Religions Reviewed

Rhetorical imputations of secrecy to their foes were available to the Lollards as well, and perhaps with greater justification. “The Twelve Conclusions of the Lollards” generalize the misdeeds of the Church of England as “flattering of private religion.”  The heretic William Thorpe’s account of his examination by Archbishop Arundel includes descriptions of the privy and furtive behavior of the churchman. Arundel “when that hee sawe me, he went faste into a closet, bidding all seculer men that folowed him to goe forth from him soone….”  De heretico comburendo says that heretics “make unlawful conventicles and confederacies, they hold and exercise schools, they make and write books, they do wickedly instruct and inform people.” 

Whether or not acts of instruction and information were judged inherently wicked, it appears that the forces of orthodoxy opposed schools, the public circulation of books, and lay assembly for study.  In contrast to that containment of learning, and contrary to Krug’s emphasis on the privacy of Lollard bible study, privacy does not seem to have been the ideal of Lollards’ encounters with the bible. They would not have troubled to organize “conventicles” and “schools” if it were. The Oxford translation debate in 1401-1407 clearly associated arguments of wider public access to scripture with the side of those who, like the Lollards, supported its translation into the vernacular.   Despite the hazards posed by persecution, Lollard preaching and bible reading in taverns continued throughout the 15th century.