equity lawyers  10, 11, 13, 81, 183 n. 7, 187, 410, 416 licentia docendi  45 n. 56 liturgy  11, 19, 276–77, 280, 284–91, 366 logic  17, 89, 104, 139–56, 345–47 moral  106, 112 see also Bible masters, secular  10 n. 4 materia subiecta  103–04, 112 matter  38–39, 117–37 medicine 108–09 method / methodology homiletic 341–60 scholastic  11–15, 29–72, 117–37, 343, 349, 356 moral life / morality, role of  9, 14–16, 20, 57–59, 103–12, 124, 130, 240, 332, 337, 352, 370, 372, 383

paradoxes 141–42 patristics, role and study of  301–18 peace  30, 60, 111, 409, 412–14, 419–25 perplexitas  9, 16, 412 philosophy  9–25, 29–72 christiana philosophia 121 in sermons  341–60 pagan  43, 54, 47, 101 Wyclif ’s concept of  118–37 plagiarism  18, 248 popes, papacy  16, 31–34, 37–38, 45 n. 56, 46, 48, 62, 79, 81–82, 88–89, 161, 165, 171, 192, 237, 252, 310, 352–53, 369, 373–77, 390, 424 see also Schism, Great potentia absoluta and ordinata 122, 126, 134 preaching  15, 19, 32–34, 108, 190, 231, 235, 237, 300, 301, 307–11, 321–26, 329–36, 341–56, 392, 398, 411 see also sermons predestination  21, 307–11, 345, 352, 381, 383 principia  50–61, 121, 124, 129, 160, 126 n. 23, 158–60, 260 probability  13, 84, 89, 106 prophecy  321–26, 331–34 propositions (in logic)  141–48, 151 protestatio  15, 22, 51, 60–61, 157–77 see also oaths

441

442

ge n e r a l i n d e x

realism, philosophical  50, 56–57, 139–56 reason  42–45, 44 n. 51, 59, 82, 112, 124, 131, 161–64, 168, 322–24 rhetoric (and theology)  20–21, 99–115 sacraments 369–71 sapientia  106–08, 126 scandal  31, 29–72, 103 Schism, Great  9, 15, 20, 30, 102, 248–49, 252, 258, 261, 262, 308, 365, 410, 411 scholasticism late-medieval 29–72 mos scholasticus 111 anti-scholasticism 311 see also method / methodology ‘schools of thought’, latemedieval  17, 30–31 scientia  47, 56 n. 96, 83, 102, 104 n. 23, 107, 128 n. 32 Sentences commentaries  50–52, 54, 56 n. 95, 59 n. 104, 61 n. 113, 121–22, 158–60, 164, 226, 236, 238, 240, 245–74 sermons collections of  342, 348–49 Hussite  19, 224–28, 342–56 model 348 see also preaching sodomy 335–37 sophistry  19, 344–45 statutes, university  43 n. 48, 60 n. 108, 142, 147, 157–60, 387 style exegetical, homiletic, theological  13, 20, 99–115, 202, 205, 210, 214, 226, 239, 282, 343–44 stylus theologicus  13, 101–06 suppositions, logical  142–45, 148–51

theologians  10, 20, 40, 43, 45 n. 56, 48, 52, 58–59, 62, 76–81, 99, 102–03, 107–11, 132, 158, 311, 321–22, 331–35, 344, 361, 364–65, 378 disdain for  325–27 theology affective 106–12 and canon law  13, 102, 103, 410 and method  117–37 and politics  409–31 and rhetoric  99–115 Faculty of  9, 45, 157–59 Faculty of, University of Paris  36–38, 159, 387 Faculty of, University of Prague 160 Faculty of, University of Vienna  60 n. 108, 245–74, 387 mystical 14 popularization of  110 role of  58, 131–32 speculative  107–12, 343–46 vernacular 20 see also tradition tradition and exegesis  105, 218 apostolic  15, 91, 92 Church and  101, 252 extra–scriptural 105–06 theological  42–43, 63, 106, 126– 27, 218, 252, 321, 332–34, 351–52 tract, medieval genre of  18 translation cultural  284, 346, 348, 355 vernacular  181–99, 201–21, 275–97, 345, 379, 382 transmission, textual  139, 223–24, 245–74, 403 of Joachim of Fiore  327–28 of John Wyclif  139–41, 146–51, 163, 223–40, 245–74 Trinity, Holy  34, 45–46, 56, 58, 126, 191, 236, 333, 345–46 trust  15, 48, 59, 75–97

