#john wycliffe

[heartofstanding]

john of gaunt threatens to drag william courtenay, bishop of london out of his own cathedral during john wycliffe's trial, as interpreted through tumblr text posts

[upennmanuscripts]

Coffee with a Codex: New Testament in Middle English

An informal lunch or coffee time to meet virtually with Kislak curators and talk about one of the manuscripts from Penn's collections. Each

Coffee With A Codex is an informal lunch or coffee time to meet virtually with Kislak curators and talk about one of the manuscripts from Penn's collections. Each week we'll feature a different manuscript and the expertise of one of our curators. Everyone is welcome to attend.

On February 19, curator Dot Porter will bring out Ms. Codex 201, a copy of the New Testament translated into Middle English by John Wycliffe. It was made in England in the late 14th or early 15th century.

Register here:

Coffee with a Codex: New Testament in Middle English

An informal lunch or coffee time to meet virtually with Kislak curators and talk about one of the manuscripts from Penn's collections. Each

[codex-archive]

CHARACTERS — 91/262 — Jan Hus

Jan Hus was a priest, thinker and one of the most important Czech and European religious reformers and preachers. His works, inspired by the theological writings of John Wycliffe, was key to understanding the essence of the Church Reformation. As of 1398 he taught and spread his views at Prague University and from 1402 he preached at the Betlehem Chapel in Prague. From there he initiated discussion among the broad classes of burghers on current religious and secular issues. For his strong, but very popular, criticism of conditions in the Curch, he was eventually excommunicated by the Pope in 1412 and had to take refuge in the countryside. At the Council of Constance, where he was invited by Emperor Sigismund to defend his views, he was condemned and burned as a heretic. His legacy, however, sparked a strong uprising in the Czech lands against the existing order. This began a period known as the Hussite Wars (1420—1434).

TRIVIA

— John Wycliffe’s criticism of Church authority included a rejection of the doctrine of transubstantiation (belief that bread and wine become Christ’s body and blood during eucharist), which he considered unscriptural. This view was not accepted by most reform-minded scholars of his time and contributed to a decline in his influence, even among those who supported his calls for moral renewal. His writings nevertheless circulated widely in Central Europe and reached Prague at the turn of the 15th century.

Jan Hus studied Wycliffe’s works and adopted many of his institutional criticisms, but he did not follow Wycliffe in denying transubstantiation. Hus accepted the traditional teaching on the Eucharist, while focusing his attention on issues he considered more pressing, such as the moral state of the clergy and the withholding of the chalice from the laity.

Although Hus did not renounce transubstantiation, his insistence that the laity should receive the chalice placed him in a position between traditional doctrine and emerging reformist views. It is interesting that, whether intentionally or not, this stance created a kind of intermediary bridge between those who upheld the medieval teaching and those who questioned it. By preserving the sacrament’s meaning while challenging its restricted practice, Hus offered a form of reform that appealed to both sides of the debate.

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[walkingthroughthisworld]

December 31, 1384:

John Wycliffe, often called the “Morning Star of the Reformation,” dies at about age 64. He championed the authority of Scripture and oversaw the first complete translation of the Bible into English. His teachings deeply influenced later reform movements, especially Jan Hus, and helped lay theological groundwork that would shape the Protestant Reformation. Condemned posthumously at the Council of Constance (1415), his remains were exhumed and burned as an act of symbolic censure.

[caviarsonoro]

Adam Tendler · Nico Muhly:  Eiris, Sones ( Inheritances 2024).

