Catholic Church: Persecutor of Wycliffe?

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Greetings to all.

I am in need of some assistance. I am in the process of coming home to the Catholic Church but my father-in-law, who is a pentacostal minister insists that the Catholic Church violently persecuted the Biblle translators such as Wycliffe and that the Church also chained the Bible to the pulpit so no one could read it. Of course, I know that there is another side to this story, so I am hoping someone can give me a reference to where I can read up on the Catholic side of this story. I assume that the reason the Bible was chained to the pulpit was because they didn’t want it stolen since it would have been expensive to reproduce. But assuming isn’t going to be good enough for my father-in-law.

Thanks.
 
kdmay68 said:
Greetings to all.

I am in need of some assistance. I am in the process of coming home to the Catholic Church but my father-in-law, who is a pentacostal minister insists that the Catholic Church violently persecuted the Biblle translators such as Wycliffe and that the Church also chained the Bible to the pulpit so no one could read it.
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Wycliffe was persecuted (actually not that severely during his lifetime, because he had powerful aristocratic protectors; however, his body was dug up and burned after his death and his followers were persecuted) because of his doctrinal teachings, primarily his denial of transubstantiation but also his radical doctrine of predestination (which led him to believe that the Church was made up only of the elect and that if the Pope was not elect–i.e., if he was not a virtuous and holy man–he was actually the Antichrist) and related questions of ecclesiology and church polity (he wanted the Church to be poor and holy, which sounds great but the other side of the coin would be that the government basically controlled things). Wycliffe himself probably did not do the translation–it was almost certainly produced by his followers, and was naturally regarded as unorthodox because it was produced by unorthodox people.

However, the English Church did respond to this situation by banning the reading of the Bible in English (and if one of my professors in grad school was right, even the discussion of religious questions in English!). This was in my opinion unconscionable, and Protestants are right to be outraged. But they are not right to generalize this to a claim that the Catholic Church persecuted people just for translating the Bible.

Edwin
 
The argument that the Catholic Church didn’t allow people to read the Bible by “chaining it to the pulpit” never made sense to me.

Think about it. If you want something concealed from the public, do you chain it to a public place? Or lock it away? In the instances where it was indeed chained down, this guaranteed that it would not be stolen, and yet be accessible. If it had been just left out on a table, it would surely have been stolen almost immediately, and thus accessible to nobody! Remember, at the time they were extremely expensive, and very rare. A parish would be fortunate to have ONE. Allowing it to be stolen would deny it to the people.
 
If we read the Council of Constance’s list of Wycliffe’s errors, we see why temporal means had to be used against him. His doctrines were a recipe for social chaos. Besides his rejection of much of the fundamentals of the Catholic faith, he claimed that princes who were in a state of sin lost all authority. Essentially, what followed was that if his followers thought their ruler was a sinner, they no longer felt obliged to obey laws. :eek:

Here is the condemned error from Constance:

“15. Nobody is a civil lord or a prelate or a bishop while he is in mortal sin.”
 
mainusch said:
The argument that the Catholic Church didn’t allow people to read the Bible by “chaining it to the pulpit” never made sense to me.
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Yes, I’m actually not sure that medieval Bibles were chained to the pulpit. I do know that this was done in 16th-century Anglicanism as a way of making the Bible available to the people. I hope that it was done before the Reformation as well, although of course a Latin Bible would be accessible to far fewer people (by the later Middle Ages there were quite a few people who were literate only in the vernacular, and of course one person could always read to the others).

Edwin
 
Genesis315 said:
If we read the Council of Constance’s list of Wycliffe’s errors, we see why temporal means had to be used against him. His doctrines were a recipe for social chaos. Besides his rejection of much of the fundamentals of the Catholic faith, he claimed that princes who were in a state of sin lost all authority. Essentially, what followed was that if his followers thought their ruler was a sinner, they no longer felt obliged to obey laws. :eek:

Here is the condemned error from Constance:

“15. Nobody is a civil lord or a prelate or a bishop while he is in mortal sin.”
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Did Wycliffe really say this, or is this the Council’s interpretation of what he said? The main reason I question this is that Wycliffe got a lot of support from the aristocracy because they saw him as an ally against the Church hierarchy–I can’t imagine them supporting him if he was saying that those of them who were in mortal sin lost their right to rule. I would actually think more highly of him if he did apply it to civil as well as religious authorities. My biggest problem with his theology is his elevation of the civil authorities over the Church–the same is true for many of the Reformers.

Edwin
 
Church_Militant said:
Oh, & BTW, Bibles (which were hand copied and all kindsa rare at that time) were indeed chained to pulpits…for the same reason that we chain phone books and pens in a bank to this day. So they don’t walk off and so everyone can use them.
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And I always thought the reason they chained phone books and pens was to prevent people from using them. Learn something new every day! 🙂
 
Contarini said:
Did Wycliffe really say this, or is this the Council’s interpretation of what he said? The main reason I question this is that Wycliffe got a lot of support from the aristocracy because they saw him as an ally against the Church hierarchy–I can’t imagine them supporting him if he was saying that those of them who were in mortal sin lost their right to rule. I would actually think more highly of him if he did apply it to civil as well as religious authorities. My biggest problem with his theology is his elevation of the civil authorities over the Church–the same is true for many of the Reformers.

Edwin
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From what I have read he did actually teach this. His doctrine was that dominion was founded on grace, and there was none apart from grace. Therefore, those not in the state of grace had no dominion in Church or state. He also seems to have taught that it forfeited property rights as well (see first article below). It is odd that rulers would still back him.

Here are a couple links that deal with this:

justus.anglican.org/resources/bio/27.html
island-of-freedom.com/WYCLIFFE.HTM
newadvent.org/cathen/15722a.htm
bartleby.com/212/0207.html
 
Genesis315 said:
From what I have read he did actually teach this. His doctrine was that dominion was founded on grace, and there was none apart from grace. Therefore, those not in the state of grace had no dominion in Church or state. He also seems to have taught that it forfeited property rights as well (see first article below). It is odd that rulers would still back him.

Here are a couple links that deal with this:

justus.anglican.org/resources/bio/27.html
island-of-freedom.com/WYCLIFFE.HTM
newadvent.org/cathen/15722a.htm
bartleby.com/212/0207.html
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I’d like to see the primary texts, but in the absence of that you do appear to be right. And I do remember the bit about property rights, now that you mention it. It seems like the sort of thing that you’d have to apply very selectively!

Of course, this was true of the original Donatist heresy as well!

Edwin
 
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