Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 9.djvu/372

 LOUUkBDS 333 LOLLARDS

«"9"th* for a first ofiFenoe, and 1000 sucres and six lish fla^ or in the Free Companies, brought home an month* for a second. Education, to which the secu- evil spirit of disorder, while the military system helped lax authorities were until recently indifferent, and to produce an ''over-mighty", greedy, and often anti- which was therefore provided for by the energy of the clerical nobility. In the lower ranks of society there dergy, is now compiusory and gratuitous for children was a similar growth of an intemperate and subversive between the ages of six and twelve. The Liberal Gov- independence. The emancipation of the peasant class ermnent testified offici^y (in 1900) to the great zeal had proceeded normally till the Black Death threw displayed by the religious teachers and the success into confusion the relations between landlord and ten- that attended their efforts; since then, however, the ant. By gi^'ing the labourer an enormous economic State has established godless schools; yet parents are advantage in the depopulated country it led the land- free to send their children to the churdi scnools. The lords to fall back upon their legal rights and the tradi- public authorities are forbidden to contribute to the tional wages. support of the latter. In the Church there was nearly as much disorder as

Only a very small proportion of the population of in the State. The pestilence had in many cases disor-

tbe diocese is of pure white ori^, the remamder being eanized the parish clergy, the old penitential system

a hybrid race of mixed Spanish, Indian, and Ne^ro had broken down, while Tuxiny, at least among the few,

blood, known as cholos, zambos, or mestizos, with was on the increase. Preachers, orthodox and hereti-

many pure-blooded Indians. The climate of the dio- cal, and poets as different in character as Langland,

oese varies from a mean of 18° C. in the higher regions Gower, and Chaucer are unanimous in the gloomy pic-

to torrid heat on the slopes of £1 Oro to the ocean, ture they give of the condition of the clergy, secular and

Trade consists mostly in cerealS) coffee, sugar, cin- regular. However much may be allowed for exag-

chona, and mules; there \a considerable mining at geration, it is clear that reform was badly needed, but

Zaruma. The principal towns are Machala (5000 in- unfortunately the French A\'ignon popes, even when

babitCLnts), Santa Rosa, Zaruma, and Loja. they were reformers, had little influence in England.

Daouin. Etude 9ur U rigime dea cultes dana la ripublique de Later On, the Schism gave Englishmen a pope with

rSquaUrurin the BuUHin merumel de laMcieUdrlcgiMion whom their patriotism could find nO fault, but this ad-

SZ^ ^^SU^'^'^&i i^2)f B^i;*;^?.^: vantage was dearly purcha^ at the cost of weakening

Aimiia«ivponA(/!cafo(Pam, 1010); Gir6nyArcas. La iSi/uacu5n the spuritof authonty in the Church. It IS to these

Juridical la Idesia Catdli^^ en Europa y Arnica (Madrid, social and religious distempers that we must look for

1905), 302-26: Izaouirre, BxograHa del IluMrlgimo y Rmo. P. . l _ «ft„«^«, «p ♦ Ko Pfta«ATi+ Povnlf onri f Vin T^llorH ttiova.

Ft. Joa4 Maria Meuid, Olnspo de Loja (Barcelona. 1904). ^^^ causes Ol the i^eaS^t Kevolt and the iX>llarcl move-

A. A. MacErlean. men. Both wece mamfestations of the discredit of au- thority and tradition. The revolt of 1381 is unique in

LoUardfli the name given to the followers of John English history for the revolutionary and anarchic

Wyclif, an heretical body numerous in England in spirit which inspired it and which indeed partially sur-

the latter part of the fourteenth and the first half of vived it, just as Lollardy is the onlv heresy which

the fifteenm century. The name w^as derived by con- flourished in medieval England. The disorganized

temporaries from loUiunif a tare, but it had been used state of society and the violent anti-clericalism of the

in Flanders early in the fourteenth century in the sense time would probably have led to an attack on the dog-

of " hypocrite '\ and the phrase *'Lollardi seu Deum matic authonty and the sacramental system of the

laudantes" (1309)point6 to a derivation from loUcji, Church, even if Wyclif had not been there to lead the

to sing Boftlv (cf. En^. lull). Others take it to mean movement.


 * ' idlers " and connect it with to loll. We first hear of it The Beginnings of LoUardu. — During the earlier part

aa referring tothe Wycliffites in 1382, when the Cister- of his public career Wyclif had come forward as an

cian Henry Crumpe applied the nickname to them in ally of the anti-cIcrical and anti-papal nobility, and es-

public at Oxford. It was used in episcopal documents pecially of John of Gaunt. lie had asserted the ri^ht

in 1387 and 1389 and soon became habitual. An ac- of temporal lords to take the goods of an imdcserving

count of Wyclif 's doctrines, their intellectual parent- clergy and, as a necessary consequence, he had at-

a^, and their development during his lifetime will be tacked the power of excommunication. He was popu-

given in his own biography. This article will deal lar with the people, and his philosophical and theologi-

with the general causes wnich led to the spread of Lol- cal teaching had given him much influence at Oxfora.

lardy, with the doctrines for which the Lollards were His orthodoxy had been frequcntlv impeached and

individually and collectively condemned by the au- some of his conclusions condemned by Gregory XI,

thorities of the Church, and with the history of the but he was not yet the leader of an obviously heretical

sect. sect. But about 1380 he began to take up a position

Causes of the Spread of LoUardg. — Till the latter of more definite hostility to the Church. He attacked part of the fourteenth century England had been the pope and the friars with unmeasured violence, and remarkably free from heresy. The Manichean move- it was probably about this time that he sent out from ments of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries which Oxford the "poor priests" who were to carry his threatened the Church and society in Southern Europe teaching to the country folk and the provincial towns. and had appeared sporadically in Northern France and The necessity of giving them a definite gospel may well Flanders had made no impression on England. The have led to a clearer expression of his heretical teach- few heretics who were heard of were all foreigners and ing, and it was certainly at this date that he be^an the they seem to have found no following in the country, attack on transubstantiation, and in this way inaugu- Yet there was much discontent. Popular protests rated the mo8t characteristic article of the Lollard against the wealth, the power, and the pride of the heresy. Wycliflism was now no longer a question of cfeixy, secular and regular, were frequent, and in times scholastic disputation or even of violent anti-clcrical- of (uaorder would express themselves in an extreme ism; it had become propagandist and heretical, and form. Thus, during the revolution which overthrew the authorities both of Church and Stete were able Edward II in 1327, mobs broke into the Abbey of for the first time to make a successful assault upon it. Bury St. Edmunds and attacked that of St. Albans. In 1382 a council in London presided over by Arch- As the century proceeded there were many signs of na- bishop Courtenay condemned twenty-four of Wy- tional disoiganiJEation and of religious and social dis- clif's 'Conclusions": ten of them as heresies, four- content. Tiie war in France, in spite of the glories of teen as ' ' errors ". [For the Acts of this council and the CMcy and Poitiers, was a curse to the victors as well as documents connected with the subsequent proceed- to die vanquished. The later campaigns were mere ings at Oxford, see Shirley, *' Fasciculus Zizaniorum" ravaging expeditions and the men who inflicted such (Itolls Series), pp. 272-334.] untold miseries on the French, whether under the Eng- Though little was done against Wyclif himselfi a