"Lollard" is the name given to followers of John Wyclif, the
English dissident theologian who was dismissed from Oxford
University in 1381 for his arguments regarding the eucharist. A
forceful and influential critic of the ecclesiastical status quo in
the late fourteenth century, Wyclif's thought was condemned at the
Council of Constance in 1415. While lollardy has attracted much
attention in recent years, much of what we think we know about this
English religious movement is based on records of heresy trials and
anti-lollard chroniclers. In Feeling Like Saints, Fiona Somerset
demonstrates that this approach has limitations. A better basis is
the five hundred or so manuscript books from the period (1375 1530)
containing materials translated, composed, or adapted by lollard
writers themselves.
These writings provide rich evidence for how lollard writers
collaborated with one another and with their readers to produce a
distinctive religious identity based around structures of feeling.
Lollards wanted to feel like saints. From Wyclif they drew an
extraordinarily rigorous ethic of mutual responsibility that
disregarded both social status and personal risk. They recalled
their commitment to this ethic by reading narratives of physical
suffering and vindication, metaphorically martyring themselves by
inviting scorn for their zeal, and enclosing themselves in the
virtues rather than the religious cloister. Yet in many ways they
were not that different from their contemporaries, especially those
with similar impulses to exceptional holiness."
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