The Earthquake Synod

The Earthquake Synod was held on 21 May 1382 in London, England. It was called by Archbishop of Canterbury William Courtenay to address 24 of the theses put in writing in recent years by John Wycliffe.

During the meetings, an earthquake in the Dover Straits happened at 3:00pm with an estimated intensity of VII to VIII on the Modified Mercalli intensity scale, which runs from I (so mild it is felt by no one, perhaps only detectable by instruments) to XIII (which represents total destruction).

The earthquake destroyed the bell tower of Canterbury Cathedral. A manor house and church in Kent were damaged. In London, some miles away, Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's Cathedral also sustained damage.

At the Synod in London, the monastery where it was being held felt the shaking which alarmed many of the participants. The archbishop cleverly used the earthquake as a sign of favor, declaring:

This earthquake portends the purging of the kingdom from heresies. For as there are shut up in the bowels of the earth many noxious spirits, which are expelled in an earthquake, and so the earth is cleansed, but not without great violence: so there are many heresies shut up in the hearts of reprobate men, but by the condemnation of them the kingdom is to be cleansed, but not without irksomeness and great commotion.

Of the 24 theses, 10 (such as his rejection of transubstantiation) were considered heretical. The rest (for example, criticizing Church hierarchy and matters of wealth vs. poverty) were considered simply erroneous and should be ignored.

The synod decreed that those who professed any of the heretical 10 ideas should be prosecuted. For this to happen, though, needed the cooperation of secular authority, but the House of Commons rejected the bill that would have made it into law. In November he was summoned to stand before a synod at Oxford, where many of his colleagues were sympathetic to his views. Again, the secular powers would not condemn him and he kept his freedom and his views.

He was summoned to Rome in 1383, but he had a stroke and could not travel; he died in the following year. The Church did not succeed in getting him declared outright as a heretic until years after his death, in 1415 at the Council of Constance (probably called because Wycliffe's ideas were being spread by Jan Hus). In order to deal with things definitively, the order was given to burn Wycliffe's books along with his body. His corpse was exhumed (but, burials being what they were, there is a theory that the body dug up was a man who had been buried next door), burned, and the ashes scattered in the river. (The illustration shows his burning from a 16th century book on martyrs.)

For a change, let's talk about earthquakes in the Middle Ages next time. See you then.

Wycliffe and Controversy, Part 2

After getting in trouble for his writings and being told officially not to discuss the points he raised, John Wycliffe decided he would raise different points.

After being released from confinement in Black Hall at Oxford, he wrote (in both Latin and English for wider awareness) De incarcerandis fedelibus ("On the Incarceration of the Faithful"). In it he declared that excommunication and incarceration were wrong, and those treated with such punishments should be allowed to appeal to the king.

The nobility and the mainstream population liked his reasoning, but the Church of course objected to the idea that the king could overrule their punishments. Pope Gregory XI, who had written against Wycliffe earlier, died before he could respond to this new essay.

Wycliffe then started speaking out even more strongly against the institution of the papacy and other Church practices than he had earlier. He argued before Parliament that those who sought sanctuary in churches could be forcibly removed. Excommunication, he believed, should require a trial before Parliament and a Synod. He repeated his contention that the Church should divest itself of wealth and property, that priests should be poor.

In 1381, he went too far (again) with his ideas about the Last Supper, rejecting the doctrine of transubstantiation. This was indeed a step too far, in that he lost the support of men like John of Gaunt, the young King Richard II's powerful uncle.

This happened in the summer of 1381, and from May to October the peasant uprisings collectively called the Peasants Revolt occurred. Wycliffe's teachings, spread about in English and emphasizing egalitarianism, certainly helped to fire up the countryside to rebel against the hierarchy that they recognized as oppressive. Wycliffe did not approve of the destruction caused by the Revolt, but he was often referenced by followers who took part. One of the most egregious acts during the Revolt was the killing of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Simon Sudbury.

Sudbury was succeeded by William Courtenay, who had been Wycliffe's enemy for awhile. In 1382 Courtenay called an assembly in which he was going to deal with Wycliffe. This led to the interestingly named Earthquake Synod. Let me tell you how that went down (that's an earthquake joke) tomorrow.

