Lollards in the English Reformation : History, Radicalism, and John Foxe

This book addresses a perennial question of the English Reformation: to what extent, if any, the late medieval dissenters known as lollards influenced the Protestant Reformation in England. To answer this question, this book looks at the appropriation of the lollards by evangelicals such as William Tyndale, John Bale, and especially John Foxe, and through them by their seventeenth-century successors. Because Foxe included the lollards in his influential tome, Acts and Monuments (1563), he was the most important conduit for their individual stories, including that of John Wyclif (d. 1384), and lollard beliefs and ecclesiology. Foxe’s reorientation of the lollards from heretics and traitors to martyrs and model subjects portrayed them as Protestants’ spiritual forebears. Scholars have argued that to accomplish this, Foxe heavily edited radical lollard views on episcopacy, baptism, preaching, conventicles, tithes, and oaths, either omitting them from his book or moulding them into forms compatible with a magisterial Reformation. This book shows that Foxe in fact made no systematic attempt to downplay radical lollard beliefs, and that much non-mainstream material exists in the text. These views, legitimised by Foxe’s inclusion of them in his book, allowed for later dissenters to appropriate the lollards as historical validation of their theological and ecclesiological positions. The book traces the ensuing struggle for the lollard, and indeed the Foxean, legacy between conformists and nonconformists, arguing that the same lollards that Foxe used to bolster the English church in the sixteenth century would play a role in its fragmentation in the seventeenth. "This volume addresses a perennial question in the history of English religion: to what extent did the late-medieval dissenters known as lollards influence the Protestant Reformation? To answer this question, it examines the afterlife of the lollards as shaped by sixteenth-century evangelicals, especially John Foxe, and their seventeenth-century successors. Foxe's Acts and Monuments (1563) is second only to the Bible as the most influential book in early modern England, a juggernaut in Tudor historical writing that solidified the emergent national church. His reorientation of the lollards from heretics and traitors to martyrs and model subjects portrayed these medieval dissenters as Protestants' ideological forebears. This volume offers a strong corrective to the traditional interpretation that Foxe heavily edited radical Lollard views to bring them in line with a mainstream monarchical church. Instead, it shows that a wealth of non-mainstream material is present in Foxe's text that allowed seventeenth-century religious radicals to appropriate the lollards as historical validation of their own theological and political positions, including the act of separation. Lollards in the English Reformation traces the ensuing struggle for the Lollard legacy between conformists and nonconformists, arguing that the same lollards that Foxe used to bolster the fledgling English church in the sixteenth century would play a role in its fragmentation in the seventeenth. This fresh and exciting research promises to shake up our assumptions about Foxe, the levels of radicalism in post-Reformation Protestantism and the significance of historical precedent in post-Reformation polemic." -- Back cover This book examines the afterlife of the lollard movement, demonstrating how it was shaped and used by evangelicals and seventeenth-century Protestants. It focuses on the work of John Foxe, whose influential Acts and Monuments (1563) reoriented the lollards from heretics and traitors to martyrs and model subjects, portraying them as Protestants' ideological forebears. It is a scholarly mainstay that Foxe edited radical lollard views to bring them in line with a mainstream monarchical church. But this book offers a strong corrective to the argument, revealing that the subversive material present in Foxe's text allowed seventeenth-century religious radicals to appropriate the lollards as historical validation of their own theological and political positions. The book argues that the same lollards who were used to strengthen the English church in the sixteenth century would play a role in its fragmentation in the seventeenth. Analysing the lollard legacy in the post-Reformation era, this book identifies the significance of John Foxe's Acts and Monuments in shaping these medieval dissenters for early moderns. It shows that Foxe left much of their radical beliefs intact, inadvertently contributing to later contentions in the Church of England's struggle for identity. Front matter Dedication Contents Acknowledgements List of abbreviations Introduction Lollards, evangelicals, and historians The Christian commonwealth The lollard legacy of persecution Sacraments Priesthood and tithes Preaching and conventicles Conclusions Select bibliography Index