Wyclif: “Trialogus.” trans. by Stephen E. Lahey (review)

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the now defunct Wyclif Society undertook the publication of all the works of the fourteenth-century church reformer John Wyclif. These thirty-six volumes, which include sermons in addition to philosophical and theological tracts, are in Wyclif’s “notoriously challenging” (35) Latin and have only rarely been translated. When they are translated, they are usually excerpted to present Wyclif’s argument without his characteristic repetitiveness (for instance, John Wyclif’s “On the Truth of Holy Scripture,” trans. Ian C. Levy [Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute, 2001]). Wycliffite scholars as well as those who study late medieval religion will gladly welcome Stephen E. Lahey’s lucid and complete translation of one of Wyclif’s pastoral and instructive works, the Trialogus. Lahey also includes a translation of a short text known as Supplementum or De Dotatione Ecclesie.

Lahey’s translation opens with a helpful introduction that contextualizes both Wyclif and Trialogus. As is well known, Wyclif was at Oxford, first as a student and, ultimately, as a doctor of theology, from the 1360s through the early 1380s, when he returned to his parish church in Leicestershire. Wyclif’s philosophical, theological, and political positions led to his exile from the university. These included his insistence on a realist metaphysics that grounded his rejection of the doctrine of transubstantiation and his call for the disendowment of the church. Wyclif’s ideas were later condemned at the Council of Constance in 1415.

Trialogus dates, most likely, from Wyclif’s last years as a parish priest. Modeled on a popular school text used in the thirteenth century, the Ecologues of Theodulus, Trialogus is arranged as a conversation among three people. Alithia, a woman, poses questions and, thus, frames the conversation. Pseustis, a friar, presents the positions that Wyclif most assailed. Often, though, Wyclif’s presentation of the positions of his opponents falls into caricatures or overstates their importance (see, for instance, n. 35, 312). The final character and the one whose ideas are presented most thoroughly is Phronesis. He represents Wyclif’s own theology, but, as Lahey points out, “his voice is much less formal and much less pedantic than is Wyclif’s voice in other works” (3). Lahey suggests, therefore, that Wyclif’s intended audience for Trialogus was educated members of civil society—lawyers, clerics, members of the Commons and lower nobility—who were literate in Latin and possessed sufficient schooling to understand the main ideas. A second group who may have been part of the intended audience was the members of Wyclif’s “poor preachers.” Although there is disagreement among scholars about the actual existence of such a group, Lahey believes, with considerable grounding in the text, that Trialogus could have been part of a preaching program (see, for instance, references to preachers and preaching on 138, 262–63).

After a brief prologue introducing the characters, Wyclif divides Trialogus into four books, broadly following the outline of Peter Lombard’s Sentences. In the first book of Trialogus, Wyclif, like Lombard, examines questions about the nature of God. Throughout this section, Wyclif characteristically emphasizes the importance of the “faith of scripture” and the “limits of reasoning” (57) while developing his notion of divine Ideas. For Wyclif, contrary to William of Ockham, the divine Idea could be identified with God’s nature and is “formally … the reason according to which God understands creatures” (62). Wyclif insists that it cannot be formally associated with a thing signified because then “God would be some creature, and everything nameable would be an eternal Idea” (62). He insists that without a proper philosophical grounding, a person will misunderstand Sacred Scripture and fall into heresy.

In the second book, Wyclif, like Lombard, presents his theology of creation. This book includes discussions about the created matter of the world, the human soul, angels, and predestination. Unsurprisingly, Wyclif emphasizes the importance of Scripture and the writings of the saints in understanding each of these as theological concepts (99). The way that...