MEDIEVAL HERESY
Rebels with a cause
Those brave enough to contradict the teachings of the Church often found themselves paying a heavy price for their heresy
In medieval England, heretics didn’t tend to be anti-Christian, nor atheist. They simply believed in a simpler form of Christianity, one that didn’t involve the rituals and ceremonies of the Catholic Church. As such, the persecution of heretics – which resulted in thousands of people being burned at the stake, both in England and across Europe – can largely be seen more as an issue of disobedience towards the Church rather than overtly anti-Christian behaviour.
Until around 1160, only a small number of leaders of heretic groups were burned at the stake. After then, ordinary folk were increasingly put to death for espousing beliefs that deviated from the strictures of the Church, a pattern that accelerated as the centuries unrolled.
In 1401, Parliament started proceedings against a group they sneeringly branded ‘Lollards’ (a term derived from the Middle Dutch word lollaert, meaning ‘mumbler’). Feeding from the writings of the theologian John Wycliffe, the Lollards opposed the presence of particular rituals within church worship, including the sacraments and the veneration of saints. Furthermore, the wealth of the Church was considered obscene, an example of its preoccupation with, and corruption by, temporal, earthly concerns.
All the while that his criticism was levelled more at the wealth and behaviour of the Church, Wycliffe had enjoyed the support of at least some churchmen, even if it provoked the ire of Pope Gregory XI. But when he spoke out against the Eucharist – the idea that bread and wine could be turned into the body and blood of Christ – any support Wycliffe retained within both the Church and the nobility dissolved.
Wycliffe’s thinking partly influenced the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, beliefs that had trickled across the country via a band of laymen known as ‘poor priests’. The revolt, not advocated by Wycliffe himself, saw the killing of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Simon Sudbury. The following year, 24 of Wycliffe’s doctrines were ruled either erroneous or heretical. Holding any of these opinions, or disseminating them publicly, was declared illegal.
“Four decades after his death, Wycliffe’s remains were dug up and removed from consecrated ground”
Somehow escaping excommunication, Wycliffe continued to rail against what he believed to be a corrupt Catholic Church for the rest of his life. Four decades after his death in 1384, his remains were dug up and removed from consecrated ground. He had finally received an excommunication of sorts.
In 1401, a law called De Heretico Comburendo, or ‘On the burning of heretics’, was deployed and, in the same year, a priest named William Sawtrey was burned for his thoughts on the Eucharist, believing that “bread remains in the same state as before”. It was a popular view among the Lollards, one of whom commented: “Summe folys cummyn to churche thynckyng to see the good Lorde – what shulde they see there but bredde and wyne?”
The 1401 law forced Lollardy underground, but a number of high-profile Lollards remained targets for persecution. In 1410, John Badby was burned at the stake, again for criticism of the Eucharist: “if every host consecrated at the altar were the Lord’s body, then there be 20,000 Gods in England”.
– was executed after his Lollard sympathies
were exposed
Another notable critic of the Church was John Oldcastle, a close confidant of Henry V. After his Lollard sympathies had been revealed, Oldcastle was brought to the Tower of London where he labelled the pope the Antichrist. Charged with heresy, Oldcastle was sentenced to death. However, a band of Lollards sprang him from the Tower, after which he organised an insurrection – the Oldcastle Revolt – centred around the kidnapping of the king. The failed rebellion ended with Oldcastle’s execution.
The persecutions and executions continued throughout the 15th century and into the next. In 1511, five years after the burning of a notable Lollard, William Tylsworth, in Amersham, a bishop began an inquiry into religious dissent in the town. The inquiry ultimately led to the execution of a further six Lollards in 1521, posthumously known as the Amersham Martyrs.
At his trial, Tylsworth had refused to renounce his pronouncements, but several others recanted their beliefs and received reprieves. One of these was omas Harding, who would be charged again a couple of decades later in 1532.
As he awaited his execution, Harding was killed after being struck on the head by a piece of the pyre’s firewood, as brandished by a bystander. As the Elizabethan tome Foxe’s Book of Martyrs later described it, “when they had set fire to the fagots, one of the spectators dashed out his brains with a billet”.
helped drive the Reformation under Henry VIII
A sign of things to come
Harding’s crime had been to be found in possession of William Tyndale’s book The Obedience of a Christian Man, published in 1528. His would be the same fate that befell anyone owning Wycliffe’s earlier translation of the Bible from Latin into Middle English. Tyndale’s book called for a country’s head of state to become the head of the church, replacing the pope. As such, it became a profound influence on Henry VIII, inspiring his split from the Catholic Church in 1534.
Henry’s divorce from Rome can be seen as the denouement of the religious dissent of the previous few centuries. In one fell swoop, the power of the Catholic Church in England was seriously shorn, with the supposedly heretic beliefs and writings that had been outlawed for generations, and punishable by death, providing the framework for the establishment of Protestantism in England. That was quite the turnaround.
An intolerant society
Virulent anti-Semitism made life for England’s Jews increasingly dangerous
Actively encouraged by William I, Jews first came to settle in England following the Norman Conquest. As Christians were disqualified from practising usury – the charging of interest on money borrowed – the burgeoning Jewish community made this their dominant occupation and, as a result, became distinctly wealthy.
Because of their value to the exchequer, Jews were afforded royal protection, a status that, in combination with their wealth, made them the target of deep mistrust from the wider population. Violent attacks upon Jews became increasingly common. One of the more gruesome episodes came in 1190 when the entire Jewish community of York sought the sanctity of the city’s castle from murderous gangs. Without a feasible means of escape, each and every one took their own lives.
In the 13th century, Jews were easily identifiable in England, thanks to an instruction from the Royal Council that they must all wear a pair of white patches of cloth or parchment on their upper clothing. There was also widespread intolerance of Jewish religious practice. Most sinister were the repeated accusations that Christian children were being murdered as part of Passover ceremonies, rumours that would regularly resurface despite being without foundation.
During the 12th and 13th centuries, extra taxes were levied on Jews. Despite only forming 0.25 per cent of the population of England, they paid up to 8 per cent of all taxes due to the Royal Treasury. Much of this revenue funded Christian crusades and the construction of churches and cathedrals.
In 1269, laws were introduced that forbade Jews owning property beyond that in which they lived. Six years later, Jews were outlawed from practising usury. A generous interpretation might be that Edward I was attempting to better integrate Jews into English society by forcing them into other lines of business, but his true intentions came with the issuing of a royal edict in 1290 that expelled all Jews. Any Jew found in England after 1 November could be sentenced to death. As many as 16,000 fled to mainland Europe, while those who remained either disguised their heritage or converted to Christianity. Jews would not be readmitted to England until the 1650s.