Part 12

The style of Wiclif’s Bible is simpler and clearer than the rest of his English. Green says that Wiclif’s style is a model, and that he was the father of our modern vernacular; but this is disposed of by better authority. Sharon Turner says that Wiclif’s style was inferior to that of some of his cotemporaries. Vaughn[19] whose biography of Wiclif is an almost continuous panegyric, says his style is repulsive and unintelligible. Le Bas says it is barbarous. Knight’s history says it is so obscure as to defy interpretation. The truth is, Wiclif like many another man of genius, had not the minor gift of phrase-making; and the better English of his Bible was owing to his collaborators who possessed that gift. Wiclif with the rest of his knowledge, had self-knowledge: he knew his own defects and how to obviate them.

As for his opinions they were fluctuating; and different writers give different accounts of them. His eulogists say they were progressive; his enemies that he recanted. Hume says he had not the spirit of a martyr, and was ready to explain away his doctrines whenever they put him in danger; but it is probable that such was the unpopularity of the French hierarchy that he ran no risk of martyrdom. He was not only left undisturbed in his cure of Lutterworth, but in spite of his opinions he was made one of the royal chaplains at the accession of Richard II.

We find him at one time appealing to the pope against the archbishop of Canterbury; at another, calling his Holiness a _purse-kerver_ that is a pick pocket. Some of his expressions seem to call in doubt the existence of purgatory; but he upholds masses for the dead. He adheres to the seven sacraments, but he not only condemns the restrictions of the Church on the marriage of relatives, he approves of that connection between those more nearly allied in blood than is now sanctioned by modern legislation. He was no doubt betrayed at times by the sharpness of his own dialectics. His was the logic of the schools, the logic of the nominalists and the realists, of Abelard, Aquinus and Dun Scotus, a logic by which anything might be proved or disproved at choice.

The most important and most difficult question is what were his opinions of the Eucharist. It is commonly said that he denied Transubstantiation. But how far did he deny it?

The term transubstantiation was not known till the twelfth century. For eleven hundred years, Christian theology had subsisted without it; and when it came, it came as all words come--the product of evolution. It is not known at what time the idea was first formulated that when Christ said _this is my body; this is the blood of the new testament_, he taught that there was no longer any distinction of entity or identity between himself and the bread and wine he held in his hand--that he was they, and they were he. This dogma, shadowy at first, grew more and more palpable till it developed into a word to express itself. But the theologians still imagined a difference. Did Christ on that occasion annihilate the bread and the wine, and substitute for them himself so utterly that the physical qualities of bread and wine still apparent to the senses, were a delusion? If he did, it was unqualified or major transubstantiation; if he did not, it was qualified or minor transubstantiation which after a time took the name of Consubstantiation. The latter was the creed of Wiclif. He admitted the Real presence; he declared that the bread after consecration, was the very body that hung upon the cross; but he held that the inner _somethingness_ of bread, as he expressed it, still remained. Thus far and no farther did he deny transubstantiation. Archbishop Trench says Wiclif escaped one danger only to fall into another equally great. The distinction between the two was a mere logomachy which had no practical effect on his conduct. He cleaved to the Mass; and it was at the celebration of that rite in his own church at Lutterworth that he received his death shock.

Can the Mass exist without transubstantiation major or minor? Let us see. The Mass is not a mere church service, it is a sacrifice, a renewal of the Atonement, a rehearsal of Calvary. The consecrated Bread is the body and blood which suffered crucifixion; it is the Host, the victim. The priest raises it on high, and the people fall and worship it; Wiclif worshipped it. Is this idolatry? Not if God himself lies on that silver paten.

