The Detection of Heresy in Late Medieval England

Abstract

Heresy was the most feared crime in the medieval moral universe. It was seen as a social disease capable of poisoning the body politic and shattering the unity of the church. The study of heresy in late medieval England has, to date, focussed largely on the heretics. In consequence, we know very little about how this crime was defined by the churchmen who passed authoritative judgement on it. By examining the drafting, publicizing, and implementing of new laws against heresy using published and unpublished judicial records, this book presents a study of inquisition in medieval England. It argues that because heresy was a problem simultaneously national and local, detection relied upon collaboration between rulers and the ruled. While involvement in detection brought local society into contact with the apparatus of government, uneducated laymen still had to be kept at arm's length because judgements about heresy were deemed too subtle and important to be left to them. Detection required bishops and inquisitors to balance reported suspicions against canonical proof, and threats to public safety against the rights of the suspect and the deficiencies of human justice. The major figures in the prosecution of heresy were Thomas Arundel and Henry Chichele, archbishops of Canterbury. At present, the character and significance of lollardy, the heresy associated with John Wyclif, in late medieval England is the subject of much debate. The book considers that this debate has to be informed by a greater awareness of the legal and social contexts within which heresy took on its many real and imagined attributes.

Lollardy, Hussitism and the Scottish Inquisition, c.1390 - c.1527

“…There were both English inquisitors and foreign inquisitors, delegated by popes, bishops, archbishops, and the crown and foreign inquisitors, direct agents of papal authority with jurisdiction over ecclesia anglicana." 68 The same logic can be applied to the Scottish context. In Scotland it has long been established that there was a papal-appointed inquisitor, but this has blinded scholars to evidence that demonstrates that inquisition in Scotland spread further than the portfolio of Laurence of Lindores.…”

Stranger than fiction in the archives: The controversial death of William Cowbridge in 1538

“…78 Until recently, the scholarly emphasis in Lollard studies has been textual and prosopographical, thanks to the monumental and groundbreaking work done by Anne Hudson 79 and by her students in constructing networks of manuscript circulation and mutual contact. 80 Recent years, though, have seen a shift from concerns about textual traditions and social networking to a focus on belief: how outer signs indicate inner belief, 81 and ways that doctrines developed. 82 The result of this shift, most clearly seen in the work of Patrick Hornbeck, to say nothing of the work of Richard Rex, is that the Lollards cannot be conceptualized as members of a cohesive movement.…”

Lollards and Protestants Revisited

“…61 Meanwhile, from the other side of a notional subdisciplinary garden fence, scholars like Shannon McSheffrey, Rob Lutton, and Ian Forrest have similarly been inviting us to question the 'orthodoxySheresy polarity' according to which the late medieval religious scene is conventionally assessed. 62 The boundary separating licit from illicit opinions and forms of devotion was both porous and movable, and the religious motivations of the pious Catholic and of the person who might find him or herself accused of heresy could be very similar. It is a truism deserving repetition that heresy in the late medieval period was a fundamentally ascriptional phenomenon.…”