The impact of John Wyclif on late medieval religion has been a topic of scholarly attention since the man’s own lifetime in the latter part of the fourteenth century; his ideas caused consternation among ecclesiastical authorities and sparked a popular movement in England calling for reform of the Church. His influence on Jan Hus and the Bohemian reform movement has been a controversial topic as well, particularly in the wake of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century studies by Johann Loserth which asserted that Hus simply cribbed many of his ideas from the Oxford theologian. More recent scholarship has moved beyond such simple narratives, and the book that is the subject of the present review is a prime example of what can be accomplished when the complexity of the past is allowed to be confronted on its own terms.
This edited volume gathers seventeen essays into an interdisciplinary and international dialogue reflective of the complex nature of its subject, the impact of Wycliffism and Hussitism on late medieval religion, both in England and on the Continent. In place of an overarching narrative of late medieval religion, several related themes are explored, allowing the complexity of the subject matter to take center stage; just as the Late Middle Ages themselves grappled with perplexitas and epistemological uncertainty, the contributions to this volume recognize similar limits to our own understanding of the phenomena of Wycliffism and Hussitism, grounding their arguments in close and careful reading of the sources, often buried in manuscripts. This is commendable for many reasons, not the least of which is that one of the driving themes of the collection is the impact of textual production, particularly in the vernacular, on late medieval thought and religion.
The limited space available in a review precludes detailed analysis of each of the contributions, so in what follows, I will offer some observations about the collection as a whole while highlighting apposite examples from select contributions. The book falls into three parts plus what might be considered a prolegomenon by Maarten Hoenen, who offers an overview of debate in late medieval scholasticism, which he sees as producing a “cultural crystallization” open to conflict and tension. The continuous debates of the scholastics in the institutionalized setting of the universities developed a plethora of possible arguments on such topics as the eternity of the world, reflecting an increasing concern with divine transcendence. These debates led to conflict precisely because the scholastic method based itself on finding ever finer distinctions, inevitably becoming more and more obscure; the confusion caused by this obfuscation and the conflict arising from it led to a recourse to authority, either ecclesiastical or academic. Once these debates escaped the confines of the universities, the situation was only aggravated. A figure like Jan Hus represents an important development in his appeal to his own conscience rather than to an institutional authority; standing on the strength of his convictions, Hus represents the culmination of the process of cultural crystallization for Hoenen.
The first part of the book deals with philosophical and theological speculation, offering explorations of medieval ideas about implicit faith, the use of rhetoric in theology, the eternity of the world, and protestatio (public professions of faith). Here as elsewhere in the volume, the authors are concerned as much with method as with content, carefully tracing how late medieval thinkers like John Wyclif and Jean Gerson adapted theological and philosophical methods to their own needs and the conditions of their particular contexts. For example, Luigi Campi demonstrates that Wyclif’s epistemology, famously measuring truth against the words of Holy Scripture properly interpreted, was motivated in part by a reaction against the uncertainty and plurality of late medieval philosophy. Campi terms this methodological approach “post-disciplinary” in that Wyclif believed “at an advanced stage of his or her studies, a Christian believer should go beyond...specific methodologies and techniques and recognize that there is but a single, unified science, whose method is derived from the logic of Scripture” (131).
The second section of the book deals with texts, in particular the use of authorities and the practice of compilation. This section opens with the insightful essay by Fiona Somerset exploring legal material in a Wycliffite compilation, the Floretum, and its redaction, the Rosarium. Wyclif and Wycliffites cite canon law quite often, which is a somewhat surprising fact given their often quite negative view of human law; in fact, in the same way that Wyclif subordinates philosophy to scripture and its logic, he subordinates human law to the Law of Love, the Law of Christ as given in scripture. Why then this consistent citation of canon law? Somerset offers three reasons for this. First, it allows Wycliffites “to argue with opponents on their own terms” (183). Second, they cite canon law out of convenience as a source for patristic and scholastic authorities. Third and most importantly, “they are interested in demonstrating a broad consistency between human laws and God’s law, except where human law is simply wrong,” and “they see that broad consistency as a basis for their political and social thought” (183). While stated in only tentative terms, Somerset is almost certainly right in her interpretation here, and an update on William Farr’s John Wyclif as Legal Reformer (1974) might usefully explore this question in relation to Wyclif’s writings.
The third part of the volume covers the transmission of ideas through various media, such as exegetical writings, preaching, vernacular and Latin texts for clergy, and face-to-face dialogue. Pavel Soukup’s contribution to this section looks at the methodology of Hussite preaching and notes their impact on the Bohemian reform movement. In part, these were a reflection of the tensions between Hussites and Roman ecclesiastical authorities, pushing Hussites into interpretations that supported their ecclesiological and theological positions as premise rather than exegesis, as in the interpretation of the “rock” of Matthew 16:18 as Christ rather than Peter. In the end, as a part of an intra-clerical discourse, these methods allowed Utraquists to “build and maintain a functional religious community that took part in the troublesome process of flattening hierarchical religious discourses” (356).
The quality of the essays in this collection is consistently high, and the editors are to be commended for their work in unifying the various interrelated strands of argument under the overarching themes of thinking, writing, and persuading. Taken together, these contributions paint a more nuanced and complex portrait of the conflicts and controversies of late medieval European Christianity, one that is attentive to the context of these debates as represented in the sources and which resists oversimplification. It is only to be hoped that such fruitful dialogue between international scholars will continue to bear such welcome fruit.