ge ne ral i nd e x

universals  139–56, 250, 347 universities  9–22, 29–72, 246, 387–408 Utraquism  16, 19, 21, 249–74, 290, 310, 334–35, 349, 353, 362, 364, 367–68, 372–73, 381, 392–96, 417–18 see also Eucharist

vernacular  11, 14–16, 19–22, 29, 100, 181, 201–21, 235, 275–97, 361–85 violence  308, 321–24, 336, 372, 376 virtus sermonis  103, 259 vita apostolica  15, 19, 21, 311 n. 39, 369–72 war holy: 306 licit and illicit: 305 Wegestreit: 17 n. 23, 30, 50, 63

443

Medieval Church Studies

All volumes in this series are evaluated by an Editorial Board, strictly on academic grounds, based on reports prepared by referees who have been commissioned by virtue of their specialism in the appropriate field. The Board ensures that the screening is done independently and without conflicts of interest. The definitive texts supplied by authors are also subject to review by the Board before being approved for publication. Further, the volumes are copyedited to conform to the publisher’s stylebook and to the best international academic standards in the field. Titles in Series Megan Cassidy-Welch, Monastic Spaces and their Meanings: Thirteenth-Century English Cistercian Monasteries (2001) Elizabeth Freeman, Narratives of a New Order: Cistercian Historical Writing in England, 1150–1220 (2002) The Study of the Bible in the Carolingian Era, ed. by Celia Chazelle and Burton Van Name Edwards (2003) Text and Controversy from Wyclif to Bale: Essays in Honour of Anne Hudson, ed. by Helen Barr and Ann M. Hutchison (2005) Lena Roos, ‘God Wants It!’: The Ideolog y of Martyrdom in the Hebrew Crusade Chronicles and its Jewish and Christian Background (2006) Emilia Jamroziak, Rievaulx Abbey and its Social Context, 1132–1300: Memory, Locality, and Networks (2004) The Voice of Silence: Women’s Literacy in a Men’s Church, ed. by Thérèse de Hemptinne and María Eugenia Góngora (2004) Perspectives for an Architecture of Solitude: Essays on Cistercians, Art and Architecture in Honour of Peter Fergusson, ed. by Terryl N. Kinder (2004) Saints, Scholars, and Politicians: Gender as a Tool in Medieval Studies, ed. by Mathilde van Dijk and Renée Nip (2005) Manuscripts and Monastic Culture: Reform and Renewal in Twelfth-Century Germany, ed. by Alison I. Beach (2007) Weaving, Veiling, and Dressing: Textiles and their Metaphors in the Late Middle Ages, ed. by Kathryn M. Rudy and Barbara Baert (2007) James J. Boyce, Carmelite Liturgy and Spiritual Identity: The Choir Books of Kraków (2008) Studies in Carthusian Monasticism in the Late Middle Ages, ed. by Julian M. Luxford (2009)

