What Is a Lollard? Dissent and Belief in Late Medieval England by J. Patrick Hornbeck II (review)

Hornbeck’s book explores the nature of late medieval religious dissent in England in the light of a more finely tuned methodology than has been offered in previous studies. It is to this methodological issue that the title points; previous scholarship has tended to work with a dichotomous interpretation of late medieval English religion: basically anyone who was not “orthodox” was a lollard. This is essentially the case also with revisionist accounts that seek to marginalize the role of lollardy in the doctrinal development leading up to the English Reformation. The underlying assumption behind these sorts of studies—Hornbeck engages the apposite examples of A.G. Dickens, Richard Rex, and Eamon Duffy—is that lollardy is studied for its impact on the Reformation rather than as a phenomenon in its own right. Hornbeck’s innovation on this score is to look at lollardy using Wittgenstein’s concept of family resemblance, which posits that we can understand phenomena in relation to other phenomena in terms of how they resemble one another: the closer the resemblance, the closer the analogous family relationship. This allows a move away from essentialist interpretations of dissent (e.g., Thomas Denys denied transubstantiation and was therefore a lollard) toward relational interpretations (e.g., Thomas Denys denied transubstantiation, but in a way different from Wyclif).

An example of how this works is given by Hornbeck in a short case study of Thomas Denys, who was prosecuted for heresy by the bishop of Winchester and burned at the stake in 1512 (14–17). Denys is studied under three categories: beliefs, texts, and relationships/associations. As for his beliefs, Denys did not adhere to the remanationist eucharistic theology of John Wyclif, the purported founder of lollardy, but instead followed a figurative/commemorative interpretation, which seems to have been popular in Denys’s locality and time and was propounded in Wycklyffes Wycket. Denys might have owned a copy of the Wycket, but this is not certain. The people with whom Denys was associated offer the most interesting and helpful insights, since Denys can be shown to have interacted not only with locals, but with a man named Lewis John, who was prosecuted for heresy at London and who owned a copy of Wycklyffes Wycket. The question of whether Thomas Denys was a lollard cannot fruitfully be answered by a simple yes or no on the basis of this evidence. A more fruitful approach, and the one taken by Hornbeck, is to look at the resemblances and to realize that the phenomenon of lollardy was “a theologically and socially diverse family of phenomena that contributed in varied ways to the already highly complex religious landscape of late medieval England” (19).

With his methodology established, Hornbeck tackles several key issues that have often been said to define lollardy: soteriology, the Eucharist, marriage and clerical celibacy, holy orders, and the papacy. In each of these case studies, Hornbeck begins with Wyclif’s teaching, contextualized within the orthodox discussions of the subject, and ends by discussing dissenting texts and trial records. The picture that emerges is one of diversity of opinion; dissenting beliefs are seen to cover a broad spectrum rather than a monolithic credo. Opinions about eucharistic theology are especially diverse, ranging from figurative/commemorative to remanationist interpretations, the one common factor being a rejection of transubstantiation. Less diversity of opinion is apparent in understandings of the priesthood, where only a minority wanted abolition of the priesthood as a separate class of Christian, with most agreeing that the priesthood needed reform instead.

Hornbeck’s study is careful and thorough, and judicious use of evidence, especially the very tricky records of heresy trials, lends credibility to his conclusions that “the findings presented in these pages endorse the trajectory of a more recent scholarly consensus: that the notions of a monolithic lollard movement and a linear dissemination of heterodox views from...