June 2005

Parish History Episode 50
New Questions Asked

In recent issues we have described how society was changing, how men and women were becoming personally freer, and were probably becoming better off, partly because the shortage of labour after the Black Death was forcing wages up, and partly because the more intensive organisation of farming, mining and trade were increasing the wealth of the countryside. As men and women became slightly wealthier, and as they felt more secure, some of them began to ask fundamental questions about the world they lived in, and moreover to ask them of each other in their own vernacular tongue, and not to leave the answering of such questions to scholars writing in Latin for other scholars. It was not only the authority of the schoolmen, however, which was being challenged by such questions. Ecclesiastical and political changes were undermining the hitherto unquestioned verities of Church and State: of the unity of the Papacy and the majesty of the Crown.

The Papacy had remained at Avignon (in what was later thought of as "the Babylonish Captivity") from 1305 to 1378. The popes continued during this time to be lords of Rome and of much of central Italy (at least in theory: various robber barons and petty dynasts were often in control of their lands), and at times visited their traditional seat of power, but continued to hold Court at Avignon. Then in 1378, a pope, Gregory XI, died while on a visit to Rome. The Romans seized some cardinals who had been accompanying him, and forced them to hold a conclave and to elect a successor, who became Urban VI, and he was forced by the mob to promise not to leave Rome again. Meanwhile the remaining cardinals, on hearing of the death of Pope Gregory, had met in Avignon, and had also elected a successor, who became Clement VII, and who promised not to leave Avignon. There were now two rival popes, with two rival courts, each intriguing against the other for the loyalty and the revenues of Christendom. The French kings zealously upheld the authority of "their pope", their man at Avignon, and in consequence disaffected subjects of the French Crown, such as the textile magnates of Flanders, proclaimed their loyalty to the pope, not of Avignon, but of Rome. The exterior enemies of the kings of France, such as the kings of Castille and England, and the German Kaiser, also supported Rome. Therefore the enemies of the enemies of France, such as the kings of Aragon and Scotland, supported the pope of Avignon. Soon most men in Christendom became cynical over the whole affair: whoever had been legitimately elected in the first place, the reasons for kingdoms admitting the supremacy of Rome or of Avignon were so blatantly self-interested that hardly anyone took the schism seriously.

But nevertheless there was a schism. And the sight of rival popes excommunicating each other undermined the moral authority of the Western Church, which had for three hundred years or more boasted of its discipline and its centralised authority - such a contrast to the mosaic of rival Churches in the East.

It was in this atmosphere that learned men began to query the whole structure of the Church, as it had arisen in the West, and even to ask whether or not it was a legitimate development from the Gospels. Would-be Reformers began to appear, but these Reformers were divided into two main schools, which might be called the Continental and the English schools. Broadly speaking, the "Continentals" called for the re-structuring of the (Western) Church, so as to end the Papal "monarchy", and to bring the Church under the rule of Councils, that is of synods of bishops meeting under the presidency of the Pope (if the Church could be brought to acknowledge one pope). They often cited the example of the Greek (Orthodox) Church as a model, and they sometimes looked with favour on other aspects of the Greek Church (at least, as they understood it), such as the married clergy, the vernacular Mass, and the Communion of the laity "in both Kinds" - that is, the administration of the Wine (the Blood) as well as the Bread (the Body), to all present, during the Eucharist.

The supporters of Papal power naturally cited the political distress of the Greek Church as a warning against going down that road - at that time, though the cities of Constantinople and Trebizond both enjoyed a dubious independence under their rival emperors, most of the mainland of both the Anatolian and the Balkan peninsulas had been overrun by the Ottoman Turks, while the offshore islands were mostly in Venetian or Genoese hands. But, if the Greeks were weak, so was the Latin Church, now that it had split asunder. It was difficult to have much respect for such a divided and quarrelsome Papacy.

The English Reformers were led by John Wycliffe (whose family name almost certainly derives from Wycliffe-upon-Tees, near Barnard Castle), a teacher at Oxford University, whose criticisms of the Church were far more fundamental than were those of the Continental Reformers. In a series of books, written from 1370 onwards (and thus pre-dating the start of the Papal Schism), he not only denounced the powers of the Papacy over the Church (the usurped powers, in his view), as other Reformers did, but he also strongly criticised the powers exercised by the Church, even at a local, parochial level. He suggested that the Church had buttressed its authority by keeping the Scriptures in Latin, an arcane language not understood by the majority even of literate people in England, and recommended the translation of the Scriptures into English and other modern languages. He denied also the doctrine of Transubstantiation, which means the belief that the Bread and Wine of the Mass are, at each Celebration, metamorphosed into the very Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, and that, despite all appearances to the contrary, they cease to be Bread and Wine. This, he maintained, was in no way a Scriptural doctrine, and it had (he claimed) turned the people of Christ away from real Communion with their Lord into paths of barren superstition.