Kevin J. Alban, The Teaching and Impact of the ‘Doctrinale’ of Thomas Netter of Walden (c. 1374–1430) (2010) Gunilla Iversen, Laus angelica: Poetry in the Medieval Mass, ed. by Jane Flynn, trans. by William Flynn (2010) Kriston R. Rennie, Law and Practice in the Age of Reform: The Legatine Work of Hugh of Die (1073–1106) (2010) After Arundel: Religious Writing in Fifteenth-Century England, ed. by Vincent Gillespie and Kantik Ghosh (2011) Federico Botana, The Works of Mercy in Italian Medieval Art (c. 1050–c. 1400) (2011) The Regular Canons in the Medieval British Isles, ed. by Janet Burton and Karen Stöber (2011) Wycliffite Controversies, ed. by Mishtooni Bose and J. Patrick Hornbeck II (2011) Nickiphoros I. Tsougarakis, The Latin Religious Orders in Medieval Greece, 1204–1500 (2012) Nikolaos G. Chrissis, Crusading in Frankish Greece: A Study of Byzantine-Western Relations and Attitudes, 1204–1282 (2012) Demetrio S. Yocum, Petrarch’s Humanist Writing and Carthusian Monasticism: The Secret Language of the Self (2013) The Pseudo-Bonaventuran Lives of Christ: Exploring the Middle English Tradition, ed. by Ian Johnson and Allan F. Westphall (2013) Alice Chapman, Sacred Authority and Temporal Power in the Writings of Bernard of Clairvaux (2013) Religious Controversy in Europe, 1378–1536: Textual Transmission and Networks of Readership, ed. by Michael Van Dussen and Pavel Soukup (2013) Ian Johnson, The Middle English Life of Christ: Academic Discourse, Translation, and Vernacular Theology (2013) Monasteries on the Borders of Medieval Europe: Conflict and Cultural Interaction, ed. by Emilia Jamroziak and Karen Stöber (2014) M. J. Toswell, The Anglo-Saxon Psalter (2014) Envisioning the Bishop: Images and the Episcopacy in the Middle Ages, ed. by Sigrid Danielson and Evan A. Gatti (2014) Kathleen E. Kennedy, The Courtly and Commercial Art of the Wycliffite Bible (2014) David N. Bell, The Library of the Abbey of La Trappe: A Study of its History from the Twelfth Century to the French Revolution, with an Annotated Edition of the 1752 Catalogue (2014) Patronage, Production, and Transmission of Texts in Medieval and Early Modern Jewish Cultures, ed. by Esperanza Alfonso and Jonathan Decter (2014) Devotional Culture in Late Medieval England and Europe: Diverse Imaginations of Christ’s Life, ed. by Stephen Kelly and Ryan Perry (2014) Matthew Cheung Salisbury, The Secular Liturgical Office in Late Medieval England (2015) From Hus to Luther: Visual Culture in the Bohemian Reformation (1380–1620), ed. by Kateřina Horníčková and Michal Šroněk (2016) Medieval Liège at the Crossroads of Europe: Monastic Society and Culture, 1000–1300, ed. by Steven Vanderputten, Tjamke Snijders, and Jay Diehl (2017)

Episcopal Power and Local Society in Medieval Europe, 900–1400, ed. by Peter Coss, Chris Dennis, Melissa Julian-Jones, and Angelo Silvestri (2017) Saints of North-East England, 600–1500, ed. by Margaret Coombe, Anne Mouron, and Christiania Whitehead (2017) Tamás Karáth, Richard Rolle: The Fifteenth-Century Translations (2017) Late Medieval Devotional Compilations in England, ed. by Marleen Cré, Diana Denissen, and Denis Renevey (2020) Episcopal Power and Personality in Medieval Europe, 900–1480, ed. by Peter Coss, Chris Dennis, Melissa Julian-Jones, and Angelo Silvestri (2020) Inwardness, Individualization, and Religious Agency in the Late Medieval Low Countries: The Devotio Moderna and Beyond, ed. by Rijcklof Hofman, Charles Caspers, Peter Nissen, Mathilde van Dijk, and Johan Oosterman (2020) Bishops’ Identities, Careers, and Networks in Medieval Europe, ed. by Sarah E. Thomas (2021) In Preparation Late Medieval Devotion to Saints from the North of England: New Directions, ed. by Christiania Whitehead, Hazel J. Hunter Blair, and Denis Renevey