"Ech good gramarien hath power to construe Scripture": Grammar and the Vernacular in the Theology of Reginald Pecock

This article argues that Reginald Pecock, fifteenth-century bishop of Chichester, calls upon his scholastic background to present a grammatical justification for a theological vernacular. However, in attempting to justify the vernacular, Pecock finds himself confronting the specter of John Wyclif and the shadow that the posthumously condemned cleric casts over any form of lay education. Pecock is so anxious to prove himself non-Wycliffite that he seeks to control the interpretations of his texts in very Wycliffite fashions, a choice that characterizes his paradoxical approach to the task of vernacularizing theology.