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63  Chapter 2 God’s Law Loving, Learning, and Teaching Near the end of the final chapter of the General Prologue to the Wycliffite Bible, as the writer’s defense of biblical translation comes to an end,he expresses his hopes for the effect that English translation might have upon the people of England. Until now they have been deprived of access to scripture, whether because of the negligence of the clergy or their own sinfulness. Now, he hopes this may change: “[May] God for his merci amende [rectify] þese yuele [evil] causis and make oure puple to haue and kunne [know] and kepe treuli hooli writ to liyf and deþ.”1 Having and knowing and keeping, truly, and even unto death: this is a familiar concatenation of terms in lollard writings, as we will soon see. But most typically what readers are exhorted to have and know and keep in lollard writings is not holy writ, as here, but “God’s law.” “God’s law,” or its rather less common alternate “Christ’s law,” is one of lollard writers’ most favored terms and most common points of reference.2 1. The General Prologue is edited by Dove under the title “The Prologue to the Wycliffite Bible” in EA, 3–85. For this quotation, see EA, 84/2945–46. 2. Although not listed among common lollard locutions in Anne Hudson’s article “A Lollard Sect Vocabulary?,” repr. in Lollards and Their Books (London: Hambledon, 1985), 165–80, terms or circumlocutions such as “law of God” occur, for example, four times in the Lanterne of Liȝt, fifteen times in the Apology for Lollard Doctrines,twice in the E WS (which,however,cite Christ or God tout court very frequently),and in items 1,4,7,8,9,10,17,21,22,23,26,and 28 in Matthew. Mainstream 64 CHAPTER 2 writings, too, use the term, but without making an explicit contrast with human laws or dismissing them as inferior. These statistics were culled from Frances McSparran, ed., Middle English Compendium ,University of Michigan,at http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/mec/,but readers will find it easy to confirm these findings in other works. 3. Mary Dove, “The Lollards’ Threefold Biblical Agenda,” in WC, 211–26, suggests the General Prologue writer hopes readers will read the whole bible. She has some warrant, for the author has just been strongly advocating translation of the bible as a whole. However, see chap. 5. 4. EA, 5/78–82, 65/2264–75, both citing Augustine’s sermon 350 in praise of charity; and 70/2419–30, citing Augustine, De doctrina Christiana, book 2, chaps. 6 and 7. On Wyclif’s understanding of the senses of scripture, see De veritate sacre scripture, ed. Rudolph Buddenseig, 3 vols., Wyclif Society (London:Trübner,1905–7),1:119–25,where,however,Wyclif cites John Duns Scotus and refers to what is literal (literalis) rather than what is open (121/18–122/6). Wyclif cites Augustine on scripture’s explicit and implicit meanings in his Trialogus cum supplemento trialogi,ed. Gotthard Lechler (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1869), 240. For an introductory discussion of Wyclif’s hermeneutical principles and their intellectual underpinnings, see Ian C. Levy, “Holy Scripture and the Quest for Authority among Three Late Medieval Masters,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 61 (2010): 40–68, and see also Levy, Holy Scripture and the Quest for Authority at the End of the Middle Ages (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012). 5. See Kantik Ghosh, The Wycliffite Heresy: Authority and the Interpretation of Texts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), passim (see entry in General Index, 296); and among others, Rita Copeland, “Rhetoric and the Politics of the Literal Sense in Medieval Literary Theory: Aquinas, Wyclif , and the Lollards,” in Interpretation: Medieval and Modern, ed. Piero Boitani and Anna Torti (Woodbridge :Brewer,1978),19–20;Andrew Cole, “Chaucer’s English Lesson,”Speculum 77 (2002):1146–48. 6. For SS74,see chap. 1. On the disproportionate or otherwise unconventional treatment of the commandments in the Lanterne of Liȝt and other works, see WS, 9–10. What do they mean by it? Most broadly,as the Prologue writers’substitution of “hooly writ” for the more common “God’s law” would suggest, God’s law is holy writ. More precisely, it is the moral instruction contained in the bible. But even while the bible’s translators obviously attach importance to making the whole of the bible accessible,this need...

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