Had Wiclif been born sixty years later, we never should have heard of him: such a career as his would have been impossible. The House of Lancaster had then usurped the throne, and sought to strengthen its claim by subservience to the see of _Rome_. I say _Rome_ in italics because the Captivity had lapsed into the Great Schism--a pope at Rome and a pope at Avignon--England was of the obedience of the former, France of the latter. The odium theologicum was reënforced by the odium politicum; and while any English priest might vent one or both, with impunity and applause, upon his Holiness at Avignon, he would risk his life if he tried it upon his rival Holiness at Rome.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] NOTE: Green throws light on the fall of James’s father Charles I. He says it was Villiers, duke of Buckingham, “who was destined to drag down in his fatal career the throne of the Stuarts.” His fatal career was posthumous: he had been assassinated twenty-one years previous.

[2] NOTE: Such is Berwick’s own story. See his memoirs. Macaulay’s account of the matter is one of his boldest perversions, inasmuch as he cites Berwick at the head of the list of his authorities. See Macaulay, Lippincott edition, Vol. IV, pages 325, 326, 327.

[3] One of the largest pictures in the museum in Central Park, New York, represents or rather misrepresents this scene.

[4] The papal crown was not originally a tiara: it was single like any other crown. Boniface VIII. added the second crown. It is not known who added the third: it has been attributed to John XXII., to Urban V., and to Benedict XIII.

[5] Capet was a nickname given to Hugh the founder of the dynasty, and was not borne by any of his descendants, excepting that the line is called the capetien. The meaning of Capet is uncertain.

[6] We shall throw some light upon this want of credit in princes of the blood, when we come to speak of Louis of Orleans.

[7] Of the two grandmothers of Edward III., one, Eleanor of Castile, was pure Spanish, and the other, Joanna of Navarre, was half or more.

[8] Had the male line of Burgundy survived, it would have inherited the crown instead of the House of Bourbon.

[9] This low opinion of Scotch valor was still rife in Shakspeare’s time. The poet in describing the lovers of Portia, makes the German a drunkard, the Frenchman a montebank and the Scotchman a coward.

[10] Green calls this prelate sometimes bishop of Winchester and sometimes bishop of Chichester. He was so swept along by his own rhetoric that he forgot men’s names like the Bastard in King John.

[11] Malone whose researches had been standard authority fifty years when Green wrote, says that two lines only of that incomparable scene were thus taken. But let us be just to Green; his incapacity to discern the touch of Shakspeare, and his inadequate knowledge of Shaksperean literature, are after all, among the least defects of his histories.

[12] The order of the Golden Fleece is still extant. The emperor of Austria and the king of Spain, both descendants of Philip, share between them the Grandmastership of the order.

[13] Philip’s third wife was Isabella of Portugal, granddaughter of John of Gaunt, and therefore niece of the cardinal and cousin of Bedford. Isabella was the mother of Charles-the-rash, and it is thus that the Hapsburgs and the Bourbons trace descent from the Plantagenets.

[14] Louis XII. was grandson of Louis of Valentina. Their great-grand-daughter; grand-mother hyphenated below Margaret of Valois was grand-mother of Henry IV. from whom have descended all the branches of the House of Bourbon.

[15] Dunois took his title, count of Dunois, from an estate given him by his half-brother the duke of Orleans, one of those who had stood by his side at the dying bed of Valentina.

[16] Byng was defeated by a French fleet in the Mediterranean. There was no question of his courage or loyalty, but he was none the less condemned to be shot; and the barbarous sentence was carried into effect, Voltaire said it was “pour encourager les autres.”

[17] Dumouriez did not wait for a second embassy; he fled and there fled with him a young prince who had fought by his side for republican France--the duke of Chartres, afterwards duke of Orleans, afterwards Louis Philippe king of the French.

[18] Infallibility of the pope and Immaculate conception of the Virgin were in that age and long after, points in dispute. The Church had not yet erected them into cardinal doctrines which we may question only at the peril of our salvation. Those additional burthens upon our faith were reserved for the present century.

[19] Green cites Vaughn for his authority. The recurrence of such cases justifies E. A. Freeman in saying that Green was not in the habit of reading the authors he quotes; and that he should be judged rather by his essays than by his histories.