Re: Wycliffe, Lollardy, and Purgatory

Sharon Michalove, Editor, H-Albion (mlove@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu)
Wed, 12 Apr 1995 12:51:31 -0600

Date: Wed, 12 Apr 1995 10:06:33 -0700 (PDT)
From: <sjustice@violet.berkeley.edu>

The _Select English Works of John Wyclif_ are none of them (or almost
none) works of John Wyclif; the assumption that they were was a fantasy
of nineteenth-century historiography, which took Wyclif to be the
translator of the Bible and the popular reformer who wrote the many
vernacular works that retailed his doctrine. (A few might actually be by
his hand; see Margaret Aston, "Wyclif and the Verncular" in Hudson and
Wilks, eds. _From Ockham to Wyclif_ and, if you like, chapter 2 of my
_Writing and Rebellion: England in 1381_). And I _think_ it's correct to
say that Wyclif never attacked the doctrine. The scholar you quote,
though, rather understates the case; it is not only that Wyclif attacked
the merchandising of purgatory, but also that his division of humanity
into the _numerum salvandorum_ and _numerum praeteritorum_ he pretty much
evacuated any meaning from the concept.

Steven Justice
English
U C Berkeley