Compuesta en 2020 como parte del proyecto Inheritances del pianista Adam Tendler, Eiris, Sones es una pieza breve pero profundamente emotiva que explora la temática de la herencia desde una perspectiva musical y personal. Muhly se inspira en el versículo 13:22 del Libro de los Proverbios, en la traducción de John Wycliffe de 1382:    “A good man schal leeue aftir him eiris, sones, and the sones of sones; and the catel of a synnere is kept to a iust man.” Este texto, aunque no se canta, está implícito en la estructura de la obra. Muhly crea un coral sencillo que el pianista interpreta mientras imagina las palabras, fusionando la línea melódica y la armonía en una sola voz instrumental. Esta técnica evoca una sensación de introspección y contemplación, donde la música se convierte en un medio para reflexionar sobre la transmisión de valores y legados familiares. La pieza se caracteriza por una armonía rica y una textura que recuerda a la música coral renacentista, pero con un enfoque contemporáneo. La interpretación de Tendler aporta una sensibilidad especial, destacando la delicadeza y la profundidad emocional de la composición. La elección de una escritura pianística que sugiere la polifonía vocal permite que el oyente experimente una conexión íntima con el tema de la herencia y la memoria. Eiris, Sones se presenta como una meditación musical sobre lo que dejamos atrás y cómo nuestras acciones y valores perduran en las generaciones futuras. Es una obra que invita a la reflexión y que, a pesar de su brevedad, deja una impresión duradera en el oyente.

[ineslareina]

[racefortheironthrone]

So what were the actual politics of the Hussites historically? I always find medieval heresies interesting but it feels like the discussion of "proto protestant" heresies in popularly available books tends to focus in on how much they actually were like later protestantism. Rather than taking them up on their own terms and actions. It seems interesting with the influence they took from Wycliffe, while actually being much more the motivating ideology for the revolt of the lower orders than Wycliffe's own beliefs were.

It's a bit tricky to analyze the "actual politics" of the Hussites of the Bohemian Reformation, because one of the things you come to understand about the Reformation, Counter-Reformation, the Wars of Religion, etc. is that religious symbolism can have really significant cultural politics in ways that can be very opaque and hard to understand for modern audiences.

(Take this as a strong hint for someone to ask me about how the Puritans of the English Civil War and colonial New England are completely misunderstood, especially on Tumblr.)

So leaving aside Jan Hus' broadly Wycliffian/proto-Lutheran position on religious issues like the need to fight corruption in the Church, the authority of the Bible over the Pope, opposition to indulgences, the critical importance of the vernacular Bible, and so forth - what were the politics of the Hussite movement?

Well, the Four Articles of Prague I think serve as a pretty good condensation of Hussite politics, although it's important to keep in mind that it was a political statement of the more conservative faction of the Hussites:

Freedom to preach the Word of God.

Freedom of the communion of the chalice (under both kinds also to laity).

Exclusion of the clergy from large temporal possessions or civil authority.

Strict repression and punishment of mortal public sins, whether in clergy or in laity.

So all of this sounds like it's more theology than politics, but if we analyze it, we can find the politics under the hood. Taking the first point, the Hussite movement was largely inspired by a popular revulsion to the Council of Constance burning Jan Hus at the stake despite the promise of safe conduct - so in reaction, they seemed to adopt a strong commitment to religious free speech.

Second, there is a strong emphasis on anti-clericalism: by the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church had come to emphasize the higher social status of the clergy over the laity by changing the ritual of communion such that, while communion in bread was given to the laity, only the priest was allowed communion in wine from the chalice. As a statement of social equality, the Hussites insisted that ordinary people should receive both forms of communion - and went one step further by insisting that children as well as adults should receive both - as a statement of the equality of all men before God.

Third, there is a strong dislike of Church corruption, which tended to emphasize the need for the clergy to devote themselves to poverty and spiritual matters rather than secular politics and moneymaking.

The more radical Hussites wanted to confiscate church lands and transfer them to secular hands, they believed that the Bible was the only authority for both religious and political matters, and they were very strict Biblical literalists who particularly emphasized Wycliffe's denial of transubstantion. In general, they tended to believe that society should be more democratic.

Finally, there's a strong element of Czech proto-nationalism: hence the emphasis on translating the Bible into Czech, and the successful defense of their religious independence during the Hussite Wars, where the Hussites took on the Pope (several Popes declared no less than five Crusades against the Hussite heretics), the Holy Roman Emperor, and the King of Bohemia in the Hussite Wars - and ultimately won, forcing the Catholic Church to recognize the Moravian Church.

(This is something of a simplification of a very complicated conflict, because there was also a civil war between the more conservative and more radical Hussites that saw the radicals militarily defeated and their church disbanded.)

[slave-of-the-lord-jesus-christ]

I believe that in the end the truth will conquer.

-John Wycliffe