Manchester University Press - Lollards in the English Reformation

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.

Reviews

'This study links three major radical expressions of English church history: Wyclif and his 14th/15th-century followers, the Lollards; John Foxe's book of martyrs, Actes and Monuments (1563); and 17th-century English nonconformist critics of the Church of England. Royal (theology and religion, Durham Univ., UK) designates these three movements as radical because the established churches of their respective eras opposed their views and practices. Whereas the Roman Catholic Church declared Lollards heretics, Foxe interpreted them as proto-Protestants and martyrs of the true church. Similarly, Puritans and nonconformist apologists found in Foxe's book support for their demands for additional reforms. The author's purpose is not so much to offer an account of Lollard history or of Foxe's accounts of martyrs as it is to reveal the positive appropriation of Lollard views by Foxe and, through him, by English nonconformists. The particular genre of Royal's history is thus textual transmission and the Protestant reception history of the Lollard tradition. The author stresses Lollard critiques of Roman Catholic views of sacraments, priests, and tithes, and Lollard affirmation of the centrality of preaching. During the long English Reformation (1534-1660) radical Lollard critiques provided justification for advocates of reform. This analysis makes a solid contribution to the historiography of radical English Christianity.'
W. L. Pitts Jr., emeritus, Baylor University
Reprinted with permission from Choice Reviews. All rights reserved. Copyright by the American Library Association.

'Royal's examination of this subject [therefore] represents a useful addition to the growing understanding of Foxe's work, its creation, purpose, reception, and its influence. It also manages to bring new interpretations to how Foxe managed and interpreted the lollard textual legacy.'
Journal of British Studies

'This is an absorbing look at the Lollards and their afterlife in the eyes of subsequent reformers'.
Stephen Copson, Baptist Quarterly

Introduction
1 Lollards, evangelicals and historians
2 The Christian commonwealth
3 The lollard legacy of persecution
4 Sacraments
5 Priesthood and tithing
6 Preaching and conventicles
Conclusions
Index