Wycliffe and Controversy, Part 1

The Middle English Bible translated from the Vulgate (supposedly by John Wycliffe) wasn't in itself controversial. But Wycliffe wrote De civili dominio ("On Civil Dominion") in 1377, advocating that the Church divest itself of property and live in poverty. He had a powerful ally in John of Gaunt, who disliked the power many clergy had because of revenues from property. This revenue could have instead gone to support royal military needs (the Hundred Years War was an ongoing concern for England).

Pope Gregory XI censured 19 of the points in De civili dominio. The Bishop of London, William Courtenay, summoned Wycliffe to a convocation at St. Paul's Cathedral (shown above in a mural by Ford Madox Brown [link]). Wycliffe was accompanied by an armed John of Gaunt and other nobles. An argument between Gaunt and the bishop took place over whether Wycliffe would be allowed to sit during his investigation. Gaunt made it clear that he supported Wycliffe's suggestions on limiting the clergy and stormed out with Wycliffe.

The Church had its supporters, of course, and there were riots attacking Gaunt's disrespect of the clergy that started the next day.

That was in February. In May, the pope sent a papal bull against Wycliffe to five people, including King Edward III and the chancellor of Oxford. When Wycliffe returned to Oxford he was confined for a time to Black Hall (a college building now memorialized in Blackhall Road in central Oxford). Wycliffe's friends eventually obtained his freedom.

In March 1378 he was again summoned to be questioned for his views. King Edward had died, and his very young grandson Richard II was king. Sir Lewis Clifford confronted the investigation on behalf of the new king's mother, Joan of Kent, and forbade the assembled clergy from condemning Wycliffe. The clergy simply forbade him from speaking out on his controversial views.

Wycliffe instead decided to make new controversies. I'll talk about them tomorrow.

Wycliffe the Reformer

John Wycliffe (c.1324-1384), first discussed yesterday, started his career as a respectable Oxford scholar and theologian. His religion and study taught him that wealth was not needed for a Christian life, and not appropriate for the clergy. This was not a radical idea, or new—Francis of Assissi had been preaching and embodying the ascetic life almost 200 years earlier*—however, his arguments and his public presence and patronage made him notorious.

It was after the conference at Bruges (mentioned briefly in the above link) that he seems to have decided he needed to make a more overt defense of his views. Wycliffe might have been fine keeping his views in the rather private academic arena, but when he was denounced and challenged in public by William Bynham of Wallingford Priory in Oxford, Wycliffe decided to go public with his Summa Theologiae in which he explained why the church should not have temporal authority, and that the king was above the pope in earthly matters. He followed this with De civili dominio (On civil lordship), in which he stated that if the church should abuse any of its temporal holdings, the king should take those holdings away; not to do so would be remiss. It was the strongest argument (and the most welcome, to members of the nobility) for the king's authority over the church.

The monastic orders, who benefited from the feudal system of rents and tenants, were understandably threatened by this, especially considering the patronage Wycliffe enjoyed from men like John of Gaunt, who was effectively the ruler of England during Edward III's decline. When Wycliffe was summoned before Bishop William Courtenay of London, he was accompanied by John of Gaunt, the Earl Marshal Henry Percy, other nobles, and even some friars of the orders that rejected personal possessions. Gaunt's presence cowed the bishop, and the gathering broke up without immediate consequence for Wycliffe. This pattern, of attempts to chastise or reign in Wycliffe being overwhelmed by his supporters, would be repeated more than once in the years to come.

In fact, Wycliffe's views were so popular in England that they sparked the anti-establishment movement called "Lollardy" about which it was supposedly said at the time "Every second man that you meet is a Lollard." It is certain that the citizens involved in the Peasants' Revolt were familiar with his views on equality, although he disapproved of their violence. It is ironic that Wycliffe's most powerful patron, Gaunt, was also one of the chief targets of the mob because of his aristocratic standing. It was not long after the Revolt that Wycliffe was officially being denounced as a heretic, which complicated his life but didn't stop him from writing. As well as other tracts and letters, he had one more major work he wished to produce that would shake the church to its foundations. He decided to do what had never been done before: translate the entire Bible into English.

*Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose is remembered as a murder mystery set in 1327 by many readers who have forgotten that one of the central themes is the philosophical debate on the topic of the church and material wealth.