That was, of course, rank heresy, and if the Church had not been, at least from 1378, in such an appalling state of disarray, with two rival popes, and with Councils of learned divines denying that either pope deserved the monarchical powers which had long been wielded by the Roman See, one may presume that Wycliffe would soon have been burned. But its arguments became popular with many in England, both clergy and laity. When he further suggested that the Church had too much wealth, and would be better placed to follow her Lord if she were divested of much of her surplus (an argument which had been put forward by many before him, but earlier critics had not, generally, been able to support such propositions with theological reasoning), he found an appreciative audience among many of the greater lords of the Kingdom, even at the Court of England's boy-king, Richard II, who had ascended the Throne in 1377 at the age of eleven. Indeed, his arguments were particularly attractive to the great lords at the Royal Court, who were willing to be trustees of the Church's wealth, for the Crown had need of money, to sustain the wars which still dragged on in Ireland and in France.

Nothing now remained of earlier English conquests in Ireland, save only the city of Dublin and a few neighbouring castles. In France, the Hundred Years' War had been resumed after the interlude of the Black Death, and at first things had gone well for the English, and King Edward's son, "the Black Prince", took the King of France prisoner, and King Jean II was brought to London, to join King David II of Scotland as an enforced guest at the English Court. He died in London, and his son was crowned at Reims as King Charles V of France. The fortunes of war then changed, and by 1380 the English had lost all France except for five ports - Bordeaux, Brest, Cherbourg, St. Vaast and Calais; and the cost of maintaining garrisons in those five cities and in Dublin was crippling the English exchequer.

After the earlier conquests achieved by the great Edwards, there seemed to be an air of weariness and exhaustion at the Court of young King Richard. The tolerance, even patronage, of heresy by the King's ministers seemed to suggest that the old mediaeval synthesis of hierarchical church and feudal state was coming to an end. But more immediately dangerous, in most contemporary eyes, was the rise of social agitation against the very basis of feudal society. Some unbeneficed priests had taken to spreading Wycliffe's ideas among the common people, and then, when the government unwisely attempted to levy a poll tax to raise money for the wars, and in 1381 the peasants, incited by these "hedge-priests", rose in rebellion.

There was tumult and disorder over all the lowland shires of England, from the New Forest to the Vale of York, by way of the South and East coasts, and the valleys of the Thames, the Fenland rivers, and the Trent, and a peasant army from Kent was to capture London briefly before the rebellion was suppressed. The border counties, facing Wales or Scotland, were not affected, for the peasants there, needed for fighting as well as working, did not feel themselves to be oppressed, and there was relatively little trouble elsewhere in the West Midlands or in the Northern counties.

While the poll tax had been the spark which led to the explosion, the ground had been prepared by the Wycliffite "hedge-priests", who had taught the peasants to demand replies to unanswerable questions, such as "When Adam delft and Eve, span, who was then the gentil-man?" Certainly society was being rocked by such queries, in a manner which had never been known before.

The nobility succeeded in crushing the peasants with ruthless severity, and thousands were hung. But the questions remained. Noblemen listened with sympathy to Wycliffe's arguments that the corruptions of the Church could possibly be healed by the surgeon's art of draining off excess blood, and using the confiscated wealth to pay for the everlasting wars.

The end of the century drew near: the century of the Black Death, the Great Schism, and much else. Many men felt that all the glories won by the great Edwards had been dissipated. Wales was, or at least appeared to be, the only safe and final gain from all that fighting. Ireland had been mostly conquered, and then mostly lost. Scotland had been almost entirely conquered, and then almost entirely lost (Berwick-upon-Tweed still remained in English hands). France had been half conquered, but then that half had been mostly lost. And King Richard's ministers seemed to be thinking up schemes to confiscate the wealth of the Church, and to use the money to start the wars up, all over again.

Their unpopularity was to lead to a successful uprising in 1399, the murder of King Richard, the end of the direct line of the Plantagenet dynasty, and the crowning of Henry Bolingbroke as King Henry IV. Many dynastic wars lay ahead for England.

King Edward III had brought up five sons, which should have proved ample to ensure the continuity of the Plantagenet dynasty; but that possibly proved four too many. The titles of these sons were: the Prince of Wales ("the Black Prince"); the Duke of Clarence; the Duke of Lancaster (John of Gaunt); the Duke of Gloucester; and the Duke of York. From the lineage of all these princes, save only Gloucester, was to arise a claimant to the English Throne. The Black Prince died before his father, and so it was his son, Edward III's grandson, who was to succeed Edward as Richard III in 1377.

The Duke of Clarence's grandson, Edmund Mortimer, was to be put forward by Owen Glendower, as we will read next month, as a candidate for the English Throne. John of Gaunt's son, Henry Bolingbroke, was to kill Richard 11, and make himself King Henry IV, first king of the Lancastrian line. And that dynasty was to be overthrown by Edward of York, great-grandson of Edward III's youngest son, who would make himself Edward IV, first king of the Yorkist dynasty.

Some of these kings, particularly those of the Lancastrian dynasty, took stern measures to burn heretics, and to prevent awkward questions from being asked. But Wycliffe's questions would not go away.

Dick Toy

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