Feeling Like Saints: Lollard Writings after Wyclif by Fiona Somerset (review)

Must all Lollard writings, by definition, be heterodox in nature? If a work that had been previously counted as Lollard turns out, upon closer examination, to be largely orthodox in content and aspiration, must it shed its Lollard appellation and be moved into the orthodox category? The answer to these questions would have to be “yes,” if we remain committed to adhering to a narrative constructed by the late medieval ecclesiastical hierarchy as it is manifested in trial records, condemnations, and polemical treatises. Fiona Somerset convincingly makes the case in her deeply learned volume, Feeling Like Saints, that we should not so readily swallow such pre-constructed narratives, but rather rethink the Lollard story from the ground up. Somerset sets out to read Lollard writings on their own terms, letting them speak for themselves, apart from objectifying categories that often do more to obscure the material than disclose it. In doing so, Somerset is asking fellow scholars to reconsider, and thereupon reconceptualize, the landscape of English religiosity at the turn of the fifteenth century.

A lively discussion has been taking place over the last few years regarding the very word “Lollard.” Scholars such as Patrick Hornbeck and Andrew Cole, among others, have reexamined the etymological roots and conceptual implications of the word, especially as it relates to the frequently concomitant designation “heretic.” Somerset, in keeping with the larger aims of her study, has attempted to recast the word so as to obviate a rigid and unhelpful heterodox–orthodox dichotomy. To that end, she pointedly employs the term “Lollard” adjectively, as in “Lollard writer,” rather than speaking of “Lollards” as though they were an identifiable social group. A “Lollard writer” may be defined as an author whose texts draw upon the thought of John Wyclif and whose work shares certain traits with other writings also influenced by Wyclif. The emphasis is to be placed upon what these texts reveal about ways of living the Christian life, rather than establishing stable personal identities. People might, therefore, write in Lollard ways without identifying themselves as Lollards. Lollard writers and Lollard readers were “engaged in a textual culture” devoted to reform—not merely reform of the institutional Church, but a profound personal re-formation. These were men and women who, through sermons, commentaries, and tracts, sought to transform their lives: to live like, and indeed feel like, holy people, i.e., saints.

One of the great strengths of Somerset’s book is the material that she brings to light from her wide-ranging examination of manuscript collections. She begins with an analysis of a sermon collection (Cambridge, Sidney Sussex College, MS 74) in order to highlight the ways in which Lollard pastoral instruction so often concerned itself, not with bitter anticlerical polemics, but with the care and formation of the flock, thereby exhibiting the central concerns of so many medieval pastoral manuals across the centuries. This Lollard writer was principally concerned with the concrete reality of what it means for ordinary folk to live in true community as Christian people. Hence the stress placed upon loving God, which is most clearly manifested in a life marked by good deeds and pious behavior. Readers are thus reminded “God dwells in us if we love together. We ought to flee therefore this false love and leave behind vain knowledge so that we may learn to love God above all things in our heart, so that we may dwell with him in love unto everlasting life” (32). Such moral exhortation was premised upon the notion of a responsible hearer capable of responding in freedom to this call to holiness. Thus, as Somerset notes, the devotion to God and neighbor that lay at the heart of Lollard pastoral care meant viewing “love as a choice . . . an act of will” that frequently entailed sacrifice on the part of the Christian (59).

Somerset is keen to point out that the Christian life envisioned by such Lollard...