Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 40.djvu/239

 Concilia, xii. 1253 E, 1254 A, &c.), and Laurence Burell, who styles him ‘doctor autenticus,’ has some lines on him (''Harl. MS''. 1819, f. 66 b), which commence:   Hic prior Anglus erat, per quem provincia gesta est,    Atque fides per quem candida nostra manet;    Hic truncos hæresum invasit rapidissimus ignis;    Concilium testis Basiliense fuit. Netter is said to have refused repeated offers of bishoprics, that he might devote himself to the service of his order. The institution of Carmelite nuns in England is ascribed to him. By Trithemius and others he is reckoned among the saints of his order, though he was never formally canonised. Leland says that he gave many books to the Carmelite library in London, which thus became of great value; one of the volumes thus presented by Netter, a commentary on the Psalms, is now MS. 58 at Trinity College, Oxford. The frontispiece to the first volume of the ‘Doctrinale Fidei’ in Blanciotti's edition is a portrait of Netter ‘ex pervetusta tabula Carmeli majoris Neapolis.’ Thevet, in his ‘Pourtraits et Vies,’ &c., leaves the place for the portrait blank.

Netter's chief work was the ‘Doctrinale Fidei Ecclesiæ Catholicæ contra Wiclevistas et Hussitas.’ This treatise as now extant is arranged in three parts or volumes; the first comprises four books, viz.: (1) ‘De Capite Ecclesiæ Jesu Christo;’ (2) ‘De Corpore Christi quod est Ecclesia;’ (3) ‘De religiosis perfectis in lege Christi;’ (4) ‘Quomodo religiosi in Ecclesia Dei possunt licite exigere victum suum.’ The second volume, ‘De Sacramentis,’ and the third, ‘De Sacramentalibus,’ treat of heresies affecting the sacraments and kindred matters. The first two volumes were presented to Martin V in 1426 by John Tacesphalus or Tytleshall, an Oxford Carmelite, but Netter himself says that he commenced it at the wish of Henry V, and he was clearly writing it as early as 1421. The last volume was presented to Martin V by John Keninghale [q. v.] in 1427. Netter, in his letter to the pope (Doct. Fidei, iii. 1), promises to treat in a fourth volume ‘de jejuniis, de indulgentiis, de juribus et immunitatibus ecclesiasticis, de fide quoque et hæresibus et reliquis multis.’ This fourth volume, if ever completed, does not now appear to be extant; and Thomas Gascoigne [q. v.] describes the work as it now exists (Loci e Libro Veritatum, p. 2). Jodocus Badius Ascensius printed the ‘De Sacramentis’ at Paris in 1521, and the ‘Sacramentalia’ in 1523, but did not produce the first volume till 1532, when he obtained a copy of it from Ghent. The two later volumes were printed at Salamanca in 1556–7, and all three at Venice in 1571. Of this last edition some copies bear the imprint ‘apud Vincentium Valagrisium,’ others ‘apud Jordanum Zilettum,’ but the text is identical; the last edition is that of Père Blanciotti, Venice, 1757; all the editions are in folio. Blanciotti used for his edition a manuscript in the Vatican (984), which dates from 1431, but which has been wrongly supposed to be Netter's autograph, together with a manuscript of little later date, then preserved at Ferrara. Other manuscripts are ‘Bibliothèque Nationale,’ 3677, 3678, 3679, comprising the complete work; Merton College, 317 (books iii. and iv.); Magdalen College, Oxford, 153 and 157 (the first two volumes); Merton College, 319; and Lincoln College, 106 (‘De Sacramentis’); Bodleian MSS. 2436, 2437 (the last two volumes); Cambridge Univ. Lib. Dd. 16, 17 (the first two volumes); and Reg. MS. 8 G. x in the British Museum (books i. and ii. of the ‘Doctrinale’).

Next in importance to the ‘Doctrinale Fidei’ comes the ‘Fasciculi Zizaniorum, Johannis Wyclif.’ This work consists of a collection of documents and other materials which furnish us with our only contemporary account of the rise of the lollards. Till the death of Wiclif the documents are ‘connected by a narrative which, though broken and inconsecutive, is evidently authentic and of great value.’ But from this point to the close of the book in 1428 the original papers are given without comment or connection (, p. x). The ascription of the collection to Netter is not free from doubt; the notices of the councils of Pisa and Constance, and the close of the collection with the examination of William White in September 1428, at which Netter was present, favour the idea. On the other hand, the narrative portion of the earlier part appears to be the work of a contemporary, and can therefore hardly be Netter's. Shirley concludes that the volume was collected after Netter's death from papers found in his possession, and that the basis of the collection was a fragment of a history of the lollards written by an earlier hand—perhaps by Stephen Patrington. It is, however, to be noticed that in the ‘Doctrinale Fidei’ (i. 385) Netter speaks of ‘Suadelæ Wicliffi quas congregat in unum Zizaniorum Fasciculum comburendum.’ Blanciotti (ad loc.) seems to think that the compilation was the work of William Woodford. Whether Patrington's or Woodford's, the collection is extremely likely to have come into Netter's hands, and to have been continued by him. The collection is now contained in Bodleian